Sea Leopard

Sea Leopard

A Kenneth Aubrey and Patrick Hyde Novel

Craig Thomas

For Mike, Agent and friend, and in memoriam

Anthea Joseph,

A kind and courageous lady

CHARACTERS

British Intelligence (SIS—Secret Intelligence Service), police & military personnel

AUBREY, Kenneth de Vere: Deputy Director, SIS

CLARK, Ethan,: US Navy, Naval Intelligence Command (ASW/Ocean Surveillance), on liaison to the Admiralty

COPELAND, Lt. Commander: Anti-submarine warfare expert on the Admiralty’s Chessboard Counter

CUNNINGHAM, Sir Richard: SIS Director (C)

EASTOE, Sqn. Ldr. Alan,: Nimrod pilot, Royal Air Force

HYDE, Patrick: Field agent, SIS

PYOTT, Col. Giles: British Army; Member NATO StratAn Committee

SUGDEN: Special Branch, British Police

SHELLEY, Peter: Assistant to Kenneth Aubrey

HMS Proteus crew

CARR, Sandy: Navigator

HACKETT, Lt. Commander: Engineering officer

HAYTER, Lt. Commander Don: Senior Electronic Counter-measures Officer

LLOYD, Comm. Richard: Captain

THURSTON, Lt. Commander John: Second-in-Command

The Red Navy

ARDENYEV, Captain Valery,: Commander, Underwater Special Operations Unit

BALAN, Lev: Red Section, Special Ops Unit (chief, underwater salvage)

DOLOHOV: Admiral, Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet

ORLOV, Senior Lieutenant Andrei: Ardenyev’s second-in-command and leader of Blue section of the special operations unit

SHADRIN: Explosives expert, Red Section, Red Navy Special Ops Unit

TEPLOV, Viktor: Deputy Leader, Red Section, Special Operations Unit

VANILOV: Special Ops team member

Others

QUIN: Electronic engineer, inventor of the ‘Leopard’ comms system

QUIN, Tricia: Quin’s daughter

PASVIK: Agent-in-place (British Intelligence) in Pechunga

PANOV, Professor: Electronics engineer/scientist

PETRUNIN, Tamas: KGB Resident, Soviet Embassy, London

SERGEI: Aide to Dolohov

VASSILIEV, Dmitri: Soviet Embassy Official, London; SIS informant

part one

a game at chess

ONE

Bait

The office of Tamas Petrunin, Trade Attaché at the Soviet embassy in London, looked out upon Kensington Palace Gardens, across the lawns of the embassy grounds. The straight lines of bare plane trees marked the boundary between himself and the western city he both despised and coveted. A fierce early spring wind searched for, and found, the remains of last autumn’s leaves, and hurried them along the road and beneath the wrought-iron gates into the drive of the embassy, finally scattering them like burnt secret messages and papers over the gravel and the grass. The sky was unrelievedly grey and had been threatening rain all morning. Tamas Petrunin had leisure to reflect, as he listened angrily to the tape cassette from the duty room and its recorded conversation, that London irritated him particularly at that time of year. There was no snow. Wind, and rain—an umbrella threatening to turn inside out carried by an old man passing the gate, unceremoniously jostled by the wind—wind and rain, but little snow. Only sleet in the evening air sometimes, turning instantly to slush in the gutters, like a promise broken. In Moscow, there would be inches of snow, and everyone rotund and animalised in fur coats and hats.

The Scotsman’s recorded voice enraged him. Almost always it did. Now nasality and meaning combined to grip his stomach with an indigestion of rage.

We have been trying to contact you for two days, the authoritative Russian voice insisted. Ruban, the Naval Attaché who worked under the auspices of Petrunin and the KGB at the embassy. You fully understand how difficult movement outside London is for our people here. Why have you not contacted us on schedule? Now you say the submarine has sailed.

There was an additional nasality, and a promoted, cultivated cough in the Scot’s voice when he replied. I’ve been in bed with the flu. It’s no’ my fault. I havena been to work all week. I’ve been in my bed, y’ understand? The whine was almost rebellious.

We do not pay you to be ill, Macfarlane.

I couldna help it. I still feel lousy. I got up to come to the phone. There’s fog, too. A small, projected bout of coughing followed the weather bulletin. Petrunin, despite his anger, could not suppress a smile.

When did the submarine sail from Faslane?

Three nights ago, early hours.

"What? Three nights? What else did you learn?"

I couldna ask, could I? Just that she sailed three nights ago.

