Джон Болл - The First Team

After he had finished his meal he wandered to the small stateroom which had been assigned to him and the commander of the Hunters Point shipyard. He found his colleague there trying to pass the time with a book on submarine operations and tactics. He put it down gladly when Wagner appeared and welcomed the opportunity to talk.

They were still so engaged when Magsaysay first pushed her nose into the beginning waters of the Chukchi Sea. Fifty-eight minutes later, intently at work at his station, the navigator reached with his dividers once more and plotted her position one half nautical mile north of the Arctic Circle. Now there were only vast waters ahead and the shrouding cover of the great ice cap.

Feodor Zalinsky was thoroughly worried because it was already midmorning and his interpreter had not yet reported for work. He had been informed, of course, that the man Hewlitt had been seen being kidnapped on the street, but that was not what caused him concern. He was particularly afraid that Rostovitch had him.

If that were the case, then that meant that the position and authority he presently held were being challenged. Previously, not even Colonel Rostovitch would have dared to interfere with members of his personal staff without at least advising him first. But if Rostovitch did not have Hewlitt, then who did? Zalinsky could not answer that question and it haunted him.

He picked up a phone. “Get me Colonel Rostovitch,” he said.

As soon as the connection was made he was on the firmer ground of his own language. The conversation was brief; the colonel, who was in his usual biting mood, denied any knowledge whatsoever of Hewlitt’s whereabouts. This in itself was bad news, since the chances were better than ninety per cent that he was lying. Zalinsky hung up and then considered carefully what he ought to do next. Rostovitch technically reported to him as the head of the occupying authority, but in real fact the ferociously ambitious colonel headed his own organization and reported back directly to the premier himself.

Zalinsky was most concerned over his own position and its protection. The question before him was a simple one: had Rostovitch picked up his interpreter and if so why? Hewlitt himself was a minor pawn in this kind of a power play and what happened to him was incidental. At the same time he had recognized a certain ability in the man and even Rostovitch might find him troublesome for a short while.

He was still pondering the matter when the silence of the Oval Office was broken by a brief tap on the door. Before he could respond it was swung open and he was startled to see Hewlitt himself standing there. The surprise of his arrival was compounded by his appearance: he was unshaven and his hair appeared to have been given little or no attention. His clothes looked as if he had slept in them and his tie was crumpled and limp.

“I am glad to see you,” Zalinsky said in his own language. “Are you all right?”

Hewlitt came into the room, almost an incongruous figure in the vaulted dignity of the White House office. “Yes, I’m all right,” he answered. “Please excuse my appearance; I came here in a hurry because it was urgent.”

“Evidently.”

Hewlitt stood before him, disheveled but nonetheless fully in control of himself. “Mr. Zalinsky,” he said, “you’d better stop whatever you’re doing and listen to me; I have something very important to tell you.”

Senator Solomon Fitzhugh stepped through the doorway into the VIP suite and displayed his membership card to the young lady at the desk. “Good morning, senator,” she greeted him. “Nice to have you with us again. Your flight will be departing on time for a wonder.”

“I believe you have my ticket,” Fitzhugh said.

“Yes, right here, sir.” She produced it. “You should have a nice flight; the weather’s good all the way and it’s quite pleasant in Chicago this morning.”

“Thank you.”

“You aren’t leaving us are you, sir?”

He did not like the question, but he answered it courteously. “For a little while. Congress isn’t meeting at the moment and I’m allowing myself a short vacation. I have a small place in Upper Michigan where I can get some rest.”

The girl handed him his ticket. “Have a good time, senator, if that’s the thing to say right now. Anyhow, good luck.”

“Thank you,” he acknowledged.

A little more than an hour later he was airborne and headed westward from Washington. He sat alone, paying no attention whatever to the attractive woman two rows behind him, who was apparently totally concerned with her own affairs.

At Chicago he was transferred to the Butler ramp where he boarded a twin-engined private aircraft which bore no markings other than its registration number. His departure was quite private, so there was no notice taken by the general public when the lady who had been on the airliner boarded also. Two planes took off shortly after that, one of them headed for Upper Michigan, the other pointed toward Colorado. Both had high-altitude capability and were soon out of sight of all but the air traffic controllers, who had a great many pips to watch on their radarscopes.

“It is fantastic,” Zalinsky said. “Furthermore, it is very difficult for me to believe even a word of it.”

Hewlitt had expected that. “That is up to you,” he continued in Zalinsky’s language, “but it happened just as I have reported it to you and I haven’t added a thing. There is no need to.”

Zalinsky spread his hands. “But it is impossible; when you had everything, an immense military establishment, vast resources of nuclear weapons, millions of men under arms, you were defeated almost by default. Now you have almost nothing and now it is that you choose to put up a fight. Against impossible odds.” He shook his head.

“We’ve been over this ground before,” Hewlitt retorted. “As for the truth of what I have been telling you, you know that the submarine left San Francisco; practically everyone in the country does by now. And if you check, you will probably find that one attack-type submarine is missing from your navy.”

Zalinsky dropped into a brown study, his face heavily furrowed, his chin on his chest as he slumped back in his chair. He thought for some moments before he spoke again. “Let us say that it is all true — everything you have told me. You are then risking everything on one single submarine, a ship that can be found and sunk by the most powerful navy in the world.”

“Perhaps — but you haven’t done it yet.”

“Suppose that I believe that you were selected to be the messenger because you know me and can speak my language. I would like to believe it for your sake, but I do not. You are a member of this underground; it is not logical that they would trust you otherwise.”

“You can believe that if you want to, but I told you that we trust people more than you do; we are not as suspicious.”

“Colonel Rostovitch would not believe it, not for a moment.”

“I’m not talking to the colonel, I’m speaking to his superior — in position and I believe in intelligence also.”

Zalinsky stretched as he had a habit of doing. “It is not necessary that you flatter me if I am indeed as intelligent as you claim. What is now proposed?”

“That we continue as before while you communicate with the premier and inform him of the facts. Presumably he will want to make a decision.”

“That is all?”

“Substantially, yes. Except as I explained to you. No more people are to be shot.”

“It is blackmail.”

Hewlitt nodded. “That is part of the system. You will recall those words.”

Zalinsky seemed quite suddenly to be very tired. He did not look well, and Hewlitt recalled his previous request for a doctor.