He'd needed two years to make his theoretical breakthrough into something practical, but fifteen months earlier he'd made his first 'recovery' from the U.S. State Department's most secure cipher, called STRIPE. Six months after that he'd proven conclusively that it was similar in structure to everything the U.S. military used. Cross-checking with another team of cryptoanalysts who had access to the work of the Walker spy ring, and the even more serious work done by Pelton, what had resulted only six months earlier was a systematic penetration of American encryption systems. It was still not perfect. Daily keying procedures occasionally proved impossible to break. Sometimes they went as much as a week without recovering one message, but they'd gone as many as three days recovering over half of what they received, and their results were improving by the month. Indeed, the main problem seemed to be that they didn't have the computer hardware to do all the work they should have been able to do, and the 8th Directorate was busily training more linguists to handle the message traffic they were receiving.

Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko had been awakened from a sound sleep and driven to his office to add his name to the people all over the world shocked into frightened sobriety. A First Chief Directorate man all of his life, his job was to examine the collective American mind and advise his President on what was going on. The decrypts flooding onto his desk were the most useful tool.

He had no less than thirty such messages which bore one of two messages. All strategic forces were being ordered to Defense Condition Two, and all conventional forces were coming to Defense Condition Three. The American President was panicking, KGB's First Deputy Chairman thought. There was no other explanation. Was it possible that he thought the Soviet Union had committed this infamy? That was the most frightening thought of his life.

"Another one, naval one." The messenger dropped it on his desk.

Golovko needed only one look. "Flash this to the navy immediately." He had to call his President with the rest. Golovko lifted the phone.

For once the Soviet bureaucracy worked quietly. Minutes later, an extremely low-frequency signal went out, and the submarine Admiral Lunin went to the surface to copy the full message. Captain Dubinin read it as the printer generated it.

AMERICAN SUBMARINE USS MAINE REPORTS LOCATION AS SOD-55M-O9SN I53D-OIM-23SW. PROPELLER DISABLED BY COLLISION OF UNKNOWN CAUSE.

Dubinin left the communications room and made for the chart table. "Where were we when we copied that transient?"

"Here, Captain, and the bearing was here." The navigator traced the line with his pencil.

Dubinin just shook his head. He handed the message over. "Look at this."

"What do you suppose he's doing?"

"He'll be close to the surface. So we'll go up, just under the layer, and we'll move quickly. Surface noise will play hell with his sonar. Fifteen knots."

"You suppose he was following us?"

"Took you long enough to realize that, didn't it?" Dubinin measured the distance to the target. "Very proud, this one. We'll see about that. You know how the Americans boast of taking hull photographs? Now, my young lieutenant, now it will be our turn!"