Sea Leopard

masked by the murk and the flying rain and sleet and remained as unreal as the satellite pictures he had seen of it and of dozens of other Soviet naval ports, but the big ships were real, uncomfortably so. Two 'Kara'-class cruisers at anchor, one half-repainted. Three or four destroyers, like a display of toys, small and grey and bristling with aerials and radar dishes and guns. Frigates, a big helicopter cruiser, two intelligence ships festooned with electronic detection and surveillance equipment. A submarine support ship, minesweepers, ocean tugs, tankers. The sight, the numbers, overawed him, ridiculing Portsmouth, Plymouth, Faslane, every naval port and dockyard in the UK. It was like going back into the past, except for the threatening, evident modernity of these vessels, to some great review of the fleet at Spithead between the two world wars, or before the Great War. The harbour at Pechenga, a satellite port for Murmansk, daunted Lloyd. He felt completely and utterly entrapped.

The submarine pens, mere nest-holes in the concrete at this distance, winked with lights ahead of the Karpaty. One of those small black holes would swallow his vessel, contain it until people like this Russian on his bridge said they could leave, gave them permission. He shrugged hopelessly.

'You're impressed?' Ardenyev asked.

'As long as they're not all cardboard mock-ups, yes.'

They're not.' Lloyd looked at Ardenyev. The man seemed unenthusiastic about the conversation he had begun.

'So familiar as to be boring?' he asked.

'What? Oh, this. I was just thinking what a dull town Pechenga is.'

'I see.'

'I doubt it.' They slid beneath the lee of a cruiser. Crewmen leaned over the rails, looking down at the British submarine, waving their caps, yelling indistinguishable words and greetings. Ardenyev watched them as he might have observed the behaviour of monkeys at a zoo. 'The brothels are quite dreadful,' he continued. 'All right for conscripts, but not for the likes of you and me. A good job you will not be allowed ashore. The casualty rate would be staggering. Quite unacceptable to the Admiralty.'

'You seem to have run out of steam,' Lloyd remarked.

'What? Oh, perhaps.' Ardenyev brushed a hand through his wet hair, and assayed a tired grin. His waving arms indicated the whole bulk of the Proteus. 'It's over for me. The dull time after excitement. I am feeling sorry for myself. Forgive my bad manners.'

They were slowing now. Karpaty seemed to lag, and they began to overtake her in a snail-like pursuit, until the Proteus herself came to a stop. Tiny figures emerged from the forward hatch and scuttled along the slippery, gleaming deck, casting off the tow-lines swiftly and expertly. A hard-lit submarine pen gaped before them. Proteus began to edge, towards the open gates of the pen on her intact docking propeller, the 'egg-beater' located forward of the main propeller and retracted when not in use. Lloyd shuddered.

'As soon as we dock, I must leave you to make my report,' Ardenyev murmured. Lloyd ignored him, watching his vessel slide forward into the maw of the submarine pen. Down the line of pens, men had stopped work to watch. The sterns of Soviet submarines were visible through the open gates of other pens, but Lloyd, after one quick, self-concious glance, returned his gaze to the bow of the Proteus. She stopped again, and men scrambled over the deck, attaching the hawsers whereby she could be winched into the pen, An order was given, the deck was cleared again, and then the winches picked up the slack, measured the bulk of the submarine and began to pull her forward.

Each moment was marked by a further surrender to circumstances. Lloyd felt an emotional pain that was as acute as a physical injury. The hull of the Proteus seemed marked like a ruler, measuring off her entry into the pen. Hard lights gleamed in the roof. The pen contained the torpedo tubes, the forward hatch, the forward hydroplanes, then the fin itself. Proteus was half-swallowed.

There was cheering from the dockyard workers lining the concrete walks on either side of the water, which sickened and enraged him. Lloyd could see the first teams of men with the props that would support the hull, eager to begin berthing the Proteus.

Then Ardenyev's hand was on his shoulder, and he was shouting above the echo of the cheering bouncing back from steel and concrete.

