Simmonds smiled, then squinted across at the Cardiff lighthouse. ‘Not far to go.’ He throttled back and the Chrysler car-engine just hummed like a landlubber on a parking lot.
In the cabin I plotted the chances of going aboard should a submarine turn up at the location radar had computed. With a whispering engine we could get close. I could swim reasonably well though I was out of condition. The water was warm and unruffled and we were due for a moon around midnight. There would be a short lapse of time between the surfacing of a sub and the switching on of its radar night-eyes.
My chances of getting in — and just as important — out, would depend on luck alone.
Simmonds shut down the engine and took a sighting on the three lighthouses which would give us a fix. Watching the blinking sweep of each beam emphasized my sense of remoteness and amplified the truly enormous stakes. Two men in a boat against what? — Thinkbombs? And what were they? How might the submarines reveal any part of such an eerie problem? — Or did Chindale know more than he admitted and therefore have reason to believe that the subs might be guided in the same way?
Simmonds tapped the chart with a pencil. ‘We’re inside this triangle,’ he said. ‘That’s as close as we’ll get. Now we wait.’
*
Later, he asked: ‘Why did you pick me for this job, Nigel?’
‘Because you fly right.’
‘Thanks. But that isn’t the reason.’
‘Then what is?’
‘You remember there was a fellow, back in the days of Thompson’s Falls, who was rather nasty to black Africans? What was his name ... I can’t remember.’
I did remember and I named him.
‘Right. That’s the man. He beat up a houseboy on one occasion.’
The reference to this seemed obscure to me. I had been in Kenya on behalf of one of the big tractor concerns. A lot of heavy equipment was getting spirited away, then reappearing with new chassis numbers in the Union. Actually it hadn’t mattered too much; the Ground Nut Scheme was whimpering to an end and the operating companies didn’t mind writing the thefts off against insurance — it was a lot cheaper than shipping them back to the UK. But in the end a tawdry little gang of knaves — old-fashioned adventurers, really, who thought crime in the colonies was a gentleman’s occupation — had been rounded up and taken back to England. Their daddies paid the big bills and no charges were preferred. Mau-Mau had in any case come to a head and nobody had time to bother with obsolete scoundrels. Simmonds, a Special with the Kenya Police in the days when the e in Kenya was long, had worked along with me. The tractor company provided the aircraft and Simmonds was the first black African to qualify with the East African Flying Club. The finale of all this had involved flying four taut-lipped ne’er-do-wells to Nairobi. It was one of these gentlemen who had beaten up the houseboy.
Simmonds was saying: ‘The character in question snarled at you and said “You go out of your way to be nice to everyone except whites” — You remember that?’
‘Yes, that’s right. So he did. What are you getting at?’
‘Only that it could be true, Nigel. For some reason you may think you have to.’
‘Balls. A Negrophile like that would have to feel rejected by his own race.’
‘I didn’t say you were a Negrophile. But your racial non-discrimination wouldn’t stick under real duress if you’re bending over backward to keep it up.’
‘We’ve been in some pretty tough spots together.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘we have. But under pressure from the outside.’
I grinned at him through the darkness. ‘Are you calling me names just for the fun of it? — I mean, it can be boring sitting here glaring at non-existent subs.’
‘I’m not calling you any names,’ he said. ‘And you come pretty near to being unprejudiced. That’s why I can say it. I just don’t want you to get a shock. I just wish people would relax. The difference between black and white is factual — not emotional. You can’t integrate with a figment or blow boilers proving we’re all either exactly the same or completely different.’
We kept on waiting for action and I got cramp. At two o’clock we thought there was something ahead. Simmonds started the engine and we slithered forward to investigate. Nothing there. We were trying to force events because we needed them and they were none the less refusing to take place. The engine died back and we slopped around for another twenty minutes. ‘Why,’ breathed Simmonds into darkness, ‘did Dad omit the hydrophones? — He seems to have fitted everything else.’
‘Because he would have forgotten to connect them up.’
