Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (50 page)

“Can you blame them, Comrade?” the driver asked, taking all of this in, filing, analyzing, composing his independent report to
Moscow
Center
.

“And he said that there was no further reason for our fleet to be off their coast.”

“How did he say this? Was it a demand?”

“His words were soft. Softer than I expected. This concerns me. They are planning something, I think. Rattling a saber makes noise, drawing it does not. He demands an explanation for this entire affair. What do I tell him? What was happening?”

“I suspect that we will never know.” The senior agent did know—the original story, that is, incredible as it was. That the navy and the GRU could allow such a fantastic error to take place had amazed him. The story from agent C
ASSIUS
was scarcely less mad. The driver had passed it on to
Moscow
himself. Was it possible that the
United States
and the
Soviet Union
were both victims of a third party? An operation gone awry, and the Americans trying to find out who was responsible and how it was done so that they might try to do it themselves? That part of the story made sense, but did the rest? He frowned at the traffic. He had orders from
Moscow
Center
: if this was a CIA operation, he was supposed to find out immediately. He didn't believe it was. If so the CIA was being unusually effective in covering it. Was it possible to cover such a complex operation? He didn't think so. Regardless, he and his colleagues would be working for several weeks to penetrate any cover there was, to find out what was being said in
Langley
and in the field, while other KGB sections did the same throughout the world. If the CIA had penetrated the Northern Fleet's high command he'd find out. Of that he was confident. He could almost wish they had done so. The GRU would be responsible for the disaster, and would be disgraced after profiting from the KGB's loss of prestige a few years back. If he was reading the situation correctly, the Politburo was turning the KGB loose on the GRU and the military, allowing
Moscow
Center
to initiate its own independent investigation of the affair. Regardless of what was found, the KGB would come out ahead and deflate the armed services. One way or another, his organization would discover what had taken place, and if it was damaging to his rivals, so much the better . . .

When the door closed behind the Soviet ambassador, Dr. Pelt opened a side door to the Oval Office. Judge Moore came in.

“Mr. President, it's been a while since I've had to do things like hide in closets.”

“You really expect this to work?” Pelt said.

“Yes, I do now,”
Moore
settled comfortably into a leather chair.

“Isn't this a little shaky, Judge?” Pelt asked. “I mean, running an operation this complex?”

"That's the beauty of it, Doctor, we're not running anything. The Soviets will be doing that for us. Oh, sure, we'll have a lot of our people prowling around
Eastern Europe
asking a lot of questions. So will Sir Basil's fellows. The French and the Israelis already are, because we've asked them if they know what's happening with the stray missile sub. The KGB will find out quickly enough and wonder why the four main Western intelligence agencies are all asking the same questions—instead of pulling into their shells like they'd expect them to if this were our operation.

"You have to appreciate the dilemma the Soviets face, a choice between two equally unattractive scenarios. On the one hand, they can choose to believe that one of their most trusted professional officers has committed high treason on an unprecedented scale. You've seen our file on Captain Ramius. He's the Communist version of an eagle scout, a genuine New Soviet
Man.
Add to that the fact that a defection conspiracy necessarily involves a number of equally trusted officers. The Soviets have a mind block against believing that individuals of this type will ever leave the Workers'
Paradise
. That seems paradoxical, I admit, given the strenuous efforts they expend to keep people from leaving their country, but it's true. Losing a ballet dancer or a KGB agent is one thing—losing the son of a Politburo member, an officer with nearly thirty years of unblemished service, is quite another. Moreover, a naval captain has a lot of privileges; you might call his defection the equivalent of a self-made millionaire leaving
New York
to live in
Moscow
. They simply will not believe it.

“On the other hand, they can believe the story we planted through
Henderson
, which is also unattractive but is supported by a good deal of circumstantial evidence, especially our efforts to entice their crewmen to defect. You saw how furious they are about that. The way they think, this is a gross violation of the rules of civilized behavior. The president's forceful reaction to our discovery that this was a missile submarine is also evidence that favors
Henderson
's story.”