'I'm sorry, my friend! You have lost!'

Lloyd shook his head, not to deny but to admit defeat. Proteus was slowing as orders were passed from the officer in charge of the docking procedure to the winch operators. Even the motion of his vessel was out of his control. He felt utterly humiliated. Strangely, there was an air of dejection about Ardenyev, too, amid the coarse cheers and their magnified, inhuman echoes.

* * *

A mist was beginning to rise in the dusk. The wind had dropped to an occasional breeze which stirred the tendrils and shrouds of grey. The landscape was subsiding into darkness, the hills already no more than smudges, the trees merely dark, crayon shadings. Hyde saw the mist as a final irony. It cloaked Petrunin now, not any attempt on his part to reach a telephone. Petrunin had arrived too early, just before six, announcing his presence with a deadline for Hyde's surrender. Yet in another sense he was belated. Hyde had already, slowly and reluctantly and with an inward fury, decided he could not leave the girl and her father exposed to capture, and there was no way the three of them could get safely away from the cottage. He had to make the difficult, even repellent assumption that they would be safer, if only because they would be alive and unharmed, in surrender than resistance. Hope springs eternal was a difficult, and unavoidable, consolation. He had admitted to himself that they were successfully trapped even before Petrunin reiterated that simple message through a loud-hailer.

Quin had rendered himself useless, like some piece of electrical equipment that possessed a safety circuit. He had switched himself off like a kettle boiling too long. He was slumped where he had sat for hours, staring at his lap, sulking in silence. Even his danger no longer pricked him to complaint. The girl, moving only occasionally to check on her father's condition, had remained near Hyde. Their conversation had been desultory. Hyde had hardly bothered to alleviate the girl's fears, possessed by his own self-recriminations. The bug on the car, the bloody bug —

Then Petrunin was talking again. 'Why not attempt to reach a telephone, Mr Hyde?' his magnified, mechanical voice queried from behind a knoll a hundred yards or more from the cottage. Hyde was certain he could hear soft laughter from one of the others. 'This mist should hide your movements quite successfully.' Again the accompanying, sycophantic laughter, coarser now? Hyde could not be certain he was not mocking himself, imagining the amusement. Petrunin was enjoying himself. Was he covering an approach, distracting them? The problem is, your friends would not be safe while you were away. Can the girl use a gun? Can her father?'

'Fuck off,' Hyde replied with a whispered intensity. The girl touched his arm, making him start.

'Give me the gun. Why don't you try to get out?'

'I gave that idea up hours ago, girlie. We're right in the shit, and bloody Lenin out there knows it.'

'Won't your people be looking for us?'

'I bloody hope so! But, he knows that, too. He won't wait much longer now.'

'Your time is up,' Petrunin announced, as if on cue. Hyde grinned mirthlessly. 'Please show yourselves at the door. Throw your gun out first, please. We have night-sights. No movements you make will be missed, I assure you.'

'The trouble with bloody desk men when they get in the field is they're so bloody gabby.' He looked at the shadowy outline of Quin across the room, then at the girl. His hand was clenched around the butt of the Heckler & Koch pistol, and it would take one movement to smash the window and open fire. Useless to try; but in another, more febrile way, satisfying to do so. Bang, bang, he recited to himself, pointing the gun into the room as if taking aim. Bloody bang, bang, and these two would be dead, or wounded. 'Nowhere to go, nothing to do,' he announced aloud.

'You can't — ' the girl began.

'I'm bored with sitting on my bum,' he said. 'Besides, when the shooting starts, someone else always gets hurt. It's in the rules. Petrunin knows I won't risk your father or you, and I know I won't. Shitty, but true. Now, we have no chance. Later, who knows?' He stood up to one side of the window. It was open at the top, and he raised his voice to a shout. 'All right, Trotsky — we're coming out. We' ve both seen this bloody film before!'

'No cavalry, I'm afraid. Only Apaches,' Petrunin called back through the loud-hailer. Hyde tossed his