Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  But she was there. Denims and a dark donkey jacket too big for her — was it her, certainly the jacket was too big for the present wearer? — slipping out of the coach without pause, walking with and then ahead of the two other women. The white globe of a face for a moment as she looked round, then she was through the lighted door and gone.

  "Was she there?" the superintendent asked. His manner was not unfriendly, not unhelpful. Hyde had been scrupulously deferential and polite.

  "I don't know." He felt a tightness in his chest. Was it her? Furtive, certainly furtive. Alletson had paused, allowed himself to be recognised, taken the limelight. Declaring he was alone, there was no girl. "I think so."

  "The one with the too-big coat?"

  "I think so."

  "Okay. You'd better go and find out. Want one of my chaps to go with you?"

  "No. I'll be enough to panic her by myself."

  "Suit yourself."

  "Thanks for your help."

  Hyde crossed the tarmac, rounded the coach, and showed his warrant card to the PC on duty at the door. The superintendent was apprised of Hyde's real capacity, but it was unnecessary for anyone else to know. "Where are the dressing rooms?"

  "Down the corridor, turn left. You'll see another bloke dressed just like me. And the press, and the bouncers and the hangers-on. Can't miss it."

  "Not your scene, this?"

  "I'd rather be at the Villa, yobs and all."

  "They playing at home tonight?"

  Too bloody true."

  "Shame."

  Hyde followed the corridor, and turned the corner into a crowd of pressmen and cameramen, carefully orchestrated outside the closed dressing room doors. Heat of the Day were back in business. Interest had to be stoked, and kept alight. Hyde pushed through the crowd towards the policeman on the door of one of the rooms. He waved his warrant card.

  "Which one is Alletson in?"

  "Who?"

  "The short bloke with the wavy hair.“

  "Uh — that one," the PC supplied, indicating the other door, outside which two bulky men in denims and leather jackets stood, arms folded. Hyde wondered who, precisely, they were guarding. A press or publicity secretary was informing the cameramen that they would be allowed to take their pictures just before the band went onstage. Her announcement was greeted with a chorus of groans. Hyde showed his warrant card to one of the band's security men, who seemed to loom over him.

  "Who do you want?" The question was wrong, and revealing. Again, Hyde felt his chest tighten with anticipation. The girl was in there.

  "I'm not after his autograph."

  "So, what do you want?" Both of them seemed uncertain what to do.

  "Just a security check. And I want to talk to Jon about after the concert. Getting away."

  "I'll ask him."

  "Don't bother. I'll talk to him." He made to reach for the door handle. A large hand closed over his own, and he looked up into a face adopting aggression reluctantly, uncertainly. "Don't be stupid," Hyde said. "It might be big trouble — will be big trouble." The two men glanced at one another, then his hand was released.

  "Easy, eh?"

  "I'll take it easy — don't upset the artiste, right?" Hyde opened the door without knocking. The girl turned in her chair, alert, nervous, instantly aware of what he was and why he was there. Alletson was lying on a camp bed, and the keyboard player, Whiteman, was scribbling with a pencil on stave paper.

  "Who the hell are you?" he asked. Alletson's voice provided a more nervous, knowing undertone.

  "Trish — what is it?"

  The girl simply stared at Hyde as he shut the door behind him. Whiteman, oblivious to the other two and their anxiety, added, "Piss off, we're busy." He glanced contemptuously at the warrant card. "Autographs later," he sneered.

  "Miss Patricia Quin, I presume?" Hyde asked. The girl said nothing. Her face, however, was voluble with confession. Alletson got up lithely and stood in front of her.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "The lady in the case."

  Alletson took the warrant card, inspected it, then thrust it back into Hyde's hand. "Harassment?" he asked.

  "This isn't about smokes or shots, Jon-boy," Hyde drawled. "It isn't really any of your business. You get on rehearsing or composing or something." Whiteman was standing now, just behind Alletson. Long blond hair, his frame bulkier with good living than two years before. He looked healthier.

  "Why don't you piss off?"

  "Why did they let you in?" Alletson demanded.

  "They'd have been silly not to."

