by Andy McNab
Jack rested against the ladder. Now it was Gabriel’s turn to attempt the flip-flop challenge. We were in something like a highly polished service corridor or an efficiently run office: hardly a whisper, apart from the movement of bodies, the odd blip, and unhurried, businesslike intercom messages.
Tellingly, the place was filled with white light. It must have been daytime in the real world.
The high-tech in the control centre put NASA to shame. The crew studied their consoles, not remotely interested in what was being brought aboard. We were just cargo to be taken somewhere. They already knew all they needed to know. Everything was so intimate on a boat: they’d have been told exactly what was going on here, and why.
They all wore tracksuits and trainers. Uniforms were for the return to port, the parade on deck, the whole navy thing to make their supreme leader happy and their mums proud. At sea, it was all about the balance of life, and the expertise of the personnel. The stakes were too high to play it any other way. When it came down to it, the boat and its crew existed for only one reason: to take the world’s most sophisticated weapons systems for regular swims, undetected before they launched and destroyed half the planet.
These Dolgorukiy-class subs were multipurpose. As well as torpedoes and all the traditional stuff, they carried a whole range of state-of-the-art killing machinery. News reports constantly displayed two dozen tubes full of Cruise missiles, ready to be unleashed at any moment, and cohorts of Russian politicians saying how wonderful it was that they were once more major players on the world stage.
The official ceremony raising the Russian Navy colours on this new class of submarine had taken place in 2013. The Russian deputy prime minister had gone on TV and announced, ‘Tremble, bourgeoisie! You’re done with!’
Anna had laughed like a drain, but the PM had had a point.
These craft had come a long, long way since the Kursk, which had sunk to the bottom of the sea when a torpedo exploded on board in 2000. Twenty-three of the crew survived the blast, but then made what the media called the ultimate sacrifice. In other words, they died slowly and painfully of hypothermia and asphyxiation because the Russian head-shed were too proud to accept any outside help.
Anna had always maintained that there was more to it than just an unhappy accident. An American sub had been in the area when the Kursk went down.
We were led away by a couple of crew members so young they could barely grow bum-fluff. Their skin was dull and zitty after however long it was they had been deprived of natural light. They weren’t overly friendly, but they weren’t pointing pistols at us, and that was the main thing.
We passed along a narrow passageway lined with pipes sending water here, electricity there, then another with nothing much at all, until we came to a compartment the size of a walk-in closet. Piles of blankets were stacked in one corner. The door was locked behind us, but I didn’t mind. We were dry; we were comfortable; we were warm. Fantastic.
The door opened again and brought more good news – four white plastic vacuum flasks, mugs, and a couple of plates piled high with something like pitta bread. The fact was, no matter who you were or where you came from, military all around the world didn’t have any problem translating ‘We’re cold and hungry.’ It was almost a common language.
Jack gave a very gracious thank-you. The young guys nodded and closed us down once more.
Gabriel had already taken his leg off. Now he unscrewed the nearest flask. ‘Soup. Great.’
He passed around the mugs. I dipped my pitta into mint pea soup. The igloo seemed to belong to a different world.
I was about to get Jack’s attention and launch into: ‘See? I told you. This time tomorrow we’ll all be laughing about this shit.’ But I thought better of it: that was meant to be for the three of us.
Rio opted for a chocolate appetizer. He kept his voice as low as the boat’s gentle electric hum. ‘Where the fuck now?’
The intercom made a series of announcements, which seemed to be met with a flurry of calm, measured and efficient activity in the passageway outside. I felt the nose tilt into the beginnings of a dive.
‘Where now?’ Jack looked darkly at Rio. ‘There’s your answer. Onwards and downwards.’
My soup and pitta were finished. I held up my Alenka bar. ‘We’re warm, we’ve been fed, which is a lot better than we were a couple of hours ago. Everything after that is a bonus.’
