Jerry suspected that was the security director’s way of keeping him on the reservation. He asked, “What happens if I want to write a story that’s sort of about this but I change things around so it isn’t exactly?”

“You’ll need to send it to us so we can make sure it doesn’t violate national security before you submit it to an editor. You’ll need to do that with anything you write for publication from now on, in fact. We won’t be unreasonable—we’ve dealt with this situation before—but we may suggest changes to help keep secrets.” Porter answered as if he’d been waiting for the question. Odds were he had.

“Happy days!” Jerry said. As if dealing with one editor wasn’t hard enough, now he’d have two on every story. He did remember something about this in the nondisclosure agreements he’d signed, but he hadn’t worried about it then. He wondered how big a mistake that was.

V

Over the next few days, the pipe string began to descend in earnest. Things still weren’t going so smoothly as Dave wished they would, but they were going. And they were going right under the SB-10’s nose, and the Russians didn’t know they were. That made everyone on the Glomar Explorer grin.

Sometimes the Soviet tug would sniff around the Explorer like a puppy hopping around a grazing cow. Sometimes it would back off and hold station southeast of the much bigger ship.

That puzzled Jack and Dave and Dale and Steve, but only for a little while. The Glomar Explorer disposed of garbage by putting it into trash bags and chucking them into the vastness of the Pacific. The bags didn’t sink right away. Wind and waves mostly carried them … southeast.

The Russians captured as many of the floating trash bags as they could and brought them aboard the SB-10 to paw through them. As soon as people on the Glomar Explorer realized that, an order went out: make goddamn sure you don’t throw anything classified in the trash.

From then on, the crew had fun with the snoops. They put worthless computer printouts or even Playboys in trash bags and gave the bags a shot of acetylene gas, which made them float better and scud along before the wind like Portuguese men o’ war. The tug would hurry this way and that to make sure it caught everything.

But the printouts and the centerfolds were liberally smeared with Aqua Lube. Jerry had already had the misfortune of meeting up with the green goop. If it wasn’t the slipperiest stuff in the world, he couldn’t imagine what would be: it greased pipe connections deep underwater. And when you touched it, it wouldn’t wash off for days. It ruined clothes, too.

“Aqua Lube, my friend!” he sang, as another bag of gooped papers went into the sea.