You are useless to us! stormed Ruban on the tape behind Petrunin. One of the embassy chauffeurs was walking, leaning against the wind, towards a parked black Mercedes saloon. His black uniform trousers were flapping around his legs, and he was holding his peaked cap firmly on his head.

I couldna help it—it was no’ my fault if I caught the damn flu, was it?

Was the equipment on board? Do you know that much for certain?

I heard it was.

"You don’t know?"

Yes, dammit, it was on board! The Scot sniffled on the tape. Petrunin pictured him. Pale, rat-faced, unshaven, untrustworthy. Trash. He was poor material with which to start a blaze. Ruban thought so too, by the sound of his voice. Ruban would have to report to Murmansk, via himself, and they would have to decide, on MacFarlane’s word alone, whether the British submarine Proteus was carrying the Leopard equipment or not when she slipped out of Faslane into the Atlantic three nights before.

You’re guessing, Ruban said after a pause. You can’t know for certain.

I’m sure, dammit! Nothing was taken off the ship after she returned from sea trials with this ‘Leopard’ stuff! Macfarlane had forgotten his habitual ingratiating manner. I found out that much. Nothing came off the ship.

And where is she now?

I dinna know. MacFarlane retreated from anger into surliness.

And that ends your report?

In the silence that followed, Petrunin moved to his desk and switched off the cassette player. Then he returned to the window of his office, rubbing his chin. In no more than thirty minutes, he would have to summon Ruban, and they would have to make a decision before five or five-thirty as to the nature of the signal they would send to Moscow Centre and to Red Banner Northern Fleet HQ, Murmansk, EYES ONLY Admiral Dolohov. Damn MacFarlane and his attack of influenza.

Leopard. Was it on board? If so, then the likelihood that Proteus was on her way to map the location and extent of the newest Soviet sonar-grid across the Barents Sea from North Cape to Murmansk was transmuted into a virtual certainty. The only way to do that was by means of a submarine indetectable by sonar, which would mean Proteus using the Leopard equipment. Ethan Clark, the American expert, was in London on liaison work; Proteus had sailed on secret orders to an unknown destination as soon as her sea trials were complete. It was a likelihood—was it a certainty?

Petrunin paced the room carefully, keeping to the border of the patterned Turkish carpet, studying his footsteps with apparent intentness, rubbing his chin lightly with thumb and forefinger in a ceaseless motion of his hand. Proteus had to reach North Cape in order for the Red Banner Fleet’s cock-eyed plan to be put into operation. If she were sailing elsewhere, all the preparations would have been a waste of time and effort.

Petrunin found himself before the window again. The newly-imprisoned leaves seemed to be scurrying aimlessly across the embassy lawns, seeking escape. He shook his head. Proteus’s target had to be Chessboard. The development of Leopard had been violently accelerated during the past six months; the sea trials had been conducted with maximum haste; both facts implied an urgent task for the equipment. After all, there were no other Leopard units as yet, none fitted to any submarine or surface ship in the Royal Navy. Just this one priceless example of anti-sonar equipment, being used for one special task—

Yes. He nodded vigorously. He would go over it again with Ruban in fifteen minutes or so, but he had decided. They would signal Moscow and Murmansk that Proteus was on her way north, making for North Cape. Then it was up to the Red Banner Fleet.

And, he reminded himself, not for the first time that afternoon, there then devolved upon himself the task of finding Quin. Quin, the inventor and developer of Leopard. Disappeared without trace. Not under protective custody, because British Intelligence, the Directorate of Security and Special Branch were all looking for him. Quin. More important—at least in Petrunin’s estimation—than Leopard itself. Where was he?

He realised, with a mounting disappointment, that his decision with regard to Proteus was no decision at all. Merely a side-issue, a piece of self-indulgence, a war-game for sailors. Quin was what mattered. And Quin could not be found.

It had become routine, watching the house in Sutton Coldfield, in a quiet, residential street between the roads to Lichfield and Brownhills. A pre-war detached house, standing a little back from the road and elevated above its level, partially screened by a stone wall and a dark hedge. Leaded windows, trained ivy like an artificial ageing process climbing wooden trelliswork around the front door, and cherry blossom trees waiting for the spring. The street was still stained from the recent rain, and the slim boles of the trees gleamed green. Routine, boring routine. The young officer of the Special Branch unit attached to the West Midlands constabulary knew the façade of the house in which Quin’s divorced wife lived with a familiarity that had become sour and stultifying. She worked part-time in the elegantly refurbished premises of an antique shop a hundred yards away. She was there now. The Special Branch Officer had parked his unmarked Ford Escort so that he had a clear view of the house and the entrance of the shop. He had observed well-dressed women, the occasional couple, a small delivery van, but no sign, none whatsoever, of Quin or of his daughter who had disappeared from her teacher-training college in Birmingham at the same time that he had vanished. And there had been no visitors to the house except the milkman, the grocery delivery on a Thursday, the fish van on Wednesdays.

