Shadow Hunter

by Geoffrey Archer

  She did as he asked, conscious of wanting to calm her own breathing, but not being able to.

  ‘Now we can talk.’

  He pulled off his wig, folded it carefully, and pushed it into a pocket. He still looked strange to her with his hair, that had been long and blond, dyed brown and trimmed short.

  ‘That’s better,’ she smiled.

  ‘Have you heard anything more? About Philip?’

  ‘They haven’t managed to stop him; that’s all.’

  ‘And I risk this meeting, just for you to tell me that?’

  His voice grated. His eyes flicked back to the window nervously.

  ‘I was lonely. I wanted to see you again,’ she heard herself say.

  For a few moments he was silent, then he chuckled.

  He pulled her away from the window. She felt limp, paralysed.

  ‘You’re a child,’ he told her, putting his arms round her in a tender embrace. ‘A beautiful, sensual woman. But also a child.’

  Then he crushed his mouth to hers and, cupping his big hands round her behind, he pressed against her hungrily.

  Sara struggled for breath. She wanted to stop him, warn him it was a trap, yet she felt powerless.

  ‘Please, no,’ she protested feebly.

  ‘Please, yes. It’s the last time I’ll see you.’

  His voice grated in his throat like gravel.

  ‘I have to go away. It’s dangerous for me here. But I can’t go without feeling you again. Having you one more time.’

  He pulled up her guernsey and tugged her blouse free of her jeans so he could slip his hands underneath to caress her.

  ‘Gunnar . . . don’t.’

  He teased at her mouth with his lips, silencing her, and began to fumble with the zip of her jeans. He tore at it, breaking the button.

  He unclasped the belt of his trousers.

  Then he heard the helicopter.

  He froze.

  Sara whimpered. She’d heard it too.

  Viktor seized her by the shoulders and held her so he could see her eyes. She looked away.

  ‘You? You knew?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Your police? Coming for me?’ he hissed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She began to cry. ‘They . . . made me.’

  He let out a howl of rage. ‘Bitch!’

  Drawing back his right hand, he balled it into a fist, and smashed it into her face.

  Sara crashed to the floor, blood spurting from her mouth. Her midriff was bare, pullover pushed up, trousers on her hips.

  Kovalenko darted to the window. The noise of the helicopter was deafening; it was landing in the meadow behind the house. They must not take him. Moscow’s orders.

  In terror and pain, Sara began to scream for help.

  Kovalenko stared in shock at the woman whose sweet body had blinded him so fatally. Anger overwhelmed him. He calmly re-buckled his trousers and reached into the side pocket of his coat.

  The first bullet ripped into Sara’s groin, the second into her chest. The scream froze in her throat.

  Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she stared. She looked suddenly surprised.

  Viktor aimed again and blasted a hole in the centre of her forehead.

  He flung himself down the stairs. At the back of the house he could hear voices, and the helicopter turbines still whining.

  The van started at first turn of the key. He slammed into reverse and swung the vehicle round to face the road. Left or right? It didn’t matter.

  He turned left, away from the village. He raced up through the gears, foot jammed hard down on the accelerator. There was a bend ahead. He rounded it, barely keeping the wheels on the road.

  Just fifty yards ahead a South West Electricity Board van was slewed across the road.

  His mind raced. Could he stop? No room! His foot moved to the brake, touched it lightly, then swung back desperately to where it was before.

  John Black crouched behind the van, an automatic pistol in his right hand. The expected drop in the engine note never came.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ he exploded, and hurled himself sideways into the ditch, as the van carrying Viktor Kovalenko smashed into the roadblock and exploded in flames.

  * * *

  HMS Tenby 1240 hrs GMT.

  ‘Contact confirmed, sir. It’s a Trafalgar ahead of us.’

  ‘Watch stand to!’ called Commander Biddle on the loudspeaker. Then he said to the weapons engineer, ‘All tubes to the action state! Hammerfish torpedoes.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ The WEO looked startled, but scuttled down the companionway to the forward weapons compartment.

  Biddle stood next to Tinker.

  ‘At bloody last!’ he hissed.

