The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Thank you for trying, Frau Klason,’ he replied, powering down the computer and shutting the lid. ‘I didn’t expect anything, to be honest with you. Most of these are football hooligans. The people who attacked your husband are in another league.’ He stood up and shook her hand. ‘I hope the doctors can do something for him.’

  Only if they can work miracles here, thought Nina Klason. Only if they can work miracles.

  HMS Truculent

  Arthur Harris was lunching in the senior rates’ mess. In the corner of the small, beige-panelled space a couple of chiefs were looking through a box of video cassettes, trying to decide which films would bear watching for the umpteenth time this patrol.

  Harris had resigned himself to the idea of playing no further part in the ‘Russians on the Rocks’ mystery, as the affair was being referred to on board. The boat had been due to take in a broadcast at six that morning. He’d slept through until nine, but if there’d been a follow-up he was sure he would have heard about it.

  There was a different atmosphere on board today. An end of term feel, yet one the men were reluctant to grasp. The operational phase was over, but it would be three weeks before they saw the lights of Plymouth again. Meanwhile the weekend lay ahead. Many of those with partners coming out to Crete were suffering from nerves. Sitting beside Harris was one of the ‘back aft’ chiefs, a nuclear reactor technician.

  ‘It’s like starting again every time I get back with the wife,’ he complained.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Harris affirmed, living his small private lie.

  ‘They say being married’s like riding a bike. You don’t forget how to do it. But each time you get back on top you ask yourself if anything’s changed. Any bits broken or worn out. Anybody been oiling it while you’ve been away . . .’ The chief picked up his empty plate. ‘Shouldn’t have fucking said that,’ he muttered, returning it to the serving hatch. ‘Got meself all worried now.’

  Harris drank down the remains of his coffee and stared absently into the corner. He would miss this companionship when he got back to Cheltenham. The only regular company he had at home was his mother, whom he’d moved down from the north after his father died.

  The sonar chief Brian Smedley dropped into the chair opposite with a plate of spaghetti, which he began to devour.

  ‘You stopping in Crete before heading home?’ Smedley asked, tomato sauce sticking to his lips.

  ‘No. Got a flight booked for Saturday night. The CTs’ job is over.’ No need for the GCHQ team to stay on board for the long underwater transit to the UK. ‘Looking forward to Souda?’

  ‘Not much, to be frank,’ Smedley confided. ‘Have to behave meself now there’s a spy on board.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘That pretty-boy lad with the panda eyes.’

  ‘I’m not with you. You mean Griffiths?’

  ‘Yes. Bloody Griffiths. It were my daughter he got pregnant, the dirty little rascal. I’m gonna be his bloody father-in-law in a few months’ time. Can’t have him reporting back to the wife.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Harris breathed, trying not to smile. ‘Cramping your style a bit then.’

  ‘Just this once, yes. Won’t happen again. The coxswain’s getting him transferred to another boat.’ Smedley stuffed his face with another forkful. ‘Mind you, we mightn’t even get to Crete, the way things are going.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ Harris’s hopes soared suddenly. Perhaps they were going Russian-hunting again after all.

  ‘We detected a bloody submarine this morning. Went into the ultra-quiet state. Didn’t you hear the pipe?’

  ‘Must’ve slept through it,’ he mumbled disconsolately.

  ‘Just before six, when we were going to PD for the broadcast. Had to go deep again. We thought it was one of the Yugoslav boats at first. Turned out to be an Italian way out of his box.’

  ‘So what happened to the broadcast?’ Harris asked, his hopes rising again.

  ‘Lost it. Had to stay deep. Next access time is about now.’

  They both glanced at the depth repeater on the mess bulkhead.

  ‘Thirty metres,’ Smedley nodded. ‘We’re on the way up again.’

  Commander Anthony Talbot nodded with satisfaction as the sound room reported no new sonar contacts.

