TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/85/85capbks.1

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 6.1 KB | 120 lines

                ïM                                                            March 4, 1985

BOOKS

One of Their Subs Is Missing


An insurance broker's novel has the White House reading


Ronald Reagan, who rarely has time for fiction, has read it,
pronounced it "the perfect yarn" and issued an invitation to
the author to visit him at the White House this month. Other
avid fans of the novel in the Administration include U.S.
Information Agency Chief Charles Wick, outgoing White House
Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver and the brass at the
Defense Department. The Soviet embassy in Washington has
reportedly bought several copies, presumably for shipment to
Moscow. The object of all this high-level interest is The Hunt
for Red October, a sea thriller about spooks and submarines by
Tom Clancy. Currently in its fourth printing, the book has been
on the capital's bestseller list for 15 weeks and is inching
toward the charts in other major cities. Paperback rights have
been sold for $49,500. Negotiations are under way for a movie.

Clancy's book differs from the usual commercial publishing
success in a number of ways. First, it was brought out not by
Simon & Schuster of Random House but by the Naval Institute
Press (N.I.P.) of Annapolis, an academic publisher specializing
in works like The Mariner's Pocket Companion and Dictionary of
Naval Abbreviations. Second, the author is not an experienced
novelist but a Maryland insurance broker who wrote his tale of
high-tech undersea warfare without having served a single day
in the Navy, much less aboard a submarine.

Clancy had gone directly to N.I.P. with the manuscript of The
Hunt because his only previously published writing, a letter to
the editor and a three-page article about MX missiles, had
appeared in the press's monthly magazine, Proceedings of the
U.S. Naval Institute. N.I.P. grabbed Clancy's book; as it
happened, the editors had just decided to publish original
fiction, provided it was "wet"--about the Navy.

What rescued The Hunt from the publishing boneyard was Clancy's
gripping narrative. Navy buffs and thriller adepts have been
mesmerized by the story of Soviet Submarine Captain Marko
Ramius, who seeks to defect to the U.S., bring a billion-dollar
present with him. This is Red October, a ballistic-missile-armed
submarine, or "boomer," equipped with a new, silent propulsion
system. In a message to his superior in Moscow, Ramius
challenges the whole Soviet navy to catch him. He then takes
off for Norfolk, together with a group of equally disaffected
officers and an unsuspecting crew. Moscow dispatches 58 attack
submarines to hung and destroy the rogue boat before its secrets
can fall into U.S. hands.

Exploits at sea are complemented by onshore skulduggery. A mole
in the Kremlin tips off the CIA to Ramius' intentions. The
agency, the Navy and the White House then concoct a scheme to
deceive the Kremlin into thinking that Red October has exploded
in a nuclear accident when in fact the U.S. has blown up one of
its own obsolete boomers. The denouement has Soviet and American
nuclear subs playing a game of chicken that stops just short of
unleashing World War III.

President Reagan was impressed by the technical information:
the receptors on the sub's hull that act like the sensory organs
on a shark, the missile rooms that are dubbed Sherwood Forest
because the green missile tubes resemble a stand of trees.
Praising the author, the President is said to have wondered,
"How in the world did he have all this knowledge?"

The answer is that Clancy, 37, studied the major unclassified
books dealing with Soviet submarines, such as Combat Fleets of
the World and Norman Polmar's Guide to the Soviet Navy. Another
important resource was the $9.95 war game Harpoon, devised as
an instruction manual for Navy ROTC cadets, which comes with a
40-page rule book of strategy and tactics for Soviet-American
naval engagements. The author also interviewed former
submariners who are now operating the Baltimore Gas & Electric
nuclear power plant near his home in Huntingtown, Md. "I didn't
get kissed by the muse," he says. "It was hard work."

It was also the fulfillment of an old dream. Clancy had longed
to write a thriller ever since he majored in English at Loyola
College in his native Baltimore. Severe myopia kept him from
serving in the Viet Nam War, and the need to earn a living made
him put his literary ambitions aside for the insurance business.
The writing urge resurfaced in 1976 when Clancy read about a
mutiny aboard the Soviet frigate Storozhevoy. The ship's
political officer and a group of enlisted men had attempted to
defect to Sweden, and most of them had been killed. "That
mutiny rattled around in my head for years," Clancy recalls.
Eventually the frigate was imagined as a submarine, and the
novel began to take shape. He completed a first draft in six
months. The finished manuscript was read by two submarine
officers, who found only a few mistakes. For example, at one
point Clancy had put valves on the bottom of ballast tanks
instead of at the top.

In spite of the book's popularity in the White House and the
Pentagon, some expert readers have expressed reservations. Says
one top-level Navy officer:  "Though the descriptions of sea
duty are fairly accurate, the plot line is ludicrous."

Clancy may also be faulted for setting up a model of macho
military behavior that includes potential disobedience of
orders. In his zeal to defend the defecting Red October from
an Alfa-class Soviet hunter, the commander of a U.S. attack sub
considers torpedoing the Alfa on his own authority. Another
American officer vows that if the Soviets fire at Red October,
then he will destroy the hunter, "and rules of engagement be
damned."

In a blurb on the novel's jacket, the former CIA chief, Admiral
Stansfield Turner, is quoted as saying, "[Clancy] makes you
appreciate that decisions naval commanders on both sides may
have to make in peacetime could lead the United States and the
Soviet Union into war."  Readers might well hope that the highly
placed fans of The Hunt will keep the admiral's thought in mind.

--By Patricia Blake