Sea Leopard

But impossible of fulfilment. 'Leopard' as the prize. Clark, too, he knew agreed with his insight. He had not asked the American; he had asked no one. He stared at the cup of coffee in his hand, and found its surface grey. His watch peeped like a rising, ominous sun over the curve of his wrist, from beneath his shirt-cuff. He ignored it.

He had never been interested in seconds, in the sweep of the quick hand. Blister or burn operations that relied on that kind of exactitude had never been his forte. Yet he had waited longer, and more often. Back rooms of empty buildings near the Wall, with the rats scampering behind the skirting-board and the peeling wallpaper; or beneath the slowly revolving ceiling-fans, in hotel rooms with geckos chasing insects up the walls or places where, with the fan less effective against even hotter nights, crickets chorused outside; or with windows fogged by the warmth of wood-burning stoves, and wooden walls; and so many embassy basements and signals rooms, and so many rooms like this, in London and a dozen other cities. Memory's persistence, its retained vivacity, wearied and oppressed him.

Shelley's telephone call was, perhaps, the worst moment; the small, personal act of spite or neglect amid a more general ruin. Of course Hyde was correct — he must reach the girl himself, if they were not only to possess her, but to possess her confidence also. Manchester. Aubrey was doubtful that the girl had returned to the pop group; and at the same moment wondered whether his disdain towards their kind of music made him think that. He could not, he found, identify in any way with a modern girl of twenty-plus. An alien species. And Shelley's background was probably wrong. Hyde might know more than either of them.

With great reluctance, Aubrey looked at the clock on the wall opposite his chair. Another minute clicked away. Twelve twenty-four. Another six minutes, with good fortune and communications, before the Nimrod transmitted a status report on Soviet activity in the area of the Tanafjord.

And, despite the weariness of the waiting, he felt no desire to receive that report.

* * *

'No trace of them? After almost three hours, no trace of them?' Dolohov raged at the rear-admiral, who blanched with a suppressed indignation of his own, and the sense of humiliation at once more being berated in front of junior officers, his own and those who had come with Dolohov. 'It is not good enough, Admiral. It is very bad. We knew it would come to this, we knew it! They found her, crippled her so they say, and now they have lost her. It is not good enough!'

'I — can only repeat, sir, that everyone, every unit on station, is using every means to locate the submarine. We have reduced the search area to a matter of fifty or so square miles of the seabed. The British submarine is inside that square. It is only a matter of time.'

Dolohov stared through the window of the control room, down at the map table. A cluster of glowing lights, now merely the decoration for the fir-tree. He dismissed the childhood image, but he could no longer believe in the symbolic importance of those lights. They were strung together for no reason. The rear-admiral's voice seemed to whine in his ear, and his own breath whistled in and out of the spaces under his ribcage.

'They could stay down there for weeks, unless the hull has been damaged, which evidently it has not.' As he spoke, his exhalations clouded a little circle of glass in front of his face, as if he were attempting to obscure the signals of temporary failure that glowed below him. 'It will be wearying for them, but not uncomfortable or dangerous, while we listen for the whispers of their breathing, the sound of their feet.' He turned on the rear- admiral. 'We should not have lost contact when the submarine was hit. Grishka's captain should not have lost contact.'

'Admiral, he had poor target acquisition, just a trace of the submarine's wake. The torpedo had to be launched, or held, and he made his decision. I–I happen to think he made the right decision.'

'You do?' Dolohov's face was bleak with contempt and affront. Then it altered; not softened, but it became more introspective. His voice was softer when he continued. 'Perhaps. Perhaps. If they don't find her soon, then we shall pass from the realm of action into that of diplomacy, achieve an international situation. She is in Norwegian waters, and they will attempt to rescue her. Already, they have made contact. You have no idea what that message contained?'

The rear-admiral shook his head. 'A one-time code. We would need all their computer cards, and then know which one.'

'Very well. It was probably a recall signal. What of the aircraft?'

'A British Nimrod. It will be watching us.'

'You see my point, Admiral? Once they understand what we are doing, they will attempt to intervene. There will be evidence, photographs, computer print-outs. It will all serve to complicate matters.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Temperature sensors, sonar, infra-red — all useless.' Dolohov rubbed his chin, staring at the ceiling above his head. In a quiet voice, he said, 'Likelihood. Likelihood. If there was some element of choice open to the British captain — eh?' He turned to the rear-admiral. 'If he was able to decide, at least to some extent, his final location, where would it be? A ledge, a cleft, a depression? Feed into the computers every detail of every chart and every sounding we have of your fifty square miles. If necessary, we can send down divers — before Ardenyev's team are let loose. Or we can use submersibles with searchlights — ' Dolohov was elated again. He controlled, he contributed, he conceived. 'Yes, yes. We must be prepared.' Then, seeing that the rear-admiral had not moved, he motioned him away. 'Get on with it, get on with it!'

* * *

Twelve twenty-nine. Clark had joined him, together with Copeland, one of the less reluctant members of the 'Chessboard Counter' team. He had requested a conversation with Eastoe, the pilot and captain of the Nimrod. The high-speed, frequency-agile transmissions would delay question and answer but not prevent it. When Eastoe spoke, his words would be recorded on the Nimrod, speeded up to a spitting blur of sound transmitted on frequencies that changed more than a hundred times a second, re-recorded in MoD, slowed and amplified for Aubrey. Then his words would take the same few seconds to reach Eastoe in comprehensible form.

'What's she doing now, Ethan?' he asked suddenly. 'Proteus, I mean?'

'Getting the hell out, if her captain's got any sense,' Clark replied gloomily.

'You really think they're on to her, don't you?' Copeland challenged Clark. Clark nodded, his face saturnine with experience, even prescience. 'I can't believe that — ' Copeland turned to Aubrey and added: 'Nor should you, sir. “Leopard” is undetectable, and they'll have taken no action against her.'

'Ah,' Aubrey said. 'Would they not?' Copeland shook his head vigorously. 'I wish I shared your faith, young man.'

The communications officer approached them. Transmission time, Mr Aubrey.' He was punctiliously polite, but here was little respect. As if Aubrey had somehow, by some underhand trick, succeeded to the commodore's job and salary and pension..

'Thank you — we'll come over.'

Aubrey ushered Clark and Copeland towards the communications console with its banks of switches and reels of tape. Almost as they arrived, a red light blinked on, and a tape began to whirl at near impossible speed. A spit of noise like static.

'The Nimrod's transmitting,' Copeland explained offhandedly.

'Thank you.'

The communications console operator typed on the bank of switches like a competent secretary. Another tape began to turn, slowly. After more than a minute-and-a-half it stopped and the operator rewound it. Aubrey was aware of the other people gathered behind him, much as men might have gathered around a radio for the cricket Scoreboard.

Eastoe's voice, a man Aubrey did not know. Nevertheless, informed of the ETNA order and aware of its significance, Eastoe addressed his words to Aubrey.

Call sign. Identification. Then: 'We have concluded a square search of the area, dropping patterns of sonar buoys while surveying the area by means of infra-red and radar. There is a great deal of Soviet naval activity, surface and sub-surface — ' Clark scribbled the co-ordinates, even though they were already being fed into the map's computer. 'We have identified by sonar at least four hunter-killer submarines in the immediate area, and the VTOL carrier Kiev and the rescue ship ident is confirmed.

There are other surface units of the Northern Fleet engaged in what appear to be sonar searches of the area. Infra-red and radar is also being extensively and intensively used by all surface and sub-surface vessels —