Sea Leopard

unwind. Down through twenty thousand feet, nineteen, eighteen.

Turbulence buffeted the Nimrod as the aircraft dropped towards the sea. Eastoe sensed for a brief moment the fragility of the airframe around him, imagined the last moments of the Nimrod that had crashed on take-off, remembered the pilot and the crew who had died, and then they broke through the lowest fringes of the cloud, into squalling rain and a headwind. He levelled the Nimrod no more than a hundred and fifty feet above the whitecapped water. The carrier was a fuzzy, bulky shape through the rain, less than a mile ahead of them.

In his headphones, the senior Nav/Attack officer began calling out the readings from his screens and sensors, describing the movements of the surface and sub-surface vessels during the time they were descending. The carrier seemed to leap towards them like a huge stone across the stormy water.

The subs were altering, or had altered, course, and all were closing on the same bearing. The carrier appeared to be lumbering on to a new course. All units closing on the fixed position of the Proteus. They'd found her. Maybe foxed for the moment, but they had her now.

Eastoe throttled back the four Rolls-Royce engines, and the Nimrod appeared merely to float above the deck of the Kiev. No activity, launches stowed on both the port and starboard boat-decks — the co-pilot calling out confirmation of what Eastoe had seen for himself— and then the rescue ship was ahead as the Kiev passed out of sight beneath them. The Karpaty was making slow headway and, as Bob called out her course, Eastoe realised that the rescue ship was on a heading that would take her over the Proteus.

He realised, too, the significance of the rescue ship. He, throttled back once more, and they drifted towards the Karpaty.

'See it?' he said.

'Yes, skipper. They're trying to launch a boat from the starboard side, looks like.'

The Nimrod crept towards the rescue ship. Tiny figures, moving with what seemed hopeless and defeated slowness around the starboard launch on its davits. Eastoe strained forward in his seat. The co-pilot increased the beat of the wipers. Shiny, oil-skinned crewmen — no, not ail of them, surely?

'What in hell —?'

'Divers.'

'Divers! Shit and hell!'

The Nimrod floated over the dipping bow of the Karpaty. A chaos of water flung up over her deck, the surge of an animal as the wave released her into, the next trough. Men in shiny, tight-fitting suits, face-masked, oxygen cylinders on their backs. They were pinpricks, tiny matchstick men, but they were divers, climbing into the launch.

'How far is she from the Proteus?'

'Less than a mile,' he heard the navigator reply as the nose of the aircraft blotted out the scene directly below them.

'I'm going round for another look and some more pictures,' Eastoe said, 'and then we'd better send Aubrey the bad news — they're going down to the Proteus, for God's sake!'

Chapter Eight: SEIZURE

Aubrey stared at the note he had scribbled, the small, neat handwriting suddenly expressive of powerlessness, and realised that they had lost. 'Leopard' had malfunctioned, betraying the position of the Proteus to the Russian submarines in the immediate area. The rescue ship Karpaty was preparing to launch a small boat on which were a team of divers. They had received photographic proof of that over the wireprint. Opposite his note, Clark had scrawled in his strangely confident, large hand RB Spec Ops Unit — Ardenyev. Aubrey presumed it was no more than an informed guess, and it had no significance. The identity of the divers did not matter, only that they existed and were less than a mile from the reported position of the British submarine.

It was dark outside now. Perhaps not quite. A drizzling, gusty dusk. Aubrey had taken a short afternoon walk in St James's Park, but he had been unable to shake off the claustrophobic, tense gravity of the underground room beneath the Admiralty, and had soon returned to it.

Lost. Found by others. The Russians evidently intended that Proteus should be salvaged, perhaps even boarded, and the 'Leopard' equipment inspected before it was presumably returned, together with the submarine and her crew. An accident, not quite an international incident, no real cause for alarm, no ultimate harm done. He could hear the platitudes unroll in the days ahead, perceive the diplomatic games that would be played. He knew the Russians would take Proteus to one of their closest ports — Pechenga, Poliarnyi, even Murmansk — and there they would effect apologetic repairs, even allowing the American consul from Leningrad or a nominated member of the British embassy staff from Moscow to talk to the crew, make the noises of protest, send their London ambassador to call on the foreign secretary and the PM, heap assurance upon assurance that it was an accident, that all would be well, that this indicated the willingness for peace of the Soviet Union — look, we are even repairing your submarine, send experts to inspect our work, why are you so suspicious, so belligerent, you will have your submarine back as good as new —

The diplomatic support for the operation sprang fully-envisaged into Aubrey's awareness, like a childhood or youthful moment of extreme humiliation that haunted him still in old age. It did not matter that it was all a blatant lie; it would work. It would give them enough time to photograph, X-ray, dismantle 'Leopard', and learn its secrets.

And, at the same time, they might obtain its designer, Quin, who would help them to build more. In the moment of the loss of 'Leopard', Aubrey feared Hyde's failure and the girl's capture.

'What do we do, Kenneth?' Pyott asked at his shoulder. The channel to Eastoe in the Nimrod was still open, the tapes waiting for his orders. Aubrey waved a hand feebly, and the operator cut the communications link.

Aubrey looked up into Pyott's face, turning slightly in his chair. 'I do not know, Giles — I really do not know.'

'You have to order Lloyd to destroy “Leopard” —I mean literally smash it and grind the pieces into powder,' Ethan Clark remarked, his face pale and determined. 'It's the only way. The guy must know by now that's what they're after, and how close they are to getting it. He has to get rid of “Leopard”.'

'Just like that? I seem to remember the Pueblo made a monumental cock-up of a similar procedure some years ago,' Pyott observed haughtily. 'It won't be easy. “Leopard” isn't in a throwaway wrapper, Clark.'

'You British,' Clark sneered. 'Man, you're so good at inertia, you make me sick.'

'There has to be something else we can do — besides which, “Leopard” is working again.'

'For the moment.'

'Gentlemen,' Aubrey said heavily, wearily, 'let's not squabble amongst ourselves. Ethan, is there anything else we can do?'

'You're not able to rescue Proteus, Mr Aubrey.'

'Then perhaps we should warn her what to expect.'

Aubrey got up from the chair at the communications console, and crossed the room to the map-board. He seemed, even to himself, to be shrunken and purposeless beneath it. Proteus — white light — had been repositioned, closer inshore, and the updated courses and positions of the carrier, the rescue ship, the destroyers and the submarines created a dense mass of light around one thin neck of the Norwegian coast. The sight depressed Aubrey, even as it galvanised him to an action of desperation. He had lost the game, therefore he must damage and make worthless the prize.

'Encode the following,' he called across the room, 'and transmit it to Eastoe at once, for relay to Proteus. Mission aborted, destroy, repeat destroy “Leopard”. Priority most absolute. Append my signature.'

Every man in the room listened to him in silence, and the silence continued after he had finished speaking. A heavy, final silence punctuated only by the clicking of the keys of the encoding machine.