“Soviet submarine reconnaissance?” Norman asked. “That’s what I told them in Honolulu.” Barnes grinned. “Part of the game, to get what you need for an operation like this. You’ve got to know how to requisition equipment in the modern Navy. But of course the Soviets won’t come around.”

“They won’t?” Norman felt he had somehow missed the assumptions that lay behind the conversation, and was trying to catch up.

“It’s very unlikely. Oh, they know we’re here. They’ll have spotted us with their satellites at least two days ago, but we’re putting out a steady stream of decodable messages about our Search and Rescue exercises in the South Pacific. S and R drill represents a low priority for them, even though they undoubtedly figure a plane went down and we’re recovering for real. They may even suspect that we’re trying to recover nuclear warheads, like we did off of Spain in ‘68. But they’ll leave us alone-because politically they don’t want to be implicated in our nuclear problems. They know we have troubles with New Zealand these days.”

“Is that what all this is?” Norman said. “Nuclear warheads?”

“No,” Barnes said. “Thank God. Anything nuclear, somebody in the White House always feels duty-bound to announce it. But we’ve kept this one away from the White House staff. In fact, we bypass the JCS on this. All briefings go straight from the Defense Secretary to the President, personally.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “So far, so good. And you’re the last to arrive. Now that you’re here, we’ll shut this thing down tight. Nothing in, nothing out.”

Norman still couldn’t put it together. “If nuclear warheads aren’t involved in the crash,” he said, “why the secrecy?”

“Well,” Barnes said. “We don’t have all the facts yet.”

“The crash occurred in the ocean?”