Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

* * *

  Hyde opened his eyes. For a moment, Shelley's features were unfamiliar. Then he recognised Aubrey's aide, and attempted to sit up. Pain shot through his ribs, and his back, and he groaned. Hands pushed him back down on the hard bed. He could feel the thin, hard, uncomfortable blanket beneath his fingers, and he wiggled his toes, eyes very tightly shut for a moment until he opened them in relief.

  "You're all right," Shelley said. "God knows how, but you're just bruised pretty badly."

  His neck and shoulder ached more than his back and ribs. "One of them hit me," he complained.

  "We assumed that was the case. It's why you" ve been out so long."

  "How long?"

  "Almost four hours."

  "Christ." He covered his face with his hands, as if the light hurt him or he was ashamed. "Jesus, my head."

  "I caught the end of the concert. Mine feels much the same."

  "Very funny."

  "Who was it — Petrunin?"

  Hyde's eyes snapped open. "How did you know?"

  "Routine surveillance report on the embassy. Unauthorised trip north by the Resident. It had to be you and the girl."

  "I saw him." Hyde saw Shelley motioning towards another part of the narrow, cream-painted room. A door closed. Shelley's face appeared above his own again, and then he was being helped to sit up. Shelley proffered a mug of tea. Hyde sipped the sweet, scalding liquid, hands clasped round the mug as if to warm them. "I almost had her." They were alone in the room now. "I'm all right?"

  Shelley nodded. "You're all right — just a bit crook."

  "I feel it. The girl panicked. She's like something high on LSD. Seems to think they're coming out of the woodwork for her."

  "She's right."

  "That bloody rock band. They got in the way."

  "Where do you think she is? Do you think they" ve got her?"

  "I don't know. She could be anywhere." Hyde concentrated. "I got the impression Petrunin had gone back off the platform — the bloke who clobbered me was being pushed towards the steps — the girl was down the other end of the platform. One of them went after her. He might have made it."

  "By the time I got here, they'd all disappeared. No one saw the girl."

  "Shit."

  "I know."

  "What does Aubrey want us to do?"

  "He's otherwise occupied. He's taken control of the submarine business. He seems to think it's in a hell of a mess."

  "He's got the set now, then. It's all a bloody mess."

  "Where is she, Patrick? If she isn't at the embassy or one of their safe houses? I" ve got everything I can screened. They won't be able to get her out — I hope. If they want to, that is. But if she's free, where is she?"

  "Why not Heat of the Day? It's where she ran for help and cover in the first place? She might have nowhere else to go."

  The group?"

  "Yes."

  "Where are they?"

  Hyde groaned as he swung his legs off the bed and sat up. He touched his ribs gingerly. "Are they sure nothing's broken?"

  "Quite sure."

  "Free Trade Hall, Manchester, is their next venue. Where they're staying tonight, I" ve no idea. Maybe here?"

  Shelley shook his head. "Not here. Some country hotel in Cheshire. I'm having it checked out."

  "You won't find the girl. She won't stick her neck out again. They could even have hidden her somewhere. She'll go to ground for the duration if the Branch trample all over the garden in their big boots."

  "You can't do it yourself."

  Hyde rubbed his neck and shoulder, groaning softly. Then he looked into Shelley's face. "I'll accept discreet cover, but nothing more. The girl doesn't believe me as it is. If I go in mob-handed, she'll never tell us where Dad is. You can see that, can't you?"

  "Aubrey wouldn't like it."

  "He might. The girl is frightened. She knows one mob is after her, one mob and me on my own. Give me until tomorrow night, and if I can find her and talk to her, she might come in. I won't lose her again."

  "Petrunin won't let go of you."

  "All right. But the girl's more important. It won't be any good arresting a rock band and sweating the lot of them. She has to be coaxed. She's near panic. Her father must be a mistrusting bastard. She's neurotic about us."

  Shelley paced the room, one hand rubbing his chin, the other thrust into the pocket of his overcoat. He glanced at Hyde from time to time. Indecision blossomed on his face. Eventually, he said: "I don't know — I just don't know."

