by James Philip
Drops of lumpy cold rain were falling as the Atlantic storm front they’d outrun thirty minutes before in the Wessex roared onshore. The wind plucked at their coats tails, sent the woman’s hair flying in streamers.
“I have the honour to present Ms Clara Pullman,” the former Soviet KGB Colonel announced. “She has rendered invaluable and selfless service to her country. Without her by my side I could have achieved nothing.”
Clara lowered her eyes in embarrassment while she tried to sort out what seemed to be so wrong about this meeting – or rather, for Arkady Rykov and the tall man, what was obviously a reunion – on a windswept airstrip in Portugal. The atmosphere was wrong, so wrong it was unreal. And then she began to think about the respect and solicitude with which she and Arkady had been received, and subsequently treated on HMS Hermes. She’d thought there must have been a breakdown of communications and the Royal Navy, as it was with all its guests, was simply being politely hospitable. But in hindsight, it had been more than that. They’d been welcomed on board like minor homecoming heroes, VIPs, prodigals returned. And now there was this odd reception, in the one place in Portugal that nobody could possibly overhear what they were saying to each other.
The tall man held out his hand to shake Clara’s.
He held her hand a moment longer than necessary, waiting for her to look him in the eye.
“Forgive Arkady’s coyness,” he apologised, the laughter lines around his clear grey eyes quirking. “That’s a Russian trait he’s never quite conquered. In case you were wondering, Arkady and I are old acquaintances.”
Clara recovered her hand and tried to retain her equilibrium.
“Clara,” Arkady Pavlovich Rykov declared, “this is the man who has been my controller since I first made contact with British Intelligence in 1956. Let me introduce you to Sir Richard White, the Head of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.”
Clara stared dumbfounded at the Head of MI6.
“Dick,” the tall man said. “Everybody calls me ‘Dick White’.”
Chapter 17
Monday 9th December 1963
HMS Dreadnought, 74 miles ENE of Lisbon, Portugal
“Down one-hundred,” Commander Simon Collingwood said in a completely normal voice which sounded deafening in the ultra quiet control room of the Royal Navy’s first, and for the foreseeable future, only nuclear powered hunter-killer attack submarine. “On the planes only, if you please.”
“Down bubble,” a voice confirmed.
“Belay trimming fore and aft,” Simon Collingwood added, probably unnecessarily but then when you were Captain of one’s nation’s single most valuable military asset, one was expected to drive it with both care and no little unction. “Sound room. Report please.”
“No new contact, sir.”
Collingwood threw a glance in the direction of his bearded, poker-faced Executive Officer, Lieutenant-Commander Max Forton. The younger man shrugged at him as they both ‘worked’ the problem. The ghost contact – sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes not there at all - might have been a whale; and if they hadn’t been playing cat and mouse with two United States Navy attack boats for most of the last forty-eight hours they’d have ignored it. But...
“Water temperature?” Simon Collingwood asked.
“Possible inconsistent gradient...”
Perhaps, either Dreadnought or the other boat had crossed through an overly saline cross-section of the water column? Or found a minutely warmer or colder deep ocean current to hide above or beneath?
The Diving Officer was softly calling out the depths.
“Three-three-five feet...”
“Three five-oh feet...”
Again, Captain and Executive Officer exchanged thoughtful looks.
“Level the boat at three-seven-five feet please.”
Forty-eight hours ago Collingwood had deliberately advertised HMS Dreadnought’s presence by running fast and deep ahead of the US boats; initially, this had succeeded in driving them some thirty miles north-west and away from northernmost elements of the Hermes Battle Group. For nearly twelve hours he’d hoped they’d gone looking for easier prey, hopefully to play games with the Ark Royal’s anti-submarine screen. However, when they’d reappeared they’d clearly been acting as a team, executing a series of horribly professional and methodical sweeps, driving Dreadnought ever farther south until now she was patrolling only twenty miles north of the eighty by thirty mile rectangle of ocean in which the Hermes Battle Group was currently operating.
