Spy Story hp-5

by Len Deighton

  She looked at her watch and sighed. 'You couldn't have chosen a worse time of day.'

  'I can wait.'

  'Oh Lord! Look, come back for lunch — on the house. We'll do your questions after.'

  'I have a lunch appointment'

  'Bring her with you.'

  I raised an eyebrow.

  'I told you; I'm psychic' She consulted a large book. 'Deux converts — one o'clock? It will give you time for a drink.' She uncapped a gold pen. 'What was the name again?'

  'You make it hard to refuse.'

  'Excellent,' she said, and fidgeted with the pen.

  'Armstrong.'

  'And I'll give you your tickets for the play.' She went to the door. 'Sylvester!' she called, 'what the bloody hell are you doing down there! We've got the devil of a lot to do before lunch.'

  Chapter Twelve

  At the discretion of control game time can be speeded, halted or reversed so that bounds can be replayed with the advantage of hindsight. No appeal can be in made except on the grounds that notice in writing was not received before control's action.

  RULES. ALL GAMES. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON

  I went up to the Control Balcony when I got back. Schlegel was on the phone. It was still early; I hoped that he hadn't missed me. 'Sonofabitch,' he shouted, and slammed the phone down. I wasn't dismayed; it was just his manner. He used too much energy for everything he did: I'd seen such activity before in small thickset men like Schlegel. He smacked a first into his open palm. 'For Christ's sake, Patrick. You said an hour.'

  'You know how it is.'

  'Never mind the goddamned apologies. Not content with Hying boats, your friend is putting ice-breakers on a converging pattern along the Munnanskiy Bereg. Ice-breakers with sonar buoys… get it? He'll plot both the subs by taking bearings.'

  'That's not bad,' I said admiringly. 'No one's thought of that before. Maybe that's why the Russians keep those two nuclear breakers so far west.'

  Schlegel had a lot of hands, and now he threw them at me, so that the index fingers bounced off my shirt. 'I've got two admirals and selected staff from Norfolk running the Blue Control.' He walked over to the teleprinter, fed out some paper, tore it off, screwed it up and threw it across the room. I said nothing. 'And your friend Foxwell chooses this moment to demonstrate how well the commies can shaft us.'

  He pointed down at the War Table. Plastic discs marked those spots where Ferdy had wiped out nuclear subs. The two replacement subs coming from Iceland and Scotland were moving along the Murmansk coast and would be detected by Ferdj-'s buoys.

  'They should have dog-legged those subs nearer to the Pole,' I said.

  'Where were you when we needed you?' said Schlegel sarcastically. He picked up his jacket and stood there in his shirtsleeves, his thumb hooking the jacket of his blue chalk-stripe, over his shoulder, his fingers grasping his bright red braces. He climbed into his jacket and smoothed the sleeves. That suit was Savile Row, from label to lining, but on Schlegel it was Little Caesar.

  'How do we know that in a real, war the Russians wouldn't be just as nutty?' I said.

  'And leave the Kara Sea wide open?' He tightened the knot of his tie.

  'It's working out O.K.' I looked at the Game Clock, which moved according to the computer-calculated result of each bound. I picked up the pink flimsies that Blue Control had issued, trying to call the destroyed submarines.

  'They just won't buy it,' said Schlegel. I noticed that on the electric lights of the tote board they were still shown as un-destroyed and in action.

  I looked at the Master Status Report. I said, 'We should programme Ferdy's ideas, using every last ice-breaker available to the Russians. And we should do it again, giving every ice-breaker sub-killing capability.'

  'It's all right for you,' muttered Schlegel. 'You won't have to go to the post-mortem with these guys this weekend. When they get back to Norfolk the shit will hit the fan, mark my words.'

  'Aren't we supposed to be putting up the best defence of the I Russian mainland that we can devise?'

  'Where did you get that idea?' said Schlegel. He had a habit of running his index finger and thumb down Ms face, as if to wipe away the lines of worry and age. He did it now. 'The navy comes here for one reason only: they want a print-out that they cart take to the Pentagon and make sure the trash haulers don't steal their appropriations budget.'

  'I suppose,' I said. Schlegel despised the men of Strategic Air Command, and gladly allied himself with the navy to fight them I at any chance he got.

