Shadow Hunter (31 page)

‘The Pentagon's working on an options brief. They'll have it for you tomorrow.'

Reynolds sounded impatient. He shoved the
Rostov
file to one side.

‘Listen. The CIA's got something new out of Moscow. This stuff's hot!'

‘Give it to me, Tom.'

‘Savkin's just lost his majority on the Politburo. Only he doesn't know it yet. The faction that supports his reforms of the economy is now in a minority. Secretly the opposition to Savkin has decided to put the brakes on. They want to freeze prices, reintroduce subsidies on food, and break the link between pay and output. Strikes are spreading like crazy; they reckon it's the only way to stop them turning into riots.'

‘Is that reliable information?'

‘Copper-bottomed, the Company says.'

‘And how come Savkin doesn't know what's going on?'

‘It's one of his closest friends that has changed sides, and he's still choosing the moment to tell him. But the CIA thinks Savkin's seen it coming – that's why he's been sounding off about “American aggression”. Wants a distraction. Needs one – at any price, John.'

His final words hung like a thundercloud. Their eyes met, unblinking.

‘How far would he go, Tom?'

‘That's the sixty-four-thousand dollar question. The Soviet section chief at Langley thinks Savkin wants a shooting-match – a little one – just so long as it's us that starts it.'

‘He's not going to risk that!'

‘I said “a little one”. A small, contained conflict. A few shots fired, maybe one or two people killed – enough to make one hell of a big story back home to take the workers' minds off the bread queues, and to hold together any splits in the Politburo.'

‘And how the hell do you arrange a “small, contained conflict” between the USA and the Soviet Union, for God's sake?'

‘At sea. It already happened, a few years ago, in the Black Sea. One of our warships got rammed by one of theirs while we were exercising our right of innocent passage through Soviet territorial waters. If you take that scenario a step further, you'll get shots being fired.

‘Right now Savkin doesn't reckon he has much to lose. He's just as committed to
perestroika
as Gorbachev was. If it fails, the Soviet Union heads back to the dark ages – that's his line.'

‘For dark ages, read “cold war”.'

Reynolds shrugged. It was a bleak picture. If the Politburo had its way, Russian relations with the West would take a dive. Yet for Savkin to hold on to power, he'd have to sacrifice all the east-west détente that had been built up in recent years.

‘So, what's your advice, Tom?'

‘Keep it cool. Like we've done with the
Rostov.
Don't give them the chance to pull us into a fight.'

‘And the exercise?'

‘You mustn't be seen to be changing any of it. But let's check the game plan. It won't be the surface ships that cause trouble; they'll keep west of North Cape, the way they always do. It's the subs that worry me. They got something different planned, but I don't remember what it is. You got the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming to see you in an hour. Just time for me to call him, to make sure he's briefed.'

‘Okay. Do it, Tom.'

McGuire looked at his watch. He could grab a sandwich lunch before the Admiral arrived and have everything straightened out before he called the British Prime Minister at 4pm.

* * *

Rear-Admiral Anthony Bourlet was thunderstruck. He let the telephone receiver drop onto its rest. What Captain Norman Craig had just told him had given Operation Shadowhunt a ghastly new dimension.

Suddenly they faced the possibility that Hitchens wasn't suffering a breakdown after all, but was acting under some sort of duress, presumable from the KGB.

Bourlet checked his watch. 1700 hrs. There could still be someone at the registry. He jabbed a finger at the intercom button.

‘Do something very urgently for me, will you?' he called his WRNS PA. ‘Get onto the registry and see what you can dig up on
HMS Tenby,
Not the SSN. The old T-class with the same name, back in the early sixties. Disappeared in the Barents. I want to know when, where, and preferably the inquiry report, too. Hurry now. I'm just going along to the C-in-C.'

‘He's just left his office, sir.'

‘Well, see if you can catch him. Ring down to the security desk.'

The door to the C-in-C's outer office was open.

‘Has he been gone long?'

‘'Bout half a minute, sir. Just missed him,' replied Waverley's staff officer. Just then the telephone rang.

‘Oh, yes, sir. He's here now.'

The lieutenant commander passed the phone across.

‘Is this really urgent, Anthony? I'm in a hurry,' came the irritated voice of Admiral Waverley.

‘Vital, sir.'

There was a pause. Bourlet heard a sigh at the other end.

‘Oh, all right. I'll come up again.'

Within two minutes Bourlet was explaining about the unknown woman who had met Philip secretly in Guernsey earlier that summer.

‘Craig's been onto the security services. They're going to see Sara Hitchens again. Apparently the Russian who's been screwing her has a wife. MI5 suspects there was some sort of double-act going on.'

‘I'm lost. What exactly do we suspect now?'

Waverley was hollow-eyed at the thought of having to break news of further horrors to the Prime Minister.

