A Ravel of Waters

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  High overhead, the towering aerodynamics of Thomsen's space-age marvel thrust her along at seventeen knots through a Force Eight gale and dark confused sea towards her goal. Fate-or Molot?

  Chapter 25

  It was Molot. It was the most colossal spectacle I have ever seen.

  Grohman's arrival on schedule was a tribute to the magnificent way the automatics had handled Jetwind, although he had been lucky with the wind. It was the afternoon of the third day of our captivity.

  Perhaps it was mainly Tideman's diagnosis that the winner in a hostage snatch was the one who kept his nerve the longest that kept us going. That, and our endless — and sometimes futilely impractical — plans to retake the ship which we formulated and reformulated as the hours and the guards' presence leaned on us. The worst aspect was that we had nothing to keep us occupied. An adjunct to our plotting — like prisoners of war doing mental mathematical calculations to prevent them from going mad — was our attempts to estimate Jetwind's speed, course, and destination. The gale had fluctuated between Forces Seven and Nine. Neither Tideman nor I needed instruments to judge that. Only once did Jetwind slow. There was a curious hiatus one afternoon when the wind fell to a light northwesterly breeze and the ship rolled heavily in the rough swell. Then the wind backed strongly and Jetwind put on her seven-league boots again. The course was the big poser. We know Jetwind still headed eastnortheast from the sun's position through the porthole. Often, however, it was obscured by cloud.

  World interest in Jetwind became progressively less as the days passed. At first there was some comment on the radio bulletins about the lack of further information. However, a report that the British Antarctic survey ship RRS John Biscoe would shortly be leaving South Georgia and would traverse the area from which Jetwind had supposedly radioed, seemed to kill the drama in the media's eyes.

  Our guards had remained super-vigilant but we saw almost nothing of Grohman. On one of his rare visits I had tried to rattle him by accusing him of throwing the bodies of Brockton and Arno overboard. His reply had been, had he the discretion, he would have done so. As it was, they were being kept in deep-freeze 'for clinical examination' at Molot. This answer had started new trains of speculation. Clinical examination postulated a base with facilities.

  Now — it was late in the afternoon watch. Kay, Tideman and I were trying to kill the uhkillable time. Suddenly Kay exclaimed, 'What's happening?'

  A second guard had entered the glassed-off section. The sentry himself seemed surprised. The newcomer gestured in our direction. He was strung about with spare UZI magazines and there were two grenades at his belt. He opened the door. 'Come!'

  The two hijackers conducted us along a passageway leading to the navigation and chart offices and finally to the bridge.

  There I paid no attention to Grohman: I had eyes only for what lay ahead of the ship. 'By all that's holy!' exclaimed Tideman softly.

  In Albatros, it had been a hallucination, a dream; now it was a living nightmare.

  The entire ocean was a fantasy in foggy blue, white and pearl with no clear demarcation between green-grey sea, pale horizon and grey overcast. The misty reality was the same as before; the two groups of piled-up icebergs were the same. So was one great isolated berg which rode alone and whose resemblance to a Cunarder had made me doubt my senses when I had sighted it from Albatros's cockpit. The two assemblages of bergs tumbled together to form a kind of gigantic gateway to what lay behind — undefined as yet, vast, murky, secret. 'Molot!' Grohman was amused at our thunder-struck silence. 'It's not on any chart,' I said doubtfully.

  Chart or no chart, it was engraved in my memory. It was there, out to starboard, inside the huge entrance, that I had seen the Orion vanish into a no-world of water vapour, ice and sky. Further in still, I had sighted the submarine. Kay found her voice. 'Molot — what does it mean?' 'Hammer,' replied Grohman. 'The hammer…' '… and the sickle,' added Tideman.

  Grohman chuckled. 'Molot is on the chart — if you have the right chart.' He brought one out from under his arm. He'd obviously been waiting for the question — the typical need for exhibitionism of the paranoiac.

  I did not need to understand the Russian lettering. It was the Soviet Fleet's nuclear submarine chart of the Southern Ocean. Tideman gaped.

