Sea Leopard
Page 31
"Thank you." he said.
"No problem. This," he added, dabbing his finger on the map, "the net?" Pasvik nodded. "Here, too?"
"Yes. You will need to go over, or beneath, two nets."
"Mines?"
Pasvik pulled a leather-bound, slim notebook from his pocket. It seemed misplaced about his person. It required an executive's breast-pocket, in a grey suit. Pasvik laughed at the expression on Clark's face.
"One of a consignment that I kept for myself,“ he explained. 'they are very popular with junior officers." He opened the book. 'this, you understand, is a digest of gossip and observation collected over some years." He fished in the breast pocket of his shirt, and hitched a pair of wire-framed spectacles over his ears. Then he cleared his throat. 'the mines are of different types — proximity detonated, trip-wired, acoustic, magnetic. They are set at various depths, and the pattern is very complicated. I do not have any details. Indiscretion in Red Navy officers goes only so far, you understand?"
"The mines I don't worry too much about. Except the contact stuff. Are they marked? Do you have any idea of their shape and size?"
"Ah, there I can help you, I think." He showed a page of the notebook to Clark. The sleeve of the old dressing-gown that he had borrowed from Pasvik brushed the brandy glass, spilling what remained of the drink across the map in a tobacco-coloured stain.
"Damn!" Clark exclaimed, soaking up the liquid with the sleeve of his dressing-gown. "Sorry." Some of the neatly written labelling on the map had smudged.
"No matter."
Clark studied the drawing. A small mine, probably, activated by direct contact with the horns. To deter and destroy small vessels venturing into the restricted waters of the inner harbour, even to kill a swimmer. He handed the notebook back to Pasvik. The stained map absorbed his attention like an omen.
"Okay. Where's the Proteus?"
"Here are the submarine pens. This one, as far as I can make out. Gossip, as you will imagine, has been rife." He tapped at one of the numbered pens. There were two dozen of them and Proteus was supposedly in the fifth one, measuring from the eastern end of the pens. "Many of them are empty, of course."
"Where will you be?" Clark asked.
"Ah — here," Pasvik replied, "you see, in a direct line. It is, or was, a favourite picnic spot in summer." He sighed.
Clark looked at his watch. "Nine-forty. Time to get going?"
"Yes."
"Will you be stopped on the road?"
"Yes, but it's not likely I will be searched. Not going in the direction of the fishing harbour. Anyone who knows me will assume I am making a pick-up of some smuggled goods from a freighter. On the way back, they may be more nosey. So I will have some of the old favourites — stockings, perfume, chocolate, cigarettes, even sex books from Sweden — in the back of the van. I make a habit of free gifts, once in a while. You are ready?"
Clark found Pasvik studying him. The raisin eyes were deep in their folds, but bright with assessment and observation. Eventually, Pasvik nodded and stood up. "You will make it," he announced, "of that I am reasonably sure."
Thanks."
Clark took off the dressing-gown and laid it on Pasvik's narrow, uncomfortable-looking bed. Then he donned the immersion suit again, heaving it up and around his body, finally pulling on the headcap.
"Another brandy?"
"No thanks."
As they went down the bare wooden stairs to the storeroom and the small, noisome yard where Pasvik had parked his van, the grocer said, "So, Mr Aubrey is not very far away at this moment, up in the sky, mm?"
"He is. At least, he ought to be. I'll signal him before I take to the water."
"I can do that."
"Better me than you." In the darkness, Clark patted the side of his head, then the tiny throat-mike beneath his chin. "This stuff has got to work. I don't want to find out it doesn't after I get aboard the Proteus."
Pasvik unbolted the door and they went out into a wind that skulked and whipped around the yard. Clark looked up at the sky. A few light grey clouds, huge patches of stars. The clouds seemed hardly to be moving. Almost a full moon, which he regretted. However, the improvement in the weather would mean a less choppy surface in the harbour, and he might need to conserve the air in Pasvik's tanks. Pasvik, he noticed as the man crossed to the van and opened the rear doors, moved with a leg-swinging shuffle.
Presumably the limp explained why he no longer carried out immersion-suited surveillance of the harbour.
