Shadow Hunter

Contents

About the Author

Also by Geoffrey Archer

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Copyright

Geoffrey Archer is the former Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent for ITN's
News at Ten
. His work as a frontline broadcaster has provided him with the deep background for his thrillers – the bestselling
Skydancer, Shadow Hunter, Eagle Trap, Scorpion Trail, Java Spider, Fire Hawk, The Lucifer Network
and
The Burma Legacy
. A keen traveller, he now writes full time and lives with his wife and family in Surrey.

Skydancer

Eagle Trap

Scorpion Trail

Java Spider

Fire Hawk

The Lucifer Network

The Burma Legacy

Dark Angel

To Eva, Alison and James,
for their encouragement

THE RESTAURANT WAS
Greek. Kebabs and non-stick rice, washed down with retsina. Plymouth had a dozen like it; the evening trade was good in a navy town.

The watchers sat outside in a car, wishing they were inside so they could catch something of what the man and woman said to each other, but there'd been no spare table.

For a week, the two men from Special Branch had been shadowing the big blond man who claimed to be Swedish. The man had chatted up a young submariner in a pub, asking questions about nuclear propulsion that were too intelligent to be casual.

Up to now there'd been nothing; a dreary circuit of bars and dockside dives. Sometimes the man had drunk alone, just looking at faces. Sometimes he'd feigned drunkenness and joined in the raucous banter of the sailors, but there'd been nothing they could call a contact.

Clearly the man was searching. But for what? Information? Secrets? Or just companionship?

For most of the week the Swede had stayed in cheap lodgings. Then, that morning, he'd gone up-market – checked into the Holiday Inn. The receptionist had welcomed him as a regular client.

Now he'd met a women, a classy one at that, judging by the way she dressed. Someone else's wife, they'd guessed. She'd come separately to the restaurant, kissing him as she sat down. They'd been given a table by the window, easily visible from the watchers' car.

‘If this job had been important, they'd have given us the gear and we could hear what Blondie's saying,' one of the watchers grumbled.

‘Don't need to hear it,' the other replied. ‘He's talking dirty. That's what the hotel room's for.'

Nearly ninety minutes passed. Concentration was flagging.

‘Hey, look!' one of the policemen snapped. The woman was agitated. She was clutching her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

‘She's blubbing.'

They saw the Swede grab her hand but she pulled it away.

‘Talking too dirty, you reckon?'

‘Hang on! She's moving.'

The woman stood up, then scrabbled on the floor for her bag. The man reached out, trying to pull her back. He glanced round, embarrassed.

The door opened and the woman ran into the street. Disoriented at first, she pulled a handkerchief from her bag and dabbed at her eyes. Then, darting a look over her shoulder, she turned right and ran down the street.

The Swede stayed inside and called hurriedly for the bill.

‘She's got a car, look. A Golf. You follow her – I'll take Blondie.'

The watcher closed the passenger door and slipped into the darkened entrance of a newsagent's shop. His companion started the engine and moved off in pursuit of the woman.

Three minutes passed before the tall foreigner emerged into the street. He looked around briefly, pulled a cigarette from a pack, and lit it. For a split second his gaze rested on the doorway opposite. Hand and cigarette hovered for a moment.

Casually he turned and walked up the road, passing one pub, but pausing uncertainly outside another. The watcher was in the open now. He kept moving, knowing he'd been seen, but perhaps not yet recognized for what he was.

The Swede pushed open the door to the lounge bar. The watcher gave him a few seconds' start then crossed the road and followed him in.

The lounge was packed. No sign of him. The policeman eased through the crush to the bar, looking all around
He reached the counter and his eyes met the Swede's, inches away, grey-blue and hard as nails.

‘Can you watch this for me? I must take a leak.'

The blond pointed to his pint of lager.

‘Sure,' replied the watcher, unprepared.

The Swede elbowed his way to the gents'.

Did he know? Was his cover blown? The policeman dithered for just a moment too long.

He shoved through the crowd, drawing complaints and threats. Inside the toilet a cold wind blew through the wide-open window. Outside he heard a motorbike roar away.

‘Sod it!' Blondie had been a professional after all, and he'd lost him.

* * *

It was weeks since Commander Andrew Tinker had worn a cap and the soft leather band felt like the steel hoop of a barrel. At sea submariners ignored naval formality, but heading back into harbour after six weeks on patrol, uniforms were brushed and smoothed, ready for the world of normal people.

‘Funny smell.' Tinker sniffed, stepping clear of the hatch and stretching. He leaned his elbows on the edge of the tall, slim fin. The joke was an old one.

‘It's called fresh air, sir . . . ,' the watch officer fed the expected line.

The early morning sky was grizzled, but there was no rain. Andrew gulped at the offshore breeze, rejoicing in its scent after weeks of confinement in conditioned air. As they rounded Penlee Point into Plymouth Sound, he could taste its sweetness; his senses peeled away the layers of smell – woodsmoke, wet grass, sea-weed.

