'How's about letting me in on what will help things,' I said.
'Is anything missing?' the American boy asked,
'No,' I said. 'Not as far as I can see.'
'Well, there you are,' said Ferdy.
'I'll toddle,' I said.
'You'll tell Schlegel I want weather?'
'I'll tell him,' I said. 'But he'll get it off the computer like I told you.'
'You put some weather on the line,' said Ferdy. 'Or don't bother about dinner tonight.'
'You don't get out of it as easy as that,' I said. 'See you at eight.'
Ferdy nodded. 'Now we're going to put some sonobuoys into the Kara, and we'll start a search with the Mallow flying boats. Take a good look at the weather reports and then place them.'
The young American submariner had removed his uniform jacket and now he loosened his tie. He pushed the plastic markers that were the Russian flying boats along the line of the ice-limits. The ocean, which had always seemed so empty to him, was now a network of detection stations and seabed sonar. The flying boats were the most effective weapon of all, for they could land on the water and lower their detectors into it to get beneath the anticline of the layered water. Then they could bring out their short-range Magnetic Anomaly Detectors to confirm that it was a big metal sub down there, and not just a whale or a patch of warm water.
'What about the ice-limits?' the boy asked.
'Forget it — bang your flying boats down wherever you want them to start the search.'
'On the ice?'
'They've got wheels — either the ice is thick enough to lake the weight of them or they'll float.'
The boy turned to me. 'Did the Russians ever do that?'
'No,' I said. 'But it would certainly change the tactical maps if is was possible.'
'It'd shake up the electronics,' said the boy. 'It's about forty tons of airplane — she'd be a thin scattering of rivets and radio tubes if you did that with her.' He held the plastic marker in his hand, hovering above the deep water channel where the attacking U.S. submarines would probably turn to reach the Russian coastline.
'Place those damned markers,' said Ferdy. 'This is a war, not a safety week.'
'Jesus,' whispered the boy, and now he was out there in the freezing ocean with those two Mallows, laden with A.S.W. equipment, right over him. 'There's just no place to hide if you do that.'
It's a rare event that I'm home early enough to worry about the parking regulations, Marjorie was even earlier. She was already dressed up and ready to go to Ferdy's dinner party that evening. She was relaxed and beautiful and determined to mother me. She made a big pot of coffee and added a plate of Florentina sticky cakes to the tray placed within arm's reach of my favourite chair. She offered to put her car in the lock-up so that there would be room for mine on the meter. And before she went to move both cars herself, she told me for the third time that my suit was laid out on the bed and there was a clean shirt in the top drawer. And she was beautiful, clever and she loved me.
The bell rang only two minutes after she'd gone downstairs. I chuckled in that patronizing way that men do when women forget keys, can't open a tin or stall in traffic. 'Put your door keys on the same ring…' I said, but when the door was open far enough, I saw two men in black overcoats and one of them carried a burnished metal case that might have contained soap samples.
'No thanks,' I said.
But the sort of sales course these two had graduated from had 'no, thanks' as the first lesson. They were heavyweights: with big hats that bent the tops of their ears over, and the sort of teeth that went up in value whenever paper money slipped. They lowered their shoulders. I had the door almost closed when four hundred pounds of animal protein split the facing board almost without pause and sent me pirouetting down the hall.
By the light coming through the hall window I could see them better. One — a swarthy man, with a neatly trimmed beard and pigskin gloves — I'd seen before. He had been in the passenger seat of the blue BMW that had tried to force us off the Great Hamish road.
It was this one that tried to bear hug me now, and put his face low enough for me to elbow. He avoided the full force of it only by twisting his head, while I put my foot on his instep with enough force to make him grunt. He reeled back into his friend but my victory was short-lived. All three of us knew that I'd stand little chance if they backed me into the larger space of the lounge. They paused before the head-down charge, then together they gave me the sort of treatment that had worked so well on the door panels. My feet left the ground and I went right over the back of the sofa. As I came into land on the carpet, I took with me the coffee tray, cakes and a blizzard of flying chinaware.
I was still full length as the clean-shaven one came wading through the debris. I was only just fast enough to ensure that his big, black, well-polished military boot, with its lace double knotted, nicked my ear, instead of carrying away the: side of my head.
I rolled away from him, raising myself up on my knees. I grabbed the edge of the rug and fell forward again still holding it. With one foot still raised he was in the perfect pose. He went over like a brick chimney. There was a thud as his head hit the glass front of the TV, and a blast of song as his sleeve went down the controls. For a moment he didn't move at all. On the screen there were singing glove puppets, brutally compressed and repeated across the screen in horizontal slices.
The bearded one gave me no time to admire my handiwork. He came at me even before I was fully upright. One hand was ready to chop and the other was looking for a wristlock. But the judo man is off balance at the time he makes his grab. I jabbed him hard. It was enough to make him step back a pace and yell, although it might not have been had I not been holding the brass-plated fire-tongs that Marjorie's mother had given us for Christmas.
But I hadn't crippled either of them. I'd just slowed them a little. Worse, I'd come to the end of my surprises: they were wary. The fellow under the TV was already back on his feet and he was staring at the flickering strips of glove puppet as if fearing for his vision.
Then he turned and they came at me from different sides. 'Now let's talk,' I said. 'I've heard about hard-sell techniques, but this is ridiculous.'
The bearded one smiled. He was dying to put his world-famous right cross on me. I could tell that from the way he was drawing the diagrams of how he'd do it. I taunted hurt twice, and then came in early to make him throw it. I took it on the forearm and it hurt like hell but not as much as the right jab I hung on his jaw.
He slewed as he fell, revealing the bald patch on his head. For a moment I felt ashamed, and then I thought maybe Joe Louis and Henry Cooper had bald patches, too. And by that time the other one was slamming short body punches into my ribs and I was making noises like an old concertina that had been dropped on the floor.
I punched him off, but baldy came behind me and took my left wrist with enough enthusiasm to make my nose touch my knees. And suddenly the whole world was sliced into horizontal slices and singing like glove puppets, and I could hear this voice shouting, 'What did I tell you in the car. What did I tell you in the car.' It was a very angry voice.
It wasn't Marjorie. It was a broad-shouldered elderly Soviet security Colonel named Stok. He was waving a pistol and threatening to do terrible things to his friends in Russian.
'He attacked us,' said the hairy one,
'Get to work,' said Stok. The bearded man picked up the metal case and went with it into the next room. 'And fast,' said Stok. 'Very, very fast.'
There will be trouble,' I said.
'We thought you both got into the car,' said Stok.
'You'd better get new glasses before you trip off World. War Three.'
'We hoped you would be out,' said Stok. 'It would have been simpler.'
'It's not complicated this way,' I said angrily. 'You let your gorillas out of their cage, oil your gun, rough up the citizens, break the furniture often enough, and soon life will be as simple here as it is in the Soviet Union.'
Through the door I could see the two men getting drills and a hammer from the metal case. 'They'll find, nothing here,' I told Stok.
'There is a conspiracy,' Stok said. 'A Soviet official is threatened.'
'Why not tell the police?'
