Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (42 page)

“Good luck, Owen.” White shook hands with the youngster, who saluted and moved off.

“My regards to your wife, Admiral.” Ryan took his hand.

“Five and a half days to England. You'll probably see her before I do. Be careful, Jack.”

Ryan smiled crookedly. “It's my intelligence estimate, isn't it? If I'm right, it'll just be a pleasure cruise—assuming the helicopter doesn't crash on me.”

“The uniform looks good on you, Jack.”

Ryan hadn't expected that. He drew himself to attention and saluted as he'd been taught at Quantico. 'Thank you, Admiral. Be seeing you."

White watched him enter the chopper. The crew chief slid the door shut, and a moment later the Sea King's engines increased power. The helicopter lifted unevenly for a few feet before its nose dipped to port and began a climbing turn to the south. Without flying lights the dark shape was lost to sight in less than a minute.

33N 75W

The Scamp rendezvoused with the Ethan Allen a few minutes after
midnight
. The attack sub took up station a thousand yards astern of the old missile boat, and both cruised in an easy circle as their sonar operators listened to the approach of a diesel-powered vessel, the USS Pigeon. Three of the pieces were now in place. Three more were to come.

The
Red October

“There is no choice,” Melekhin said. “I must continue to work on the diesel.”

“Let us help you,” Svyadov said.

“And what do you know of diesel fuel pumps?” Melekhin asked in a tired but kind voice. “No, Comrade. Surzpoi, Bugayev, and I can handle it alone. There is no reason to expose you also. I will report back in an hour.”

“Thank you, Comrade.” Ramius clicked the speaker off. “This cruise has been a troublesome one. Sabotage. Never in my career has something like this happened! If we cannot fix the diesel . . . We have only a few hours more of battery power, and the reactor requires a total overhaul and safety inspection. I swear to you, Comrades, if we find the bastard who did this to us . . .”

“Shouldn't we call for help?” Ivanov asked.

“This close to the American coast, and perhaps an imperialist submarine still on our tail? What sort of 'help' might we get, eh? Comrades, perhaps our problem is no accident, have you considered that? Perhaps we have become pawns in a murderous game.” He shook his head. “No, we cannot risk this. The Americans must not get their hands on this submarine!”

CIA Headquarters

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Senator. I apologize for getting you up so early.” Judge Moore met Donaldson at the door and led him into his capacious office. “You know Director Jacobs, don't you?”

“Of course, and what brings the heads of the FBI and CIA together at dawn?” Donaldson asked with a smile. This had to be good. Heading the Select Committee was more than a job, it was fun, real fun to be one of the few people who were really in the know.

The third person in the room, Ritter, helped a fourth person out of a high-backed chair that had blocked him from view. It was Peter Henderson, Donaldson saw to his surprise. His aide's suit was rumpled as though he'd been up all night. Suddenly it wasn't fun anymore.

Judge Moore waxed solicitous. “You know Mr. Henderson, of course.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Donaldson asked, his voice more subdued than anyone expected.

“You lied to me, Senator,” Ritter said. “You promised that you would not reveal what I told you yesterday, knowing all the time you'd tell this man—”

“I did no such thing.”

“—who then told a fellow KGB agent,” Ritter went on. “Emil?”

Jacobs set his coffee down. “We've been onto Mr. Henderson for some time. It was his contact that had us stumped. Some things are just too obvious. A lot of people in D.C. have regular cab pickup.
Henderson
's contact was a cab driver. We finally got it right.”

“The way we found out about
Henderson
was through you, Senator.”
Moore
explained: "We had a very good agent in
Moscow
a few years ago, a colonel in their Strategic Rocket Forces. He'd been giving us good information for five years, and we were about to get him and his family out. We try to do that, you know; you can't run agents forever, and we really owed this man. But I made the mistake of revealing his name to your committee. One week later, he was gone—vanished.