It was like being released from sensory deprivation, every nerve newly sensitized. The gentle flapping of the bridge ensign was like a whip-crack to his ears, the light wind on his face seemed to tug like a gale.

He was pale; they all were after weeks without sunlight.
However, a few brisk walks on the moors would soon bring the colour back.

The conning tower stood thirty feet above the casing. Dark green water washed like liquid glass over the fat, blunt nose of the submarine and away to the sides. There was no sound, no vibration from the powerplant deep below the surface. The black shape probed and the smooth sea yielded effortlessly to its penetration. Brutal. Phallic.

Eyes fixed on the parting of the waters, his thoughts turned to sex. They could afford to now that he was going ashore. He'd learned to suppress such feelings at sea. Within hours he'd be home; Patsy would be waiting for him.

‘About forty minutes 'til we're alongside?'

‘That's right, sir. First line ashore at 08.00 – that's if
Truculent
's cleared the berth in time. We should see her any minute.'

The lieutenant raised a heavy pair of binoculars and focused on the distant cranes of Devonport dockyard. The towering roof of the triple drydock dominated the view. At that range the black fin of their sister ship heading for sea would be difficult to spot against the vertical lines of the harbour side.

HMS Truculent
was almost identical to Tinker's own
HMS Tribune
; a few pieces of equipment on board differed. Despite his eagerness to be home he envied
Truculent
's captain. Commander Philip Hitchens was heading for the north Atlantic for biennial NATO exercises. This autumn the manoeuvres were being held closer to Soviet waters than ever before. Tinker enjoyed war games – stalking the massive American aircraft carriers and ‘sinking' them with salvos of simulated torpedoes and missiles. It was a shame the patrol schedules had favoured Hitchens rather than himself. Hitchens would never admit to enjoying something as serious as war, even when it was just a game.

‘Steer two-nine-zero. Revolutions for five knots!' Andrew ordered into the bridge microphone. They were passing north of Drake's Island, the Hoe to their right
dominated by the disused lighthouse known as Smeaton's Tower.

‘Got her, sir! She's just coming through the narrows.'

Andrew raised his own binoculars and followed the line set by the lieutenant. It was the
Truculent,
all right; and there was Phil on the bridge. The set of his head was unmistakable.

‘Great sight,' Andrew whispered as the
Truculent
picked up speed towards them, bow-wave foaming.

‘The best there is,' the young lieutenant concurred. ‘A five-thousand-ton black mistress! That's what my girlfriend calls this beast.'

‘Jealous, is she?'

‘Hmmm. But they like to be jealous, don't they, women?'

Andrew didn't reply at first. He was very young, the lieutenant.

‘Planning to tie the knot, are you?'

‘No, not me. Not ready yet, sir.'

Truculent
was less than half-a-mile ahead, aiming to pass a hundred yards to port. Tinker raised the binoculars again; the finely-chiselled face of Philip Hitchens stared straight ahead from the conning tower, cap pulled firmly down against the wind.

‘Come on, Phil,' he breathed. ‘Give us a wave. You're not making a movie!'

The two commanders had shared a ‘cabin' at Britannia College, Dartmouth, and their careers had progressed in an undeclared spirit of competition.

It surprised Tinker they'd remained such good friends. Hitchens was so straitlaced he was a curiosity. He had breeding and style, yet often seemed overwhelmed by the responsibility of his work. His handsome features should have made him a ‘ladies' man', yet Andrew had never known him make a pass at another woman, despite his own wife's questionable fidelity. Tinker found the mismatch of appearance and character intriguing.

Andrew saluted as the two black hulls passed one another silently.

‘The bugger!' Tinker growled. ‘He's not even acknowledging! Come on, Phil! What's the matter with you?'

To ignore the salute of a fellow warship was very bad form in navy protocol. Tinker sharpened the focus of his binoculars. His friend of twenty years was studiously ignoring him.

‘Something we said, sir?' the lieutenant suggested blandly.

Within the hour they were alongside the jetty in Devonport submarine base, astern of the lustrous black hull of a sister boat just out of refit. Standing on the casing ready to welcome aboard the Captain of the Second Submarine Squadron, Tinker realized how tatty his own vessel had become. The black paint had lost its sheen and there were patches on the fin where sound-absorbent tiles had pulled away, the adhesive softened by weeks of immersion.
Tribune
would need a spell in the dockyard before her next patrol.

‘Good morning, sir.' He saluted briefly.

‘Morning, Andrew. Welcome home!'

Captain Norman Craig had eight nuclear-powered submarines in his squadron. He was responsible for the well-being of the boats and their crews.

‘Lovely day. Let's get below for a chat. Won't keep you long.'

Tinker followed him down through the hatch and into the wardroom where the stewards were pouring coffee. De-briefing was routine at the end of a patrol. The weapons and mechanical engineers would hand over reports on defective equipment so the mechanics at the shore base,
HMS Defiance,
could put it right. Personnel problems would be raised, and gossip exchanged, but the session was always kept brief. The members of
Tribune
's crew who were due to take shore leave would want to get home.