by Len Deighton
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 something 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?’
It broke the tension and even Schlegel smiled.
‘Is it ice?’ said the Captain. ‘I don’t give a damn about the light, but is it ice?’
‘It’s not on the sonar?’ I asked.
‘A thin sheet of ice might not show,’ said the Conning Officer.
‘Take her up, skipper,’ Schlegel said.
The Captain nodded. ‘Down periscope. Flood negative.’
The ship wobbled as the buoyancy control tank echoed, and the ascent began; The crash came like a sledgehammer pounded against the hollow steel of the pressure hull. The Captain bit his lip. All eyes were on him. Obviously some dire damage had been done to the submarine, and just as obviously there was no stopping the ascent just a few feet from the surface. We floated, rocking in the swirl of the disturbed water. Already the Captain was halfway up the ladder. I followed. Whatever was waiting up there, I wanted to see it.
After the bright glare of the submarine’s fluorescent lighting, I’d half-expected a limitless landscape of gleaming ice. But we emerged into Arctic darkness, lit only by diffused moonlight and walled-around with grey mists. The icy wind cut into me like a rusty scalpel.
Only when my eyes became accustomed to the gloom was I able to see the far side of the lagoon, where the dark waters became ash-coloured ridges of ice. The Captain was examining the dents in the periscope casing, and now he looked down and cursed the great sheet of ice that we’d broken into pieces and scattered on our waves.
‘What are the chances, Dave?’ the Captain asked the Engineering Officer, who was expected to know how to fix everything, from nuclear reactor to juke box.
‘It’s vacuum packed. It would be a long job, skipper.’
‘Take a look at it anyway.’
‘Sure thing.’
Schlegel took the Captain by the arm. He said, ‘And since I’ve told you the authorized version, let’s make sure you know what the score really is.’
The Captain bent his head, as if to listen more attentively.
‘Never mind your goddamned pig-boat, sonny. And never mind those orders. If you sail off into the sunset, leaving any one of us out there, I’ll get back. Me, personally! I’ll get back and tear your balls off. That’s the real score, so just make sure you understand it.’
‘Just don’t start anything the navy will have to finish,’ said the Captain. Schlegel grinned broadly. The Captain had taken less time to understand Schlegel than I had. Schlegel played noisy barbarian to examine the reactions of his fellow men. I wondered if I’d come out of it as well as the Captain had.
‘Your boys ready to go, Colonel?’
‘On our way, Captain.’ It was easier said than done. The high freeboard and streamlined shape of the nuclear subs makes it difficult to land from them, except to a properly constructed jetty or mother boat. We clambered down the collapsible ladders, dirtied by the hull and breathless from the exertion.
There was the corpse too. We slid it out of the metal cylinder that breathed the grey smoke of dry ice. He was sitting on a crude wooden seat, which we took from the body and sent back to the sub. Then the body was clipped on two runners and we began to plod across the ice.
We had left the permanent fluorescent day of the submarine for the long winter of Arctic night. The cloud was low, but thin enough for moonlight to glow pale blue, like a TV left on in a deserted warehouse. The cold air and hard ground made the sound travel with unexpected clarity, so that even after we were a mile away from the lagoon we could hear the whispered conversation of the welders inspecting the damaged periscope.
Another mile saw all three of us beginning to feel the exertion. We stopped and deposited the radio bleeper that had been modified to operate on the Russian Fleet Emergency wavelength. We looked back to the submarine as the deck party disappeared back into
the hull.
‘Looks like they can’t fix it,’ said Schlegel.
‘That’s what it looks like,’ I agreed.
For a moment it was very still and then, slowly, the black shiny hull slid down into the dark Arctic water. I’ve never felt so lonely.
We were alone on a continent composed solely of ice, floating on the northern waters.
‘Let’s move over a little,’ I said. ‘They could home an anti-personnel missile on to that bleeper.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Schlegel. ‘And bring the incredible hulk.’ He pointed to the frozen corpse. It lay on its side, rolled into a ball as if someone had just floored it with a low punch. We moved two hundred yards and settled down to wait. There was still nearly an hour to go until RV time. We buttoned up the anoraks across the nose, and pulled down the snow goggles to stop the icicles forming on our lashes.