Sugden found himself idly flicking through the leaves of his notebook, rehearsing the boredom of two weeks’ surveillance of the quiet street in a quiet suburb, shook his head, and snapped the notebook shut on the seat beside him. He put another cigarette to his lips, lit it, looked at his watch—Mrs. Quin would be coming home for a salad lunch in another half-an-hour—and slid lower in the driving seat, attempting to stretch his legs. He yawned. He and Lane, day and night for two weeks, just in case the missing man contacted the wife he’d left four years before, or in case the daughter turned up.

No chance, he told himself with a spiteful satisfaction that seemed to revenge him on the London superiors who had placed him in his present limbo, no chance at all. It was even duller work than preparing for the visit of the Queen to a Lichfield school a couple of years before, or Princess Margaret’s opening of another Lichfield school before that, just after he had joined the Branch in Birmingham. Dull, deadly, dead. Quin and the girl had gone over. Not voluntarily, of course. Kidnapped. Snatched, Sugden yawned again. Quin was building Leopard for the Soviet Union by now, watched by his friendly neighbourhood KGB man. Despite wishing to maintain a frosty contempt for his present task and for those who had given him his orders, Sugden smiled to himself. Once Mrs. Quin was inside the house, a quick sandwich and a pint for him in the pub opposite the antique showroom. In the window seat, he could just about see the path up to the Quin house. Well enough, anyway. Certainly, he could observe any car that parked near the house, or a pedestrian on the pavement.

He wondered why Quin had left his wife. Perhaps she had left him. They’d moved down to London when he began working for Zedect Electronics, one of the MoD’s go-to contractors and now the biggest player raking in large profits by providing electronic systems to NATO members for military use. She’d come back to the Midlands after the separation because they were both from the area and because the girl, Tricia, was enrolled at a training college in Birmingham. She’d repeated her first year twice, the file said, then failed her second year after the decree nisi, and only someone’s pull high-up had prevented her from being expelled from the college. Now she’d disappeared along with her father. Another lever for the KGB to use on him, Sugden presumed. Mrs. Quin looked pleasant and capable. Greying blonde hair, smartly turned out, could be taken for early forties. Quin, from the look of his picture—on the dash of the Escort—wasn’t much of a catch, at least not in looks. The girl was pretty, but student-scruffy rather than making the most of herself. Almost drab, like the female of some brightly-plumaged species of bird.

She came down the path as Sugden rubbed his face and stifled another yawn. Tricia Quin, coming out of her mother’s house. The closing of the door alerted him. She took no notice of the car, turned left, and began walking briskly down the hill towards the Lichfield road. Frayed denims, a long cardigan in some sludgy colour beneath a cagoule, untidy fair hair. Tricia Quin.

She was almost fifty or sixty yards down the hill before his hand jerked at the door handle, and he got out of the Escort. He could not believe it, though the confirmatory photograph was in his hand. He opened his mouth, fish-slow and silently, and then slammed the door behind him with an angry curse. He appeared stupid, would appear stupid, even when he took the girl in …

A rush of thoughts then. Quin might be in the country after all—the girl, how had she got in last night, how had Lane missed her? Comfortable thought, that. Lane’s fault; where was Quin? Door opening and closing in the empty house with its For Sale notice, the one he’d suggested using but permission had been denied, too much paperwork to take it over—door closing, the girl further away down the hill, oblivious of him.

Or of the squat-featured, heavy-looking man in the grey double-breasted suit coming down the path of the empty house, a taller, thinner man running behind him. Both of them running, no more than twenty yards away from him now, and perhaps a hundred or so from the girl. KGB, so obvious he wanted to laugh, so sudden their appearance he could not move and was aware only of their numerical superiority.

Wait a minute— he managed to say, stepping round the Escort onto the pavement. The one in the grey suit ran with his thick arm extended, palm outwards, to fend him off like a rugby player; the thinner man dodged round the offside of Sugden’s car. They were going to get past him, no doubt of it. Wait!