Simon Collingwood’s orders were explicit.
...You will avoid contact with surface units of the Enterprise BG but will operate in such a way as to block submarine elements of that force, and if possible other potentially hostile submarines from approaching the northern flank of the Hermes BG. ROE Protocol 1.2 is in effect...
Under her current ‘rules of engagement’ Dreadnought was not authorised to initiate hostile action against elements of the Enterprise Battle Group but she was permitted to defend herself if threatened or attacked.
“Contact bearing two-six-two.”
Then: “Down Doppler.”
Dreadnought was levelling out.
“Range to contact four thousand yards...”
Simon Collingwood stopped himself whistling with surprise.
Two miles. That was too close. Worse, this wasn’t the contact they’d had before; that had been more distant, very slowly moving north to south east.
“Your opinion please, Number One?” The Captain of HMS Dreadnought inquired nonchalantly of his Executive Officer.
Max Forton’s face creased in intense thought.
“I think they’re pissing in the wind, sir.”
Simon Collingwood chuckled lowly. He was a lean, clean-shaven man of only just average height with dark hair that had been receding for some years. He’d been designated as one of three candidates to be Dreadnought’s first Executive Office before the October War had changed everything. It had fallen to him to commission the boat, build a new crew and take Dreadnought, probably, to war. The US Navy had a score of boats like, and in many cases, more advanced and capable than his command; no matter, one could only confront what was before one.
“How are we trimmed, Number One?” He asked, considering his next move and the half-a-dozen after it. Underwater hide and seek was like three dimensional chess.
“If we lose steerage way we’ll start rising by the bow, sir.”
“How badly?”
“We’ll hold level for maybe three or four...”
Thereafter entropy would do the rest.
“Zero revs!” Simon Collingwood ordered. “Silence in the boat, if you please.” This latter was a redundant order; they’d been closed up running silent, mostly running deep for ten hours without a break. A lot of men wouldn’t have slept for twenty-four hours. This wasn’t the time to get careless.
Lieutenant-Commander Max Forton tip-toed around the plot and joined his Captain, leaning on the back of his high chair.
“Those jokers aren’t taking this anywhere near as seriously as we are,” he whispered.
“How would they play it if this was for real?”
The younger man by a handful of years scratched his rust-coloured beard.
“I’d go active,” he decided.
“So would I if I was them. But only if I was absolutely certain I’d got a bead on us. They know we’re here. I don’t think they’ve got us on their plots though. So, if I was them I’d be treating it like a peacetime exercise, making sure my log looks good when my Flag Officer crawls all over it in a month’s time.” This sounded reasonable as far as it went; but nothing stopped the hairs on the back of Simon Collingwood’s neck rising as a cold, cold hand clutched for his heart. “Surface contacts?”
“Negative, sir.”
“What is it, sir?” Max Forton asked, frowning.
Simon Collingwood sighed.
Game over!
“Some you win, some you lose,
Number One.” He hesitated another moment. “Trim the boat, if you please. Make our revs five-zero. Five degrees left rudder, turn onto three-three-zero degrees. Stand down silent running.”
The crisp orders were repeated and acknowledgements flew around the control room.
“Contact astern!” Reported the sound room.
“How close is he?” The Captain of HMS Dreadnought asked, already knowing the answer.
“Almost on top of us, sir. Less than five hundred yards.”
“Send by active ping the following: WELL PLAYED SIR STOP PLEASE KEEP YOUR DISTANCE MESSAGE ENDS.
Simon Collingwood cleared his throat.
He looked around the control room.
“Gentlemen, we must not let that happen again. I suspect the ghost contacts we allowed to distract us were sonar buoys dropped by the Enterprise’s aircraft. Subsequently, one of the boats out there made himself visible so that we believed we had a handle on both hostiles while the other one worked around behind us. When we analyse the plot we shall find that the rate of drift of the sonar buoy contacts approximately correlates to known tidal, current and drift records relative to our movements which we ought to have factored into the plot. No matter how tired we are we must focus, gentlemen. Our foe,” he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘our enemy’, “has learned from the run around we gave him a week or two ago. We must learn from today’s exercise. That is all, resume normal watch keeping stations.”
