Shadow Hunter

by Geoffrey Archer

  The smell of coffee told him that his staff were awake and about their business. The house was managed by a middle-aged civilian couple from Leningrad; the woman cooked and cleaned, and her husband served at table, polished brass and silver and acted as valet to Feliks.

  He also had a personal driver, who lived in the barracks in the main naval base area, a starshina who would arrive outside the house at 6.30 each morning, drunk or sober.

  Feliks would take his breakfast in the kitchen, bread, sliced sausage, and coffee. His staff took pleasure in his passing the time of day with them; his wife treated them like serfs.

  The kitchen window faced east, overlooking a distant creek where sailing boats lined the jetties of a small marina belonging to the officers’ club. The sky was grey, but gold where the clouds broke to reveal the rising sun.

  He would start early as soon as the driver arrived, tour the harbour and see who he could catch off-guard.

  Severomorsk is a grey, granite naval town, ringed by greenhouse farms to provide fresh vegetables for the Navy. The town’s only purpose is to serve as the headquarters of the Northern Fleet. Set on a bay on the east bank of the Kol’skiy Zaliv, the Kola inlet that leads to Murmansk, its piers stretch from the dockyard like outspread fingers. Heavy cranes tower black against the clouds.

  They passed a guard post and the duty man hurried back into his hut to telephone ahead that the Deputy Commander was on the prowl.

  To Feliks’ right lay the sea, grey and choppy in the chill breeze that felt as if it came from the North Pole. The low hills on the far bank of the fjord five kilometres distant were discernible just as an outline in the mist.

  Some of the finest warships in the Soviet fleet lined the piers. The twelve-thousand-ton cruiser Slava took up almost the whole length of No.3 jetty, some of her long-range missile tubes hoisted ashore for maintenance. Beyond her, at anchor in the bay, Feliks could see the distinctive outline of the aircraft-carrier Minsk.

  He instructed the driver to stop the car, and wound down the window. The temperature felt below freezing, but he sniffed the air, savouring the odours of oil fumes and rotting fish. It was a smell of which he would never tire.

  He was proud of his Navy, which had been expanded and modernized dramatically in the past decade. Yet he prayed it would never have to fight a war. He looked again at the Minsk. She carried a dozen vertical take-off jet fighters and a similar number of helicopters, but had none of the striking power of the Americans. The first of his own Navy’s big carriers was still on sea trials and there’d be no more built.

  Another pier, and a pair of Sovremenny class destroyers. They were due to sail any day now, to join the carrier Kiev and the cruiser Kirov maintaining the defensive barrier north of North Cape. Their departure depended on crew training; three-quarters of the men on board were conscripts. Autumn was the time for a new intake, and all the problems of moulding reluctant, ignorant young men into sailors.

  His own submarine service was the worst affected. Greater skills were needed for the complex technology. With a rapid turnover of crews, harbour-time was high; most submarines in the fleet would spend all but a few weeks of the year alongside the jetty.

  Feliks envied the professional, volunteer navies of other countries.

  ‘Let’s move on, Comrade,’ he called to his driver.

  They drove along the waterfront road that linked the heads of the piers. There were no submarines in harbour that morning; in fact, there were seldom any at Severomorsk, the main submarine bases being further north around Polyarny, at the mouth of the Kol’skiy Zaliv.

  Looking out to the main navigation channel, he watched a fish-factory ship heading south for Murmansk, low in the water with the weight of its catch from around the shores of the British Isles.

  Murmansk was an ugly sprawl of a city, whose population had grown to nearly four hundred thousand on the back of the Atlantic fishing fleet based there. The Gulf Stream kept the fjord to Murmansk open all year round with winter temperatures ten degrees higher than other Arctic zones on the same latitude.

  To Feliks, however, the whole area was grim. He hated the bare rocks of the coastal zone, and pitied the puny shrubs and birch trees that struggled to survive inland. He longed for the gardened splendour of Leningrad.