  ‘We’re only eight miles from the Rybachiy Peninsula. Well inside their twelve-mile limit,’ Andrew warned. ‘If we don’t get it right, and we cripple him here, the Soviets’ll have a whole Trafalgar class submarine to play with!’

  ‘It’s your decision, Andrew.’

  ‘Don’t I bloody know it!’ he replied drily. ‘We need to know the distance.’

  ‘Steer zero-nine-five, revolutions for fifteen knots!’

  The course change was to compute the range.

  ‘Aircraft overhead!’ squawked the communications box. ‘Sounds like a MAD run!’

  MAD stood for Magnetic Anomaly Detector. A tail ‘sting’ on the Soviet IL-38 anti-submarine aircraft could pick out a large metal submarine from its interference with the earth’s magnetic field.

  ‘Steer zero-three-five!’ Biddle called. ‘Keep one-hundred-and-seventy-five metres!’

  They’d need to go in for some fast evasive action.

  ‘That’s all we sodding well need!’ Andrew cursed.

  ‘Stony ridge ahead, sir, rising to one-two-five metres!’ the navigator shouted. ‘Distance on the new course, about three miles!’

  ‘Got that, thank you,’ Biddle answered calmly.

  They’d been navigating a deep-water trench some six miles wide, which led southeast into the Kola Inlet. Turning at a right-angle to evade the aircraft, they now risked smashing into the ridge at its northern edge.

  The two commanders made the calculation simultaneously. Twelve minutes before they hit the rocks.

  Andrew bit his tongue. He was in command of their overall mission, but Biddle was driving the boat.

  ‘Revolutions for twenty-five knots!’

  Biddle looked at the clock. He’d take no chances; just two minutes on this course and speed, before weaving east again.

  Andrew stepped into the sound room to talk to the TAS, Algy Colqhoun.

  ‘What’s the maximum range of the underwater telephone here, d’you reckon?’

  The lieutenant checked the Sound Path Predictor computer, linked to probes on the hull that analysed water samples.

  ‘About three to four miles, sir. And at a guess, at least a dozen Soviet sonobuoys would hear it too, and get a nice fix on us!’

  Andrew didn’t need reminding. He went back to the control room.

  ‘Revolutions for fifteen knots! Starboard twenty. Steer one-three-five!’

  The deck lurched sideways with the violence of the new manoeuvre.

  ‘Where’s the range on the bloody target, TAS?’ Biddle growled, knowing Colqhoun would be working on it without his telling him.

  ‘New contact, sir!’ the sound room announced. ‘Astern. Submarine contact on the towed array.’

  ‘Classification?’

  ‘Working on it, sir. Looks like a Victor.’

  On the Action Information screen, contour lines marked the edges of the deep-water channel. Ahead of the symbol for their own boat, a small square representing Truculent changed to a diamond, signifying its range was now known.

  The operator hit a key to open a window with the target data on the right of the screen.

  ‘Range eight miles, heading one-four-zero, speed eight knots,’ Andrew read. ‘Eight miles? Are we sure? That’s beyond the n
ormal detection range for a Trafalgar.’

  ‘Told you the sonar fit on here’s bloody brilliant,’ Biddle answered. ‘The Truc’s got the older set. Phil won’t know we’re here yet.’

  ‘Eight more miles, and he’ll be at Ostrov Chernyy,’ Andrew grimaced. ‘If he maintains that speed, he’ll be there in an hour.’

  ‘Target’s changed course, sir,’ the AIO rating called across.

  ‘Dodging planes, like us, I guess,’ Andrew commented.

  ‘Steer one-eight-zero!’ Biddle ordered, changing course again so the towed array could compute a bearing on the second contact, behind them.

  ‘We’ve got to catch up with him, Peter,’ Andrew insisted, ‘before he gets there and lays a Moray mine on the shelf, like a bloody Easter Egg. Ten minutes at thirty knots might put us close enough to talk to him.’

  ‘But we’d be deaf for those ten minutes. We’re surrounded by Russians. And they’ve got sea-bed arrays somewhere around here. The noise we’d make could give them a firing solution.’

