Tom Donnegan rose, but he turned to address his comments to President Brown. “Mr. President, we don’t have any new communications since just before the SEAL team went into the Polyarnyy base to attempt to rescue Smitrov. Dr. Kinnowitz is correct. We did see pictures of the troop carrier they apparently used to escape, and it was in flames. We also have not heard from Toledo since before it entered the Murmansk Fjord to recover the swimmer delivery vehicle. We do have a development, though. The latest imagery is showing a good deal of activity from warships in the Murmansk Fjord. We think they are hunting for the mini-sub and for Toledo. As we heard in his speech, Durov is claiming they have been destroyed already. Personally, I don’t believe a damn word of it. I would prefer to assume they are okay, that they are still fighting for their lives, until we have something more solid than Durov’s boasting. I know Toledo’s skipper. If there is a way…”

President Brown stopped him with a frown. “Tom, that’s not a lot to go on. When will you have something more definite for us?”

“Not until Toledo is clear of the fjord and comes up to communicate. If she’s still alive, she can hardly come up to give us the news headlines when she’s busy dodging torpedoes down there.”

The president was displeased with the answer. He was being blatantly accused by a crazed military zealot of initiating acts of war and ordering the kidnapping of a head of state. He was being made the fall guy for a coup in Russia. Members of the opposition party were vilifying him at that very moment on the floor of the Senate for his mishandling of the crisis. The president did not want to be told he would have to wait still longer for an answer. He gritted his teeth when he spoke again.

“I assume you don’t have any idea where those other Russian subs have gone to, either?”

“Sir, we know where one of them is. We have been tailing it all the way into the Gulf of Finland. The other four headed out of the Murmansk Fjord and down into the White Sea. Sir, we don’t have any assets up there to track them.” He wanted to editorialize a bit, to remind the president that it was Congress’s heavy-handed pork-barrel approach to military spending that left them with so few boats to do this job, but he held back. This was neither the place nor the time. “Those Akulas haven’t shown up on any imagery or communications intercepts since then. However, I expect that Durov’s reference to the Kronstadt incident was a thinly veiled threat to use them in some way.”

“What way?” Brown asked, puzzled.