Marine I SBS

by David Monnery

  McClure, meanwhile, was still staring down the length of the ship, searching for any sign that their arrival uninvited had been noticed. The distant superstructure grew alternately fainter and more substantial as the mist swirled around it, and the strip of yellow light which marked the bridge seemed to be flickering on and off like a faulty fluorescent strip-light. Besides that intermittent glow there were only the fuzzy red, green and white navigation lights to tell the SBS man that he had not boarded a ghost ship.

  The entrance hatch to No. 2 Tween-decks, where the crate was supposedly stored, was about thirty metres away. McClure waited while Noonan and Davies hauled up the rope cradle which had been chosen to carry the crate, and then hand-signalled them to follow him. The three men advanced down the slippery deck, the lighted window of the bridge growing clearer as they did so, but even when the mist was at its lightest no human figures could be seen inside. Visibility to either side was no more than fifty metres, and above them it was even less, so that the tops of the derricks were hidden in the clouds.

  They reached the entrance hatch. Davies swung it open and the three men dropped through on to the ladder which led down on to the tween-decks. McClure closed the hatch behind him, plunging them into total darkness, and then for several moments the three men waited in silence.

  ‘OK,’ McClure said at last, switching on his torch. The others followed suit.

  The tween-decks was arranged like a wide, four-sided balcony overlooking the inner courtyard of the main No. 2 hold below. McClure gestured Noonan and Davies to go one way while he went the other, their torch beams dancing on the walls and piles of crates on pallets. Noonan had another mental picture – this time of the space travellers searching the nesting place at the beginning of Alien – and decided it was time he stopped going to movies. Or at least the scary ones.

  ‘Over here,’ McClure called softly. He had found the crate with the marking.

  This was becoming too easy, Noonan thought, as he hurried across with the Geiger counter.

  The LCD didn’t go mad – in fact it hardly moved at all. If there was Uranium-235 in the crate it was better shielded than anyone could have hoped.

  ‘Nothing,’ he told McClure.

  ‘We’d better open it up.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d suggest that.’

  It wasn’t difficult, as the crate was no better clamped shut than the average tea chest of crockery in transit. And no lead or similar containment vessel appeared in the light of their torches – just four heavy-looking cylindrical canisters packed in straw.

  McClure tried to lift out one of the canisters and found they were lighter than they looked. The writing on the side contained several figures and two tell-tale words in English – ‘Red Mercury’.

  Noonan searched his memory for what the course instructor had told them about it. It had been confusing enough at the time – according to some people the stuff could be used to make nuclear weapons; it was the poor man’s plutonium – but other, equally reputable scientists dismissed it as a hoax.

  ‘This must be it,’ McClure announced.

  ‘There’s no indication of anything radioactive down here,’ Noonan confirmed.

  McClure banged the lid back down on the crate with the butt of the MP5. ‘Let’s get it out of here,’ he said.

  Noonan and Davies carried the crate to the bottom of the ladder, and once there lowered it into the rope cradle. McClure went up the ladder, pushed the hatch ajar and examined the visible deck. If anything the mist was a little thicker, the bridge light faint enough to be a figment of the imagination. He climbed up on to the deck, gestured Noonan up with the rope, and together they hauled the crate up through the hole and on to the deck.

  Davies was just emerging through the hatch when the Russian materialized out of the mist. He was wearing a dark parka, which he hadn’t bothered to close at the front. The hood was also down, exposing a bearded face and longish hair slicked flat by the moisture in the air. He was swaying as he walked, and not merely with the motion of the ship.

  He shouted at them in Russian, seeming to find something funny, and reached inside his parka.

  He could have been going for a gun, but Noonan instinctively knew that he wasn’t.

  McClure’s silenced MP5 triple-coughed, the Russian’s knees buckled, and he fell forward on to the deck like a bull which had been given the coup de grâce.

