George Bartram: Under the Freeze

“Everything’s history.”

Repin’s voice fell to a growl. Suddenly he looked sly and ugly, his lower lip pushed forward and his eyes tiny and greedy like the gull’s. “I remember. You never forget, never forgive. The American way.” He spat over the side. He stirred the whiskey with a stubby finger and then looked at the finger, from which an amber drop began to fall, and he flicked the finger toward the water, sending tiny droplets seaward. “For the gods of the ocean,” he said gloomily, his mood completely changed. He looked like a man with a chill now, indrawn and miserable; he looked at the horizon and glanced warily toward the sun as if he expected it to hurt him. “Will there be storm?”

“No.”

“I can get back to Cuba tonight?”

“As far as the weather’s concerned.”

Repin massaged his forehead with his left hand, pushing his straw hat back on his head, the half-empty glass seemingly forgotten in his right hand. The fingers passed down over the eyebrows, went to the left eye socket, massaged the eye, and pulled down the lower lid as if he were a man trying to wake up. He sighed, and the left hand dropped lifelessly to his side. “I got big problem, Tarp.”

Tarp said nothing. When people talked, he let them.

Repin lifted the bottle, poured more whiskey on top of that already in the glass. “Not so long ago,” he said, holding the bottle on his left thigh, “Soviet submarine went aground in Swedish waters. You heard about it?”

Tarp nodded.

“Was very old submarine, but usable. What you call Whiskey class — conventional, no missiles. You know. Going aground like that was big embarrassment. The damned Swedes made a lot of it; the peace movement, they made a lot of it; for once, even the U.S. looked good in European press. Still, everybody says, is only embarrassment. But — big surprise! Swedes announce there is atomic material on board. Uproar! Nuclear warheads, say the Swedes. They find radiation when they check sub from outside. Inside, they never go. But big uproar, big noise — more ammunition for peace movement, more embarrassment for Soviet government. The Swedes, they love it. They invite in press, television, all that. Private joke in Moscow: Swedes are going to keep submarine and rename it the Raoul Wallenberg . Funny, hey? But is only embarrassment after all; when damned Swedes have got all the attention they can, they let submarine go and send it home.” He grunted, nodded, then shook his head as if in amazement at the story he had just told. He looked at Tarp. “Well?”

“Well? You got caught — so?”

“But that is point — we did not get caught! There was no nuclear missiles on that submarine!” Without ever taking his little eyes from Tarp’s, Repin drank. He jerked the glass from his lips angrily. “You understand what I just say? There was no atomic missiles ! Not atomic submarine; not a missile-equipped submarine. Eh?”

“So, the Swedes were wrong.”

Repin looked at the horizon as if he wanted to wipe it away with his hand. “No.” His voice was rich with disgust. “Swedes were not wrong. In forward torpedo tubes, there was enough weapons-grade plutonium to make eight tactical atomic bombs.” He flattened his lips by pulling them down over the teeth like an ape; then he pushed them out, as if he were a clown expressing comic gloom. “That plutonium, Tarp, it was not supposed to be there.”

Tarp waited again. Repin disliked his silence and glared at him, but Tarp did not make small talk. This all had a point, he was sure, and Repin would get to it without any chat from him.

“The plutonium was stolen,” Repin muttered. “They think from plant at Semipalatinsk. Stolen plutonium, Tarp — stolen in U.S.S.R.”

They were silent. The boat rocked gently on the wake of another sportfisherman that had just gone out. Tarp had been leaning against the side, and now he straightened. “I’m going to take her out.” He could smell the last cool vestige of the night on the breeze; in minutes the air would be sticky and the breeze would shift. “Want me to put you ashore?”

“Why would I go ashore? I don’t know anybody ashore.”

“How’re you going to get back to Cuba?”

Some of Repin’s good humor returned. “You are going to take me.”

Tarp looked over the boats, the marina, the oily swells that still heaved behind the distant boat. “Why am I going to do that?”

