Deep Lie (2 page)

From somewhere out in the fog he could hear a boat’s engine closing fast on him, but he didn’t care. Now there would be no days with his grandson, telling him, showing him where the fish were and how to catch them. Now there was only old age and loneliness, stretching toward death. He wanted it now. He plucked at the knot at his wrist until it came loose, and the blood flowed from his finger stumps again.

The patrol boat came out of the fog, now, and slowed.

A loud, metallic voice came at him from across the water.

“You are in a restricted area; you must leave at once. Please follow me. You are in a restricted area…” The boat came alongside his swamped craft, and the voice stopped. The tanned face of a young naval lieutenant came from behind the loud hailer and looked at him from a few yards away. The face turned white.

Oskarsson look up at the pale boy in the ensign’s uniform.

“Go fuck yourself, sailor boy he said. SENIOR LIEUTENANT JAN HELDER stood in the conning tower of Whiskey Class submarine 184 and breathed fresh air. It was frigid. Murmansk, the headquarters of the Soviet Northern Fleet, is above the Arctic Circle and May there is not like May in other, more reasonable places. Helder watched closely as the sub was made fast in its berth, then looked up to see two men striding in step down the dock, toward where his men were readying the gangplank—a captain third grade in a well-cut uniform and a civilian in a bad suit. He didn’t know either of them, and he didn’t like it. Rewards in the Soviet Navy did not arrive in the company of a captain third grade and a political officer.

Holder’s first thoughts were of what he might have done. He had drunk too much in the officer’s mess the night before sailing on his just-completed cruise in the North Atlantic, but everybody drank too much. Since he was, normally, the most careful and correct of officers, he could think of no other infraction, except that he was Estonian. That, of course, might be enough..

He got down on deck in time to meet them as they came aboard. Neither man asked permission.

“Captain Helder?” the naval captain asked. Who else? Helder thought. The I man’s tone carried the sort of formality that accompanied an arrest.

“Yes, Comrade Captain,” Helder replied, snapping to | attention and saluting. He felt somewhat foolish, engaging it I I in military courtesies in his condition; he had not shaved nor bathed properly for five weeks. He could have, of course, since his facilities were somewhat better than those of his crew, but the crew liked it when their captain remained as filthy as they.

“You are to report to the chief administrative officer at staff headquarters in Leningrad at once,” the captain said, stiffly, and thrust an envelope at him.

“Here is a written order to that effect and a pass to staff headquarters.”

Helder took the envelope. He was amused at the “at once.” Leningrad was more than six hundred miles to the south.

“Thank you. Comrade Captain. If I may be permitted to bath and change…” He was wearing a filthy, cotton coverall over a heavy naval sweater that used to be white. Out of the corner of his eye, Helder saw a truck draw to a halt next to the gangplank. A truck, not a car.

Bad.

“There is no time for that; you must leave at once.”

“Of course. Comrade Captain. If I may have a moment to collect my gear from my cabin.”

“Your gear will be forwarded to you,” the civilian said, testily.

“You are relieved, Lieutenant,” the captain said.

Holder’s heart sank. The man was no longer bothering with the honorary “captain” due the commander of a vessel. But then, he had been relieved. He was no longer entitled to that designation.

“Get going, then,” said the civilian.

It offended-Holder’s military sensibilities to leave his ship in this manner, with not even an opportunity to speak to his officers, but he saluted again and walked quickly toward the gangplank. A seaman saluted him, and Helder said. calmly, “Tell the executive officer that I have been relieved, and he is in command pending further instructions.”

As he approached the truck there didn’t seem to be a guard, so, as a gesture of optimism, he got in beside the driver, instead of climbing into the back. The driver said nothing to him, but executed a quick U-turn and roared off down the dock.

