an acceptable custodian.
Five and a half hours of sleep in the past – thirty? Something like that; he was too tired to look at his watch. It wasn’t fair. Sleeplessness murders judgement. But it made little sense telling himself that, and telling the admiral would make less.
He was in Greer’s office five minutes later.
‘Sorry to have to wake you up, Jack.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, sir,’ Ryan returned the lie. ‘What’s up?’
‘Come on over and grab some coffee. It’s going to be a long day.’
Ryan dropped his topcoat on the sofa and walked over to pour a mug of navy brew. He decided against Coffee Mate or sugar. Better to endure it naked and get the caffeine full force.
‘Any place I can shave around here, sir?’
‘Head’s behind the door, over in the corner.’ Greer handed him a yellow sheet torn from a telex machine. ‘Look at this.’
TOP SECRET
102200Z*****38976
NSA SIGINT BULLETIN REDNAV OPS
MESSAGE FOLLOWS
AT 083145Z NSA MONITOR STATIONS [DELETED] [DELETED] AND [DELETED] RECORDED AN ELF BROADCAST FROM REDFLEET ELF FACILITY SEMIPOLIPINSK XX MESSAGE DURATION 10 MINUTES XX 6 ELEMENTS XX
ELF SIGNAL IS EVALUATED AS ‘PREP’ BROADCAST TO REDFLEET SUBMARINES AT SEA XX
AT 090000Z AN ‘ALL SHIPS’ BROADCAST WAS MADE BY REDFLEET HEADQUARTERS CENTRAL COMMO STATION TULA AND SATELLITES THREE AND FIVE XX BANDS USED: HF VHF UHF XX MESSAGE DURATION 39 SECONDS WITH 2 REPEATS IDENTICAL CONTENT MADE AT 091000Z AND 092000Z XX 475 5-ELEMENT CIPHER GROUPS XX
SIGNAL COVERAGE AS FOLLOWS: NORTHERN FLEET AREA BALTIC FLEET AREA AND MED SQUADRON AREA XX NOTE FAR EAST FLEET NOT REPEAT NOT AFFECTED BY THIS BROADCAST XX
NUMEROUS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT SIGNALS EMANATED FROM
ADDRESSES IN AREAS CITED ABOVE XX ORIGIN AND TRAFFIC ANALYSIS TO FOLLOW XX NOT COMPLETED AT THIS TIME XX
BEGINNING AT 100000Z NSA MONITOR STATION [DELETED] [DELETED] AND [DELETED] RECORDED INCREASED HF AND VHF TRAFFIC AT REDFLEET BASES POLYARNYY SEVEROMORSK PECHENGA TALLINN KRONSTADT AND EASTERN MED AREA XX ADDITIONAL HF AND VHF TRAFFIC FROM REDFLEET ASSETS AT SEA XX AMPLIFICATION TO FOLLOW XX
EVALUATION: A MAJOR UNPLANNED REDFLEET OPERATION HAS BEEN ORDERED WITH FLEET ASSETS REPORTING AVAILABILITY AND STATUS XX
END BULLETIN
NSA SENDS
102215Z BREAKBREAK
Ryan looked at his watch. ‘Fast work by the boys at NSA, and fast work by our duty watch officers, getting everybody up.’ He drained his mug and went over for a refill. ‘What’s the word on signal traffic analysis?’
‘Here.’ Greer handed him a second telex sheet.
Ryan scanned it. ‘That’s a lot of ships. Must be nearly everything they have at sea. Not much on the ones in port, though.’
‘Landline,’ Greer observed. ‘The ones in port can phone fleet ops, Moscow. By the way, that is every ship they have at sea in the Western Hemisphere. Every damned one. Any ideas?’
‘Let’s see, we have that increased activity in the Barents Sea. Looks like a medium-sized ASW exercise. Maybe they’re expanding it. Doesn’t explain the increased activity in the Baltic and Med, though. Do they have a war game laid on?’
‘Nope. They just finished CRIMSON STORM a month ago.’
Ryan nodded. ‘Yeah, they usually take a couple of months to evaluate that much data – and who’d want to play games up there at this time of the year? The weather’s supposed to be a bitch. Have they ever run a major game in December?’
‘Not a big one, but most of these acknowledgements are from submarines, son, and subs don’t care a whole lot about the weather.’
‘Well, given some other preconditions, you might call this ominous. No idea what the signal said, eh?’
‘No. They’re using computer-based ciphers, same as us. If the spooks at the NSA can read them, they’re not telling me about it.’ In theory the National Security Agency came under the titular control of the director of Central Intelligence. In fact it was a law unto itself. ‘That’s what traffic analysis is all about. Jack. You try to guess intentions by who’s talking to whom.’
‘Yes, sir, but when everybody’s talking to everybody –’
‘Yeah.’
‘Anything else on alert? Their army? Voyska PVO?’ Ryan referred to the Soviet air defence network.
‘Nope, just the fleet. Subs, ships, and naval aviation.’
Ryan stretched. ‘That makes it sound like an exercise, sir. We’ll want a little more data on what they’re doing, though. Have you talked to Admiral Davenport?’
‘That’s the next step. Haven’t had time. I’ve only been in long enough to shave myself and turn the coffee on.’ Greer sat down and set his phone receiver in the desk speaker before punching in the numbers.
‘Vice Admiral Davenport.’ The voice was curt.
‘Morning, Charlie, James here. Did you get that NSA-976?’
‘Sure did, but that’s not what got me up. Our SOSUS net went berserk a few hours ago.’
‘Oh?’ Greer looked at the phone, then at Ryan.
‘Yeah, nearly every sub they have at sea just put the pedal to the metal, and all at about the same time.’
‘Doing what exactly, Charlie?’ Greer prompted.
‘We’re still figuring that out. It looks like a lot of boats are heading into the North Atlantic. Their units in the Norwegian Sea are racing southwest. Three from the western Med are heading that way, too, but we haven’t got a clear picture yet. We need a few more hours.’
‘What do they have operating off our coast, sir?’ Ryan asked.
‘They woke you up, Ryan? Good. Two old Novembers. One’s a raven conversion doing an ELINT job off the cape. The other one’s sitting off King’s Bay making a damned nuisance of itself.’
Ryan smiled to himself. An American or allied ship was a she; the Russians used the male pronoun for a ship; and the intelligence community usually referred to a Soviet ship as it.
There’s a Yankee boat,’ Davenport went on, ‘a thousand miles south of Iceland, and the initial report is that it’s heading north. Probably wrong. Reciprocal bearing, transcription error, something like that. We’re checking. Must be a goof, because it was heading south earlier.’
Ryan
