Free Kilo Class by Patrick Robinson Page B

of not-too-competent operators. The Chinese order represents a major change in policy by the Russians and gives us a serious problem. It seems we are not going to be able to persuade them
not
to fulfill the China order. Nor are we going to persuade the Chinese to back off. Those last seven diesel-electrics will get to Shanghai, and then to Xiamen, right on the Taiwan Strait. Whether we like it or not.”
    The room was very still for all of a half minute. Then Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan spoke. Slowly.
    “No, Joe. No they’re not,” he said.
    And the tone was not menacing. It was uttered as a simple statement of opinion. Boomer Dunning felt a chill run right through him. Now he knew for certain precisely why he was in this particular room. He betrayed no emotion. But he glanced up at the CNO, who remained expressionless. Boomer thought he noticed the smallest perception of a nod.
    “I speak in this way because I believe we are never going to persuade the Russians to give up that order. They’ve got too much riding on it. Not just cash.”
    “How d’you mean exactly?” asked Admiral Mulligan.
    “Well, right here we have another development, Joe. You remember that Russian aircraft carrier the
Admiral Kuznetzov
?”
    “Sure. It’s their main surface ship in the north, isn’t it? Not so big as a Nimitz, nor even a JFK or an Enterprise Class of ours. But still big, close to a thousand feet long I thought?”
    “You thought right. She’s big, she’s dangerous, and the Russians had decided to build a whole class of them. However when the entire house of cards caved in round about 1993, and they simply could not afford to continue such grandiose plans, they found themselves stuck with a couple of fucking great carriers, both half-finished, in a shipyard in the Ukraine they no longer even owned. By this time they were just about bust. Terrible things happened — like the town threatened to cut off the power supply to the shipyard. No one was getting paid, and naturally the new carriers were more or less abandoned.”
    “Jesus. Yeah, I remember. Remind me, what were they called?”
    “There was the
Varyag
, which I think they got rid of locally, and there was the
Admiral Gudenko
. And she’s still sitting right there at the Chernomorsky Shipyard in Nikolayev while the governments of Russia and the new Ukraine argue about who owns her, and who’s going to pay for her completion. The answers to both questions are the same: no one. Which has been a major blow to the local shipbuilding industry. People ended up almost starving in that town.”
    “And?”
    “Not much happened for a long time. The
Admiral Gudenko
had been launched, but she was covered in scaffold, and they eventually moved her out to one of the unused piers in the south of the yard, where no one much goes. Then someone had a brainstorm — let’s sell her to some country that will pay for her completion. Who was the first name on the list?”
    “China, as we know.”
    “Right. They wanted her, but they could not really afford her, thank Christ. And again things went a bit quiet. But we just learned yesterday that terms have finally been agreed, and China
will
buy the
Admiral Gudenko
, for around two billion US dollars. Which you can guess is sensational news all around in Nikolayev and effectively puts the yard right back in business. We learned, however, that there is one condition on which this huge order depends.”
    “Oh no,” groaned Joe Mulligan. “They gotta deliver the last seven Kilos?”
    “You got it.”
    Admiral Mulligan shook his head. “I assume the State Department is pulling all its strings?”
    “Sure are. Travis had the Russian ambassador and two Naval attachés in there early this morning. Read ’em a kind of velvet-coated riot act. I understand he was planning to try all kinds of persuasion, trade agreements, and God knows what else. I also understand that none of it worked.”
    “Bob MacPherson was talking to someone in