  'You suppose! Ever wonder what a flying gyrene like me is doing over here, running this toy-box? I was the nearest they could get to having a submarine admiral.' He worked his jaw as though getting ready to spit but he didn't. He switched on the intercom again. 'Phase Eight.' He watched the Game dock hands spin round to fourteen thirty hours.

  'Now they'll have to write off their two subs,' I said.

  'They'll tell themselves it's pack-ice affecting the radio for another Phase yet.'

  I said, 'Well they'll have one missile-submarine close enough to fire.'

  Schlegel said, 'Can they retarget the mirvs before launching?'

  I said, 'No, but they can make the independently targeted, war-heads fall as a cluster.'

  'So it becomes a Multiple Re-entry Vehicle but not independently targeted?'

  'That's what they call it.'

  'That's like making a Poseidon back into a horse-and-buggy Polaris.'

  'Not really,' I said.

  'It's name rank and number time again, is it?' said Schlegel. 'Not really? How much not really? Jesus, I really have to drag information out of you guys.'

  'There's far more bang per megaton for one thing. Also the clusters are more useful against dispersed targets.'

  'Like silos?'

  'Like silos,' I said.

  'How does the computer answer that? Against a ten-missile silo, for instance?'

  I said, 'Providing there are no "climate specials" or "programming errors" it usually comes out as one hundred per cent destruction.'

  Schlegel smiled. It was all Blue Suite needed to defeat Ferdy, given average luck. And Schlegel in Master Control could provide that.

  'Dandy,' said Schlegel. I was Schlegel's assistant and it was my job to brief him witfi anything he wanted to know. But I had the feeling he had his thumb in the scale for the admirals in Blue Suite, and that made me feel I was letting Ferdy down.

  'I'll give Ferdy the air reconnaissance of the drift-ice and the water temperatures, shall I?'

  Schlegel came close. 'A word of advice, Patrick. Your friend is under surveillance.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  He looked over his shoulder to be sure the door was closed. 'I mean he's under surveillance. Security, right?'

  'Aren't we all? Why are you telling me?'

  'For your own good. I mean… if you are with the guy… well, I mean… don't take him to your favourite whore-house unless you want the address on my desk next morning. Right?'

  'I'll try and remember.'

  I took the weather reports and the air analysis down, to Ferdy in the basement.

  Ferdy switched off the console when I entered. It was dark in Red Ops. Around us the edge-lit transparent sheets showed a changing series of patterns as the coloured lines drew closer. 'What did you find out?' he asked anxiously.

  'Nothing much,' I admitted. I told him about Detective-Sergeant Davis, and the girl. He smiled. 'Didn't I tell you: Schlegel has set it all up.'

  'Schlegel!'

  'He was sent here to set it up. Don't you see?'

  I shrugged it off. I went out through the light trap into the corridor. I closed the door noisily. When I got back upstairs in the Main Control Balcony the plotters wen: putting flying boats on a square-search along the coast as far as the Norwegian border. Out of Archangel, more were patrolling the narrowest part of the White Sea. Not that there were any seas. The coastlines on. that map meant nothing in the Arctic, where you coul
d walk across the pack-ice of the world's roof, all the way from Canada to the U.S.S.R., and where the drift-ice comes down nearly to Scotland. There wasn't much moving on that great white nothing, where the blizzards roared, and wind turned a man to ice, scattered the fragments and screamed on hardly noticing. Nothing moved on that — but under it. Under it the war never stopped.

  'Phase eight, section one,' whispered the loudspeaker on Schlegel's console. The plotters moved the subs and the icebreakers. The phone from Red Suite flashed.

  'Challenge,' said Ferdy. He had obviously expected it to be Schlegel on the phone and he changed his voice when he discovered it was me.

  'What can I do for you, Admiral?'

  'The ice-limit on these weather reports you brought down. They are for an earlier part of the season.'

  'I don't think so, Ferdy.'

  "Patrick. I don't want to argue but the drift-ice goes solid all along the estuary and links the islands at this time of year. You've been there, you know what: it's like.'

  'They are machine-compiled from earth satellite photos.'