“Chummy hasn’t replied to our message, sir,” Max Forton remarked.
“No, he won’t.” Not even when he’s stopped rolling around on the deck splitting his sides with mirth. “The nature of the game has changed, Number One. I shall be in my cabin.”
Once in the claustrophobic solitude of his cabin Simon Collingwood shut the hatch at his back. The Captain’s Cabin on HMS Dreadnought was small and pokey but by far the most luxurious berth on the boat.
The two American submarines would cling onto Dreadnought’s skirts like grim death; if war came his command would already been locked in their sights. He understood the game; they understood the game. It wasn’t personal. It was just the way it was. The second part of his short message had communicated that he understood, as they must as brother submariners that death could come with horrible swiftness in their profession. If they had to do their duty, so be it. In the meantime it was his job to wriggle free of the trap they’d sprung with such aplomb. He’d take himself to task for putting his hand in the meat grinder another time; assuming they all lived to tell the tale.
Never forget it is just three dimensional chess.
Always look one move farther ahead than the other fellow...
Simon Collingwood had built his naval career as a technician, one of the new breed of ‘experts’. He’d been posted to the Dreadnought project primarily to oversee the last year of her construction, the commissioning of her propulsion and electronic systems, and to ‘manage’ the start up of her nuclear reactor. Afterwards, he’d have stood down, possibly been assigned to a similar role in the construction of Britain’s second nuclear submarine, HMS Valiant, which was presently a partially formed steel skeleton near to where Dreadnought had been fitting out on the night of the October War. He’d dreamed one day of commanding one of the new nuclear boats; secretly suspected that this was no more than an idle pipedream. Yes, he’d passed the ‘Perisher Test’, the gruelling course that all would be submarine captains in the Royal Navy had to pass; but he’d had no illusions he was a man born to command one of the Navy’s most complicated and inherently dangerous vessels. His progression in the Service had been gradual, and other than in his chosen specialism, electrical and mechanical engineering, he’d never stood out from the crowd, and even now he could think of a dozen men better qualified and better temperamentally fitted to command HMS Dreadnought. However, they were on land or making the best of a bad deal in old-fashioned diesel-electric boats; he was the one who’d found the prize at the bottom of the apple barrel.
Escaping Dreadnought’s two US Navy jailors was his job.
He checked his watch: he’d been brooding some fifteen minutes.
It was time to get back to work.
Chapter 18
Monday 9th December 1963
Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana
Over half the B-52s despatched on strike missions on the night of 27th-28th October 1962 had been lost. The 100th Bomb Group had been formed out of the remnants of units decimated during the October War. Reforming the ‘Bloody 100th’ had been the suggestion of one of General Curtis LeMay’s long-time staffers and in the febrile, jittery aftermath of the war he’d seen moral boosting possibilities in the idea. Like any idea to which Curtis LeMay took a shine he’d driven it forward with the zeal of an angry bull in a china shop.
Normally based at Arnold Air Force Base at Tullahoma, Tennessee, the seventeen operational B-52s of the 2nd and 3rd Bomb Wings of the 100th Bomb Group had been operating out of Barksdale on a routine two-week training rotation. The Chief of Staff of the US Air Force didn’t like his front line Strategic Air Command crews getting either too set in their ways, or too comfortable in their home bases. Complacency was the greatest enemy and the hardest to combat in peace time.
