Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  Submarines had been lost before, Lloyd reminded himself involuntarily. There was no fear and no courage, either. Vessels encountering each other in the dark, crowded sea. Collision or avoidance, attack or retreat. The "Victor-II" was following their scent — heat, prop-wash, hull noise, the tiny skin-flakings of their passage which "Leopard" could not completely neutralise. The twin hulls that enclosed them like plasterboard walls waited to transmit any sound they might make. Closer. Bearing unaltered. Speed a cautious, stalking twelve-point-seven knots. Time to contact, five minutes.

  Lloyd mouthed silently at Thurston, who nodded. The first-lieutenant framed his lips to reply in the slightest whisper, after swallowing hard.

  “If she doesn't find us, she might just miss us."

  "By much?"

  "Not much," Lloyd's hand was on the back of the sonar operator's chair. Some transmitted electricity from his captain made the rating twitch. Lloyd moved his hand. He turned to watch the two planesmen, juggling the control wheels like nervous car drivers. As if not in control of the vehicle. Proteus remained still, lying in the dark, waiting. Other trails of light — not new, but suddenly noticed and rendered significant by heightened nerves — on the sonar screen. Four other submarines, two destroyers and what might be the carrier Kiev, flagship of the Northern Fleet. She was too distant for a positive identification, and Lloyd had tended to discount her appearance in the Barents Sea. This early in the season, she was normally still refitting in Murmansk. And the "Victor-II", brighter than all of them. Contact time, four minutes fifty. Lloyd felt, despite himself, that his hands were beginning to perspire. He opened them. The control room seemed hotter. Illusion.

  Bearing unaltered. Speed constant. Cancel. New red numerals appeared in the read-out panel. Speed ten knots. The "Victor-II" was slowing. Contact time three minutes twenty-eight, seven, six —

  The sonar operator turned to Lloyd, his face puzzled. The "Victor-II" was stopping, contact time and distance read-outs slowing down, then settling. Stopped. Contact time two minutes thirty-one frozen. The small, cramped space of the control room hot. Thurston was perspiring, a line of beads along his hairline. Lloyd felt the sweat dampening his shirt, running chilly down his sides. The sonar operator's hair cream, a sickly smell of which he was suddenly aware. Stomach light, disturbed.

  Stopped. A third of a mile away. Six hundred yards. Close enough for temperature sensors. The movement of bare forearms in the corner of his vision as the planesmen juggled the Proteus to stillness. The auto-suggested hum of electronics, like the buzzing of an insect seemed very difficult to discount. The "Victor-II" digesting the scraps of information, her captain waiting for an answer from his computer. Is there an enemy submarine close to us?

  Red numerals flicking off. A bare, dark green panel beneath the sonar screen with its bright blip of light. Then new numbers. Speed four knots, five, six. Contact time two minutes nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, fifteen, twelve, seven — one minute fifty-nine. Bearing unchanged.

  Lloyd waited. He could hardly bear to see the "Victor-II" as it moved through the darkness towards them. One minute twenty. Speed ten knots. Distance two hundred yards, a little more, the little more eaten up even as he thought it. Eleven knots, bearing unchanged; as if they knew where Proteus was.

  Then they listened. Two steam turbines driven by a pressurised water reactor. They would hear them, even though they were little more than idling at eleven knots.

  Faces turned to the ceiling. Always that, Lloyd observed. A familiarity of orientation brought with them on to the submarine. It could be below, alongside, anywhere.

  The churn of the screws. A slight, almost inaudible thrumming in their own hull. Faces tightening, the sense of fragility obvious. Louder. The illusion of a rising tremor in the eggshell of the hull. Hands sensing it where they rested damply against any part of the hull, any instrument — the planesmen juggling more violently now as the distressed water outside the hull assaulted the Proteus — feet feeling it, muscle-spasms in the calves. Louder.

  Loudest, going on for what seemed like minutes, the planesmen failing to stop the submarine's bow from dropping, the whole vessel slipping forward into the beginnings of a dive, then arresting the movement, bringing the vessel back to stillness. Retreating noise and vibration. All around them the noise and motion had been, but Lloyd was certain the Soviet submarine had passed below them, slightly to port.

