"Sure is. You have a good one, sir."

"Be careful, man," Russell said, shaking his hand one more time.

"It's a mistake to let him go," Ghosn observed to the Commander in Arabic.

"I think not. The only face he has really seen is Marvin's, after all."

"True."

"Have you checked it?" Qati asked.

"There is no damage to the packing box. I will do a more detailed check tomorrow. I would say that we are almost ready."

"Yes."

"You want the good news or the bad news?" Jack asked.

"Good first," Cathy said.

"They're asking me to resign my position."

"What's the bad news?"

"Well, you never really leave. They'll want me to come back occasionally. To consult, stuff like that."

"Is that what you want?"

"This work does get in your blood, Cathy. Would you like to leave Hopkins and just be a doc with an office and patients and gla.s.ses to prescribe?"

"How much?"

"Couple times a year, probably. Special areas I happen to know a lot about. Nothing regular."

"Okay, that's fair-and, no, I couldn't give up teaching young docs. How soon?"

"Well, I have two things I have to finish up with. Then we have to pick someone for the job...." How about the Foleys, How about the Foleys, Jack thought. Jack thought. But which one ... ? But which one ... ?

"Conn, sonar."

"Conn, aye," the navigator answered.

"Sir, I got a possible contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint, but it keeps coming back."

"On the way." It was a short five steps into the sonar room. "Show me."

"Right here, sir." The sonarman pointed to a line on the display. Though it looked fuzzy, it was in fact composed of discrete yellow dots in a specific frequency range, and as the time scale moved vertically upward, more dots kept appearing, regular only in that they seemed to form a vague and fuzzy line. The only change in the line was a slight drift in direction. "I can't tell you what it is yet."

"Tell me what it isn't."

"It ain't no surface contact, and I don't think it's random noise either, sir." The petty officer traced it all the way to the top of the tube with a grease pencil. "Right about here, I decided it might actually be something."

"What else you got?"

"Sierra-15 over here is a merchant, heading southeast and way the h.e.l.l away from us-that's a third-CZ contact we been trackin' since before turn of the last watch, and that's about it, Mr. Pitney. I guess it's too b.u.mpy topside for the fishermen to be out this far."

Lieutenant Pitney tapped the screen. "Call it Sierra-16, and I'll get a track started. How's the water?"

"Deep channel seems very good today, sir. Surface noise is a little tough, though. This one's tough to hold."

"Keep an eye on it."

"Aye aye." The sonarman turned back to his scope.

Lieutenant Jeff Pitney returned to the control room, lifted the growler phone, and punched the b.u.t.ton for the Captain's cabin. "Gator here, Cap'n. We have a possible sonar contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint. Our friend might be back, sir. ... Yes, sir." Pitney hung up and hit the 1-MC speaker system. "Man the fire-control tracking party."

Captain Ricks appeared a minute later, wearing sneakers and his blue coveralls. His first stop was to control, to check course, speed, and depth. Then he went into sonar.

"Let's see it."

"d.a.m.n thing just faded on me again, sir," the sonarman said sheepishly. He used a piece of toilet paper-there was a roll over each scope-to erase the previous mark, and penciled in another. "I think we have something here, sir."

"I hope you didn't interrupt my sleep for nothing," Ricks noted. Lieutenant Pitney caught the look the two other sonarmen exchanged at that.

"Coming back, sir. You know, if this is an Akula, we should be getting a little pump noise in this spectrum over here...."

"Intelligence says he's coming out of overhaul. Ivan is learning how to make them quieter," Ricks said.

"Guess so ... slow drift to the north, call the current bearing two-nine-seven." Both men knew that figure could be off by ten degrees either way. Even with the enormously expensive system on Maine, Maine, really long-distance bearings were pretty vague. really long-distance bearings were pretty vague.

"Anybody else around?" Pitney asked.

"Omaha is supposed to be around somewhere south of Kodiak. Wrong direction. It's not her. Sure it's not a surface contact?" is supposed to be around somewhere south of Kodiak. Wrong direction. It's not her. Sure it's not a surface contact?"

"No way, Cap'n. If it was diesel, I'd know it, and if it was steam, I'd know that, too. There's no pounding from surface noise. Has to be a submerged contact, Cap'n. Only thing makes sense."

"Pitney, we're on two-eight-one?"

"Yessir."

"Come left to two-six-five. We'll set up a better baseline for the target-motion a.n.a.lysis, try to get a range estimate before we turn in."