  ‘Tow a decoy. Make them think we’re, one of their own.’

  Biddle hesitated. The decoy would make even more noise – make them easier to track. Would it fool the Soviets if they tuned it to sound like a Victor III?

  ‘Second contact confirmed, sir!’ came the voice from the sound room box. ‘Victor three astern. Heading one-two-seven degrees. Range ten miles, range decreasing. Estimated speed twenty knots!’

  ‘Okay, Andrew, you’ve got it,’ Biddle decided. ‘Time’s running out. But hang on tight. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

  * * *

  HMS Truculent 1310 hrs GMT.

  Philip Hitchens gripped the padded rail of the bandstand, picking at its blue imitation leather cover with his fingernails.

  ‘Steer zero-six-zero. Ten down. Keep two hundred and twenty metres,’ he snapped.

  The sound room kept reporting aircraft noise. The sky must be full of planes. What the hell were the Russians up to? If they wanted the damned mine, they’d do better to leave him in peace.

  Had they decided he’d renege on the deal? Perhaps they were right. Doubt still paralysed him. He was acting on instinct now. Survival – that was all. Had to get away from those planes.

  ‘Charted depth two-hundred-and-fifty metres, sir,’ cautioned Lieutenant Nick Cavendish.

  The chart was all they had to go on. They dared not use their echo-sounder, for fear it would be detected and give away their position.

  Faces in the control room were tense and sombre. The day before, they’d found it hard to accept the Captain’s warnings that the world above them was close to war. But today they were beginning to believe him.

  A few hours earlier, Sebastian Cordell had summoned Tim Pike to the sound room, and clamped headphones on his ears so he could hear the sudden silence. The sonar had been tracking over fifteen surface contacts, from tankers to trawlers, but one by one they’d disappeared.

  It was eerie. All around them, ships had cut their engines; propellers hung idle.

  There was only one explanation; the Russians knew they were there. They’d ordered silence, to make it easier to find them.

  Deprived of the Boris Bubnov as a noise shadow, they were now on their own in hostile waters, lacking the most important weapon a submarine can have – surprise.

  The Action Information display was uncomfortably empty of contacts. Tim Pike felt like a goldfish in a bowl, surrounded by hungry Soviet cats.

  Every post on the submarine was closed-up now, ready for action. Pike’s task was to follow his captain’s every move, ready to take over if ordered – or if he felt the time had come.

  ‘It’s almost as if they were expecting us, sir,’ Pike murmured to the captain. ‘They’ll have sonobuoys everywhere.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’re we going to do, sir?’

  ‘Complete our mission,’ Philip said icily, yet feeling as if someone else had spoken. He swung round to address Paul Spriggs.

  ‘WEO. Bring all tubes to the action state. Load two tubes with Mark 24 torpedoes. Make ready three Moray mines.’

  Spriggs shot a glance at Pike for support.

  ‘What exactly are our orders for the mines, sir?’

  There was a moment’s silence, but Hitchens was ready for them.

  ‘Very shortly, Paul, I shall be in a position to tell you. Tim? Take over. I shall be in my cabin.’

  * * *

  Severomorsk.

  Admiral Andrei Belikov snapped his fingers for some more tea. He’d sat in the operations room in the underground bunker since the moment he’d learned of Astashenkov’s ‘freelance’ mission on board the Ametyst, and his eyes were feeling gritty and tired.

  Reports from the IL-38s had produced nothing but confusion; suspected contacts had been ‘detected’ in six different areas. Most of them were caused by malfunction in the equipment or by excessive optimism on the part of the crew, Belikov believed.

  But there had been persistent traces of a submarine, northwest of Ostrov Chernyy. It was in the right place and on the right heading if Commander Philip Hitchens was intending to carry out his contract with the KGB. The trouble was that there had also been strong reports of another contact twelve kilometres further west.

  The Captain Lieutenant seated in front of him turned from his communications panel.

  ‘A request from one of the maritime aircraft, Comrade Admiral. The intermittent contact it was tracking now sounds to him like one of our own PLAs. He’s asked if we can confirm it’s the Ladny.’