He ducked outside the extended hand, felt it heave at his shoulder, then got a hold on the arm behind it, ripping the grey sleeve of the suit immediately. A heavy fist swung at the edge of his vision and caught him on the temple. He was immediately dizzy.

The heavy man said something in Russian. Mrs. Quin was coming out of the shop, Sugden could see her over the roof of the car as the heavy man lurched him against it. The thinner man was galloping down the middle of the road, no athlete but certain to overtake the still unaware girl.

Sugden opened his mouth and bellowed her name. The heavy man struck upwards into Sugden’s groin with his knee. Sugden doubled up, retching and groaning, his head turned sideways. The girl had become instantly alert, then had begun to run. The heavy man cursed and moved away after aiming a foot at Sugden’s head and connecting with his shoulder. Both men were running off. Sugden, groaning, his eyes wet with the latest wave of pain, knew he had to concentrate. They would want everything in his report.

Three hundred yards away, still just identifiable, Tricia Quin boarded a cream and blue bus as it pulled away, heading into the centre of Sutton Coldfield. The two Russians were just short of her, and the traffic lights were in the bus’s favour. She was gone; they’d lost her, just as he had.

He rolled onto his back, still clutching his genitals, and listened to the tattoo of Mrs. Quin’s high heels on the pavement as she ran towards him.

Patrick Hyde hurried through the rooms of the empty house, as if their last, impermanent occupants might yet be overtaken and restrained, just so long as he displayed sufficient haste. Two camp beds in one of the bedrooms, spare linen in the airing cupboard on the landing, food still in cardboard boxes, mostly tinned stuff, the refrigerator half-full, six-packs of lager, bottles of vodka. The two KGB men must have arrived before Birmingham Special Branch began its surveillance. The almost full dustbins at the side of the house suggested they had moved in almost as soon as Quin first disappeared.

Hyde snorted with self-derision and with an anger that included himself, Kenneth Aubrey, the DS, Special Branch, everyone. Quin had simply panicked, hidden himself. Or had he? He could even be dead, and they might want the girl for some other reason …

Quin is alive, and well, and living somewhere in England, he reminded himself. He turned to the police inspector who had followed at his heels through the house. No sign of them now, sport? He dropped immediately into a strengthened accent, one he had never himself possessed but which he used always to remind others of his Australian origins—because he knew it irritated them, and it served in some way to dissociate him from their incompetence. The only person secure from its mockery was Kenneth Aubrey. A right bloody cock-up, mate. Wouldn’t you say?

The police inspector controlled his features. He disliked having to deal with someone from Intelligence rather than from what he would have considered the proper channels, counterintelligence. He could see no reason why Hyde, as SIS operative, should be officially functioning inside the United Kingdom, and displaying his superiority so evidently. And a bloody Aussie …

You’d like to speak with Sugden now, I suppose, Mr. Hyde? he said through thinned lips, hardly opening his teeth to emit the sounds.

Hyde scowled. Too bloody right, Blue. Where is he?

The inspector pointed to the lounge window, across at the Quin house. Mrs. Quin looked after him, then he radioed in. He’s still there. The doctor’s taken a look at him.

Bruised balls. He’s lucky they were only playing with him. OK, let’s have a word with him. The inspector made as if to precede Hyde from the room. He was taller, thicker set, in uniform. Hyde’s voice and manner seemed to dismiss all of it. Hyde wagged a finger at him, bringing two points of colour to the policeman’s cheekbones. "And you called the Branch?"

Sugden is their man.

You were instructed to call me—not the Branch, or the DS, or the Home Secretary or Her Majesty the Queen Mum—me. Next time, call me direct. Reverse the charges if you have to, but call me. Quin is mine. Hyde made Quin sound like part of his diet. The inspector seethed in silence, allowing Hyde to leave the room in front of him, just in case the Australian saw his eyes and their clear message. It’s a bloody cock-up! Hyde called back over his shoulder. "Too much bloody time has gone by!"

Hyde banged open the front door and went down the path, the same urgency possessing his slight frame. His denims and pale windcheater over a check shirt did nothing to endear or recommend him to the inspector, who nevertheless dutifully followed him across the road and up the path to Mrs. Quin’s door. Hyde rang the bell repeatedly.

The woman’s had a shock, you know, the inspector cautioned.

Hyde turned on him. She bloody well knew we wanted her husband and her daughter. Did she ring? No bloody fear. She almost got her precious daughter nobbled by the KGB!