Clark climbed into the rear of the van, and the doors slammed shut on him. He squatted in a tight, low crouch behind stacked wooden crates, near the partition separating the rear of the van from the driver. He watched as Pasvik clambered into the driving seat, slammed his door, and then turned to him.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
Pasvik started the engine, and ground the car into gear. A moment later, they were turning out of the narrow lane behind the row of shops into a poorly lit street on which a few cars and one or two lorries were the only traffic. Clark felt tension jump like sickness into his throat, and he swallowed hard. He squeezed his arms around his knees, which were drawn up under his chin. His two packs — right hand good, left hand bad — were near his feet. Without conscious thought, he reached out and unsealed one of the packs. He reached into one of the small side pockets and withdrew a polythene-wrapped package, undid the elastic bands, and removed the gun. A small, light.22 Heckler & Koch pistol with a ten-round magazine, effective stopping range less than thirty metres. He unzipped the neck of his immersion suit and placed the re-wrapped pistol inside. If he ever needed the gun, he was close to being finished.
The grocery van trailed a tarpaulin-shrouded lorry along the northbound road, through a dingy, industrialised suburb of Pechenga. Pasvik seemed to have no desire for conversation. Perhaps, Clark admitted, he thought talk would make his passenger more edgy. Pechenga was little more than a ghost town after dark. There were few pedestrians, fewer vehicles. The town seemed subdued, even oppressed, by the security that surrounded the naval installation. The place had a wartime look, a besieged, blacked-out, curfewed feeling and appearance which depressed and yet aggravated his awareness.
There was a haze of light to be seen over the low factory roofs from the naval base, a glow like that from the border lights as he had seen them from the Harrier. Then he felt the van slowing. The brake lights of the lorry in front of them were bright red. There was a squeal of air brakes.
"A checkpoint — outside the civilian harbour. Get down," Pasvik instructed him. "Cover yourself with the tarpaulin."
White light haloed the bulk of the lorry. Clark could hear voices, and the noise of heavy military boots, though he could see no one. He slid into a prone position, and tugged the tarpaulin over him, which smelt of cabbage and meal. Once underneath, he unzipped the neck of his immersion suit once more, though he was able consciously to prevent himself from unwrapping the gun. Nevertheless, through the polythene his finger half-curled around the trigger. His thumb rested against the safety catch. He could not prevent finger and thumb taking what seemed a necessary hold upon the pistol.
A voice, very close. Clark's Russian was good, but he reacted more to the interrogative tone. A guard leaning his head into the driver's window. Pasvik's voice seemed jocular, confiding in reply.
"Hello, Pasvik. Out and about again?"
Pasvik smiled, showing his dentures, opening his hands on the wheel in a shrugging gesture.
"You know how business is, Grigory."
"Keep your voice down, Pasvik — the officer'll hear you."
"Then you'll be in trouble, eh, my friend?"
"You want me to search your van, have everything out on the road, now and on the way back — eh, Pasvik?"
"Don't be irritable, my friend."
"Look, I" ve told you — I'm not your friend. Just keep your voice down."
"You want to see my papers?"
"Yes — quick, here's my officer.
Bastard." Grigory uttered the last word almost under his breath.
"What's going on here?" the officer enquired above the noise of the lorry moving off and pulling into the docks. Beyond his short dapper figure Pasvik could see the outlines of cranes, the silhouettes of cargo and fishing vessels. "Are this man's papers in order?"
"Yes, sir."
The officer took them from Grigory, perused them in a showy, self-satisfied, cursory manner, then handed them back. He turned on his heel and strutted away. Grigory pulled a scowling face behind his back, then thrust the papers back at Pasvik. He bent near to the window again.
"I want some more," he whispered.
"More what?"
"Those books."
"You sell them off again, eh, Grigory?"
"No!" Grigory's face changed colour.
"I'll see what I can do. Stop me on the way back, get in the back of the van then. I'll leave some for you, under the tarpaulin. Okay?"
"Okay. I'm off duty at midnight, though."
"I'll be back before then."
Grigory stepped back, and waved Pasvik on. The red and white pole between the two guard huts swung up, and Pasvik drove the van into the civilian harbour. In his mirror, Pasvik could see the officer speaking to Grigory. The posture of his body and the bend of his head indicated a reprimand rather than an enquiry as to Pasvik's business. He would have to be careful when Grigory collected his sex books from the back of the van on the return journey. Perhaps he needed something for the officer, too?
