This amateur photo made available on Oct. 19 by the Swedish Defence Ministry shows an object, top centre, in the sea near Stockholm.Handout/Reuters
The Hunt for Red October is a famous spy thriller involving a search for a hard-to-find submarine. Right now, a real-life version is under way in the waters off Sweden.
The Scandinavian nation has mounted its largest naval mobilization in decades in response to at least three – and as many as five – sightings of a mysterious vessel near its coast.
The intruder is presumed by most experts to be a Russian submarine, though Russia has denied any such incursion and Sweden has been careful not to point fingers.
The search for the vessel has transfixed Swedish public and generated a media frenzy. At times, the consequences have been humorous: a retiree on a fishing trip was mistakenly thought to be a frogman from the mysterious vessel.
But despite the storyline straight out of a novel, this is no light entertainment. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made its neighbours distinctly nervous and alert to its every move. Sweden lodged a formal protest last month over violations of its airspace by Russian fighter jets; Finland reported that Russian forces had interfered with the movements of its research vessel while in international waters in August and September; Estonia asserted that Russian agents abducted one of its intelligence officers at gunpoint in September.
Whether these countries can do much in response to possible provocations is another question. Sweden's military readiness, like those of other small European countries, appears somewhat lacking. The amount it spends on defence, as a percentage of GDP, has fallen steadily since the end of the Cold War. Some of the helicopters needed to conduct a submarine search were phased out in 2008, according to Foreign Policy magazine. Last year, Danish jets under NATO command were scrambled to confront Russian warplanes heading toward Sweden.
Sweden's military brass sounds deeply angry, both about the incursion and its inability to find the mystery vessel. On Tuesday, the chief of the country's military said: "Our aim now is to force whatever it is up to the surface … with armed force, if necessary," reported the Daily Telegraph.
Meanwhile, the entire Baltic region will remain on edge. Earlier this week, Carl Bildt, Sweden's former foreign minister, tweeted a link to a piece he wrote a decade ago entitled "The Baltic Litmus Test: Revealing Russia's True Colors." The article argues that the region provides the "critical test of the relationship between Russia and the West."
For now, would-be spy novelists have plenty of new material. What was the submarine doing there? Did its mission go awry? Has it already headed home? It's not clear if the answers will ever be known outside an author's imagination.