Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  Hyde sipped at his drink. The trio drew attention to the stage with a peremptory call to attention that echoed Oscar Peterson, then slipped into the strait-jacket of "I'm forever blowing bubbles" as a bath was wheeled on.

  "Oh, Christ— bath night again," Hyde murmured. "Ivy the Terrible." The subdued chatter of the audience tailed off into a silence that was weary rather than expectant. "Well, Dmitri?"

  Vassiliev leaned towards him, eyes flicking over Hyde's shoulder towards the stage, as the pianist imitated a fanfare. Hyde could never decide whether Vassiliev's interest in the girls was genuinely naïve and crude, or merely a badge of his manhood, designed to be noticed by those in his company. The KGB regarded homosexuals in only one light — as victims; malleable, male prostitutes. If Vassiliev had any hidden proclivities towards men, then he was wise to hide them.

  "You were wrong," he said.

  It was the one statement Hyde had not expected to hear. It generated a mass of complex doubts, questions and fears in an instant. The woman on stage was young, breasts extended to unnatural size by injection and implant, face expressionless beneath the make-up. See-through negligée, towel and loofah, bar of soap. The trio vamped the only expectancy in the now darkened room. Hyde watched the stage, picking his way towards the appropriate degree of innocent surprise. "Dmitri, what do you mean I was wrong?"

  "They have got Quin. They have him, but they want the girl." Vassiliev's sweat gave off the pungency of the body rub he used. It clashed with his after shave, with the girl's scent, the omnipresent cigarette smoke.

  "I'm not wrong," Hyde began, but Vassiliev was already nodding eagerly. Hyde felt cold.

  "Yes. Look, I risked everything this afternoon. There was no more gossip. I looked in the travel ledger. I went back and checked on the people who came in. They left with a third man — the next day. They flew to Paris in a light aircraft. I have the address, the booking. Three passengers —" He reached into his pocket, but Hyde grabbed his hand — it quivered in his grip, which was slippery against Vassiliev's skin, informing Hyde that his nerves were taking him over. The girl was testing the supposed temperature of the water in the bath, letting the negligée fall open almost to the crotch. None of the audience was watching their corner of the room.

  "Three? Three? What proof's that? I don't believe you, Dmitri. I don't think you know," Hyde hissed at the Russian, still gripping the man's hand near his chest. The girl had stepped — with something less than elegance — over the side of the bath. Her negligée was drooping from one shoulder, tented by one enormous breast.

  "You must believe me, you must!"

  "I don't, Dmitri. Now, what bloody game are you playing?" The girl was obviously going to bath with tassels on her nipples. She slid down into the supposed water.

  Then Vassiliev's eyes began moving, darting round the room. Hyde forced himself not to turn round. It did not mean there was someone in the room, only that there were others, either nearby or simply giving orders. Hyde gripped his thigh with his free hand, forcing the calm of angered puzzlement into his frame and face and voice. "What bloody game are you playing, mate?" The girl had divested herself of the" negligée, but not the tassels. She was stroking herself with the loofah.

  "No game, Mr Hyde, no game!" Vassiliev was leaning towards him like a lover in the hot darkness, but he could not keep his eyes on Hyde's face. Escape, help, answers. He repeated the formula they had taught him. "Three men left in that plane for Paris. Yes, they want the girl, but they have Quin in Moscow — I'm certain of it."

  "You don't know who the third man was. It couldn't have been Quin — " Hyde found himself engaged in an attempt to justify the suspicions he had voiced to Aubrey; as if he believed Vassiliev. The girl was on the point of engaging in intercourse with the loofah. Soon she would be dropping the soap. "No," he said, "you're lying, Dmitri. Why should they want you to lie?"

  "They? What do you mean?" Too innocent.

  "You weren't lying or mistaken at lunchtime. You knew, then. Now, you're working for them. Did they ask you how much you told me? Did they?" Hyde's face was close to Vassiliev. He could smell the man's last meal on his breath, and the brandy after dinner. Too much brandy — no, they wouldn't have allowed him more than one or two. "They knew about you all the time, but they didn't let on. Not until they realised you must have told me more than was good for me." He was shaking Vassiliev's hand, in anger and in community. The girl had dropped the soap, which did not slide across the stage. Her enormous breasts were hung over the side of the bath as she attempted to retrieve it. The trio was playing palm court music. The prissy, virginal sweetness of it assailed Hyde. "You were doing all right until you told me you thought they didn't have Quin. And you know it!"