  The car turned left, past the storage sheds and maintenance workshops essential for keeping the complicated and costly warships operational. Men on bicycles weaved their way through dockyard clutter, as a night-shift finished and the day workers began.

  Feliks decided against an unannounced visit to a ship. He’d bitterly resented such treatment from his own superiors when he’d been a submarine commander.

  ‘Take me to the headquarters building,’ he grunted. He’d put in an hour or so with the paperwork that threatened to take over his desk, before attending the morning command briefing.

  * * *

  0800 hrs. GMT.

  Northwood, England.

  Andrew Tinker searched the corridor of the Fleet headquarters for the office of the Fleet Psychiatrist. Finding the door, he tapped on it but there was no answer.

  It was locked. He checked his watch – just past eight.

  Behind him in the corridor he heard the click of high heels.

  ‘Excessive punctuality’s a sign of anxiety,’ chided a confident female voice.

  Andrew turned to see a short, red-haired WRN commander approaching.

  ‘Tell that to those who trained me,’ he countered.

  She took his outstretched hand and held it loosely.

  ‘It’s a lost cause with me, I’m afraid,’ she smiled.

  Commander Felicity Rush was maturely attractive, but she looked weary.

  ‘The thing is, I’m terrible at getting up in the mornings. Never normally see anyone before ten if I can help it. But when an Admiral orders. . . .’

  She unlocked the door and led him in. Andrew was expecting it to be more like a consulting room than just another office.

  ‘You are Commander Tinker?’

  ‘Indeed I am.’

  She placed her briefcase on the desk but left it unopened.

  ‘Pull up a seat. There’s nothing very comfortable, I’m afraid. I don’t rate an armchair.’

  Andrew dragged a typist’s swivel seat over to the desk and sat down.

  ‘Now, I’ve no idea what this is about,’ she began, pulling a notepad from a drawer, ‘except that it must be exceptionally urgent. Admiral Bourlet knows perfectly well how badly I function at this hour.’

  Andrew raised an eyebrow at what he thought was innuendo, but there was no hint of embarrassment on her face.

  ‘Are you the one with the problem?’ she pressed, her eyes softening with professional sympathy.

  ‘What? No, thank God! Not me. It’s a friend of mine. He also drives a submarine, but the poor sod’s just had a bust-up with his wife. We’re worried he may have had some sort of breakdown.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. He’s not responding to signals from headquarters and is now somewhere under the North Atlantic heading for the Arctic Circle at a rate of knots.’

  For a moment her face didn’t move. Then she frowned.

  ‘Would you mind saying that again?’

  Andrew began to explain. The Admiral had told him to tell her only what was necessary for her to form a medical opinion.

  ‘This is utterly confidential. I can’t give you all the details, but the blunt facts are these; the CO in question discovered his wife had been regularly unfaithful while he was away. That was bad enough, but then he found out one of her lovers was a Soviet agent.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘And it’s beginning to look as if he’s decided to get his own back on the Russians, using the weapons on his submarine.’

  ‘Crikey!’

  His words had shaken her out of her morning stupor.

  ‘But that’s appalling! Surely he’ll be stopped by his crew.’

  ‘Yes, but only if the other officers c
an see something’s wrong and do something about it. That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping you can give us some idea of how he’ll be behaving down there.’

  ‘I see.’ She looked flustered. She’d never met a situation like this before. ‘You’d better start again. Tell me what you know, from the beginning.’

  As she listened, she took a note from time to time, usually just a single word to jog her memory.

  ‘It’s difficult without knowing the man himself. What you’ve described is a tragically common state of affairs. Infidelity is part of the human condition, and when the offended partner finds out about it, the effects can be devastating. It can tip someone over the edge into doing something wild, but that’s usually a spur-of-the-moment thing. If I understand you correctly, you suspect that this man has planned some quite elaborate revenge. That implies a certain rationality – an irrational rationality, if you follow me.’

  ‘Er . . , not altogether.’

