‘What was the delay?’ Craig asked me.
‘They were discussing the order.’
‘The targeting? East Berlin?’
I nodded.
‘That seemed weird to me,’ said Craig. ‘But they decided to go ahead?’
There were two missile techs near us, who could easily hear what we were saying. I lowered my voice to just above a whisper. ‘Lars objected.’
‘He did?’
‘Yes. He said he thought the order might be an error. They had given us no context. East Berlin didn’t make sense. Only three missiles didn’t make sense. The fact it was the same target package as the exercise they gave us a couple of weeks ago didn’t make sense.’
‘I get what he’s saying,’ said Craig. ‘What did the captain say?’
‘He thought about it. Said we go ahead.’
‘And the XO?’
‘Concurred.’
Craig frowned. He didn’t look as if he agreed with that conclusion. ‘OK,’ he said with a sigh.
He paused as an instruction came through the intercom from the conn. ‘The firing order will be one, nine, two,’ he announced to his team over the missile control centre circuit.
‘Lars took a swing at the captain,’ I said. ‘With a wrench. Could have killed him. He was trying to kill him.’
‘What!’
The missile tech in the seat next to Craig, a petty officer named Morgan, glanced up at me, shocked. But everyone on the boat would know what had just happened in the control room soon enough.
‘He was stopped,’ I said. ‘I stopped him. Now he’s under arrest.’
‘I bet he is. So he cracked?’
I nodded. But as I did so, I wasn’t sure that Lars had cracked. And I knew I hadn’t explained my own role to Craig entirely accurately.
The minutes ticked by. The missile department was a good team. We worked well together. We had practiced this countless times.
This was going to happen.
The missile control centre lurched and tilted as the submarine rose toward launch depth of one hundred and fifty feet.
As I leafed through the checklists in the launch manuals and played my part in the dozens of procedures required to ready the missiles, to check and double check the targeting, my mind was divided in two. One half was concentrating on what I was doing, what I had been trained to do.
The other half was thinking about what the consequences were.
And I knew I wasn’t alone. The team appeared to be entirely focused on their job. But I could tell from the tension in the shoulders of those missile techs hunched over their instruments and in the sneaked glances between one crew member and another, especially those whom I knew were close buddies, that they were all thinking of what was about to happen, what might be happening at that very moment.
The New London Submarine Base would be on the Soviet target list. It was unlikely that families would be evacuated in time. So every crew member with a wife would probably lose her that day, lose their children.
Maybe they would be the lucky ones, dying instantly in a thermonuclear explosion, rather than slowly from radiation poisoning.
The world had finally gone mad.
Or had it? There was a chance, a slim chance perhaps, that Lars was right. That despite the Soviet leadership’s paranoia, the doctrine of Mutual Assured Deterrence was holding. That the EAM we had received was just an enormous screw-up.
Suddenly it was clear to me. If the launch order was genuine, we were already involved in a nuclear war or soon would be. A war no one would win. The Alexander Hamilton’s participation would make no difference one way or another.
But if the launch message was an error? Then what we did would make a very great deal of difference.
This was a problem with only one correct answer. And Lars had found it.
I heard Craig talking into his headset next to me. ‘Conn, weapons. Three minutes to 1SQ.’
I glanced over to the fire control console. There were sixteen columns, one for each missile, but only three were lit up. The bottom four lights were labelled 1SQ, DENOTE, PREPARE and AWAY. All four buttons shone red. Soon, one by one, they would turn to green. The DENOTE and PREPARE launch phases took less than sixty seconds, during which the outer hatch of each missile was opened to the sea one by one. When the AWAY button turned green the missiles would be in the air.
A digital readout above the panel counted down to an estimate of when all three missiles would be spun up. Two minutes and fifty seconds.
Driscoll’s voice came over the 1-MC, echoing throughout the submarine. ‘This is the captain. Estimated time to 1SQ three minutes. Prepare for missile launch.’
