Sea Leopard

she was staying clear of her father, desperate not to lead anyone to him.

The two KGB men strolled together towards Watson Street. An Austin Allegro drew level with them, and they bent to the window as it opened, becoming instantly engaged in a voluble conversation with the driver of the car. Then the lights changed, and the green Austin turned into Peter Street. As it passed him, Hyde saw that the driver was Petrunin. There was no one else in the car, which drew in and parked in the square. Petrunin did not get out.

Hyde felt hunger expand as a sharp, griping pain in his stomach. Nerves were making him hungry. He had probably another seven or eight hours to wait. This time, he would not go in until the band was on stage.

He crossed Peter Street to speak to the Special Branch men in the queue. If he was going to wait that long, no one was going in before him.

* * *

Aubrey, Clark and Pyott had become, with the passage of the night and morning, an uneasy, indecisive cabal inside the organisation of the underground room and the parameters of the rescue operation.

'Kinloss have another Nimrod standing by, with a fresh crew,' Pyott argued. 'They can be on-station in two or three hours. They won't resent the job, they won't be tired.'

Aubrey shook his head. 'Get them to contact Eastoe at Bardufoss. He and his crew must go back on-station immediately. I cannot afford to have that area unsighted for that long — no, not even with satellite surveillance. The cloud cover is making things difficult. Eastoe will have to go down to sea level if necessary. I must have eyes there, Giles.'

'They'll be dog-weary, Mr Aubrey,' Clark offered.

'I have slept for three hours in the last twenty-four, Ethan. We must all make sacrifices.' Clark grinned at the waspish remark. 'Very well, when the relief Nimrod is on-station, Eastoe and his crew will be recalled — for the moment. Let us discuss ways and means to preserve the security of “Leopard”. That is our real priority.'

'We're to take it you have abandoned any notion of destroying the Proteus?' Pyott asked with a mocking lightness.

'That was never my intention — you misconstrued. We may have to expose Proteus, however, by ordering Lloyd to destroy the “Leopard” equipment.'

Pyott nodded. 'We may have to. We can, however, run it extremely fine. No need as yet. I'm not sure you'd get Lloyd to do it, anyway.'

'He would disobey a direct order?' Aubrey asked in surprise.

'For the sake of his vessel and his crew, he would be entitled to do so.'

'Very well, Giles. What can we do — before tomorrow, when the first NATO vessel arrives in the area? We must do something.'

'Diplomacy?'

Aubrey snorted in derision. 'I'm afraid the Foreign Office is running its head against a brick wall of denials. The Soviet ambassador has denied all knowledge of the matter. Soviet vessels are engaged in bad-weather exercises in the Barents Sea. He confirmed that, apparently with Red Banner headquarters in Murmansk. It will take too long, I'm afraid, to unstick this matter through the proper channels.' Aubrey looked drawn, thinner, older. He had slept in a cramped cupboard-like room off the main operations room, on a thin, hard bed that seemed to imprison him. It had not improved his temper, or his patience. He wondered at his frenetic desire for action, and at the inertia of events which seemed to be bearing him with them like a great tide. Yet he could not retreat into the dim, cool, shadowed walks of military sang-froid as Pyott did. 'It will take too long,' he repeated. 'Far too long.'

'And tomorrow never comes,' Clark remarked, 'by tomorrow, they may have a fix on Proteus, and then you'll find — what'll you find?' He looked at Aubrey. Clark in shirtsleeves and without his tie seemed more American; less sophisticated, stronger. Perhaps a hard-boiled newspaper editor, or a policeman. Yes, without the formality imposed by his suit, he looked more like Patrick Hyde; of the same type or species.

'What will we find, Ethan?'

'My guess is a salvage operation — if they can pinpoint the sub.'

'You're serious, aren't you?' Clark nodded. 'Why so certain?'

There's no other way. They have to salvage Proteus if they're to save “Leopard”. At least, I think so.'

'And Lloyd may not destroy “Leopard” now, if we order him to do so — I agree with Giles there. Then we are on the horns of a dilemma, gentlemen.'

'Kenneth, we're left relying on “Leopard” itself. At the moment it protects Proteus and itself. It must continue to do so for at least another twenty-four hours.'

'The rescue ship from Tromso will take longer than that,' Aubrey remarked gloomily, staring at his liver- spotted hand caressing the edge of the commodore's desk. 'All we will have in the area tomorrow is one American submarine and a Norwegian “Oslo”-class frigate. The day after, more, I agree. But, too late. We have to have surface ships engaged in any rescue operation, a counter to the Soviet concentration. They will, hopefully, go away when we arrive. I did not want to escalate our presence, but there is no alternative. We have nothing there now, that is our problem.' His hand slapped the wood of the desk.

'Sorry to be the bad-news boy,' Clark said, 'but you're ignoring the latest movements of the rescue ship the Soviets have on-station, and those helicopters that arrived last night.'

'Yes?' Aubrey snapped impatiently. Then: 'Sorry — go on.

'The boarding party?' Pyott queried, and Clark nodded. 'Damnation! What do we do! Tell me that. What do we do?'

'Send Eastoe down on the deck to look over the rescue ship and the immediate area — and continue our orisons, I should think,' Pyott drawled. Aubrey looked venomously at him, and Pyott blushed slightly with the memory of his culpability. 'Sorry,' he said softly.

'It's escaping from us,' Aubrey sighed. 'I feel it. It is too far ahead of us to be overtaken.'

* * *

Lloyd paused for a moment at the door of the computer room, aft of the control room. Don Hayter's summons — a rating tapping his captain on the arm, beckoning him theatrically — had been peremptory and urgent, and Lloyd's sense of bodily temperature had leapt. Yet he could not bring himself to move through the door, not for a moment. The rating's face had been worried, pale and disturbed in the red lighting. It had seemed, immediately and without embroidery by Lloyd's jumpy imagination, to indicate disaster. Then Hayter saw him, and urgently waved him in. Hayter was bent over one of the “Leopard” screens. The noise he was making tapping a pencil against his teeth shocked Lloyd.

Hayter grabbed Lloyd's arm as he reached the panel, and tapped at the screen with the pencil, underlining the computer-print words the screen displayed. He tapped again and again at one phrase.

FAULT NOT IDENTIFIED.

Then he looked up at Lloyd, who concentrated on reading the rest of the computer's assessment of the situation.

'Leopard' had developed a fault.

'What is it?' Lloyd asked, then repeated his question in a whisper that was not clogged with phlegm. 'What is it?'

Hayter shrugged. 'It's been happening for four minutes now. We' ve checked— ' he nodded at the rating who had brought Lloyd to the computer room, and the sublieutenant who was Hayter's second-in-command, ' — everything, so has the computer.'

'What— what is the fault doing? What effect is it having?' Lloyd almost wanted to smile at the exaggerated seriousness of Hayter's expression. Lugubrious.

'It's blinking. On, off, on, off. Sometimes, they can see us, sometimes they can't.'

“What?

'Whatever the malfunction is, it's intermittent.'

'And now— at this moment?'

'Invisible. A moment before you came in, it came back on, full strength, fully operational. Before that, for