It was the smell of disinfectant that first let me know I wasn’t dead.
It was strong and overpowering. I opened my eyes to see I was no longer on a submarine but in a room that was old by the looks of the ceiling. It had to be at least fourteen feet high and no one builds that way any more. I attempted to get up and thought much better of it. My head ached badly from the morphine. I knew the feeling well. During my years of football I had two major injuries and both times they put me on morphine and both times I had this same type of headache. It’s interesting how something like that can come back to you now and then.
"I would not try to do that without help. ” I rolled over to look at the point where the voice had come from. Max sat in a suit sucking a lollypop. He motioned to it and added, "they won’t let me smoke in here, so I need something. ”
"Max. How are you? ” I smiled at him.
"I’m fine. The question is how are you? You have alarmed all of us with your little antics. ” He laughed trying to use understatement for a very bad situation.
"Where’s Irina? ” I was able to push myself into a sitting position. My ribs were wrapped and the arm bandaged. I touched my ribs and wish I hadn’t.
"Pushed one of the those right into a lung. Took that Navy surgeon a hell of a lot of time to get you fixed up, while you guys rode out the worst storm in a hundred years up there. ” Max laughed again.
"Did they blow the island? ” I asked him.
"To kingdom come. Not a trace of it left. Somebody claimed it was a subterranean volcano that set the Richter scales off and a couple of days ago a Navy ice patrol plane out of Scotland reported that Mount Grace had disappeared. 'Geological Phenomenon’ is how they are putting it down. Of course that doesn’t explain the extremely high radiation readings across the northern side of Russia all the way down to Vladivostok on the Pacific. ” He dropped the lollypop into the garbage. "Irina is next door and doing fine. Hell of a head ache but she is O. K. ”
"I need to thank O’Bannon for saving our butts. I presume you had something to do with that as well. ” I looked at him and he looked down at the floor for a moment.
"No one rightfully knows how that happened, Ted. ” He looked up with concern. "Jacobs thinks you’re working both sides of the street and you are in contact with people we don’t know anything about. ” He let that hang in space for a moment. I tried to make sense of the comment out of the fog in my head, but I knew I didn’t like the sound of it.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean? ”
"The second flash traffic message O’Bannon received was from the White House and nobody there will admit to sending it. The Shark was placed on a war footing. All hell could have broken loose and all the fingers point back to you. Jacobs is in DC right now doing a jig to somebody else’s tune and he isn’t comfortable with it at all. ” Max got up and poured me a glass of water. "That’s why my black ass is sitting here waiting for you to wake up instead of being there having it flame broiled over the same fire Jacobs is being barbequed on right now. ”
"I don’t think I can help you with that one, Max. ” I wondered who was pulling the strings this time and why.
"I will leave that one alone for right now. Did you get the information from Kammler? ” Max sat back down pulling his cigarette lighter out and fondling it.
"Yeap. ” I took a sip of the water and looked around the room, it looked like an old hospital that was built before the start of the century. "Where the hell are we? ”
"Scotland, Edinburgh to be exact. We’re on High Street and this is the Honorable Soldiers Retirement Home and Hospital. A very quiet place where most of these guys can’t even get up the staircase leading to the third floor now used exclusively for you and Captain Tolsky. By the way, why did she help you? ” Max put the lighter back into his pocket.
"A change of heart I would imagine, or my boyish charm. When can we get out of here and head for home? ” I started to get off the bed and felt the sharp pain in my ribs.
"When you are able to travel the doctors say you can leave. Until then we are staying right here. I’ll get a wheel chair and we can visit your girl friend. ” Max seemed pretty light-hearted for someone whose friend and boss was getting the going over by guys that apparently knew how to do it.
# # # # £
"So, do you want to tell me, Admiral, how this all got so out of hand? ” The four men sitting on one side of the large conference room table were all older and senior members of the government. Each had a file in front of him that detailed a certain aspect of an operation that was never supposed to see the light of day.
"I cannot sir. I am as completely in the dark as you are. ” Jacobs was watching fifty plus years of dedicated service heading south.
"Well I, for one, cannot understand what happened. When we put this matter in your hands you told us there would never be any sight of it. ” The man at the end of the table was wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe. "Now we got this young captain, what is his name? O’Bannon. He filed a report with the base commander at Holly Lock where he stumbled in with two burned out turbines and a core reactor about to go into meltdown that is going to need a major refit. Two years! The USS Shark, our best and most advanced submarine, will be laid up in dry dock at Groton for two years before we can even get it home. ” The man read the report in front of him. "The base commander sent this up to Atlantic Command at Norfolk and all hell broke loose. No one knows anything about this rescue operation and the Post and the Times are running all kinds of stories about secret attacks on Russian subs and midnight commando raids. ” He put his pipe down and cleaned his small round glasses. "Admiral, we just can not afford this kind of publicity. ”
"I understand that fact, sir. ” Jacobs wanted the same answers they did and wished he was getting them and wringing some necks instead of being here.
"Well, that is reassuring. ” The other man said with enough sarcasm to sink another submarine. "Great, explain it to us then. We got a National Security Advisor for the President wanting to know how we interdicted into their secure communication lines and transmitted out that order under the President’s signature. The CIA, ” he motioned toward the end of the table, "tell us they know nothing about this operation and the guys that work over at NSA have the doors closed, locked and bolted until they find out if they got a mole working inside. Now, you tell me, Admiral, how you understand any of this? ”
"I meant, that... that... I understand the Senator’s concern. I don’t have the foggiest idea how any of this happened. I sent a man to find out some information on a facility controlled by the Russians, that part is correct. He is not a trained agent. Or
at least we didn’t think he was until he made his escape under fire and brought out a Russian intelligence officer with him. ” The man at the end of the table with the pipe interrupted him.