With the Soviet threat if not eliminated, then eradicated for a generation and no significant extant hostile strategic military threat to the North American continent, Curtis LeMay hadn’t been able to prevent the President and his Congressional lap dogs clawing back a massive so called ‘peace dividend’ equivalent to over forty percent of the 1961-62 real dollar spend on defence. Half the Navy had gone straight into mothballs, the regular Army had been reduced to a skeleton of less than two hundred thousand men, and the front line war-fighting order of battle of his Air Force had been reduced by war losses and Capitol Hill gerrymandering to less than a third of its pre-war roster. He’d been forced to scrap or mothball the entire B-47 component of SAC, and pare down the B-52 force to only 188 aircraft organised between five under strength Bomb Groups. Half of all US Air Force Bases in North America had been decommissioned in the last five months. The idiots in Washington didn’t have any inkling how much trouble they were storing up for themselves by prematurely retiring and discarding so many good and true, patriotic Americans. But that was a problem for the future and presently, the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force had a very big, and very immediate problem of his own that neither he, nor anybody else had seen coming and worse, neither he nor anybody else knew what to do about.
Somebody in the Air Force Department in Washington had raised and routed a request for B-52 strikes on Malta and Gibraltar, and somebody at the Pentagon had green-lighted the operations order.
Whoever it had been; it hadn’t been fifty-seven year old Ohio-born General Curtis Emerson LeMay, Chief of Staff since 1961 of the United States Air Force. Which was a problem because the hardcopy teleprinter operations order running to some forty-seven pages bore the imprimatur of his personal authentication code!
“What the fuck is going on here!” He growled at the base commander, whom LeMay had known since the bad old days in Europe. Major-General Phineas ‘Slim’ Babcock had also been with him in India, China and the Pacific, and for most of the last ten years he’d been his go to ‘operations guy’ whenever a SAC Air Wing failed to measure up to his exacting standards. LeMay had never seen his old friend so ashen-faced, so mortified; while Babcock, who’d seen the Chief of Staff blow his top too often to be easily impressed, had never seen him this coldly angry and this shaken. “Where’d this shit come from, Slim?”
Babcock stared at the sheaf of papers the other man was brandishing.
The base commander who owed the handle ‘Slim’ to his long ago West Point days when he’d been a ferociously bear-like linebacker. He’d been a big man in his youth and over the years he’d beefed up more than somewhat so that nowadays his huge frame was threatening to visibly sag beneath the accumulated layers of flesh and muscle.
“Jeez,” he
protested. “Don’t you think I didn’t think it was screwiest thing I’d ever seen in my life? I was straight on the horn to the Air Force Department. They said this thing came from the top; the Commander-in-Chief wanted it done and anybody who didn’t like it could resign the Service. Then I talked to your new guy Seedorf...”
“Who the fuck is Seedorf?” General Curtis LeMay exploded, threatening to come across the desk to physically assault Babcock.
“Larry Seedorf. Colonel Larry Seedorf, the guy you brought onto the staff to re-draft the war plans...”
“I don’t know any Colonel Seedorf.” Curtis LeMay didn’t think his old buddy was lying to him. Why would he? Jesus H Christ! He and Slim had flown B-24s to Regensburg and most of the worst places on Earth a man could take a heavy bomber in 1943. Slim Babcock would put his hand in the fire if his President asked him. Shit, JFK wouldn’t have needed to ask him twice, either! “How many times have you talked to this Seedorf character?”
“Er, twice, sir. Once to confirm the rotation schedule when the two 2nd Bomb Group wings were rotated out to Arnold AFB a week ahead of program to test 100th Bomb Group’s readiness to relocate at short notice...”
Curtis LeMay slumped back into his chair.
The orders altering the rotation schedule hadn’t come across his desk either.
Or if it had he sure as Hell hadn’t authorised it.
The truly frightening thing about this situation was he had no idea how many people would have had to have been involved in this to make it work. Other than that number would have had to have run into scores. Dozens just at the Air Force Department and at the Pentagon, for sure. Granted, some of those involved would have gone along with it rather than make waves, but others had to have known it was a crock of shit. They’d have had to be persuaded to sit on their hands; or genuinely convinced that it was suddenly the policy of the United States Government to mount sneak attacks on its oldest surviving allies. Jesus, every way he looked at it this thing just got worse... A small core of conspirators – traitors – must have spent months planning... Even then, how the fuck had they got away with it?
