by Len Deighton
The world was tightening around us. The sonar needle did not stop and turn back until one hundred and forty. If we’d stayed at our previous level the ice would have taken five feet off our sail top.
‘Only just,’ said the Exec.
The skipper scratched his nose. He turned to Schlegel. ‘It’s usually a bit hairy before we get to the ice-limits.’
At the ice-limits the thickness is more predictable but the ocean is shallower, and after that we must turn to follow the Russian coastline towards the White Sea. There the shore-line ice starts building together. That’s the worst section of all.
‘That Polish sub has gone?’ said Schlegel.
‘Still on our sonar – she’s turned almost parallel again.’
‘She’s tailing us,’ said Schlegel. He looked at Ferdy.
‘No,’ said the skipper. ‘She probably can’t see us. She could be having the same ice problems we have. Her sonar range is nothing – she’d be rubbing noses with the Eskimos before they’d have a reading.’
‘She knows we’re here?’
‘She knows we’re somewhere. They can hear our sonar hitting them. But they can’t get us on their sonar.’
‘But she’s making good speed,’ said Schlegel.
‘They have better charts than we do for this area. Neither of us can guess the ice but she knows the soundings: it helps.’
‘I’d like to take a poke at it,’ said Schlegel.
‘We both have plenty to occupy us at present,’ said the skipper.
‘The history of the world,’ said Ferdy. ‘Overlooking small enemies in the threat of greater ones – all history comes down to that finally.’
Ferdy was wearing a black silk dressing-gown, its dark red kerchief fixed with a gold pin. The Captain looked at him as if noticing his attire for the first time. Finally he nodded. ‘I suppose.’
‘Still shoaling, sir.’
It was the great silt deposits that made the sea bed flat, but beneath the silt, the bottom was hard enough to take the floor from under us. There was only eighty feet of water below us now, and above us another pressure ridge was building, under the nervous pen of the fathometer. Again the ink line faltered and turned back.
‘Down another fifty,’ said the Captain.
We sank deeper. The pen line shrank away from the horizontal line that represented the top of our sail. I heard Ferdy sigh. We levelled off and the pen made a beautiful tall canopy above us.
‘This is going to be a tough one,’ said the Captain. ‘Come left to north-east.’
‘Lagoon ahead,’ said the sonar operator.
‘How far?’
‘A mile, a bit more perhaps.’
‘Here she comes again.’
This was a big ridge, the keel of an enormous floe.
The drawing showed how it had been born out of corrugated ridges jammed so tight together that the whole floe tilted, so that the pen drew a mad inverted porcupine shape upon the thin white paper.
‘Down thirty.’
‘Goddamn that packing.’ The Captain reached into his shirt collar to mop up the trickles of cold water that had been dripping from the periscope, increasing their rate of flow as the water became colder. The dribbling water had started off as a joke, but now the thought of icy water on the other side of the steel hull raised no laughs.
‘Hold that,’ said the Captain.
Now there was just a swirl of silt beneath us. The fathometer was wobbling as it tried to register upon the soft bottom dislodged by our passing.
‘Full astern – hold it, hold it.’
The floor tilted as the propellers came to a standstill and then began slowly to turn the other way. For a moment the sub became unstable, like a dinghy riding out a long wave. Then the props picked up speed and the forward movement stopped us with a shudder and a loud rumble.
‘Dead slow.’
Now the needle made a series of corrugations over the dark horizontal line that was us. The Captain clamped his hand over his face as if he’d been hit, but I knew he was listening to the scrape of ice along the hull. It came scratching along the metal like predatory fingernails.
The ship had lost all forward speed now. ‘Negative buoyancy,’ said the Captain. There was a lurch and then a groan. The buoyancy chambers rang with a hollow sound as the ship sank to the ocean floor. I lost my balance as we heeled over ten degrees.
Everyone held on to a bulkhead, pipe or fitting. The Captain took the PA microphone. ‘Attention all hands. This is the Captain speaking. We are resting on the ocean bed while I take a good look at the sonar. There is no need for any alarm. Repeat: there is no need for any alarm.’ The Captain replaced the mike and beckoned Schlegel and me over to the control console. He sat down and mopped his brow with a paper tissue. ‘I think we’ll have to try another way through, Colonel.’
