“A ’65 American. Light blue. ONR 541. Steinberg.” The guard wrote in a little notebook he pulled from his breast pocket. Then he looked up. “Okay. We’ll take care of it. Hope you have a safe trip and everything works like it’s supposed to.”

“Me, too. Thanks again.” Jerry wondered whether the guard knew the whole story or thought the Glomar Explorer was going to try deep-ocean mining. He would have bet on the latter, but had better sense than to ask.

As he walked down the pier to the ship, its sheer size smacked him in the face. He’d seen it before in a couple of black-and-white newspaper photos, and in news snippets on his twelve-inch black-and-white TV. Those gave shape, but not scale. The Hughes Glomar Explorer was 619 feet long, with a beam of 116 feet—bigger than some American battleships that had fought in World War II. The central derrick rose more than 250 feet above the keel.

If they’d put guns aboard her … but they hadn’t. She carried pipe instead, more than three miles of pipe. They’d join it all together when they got where they were going, join it together and use it to lower the giant grabber to the lost K-129. Then they’d bring it up again.

How much weight did the sub, the grabber, and all that heavy-duty pipe add up to? Had to be thousands of tons. How many thousands, Jerry didn’t know. But he could see why the Russians figured anything that big, lost three miles underwater, was lost for good. Anybody in his right mind would.

Which says what about me, exactly? he wondered as he came up the gangplank connecting the Glomar Explorer to the pier. At the pier end, another armed guard checked his name off a list and examined his counterfeit driver’s license. It passed muster one more time.

A fellow in crisp whites waited at the other end of the gangplank. A steward—Jerry was pleased with himself for finding the right word. “Welcome aboard, sir. You are…?” the man said.

“Jerry Steinberg.” This time, Jerry brought out the name that wasn’t his with assurance.

“Steinberg.” The steward checked a list, too. He nodded to himself. “Okay. We have you quartered with Mr. Dahlgren in cabin 116.” He pointed toward the stern.

“Dahlgren. Gotcha.” Jerry added, “Oh. Thanks,” as the steward handed him a key. He hoped it would work out all right. Except for nights with Anna, he was in the habit of sleeping alone. You couldn’t get much further from that than sharing a cabin with somebody for a couple of months.