  Earlier, when the first trace of that other submarine had been picked up, the control room had gone electric. He’d marched into the sound room to listen to the rustling noises that Chief Smedley assured him was the water flow round a submerged hull. With no NATO boats scheduled in the area, he’d had to assume it was a potential enemy which they needed to identify. They’d diverted from their course south to track it. From his own point of view he’d have been delighted to have missed the run ashore in Souda Bay if it meant a bit of action. For the most part, this mission had been tediously routine and it was his last patrol before a staff job ashore. But when the ‘enemy’ boat’s signature was identified as an Italian Sauro class submarine, the relief on the faces of the crew told him that if he’d cancelled the weekend’s leave he might have had a mutiny on his hands.

  ‘Twenty metres.’ The planesman had shouted the depth every ten metres as they came slowly up.

  ‘Keep eighteen metres,’ Talbot ordered. He got to his feet, standing behind the ship control panel. ‘Revolutions for three knots.’

  As the submarine’s fin grazed the surface of the sea the boat began to wallow, the planesman pushing forward to decrease the ascent angle, then pulling back sharply to stabilise the response. Riding the bubble, they called it.

  A red figure 18 appeared on the digital depth gauge and stayed there.

  ‘Depth steady at eighteen metres, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, ship control. Raise the search periscope.’

  Watch officer Lieutenant Harvey Styles grabbed the handles as the shiny tube slid upwards. When it locked in place he walked the sight all the way round.

  ‘Nothing visual, sir.’

  ‘Raise the WT mast,’ Talbot ordered. Two minutes to go to the broadcast.

  The periscope video camera showed a grey morning up above, with large waves splashing foam over the optics. The boat rolled uncomfortably. Submariners’ stomachs weren’t used to surface motion. They’d want to go deep again the moment the broadcast was in.

  Talbot noticed Arthur Harris hovering by the chart table, waiting to know if there was a reaction to the recording they’d transmitted twelve hours earlier. A man obsessed by a voice.

  In the W/T room LED displays flickered as bursts of data were sucked in from the satellite 24,000 miles above them.

  ‘Broadcast reception successful, sir,’ the operator announced a few seconds later.

  The signals officer broke off a strip of punched tape containing the day’s code and fed it into the reader. A few seconds later the dot-matrix printers perched on top of the equipment racks purred into life. The officer fingered the leading edge of the paper to read the heading.

  TO HMS TRUCULENT.

  FOR THE CAPTAIN’S EYES ONLY.

  Arthur Harris stood by the chart table staring down the passageway leading aft. The W/T office was off it. He noted the rating emerge with his clipboard and followed him with his eyes as he approached the captain. Talbot took the sheets of signals. He read the heading, then ordered Styles to take the boat to thirty metres again. Frowning, he walked towards his cabin.

  Once inside with the curtain drawn across the doorway, Talbot sat at his tiny desk and began to read. As he did so, his heart sank. Then almost simultaneously he experienced a surge of excitement.

  The shore leave at Souda Bay had been cancelled. They were to return to the waters near the island of Lastovo and prepare for a special forces mission. There’d be action after all.

  He sat quietly for a moment, thinking. Selling the idea to the crew would have to be done with care and compassion. Expressions of regret over the loss of leave, rather than being too gung-ho about their new task.

  After a
couple of minutes he stood up and returned to the control room, pausing by the navigation table. He looked at the chart, measuring their distance from Lastovo with a pair of dividers.

  Lieutenant Harvey Styles came and stood beside him.

  ‘We’re going back,’ Talbot told him. ‘On full power.’

  Styles pursed his lips but didn’t say anything. In a few moments the captain would need to make a pipe, a task he didn’t envy him.

  Talbot saw Arthur Harris standing by the door to the trials shack. ‘You win, Chief Harris,’ he grinned. ‘We’re going back for your Russians.’

  Arthur Harris allowed himself a smile.

  Vienna

  12.25 hrs

  As Julie Jackman walked from the Marriott Hotel to the café where she’d agreed to meet Sam, she was in a state of perplexity. Stuffed into her shoulder bag was a copy of that morning’s Daily Chronicle, bought at the stall in the hotel lobby.

