Sea Leopard

even heard the movement of Carr's sleeve across his chart as he updated the Contact Evaluation Plot at his chart table. The whisper of the hydroplane control wheels as the planesmen worked continuously to keep Proteus level and unmoving, constantly balancing the submarine's own attempts to alter position and depth. A juggling act. Easier on the bottom, but they weren't on the bottom.

Lloyd crossed to Thurston, who was standing behind the sonar operator monitoring the approach of the 'Victor-II' and whose screen displayed the snail-trail of light that revealed the position of the Russian vessel. Below the screen, red numerals supplied the read-out of bearing and distance. The 'Victor-II' was closing.

Submarines had been lost before, Lloyd reminded himself involuntarily. There was no fear and no courage, either. Vessels encountering each other in the dark, crowded sea. Collision or avoidance, attack or retreat. The 'Victor-II' was following their scent — heat, prop-wash, hull noise, the tiny skin-flakings of their passage which 'Leopard' could not completely neutralise. The twin hulls that enclosed them like plasterboard walls waited to transmit any sound they might make. Closer. Bearing unaltered. Speed a cautious, stalking twelve-point-seven knots. Time to contact, five minutes.

Lloyd mouthed silently at Thurston, who nodded. The first-lieutenant framed his lips to reply in the slightest whisper, after swallowing hard.

“If she doesn't find us, she might just miss us.'

'By much?'

'Not much,' Lloyd's hand was on the back of the sonar operator's chair. Some transmitted electricity from his captain made the rating twitch. Lloyd moved his hand. He turned to watch the two planesmen, juggling the control wheels like nervous car drivers. As if not in control of the vehicle. Proteus remained still, lying in the dark, waiting. Other trails of light — not new, but suddenly noticed and rendered significant by heightened nerves — on the sonar screen. Four other submarines, two destroyers and what might be the carrier Kiev, flagship of the Northern Fleet. She was too distant for a positive identification, and Lloyd had tended to discount her appearance in the Barents Sea. This early in the season, she was normally still refitting in Murmansk. And the 'Victor-II', brighter than all of them. Contact time, four minutes fifty. Lloyd felt, despite himself, that his hands were beginning to perspire. He opened them. The control room seemed hotter. Illusion.

Bearing unaltered. Speed constant. Cancel. New red numerals appeared in the read-out panel. Speed ten knots. The 'Victor-II' was slowing. Contact time three minutes twenty-eight, seven, six —

The sonar operator turned to Lloyd, his face puzzled. The 'Victor-II' was stopping, contact time and distance read-outs slowing down, then settling. Stopped. Contact time two minutes thirty-one frozen. The small, cramped space of the control room hot. Thurston was perspiring, a line of beads along his hairline. Lloyd felt the sweat dampening his shirt, running chilly down his sides. The sonar operator's hair cream, a sickly smell of which he was suddenly aware. Stomach light, disturbed.

Stopped. A third of a mile away. Six hundred yards. Close enough for temperature sensors. The movement of bare forearms in the corner of his vision as the planesmen juggled the Proteus to stillness. The auto-suggested hum of electronics, like the buzzing of an insect seemed very difficult to discount. The 'Victor-II' digesting the scraps of information, her captain waiting for an answer from his computer. Is there an enemy submarine close to us?

Red numerals flicking off. A bare, dark green panel beneath the sonar screen with its bright blip of light. Then new numbers. Speed four knots, five, six. Contact time two minutes nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, fifteen, twelve, seven — one minute fifty-nine. Bearing unchanged.

Lloyd waited. He could hardly bear to see the 'Victor-II' as it moved through the darkness towards them. One minute twenty. Speed ten knots. Distance two hundred yards, a little more, the little more eaten up even as he thought it. Eleven knots, bearing unchanged; as if they knew where Proteus was.

Then they listened. Two steam turbines driven by a pressurised water reactor. They would hear them, even though they were little more than idling at eleven knots.