Turn in, Pitney thought. Pitney thought. Jesus, boomers aren't supposed to do this stuff. Jesus, boomers aren't supposed to do this stuff. He gave the order anyway, of course. He gave the order anyway, of course.

"Where's the layer?"

"One-five-zero feet, sir. Judging by the surface noise, there's twenty-five-footers up there," the sonarman added.

"So he's probably staying deep to smooth the ride out."

"d.a.m.n, lost him again ... we'll see what happens when the tail straightens back out...."

Ricks leaned his head out of the sonar room and spoke a single word: "Coffee." It never occurred to him that the sonarmen might like some, too.

It took five more minutes of waiting before the dots started appearing again in the right place.

"Okay, he's back. I think," the sonarman added. "Bearing looks like three-zero-two now."

Ricks walked out to the plotting table. Ensign Shaw was doing his calculations along with a quartermaster. "Has to be a hundred-thousand-plus yards. I'm a.s.suming a northeasterly course from the bearing drift, speed of less than ten. Has to be a hundred-K yards or more." That was good, fast work, Shaw and the petty officer thought.

Ricks nodded curtly and went back to sonar.

"Firming up, getting some stuff on the fifty-hertz line now. Starting to smell like Mr. Akula, maybe."

"You must have a pretty good channel."

"Right, Captain, pretty good and improving a little. That storm's gonna change it when the turbulence gets down to our depth, sir."

Ricks went into control again: "Mr. Shaw?"

"Best estimate is one-one-five-K yards, course northeasterly, speed five knots, maybe one or two more, sir. If his speed's much higher than that, the range is awfully far."

"Okay, I want us to come around very gently, come right to zero-eight-zero."

"Aye aye, sir. Helm, right five degrees rudder, come to new course zero-eight-zero."

"Right five degrees rudder, aye. Sir, my rudder is right five degrees, coming to new course zero-eight-zero."

"Very well."

Slowly, so as not to make too great a bend in the towed array, USS Maine Maine reversed course. It took three minutes before she settled down on the new course, doing something no U.S. fleet ballistic-missile submarine had ever done before. Lieutenant Commander Claggett appeared in the control room soon thereafter. reversed course. It took three minutes before she settled down on the new course, doing something no U.S. fleet ballistic-missile submarine had ever done before. Lieutenant Commander Claggett appeared in the control room soon thereafter.

"How long you figure he's going to hold this course?" he asked Ricks.

"What would you do?"

"I think I'd troll along in a ladder pattern," Dutch answered, "and my drift would be south instead of north, reverse of how we do it in the Barents Sea, right? Interval between sweeps will be determined by the performance of his tail. That's one hard piece of intel we can develop, but depending on how that number looks, we'll have to be real careful how we trail him, won't we?"

"Well, I can't approach to less than thirty thousand yards under any circ.u.mstances. So ... we'll close to fifty-K until we have a better feel for him, then ease it in as circ.u.mstances permit. One of us should be in here at all times as long as he's in the neighborhood."

"Agreed." Claggett nodded. He paused for a beat before going on. "How the h.e.l.l," the XO asked very quietly indeed, "did OP-02 ever agree to this?"

"Safer world now, isn't it?"

"I s'pose, sir."

"You're jealous that boomers can do a fast-attack job?"

"Sir, I think that OP-02 slipped a gear, either that or they're trying to impress some folks with our flexibility or something."

"You don't like this?"

"No, Captain, I don't. I know we can do it, but I don't think we should."

"Is that what you talked to Mancuso about?"

"What?" Claggett shook his head. "No, sir. Well, he did ask me that, and I said we could do it. Not my place to enter into that yet."

Then what did you talk to him about? Ricks wanted to ask. He couldn't, of course. Ricks wanted to ask. He couldn't, of course.

The Americans were a great disappointment to Oleg Kirilovich Kadishev. The whole reason they'd recruited him was to get good inside information on the Soviet government, and he'd delivered precisely that for years. He'd seen the sweeping political changes coming for his country, seen them early because he'd known Andrey Il'ych Narmonov for what he was. And for what he was not. The President of his country was a man of stunning political gifts. He had the courage of a lion and the tactical agility of a mongoose. It was a plan that he lacked. Narmonov had no idea where he was going, and that was his weakness. He had destroyed the old political order, eliminated the Warsaw Pact through inaction, merely by saying out loud, only once, that the Soviet Union would not interfere with the political integrity of other countries, and had done so in the knowledge that the only thing that kept Marxism in place was the threat of Soviet force. The Eastern European communists had foolishly played along, actually thinking themselves secure in the love and respect of their people in one of history's most colossal and least understood acts of lunacy. But what made the irony sublime was that Narmonov could not see the same thing in his own country, to which was added one more, fatal, variable.