Mrs. Quin opened the door on its safety-chain. Her hair had freed itself from the restraint of lacquer, and two separate locks fell across her left eye. She brushed at them. Hyde showed her no identification, but she studied the uniformed inspector behind him, then released the chain on the door. Hyde walked past her into the cool, dim hall. Mrs. Quin caught up with him. Her mouth was trembling. The inspector closed the door softly.

Where is he, Mrs. Quin?

In the lounge, lying down. Her tone was apologetic. She offered Sugden’s comfort as a token of her good intentions. Poor man.

‘‘I’ll talk to him. Then I’ll want to have a word with you, Mrs. Quin."

Mr. Hyde— the inspector began.

Hyde turned to look at him. Too late for that.

Hyde went into the lounge and closed the door behind him. Sugden was lying on a chaise longue, his face still pale, his tie askew, jacket draped over the arm of an easy chair. His face arranged itself into a memory of pain, through which guilt thrust itself like the outbreak of some malady.

Mr. Hyde— he began.

Don’t apologise, sonny, it’s too late for that. Hyde pulled an armchair in front of the chaise.

But I am sorry, Mr. Hyde. I just didn’t know they were there.

You cocked it up, son. You didn’t expect the girl, you didn’t expect the heavy mob—what did you expect?

Sugden tried to sit up, to make himself feel at less of a disadvantage. Hyde waved him back, and he slumped on the chaise, his hand gently seeking his genitals. He winced. Hyde grinned mirthlessly.

I don’t know.

Hyde took out a notebook and passed it to Sugden. These are your descriptions of the two men? Sugden nodded. They don’t ring any bells with me. They could have been brought in for this. The KGB has trouble travelling. They didn’t get the girl? Sugden shook his head vehemently. Neither did we. When did she arrive?

Mrs. Quin didn’t say.

She will. You know what it means, mm?

They haven’t got Quin?

Too true they haven’t. Shit, we should have guessed they didn’t have him! Hyde slapped his hands on his thighs. Why the bloody hell did we assume they did? Too many post-Imperial hang-ups in Whitehall, sport—that’s the bloody answer. Quin’s gone, we’re so incompetent and wet, they must have him. It’s what we British deserve. He saw Sugden staring at him, and grinned. The expression seemed to open his face, smooth its hard edges. It surprised Sugden as much as his words had done. My hobby-horse. I race it around the track once in a while. Trouble is, I fell for it this time.

You don’t think much of us, do you?

Too right. Not a lot. You’re all a lot more sophisticated than us Aussies, but it doesn’t get you anywhere, especially with the KGB. Bloody Russians wouldn’t last five minutes in Brisbane. Hyde stood up. OK, sport, interrogation’s over for now. I’m going to have a word with Mum. She has a lot of explaining to do.

He found Mrs. Quin and the inspector sitting in the breakfast kitchen, sipping tea from dark blue and gold cups.

Mr. Hyde—

Very cosy, Hyde sneered, and the inspector coloured. Mrs. Quin looked guilty, and defiant, and Hyde was brought to admire the manner in which she stared into his eyes. She was afraid, but more for her daughter than herself.

Tea, Mr. Hyde? she offered.

Hyde felt pressed, even ridiculed, by the scene; by the pine furniture, the split-level cooker, the pale green kitchen units. Only he expressed urgency, was in haste.

No time. He stood over the woman. The inspector played with his gloves on the table. Will you check with the bulletin on Miss Quin, Inspector? The policeman seemed reluctant to leave, but only momentarily. Hyde remained standing after he had left. You weren’t going to tell us, were you, Mrs. Quin? She shook her head, still holding his gaze. Why not, for Christ’s sake?

Tricia asked me not to.

We’d have looked after her.

She said you couldn’t. I don’t know why not. She didn’t explain. Her hand shook slightly as she lifted the cup to her lips. They quivered, smudging pink lipstick onto the gold rim of the cup.

She knows where her father is, doesn’t she? Mrs. Quin nodded, minimising the betrayal. There was nothing in her eyes but concern. She cared for her daughter, it was evident, but regarding her husband she was composed, perhaps indifferent. Did she say where?

No.

Has she gone back to him now?

I don’t know. The exchanges had achieved a more satisfying momentum which disguised the emptiness behind the answers. The woman knew little, perhaps nothing.

Where has she gone?

She wasn’t supposed to be going out. Mrs. Quin waved her hands limply. They were as inanimate as gloves at the ends of her plump arms. I don’t know where she is. The voice cracked; the mouth quivered.