  "Look, you work on the assumption that Petrunin has her, and I'll work on the assumption he hasn't. Get back to London and mobilise the troops. I'll go up to Manchester, and sit on my arse and wait. Get me cover, discreet cover, from the Branch up there, and then let me try to get to the girl. If she isn't in Manchester, and they won't tell me where she is, then you can take over. Okay?"

  "All right," Shelley said after another lengthy pause. "All right. We'll do it your way, for the moment."

  "At least I'm a familiar face."

  "You won't be if you get knocked about any more." He glanced at the telephone on a folding table, next to a black medical bag. "I'll try to talk to Aubrey, though. I want him to be fully informed."

  * * *

  It was a tableau of activity, a frozen still-life of tension, fear close to panic, routine and emergency procedures. In other parts of the submarine, men lay in their bunks or sat on the floor. No one moved unless movement was unavoidable and essential to the survival of the Proteus. In the control room, men stood or sat as their functions dictated, and when they moved — which was rarely, and with Lloyd's express permission — it was with an exaggerated, burglar-like stealth. All unnecessary electrics had been switched off, and the control room was made eerie by the emergency lighting. Only Lloyd stalked the control room like a hunter, like an escapee.

  The sonars, in passive mode, their screens illuminating the faces of their operators from beneath, making arms and chins and cheeks blue or green or red, a ghastly imitation of disco strobe-lights, revealed the Proteus's danger. Under the cloak of "Leopard" the submarine lay on the ledge almost fifty fathoms down, while Soviet submarines moved back and forth around, below and above them like prowling sharks outside a diver's cage. As Lloyd watched over the shoulder of one of the sonar operators, a bright trail on the screen slid slowly to the port like the hand of a clock, mere hundreds of yards from their position. Noise — any noise — would be like blood to that shark, and bring others.

  Lloyd left the screen and stood beneath one of the emergency lights. Once more, he scanned the damage report that his chief engineer had compiled in silence and semi-darkness. They had not dared send a diver outside the hull, outside the cloak of the anti-sonar. Much of it was guesswork, or deduced from the instruments and the computer. The damage was relatively slight, but almost totally disabling. Thurston and the chief engineer had guessed at a low-charge torpedo — wake-homing, as they had known in those last seconds before it struck — which had damaged the propeller blades and the port aft hydroplane. It left the Proteus with no effective propulsion, and little ability to maintain course and depth. She needed repairs before she could go anywhere. And in that conclusion, Lloyd perceived the Russian objective.

  He was calm. It was partly an act for the benefit of the crew, and yet it was genuine too. He had not known he would react in this way, in harm's way. It had little to do with the fact that the pressure hull remained undamaged, or with the invisibility bestowed by "Leopard". It was, simply, him. He had no inclination to curse MoD or to blame himself for not aborting the mission hours earlier. The past, even as recently as two hours before, was dead to him. The Russians did not know where they were and, eventually, help must come — diplomatic, military, civilian, mechanical, political.

  Thurston left the navigator and Hayter, who was taking a much needed break from monitoring the functioning of "Leopard", and crossed the control room. In his hand he had a notebook and pen. He held it up to Lloyd.


  Thurston had written: What do we do? Lloyd merely shook his head. Thurston was puzzled, then scribbled furiously on a fresh sheet of the notebook: We have to tell someone. Lloyd took a pen from his breast pocket, and borrowed Thurston's notebook. He scribbled: And tell them where we are? Thurston — Lloyd could not help being amused by the pantomime they were enacting — wrote: Must be Nimrod in area by now.

  We can't transmit. Too risky. Lloyd scribbled.

  They want "Leopard" — but how? Thurston wrote.

  Salvage?

  They couldn't, Thurston began writing, then his hand trailed off to the edge of the sheet. Savagely, he crossed out what he had written. Defiantly, he wrote: Have to find us first. Lloyd patted his shoulder, then wrote: Only a few days.

