The Rybinsk Deception

by Colin D. Peel

  ‘Only this.’ Coburn showed him the rolled up chart. ‘How’s everything on the Selina?’

  ‘We have not been so good at rationing our food supplies, but for many days it has been too hot on board to eat, so it is only a small problem for us.’ Pushing off from the Sandpiper, the Somalian opened the throttle of the outboard and turned the Zodiac north towards some pinpoints of light that were twinkling in the distance.

  The lights were those of the Korean fishing boats. They were anchored 4 to 500 yards from the shore of the island Hari had mentioned, strung out in an uneven line at the end of which, riding without lights, was the Selina.

  To greet Coburn, Hari had assembled his crew on deck – not that there were many of them.

  One was Indiri’s husband who, after saying a shy hello, handed Coburn a grimy and crumpled envelope that he said Heather had asked him to deliver. The other two men were strangers whom Coburn couldn’t recall meeting at the village.

  Hari introduced them as Susilo and Ali, smooth-muscled, fit-looking Indonesians who, he explained, were experienced pearl divers from Bengkalis and therefore accustomed to working underwater.

  They too were shy, keeping their eyes lowered while Coburn shook hands with them and then hurrying off as soon as formalities were over.

  Although the strain of the trip was showing on Hari’s face, for the moment at least he seemed reasonably happy. ‘Not by sea before have I travelled this far so quickly,’ he said. ‘Never again shall I attempt such a journey. Come so we can talk and you can tell me if you are still confident of locating our target tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s shown up already.’ Coburn accompanied Hari to the deckhouse. ‘We got a radar fix on him earlier this evening. The Sandpiper’s going to lead him right into your lap tomorrow night. That’s why I’ve brought this chart.’

  ‘It shows where we will be able to find him?’

  ‘Pretty much. I’ll go over it with you later.’

  ‘After you have read your letter from Miss Cameron.’ Hari grinned. ‘Perhaps it is to say that when you return she will no longer wish to sleep with you.’

  Like the envelope, the note inside it had suffered from the rigours of the voyage. The paper was so damp and creased that in places the handwriting was badly smudged, but the message was just about decipherable:

  If you don’t come back in one piece, I’ll tell my godfather about you and he’ll tell the IMB, then you won’t have a job anymore.

  Please be careful. H xx

  To stop Hari asking what it said, Coburn let him read it for himself.

  ‘Ah. I have heard of this argument before.’ He gave the note back. ‘When I first tell Miss Cameron I am not one hundred per cent certain I can help you, she says that because her godfather is the director of a big marine insurance company in London, he would be most interested to learn of my business. For a young woman she can be quite persuasive.’

  ‘I know.’ Coburn didn’t need reminding. ‘How many mines did you bring?’

  ‘You tell me we will need four, so, in case we chance upon a good opportunity to use one on our way here, we bring five. We have also conducted some experiments with them. If you will follow me I can show you how it is we have modified their magnets.’

  After the comparatively civilized environment on board the Sandpiper, conditions below the deck of the stripped-out Selina were appalling.

  Made worse by the impossibly high temperature, the smell of hot engine oil, cigarette smoke and cooking was as overpowering as the fumes coming from puddles of spilled fuel, while scattered around everywhere were empty drums of diesel, wet clothes, water containers and boxes of canned food, milk powder and toilet rolls.

  ‘Over here.’ Hari had found a bulb to screw into one of the overhead sockets. ‘Now you can see.’

  Packed in individual foam-lined crates and jammed between some halogen lights and parts of the Selina’s disassembled machine-gun, the mines were of a type Coburn was familiar with, squat black pancakes already secured to their attachment magnets and equipped with electronic triggers and aerials to receive the radio signals that would detonate them.

  What he hadn’t seen before were football-sized air bladders that had been fitted to the bases of the magnets.