‘If only we could use our ears instead of our eyes.’
‘Yes.’
But we couldn’t. So we opened a couple of cans and munched. Then Simmonds stopped me mid-mouthful and said sharply: ‘What’s that? Starboard quarter? One mile? See it?’
With a surreptitious sucking noise that was lavatorially obscene a cigar-shaped shadow obstructed the view of Wales on the skyline and caught the sheen off an anaemic slice of moon. There was a deep shiver underneath us.
It was a sub, all right!
Vortices blew from her tanks; whining machinery shrilled as gear which opened deck hatches cranked into hydraulic operation. Then, as the sub settled, enigmatic and still, silhouetted on the surface gigantically against the starline, the shiver was echoed in my own guts.
From the shock of spectacle my brain punched up the answer-card.
I knew about Louise and why she was ill and what the illness was and when she had contracted it.
I knew why there had been two ambulances instead of one, tearing out of the main gate at Elstree and sheering off to the west.
‘Oh, God ... Oh, God!’
Simmonds bent low to watch my face. ‘For Christ’s sakes, man! What is it?’
‘Start up. We’re moving in. I’m going to board her.’
‘Just like that? You’re crazy.’
‘Do as I say.’
‘Tell me what’s on your mind.’
‘Get moving first.’
Simmonds hesitated another second. Then moved, agile and quiet, across to the engine panel.
I said: ‘How far off is she, do you reckon?’
Simmonds pressed the starter and the motor ran steadily. ‘I dunno ... She’s large. Pretty big stuff, and nuclear, I’d say. Three quarters of a mile, maybe?’
‘I agree. Make fifteen knots until we’re two hundred yards off. Then go dead slow.’
Simmonds slammed the gear lever in forward and spun the wheel.
‘No lights,’ I said.
The navigation lights were off, but we doused cigarettes and switched out the instrument panel. On course now, moving straight towards the sub. She showed no lights either; just sat there, cold.
‘Now ... What’s new, Nigel?’
‘Nothing new, that’s the point. I should have seen it all. But I’m slow. Too damn slow!’
‘Yenn, hold it. Let’s concentrate on this!’
‘I am! That’s what I’m on about!’
‘Mutilated brains? How does that fit in with a parked submarine?’
‘What I was telling you before ...’ I pulled myself short, kept my voice low. ‘The night of the accident —’
‘Which? The ambulance bit?’
‘Right. Suppose it’s like this: Louise gets a phone call from Thorne —’
‘ — That’s the guy who got caught in the works?’
‘Yes. The man on the reactor ... So. He phones Louise, suddenly. They haven’t been seeing each other but this is something special. He’s been slipping on the job; his Dove-type politics have got him in big trouble, he’s desperate and uncertain ... perhaps for the first time in his life ...’
‘Am I to steer towards the sub’s stern?’
‘Yes. About ... two hundred yards in line.’
A fractional adjustment to the wheel. ‘Then?’
‘Thorne says he wants her there. He’s found out something.
Maybe about what Group Three is really doing.’
‘Which is making these NCBMS?’
‘Thinkbombs to their friends.’
‘Christ. What’s a Thinkbomb do?’
‘What do you think?’
He spoke very low, his face right up to mine. I could see in the faint light the sudden taut lines down the face ... Mgiriana turning Kikuyu. ‘How’s about Organic Computers?’
‘That’s what I think.’
‘Is it possible?’
‘It is if Stergen’s on it.’ I looked dead ahead at the sub. It had grown huge in changed perspective. ‘... And they could use them for anything.’
Simmonds whistled. ‘Like subs.’
‘First things first.’
‘Like reactors in Group Three?’
‘Why not? A good way of testing them out.’
‘So Louise goes there. How would she get in?’
I said: ‘Thorne passed her in — must have.’
‘But then people would have known and you would have found out from them.’
I thought about Stavely sitting there being lugubrious, suspicious ... Michael mentioning two ambulances but leaving out details of any other occupant. Suddenly I felt violently sick. ‘Can you steady this crate? It’s snaking and I’ll throw up.’
