Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  "Two, maybe three."

  "You don't think they might try something before dark?"

  "Why? They'll assume I'm armed, they know I'm a professional, just like them. They're not going to volunteer to get their balls blown off. Your dad's here, and he isn't going anywhere."

  She studied her father, then looked away from him.

  "What about your people? This man Aubrey?"

  "When we don't turn up in Manchester, he'll worry. He knows where we are."

  "Will he worry in time?""

  "That's what I'm worrying about." He smiled, and studied her face. "How are you?"

  "I'm all right." She avoided looking at her father.

  "What are you going to do?" Quin asked.

  "For Christ's sake, stop moaning!"

  "It's your fault — you brought them here! This is just what I tried to avoid — what I came here to get away from," Quin persisted. Hyde perceived deep and genuine and abiding fears, disguising themselves in self-pity. He could almost feel sorry for Quin; might have done so, had their situation at that moment been less acute. And had Quin's voice been less insistent, less whining. "I knew I couldn't be adequately protected, that no one took my fears seriously, and now look what's happened — they're out there, the very people I tried to avoid. And you — you brought them here. You" ve as good as handed me to them on a plate!"

  "All right. So they stuck a bleeper under the car. Sorry."

  That won't do us any good."

  "Shut up! It's your bloody fault we're all stuck here."

  "Leave him alone," Tricia Quin pleaded softly.

  "All right. Look, once it's dark, I can try to get to a telephone that hasn't had its wires cut. But I'm not walking out there just at the moment. He'll have to sit it out, just like us."

  "As long as nothing happens to him."

  "It won't. Petrunin's in a corner himself. It's a stalemate. Nothing's going to happen to Dad — unless I break his bloody neck for him!"

  Quin scowled like a child sulking. Hyde looked at his watch. Just after three. Patience, patience, he instructed himself. Aubrey has got to catch on soon.

  He wondered, without letting the thought tinge the bland expression on his features, whether Petrunin's orders might not have changed because of the capture of the submarine by the Russians. The death of Quin, rather than his capture, might be a satisfactory conclusion to the operation.

  It was hard to discard the thought, once he had admitted it. It was unlikely, but possible. Of his own death, he did not think. That, he had considered almost as he closed the cottage door behind him after he had run from the car, would be inevitable whether Petrunin wanted Quin alive or dead. He looked at his hand, wrapped in his handkerchief. His gun made an uncomfortable, pressing lump against the small of his back. It was not entirely a stalemate, it merely gave that impression. Petrunin wanted Quin badly. Petrunin was finished in the UK anyway, after this. When he went, he'd want Quin with him. As soon as it was dark, he'd come for him.

  * * *

  "Ethan, it is not an old man's vanity, or sense of hurt pride — or even senility. I am asking a serious question. Could someone get into Pechenga and destroy “Leopard” before the Russians can examine or dismantle it?"

  "You're crazy, Mr Aubrey. In twenty-four hours the Russians will have that submarine turned around and on her way. There's no time to do anything."

  "I'm not sure about that." Aubrey looked up from the narrow camp bed where he sat perched like a tired, dishevelled prisoner under the hard strip-lighting of the cupboard-like room. Clark leaned against the door, dressed like a golfer in sweater and slacks. Clark's increasing informality of dress during the past days had been a badge of defeat and of defeatism. Aubrey felt tired, directionless; yet at the same time he was possessed by the quick seductive glamour of a counter-operation. "I'm not sure about that," he repeated.

  "You don't even know it's Pechenga," Clark persisted.

  "Satellite and Nimrod suggest it might be. There are signs of what might be preparations for Proteus's arrival at Pechenga, but not at Murmansk." Aubrey rubbed his hands together in a washing motion. To Clark the activity suggested a pretended, mocking humility. The room was coffin-like, stale and dead, and pressed in on him uncomfortably.

  "Maybe. Look, these quick-burn operations always look good on paper. Our intelligence is nil, Mr. Aubrey, and there's no time or capacity for back-up. Face facts — the Russians have Proteus on their ground, on their terms. They'll give her back."

  "I realise that," Aubrey snapped, "but I am not prepared simply to wait until she is handed back like a toy that no longer works!"