  "What sort of copper are you?" Whiteman was a Londoner. "You're a bloody Aussie by the sound of it."

  "Too true, Blue. I'm the sort that wants to help her. Can I talk to her?"

  "Not unless she wants to."

  "Stop it, Jon. It won't do any good." Tricia Quin pushed to Alletson's side, and held his arm. "Who are you?"

  "My name's Hyde."

  "I didn't think it would be Jekyll — he was the goody, wasn't he?" Whiteman sneered.

  "He was. Look, Miss Quin, I'll talk to you with your friends here, if you wish, as long as they can keep their mouths shut." He looked steadily at Alletson and Whiteman, then continued. "You are in danger, Miss Quin. It's stopped being a game. You know there are people after you?"

  "You are."

  "No, not me. Not even my side."

  "What's he talking about, Trish?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The men in Sutton, at your mother's house?" She nodded, fear flickering in her pale eyes. Cleverness, too. "That wasn't us. Our bloke got kicked in the balls trying to look after you. You need protection — mine. Will you come back with me?"

  She shook her head. "No, I won't. I'm safe here."

  "I can't risk that, Miss Quin. We want you and your father safe. You could lead the KGB right to him." She was shaking her head violently now. Her fair hair flopped about her pale, small face. She looked vulnerable, afraid but determined.

  As if her shaking head was some signal, Alletson stepped up to him and aimed his knee at Hyde's groin. Hyde bucked backwards and the blow struck his thigh. Off-balance as he was, Alletson pushed him against a tall metal locker. Hyde, watching Tricia Quin move towards the door, jarred his head and shoulder against the locker, then slumped into the corner of the dressing room.

  "Trish!" Alletson called, but the girl was already out of the door. Two hopeful flash-bulbs exploded. Hyde got shakily to his feet.

  "You stupid buggers!" Hyde snapped, rubbing his shoulder. "She's a menace to herself at the moment, as well as to her father. Christ — you stupid buggers!" He opened the door, and yelled to the PC on duty. "Which way did the girl go?" Someone laughed.

  Towards the hall."

  "Who is she?" someone asked.

  "It'll be pot," someone else answered. "Poor bitch."

  Hyde forced his way through the press, jabbed uncomfortably more than once by the lens of a camera, then he was running. At the far end of the corridor, the door into the hall was open. He rubbed his thigh as he ran, his resentment against Alletson growing not because of the pain but because of the girl. Stupid bugger, silly bitch, he chanted to himself, grinding his teeth at the opportunity that had been spoiled. He had had the girl safe, for a moment. It was only a matter of getting her to his car, getting her to Aubrey — shit!

  In the hall, lighting gantries were being pulleyed up to the ceiling, mirrors were being positioned for the light-show that the band used, and the roadies were still working furiously to rig and test the amplification equipment. Two grubby girls passed him without a glance, pushing one of Whiteman's electronic keyboards. Up the ramp and on to the stage. He was standing just below the stage. Lights, mirrors, amplifiers, instruments — and Tricia Quin picking her way delicately like a cat through the maze of boxes and wires. She must have taken the other turn in the corridor to enter on to the stage itself.

  She saw him. Part of her slow and delicate passage across the s
tage was due to her continual backward glances. She began to move more quickly, upstage towards the far side. Even as he moved, she disappeared into the wings. He pushed past the girls with the keyboard, and ran as quickly as he was able through the maze of cables and boxes — someone yelled at him — and then he was in the semi-darkness of the wings. He paused, listening. Above his heartbeat and breathing, footsteps. Running. He blundered forward again, sensing rationality disappearing and panic encroaching. He suddenly knew that the KGB were out there, and that she was running towards them. He shook his head, cannoning off a wall as he rounded a bend in the corridor.

  Lights again. The foyer and main corridor connecting Hall 5 with its companions and with the railway station. A handful of people moving slowly, and one slight figure running. He did not call after her, merely pursued her, his feet pounding, his blood beating in his ears. He felt a sickness of self-recrimination, an anticipation of disaster.

