Free Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy Page A

pushed for greater brightness using normal procedures. The third pair was digitally enhanced for color resolution, and the fourth was digitally enhanced for line resolution. I have undeveloped frames of each view for Barry Somers to play with.”
    “Oh?”
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     looked up briefly. “That's right neighborly of the Brits. What's the price?” Greer told him. “Pay up. It's worth it.”
    “That's what Jack says.”
    “Figures,”
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     chuckled. “You know he really is working for them.”
    Ryan bristled at that. He liked the English, liked working with their intelligence community, but he knew what country he came from. Jack took a deep breath.
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     liked to goad people, and if he reacted
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     would win.
    “I gather that Sir John Ryan is still well connected on the other side of the ocean?”
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     said, extending the prod.
    Ryan's knighthood was an honorary one. It was his reward for having broken up a terrorist incident that had erupted around him in St. James's Park,
    
    
     London
    
    
    . He'd been a tourist at the time, the innocent American abroad, long before he'd been asked to join the CIA. The fact that he had unknowingly prevented the assassination of two very prominent figures had gotten him more publicity than he'd ever wanted, but it had also brought him in contact with a lot of people in
    
    
     England
    
    
    , most of them worth the time. Those connections had made him valuable enough that the CIA asked him to be part of a joint American-British liaison group. That was how he had established a good working relationship with Sir Basil Charleston.
    “We have lots of friends over there, sir, and some of them were kind enough to give you these,” Ryan said coolly.
    Davenport
    
    
     softened. “Okay, Jack, then you do me a favor. You see whoever gave us these gets something nice in his stocking. They're worth plenty. So, exactly what do we have here?”
    To the unschooled observer, the photographs showed the standard nuclear missile submarine. The steel hull was blunt at one end, tapered at the other. The workmen standing on the floor of the dock provided scale—she was huge. There were twin bronze propellers at the stern, on either side of a flat appendage which the Russians called a beaver tail, or so the intelligence reports said. With the twin screws the stern was unremarkable except in one detail.
    “What are these doors for?” Casimir asked.
    “Hmm. She's a big bastard.”
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     evidently hadn't heard. “Forty feet longer than we expected, by the look of her.”
    “Forty-four, roughly.” Ryan didn't much like
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
    , but the man did know his stuff. "Somers can calibrate that for us. And more beam, two meters more than the other Typhoons.
    She's an obvious development of the Typhoon class, but—"
    “You're right, Captain,”
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     interrupted. “What are those doors?”
    “That's why I came over.” Ryan had wondered how long this would take. He'd caught onto them in the first five seconds. “I don't know, and neither do the Brits.”
    The Red October had two doors at the bow and stem, each about two meters in diameter, though they were not quite circular. They had been closed when the photos were shot and only showed up well on the number four pair.
    “Torpedo tubes? No—four of them are inboard.” Greer reached into his drawer and came out with a magnifying glass. In an age of computer-enhanced imagery it struck Ryan as charmingly anachronistic.
    “You're the sub driver, James,”
    
    
     Davenport
    
    
     observed.
    “Twenty years ago, Charlie.” He'd made the switch from line officer to professional spook in the early sixties. Captain Casimir, Ryan noted, wore the wings of a naval aviator and had the good sense to remain quiet. He wasn't a “nuc.”
    “Well, they can't be torpedo tubes. They have the normal four of them at the bow,