  The sudden noise was deafening, literally terrifying to every man in the control room. It was more than two seconds before the rating at the code-signals console cut the amplification with a hand that dabbed out, as if electrified, at the switch. He stared at Lloyd guiltily, afraid, his youthful face behind his ginger beard blushing. Lloyd tiptoed across to him, his whole body shaking with reaction. The chatter of a high-speed coded signal, incoming. The rating removed his headphones, offering them like a propitiation to Lloyd, something to avert his wrath. Lloyd pressed him, firmly but not unkindly, on the shoulder, and held the headphones to one ear. He nodded, as if deciphering the signal for himself, or hearing an instruction in plain language. The rating flicked switches, and waited. His screen remained blank. Lloyd watched it, looking into a mirror, a crystal ball. Thurston arrived behind him, his breath ragged and only now slowing down. Lloyd felt the tension in the control room of the shrilling chatter of the signal, and the awareness of the Russians beyond the hull, and the knowledge that the signal was continuing. It crawled on his skin like St Elmo's Fire, or a disturbed nest of ants.

  The screen displayed a line of white print. A message buoy. Thurston nudged Lloyd, and mouthed Nimrod, and Lloyd nodded. The code identification then appeared, deciphered. MoD, then the placing of the security level of the instructions. ETNA. Lloyd looked startled. A civilian override by the intelligence service. The comprehension of their danger by some outside authority made him feel weak. They had known, had tried —

  The message unreeled on the screen, line by line, then began to repeat itself. Abort the mission, return to home waters immediate. ETNA. ETNA. Acknowledge, code 6F, soonest. Compliance immediate —

  Compliance impossible. Someone had known, someone in SIS or the Directorate of Security or the CIA, or the Norwegians, the Germans, the Dutch — someone somewhere had known, or suspected, and had tried to warn them, recall them. The knowledge was like a debilitating illness.

  There was a Nimrod in the area, on-station. It would, perhaps, wait for an acknowledgement. It would, doubtless remain on-station to monitor Soviet naval activity. Such would be its orders. It was up there, somewhere.

  Signal, Lloyd wrote on Thurston's pad. The rating watched the screen. The message began repeating for the third time. Lloyd reached out, flicked a switch angrily, and the screen darkened. The rating's shoulders hunched as if against a blow from behind.

  You can't, Thurston had written by the time Lloyd looked back at the pad. The two men stared at one another, their faces seeming agonised in the dimness of the emergency lights.

  Lloyd crossed the control room. Four trails of light, not one of them more than a mile-and-a-half from the ledge on which they lay. Four hunter-killer submarines, waiting for the blood that would spur them, fix the position of Proteus. That blood might be any noise, even the sonar shadow of the aerial buoy they would have to send to the surface to contact the Nimrod.

  You can't.

  Lloyd realised he still had Thurston's pad in his hand. He dare not, in his anger, tear out the sheet or throw down the pad. It would not make a detectable noise. Yet he did not dare.

  * * *

  In how many rooms had he waited, on how many occasions? Clocks. How many clocks? So many of them with large, plain faces and a red sweeping second hand. Arms that clicked on to the next minute. Clocks. The persistence of memory. Even now, there was no clarity to his thoughts, no cleanness. Only the many other occasions on which he had endured the same, endless waiting.

  Aubrey sighed. He had not been aware of the number of clocks in the underground room until all the protocol had been observed and Brussels and Washington and MoD had agreed to his assumption of complete authority over the safe return of the Proteus. Furious telephone and signal activity, followed by a post-coital lassitude, restlessness. Waiting for the Nimrod's report, waiting then for the first safe occasion when the submarine could send an aerial buoy to the surface and answer their peremptory summons home. Until a certain time had passed — the remainder of that night, perhaps the next day, too — they could make no assumptions. Nor would they be able to prevent dread from flourishing like a noxious weed in each of their minds.

  Aubrey knew it, understood the Soviet scheme in its entirety. Daring, almost foolhardy, reckless, extreme. But impossible of fulfilment. "Leopard" as the prize. Clark, too, he knew agreed with his insight. He had not asked the American; he had asked no one. He stared at the cup of coffee in his hand, and found its surface grey. His watch peeped like a rising, ominous sun over the curve of his wrist, from beneath his shirt-cuff. He ignored it.

  He had never been interested in seconds, in the sweep of the quick hand. Blister or burn operations that relied on that kind of exactitude had never been his forte. Yet he had waited longer, and more often. Back rooms of empty buildings near the Wall, with the rats scampering behind the skirting-board and the peeling wallpaper; or beneath the slowly revolving ceiling-fans, in hotel rooms with geckos chasing insects up the walls or places where, with the fan less effective against even hotter nights, crickets chorused outside; or with windows fogged by the warmth of wood-burning stoves, and wooden walls; and so many embassy basements and signals rooms, and so many rooms like this, in London and a dozen other cities. Memory's persistence, its retained vivacity, wearied and oppressed him.

