Red Ice

A mushroom valve was a soft, flexible rubber disk that, during the breathing cycle, kept water from entering the mouthpiece as exhaust air escaped. These disks were missing. We examined the other regulators. Their valves were missing, too. This was no manufacturer’s error. It meant deliberate sabotage—the kind a diver wouldn’t normally detect until it was too late—sabotage that killed with choking horror.

“Gurung, let the control room know we’ve called off the lockout drill.”

“Thought it might have been a Jonah back in Korea, but we’ve got a Judas with us. Don’t we?” Wickersham thought aloud.

“Yes, it appears we do. But he hasn’t stopped us… yet.”

“Break out the kayaks. It looks like this boat’s going to have to surface, after all.”

CHAPTER 19

Keiko and I shared the same stateroom but barely spoke to one another. She had become distant, or perhaps I had become distant. It didn’t matter since I was busy checking and rechecking, inspecting and reinspecting, planning and replanning. A chill had fallen on our relationship and I just could not spare the time to lift it. If that were possible.

A howling storm hit us three-quarters of the way across the Sea of Japan. Forty-foot waves tossed the surface-running sub around like a beer can in a washing machine. The heads became awash with vomit and we were forced to strap ourselves into our racks. Several crew members sustained broken ribs or collarbones as they caromed down passageways or attempted to climb to the sub’s conning tower. The waves picked the boat up with perverse relish, hesitated, and then abruptly dropped it into the raging sea.

On one occasion, several hundred gallons of seawater cascaded down an open hatch. A lookout had opened the hatch for his watch relief. The relieving crewman was knocked senseless and the seawater short-circuited a number of powerlines. Fortunately, the seawater did not get into the sub’s batteries. Seawater and batteries combine to generate deadly chlorine gas.

The storm had lasted for twenty-four hours and left everyone hungry and exhausted.

I was alone in the submarine’s wardroom when Dravit and Chamonix filed in.

“Skipper, I think we’d better take a second look at this operation,” Dravit opened.

His color was up. Chamonix wore a similar look of intensity. A confrontation.

I was seated. They stood over me. Dravit’s cast clunked against the bench seat. I had been expecting something like this. Now the two of them had me cornered.

“We’re out on a limb already and I can hear some bugger making little chopping noises behind us,” he said through clenched teeth.

I searched their faces for a hint of indecision or inconsistency, and found none.

“Mister Frazer,” Chamonix added in even tones, “there has been a serious pattern of acts, of, how do you say—it is the same word in English—sabotage. We cannot disregard these acts. To endure difficulties, this is admirable. To ignore clear signs of treachery, that is foolhardy.”

Dravit drummed his fingers on the table softly, unconsciously.

“You mean you want me to pull the plug?” Not quite the right expression to use aboard a submarine, I thought as I said it.

They hesitated. They had come this far and now they stood before me awkward and flat-footed. None of us had wanted to be the first to say it.

“We’re compromised,” Dravit pleaded.

“Maybe. I don’t think so.”

The Frenchman looked down at his shower shoes. Dravit slumped into the bench seat across from me. Then he pulled himself up to a more adversarial posture.

It was disquieting being at odds with your second and third in command. Both Dravit and Chamonix were seasoned combatants with a wide range of field experience between them.

Dravit countered, “Well, then, who do you ken is responsible and what are you going to do about it?”

“Anyone. Everyone. Nothing for now.”

They gave each other confirming looks.

“The pattern seems pretty subtle,” I continued. “The camera, the Japanese police, your accident, the regulators… Why do they keep trying to spring the trap before they can get all of us? Why not wait and stop us once and for all?”

Chamonix cocked an eyebrow. “The right charge in Henry’s ski booby trap could have taken us all out?”

“Yes, including the turncoat,” Dravit interrupted.

“What can he do in Siberia that won’t take him ‘out,’ along with us?”

“Maybe he wants to be in Siberia. Maybe the people he’s working with are there,” Dravit persisted.

That was a possibility I most dreaded.

“Why, then, take the trouble to tamper with the regulators?”

Chamonix had withdrawn enigmatically from the conversation. Evidence of his fine mind burned through occasionally, but too often his thoughts lay concealed behind a dark cloud.

“We’re talking about nine men.”

“I know.”

“All we need is one bloke who can make contact with the wrong people at the right time and you’re bloody well through.”

“I’ve considered that.”

“You run the chance of jeopardizing the sub’s crew, too. That’s another eighty men to figure into the balance.”

“Yes, they’re at risk.”