‘How?’
‘We’ll go south until we find the end of the rafted ice.’
‘I don’t know much about rafted ice, Captain, but it sounds pretty unlikely that it’s going to get better that way. This stuff builds from the shore outwards. Or that’s what I hear.’
‘Or until we find one of the sea passages that the ice breakers clear all the way to Murmansk.’
‘Nothing doing,’ said Schlegel. ‘That would prejudice my mission. I need a whip antenna in the air inside the next sixty minutes.’
‘Impossible,’ said the Captain. He mopped his brow with a fresh tissue and, taking careful aim at the waste-bin, he threw it away with all the care and attention of an Olympics champion.
‘You’ve got a lagoon a mile or so ahead. We’re going to squeeze this pig-boat through the mud and make it by the time the big hand’s on twelve. Got it?’
‘I’ve got it all right,’ said the Captain. ‘But you haven’t. Prejudicing your mission is tough, but prejudicing my ship is not a contingency.’
‘The decision is mine,’ said Schlegel softly. He glanced over his shoulder, but we weren’t getting much attention from the rest of them. ‘And the sealed orders in your triple-lock safe will say so. Meanwhile glim this.’ He passed the Captain an official-looking envelope. Inside it there was a sheet of paper headed ‘Director of Undersea Warfare’ and there was a Pentagon letterhead and lots of signatures.
‘And if you find that impressive,’ warned Schlegel, ‘let me tell you that the one in your safe is from Joint Chiefs.’
‘There is no one can authorize me to risk my ship,’ said the Captain primly. He looked round at me. I was the only person in earshot.
‘Listen,’ said Schlegel in that Bogart voice with which I’d seen him thrash champions. ‘You’re not speaking to some chicken-shit soldier-boy, Captain. I was riding pig-boats before you were riding kiddie cars. I say she’ll go through and I’m not asking your advice.’
‘And I say …’
‘Yes, and you say I’m wrong. Well, you prove I’m wrong, sailor-boy. You prove I’m wrong by jamming us under the goddamn ice-floe. Because if you turn us around and toddle off home I’ll make sure they kick your ass from sun-up to sack-time. Because you can’t prove your contention without sinking us.’
The Captain had spent a long time since last getting that kind of treatment. He stood up, gasped and sat down again to mop his brow. There were two or three extra-long minutes of silence.
‘Take her through, son,’ coaxed Schlegel. ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’ Schlegel mauled his face, as I’d seen him do at other moments of stress.
The Captain said, ‘The floe over us is maybe as big as the UN building; solid as concrete.’
‘Captain. There’s some kid out there … driving along the road that follows the Kola Fjord north from Murmansk. He’s in some lousy Russian automobile, and the ice is getting under his wiper blades. He’s been watching the mirror for the last half hour, dreading to see the headlights of a prowl car. When he gets into position, on some desolate section of freezing cold headland, he’s going to open up the boot and start fooling with the
antenna of a radio transmitter to give us a message. He’s doing all that – and risking his neck – because he believes that freedom is a beautiful thing, Captain. Now, are we – sitting here in this air-conditioned rinky-dink with a rare steak, corn-oysters and blueberry pie on the menu tonight – are we going to let that kid call us up and get no reply?’
‘We’ll maybe lose the periscope,’ said the Captain.
‘Give it a whirl,’ said Schlegel.
Don’t let me leave you with the idea that I personally was joining Schlegel’s clamour for a chance to wriggle under the keel of that iceberg. Let that kid in the car keep right on driving if he’s nervous.
‘One more home-team try,’ said the Captain to his Executive, but no one gave the college cheer.
‘Five knots is all I want.’
The screws began to turn. As water flowed along the hull the deck lurched and slowly came level. I saw the Captain tell the Exec something and I guessed he was sending him off for the sealed orders before making the attempt to get through. That Captain didn’t trust anyone. That was wise of him.
