Deep Lie (30 page)

He went below to the chart table. The VHF radio was useless; its antenna had gone with the mast, and he had no emergency antenna. The Decca navigator still worked, though. Its antenna was fixed to the stern pulpit, not the mast. He read off the latitude and longitude, then plotted the position on the chart. He was about forty miles west and slightly north of a town on the Latvian coast. He had never heard of the town. Its name was Liepaja. RULE shuffled listlessly through the morning’s * bag of cables and raw intelligence. She had not slept well the night before, and she had a headache.

Simon wanted her out of the agency; he had bluntly told her so. He had complained about her working when they had been married, and after the divorce, his complaints had never stopped. Simon had long ago conceived an idea of what a mother should be, and she knew she had never filled the bill. Even divorced, he wanted her at home, car pooling with the other mothers, ready with milk and cookies when Peter came home from school. What had kept her awake was wondering how much Simon wanted that, how far he would go to make it happen.

She opened an internal mail envelope and shook out some sort of publication in Russian. It was the journal of the Soviet Navy. and it had been folded back to show a marked item. It was nothing more than a list of promotions and assignments, but the item leapt out at her. An appointment had been made to the chairmanship of the Third Department of the Intelligence Directorate of Soviet Naval Headquarters. The name was that of Viktor Sergeivich Majorov, Captain, First Grade. She looked at the date on the newspaper: August 18, 1983.

Rule was flabbergasted. Majorov had been the darling of Andropov, had had the plum job of head of the first Chief Directorate of the KGB. Then. more than six months before the death of Andropov, he suddenly became a ~nQ commodore in the navy and was transferred to a job three or four ranks lower than his previous one. While it was certainly not uncommon for a highly placed Soviet to fall from grace and land in an ignominious place (she remembered that Malenkov, once co leader of the party, had ended up running a pencil factory) she could not remember any occasion when a civilian had been moved to a military job. Nothing she had so far learned about Majorov had indicated any sort of naval background. It was baffling.

She went to a filing cabinet, found a Pentagon phone book. looked rapidly through it, then dialed a number. The phone was answered on the first ring.

“Naval Intelligence, Captain Stone’s office.”

“May I speak with Captain Stone, please? This is Katharine Rule. Soviet Office. CIA.”

“Just a moment, ma’am.” She was put on hold.

“Kate? How are you? It’s been a long time.”

“Hello Doug, yes it has. I heard about your promotion.

Congratulations.”

“Thanks. This business or social?”

“Business. Just a quick question. I’m a little rusty on the Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Navy. What does the Third Department cover?”

“That’s an easy one. The Third Department is SPETSNAZ.”

Rule’s heart lurched.

“Who’s in charge there?”

“That’s easy, too, if a little mysterious. Name’s Majorov It’s mysterious, because nobody here ever heard a thing about him until he got the job. I did a computer search of the service journals, and he’d never had a promotion or a reassignment announced. It was like he’d just joined the navy and then got put in charge of SPETSNAZ.”

“Thanks, Doug… oh, is anything brewing with SPETSNAZ these days? Anything unusual. I mean?”

“Nope. Well, they’re bunched up in Poland and the Baltic Republics at the moment, but that’s to be expected.”

“Why?”

“Operation Hammer, At least, that’s our name for it.

The Soviets run major, interservice maneuvers every four years in a different region, and it’s the Baltic’s turn. I’m glad. too; it makes me nervous when they do it in East Germany, like last time.”

“Thanks, Doug, that answers my question. Take care.”

She hung up. Military intelligence was not in her bali wick but she knew about the Soviets’ quadrennial maneuvers; she just didn’t know that this year it was the Baltic.

Maneuvers in East Germany made Doug Stone nervous; maneuvers in the Baltic at this moment made her very nearly crazy. She got up and walked to Alan Nixon’s office. He received her icily.

“Yes, Katharine?”

“Alan. I realize that you’re probably not in a mood to hear about this, but it just came across my desk in a routine way this morning.”

Nixon sighed.

“Is this about Finsov again?”

“Firsov. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned, and you can draw your own conclusions. In August of 1983. Majorov-which as I’ve mentioned, is Firsov’s real name—was moved out of his job as head of foreign operations of the KGB, was apparently inducted into the Soviet navy as a commodore, and was put in charge of the special marine infantry, SPETSNAZ. The assignment was published. At the moment. the Soviets are preparing to hold interservice maneuvers in the Baltic Republics, and SPETSNAZ forces have been grouped there, ostensibly for the maneuvers. So, I expect, has a rather large chunk of the Red Army, and one hell of a lot of materiel, if their war games are anything like ours.” She started out of the room.

“I just thought I’d lay that on you. see if there was any interest.”

Nixon said nothing. She stopped at the door.

“By the way, Alan, when was it exactly that the Snowflower operation ran? I forget.”

“May or June of ‘eighty-three, I think.”

She nodded.

“Right. I couldn’t remember the dates.”

She left before it might occur to him that she wasn’t supposed to know about Snowflower.

Back in her office, she switched on the computer and went to the word processing mode. She typed a memo to Alan Nixon, Deputy Director for Intelligence, outlining what she had just told him, referring to their earlier conversations on the subject, and recommending further investigation by operations. She gave the memo a file number, then printed out a hard copy and saved the file for central records. She dropped the hard copy into an interoffice envelope, wrote Nixon’s name on it, and put it in her out box.

Now she was on the record. This thing was going to blow, she knew it, and it was time to start covering her ass. WILL LEE looked around him and saw nothing. The short, Baltic night had long ago given way to morning, but with it had come fog. The wind had dropped to a light breeze, but there was still a leftover sea running, making life aboard the yacht uncomfortable, with relentless and unpredictable rolling. He had fired another flare at midnight, in the hope of being seen by some western craft before drifting into Soviet waters, but no one had come to his aid. He was saving the last flare in case everything got even worse. The Decca navigator was still working, placing him close to the Latvian shore, and his depth sounder readings had steadily decreased to what was now only twenty meters. He had an anchor and warp on deck, but there was no point in using it, yet.

