Red traitor, p.21
Red Traitor, page 21
“Don’t have any friends at the kontora apart from you.”
“Makes me feel so much better. So?”
“So—Khrushchev is about to back down on the Cuban missiles. It’s been decided at Politburo level. He’s going to fold, just like you predicted. That info comes from the top, by the way. Katya Orlova passed it on.”
Kuznetsov pursed his lips for a long moment, then nodded.
“Makes sense. Guess nobody on our end expected Kennedy to get so fucking upset. Embarrassing for Khrushchev, though. Humiliating.”
“Exactly. But what Khrushchev doesn’t know is that there’s a flotilla of our submarines armed with nuclear torpedoes heading for Cuba with orders to run the Yankee blockade. And they are officially authorized to fire at will if they’re engaged by the enemy. And they’re due to arrive in the Caribbean right now.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Never been more serious in my life.”
“This flotilla—sent by who, exactly?”
“Exactly? No idea. Generally—by some belligerent big hats in the military who want to start a war.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“From Orlov’s man inside the Aquarium. He saw the official fire-order authorizations from Northern Fleet HQ. Signed by Admiral Gorshkov himself. And we knew about the flotilla already. Remember those telegrams I read to you a few weeks back? They mention the submarines. But not the nuclear torpedo part.”
Kuznetsov closed his eyes as he digested the information, half turning to lean against the wall. A pair of young clerks carrying piles of files clattered down the stairs, slowing their pace respectfully as they passed the older officers.
“So you told your boss Orlov all this and he said what?”
“He told me to shut up and fuck off. Essentially.”
“Okay. But no word on what he was planning to do with this information?”
“I assume that Orlov’s not going to do a damn thing about it.”
“Because?”
“Because he’s obsessed with his own vendettas. He’s gunning for Serov.”
“Serov—as in, head of the GRU?”
“That Serov. And maybe he reckons Serov is involved in this somehow. So he’s waiting for him to screw up.”
“Screw up—how?”
“If these people succeed in turning this crisis into a war, Khrushchev will fall. The generals will take over. It’ll be a coup d’état. But all Orlov cares about is ending up on the other side of this mess stronger than before…”
Kuznetsov put a hand on Vasin’s shoulder.
“Sasha. My friend. Stop there. Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound? Serov? Coup plots? Nuclear war?”
Vasin twisted free of his friend’s grip, eyes blazing.
“Maybe it sounds crazy, but it’s true. And we have to do something about it.”
“We do, do we? Like what?”
An unmistakable note of mockery had crept into Kuznetsov’s voice—the same sarcastic edge of contempt he’d heard in Katya’s voice the night he’d been put on ice. Vasin wanted badly to shock Kuznetsov out of his complacency, force him into some kind of action. Blurt out that the only solution that Vasin could think of was to go to the Americans and warn them? That would wipe the smile off Kuznetsov’s face. But—no. Vasin knew that would be unfair to Kuznetsov. The man would be obliged to do something. Either help him…or stop him.
Vasin forced himself to take a deep breath and remain silent. What had he wanted to hear from Kuznetsov, anyway? What advice or help could he hope for from a man like him? Kuznetsov was a survivor, not a player. One of life’s detached observers.
“Listen, Sasha.” Kuznetsov descended by one step toward Vasin and lowered his voice confidingly. “You’re a good guy. That’s your problem. You’re always the cleverest. You want to fix the world.”
The cleverest. Exactly what Vasin’s old bosses back at the Moscow homicide squad had called him. And they hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
“What you did, back in Arzamas last year?” Kuznetsov continued. “I don’t pretend to know all the details. But I know that took balls. Going behind the bosses’ backs. Pursuing your lead. Tracking down your spy. You’re fearless, Vasin. And I admire you for that. But…whatever it is you’re planning to do about these submarines of yours? Whatever crazy stunt you’re planning? I’m begging you—don’t do it. Because though you’re an exasperating asshole, I actually quite like you. Think there should be more guys like you in the world. In the kontora, even.”
