Captain Andropoyov pulled the fox fur hat even farther down over his ears and yanked the heavy fur-lined mittens onto his stiffening hands. He glanced around before stepping off the little stoop into the horizontally blowing snow. The dull gray buildings that made up the Polyarnyy Northern Fleet Submarine Base added no color at all, nothing that might alleviate the drabness of the landscape. They only served to funnel the icy winds into an even more concentrated blast of knife-sharp cold.

Andropoyov walked quickly to the slushy street that ran in front of the building and jumped into the backseat of the old black Zil waiting at the curb. He didn’t utter a word to the tall, thin man who held the car’s door open for him. Michman Tschierschkey slammed the door shut and scurried around to climb into the driver’s side.

“Back to the ship, Captain?” he asked, rubbing his nose with both hands to get the circulation going again.

“Oh, da, Tschierschkovich,” Andropoyov said without even looking up. “It is time for us to be sailors again.”

The two men had sailed together for as long as Andropoyov could remember. Tschierschkey had been a draftee on board the old submarine Kommosellet when Andropoyov first reported aboard, fresh out of the Soviet Naval School at Stalingrad. Much had changed in the years since. The city was called St. Petersburg once again, the Soviet Union no longer existed, and the mighty Northern Fleet of the U.S.S.R. was nothing more than a rusting shell.

That is, except for Sergei Andropoyov’s new submarine. The K-475, Gepard, waited in the covered sub pen at Shkval on Olenya Bay, newly completed and hungry for her first taste of the sea.

“We have orders, Captain?” Tschierschkey asked, his eyes wide as he turned to look back at his commander.

“We sail with the tide.” Andropoyov met the gaze of the thin man, his eyes squinting in mock anger. “Admiral Durov will not be sympathetic if we are late because my insolent driver wanted to sit here in front of his headquarters and chat.”

Tschierschkey wore a broad grin as he turned and ground the car’s starter. He already had the inside of the old Zil warm, just the way he knew Andropoyov liked it. The captain slipped off the heavy mittens and pulled the fur cap from his head, revealing a disheveled shock of white-blond hair. He sat back in the seat and sighed as the old michman pulled away from the curb, skewing a bit on the patchy ice in the roadway.

The ride over the steep, potholed streets back to where his boat awaited him would give Andropoyov time to reflect on the meeting he had just completed. Admiral of the Northern Fleet Durov had been his usual imperious self, but as well as he knew him, Sergei had never seen him act quite the way he had this morning.