Sea Leopard

'I want to see my mother,' Tricia Quin announced.

'Your father's to go straight to London, Miss. Mr Aubrey's instructions,' he added by way of explanation to Hyde. 'He'll want to see you, no doubt, at the same time.'

'Get us to Manchester,' Hyde replied. 'We'll see, then.'

'I'm not going to London.'

'Okay, okay,' Hyde conceded. 'I'll take you to see Mummy as soon as we' ve got your dear old dad on the plane. All right?' The girl nodded firmly. 'Christ, why you spend your time worrying so much about them, I don't know!' He looked up at the police officer. 'Caught 'em?'

'I doubt it. We haven't the time to waste. Leave that up to the Cumbria constabulary. Come on — let's get moving.'

Hyde stood up. The girl immediately held his arm to steady him, unnecessarily.

'You're all bloody solicitation, Tricia,' Hyde observed. 'No wonder you get hurt all the time. People aren't worth it.' She saw that he was looking at her father as he spoke, and a wince of pain crossed her face. Misinterpreting the expression, he added: 'Your ribs okay?'

'Yes!' she snapped, and walked away from him. Hyde watched her go, and shrugged. Relief returned in a rush of emotions, and he exhaled noisily. It was over. The cavalry had arrived, with a loudhailer instead of a bugle. But they had arrived —

* * *

They allowed Quin five hours' sleep, under light sedation, before Aubrey had him woken. The doctor had examined him as soon as he had arrived at the Admiralty, and had pronounced him unfit for strain or effort, mental or physical. Aubrey had thanked the doctor and dismissed him. He pondered whether Quin should be prescribed stimulants, and then reluctantly decided against this course. Aubrey suspected drugs, except in their interrogational usefulness. He wanted Quin completely and reliably rational. Quin was the lynchpin of the scheme that was increasingly obsessing him, it had prevented him from taking any sleep himself, it had made him impatient of Quin's rest and impatient during his first conversation with the man, so much so that Ethan Clark had intruded upon their conversation and eventually commandeered it. Aubrey, seething at Quin's weariness, his retreat from reality, his reluctance to consider the plight of his own invention, had left the Admiralty to walk for half an hour on Horse Guards, but the military statues and the mobility of the buildings had made him flee to the more agreeable atmosphere of St James's Park.

The park, across which people hurried at the beginning of a bright, windy day, offered him little solace. From the bridge, he could see, in an almost gilded white clarity, Buckingham Palace in one direction, Whitehall in the other. If he followed the path from the bridge, it would bring him to Birdcage Walk and Queen Anne's Gate and his own office. Shelley would bring him coffee and soothing information of other parts of the world; not Pechenga, not the place on that blown-up aerial photograph propped on an easel. The parade of government officials and office workers passing him composed a race to which he did not belong. His office was barred to him until this business was resolved.

He skirted the lake, back towards Whitehall. The sun was gilding the roofs, providing an unremarked beauty. Aubrey was profoundly doubtful whether Quin would be of the least use to them. He seemed a poor specimen, physically, emotionally. He certainly seemed inadequate to the role in which Aubrey wished to cast him.

One man, who is a grocer. A Harrier jet. The AWACS Nimrod at Farnborough which was used to give Proteus her sea trials with the 'Leopard' equipment. Eastoe and his crew, returned by now to RAF Kinloss, no more than two hours away by aircraft from Farnborough. And Clark.

And Quin. Miserable, whining, ungrateful, uncaring Quin. Aubrey clenched his hat more firmly, savagely in his hand, mis-shaping its brim with the rage he felt against Quin. It could work, but only with Quin. With Quin as he was, it was doomed.

Pyott and Clark were alone in what had once been the 'Chessboard Counter' operations room. Aubrey had stood-down all RN personnel, who would be briefed to run what had become, in his mind, a rescue rather than a destruction operation. He intended that 'Leopard' should be repaired and that Proteus make her escape, under cover of its anti-sonar, from Pechenga. The scheme seemed utterly unworkable to Clark and Pyott, and it had seemed so to him in the windy light of the park, between the gilded buildings. In this underground room, precisely because Quin had obviously been allowed to rest by Clark, it seemed only a little less ridiculous. An old man's fancy. He had code-named it 'Plumber'.

Clark's face expressed disappointment, beneath the surface of superiority. He had been proven right; Quin was a broken reed. Yet Clark evidently wished it had been otherwise. There was an undisguised disappointment on Pyott's handsome face as he stood with Clark in what had the appearance of a protective hedge of easels supporting mounted photographs and charts. The bric-a-brac of an operation that would never be allowed to run. The board would never be set up for it, the timetable never decided, the communications and the back-up never arranged. It was already dead.

The knowledge made Aubrey furious.

'I'm sorry, Mr Aubrey,' Clark began, 'but that guy's in no condition to cross the street. He's in bad shape, psychologically.'

Pyott fiddled with his moustache, as if caricaturing his uniform and rank. 'I'm afraid so, Kenneth. Nerves shot to bits, willingness to help nil. Bloody little man —'

'What are these?' Aubrey asked, pointing at the easels in turn. 'Did we order these?'

'I did,' Pyott admitted, 'before we had a good chat with our friend Quin.'

'Is this Proteus?' Aubrey had stopped in front of one of the grainy, enlarged monochrome pictures. A harbour, the slim, knife-like shape of vessels seen from the air.

'Yes.' Clark sounded suddenly revived. He joined Aubrey, Pyott coming to the old man's other shoulder. Aubrey felt hemmed in by younger bone and muscle. 'The quality's poor. Satellite picture in poor conditions. Getting dark down there, and the cloud cover obscured most of the shots. This is the inner harbour at Pechenga. That's her.' His long, thick finger dabbed towards the top edge of the picture.

'What damage has she sustained?'

'Hard to tell. Look through this.' Clark handed Aubrey a magnifying glass, and the old man bent to the photograph, moving the lens slowly over the scene, which threatened at any moment to dissolve into a collection of grey, black and white dots. 'Those look like buoyancy bags at the stern. Must have been a low-warhead torpedo, maybe two. She's not under power, she's being towed by the rescue ship ahead of her.'

Aubrey surrendered the magnifying glass. 'How long?' he asked.

Clark shook his head. 'Impossible to guess. One day, two. I don't know. No one could tell you from this shot, not even with computer enhancement.'

'Show me where on the chart of Pechenga.'

The three of them moved, in a tight little wedge, to another easel. Their voices were echoing drily in the empty room. There was a marble, sepulchral atmosphere about it. The huge map-board in the middle of the floor registered, frozen like something unfinished but preserved in ice, the conditions and dispositions at the time the Proteus was boarded. Even the dot of the relief Nimrod was frozen on station above the coast of Norway. The board had not been allowed to continue revealing the extent of their defeat.

'Here,' Clark said. 'These are the submarine pens.'

'Well? Well? Is it only Quin we are worried about? I will take responsibility for him. We have discussed this operation for most of the night. Is there more than Quin to hold us back?'

'You never give up, do you?' Clark said.

'Would you drop out?'

'No.'

'Giles?'

'Too risky — no, I'm not sounding like a granny just for the sake of it. Quin is crucial. If Clark can't get the right information, at the precise split-second he requires it, then everything could be lost — including Clark.' Pyott shook his head, held his features in a gloomy, saturnine cast, to emphasise his words.

Aubrey was exasperated. He had seen the Proteus now. He had to act.

'You' ve talked to MoD air?'

'There's no problem there. A Harrier could get Clark across Finland and into the Pechenga area — yes. You