  "Listen, Mr Aubrey," Clark began angrily, turning from the door which he had been facing as Aubrey spoke, as if to hide the expression on his face, "I can't give you what you want. I don't know enough about “Leopard” to be able to tell you how to destroy it effectively without blowing up the damn boat, too! The Russians may have their superman in Ardenyev, but don't put the role on to me. I can't help you."

  "Someone at Plessey, then," Aubrey murmured disparagingly.

  "You need Quin."

  "I realise that. If I get you Quin, can you do the job?"

  "What?"

  "I said — if I get you Quin, will you do the job? Can you do the job?"

  "Job?"

  "Don't be dense, dear boy. You would have to do it. You are familiar with the whole operation, you are familiar with the equipment, you are in naval intelligence, you have a great deal of field experience. Who else would I consider sending?"

  "One man?"

  "One particular man, yes."

  "And all I have to do is get into Pechenga, board the Proteus, destroy the equipment, and get out again with no one any the wiser?" Clark raised his hands in the air. "You" ve really flipped, Mr Aubrey. It can't be done."

  "It must be attempted."

  "I'm not on your staff."

  "I'm sure I can arrange your temporary assignment."

  "There's no time."

  "We must try!"

  "So where's Quin? Your house of cards falls down without him."

  Aubrey's face became saturnine. "I don't know. Hyde should have arrived at Manchester airport by now. He has not done so."

  "Then he's in trouble."

  "You think so?"

  Clark paced the tiny cubicle. "You" ve spent all your time dreaming up this crazy scheme instead of worrying about realities. Your guy has to be in trouble, and you haven't even given him a thought!"

  Aubrey's face registered an expression of rage, directed at Clark. Then, in admission, his look turned inwards. He had been taking an afternoon nap of the intellect. Clark was perfectly correct. He had ignored Hyde, and Hyde must now be in trouble. He clenched his fists in his lap, then got up and opened the door.

  "OS map of the Coniston Water area!" he shouted into the underground room, directing the order at every one of its occupants. Pyott looked up, startled, and then reached for a telephone. "Quickly!" He slammed the door and looked steadily at Clark. "You are right. I have been foolishly, dangerously remiss. But if we get Quin here, we shall talk again. You are not off the hook, Ethan!"

  "Neither are your guy and Quin."

  * * *

  The Proteus reached a moment of equilibrium after her seeming rush from snorkel depth to the surface, and then the motion of the waves began to affect her. Ardenyev watched as the hatch above them slid back. Water dripped on him and Lloyd and the armed guard, and then the platform of the bridge was raised electronically until their heads rose above the fin of the submarine. The Proteus rolled gently in the swell of the outer harbour of Pechenga, the adjusted buoyancy bags at the stern maintaining her at the correct depth but impairing her stability.

  Ardenyev smiled, and waved an arm towards the low shoreline.

  "Welcome to the Soviet Union, Commander Lloyd." Rain whipped into their faces, and fuzzy lights glowed through the dark late afternoon. Low submarine pens lay ahead of them, beyond the harbour wall with
its guard towers and its anti-submarine net. The rain was chilly, mingled with sleet which numbed the side of Lloyd's face as he studied the scene with the hunched shoulders of a prisoner. The rescue ship Karpaty made cautious headway, still towing the Proteus. He turned to look back aft of the sail. Huge jellyfish bags surrounded the stern of the submarine like splints on a damaged limb. He could make out, through the white-edged spray and the driving rain, the scars and the rough repairs that had been affected beneath the surface by the rescue team. The bow of the Proteus was still angled slightly below the horizontal because of the crudity of measurement employed in inflating the bags. A bow-wave surged along the forward deck as Lloyd turned his gaze back towards Pechenga. The Karpaty had passed through the gap in the harbour wall where the net had been swung electronically away to allow her access, and Proteus was slipping, in an almost lurching, ungainly fashion between the towers on the wall. Lloyd could see faces looking from the towers; they all seemed to be grinning, and an arm waved. The sight created a sense of humiliation in him.

  Ardenyev was speaking.

  "I'm sorry — you were saying?" he said, indulging his sense of defeat and self-blame. He had made mistakes, fatal ones for "Leopard". Because the situation was so unreal, and its consequences dangerous only for a lump of inoperable equipment in the bowels of his vessel, his mind was more keenly aware of errors of judgement and tactics. He should not have been so slow in realising their danger, he should not have settled on the bottom. There seemed no limit to the catalogue of blame.

