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For a deadly high-stakes game of nuclear submarine hide-and-seek you can turn to a Tom Clancy thriller. Or a newspaper. But not, alas, Canada’s Department of National Defence.

The Hunt for Red October has perhaps vanished over the cultural horizon, the 1990 movie and the 1984 novel praised by that amusing Cold War relic Ronald Reagan. But the chilling newspaper story was in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph.

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It started “Britain and America fear Vladimir Putin is prepared to cause financial chaos by attacking undersea cables between the countries and are going to extraordinary lengths to track Russian submarines.” Apparently Putin has rebuilt the old Soviet blue-water navy that rotted at the wharf with a particular emphasis on submarines now busier in the North Atlantic than in a quarter century.

What are they doing there? The U.S. and U.K. are expending enormous, impressive high-tech efforts to discover the details, from satellites to seabed listening devices to modern versions of the U.S.S. Dallas following their Russian counterparts. But the big picture is the Russians are developing an impressive capacity to disrupt vital communications as well as, you know, launch a sneak nuclear attack.