“So what side will they come down on?” the president asked.

“That, sir, is a question of psychology more than anything else, and Soviet psychology is very hard for us to read. Given the choice between the collective treason of ten men and an outside conspiracy, my opinion is that they will prefer the latter. For them to believe that this really was defection—well, it would force them to reexamine their own beliefs. Who likes to do that?”
Moore
gestured grandly. “The latter alternative means that their security has been violated by outsiders, but being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of their own governing philosophy. On top of that we have the fact that the KGB will be running the investigation.”

“Why?” Pelt asked, caught up in the judge's plot.

“In either case, a defection or a penetration of naval operational security, the GRU would have been responsible. Security of the naval and military forces is their bailiwick, the more so with the damage done to the KGB after the departure of our friend Andropov. The Soviets can't have an organization investigating itself—not in their intelligence community! So, the KGB will be looking to take its rival service apart. From the KGB's perspective, outside instigation is the far more attractive alternative; it makes for a bigger operation. If they confirm
Henderson
's story and convince everyone that it's true—and they will, of course—it makes them look all that much better for having uncovered it.”

“They will confirm the story?”

“Of course they will! In the intelligence business if you look hard enough for something, you find it, whether it's really there or not. Lord, we owe this Ramius fellow more than he will ever know. An opportunity like this doesn't come along once in a generation. We simply can't lose.”

“But the KGB will emerge stronger,” Pelt observed. “Is that a good thing?”

Moore
shrugged. “Bound to happen eventually. Unseating and possibly killing Andropov gave the military services too much prestige, just like with Beria back in the fifties. The Soviets depend on political control of their military as much as we do—more. Having the KGB take their high command apart gets the dirty work done for them. It had to happen anyway, so it's just as well that we can profit by it. There's only a few more things we have to do.”

“Such as?” the president asked.

“Our friend Henderson will leak information in a month or so saying that we had a submarine tracking Red October all the way from
Iceland
.”

“But why?” Pelt objected. “Then they'll know that we were lying, that all the excitement over the missile sub was a lie.”

“Not exactly, Doctor,”
Moore
said. “Having a missile sub this close to our coast remains a violation of the agreement, and from their point of view we have no way of knowing why she was there—until we interrogate the crewmen remaining behind, who will probably tell us little of value. The Soviets will expect that we have not been completely truthful with them on this affair. The fact that we were trailing their sub and were ready to destroy it at any time gives them the evidence of our duplicity that they'll be looking for. We'll also say that
Dallas
monitored the reactor incident on sonar, and that will explain the proximity of our rescue ship. They know, well, they certainly suspect, that we have concealed something. This will mislead them about what it was we really concealed. The Russians have a saying for this. They call it wolf meat. And they will launch an extensive operation to penetrate our operation, whatever it is. But they will find nothing. The only people in the CIA who know what is really going on are Greer, Ritter, and myself. Our operations people have orders to find out what was going on, and that's all that can leak out.”

“What about
Henderson
, and how many of our people know about the submarine?” the president asked.

“If
Henderson
spills anything to them he'll be signing his own death warrant. The KGB deals severely with double agents, and would not believe that we tricked him into delivering false information. He knows it, and we'll be keeping a close eye on him in any case. How many of our people know about the sub? A hundred perhaps, and the number will increase somewhat—but remember that they think we now have two dead Soviet subs off our coast, and they have every reason to believe that whatever Soviet sub equipment turns up in our labs has been recovered from the ocean floor. We will, of course, be reactivating the Glomar Explorer for just that purpose. They'd be suspicious if we didn't. Why disappoint them? Sooner or later they just might figure the whole story out, but by that time the stripped hulk will be at the bottom of the sea.”

“So, we can't keep this a secret forever?” Pelt asked.