Faces turned to the ceiling. Always that, Lloyd observed. A familiarity of orientation brought with them on to the submarine. It could be below, alongside, anywhere.

The churn of the screws. A slight, almost inaudible thrumming in their own hull. Faces tightening, the sense of fragility obvious. Louder. The illusion of a rising tremor in the eggshell of the hull. Hands sensing it where they rested damply against any part of the hull, any instrument — the planesmen juggling more violently now as the distressed water outside the hull assaulted the Proteus — feet feeling it, muscle-spasms in the calves. Louder.

Loudest, going on for what seemed like minutes, the planesmen failing to stop the submarine's bow from dropping, the whole vessel slipping forward into the beginnings of a dive, then arresting the movement, bringing the vessel back to stillness. Retreating noise and vibration. All around them the noise and motion had been, but Lloyd was certain the Soviet submarine had passed below them, slightly to port.

Then it was gone. Thurston mopped his brow enthusiastically, and grinned shakily at Lloyd.

'Close,' he murmured.

'Too close.' Then the idea came to him, and he voiced it before he considered its effect. 'I think she was expecting us — I mean us, this boat and its anti-sonar.'

'What?'

Lloyd looked down at the sonar operator, then at the others in the control room. He did not want to explain, not now. The idea, half-formed, frightened him, and he wanted to ignore it.

Thurston waited for his explanation, and Lloyd said, lamely, 'That Russian has been following a very poor trail for an hour. As if he knew we were here.'

'You're imagining it, skipper.'

'As if he knew he was looking for a submarine that wouldn't show up on his sonar,' Lloyd added.

* * *

'The evidence is in front of you, man. It may not be conclusive, but there is evidence there to suggest Grishka encountered the British submarine with its anti-sonar system working. Surely?'

'I will admit that not every trace of heat emission can be explained by temperature differences in the sea — perhaps there are identifiable traces of prop-wash and turbine activity, perhaps the faint gas traces help us —' The rear-admiral looked round at his subordinates, then shrugged. 'We will pinpoint the British submarine at the position signalled by the Grishka and await any satellite confirmation there might be.'

'Excellent. She is on course. ETA?'

'On the basis of our supposition, no more than eighteen hours.'

Dolohov was about to reply when the door to the control room opened, and a man in civilian clothes — very Western, Dolohov noticed, a sweater, windcheater and corduroy trousers — stood in the doorway. The man came forward into the light, and Dolohov saw that he was grinning. His hair was blown awry. Dolohov returned the smile, and waved away the junior officer accompanying the man.

'Valery — Valery, my boy!' he announced, ignoring the others in the room, embracing the newcomer, kissing him on both cheeks, a greeting that was returned by the younger man.

'Admiral — sir,' the younger man acknowledged when held at arm's length by Dolohov. The rear-admiral seemed surprised to discover that the civilian, in addition to having a permit of entry to his operations room, was some species of naval officer. The haircut, the acknowledgement of rank. Yet almost like a son to the admiral. A little spurt of envy flared in the rear-admiral. This man was not to be treated like a schoolboy slow at his sums, apparently.

'You' ve come straight here?' Dolohov, even as he asked, was already drawing the younger man towards the window of the control room, already extending his free arm to direct the other's gaze. He was revealing a prized object of desire. The rear-admiral bowed frostily as he was casually introduced, resenting the intimacy that had invaded his clinical, sterile control room. 'Captain Valery Ardenyev, commanding the Red Banner Special Underwater Operations Unit,' Dolohov explained with evident pride, almost with a proprietorial, parental tone, then ignored the rear-admiral. 'Down there,' he said to Ardenyev. 'We' ve marked her with a green light. A colour all to herself.'

'You're sure, sir?'

'We think so. She's on course, eighteen hours away from the fjord.'

Ardenyev stood looking down at the map table for some time. Dolohov, like a senior priest, allowed him