  ‘You are looking at a new development,’ Hari said. ‘Tomorrow night, to guard against Ali and Susilo being detected by radar, first they will use wooden oars and a rubber dinghy to transport the mines. Then, when they are close to the patrol boat they will swim underwater and tow the mines behind them. But the mines are very heavy, so for that to be possible a flotation aid must be provided. Now you will understand the reason for the bladders, I think, but they also serve another purpose.’

  ‘What?’ Coburn couldn’t think of one.

  ‘When such powerful magnets are offered up to the side of a steel hull, they will jump from your hands and by making a loud clang when they first make contact they can alert the crew.’

  ‘But that won’t happen with these,’ Coburn said. ‘Because the bladders will act as cushions.’

  ‘To begin with, but there is another feature.’ Hari pointed to a small plug on the side of a bladder. ‘When that is removed, the air will escape allowing the magnets to attach themselves slowly and in silence.’

  The idea was fairly ingenious, Coburn thought, perhaps not so much a technological breakthrough as an example of Hari’s ability to foresee risks that needed to be addressed, and why, maybe for the first time, Yegorov was going to be up against someone trickier than he was.

  But would that be enough, he wondered? When the end game was more likely to be played out months from now in the corridors of Washington rather than on the night after next in the Yellow Sea, would Ritchie’s testimony be a match for the reputation of a brigadier general whose life appeared to have been dedicated to the preservation of American ideals?

  Knowing it was senseless trying to predict the outcome of an inquiry over which he would have no influence, he put the whole business out of his mind, and instead decided this would be as good an opportunity as any to bring Hari properly up to date.

  He started by explaining the reason for O’Halloran’s presence on the Sandpiper then, while Hari smoked his way through countless cigarettes, went on to describe how the explosion of the Canyon City munitions store had allowed them to access Shriver’s records, and how that in turn had revealed the FAL plan to stage what would look like an unjustified and unprovoked attack on a US warship by the North Korean Navy.

  At midnight, too wide awake to contemplate sleeping, and unwilling to go below, he decided to stay on deck, hoping that by this time tomorrow his confidence would have received a boost, because by then he’d know for certain whether the mines were in place awaiting the signal that twelve hours later would finally bring his part of the mission to an end.

  CHAPTER 20

  SINCE HIS TRANSFER from the Sandpiper last night, Coburn had grown more accustomed to the Selina’s primitive conditions, and having spent the latter part of this afternoon getting to know Ali and Susilo, he was beginning to feel less of an outsider in the company of Hari’s crew.

  The two divers had been slow to overcome their shyness – in part because of their rudimentary English – but once Coburn had shown an interest in the pearl business, they’d gradually lost their reservations, and with Hari on hand to act as an interpreter, they’d soon been more willing to talk about the job they’d come to do.

  Hari himself had spent a frustrating day. While the Selina had slowly headed north, for much of the time he’d been at the wheel, maintaining his distance ahead of the meandering minehunter which had been easy to identify on his radar, but struggling to separate the echo of the Korean patrol boat from those of other vessels that were travelling up through the islands on similar courses.

  Not until this evening when they’d dropped anchor at the co-ordinates on Ritchie’s chart had his mood improved, and then only because of an unscheduled call Coburn had received from O’Halloran
.

  The American had been in touch to say, that now the Selina was in position, the Sandpiper would be passing them shortly on the port side, and that accordingly, before Ritchie dropped his own anchor, it shouldn’t be long before they had their first visual sighting of the Osa.

  As things had turned out, unlike the much larger minehunter which had been easy to see, the Osa hadn’t been.

  In Yegorov’s pursuit of his target, he’d been keeping further to the west where the combination of the setting sun and fading light had made it all but impossible for Coburn to pick out the Korean patrol boat even with binoculars.

  That had been ten minutes ago – a somewhat tense ten minutes during which Hari had finally located the Osa on his radar, while everyone else on the Selina had been waiting patiently for the announcement that would mean Ali and Susilo could begin their preparations.

  ‘Ah. You see.’ Hari pointed to a dot on his screen.

  With each rotation of the Selina’s radar dish, the dot was glowing more brightly, but Coburn couldn’t tell whether it was continuing to move or not.

