by Craig Thomas
‘What is the matter. General Vladimirov?’ the First Secretary asked conversationally. Vladimirov stopped in mid-stride and turned to face the Soviet leader. You must learn to accept success with more aplomb, my dear Vladimirov!’ The First Secretary laughed.
Vladimirov smiled a wintry smile, and said: ‘I wish I could be certain. First Secretary - much as I fear my mood must displease you, I am not certain.’
‘You’re not happy that we have lost the Mig-31!’
‘No. I’m not happy that we have lost it - I wonder whether we could kill this man Gant quite so easily.
‘But it was your plan we followed, Vladimirov - you have doubts about it now?’ Andropov asked from behind the First Secretary, a thin smile on his lips. ‘I never was certain of its success. Chairman, Vladimirov replied.
‘Come ‘ the First Secretary said softly. ‘What would make you happy, Vladimirov. I am in a generous mood.’ The man smiled, broadly, beatifically.
‘To continue, and intensify, the search for Gant. Vladimirov’s tone was blunt, direct.
‘Why?’
‘Because - if he’s still alive, our self-congratulation might be just the help he needs. Find the refuelling aircraft, or ship, or whatever it is, that must be waiting for him.’
The First Secretary seemed to be looking into Vladimirov’s mind as he debated the argument. After a long silence, he looked not at Vladimirov with his refocused gaze, but at Kutuzov.
‘Well, Mihail Ilyich - what do you say?’
Kutuzov, his throat apparently rusty with disuse, said: ‘I would agree to every precaution being taken, First Secretary.’
‘Very well.’ The First Secretary’s bonhomie had disappeared, and he seemed displeased that the euphoric mood of the room that had existed since the report from Firechain One-24 had been dispelled. He was brusque, efficient, cold. ‘What do you need, apart from the massive forces you have already called upon…?’ There was an almost sinister emphasis on the word, and he left the sentence hanging uncomfortably in the air.
‘Give me the Barents Sea map, and bleed in current naval dispositions in the area, together with trawler activity and Elint vessels,’ Vladimirov called over his shoulder, standing himself squarely in front of the circular table, his hand plucking at his chin thoughtfully. The projection of the northern coastline of the USSR faded, taking with it the pricks of light that had been the Firechain stations and the ‘Wolfpack’ bases, and was replaced by a projection of the Barents Sea.
Vladimirov waited, as the map operator punched out his demands on the computer-console. Slowly, one by one, like stars winking in as dusk fell, lights began to appear on the map, the stations of ships in the Barents Sea and the southern Arctic Ocean. Vladimirov stared at them for a long time in silence.
‘Where is the print-out?’ he asked after a while. The map operator detached himself from his console, and handed Vladimirov a printed sheet of flimsy which registered the identification and exact last reported position and course of each of the dots on the projection glowing on the table. Vladimirov studied the sheet, glancing occasionally at the map.
North of Koluyev Island and west of Novaya Zemlya, the clustered dots of a trawler-fleet registered in white. The neutral colour signified their non-military purpose. They were a large and genuine fishing fleet. However, slightly apart from the close cluster were two deep-blue dots, which signified Elint vessels, spy trawlers, overfitted with the latest and most powerful aerial, surface and subsurface detection equipment. They flanked the fishing fleet like sheepdogs but, as Vladimirov knew, their interest lay elsewhere. At that moment, they would be sweeping the skies with infrared detectors, checking traces with the search-pattern they would have received from the ‘Wolfpack’ sector commander the coast of whose area they were sailing. It was early in the year for Elint vessels to be operating in the Barents Sea, but Deputy Defence Minister, Admiral of the Soviet Fleet Gorshkov, liked his spy ships in action as soon in the Arctic year as was feasible. Because of the southward drift of the ice in the Arctic spring, at the moment they did little more than supplement the coastal radars.
Vladimirov’s eye wandered north across the projection of the Barents Sea, picking up the scarlet dot of a naval vessel. From the list in front of him, he knew it was the helicopter and missile cruiser, ‘Moskva’ class, the Riga, and the pride of the Red Banner Northern Fleet: 18,000 tons displacement, armed with two surface-to-air missile-launchers, and two surface or antisubmarine launchers, four sixty-millimetre guns, mortars, four torpedotubes, and four hunterkiller helicopters of the Kamov Ka-25 type. She was proceeding at that moment on an easterly course, at the express command of the First Secretary, through Gorshkov in Leningrad, which would, within little more than an hour, bring her close to Novaya Zemlya.