  "I intrude upon your self-examination?" Ardenyev asked lightly. "But there is no danger. No cause for alarm."

  "That's the most unreal thing of all, isn't it?" Lloyd replied.

  Ardenyev ignored the reply. "As I was saying, we will have the submarine docked in two or three hours. Of course, we will not delay you more than is necessary. Your reactor will not be run down, you will be docked in a wet dock — we can manage the repairs quite adequately without a dry dock — and you will be ready to sail in no more than forty-eight hours. That I promise you."

  "You would be able to make such a promise, of course," Lloyd replied acidly, "since the damage to my ship was quite precisely calculated, no doubt."

  "I'm sorry—?"

  "Forget it. It was all an accident, a most unfortunate accident."

  "Of course."

  The swell was hardly discernible inside the harbour wall. Lloyd was uncomfortably aware, however, of the forward motion of the submarine and of the other vessels in the harbour basin. Pechenga was unsubstantial still, masked by the murk and the flying rain and sleet and remained as unreal as the satellite pictures he had seen of it and of dozens of other Soviet naval ports, but the big ships were real, uncomfortably so. Two "Kara"-class cruisers at anchor, one half-repainted. Three or four destroyers, like a display of toys, small and grey and bristling with aerials and radar dishes and guns. Frigates, a big helicopter cruiser, two intelligence ships festooned with electronic detection and surveillance equipment. A submarine support ship, minesweepers, ocean tugs, tankers. The sight, the numbers, overawed him, ridiculing Portsmouth, Plymouth, Faslane, every naval port and dockyard in the UK. It was like going back into the past, except for the threatening, evident modernity of these vessels, to some great review of the fleet at Spithead between the two world wars, or before the Great War. The harbour at Pechenga, a satellite port for Murmansk, daunted Lloyd. He felt completely and utterly entrapped.

  The submarine pens, mere nest-holes in the concrete at this distance, winked with lights ahead of the Karpaty. One of those small black holes would swallow his vessel, contain it until people like this Russian on his bridge said they could leave, gave them permission. He shrugged hopelessly.

  "You're impressed?" Ardenyev asked.

  "As long as they're not all cardboard mock-ups, yes."

  They're not." Lloyd looked at Ardenyev. The man seemed unenthusiastic about the conversation he had begun.

  "So familiar as to be boring?" he asked.

  "What? Oh, this. I was just thinking what a dull town Pechenga is."

  "I see."

  "I doubt it." They slid beneath the lee of a cruiser. Crewmen leaned over the rails, looking down at the British submarine, waving their caps, yelling indistinguishable words and greetings. Ardenyev watched them as he might have observed the behaviour of monkeys at a zoo. "The brothels are quite dreadful," he continued. "All right for conscripts, but not for the likes of you and me. A good job you will not be allowed ashore. The casualty rate would be staggering. Quite unacceptable to the Admiralty."

  "You seem to have run out of steam," Lloyd remarked.

  "What? Oh, perhaps." Ardenyev brushed a hand through his wet hair, and assayed a tired grin. His waving arms indicated the whole bulk of the Proteus. "It's over for me. The dull time after excitement. I am feeling sorry for myself. Forgive my bad manners."

  They were slowing now. Karpaty seemed to lag, and they began to overtake her in a snail-like pursuit, until the Proteus herself came to a stop. Tiny figures emerged from the forward hatch and scuttled along the slippery, gleaming deck, casting off the tow-lines swiftly and expertly. A hard-lit submarine pen gaped before them. Proteus began to edge, towards the open gates of the pen on her intact docking propeller, the "egg-beater" located forward of the main propeller and retracted when not in use. Lloyd shuddered.

  "As soon as we dock, I must leave you to make my report," Ardenyev murmured. Lloyd ignored him, watching his vessel slide forward into the maw of the submarine pen. Down the line of pens, men had stopped work to watch. The sterns of Soviet submarines were visible through the open gates of other pens, but Lloyd, after one quick, self-concious glance, returned his gaze to the bow of the Proteus. She stopped again, and men scrambled over the deck, attaching the hawsers whereby she could be winched into the pen, An order was given, the deck was cleared again, and then the winches picked up the slack, measured the bulk of the submarine and began to pull her forward.