He said quietly: ‘I don’t think it’s the motion. You’re frightened for Louise.’ He checked it a bit, though.
I went on: ‘There are several entrances there. She finds Thorne in the control room. Going to pieces fast. He blurts out a desperate story ... a helpless need for Louise now that she’s lost interest. He reels off how wrong he’s been about every damn thing ... It’s weapons of war and he’s been had.’
‘Then what?’
‘The reactor listens.’
‘It does what?’
‘It’s a brain! God knows how they keep it alive. But they’ve got some horrible organic compound, rolled out on plastic strips. These can conduct neurons — the impulses which —’
‘ — I know, I know! Get on with it, man!’
‘The reactor control system hears this treasonable act. Louise is being told. She would tell others. It must be stopped.’
‘So there’s an accident?’
‘Right! A surge ... anything that can cause serious contamination. Only Thorne himself gets it the worst.’
‘A fatal dose.’
‘Fatal to the body. But maybe the brain can be saved. A new blood supply, someone else’s organs ... whatever they do.’
‘And Louise?’
‘She gets a dose, too. Only they don’t want her brain anyway. It doesn’t know anything. It isn’t trained.’
‘God.’
‘So they rush her down here to Somerset too — and examine her. Radiation sickness is diagnosed, possibly in a particular gland. She’s placed under observation ... I heard she was in hospital for a time. God, why couldn’t I think!?’
‘You were in love and how could you change anything?’
‘And she could be dying!’
Simmonds couldn’t say anything and couldn’t do anything and we were now very close to the submarine. The helm went over and we started to come back towards her in line astern. Nothing moved on deck, no lights showed. I could see there were two hatches open — one amidships, the other nearer to us at the stern. She was vast but unusually flat, lying low in the water, numbered K-41 in stencil black. She hadn’t got the lines of any normal submarine I had seen.
Simmonds closed the throttle and switched off. Now he spoke, but he wasn’t thinking of our immediate situation. He said: ‘Louise is making the best of it, and you must help her. Maybe you’re giving her the treatment she needs as much as theirs. Maybe to want to live enough you have to be already living a lot. Maybe for her to have enough will to survive she’s in need of the therapy of fun and the energy of plain damn lust. How do you know? Either way, you can’t question it. Once you both admit what you both know, she dies young — maybe younger than she’s going to anyway. A matter of months or weeks or days. Don’t question it.’ He was finished, through with the whole subject. His voice dropped low. ‘Look up there!’ He gestured towards the huge conning tower, thick black and stark against the brilliant pinheads of the stars. ‘What do we do? Open the throttle and jump on her back? You’ll never get aboard!’
My sudden calm matched the limpid night containing us. I had made up my mind on a simple issue: to be direct; to act without the thoughts which would undo the decision made. You can think yourself out of anything. You can consider odds that are too large to fit the hour, too long to permit an opportunity. Security work had taught me perhaps only one thing: to leap before you look.
Simmonds, sceptical but not cynical, listened — arms folded across — while I shortlisted the steps to be taken if the unforeseen occurred. Should the submarine move off with me still aboard he was to inform Chindale at a number I gave. It was now three o’clock: that gave almost exactly thirty-four hours before the next-call-but-one of the Little Man — Louise taking care of the first. Chindale would have to take steps to seal off Louise from the outcome of my failure to report back by Monday morning. He should also be informed that Louise was possibly extremely ill.
The rest was already arranged; Simmonds would beach the Golden Hind, pick up the Land-Rover (I told him where I’d left it) double back to the aircraft and carry out a pattern search of the sea area.
We were all set. It was one of those instants you never forget ... The chill of silence. The crouch of the sub and the bobbing of the boat. Self-consciously we shook hands. It seemed an idiotic thing to do and we smiled because of that.