The Soviet people-a term that never had any meaning, of course-were held together only by the threat of force. Only the guns of the Red Army guaranteed that Moldavians, and Latvians, and Tadzhiks and so many others would follow the Moscow line. They loved the communist leadership even less than their great-grandfathers had loved the czars. And so while Narmonov had dismantled the Party's central role in managing the country, he'd eliminated his ability to control his people, but left himself no ethos with which to supplant what had gone before. The plan-in a nation which for over eighty years had always had The Plan-simply did not exist. So, necessarily, when turmoil began to replace order, there was nothing to do, nothing to point to, no goal to strive for. Narmonov's dazzling political maneuvers were ultimately pointless. Kadishev saw that. Why didn't the Americans, who had gambled everything on the survival of "their man" in Moscow?

The forty-six-year-old parliamentarian snorted at the thought. He was their man, wasn't he? He'd warned them for years, and they hadn't listened, but instead used his reports to b.u.t.tress a man who was rich in skill but bereft of vision-and how could a man lead without vision?

The Americans, just as foolish, just as blind, had actually been surprised by the violence in Georgia, and the Baltic states. They actually ignored the nascent civil war that had already begun in the arc of Southern republics. Half a million military weapons had vanished in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mostly rifles, but some were tanks! tanks! The Soviet Army could not begin to deal with the situation. Narmonov struggled with it on a day-to-day basis like some kind of desperate juggler, barely managing to keep up, taking his effort from one place to another, keeping his plates in the air, but barely. Didn't the Americans understand that some fine day all the plates would fall at the same time? The consequences of that were frightening to everyone. Narmonov needed a vision, needed a plan, but he didn't have one. The Soviet Army could not begin to deal with the situation. Narmonov struggled with it on a day-to-day basis like some kind of desperate juggler, barely managing to keep up, taking his effort from one place to another, keeping his plates in the air, but barely. Didn't the Americans understand that some fine day all the plates would fall at the same time? The consequences of that were frightening to everyone. Narmonov needed a vision, needed a plan, but he didn't have one.

Kadishev did, and that was the entire point of his exercise. The Union had to be broken up. The Muslim republics had to go. The Balts had to go. Moldavia had to go. The Western Ukraine had to go-he wanted to keep the Eastern part. He had to find a way to protect the Armenians, lest they be ma.s.sacred by the local Muslims, and had to find a way to keep access to the oil of Azerbaijan, at least long enough until, with help from the West, he could exploit all the resources of Siberia.

Kadishev was a Russian. It was part of his soul. Russia was the mother of the Union, and like a good mother, she would let her children go at the proper time. The proper time was now. That would leave a country stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, with a largely h.o.m.ogeneous population and immense resources that were scarcely catalogued, much less tapped. It could and should be a great, strong country, powerful as any, rich in history and arts, a leader in the sciences. That was Kadishev's vision. He wished to lead a Russia that was a true superpower, a friend and a.s.sociate to other countries of European heritage. It was his task to bring his country into the light of freedom and prosperity. If that meant dismissing almost half of the population and twenty-five percent of the land-so be it.

But the Americans weren't helping. Why this should be so, he simply did not understand. They had to see that Narmonov was a street without an exit, a road that merely stopped... or perhaps stopped at the brink of a great abyss.

If the Americans couldn't help, then it was within his power to force them to help. That was why he had allowed himself to be recruited by Mary Foley in the first place.

It was early morning in Moscow, but Kadishev was a man who had long since disciplined himself to live on a minimum of sleep. He typed his report on an old, heavy, but quiet machine. Kadishev used the same cloth ribbon many times. No one would ever be able to examine the ribbon to see what had been written on it, and the paper was from a sheaf taken from the office central supply room. Several hundred people had access to it. Like all professional gamblers, Kadishev was a careful man. When he was finished, he used leather gloves to wipe the paper clean of whatever fingerprints he might have accidentally left on it, then, using the same gloves, he folded the copy into a coat pocket. In two hours the message would be pa.s.sed. In less than twenty, the message would be in other hands.

Agent SPINNAKER needn't have bothered. KGB was under orders not to hara.s.s the People's Deputies. The coat-check girl pocketed the paper, and soon thereafter pa.s.sed it across to an individual whose name she did not know. That man left the building and drove to his own workplace. Two hours after that, the message was in another container in the pocket of a man driving to the airport, where he boarded the 747 for New York.