  Grohman indicated a position. I could not follow the Russian scale; at a guess, the place was about six hundred nautical miles southsouthwest of Gough Island.

  'Molot!' he repeated. He waved to the spectacle outside as if to underscore what he was telling us. 'Molot!'

  'There is no land!' I expostulated. 'There can't be! It would have been discovered years ago!'

  'It is not land,' answered Grohman. 'It was not land we were after. Molot is a seamount, a series of shallow-water shoals. It is the shape of a huge triangle — the sides measure thirty-one by twenty-nine by eighteen kilometres.' 'No one has ever suspected that such a place exists!'

  'Of course they haven't — except the Red Fleet,' Grohman retorted contemptuously. 'What do you think was the true purpose of years of patient oceanographical research carried out by Soviet ships in the Southern Ocean? Whales? Plankton studies? No! The purpose of our search was strategic, and we found what we were looking for — Molot.'

  Tideman and I had our attention focused on the chart; we did not see what caused Kay to utter a further gasp of amazement.

  Some freak of cold air interacting with warm vapour drew aside the mist curtain for a moment.

  A single monster iceberg stretched from horizon to horizon. It blocked our entire view of the ocean to port as far as the eye could reach. It had the characteristic tabular shape of the Antarctic iceberg, but I had never seen anything to approach it in size. It towered some five hundred metres out of the water. Although this giant was the centre-piece, the rest of the panorama was equally breathtaking. Groups of smaller bergs, giants in themselves but puny by comparison with the monster, scattered the ocean ahead and on both sides of Jetwind3 now moving under reduced sail. The barrier of ice was already having a taming effect on the swells at the approaches to the bases.

  Grohman said, 'It is the biggest iceberg ever seen in the Southern Ocean.' 'Trolltunga!' I exclaimed. 'Yes, Trolltunga,' he repeated.

  Kay stared at the great berg as if mesmerized and shivered. I remembered her premonition of evil when she first heard the name Trolltunga.

  'You're seeing Trolltunga only in old age,' Grohman continued, repeating what I had already heard from Brockton. 'It was first spotted by an American satellite in the Weddell Sea as long as fifteen years ago. Now, it is only about half its original dimension. Trolltunga has taken all those years to drift north from the main Antarctic ice shelf and it has lost size as it passed gradually into warmer seas. Now, as you can see, it is fast.' 'Fast?' exclaimed Tideman. 'What do you mean — fast?'

  'The nearest comparison to Alolot I can make is the Burdwood Bank off the Malvinas — your Falklands,' he answered. 'There, every season, are gigantic accumulatdons of icebergs which have grounded in the shallow water after breaking free of the Antarctic pack. Don't forget, Molot's present position is still within the limits of drifting pack-ice. Trolltunga has rested stationary here for years. It forms the entire southwestern barrier of the base.'

  It prompted the question which had been in my mind ever since the day in Albatros I had imagined I was suffering from hallucinations.

  'How is the fog formed? The icebergs themselves are not enough to generate it.'

  'I told you, Molot is a seamount,' said Grohman. 'It is a section of a highly unstable ocean-floor volcanic pattern which stretches southwestwards from the vicinity of Gough towards the Horn. You remember that some years ago Tristan da Cunha was almost destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Molot has the same characteristics, except that its volcanic crater lies just below the sea's surface. We have established that it is alive, but it is not active in the sense that it is liable to blow up at any moment. The underwater volcanic action in contact with the cold sea surroundi
ng the icebergs causes the fog.'

  'You keep saying we — do you belong to the Soviet Navy?' I ventured.

  While he had been explaining the physical features of Molot Grohman's earlier hectoring, paranoid attitude towards us had abated. Now my question seemed to fuel it afresh. 'I am a patriot, an Argentinian,' he snapped. 'I am going to recapture the Malvinas — the Falklands — for Argentina.' 'That's a tall order,' I observed.