  ‘Let me explain. The initial reaction to marital breaks is the obvious one – anger and despair. That can lead to a depression which can become clinical – a sense of helplessness, loss of self-esteem, crying, physical disorders, thoughts of suicide. Now, if that’s what your man is going through, it should be obvious to the other officers on board. He’ll be unusually irritable, off his food, and above all indecisive. What sort of a CO is he, by the way? Easy-going or a stickler for discipline?’

  ‘Definitely the latter, I would say. Not the most popular of captains. Gets the respect of his crew, but not their affection.’

  ‘Pity. That’ll make it more difficult for his first lieutenant. If he was a more relaxed type, his irritability would be more obvious. But it’s odd. I’d expect a man like that to stick to the rules, whatever his personal problems. He might even find some comfort in the familiarity of discipline and order. Yet he’s not doing that, you say. He’s scrapped the rule book and taken matters into his own hands. He faces a court-martial for what he’s doing, and if he does something nasty to the Russians, he’s risking his own life and those of his crew and a great deal else besides. That suggests something much more serious than depression. He may be psychotic – unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. But again, that should be pretty obvious to his junior officers . . .’

  She was thinking aloud, tapping one end of her ballpoint on the pad, turning it over and tapping it again.

  ‘Tell me more about him. I don’t have a picture of the man yet. I’d get his file from the registry, but it’s too early in the morning.’

  ‘He’s a year younger than me, and I’m forty. We trained at Dartmouth together – shared a cabin. He worries; always thought I had the edge on him because I’d spent a year in the big, wide world before joining up, even though I’d only driven a delivery van most of that time.

  ‘Anyway, he’d come straight from school. A bit unworldly, I suppose; still is. Nervous of women, very few girlfriends before he met Sara. Certainly prefers the company of men, so he should be well suited stuck in a steel tube for months at a time!’

  ‘Latent homosexual perhaps?’ she asked casually.

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so. We slept in the same room for nearly a year; I just don’t think he’s very interested in sex.’

  Commander Felicity Rush knew that no man was uninterested in sex and wrote down the words ‘acute sexual repression’ followed by a question mark.

  ‘Are his parents still alive?’

  ‘I seem to remember his father died when Philip was a kid. He was in the Navy, also a submariner. His boat disappeared up north, somewhere. I’m not sure they ever discovered what happened.’

  ‘How old was Philip when that happened?’

  ‘Don’t know. Quite young, I think.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. A tragic loss in childhood can sensitize you; if you face something similar later you can react much more dramatically than normal. What about his mother?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her. He never mentioned her. Funny, that. Used to talk of “going home”, but never said who was there.’

  ‘What about his work? He’s respected as a commanding officer, you said; what’s his attitude towards the Soviets?’

  ‘Pretty sceptical, like most of us. Thinks they’re a devious bunch of opportunists. Come to think of it, he’s harder than most. Rants and raves in high glee when they get caught out.’

  ‘So he hates the Russians?’

  ‘Well, yes. He probably does.’

  She arched her eyebrows and sat back, arms folded.

  ‘All I can say is that you’d better stop him. And soon.’

  ‘That may not be so easy. But that’s why I want your advice. If we can get close enough to Truculent I’ll try to talk to him – by underwater telephone. But if I say something wrong, I could make things worse.’

  ‘Whatever you say may be wrong, as far as he’s concerned. Look; if his mental disorder were just the result of a broken marriage, either he’d have had an emotional breakdown, which would be obvious to his crew, or he’d have come to his senses and given up any daft idea of revenge. Since neither of those things has happened, apparently, I can only assume he may have some sort of psychopathic condition, that’s been dormant up to now.’

  ‘Phil? A psychopath? That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘A psychopath isn’t just someone going berserk with a meat cleaver,’ she explained. ‘It’s to do with attitudes. I’m sure Philip knows that launching an attack on the Russians is morally wrong, yet if he can’t resist doing it, that’s psychopathic. Such a person would be unaffected by anything you said to him. No. Your best bet is to talk to his first lieutenant. Tell him to relieve his captain of command.’

