Torpedo! (The Silent War Book 3) Read online

  Bernstein shook his head as he led Wilson into the house. “None of those are qualifications for our work. One must be a thief and a liar and have no sense of shame. Which is why we two are such a great success. Come into the kitchen, I must talk with you before Shevenko gets here. We’ve got a few minutes.

  “I have to impose a condition, my friend. This is a very delicate thing you have asked me to do and I have done it. Now I must insist that I sit in on your talk with Shevenko. Moise, you remember Moise Shemanski, he’s still my right hand man, he’ll sit with me.”

  Wilson shook his head. “I’d rather not, Isser.”

  “So I’ll leave you alone with Shevenko. Do you know if the room is bugged? No. But you might suspect so you go for a walk in the garden to talk. I can listen to you with a Big Ear. You gave us our first Big Ear and we have made many since then. So what do you want to do? Better to have Moise close by in case that Russian bear decides to give you a hug.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Wilson said. “We’ll do it your way. But don’t interrupt unless I ask you to do so.”

  “Who interrupts? I don’t like talking to that bastard.”

  The meeting was held in the kitchen. Wilson and Shevenko sat across from each other at the kitchen table with cups of steaming coffee in front of them. Isser Bernstein and Moise Shemanski, a burly, taciturn Pole who had escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in 1944 and made his way to Israel, sat in wooden chairs against one wall of the kitchen.

  Shevenko raised his coffee cup as if offering a toast. “We meet again, Bob. It was worth the long trip just to see you.” He sipped at his coffee. “I might say also that it is almost worth the trip to taste this coffee. You would not believe the coffee we get in our building at home. It must be the water, not even the best American instant coffee tastes very good.”

  “You know why I want to see you,” Wilson said.

  “I am not good at guessing games, my friend. Tell me.”

  “One of our ballistic missile submarines was attacked and sunk by one of your submarines. The attack took place in the Atlantic, west of the Strait of Gibraltar. That was a deliberate act of war, Shevenko.”

  “A very serious charge, Bob,” Shevenko said slowly. “More serious because it is made in the presence of our mutual friends. What is the basis for such a charge?”

  Wilson opened his attaché case and pulled out several eight by ten black and white photographs. He spread them out on the table in front of Shevenko.

  “You can have two of these to take home with you. Take your pick. It’s not conjecture, Shevenko.”

  The Russian studied the pictures. “What astounding clarity!” he said in a low voice. “At that depth!” He looked at Wilson and slowly slid two of the pictures over to one side. “I may have these? Thank you. I know of an admiral or two who are going to come down with a bad case of diarrhea when they see these pictures.” He raised his coffee cup and sipped slowly, his eyes steady on Wilson.

  “Give me a reason for this insanity,” Wilson said.

  “Between sane men there can be no reason, no rationale,” Shevenko answered. “I was against the operation from the beginning. I argued against it as long as it was politic for me to do so. We have as many fools in our Politburo and our military as you do in your Congress and Pentagon. Maybe more.”

  “That’s no answer,” Wilson said.

  “Because there is no answer,” Shevenko said. “No answer that will satisfy you or would satisfy me if I were sitting in your chair.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders.

  “The only thing I can offer you is the truth, a rare commodity in our business but often useful. Your nuclear ballistic submarines, which you call a nuclear deterrent, are to us a nuclear threat. Our cities could be subjected to holocaust, a word our hosts know very well.”

  “Doesn’t wash, Shevenko. Your side has nuclear ballistic missile submarines.”

  “Of course,” Shevenko said. “But you don’t see through our eyes. We have the longest border in the world and most of it is landlocked, not available for submarine ports. We have only two major submarine ports, one in the north on the Kola Peninsula. In order to get to the Atlantic our submarines have to pass between Britain and Greenland.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled his thanks as Moise brought a hot pot of coffee from the sideboard.

