North Cape

"Amen. Your eyeballs freeze." Bridges took the coffee and stumbled over to the second officer's console and pulled himself up into the high seat and began massaging his legs. Twenty minutes passed slowly, twenty minutes in which the ship fought the angry seas while Larkin calmly continued to study the weather reports and maps displayed by his console. Only the intenseness of his concentration betrayed his worry. Larkin turned sharply at the buzz of the intercom. Folsom picked up the handset.

"Communications is ready. Shall I have them pipe it up here, sir?" Larkin nodded. He lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable at his console, then picked up the handset and pressed the button that cut in the secrecy circuits and slipped the ear-plug wire around his ear. Immediately he heard the operator two decks below begin his "ident" call on the ultratight FM scrambled frequency.

"Got him, sir."

"Beatle to Target One:… I read your signal… five by five… stand by… for transmission."

The characteristically drowsy voice of the reconnaissance pilot came through on the FM channel clearly in spite of the storm and havoc raging in the intervening twenty thousand feet between ship and aircraft. Larkin pressed a third tab and glanced around quickly to make sure the banks of tapes were all running, and then took a long drag at his cigarette.

"Clear, go ahead."

High-frequency chatter sounded briefly over the handset. The tape reels spun madly and the bridge echoed to the tortured squeal of the telemetry. The guard stood looking straight ahead impassively. Folsom sat on his stool at the executive officer's console and tried to appear disinterested in the little drama being played out at the next console. He did not succeed any more than did the eight other officers and enlisted men on the bridge. Only Larkin knew who was aloft or why. Only the captain of the rendezvous vessel was entrusted with the knowledge of the trite but very true phrase — supersecret mission — so secret that the entire project did not possess a code name. The identification label was changed with every mission flown. Tonight the mysterious pilot and aircraft were known as Target. Two weeks ago in the Indian Ocean the name had been Phoebus. Larkin became aware of a faint hissing noise filling the background as the pilot began to speak. For Cod's sake, he thought, not again. The last rendezvous had taken three hours while the communications section had struggled to maintain contact. For three hours Larkin had steamed a zigzag pattern around a fixed point while the aircraft had flown long, looping orbits around a rotating imaginary point and the ionosphere had wreaked havoc with the radio transmission. For three hours Larkin had sweated blood, knowing that even the vastness of the southern Indian Ocean was not big enough to hide both an aircraft and a large battle cruiser from hostile submarines or roving ASW patrols. Now he was praying that they would not experience similar trouble only 170 miles off the coast of the Soviet Union.

But after a few moments the hissing began to fade and the pilot's voice came through again, slow and measured but clear:

`Transmission complete… fuel load… low… proceeding to refueling… point… at minus… thirty-five minutes… everything in clear… working like a charm… no… trouble from… Reds… ECM gear… working… perfectly." Larkin hunched forward and spoke directly into the handset. "It looks as though you won' t be completing this sweep… or returning to base for a while," he said.

"We have new orders for you in supplembntary transmission coming up. I have been instructed to tell you by voice that you are to review them after''—he stressed the word—

"refueling. We will remain on station here, waiting for you to report in. The mission should he completed by i800 hours tomorrow. You will rendezvous with us tomorrow night, same location."

Larkin paused and unconsciously lowered his voice. "I have also been instructed to add that this mission is of the highest importance to East-West relations and must be completed at all costs, short — of detection."

"I… understand…"

Larkin did too, only too well in fact. What he would pass along, locked into the tapes, was an almost impossible task. "Stand by for transmission." Larkin keyed the tape decks to transmit to the circling aircraft.