Elsewhere on the living map, Vladimirov registered the presence of two missile-destroyers, smaller, less powerfully armed replicas of the missile-cruiser, without that ship’s complement of helicopters. One of them was well to the north of Novaya Zemlya, near Franz Josef Land on the edge of the permanent ice-sheet, and the other was steaming rapidly south and east from the Spitzbergen area. The majority of the Red Banner fleet’s surface vessels were in Kronstadt, the huge is-, land naval base in the estuary of the Neva, near Leningrad; it was too early for operations, too early for exercises, in the Barents Sea.
There were, however, Vladimirov saw with some relief, a number of yellow dots glowing on the surface of the map, signifying the presence of Soviet submarines. He glanced down at the list, identifying the types available to him, mentally recalling their armament and their searchcapability. Soviet naval policy in the Barents Sea was to keep the surface vessels in dock during the bitter winter months and during the early spring onslaught of the southward drift of the impermanent pack-ice, and to use a single weapon in the arsenal of the Red Banner Fleet for patrol duties - the huge submarine fleet at the disposal of the Kremlin and the Admiral of the Soviet Fleet. The policy explained why the Soviet Union had concentrated for so long, and so successfully, on the development of the Soviet submarine fleet, and why they had even returned to the commissioning of new, cheaper, conventional dieselpowered submarines, instead of an exclusive concentration, as had been U.S. policy, on the hideously expensive nuclear subs.
He ignored, for the moment, the three nuclearpowered ‘V type antisubmarine subs. and the two ballistic-missile subs returning to Kronstadt after their routine strike-patrol along the eastern seaboard of the United States. They would be of no use to him. What he required were submarines with the requisite searchcapability for spotting an aircraft, and for bringing it down.
‘What are the reports of the search for wreckage of the plane?’ he asked aloud at last, tired suddenly of the lights on the map, it was impossible for Gant to escape, and yet… he should already be dead.
‘Nothing so far, sir - air-reconnaissance reports no indications of wreckage other than that of the Badger … the ground search parties have not yet arrived at the site of the crash.’
‘Give me a report on the search for the refuellingcraft,’ Vladimirov said in the wake of the report. A second voice sang out: ‘Negative, sir. No unidentified surface vessels or aircraft in the area the computer predicts to be the limit of the Mig’s flight.’
Vladimirov looked angry, and puzzled. It was what he wanted to hear, from one point of view. No planes or ships of the West anywhere near the area. It was, frankly, impossible. There had to be a refuellmg-pomt. But the nearest neutral or friendly territory had to be somewhere in Scandinavia. It was, of course, possible to suppose that Gant was scheduled to make another alteration of course, to head west and follow the Russian coastline to North Cape, or Finnish Lapland…
He did not believe it, even though he had taken the necessary precautions already. He believed that the CIA and the British SIS would not have been able to persuade any of the Scandinavian governments to nsk what the landing of the Mig on their territory would mean, in their delicate relations with the Sov
iet Union on their doorsteps. No, the refuelling had to be out at sea, or at low altitude somehow. It could not be a carrier, there wasn’t one in the area, not remotely in the area. Apart from which, the Mig-31 was not equipped for a deck landing. But could the base be an American weather-station on the permanent ice-sheet of the Pole?
Vladimirov disliked having to confront the problem of the refuelling. Until final confirmation that Gant had crossed the coast, and the evidence that there was no refuelling-station apparent, he had concentrated on stopping him over Soviet territory. But, now…
‘Where is it?’ he said aloud.
‘Where is what?’ the First Secretary asked. His face was creased with thought, with his approaching decision.
‘The refuelling ship … or aircraft, whatever it is!’ Vladimirov snapped in reply, without looking up from the map.
‘Why?’
A thought struck Vladimirov. Without replying to the First Secretary, he said, over his shoulder: ‘Any trace on infrared or sound-detectors further west, either from Firechain bases, or from coastal patrols?’ There was a silence for a moment, and then the noncommital voice replied: ‘Negative, sir. Nothing, except the staggered sector scramble in operation.’
