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Page 24
promised that they would be properly buried when the boat reached Cienfuegos. Karmann had been ill himself. Diarrhea, fever, general weakness. Kolodin claimed it was only influenza. Karmann knew it was the early toll taken by the Device. The submarine had stayed on the surface since entering Cuban waters. The crew was incapable of handling the boat submerged.
The petty officer had allowed Karmann out without notifying the captaina violation of standing orders typical of the state of affairs on board the Pravda. Discipline was poor. The crew was surly. As they had a right to be, thought Karmann. Matters had grown worse since deployment of the Soyuz. The death of the divers was particularly resented. The captain had kept a semblance of order with promises of shore leave in Cuba. And Viktor Krasny had taken to referring to Karmann's "Jewishness." To show Kolodin what a faithful Soyuz he was? Anything was possible with Krasny.
Karmann sat at the base of the sail on the narrow deck, between the sail and the stubby vertical fin at the stern. The air was hot and humid, but the boat's speed created a breeze that made the heat bearable. The wake stretched out behind the Pravda almost to the northern horizon; the foredeck was buried under a thick film of water caused by the manner of the boat's way in the sea. The wake was as white as a road of snow. It had to be visible from hundreds of miles in space.
The deaths had decided it. Karmann intended to defect. He should have done it long ago. But the Device the Pravda had left in Hudson Bay had been the last straw. No one in his right mind could live with that kind of madness.
The Soyuz party laid claim to the old Russian traditions: empire, military virtue, patriotism, anti-Semitism. What they could not bear was any rapprochement between Russia and the West. The Western fascination with democracy was a plague to Soyuz. The device in Hudson Bay was the modern equivalent of Jew-burning to inveigh against the infection, a kind of witchcraft.

 
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