He was eventually shot, of course. His wife and three daughters were sent to
Siberia
. Our information is that they live in a lumber settlement east of the Urals. Typical sort of place, no plumbing, lousy food, no medical facilities available, and since they're the family of a convicted traitor, you can probably imagine what sort of hell they must endure. A good man dead, and a family destroyed. Try thinking about that, Senator. This is a true story, and these are real people.

“We didn't know at first who had leaked it. It had to be you, or one of two others, so we began to leak information to individual committee members. It took six months, but your name came up three times. After that we had Director Jacobs check out all of your staffers. Emil?”

"When
Henderson
was an assistant editor of the Harvard Crimson, in 1970, he was sent to
Kent
State
to do a piece on the shooting. You remember, the 'Days of Rage' thing after the Cambodian incursion and that awful screw-up with the national guard. I was in on that, too, as luck would have it. Evidently it turned
Henderson
's stomach. Understandable. But not his reaction. When he graduated and joined your staff he started talking with his old activist friends about his job. This led to a contract from the Russians, and they asked for some information. That was during the Christmas bombing—he really didn't like that. He delivered. It was low-level stuff at first, nothing they couldn't have gotten a few days later from the Post. That's how it works. They offered the hook, and he nibbled at it. A few years later, of course, they struck the hook nice and hard and he couldn't get away. We all know how the game works.

“Yesterday we planted a tape recorder in his taxi. You'd be amazed how easy it was. Agents get lazy, too, just like the rest of us. To make a long story short, we have you on tape promising not to reveal the information to anyone, and we have
Henderson
here spilling that data not three hours later to a known KGB agent, also on tape. You have violated no laws, Senator, but Mr. Henderson has. He was arrested at nine last night. The charge is espionage, and we have the evidence to make it stick.”

“I had no knowledge whatever of this,” Donaldson said.

“We hadn't the slightest thought that you might,” Ritter said.

Donaldson faced his aide. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Henderson
didn't say anything. He thought about saying how sorry he was, but how to explain his emotions? The dirty feeling of being an agent for a foreign power, juxtaposed with the thrill of fooling a whole legion of government spooks. When he was caught these emotions changed to fear at what would happen to him, and relief that it was all over.

“Mr. Henderson has agreed to work for us,” Jacobs said helpfully. “As soon as you leave the Senate, that is.”

“What does that mean?” Donaldson asked.

“You've been in the Senate, what? Thirteen years, isn't it? You were originally appointed to fill out an unexpired term, if memory serves,”
Moore
said.

“You might try asking my reaction to blackmail,” the senator observed.

“Blackmail?”
Moore
held his hands out. “Good Lord, Senator, Director Jacobs has already told you that you have broken no laws, and you have my word that the CJA will not leak a word of this. Now, whether or not the Justice Department decides to prosecute Mr. Henderson is not in our hands. 'Senate Aide Convicted of Treason: Senator Donaldson Professes No Knowledge of Aide's Action.'”

Jacobs went on, “Senator, the
University
of
Connecticut
has offered you the chair in their school of government for some years now. Why not take it?”

“Or
Henderson
goes to prison. You put that on my conscience?”

“Obviously he cannot go on working for you, and it should be equally obvious that if he is fired after so many years of exemplary service in your office, it will be noticed. If, on the other hand, you decide to leave public life, it would not be too surprising if he were not able to get a job of equivalent stature with another senator. So, he will get a nice job in the General Accounting Office, where he will still have access to all sorts of secrets. Only from now on,” Ritter said, “we decide which secrets he passes along.”

“No statute of limitations on espionage,” Jacobs pointed out.

“If the Soviets find out,” Donaldson said, and stopped. He didn't really care, did he? Not about
Henderson
, not about the fictitious Russian. He had an image to save, losses to cut.

“You win, Judge.”

“I thought you'd see it our way. I'll tell the president. Thanks for coming in, Senator. Mr. Henderson will be a little late to the office this morning. Don't feel too badly about him, Senator. If he plays ball with us, in a few years we might let him off the hook. It's happened before, but he'll have to earn it. Good morning, sir.”