  'You think so?' he sneered. 'Listen. For years I have led Group Condor, which began purely as a patriotic society. Under my leadership it became a para-military body, then finally a military strike force. But alone we could not mount an attack against the Malvinas. So we grouped ourselves with the super-power most likely to help us — the Soviet. From Molot here I will lead my assault force against the Malvinas.' A warning bell rang at the back of my mind. 'Why are you telling us all this, Grohman? It is top secret information’

  I didn't like the way he laughed. 'Why shouldn't you know? You will never live to tell. That goes for Tideman as well. As for the woman, I think Kyyiv is about as security-safe as Siberia.'

  I decided to play further on his deep-seated mania in order to elicit more information. 'How does Jetwind come into all this?'

  'There was the danger that on her run from Montevideo to the Cape she would divert and discover Molot.' 'So that is why you murdered Captain Mortensen?'

  Tideman added, 'Anyway, the Great Circle course from Montevideo passes hundreds of miles away from here.'

  Grohman's eyes went from Tideman to me. They were merciless. 'You are only tiny pawns in a big game. So was Mortensen. His life didn't count for a damn beside the big issues. There was a danger that he might go south into the Molot area to look for better winds. I was planted aboard Jetwind in the first place — a long time ago, when she was building — to hold a watching brief, just in case. It proved to be a very wise precaution.'

  I recalled Tideman's guess that the Soviet Navy might have suspected that Jetwind was not merely a new type of sailing ship but a vessel of strategic significance.

  Grohman's next words bore it out. He said in a quiet, sinister voice, 'This ship has a secret, and we mean to find it out.'

  I went cold inside. Had Jetwind's picture after leaving Montevideo — as we had speculated — indeed failed to register on a Red spy satellite sensor because of her polyionosoprene-coated sails and in consequence precipitated the order to Grohman to kill Mortensen and take the ship to safety in the Falklands pending the Group Condor attack? The jigsaw seemed to fit.

  What Grohman added made me certain. It also frightened me.

  'The woman knows what it is,' he said. 'At Kyyiv, we will extract it.' Kay went white. I'm only a sail-maker!' she exclaimed.

  'Only a sail-maker!' he mocked. 'We shall see! There are ways of extracting the unextractable, senorita!' 'There is nothing to know, Grohman!' I snapped.

  His face suffused with rage. ' You tell me that! You! Listen — you interfere in everything! You nearly caused the entire attack plan to abort! My orders were to wait in Port Stanley in Jetwind until the main body of Group Condor arrived for me to seize the place. Just to make sure, my country sent the Almirante Storni…'

  I laughed. He swung on me so violently I thought he was about to use the UZI.

  'Laugh-while you have the time!' he snarled. 'Soon you will regret what you did to the Almirante Storni!’

  Tideman stepped in to try and defuse the tension. He played on Grohman's illusions of grandeur.

  'The Soviet Navy's oceanographic ships have combed the Indian Ocean for years,' he said. 'Likewise, they must have charted every seamount and shoal in the Southern Ocean, from what you say.'

  It seemed, as if Tideman had pressed the right button. Grohman calmed down. 'Have you asked yourself why?' he asked rhetorically.

  'Obvious. Safe routes for nuclear subs,' replied Tideman.

  'As you say, the obvious deduction,' Grohman retorted with an air of contempt. 'It is what we wanted the West to think.' 'What else?' I interjected.

  He asked obliquely, 'Have you ever heard of jellified fuel?' He did not wait for us to venture an answer. 'The Soviet Fleet uses it. It is a type of fuel ideally suited to submarines. It minimizes vapour pressure and is easily relinquished. It does away with all need for the elaborate array of fleet replenishment tenders and refuelling points in mid-ocean which are subjected to monitoring by spy satellites and spy planes. Stored underwater in a base which is secure, shallow and cold, jellified fuel gives the submarine — the Red submarine, that is to say — a range without limit.' 'Molot!' I exclaimed.

  'Yes, Molot.' he said triumphantly. 'Supply ships dump large plastic containers of jellified fuel which are cached away at Molot safe from detection beneath the surface. The shoals of this seamount could not be bettered for our purpose. Our submarines are guided to the dumps by means of underwater electronic markers. Once the fuel is scooped up by a submarine, the process of reliquification is easy. By having this base, the way is open from Molot to choose our point of attack anywhere in the Southern Ocean — the Drake Passage, the Cape oil route, the Malvinas, anywhere we wish. The Malvinas is the initial operation to be mounted from Molot. The first anyone will be aware of it will be when the attack squadron with Group Condor appears in The Narrows.'

