Tom Clancy: The Hunt for Red October

The mass-sensing system was being added to all the submarines that could accommodate it. Younger attack boat commanders, Ramius knew, had used it to run the Railroad at high speed. Good for the commander’s ego, Ramius judged, but a little hard on the navigator. He felt no need for recklessness. Perhaps the letter had been a mistake … No, it prevented second thoughts. And the sensor suites on attack submarines simply were not good enough to detect the Red October so long as he maintained his silent routine. Ramius was certain of this; he had used them all. He would get where he wanted to go, do what he wanted to do, and nobody, not his own countrymen, not even the Americans, would be able to do a thing about it. That’s why earlier he had listened to the passage of an Alfa thirty miles to his east and smiled.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Judge Moore’s CIA car was a Cadillac limousine that came with a driver and a security man who kept an Uzi submachinegun under the dashboard. The driver turned right off Pennsylvania Avenue onto Executive Drive. More a parking lot than a street, this served the needs of senior officials and reporters who worked at the White House and the Executive Office Building, ‘Old State,’ that shining example of Institutional Grotesque that towered over the executive mansion. The driver pulled smoothly into a vacant VIP slot and jumped out to open the doors after the security man had swept the area with his eyes. The judge got out first and went ahead, and as Ryan caught up he found himself walking on the man’s left, half a step behind. It took a moment to remember that this instinctive action was exactly what the marine corps had taught him at Quantico was the proper way for a junior officer to accompany his betters. It forced Ryan to consider just how junior he was.

‘Ever been in here before, Jack?’

‘No, sir, I haven’t.’

Moore was amused. ‘That’s right, you come from around here. Now, if you came from farther away, you’d have made the trip a few times.’ A marine guard held the door open for them. Inside a Secret Service agent signed them in. Moore nodded and walked on.

‘Is this to be in the Cabinet Room, sir?’

‘Uh-uh. Situation Room, downstairs. It’s more comfortable and better equipped for this sort of thing. The slides you need are already down there, all set up. Nervous?’

‘Yes, sir, I sure am.’

Moore chuckled. ‘Settle down, boy. The president has wanted to meet you for some time now. He liked that report on terrorism you did a few years back, and I’ve shown him some more of your work, and the one on Russian missile submarine operations, and the one you just did on management practices in their arms industries. All in all, I think you’ll find he’s a pretty regular guy. Just be ready when he asks questions. He’ll hear every word you say, and he has a way of hitting you with good ones when he wants.’ Moore turned to descend a staircase. Ryan followed him down three flights, then they came to a door which led to a corridor. The judge turned left and walked to yet another door, this one guarded by another Secret Service agent.

‘Afternoon, Judge. The president will be down shortly.’

‘Thank you. This is Dr Ryan. I’ll vouch for him.’

‘Right.’ The agent waved them in.

It was not nearly as spectacular as Ryan had expected. The Situation Room was probably no larger than the Oval Office upstairs. There was expensive-looking wood panelling over what were probably concrete walls. This part of the White House dated back to the complete rebuilding job done under Truman. Ryan’s lectern was to his left as he went in. It stood in front and slightly to the right of a roughly diamond-shaped table, and behind it was the projection screen. A note on the lectern said the slide projector in the middle of the table was ready loaded and focused, and gave the order of the slides, which had been delivered from the National Reconnaissance Office.

Most of the people were already here, all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defence. The secretary of state, he remembered, was still shuttling back and forth between Athens and Ankara trying to settle the latest Cyprus situation. This perennial thorn in NATO’s southern flank had flared up a few weeks earlier when a Greek student had run over a Turkish child with his car and been killed by a gang minutes later. By the end of the day fifty people had been injured, and the putatively allied countries were once more at each other’s throats. Now two American aircraft carriers were cruising the Aegean as the secretary of state laboured to calm both sides. It was bad enough that two young people had died, Ryan thought, but not something to get a country’s army mobilized for.

Also at the table were General Thomas Hilton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jeffrey Pelt, the president’s national security adviser, a pompous man Ryan had met years before at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. Pelt was going through some papers and dispatches. The chiefs were chatting amicably among themselves when the commandant of the marine corps looked up and spotted Ryan. He got up and walked over.

‘You Jack Ryan?’ General David Maxwell asked.

‘Yes, sir.’ Maxwell was a short, tough fireplug of a man whose stubbly haircut seemed to spark with aggressive energy. He looked Ryan over before shaking hands.

‘Pleased to meet you, son. I liked what you did over in London. Good for the corps.’ He referred to the terrorist incident in which Ryan had very nearly been killed. ‘That was good, quick action you took, Lieutenant.’

‘Thank you, sir. I was lucky.’

‘Good officer’s supposed to be lucky. I hear you got some interesting news for us.’

‘Yes sir. I think you will find it worth your time.’

‘Nervous?’ The general saw the answer and smiled thinly. ‘Relax, son. Everybody in this damned cellar puts his pants on the same way as you.’ He backhanded Ryan to the stomach and went back to his seat. The general whispered something to Admiral Daniel Foster, chief of naval operations. The CNO looked Ryan over for a moment before going back to what he was doing.

The president arrived a minute later. Everyone in the room stood as he walked to his chair, on Ryan’s right. He said a few quick things to Dr Pelt, then looked pointedly at the DCI.

‘Gentlemen, if we can bring this meeting to order, I think Judge Moore has some news for us.’

‘Thank you, Mr President. Gentlemen, we’re had an interesting development today with respect to the Soviet naval operation that started yesterday. I have asked Dr Ryan here to deliver the briefing.’

The president turned to Ryan. The younger man could feel himself being appraised. ‘You may proceed.’

Ryan took a sip of ice water from a glass hidden in the lectern. He had a wireless control for the slide projector and a choice of pointers. A separate high-intensity light illuminated his notes. The pages were full of errors and scribbled corrections. There had not been time to edit the copy.

‘Thank you, Mr President. Gentlemen, my name is Jack Ryan, and the subject of this briefing is recent Soviet naval activity in the North Atlantic. Before I get to that it will be necessary for me to lay a little groundwork. I trust you will bear with me for a few minutes, and please feel free to interrupt with questions at any time.’ Ryan clicked on the slide projector. The overhead lights near the screen dimmed automatically.

‘These photographs come to us courtesy of the British,’ Ryan said. He now had everyone’s attention. ‘The ship you see here is the Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarine Red October, photographed by a British agent in her dock at their submarine base at Polyarnyy, near Murmansk in northern Russia. As you can see, she is a very large vessel, about 650 feet long, a beam of roughly 85 feet, and an estimated submerged displacement of 32,000 tons. These figures are roughly comparable to those of a World War I battleship.’