  “We know, my friend, that you have sown the bottom of the sea with listening devices so that you will know when one of our submarines makes the passage to the Atlantic and we know, as well, that you have mines laid so that if you wished you could blow our submarines up before they ever got to the open waters of the Atlantic.” His hands closed tightly around the heavy coffee mug.

  “Over to the east we have our only other nuclear submarine base, at Petropavlovsk. There again, we know that as soon as one of our submarines heads for the open Pacific it must run the gauntlet of your listening devices and mines.

  “You can understand, I think, that this has made our admirals paranoiac. Your nuclear missile submarines can roam the seas of the world without our knowledge of where they are. Ours cannot.”

  “The weak point in that argument, Igor, is that you know damned well that we are never going to launch a nuclear attack against anyone.”

  Shevenko shrugged. “I know that. I even believe it. But that is not the only thing that concerns our military leaders and our Politburo.

  “Your president has started on a course that will lead to friendship between the United States and Mainland China.”

  “Communist China,” Wilson interrupted.

  “Mainland China. Those bastards are not Communists. But let’s not argue about semantics. Mainland China is not only dangerous to us but also to the rest of the world, a point that your president cannot seem to recognize.

  “Some of the fools in our Navy developed a new torpedo. If you don’t know all about it I am sure our friends here do and will tell you if you ask. Like too many military men, yours and ours, they could not rest until they had tested this new torpedo under actual conditions.

  “That is the truth of this madness, the only truth. I give you my word, which is good no matter what you happen to think.”

  “Why did you argue against the operation. Don’t you share the same fears?”

  “I am a realist, Bob. You know that. I argued against it because I can see the long range consequences. You might attack in retaliation. One for one and then two for two and then the nuclear holocaust we all fear if we are sane. We, you, would be burnt toast with no marmalade because if you strike first you cannot stop our counterstrike any more than we can stop your counterstrike if we were to attack first.” The eyelids over the hard blue eyes opened wide as Shevenko stared at Wilson.

  “Our admirals have gambled that you would not respond. I am not so sure. Not even now, although when our good friend the doctor asked me to come here at once I reasoned that you wanted to talk instead of starting a war.”

  “Don’t be too confident,” Wilson said.

  “If you are foolish,” Shevenko said, “if a nuclear war does start who stands to gain? Peking. Only Peking. They would love to see us at each other’s throats with nuclear weapons. They would rule the world when the fires were out, as they will anyway in fifty years or less.

  “So how do we avoid this? You would not have asked to meet me if you did not have some plan.”

  “The people I am speaking for want Brezhnev to get on the hot line to the President,” Wilson said. “If he will do that and tell the President that a horrible tragedy has happened and that it was a terrible mistake maybe we can get out of this mess by covering up the cause of our submarine’s loss.”

  “Does your president want Brezhnev to do this?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about this, yet.”

  “Leonid Brezhnev is a proud man, Bob. Your people are asking for a lot. I don’t know if I can do what you ask. You must have considered this angle and you must have an alternative.”

  “Your submarine will
be destroyed,” Wilson said.

  “Tit for tat,” Shevenko murmured. “Once that happens there will be no easy way to stop it. I can try. But I may not be able to even see Leonid let alone sit down and talk about this matter.”

  “You were able to talk to Khrushchev in Sixty-two,” Wilson said. “If I recall you had more to do with stopping that Cuban missile crisis than anyone.”

  “Nikita was a shrewd peasant, a poker player. He knew when to throw in his hand. I don’t think Brezhnev plays poker. He is stubborn, very proud. You are asking him to humble himself.”

  “Better to be humble than to be burnt toast.”

  “And if he does listen to me, what sort of reparations will your president demand?”

  “I don’t know if he will demand anything. Let them work that out.”

  Shevenko sighed. “I will try, old friend. I will do my best. I will give you my word on that on the grave of my mother whose soul is now with God.”

  “You toss His name around pretty loosely for a Communist, don’t you think? Isser almost choked when you said that.”