‘Craig?’ I stood close to him, my voice low. I addressed him as ‘Craig’, not ‘Weps’.
‘Yes?’
‘That target package makes no sense, right?’
Craig turned to me. ‘Someone in NMCC must think it makes sense.’
‘There is a chance it’s an error, don’t you think?’
‘Hey, Bill. We only have ninety seconds to 1SQ. You said the captain and the XO discussed this. You and I have to obey orders.’
I glanced at the safe, positioned right above Craig between the fire control and the launch control consoles. ‘You don’t have to open that.’
Craig’s eyes darted to the combination lock and then back to me. He was hesitating.
‘If you don’t open it, and you refuse to tell anyone else the combination, then the birds won’t fly.’
Craig closed his eyes. Then he opened them. Doubt was replaced by determination. ‘Lieutenant Guth. We have our orders. You will follow them, as will I.’
‘Craig?’ I pleaded.
‘Back to your station, Lieutenant Guth.’ Craig grabbed the intercom.
I went back to my post. I glanced at the panel. The missiles would be spun up in less than a minute.
Then the captain would give Craig permission to fire and he would open the safe.
Lars’s words came back to me. You can stop a nuclear war if you shoot him. In the head. Because the captain’s head was where the combination to the safe in his stateroom was stored.
It was too late to stop the captain fetching his launch keys from the safe in his stateroom. The only way now to prevent the launch of the missiles was to stop Craig from opening the missile control centre safe and extracting the trigger. He was the only one who knew the combination. So he had to be stopped in such a way that he couldn’t tell a fellow officer those numbers.
He had to be killed.
My friend, one of my best friends, had to be killed. By me. In the next few seconds.
I didn’t have a gun. But Lars had chosen a good weapon. There were wrenches stowed all over the submarine in positions that were easy to grab in the event of a leak. In peacetime submarines didn’t leak, but in wartime when under attack from enemy torpedoes or depth charges, it could easily happen.
The nearest wrench was hanging in a pouch just behind me, maybe three feet from Craig.
Missile number nine spun up first, swiftly followed by number two.
Then the last 1SQ button turned from red to green.
‘Conn, weapons. The weapons system is at 1SQ.’ Craig was speaking into the intercom. He listened to an instruction and repeated it. ‘Permission to fire, aye.’
Do it!
I slowly got to my feet and moved nonchalantly towards the wrench as Craig stood and reached up to the safe, his fingers touching the tumbler.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Petty Officer Morgan watching me: he was the missile tech who had overheard what Lars had tried to do in the control room.
In one swift movement I whipped the wrench out of its pouch and lifted it. But Morgan was quick. He threw himself at me. I leapt backwards, crashing into an instrument panel, as Morgan clutched my free arm, the arm not holding the wrench.
I brought the tool down hard on his shoulder. He released his grip and fell to the floor screaming.
&n
bsp; The other missile techs were slower than Morgan. They were still at their positions, staring at me and at their colleague writhing in agony on the floor. They hadn’t trained for this; it took them a second or two to tear themselves away from the procedures on which they were so totally focused.
Craig’s fingers were on the combination as he glanced swiftly back at me.
If he had turned to face me, he could almost certainly have protected himself from my blows for the couple of seconds necessary for the rest of the crew to overpower me. He would then have had plenty of time to open the safe.
But he didn’t make that choice. He turned his back on me and spun the dial five times to the left, stopping on the first number of the combination, and then spun it to the right to the next number.
Perhaps he thought the other missile techs’ reactions were as quick as Morgan’s. Perhaps he thought he had time to set the final number on the dial and return it to zero before I got to him.
He had misjudged.
Just as he was setting the third number, and the missile chief was finally rushing me, I brought the wrench crashing down on the back of Craig’s head.
