CHAPTER NINETEEN
USS Halibut – Anchored Above the Bottom
For the next two days, the spooks recorded some of the most exciting material they had ever received from the Soviets. It was non-stop clear language material that covered the waterfront, from highly sensitive official calls between the Petropavlovsk Commander and Moscow, to unimportant personal calls from a Soviet submariner to his squeeze. Some of these personal conversations were even in English – where the parties apparently were practicing the language. For two days the pod worked flawlessly, proving beyond a doubt that John Craven’s idea was not only sound, but entirely achievable. We intercepted over 300 transmissions, of which more than half had real, immediate intelligence value. As a proof of concept, we could not have as
