Voyage of the Devilfish

On the Russian northern coast was the size of a city. Within its barbed wire fence and concrete barriers were two sprawling shipyards, repair yards, submarine and surface-ship operating bases, a weapons depot and the many buildings of Northern Reel headquarters. It was drab and massive. Shipyard workers crowded the walkways. Sailors and naval officers were almost as numerous. In the submarine building yards a half-dozen gigantic buildingways and drydocks were centers of frantic activity, three shifts a day, seven days a week. The largest construction drydock. Building Dock 4, was over 500 meters long and 20 meters deep. A six-story building could have been built in Dock 4 without rising above the rim. The dock was pumped dry of the brackish channel water. Nestled in the dock was a submarine, the first ship of the Project 985 class of attack vessels. Outside the security building for the dock two men met and shook hands. The first was a barrel-chested man in a long greatcoat, the red epaulettes on his shoulders showing four gold stars. His head was covered by a fur cap also displaying four stars. The second was bundled in a long overcoat with a suit and tie showing at the collar of the coat. The shipyard workers avoided him.

“Colonel Dretzski,” the man with the stars said.

“Admiral Novskoyy,” said Dretzski. Ivan Dretzski was assigned to the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, headquartered at Yasenevo. His specialty was nuclear weapon intelligence. Novskoyy motioned Dretzski into the security building and pointed to a row of white visitor’s hardhats. The sentry handed Novskoyy a special gleaming red hard hat. The hat had the emblem of the Northern Fleet on the front and words in block letters above and below the emblem: ADMIRAL A. NOVSKOYY, SUPREME COMMANDER, RED BANNER NORTHERN FLEET. Novskoyy looked at the hardhat and turned to Dretzski.

“This is why we can’t build a quality submarine within budget. Colonel. We spend too many rubles making hardhats.” Novskoyy tossed it back to the sentry. “Hand me one of the visitor’s hats,” he said, taking off his fur cap and putting on an old scratched hardhat. Novskoyy then motioned Dretzski out a door in the far wall of the security building to a deck overlooking the drydock. Below the men the vast submarine stretched to the vanishing point in each direction. Dretzski heard his own whistle.

“Yolki paiki, admiral. Enormous!” Novskoyy nodded. “Two hundred meters long, sixty thousand tons of submarine. Colonel. Six times bigger than the Los Angeles-class sub. Its reactors produce over three thousand megawatts of power, enough to light the lights of Moscow. Project 985. My design. Beautiful. Enough weaponry to sink a fleet and enough cruise missiles to wipe out a continent. This ship is the Kaliningrad. The Americans call it the Omega. The last letter of the Greek alphabet.

The end-all, the ultimate.” For a moment the two men watched a huge crane below move a periscope into position for lowering into the teardrop-shaped conning tower. The black hull was oval in cross-section, making it seem fat. The tail section had a teardrop-shaped pod mounted horizontally on the vertical tail fin. The screw was shrouded in a cylindrical cover. Up forward two hatches were open and men and supplies were passing in and out from the gangway to the drydock rim.

“The ship is ready to be floated out of the dock, but first I want to show it to you from below.” Colonel Dretzski followed Novskoyy downstairs to the drydock floor. Novskoyy walked under the keel of the ship.

When they were underneath it, a waiting shipyard worker walked up with a ladder. Novskoyy had the ladder erected at an open passage through the skin of the submarine above and climbed the ladder and disappeared into the hole, calling down to Dretzski to follow. Dretzski grimaced and climbed the ladder into the black hole above. He found himself standing inside the hull in a black space. A flashlight clicked on. In its wandering beam he saw Novskoyy a few meters away. He was in some sort of tank. The top surface, the ceiling, was three meters above his head.

“Amazing, isn’t it, Ivan Ivanovich?”

“Admiral, what is this?”