  Each moment was marked by a further surrender to circumstances. Lloyd felt an emotional pain that was as acute as a physical injury. The hull of the Proteus seemed marked like a ruler, measuring off her entry into the pen. Hard lights gleamed in the roof. The pen contained the torpedo tubes, the forward hatch, the forward hydroplanes, then the fin itself. Proteus was half-swallowed.

  There was cheering from the dockyard workers lining the concrete walks on either side of the water, which sickened and enraged him. Lloyd could see the first teams of men with the props that would support the hull, eager to begin berthing the Proteus.

  Then Ardenyev's hand was on his shoulder, and he was shouting above the echo of the cheering bouncing back from steel and concrete.

  "I'm sorry, my friend! You have lost!"

  Lloyd shook his head, not to deny but to admit defeat. Proteus was slowing as orders were passed from the officer in charge of the docking procedure to the winch operators. Even the motion of his vessel was out of his control. He felt utterly humiliated. Strangely, there was an air of dejection about Ardenyev, too, amid the coarse cheers and their magnified, inhuman echoes.

  * * *

  A mist was beginning to rise in the dusk. The wind had dropped to an occasional breeze which stirred the tendrils and shrouds of grey. The landscape was subsiding into darkness, the hills already no more than smudges, the trees merely dark, crayon shadings. Hyde saw the mist as a final irony. It cloaked Petrunin now, not any attempt on his part to reach a telephone. Petrunin had arrived too early, just before six, announcing his presence with a deadline for Hyde's surrender. Yet in another sense he was belated. Hyde had already, slowly and reluctantly and with an inward fury, decided he could not leave the girl and her father exposed to capture, and there was no way the three of them could get safely away from the cottage. He had to make the difficult, even repellent assumption that they would be safer, if only because they would be alive and unharmed, in surrender than resistance. Hope springs eternal was a difficult, and unavoidabl
e, consolation. He had admitted to himself that they were successfully trapped even before Petrunin reiterated that simple message through a loud-hailer.

  Quin had rendered himself useless, like some piece of electrical equipment that possessed a safety circuit. He had switched himself off like a kettle boiling too long. He was slumped where he had sat for hours, staring at his lap, sulking in silence. Even his danger no longer pricked him to complaint. The girl, moving only occasionally to check on her father's condition, had remained near Hyde. Their conversation had been desultory. Hyde had hardly bothered to alleviate the girl's fears, possessed by his own self-recriminations. The bug on the car, the bloody bug —

  Then Petrunin was talking again. "Why not attempt to reach a telephone, Mr Hyde?" his magnified, mechanical voice queried from behind a knoll a hundred yards or more from the cottage. Hyde was certain he could hear soft laughter from one of the others. "This mist should hide your movements quite successfully." Again the accompanying, sycophantic laughter, coarser now? Hyde could not be certain he was not mocking himself, imagining the amusement. Petrunin was enjoying himself. Was he covering an approach, distracting them? The problem is, your friends would not be safe while you were away. Can the girl use a gun? Can her father?"

  "Fuck off," Hyde replied with a whispered intensity. The girl touched his arm, making him start.

  "Give me the gun. Why don't you try to get out?"

  "I gave that idea up hours ago, girlie. We're right in the shit, and bloody Lenin out there knows it."

  "Won't your people be looking for us?"

  "I bloody hope so! But, he knows that, too. He won't wait much longer now."

  "Your time is up," Petrunin announced, as if on cue. Hyde grinned mirthlessly. "Please show yourselves at the door. Throw your gun out first, please. We have night-sights. No movements you make will be missed, I assure you."

  "The trouble with bloody desk men when they get in the field is they're so bloody gabby." He looked at the shadowy outline of Quin across the room, then at the girl. His hand was clenched around the butt of the Heckler & Koch pistol, and it would take one movement to smash the window and open fire. Useless to try; but in another, more febrile way, satisfying to do so. Bang, bang, he recited to himself, pointing the gun into the room as if taking aim. Bloody bang, bang, and these two would be dead, or wounded. "Nowhere to go, nothing to do," he announced aloud.