Sea Leopard

'That's it, Mr Aubrey. Sorry.'

Aubrey looked through the porthole, out beyond the sun-tipped port wing. Ahead of the Nimrod, the sky was darker, and the land below them was tumbled and cracked in shadow. Cloud and mist wound like white, unsubstantial rivers through the peaks and the fjords. The MiG-23 on the port wing waggled its body like an athletic silver insect, dipping its wings in turn, and then it dropped away and out of sight. The Nimrod was more than a hundred and fifty miles from the Soviet border, making for North Cape.

Aubrey groaned with disappointment.

'I'm sorry,' Quin said.

'Do you think he would have found anything?'

'There seemed no other place to look —' Quin shook his head and stared at the still-open manual in front of him. He closed the wirebound book. 'I don't know. I could think of nothing else.'

Behind them, Proteus and her crew would be breaking out — to what purpose? With what reprisals? There was blood now, instead of diplomacy or an intelligence game. People had been killed, Soviet citizens. It did not bear consideration. Aubrey surrendered instead to his utter and complete weariness of mind and body; a comforting numbness.

Seven twenty-nine.

Then the signal, in clear, that he no longer believed to be possible.

'Mr Aubrey?'

'Yes?'

'A signal from Proteus, in clear.'

'No —'

'It reads — “At one stride comes the dark” — end of message. Do you understand it? Shall I ask for a repeat?'

'No, thank you, Squadron Leader. Let us go home.'

'Very well, sir.'

A beatific smile wreathed Aubrey's features, inflating his grey cheeks, forming his lips, screwing up his eyes. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 'At one stride comes the dark'. The signal he had told Clark to make in a moment of amusement, a moment of looking for the right, witty, portentous thing for Clark to say if and when he repaired 'Leopard'. Somehow, he had done it.

'What is it?' Quin asked.

'It's all right. It's all right,' Aubrey repeated, opening his eyes, slouching back in his seat, almost asleep already. 'Clark has done it.'

'Thank God,' Quin breathed.

The man's daughter, Aubrey thought, his body immediately chilled. Tricia Quin and Hyde. What of them? Alive, or dead? If the latter, how would he tell Quin?'

* * *

'Admiral, we have no units capable of detecting and stopping the British submarine — not in the inner harbour,' the officer commanding the defences of Pechenga explained to Dolohov, nervously standing to attention before the older, more senior man. Inwardly, he wished himself a great distance from the defence control room, set beneath thick concrete and lit by strip-lighting, but he struggled to preserve a form of dignity and an impassive expression on his face. Dolohov was evidently beside himself with rage.

'Nothing? Nothing?' Turning, Dolohov waved at the sheet of perspex marked in a grid, displaying coloured lights and chinagraph markings. The two anti-submarine nets were bright red strings of beads, the mines, represented by colours according to type, were like the knots in a fine skein, ready to be drawn about the Proteus. Beyond the first net, the units of the Red Banner Fleet at present in Pechenga appeared as a host of bright lights.

'Everything is cold, Admiral — reactors, diesels, turbines all need time to run up to operational readiness. We have been caught flatfooted — ' He cut off his explanation as Dolohov turned to him again.

'Where is she? Where is the submarine?' he bellowed.

'She disappeared from our screens two minutes ago — here.' The defences commandant hurried to the perspex screen in the centre of the operations room and gathered up a pointer that rested against its base. The perspex flexed and dimpled as he tapped with enthusiasm at it. A chinagraphed dotted line ran from the fifth of the submarine pens to a point marked with a circled cross, in the inner harbour. 'We think she was already turning at this point —' A junior officer beside the perspex screen nodded in agreement.

'What do you intend to do about it?'

There are two patrol boats in the inner harbour now — the mines, of course, are all activated. However, the inertial navigator memory aboard the submarine may have tracked their course when they entered the harbour, if it had been left on. Even so, it is unlikely they will be able to avoid the mines with any degree of success —'

'Switch them off! Switch off all your mines, at once!'

'But Admiral —'

'Do as as I order! That submarine must be stopped, not destroyed. We cannot take the risk of doing permanent or irreparable damage to her.' Dolohov paused. The political consequences would be enormous, and possibly violent, he considered. In making that judgement, he gave no thought to London or Washington or Brussels, only to the Kremlin. His political masters would not forgive the international repercussions of the destruction of the British submarine in Soviet territorial waters. That had been made clear to him, from the outset.

The commandant nodded to one of his juniors, and the order was given. Almost immediately, the fine skein of lights blinked off, leaving great areas of the perspex screen blank and grey. Every mine in the inner harbour and in the outer basin was now disarmed. The fleet vessels which had before glowed in tiny pockets of greyness, their safe anchorages clear of the mines, now beamed out in isolation; single, unmoving lights. Dolohov hated the blank areas of the screen, like areas on a map still to be explored.

'Now,' he said heavily, 'I want every unit in the outer basin to be prepared. You have a minelayer in port?'

'Yes, Admiral.'

'With low power mines?'

'Yes, Admiral.'

“Then they must be instructed to sow fresh mines along the seaward side of the inner net. Proximity fuses, or magnetic. But they must be of sufficient strength only to cripple, not destroy. Understand?'

'The inner net, Admiral, will not be opened?' The man evidently did not understand.

'You will lay the mines, by aircraft if you have to, and you will do it at once,' Dolohov said with a passionate calmness. 'The British captain has torpedoes, wire-guided with television cameras. He can blow a hole in the inner net. If there are mines waiting for him when he escapes through his own hole, he will go to the bottom, or be slowed down, or be forced to the surface. Now do you understand?'

'Yes, Admiral. I will issue the orders at once.'

'Good.' Dolohov thought once, and briefly, of the fact that Ardenyev was aboard the Proteus, and then dismissed his image in favour of self-congratulation. In the midst of his fierce rage and disappointment, there was room for satisfaction. He had anticipated what the British captain would do to escape, and he might already have made the move that would frustrate his efforts.

He studied the perspex screen intently.

* * *

'Torpedo room— stand by.'

'Aye, aye, sir. Standing by.'

Lloyd studied the sonar screen in front of him. As its arm circled the screen, washing the light-pattern behind it, the bright spots and lines of the submarine net appeared on the screen. It was, as Clark had originally outlined, the only way out— through both nets.

'Range?' he said.

'Eight hundred, sir.'

Torpedo room— load number one tube.'