  'Patrick, let me see the whole season, and I'll show you you are wrong. They have probably jumbled the cards in the machine.'

  I was sure that he was wrong but I didn't argue. 'I'll get them,' I said, and put down the phone. Schlegel was watching me. 'Mr Foxwell challenges the ice-limits,' I said.

  'Just keep him off my neck, Patrick. That's the fourth challenge of the game. Blue Suite haven't challenged me once.'

  I phoned down to the geography room where they kept the ice maps. They said they would take nearly an hour to get the whole lot together. I phoned the duty processor to tell him he'd be needed. Then I phoned Ferdy and told him the challenge would be allowed.

  'Could you come down here again?' Ferdy said.

  'I'm up and down like a yo-yo,' I complained.

  'It's important, Patrick,' he said.

  'Very well.' I went down to the basement again. As I was going into the darkened Ops Room, the young submariner who had elected to be Ferdy's assistant passed me on his way out. I had a feeling that Ferdy had found him an errand to be rid of him. 'War is hell,' the boy said, 'don't let anyone tell you different.'

  Ferdy confessed that it wasn't really important even before I was through the door. 'But I really needed a chat. You can't talk with that American boy.'

  'Schlegel will go crazy if he finds out we've sent a processor to code those instructions, and used computer lime, just to give you a chance for a chat.'

  'I'm allowed a few challenges.'

  'The other side have made none so far.'

  'Amateurs,' said Ferdy. 'Patrick, I was thinking about what you told me… about the girl.'

  'Go on,' I said. But Ferdy didn't go on. He didn't want a conversation so much as an audience. He'd placed his counters across the neck of the White Sea. On Ids small War Table it looked like the Serpentine Lake but it was well over twenty miles of frozen water with ice-breakers keeping two shipping lanes clear all through the winter.

  The teleprinter clerk read off the computer material as it came on the print-out. 'Hunter-killer submarines searching square fifteen…'

  'What have I got in hunter-feller subs?' Ferdy asked the operator.

  'Only the Fleet Alerted ones at Poliarnyi, and the ones at Dikson.'

  'Damn,' said Ferdy.

  'You must have known, what would happen, Ferdy,' I said. 'You've had your fun but you must haw realized what would happen.'

  'There's still time,' said Ferdy.

  But there wasn't time. Ferdy should have stuck to the usual procedure of hitting the electronic surveillance submarine first. They were the subs that we used for our listening posts to set up the game in the first place. Ferdy knew better than anyone in Blue Suite what they could do, and why the rest of the U.S. missile fleet depended upon them. There were two of them now, positioning the others for the missile attacks on Moscow, Leningrad and Murmansk, while the subs with the more sophisticated MIRV knocked out the missile silos, to lessen the retaliation upon our Western cities.

  'Are you going to play it out for Doomsday?' I said. But if Ferdy intended to go for maximum destruction without caring about winning the war, he didn't intend to confide in me about it

  'Bugger off,' said Ferdy. If he could find which of the U.S. subs had the mirvs, he might still pull off a freakish win. For the Polaris subs firing from the seabed up through the ocean or the ice aren't accurate enough for targets smaller than a town. The MIRV was Ferdy's real danger.

  'It's all over bar the shouting, Ferdy. You can fiddle around for a week of game-days but you'll need uncanny luck to win.'

  'Bugger off, I said,' said Ferdy.

  'Keep your hair on,' I told him. 'It's only a game.'

  That Schlegel is out to get me,' said Ferdy. He got to Ms feet. His giant frame could only just squeeze between console and the game array panels.

  'It's only a game, Ferdy,' I said again, Reluctantly he gave a little grin to acknowledge the feeble standing joke of the War Studies Centre. If they ever give us a badge or a coat of arms that will be on the scroll beneath it.

  I watched Ferdy as he ran his fingertips over the Arctic map. 'There is another trip scheduled for us next month.'

  'So I hear,' I said.

  'With Schlegel,' said Ferdy archly.

  'He's never been to the Arctic. He wants to see it all working.'

  'We will have only been back a month by then.'

  'I thought you liked the long trips.'

  'Not with bloody Schlegel, I don't.'

  'What now?'

  'I've waited a week to have my library permit renewed.'

