Джон Болл - The First Team

He was cold and it was sure to be much warmer inside the submarine. And the decontamination suits were warm too. Plus which it was undoubtedly his duty to take one more look; the meter indicated that things were coming under control and he could confirm it when he was asked. He went to the brow and called to a man who was on the deck.

Morrison, when he appeared, did his best to dissuade him, but Kepinsky knew what would be expected of him; despite the consideration he was being shown he felt he had to insist. Once more a man was called on deck to give him his suit and once more he went through all of the motions of being properly encased in the radiation protection.

He went down the hatch feeling a little better; the chill was already disappearing from his body and he was in an environment that appealed to him even though the circumstances were far from agreeable. Obviously the Americans were doing well; when he saw the results himself he wondered if it would be within his dignity as a member of the occupying forces to commend them on their work. Someday all men would have to get along together, and that would be accomplished only through millions of relatively small personal contacts. He would see.

He went to the power compartment with no suspicions whatever. He began to look about him and then he realized something; the reactor pile was working — it had to be. That meant only one thing, and in a startling, upheaving moment of revelation he saw the whole truth. He stood stock-still and used his brain; then he turned and raised both of his enclosed arms in front of him, placing his palms together in an unmistakable gesture. He walked quickly out of the compartment and went forward. He made no attempt to go up the hatch when he passed the ladder, but he held his arms up in a gesture of surrender.

When he had gone as far as he was able he pulled off his headpiece and faced the several men who had followed him. The man immediately behind him took off his own headgear and revealed a strange face, hard-set and determined. “You are escaping,” Kepinsky said.

‘Yes, we are.” It was the exec, although Kepinsky did not know that.

“Please, who is in charge?”

“I will do.”

Kepinsky gathered all of the courage he could muster. “Please take me. If stay, I am shoot.” He stopped. He wanted greatly to put his case more eloquently, but his knowledge of English was largely only a reading skill for technical material.

The executive officer hesitated for a bare moment. In that interval Kepinsky remembered a phrase he had read. “Political asylum,” he said.

Another man pushed by and came forward. Kepinsky reacted when he saw him, for despite his smaller stature he realized who he was.

“He knows, captain,” the exec explained. “He’s asking for political asylum — he wants to come with us.”

“Political asylum?”

“Yes, sir. We had every intention of taking action, but he raised his arms…”

“I understand.”

“I help,” Kepinsky pleaded. “Will work.”

Morrison ventured to speak. “He’s been decent enough, sir, just doing his job.”

The captain wasted no more time. “Asylum granted. The first misstep of any kind — dispose of him.”

Kepinsky’s face burst out in sweat. Morrison pushed him by the arm into a tiny cabin and quickly posted a guard; there wasn’t time for anything else.

The captain had already left to return to the con. He glanced at his watch, then dismissed the matter of the unwanted guest from his mind — Morrison was highly responsible and would take care of it.

The quartermaster spoke. “Eleven minutes.”

The captain heard but did not answer; his mind was totally on his ship and the job immediately ahead. The long night was all but past and the near impossible had been accomplished; the screw had been cleared, the pile had been lit, and power was ready. All of this had been done directly under the eyes of the enemy by a group of icy-nerved, exceptionally resourceful men. Navy men. Then in a moment of strict fairness he conceded that the Air Force was good when it had anything to fly, the Army too, and of course the Marine Corps. That mental obligation discharged, he turned back completely to the mission at hand. “Final check,” he ordered.

The departments reported quickly; the crew was in command of the ship even though she was still tied to the dock and under the barrel of a rapid-fire field gun that could pierce her hull with a single round. The responses were all affirmative; the Magsaysay was ready. The captain looked once more at his watch, then folded his arms and stood still in the middle of the con. All he could do now was wait.

Colonel Gregor Rostovitch had had a very large evening and night. He had not had a woman for some time and the need for one had been growing on him. He had had no time for any niceties or any desire to be subtle; he had given orders that he was to be provided with a qualified female, and he had expected results. Then he had returned in savage mood to his self-assigned task of ferreting out the American underground organization. It was not going well. The usual devices were not bringing in the leads; no convenient informers had appeared since the incident in the Midwest, and that had concerned only an impotent group of college students. The colonel wanted and demanded more action; he maneuvered an increasingly large number of agents into every critical area that he could pinpoint and read their reports with total attention, but the solid results were not there. Whoever his opponent was, whoever was playing the game from the other side of the board, was no amateur and the fact that no evidence of activity had appeared above the surface meant nothing. Something had to be going on; the colonel knew that, and he was determined to find out what it was. When he did he would smash it: smash it so hard that no one else would dare to challenge the new authority that had been clamped onto the United States of America.

The one satisfaction the colonel had was the relentless progress of the Jewish segregation program. His hatred of those people was complete, and where Hitler had failed, he would succeed. Hitler had been a maniac, a madman who despite his incompetence had very nearly succeeded. If men like Rommel had been allowed to run things, professionals who knew their work, it would have been different: Churchill would have danced at the end of a hangman’s rope, England would have been swept into Fortress Europe, and iron discipline would have broken the back of resistance.

Discipline! The lack of it had destroyed the United States, the command of it would very shortly raise Gregor Rostovitch to the peak of his country’s hierarchy, and after that… He dropped it because he had thought it out many times before to its conclusion and he knew what was to come. He knew his own strength, his relentless toughness, and the power of his intelligence. He knew accurately that he was vastly superior to the Austrian paperhanger and that he would not and could not be stopped. The military power behind him was absolute, and the man did not live who would dare to get in his way. Except for some subversives in the occupied United States, and they would be exterminated!

The woman who was delivered to him was in her early thirties, attractive enough to be interesting, and willing if she knew what was good for her. After five minutes in her company he sensed that she too knew her business and was ready to deliver the merchandise. That mollified him to a degree: his physical appetites were as strong and driving as his political thirsts and he had no compunctions about gratifying either.

He took the woman to his quarters and in a preliminary tryout found her as competent as he had expected. On the strength of that he had a good dinner sent up for both of them and after that plenty of side delicacies and top-quality liquors. He got very little actual sleep that night and he desired none; his animal instincts were at their peak and the woman gave him great satisfaction. When at last he ceased, because the alcohol he had taken into his system would no longer be denied, he sank into a kind of stupor and remained that way until early morning. Then he roused himself, shaved, dressed, and was ready to do battle.