‘Nothing at all?’ Vladimirov said with a kind of desperation in his voice.
‘No, sir. Completely negative.’
Vladimirov was at a loss. It was like staring at a jigsaw puzzle that didn’t make sense, or a game of chess where unauthorised moves had been suddenly introduced, to leave him baffled and losing. He realised he had operated too rigidly as a tactician, and that the people who had planned the theft of the Mig had been experts in the unexpected - security men like Andropov. He glanced quickly in the Chairman’s direction. He decided not to involve him. Realising that he was perhaps committing Kontarsky’s crime, he decided to handle it himself.
There had to be an answer, but he could not see it. The more he thought about the problem of Gant’s refuelling, the more he became convinced that it was the key to the problem.
But, how?
He glared at the map as though commanding it to give up its secrets. On it, every single light represented a Soviet vessel, except for a British trawler-fleet on the very edge of the map, in the Greenland Sea, west of Bear Island.
He wondered, and decided that it was too far. Gant would not have sufficient fuel to make it - and how did the British navy expect to conceal an aircraft carrier inside a trawler-fleet? The idea was ludicrous. No. The map didn’t hold the answer. It told him nothing.
His hand thumped the map, and the lights jiggled, faded and then strengthened. ‘Where is he?’ he said aloud.
After a moment, the First Secretary said: ‘You are convinced that he is still alive?’
Vladimirov looked up, and nodded.
‘Yes, First Secretary. I am.’
There its was, Aubrey thought, a single orange pinhead on the huge wall map. Mother One. An unarmed submarine, hiding beneath an icefloe which was drifting slowly south in its normal spring perambulation, its torpedo room and forward crew’s quarters flooded with precious paraffin to feed the greedy and empty tanks of Gant’s plane.
He coughed. Curtin turned slowly round, then the spell that had seemed to hold them rigidly in front of the map was broken by the entry of Shelley, preceded by a food trolley. Aubrey smelt the aroma of coffee. With a start, he realised that he was hungry. Despite being envious of Shelley who was shaved and washed and had changed his shirt, Aubrey was not displeased by the sight of the covered dishes on the trolley.
‘Breakfast, sir!’ the younger man called out, his smile broadening as he watched his chief’s surprise grow, and then become replaced by obvious pleasure. ‘Bacon and eggs, I’m afraid,’ he added to the Americans. ‘I couldn’t find anyone in the canteen who could make flapjacks or waffles!’
Curtin grinned at him, and said: ‘Mr. Shelley - a real English breakfast is the first thing we Americans order when we book into one of your hotels!’ Shelley, absurdly pleased with himself, Aubrey thought, was unable to grasp the irony of Curtin’s remark. Not that it mattered.
‘Thanks,’ Buckholz said, lifting one of the covers. Aubrey deeply inhaled the aroma of fried bacon, left his chair and joined them at the trolley.
They ate in silence for a little time, then Aubrey said, his knife scraping butter onto a thin slice of toast, his voice full of a satisfied bonhomie: ‘Tell me. Captain Curtin, what is the present condition of the icefloe beneath which our fuel tanker is hiding?’
Curtin, eating with his fork alone in the American style, leaned an elbow on the table around which they sat, and replied: ‘The latest report on the depth of the ice, and its surface condition, indicates all systems go for the landing, sir.’
Aubrey smiled at his excessive politeness, and said: ‘You are sure of this?’
‘Sir.’ As he explained, his fork jabbed the air in emphasis. ‘As you know, sir, all signals from Mother One come via the closest permanent weather-station, and are disguised to sound, if anyone picked them up, just like ordinary weather reports or ice-soundings. So we don’t know what Frank Seerbacker in his ship really thinks, only what he sends. But the conditions are good, sir. The ice surface hasn’t been changed or distorted by wind, and the floe still hasn’t really begun to diminish in size - take it perhaps another three or four days to get south enough to begin melting.
‘And - it’s thick enough?’ Aubrey persisted. Shelley smiled behind another mouthful of bacon and egg poised on his fork. He recognised the signs. Whenever Aubrey was at a loss in the matter of expertise, as he plainly was in the area of polar ice and its nature and behaviour, he repeated questions, sought firmer and firmer assurances from those who posed as experts.
