“To put it simply, Comrade Director, the Admiral is a bungholer. I looked up the proper word today, after I had decided I must come and talk to you. The Admiral is a pederast.”
“And Lubutkin?” Shevenko said.
“He has the hole the Admiral bungs,” Simonov said.
“You have proof of that?”
“Not the sort of proof one would need to go before a Board of Inquiry. But I have lots of circumstantial evidence. Pictures of the two of them meeting clandestinely. Lubutkin getting into the Admiral’s car. Lubutkin and the Admiral getting out of the car at the Admiral’s apartment and going inside. Lubutkin coming out alone hours later. Lubutkin going home to be consoled by his roommate.”
“I thought he lived alone,” Shevenko said.
“The housing records show he lives alone but he shares his apartment. He has two rooms and a private bath and a kitchen, with another pervert, an artist who has been in trouble before for making anti-Soviet statements. We have had microphones and a camera hidden in that apartment for two weeks. The evidence is quite interesting, if you have a strong stomach.”
“Explain,” Shevenko said.
“When Lubutkin comes home from the Admiral’s apartment his roommate bathes him and applies some sort of salve to his asshole. The Admiral must be hung like a mule. Then your boy bungholes his roommate. Two days ago the roommate begged Lubutkin to bring his friend to their apartment for a threesome. If that were to happen…” Simonov left the sentence hanging.
“If that were to happen the Admiral would be commanding a shovel in Siberia,” Shevenko said. “But it won’t. He’s too old a fox to go outside his own run.” He looked at Simonov and reached for the bottle of vodka.
“You wouldn’t care to tell me who ordered you to begin this surveillance of the Admiral?”
“I couldn’t do that, now could I, old friend?” Simonov reached for the small glass of vodka and held it in his hand. Shevenko noticed that Simonov’s hand did not tremble.
“Let me make a guess, then,” Shevenko said. “Would the person who asked you to do this be older than most, one who spits a lot?”
Simonov sipped at the vodka. “In school, when we were in school,” he said, “when the teacher wanted an answer and no one knew you would always guess and you were almost always right. You have not changed.”
“Thank you,” Shevenko said. He smiled. “You can supply me with photos, duplicates of your tapes?”
“Of course,” Simonov said. “I will deliver them myself, tomorrow. We use the new camera, the one that prints the date and the time of day in one corner of the negative. How about an early lunch in that place we used to meet when you were planning the change in my department? Eleven-thirty?”
“Fine,” Shevenko said. “I depend on old friends like you. I wish I had more of them. As my mother used to say, go with God.”
“My mother always said that, too,” Simonov said with a grin.
Isser Bernstein rocked back in his desk chair and let his eyes move from Moise Shamanski to Naomi to Lev Tolar, the top naval expert in the Mossad. Tolar, a short, squat man with a heavy beard, sat erect in his chair, holding a sheaf of papers in his hands. Bernstein turned to Naomi.
“What’s the latest on the attacks by the Chinese along the Soviet border?”
Naomi looked at the notebook she held in her lap. “Our last information is timed at zero five thirty this morning, from the Moscow source. The Soviets are moving four divisions to the Chinese border. Two divisions are being pulled out of Poland, two out of East Germany. It’s an airlift operation. Aviation units are also being deployed from western Russia to the border.”
“Hm,” Bernstein said. “Pretty big diversion of force, isn’t it? Do the attacks along the border warrant that sort of diversion?”
“Our military people don’t think the attacks are that serious,” Naomi said. “They agree that one, perhaps two divisions would be sufficient at this time. With the caveat that if the Soviets really believe that the Chinese are going to do more than they have in the past then four divisions plus aviation units would be reasonable.”
Bernstein turned to Lev Tolar.
“What’s your thinking on this order from Moscow to put all their submarines on a war alert status?”
Tolar shrugged his shoulders “I wonder about the way the message was sent. It was sent in an old code, one that everyone can read. It’s as if the Soviets wanted the Americans and everyone else to know what they are doing, and that isn’t like them at all. If they meant serious business I think they would have used one of their top secret codes.
“Putting their submarines on war alert doesn’t necessarily mean they will go to sea. Our reports show that their submarines are taking aboard stores and some torpedoes to fill out their racks. The order was issued yesterday morning but the crews of the submarines stopped work at fifteen thirty hours, the usual quitting time and crew members off duty were seen going ashore, going into town.”
“What reaction do you pick up from Washington to that order?” Bernstein asked.
“The Americans have changed deployment of their attack submarines, sending two attack submarines to cover each Soviet missile submarine that is loose in the Atlantic or Pacific. But that’s normal also, it’s happened a number of times before when the Soviets would issue a general alert.
“There aren’t very many Soviet missile submarines in the Atlantic or the Pacific,” Tolar continued. “The Soviets have had quite a bit of matériel difficulty lately and their Navy seems, at times, to be on the edge of almost mutiny because of extended sea duty and very little time in port. So they’ve started leaving a lot of their ships in port, surface and submarine ships, to give the crews more leave time.” He looked up from his notes.
“The Soviet admirals have had a policy of ten to fourteen days leave for their sailors every three years. It is a stupid policy and they’ve begun to realize that.”
“Those Soviet submarines in port, they have to run a gauntlet of underwater listening devices and mine fields to get out to the Atlantic from the Kola Peninsula and to the Pacific from the Sea of Okhotsk, don’t they?” Naomi asked.
“Yes,” Tolar said. “That is, the Americans will know the minute any Soviet submarine tries to get out into the Atlantic. The net east of the Sea of Okhotsk is not as tight, the area is more open than the route from the major missile submarine base on the Kola Peninsula so a few might get out into the Pacific.”
“Once they start to move out to sea the underwater listening devices pick them up and then the mines get them, is that the way it works?” Bernstein asked.
“That’s the principle,” Tolar said.
“I’d like your opinions of what would happen if the major powers lose their heads and begin a nuclear war. Lev, you first.”
“Both sides lose,” Tolar said. “Neither can neutralize the other’s counterstrike capability. Both lose.”
“Where does that put Israel?” Bernstein said. “Where would we be in relation to the Arab World?”
“At war,” Moise Shemanski said glumly. “At war with an enemy that outnumbers us twenty or more to one. Without any doubt, most of the Third World nations would come in on the side of the Arabs.”
“Japan?” Bernstein said softly.
“They’d wait, with China, until the Third World nations had mopped us up and then China would move in and dominate what was left of the world. Japan would be China’s ally, without doubt.” Naomi and Tolar nodded their heads in agreement.
“My assessment is that the Soviets will do nothing for a while,” Bernstein said. “They have too much on their plate at the moment, no matter what their hardliners say.