"We will want to talk to this Captain Tolsky in depth. ” He relit his pipe and blew blue vapors toward the ceiling.
"I am not sure about that, sir. The man we sent in has made it clear to us that no body is to talk to her. ” Jacobs could hear this one come out and expected the resulting broadside.
"Are you telling me that a field agent of yours is making decisions of who gets to talk to our captured asset, Admiral? ” The man squinted at Jacobs.
"No. First of all he is not a field agent. Secondly, we have used certain methods you are not privy to nor are we willing to discuss. But I can tell you this: that little explosion in the North Sea will be nothing in comparison to the blast that would happen if we screw with this guy. ” Jacobs had read one report from Max and was waiting for the next. The first one made him understand that no one should try anything right now until he had a chance to talk to Ted.
"You’re telling us that this one man is that dangerous? ” Another man looked at the file and looked up in disbelief.
"I am telling you that this one man can make the difference between this planet being inhabitable and it being a burnt out cinder. ” Jacobs didn’t want to use that punch but it was necessary.
"I don’t believe it. ” The man with the pipe threw his hands up. "I think you’re running a shell game on us, Admiral. ”
Jacobs had had enough.
"Is that why this man has risked his life and sanity spending the last three months in the company of Doktor Hans Kammler? ” The name shattered outwards around the table, hitting them all like a blast of shrapnel. Before the shellshock faded Jacobs attacked. "Someone your people couldn’t even find! This man got to him inside a top secret Russian submarine base hidden on a secluded island. ” He rose ominously, stabbing his finger on the table. "Tell me, to my face, you would not be scared of someone that can do that! Gentlemen, ” he gathered his files into his briefcase, "I am needed elsewhere. This is going no place and I can’t see any reason to continue. Good day! ”
Jacobs spun on his heel and strode from the room as stunned silence washed over the men in his wake. Once outside he leaned up against the wall then punched it with his fist to calm himself down. He hadn’t wanted it to go this way, but he had to protect the project. He walked out of the old Executive Office building across from the White House and headed to his office on Connecticut Avenue.
if if if if if
Irina laid in bed looking out her window onto the Royal Mile, watching the people go by. She turned and looked at me when Max rolled me into her room.
"Hey! Brought you someone to keep you company for a little bit. ” Max rolled the chair up close to her bed.
"I thought you were going to bring me nylons, chocolates and movie magazines from America, Max? ” She laughed and then winced. Her head was bandaged up and she was black and blue down one side of her face.
"Next time, darling. Right now this old man is going outside to get a smoke while you two love birds chat with each other. ” Max touched Ted on the back and winked at Irina.
"Hey, cowboy. ” Irina looked dreamy laying there, beaten up and battered. She had that certain vulnerability again about her.
"Why cowboy? ” I asked.
"Max tells me that Bar Stool is in your American Southwest in the desert and everyone from the west are cowboys. ” She reached out and took my hand.
"It’s Barstow, not bar stool. ” I added with a laugh.
"Bar Stool, Barstow, same thing. How are you? ” She held on to me and looked deeply into my eyes.
"I’m sore. I got a hole in me. And just damn glad to be alive and with you. ” I kissed her hand gently.
"Me too. ” She tightened her grip.
"Me too what? ” I had to ask.
"Me too, I am sore, got a hole in my head and me too glad to be with you. ”
"What do you mean you got a hole in you? ” I wondered if I had missed something in the exchange in the moon pool bay during the firefight.
"They opened my head up to pull out small pieces of bone that was lodged against my brain. They couldn’t do that on the submarine, so they did it here. They tell me that I will be fine. ” She drifted a little bit and I let her. I hadn’t realized that the blow had been that bad. I sat there holding her hand and looking out at the gray city wondering what I should do next. One thing was sure, I wasn’t going to let go of her hand.
if if if if if
Max stood in the hallway talking to a short, plump, middle-aged man in a rumbled tweed vested suit with a medical bag in his hand, who handed him a pair of files.
"It is all in there. Under regression I found she is in love with him and I reenforced that as instructed. She is committed to helping him. Beyond that she is as clean as the driven snow. ”
Max nodded his head and looked at the other one. "And Ted? ”
"He is a different animal completely. That man has had some kind of conditioning done on him that we are not responsible for. You try to go in there and you hit an unbelievable brick wall. Either he is not what you think he is or he is so well disciplined that our drugs won’t work on him. Either way, you are going to have to deal with him straight up. There is absolutely nothing I can do. ” He nodded and turned to leave.
"Doctor Lloyd, one moment. ” Max followed him. "Could someone else have programmed him and could you find that out? ”
"Could have. ” The fat little doctor put a finger to his pursed lips. "Yes. That would explain a great deal. But the technique would have to be so advanced that we can’t even get near it. As far as breaking into that part of him to find out if that happened it would do as much good as talking to the wall behind you. Listen, I got a train to catch back to London if I want to make my flight. ” The man waved good-bye and walked out of the building. Max flipped through the reports, wanting a cigarette very badly.
"Nothing. ” He said to himself with worry and doubt. "Same thing again with him, just nothing. ” Max walked outside to have a smoke and find a pay phone.