He drove out of the string of white lights along the main thoroughfare of the docks, turning into a narrow, unlit alley between two long, low warehouses. Then he turned out on to a poorly illuminated wharf, driving slowly past the bulk of a Swedish freighter. Music from the ship, a drunk singing. A head peering over the side. Two armed guards patrolling, leaning towards each other in conversation, stultified by routine and uneventfulness. Pasvik stopped the car in the shadow of a warehouse, beneath the dark skeleton of a dockside crane.
"Very well, my friend. You can get out now."
Pasvik slipped out of the van, and opened the rear doors. The two guards, unconcerned at the noise of his engine, were walking away from him, into and then out of a pool of light. Clark sat on the edge of the van, stretching. Then he hefted the two packs on to the concrete of the wharf.
"Thanks," he said.
"You have everything in your mind?"
Clark nodded. "Yes. What about the tanks?"
"One moment." Pasvik limped off swiftly, towards the door of the warehouse. He appeared to possess a key, for Clark heard the door squeak open, then the intervening moments before the door squeaked again were filled with the singing of the Swedish drunk, who had become utterly maudlin. Clark heard, as the door closed again, the reassuring metallic bump as the tanks struck the concrete. Then Pasvik came scuttling out of the shadows, hefting the two air tanks over his shoulder. He placed them, like game retrieved, at Clark's feet. The American inspected and tested them. The hiss of air satisfied him. Both gauges registered full.
"Good."
"The patrol will be back in five minutes. By that time, I must be aboard the freighter and you must be in the water. Come."
Pasvik helped Clark strap the tanks to his back, lifting the mouthpiece and its twin hoses gently over his head like a ceremonial garland. Then they carried the packs across the wharf, slipping quickly through the one dim patch of light into the shadow of the freighter. Pasvik make a lugubrious face at the singing, still audible from above. The water was still and oily below them, against the side of the ship. Clark could smell fish on the windy air. He unwound short lengths of nylon rope from each pack, and clipped them on to his weighted belt. As he did so, he felt he was imprisoning himself. An anticipation of utter weariness overcame him for a moment, and then he shrugged it off. He would make it, even with that weight being towed or pushed, since the packs would become buoyant in the water.
"Okay," he said, about to slip the mouthpiece of his air supply between his lips. Thanks."
"Don't forget the landmarks I described — don't forget the patrol boats — don't forget the contact mines, some of them are small enough, sensitive enough…" Pasvik halted his litany when Clark held up his hand.
"Okay, okay." Clark grinned. "I'll take care, Mom."
Pasvik stifled a delighted laugh. "Goodbye, my friend. Good luck."
He lifted one of the packs as Clark moved to the iron ladder set in the side of the wharf, leading down to the water. Clark, holding the other pack, began to climb down, his back to the freighter's hull. Then he paused, his head just above the level of the concrete, and Pasvik handed him the second pack. Clark appeared almost to overbalance, then he stumbled the last few steps and slid into the water. Pasvik peered down at him. Clark waved, adjusted his mouthpiece and facemask, then began swimming out and around the bow of the freighter, pushing the two packs ahead of him, slowly and awkwardly.
Pasvik watched until the swimming man was hidden by the hull of the Swedish ship, then softly whistled and shook his head. Then he slapped his hands together, shrugging Clark away, and headed for the boarding ladder up to the deck of the freighter.
Clark swam easily, using his legs and fins, his arms around the two packs, guiding them through the water. Their buoyancy made them lighter, easier to handle in the water. After a few minutes, he trod water, and opened the channel of his transceiver. The ether hummed in his ear.
"All is well," he said.
Aubrey's voice, slowed down from the spit of sound on his earpiece, replied a few moments later. "Good luck."