I took a swig of whisky and plopped over the side. Once clear of the craft I signalled to Simmonds. He waved back, started the motor and ruddered around on the heading back. I watched the dark shadow of the boat as it turned towards the glossy towers of the power station ashore.
I started swimming towards the cold steel yonder. After a few seconds the water felt reasonably warm. After a few more I knew I was mad.
It took me ten minutes to find a way up the side of the sub. The two hatches were still open. I could hear the motors which ran the air conditioning. But even as I slid on to the flat deck someone must have heard the muffled exhaust of the boat as Simmonds opened the throttle wide to get clear.
All that had been inert became action. A searchlight sputtered into brilliance and thrust through the night like a solid white-hot rod, as a klaxon sounded from within. The far hatch, well forward of me, closed hydraulically with a high pitched whine. The sub was enormous; the other hatch, still open, was even further off. Between, the obscene hull rose in a tungsten steel curve, shining wet and bluish in the moonlight. Great fins stuck out on either side immediately in front of me ... thick, powerful hydroplanes hinged inboard in vulgar impersonation of the elegant ailerons of the Cessna we had flown in. There was the coarse smell of hot oil, and nearby an exhaust vent blew stale air up into the damp. I began to clamber forward along the tin fish, wondering now if any small part of my plan to get in made any sense at all. I was quite sure it didn’t.
Golden Hind was going flat out but taking, it seemed to me, a hell of a time to get anywhere. She wasn’t in the searchlight beam yet but Simmonds better get off but fast!
For no apparent reason the searchlight blacked out.
Then I knew the reason. With a roar that would have ripped my eardrums had they not been sogged with water the tanks blew air right beneath me. The searchlight started to retract. We were diving, by God, and I was on top ...
I had a few seconds only to get to that hatch. Why was it still open? Time slowed down as I froze for milli-seconds, then leapt forward as a great drench of water careered over the back of the big fish and tried to wrap me several times around the hull. I slid on oil and crashed down, managed to hang on to a stirrup — one of a row that led to the hatch — but my arms were being stretched out of their sockets and I couldn’t get a leverage.
The val
ves that flooded the ballast tanks were now wide open and there was a roaring sound like a gigantic drainplug vortexing like a spin-dryer in a sewage pipe. Then a sluice-current slammed the opposite way as the fishtail of the sub cranked upward; white foam raced phosphorescently along the upper surface from the stern and lifted me violently from my feet.
I still hung on to the stirrup, waiting to be dashed now, in a semi-circular arc, pivoted at my wrists, against the closing lid above me ... the hatch on the high part of the hull still clear of water, now closing. I had to let go my hands at the precise optimum moment — too soon and my head would be stove in; too late and my arms would be bent backward and cracked across the stirrups. Duration for all this: about three seconds — the hatch was still seventy degrees open and there was still a miraculous chance.
I let go my hands.
No more chilling a moment, no more frantic a gamble, had ever in my lifetime compressed the grim business of survival into so short a time.
And yet it seemed endless. My unclenched hands had lost touch with that which was solid and metal and there, and I was in space, crazily timing by the instincts born from fear a leaf-spring manoeuvre no one could ever compute.
... falling ... falling ...
And yet, and yet — so cussed is the human mind under duress, so unpredictable are basic human reactions, that only one clear thought entered my conscious mind as the thrashwave of water caught my arch-bowed spine and numbed me nearly right out ...
Why were they late with the hatch?
*
I should think I was only unconscious for a few seconds ... not even long enough to interrupt my awareness of events. I knew where I was; I niched in my mind the significance of the long, metallic corridor and the steel floor on which I’d fallen. Above me were the rungs leading up to the hatch; there was water still slopping down on to me. The pool in which I lay was tinted red. The blood had come from a cut on my head. The injury wasn’t severe but was still bleeding.
I found my limbs intact, wondered how this could possibly be so. I must have caught the thick padding which lined the funnel-shaped descent. Semi-conscious during the fall I probably gripped the companionway and got some sort of foothold, enough anyway to break the fall.
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