  “My mother taught me well. She taught me that God forgives all sins. In my work I have had to do some things that even our hosts might consider sinful.” Isser Bernstein rolled his eyes upward and shook his head. Shevenko saw the gesture and smiled.

  “The package your people took from me when I got into your car, Isser, could I have it now? Your bomb people have had time to open it and see what is inside.”

  Moise Shemanski left the room and returned with a brown paper package tied with cord.

  “Cuban cigars,” Shevenko said to Wilson. “We know that your new boss likes a good cigar after dinner. These are the best. The paper and string are from New York. You could maybe tell him that a friend in the United Nations gave you the cigars. He would probably faint if he knew you got them from a KGB man.” He sat back in his chair and grinned at the other men.

  “I can give you four or five days, no more,” Wilson said. “My people have to know by then if Brezhnev will make the phone call.”

  “Of course,” Shevenko said. “Isser, could you do me a small favor in return for my coming here on such short notice? If I sent you a bottle of the water in our building could you have your chemists analyze it? Our chemists know nothing about coffee, they only know about tea. If it’s the water ruining my coffee I may have to get bottled water from West Germany.” He turned back to Wilson.

  “One more thing, I was going to notify you through Dobrynin that I have asked Fidel to get me tickets to the Super Bowl game in Miami. I asked him to route me from Havana through Mexico City. I’ll keep you advised of my itinerary through the diplomatic pouch, if that’s all right with you.”

  Wilson shrugged.

  “I’ll call Isser every day; it’s easier for me to contact him than to get in touch with you.”

  The door opened and two Mossad agents came in. Shevenko stood up and shook hands with the three men and left. Bernstein led Wilson into the living room and Naomi came in with a plate of sandwiches, crisp slices of cucumber between thin slices of whole wheat bread that had been spread with sour cream.

  “You should have served him some of these sandwiches,” Wilson said. “He might have offered to buy up your whole cucumber crop.”

  “I will watch him drink coffee but I will not eat with him,” Bernstein said. “You shook him badly with those pictures. He caved in, admitted the crime. I have known him a long time. I have never seen him so upset.”

  “I didn’t see any sign of that,” Wilson said. He finished his sandwich and reached for a second one as Naomi poured fresh coffee.

  “People in our business are schooled to show no emotion in their face or their hands,” Bernstein said. “I was watching his feet under the table. He was upset.”

  “The important thing is that he got the message,” Wilson said. “All I have to worry about is whether he will contact Brezhnev and if he does, if Brezhnev will call the President.”

  Bernstein chewed slowly. “I would say that Shevenko will try to carry out his part of the bargain. But there is a manic atmosphere in the Politburo. Brezhnev might not be able to take the political risk of backing down from a Politburo decision.

  “How much do you know about that?” Wilson eyed the Mossad chief.

  “I know the vote to test the torpedo was five to four. One member of the Politburo was sick and did not vote. Brezhnev could have cast the tie vote and that would have ended the matter for some time but he did not vote. So he might not feel strong enough to risk calling the President.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Time for you to go, my friend. Pray tonight, as I will, that this madness will go no further. I will be in touch with you after each of Shevenko’s calls to me.”

  Sitting in the living room with Schemanski, who was finishing the last of the sandwiches, Bernstein turned to his aide. “Did you catch that reference Shevenko made to Bob, telling him to tell his boss that he got the cigars at the United Nations? Leah told us that his cover for being away from his office was an inter-office memo ordering him to go to New York to see some people at the UN. You’d better get word to Leah at once and warn her that Shevenko may have an agent inside the CIA who also reads inter-office memos.”

  “I think you’d better warn Mr. Wilson, too,” Shemanski said.

  “How can I do that? If we do he’d start searching for Leah. I don’t want her cover blown. It took a long while to get her in place.”

  “We should find some way to tell him,” Shemanski insisted. “It’s not nice to keep that sort of thing from a friend who once saved the lives of your wife and daughter.”

