With a length of five hundred seventy feet and a seventy-five-foot beam, the Typhoon was the biggest submarine ever built. The long forward deck stretched out from the massive, forty-two-foot-tall conning tower, or sail, to make room for twenty large missile tubes arranged in two rows. The design gave the Typhoon a distinctive profile.
The unique hull design extended past its metal exterior. Instead of one pressure hull, as in most submarines, the Typhoon had two parallel ones. This arrangement gave the Typhoon a cargo capacity of fifteen thousand tons and room in the starboard hull for a small gym and a sauna. Escape chambers were located above each hull. The submarine’s control room and attack center were both in compartments located under the sail.
The Bear was one of six 941 Typhoons commissioned in the 1980s and introduced into the Northern fleet as part of the first flotilla of nuclear submarines based at Nerpichya. Leonid Brezhnev called the new model “the Typhoon” in a speech, and the name stuck. They were deployed as the Russian Akula class, meaning “shark,” which was the name the U.S. Navy used for them.
Despite its huge size, the Typhoon clipped along at more than twenty-five knots underwater and around half that speed on the surface. It could turn on a ruble, dive to the ocean depths, and stay down a hundred eighty days, accomplishing these maneuvers with one of the quietest power systems ever designed. The sub carried a crew of more than one hundred sixty. Each hull had a reactor plant that powered a steam turbine which produced fifty thousand horsepower to drive the two huge propellers. Two propulsion pods allowed the sub to hover and maneuver.
The Typhoon subs eventually outlived their military and political usefulness and were taken out of service in the late 1990s. Someone had suggested that they might be converted to carry cargo under the arctic ice by replacing the missile tubes with cargo space. The word went out that the Typhoons were for sale to the highest bidder.
The captain would have preferred to see the subs scrapped rather than have them turned into undersea cargo scows. What an ignoble end for a fine war machine! In its day, the terrible Typhoon was the subject of books and movies. He had forgotten how many times he had seen The Hunt for Red October.
Vasilevich had been hired by the Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering to oversee the conversion. The nuclear missiles had long been removed as part of a joint treaty with the U.S., which had agreed to scrap its own city busters.
Vasilevich had supervised the removal of the missile silos to create a vast cargo hold. The silos were plugged and modifications were made that would allow easier loading and off-loading of cargo. A crew half the size of the original would deliver the sub to its new owners.
The captain took another shot of vodka and tucked his flask into a pocket. Before leaving the dock, he couldn’t resist turning back for one last look. The submarine had cleared the harbor and was on the open sea headed to its unknown fate. The captain pulled his coat closer around him to ward off the damp breeze coming off the water and headed back to his car.
Vasilevich had been around too long to accept things at face value. The submarine supposedly had been sold to an international freight company based in Hong Kong, but the details were vague, and the deal was structured like a set of matryoshka nesting dolls.
The captain had his own theories about the sub’s future. An undersea vessel with the long range and huge cargo capacity of the Typhoon would be perfect for smuggling goods of every kind. But Vasilevich kept his thoughts to himself. Modern-day Russia could be dangerous for those who knew too much. What the new owners did after taking possession of the Cold War relic was none of his business. This deal had warning signs posted all over it, but the captain knew it was wise not to ask about such things, and even wiser not to know.
CHAPTER 2
ANHUI PROVINCE, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
THE HELICOPTER DARTED IN FROM NOWHERE AND CIRCLED above the village like a noisy dragonfly. Dr. Song Lee looked up from the bandage she was applying to a cut on the young boy’s arm and watched as the helicopter hovered and then started its vertical descent to a field at the edge of the settlement.
The doctor gave the boy a pat on the head and accepted her payment of half a dozen fresh eggs from his grateful parents. She had treated the wound with soap, hot water, and an herbal poultice, and it was healing nicely. With little in the way of medicine and equipment, the young doctor did the best she could with what she had.
Dr. Lee brought the eggs into the hut and then joined the noisy throng rushing to the field. Excited villagers, including many who had never seen an aircraft up close, completely surrounded the helicopter. Lee saw the government markings on the fuselage and wondered who from the Ministry of Health would be coming to her remote village.
The helicopter door opened and a short, portly man wearing a business suit and tie stepped out. He took one look at the chattering crowd of villagers and an expression of terror crossed his broad face. He would have retreated into the helicopter if Lee had not eased her way through the mob to greet him.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Huang,” she called out in a strong enough voice to be heard above the babble. “This is quite the surprise.”
The man cast a wary eye over the crowd. “I hadn’t expected such a large reception.”
Dr. Lee laughed. “Don’t worry, Doctor. Most of these people are related to me.” She pointed to a couple whose weathered brown faces were wreathed in smiles. “Those are my parents. As you can see, they’re quite harmless.”
She took Dr. Huang by the hand and led him through the swarm of onlookers. The villagers started to follow, but she waved them off and gently explained that she wished to speak to the gentleman alone.
Back at her hut, she offered her visitor the battered folding chair she sat in to treat patients. Huang mopped the sweat off his bald pate with a handkerchief and scraped the mud from his polished leather shoes. She boiled water for tea on a camp stove and poured a cup for her visitor. Huang took a tentative sip, as if he were unsure it was sanitary.
Lee sat down in the patched-up old dining-room chair that the patients used. “How do you like my open-air treatment room? I see my more modest patients inside the hut. Farm animals, I treat on their own territory.”
“This is a far cry from Harvard Medical School,” Huang said, gazing in fascination at the hut, with its walls of mud and thatched roof.
“This is a far cry from anywhere,” Lee said. “There are some advantages. My patients pay me in vegetables and eggs, so I never go hungry. The traffic is not as bad as in Harvard Square, but it’s next to impossible to find a good caramel caffe latte.”
Huang and Lee had met years before at a mixer for Asian students and faculty at Harvard University. He was a visiting professor from China’s National Laboratory of Medical Molecular Biology. She was finishing her graduate studies in virology. The young woman’s quick wit and intelligence had impressed Huang immediately, and they had continued their friendship after returning to China, where he had risen to a high position in the ministry.
“It has been a long time since we talked. You must be wondering why
I’m here,” Huang said.
Dr. Lee liked and respected Huang, but he had been among a number of highly placed colleagues who were conspicuously absent when she needed someone to speak out on her behalf.
“Not at all,” Lee said with a note of haughtiness. “I expect that you are probably carrying the apology of the authorities for their heavy-handed treatment of me.”