‘Sir,’ Curtin nodded with unfailing courtesy. ‘And it’s long enough and wide enough,’ he added, with the hint of a smile on his Ups. ‘Gant, if he’s anything of a pilot, can land that bird on it.’
‘And the weather?’ Aubrey continued.
Buckholz looked up, grinned and said: ‘What’s the matter, Aubrey? Indigestion, or something?’
‘And the weather?’ Aubrey persisted, not looking at Buckholz.
‘The weather is, at the moment, fine - sir,’ Curtin informed him. He was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘It’s abnormally fine for the time of year, in that sort of latitude…’
‘Abnormal?’
‘Yes, sir. It could change - like that.’ Curtin snapped a the fingers of his disengaged hand.
‘Will it?’ Aubrey asked, his eyes narrowing, as if he suspected some massive joke at his expense. ‘Will it?’
‘I can’t say, sir. Nothing large is showing up, not on the last batch of satellite pictures.’
‘What of the reports from the submarine itself?’
‘Nothing yet, sir. The weather’s perfect. The sensors are being thrust up through the floe from the submarine’s sail every hour, on the hour. The local weather’s fine, sir - just fine.’ Curtin ended with a visible shrug, as if to indicate that Aubrey had bled him dry, both of information and reassurance.
Aubrey seemed dissatisfied. He turned his attention to Buckholz.
‘It’s a lunatic scheme - you must admit that, Buckholz, eh?’
Buckholz glowered at him across his empty plate. He said: ‘I’m admitting no such thing, Aubrey. It’s my a end of the business, this refuelling. You got him there, I admit that - a great piece of work, if that’s what you want me to say - but I have to get him home, and you just better trust me, Aubrey, because I’m not about to change my plans because of your second thoughts.’
‘My dear chap,’ he said, spreading his hands on the table in front of him, ‘nothing was further from my thoughts, I assure you.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘I just like to be in the picture, so to speak, just like to be in the picture. Nothing more.’
Buckholz seemed mollified. ‘Sure, it’s a crazy scheme landing a plane on a floating icefloe, refuelling it from a submarine - I admit that. But it�
�ll work, Aubrey. There’s just no trace of that sub, not at the moment, because it’s under the floe, and showing up on no sonar screen anywhere, except as part of the floe. It comes up out of the water, fills up the tanks, and our boy’s away.’ He smiled at Aubrey. ‘We can’t use disguises, not like you, Aubrey. Out there, on the sea, you can’t disguise a ship to look like a pregnant seal!’
There was a moment of silence, and then Aubrey said: ‘Very well, Buckholz. I accept your rationale for using this submarine. However, I shall be a great deal happier when the refuelling is over and done with.’
‘Amen to that,’ Buckholz said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the percolator. ‘Amen to that.’
Almost as soon as the last of the coastal fog vanished and the bitter grey surface of the Barents Sea was sliding beneath him, strangely unreflective of the pale blueness of the sky, Gant was on top of the trawler. He was travelling at a fraction more than 200 mph, idling by the standards of the Firefox, heading for the twin islands of Novaya Zemlya, his next visual coordinate checkpoint, and the trawler was suddenly almost directly beneath him. As he flashed over the deck, at a height of less than a hundred feet, he saw, in the briefest glimpse, a white upturned face. A man had been emptying slops over the side. Then the trawler, was gone, become a point of green light on the radar screen and he cursed the fact that he had confidently switched off his forward-looking radar when he crossed the coast. Now. too late, he switched it on again. In the moment of success against the Badger, he had been careless, excited. In the moment he had glimpsed the white, upturned face, he had seen something else, something much more deadly. As if to confirm his sighting, the ECM register of radar activity indicated powerful emissions from a source directly behind him, and close. What he had the vicious bad luck to pass over was an Elint ship, a spy trawler. Even now, they could be following his flight-path on infrared.
He pushed the stick forward and the nose of the Firefox dipped, and the grey, wrinkled sea lifted up at him, threateningly. He levelled off at fifty feet, knowing that, with luck, he was already out of electronic view, at his present height. The Elint ship’s infrared operators would have seen him disappear from their screens, even as they informed the captain of their trace, even as the man with the empty slop-bucket raced towards the bridge, mouth agape at what he had seen. They would have some kind of fix on him, a direction in which he had been travelling. He was heading for Novaya Zemlya - a blind man could pass that information back to whoever was coordinating the search for him.