  ‘Which track is that?’

  ‘Number four.’

  The Captain Lieutenant shone his light pen at the more westerly of the two strongest contacts.

  ‘Send Ladny a signal. Tell her to report her position.’

  The submarine towed a communications buoy. The antenna could only receive, but she’d reply within minutes by raising a VHF mast above the waves.

  Belikov drummed his fingers on his desk as they waited until the printer began to chatter. The Captain Lieutenant tore off the sheet, noted the contents and, with eyebrows raised, passed it to the Admiral. Then he tapped the keys on his computer terminal.

  On the large wall-screen in front of them, a red circle appeared for the Ladny, well to the left of the triangle which was the contact reported by the aircraft.

  ‘Hah! So the Ladny has a ghost!’ Belikov exclaimed.

  ‘I’ve asked the IL-38 to re-confirm the position of its contact, Comrade Admiral.’

  ‘Where’s the Ametyst got to? Could it be her the aircraft’s tracking?’ Belikov demanded.

  ‘Not out there. She was detected close to the Kol’skiy Zaliv, half an hour ago.’

  The printer spewed out more paper.

  ‘Reconfirmed,’ declared the Captain Lieutenant. ‘The IL-38 reports the contact has headed east at speed, conducting evasive manoeuvres. They’ve lost it now. Should they try to track it?’

  ‘Tell them, yes. And put out a general alert that the British submarine Truculent seems to be using a noise generator. She’s pretending to be one of ours.’

  * * *

  Submarine Ametyst.

  Feliks Astashenkov heaved a sigh of relief when he checked on the chart the position of the Truculent that the Severomorsk headquarters had just transmitted. If she was still that far out the chances were she’d not yet laid her mines.

  The thought of the undetectable threat that might be sitting on the sea-bed anywhere in their path had terrified him since leaving port. Against another submarine they could fight, but a mine gave no warning, no possibility of retaliation.

  Suddenly, he was filled with hope. There was a chance, after all, that they could complete their mission, that the British boat could be destroyed inside Soviet waters and the wreckage brought up so that the Soviet people could be shown how NATO threatened the security of the State.

  ‘There you are, Yury. Those are the co-ordinates of the target,’ he said, putting his arm round the youn
ger man’s shoulders. ‘Let’s go and look for it!’

  * * *

  Helsinki, Finland.

  The young, white-coated doctor crashed through the swing doors with a trolley carrying a cardiac-arrest emergency kit.

  Ahead of him he could see the Russian nurse holding open the door to the small, private room.

  He swung the trolley inside; one of the clinic’s own female nurses was pressing rhythmically on the breastbone of the old man on the bed.

  They hadn’t been told his name; they knew him simply as ‘the patient in room 112’. But a nurse had heard him speaking English.

  ‘He must be kept alive, doctor,’ whispered the Soviet official who’d been guarding the room since their arrival earlier that day.

  The Finnish doctor ignored the remark. Goddamned KGB! He could smell them a mile off.

  He grabbed the old man’s wrist. No pulse. The trace on the electrocardiograph screen was flat.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Two, three minutes,’ answered the nurse.

  The doctor uncoiled cables and placed two electrodes either side of Alex Hitchens’ immobile heart, removing the ones connected to the electrocardiograph.

  ‘Stand back,’ he instructed, and pressed the switch.

  Four times he repeated the process, checking after each shock for some sign that the heart had restarted. There was none.

  The ECG was reconnected. The trace stayed flat.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he announced.

  ‘Not possible,’ hissed the Russian guard. ‘He has to live!’

  The doctor suppressed a desire to seize the Russian by the throat.

  ‘He was half-dead when he arrived here this morning. You gave us no medical records for him. But he had clear signs of heart failure. You must’ve known that before you brought him here. You knew the risks. He should never have been moved in his condition.’

  With that he began to pack up his equipment.

  The Finnish nurse looked down at the wrinkled old man, his sunken eyes hidden beneath closed lids. No name. No past. No future. It was sad that anyone should end their days in such anonymity.