Vasin’s face had gone blank and hard.
“Thanks for the advice, Vadim. We might not be seeing each other again.”
Kuznetsov pursed his mouth and nodded in understanding.
“Fine. Do your thing, Sasha. And…before you ask, I never saw you here. You can trust me on that.”
The two men shook hands.
“Enjoy Cuba, Vadim.”
“Sasha—that may be difficult. According to you, the island’s about to be reduced to a pile of smoking, radioactive rubble.”
9
KGB Headquarters, Moscow
Saturday, 27 October 1962, 16:00 Moscow Time / 09:00 EDT
Vasin had an hour to find a phone from which he could make his scheduled call to Tokarev. But finding a phone with an outside line in the Lubyanka that wasn’t guarded by some secretary or desk jockey proved harder than he’d imagined. He finally located one down in the coat check near the main entrance. Evidently kontora wives used it to track down lost scarves and gloves—and by the platoon of coat-check clerks to organize their personal lives. One of them was halfway through a tirade against her good-for-nothing daughter when Vasin interrupted her with a flick of his ID card.
The call box number that Tokarev had left was engaged, doubtless by some spiritual twin sister of the coat-check gorgon. The call connected on his fifth attempt.
“I am listening.”
Tokarev was out of breath, his voice strained.
“What’s happened?”
“Our main opponent has found the submerged craft.”
The “main opponent” was the KGB’s officialese for the Americans.
“Shit.”
A chorus of disapproving clucks came from the huddle of babushkas who were listening to Vasin’s conversation with undisguised curiosity. He threw them an angry glance.
“Motherfuckers. You mean they’ve found and intercepted?”
“Just located, as of yesterday morning. Two craft spotted by electronic means. A dozen ships scrambled to hunt them down.”
“Do our guys have any chance of getting away?”
“I’m not an expert. But I’d guess not much.”
“So it’s happening. What we feared.”
“It’s happening, kid. Don’t know what you’re planning to do about it but yes—the enemy knows. And is on the hunt.”
Vasin felt the plastic of the receiver cutting into his cupped hands as his grip tightened.
“Wait—how did you get this information? You said you didn’t have access to the details of these messages.”
“How do you think?” Tokarev’s voice had gone hoarse. “I stole them for you. For your boss.”
“Brave. But fucking foolish.” Vasin shot another hostile look at the old women. “I need you alive and free, old man.”
“Just make sure that Orlov knows what I did for him, okay?”
“I’ll be sure…to tell him.” The lie almost stuck in Vasin’s throat as he spoke it. Tokarev had no way of knowing of Vasin’s new frozen status. “Same time tomorrow?”
“If God allows.”
Vasin replaced the phone on its cradle and pushed his way, unseeing, through the ranks of uniform greatcoats and hats arrayed in lines like a parade of empty men.
Vasin could think of only one person in Moscow who could help him now. And she wasn’t going to agree easily. But first, Vasin had to figure out how to escape from the Lubyanka without being spotted by Orlov’s watchers.
10
KGB Headquarters, Moscow
Saturday, 27 October 1962, 15:15 Moscow Time / 08:15 EDT
The kontora annex that stood on the opposite side of Pervomaiskaya Street was sarcastically known as the Artists’ Wardrobe. Vasin had never been there himself but knew that it specialized in costumes and disguises for covert surveillance. In the macho culture of the kontora, the employees of the Artists’ Wardrobe were widely mocked as cross-dressing effeminates. So it came as a surprise to Vasin, as he emerged from the underground corridor that led to the Wardrobe, to find his way blocked by a burly native Siberian sergeant with the build of an all-in wrestler. The man sat behind a tiny desk wedged into the corner of a stairwell. He bulged around his workstation like a clown driving a miniature car.
“Department you lookin’ for?” The man spoke with a heavy accent.