Jack thought about it and gave me a hint of a smile. ‘Men wanted for hazardous journey.’ His accent was pure Eton. ‘“Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”’
Rio didn’t have a clue. ‘What the fuck you on about?’
‘Shackleton. His recruitment ad in The Times.’
Rio nodded. His face may have been covered with soup and chocolate, but he knew something about it. ‘Yeah, but all that lot got back safe, didn’t they?’
Jack didn’t want to pursue the Shackleton theme. He had something else on his mind. ‘What was it you didn’t want to talk about in the wagon, Nick? What were you three on about?’
Gabriel waited for my answer, but Rio jumped straight in. ‘We should tell him. No harm in it now, is there?’
I placed Stalin’s granddaughter carefully on my blanket. At least she was still smiling at me.
As I unwrapped the silver foil, I ran through where Stedman’s cash had been supposed to come from, why the deal had gone wrong, and why Ponytail and Half Bear had got dead at the airport.
‘What? You three killed them, at the fucking airport? What happens when we get back?’
The other two exchanged a smile and slowly shook their heads.
Jack clicked. ‘Ah, yeah. Doesn’t really matter now, does it?’
I decided I couldn’t face the chocolate, and put it down beside my duvet-jacket pillow. ‘There’s something else you all need to know. The reason we’re here, the reason the others aren’t … It’s my fault. I knew what was happening but I didn’t tell you, didn’t give you the option to back out.’
They all stopped eating and drinking and stared at me as I told them I’d lied about the Cauldwell connection, that I’d known something was going on at Barneo, but was really just thinking of myself, that I’d come to realize I wanted this trip as much as any of them. And I told them that, when we were on the ice, I’d become pretty sure I knew what the Quislings were doing, what Rune was up to with the so-called monitors.
I explained what Munnelly had told me, and what was actually happening up there – and why Russian submarines were torpedoing American research vessels.
And, finally, I told them that I was sorry. I’d fucked up big-time.
There was no reaction as they thought about it and took everything in.
Gabriel was the first to spark up. ‘So? What the fuck? I would have done the same.’ He looked around. ‘We all would have, no?’
Jack nodded vigorously. ‘I would so have done the same.’
Rio agreed. ‘Yeah, count me in. And it’s not every day you get to help kick off the Third World War.’
Jack lay down, and we all took his cue. We started to pull the covers over us as we tried not to think about what might be happening up above us in the real world.
Rio must have had a thought about the substance of his joke and summed up the situation: ‘Shit.’
I lay with my head on my duvet, covered with two soft nylon blankets, not sure how I felt about their reaction. Maybe they really would have done the same as me, but that didn’t make me feel completely at ease. I felt like I should have been made to feel shit, feel some of that guilt I’d talked Will out of.
75
I woke to the sounds of the intercom dishing out a string of monotone instructions, but that wasn’t what had broken my sleep. I could feel motion. We were still moving forwards, but now we were also moving up.
The others stirred, responding to the same sensation.
Gabriel was sitting bo
lt upright, trying to listen to the announcement, as if he could interpret. ‘For fuck’s sake, man. Is that Russian, or has the guy burned his tongue?’
‘You really complaining about his accent, you oatmeal savage?’ Rio pushed his way up onto his arse and mimicked talking into a mic. ‘Hello, Pot … Hello, Pot, do you read me? Kettle calling …’
Jack checked his watch. ‘Shit, it’s been over sixteen hours.’
It was then I realized we’d gone to red light. It was dark o’clock in the real world above us.
He levered himself up. ‘Where do you think we are?’
‘The Northern Fleet is based in Severomorsk. I guess we could have come that far south. These things can shift.’
I heard muffled voices outside the door. It swung open to reveal the return of the bum-fluff crew. The bad news was, they hadn’t brought food.
They beckoned us. ‘Come, come.’
Behind them were a couple of not-so-young, not-so-slight guys, presumably detailed to ensure we did as we were told.
This shit had just got serious.
