Voyage of the Devilfish

All were present except the President, who would be a minute late. Dretzski paused from his notes and his mixed feelings to look over the members. On the far left was General Anton Voskod, Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the service that once owned the silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. With the arms treaties and the peace race, Voskod was out of a job. Voskod was one of the younger generals, in his early fifties, and had been a hawk during the time when his missiles were constantly pointed at U.S. cities. On General Voskod’s left sat General Dmitri Pallin, the KGB’s Head of the First Chief Directorate, the KGB arm responsible for foreign intelligence. Pallin had come from the FED’s commando ranks. Pallin was also Dretzski’s boss at FED, which meant the presentation had better go well or it would reflect unfavorably on both of them. On Pallin’s left was the civilian KGB chief, Viktor Maksoy, a tired old man who tended to do whatever Pallin wanted, or whatever the highest ranking bureaucrat wanted. Maksoy had no backbone, which was the reason the President had chosen him — he had no taste for a KGB with teeth. Maksoy would go whatever way the wind blew. In the center of the horseshoe was the empty chair for the President. The hearing could not go on without him. Next to the empty chair was Tafel Fasimov, the Defense Minister. A hard-liner like Voskod, he was never fond of capitalism or negotiations with the Americans.

When, thought Dretzski, would the dinosaurs be gone? To the left of Fasimov was the Foreign Minister Anatoly Kirova. Kirova had spent much time at the U.N., Dretzski thought, and had become, some said, Americanized, his conversion measurable in the hot dogs and pizzas he consumed. Kirova would be against the Novskoyy deployment, and would oppose harassment of the Americans. In the last seat on the right was Admiral Mikhail Barisov, Supreme Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Novskoyy’s opposite number in Vladivostok. Barisov and Novskoyy were as different as two men could be. Barisov was a thinker, a lover of ballet, reader of history. Barisov too had become cozy with the glavny protivnik, spending over a month at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport.

President Misha Sergeiyvich Yulenski entered the room then. Dretzski had not been able to read Yulenski, who could be agreeable one moment and furious the next. He was one of the new generation of democratic politicians. After Yulenski called the hearing to order Dretzski addressed the men at the table.

“President Yulenski, gentlemen, my name is Colonel Ivan Dretzski and I have been asked to come here and brief you at the request of General Pallin and Chief Maksoy. I am an intelligence specialist in First Chief Directorate, responsible for foreign intelligence estimates and nuclear weapon intelligence. I have a statement to read concerning the deployment of the Northern Fleet, after which I will try to answer any questions you have. Sir?”

“Yes, go ahead. Colonel Dretzski,” Yulenski boomed, his voice and manner jolly, as if trying to win votes.

“Gentlemen,” Dretzski began, “on Tuesday, the Northern Fleet’s 120 nuclear-attack submarines deployed together from their bases on the northern coast. They had been prepared for this special exercise for several months, and at the order of Admiral Alexi Novskoyy, admiral in command of the fleet, the boats began the exercise. The exercise involves several parts. The first part is completed. The initial test was to see how quickly and efficiently the fleet could be scrambled to sea—” Dretzski could feel Admiral Barisov’s eyes on him. It would not be easy to get anything by Barisov, which was probably why he had been flown in from Vladivostok.

“—with a minimum of notice. The second element of the exercise is to enter the North Atlantic and make a recordtime-run to the east coast of the United States—”

The room filled with the buzz of voices.

“I need to stress that this is an exercise only. The ships are training for the possibility of a rapid-deployment. As Admiral Novskoyy has said, if a military unit is supposed to have a capability, and that capability is not regularly tested, the capability vanishes.

“After approximately one to two days on the coastline, the submarines will withdraw and return to their bases. That will be the third phase. We will evaluate the submarines on their ability to fulfill their missions. We have, of course, never gone into combat with our nuclear submarines — it is not like an army-artillery brigade, learning the science of warfare from centuries of firing cannons. Nuclear submarines are still a relatively new science, never taken into combat. We need to learn how to use this navy if it is to serve the defense of our newly constituted country. Admiral Novskoyy’s exercise will rewrite the book on how we operate our ships.”