  A tunnel of lights down which she fled, a small dark shape. The scene wobbled in his vision. He seemed no nearer to her. The station concourse was at the end of the wide tunnel. She was almost there, sixty or seventy yards away.

  Someone turning, moving with her, after her. She was oblivious to whoever it was, didn't even look round for him as she reached the concourse. He began running, impelled by the certainty of disaster now. Someone had recognised her — other men, two of them in overcoats, just come in from the cold of the car park outside the station, moving to intercept her.

  He reached the concourse. The girl had disappeared. Two men had pushed into the small queue for tickets, one of them arguing. He hadn't imagined it. They were stereotypes. The girl must have gone down on to the platform. Two of them, three — where was the other one, the one who had turned in the tunnel, recognised her?

  Petrunin. Hyde could not believe it. Standing beneath the announcement board, impatiently watching his men create the wrong kind of disturbance, then turning to the platform ticket machine and banging it because it appeared jammed or empty. No, girl, no girl —

  Petrunin, London Resident. KG-bloody-B. Where the hell was the girl? Petrunin. The clever bugger must have worked it out. Tickets being issued, the small queue silenced by embarrassment. Petrunin almost hopping from foot to foot. Train announcement, the next train arriving, Petrunin turning his head from side to side as if regretting something or because he had lost something — and seeing him. Knowing him not so much by his face as by his colour and heaving chest and wary, tense posture.

  Hyde ran at the barrier, Petrunin moved to cut him off, slowly drifting, so it seemed, on a collision course. The next train arriving, for Birmingham — special train? He saw the dark, frightened face of the ticket collector, then he vaulted the turnstile, almost stumbling on the far side, hearing the noise of the train. He ran headlong down the flight of steps to the platform, round the corner, skidded, righted himself, flung open the glass doors.

  She was almost alone on the platform. He saw her immediately. And she saw him. Policemen, too. Clattering footsteps behind him, but it was all right. Policemen. All round them, policemen. He hadn't lost her. He called to her as she stood looking at him. The noise of the train covered his words as it slowed, then came to a stop.

  One of Petrunin's men grabbed him from behind. He turned, lashed out to try to prevent a second man passing him, heading towards the girl. Then they seemed to be drowning in bodies as the special train from Huston debouched hundreds of rock fans on to the platform, every one of them intent on reaching the exit first. Noise assailed Hyde, and perfume. He was brushed aside, the only certainty the hand holding his collar. He raised his fist, but the crowd trapped it against his chest, pinning it there as in a sling. Petrunin's man had his arm above the heads of the crowd. He was waving a rubber cosh. He struck slowly down. The movement was awkward because he was being relentlessly pushed back towards the exit. Hyde lost sight of the girl, of Petrunin who seemed to have retreated back up the steps, and of the cosh which struck him across the neck and shoulder, numbing him after the spurt of fire through his head. Then the Russian's hand was gone from his collar and he stumbled forward, flung sideways to his knees. Then on to his chest. Feet pressed on his back, compressing his lungs. People began surging over him. He was drowning for a moment, then he could not breathe, and then it was dark.

  Chapter Five: CRIPPLE

  "Sir, why the hell is the Kiev in the area? There's no major Soviet exercise on, and she couldn't possibly be any help in rescuing those poor dead buggers in the crippled boat — so why do they need an aircraft carrier? What's her game?"

  "I don't know, John."

  "And the course changes — sir, we remained rigged for silent running for too long. If we'd had the magnetic and acoustic sensors working, and gone to active sonar, we'd have known sooner she was closing on us."

  "I know that, John. I know we're the quarry."

  "Sir, what in hell are we doing here?"

  "Playing MoD's games for them, John. Undergoing our final examination."

  "What?"

  "I mean it. In this sea trial, the danger's all the better for MoD for being real."

  "Bastards. Sir, we're being gathered into a net. The net is in the Tanafjord, and we're being driven towards it."

  "Agreed."

  "What do they want?"

  "I should have thought that was obvious. What they want is called “Leopard”. As to what they'll do, you guess."

  "What do we do?"

  "ETA Norwegian territorial waters?"

  "Two hours plus some minutes."