  The midday sun beat down strongly, but she hardly noticed it. After a night of bad dreams, she’d woken this morning in a cold sweat at the thought of what she’d agreed to do. Deciding that delaying the dreaded phone call would only make it harder, she’d rung Max at the clinic soon after nine to tell him she wasn’t sure she wanted to end their relationship after all. Sounding remarkably unsurprised by her change of heart, he’d suggested they meet for a drink in the late evening ‘to talk things through’.

  Julie had agreed to set up the meeting with Max partly because she owed it to Sam after making such a mess of his life, but more importantly because in the restless small hours she’d come to the conclusion she was definitely falling in love with him. But now as she approached the café everything was up in the air again. This latest article in the Chronicle painted him as a thoroughly suspect character, a man just as untrustworthy as all the others she’d fallen for over the years.

  When Sam saw Julie walk into the café, her appearance touched him. Her face was ashen with worry. Her glasses had slipped a little, giving her the forlorn look of a fresher student still trying to work out where the library was. She was dressed in a pale grey T-shirt and her dark trousers were baggy with cargo pockets. He felt an urge to hug her, until he reminded himself of the havoc she’d caused him.

  As she approached the table, he stood up. It was an old habit from his Navy days.

  ‘Hello,’ he smiled.

  She nodded a greeting but avoided his eyes.

  ‘Is it fixed with Max?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Tonight at ten,’ she whispered, putting her shoulder bag down on the floor. ‘Sort of.’

  She cast a glance around the café, looking anywhere but at Sam. The place was large and open and only half full. There were hat stands in the corners, big windows onto the street and black-jacketed waiters ignoring the customers.

  The ‘sort of’ had worried him. Sam saw the newspaper poking from Julie’s bag and guessed why she was reluctant to meet his gaze. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I gather your media friends have been having fun again.’ He spoke aggressively, deciding to confront the problem head-on.

  Julie rounded on him. ‘They’re not my friends!’ She didn’t like the way he was staring at her. Not the bruised look of someone cruelly misrepresented in the media, but the calculating glare of a manipulator. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, as if to sharpen the focus of this different view she was having of him. She straightened her back. His catty gibe about her relationship with the press had decided things for her.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she announced, returning his glare. ‘I won’t be seeing Max this evening after all.’

  Sam gritted his teeth. He should have expected something like this. The woman was as dependable as a chocolate teapot. He waved an arm at the waiter and ordered two beers without bothering to enquire what Julie wanted to drink.

  ‘May I ask why you’ve decided that?’ he demanded, when the waiter was gone.

  ‘I have to return to London this afternoon,’ she insisted stonily, her resolve strengthened by his chauvinism over the drinks order. ‘I spoke to the lab an hour ago and they need me urgently.’ She lifted her chin, daring him to challenge her veracity.

  ‘Your ticket’s for tomorrow,’ Sam countered, determined to make her change her mind again. ‘It’s an unchangeable reservation.’

  ‘They’re paying for a new one,’ she retorted. It was a lie. All the lab had said when she’d spoken to them that morning was that they would welcome her back as soon as she could make it.

  ‘And why do they need your presence so urgently?’ he prodded. ‘I thought you’d been suspended.’

  Her face reddened. ‘Because of the Brussels virus. They’re working flat out to identify it and develop a vaccine.’

  ‘Brussels virus?’ Sam asked, slow to make the connection.

  ‘You must have read about it. It’s been in the papers. Two EU officials ill with a brain disease nobody’s ever seen before.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes, I’ve read about it. But the story I saw only mentioned one official.’

  ‘There’s been another taken ill this morning. A woman – the European Commissioner for Racial Equality, or something . . .’

  Sam felt a buzz of alarm. Something very nasty was developing, making it more important than ever to discover whether there was a Jackman connection.

  ‘If the problem’s in Brussels why’s your lab involved?’

