H.M.S. Unseen

The six young Iranian Naval officers, posing as Turkish millionaires, and their staff, had never had such a wonderful time. This was a very beautiful boat, built in England by Camper and Nicholson. They all appreciated that. They were ready to set off on the voyage across the Gulf of St. Malo, making an overnight stop at St. Peter Port on the Channel Island of Guernsey, then pressing on to the meeting point.

Essentially they had four days off, and the only dark cloud on their horizon was that Abdul Raviz, the “chef,” was in fact the gunnery and missile officer in Iran’s Houdong-Class fast-attack craft P307, out of Bandar Abbas. He had never actually been in a galley. Neither had any of the other five.

Hedoniste was laden to the gunwales with the finest French cuisine, but the combined culinary talent of its guests and crew would have had serious difficulty producing a piece of buttered toast.

They resolved to make a fast run to St. Peter Port and dine in the hotel. They carried with them a leather pouch full of French francs. The world, they knew, could be their oyster, if they could just work out how to shuck it.

282120MAR02. 49.50N, 4.20W. Course 020. Speed 7.

The Santa Cecilia was making a racetrack pattern on a dark cloudy night. The moon was completely hidden, and the westerly wind gusted occasionally over the short sea. Commander Adnam could see no ships anywhere along the horizon. He could hear only the hiss of the spray slashing back off the steel bow as the old freighter shouldered her way forward.

He had been on deck for half an hour, staring out to the southeast, watching for the running lights, listening for the deep throb of the twin diesels of the French-based luxury yacht. Twice he had thought he heard something, but the sound came from too far east. He knew the bearing for her approach, and in the darkness of the English Channel he stared through binoculars, straight down bearing one-three-five. But there was nothing out there, so far. Below in the sleeping hold, his men were ready, each of them in black wet suits, each of them variously armed, the two hit men from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps rather better than the rest.

At 2145 he picked up the running lights of the Hedoniste, her white hull visible half a mile away. She was bang on time, making good headway through the bumpy sea. Ben ordered the captain to reduce speed to two knots, and huge fenders were hung off the starboard side, as the “Turkish millionaires” maneuvered alongside.

The sea was a thunderous nuisance, and the 80-foot yacht was rising and falling through 6 feet during the transfer. They used a climbing net and two rope ladders, but it was dangerous in the dark. Ben noticed that the two men from the IRGC waited for the right moment and jumped straight onto the Hedoniste’s foredeck. The other nineteen, including the commander, made the transfer less adventurously. Ten minutes later, Captain Ertegan revved the starboard engine and reversed away from the Panamanian freighter, which was about to head southwest.

He set a course of zero-two-zero, and the overloaded cruising yacht swung around to the north, making her way toward the great lighthouse standing guard over the legendary sailor’s graveyard of the Eddystone Rocks, 25 miles away. At 8 knots Ben calculated the 133-foot-high, white warning beacon should be a couple of miles off their port beam by 0045. But they would see its two bright flashes, every ten seconds, long before that.

Meanwhile, the men were making their own introductions, though most of them had been acquainted before back at Bandar Abbas. Ben Adnam went briefly through the plan with the “Turkish playboys,” and everyone could feel the atmosphere tightening as the team began to run last-minute equipment checks, paying particular attention to their breathing apparatus.

By midnight, the Eddystone Lighthouse looked very close, off the port bow less than 3 miles away. “Hold that course zero-two-zero,” ordered Ben. “Make your speed ten, remember we’re just a luxury yacht running in late from the Channel Islands…keep the decks clear for the moment…we have plenty of water and we’re well clear of the rocks.”

By 0100 the towering light, which has warned sailors of the dangers since 1698, was slipping behind, brightening the black water off their port-side quarter. The sharp white flashing light was certainly more efficient than the 60 great tallow candles of the eighteenth century, but Ben would have been glad of pitch-black just then, as Hedoniste drove forward toward the coastline of southwest England.

He had chosen a craft such as this because it was unlikely to attract the attention of the notoriously vigilant English coast guard, who were always apt to stop an old foreign freighter making its way to port in the small hours of the morning. There were still around 9 miles to run, but the sea was almost deserted along the inner east-going traffic lane. The men had started to blacken their faces with a special oil, and little was said as they prepared for their mission. They had gone over the plan a thousand times. No one was in any doubt about what was expected of him.

At 0155 Ben spotted the line of red lights on the radio masts high up on Rame Head. He estimated they were 4 miles away, right off the port bow, one of them flashing a warning to aircraft. The light on the western end of the breakwater was dead ahead.

Ben Adnam and his navigation officer, Lt. Commander Arash Rajavi, aged thirty-one, were alone under the canopy of the exposed upper bridge while Captain Ertegan steered from the warm wheelhouse below. Both men were protected from the chill March night by their wet suits, and on their heads they wore dark balaclavas, which they would keep on under the tight-fitting black-rubber hoods they would need for the mission.

Suddenly, in his naturally soft voice, the lieutenant commander said, “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

“Fire away,” replied Ben.

“How do you actually know the submarine is there?”

“I know,” said Ben.

“But how?”

“Well, first, I read last August that the Brazilians were negotiating to buy one of the Royal Navy’s Upholder- Class submarines, HMS Unseen, and they hoped to take delivery in the submarine base in Rio de Janeiro around May 15. I calculated twenty-eight days at 9 knots for the 5,500-mile journey, so they probably intended to clear Plymouth Sound around April 18.

“I knew there would be a six-week workup period for the Brazilian crew right out here in the Channel beginning around March 7. That would mean the submarine would arrive in the Devonport Navy dockyard for maintenance three weeks before that. On February 1, just before we left, I asked our agent in England to check when HMS Unseen was scheduled to leave the base at Barrow-in-Furness. That part was easy. They were having a little ceremony to say good-bye to her on February 14. So I knew everything was right on schedule. She has been sighted since then…working down here.

“So…Arash, you will find that Unseen will be right out there where I say she’ll be. Moored on the big Admiralty buoy, 440 yards inside the breakwater. The buoy is huge…they say it could hold an aircraft carrier in a full gale. But that’s where she’ll be, three weeks into her workup, with about forty Brazilians on board. I know. I’ve moored on that buoy in a submarine while I was training here. That’s where all Royal Navy workup submarines tend to spend their weekday nights if they’re not out at sea.”

“Sir, you are very smart man.”

“Still breathing,” said the commander absently.

By 0220 the sea was calmer in the lee of the Rame Headland, and Ben ordered an increase in speed, to 12 knots. They looked like a typical big motor yacht with nothing to hide, charging in from the Channel Islands, running late, anxious to make Oliver’s Battery, the big marina, northeast of Drake’s Island, deep in Plymouth Sound. Innocence, thy name is Benjamin, and to underline it, he personally called the marina on Channel M to check their berth and give an ETA.

The sky was brighter, the streetlights of Plymouth casting a glow in the sky to the north. Through his glasses Ben could make out the old familiar breakwater that guards the sound — right out in the middle, more than three- quarters of a mile long, a low man-made construction of concrete and rocks, with a lighthouse on either end.

Ben could see the light flashing at the western end, and as they drew ever closer, he picked up the little intercom, and snapped, “Stand by!” No reply was needed, and now they were right opposite the light.

“Four hundred meters,” said Ben. “Lead swimmers prepare to go…reduce speed…make it eight knots for the next half mile.”

He lifted his night-vision binoculars and could make out the dark hulk of the submarine out on the buoy, a