I picked my half-melted Alenka bar off the floor, shoved it down my neck, pulled on my duvet and helped Jack sort out his leg. Rio was doing the same for Gabriel. Nobody said a word. We didn’t need to. The boat had levelled off. We all knew we were entering a new phase, and we were all thinking the same thing. Rio’s refrain: What the fuck now?
The lads hurried us up, which they hadn’t done sixteen hours ago. We were soon shuffling our way back towards the ladder into the conning-tower arch. At the top, we were told to put on our boots.
Another game-changer? Had the effort to keep us alive after all that we had seen and touched now been dumped – like everything else – at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean?
One of the crew opened the hatch. A diver was waiting for us.
We might have red light down here, but it was light out there, even though the sky above us was a dull, dark grey. We were still well within the Arctic Circle.
It was clearly a good thing we were still breathing, but the effort it had taken for this boat to get us to wherever we were now wasn’t because of some brotherhood of the sea. There was a plan. And the problem with other people’s plans was that they hardly ever turned out to be the best ones.
As I came out onto the deck in front of the conning tower, the water was choppy; whitecaps crested the waves. I could hear them bouncing against the hull below us.
The diver gripped me to keep me steady, and helped me as I sorted out my feet. It seemed we weren’t about to be thrown overboard. I tugged up my hood and pulled the cord as tightly as I could around my face.
I could now see that platforms of ice dotted the black ocean.
Then I saw a small mass of white light. Maybe three or four Ks away. It was always difficult to judge distance at sea. Well, it was for me, anyway. But I was definitely not imagining it.
Jack was next out. I grabbed him and helped him, made sure he hung onto the rail.
‘What do you think, Nick?’
‘I think we’re not in the Motherland. Otherwise why not just park up normally? But we’re definitely south. The ice is floating, not solid. And the weather: shit. That’s what we left, mate – shit weather coming up from the south. The Russians have islands in the Arctic as well. They’ve got archipelagos. Maybe they can’t park up at them. I don’t know.’
Rio was next out and needed extra help to make sure his good arm was secure. Jack did his hood up for him as he held on with his arm. ‘I hope that fucking scabby Jock gets up here next. I want him to suffer.’
His eyes narrowed and I followed his gaze. In the gloom, I could see the dark shape of a boat manoeuvring between the ice floes at high speed. It was coming towards us.
Rio turned to me, making sure I could see his face. ‘Mate, what Gabriel said before, about you thinking you fucked up? Really, all of us would have done the same. Whatever happens next, fuck it.’
The boat was alongside us in seconds, a big RIB with three Yamaha 75s on the back, and a white but battered and grimy fibre-glass cover as an improvised wheelhouse. It wasn’t military. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But if it meant we were about to get on land, it was good for only two reasons worth thinking about. Because it meant we had a chance to escape and make distance.
There were three people onboard, and they threw out ropes to the divers, who lashed the RIB to the boat, then lowered their gangway onto the smaller area of exposed decking at the rear.
The divers pointed downwards. It was time for us to go. I went first as the RIB swayed in the swell. As I reached the bottom, I was grabbed to steady me, then pushed onboard. I sat on the fibre-glass bench at the front by the bow.
Above me, at the top of the conning tower, stood the same small collection of men who’d watched us board the previous day. They were busy scanning the sea with binos. Their body language said they wanted out of there fast.
The rest of the team gradually assembled, and we huddled at the front of the cubby as the RIB moved off at a speed that could only have been achieved by somebody who knew where they were going and what they were doing.
The bow bounced up and smacked down on each wave. All we could do was accept the hard landing, try to stabilize ourselves, then brace ourselves for the next.
At first, I didn’t give a fuck. I doubted any of us did. We were all looking through the old, scratched, frosted Perspex windows, at the ribbon of white light along the coastline starting to grow, and then at the shapes of buildings as they emerged: harsh, angular industrial structures.
And then, higher up, we could see bigger buildings. Apartment blocks? Somehow it made me feel better. There was habitation.