The low cloud, and the hard flat ice, trapped the sound and cast it back and forth between them so that the noise of the helicopter seemed to be everywhere at once. It was a Ka-26, with two coaxial rotors that beat the air loudly enough almost to eclipse the sound of its engines. It hovered over the radio bleeper, dipping its nose to improve the pilot’s view. Still with its nose drooping, it slewed round, searching the land until it saw us.
‘Search and Rescue livery,’ said Ferdy.
‘Ship based,’ said Schlegel. ‘It could still work out.’
‘Remoziva, you mean?’ Ferdy said.
Schlegel shot me a quick glance. ‘Yes, it could be,’ said Schlegel. ‘It could be.’
The chopper settled in the great cloud of powdered snow that was lifted by its blades. Only when the snow settled could we see it, sitting a hundred yards from us. It was slab-sided, with twin-boom tailplane. The cabin was no more than a box, with two huge engine pods mounted high on each side. The exhausts glowed red in the darkness. The box-like design was emphasized by stripes of international-orange, calculated to make it conspicuous on either the ice or the dark ocean. There were dimension lights on every corner of it, and even after the blades came to a sticky halt – when the chopper’s outlines were no longer easy to see – the lights continued to wink on and off like crazy fireflies on a summer’s evening.
Schlegel put a hand on Ferdy’s arm. ‘Let them come to us, let them come to us.’
‘Could that be Remoziva?’ said Ferdy.
Schlegel only grunted. The man who had got out came from the door on the passenger side. He held on to the side of the airframe as he dropped to the ground. His breath hit the cold air like smoke-signals. He was clearly not a young man, and for the first time I began to believe that it might be on.
‘You’d better go, Pat,’ Schlegel said.
‘Why me?’
‘You speak.’
‘Ferdy too.’
‘Ferdy knows what’s happening here.’
‘You’ve got me there,’ I said. I got to my feet and walked towards the old fellow. He was easier to see than I was, for he was dressed in a dark-blue naval overcoat but without shoulderboards or insignia. Stok. It was Colonel Stok. He stopped forty yards from me and held up a flat hand to halt me too.
‘We’ll need the body,’ called Stok.
‘It’s here.’
‘The insignia? … Uniform? … Everything?’
‘Everything,’ I said.
‘Tell them to bring it to the aircraft.’
‘Your man,’ I said. ‘Where is your man?’
‘He’s with his assistant in the back seat. It’s well. Go back and tell them, it is well.’
I returned to the others. ‘What do you think?’ said Schlegel. I was about to tell him that I didn’t like anything about it, but we’d more or less agreed that I’d try to believe in fairies until they beat us over the head with exploding copies of Izvestiia. ‘He’s a very wonderful human being, and you can quote me.’
‘Cut out the shit,’ said Schlegel. ‘What do you think?’
‘He says Remoziva is in the back seat with his assistant. They want the body.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Ferdy. ‘If they wreck this helicopter with that corpse at the controls, how do they get back?’
‘Do you know something, Ferdy, any time now you’re going to find out about Santa Claus.’
‘Hack it, you two! Help me with this goddamn stiff.’
The Russians didn’t help us. Stok watched us through light-intensifier glasses hooked up to the chopper’s power unit. I suppose they needed such things for Arctic Search and Rescue, but that didn’t help me feel any less conspicuous.
When we were about ten yards from the chopper I said to Schlegel, ‘Shouldn’t one of us make a positive recognition of Remoziva?’
‘What’s the difference? What do we need the stiff for anyway?’
I stopped for a moment. ‘Nothing, but these people might want it as evidence against Remoziva. They might be security police holding your friend Remoziva in custody.’
‘Nice thinking, Pat,’ said Schlegel. ‘But if my Admiral friend is in custody, one uniformed body with kidney trouble is not going to matter much, one way or the other.’
‘You’re the undertaker,’ I said, and we carried the corpse all the way to the doors of the chopper. From behind me I felt a hand grab my leather belt. Almost as if that was a signal, the Russian with Stok hit Ferdy on the face. Ferdy was bending to the body, to help get it feet first into the helicopter doors, and now he straightened. The punch had gone over his shoulder but Ferdy’s retaliation landed. The Russian reeled back against the open door, which banged against the fuselage. The Russian’s fur hat was knocked off and I recognized him as one of the men who’d been with Stok at my flat.