Henderson
would play along. His alternative was life in a maximum security penitentiary. After listening to the tape of his conversation in the cab, he'd made his confession in front of a court stenographer and a television camera.

The
Pigeon

The ride to the Pigeon had been mercifully uneventful. The catamaran-hull rescue ship had a small helicopter platform aft, and the Royal Navy helicopter had hovered two feet above it, allowing Ryan and Williams to jump down. They were taken immediately to the bridge as the helicopter buzzed back northeast to her home.

“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” the captain said agreeably. “
Washington
says you have orders for me. Coffee?”

“Do you have tea?” Williams asked.

“We can probably find some.”

“Let's go someplace we can talk in private,” Ryan said.

The
Dallas

The
Dallas
was now in on the plan. Alerted by another ELF transmission, Mancuso had brought her to antenna depth briefly during the night. The lengthy
EYES ONLY
message had been decrypted by hand in his cabin. Decryption was not Mancuso's strong point. It took him an hour as Chambers conned the
Dallas
back to trail her contact. A crewman passing the captain's cabin heard a muted damn through the door. When Mancuso reappeared, his mouth couldn't keep from twitching into a smile. He was not a good card player either.

The
Pigeon

The Pigeon was one of the navy's two modern submarine rescue ships designed to locate and reach a sunken nuclear sub quickly enough to save her crew. She was outfitted with a variety of sophisticated equipment, chief among them the DSRV. This vessel, the Mystic, was hanging on its rack between the Pigeon's twin catamaran hulls. There was also a 3-d sonar operating at low power, mainly as a beacon, while the Pigeon cruised in slow circles a few miles south of the Scamp and Ethan Allen. Two Perry-class frigates were twenty miles north, operating in conjunction with three Orions to sanitize the area.

“Pigeon, this is
Dallas
, radio check, over.”

“
Dallas
, this is Pigeon. Read you loud and clear, over,” the rescue ship's captain replied on the secure radio channel.

“The package is here. Out.”

“Captain, on Invincible we had an officer send the message with a blinker light. Can you handle the blinker light?” Ryan asked.

“To be part of this? Are you kidding?”

The plan was simple enough, just a little too cute. It was clear that the Red October wanted to defect. It was even possible that everyone aboard wanted to come over—but hardly likely. They were going to get everyone off the Red October who might want to return to
Russia
, then pretend to blow up the ship with one of the powerful scuttling charges Russian ships are known to carry. The remaining crewmen would then take their boat northwest into
Pamlico Sound
to wait for the Soviet fleet to return home, sure that the Red October had been sunk and with the crew to prove it. What could possibly go wrong? A thousand things.

The
Red October

Ramius looked through his periscope. The only ship in view was the USS Pigeon, though his ESM antenna reported surface radar activity to the north, a pair of frigates standing guard over the horizon. So, this was the plan. He watched the blinker light, translating the message in his mind.

Norfolk
Naval
Medical
Center

“Thanks for coming down, Doc.” The intelligence officer had taken over the office of assistant hospital administrator. “I understand our patient woke up.”

“About an hour ago,” Tait confirmed. “He was conscious for about twenty minutes. He's asleep now.”

“Does that mean he'll make it?”

“It's a positive sign. He was reasonably coherent, so there's no evident brain damage. I was a little worried about that. I'd have to say the odds are in his favor now, but these hypothermia cases have a way of souring on you in a hurry. He's a sick kid, that hasn't changed.” Tait paused. “I have a question for you, Commander: Why aren't the Russians happy?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Kind of hard to miss. Besides, Jamie found a doctor on staff who understands Russian, and we have him attending the case.”

“Why didn't you let me know about that?”

“The Russians don't know either. That was a medical judgment, Commander. Having a physician around who speaks the patient's language is simply good medical practice.” Tait smiled, pleased with himself for having thought up his own intelligence ploy while at the same time adhering to proper medical ethics and naval regulations. He took a file card from his pocket. “Anyway, the patient's name is Andre Katyskin. He's a cook, like we thought, from
Leningrad
. The name of his ship was the Politovskiy.”