On the desk was a comic book, not a ledger. That made the sergeant a species of concierge rather than a security guard. Vasin flipped open his ID card nonetheless, keeping his thumb over his surname.
“Barbershop.”
“Ground floor. Left down the corridor. Stinks o’ perfume. Can’t miss it.”
Vasin nodded and sprinted up the stairs. He stood by as a heavily made-up woman steered a mobile clothes rack full of assorted clothing down the corridor. He passed open doors which revealed a seamstress’s station, a fitting room—and an atelier equipped with rows of mannequin heads, each with a wig on it. Vasin paused and peered inside. A girl in civilian clothes was laboriously brushing out a long, blond wig. She looked up, startled by Vasin’s intrusion.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh. Yes.” Vasin looked around the tabletops and spotted a red wig lying loose on the worktop like a particularly hairy cat. “Can I come look out of your window? Yury Gagarin is about to drive by.”
“Wow! Gagarin! No way!” The young woman jumped up and ran to the window, hoisting herself up on the sill with her hands in girlish enthusiasm.
Vasin sprinted down the corridor, cramming his stolen wig on his head. The dark red nylon hair was, to Vasin’s relief, only jaw-length. A minute later and he’d reached the street entrance. The duty sergeant called something after him as Vasin pushed through the doors into the fresh air of a gray Moscow afternoon and sprinted toward the sheltering anonymity of the metro.
11
B-59, Sargasso Sea
Saturday, 27 October 1962, 10:15 EDT / 17:15 Moscow Time
Arkhipov wiped sweat from his brow with a sleeve already soaked in perspiration. B-59’s sixth compartment housed the boat’s three monster electric engines. Running at full speed, they put out more than six thousand kilowatts of power between them, making the compartment as hot as a sauna. Arkhipov had enjoyed his weekly shower in the boat’s single washroom just a day before. Now he already stank, despite the cotton-wool swabs soaked in formaldehyde that the surgeon passed around to the whole crew for nightly personal hygiene.
“Just about tapped out, sir.” The engineering officer, Captain Third Class Boris Davydov, peered along the row of battery power indicators. Most stood at zero, with a few gauges hovering just above.
Arkhipov nodded. Twenty-five hours underwater, five of them at top speed. He hadn’t expected the batteries to last that long, in fact. Must have been the warm Caribbean waters that allowed B-59 to extract a bit more juice from the power banks.
“Still too early to surface. Another nine hours of daylight. Can we make it that long on the crawler?”
The two men turned toward a fourth, auxiliary electric engine—one usually used as a dynamo to charge the batteries up slowly on long surface runs. But in a pinch it could turn the central of B-59’s three propeller shafts at a slow three knots.
“Should be fine, if we turn off the air-conditioning and power down the galley refrigerators.”
“Very good, Davydov. Make it so.”
The engineer stepped aft to the controls of the main engines, each handle covered in thick rubber insulation, and cranked each magneto down to zero. The high whine of the electric motors stilled, leaving an eerie silence. At this depth there was no noise from the water that pressed in at more than ten times atmospheric pressure.
Arkhipov made his way forward through the silent diesel engine room and the warrant officers’ quarters to the command center. Every few paces Arkhipov had to squeeze past other men. B-59 felt oppressively cramped compared to his old nuclear boat. At her waterline, she was just shy of ninety meters long. But inside the pressure hull there were less than sixty meters between the breeches of the torpedo tubes at the bow and stern. Seventy-nine officers and men crowded into this tiny space, sharing just two toilets and a single galley. They lived, quite literally, inside a machine, servants and acolytes to its vital functions.
Arkhipov had spent his working life on submarines, of course, and the tight conditions were second nature to him. Part of him still dearly loved the camaraderie of life on board a sub, every man a part of an efficient war machine. But more than a day underwater, with no sight of the sea or the sky, was getting to him. The one compensation for the cramped conditions on a diesel-electric boat was that it had to surface in order to breathe.