  McClure strode forward and checked inside the man’s clothes for identification, his senses alert for any further interruption. There was nothing to say who the man was, nothing to connect him to this ship; it should be safe to throw the body overboard, bullet wounds and all. It would be better to weigh it down, but there was nothing suitable to hand.

  He beckoned the others to help him get the body across the rail. Noonan snapped out of his trance and hurried across. As they lifted the corpse the parka fell open, revealing the corked vodka bottle resting in the large inside pocket. There was no sign of a gun.

  After making sure that the FPC was not directly below, they let the body drop into the dark swell. Their boat was only ten metres or so away, and even in the darkness Noonan could see the expression of shock on Appleton’s face echo that which his own had worn.

  He and Davies turned their attention to the cradled crate, lowering it carefully into the other boat as Appleton kept the FPC in position and McClure kept watch. Then, with the rope reattached, they took their leave of the Red Voyager. A flick of McClure’s wrist disengaged the grappling-hook, and Appleton turned the FPC slowly and almost silently away from the freighter. Within seconds it had been swallowed by the mist.

  Noonan found he was expecting McClure to say something about the killing, but the team leader apparently felt no such compulsion. ‘No witnesses,’ they had been told, and McClure had obviously taken the order literally.

  Noonan looked across the crate at the other man, who was now reporting in on the radio. He had an almost dreamy smile on his face, like a cat which has just tasted cream.

  On the bridge of the Red Voyager Captain Vlasov was sharing a drink with First Mate Denikin. They had observed deck-hand Samsonov’s ridiculous encounter with the British commandos through nightscopes, and the experience had cast a slight pall over an otherwise successful operation.

  ‘What was the idiot doing out there?’ Vlasov wanted to know.

  ‘God only knows. It looked like he was going to offer them a drink.’

  ‘Did he have any family?’

  Denikin expressed his ignorance with a shrug. ‘Maybe we can get compensation from the Iraqis,’ he suggested.

  Vlasov grunted. ‘And maybe Yeltsin is a teetotaller,’ he said, then drained his glass. ‘Oh well,’ he added, ‘at least we can stop crawling along at this ludicrous pace now that our visitors are gone.’

  Eight hours later Noonan was in the CO’s office, feeling Colhoun’s penetrating gaze boring into him. The team had been officially debriefed on their return, but something had obviously stuck in the Old Man’s craw, and Noonan had a shrewd idea what it was. He felt like a schoolboy who had been called back in by the headmaster to rat on his fellows.

  ‘This is off the record,’ Colhoun said. He felt awkward himself, but there didn’t seem any other way of getting to the bottom of this business.

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Noonan said noncommittally.

  Colhoun leaned back in his chair. ‘Take me through the shooting incident again.’

  ‘It was like Sergeant McClure said. The man came out of nowhere, shouted something, then reached inside his jacket. He could easily have been reaching for a gun.’

  ‘Did you raise your own weapon?’ Colhoun asked.

  ‘There wasn’t time. The sergeant had already dealt with it.’

  Colhoun sighed. ‘According to our records, Corporal, you have consistently scored higher in instinctive response tests on the firing range than Sergeant McClure.’

  Noonan looked at the floor. ‘I didn’t think the man was a threat,’ he said, ‘bu
t I could have been wrong. And if I had been, then McClure’s action would have saved the operation.’ He looked up at Colhoun, and the distress in his eyes would have been hard to miss. ‘It happened so fast, boss.’

  7

  Thirty-six hours after the boarding of the Red Voyager the SBS CO was back in the increasingly familiar environs of Conference Room B. As he waited for the meeting to begin, Colhoun stared idly at the landscape painting on the wall with its doomy skies and deep shadows. It suited the room, he thought. It suited Whitehall.

  The roster for these meetings seemed to be shrinking. This time there were only five men gathered around the table: Colhoun himself, Junior Minister Clarke, scientific adviser Constantine, Salewicz from the American Embassy, and MI6 chief Sir Christopher Hanson.

