Ramius held them up to the light, scanning the film strips top to bottom.  He frowned.  "Who knows of this?"

"You and I, Comrade Captain."

"You will tell no one—no one."  Ramius paused.  "Any chance that the films were—that they have something wrong, that you made an error in the developing process?"

Petrov shook his head emphatically.  "No, Comrade Captain.  Only you, Comrade Borodin, and I have access to these.  As you know, I tested random samples from each batch three days before we sailed."  Petrov wouldn't admit that, like everyone, he had taken the samples from the top of the box they were stored in.  They weren't really random.

"The maximum exposure I see here is . . . ten to twenty?"  Ramius understated it.  "Whose numbers?"

"Bulganin and Surzpoi.  The torpedomen forward are all under three rads."

"Very well.  What we have here, Comrade Doctor, is a possible minor—minor, Petrov—leak in the reactor spaces.  At worst a gas leak of some sort.  This has happened before, and no one has ever died from it.  The leak will be found and fixed.  We will keep this little secret.  There is no reason to get the men excited over nothing."

Petrov nodded agreement, knowing that men had died in 1970 in an accident on the submarine Voroshilov, more in the icebreaker Lenin.  Both accidents were a long time ago, though, and he was sure Ramius could handle things.  Wasn't he?

The Pentagon

The E ring was the outermost and largest of the Pentagon's rings, and since its outside windows offered something other than a view of sunless courtyards, this was where the most senior defense officials had their offices.  One of these was the office of the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the J-3.  He wasn't there.  He was down in a subbasement room known colloquially as the Tank because its metal walls were dotted with electronic noisemakers to foil other electronic devices.

He had been there for twenty-four hours, though one would not have known this from his appearance.  His green trousers were still creased, his khaki shirt still showed the folds made by the laundry, its collar starched plywood-stiff, and his tie was held neatly in place by a gold marine corps tiepin.  Lieutenant General Edwin Harris was neither a diplomat nor a service academy graduate, but he was playing peacemaker.  An odd position for a marine.

"God damn it!"  It was the voice of Admiral Blackburn, CINCLANT.  Also present was his own operations officer, Rear Admiral Pete Stanford.  "Is this any way to run an operation?"

The Joint Chiefs were all there, and none of them thought so.

"Look, Blackie, I told you where the orders come from."  General Hilton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded tired.