She came to put your mind at rest, is that it? Mrs. Quin nodded. And she said nothing about your husband—her father? Mrs. Quin shook her head. Her face was averted from Hyde’s eyes now. But she was concealing nothing, except perhaps inadequacies that belonged to her past. She was keeping only herself from him, not information. She gave no clue?

No, Mr. Hyde. Except that he’s well and is in hiding. I think she hoped I would be pleased at the news. I tried to show I was. The confession stuck into their conversation like a fracture through skin.

She’s been with him?

Yes.

"Since his disappearance? She disappeared with him?"

Yes, Mr. Hyde. And then she came back here. She’s always bounced between us, ever since the divorce. Mrs. Quin tried to smile. She is a trier, even if she’s a failure. Assumed cynicism was an attempt to shut him out, he realised.

Where might she be now, Mrs. Quin?

I have no idea whatsoever. Back with him, I suppose. But I have no idea where that might be.

Hyde breathed out noisily. He looked at the ceiling, his hands on his hips. The texture of their conversation had become thickened, clogged with personalities. There might be clues there as to the girl’s character, behaviour, whereabouts, but such enquiries possessed no volition, no urgency. Hyde was impatient for action. The girl was vital now, and he and the KGB both understood that. She’d been shown to them like some tempting prize which would be awarded to the swiftest, the strongest, the most ruthless.

Thank you, Mrs. Quin. I may be back. I just have to use your telephone—

Mrs. Quin dismissed him with a slight motion of one hand. The other rubbed at the edge of the pine table, erasing memories. Hyde went out into the hall.

Aubrey had to know. The Deputy Director of SIS had been with the Foreign Secretary when the call from Birmingham had finally been routed through to Queen Anne’s Gate. Hyde had left a message, but now Aubrey had to know the extent of their problem, and their hope—or lack of it.

He was dialling the number when the front door opened, and the inspector reappeared. Hyde ignored him and went on dialling.

Whoever you’re reporting to, the policeman remarked with evident, hostile sarcasm, you’d better mention the car that just drove past. I’d say it contained the two men who worked Sugden over.

What? The telephone was already ringing in Aubrey’s office, even as Hyde examined a residual sense that he had once more blundered into, and through, a private world. Mrs. Quin hadn’t deserved the way he had treated her. Yet, had he altered his manner, even though he might not have bludgeoned there would have been little gentleness, almost no sensitivity. He took the receiver from his cheek. You’ve got them?

The inspector shook his head. Foot down and away, as soon as they saw my lads. The registration number won’t be of any use either, I shouldn’t wonder—

Shit!

I beg your pardon! Aubrey’s secretary demanded frostily at the other end of the line.

Ethan Clark, of the US Naval Intelligence Command (ASW/Ocean Surveillance), had been made to feel, throughout the week since he had joined the Chessboard Counter team in the Admiralty, very much like an executive of some parent company visiting a recently taken over small firm. He was present in both his USN and NATO capacities, but these men of the Royal Navy—of, more precisely, the Office of Naval Intelligence (Submarine Warfare)—exuded a silent, undemonstrative resentment of him. Which, he well knew, made any doubts and hesitations he had concerning the mission of HMS Proteus seem no more to them than American carping. The Commodore and his team in this long, low room in the basement of the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall were dry-land sailors playing a war game, and thoroughly and blithely enjoying themselves.

Clark supposed it had its basis in a buried sense of inferiority. For years, the contracting Royal Navy had belied its great history, and now, quite suddenly, they had developed Leopard and installed it in a nuclear-powered fleet submarine and were engaged in mapping the Chessboard sonar grid in the Barents Sea. Their high summer had returned. NATO needed them as never before, and the USN wanted greedily to get its hands, and its development budgets, on the British anti-sonar system.

Nevertheless, he told himself again as he sipped coffee from a plastic cup and observed the British officers waiting for the ritual serving of afternoon tea, Chessboard should have waited. NATO and the Navy Department had required of the Royal Navy that they install the only operationally-functioning Leopard unit in a submarine, rush their sea trials, then send it racing north to the Arctic Circle. The British had responded like a child doing everything at top speed to show its willingness and its virtue. Even before they had paid Zedect the bill for what they had, and before they had ordered any more Leopard units. With that kind of haste, things often got smashed, plates got dropped. Boats had been lost before. It would be a great pity if Leopard was lost; a tragedy if anyone else found it.