  Martin Clarke asked for Constantine’s report.

  ‘Well, it follows the prescription for red mercury,’ Constantine confirmed.

  ‘And what is red mercury?’ Clarke asked, looking round. ‘Or am I the only one here who doesn’t know?’

  ‘No one seems very sure,’ Constantine said drily. ‘The name has no scientific basis, but the stuff which usually goes with the name is a compound of mercury and antimony oxides. It’s normally transported in powder form, as in this case, but it can be converted into a liquid with the application of pressure and radiation. In liquid form – so the manufacturers allege – it acquires explosive properties.’

  He paused, wondering how to present his information in the simplest possible manner. ‘Two things happen in a nuclear warhead or bomb,’ he said. ‘A conventional explosive is used to implode the plutonium core, crushing and destabilizing it. Then an electronic gun fires a stream of high-energy neutrons into the destabilized plutonium, starting the fission chain reaction – the nuclear explosion. What its proponents claim for red mercury is that it does both jobs – it provides both the conventional explosion and the burst of high-energy neutrons. And in doing both jobs it makes bomb or warhead design much simpler.

  ‘That’s the claim, and if it was true then red mercury would be a very significant discovery. The obvious hunger for the stuff – as evidenced by the number of seizures made by various police forces and customs officials over the last few years – suggests there might be something in it, but there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to back up such a belief. Seized material has been analysed in a dozen countries, and no one has discovered any explosive properties in the stuff. The International Atomic Energy Authority doesn’t believe in it. The Los Alamos National Laboratory says it doesn’t exist. And the obvious conclusion is that a few Russian laboratories have thought up a product, given it an enigmatic name and an astronomic price tag, and counted – rather successfully – on the gullibility and deep pockets of the Saddams and Gaddafis of this world.

  ‘Against that, the black-market trade in the stuff has been going on for twenty years now, which is a long time to run a bluff. It’s possible that Russian scientists have made some sort of breakthrough which we either can’t or won’t recognize. There are British scientists – respected British scientists – who believe there’s something worth investigating here.’

  ‘Is there any actual evidence that the Iraqis take it seriously?’ Hanson asked.

  ‘Yes. The UN inspectors found boxes of paperwork on the stuff when they raided a building in Baghdad a few years ago. Nothing conclusive there either,’ he added, leaning back in his chair and looking at Clarke.

  ‘That was a very judicious presentation,’ the minister said. ‘The only thing you neglected to give us was your own opinion of this stuff. Is it real or isn’t it?’

  Constantine smiled at him. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give a definite answer. I’m not sure. My experience suggests that when scientific opinions diverge this much about something, the truth is usually somewhere in between, but in this case it’s hard to imagine a middle ground. Either red mercury simplifies the manufacture of nuclear weapons or it doesn’t. And though the amount of energy which seems to be going into its procurement suggests that a lot of people think it can, the plain fact is that we have no evidence to suggest that it does. And twenty years down the line I find that significant.’

  ‘You think it’s a hoax?’

  Constantine shook his head. ‘I’m keeping an open mind. But if I was a betting man, I wouldn’t be putting my money on it being a panacea for states in search of a quick nuclear fix.’

  ‘None of our scientists believe in the stuff,’ the American offered.

  ‘The Iraqis seem to,’ Hanson said, without a great deal of conviction. The intelligence chief was simply playing devil’s advocate, Colhoun decided.

  ‘They may do,’ Constantine said carefully. He had his suspicions about the whole business, but had decided that for the moment he would keep them to himself.

  ‘So at least your boys weren’t wasting their time the other night,’ Salewicz told Colhoun. ‘Whether the stuff works or not, Saddam’s going to have to put in another order.’

  ‘The SBS team performed in exemplary fashion,’ Clarke added. Unlike the SAS, with whom the minister had also had dealings in recent months, Colhoun’s men seemed capable of performing those tasks – and only those tasks – which had been set them.