  "I — must go," Vassiliev said. Now the soap was back in the bath, but lost again. The girl was looking for it on her hands and knees. Snake-charmer music, and she rose to her feet, backside to the audience, buttocks proffered, swaying.

  "You're going nowhere. Where are they?"

  "Not here, not here!"

  "You're coming in, Dmitri."

  "No!"

  "You have to. We'll take care of you. I can't behave as if I believe you. You're the one in danger now." Vassiliev had thought of it, but had ignored it. He shook his head, as if the idea was only a pain that would move, dissipate. The girl had the loofah again, standing up now, in profile to the room. The loofah was being energetically applied. "Come on," Hyde added.

  "No! I can't leave with you, I can't!"

  "Why not?"

  "I can't!" He was pleading now. They were outside. If he emerged with Hyde, they would know Hyde had not swallowed the tale. The almost religious silence of the room was broken by hoarse cries of encouragement, underscored with what seemed like a communal giggle. The girl's body acknowledged the response to her performance.

  "You can!" The gun, the gun — he'd left it at his flat, held it in his hand, almost amused, for a moment before stuffing it under a pile of shirts in a drawer. The gun —

  "No, no, no — " Vassiliev was shaking his head vehemently.

  "It's your only chance. Come on, the back way." Hyde got up, stood over the Russian, willing him to his feet. Vassiliev rose, and they shuffled through the tables towards the toilets. The door into the concrete, ill-lit corridor sighed shut behind them.

  Vassiliev immediately turned to him. "No," he said.

  “They concocted this story, right?" Vassiliev nodded, nerveless, directionless now. "Why?"

  "I don't know. They told me they had known, that they had fed you the information about Quin through me, deliberately. Then yesterday happened, and while they were deciding what to do about me, we talked. I–I told them everything." A sense of shame, as sharp as a physical pain, crossed his features.

  "It's all right, it's all right — was there anyone in the club?

  Vassiliev shook his head. There was applause on the other side of the door. "Come on."

  Hyde half-pushed Vassiliev towards the emergency exit beyond the toilet. He heaved at the bar, remembered letting in friends by similar doors in Wollongong cinemas just before the start of the main feature, then the door swung open. The windy night cried in the lightless alley. He paused momentarily, and looked at Vassiliev. Then he nodded.

  They went through the door almost together, but even so the man with the gun must have been able to distinguish between them. Vassiliev cried out — Hyde hardly heard the brief plopping sound of the silenced gun before the Russian's murmured cry — then he slumped against Hyde, dragging at his clothes, smearing the front of the Australian's shirt with something dark and sticky. Then he fell back, for a moment his face green from the exit sign's light, then all of him was simply a barely distinguishable bundle of clothes on the other side of the alley. Hyde waited for the noise of footsteps above the wind's dry call, or the sound of another stone-into-water plop that would be the last sound he would ever hear.

  Chapter Three: INTRUDER

  The gilded French clock
on the marble mantelpiece chimed twelve, a bright, pinging, musical sound. Aubrey paused in his narrative, and he and Sir Richard Cunningham, Director of the Secret Intelligence Service, listened to the sound, watching the blue-numeralled face of the clock. When the chimes had ended, Aubrey stared into his brandy balloon, aware of how out of place his employment of technological and military jargon seemed here, in the study of Cunningham's flat in Eaton Place. Books and paintings — Cunningham had a small Braque and two Picasso etchings in that room — heavy furniture, civilisation. A conspiracy to belie the reality of detection systems, anti-sonar, satellites and distress signals in broken codes. Aubrey, for a moment, wished devoutly for a double agent, for the intimacies of a debriefing or an interrogation, for the clear boundary between SIS and MoD. Clark had pushed him across that border.

