the product of a career of training and contingency planning. When the construction of the Red October was restarted after a two-year hiatus, Ramius knew that he would command her. He had helped with the designing of her revolutionary drive system and had inspected the model, which had been running on the Caspian Sea for some years in absolute secrecy. He asked for relief from his command so that he could concentrate on the construction and outfitting of the October and select and train his officers beforehand, the earlier to get the missile sub into full operation. The request was granted by the commander of the Red Banner Northern Fleet, a sentimental man who had also wept at Natalia’s funeral.
Ramius had already known who his officers would be. All graduates of the Vilnius Academy, many the ‘sons’ of Marko and Natalia, they were men who owed their place and their rank to Ramius; men who cursed the inability of their country to build submarines worthy of their skills; men who had joined the Party as told and then become even more dissatisfied with the Motherland as they learned that the price of advancement was to prostitute one’s mind and soul, to become a highly paid parrot in a blue jacket whose every Party recitation was a grating exercise in self-control. For the most part they were men for whom this degrading step had not borne fruit. In the Soviet Navy there were three routes to advancement. A man could become a zampolit and be a pariah among his peers. Or he could be a navigation officer and advance to his own command. Or he could be shunted into a speciality in which he would gain rank and pay – but never command. Thus a chief engineer on a Soviet naval vessel could outrank his commanding officer and still be his subordinate.
Ramius looked around the table at his officers. Most had not been allowed to pursue their own career goals despite their proficiency and despite their Party membership. The minor infractions of youth – in one case an act committed at age eight – prevented two from ever being trusted again. With the missile officer, it was because he was a Jew; though his parents had always been committed, believing Communists, neither they nor their son were ever trusted. Another officer’s elder brother had demonstrated against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and disgraced his whole family. Melekhin, the chief engineer and Ramius’ equal in rank, had never been allowed the route to command simply because his superiors wanted him to be an engineer. Borodin, who was ready for his own command, had once accused a zampolit of homosexuality; the man he had informed on was the son of the chief zampolit of the Northern Fleet. There are many paths to treason.
‘And what if they locate us?’ Kamarov speculated.
‘I doubt that even the Americans can find us when the caterpillar is operating. I am certain that our own submarines cannot. Comrades, I helped design this ship,’ Ramius said.
‘What will become of us?’ the missile officer muttered.
‘First we must accomplish the task at hand. An officer who looks too far ahead stumbles over his own boots.’
‘They will be looking for us,’ Borodin said.
‘Of course,’ Ramius smiled, ‘but they will not know where to look until it is too late. Our mission, comrades, is to avoid detection. And so we shall.’
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Ryan walked down the corridor on the top floor of the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had already passed through three separate security checks, none of which had required him to open his locked briefcase, now draped under the folds of his buff-coloured toggle coat, a gift from an officer in the Royal Navy.
What he had on was mostly his wife’s fault, an expensive suit bought on Savile Row. It was English cut neither conservative nor on the leading edge of contemporary fashion. He had a number of suits like this arranged neatly in his closet by colours, which he wore with white shirts and striped ties. His only jewellery was a wedding band and a university ring, plus an inexpensive but accurate digital watch on a more expensive gold band. Ryan was not a man who placed a great deal of value in appearances. Indeed, his job was to see through these in the search for hard truth.
He was physically unremarkable, an inch over six feet, and his average build suffered a little at the waist from a lack of exercise enforced by the miserable English weather. His blue eyes had a deceptively vacant look; he was often lost in thought, his face on autopilot as his mind puzzled through data or research material for his current book. The only people Ryan needed to impress were those who knew him; he cared little for the rest. He had no ambition to celebrity. His life, he judged, was already as complicated as it needed to be – quite a bit more complicated than most would guess. It included a wife he loved and two children he doted on, a job that tested his intellect, and sufficient financial independence to choose his own path. The path Jack Ryan had chosen was in the CIA. The agency’s official motto was, The truth shall make you free. The trick, he told himself at least once a day, was finding that truth, and while he doubted that he would ever reach this sublime state of grace, he took quiet pride in his ability to pick at it, one small fragment at a time.
The office of the deputy director for intelligence occupied a whole corner of the top floor, overlooking the tree-covered Potomac Valley. Ryan had one more security check to pass.
‘Good morning, Dr Ryan.’
‘Hi, Nancy.’ Ryan smiled at her. Nancy Cummings had held her secretarial job for twenty years, had served eight DDIs, and if the truth were known she probably had as good a feel for the intelligence business as the political appointees in the adjacent office. It was the same as with any large business – the bosses came and went, but the good executive secretaries lasted forever.
‘How’s the family, Doctor? Looking forward to Christmas?’
‘You bet – except my Sally’s a little worried. She’s not sure Santa knows that we’ve moved, and she’s afraid he won’t make it to England for her. He will,’ Ryan confided.
‘It’s so nice when they’re that little.’ She pressed a hidden button. ‘You can go right in, Dr Ryan.’
‘Thanks, Nancy.’ Ryan twisted the electronically protected knob and walked into the DDI’s office.
Vice Admiral James Greer was reclining in his high-backed judge’s chair reading through a folder. His oversized mahogany desk was covered with neat piles of folders whose edges were bordered with red tape and whose covers bore various code words.
‘Hiya, Jack!’ he called across the room. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’
James Greer was sixty-six, a naval officer past retirement age who kept working through brute competence, much as Hyman Rickover had, though Greer was a far easier man to work for. He was a ‘mustang,’ a man who had entered the naval service as an enlisted man, earned his way into the Naval Academy, and spent forty years working his way to a three-star flag, first commanding submarines, then as a full-time intelligence specialist. Greer was a demanding boss, but one who took care of those who pleased him. Ryan was one of these.
Somewhat to Nancy’s chagrin, Greer liked to make his own coffee with a West Bend drip machine on the shelf behind his desk, where he could just turn around to reach it. Ryan poured himself a cup – actually a navy-style handleless mug. It was traditional navy coffee, brewed strong, with a pinch of salt.
‘You hungry, Jack?’ Greer pulled a pastry box from a desk drawer. ‘I got some sticky buns here.’
‘Why thanks, sir. I didn’t eat much on the plane.’ Ryan took one, along with a paper napkin.
‘Still don’t like to fly?’ Greer was amused.
Ryan sat down in the chair opposite his boss. ‘I suppose I ought to be getting used to it. I like the Concorde better than the wide-bodies. You only have to be terrified half as long.’
‘How’s