A Photograph from Moscow

I served aboard USS Ray, SSN-653, a fast attack nuclear submarine, during the Cold War. Years later I wrote a book about it. I called it Super Nuke!

The book was never about me. It was about the crew. Men who stood watch in a steel pipe under the ocean and did work that nobody would ever hear about. I wanted their names written down somewhere – to document their contributions. I also wanted it to be motivational to encourage young people to consider the US Naval Nuclear Submarine Force – and to show the taxpayer that they got something for their money.

Before I published it, I sent the manuscript to men I had served with. Some of them were admirals by then. They read it and told me to go ahead.

I did not think that settled it. Submarines are a careful business – and most what they did then and do now remains highly secret. So I sent it to the Department of Defense for review – that was the proper protocol to stay out of trouble.

The telephone call came a while later. They wanted me in Washington to talk about the book.

The meeting was in a SCIF. That is a secure room, sealed against the outside. There were about twelve people at the table. Four from Naval Reactors. Four from nuclear submarine operations. Four from NCIS.

Nervous? Sitting down, I thought about Leavenworth or the super max.

Then they said they only wanted to talk about the book.

I told them what I believed, which was simple. We are on the same side. I do not want to publish anything classified. If you do not want this published, it will not be published.

They said they only wanted to go through it with me.

So we went through it. Every page. Where something came close to classified, they highlighted it and wrote different words in the margin. Words that said the same thing without saying the thing. It took a long time. When it was done, the book was clean, and I published it.

A while after that a man wrote to me from Russia. His name was Nikolay Teplykov. He was a Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submariner in the 1980s. He comes to the United States now and then as a member of the international submarine veterans community. He is a very nice man and he wanted a copy of the book.

I told him: “Nick, if I send you this book, I want a picture of you reading it.”

Since the book had been cleared by the Navy and the Department of Defense, I sent it.

A month or so later the photograph came. Nikolay Teplyakov in full uniform, sitting in his study in Moscow, reading Super Nuke!

For thirty years we had hunted each other under the ice and in the deep water. Neither of us ever saw the other man’s face. Now here he was at his own desk with my book in his hands, and he had gone to the trouble of having his picture taken so that I could see it.

Nick and I chatted by phone a few times. He told me a couple of things. First, he said, “Charlie, there are only two kinds of ships. Submarines . . . and targets!”

Then he said graciously, “Charlie, we were never enemies. We were adversaries and rivals, of course. Our only enemy was the sea. We are fellow submariners, and we will always be brothers.”

It is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

Thank you, Nick!

The photo is Nikolay Teplyakov, former Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submariner, reading Super Nuke! in his study in Moscow.