  Cunningham had hardly spoken throughout Aubrey's recital of events, suspicions, fears. He had assiduously filled and refilled Aubrey's glass and his own, refrained from smoking a cigar, and listened, his half-closed eyes regarding his slippered feet crossed at the ankles. The book he had been reading when Lady Cunningham had shown in Aubrey lay on the occasional table at the side of his chair, the Bach to which he had been listening lay still on the turntable, his half-glasses rested on the end of his patrician nose, and his lips were set in a firm, expressionless line. Aubrey felt extremely reluctant to continue.

  Then Cunningham spoke. "What, exactly, do you wish to do, Kenneth?"

  "Go in there — assess the situation for myself."

  "I see. You know how MoD regards us. You know how the navy regards itself. It's tricky. You" ve no just cause or impediment, after all."

  "I realise that, Richard. However, there is a mutuality of interest that might be stressed. Quin —"

  "Ah, yes. MoD will tell us that he is our proper concern, one of Her Majesty's submarines more properly their sphere of authority. They will not take kindly to you suggesting they should reverse their decision. Nor will Brussels, nor will Washington. Sure you're not simply acting the old warhorse smelling the battle afar off?"

  Aubrey smiled. "I don't think so."

  "Mm. Neither do I. Devilish tricky, though. I can quite well see the importance of this anti-sonar system, and of Quin, and of keeping both out of Soviet hands. But we are not the experts, we are not the military. They don't seem to believe there is any risk — this man Clark, the American. Trust him?"

  "And his judgement."

  "Mm. Knew you did." Cunningham spread his hands, wafting them in the air. "I just don't know —"

  The telephone rang. Cunningham got up heavily and crossed to it. He listened, then gestured with the receiver towards Aubrey. His face was impassive.

  "Yes?" It was Hyde. Aubrey listened to the voice at the other end of the line, his eyes watching Cunningham, deep in thought in his chair.

  "… they obviously didn't want the hassle of killing me — just Vassiliev out of the way. They must have known I would try to take him in if I got suspicious…"

  "You're all right?" Cunningham looked up at the note of concern in Aubrey's voice.

  "Unhurt, I said. What now?"

  "You'll see Mrs Quin tomorrow, and take a trip to the girl's college. Someone must be able at least to guess where she might be."

  "If you say so—"

  "Tomorrow, you will go armed. Good night to you, Hyde."

  As Aubrey put down the receiver, Cunningham stared at him. "What is it?"

  "Hyde. His contact at the Soviet embassy has just been expertly dispatched in a dark alley. Before he was eliminated, Hyde had discovered that the news of Quin's removal had been deliberately leaked, and yesterday's events in Sutton Coldfield were being hidden behind a smokescreen. The KGB were on to the poor blighter, tried to turn him, realised they'd failed, and shot him."

  "Our man is all right?" Aubrey nodded. "They don't have Quin, then. I think we can be certain of it now. There is still no connection between these events and the submarine."

  "I agree. Could we not argue a suspension of operations employing “Leopard” until the Quin matter is settled?"

  "We might. The first thing, I suppose, is to get you inside this “Chessboard” matter. Once there, it will be up to you. You will have to find the means to persuade the minister to ask Cabinet to postpone this little adventure. I suggest you go in there for a briefing on this “Leopard” business, sniff around, and weigh the worth of what's being done. If you can convince me, then we'll go to the minister together, and he can take it from there, if he agrees with us. Satisfied?"

  Aubrey pursed his lips, studied his glass, and then nodded. "Yes, Richard. That will do nicely. I'll make an appointment for tomorrow — perhaps with Giles Pyott." His face darkened. "I'm too old for hunches and intuitions. But Clark is a clear-sighted, intelligent individual with a genuine talent for our work. I'm sorry to say it, but I think there is cause for concern, and I'm sure we should recall Proteus until we find Quin."

  "Make certain, Kenneth. There are a great many sensitive corns in MoD. Tread softly."

  * * *

  "Mrs Quin, you must have some idea where we can find him! I just don't believe you can't help me."

  "Have you ever been divorced, or separated?"

  "No."

  "Your parents?"

  "No."

  "What happened to some of the girls you" ve known? Where are they now — just one of them? Tell me what she did yesterday."

  "It isn't the same."