Arkhipov found Savitsky leaning over a chart in the navigator’s room—a tiny cubbyhole squeezed between the periscope tubes and the port side of the hull opposite the command center. As Arkhipov ducked his head around the hatch, Savitsky stopped speaking midsentence and fixed him with a hostile stare.
“The engines have stopped.” Savitsky’s tone was flat.
“We’re got enough power to run the crawler engine until dusk…”
“You ordered the engines to stop.”
“I did, Valentin Grigorievitch.”
“Perhaps I missed the new instructions from fleet headquarters. Are you the captain of this ship now, Vasily Alexandrovich?”
Savitsky was right. Operationally, B-59 was under Savitsky’s command—the flotilla, under Arkhipov’s. Exactly where the line between those authorities lay was undefined. But Arkhipov knew that he’d made a foolish error—albeit one that a less choleric captain would have ignored.
“My apologies, Captain. I should not have given the order. Shall I summon Davydov so that you can confirm it?”
“I do not confirm your order. I rescind it. We surface and recharge.”
Savitsky was struggling to control the anger in his voice.
“Captain—we’ll be surfacing in broad daylight.”
“Thank you. I am aware. I prefer to maintain speed and get to the Puerto Rico Trench as fast as possible.”
Arkhipov bit his lip.
“Comrade Popov—could you give us a moment, please?”
B-59’s navigator, Lieutenant Commander Gleb Popov, stood wedged between Savitsky and the bulkhead. Obediently he shuffled between the Captain and the gyroscopic compass, then squeezed past Arkhipov and the corner of the chart table, leaving the two captains alone in the cramped space.
“You’re acting in anger, Comrade Savitsky.”
The Captain gripped the table with both hands, staring intently at the chart and evidently fighting down the urge to insult Arkhipov once more. After collecting himself, he stabbed a finger at the sub’s position just west of the Caicos Islands.
“We are now more than six hundred kilometers away from where the Americans located us. The Puerto Rico Trench is nearly two hundred kilometers to the southeast. Sonar tells us that the thermocline has all but disappeared, so we are visible to Yankee sonar. Therefore, we make haste.”
Arkhipov remained silent. The Trench was more than eight hundred kilometers long and over eight thousand meters deep, the marine equivalent of a canyon. Once they reached it, the Trench would indeed make a good refuge. But running there on the surface in daylight was a dangerous gamble. A gamble that Savitsky had only just this moment resolved to take, Arkhipov guessed, and then only in order to flex his power. Which was weak—and dangerous. Both men knew it.
“Very good, Comrade Captain. If that is your decision.”
Savitsky pushed past without meeting Arkhipov’s eye. The commander’s post in the control center was four steps away from the navigator’s compartment. The Captain flicked on all three communicators that protruded from the bulkhead over his seat, their cream-painted mouthpieces like a trio of daffodils.
“Prepare to surface!”
12
Malaya Gruzinskaya Street, Moscow
Saturday, 27 October 1962, 20:15 Moscow Time / 13:15 EDT
The chilly autumn night had already shrouded the sidewalks, turning the hurrying commuters into shadows. Vasin turned his collar up against the wind and hovered by a row of public telephone boxes. He’d spent the previous two hours riding the metro, changing stations randomly, switching back on himself, riding to the very end of the line. He was clean. And so—as far as Vasin could tell—were the environs of Sofia’s house.
Despite her boxy military coat and headscarf, Sofia, as usual, was unmistakable. Vasin turned away as she passed, then followed her into the apartment building. He caught up with her between the outer street door and the inner one that opened onto a vestibule.
“You!” Sofia’s voice was surprised. “What are you doing here?”
Vasin took her wrist, holding it hard.
“Come with me. It’s important. Follow in half a minute.”
He released Sofia’s hand. Keeping his head bowed, he stepped back out onto the street and hurried to the shadows of a clump of linden trees that flanked the entranceway. For a long moment he feared that Sofia would refuse to follow him. But no. She opened the heavy street door and peered around her.