I could see Rio checking out the decay along the jagged, rocky coastline – hundreds of metres of rusted, collapsing conveyor belts that led from the buildings towards the sea. He was muttering to himself, ‘Where the fuck are we?’
Gabriel turned to him and gave a shrug. It was then that I spotted a ceremonial plinth, with a head at the top, looking towards the sea.
It could only be Lenin.
‘Fuck,’ I muttered. ‘I know.’
76
Barentsburg
Latitude: 78.0820 North
Longitude: 14.1867 East
We weren’t in military hands any more, or at least not overtly, that was for sure. This island belonged to a NATO country. Not that that had meant much to the submariners behind us, or to the Russian special forces who had been covertly recceing Longyearbyen airport.
So who were the RIB crew if they weren’t military? Police? No. The Russians wouldn’t just hand us over to the police. We’d seen too much. We could say too much. Maybe part of their intelligence service. I guessed we’d find out sooner or later who wanted us in Barentsburg, and why.
We obviously weren’t heading for the harbour – I could see its rectangular concrete breakwaters off to the right, jutting out of the sea. We were heading to the left, away from the lights, towards a stretch of beach towered over by some massive rocks. The closer we got, the higher they became.
I could see the waves breaking on them with an endless sequence of big white explosions. Sixty or seventy metres from the beach, the RIB slowed suddenly, the engine just ticking over as the cox manoeuvred us in the swell.
There was a reception committee on the shoreline, standing by the silhouette of a vehicle. By the time we were twenty out, I could see that four bodies were waiting for us. The cox gave it some revs, then cut the engines altogether. He lifted the props and locked them horizontal as we coasted in. The vehicle now came clearly into view: the blue UAZ four-wheel-drive minibus.
The shore crew were careful not to get their boots wet. They waited as the RIB rode a wave in and beached itself, like a killer whale going for a seal, then grabbed the bow line and pulled it onto the shingle as the water receded.
We were ushered almost silently off the front of the RIB and onto the shingle. Rio turned back and g
rabbed hold of Gabriel to make sure that when he came down he didn’t fuck his stump up any more than he had already.
There may have been a dull, grey light, but the lack of voices at first and now the low mumblings made it feel as if we were fucking about in the middle of the night. Maybe it was.
Two of the reception committee made sure we weren’t going anywhere as the other two pushed the RIB back into the sea. The crew paddled out far enough to be able to lower and reactivate the outboards, then vanished into the gloom.
All four bodies corralled and herded us towards the minibus.
Jack closed up on me. ‘Where are we? How do you know?’
‘Barentsburg. Me and Stedman?’
I could see what the other two were thinking because it had crossed my mind as well. Payback time for the two bodies at the airport … ‘Lads, we’re about to find out.’
We were shoved into the back of the UAZ.
A fifth guy was already in the wagon, at the wheel. I recognized him. He’d ferried me and Stedman to the heli with the Owl and Munnelly. He did a double-take, then turned his full attention to the windscreen. He clearly didn’t want anything to do with whatever shit was happening behind him.
The minibus answered one question for me: the dashboard clock showed 03.30.
I sat back. It didn’t do much to help our situation, but it felt good to be aware of something.
Rio gave me a nod. They all knew not to talk, just to comply, whatever the five wanted us to do. It wasn’t rocket science. They were worker bees, doing what they’d been ordered to do. If we resisted, they’d fight back. They had to make sure we were delivered.
The tyre-chains clattered on the ice as we lurched up the track, away from the beach and onto the high ground.
The vehicle slid off to the side a couple of times, the driver correcting with aggressive hand turns and lots of revs. Instead of going right and into the built-up area where Lenin lived, we went left into the land of industrial decay, past the rusting mine wheels and the other relics of happier times. Even the snow was grey in this part of town, and everything was covered with it – the derelict tin buildings, the sunken wooden structures, and the featureless blocks that might have been airlifted in from East Berlin on a slow day.
