George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

The two ships steamed north into the Kol’skiy Zaliv, the wide mouth of the fjord that opened into the Barents Sea. Farther north was nothing but the frozen wasteland islands of Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, and then the polar ice cap. The surging breakers of the open sea prevented ice from building out here. The sub began to pitch and roll in the growing swells.

Andropoyov smiled even though the wind made his teeth ache and his cheeks sting. “It is good to feel the sea again, aye, Dimitriy?”

Pishkovski shouted over the wind, “Yes, Captain. It is good. It will be better, though, when we have dived and are down in the warm control room with a cup of tea.”

Andropoyov nodded and answered, “I agree. It is time. Signal the icebreaker that we are diving. Then we will lie below.”

Pishkovski aimed the Aldis lantern at the icebreaker and flipped the shutter handle. The icebreaker returned the flashing light signal and swung around to return home. The two officers scurried down through the hatch, closing and dogging it behind them.

Their mission had begun.

Igor Serebnitskiv stood in the open bridge cockpit of the K-461, watching with great interest as the Gepard sailed out of the submarine pen and disappeared into the blackness of the night. The lights of the icebreaker leading the submarine away were all that marked the new boat’s progress.

He didn’t try to hide the rueful grin on his face. Gepard was a beautiful boat, so much newer and more capable than Serebnitskiv’s beaten and rusty old Volk . He couldn’t help chafing at the thoughts of Sergei Andropoyov riding high up there on Gepard ’s bridge, driving a boat that should have rightfully been his own to command. Years of careful manipulation to be first on the list of commander candidates had been wasted. Political leverage had been applied, bribes surrendered to all the right bureaucrats, all for naught. To make the sting of the slight even more unbearable, his uncle, Admiral Alexander Durov, commanded the submarine fleet. With all that capital, Serebnitskiv could never understand why he had been passed over for command of K-475.

After this morning’s meeting, he understood one important thing: his uncle’s scheme and the part he was to have in it. Durov was playing a much larger game of no-return chess, and it was one in which the admiral’s nephew would have a most pivotal role. His success in this mission would propel him to heights within the Russian military he could never have anticipated. As he watched the running lights of the ice breaker being erased by the snow and spray, he could hardly wait to be in motion, to assume the rightful place of importance his skills and connections and political savvy deserved.

Still, his voice was low and unhurried when Serebnitskiv muttered the orders to get K-461 under way. K-475 had already disappeared around the point of land into the Murmansk Fjord when Volk slid out of the silent, darkened submarine pen. The ice was beginning to refreeze as the older sub crunched its way through on its own journey toward the deep death-cold waters of the Barents.

Dmitri Ustinov flopped down in his worn office chair. He stuffed a sugary cruller into his mouth as he waited for his computer to boot up. His bad luck to have to ride up the elevator with his sissy British boss.

When the icons on the desktop blinked into place, he looked around the office, then clicked the mouse button to check his e-mail. Sure enough, there was one there from Roman. The message was an innocuous recap of an uneventful weekend trip to the Hamptons. He clicked the button to send the message to the printer on his desk, then deleted it from his in-box and mail server and erased all traces of it from the hard drive on his computer.

Once again, he glanced around the office space to see if anyone might be watching him. He grimaced and mentally kicked himself for being so skittish. The paranoia of his boyhood education in Moscow was imprinted on Dmitri Ustinov’s psyche. He was still certain that shadowy forces monitored all e-mail, that some all-seeing someone was always watching him, spying on every move he made. The mere fact that he received an encrypted e-mail would alert whoever watched that he had something important to hide. It was much better to conceal everything by hiding nothing, by conducting his business in broad daylight where it would attract the least amount of unwanted attention.

With another series of mouse clicks and an eight-digit password, Ustinov brought to life the accounting program on his computer. He converted each letter of the e-mail to a number and then typed in the number sequence backward. A macro churned away for a second, and a ten-figure total appeared in the answer block. Ustinov memorized the number, shredded the e-mail, and closed the program without saving his work.

Yet again, he gave a fleeting look around the office, making sure no one had observed his actions, no matter how innocent they might have seemed. The telephone next to his elbow jangled, startling him. He snatched the offending device before it could shriek a second time and jammed it to his ear. “Ustinov.”

“Dmitri, morning. This is Chuck Gruver over at the New York Stock Exchange. We’ve been working with your people to test some of those new modules for post-trade clearing.”

Ustinov had been expecting this call. He leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, Chuck. Is there some problem? Functionality not working out?”

He put his feet up on his desk and caught sight of the pretty young programmer in the cubicle across the hall from his office. Marina Nosovitskaya had first gained his attention the day before. She was quite a treat, too, with dark, slanted Asian eyes above high Slavic cheekbones, her long hair gold and flaxen. Her tight leather jeans and sweater did little to conceal a perfect body. He couldn’t believe he had not noticed her before, but now there was enough interest that Ustinov had taken the time and trouble to pull and review her records. She was as smart as she was beautiful. She had graduated with the highest scores from the prestigious Department of Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies at the Vladivostok School of Mathematics and Computer Science. Definitely worth further interest when he had the time. Russian immigrants to the U.S.A. needed to stick together, after all.

Marina must have felt his gaze. She looked up at him from her computer screen and smiled shyly, the glow of the monitor shining in her eyes. Ustinov stared right back at her, flicking the cruller crumbs from his shirt and tie before returning the smile. All the while, Gruver prattled on and on about the testing difficulties they were having with the new software. Ustinov grunted occasionally to verify that he was listening, but he never took his eyes off the pretty young programmer.

She would soon be his. Of that he was certain.

Gruver said something then that broke through Ustinov’s pleasant distraction.

“One other thing. I was doing a little white box testing on some of the modules. Maybe you can clear something up for me. There are some lines of code in there that I don’t understand. They don’t seem functional at all.”

Ustinov paused for a second and phrased his reply very carefully. “Oh yeah. I know what you are seeing, Chuck. Do not worry about those. It is check and monitoring code the SEC insisted on us putting in there. Their people put it in so they can track things later if they ever need to. We debugged it on our end already. It is good, solid code, even if it did come from the government.”

Ustinov held his breath and waited. Would Gruver buy the story or would he ask more embarrassing questions, questions that would be infinitely harder to answer?