Sea Leopard

glances. She began to move more quickly, upstage towards the far side. Even as he moved, she disappeared into the wings. He pushed past the girls with the keyboard, and ran as quickly as he was able through the maze of cables and boxes — someone yelled at him — and then he was in the semi-darkness of the wings. He paused, listening. Above his heartbeat and breathing, footsteps. Running. He blundered forward again, sensing rationality disappearing and panic encroaching. He suddenly knew that the KGB were out there, and that she was running towards them. He shook his head, cannoning off a wall as he rounded a bend in the corridor.

Lights again. The foyer and main corridor connecting Hall 5 with its companions and with the railway station. A handful of people moving slowly, and one slight figure running. He did not call after her, merely pursued her, his feet pounding, his blood beating in his ears. He felt a sickness of self-recrimination, an anticipation of disaster.

A tunnel of lights down which she fled, a small dark shape. The scene wobbled in his vision. He seemed no nearer to her. The station concourse was at the end of the wide tunnel. She was almost there, sixty or seventy yards away.

Someone turning, moving with her, after her. She was oblivious to whoever it was, didn't even look round for him as she reached the concourse. He began running, impelled by the certainty of disaster now. Someone had recognised her — other men, two of them in overcoats, just come in from the cold of the car park outside the station, moving to intercept her.

He reached the concourse. The girl had disappeared. Two men had pushed into the small queue for tickets, one of them arguing. He hadn't imagined it. They were stereotypes. The girl must have gone down on to the platform. Two of them, three — where was the other one, the one who had turned in the tunnel, recognised her?

Petrunin. Hyde could not believe it. Standing beneath the announcement board, impatiently watching his men create the wrong kind of disturbance, then turning to the platform ticket machine and banging it because it appeared jammed or empty. No, girl, no girl —

Petrunin, London Resident. KG-bloody-B. Where the hell was the girl? Petrunin. The clever bugger must have worked it out. Tickets being issued, the small queue silenced by embarrassment. Petrunin almost hopping from foot to foot. Train announcement, the next train arriving, Petrunin turning his head from side to side as if regretting something or because he had lost something — and seeing him. Knowing him not so much by his face as by his colour and heaving chest and wary, tense posture.

Hyde ran at the barrier, Petrunin moved to cut him off, slowly drifting, so it seemed, on a collision course. The next train arriving, for Birmingham — special train? He saw the dark, frightened face of the ticket collector, then he vaulted the turnstile, almost stumbling on the far side, hearing the noise of the train. He ran headlong down the flight of steps to the platform, round the corner, skidded, righted himself, flung open the glass doors.

She was almost alone on the platform. He saw her immediately. And she saw him. Policemen, too. Clattering footsteps behind him, but it was all right. Policemen. All round them, policemen. He hadn't lost her. He called to her as she stood looking at him. The noise of the train covered his words as it slowed, then came to a stop.

One of Petrunin's men grabbed him from behind. He turned, lashed out to try to prevent a second man passing him, heading towards the girl. Then they seemed to be drowning in bodies as the special train from Huston debouched hundreds of rock fans on to the platform, every one of them intent on reaching the exit first. Noise assailed Hyde, and perfume. He was brushed aside, the only certainty the hand holding his collar. He raised his fist, but the crowd trapped it against his chest, pinning it there as in a sling. Petrunin's man had his arm above the heads of the crowd. He was waving a rubber cosh. He struck slowly down. The movement was awkward because he was being relentlessly pushed back towards the exit. Hyde lost sight of the girl, of Petrunin who seemed to have retreated back up the steps, and of the cosh which struck him across the neck and shoulder, numbing him after the spurt of fire through his head. Then the Russian's hand was gone from his collar and he stumbled forward, flung sideways to his knees. Then on to his chest. Feet pressed on his back, compressing his lungs. People began surging over him. He was drowning for a moment, then he could not breathe, and then it was dark.

Chapter Five: CRIPPLE

'Sir, why the hell is the Kiev in the area? There's no major Soviet exercise on, and she couldn't possibly be any help in rescuing those poor dead buggers in the crippled boat — so why do they need an aircraft carrier? What's her game?'

'I don't know, John.'

'And the course changes — sir, we remained rigged for silent running for too long. If we'd had the magnetic and acoustic sensors working, and gone to active sonar, we'd have known sooner she was closing on us.'

'I know that, John. I know we're the quarry.'

'Sir, what in hell are we doing here?'

'Playing MoD's games for them, John. Undergoing our final examination.'

'What?'

'I mean it. In this sea trial, the danger's all the better for MoD for being real.'

'Bastards. Sir, we're being gathered into a net. The net is in the Tanafjord, and we're being driven towards it.'

'Agreed.'

'What do they want?'

'I should have thought that was obvious. What they want is called “Leopard”. As to what they'll do, you guess.'

'What do we do?'

'ETA Norwegian territorial waters?'

'Two hours plus some minutes.'

'Then we'll run for shelter. We might just get away with it, inside Norwegian waters. We'll hide, John. Hide.'

* * *

'Ethan, has the Nimrod's position been updated?' 'She's here, Mr Aubrey, as of five minutes ago.' Aubrey stared up at the huge map-board. The cluster of lights glowed with what he could easily imagine was malevolence. A single white light had been introduced to the board to represent the Proteus. Aubrey periodically wished it had not been done. The white dot was in a ring of coloured lights representing the Soviet naval vessels in the immediate area. Far to the south and west of that cluster, a second white light shone like a misplaced or falling star over the fjordal coastline of western Norway, perhaps a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle.

'Not enough, not far enough,' Aubrey murmured. The dot seemed hardly to have moved since the aircraft's previous signal.

'You can't know that, Mr Aubrey.'

'Don't offer me morsels of comfort, Ethan!' Aubrey snapped, turning to the American. Heads turned, and then returned to screens and read-outs. Aubrey had subdued the 'Chessboard Counter' team by cajolement and command, and by exploiting their sense of failure. The map-board had completed their change in function as it increasingly betrayed Proteus's danger. They were now a rescue team, busy and helpless.

'Sorry.'

Pyott and the commodore had sought another place of residence. Vanquished, they had left the field to Aubrey. Rather, he saw them as children running away from the broken window, the smashed greenhouse.

'My apologies. What's the Nimrod's ETA?'

'A little more than an hour to Hammerfest, then maybe another twenty minutes to the Tanafjord.'

Aubrey looked at his watch. 'Eight-fifteen. Can we do it, Ethan?'

Clark rubbed his chin. To Aubrey, he looked absurdly young, and much too unworried to be a repository of authoritative answers. And he was tall enough to make Aubrey physically uncomfortable.

'Maybe. Then Proteus has to get the hell out.'

'Why hasn't Lloyd aborted on his own initiative?'