  Then it was gone. Thurston mopped his brow enthusiastically, and grinned shakily at Lloyd.

  "Close," he murmured.

  "Too close." Then the idea came to him, and he voiced it before he considered its effect. "I think she was expecting us — I mean us, this boat and its anti-sonar."

  "What?"

  Lloyd looked down at the sonar operator, then at the others in the control room. He did not want to explain, not now. The idea, half-formed, frightened him, and he wanted to ignore it.

  Thurston waited for his explanation, and Lloyd said, lamely, "That Russian has been following a very poor trail for an hour. As if he knew we were here."

  "You're imagining it, skipper."

  "As if he knew he was looking for a submarine that wouldn't show up on his sonar," Lloyd added.

  * * *

  "The evidence is in front of you, man. It may not be conclusive, but there is evidence there to suggest Grishka encountered the British submarine with its anti-sonar system working. Surely?"

  "I will admit that not every trace of heat emission can be explained by temperature differences in the sea — perhaps there are identifiable traces of prop-wash and turbine activity, perhaps the faint gas traces help us —" The rear-admiral looked round at his subordinates, then shrugged. "We will pinpoint the British submarine at the position signalled by the Grishka and await any satellite confirmation there might be."

  "Excellent. She is on course. ETA?"

  "On the basis of our supposition, no more than eighteen hours."

  Dolohov was about to reply when the door to the control room opened, and a man in civilian clothes — very Western, Dolohov noticed, a sweater, windcheater and corduroy trousers — stood in the doorway. The man came forward into the light, and Dolohov saw that he was grinning. His hair was blown awry. Dolohov returned the smile, and waved away the junior officer accompanying the man.

  "Valery — Valery, my boy!" he announced, ignoring the others in the room, embracing the newcomer, kissing him on both cheeks, a greeting that was returned by the younger man.

  "Admiral — sir," the younger man acknowledged when held at arm's length by Dolohov. The rear-admiral seemed surprised to discover that the civilian, in addition to having a permit of entry to his operations room, was some species of naval officer. The haircut, the acknowledgement of rank. Yet almost like a son to the admiral. A little spurt of envy flared in the rear-admiral. This man was not to be treated like a schoolboy slow at his sums, apparently.

  "You" ve come straight here?" Dolohov, even as he asked, was already drawing the younger man towards the window of the control room, already extending his free arm to direct the other's gaze. He was revealing a prized object of desire. The rear-admiral bowed frostily as he was casually introduced, resenting the intimacy that had invaded his clinical, sterile control room. "Captain Valery Ardenyev, commanding the Red Banner Special Underwater Operations Unit," Dolohov explained with evident pride, almost with a proprietorial, parental tone, then ignored the rear-admiral. "Down there," he said to Ardenyev. "We" ve marked her with a green light. A colour all to herself."

  "You're sure, sir?"

  "We think so. She's on course, eighteen hours away from the fjord."

  Ardenyev stood looking down at the map table for some time. Dolohov, like a senior priest, allowed him silence and lack of interruption to his meditations, even though there was an impatience about his flinty features that made him appear both older, and much younger.

  "The weather's worsening, sir," Ardenyev said finally. "But of course you know that." Ardenyev grinned as he
brushed his hair back into place.

  "It isn't that bad, Valery," Dolohov replied with a touch of acid.

  "Not yet. I'll have to study the reports, and the predictions."

  "You have doubts?"

  "Not yet, sir. Not yet."

  "We" ve eighteen hours, Valery."

  "We have to transfer to the salvage vessel long before that, sir. By helicopter."

  Dolohov gripped his arm. "Valery — it will be all right," He was instructing Ardenyev, even the weather. Commanding them both. "It will be. We'll have her." He turned to Sergei, his aide, whose position within the small group of the rear-admiral's team seemed an obscure insubordination to Dolohov. "Sergei, get me an up-to-the-minute weather report for our area of interest. And get me all the met. predictions for the next twenty-four hours — now, Sergei." Then Dolohov turned back to Ardenyev as to a child he had indulged, and who now must become obedient. "It must be done, Valery. It must be done."