It would keep him off a rocky lee shore, though, if that was what the yacht drifted onto.

A noise came to him across the water from the east, a low rumble, like the engine of a fishing boat. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, they’ll be Swedish fishermen, who might tow him back to their own waters. The noise grew louder, and Lee looked out to see an odd, white line on the water a few hundred yards away. Fishermen’s nets? A detergent streak? He glanced at the depth sounder: eight meters, suddenly. He looked back at the white streak. It was surf. It was time for the last flare.

He fired it and watched it arch into the sky, not high enough to disappear into the fog. He had had more visibility than he realized. He was drifting inexorably closer to the line of surf, and now he could see the land behind it, low, gray, and rocky. He watched it come closer for a few minutes, glancing every few moments at the depth sounder.

It was down to six meters, now, about twenty feet, and the yacht drew seven. He stepped out of the cockpit, walked forward on the deck, and started to unlash the anchor. He wasn’t sure what sort of bottom was under him, but he guessed rock, and he hoped the anchor would hold. He had chosen the old-fashioned fisherman’s anchor, which was better in rock than either of his other two, even if there were no guarantees. He stood next to the anchor, sorting out the nylon warp attached to it and watching the line of surf. Now was as good a time as any, he thought.

He picked up the anchor.

Then, to his surprise, a bright yellow runabout with a big outboard motor suddenly appeared between the yacht and the surf. There were four young men dressed in foul weather gear aboard, and they turned as they spotted the yacht, two of them pointing and shouting to the driver. The motorboat raced toward the yacht, leaping across the still considerable waves. He hoped the driver knew what he was doing. It slowed as it approached, and swung around in his lee about ten yards off. One of the men shouted something in what. to his surprise, sounded like Swedish. Lee shook his head.

“I don’t understand!” he shouted back.

“Do you speak English? French?”

“Yes, I speak English,” the young man called out.

“I see you are in difficulties. We will tow you to the dockside.

Do you have a line?”

“Yes,” Lee called back.

“One moment.” He went forward, unshackled the anchor, and tossed the warp to one of the men, who cleated it at the motorboat’s stern and gave him a thumbs-up sign. The line came taut, and Lee returned to the cockpit to steer the yacht in the runabout’s wake. He was fortunate to have run up on someone who spoke English and, apparently, not military or police. He doubted the authorities hereabouts ran around in yellow pleasure boats. Maybe he could talk his way out of this, yet. If he could get the line untangled from the prop, he could motor back into Swedish waters, maybe to Gotland, before his fuel ran out.

The boat towed the yacht south, parallel to the shore for half an hour or so, then began a turn into what looked like the narrow entrance to a large bay. Once inside, they turned north and kept to the middle of the bay. The fog was lifting, now, and Lee could see that the body of water was much narrower than it was long. A couple of miles up the bay, a small forest of masts appeared, and he could see that they were headed for what appeared to be a marina.

He dug mooring warps and fenders out of his stern lockers and made them up at the stern and bow. As they approached the nearest pontoon, he saw a couple of dozen small yachts moored, and two other young men stood, waiting to take his lines. The motorboat slowed, and Lee steered the boat alongside and tossed his lines to the waiting men.

The man who had called to him from the motorboat jumped onto the pontoon and ran over.

“Please stay aboard your boat. I must speak to my… boss to receive his instructions.” “Right,” Lee called back.

“I’ll just make myself some coffee.”

He looked at the two men who had taken his lines.

“Would you like some coffee?” They looked interested in him and his boat, but they said nothing. Probably didn’t speak English, he thought.

Lee went below and put the kettle on. While he waited for it to boil, he looked out the galley port, which was of a blue-tinted plexiglass. He could see out, but the men couldn’t see in. What he could see didn’t seem to be much. There was a small beach to the right of the marina, and there were a number of people there launching dinghies.

The land rose behind the docks, and he could see a cluster of modern-looking buildings around a large, sloping, grassy area. It looked like the campus of a small college. The young men had looked a bit too old for students, but who knew? He hoped they weren’t calling the cops, or worse, the KGB. He knew that the KGB was responsible for internal security in the Soviet Union, guarding the borders. Suddenly, it occurred to him that he knew a great deal more than that about the KGB, and about the Central Intelligence Agency, as well. He had better start thinking about what he was going to tell the “boss” when he showed up.

The truth, he decided immediately. Well, most of it, anyway. If he were going to talk his way out of here, there had better be no mention of Washington or his work for Senator Carr on the Senate Intelligence Committee. That could only lead to a call to some higher authority, and he had no wish to talk with any higher authority, especially not the KGB. Those people would be all too interested in what he knew. He knew, for instance, a great deal about the budget and operations of the Central Intelligence Agency; he knew the names and titles of a number of its key personnel; he knew the head of the Soviet Office of the Directorate for Intelligence very well indeed; he had an appointment with her in Copenhagen in three days’ time.

The kettle began to whistle.

He made himself some instant coffee, but suddenly it seemed too hot to drink. He was already sweating. He shucked off his foul-weather jacket and mopped his brow, taking deep breaths to calm himself. He thought about dosing the coffee with brandy, but decided against it. He might be too talkative with a drink inside him. He had to keep his head and just be who he was, with only a few omissions—the innocent yachtsman, not well enough prepared to keep from losing his mast, too stupid to check for lines overboard before starting his engine. He chuckled ruefully to himself. Playing that role should be easy enough.