I heard the pen scrape again. ‘More head room, skipper.’
He made a sound to show that he was unimpressed with the extra couple of feet clearance. But his eyes were on the sonar and the lagoon beyond the floe. ‘Close all watertight doors and bulkheads.’
I heard the metal thump closed and the locks tightened. A few of the crewmen exchanged blank stares. The phone rang. The Captain took it. He listened to the Exec for a moment. And then he looked at Schlegel. ‘OK, Charlie. Then let’s do that thing.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Here we go, Colonel,’ he said to Schlegel. Schlegel gave him a smile no thicker than a razor blade.
There was another soft scraping noise on the hull. We heard it clearly because everyone was holding their breath. The ship wriggled as the contact slowed one side of the hull and turned us a degree or two. The revolutions thrashed a little as the prop lost its hold and then gripped the water and went back to normal. Again the same thing happened, but suddenly we lurched forward and the pen scratched a near-vertical line that represented fifty feet or more. The pen came down again, but only made fifteen feet, and then was a steady corrugation on the polar pack no more than ten feet deep.
‘Can’t see that damned lagoon, Colonel.’
‘If we don’t pick up a suitable break in the ice inside thirty minutes I’m going to ask you to put a couple of fish into the underside of that polar pack.’
‘That doesn’t sound healthy,’ said the Captain. ‘We’d be only three ship-lengths away.’
‘Ever hear of Polaris subs, Captain?’ Schlegel asked.
The Captain said nothing.
‘I don’t know what kind of money that fleet of pig-boats costs, but you don’t think they built those contraptions without finding out how to knock a hole in the ice, do you?’
‘We’ve got thirty minutes yet,’ said the Captain.
‘Right,’ said Schlegel, and he threw a finger at the Captain. ‘Cool your kids off a little, huh?’
‘Attention all hands. This is the Captain. We’re under the polar pack. Resume normal activity but keep the juke box off.’
We found a suitably large polynya – which is the proper name for a lagoon in the ice – and, with careful attention to the sonar, the Captain began surfacing procedures.
We were all in the electronics room with the operators that were assigned to this watch. ‘I’ve got every permutation of message he can send on call in my head,’ said Schlegel.
‘Maybe he won’t call,’ said Ferdy.
‘We’ll give him two hours and then we’ll send the negative contact.’
‘Will the Captain hold her on the surface for two hours?’
‘He’ll do what I tell him,’ said Schlegel, with one of his special scowl-like smiles. ‘Anyway, it’ll take his deck party an hour or more to paint the sail white.’
‘That won’t prevent us being picked up on the radar or MAD,’ said Ferdy.
‘Do me a favour and don’t tell that Captain,’ said Schlegel harshly. ‘He’s scared gutless already.’
‘He probably knows the radar chain better than you do, Colonel,’ said Ferdy.
‘That’s why the Colonel’s not scared,’ I added.
‘You guys!’ said Schlegel in disgust.
The radio call came through on time. It was coded in Norwegian, but any Russian monitoring crew would have to be unusually stupid to believe that there were a couple of Norwegian fishing trawlers out there in the deep freeze.
‘Bring number four net,’ came through in morse as clear as a bell and was followed by four five-figure cipher groups.
Schlegel looked over the operator’s shoulder as he deciphered and stabbed a group in the code book. He said, ‘Send that code for “market steady on today’s catches – no change expected tomorrow”. And then wait for them to close.’
Our operator released the key after the signature and there was the bleat of an acknowledgement. Schlegel smiled.
When we were back in the lounge Ferdy sank into an armchair, but Schlegel fiddled with the writing-desk light over the doctor’s one-man bridge game. ‘Our boy made it,’ Schlegel said.
‘Our boy with the suitcase radio set came in five by five. A powerful signal, and clear enough to compare with the Northern Fleet operational transmitter,’ I said.
Schlegel bared his teeth in a way that most people do only for the dentist. I was beginning to recognize it as a sign that he was on the defensive. ‘It was an official transmitter,’ he admitted. ‘Confirming the rendezvous with the helicopter.’