  Shelley's telephone call was, perhaps, the worst moment; the small, personal act of spite or neglect amid a more general ruin. Of course Hyde was correct — he must reach the girl himself, if they were not only to possess her, but to possess her confidence also. Manchester. Aubrey was doubtful that the girl had returned to the pop group; and at the same moment wondered whether his disdain towards their kind of music made him think that. He could not, he found, identify in any way with a modern girl of twenty-plus. An alien species. And Shelley's background was probably wrong. Hyde might know more than either of them.

  With great reluctance, Aubrey looked at the clock on the wall opposite his chair. Another minute clicked away. Twelve twenty-four. Another six minutes, with good fortune and communications, before the Nimrod transmitted a status report on Soviet activity in the area of the Tanafjord.

  And, despite the weariness of the waiting, he felt no desire to receive that report.

  * * *

  "No trace of them? After almost three hours, no trace of them?" Dolohov raged at the rear-admiral, who blanched with a suppressed indignation of his own, and the sense of humiliation at once more being berated in front of junior officers, his own and those who had come with Dolohov. "It is not good enough, Admiral. It is very bad. We knew it would come to this, we knew it! They found her, crippled her so they say, and now they have lost her. It is not good enough!"

  "I — can only repeat, sir, that everyone, every unit on station, is using every means to locate the submarine. We have reduced the search area to a matter of fifty or so square miles of the seabed. The British submarine is inside that square. It is only a matter of time."

  Dolohov stared through the window of the control room, down at the map table. A cluster of glowing lights, now merely the decoration for the fir-tree. He dismissed the childhood image, but he could no longer believe in the symbolic importance of those lights. They were strung together for no
reason. The rear-admiral's voice seemed to whine in his ear, and his own breath whistled in and out of the spaces under his ribcage.

  "They could stay down there for weeks, unless the hull has been damaged, which evidently it has not." As he spoke, his exhalations clouded a little circle of glass in front of his face, as if he were attempting to obscure the signals of temporary failure that glowed below him. "It will be wearying for them, but not uncomfortable or dangerous, while we listen for the whispers of their breathing, the sound of their feet." He turned on the rear-admiral. "We should not have lost contact when the submarine was hit. Grishka's captain should not have lost contact."

  "Admiral, he had poor target acquisition, just a trace of the submarine's wake. The torpedo had to be launched, or held, and he made his decision. I–I happen to think he made the right decision."

  "You do?" Dolohov's face was bleak with contempt and affront. Then it altered; not softened, but it became more introspective. His voice was softer when he continued. "Perhaps. Perhaps. If they don't find her soon, then we shall pass from the realm of action into that of diplomacy, achieve an international situation. She is in Norwegian waters, and they will attempt to rescue her. Already, they have made contact. You have no idea what that message contained?"

  The rear-admiral shook his head. "A one-time code. We would need all their computer cards, and then know which one."

  "Very well. It was probably a recall signal. What of the aircraft?"

  "A British Nimrod. It will be watching us."

  "You see my point, Admiral? Once they understand what we are doing, they will attempt to intervene. There will be evidence, photographs, computer print-outs. It will all serve to complicate matters."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Temperature sensors, sonar, infra-red — all useless." Dolohov rubbed his chin, staring at the ceiling above his head. In a quiet voice, he said, "Likelihood. Likelihood. If there was some element of choice open to the British captain — eh?" He turned to the rear-admiral. "If he was able to decide, at least to some extent, his final location, where would it be? A ledge, a cleft, a depression? Feed into the computers every detail of every chart and every sounding we have of your fifty square miles. If necessary, we can send down divers — before Ardenyev's team are let loose. Or we can use submersibles with searchlights — " Dolohov was elated again. He controlled, he contributed, he conceived. "Yes, yes. We must be prepared." Then, seeing that the rear-admiral had not moved, he motioned him away. "Get on with it, get on with it!"