The pilot had jumped down at the other side of the plane. I stepped over the undercarriage rack but Schlegel pulled me back and then stepped clear. He held a hand above his head and fired a signal pistol. The shot sounded very loud and a great red light appeared high above us, and suffused the world in a soft pink glow.
The two men from the back seat were struggling in the door and they had Ferdy’s arm while Stok wrestled with him. It was almost funny, for both Ferdy and the Russian gyrated and overbalanced like a couple of drunken ballet dancers.
The pilot must have climbed back into his seat after Schlegel’s signal, for the clutch engaged and the contra-rotating rotors began with a fierce roar. Few helicopters have overhead rotors low enough to wound even the tallest of men, and yet few resist bending when in the vicinity of the blades. As the pilot revved up, Stok crouched away, and then, fearful that the machine would ascend without him, he stretched an arm to be helped inside. Now only one of the men had Ferdy’s arm and the machine tottered into the air, swinging as the nervous pilot over-corrected. Ferdy was suspended under it, his legs thrashing trying to find the undercarriage rack.
‘Help me, Pat. Help me.’
I was very close. The corpse had already thudded back upon the ice. I threw my glove off and found Mason’s little .22 gun in my pocket. I pulled it clear. Ferdy’s feet were now well clear of the ground and I threw my arms round them in a flying tackle. Ferdy twisted one foot to lock under the sole of the other. It was that that enabled me to unwind my gun arm and raise it. The helicopter roared and lifted into the dark Arctic sky.
The helicopter yawed as it ascended. Then, perhaps in an effort to dislodge me, it slewed abruptly and tilted. I glimpsed Schlegel, standing alone on the grey ice, waving his arms frantically, in some vain attempt to keep me under his command. A puff of cloud smothered me and then, looking deceptively close as we roared across the ice, there was the submarine. She wallowed in water that was now grey: a sleek black whale, garlanded by chunks of surface ice, and on her foredeck, a party of seamen about to cut blubber.
Afterwards I realized that I should have fired through the thin alloy fuselage at the pilot, or even in the direction of the rotor linkage. But I could think only of the man gripping Ferdy’s arm and I put all my shots in that direction. There was a scream of pa
in and then I felt myself falling. I hung tight to Ferdy’s legs – and tighter still – but that didn’t stop me falling.
There was no way to tell whether we’d been there for seconds, for minutes, or for hours. I must have stirred enough to move my arm, for it was the pain of that that brought me to consciousness.
‘Ferdy. Ferdy.’
There was no movement from him. There was blood on his face from a nose-bleed, and his boot was twisted enough for me to suspect that he’d fractured an ankle.
An ankle, it would have to be an ankle, wouldn’t it. I didn’t fancy my chances of carrying Ferdy more than twenty yards, even if I had known in which direction the submarine was, or whether it was still there.
Schlegel would be searching for us. I was sure of that. Whatever his shortcomings, he did not give up easily.
‘Ferdy.’ He moved and groaned.
‘The moon was north-easterly, right, Ferdy?’
Ferdy didn’t exactly nod, but he contracted his face muscles as if he wanted to. I looked again at the sky. There was a glimpse of the moon now and again, as the low fast clouds parted. And there was a handful of stars too, but like any handful of stars I had no trouble converting them into a plough and making its handle point north any way I wanted. Ferdy was our only chance of heading in the right direction.
‘The submarine, Ferdy.’
Again there was that movement of his face.
‘Would you say the submarine was thataway?’
He looked at the moonlight, and at the hand I held close to his face. The wind was howling so loudly that I had to hold my head against his mouth to hear his words. ‘More,’ it sounded like. I held my hand above him, and turned it until his eyes moved to show me a sort of affirmative. Then I got to my feet very slowly, examined myself and Ferdy too. He was semi-conscious, but his ankle was the only damage I could see. Getting a fireman’s lift on Ferdy was a long and difficult process but the pain of his ankle brought him almost back into the world again.
‘Put me down,’ whispered Ferdy as I shuffled along, half-carrying him. His arms were clasped round my neck, and only infrequently did his good leg assist our progress.