Sea Leopard

preprogrammed cards. It's a bloody mess.'

'Any more details?'

'No. Code-names, damage indications in some Cyrillic alphabet sequence. Can't decipher that. The letters and numerals could refer to anything.'

'What other traffic?'

'Murmansk's been pouring out coded stuff — ' Carr shook his head at the light in Lloyd's eyes. 'We don't have it broken. Code of the day only, frequency-agile transmissions, the lot. But there's a lot of it. They're panicking all right.'

'Okay. Sandy, time to fetch Lt.-Commander Hackett.'

Lloyd nodded at the cabin door, and Hayter moved out of his way as the navigator went in search of the engineering officer. When Hayter closed the door again, Lloyd said, 'You don't really think MoD are wrong on this one, do you?'

Thurston pulled a melancholy face. 'They aren't infallible. I think they like the idea of the game, that's all.'

'We're risking this ship, and ourselves, and “Leopard” on this wild goose chase,' Hayter added with a quiet vehemence. That doesn't seem to have struck their lordships. I think the intelligence yield from this “monitoring action” won't be worth a candle, anyway.'

'I agree with Don.'

Lloyd was silent for a time, his hands over his face, the fingers slightly parted as if he were peeping child-like at them or at the chart on his desk. Then he rubbed his eyes, and shrugged himself upright in his chair.

'I'll ask for confirmation from MoD. Meanwhile, we'll rig for silent running — and I mean silent from now on.' A grin, unexpected and gleaming, cracked the seriousness of his expression. 'It isn't for real, you two. We won't be responsible for starting the next war. Nothing is going to happen to us. It's Norwegian, the Tanafjord. Cheer up. Just look on it as another sea trial.'

Thurston was about to reply, but fell silent as they heard a knock on the cabin door. Lloyd indicated to Hayter that he should open it. The grin was still on Lloyd's face when Carr ushered Hackett into the cabin.

* * *

The wind seemed to follow Hyde into the entrance of Lancaster Gate underground station, hurrying pages of a copy of the New Evening Standard ahead of him, with chocolate bar wrappers. He hunched against the wind's dusty, grubby touch at his neck. He went through the barrier, and descended past the framed advertisements to the Central Line eastbound platform. A woman's legs, gigantic and advertising tights, invited him from the opposite wall. Lunchtime had swelled the numbers of passengers. Hyde lounged against the wall and observed Vassiliev further down the platform. Even here the wind moved the dust in little eddies or thin, gauzy scarves along the platform. Vassiliev wore a dark overcoat across his shoulders, over a pinstriped suit. He looked English enough despite the high Slavic cheekbones and narrow nose, yet he appeared nervous beneath the clothes and the residential veneer England had given him. Hyde was still unsure of him; whether his crime was one of omission or commission.

The train slid into the arched bunker of the platform. Hyde watched Vassiliev board it, then waited until he was the last still person on the platform, then he got into another carriage as the doors shunted together behind him. He stood watching the retreating platform as the train pulled out. Nothing. There was nothing to be learned from nothing.

He and Vassiliev left the train at Tottenham Court Road, Hyde staying twenty yards behind the Russian, closing with him as they transferred to the Northern Line and then getting into the same carriage of the first northbound train. He studied the carriage and its passengers until they pulled into Euston, then took a seat next to Vassiliev. The Russian embassy official, in making a pronounced movement away from him, squeezing himself against the window, suggested either dislike or nerves. Hyde placed his hand on Vassiliev's arm in a gesture which he knew the man — superficially confident of his heterosexuality but with sexual doubts nagging at him like toothache spoiling good looks and appetite — loathed. The arm jumped beneath his touch.

'Now, sport, you and me have some talking to do, don't we?'

Vassiliev looked out of the window. Mornington Crescent. The name slowed and materialised, like oil adopting a mould. 'I–I knew you would question me,' he offered.

Too bloody right, mate! You sold me the wrong stuff, Dmitri — told me Quin was over on your side. Taken away by the bogeymen.'

Vassiliev turned at the pressure on his arm and stared at Hyde. Sitting, he was slightly taller than the Australian. His face was thinly imperious for a moment — Hyde, seeing the expression, was strangely chilled — then it subsided quickly into nervousness and apology.

'I am not a member of the KGB, you know that. I am not privy to the things they do. What I told you was a fact. I also heard rumours of who their objective was, I passed these on to you. I can do no more.'

Vassiliev glanced away from Hyde, into the lightless tunnel.

'I don't pay you for crap, Dmitri. I don't blackmail you for rubbish. Now, what do you know?'

Vassiliev shook his arm impatiently, and Hyde released it, thrusting his hand into his pocket and slumping more theatrically in his seat, feet on the seat opposite, to the irritation — silent and frightened — of an elderly man.

'I — it is difficult to ask, I can only listen. In the staff restaurant, there is talk of what happened yesterday. I–I am, well, yes, I am almost certain that they are still looking for this Quin — ' Hyde listened, every sense aware of the man in the seat next to him. Body temperature coming through the thin sleeve of his windcheater, thigh trembling slightly against Hyde's own, the faint body odour noticeable above the dusty, greasy smells of the carriage and the mothball scent from the old man. The voice, grabbing at sincerity, the breathing somehow artificially fast. The words broken by intelligence rather than emotion; thought-out hesitations. 'I have not seen the two men — they were low-grade sleepers, I understand, without accreditation to the embassy — ' The officialese flowing now like a broad, uninterrupted stream, but not quite because of habit. Learned, Hyde thought; but he remained silent. Quiver gone from Vassiliev's body. He believed he had acted sufficiently well. 'However, there was talk about them, and about the girl — and I'm sure now it is their way of getting to the father —'

'You picked up a lot yesterday and this morning,' Hyde remarked laconically.

'I am trying,' Vassiliev pleaded, turning his face to Hyde. Mirror of helpfulness, of urgent sincerity. The eyes expressionless. 'I knew what you would want. I was as surprised — shocked — as you must have been. What else can I tell you?'

CamdenTown, slowing down outside the window. Hyde swiftly surveyed the passengers on the platform, those who entered their carriage. He could not believe that they would have let Vassiliev out by himself, without a minder, with such an important role to play. But he could not find his companion. What role was he playing, anyway? Why admit that Quin was still at large?

'I want more detail, more information, Dmitri. That's what you can tell me, and I want it tonight.'

'I can't do that!'

Hyde stared into the Russian's face. 'Yes, you can. Oh yes, you can. After all, you're my creature, I' ve got the arm on you. It's not the other way round, is it?' Hyde watched the face. Mouth sloping downwards in admission, cheekbones colouring slightly with a sense of shame, brow perspiring in tiny silver beads — ignore, the temperature in the carriage and the overcoat explained it — the eyes quizzical, blank, then striving for the hunted look Hyde expected. Finding, losing, catching and holding it. Vassiliev was playing with him, at the orders of the London Resident or one of his senior staff. Again, he felt momentarily chilled.

'Yes, I will try,' Vassiliev said mournfully.

Highgate. A moment of silence, no one getting on or off the train. Stillness. Then the doors breathing noisily as they closed again. The lights elongating, the words smudged, the darkness of the tunnel, the walls pressing close to the window. Hyde shook off the awareness of himself, the pressing vulnerability. He was being led by the nose, being set up to do their work for them.

'You're sure?' he asked, staring at his feet.

'Of what?' Vassiliev asked, momentarily confused.

'He hasn't been taken over?'

'The man Quin?'