  ‘Because Professor Norton is big in genetic engineering. The theory they’re working on is that someone’s combined rabies with another virus so that it gets into the brain faster.’

  Combining viruses . . . Wasn’t that the same as viral mutation, the subject Dr Max Schenk gave a paper on a year ago? Sam rubbed his forehead. ‘Explain that bit, would you?’

  ‘Human skin is an effective barrier to most viruses,’ she explained. ‘But when there’s a break in it – a cut, or whatever – then rabies can enter. It gets into a nerve fibre and makes its way up to the brain, moving very slowly. It can take weeks before it gets there and destroys cells. But combining rabies with another infection which reaches the brain through the blood instead of a nerve means it could be got to work within a couple of days, before any vaccine has a chance to fight it. That’s the theory, anyway.’

  ‘Devilish,’ Sam murmured. ‘What sort of skills would a person need to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somebody who specialised in genetic engineering, I imagine. Viral mutation, all that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Someone like Max Schenk.’

  Julie’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she gasped.

  ‘Is it? We don’t know what your father shipped out of Russia, Julie. Nuclear, biological . . . All we know is that the whole shipment was shrouded in secrecy, with a cover story floated saying it was red mercury.’

  ‘But Max never met my father. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Ask him, Julie. This evening. It’s important.’

  Julie felt her resolve crumbling, but she was still furious with him. The nub of the issue was that he hadn’t been straight with her. Not at all. Not when they’d first met. Not when he’d come to get the letter in Woodbridge. Not last night. All this time he’d pretended to be someone else and she wasn’t going to stand for it.

  ‘Look. I know it’s my fault all this stuff about you has come out in the press, but what the hell am I supposed to believe?’ she blazed, pulling the Chronicle from her bag and slapping it on the table. ‘I mean, it turns out you’re not called Simon Foster at all but Sam Packer. And it says here your father spied for the Russians, for heaven’s sake! And your sister seems to hate you so much she’s prepared to tell the whole world what a two-faced rat you are.’

  Sam didn’t answer. He sensed that she didn’t want to believe what had been written about him, but convincing her wouldn’t be easy.

  ‘I mean, I just don’t know what to make of you,’ Julie went on, her fears about him pouring out. ‘I . . . in my own life I work with
normal people who don’t have to lie about what they do. But you . . . I mean, first you lied to me about being a businessman – okay I never really believed you on that one. But now I find that your name was a lie too and that you come from a long line of liars and cheats.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Sam protested. ‘If you think bad blood is passed from generation to generation like red hair, then you’d better worry about your own salvation.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she conceded, ‘we all know about my father. What I don’t know about is you, Simon – Sam. You’re asking me to spy on Max. But who’s it for? What are you, for God’s sake? You’ve got to be straight with me.’

  Sam knew he’d have to bend the rules. Knew he would have to open the door into his life. Just a crack.

  ‘Okay. My real name is Sam Packer, and I do work for the government. And that stuff you’ve read this morning about my father having been recruited by the Russians has some truth in it. But you’ve got to understand there are many, many things I simply can’t talk about.’

  ‘Why not? Everybody else is,’ she goaded.

  ‘There are laws . . . Official Secrets Acts.’

  Julie bit her lip. She wanted to believe in him. Still wanted him, but she had to be able to trust.

  ‘There is something I need to know, Sim––’ She shook her head at her confusion. A wisp of hair settled on her lips and she brushed it away.

  The waiter came with the beers and surlily suggested they order food while he was there. They chose omelettes and salad.

  Julie waited until he was out of earshot then repeated her demand. ‘There’s something I must know if I’m going to help you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The full truth about why you were in Africa with my father.’

  Sam felt her eyes bore into him. He remembered Waddell’s warning not to give interviews.

  ‘You need to know? Or is it your friends in the press?’

  Julie closed her eyes momentarily, wondering what she had to do to convince him she wasn’t in league with the media any more. She took in a deep breath.