The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Richard Jordan: Jeffrey Pelt

Photos 

Quotes 

• Jeffrey Pelt : Listen, I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.

• Jeffrey Pelt : Mr. Ambassador, you have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic right now. Your aircraft has dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet. Now, shall we dispense with the bull?

  Ambassador Lysenko : You make your point as delicately as ever, Mr. Pelt.

• Jeffrey Pelt : You slammed the door on the General pretty hard, didn't you?

  Jack Ryan : That was not my intention.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Oh, yes, it was! He was patronizing you, and you stomped on him! And in my opinion, he deserved it!

• Ambassador Andrei Lysenko : There is another matter... one I'm reluctant to...

  Dr. Jeffrey Pelt : Please.

  Ambassador Andrei Lysenko : One of our submarines, an Alfa, was last reported in the area of the Grand Banks. We have not heard from her for some time.

  Dr. Jeffrey Pelt : Andrei, you've lost another submarine?

• Jeffrey Pelt : I can't ask any of these characters to go. One, they don't believe in it. Two, they'd never stake their reputation on a hunch. Whereas you...

  Jack Ryan : ...are expendable.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Something like that.

• Jeffrey Pelt : It would be well for your government to consider that having your ships and ours, your aircraft and ours, in such proximity... is inherently DANGEROUS. Wars have begun that way, Mr. Ambassador.

• Ambassador Lysenko : It seems that the initial reports that one of our submarines was missing were not completely accurate. The submarine in question... is commanded by Captain Marko Ramius. Apparently, he's suffered a kind of mental or nervous breakdown. Just before he sailed, he posted a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, in which he announced his intention to... to fire his missiles on the United States.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Why didn't you tell me this the last time we met?

  Ambassador Lysenko : In my position, I am sometimes compromised by the fact that Moscow does not always tell me everything.

• Jack Ryan : [thinking out loud - while slamming his hand on the table]  You son of a bitch!

  Jeffrey Pelt : [Mildly]  You want to add something to our discussion, Doctor Ryan?

• Jeffrey Pelt : I'll give you three days to prove your theory correct. After that... we'll have to hunt down Ramius and destroy him. Will you do it?

• Jeffrey Pelt : Okay, when do you leave?

  Jack Ryan : [laughing]  Wait a minute! The General was right. I am not field personnel, I am only an analyst.

  Jeffrey Pelt : You're perfect.

• Jeffrey Pelt : Now you want us to help you hunt him down and kill him?

• Judge Moore (Briefing) : Before sailing, Captain Ramius sent a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, chairman of the Red Fleet, northern political directorate.

  Jack Ryan : [quietly to Greer]  That's her uncle.

  Admiral James Greer : Whose uncle?

  Jack Ryan : Ramius' wife. Padorin's her uncle.

  Judge Moore (Briefing) : Now, the contents of the letter are unknown, but Admiral Padorin immediately demanded a meeting with Premier Cherenenko, and within minutes of that meeting, the Soviet fleet sailed with orders to find Red October... and sink her.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Sink her?

  Admiral (Briefing) : Oh, my god, they've got a madman on their hands.

• Jack Ryan : The last 24 hours have seen some extraordinary Soviet naval activity. The first to sail was this ship, we believe called the Red October, in reference to the October Revolution of 1917. A variant of the Typhoon class, she's some 650 feet long and 32,000 tons submerged displacement; roughly the same size as a World War II aircraft carrier. We believe that these doors, here on the bow and again on the stern, enclose a unique propulsion system - a magneto-hydrodynamic drive, or caterpillar, that would enable the sub to run virtually silent. It is possible that this new drive system allowed the captain, a man named Ramius, their senior and perhaps most respected commander...

  [to an aide] 

  Jack Ryan : Do we have his picture available?

  [turning back to Pelt and the others] 

  Jack Ryan : ...allowed Ramius to elude one of our attack boats, the Dallas, which trailed Red October from harbor this morning. It is also possible that this drive system, if operable, could render the Red October undetectable to our SOSUS warning nets in the Atlantic.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Mr. Ryan, would you characterize this as a first-strike weapon?

  Jack Ryan : Uh, that is a possibility, sir. Uh, it is designed to approach by stealth and to shower its target with multiple independent warheads with little or no warning before impact.

  Admiral (Briefing) : God damn thing's made to start a war.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Proceed, Mr. Ryan.

  Jack Ryan : About the same time the Dallas lost contact, there were additional sailings from Polijarny and from Leningrad on the Baltic and from the Mediterranean. There are now some 58 nuclear submarines headed at high speed into the Atlantic. This afternoon, a satellite pass over Polijarny found heat blooms in the engineering plants at the Kirov, the Minsk, and more than 20 other cruisers and destroyers, indicating they were preparing to sail. This constitutes the bulk of the Soviet surface fleet.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Admiral Greer, your conclusions?

  Admiral James Greer : Well, sir, the data support no conclusions as yet. The absence of activity in the Pacific suggests this could be just an exercise. It may have nothing to do...

  General (Briefing) : Suppose it's not an exercise? Suppose this is the beginning of a move against NATO?

• Jeffrey Pelt : Let's assume for a minute that you're right and this Russian intends to defect. What do you suggest we do about it?

  Jack Ryan : We definitely grab the boat, sir.

  Jeffrey Pelt : Hey, wait a minute. We're not talking about some stray pilot with a MiG. We're talking about several billion dollars' worth of Soviet state property. They're gonna want it back.

  Jack Ryan : Maybe it's enough then just to get some people on board and inspect it. Call it whatever you want to; a-a Coast Guard safety inspection.

  Jeffrey Pelt : So, how do we proceed?

  Jack Ryan : First, we need to contact the commanders in the Atlantic directly. The Russians get one whiff of this through the regular communication circuits, the game is up. Second, we need to figure out what can we do to help him? We need to devise a plan to intercede, ready to go at a moment's notice. And third, somebody's gotta go out there and make contact with Ramius and find out what his intentions really are.