“I wonder, if that’s the case, how long she has. Did we have any of the FSB’s doctors at the funeral today or the dinner last night?”
“I can check, sir.”
“See if any of our physicians agree with your theory. Not that it matters, though. I understand that in American politics, the vice president is just a figurehead. Ceremonial.”
Pasternak nodded. “Just waiting around for the death of the president, so she can step in.”
“That lady isn’t stepping into anything but a chemo chair, if your guess is correct.”
“For her sake, I hope we’re wrong. She seemed like a nice person.”
Vostov smirked. “She’s a politician. We all seem nice when you meet us. It’s in offices like this, alone with our chiefs of staff, that we’re evil sons of bitches.”
Pasternak smiled briefly, then went to bring in the British prime minister.
As she did, Vostov made a mental note to have the office swept for bugs when the last of the foreign delegations left. He wouldn’t put it beyond any of them to try to plant a listening device in his inner sanctum.
He ran south on the smooth packed sand of the beach, almost to the halfway point, his father’s black lab Jackson bounding enthusiastically beside him, looking up at him and smiling that euphoric canine smile as if giving thanks for being taken on the run. It didn’t seem strange that Jackson, four years before, had made his final trip to the vet to be put to sleep. Today, Jackson was as young and energetic as he’d been as a puppy.
They were almost at the halfway point, three miles from his father’s Sandbridge house, where today’s workout plan called for him to turn around and run back. But a quarter mile farther on, he saw the figure of a beautiful woman in a bikini strolling in the surf, and there was something about her, something achingly familiar. He decided to continue the run south, knowing Jackson wouldn’t mind. As he got closer to the woman, she turned her face up from the waves to look at him and it was
Her hair blew in the wind and she beamed at him, her lips curving around that gorgeous smile. He could see the constellation of freckles arrayed around her nose and those deep brown almost liquid eyes. He came close enough to touch her, but as he started to reach out to her, he noticed another figure coming from the west, and when he turned, he saw it was Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov, clad in starched dress whites with her ceremonial sword, wearing full ribbons, her gold submariner’s emblem shining in the bright sun, her long gleaming dirty blonde hair combed down past her shoulders. He looked over at her, then at Carrie, and he realized both women were gazing at him, soft smiles on their faces.
He tried to find his voice. “Why are you here?” he heard himself ask.
“To wake you up, like you
“What time is it?”
“Midrats will be out in fifteen. If you hurry, you can get a shower in before you partake in tonight’s delicacies of beanie-weenies and cornbread.”
Pacino put his legs outside the rack and spun so his back was to Styxx and lowered himself to the deck. Getting out of a top bunk in the crowded stateroom without knocking over Styxx’s laptop or smacking her in the face with his foot took acrobatics. He pulled his hand through his tousled hair and rubbed his eyes. He’d gone down after watch relief and dinner, hitting the rack at 1900. If midrats were fifteen minutes away, it was 2315.
The deck was trembling violently, the vibrations coursing through the ship from the power of the propulsor. Evidently the watch section had kicked their speed up to flank, full out with fast speed main coolant pumps, the reactor power meter needle steady at exactly one hundred point zero percent. The deck inclined upward, then dived downward while heeling to port, then starboard, the boat doing slow corkscrews through the water. The sea state must have risen. The swells must be at least five feet high, he thought.
“Didn’t you have the afternoon watch for the surface run?” Styxx asked, having taken her seat at her pull-down desk. “You shouldn’t be the on-coming officer of the deck until zero six hundred.”
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing his towel. “XO wants me to take Short Hull under my guidance for the dive. So we both jumped watchsections.”
“I take it XO thinks Short Hull has more potential than Long Hull.”
Pacino shrugged. “Who can say who will end up being a slug and who will be a hot-runner?”
