Sea Leopard

'Fly a north-south course, over and over — if we can get away with it.'

'You're not hopeful.'

'No, I'm not. Our time here is strictly limited, I'm afraid, they're determined to get rid of us, one way or another.'

'Section completed. All readings positive,' Clark's voice announced ominously from the console.

'Damn,' Aubrey whispered. 'Damn.'

* * *

They were all drunk now, yelling, bellowing, fighting drunk. Falling down and laughing drunk, too. Disrespectful, abusive, coarse, uproarious. Ardenyev enjoyed the noise, the swirl and shudder of the vodka in his veins and head, while one still sober, cold part of his awareness perceived where their laughter and taunts were leading, and anticipated with nothing more than a shudder of self-consciousness the nature of leadership and what he would now have to do to fulfil their expectations and to maintain his grip on their affection and respect.

And also, he concluded, the drinking party had to end with buffoonery, with the game of the ego and the shallowly physical prowess they required to perform their duties. After the death of Blue Section and the others of his own team, the three survivors had been absorbed and ingested as they drank and ate into the cameraderie of the men from the rescue ship Karpaty. Balan had understood the necessity of the merger. So Balan's challenge now to him to demonstrate how he boarded the Proteus was that of a shrewd drunk. His men wanted it, a boast and valediction. He had survived, become more than ever a necessary figurehead, even to the salvage men. In the absence of an athlete, a football star, an actress, he had to submit himself to their fuddled worship, their drunken amusement.

He was drunk, though. He knew that as soon as he stood up, and swayed as if the vodka had punched him in the temple. Teplov was watching him, he could see, as if weighing whether he should let his officer proceed. Viktor Teplov appeared sober, as ever.

Ardenyev looked up, the two images of the wall and the ceiling of the officers' mess coming together, as if he had correctly, though slowly, adjusted a pair of binoculars. He held the new and single image with an effort of concentration. Teplov nodded at the fuzzy corner of his vision. He was prepared to extricate his officer from whatever situation he found himself in.

'Come on, then!' Lev Balan roared, pointing up at the air-conditioning grille. 'From that one, right round the room to that one!' His arm swept round the officers' mess, now deserted save for their own noisy group. The two grilles were on opposite walls. Ardenyev was being challenged to clamber and push his way through the duct until he could emerge with honour. Two of Balan's team were busy, balancing with difficulty on chairs, unscrewing the two grilles. Ardenyev looked at Balan, and then at Teplov, and Vanilov. All that remained of the Special Underwater Operations Unit. Teplov had the face of a stoical peasant in which his eyes gleamed with memory and with a strange amusement, perhaps even with approval. Vanilov looked as if he had drunk too much to forget. He wanted Ardenyev to prove something, perhaps only to be the adult coming into his child's bedroom, easing away the threatening shadows that had gathered around the cot.

'Okay. You're on. Two hundred roubles it is.'

'One hundred —!' Balan protested.

'Two.'

'All right, two. That means a time limit. Okay?'

Ardenyev hesitated for a moment, then he nodded. Balan's man stepped down off his chair, the grille in his hand. Ardenyev flicked the remainder of his drink into his open mouth, feeling it burn the back of his throat, then he reached up and took hold of the rough plaster edges of the square hole where the grille had been. He felt mouse droppings under his fingers.

'One minute,' Balan called. 'You' ve got one minute to get at least your head out of that other hole. Five, four, three, two, one — go!'

The cheering was deafening. Ardenyev pushed himself up level with the hole, ducked his head into it, and then heaved himself half into the duct, which bent immediately to the left. His shoulders rubbed against the plaster, and he found he had to angle his body in order to be able to move at all. The cheering behind him was muffled by the bulk of his body and by the plaster wall and the metal. He kicked, and his legs followed him into the duct. Immediately, Balan's voice came from behind him, counting.

'Eleven, twelve, thirteen…'

Ardenyev shook his head to clear it. Then he began scrambling, leaning to his left, his body rubbing along the metal channel. The cheering was dim and wordless now, falling away into silence. He reached the corner of the room. The duct was a severe right-angle. He squeezed his head and shoulders around the angle, then tried to bring his thighs and knees after his upper torso. He found himself wedged immovably. He struggled as if panicking, and sweat broke out all over his body. He cursed in a yell, and then lay still. Balan's head appeared further down the duct, in a shadowy patch of light. There was a noise that no longer interested Ardenyev coming from behind him.

'Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine…'

'Piss off!' Ardenyev yelled, not even attempting to move again. 'I'm bloody stuck!'

Balan's head disappeared with a shriek of laughter. Teplov's head appeared in its place. At the same moment, a huge cheer went up as the minute ran out. 'All right, sir?'

'Yes, thank you, Viktor.'

'Bloody silly game, sir.'

'Yes, Viktor.'

'I'll come in the other side and give you a shove, sir.'

Thank you, Viktor.'

Ardenyev smiled, then relaxed. It didn't matter. Nothing did. The air conditioning duct enclosed him more surely and tightly than the aft escape chamber of the Proteus, but there was similarity of darkness and confinement that pressed itself upon him. He allowed a congratulatory sense of memory its place in his fuddled awareness. He'd done it, he'd done it —

No one else, he told himself. No one else could have done it. Then, more sharply, he thought, if I could, someone else could. Most of the team, the dead team —

His thoughts had swung towards a maudlin, drunken horizon. He heard Teplov moving along the duct behind him, grunting with effort. He giggled drunkenly. Anyone could have done it, he affirmed in a mood of quick and sudden self-deprecation as he imagined those who had died. It wasn't anything. Then, through a connection of which he was not aware, he wondered: why is that Nimrod hanging around? What is it doing?

Teplov's hand tapped his calf. He called back to the michman: 'What's that Nimrod doing up there, Viktor?'

'Beg pardon, sir?'

'That Nimrod — they were talking about it earlier.'

'Oh, that one,' Teplov said indulgently. 'I wouldn't know, sir.'

If I could do it, he thought, anyone could. That Nimrod —

* * *

He was aware of himself, stretched out on the pressure hull, held there by the mesh of nerves that covered his body. He had heard the footsteps clattering along the hull from the stern. The boots had stamped to a halt directly over the hatch through which he had entered the space between the two hulls. He had immediately switched off the lamp, as if the outer hull had been no more opaque than a curtain, and he had turned on to his back, He seemed to himself to be less vulnerable, facing the direction of the noises. Evidence, evidence? he asked himself repeatedly. Why? Why now? Noise, suspicion, evidence!

He stared up at the outer hull as if he could really see it, almost as if he could see the armed man whose boots had clattered up on him. He listened. Tiny noises now, almost mouse-like. The irresolute shuffling of feet, the claw-like scratching of nails and metal heel-tips. The darkness pressed in, unwelcome, bringing its unexpected and disturbing claustrophobia with it. He reached up and flicked on the lamp. It shone in his eyes. He inspected his watch. Six o' clock, almost. He had been working on the back-up system for over two hours. And he had found nothing. Every circuit, every resistor, every capacitor and microprocessor and wire and pin worked—

There was nothing wrong with it, at least not with the sixty-five per cent of the back-up system that he had