Shadow Hunter (20 page)

‘Oh. I see . . ,' Patsy answered, but didn't.

‘Don't tell Andrew I told you.'

They stared in silence at the distant horizon. The aggressive outline of a frigate had come into view round the headland, making a sweeping turn towards the dockyard.

A foreign government? Patsy chewed at the words. God almighty! Sara meant a spy!

‘Philip brought me here on our first afternoon in Plymouth, about ten years ago,' Sara digressed, half to herself. ‘Wanted me to know where I could come to watch, when he set off in his submarine. We'd never been apart for more than a few days up to then. I had no idea what it was going to be like.'

Sara turned to Patsy, who found the digression aggravating.

‘You're tougher than me, but it must upset you too, the separations?' Sara asked.

‘Appalling. Particularly in the early days,' she answered briskly. ‘But I learned to accept it, most of the time. There wasn't any alternative.'

She'd meant to sound matter-of-fact, but Sara took it as a reproach.

‘The alternative's bloody obvious!' she snapped. ‘Patsy, you're so
organized,
so bloody virtuous, I'm surprised you allow yourself to be seen in public with me! But surely, even in your well-ordered existence there must've been times, when Andrew was away, when you were desperate for . . . for
something?
I don't just mean sex; I mean emotionally?'

Patsy felt her neck and face begin to burn.

‘You make me sound like a nun,' she laughed uncomfortably.

‘Of course I get lonely, too. Of course . . .'

Patsy hesitated.

‘I've never told anyone this. But I did have an affair, once. You must never,
never
repeat this. Andrew doesn't know, and he never will. It was a man I work with, a nice man. I shall always be fond of him. But one day I weighed what I was doing against my marriage and my children. And I ended it.'

‘Blimey,' Sara whispered. ‘So you
are
human!'

Patsy stiffened. A pair of gulls swooped screeching over their heads, one chasing the other.

‘Is it our own fault, the way we end up? The sort of people we become?' Sara demanded. ‘It can't be, can it? Our parents must take some of the blame.'

‘I don't know. I suppose it's a bit of both . . .'

‘My mother used to have one lover after another. Destroyed my father. I hated her, but now I'm just like her.'

Sara's eyes began to fill with tears.

Reminding herself why she'd engineered this meeting, Patsy decided she had to pull their conversation back on track.

‘What did you mean just now? About your lover being from a foreign government?'

‘I shouldn't have said that! You mustn't ask!'

But Patsy persevered, ‘When politicians use that phrase, they mean a spy!'

Sara's face crumpled.

‘A Russian?'

Sara nodded.

‘Oh, God!'

Patsy felt chilled. This wasn't just a matter of infidelity; it was a betrayal of everything.

‘Did you talk to him about Phil's work?'

‘Of course not. At least, not in any way that mattered,' she insisted. ‘Anyhow, I don't know anything about it, except what it does to me.'

‘I see. But . . .' Patsy searched for something to say.

‘Philip found out. And he flipped, literally. Something seemed to snap in his mind. Andrew was scared he might do something daft. I think they're trying to bring him back, but nobody's telling me anything. If
you
know what's happening. . . .'

‘Not a thing. It's all news to me. But what did you mean about him doing something daft?'

‘Blowing up the Russians? I don't know – some sort of revenge.'

‘You can't be serious!'

‘
I
don't know . . . !' Sara wailed, and burst into tears.

‘It's not just because of what I did, though! I'm sure there's something else.'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. There's been something churning round in Phil's mind for months. Something to do with his work. He never said. Always denied there was anything wrong.'

Patsy felt deeply alarmed. She decided she'd better sound reassuring if she could.

‘Well, let's hope they get Philip back soon. You'll have to talk the whole thing out with him, I suppose. But what about your marriage? Do you want to save it? You might still be able to.'

Sara shut her eyes and groaned. Patsy hadn't understood.

‘It's too late for that! Don't you see?'

‘Oh, I'm sure it's not. Andrew'll talk to him. Philip can get a job ashore, so he won't be away so much.'