  Andrew let out a deep sigh. The task ahead looked increasingly complicated.

  Commander Rush suddenly leaned forward, elbows on the desk, her green eyes earnest.

  ‘Suppose that doesn’t work. What will you do then?’ she asked.

  Andrew looked away. He had always had an irrational fear of psychiatrists, that they could read his thoughts.

  ‘That’s something I haven’t dared contemplate,’ he lied.

  * * *

  0900 hrs. GMT.

  Whitehall, London.

  A black Mercedes turned into Horseguards Parade, and stopped at the rear entrance to the Foreign Office. The driver showed a pass to the policeman in the sentry box, who peered into the back of the car, recognized the passenger and waved the vehicle on.

  The driver swung the wheel to the right and let the limousine roll easily up to the Ambassadors’ entrance. The Sovier diplomat got out, glancing sideways towards Downing Street, conscious that it was there his message was directed.

  A junior official received him on the steps and led him to the Foreign Secretary who had just returned from his monthly breakfast with the Diplomatic Press Corps.

  Twenty minutes later the ambassador had delivered his protest about ‘Ocean Guardian’, and was back outside. He paused briefly for a news agency photographer to take his picture. Then the Mercedes sped him back to Kensington Palace Gardens.

  * * *

  12 Noon [0900 GMT].

  The Kremlin, Moscow.

  The news, that Monday morning, was not good. The Soviet leader could see the abyss opening before him. Strikes were spreading and he was in the throes of reimposing full censorship on the media to prevent the situation snowballing out of control.

  ‘Perestroika came too late for our people,’ Nikolai Savkin muttered, half to himself, half to Foreign Minister Vasily Kalinin. The General Secretary had summoned Kalinin to his private office deep inside the Kremlin walls.

  ‘Thirty years too late, maybe. Too many generations have been taught by the Party to believe the State will do everything, and that they, the people, need do nothing.’

  ‘Such despair is not in your character, Nikolai,’ Kalinin soothed. ‘All is not lost; and don’t allow yourself to think so.’

  Savkin laughed self-deprecatingly. He kn
ew he was the wrong man for the job. He silently cursed the Aeroflot mechanic whose carelessness allegedly caused the tragic and untimely death of his predecessor in a plane crash. Personally he’d always suspected the KGB had a hand in it.

  Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had been in a different league from himself. He’d had the personality of a giant; if he were still alive the strikes would be short-lived. He’d have stormed onto the factory floors and argued the toss with the workers. If Savkin tried that tactic himself they’d spit on him.

  Then there was the minority problem. Armenians, Latvians, Tartars; all were using the new freedom of expression under glasnost to voice the grievances of forty years. The KGB had played it cleverly; opposed to the new openness, they’d let the regional protests get out of control, so the politicians would be humiliated and have to turn to them to sort out the mess.

  His control of the Politburo was on a knife edge; the small majority still supporting his reformist views was being whittled away. He could only retain their support by buckling to pressure for the perestroika programme to be further diluted.

  There were those in the Politburo who’d proclaimed their commitment to his predecessor’s ideas, but without the man himself to hold the line now the going was tough, they’d begun to distance themselves from the policies. They had the rest of their lives to think of; if perestroika collapsed, and the old system of economic feather-bedding returned, Savkin thought, holding on to their jobs would be their number-one priority. Without the privileges that went with their status, life wouldn’t be worth living in the chaos that followed.

  He tugged at the bushy, white hair at his temples, then beat at his head with his knuckles, as if to drum sense into it.

  ‘You’re right, Vasily. I’m thinking like a defeated man. And if I think like one, soon I’ll act like one. You must stop me.’

  Kalinin was more than a foreign minister; he was also Savkin’s oldest friend, an ally whose loyalty he believed he could count on for ever. A curious choice for a foreign minister, many thought; Kalinin had never travelled outside the Soviet Union before taking up his appointment. Yet he had an insight into the thinking of western leaders that Savkin found remarkably astute, all the more valuable because Savkin had little insight of his own.