  Hari could. ‘Now that Ritchie has stopped his ship, the Osa, too, is stopping,’ he said. ‘It is not as close to us as we could have wished, but close enough, I think.’

  ‘How close?’ Coburn asked.

  ‘Less than two kilometres – not so far for our divers to take the mines. When it is darker, and while we wait for the crew of the Osa to settle for the night we will inflate the dinghy and bring our halogens and machine-gun up on deck.’

  ‘What the hell do you want lights and the gun for?’ Coburn couldn’t think of a single reason.

  ‘It is a precaution. I do not wish us to be without defence if Ali and Susilo are watched on their way back here to the Selina.’

  ‘If that happens, a fucking machine-gun isn’t going to be any help, is it? You’re not up against an unarmed freighter, for Christ’s sake. You’re talking about taking on a full-blown missile attack boat.’

  Hari shrugged. ‘It is my decision. When the man you call Yegorov has more important business to which he must attend tomorrow, he will not risk advertising his presence tonight by launching a missile at us. But he could choose to use his guns.’

  Knowing better than to argue, and hoping Hari had decided this was an easy way to demonstrate his deep concern for the safety of his crew, Coburn kept his mouth shut, and for the next few hours, while Hari and the Somalian checked the detonators and bladders on the mines, kept himself busy by helping Indiri’s husband assemble and install the lights and the gun.

  By midnight the divers were ready, the mines were ready and the dinghy was ready. Hari wasn’t, checking his watch every few minutes, chain-smoking and watching clouds scud across the moon as though waiting for some divine indication that the time was right for him to give the go ahead.

  At 12.30, sensing a certain restlessness on deck, he launched the dinghy himself, lowering it over the stern on ropes and then assisting Ali and Susilo to load the mines one at a time until all four were on board and temporarily lashed in place.

  Unlike the Zodiac which was still taking up space on the afterdeck, the dinghy was designed for use only in an emergency. It was small and difficult to manoeuvre, but because of its low profile and the black wetsuits of its occupants, it had the virtue of being almost invisible once the divers began to row away.

  ‘Let us hope they see the patrol boat early,’ Hari said. ‘They navigate by compass, but their job will be harder when they have sight of their target and must start to swim.’

  ‘How long do you figure it’ll take them?’ Coburn glanced at his own watch.

  ‘I think we give them two hours to get there and back again, and a quarter of one hour for them to attach the mines. Not until after that should we become concerned.’

  It was easy to say, but hard to do.

  Three weeks ago in Singapore, after Coburn had set the timer for the Semtex in his fridge, and two weeks ago while he’d been waiting for O’Halloran after the explosion of the munitions store, he’d been aware of how slowly time could pass. But on both of these occasions he’d been counting down minutes – tonight he was faced not with minutes but with hours.

  Hari proved better at waiting for the dinghy’s return than he had been at despatching it, but after an hour and a half he went below and returned with a pair of night vision goggles which, when he wasn’t smoking or pacing up and down the deck, he used in a vain attempt to penetrate the darkness.

  After two hours he gave up looking and abandoned the goggles in favour of listening for the splash of oars, an equally futile exercise on which he was still engaged when the dinghy suddenly appeared.

  Coburn was the first to see it – or thought he had.

  Approaching the bow of the Selina at an angle on the port side, it had emerged silently from nowhere and was within hailing distance before the Somalian too caught sight of it.

  A minute later, leaving Indiri’s husband to retrieve it, the divers were back on board answering Hari’s questions while they stripped off their wetsuits.

  Their smiles told Coburn what he wanted to know – which meant their job at least was done, he thought, and that none of the things that could’ve gone wrong had gone wrong.

  Before conveying the news to O’Halloran he checked with Hari who was happy to confirm that from now on at a push of a button, Yegorov’s trip to Korea could be brought to a suitably violent and unpleasant end.

  Coburn’s call to the Sandpiper was answered so promptly, O’Halloran couldn’t have been asleep.