‘Patsy!
Listen!
He's not . . . coming . . . back! Ever!'

A shiver ran down Patsy's spine.

‘It was in his eyes as he left. Philip is going to die!'

Patsy felt cold all over. The wind had got up.

* * *

‘Are you there, Anthony?' the Commander-in-Chief shouted, pushing open the door to the room occupied by the Flag Officer Submarines.

Admiral Bourlet rose to his feet.

‘We need to talk. About Hitchens. Can you come along to my office, and bring his file with you?'

‘Of course.'

Bourlet had spent much of the morning studying the file. It had not made comfortable reading.

He closed the C-in-C's door and sat in the leather armchair to which Waverley directed him.

‘Never seen the PM more alarmed. She's horrified at the very idea that world stability could be threatened by an officer in Her Majesty's Navy.'

‘She's ahead of herself, in that case. It hasn't come to
that yet. We've still a good chance of stopping him, sir,' Bourlet announced, with contrived confidence.

‘What I want to know is how such a lunatic managed to end up as the captain of an SSN. They're supposed to be our top talent, for God's sake!'

Sir Stewart perched a pair of half-moon spectacles on the bridge of his long, thin nose. He reached across for the file.

‘To be frank, sir, he's been bloody lucky. Twice,' Bourlet explained as Waverley read. ‘He scraped through his “Perisher” with the recommendation that his ability to command had yet to be proven. They said he should be given the chance to show his worth as an Executive Officer. Then one of the Gulf sultanates bought a fleet of small diesel submarines, remember? Offered enormous sums tax-free to our submariners to work five-year contracts training Arabs to drive them. We lost four COs in a month. Three from
Oberon
diesel boats, and one from an SSN.'

‘And suddenly Lieutenant Commander Hitchens found himself in demand.'

‘Exactly. Got an “O” boat to drive. Did all right for a couple of years. Not much flair, but no mishaps either. Then came his second lucky break. Look at his S206 dated a couple of years back – his Officer's Confidential Report, at the time he came up for promotion to Commander – Section 3, the General Report, says “A competent commanding officer of an ‘O' boat, but a man obsessed by petty rules and regulations. Holds the respect of his men through firm discipline rather than any degree of affection. Not a team player. Could create unnecessary tension on board”.

‘Yet Section 5 recommends him for immediate promotion. The explanation comes in Section 6 – written by my predecessor. As you'll see, sir, he says that although Hitchens hadn't displayed the usual flair and leadership required for the command of a nuclear boat, the sudden shortage of SSN COs which occurred at that time made it essential Hitchens be considered for promotion.'

‘Ah! It's coming back to me. There was some frightful accident. . . .'

‘That's right, sir. Up at Faslane. Three SSN COs driving off base for a stag night. One of them was getting married the next day. Hit a petrol tanker. Went up in flames. All dead.'

‘And suddenly we had three boats without skippers. Mmmm. That explains some of it. So, we've got an obsessive nit-picker on the loose, obsessed at the moment, it seems, with a personal grievance against the Russians. Anything else in the file, further back?'

Bourlet riffled through the pages.

‘He came from a naval family. Father and grandfather. His father had a curious end to his career. Could be relevant. Remember the old
HMS Tenby
? A diesel submarine that disappeared in the Barents Sea in November 1962? All hands lost. No trace of her ever found.'

‘Oh, yes. I remember vaguely.'

‘Philip Hitchens' father was her second-in-command.'

‘I remember it now; I was at Dartmouth at the time. But I can't remember the details. . . .'

‘She was on an intelligence mission, monitoring Soviet torpedo trials. We believed some of them were nuclear-tipped. There was always a suspicion that the Soviets had sunk her, but never any evidence. Some boffin down at the naval architects' department in Bath came up with a theory that a fire on one of the mess decks could have flashed through into the torpedo room. Proved it on a test rig. The enquiry concluded that's what must have happened. Magazine explosion causing total loss. They changed the design of the class after that.'

‘Hitchens the younger must've been still at school at the time. Traumatic for him.'