  "If it's possible, sir, it will be. I promise you that."

  The rear-admiral, observing the dialogue, conceived the idea that Ardenyev was not without calculation and guile. Dolohov responded by grabbing the younger man's arm, and pressing it with gratitude and what appeared to be affection. The rear-admiral recalled gossip concerning the way in which Ardenyev's career had been jealously promoted by the admiral. Some connection with Ardenyev's father, even grandfather, he had heard. For his own part, the rear-admiral had risen by loyalty to the Party, and distrusted this Soviet version of what the British called the "old boy network". And he distrusted young naval officers in civilian dress with easy manners and obvious self-confidence. Elitist adventurers.

  The rear-admiral withdrew to the other side of the control room, to await the updated satellite surveillance information. A small hope that Dolohov was precipitate, even mistaken, he nourished in his stomach like the warmth of a drink.

  * * *

  The College of Education was a new one, built in the grounds of a Victorian magnate's former residence in the suburb of Edgbaston. The original house, having fallen into disrepair both before and after the compulsory purchase of the grounds, had disappeared. A tower block hall of residence stood on the site, bearing the same name as the grandiose house that one of Birmingham's Ozymandiases of trade or industry had erected to his own glorification. Two or three small, supposedly exclusive housing developments encroached on the perimeters of the college campus.

  Hyde parked his car outside the tower block and sat for a moment considering his forthcoming interview with Tricia Quin's flatmate, Sara Morrison. Birmingham CID had talked to her the day the Quin girl appeared and disappeared, and had described her as unhelpful. Hyde had checked with the interviewing DC, who had amplified his observation by referring to the Morrison girl as a "Lefty cow, anti-police, good background — isn't it usually the case", and wished Hyde the best of luck with her. A moment of futility as dispiriting as weariness overcame Hyde, then he got out of the car and slammed the door.

  The sky was overcast, sombre with rain. The downpour that it threatened was postponed only by the strong, gusty wind that swept paper and dust and old leaves across the grass and the concrete walks around the hall of residence; hurried and chafed the few figures he could see. An overriding impression of concrete and glass and greyness, a modern factory complex. He hurried up the steps into the foyer of the tower block.

  A porter, uniformed and officious, emerged from a cubicle, wiping his lips. Hyde showed him the CID warrant card which avoided explanations, and asked for Tricia Quin's flat. The porter, evidently unimpressed by the length of Hyde's hair and his casual dress, begrudgingly supplied the number, and the information that Sara Morrison was in the flat at that moment. He had seen her return from a lecture half-an-hour before. Hyde went up in the lift, unamused by the mock-intellectual graffiti that decorated its walls. He gathered, however, that punk rock had achieved the status both of an art form and a political weapon.

  A long corridor, blank, veneered doors. The carpet was marked and already worn, the plaster on the walls evincing settlement cracks. He knocked on the door of 405.

  The girl who opened the door wore her hair in tight curls. Her face was instantly suspicious rather than intrigued or helpful. A mouth that pulled down into a scowl almost naturally, it seemed. Sallow skin, no make-up, a creased blouse and uniform denims. Her feet were bare.

  "Yes?" A middle-class, south-east accent, overlain with the drawl of the fashionable urban. "What d" you want?"

  "Sara Morrison?" She nodded. "Could we have a word about Tricia Quin. I believe —" the warrant card was in his hand, his shoulder against the door as she tried to shut it. "I believe she shares this flat with you."

  The girl resigned herself to not being able to close the door on him.

  "Past tense," she said, her eyes bright with calculation.

  "Really?"

  "You're Australian."

  Too right." He grinned disarmingly, but the girl did not respond.

  "In Birmingham?" she mocked. "An Australian pig, in Birmingham?"

  "Could be. It's not only politics that travel distances. May I come in?"

  The girl shrugged and released the door. He opened it on an untidy, cramped room with two single beds against opposite walls. A window in the end wall overlooked the campus car-park. Clothes draped over a functional chair, books spread across a small, cheap desk. Posters on the wall — Mao, Lenin, Sex Pistols, a Playboy centrefold with a crudely drawn moustache and glasses and even white teeth blacked out, Castro, Margaret Thatcher used as a dartboard, a Two-Tone band.