  ‘Thought you’d be tucked up in your bunk,’ Coburn said.

  ‘I should be so lucky. Ritchie said he wanted to hear from me as soon as I heard from you. What do I tell him?’

  ‘Tell him that seeing as how it’s already the 9th of August, any time he wants I can blow four holes in the Osa right underneath each of its missile hangars. If that doesn’t slow it down, nothing will. All I need is for you to give me the word.’

  ‘OK. Ritchie’s aiming to have us up close to the Demarkation Line by 1700 hours. He thinks it’s best if we let Yegorov carry on shadowing the Sandpiper, and you hang back a bit so he doesn’t get suspicious.’

  Rather than wasting his breath explaining that, even with the Selina’s tarpaulin-covered halogen lights and gun it was probably the least suspicious-looking vessel off the coast of the entire peninsula, Coburn changed the subject before he said goodbye, suggesting that, until they reopened communications later, O’Halloran might as well catch up on his sleep.

  All in all, it had been a pretty good night’s work, Coburn decided. But he knew it was more than that – more than the planting of explosive charges that would see the patrol boat destroyed, and more than a prelude to an event that would provide evidence to destroy the FAL. Tonight’s preparations had served a more immediate purpose, he thought, not just helping to bring Shriver to account, but a means of saving the lives of forty-six men and women on board a US warship who otherwise, in a few hours’ time, would have perished without knowing they’d been used as pawns in a deadly game they could have never won.

  CHAPTER 21

  AT DAWN THE weather changed – an unwanted development that neither Hari nor Coburn had expected.

  By late afternoon, in place of a flat sea and the cloudless skies they’d enjoyed for the last nine days, the wind had started whipping up white caps, and the sky had become quite threatening.

  On this the last day of the Selina’s journey north to the Demarkation Line, the boat had been handling the conditions well, occasionally wallowing in swell when they weren’t in the lee of one of the many islands off the coast, but for the most part making good headway, and not once losing contact with either the Sandpiper or the patrol boat they were following.

  Before dark, the most noticeable consequence of the weather had been the increasing murkiness of the sea – a sure sign of rain, according to Hari, an indication that somewhere on the peninsula or the Chinese mainland, col
oured sediment that gave the Yellow Sea its name was being washed out of one of the silt-laden rivers along its shores.

  Hari said he didn’t know how long it would take the rain to reach them. Nor was he willing to say whether he believed poor visibility would make things more difficult for Yegorov.

  When Coburn had last communicated with the Sandpiper, he’d asked O’Halloran to find out if Ritchie had an opinion about the deteriorating weather. So far there had been no reply – because Ritchie had enough on his plate, Coburn had decided, the reason for his silence, and why once the Sandpiper had reached a position two miles south of the Demarkation Line, he hadn’t bothered to inform O’Halloran of his decision to turn west, nor explain why since then he’d elected to keep travelling into the wind at an uncomfortably slow speed.

  Like Hari, what Ritchie had done was track every move of the patrol boat on his radar, following its progress along the S-shaped Demarkation Line and making certain that O’Halloran notified Coburn of any sudden change in its behaviour.

  For the moment, the minehunter was a stone’s throw off the western tip of Baengnyeongdo, South Korea’s northernmost island that was supposed to resemble a crested ibis taking flight – another piece of valueless information Hari had gleaned from a brochure he’d obtained from somewhere.

  Of more interest were the lights Coburn could see. There were only a few – less than half a dozen coming from what he imagined were fishermen’s houses on one of the island’s western beaches, or maybe from dwellings perched on the cliff top above it.

  With the Selina continuing to pitch, and with so much spray being thrown up from the bow, he found it hard to be sure where anything was, including the island itself which was little more than a dark patch against an even darker background.

  The Sandpiper wasn’t much easier to pick out. Unlike the patrol boat, which even with the benefit of Hari’s night vision goggles had proved to be invisible, the minehunter at least was running with lights that allowed Coburn to get the odd glimpse of it now and then.