Eddie piped up, “Any way to do that for people, so I can keep the director from knowing where I am?”
Marietta and DeBlieu laughed. Sachs rolled his eyes. Karen Vleska smiled. “I know what you mean,” she said.
“The Virginia class has been modified for combat in littoral waters, shallow ones like those in the Mideast or the areas around Taiwan. She can slip inside the enemy’s air defense and unleash salvos of up to sixteen tomahawk missiles. She’s less detectable on the surface with the periscope gone. She uses a mast-mounted photonics array instead. She’s got hull-mounted mine detection. The acquisition by an enemy of this craft would jeopardize thousands of U.S. military personnel around the world, and our ability to wage war. When we get there, I go in first to check things, and you all wait outside.”
I started. I’d not envisioned taking her in, or taking her at all if we had to go on foot. “Dr. Vleska,” I reasoned, “you have to understand… conditions won’t be optimum. I suggest the Marines and I go first, and once we secure the boat—”
“No! There are things I need to do before anyone else can enter.”
The director remained silent. Why didn’t he stop her? I started to say, “You don’t understand…” but noticed Lieutenant Del Grazo, across from me, grinning.
“Do you mind explaining what’s so funny?” I snapped.
His and Vleska’s eyes met. They seemed to share something amusing. I felt an irrational stab of jealousy, even while I waited to hear what the hell was going on.
Del Grazo said, grin broadening, “Karen Vleska, Colonel. Vleska. Remember? She’s that Karen Vleska.”
Marietta Cristobel let out a sharp breath. “That’s you?” she said, staring at the submarine expert.
I was baffled. But now Eddie got it, too, sat back and turned to me, joined in the grin festival, at my expense. “Colonel, she’s probably got more polar experience than all of us together. She was on that expedition to the North Pole two years ago, the skiers… Fifty Nights… the documentary. Won the Oscar. All-woman expedition. Remember?”
Now I did. I remembered the ads for it. Shots of four women in a blizzard, on cross-country skis, hauling sleds. I’d not read her file on the way up, figuring she was already security-cleared since she’d helped design the sub. Now I envisioned a different sort of body beneath those thick clothes, tight and muscular, like the hands.
Karen Vleska ignored the looks. She said reasonably, “Look, we’ve got a security leak, and I will not take the chance — however remote — that the person responsible is among us. So I go down first. I cover up anything sensitive. Then you gentlemen are welcome to drop in and have a big cocktail party, do whatever you want.”
“There’s something toxic in that sub,” I argued. “There will be bodies in there.”
“I go in first.”
“How about we discuss this later?” I suggested.
“If by that you mean after I go in, Colonel, fine.”
There was a coughing sound from the intercom. The director was fading like Marley’s Ghost, but he was still there, a pale outline, a consciousness from afar. But his voice came out strong and clear. “You’ll go in together.”
That convinced me. He’s not running things.
He was disappearing as if his essence were being sucked away to be deposited in whatever Situation Room, Pentagon room, State Department, or task force room he’d be reporting to next, to face the usual round of Washington high-level second-guessers. You should have sent more Marines! We should have asked our allies for help!
The director was gone.
“I’m going, too,” Andrew Sachs said.
All eyes went to the Assistant Deputy Secretary, who had drawn himself up in his chair, fortified by a satellite phone call with the Secretary of State.
“She’s going. The Marines are going.” He sounded like a ten-year-old to me. “The Secretary has instructed me to go, too.”
Sachs sat taller, the overhead light gleaming off the bald spot on his narrow head. His thin lips were tucked together. He was the stern New England schoolmaster or preacher. The iron gray eyes dared anyone to disagree.
Sachs was one of those men who lecture rather than talk. “The last thing we want is an international incident. There’s going to be a U.S. claim to territory up here and we’ll need all the support we can get. Negotiation may be required. You are not trained to do it. The issues are greater than the fate, however important, of one submarine. To be honest,” he said, using a phrase that in my experience identifies consummate liars, “confrontation must be avoided at all costs.”
Karen bristled. “Meaning, give them my submarine?”
“Meaning no trigger-happy posse, Wild West style.”
Eddie said, aghast, “What about the sick crew?”
Sachs’s lecture finger was up, wagging. He answered to one God and it was the Secretary of State, and he had spoken from his C Street Mount Olympus. “The fate of one hundred and fifty people versus three hundred and twenty million. You are not to fight.”
“That’s not what the director said.”
“The Secretary assured me, that’s what the President said, and your director, last time I checked, doesn’t run Washington. If we get there first, fine, do what you want, recover the sub, sink it. But if we… I’m coming along!”
It was a surprise voice beside me that spoke up. Clinton Toovik, the Iñupiat marine mammal observer, said softly, very calmly, “May I ask a question?”
Sachs glared at the interruption. “What question?”
Slowly, he said, “Well, what if we don’t get there ahead of the Chinese because, well, because of you, sir?”
“Me? What? Me? Ridiculous!”
“Mr. Secretary,” Clinton asked, unperturbed, “have you ever been in an ice storm?”
“If she can do it, I can.”
“I’m sure that is true. I’m just saying. We might need to climb ice ridges thirty feet high. And wade through seawater ponds… That wind peels skin from your face. My uncle Dalton, he likes his vodka, and he came in too late once and had no skin left on the right side and had to be airlifted to Anchorage.”
“Your uncle Dalton? What does he have to do with this?”
But I noticed that Sachs, envisioning a different sort of future, had turned slightly paler, as he said, “I’ll wear heavy clothes, like everyone else.”
“Uh-huh. Also, anyone could fall in. The ice looks safe. You might even see a bear walk on it. Then you walk on it. Down you go. It’s all about weight distribution. But don’t worry. We’ll be roped together. We’ll move extra slow for you. And then, when we report back, we’ll explain how we had to go slow — lose time — because we didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Sachs was blinking more rapidly. Looking at Clinton, the big body, Hawaii barbeque T-shirt, the open, amiable expression, I knew I’d just seen one of the best conference ambushes I’d ever witnessed. I wanted to applaud.
Clinton said, “It’s not your fault if you’re the one who has never been on ice. I know the Secretary of State will understand if you cause us to lose out.”
Sachs insisted weakly, “I won’t slow us down.”
I said, joining in, “Secretary Sachs is right, Clinton. If anyone falls behind, we’ll just leave them.”
Clinton nodded thoughtfully. “That is for the best.”
Sachs looked sick.
I felt a tap on my leg, from Clinton. He pushed a folded piece of paper into my hand. I looked down. He had good handwriting.