Twenty-Six
Saturday 30 November 2019, Norfolk
Toby went with Bill to the police station in King’s Lynn, an imposing 1920s building just off the main road through town, with four brick pillars and a large blue light over the entrance. They waited half an hour for Robinson and Prestwitch to get there first, in the hope they might pave the way for Alice’s release. Toby felt the tension in Bill. He wanted to lash out at his father-in-law, blame him for getting Alice locked up, but he knew it was fruitless, so he held back.
He sensed a similar grudging self-control on Bill’s part.
If Prestwitch had spoken to the police, it hadn’t yet secured Alice’s release. And, as expected, the police wouldn’t let Toby speak to his wife. But he did get five minutes with Lisa Beckwith, Alice’s new solicitor from London, who took him to a coffee shop round the corner from the station, while Bill was being interviewed again.
She was very small, very thin with hard brown eyes and an air of suppressed aggression that Toby found comforting in the circumstances. Her advice to Toby was to say as little as possible to the police; she was gratified to hear that he had signed the Official Secrets Act. He should stick to the story he had given them about Alice’s whereabouts, and resist the urge to expand on it or embellish it.
She said she was confident that Alice would be released, but Toby didn’t believe her. She also told him she had advised Alice to say nothing.
‘Why do you do that?’ Toby asked. ‘It’s not as if she’s guilty or has anything to hide. We want the police to figure out the truth, so why don’t we help them do it?’
‘That’s not exactly what we want the police to do,’ said Lisa firmly. ‘We don’t need to prove she’s innocent. We don’t need to show the police who did kill Sam Bowen. All we need to do is prevent the police from gathering enough evidence to convict Alice.’
‘But—’
‘Toby. I know what I’m doing. Please help us. Keep quiet.’ It was more of an order than a request.
Back at the station, DC Atkinson wanted to speak to Toby again. He looked on edge. Excited. Impatient. He led Toby through to a featureless interview room and switched on the recording equipment.
No small talk.
‘Did Sam Bowen ask Bill Guth about the death of Lieutenant Craig Naylor on the submarine?’
‘As I believe you know, I have now signed the Official Secrets Act,’ Toby replied.
‘What Sam Bowen asked Mr Guth is not an official secret.’
Wasn’t it? Toby didn’t know. So he answered the question. ‘Yes, Sam did ask Bill about Craig’s death.’
‘Good. And what was Mr Guth’s reply?’
Toby wanted to answer. He wanted to help. But he had signed the act, as Bill had said, for his country and for his father-in-law. And although he disagreed with Lisa Beckwith’s strategy, there was no doubt that she knew more about keeping suspects out of jail than he did.
‘That is secret,’ said Toby. ‘It relates to what happened on the submarine.’
DC Atkinson couldn’t hide his irritation. He leaned forward. Tried a smile. ‘Look, Toby. You have to help us here. We’re just trying to find out what really happened. If your wife is innocent, she has nothing to fear from that, right?’
Toby didn’t answer.
‘We now believe that the reason Sam Bowen was murdered is that he knew something, or suspected something about the death of Lieutenant Naylor on the USS Alexander Hamilton. Justin Opizzi told us that Naylor was his biological father, and that Naylor’s sister Vicky Wenzel was always suspicious about the death. Sam’s girlfriend said Sam was suspicious about it too, and although the murderer took his computer and his notebook, and seems to have hacked into his Cloud back-up and deleted his files, there is one note on his desk back at home which suggests he was following that line of inquiry.’
‘What was that?’ Toby asked, curious.
‘Craig Naylor’s name circled with an exclamation mark next to it on a pad of paper.’
‘That doesn’t sound conclusive,’ Toby said.
‘It isn’t. Which is why I need you to tell me what you know about Lieutenant Naylor’s death.’
What did Toby know? That Bill had claimed it was an accident. That Justin had suspected Bill of killing Naylor. That Lars had admitted to killing Naylor himself.
It was useful stuff. None of it seemed to him to point to Alice killing Sam. But, on the other hand, he didn’t know why she had met the historian that evening.