The long room, with its officers seated at computer terminals in front of their screens, its maps, wires, cables, fold-away tables, was dominated by a huge edge-lit Perspex screen which stood upright in the middle of the room. The Perspex secreted a multitude of optic fibres which registered the input of the computers that controlled the screen. The lighting at the edges of the Perspex allowed the team to use chinagraph for temporary handwork additions to the computer-fed information. At that moment, much as it had done for the last week, the screen displayed a projection of the fjordic north coast of Norway, from North Cape to Murmansk. The coast was green and brown, the sea a deepening shade of blue as it stretched northward. A fine grid of red lights, no larger than dots, was shown off the coast, as if some current in the screen were knitting, or marking a school register. Other lights moved slowly or remained stationary, units of the Red Banner Northern Fleet, ships and submarines. One or two NATO units. The Commodore’s team seemed to scuttle round the base of the Perspex screen as if propitiating some idol.

The room was now quiet, orderly. An hour before, Proteus had come up to periscope depth for one of her periodic, random but pre-determined transmissions. The transmission, using RABFITS (Random Bit Frequency Intelligence Transmission System) and via a satellite link, had contained every detail of the mapping work of the submarine since the previous message. This had been fed into the map-board’s computers, updating the network of red spots which marked the Chessboard sonar grid.

Clark could not but admire, and envy, the Leopard equipment. He had been aboard Proteus as an observer during some of the sea trials, and he had also been aloft in the RAF Nimrod as the specially equipped plane tried to find the submarine. The Nimrod had been unable to locate, fix or identify the submarine, not even once, either in the Channel, the North Sea, or the north Atlantic. Not even in conjunction with the US-laid sonar carpet in the north Atlantic. No sonar trace, little and poor infra-red, nothing. It worked. Even pitted against surveillance satellites, it worked.

Perhaps, he told himself, his concern arose—like smoke, unformed but dense and obscuring—solely from the fact that when he had lunched with Kenneth Aubrey at his club at the beginning of the week, he’d learned that the man who had developed Leopard at Zedect Electronics had gone missing, presumed lost to the Russians. Leopard was both useless and unique, if that were so.

It’s going splendidly, Captain Clark, don’t you agree? Clark snapped awake from his unseeing contemplation of the dregs in the plastic cup. Lt. Commander Copeland, the anti-submarine warfare expert on the Chessboard Counter team, was standing in front of him, six inches shorter and exhibiting a grin that shaded into smug mockery. The lights of the Perspex map were bright behind him. You don’t seem to be too pleased, Copeland suggested with a more pronounced mockery. He waved an arm towards the glowing map. Everyone else is feeling on top of the world.

You’re really pleased, aren’t you, Copeland.

Your people will be delighted, too, and NATO will be over the moon.

Sure. Clark shifted his weight on the edge of the desk where he had perched.

Really, Clark! Copeland’s exasperation was genuine. "Neither the United States nor ourselves have been able to send a ballistic missile boat, or any other sort of submarine for that matter, east of North Cape for two months, ever since the Ohio was first traced, shadowed, and escorted from the area. Copeland turned to study the huge map-board. We’re helpless up there until we know how big, how good, and of what kind ‘Chessboard’ is. He turned back to Clark. Your Chief of Naval Operations saw that quite clearly, so did Supreme Allied Command, Atlantic. Proteus has the most distinguished sponsors." Again, the silent, mocking smile.

What if we lose her? Then we’ve lost ‘Leopard’ for good.

Lose? Lost? What do you mean? Oh, Quin, I suppose. Copeland shrugged. If Quin is over on the other side, then ‘Leopard’ will be useless in a matter of months, don’t you agree? Clark nodded. Well, then? We must neutralise ‘Chessboard’ now, while we have the means.

Clark looked up at the board again. A trelliswork of red dots. The carpet of active and passive sonar buoys, and other detection devices, began inside Norwegian territorial waters, less than four miles out, and extended, at present indication, perhaps fifty or more miles north into the Barents Sea. It could be a hundred miles. Proteus was moving between North Cape and Kirkenes like a tractor ploughing a field. The work could take weeks. Copeland was right, of course. The northern flank of NATO was imperilled by Chessboard. The Norwegian coast was prohibited to British or American submarines, the coast of the Soviet Union rendered inaccessible to short-range attack; the Barents Sea finally transformed into a Russian lake.

Sure. Yes, you’re right, Copeland. You’re right.

