“We’ll go to silent running and a full alert sonar status. That means we’ll be doing a constant attack problem on the Russian and on the Devilfish, so we know where Devilfish is at all times. If the Russian opens his missile hatches we should be able to hear that. The word I had in Holy Loch was that the Russians use manual power to open their missile hatches. Takes them about four minutes to open a hatch and they open one or at the most two at a time.
“That gives us time to get off torpedoes, provided we have a constant firing problem in the computers. Mr. Eckert will see to it that we have a continual attack problem running. Mr. Reiss will alert the torpedo room to the problem we face.” He paused and rubbed his beard. “We can’t go to Battle Stations and stay there for maybe days on end, once we make contact. We’ll have to play it by ear, once we find him.” He looked at Reiss.
“I want you to fill in Turk Raynor. Impress on him the need for readiness to fire on a moment’s notice.”
“Won’t we be breaking ComSubLant’s order to keep this information in the Wardroom, sir?” Reiss asked.
“Oh, hell!” Reinauer snorted. “Do you think that everyone on this damned ship doesn’t know we sank a Soviet submarine? Do you think the crew doesn’t know that we’re going to sink another one if he makes a wrong move? You can’t keep that sort of information from a crew. They know.” The telephone on the bulkhead buzzed and he turned and picked the handset off the bulkhead. He listened for a moment and then put the handset back.
“Devilfish may have made contact. Sonar reports she’s put on speed and is turning northward. Let’s go to Battle Stations. We’ll follow Devilfish into whatever she’s got. Go to silent running. Mr. Eckert, start a firing plot at once.” The Wardroom emptied and the soft, muted clanging of the Battle Stations alarm sounded throughout the Orca.
CHAPTER 15
Anton Simonov was uncomfortable. Educated by the State as a mechanical engineer he had adapted well to KGB work. He often told his wife that working for the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnost or working as an engineer wasn’t that much different. Both jobs depended heavily on research and careful reasoning; both jobs gave one satisfaction if done well. The major drawback as he saw it was that once a man had attained some degree of rank he must, of necessity, engage in politics. Anton Simonov was not a politician.
He sat in a chair in front of Leonid Plotovsky’s desk in a sparsely furnished office in a wing of the Kremlin. He watched the old man peer at the pictures Simonov had brought to the office. Plotovsky pulled the earplug for the tape recorder out of the forest of stiff hairs that stuck out of his ear and turned off the recorder.
“Disgusting,” the old man said. “Revolting, absolutely revolting! To think that good men died in the Great War to save this nation from Hitler’s barbarians and now we breed scum like this!” He slammed his hand down on his desk console of buttons and his secretary opened the door to his office. He hastily began to turn the pictures over.
“Tea for the two of us,” he growled and she withdrew.
“I need something honest to wash the taste of this filth out of my mouth,” he said. “You must need something, you’ve seen these things more than once.”
“No more than I had to see them, Comrade,” Simonov said
“I can understand that,” Plotovsky said. He thanked his secretary for the two mugs of hot tea and waited until she had left the room and closed the door.
“There are no pictures of the Admiral’s face, Simonov.”
“No, sir. Gaining admittance to his apartment, planting cameras and microphones and tape recorders would have been a major operation, sir. He has two servants, bodyguards, really. They never leave his apartment together. One is always there.” He drew a long, slow breath.
“However, I think we have what could be called a considerable body of circumstantial evidence, Comrade. If I may be allowed, let me outline that for you.
“There are the pictures of Lubutkin waiting to be picked up by the Admiral in his official car and of the pickup. There are the pictures of the two of them leaving the car and walking to the door of the Admiral’s apartment building. The lighting in that street is excellent and the number of the building can be seen very clearly. In some of those pictures the Admiral can be seen patting Lubutkin’s rear end as they walk to the door of the building.
“Then there are the other pictures,” Simonov continued. “Those of Lubutkin and his roommate, who, incidentally, is a dissident and is not registered as living in Lubutkin’s apartment. Those pictures clearly establish that Lubutkin is a sexual pervert. He buggers his roommate, his roommate buggers him. The pictures and the tape recordings leave no doubt as to his character.
“Finally, if we have to, we can use the driver as a witness against the Admiral. He is unwilling to give witness, as I note in my report, but he can be forced to do so.”
“He’s also a pervert, according to your report,” Plotovsky growled. “But it would be evidence of a sort, the damned condemning the damned. I agree with you that we should not use him unless we have to do so. If we do he would have to be eliminated. Not that it would be any loss. Well, I can only say that you have done a remarkable job in a very short time, Anton Simonov. I won’t forget it.”
Simonov looked away from Plotovsky. To enjoy the favor of a politician was, in his estimation, almost as dangerous as being in disfavor. He turned his eyes back to the old man behind the desk.
“Thank you, Comrade. One more thing, to finish my train of thought: The pictures establish the fact that the Admiral and Lubutkin were, shall we say, companionable. The tape recordings, that section where Lubutkin’s roommate asks him to have the Admiral come to their apartment for an orgy, that establishes that the Admiral’s fondness for Lubutkin was based in one thing, sexual perversion.”
“It’s disgusting,” the old man said. He turned some of the pictures over and stared at them, his thin lips curling in revulsion.
“But not uncommon,” Simonov said. “I have done some research in this area, sir. I found that this sort of perversion was quite popular in ancient Greece, in old Rome and in the Mayan civilization. It was common in those nations to use young boys and young men as prostitutes.”
“As nations they all went under, didn’t they? Pulled down by their own excesses?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We could arrest Lubutkin, make him testify about his relations with the Admiral.” Plotovsky said. “We could promise him immunity and then dispose of him after the evidence had been given.”
“Unfortunately, we cannot,” Simonov said. He chose his words carefully. He was skirting the quicksand now and if he didn’t tread carefully he could be sucked down.
“I posted two people in an apartment we requisitioned that was next to Lubutkin’s apartment. We made a peephole so the men could observe, so they would know when to film, when to activate the tape recorders. Lubutkin came home last night after seeing the Admiral and the usual perversions between the two roommates went on. After they had finished we took the film out of the camera and one of the men took it to the laboratory to process it, that was our usual procedure.