Clark switched off, and began swimming again. Ahead of him, there was a rippling necklace of lights along the harbour wall, with one dark gap like a missing stone in the middle. The water was still calm, its surface only riffled like pages quickly turned by the wind. He headed for the dark gap in the lights, keeping the flash of the small lighthouse to his left, and the steering lights of a small cargo ship to his right, It was a matter of some seven or eight hundred yards — or so he had estimated from the map — to the harbour wall. He moved with an almost lazy stroke of his legs, using the buoyant packs like a child might use water wings. The mouthpiece of the air supply rested on the packs just in front of his face.
It was twenty minutes before he reached the choppier water of the inlet beyond the fish and cargo harbour. Suddenly, as he passed between the lights, the water confronted him instead of allowing him easy passage. The packs began to bob and move as if attempting to escape him. He checked his compass, took a sighting on the lights above the twin guard towers at the entrance to the naval installation, and rested for a few moments, accustoming his body and his breathing to the choppy sea. Then he swam on.
The wall of the harbour curved away from him, as if enclosing him, then it rose in height and the lights along it were brighter and closer together. He was paralleling the wall of the Pechenga naval base.
His awareness, despite his experience and his desire that it should not be so, began to retreat into the confines of his immediate surroundings and experience — the packs behind him like brakes moving sluggishly through the water, the choppy little wavelets dashing against his facemask, his arms moving out in front and then behind, even the tight cap of his suit seemed to contain his senses as well as his mind. Thus the patrol boat was a light before it was a noise, and a light he could not explain for a moment. And it was close, far too close.
A searchlight swept across the surface of the water. The boat, little larger than a motor yacht, was a hydrofoil. Clark, catching the high-bowed outline behind the searchlight as he was startled out of his dreamlike state, saw its forward and aft gun turrets, its depth charge racks. It was paralleling his course, moving along the harbour wall. Even though startled, he continued to observe the patrol boat move lazily across his vision. The searchlight swept back and forth, moved closer to the wall, swept back and forth again, moved closer…
Clark panicked into acute consciousness. He fu
mbled with the two packs, hauling them into his embrace. He ripped clumsily at the valve on the first one — the light moved towards him again — and failed to turn it at the first attempt, and his hand hovered towards the valve on the second pack — the light swung away, then began to swing back, the patrol boat was sliding past him sixty metres away — then he turned feverishly at the first valve, hearing above the panic of his breathing and blood in his ears, the hiss of air. The bag sank lower in the water, and he grabbed at the second valve, telling himself ineffectually to slow down — the light moved forward, closer, like lava flowing over the wrinkled water, almost illuminating the pack that remained afloat — he twisted the valve, heard the air, watched the light swing away, then back, then begin its arc that would reach his head. The pack slipped beneath the water, and he flicked himself into a dive — the light slid across the distressed water where he had been, hesitated, then moved on.
Clark thrust the mouthpiece between his teeth, bit on it as he inhaled, and drove downwards against the restraint of the two packs from which he had not released sufficient air. They pulled like parachute brakes against his movement. The twin diesel engines of the patrol boat thrummed through the black water. He looked up. Yes, he could see the light dancing across the surface, as if it still searched for him. Slowly, it faded. The vibration and hollow noise of the boat's engines moved away. He allowed the buoyancy of the two packs to slowly pull him back to the surface. When his head came out of the water, he saw the patrol boat some hundreds of yards away, its searchlight playing at the foot of the harbour wall.
He lay in the water, the packs bobbing just beneath the surface on either side of him, until his breathing and his heart rate had returned to normal. Then he embraced each of the packs in turn, pressing the button on each small cylinder of oxygen, refloating the packs on the surface. Having to drag them through the water would have exhausted him long before he reached the Proteus.
He swam on, still resting his frame on the packs as he clutched them to him. Ten minutes later, he reached the entrance to the harbour. The guard towers on either wall, apart from beacon lights, carried powerful searchlights which swept back and forth across the dark opening between them and swept, too, the water of the harbour and the basin beyond it. He trod water, absorbing the pattern of movement of the searchlights. He saw the silhouettes of armed guards, the barrels of anti-aircraft cannon pointing to the night sky. He felt cold, the chill of water seeping through his immersion suit. Thought seemed to come slowly, but not because of the cold; rather; because he already knew the dangers and the risks. There was no necessity to discover or analyse them. The submarine net stretched across the entrance to the harbour, perhaps fifteen feet above the water. He would have to climb it.