harbour and the basin beyond it. He trod water, absorbing the pattern of movement of the searchlights. He saw the silhouettes of armed guards, the barrels of anti-aircraft cannon pointing to the night sky. He felt cold, the chill of water seeping through his immersion suit. Thought seemed to come slowly, but not because of the cold; rather; because he already knew the dangers and the risks. There was no necessity to discover or analyse them. The submarine net stretched across the entrance to the harbour, perhaps fifteen feet above the water. He would have to climb it.
He edged with furtive strokes of his fins around the base of the harbour wall, touching its barnacled sliminess with his hand, reaching the steel net directly beneath one of the guard towers. The, packs had begun to resist him, he imagined, as if they had lost their buoyancy. He let them drift behind him as he clung to the mesh, watching the lights. Thirty seconds. He lowered his arm as his watch confirmed the gap of darkness between the passage of each light across the harbour entrance for the second time. He had thirty seconds in which to climb the net, mount it like a rider, drag his packs after him, and climb down again to the water. He could not wait for the chance of the net being opened on its boom to admit a vessel.
The light of the searchlight on the opposite wall slid down the concrete and swung away into the harbour. His fins hung round his neck, and his mouthpiece dangled between their strange necklace. He felt clumsy, burdened. He reached up, and began climbing. The heavy steel cords of the submarine net did not even vibrate with his effort.
The seconds began racing away from him. His mind was blind and indifferent to the progress of the light, hearing only the moving numbers in his head. The numbers ran ahead of him, as his breathing did.
Top. One leg,
He scuttled down the net, feeling it vibrate now, his breath ragged, his body as tense as a spring, as vulnerable as an insect's. He was aware of the light on the opposite side of the entrance swinging back now, a hazy blur at the corner of his vision.
Clark clung to the net, forcing the mouthpiece back between his teeth, trying to calm his breathing, feeling the packs tugging him lazily back towards the surface. He held on to the net with one hand, and reduced their buoyancy with the other, his hand completing the task robotically. They bobbed beside him in the darkness, nudging him as if to remind him of their presence, or to ingratiate themselves because they had almost betrayed him.
He clung to the net until the searchlight's wavering globe of light had passed over his head another four times. Then he further adjusted the buoyancy of the packs so that they began to pull at him, drag him down. He fitted his fins, and let go of the net, moving smoothly down into the darkness.
The mines, now. Magnetic, electronic contact. Pasvik had been unable to provide the pattern. MoD had had some detail, but not enough. There did not seem to be channels through the minefield, since the mines would all be armed or disarmed by remote signal. If a Soviet vessel entered the harbour, the mines would be switched off. Simple. Effective. Clark reasoned that he must dive deep, almost to the bottom, to avoid the contact mines which would be set off by a touch, and which would have been laid at varying depths. He swam down, levelling off when his depth gauge registered a hundred feet. Time closed in on him immediately as decompression became a determining factor. He flicked on his lamp. The packs idled alongside him as he trod water. Compass direction checked, together with the time and the depth, he began swimming, moving rapidly now, ignoring the sense of isolation in his system like an antidote to adrenalin, and which assailed him for the first time since he had left the cockpit of the Harrier. The weak glow of the lamp illuminated the dull silver of fish and the strange forest of cables growing up from the harbour bed below. Above him, invisible, the mines sat at their determined depths. He jogged one cable, then another, and occasionally the packs snagged against them, operating like brakes. He had guessed correctly. He was too deep for the mines themselves.
He swung the lamp from side to side, however, in a precautionary swathe. The mine that came suddenly out of the darkness still surprised him. He flicked aside, remembering the two packs only as he did so. He stopped himself. The chill disappeared from his body. He flicked the light of his lamp behind him. One of the packs rubbed against the cable. It seemed to be sliding upwards towards the mine's old-fashioned, deadly horns. A small contact mine, almost too small to do any damage, but enough to pull a human frame into shreds. He moved slowly. The mine seemed to bob and weave like a fighting animal watching him. The water distressed it and wafted around the pack, moving it upwards. It was only inches from the mine.
He reached forward, trying to keep the light of the lamp steady. The mine bobbed, the pack imitated it. Inches. He reached forward, hardly moving his fins, feeling his body sinking away from the mine and the pack. He could not tread water any more violently. He reached forward along the short line which attached him to the pack. Touch. The buoyant pack crumpled then reshaped as he touched it. Inches. He swept at it, banging his hand down past the horns of the mine on to the pack. It bobbed away like a struck ball, and he reeled it in on its line, clutching it to him like a child who had avoided a road accident, feeling weakness envelope his body.
Eventually, he moved on, holding the packs closer to him by their lines, making slower progress but gradually sensing some kind of courage return. He ran up against the inner net, separating the outer basin of the harbour from the submarine pens, almost before he saw it in the light of his lamp. He clung to it with a kind of desperate relief which surprised him. He realised how much his nerves had been strained already. He released the net eventually, dropping down towards the bottom, dragging the unwilling packs with him. His lamp searched ahead of him. The mud and silt, its lightest elements disturbed and lifted by his movement, drifted up to meet him and almost obscured what he sought. The net ended some four or five feet from the bottom. He gripped it and slid under, pulling the packs after him.
He swam on immediately he had checked his bearings and the time. The mine cables were fewer, as if he had moved above the tree-line for these growths. Soon, they straggled out. The water became slightly warmer, and it appeared lighter. He checked his watch, then ascended twenty feet. Here, he waited, them climbed another twenty feet, waited again. Nerves began to plague him now, the need for action, for arrival, nudging at him, irritating him.
His head bobbed above the surface. The packs lay below him at the end of their lines. The row of concrete pens was in front of him. He counted. Fifth along. Lights, noise — no, no noise, just plenty of light. The gates of the pen were closed.
Pasvik the grocer studied the harbour through his night-glasses. He squatted on a blanket which protected his buttocks from the cold of the damp ground. Beneath the blanket he had spread a ground sheet. He had a hamper of food beside him, and he had his back to a tall, old tree.
He moved the glasses up, and the dim, night images blurred and smeared until they were lit with the glow of the submarine pens. He refocused, and he could see, with some degree of clarity, the lights in the fifth pen and a shadowy bulk beyond them that must be the British submarine behind the high gates. Good.
He lowered the glasses. No one would come up here in this weather, but he had a spare blanket to throw over the small dish aerials he had set up alongside him. Clark would be unable to communicate with the Nimrod from within the concrete pen without his messages, and those of the Nimrod, being relayed through the two aerials situated on a small knoll overlooking the harbour of Pechenga, the one with narrow beam facility directed towards Clark, the other, capable of handling broad-beam signals, directed towards the Nimrod.
Pasvik had no fear as he sat there, waiting for the first transmission. He was patient, warmly dressed, and he was engaged in a flatteringly important piece of espionage. However, a dim and long-past regret seemed to