  “He saved my life too, more than once,” Bernstein said. “I owe him debts I can never repay. Let me think about it. I want you to take the tape reel off the recorder and get the film from the camera upstairs. I wonder if there was enough light in the kitchen to get good pictures of those photos Bob spread out on the table?”

  “I’m sure there was,” Shemanski said.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Bernstein said. “Get the tape and the film and then we’ll go back to the office.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Igor Shevenko retraced the route he had taken to get to Israel. By plane from Lydda Airport to Rome and then on to West Berlin. He was met at the airport there by a nervous agent who was not worried at the prospect of easing his Director back through the Iron Curtain but concerned that Shevenko would think him nervous and thus not trustworthy. He boarded a Soviet airliner with a malfunctioning heater system and spent the trip to Moscow shivering in the cold. In his office he rubbed at eyes that were scratchy from lack of sleep. Stefan Lubutkin rushed in with hot coffee and a plate of caraway seed cookies.

  “You are tired, Comrade Director,” Lubutkin said solicitously. “The meeting in East Berlin was difficult?”

  “All meetings are a waste of time, you know that,” Shevenko growled. “East Berlin is a dead city, I hate it. Not even Lenin could have revived it.” He looked at his aide out of the corner of his eye, wondering if Lubutkin suspected that he had gone far south of East Berlin.

  “It is not a frivolous city, that is true,” Lubutkin said solemnly. “But in time, when Germany is reunited under our rule, it will change.”

  “Get me Admiral Zurahv on the phone,” Shevenko said. He chewed a cookie, savoring the delicate taste of the caraway seeds.

  An hour later Shevenko met the Admiral in a park. The two men, the Admiral, bearlike in his uniform greatcoat, Shevenko in a heavy sheepskin-lined coat and a warm muffler, walked along a pathway.

  “It is safe to talk here, Admiral,” Shevenko began. “What I have to tell you is for your ears alone.” He stopped and flicked a heavy gobbet of snow from the winter-nude branches of a bush.

  “The Americans have found their submarine, Admiral.”

  “Impossible,” the Admiral grunted. He kicked at a clump of ice on the pathway and sent it skittering. “You cannot put a diver down two thousand fathoms and the only
deep submergence vessel that could go that deep is in Hawaii.”

  Shevenko reached inside his coat and pulled out a brown manila envelope. He opened it and handed one of the two photographs Wilson had given him to the Admiral.

  Zurahv studied the picture for a long moment and then stared at Shevenko, who handed him the envelope. “I got this from one of my people who was afraid to trust it to the diplomatic pouch, Admiral. I had to go to East Berlin to meet him. I brought the picture back to give to you. I assure you it is genuine.

  Zurahv held the photograph up and looked at it closely. He put it in the envelope and smiled at Shevenko. “I know it is genuine, Comrade,” he said jovially. “It bears out exactly what the research people said would happen when the weapon hit the screw of a ballistic submarine and that research report is known by only a very few people. So now we must go to full production of the weapon.”

  “That is your decision to make of course, Admiral. But now that you are convinced that the information I learned is genuine I must offer you the rest of the package. I assure you it is also genuine.

  “The Americans have not announced the loss of their submarine. They will do so, of course, and attribute the loss to an unknown mechanical failure. But not until after they have destroyed one of our submarines, Admiral. The obvious target of them is the submarine that carried out the weapons test. If I may, sir, I would suggest you move that submarine to a safe area.”

  “Bull’s balls!” the Admiral snorted. “The Americans would not dare take such an action. They don’t have the political freedom to act in that way. They don’t have the will to do such a thing.”

  “If the cow had the balls she would be the bull,” Shevenko said softly. “Never underestimate what an enemy might do.”

  “How certain is your man that they intend to retaliate in this manner?” Admiral Zurahv asked.

  “He is as certain as that photograph, Admiral. What gives his story greater credence is the fact that the President has not yet been informed of the loss of their submarine. Only a very few top naval officers know about it. They have decided on retaliation on their own.”