  'I waited a month last year. That's just old English bureaucracy. That's not Schlegel.'

  'You always make excuses for him.

  'Sometimes, Ferdy, you can be a little wearing.'

  He nodded repentantly.

  'Hang on a minute,' said Ferdy. He was a curiously lonely man, educated to feel at home only with the tiny world of men who identified his obscure Latin tags, tacitly completed his half-remembered Shelley and Keats and shared his taste for both the food and jokes of schooldays. I was not one of them, but I would do. 'Hang on for five minutes.'

  The Tote — the computer's visual display — changed rapidly as he fingered the keyboard.

  We were playing a modified number five scenario: the Russian A.S.W. (Northern Fleet) had twenty-four hours of 'war imminent' to neutralize the Anglo-American subs on Arctic station. In this case the scenario opened with a mirv sub one hundred miles north of Spitzbergen. If Blue Suite got that — or any of their missile subs — much closer to Murmansk, Ferdy would not be able to attack them without a risk that the resulting explosion would wipe out his own town. This was the basic tactic of the twenty-four-hour game: getting the Blue Suite subs close to the Russian towns. Ferdy playing what Schlegel called 'madman's checkers' could never pay off.

  'They think it's till over down there, do they?' Ferdy said.

  I said nothing.

  'We'll see,' said Ferdy.

  There was a double long flash on the phone. I picked it up.

  'Schlegel here. Did you bring the Mediterranean Fleet analysis?'

  'It wasn't ready. They said they'd put it in the satchel with the stuff for the library. It's probably there now, I'll get it.'

  'You don't have to carry books over here from the Evaluation Block. We got messengers do that.'

  'A walk will do me good.'

  'Suit yourself.'

  'I have to go,' I told Ferdy. 'We'll have that chat later on.'

  'If your master allows.'

  'That's right, Ferdy.' I said with a little irritation showing through. 'If my master allows.'

  The Evaluation Building was three hundred yards down the road. There would be no important movements in the war game before the noon bound. I put on my hat, coat and scarf and took a walk through the brisk Hampstead winter. The air smelled good. After the Centre, any air would smell good. I w
ondered how much longer I could go on working in a project that swatted warships like flies and measured wins in 'taken-out? cities.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Conclusions reached by any member of stucen staff concerning the play are deemed to be secret, whether or not such conclusions were based upon play.

  STANDING ROUTINE ORDERS. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON

  Evaluation looked like a converted office block but once you got inside the front door it was not at all like a converted office block. There were two uniformed Ministry of Defence policemen in a glass box;) and a time clock, and a wall full of punch cards that the two men spent all day every day inspecting very closely before placing them in different racks.

  The policeman at the door took my security card. 'Armstrong, Patrick,' he announced to the other man, and spelled it, not too fast. The other man searched through the cards on the wall. 'Did you just come out?' said the first cop.

  'Me?' I said.

  'Did you?'

  'Come out?'

  'Yes.'

  'No, of course not. I'm just going in.'

  They've muddled the cards up again this morning. Sit down a moment would you?'

  'I don't want to sit down a minute,' I sad patiently. 'I don't want to sit down even for a second. I want to go in.'

  'Your card is not in the rack,' he explained.

  'What happens to the cards is strictly your job,' I said. 'Don't try and make me feel guilty about it.'

  'He's looking as fast as he can look,' said the gate man. The other man was bending and stretching to look at the entry cards on the wall. As he did it he repeated 'H I J K L M N O P' over and over again to remind himself of the sequence.

  'I'm only going up to the library,' I explained.

  'Ah,' said the gate man, smiling as if he'd heard this same explanation from any number of foreign spies. 'It's all the same in'it? The library is on the third floor.'

  'You come with me, then,' I said.

  He shook his head to show that it was a good try for a foreigner. He wiped his large white moustache with the back of his hand and then reached inside his uniform jacket for a spectacle case. He put his glasses on and read my security card again. Before we had the security cards, there had been no delays. I was a victim of some Parkinson's law of proliferating security. He noted the department number and looked that up in a greasy loose-leaf folder. He wrote down the phone extension and then went into the glass booth to phone. He turned to see me watching him, and then slid the glass panel completely shut, in case I should overhear him.