‘Early teens. There's nothing in his file about his thoughts on the matter, except a curious line in his original application to join. He said he saw himself as “continuing the career which his father had been unable to complete”.'

‘That obsessive streak again. There, right at the start, and no one saw the danger in it.'

‘To be fair, it's not an uncommon characteristic in the Navy, sir.'

‘Hmmm. So what you're saying is that there's nothing in the man's record that could've led us to predict something like this.'

‘Absolutely, sir. The file shows he's a weak link in the chain, slipped into the system out of temporary necessity. But there's nothing to suggest he'd ever defy orders. Just the opposite, if anything.'

‘But how come he got chosen for this special mission with the Moray mines? We should've chosen a top operator for that job.'

‘It's just the way the cards fell, sir.
Truculent
was already being fitted out as the trials boat for the mines when Hitchens took command. She's the only boat equipped to use the mines so far. It had to be him. There was no alternative.'

‘Jesus! What a shambles! I don't think the PM'll swallow much of this. She's already looking for someone to blame,' Waverley concluded miserably. ‘What's the latest on the search for
Truculent
?'

‘Nothing new, sir. The Nimrods haven't made contact again, and at present
Tenby'
s not in the frame yet. Ironic that the name of the sub we're sending to look for Hitchens should be the same as the ship in which his father died.'

‘God! If he ever finds out, it'll probably drive him clean round the bend!'

* * *

The mountainous spine of Norway turned a sinister grey as the RAF HS.125 executive jet flew steadily north. When the sun dipped below the horizon, the snow-covered tips of the peaks glowed pink. Directly below them the water in the fjords looked inky black.

Andrew felt restricted by the narrow cabin. They'd been flying for over three hours and he was desperate to stretch his legs. Even to stand up meant stooping to prevent his head striking the roof.

The landscape below had been dramatic to watch for a while, but the more he gazed down at the vast expanse of the Norwegian Sea stretching away to the left, the more pessimistic he became about the difficulties involved in finding the
Truculent
.

The captain eased his portly frame through the cockpit door. A surprisingly elderly man, Andrew thought, in his late fifties at least. A former fighter pilot, perhaps, who couldn't live without flying, but who'd grown too old for fast jets?

‘More coffee, Commander?'

‘No thanks,' Andrew answered. ‘It just makes me need to pee, and the heads you have on board isn't the easiest to get in and out of!'

The RAF man grinned. ‘We just call it “the can”. Not a lot of room, I agree, but the plane's a delight to fly. Want to come up front?'

Andrew followed the pilot forward and ducked through the doorway. The second officer grinned a greeting. There was no room to enter the cockpit, so he just leaned in, supporting himself on the doorframe. The control panel was dominated by a multi-coloured radar screen in its centre.

‘I've just spoken to Tromso. Should be there in about twenty-seven minutes,' the second officer announced. ‘They said they were expecting you. Mentioned a Sea King.'

‘That's right.'

‘Going to join a ship, are you?'

‘Yep. A submarine.'

‘Rather you than me, on a night like this.'

‘Heard a weather forecast, have you?'

‘Force five, I'm afraid.'

Andrew grimaced. He disliked helicopter flights at the best of times, but to be lowered on a wire towards a conning tower, which was wobbling about like a wooden toy? Not pleasant.

‘What does that radar screen show you?' Andrew asked.

‘It's mainly for weather. Storm warning, but it maps the ground if you point it downwards.'

He indicated the green and yellow shapes interspersed with blue.

‘That's the fjord where we sank the Tirpitz,' he pointed. ‘Tromso's just on the shoreline. We'll start our descent in a couple of minutes.'

Andrew nodded, and studied the multitude of dials for a while. Then the radio crackled and the captain pulled earphones over his head. Andrew made a gesture of thanks and returned to the main cabin.

Cross-winds buffeted them as the main wheels touched the runway. Andrew peered towards the terminal building, where two helicopters were silhouetted against the lights of an open hangar. Then he strained to study another shape further away.