Copeland smiled with evident relief and looked very young and enthusiastic. I’m so glad you agree, he said without irony.

Just one thing, Clark added maliciously, pointing towards the map. "Don’t you think there’s just too little Soviet naval activity up there? The board’s computer was feeding into the map display whatever the North Cape monitoring stations, the surveillance satellites, and air patrols were supplying via SACLANT’s huge central computers. Two ‘Kotlin’ class destroyers, one ‘Sverdlov’ class cruiser, two ‘Romeo’ submarines and one ‘Quebec’. They’re usually crawling all over the Barents Sea. Where are they?"

Our information is Murmansk, old man. Perhaps they’re taking things easy now they’ve got ‘Chessboard’ to do their work for them. The suggestion was in earnest.

Maybe.

Richard Lloyd, captain of HMS Proteus, was suddenly aware, on entering the cramped computer room aft of the main control room and its almost cathedral-like spaciousness, of the claustrophobia that most people imagined was the inevitable lot of the submariner. He did not experience it, merely understood what it must be like for people who never inhabited submarines; or who had served in them forty years before. The computer room was more cramped than ever, since at least half of its available space was now taken up by the Leopard equipment.

Don, he said, nodding. His senior electronic counter-measures officer, Lt. Commander Hayter, had been nominated as trials officer for Leopard because of his existing special navigation and electronic warfare qualifications. Lt. Commander Hayter’s comprehension of the equipment had relieved Lloyd from all but superficial knowledge of the effects and benefits of Leopard. Hayter was seated in front of a computer screen, watching the pinpricks of light that emerged from its bland grey surface blankness, then slowly faded. As Lloyd watched, one pinprick brightened while two others were fading. They formed a vague triangle on the screen. Then one was gone while another emerged, glowing brighter. To the left of the screen was another, an acoustical holograph screen which displayed the buoys seemingly in three dimensions, giving them an identity, a shape. Neither Lloyd nor Hayter regarded the holograph display. There was something more obsessive about the silent, brief lights. Sir, Hayter acknowledged. Welcome to the broom cupboard.

They had submarines smaller than this room in the last war, Lloyd observed dismissively. He glanced from the screen to the holograph display, then at the accompanying print-out.

Weird, Hayter said, as if to himself. Really weird.

What?

This feeling I have that we don’t exist. Not for any practical purpose, that is … Sonar buoys, temperature transducers, hydrophones— He pointed at the holograph as the shape of a sonar buoy formed in light. Mile after mile of them, but we just don’t exist as far as they’re concerned. Like limbo. Yet I ought to feel excited, sailing east. He turned to Lloyd, grinning. Oughtn’t I, skipper?

Something’s missing from your diet, obviously.

Much activity?

Very little.

You sound puzzled?

Maybe. No, not really. I suppose they’re relying on this stuff— He indicated the two screens. They must be relying on ‘Chessboard’. One or two surface vessels, a few submarines. Something moving well to the north, one of their ‘Echo-II’ missile boats off to take up station on the eastern seaboard of the States, no doubt. It wouldn’t be much interested in us, even if it could spot us. Apart from those few items, nothing in the shop today.

I can’t say I’m sorry.

You’re not running down your pride and joy, are you? Lloyd nodded in the direction of the main cabinet of the Leopard equipment.

No. But utter reliance on an incredibly complicated system of matching sonar signals, and emission dampers and the like—it’s not the same as having a big stick in your hands or a suit of armour on, is it? ‘Chessboard’ is the most advanced, extensive and thorough submarine detection system ever laid down. We both know that. Like tiptoeing through a minefield or burgling the Chubb factory— He smiled. And here we are, same old faces and same old submarine, but now we’re invisible. Mm, I think I feel excited, after all.

How much of it have we mapped—just a guess? I won’t hold you to it.

My computers don’t make rough guesses—just mistakes. Hayter typed on the computer keyboard below the screen. He waited for a few seconds before a message appeared, superimposed on the pinpricks of light, making them more ghostly and unreal than before. See. Twelve days and a few hours more.

That means this sonar carpet must extend at least a hundred and fifty to two hundred miles out into the Barents Sea. Lloyd’s tone was one of surprise, even though he had half-expected Chessboard to be as impressive as he had now learned.

It could be bigger. There’s an assumed twelve to fourteen percent error built-in at the moment. That’ll get less the more we chart. Hayter turned to Lloyd again. "I’m willing to bet that there’s a similar sonar-buoy carpet being laid to stretch south and west from Novaya Zemlya.