I stared at him. It seemed a lot of words for such a simple message, and why wasn’t it in high speed morse. ‘A Russian transmitter?’ I said. ‘So we are going bare-arse into a lagoon of their choosing?’
‘You don’t like the idea of it?’
‘With a Russkie egg-beater overhead? They could come down with a feather and tickle us to death.’
Schlegel nodded agreement and then studied the doc’s bridge game. Schlegel looked at all the hands and then checked the dealer. He didn’t cheat the cards; he just liked to know where they all were. Without looking up he said, ‘No sweat for the sub, Patrick. Save all your prayers for us. The sub won’t be there: it will arrive early, deposit us and then make itself scarce until we bleep it up. For all we know the RV won’t be a lagoon. We’ll have to make it on foot.’
‘Make it on foot?’ I said. ‘Across that big vanilla-flavoured ice-cream sundae? Are you out of your mind?’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ said Schlegel in the same voice he’d used on the Captain.
‘Or what? You’ll tell weight-watchers anonymous about my extra cinnamon toast?’
‘Ferdy!’ said Schlegel.
Ferdy had been watching the exchange with interest but now he got to his feet hurriedly, murmured goodnights, and departed. When we were alone Schlegel moved round the lounge, switching lights on and off, and testing the fans.
‘You don’t think Rear-Admiral Remoziva will deliver?’
‘I’ve been fed a rich diet of fairy stories all the way through this business,’ I complained. ‘But based upon the kind of lies I’ve heard, what I know, and a couple of far-out guesses, I’d say there isn’t a chance in hell.’
‘Suppose I said I agree.’ He looked round anxiously to be sure we were not overheard. ‘Suppose I told you that that radio signal obliges us to continue with the pick-up, even if we were certain that it’s phoney? What would you say to that?’
‘I’d need a book of diagrams.’
‘And that’s what I can’t give you.’ He ran his open hand down his face, tugging at the corners of his mouth as if afraid he might give way to an hysterical bout of merriment. ‘I can only tell you that if we all get gunned down out there tomorrow, and there’s no Remoziva, it will still be worthwhile.’
‘Not to me, it won’t.’ I said. ‘Stay perplexed, feller,’ he said, ‘because if the Russkies pull somethi
ng fancy out there tomorrow, it won’t matter if they take you alive.’
I smiled. I was trying to master that grim smile of Schlegel’s. I am never too proud to learn, and I had a lot of uses for a smile like that.
‘I’m serious, Pat. There are security aspects of this job that mean that I must be killed rather than captured alive. And the same with Ferdy.’
‘And are there security aspects of this job that cause you to run along now to Ferdy, and tell him that it doesn’t matter if he goes into the bag but I mustn’t get taken alive?’
‘Your mind is like a sewer, pal. How do people get that way?’ He shook his head to indicate disgust, but he didn’t deny the allegation.
‘By surviving, Colonel,’ I said. ‘It’s what they call natural selection.’
20
It is in the nature of the war game that problems arise that cannot be resolved by the rules. For this reason CONTROL should be regarded as consultative. It is not recommended that CONTROL resolves such problems until adequate exploration of the problem has taken place between all players.
‘NOTES FOR WARGAMERS’. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
We stood around in the Control Room, wearing kapok-lined white snow-suits, incongruous amongst the shirt-sleeved officers. Above us, the overhead sonar showed the open lagoon, but the Captain hesitated and held the ship level and still against the currents.
‘Look at this, Colonel.’ The Captain was at the periscope. His tone was deferential. Whether this was due to Schlegel’s blast, the letter from the Pentagon, or because the Captain expected us not to return from the mission, was not clear.
Schlegel needed the periscope lowered a fraction. It was sighted vertically. Schlegel looked for a moment, nodded, and then offered the place at the eyepieces to me. I could see only a blurred shape of pale blue.
‘This is with the light intensifier?’ I asked.
‘That’s without it,’ someone said, and the sight went almost black.
‘I don’t know,’ I said finally.
Ferdy looked too. ‘It’s moonlight,’ he said. He laughed mockingly. ‘You think the Russians have rigged a battery of lights for us?’