Twenty-five minutes later, he was in an uninsulated transport airplane, the only passenger among a load of unlabeled crates. The noise was horrific, there were no seats, and it was freezing. He curled up on a deflated rubber life raft stuffed the corners of his filthy handkerchief into his ears, and tried to get some sleep. As he drifted into a half doze, he wondered why they hadn’t just shot him on the dock. Why all this bother?

Now it was all over. Thirteen years of naval college, training, and service at sea, nearly all of it on submarines, bloody hard work, and it was over, finished. He had been due for a more modern sub, maybe of the Tango class, and, maybe, a promotion. He was already too long in grade. The worst that could happen was death, but since they were taking all the trouble to transport him to Leningrad and the staff headquarters, that seemed unlikely. A quick court martial on whatever charge, reduction in rank, and an unpleasant transfer seemed the best he could hope for. Vladivostok, he reckoned, six thousand miles by the slowest possible means of transport, and the remainder of his service as a cargo officer on the docks. He would become the oldest ensign in the history of the Soviet Navy.

He dozed off, too exhausted to care.

Holder woke as the aircraft slammed into the runway.

Bloody green pilot, he thought. He went immediately back to sleep and refused to wake up again until a blast of even colder air hit him and a voice shouted his name, none too respectfully. A KGB sergeant was beckoning him from the plane’s doorway, his voice suddenly too loud as the engines died. Helder climbed stiffly down the steel ladder and followed the soldier toward a huge building. It was dark and raining lightly. Helder looked at his watch; just past midnight. They entered a door and climbed some stairs, and Helder found himself in Leningrad’s civilian airport.

They walked briskly through the determinedly modern, nearly empty building. Only a group of Western-looking tourists, smiling weakly under the dour gaze of young KGB immigration officers in their neat uniforms and green epaulets, shared the huge terminal with Helder and the sergeant. Holder’s eyes briefly met those of a pretty young girl. English? American? He wished he had time to find out. Where he was going he would be lucky to find women at all, let alone pretty Western ones.

Another truck. Helder dozed, undisturbed by the silent sergeant, as they entered the city. He woke again as they passed the old Admiralty, now a naval college. Helder had taken an electronics course there in his training days. They passed into the large square before the Winter Palace, now part of the Hermitage Museum, and rattled over the wet and shiny cobblestones toward the triumphal archway that was the entrance to General Staff Headquarters. The truck passed through the archway, turned right, passed the main entrance, turned another corner and stopped before a door manned by a single guard. Helder tore open the envelope he had been given in Murmansk and fished out his pass.

The guard inspected it carefully, then nodded, saluted and motioned him through the doors, turning up his nose slightly at Holder’s filthy clothes. Helder had the feeling that if he hadn’t been wearing his officer’s cap, he wouldn’t have made it past the man. Inside, he was met by a young woman in an ensign’s uniform.

“Captain Helder, please follow me,” she said curtly, and started down the long hallway, which was lit only by every third chandelier at this time of night.

At least he was “captain” again. Her mistake, probably.

He followed her like a puppy, her leather heels clicking on the czarist marble, the rubber soles of his canvas deck shoes squeaking on the hard surface. They walked at least a kilometer, he reckoned, past shut office doors with departmental designations. They saw no one. The ensign turned down a wider hallway and passed through a door marked “Chief Administrative Officer.” Another woman sitting at a desk nodded at her, and she continued through the anteroom without stopping and knocked on the inner door. A voice bade her enter. She opened the door, waited for Helder to enter, followed him into the room, and closed the door gently. A short, fat contra-admiral was sitting behind a large desk, reading a document. The charges, probably.

Helder came to attention and saluted.

“Comrade Admiral, Senior Lieutenant Helder reporting as ordered.”

The admiral looked at him and winced.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“I am very sorry. Comrade Admiral, there was no time…”

“Of course, of course.” The admiral fished an envelope from a desk drawer and handed it to Helder.

“You are to report to the commanding officer of—he hesitated—“a special brigade in Liepaja at once,” he said, then seemed to think better of it.