  "What do you want?" the girl demanded belligerently as he observed the door leading off, bathroom and toilet. "She isn't here, you know." Her accent wavered between the glassy superiority of her background and undoubted money, and the urban snarl she felt he deserved.

  "I suppose not. Someone would have seen her. The porter for instance?"

  "Beria, you mean?"

  Hyde laughed. "May I sit down?" The girl swept her clothes off the single chair, and squatted on the edge of her bed, feet drawn up beneath her, signalling indifference. Hyde sat down. The girl studied him.

  "A trendy pig."

  "We try, darling — we try."

  "You fail — or should I have said, try and condemn?" She parted her lips in a mirthless grin, flashing her cleverness in that precise visual signal.

  "A hit, I do confess. Can we talk about your erstwhile girlfriend?"

  "What is there to say? She isn't here. End of story."

  "Not her story. You know she's been seen. Have you seen her?" The girl shook her head, her face betraying nothing. "Sure?"

  "I told your thick mate from CID that I hadn't seen her. Don't you believe me?"

  "Not if I asked you for the right time. What would I get — the time in Moscow, or Peking?"

  "Cuba," Sara Morrison replied without expression.

  Hyde looked up at the ennobled poster of Fidel Castro. "He's a bit out of style, isn't he? Even Arthur Scargill's heard of him."

  The girl applauded ironically. "Very funny — oh, too witty for words."

  "Blimey, thanks, darling," he replied in his broadest accent. "Now we" ve both tried on backgrounds we never came from." He leaned forward in his chair. Unexpectedly, the girl flinched. He said, “This isn't France or South America, darling. Or Nazi Germany or Kampuchea or the Soviet Union. I could have you down the station, true, but your daddy would get you out by tea-time, I should think," The girl's face wrinkled into contempt, then smoothed to indifference again, as if she had revealed too much of herself. "Always too busy at the office, was he? Chased other women? Self-made man?"

  "Fuck off." The obscenity came almost primly from her lips.

  "In a minute. Look, Tricia Quin is in trouble — not with us, before you harangue me again, with some people who you might think you like, but wouldn't if you met them."

  After a silence, the girl said, "National security bullshit, I presume."

  "Sorry
darling, it's the only excuse I have."

  "Why can't you fucking well leave her alone!" the girl suddenly yelled at him, her face bright red with rage. The mood was sudden, manic in its swing.

  "I want to. She has to be protected."

  "Crap."

  "Not crap. Listen to me." The girl's hands were bunched into fists in her lap, or twitched open, as if gripping some imagined weapon. There was a violence— of rage and guilt and outrage in her that found the body inadequate to express such depths of feeling. "I can't help the situation in which she finds herself. Blame her father, blame national security, blame the bloody arms race if you want to — but I'm the only chance she's got. People want her because they can get to her father through her. They won't mind what they do to her to discover her father's hiding place. And before you say it — yes, I want her father, too. But I don't want to harm him, and I want to help her."

  His dismissal passed like a flicker caused by dust in her eyes. Politics in place, attitudes firmly fixed, cemented. She would not tell him. Hyde saw the weapon of threat present itself, and wanted to reject it.

  "I don't know where she is — and I wouldn't tell you if I did."

  "For Christ's sake, girlie!" Hyde exploded. "Some of the two hundred or so Soviet diplomats with the ill-fitting suits and the poor-diet boils are looking for your girlfriend right now! When they find her, it will be a little bit of slapping about, then the closed fist, then the bucket over the head and the baseball bats, then the cigarette ends for all I know — they won't have time to talk to her politely, some bigger bastard will be breathing down their necks for results. Even if they wanted to be nice. Your friend could tell them she was a card-carrying member of the Party and they'd pull her fingernails out until she told them what they wanted to know." He was speaking quite calmly during the last sentence, but the girl's face was white with anger and with surprised fear. There was something unselfish as well as disbelieving about her.