  "It is, Mr Hyde, believe me, it is. Tricia's coming here was one of her impulses. She spent her childhood making believe that my husband and I were happy when we weren't, and the last three years trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again." Mrs Quin sighed, and her brow knitted into deep, thread-like lines. "I'm sorry for her — sorry for myself, too."

  Hyde sat back in the chair she had shown him to when she allowed him into the lounge. Occasional traffic outside, her day off from the antique shop, the Panda car conspicuous across the street. Trees still leafless, bending and moving with the wind. The gin-hour for lonely or bored suburban housewives. She had given him tea, and seemed not to resent his behaviour of two days before.

  "Jesus, Mrs Quin, it's a bloody mess," he sighed, rubbing his hands through his hair. "Your daughter is in real danger— all right, you already know that, I'm sorry to remind you. Nevertheless, she is. So's your husband. She's with him, or still on her way back to him. The — the other people interested in your husband know that. They know we're interested —"

  "Why did he have to involve her?" the woman suddenly cried, her voice and expression full of blame, even contempt. "No, that's not fair, I suppose. She involved herself. I know Tricia."

  "I don't. Tell me about her."

  "You mean you don't already know?" There was an arch, mocking sharp little smile, a glimpse of white teeth. Today, the hair was firmly lacquered in place, the clothes well chosen, the whole being groomed. "About the pop groups, the drugs —"

  "Drugs? Soft or hard?"

  The sort you can smoke, I believe."

  "Soft. Occasionally?" Mrs Quin nodded. "OK — rock bands?"

  "Not in your files?" The easy contempt. She had forgotten her alliance with the uniformed inspector, her concern for young Sugden. Neighbours had talked, asked questions, and the police were an embarrassment, a minor disgrace.

  "Yes — some references. Some time ago, though?"

  "She — the phrase is slept around, I believe. With them."

  "A groupie?"

  "I believe so. Am I entirely stupid to blame her college, and the kind of people they allow into them, and to teach in them, these days?" She evidently had little interest in his opinion.

  "Probably," he said. "It's your privilege."

  "It ended, anyway. But she never seemed to settle afterwards."

  "Who — which group?"

  "I don't know any of their names. I believe they were famous."

  "Did she travel with them?" A nod. "When?"

  Two summ
ers ago — all over the country, even to the Continent. And an open air festival."

  "But you don't know their names?"

  "Had I ever known them, I would have forced myself to forget."

  "I see. Would her friends in college know anything about all this?"

  "I'm sure they would have been regaled with the sordid details."

  "Perhaps I should talk to them?"

  "It's past now — can't you leave it?" A naked plea, the face smoothed young by concern, softened.

  Hyde stood up. "If there's anything, anything at all, ring this number. A man called Aubrey. You'd like him." Hyde grinned humourlessly.

  "Why didn't he come himself?" The tone knife-like.

  "He's too important. Thank you, Mrs Quin." As they reached the door, he turned to her and added, "I'll get to her first, if I can. You just pray a little, mm?"

  * * *

  "Stop engines!"

  The Soviet submarine was back. It had crossed their bows an hour earlier, fifty fathoms above them, moving away to starboard. Lloyd had ordered silent running, the engines moving them very slowly ahead, because the computer identification had been of a "Victor-II"-class attack submarine, nuclear-powered and a hunter-killer. A shark had met another shark. Then the "Victor-II" had altered course again, possibly picking up faint traces of heat emission or prop noise. And she had begun looking, knowing that there was something to find.

  The Proteus hummed with tension in the new, complete silence. Electronics murmured, those aft sonars required to keep track of the Soviet submarine, someone cleared his throat softly; Lloyd even heard the movement of Carr's sleeve across his chart as he updated the Contact Evaluation Plot at his chart table. The whisper of the hydroplane control wheels as the planesmen worked continuously to keep Proteus level and unmoving, constantly balancing the submarine's own attempts to alter position and depth. A juggling act. Easier on the bottom, but they weren't on the bottom.

  Lloyd crossed to Thurston, who was standing behind the sonar operator monitoring the approach of the "Victor-II" and whose screen displayed the snail-trail of light that revealed the position of the Russian vessel. Below the screen, red numerals supplied the read-out of bearing and distance. The "Victor-II" was closing.