“Well, perhaps not at once. An hour or so won’t matter.” He reached into a drawer, and removed a printed pad and signed it. He ripped off the page and held it out for the woman, who stepped forward to receive it.

“Take him to the headquarters depot, wake the sergeant, and get him a decent uniform. Find him a bath and a shave, too.” The admiral reached back into the drawer and produced a bottle of vodka and a glass. He poured a stiff drink and offered it to Helder.

“Here, you look as though you need this.”

Helder knocked back the drink and set the glass down on the desk.

“Thank you very much. Comrade Admiral. I wonder if I may ask.. ” “You may not,” the admiral replied.

“Get out of here.”

Apparently, there would be no court martial, and there had been no mention of a reduction in rank. Still. Liepaja.

What the hell did they want with him in Latvia? There were no submarines there. The Baltic Fleet was based in Leningrad and in Baltiisk. in Lithuania, down near the Polish border. Dock officer in Liepaja. Not as bad as Vladivostok, anyway. At least he would be almost at home, which was very unusual. Officers from the republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were invariably assigned to duty in other parts of the Soviet Union. The Politburo distrusted the independent attitudes of these peoples.

They were not Russian enough, and their young men who served in the forces were stationed in places where their Russification could proceed, unimpeded by nationalist sentiment.

Helder saluted the admiral and followed the woman again. An hour and a half later, he was on another plane, shaved, bathed, and newly uniformed. This time there was heating and seats. He grabbed an hour’s sleep before they landed in Liepaja, where a car was waiting, another improvement.

It was ten in the morning, now, and there was time only to ascertain that they were headed toward the sea before he fell asleep again.

He woke as the car lurched to a stop at a heavily fortified gate. His pass and face and that of the driver were carefully examined before they were permitted inside. They drove down a smoothly paved street which descended a hillside overlooking the Baltic. Ahead of them to their left was a sort of tidal lake, joined to the sea by only a narrow passage. They passed buildings which looked newly completed and others still under construction. As they continued down the hill, Helder suddenly realized that what he had thought was the water’s edge was really a huge, flat-topped building along the waterfront. What had fooled him was that the entire shelter had raised edges and the roof held a foot or two of water. Bloody clever, Helder thought. In a satellite photograph, the building would appear to be part of the bay. Make a lovely skating rink in winter, too.

It now occurred to him that all the buildings he was passing looked civilian and oddly Western. There was a clutch of shops, not just the usual naval store with its tobacco and vodka, and there was a petrol station. Although there was more traffic than would normally appear on the streets of a similar-sized Soviet town, he saw no military vehicles, only civilian cars and trucks, and yet he saw no school, no children, no housewives with prams doing the daily shopping. The place seemed to be neither a military base nor an ordinary town. One last thing intrigued him before he reached his destination. His car drove past a sports center that would have been at home in a much larger city. There was a huge building which, no doubt, housed a gymnasium and a swimming pool, and he counted thirty-six tennis courts down near the water. Past these was a small forest of masts, which meant a marina of some size. As the car stopped before what looked like a small office building, it occurred to him that he must be on one of the most privileged installations in the Soviet Union.

So was its commander privileged, he saw as he got out of the car. In the reserved parking space closest to the building’s door was parked a silver Mercedes 500 SE, brand new, from the look of it. He had seen one in Moscow, once.

He was met at the door by a small, very pretty blonde army sergeant and conducted into the building. On entering, he felt as if he had arrived in a foreign country.

Nothing he saw seemed of Soviet origin. Even the carpeting underfoot, the hardware on the bronzed glass doors, and the standard of construction of the building were markedly different from the shabby Soviet building efforts of recent years. The place had what he imagined was a Scandinavian air about it. They passed through another set of the glass doors and into an open area with a dozen or fifteen desks. The typewriters bore the letters IBM, and he saw half a dozen computer terminals of futuristic design.