Best just to trust Alice’s solicitor.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Toby. ‘I can’t tell you.’
Frustrated, Atkinson terminated the interview and kicked Toby out of the interview room.
Bill was waiting for him at the entrance to the police station. But as he was leaving, Toby held the door for a small woman also on her way out. Her long hair was dyed blue, and her freckled cheeks were drawn firmly downwards on either side of her mouth. She was very thin, but Toby noticed there was a slight bump at her waist.
She hurried out of the police station and down the steps to the pavement.
‘Hang on, Bill,’ said Toby, and he rushed after her. ‘Excuse me,’ he said in as friendly a voice as he could muster.
The woman didn’t look at him.
‘Are you Jasmine, by any chance?’
The woman stopped to face him, a glimmer of curiosity in her dead eyes. ‘Maybe.’
‘I just wanted to say how sorry I am about Sam.’
‘Sam? Who are you? How do you know about Sam?’
‘Oh, he came to Thanksgiving at our house on Thursday. It was the first time I had met him, but I liked him.’ Toby hesitated. Nothing he could say would be satisfactory, but he couldn’t just say nothing. ‘I am really sorry for you. And his parents,’ he added.
‘So you are from the family of the woman who killed him?’
‘Yes. She’s my wife. And she didn’t kill him, I’m sure of it.’
‘Then why isn’t she talking to the police? Why isn’t she helping them like any decent citizen would do?’
A good question. ‘I don’t know,’ said Toby. ‘But I do know she can’t have killed him.’
The woman’s shoulders slumped. ‘Whoever she is, she’s innocent until proved guilty, I get that. And she’s your wife, so you think she’s innocent. I get that too. But I don’t care. If the police find she’s guilty I hope they lock her up and throw away the key. If she’s innocent, then they can let her go. I won’t want to see her then, and I don’t want to see you now. Do you understand me?’
Toby nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘Good. Now let me get back to my shitty life. Goodbye.’
She turned and left Toby watching her forlornly.
‘Was that Sam’s girlfriend?’ Bill asked at Toby’s shoulder.
‘Uh-huh.’
�
��I suspected it might be. I thought it best to leave her alone.’
‘Good call,’ said Toby.
‘Did they ask you about Craig’s death?’ said Bill as he drove Toby back to Barnholt.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you tell them anything?’
‘No.’
‘Good man,’ said Bill.
Toby’s phone buzzed. It was Piet. Toby ignored it.
Toby stared out of the window at the industrial buildings guarding the northern outskirts of King’s Lynn, dismal beneath a layer of grey clouds that was gathering from the south.
He thought of his disastrous conversation with Sam Bowen’s girlfriend. He had just been thinking of himself, how he wanted to express his own sorrow and sympathy for her. He hadn’t been thinking of her. She clearly had no interest in him or his sympathy, and why should she?
She had a point about Alice. Lisa Beckwith’s strategy was all very well, but if Alice was innocent, surely the easiest way to get her off the hook was to prove it to the police? Or give them enough information so they could figure it out for themselves.
It was true that Alice knew what had happened on the submarine, she knew that was secret and she took that seriously. But if Sam had told the world that her father had saved it back in 1983, would that be such a bad thing? Would it be worth Alice killing Sam for?
The answer was clearly no.
Maybe defence solicitors had learned through experience that being helpful didn’t work as well as keeping quiet and being obstructive. That was probably because most of their clients were guilty.
Then it dawned on Toby.
He turned to Bill. ‘Does Alice’s solicitor think she killed Sam Bowen?’
Bill focused on the road ahead. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
Then an even more troubling thought occurred to Toby. ‘Do you think Alice killed him?’
‘Of course not,’ said Bill.
But he didn’t take his eyes off the road; he didn’t look at Toby.
Toby wasn’t sure he believed him.
Twenty-Seven
When they returned to Barnholt, Toby went up to his bedroom and Bill scurried off to his study.
Launch Code Page 15