  "Then we'll run for shelter. We might just get away with it, inside Norwegian waters. We'll hide, John. Hide."

  * * *

  "Ethan, has the Nimrod's position been updated?" "She's here, Mr Aubrey, as of five minutes ago." Aubrey stared up at the huge map-board. The cluster of lights glowed with what he could easily imagine was malevolence. A single white light had been introduced to the board to represent the Proteus. Aubrey periodically wished it had not been done. The white dot was in a ring of coloured lights representing the Soviet naval vessels in the immediate area. Far to the south and west of that cluster, a second white light shone like a misplaced or falling star over the fjordal coastline of western Norway, perhaps a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle.

  "Not enough, not far enough," Aubrey murmured. The dot seemed hardly to have moved since the aircraft's previous signal.

  "You can't know that, Mr Aubrey."

  "Don't offer me morsels of comfort, Ethan!" Aubrey snapped, turning to the American. Heads turned, and then returned to screens and read-outs. Aubrey had subdued the "Chessboard Counter" team by cajolement and command, and by exploiting their sense of failure. The map-board had completed their change in function as it increasingly betrayed Proteus's danger. They were now a rescue team, busy and helpless.

  "Sorry."

  Pyott and the commodore had sought another place of residence. Vanquished, they had left the field to Aubrey. Rather, he saw them as children running away from the broken window, the smashed greenhouse.

  "My apologies. What's the Nimrod's ETA?"

  "A little more than an hour to Hammerfest, then maybe another twenty minutes to the Tanafjord."

  Aubrey looked at his watch. "Eight-fifteen. Can we do it, Ethan?"

  Clark rubbed his chin. To Aubrey, he looked absurdly young, and much too unworried to be a repository of authoritative answers. And he was tall enough to make Aubrey physically uncomfortable.

  "Maybe. Then Proteus has to get the hell out."

  "Why hasn't Lloyd aborted on his own initiative?"

  "Maybe he wants to. Maybe he's running for the coast and keeping his fingers crossed. Who knows?"

  "My God, what an impossible situation!" Aubrey's face darkened after the quick rage had passed. He leaned confidentially towards the American. "Ethan, I'm worried about Quin. I haven't heard from Hyde. He was at the NEC in Birmingham, some sort of pop concert. He thought — no, he was certain — the girl
was with this group. She knows them, once travelled with them." Aubrey's face was drained of colour and expression now. "It is very hard to contemplate, Ethan, but I feel myself staring at the loss of the Proteus and of the man responsible for the development of “Leopard”. It is not a comfortable prospect."

  Clark recognised, and admitted to himself, Aubrey's age. Yet he respected the man's intellect and his expertise. Aubrey might, appallingly, be correct in his diagnosis.

  "Maybe," was all he could find to say.

  "I think we have to consider the possibility that what is happening up there — " he waved a hand at the top of the map-board — "is deliberate." He paused, but Clark said nothing. "We have no proof that there is a Soviet submarine in distress. It has stopped transmitting, and still no Russian vessel has gone in after it. But a great many Russian ships are concentrating in the area we know contains Proteus. If they find her — and they may be attempting to do just that — then we will have surrendered an almost priceless military advantage to them. If we lose Quin, too, then we will place ourselves in an abject position indeed."

  Aubrey tapped at the surface of the commodore's desk, which he had had moved to a position beneath the map-board. As if the gesture was a summons, the telephone rang.

  "Shelley, sir."

  "Yes, Peter?"

  "I" ve just been informed of a routine surveillance report from the DS team at the Russian embassy —"

  "Yes, Peter?" Aubrey found it difficult to catch his breath.

  "They think Petrunin left the embassy unofficially around five-thirty this evening."

  "Where was he going?"

  "I" ve checked that, sir. His numberplate was spotted heading north, I'm afraid, on the M1."

  "Damn!" Aubrey's lips quivered with anger. "Thank you, Peter. You'd better inform Birmingham Special Branch. Get them over to that concert at the NEC — quickly!"

  Aubrey put down the telephone.

  "I guess I see what you mean," Clark said slowly. "Without even really noticing, we're down to the wire."