“Curiosity. Money. Your fire .”

“Fire?”

“That fire in your belly. Always burning. I know you. It is like lust in some men — that fire to make things right. I know you. After I tell you this story, you will take me to Cuba and you will try to make things right.”

Tarp did not look at him. “It must be some story.”

“It is.”

“What happened to the captain of the sub?”

“He died in the Lubyanka.”

“Some of your colleagues must have gotten a little insistent with their questions. Did he say where he got the plutonium before they killed him?”

“He had deal with man he never saw, he said. For quarter million dollars in diamonds, he carries two packages in two torpedo tubes.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t know. Orders to come.”

“How?”

“In Cuba.”

“From whom?”

“He didn’t know.”

“Some businessman. What was the sub’s legitimate mission?”

“Training and long-distance testing — through the Baltic, running some probes on Swedish defenses, that’s how he went aground, stupid bastard; rendezvous with support ship off Narvic, then run to Cuba; then rendezvous with support ship below South Georgia Islands and run east to Indian Ocean. Rest stop at Zanzibar, waiting further orders.”

“That’s a hell of a trip for an old boat.”

“Maybe.”

“Who wrote the orders?”

“Fleet Undersea Central, absolutely in the usual way. Is normal mission, perfectly normal! There is program, very low priority, for testing capabilities of conventional submarines; this voyage was part of it. Is not so unusual.”

“Precedent?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last year, two years ago. More planned.”

Tarp eyed the intelligent, ruthless old face. “How many plutonium thefts have there been?”

Repin actually turned red. He grunted, shook his head as he had earlier. “You. You !” He shook a finger at Tarp. “All right, after they find this plutonium in submarine, they check. They think maybe four times as much is missing, but is very, very hard to tell.”

“Plutonium gets lost in the cracks, I know. So, four times as much; the subs have been making this voyage for the last two years — how many of them?”

Repin smiled. “Four.”

Tarp felt the breeze turn hot. Sudden sweat made crescents under his eyes. “It’s not enough of a story to make me run to Cuba. Sorry.”

Repin leaned forward, the whiskey bottle on his left knee like a gun butt. “One hundred thousand dollars. Gold.”

Tarp was frowning. “Let Dzerzhinsky Square handle it.” But it was Repin’s turn to say nothing. Tarp turned on him and he found that the old eyes were weary. “What is it?” Tarp said. “What’s the problem? Infighting? But that’s normal. Something else? Because Andropov’s new? But that’s not enough; those bastards are all at each other’s throats, but they get their work done. What is it?” He looked at Repin, and Repin’s eyes bored into him.

Tarp nodded suddenly. “It’s one of them , is that it?”

Repin had smiled, as if with relief. “That is the fear.”

“Who?”

Repin really laughed now. He made it seem the greatest joke there was, and it made him quite cheerful again. “That is the trouble, Tarp! Nobody knows!” His pitch went up and he giggled. He poured himself more Scotch and drank. “There was a great meeting in Dzerzhinsky Square. Andropov came. All the way from his office as general secretary of the Party he came! Beranyi came — young, hard, called by many an idealist because it is thought he would hesitate for a second or two before knifing his mother. Telyegin, my personal friend of the old days, pal of Ho Chi Minh and maybe the man who poisoned Stalin. Strisz, the bureaucrat. Falomin, the wolf. Mensenyi, Szelyupin, Galusha — a dozen others! I was not there, this is all relayed to me by various of them individually and in secret, you understand. But — what a meeting it must have been! First, they are nervous because of Andropov, because he is nervous; second, they all want the job of Semyon Tsvigun, recently deceased, mourned by nobody. And third, they believe that right there in that room is probably the man who has stolen from his mother country enough plutonium to make so many atomic bombs the world could go insane. Stolen it and shipped it out of the Soviet Union ! Can you picture it, Tarp?”