  I knew now that the submarine I had seen from Albatros had been no hallucination. Grohman's words told me what it had been busy doing — refuelling with jellified fuel. The secret was so momentous that the Orion had had to pay with its life merely because of its presence near Molot. Brockton had been in deeper waters than he had suspected.

  Molot was safe from detection by virtue of its remoteness and the wildest seas and weather on the face of the oceans. No ship-master in his senses would risk approaching that protecting screen of icebergs, even if by some off-chance he should be so distant from all recognized sea routes. Most valuable of all to the Red Fleet was that canopy of foggy vapour. It effectively created an impenetrable screen to spy satellite surveillance. Molot was the dagger aimed at the heart of the West.

  Chapter 26

  The blade of that dagger lay unsheathed when Jetwind rounded Trolltunga's ice head-land as high and impressive as Cape Horn itself. It was a Soviet naval squadron. It was a gut-roiling exhibition of the iron fist.

  I spotted the submarine. The shape of its elongated fin was the same as I had sighted from Albatros. Now, in addition, I was aware of its strange camouflage colour — bluish mauve, with the hull darker. It was the colour of the Antarctic half-night. It was (so Tideman told me later) a radar picket sub, a Whiskey Canvas Bag class. The odd name sprang from the way the Soviet Fleet had tried to mask the conning-tower from the eyes of Western observers by means of a coy canvas cover.

  Moored alongside was a big, deadly Kashin-class destroyer. Even at our distance from the warship the gaggle of four twin missile surface-to-air launchers plus four other single launchers was clearly visible. She mounted heavy guns as well; the snouts of quintuple torpedo-tubes bared their teeth over the ship's side.

  Sheltering under this formidable weaponry was the vessel responsible for the discovery of Molot itself — the oceanographic survey ship Akademik Kurchatov. Her eight heavy masts made her quite distinctive. One was in the bow, two immediately for'ard of the bridge, another immediately abaft with a mass of heavy gear and aerials. Others were sited at various points, but a triangular, gantry-type with a big derrick rigged on heavy cables left no doubt that the Akademik Kurchatov's work was in the ocean deeps.

  Dwarfing the squadron, however, was a massive, square-looking vessel — over thirty thousand tonnes, I reckoned — with a huge steel gantry running athwartships between an armoured, enclosed super-structure over her bow and stern. Her sloping steel anti-splinter upperworks, tall lattice mast for'ard strung with sophisticated search and firing radar antennae, twin SAM missile launchers, and eight 57 mm and 30 mm guns left no doubt that the Berezina could defend herself as well as fulfil her purpose, which was to act
as fleet replenishment unit to the Red Navy. Hundreds of men appeared on the super-structure of the Berezina when Jetwind came in sight — Group Condor. 'Shorten sail! Topsails only!'

  It seemed that we were about to join the fleet at anchor. I could not fault Grohman's handling of Jetwind. Operating the consoles' controls was Jim Yell, the bo'sun, who had helped me rescue Kay. He had obviously been dragooned into the job at pistol-point: he was new to it, all thumbs. Grohman's automatic at his back wasn't a help.

  Yell's handling was not quick enough for Grohman. He gave an oath at the bo'sun's awkwardness, waved him aside with the gun barrel, and took over the manoeuvre himself. Jetwind edged past the ice cape. Four explosions rang out.

  Grohman and the other hijackers' nerves must have been shot to react so violently. Both dropped into a firing crouch. The shots originated from the ice head-land we were passing. I saw spurts of ice chips fly.

  Our escape plan from Molot did not come to mind fully fledged, as had Jetwind's plan to elude the Almirante Storni. However, the sound of the explosions, the sight of a small naval pinnace moored at the foot of the iceberg, and the formidable array of Red sea-power riding at anchor in the stormy, uncertain light, were the ingredients of the mix. Consciously, it was a daring impossibility; subconsciously, my mind began to free-wheel.