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the political officer, who had refused to let them circle around the storm. The deck officer shared the captain’s view, but had prudently kept silent.
    “
Chto eto
?” said the helmsman, pointing to a long black shape that had appeared without warning off the port bow. It looked like a whale, except that it was flying.
    “It’s a plane,” said the first mate, also in Russian. “Hold course, Comrade. He will make way.”
    The two men on the bridge watched in fascination as the large aircraft bounced along beside them in the storm, not two hundred feet above the roiling sea. The plane had to be American. Nobody else would be so crazy. The craft had twin propellers and a transparent nose cone. They hadn’t seen it swooping in because, except for the nose, the entire fuselage was painted black.
    On the deck below, the soldiers were scurrying for cover, and for a moment the first mate was worried. Then he realized that their fear was not of being attacked but of being seen. The political officer, wearing an unmarked greatcoat, had moved to the gunwale, where he used an ungainly East German camera to snap photographs of the intruder.
    “Who are they?” said the helmsman.
    “They are brave men,” said the mate, a good-humored Ukrainian named Evanishyn. “They are risking their lives to follow us.”
    The ship rolled again, this time to port, and the plane climbed away. When they settled again, it was overhead.
    “We’re risking our lives, too,” the helmsman grumbled. “For what?”
    “For the Motherland. For what we carry below.”
    “Which is what?”
    “I am sure you have guessed, Comrade.” Evanishyn nodded toward the political officer, still snapping his pictures. “My mother always said you can tell a bird by its droppings.”
II
    Another man came in. He wore a threadbare sweater, but the four white stars on each epaulet told them that he held the rank of lieutenant commander in the Red Navy. Ordinarily, an officer of such rank would not be caught dead on a freighter, even the shining new
Poltava.
His presence signaled the importance of the mission, and his orders, they had been told, were to be followed without hesitation.
    “Give me the field glasses,” he said.
    A fresh wave rolled the ship hard to starboard, but the men were braced. Down on the deck, the chain securing one of the trucks was slipping, and a pair of crewmen fought their way toward it. The plane was still directly above, seeming almost to hover in the storm. Much lower and it would have struck the crane assembly, which extruded well above the wheelhouse in the center of the ship.
    The naval officer lifted the glasses. “It is an American reconnaissance plane,” he said after a moment’s study. “They designate it the P-2H, or Neptune. The dark paint makes it difficult to make out. They call themselves the Flying Phantoms.”
    “What is it doing?” asked Evanishyn.
    “Taking photographs of your ship, Comrade.” He pointed to the trucks ranked on the deck. “He hopes to discover your cargo.”
    “The cargo is mostly below.”
    The plane had dipped lower again and was now just twenty yards off the port bow. The naval officer continued his study. “He will photograph the cranes and the hatches. From this the American analysts will try to calculate the size and weight of the cargo.” He lowered theglasses. “Our destroyer escort is less than half an hour behind. Were our orders not otherwise, we could shoot him down.”
    Evanishyn was alarmed. “We are not at war, Comrade.”
    The lieutenant commander gave a tired smile. “We shall be soon.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “Come, Comrade. You yourself have reached the same conclusion. Sooner or later, the Americans will find out what we are ferrying to Cuba.”
    “And then?”
    “And then they will destroy us.”

THREE
Uncle Sam Wants You
I
    On Monday morning, Niemeyer called on Margo in class for the first time. He was once more rolling along the stage, this time