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Page 50
dismantlement. It left port with the others on the list, but you can see where it turned up. We're contacting our sources for a rundown on the command personnel. What makes it interesting is two things. First, of course, the date the track begins. Unfortunately, the fixes begin last December 31 . . . ''
"This is very old information."
"No one thought it was important until Mrs. Neville appeared on our doorstep." Kellner moved to another panel and exposed a safe. He unlocked it and removed a photo file. "Item two is this set of pictures. They were made by F/A-18s from the carrier Eisenhower at extreme slant rangein order not to violate Cuban airspace. Look at them carefully."
Morgan leafed through the stack. There were twelve prints. The first was simply a hazy, long-range shot of a Hotel III traveling on the surface. The long, rounded sail identified it as an early example of the obsolescent class. Interesting, but Morgan had seen better shots of the same thing. In the second and third shots, the submarine appeared to have slewed around into a sharp turn and gone dead in the water. A Cuban gunboat appeared in the fourth shot. The rest of the pictures were a chronicle of absolute catastrophe. Clouds of steam geysered from a ruptured casing. The sub heeled forty degrees, ninety. In the last pictures the pressure hull had ruptured and the boat was clearly on the way to the bottom.
"Then there might be some truth to Anna Neville's story," Morgan said. "She might have seen a submarine."
"Perhaps."
"If it sailed from Kola with the others, headed for Murmansk, and turned the other wayHow much influence has Soyuz in Cherny's navy?"
Kellner grimaced. "He swears it has none. But we have evidence that Suvorov is not the only Soyuz member in the Russian Repuhlic's administration. Admiral Aleyev is a member; he's close to Suvorov. Piotr Kondratiev, the police general whom Cherny passed over for promotion to marshal in the last honors list, is almost certainly Soyuz."

 
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