“Forever's a long time. We have a plan for the possibility. For the immediate future the secret should be fairly safe, what with only a hundred people in on it. In a year, minimum, more likely two or three, they may have accumulated enough data to suspect what has happened, but by that time there won't be much physical evidence to point to. Moreover, if the KGB discovers the truth, will they want to report it? Were the GRU to find out, they certainly would, and the resulting chaos within their intelligence community would also work to our benefit.”
Moore
took a cigar from a leather holder. “As I said, Ramius has given us a fantastic opportunity on several levels. And the beauty of it is that we don't have to do much of anything. The Russians will be doing all the legwork, looking for something that isn't there.”

“What about the defectors, Judge?” the president asked.

“They, Mr. President, will be taken care of. We know how to do this, and we rarely have a complaint about the CIA's hospitality. We'll take some months to debrief them, and at the same time we'll be preparing them for life in
America
. They'll get new identities, reeducation, cosmetic surgery if necessary, and they'll never have to work another day as long as they live—but they will want to work. Almost all of them do. I expect the navy will find places for them, paid consultants for their submarine warfare department, that sort of thing.”

“I want to meet them,” the president said impulsively.

“That can be arranged, sir, but it will have to be discreet,”
Moore
cautioned.

“
Camp David
, that ought to be secure enough. And Ryan, Judge, I want him taken care of.”

“Understood, sir. We're bringing him along rather quickly already. He has a big future with us.”

Tyuratam
,
USSR

The reason Red October had been ordered to dive long before dawn was orbiting the earth at a height of eight hundred kilometers. The size of a Greyhound bus. Albatross 8 had been sent aloft eleven months earlier by a heavy-lift booster from the Cosmodrome at Tyuratam. The massive satellite, called a RORSAT, for radar ocean reconnaissance satellite, was specifically designed for maritime surveillance.

Albatross 8 passed over
Pamlico Sound
at 1131 local time. Its on-board programming was designed to trace thermal receptors over the entire visible horizon, interrogating everything in sight and locking on any signature that fit its acquisition parameters. As it continued on its orbit and passed over elements of the
U.S.
fleet, the
New Jersey
's jammers were aimed upward to scramble its signal. The satellite's tape systems dutifully recorded this. The jamming would tell the operators something about American electronic warfare systems. As Albatross 8 crossed the pole, the parabolic dish on its front tracked in on the carrier signal of another bird, the Iskra communications satellite.

When the reconnaissance satellite located its higher flying cousin, a laser side-link transmitted the contents of the Albatross' tape bank. The Iskra immediately relayed this to the ground station at Tyuratam. The signal was also received by a fifteen-meter dish located in western
China
which was operated by the U.S. National Security Agency in cooperation with the Chinese, who used the data received for their own purposes. The Americans transmitted it via their own communications satellite to NSA headquarters at
Fort Meade
,
Maryland
. At almost the same time the digital signal was examined by two teams of experts five thousand miles apart.

“Clear weather,” a technician moaned. “Now we get clear weather!”

“Enjoy it while you can, Comrade.” His neighbor at the next console was watching data from a geosynchronous weather satellite that monitored the
Western Hemisphere
. Knowing the weather over a hostile country can have great strategic value. “There's another cold front approaching their coast. Their winter has been like ours. I hope they are enjoying it.”

“Our men at sea will not.” The technician mentally shuddered at the thought of being at sea in a major storm. He'd taken a
Black Sea
cruise the previous summer and become hopelessly seasick. “Aha! What is this? Colonel!”

“Yes, Comrade?” The colonel supervising the watch came over quickly.

“See here, Comrade Colonel.” The technician traced a finger on the TV screen. “This is
Pamlico Sound
, on the central coast of the
United States
. Look here, Comrade.” The thermal image of the water on the screen was black, but as the technician adjusted the display it changed to green with two white patches, one larger than the other. Twice the large one split into two segments. The image was of the surface of the water, and some of the water was half a degree warmer than it should have been. The differential was not constant, but it did return enough to prove that something was adding heat to the water.