Red Storm Rising

Calloway nodded thoughtfully. Shipyards do look alike, he thought, but why did Polyarnyy seem strange? His suspicious reporter's mind? The constant question: What is he/she/it hiding? But the Soviets had never allowed him on a naval base, and this was his third tour in Moscow. He'd been to Murmansk before. Once he'd spoken with the Mayor and asked how the naval personnel affected his administration of the city. There were always uniforms visible on the street. The Mayor had tried to evade the question, and finally said, "There are no Navy in Murmansk." A typical Russian answer to an awkward question-but now they'd let a dozen Western reporters into one of their most sensitive bases. QED, they were not hiding anything. Or were they? After he filed his story, Calloway decided, he'd have a brandy with his friend at the embassy. Besides, there was a party celebrating something or other.

He arrived at the embassy, on Morisa Toreza Embankment across the river from the Kremlin walls, just after nine o'clock that night. It turned into four brandies. By the fourth, the correspondent was going over a map of the naval base and using his trained memory to indicate just what activity he'd seen where. An hour later, the data was encrypted and cabled to London.

8 - Further Observations

GRASSAU, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The TV news crew was having a great time. It had been years since they'd been allowed to film a Soviet military unit in action, and the entertainment value of the mistakes they saw gave plenty of spice for a piece on the NBC Nightly News. As they watched, a tank battalion was stalled at a crossroads on Highway 101, fifty kilometers south of Berlin. They'd taken a wrong turn somewhere, and the battalion commander was screaming at his subordinates. After two minutes of that, a captain stepped forward and made a few gestures at the map. A major was banished from the scene as the younger man apparently solved the problem. The camera followed the dejected major into a staff car, which drove north along the main road. Five minutes later, the battalion was mounted and rolling. The news crew took its time reloading its equipment into their carryall, and the chief reporter took the time to walk over to a French officer who had also observed the procedure.

The Frenchman was a member of the Joint Military Liaison Group, a convenient leftover of the Second World War which enabled both sides to spy on each other. A lean, poker-faced man, he wore paratrooper's wings and smoked Gauloises. He was an intelligence officer, of course.

"What do you make of this, Major?" the NBC reporter asked.

"They made a mistake four kilometers back. They should have turned left, but didn't." A Gallic shrug.

"Not very impressive performance for the Russians, is it?" The reporter laughed. The Frenchman was more thoughtful.

"Did you notice that they had a German officer with them?"

The reporter had noticed the different uniform, but not realized its significance. "Oh, is that what he was? Why didn't they ask him for help?"

"Yes," the French major answered. He didn't say that this was the fourth time he had seen a Soviet officer refrain from asking assistance from his East German guide... and all in the last two days. To have Soviet units get lost was an old story. The Russians used a different alphabet in addition to the different language. That made it easy to make navigational errors, and the Soviets always had DDR officers along to help them find their way around. Until now. He flicked his cigarette onto the road. "What else did you notice, Monsieur?"

"The colonel was pretty mad at that major. Then a captain-I think showed him the mistake, I guess, and how to correct it."

"How long?"

"Less than five minutes after they stopped."

"Very good." The Frenchman smiled. The major was beading back to Berlin, and that battalion had a new operations officer now. The smile disappeared.

"Looks pretty dumb to get lost like that, doesn't it?"

The Frenchman got back into his car to follow the Russians. "Have you ever gotten lost in a foreign country, Monsieur?"

"Yes, who hasn't?"

"But they found their mistake quickly, no?" The major waved to his driver to pull off. And all by themselves this time, he thought. Interessant...

The TV reporter shrugged and walked back to his own vehicle. He followed the last tank in line, annoyed that they were moving at only thirty kilometers per hour. The tanks moved northwest at that speed until they reached Highway 187, where miraculously they joined up with another Soviet unit and, dropping back to their normal speed of twenty kilometers per hour, resumed their progress west toward the exercise area.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA