Northlight q-11 Read online

  Two or three of them looked at the thin man who sat with his legs crossed, tall in the chair. I put him down as Admiralty. 'It would need a great number of depth charges to sink a vessel the size of the SSN Cetacea. Again, the Soviets could have dropped a very great number, without coming anywhere near the target. The boat would have normally surfaced perhaps a couple of times a day to spread her antenna and signal base; in those waters, where in midwinter there's no sunlight at noon, she could have done this quite close to the Russian coast without being seen. In other words, I don't think for a moment that she was unaware of her location at any time; and if the captain had heard one depth charge going off, he would have surfaced — or changed course at once towards the open sea.'

  'Can we be sure that the Soviets did in fact detect the presence of the Cetacea off their shores?' The PM.

  'Not completely sure, ma'am.' He recrossed his long thin legs. 'But it would have been difficult for them not to. In those waters, very close to their largest naval base at Murmansk, they have underwater listening stations in a very wide array. Transonar-transducers would pick up the presence of an alien vessel easily enough, and relay the information to manned posts. Of the Soviet's six hundred or so active submarines, about four hundred are obsolescent diesel-powered boats used for patrolling the shores of the entire continent of Asia. A good few of these patrol the Barents Sea, to protect Murmansk, and they could well have picked up the noise of the Cetacea. They would-'

  'But with all their own submarines around, how could they distinguish-'

  'Every boat makes its own personal kind of noise, and a fast nuclear-powered Los Angeles class submarine sounds vastly different from a Soviet diesel.'

  'Could they have known how far off shore the submarine was?'

  'You mean whether it was beyond the twelve-mile limit, ma'am?'

  'Precisely.'

  'They would have had a fair estimation. I wouldn't go further than that.'

  'Do you think, Admiral, that the Soviets attacked and sank the submarine?'

  The silence came in like a Shockwave.

  I watched the prime minister. She was leaning forward again, not taking her eyes off the admiral. He was studying his thin veined hands, giving himself time; but he didn't need very long. 'Yes, Madam Prime Minister, I believe they attacked and sank it.'

  'Without warning?'

  'We can't even guess at that. There were no survivors. Only the Soviets know.'

  'Wouldn't it have been to their advantage to warn the submarine before attacking, to avoid a grave international incident?'

  The admiral uncrossed his legs and got up stiffly. 'If you'll excuse me, I need to stretch a little-'

  'Of course-'

  'Thank you.' He took a pace or two, his hands tucked behind him. 'I would have thought, yes, that they would have warned the boat first, if they'd given themselves time to consider.'

  'Do you see any parallel-' this was the US ambassador now — 'between this act and the downing of the Korean airliner?'

  'Several. But the aspect common to both acts is unfortunately that we in the West haven't got full information.'

  'No survivors.'

  'Quite.' The admiral took another turn across the Persian carpet. 'I should point out that although we might regard the sinking of the Cetacea as an act of war, the Soviets might claim with equal justification that the presence of a NATO submarine in their waters and within the proximity of their major naval base is also an act of war.'

  'But they don't claim that.'

  'Not at present. Their line at present is simply that they had no knowledge of the Cetacea until the Norwegian coastguard sighted debris drifting from the east.'

  'That's typical of them,' said the Foreign Secretary, and got up too. 'If you don't mind, Madam Prime Minister-'

  'We should move about, of course. This is going to be a long session, gentlemen.'

  'Typically,' Cranley went on, 'they start out by denying everything in a case like this. It gives them time to think, and avoids the risk of putting their foot in their mouth. Today they're saying that the submarine must have exploded of its own accord. Tomorrow they'll start screaming that it shouldn't have been in their waters anyway.'

  The PM was still in her chair, and I watched her, not getting up like most of them. I hadn't got the drift yet. I couldn't see why Britain was so involved as to call a high-level meeting in Downing Street. Or why the Bureau was involved.

  'Wouldn't you say, Admiral Cummings, that a major incident like this, entailing the loss of more than a hundred lives and a nuclear submarine, would come under the terms of the Incidents at Sea Treaty we all signed with the Soviets in 1972?'

  'Oh yes. I tried to telephone Admiral Novoselov in Moscow as soon as I heard the news of the sinking, but they told me he was unavailable. That's unusual.'

  'In the case of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk,' said the US ambassador, 'our people were able to contact Novoselov immediately.'

  'There's not so much in common, Mr Ambassador, with the two incidents. True, the damage to your carrier by the Soviet submarine was in the region of two million dollars; but the collision occurred in international waters in broad daylight, and was the obvious result of poor seamanship on their part.

  Also there was no loss of life. In the present case we have a death toll of one hundred and five sailors on active duty and the presence of a NATO submarine in waters close to the Soviets' major naval base. With the Kitty Hawk there were a few red faces and the dismissal of one Soviet submarine commander. With the Cetacea, we already have your president's declaration of a national day of mourning throughout the United States of America.'

  The PM got up at last, and took an elegant step across to the fireplace, standing with her back to it. The central heating was having a job to cope with the winter temperatures outside; from where I was sitting I could feel a cutting draught coming through a gap in the curtains.

  'Let me ask you, Admiral, whether you've reached any kind of construction, in your own mind, of what actually happened in the Barents Sea four days ago. Perhaps that's not quite a fair question, but it's an important one.' In a moment she added: 'You don't have to commit yourself, of course.'

  Cummings studied his hands again, and took longer this time to speak. 'I've thought about it quite a lot, Madam Prime Minister, as we all have. From my experience as an ex-submariner, and as an observer of the Soviet thought processes in East-West relations and diplomacy, I do in point of fact have a feeling — quite a strong feeling — that what really happened in the Barents Sea was that the SSN Cetacea was not detected by the Soviets until she was close to the twelve-mile limit, and was at once attacked by a sonar-guided torpedo — or perhaps several. And I believe that no warning was given because the Soviets were taken by surprise, and thought the submarine was within their territorial waters, offering a distinct threat.'

  'You mean there was no time — as in the case of the Korean Airlines disaster — for orders to be requested from higher authority before action was taken by a local commander?'

  'Quite so. I'd say that the element of surprise was inevitably involved, even of panic on the part of some young naval shore-defence officer.'› 'Or simply over-zealousness? Ambition in the line of duty?'

  'What we're trying to say,' the foreign secretary cut in heavily, 'is that someone blundered.'

  It was gone midnight before the PM broached the real issue I'd been brought here to listen to.

  'I'm glad to have had your expert opinions, gentlemen, on what is in itself a matter of grave and tragic proportions, affecting the personal lives of so many Americans, and the already critical relationship between the two great powers and their allies. But as I'm sure you've realized, what we are here to discuss is the appalling threat this incident has brought to the summit meeting that was to have taken place in less than two months from now in Vienna.'

  Half an hour before we'd been moved into another room, where there were sofas and deep armchairs; a huge silver tea-tray
was being cleared away, and some of the men present were holding whisky glasses. What had gone before was only the preamble to the night's work.

  'The agreement by Washington and Moscow to convene the summit conference was made because of the very precariousness of the East-West relationship, and the danger it presents to world peace. And what we have to do now is to ask ourselves whether the incident in the Barents Sea — however tragic in its loss of life and however shocking in its impact on East-West relations — can be allowed to bring down our hopes for a successful summit meeting in Vienna, and our hopes that the United States and the Soviet Union can work out their differences and diminish the threat of a final and annihilating war that the whole world faces today.'

  I saw the US ambassador lift his head quickly to look at her. Someone behind me reacted so sharply that the ice-cubes jingled in his glass. I looked across at the foreign secretary. His eyes were down. He'd been told what his prime minister was going to propose tonight.

  'This incident' is not, of course, of major concern to Great Britain, though as a loyal ally of the United States and a member of NATO we are indirectly affected.' She lifted her wrist and adjusted the thin gold bracelet: it was the first sign of nervousness she'd shown since I'd come into the room. 'We are well placed, however, in the area of international intelligence, and may be able to make ourselves useful to the United States in the immediate future, when diplomatic relations between East and West will be critically and dangerously strained. If certain information I received earlier tonight is reliable, we may shortly be in possession of absolute proof that the US submarine Cetacea was in fact attacked and sunk by Soviet arms.'

  Tension was suddenly in the room again, and we all froze.

  'My God,' someone said quietly.

  I didn't look at Frome. I'd see nothing in his face if I did. What did she mean, 'proof? 'The feeling of outrage among the people of the United States at this moment is so strong that there is no way the president could go to meet the Soviets in two months' time. But if we can secure irrefutable proof of their criminal act in the Barents Sea, then the United States will be in a position to demand — and with God's help extract — a full and unstinting apology from the Kremlin. And this may be the only chance we have of saving the summit conference.'

  It was gone two in the morning when I left Downing Street and turned along Whitehall with the windscreen wipers on high speed to get rid of the rain. A constable with a drenched cape was guarding the only two parking spaces left outside our building and I slid into the end one and got out, just as Frome came in with his mud-caked Rover. He drove up from the country every day and never had the thing cleaned.

  All he'd said to me when we'd left No. 10 was that he'd rather I didn't go home until I'd seen Croder.

  We didn't talk on our way up in the lift. I didn't know how much his mind was occupied with the submarine thing and how much with the diagnosis the doctors had given him; in the flickering light he already looked like death.

  He left me on the fourth floor, turning away without a word while I went into the small cramped room where the security sergeant was sitting at his desk filing his nails. He picked up one of his phones right away and poked out a number with a nicotine-yellowed finger and waited, eyeing me with a companionable stare. I heard the line open.

  'Sir? Quiller's in.' He waited again and then said 'Yes sir' and put the phone down and told me: 'He'd like you to go along for a minute. Room 7. Still raining, is it?'

  'Yes.'

  'Shocking, isn't it? Simply shocking.'

  3 BREKHOV

  'Then what the fuck are you waiting for?'

  There were only three other people in here, sitting in the corner by the tea urn hunched over what they were saying, as if they had to keep it a secret. My God, if anyone could keep a secret in this bloody place they'd have to be deaf and dumb.

  'Clearance,' I said.

  The Canadian sat back in his chair and I heard it creak, or it might have been his bones. He'd been here for years now, haunting the Caff, refusing to go, refusing to spend half the rest of his life picking up his pension at the post office and other half spending it on raw bourbon and cheap tarts till they came and picked him up and dropped him into an economy-model pinewood box and shovelled the earth over him.

  He sipped his tea. Daisy had laced it with whisky, as she always did, strictly against the rules but of course she'd do anything for Charlie; the last time he'd come in from a mission she'd gone over to him with the entire stock of bountiful motherhood remaining in the world and gathered him into it with the passion of a Salvation Army girl who'd found a hit and run victim in the middle of the road.

  'That was a nasty one,' she'd said — I'd been there, helping him find a chair — 'but you're all right now, dear, everything's all right now.' She'd sat down at the rickety plastic-topped table with him and automatically wiped a puddle of tea away with her cloth while she stared into his face, reading his soul with those copper-dark fathomless eyes of hers until Charlie had started to laugh gently, coughing a bit at first as he always did, as the thought was borne into his mind that maybe he was all right now, maybe everything was all right. 'Go and get me some tea, you fat old whore,' he'd told her, and she'd got up and brought him some, and that was the first time she'd ever put a tot of whisky in it, and she'd been doing it ever since.

  'You're getting clearance,' he asked me, 'at four o'clock in the morning?'

  'Croder's phoned them. They're on their way.'

  'You're going out for Croder?'

  'Someone's got to.'

  He watched me, sitting back in his chair because his vision had been going lately; you had to be at arm's length, like the newspaper. His hatchet-shaped face had gone quiet, as if he'd found something significant to think about. I didn't like that. Tonight wasn't for significant thoughts; it was for getting through as fast as I could without thinking about what I was doing. Only Croder could have got me back into the action within fifteen minutes flat: that's why they'd given him the job, I suppose.

  'It's awfully good of you to come and talk to me, Quiller.'

  A soft manicured hand, a brilliant smile. Tonight he'd pulled a polo sweater over his pyjama trousers: he was in the top echelon, London Control level, and sometimes slept in one of the small dormer rooms under the eaves of the building, where a hundred years ago the servant girls had slept two in a bed for warmth, nursing their chilblains.

  'You found things interesting, I'm sure, at No. 10.'

  'A bit too political for my taste.'

  His bright smile came again, like a flicker of lightning. 'She does wax a shade rhetorical, I know. But as long as you got the background. A little brandy?'

  'I'd like to get down to business, if that's all right with you.'

  'At once.' The pale blue eyes glittered slightly, lighting the fixed smile. Some people said he had a face massage once a week; others said he'd come back from a tricky one as a young shadow executive and they'd had to stretch a brand new skin graft right across his face; in some lights it did have the look of a mask. 'We would very much like you to go and fetch something for us,' he said, 'from Germany, or thereabouts.' A brief smile, as an apology for being so vague. 'It's only a small package.'

  He stopped right there. He wouldn't say any more until I asked questions. At this stage, before briefing and before clearance, they want you to know as little as possible in case you turn down the job.

  'When?'

  'Soon, I believe. I'm sorry I can't be more explicit. Within a day or two.'

  'From a courier?'

  'Yes.'

  'Which border?' If they wanted anything from West Germany itself they'd just shove it in the diplomatic bag or put a Queen's messenger on special assignment.

  'Again,' he said in his soft tone of apology, 'we're not absolutely sure. Not yet.'

  'Running like hell somewhere, is he?'

  He didn't smile now. He looked at me with his bright eyes losing all expression as he took me anothe
r inch towards the heart of the matter. 'They're not on to him yet. But yes, he's running hard with it.'

  'With the package?'

  'Yes.'

  'Is he trying to get into Norway?'

  He shook his head. 'No. That would be too difficult.'

  'But he started from Murmansk?'

  'Yes,' he said straight away, and the lightning flickered faintly in the depth of his eyes.

  I didn't want this.

  'I don't want this,' I told him.

  'Why ever not? There's nothing very complicated.'

  I turned to look through the black glass of the window, where the rain made silver rivulets across the Houses of Parliament in the haze. 'I'm not a bloody messenger boy.'

  'Oh, come.' I watched his reflection. 'You don't really think I'd encroach on your evening's leisure and ask you to spend all that time in Downing Street just to propose our using you as a messenger boy, surely?'

  'It's too political,' I said.

  'You're just dodging the issue.'

  'I know.'

  His soft laugh came. 'Now please don't equivocate.'

  Wrong word. Before he'd come into the Bureau he'd been a schoolmaster, and it still showed.

  'Cliff can do a job like this,' I told him. 'Or Wainwright.' I turned to face him. 'I'm ready to go out again, but not just to fetch the paper.'

  'Certainly we could send Cliff, or Wainwright. But this is extremely important, as you should realize. You know what's in that package, don't you?'

  'Proof.'

  'Quite so.'

  If certain information I received earlier tonight is reliable, we may shortly be in possession of absolute proof that the US submarine Cetacea was in fact attacked and sunk by Soviet arms.

  'Anyone can bring that package in,' I said. 'Tuft, Malone, Flood, why on earth don't you use them?'

  He watched me with the light playing in his eyes. He'd be in a towering rage by now, I knew that, because I wouldn't do what he wanted me to do. But this was as much as he'd show: just this shimmering light at the back of his eyes.