  Colhoun bowed his head slightly in recognition of Clark’s praise. He didn’t like the man, but in these days of sweeping military cut-backs any political endorsement of the Squadron’s continuing viability was worth its weight in gold.

  ‘Well, that seems to be that then,’ Clarke said. ‘I have to get across to the House,’ he added, getting up. A nodded goodbye and he was headed for the door.

  Colhoun, after making a more leisurely departure, found the scientific adviser waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I have a question,’ Constantine said, falling in beside the SBS man.

  ‘Yes?’ Colhoun asked, surprised.

  ‘In your report the speed of the Russian ship is estimated at eight knots. I know there was a heavy mist but that seems unnecessarily slow – I mean, these days ships aren’t blind in those sorts of conditions, are they?’

  ‘No, they’re not. The Red Voyager had radar, of course.’

  ‘So why such a slow speed?’

  Colhoun shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask the captain.’

  ‘But there’s no obvious reason you can think of?’

  ‘No,’ Colhoun said, wondering what the other man was getting at.

  ‘And why didn’t their radar pick up your men’s boat?’ Constantine asked, as if the question had just occurred to him.

  ‘Too small, too low in the water,’ Colhoun told him.

  ‘Ah. Thanks. No doubt we’ll meet again in similar circumstances.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Colhoun agreed with a grin. He watched the scientist thread his way through the Whitehall traffic, thinking that this was probably a man he’d like to know.

  For his part Constantine spent the journey home to Cambridgeshire shuffling his suspicions about the whole business. A single telephone call to the British Embassy in St Petersburg had revealed that a ship carrying nuclear material would soon be passing through the English Channel. Despite the fact that this material was expensive, illegal and vital to the buyer’s interests, the ship had obligingly slowed to a virtual crawl and left its decks unlit and unpatrolled. The only confrontation which had taken place had obviously been an accident. And no report of a missing seaman had been filed by the ship’s captain.

  It had to be a set-up.

  Back at his cottage, Constantine phoned an acquaintance in the university’s Russian department and passed on what Noonan had remembered of the unfortunate sailor’s last words.

  ‘What was the context?’ the linguist asked.

  ‘The person who said it was greeting some other people.’

  ‘Then he was simply saying, "You’re late".’

  * * *

  Noonan slowed to let the idiot with unclipped lights sweep past, and then put his foot back on the accelerator. Next to him, J
ulie seemed to be lost in her thoughts, which wasn’t very surprising – the evening had not been a great success. He knew now that he would have been better off taking her to a film than to his favourite country pub, but their first date had felt such a success that he’d been tempted to repeat it.

  Trouble was, he couldn’t seem to get the dead Russian out of his head, and it hadn’t made him very exciting company.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked suddenly, as if she’d read his mind.

  ‘Nothing really,’ he said, giving her an awkward grin. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘You’ve been looking like your cat just died all evening. Is it me? Because . . .’

  ‘Christ, no.’ He exhaled noisily. ‘Look, I shouldn’t tell you this, right, but I was on duty the other night and someone got killed. It’s just kind of shaken me up, know what I mean?’ He glanced across at her, knowing that now she’d ask him what had happened and where and he’d have to say he couldn’t tell her.

  But she didn’t.

  ‘I know how a death can . . . well, it can take over, almost. It’s happened to me at work. Sometimes you can’t help letting yourself care – more than you should as a professional, I mean . . .’

  ‘But I’m a Marine,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m not supposed to let caring get in my way.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  He grunted. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘Let it get in the way.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then, that’s OK, isn’t it? You did your job. If you didn’t care afterwards then you wouldn’t be someone I’d want to go out with.’

  He smiled. ‘No?’

  ‘Pull the car over.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  He did as she asked and turned to face her.

  ‘I’ve just thought of a way to cheer you up,’ she said, uncoupling her seat-belt.