‘Remember those words of Philip's that Sara overheard; “Dad, what have they done to you?” – something to that effect? Suggests Philip's father is still alive. If that's the case, the Soviets could be offering to free him – in exchange for something.'

Waverley swallowed hard.

‘Like what?'

‘Dunno. A
Trafalgar
class sub?' Bourlet joked grimly.

‘Bollocks! His crew would never let him.'

‘Well then, something else. . . .'

‘A Moray mine?'

‘Exactly!'

‘Oh, Christ!'

Waverley pressed the flat of his hand against his brow, rubbing it back and forth as if to muffle the alarm bells ringing inside his head.

The implications were horrendous. The Moray was a British–American development. He could imagine the bad-mouthing that would pour from Washington if this nightmare came true.

‘But, but even if Hitchens had been blackmailed into giving them a Moray, what about his wife's affair with the Russian? Are you saying he accepted that as just something else he had to put up with if his father was to be freed? Surely not.'

‘According to Sara Hitchens, when Philip found out about her and the Russian, it seemed to make up his mind for him. Make of that what you will.'

‘In other words, we haven't a clue what he's going to do.'

‘That's about the size of it.'

Waverley stood up and smoothed his uniform jacket.

‘I'll have to tell Downing Street. She's not going to like this, you know.'

Bourlet took a certain malicious pleasure in seeing the misery engraved on the face of his Commander-in-Chief.

‘And you'd better signal Commander Tinker in
Tenby
, particularly as it's his own wife who's brought all this to light. . . .' Waverley frowned. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence – the name of the SSN we've sent to find him. D'you think it means something?'

Back in his own office Bourlet opened Hitchens' file, and began to read. His own memories of the events of 1962 began to return. He'd been a sub-lieutenant then, on his first posting.

The official report had been a bland document for public consumption, making no reference to the spying mission that
Tenby
had been engaged in at the time. But a secret annexe to the report suggested the very real possibility that the Soviets had vaporized the boat with a nuclear torpedo.

But if Lieutenant Commander Hitchens, Philip's father, was still alive, that theory didn't fit any more.

* * *

The Foreign Secretary, Sir Nigel Penfold, arrived at Number 10 at 8.30 p.m., half-an-hour before the call from Washington was due. In his briefcase were the notes from MI6, which offered an assessment of Soviet affairs almost identical to that provided by the CIA to President McGuire.

In the House of Commons that afternoon the Prime Minister had faced tough questions from MPs, suggesting the NATO manoeuvres were indeed provocative at a time when President Savkin needed all the help he could get. In reply she'd slammed into the ‘blatant propaganda' emanating from Moscow, and trumpeted the right of NATO navies to exercise in the Norwegian Sea.

‘I've had three calls from Admiral Waverley today,
Nigel,' she announced. ‘The first to tell me they'd located the
Truculent,
the second to say they'd lost her again, and the third just this moment, to tell me that it now looks as if Commander Hitchens could be a Russian agent!'

‘What?'

‘The KGB may be blackmailing him. Something to do with his father. I've just launched a rocket at the security chiefs; I should have heard about it from them, not the wretched Navy!

‘And Sir Stewart had the cheek to tell me that because the Royal Navy has the quietest submarines in the world, they may not be able to stop Commander Hitchens doing whatever he intends to do!

‘Pour me another whisky, would you? It's been a long day.'

The Foreign Secretary obliged, but kept the measure small. He'd noticed the PM losing her concentration recently after too many whiskies.

‘What's President McGuire going to say? Not a word to him about this business, Nigel.'

A buzzer sounded in the secure communications box. The PM picked up the receiver, and nodded to Penfold.

‘We're ready. Put him through.'

She replaced the receiver and keyed the conference switch that operated a loudspeaker and microphone.

‘Good afternoon, Prime Minister. John McGuire here.'

‘Good
evening,
Mr President. How nice to hear your voice. I have Sir Nigel with me. Are you accompanied at your end?'

‘Tom's here.'

‘Good evening, ma'am, Sir Nigel,' came the voice of the National Security Adviser.

‘Perhaps you'd let me make the opening shots,' McGuire's voice had an edge to it. ‘Our intelligence assets think Savkin's on the way out. The conservatives on the Politburo are getting the upper hand and want to turn the clock back. Our assessment is that he's spoiling for a fight with the West as a distraction. Just a little fight, but something, nonetheless. Do you go along with that view?'

‘We agree as to what's happening in the Politburo, and
your assessment of Savkin's actions is certainly a distinct possibility,' the PM answered.

‘Our view is that Savkin's lost his hand anyhow. There's no way we can save him. All we can do is pray they don't turn the clock right back to Brezhnev's time.'

‘You're more pessimistic than we are, John. But we agree in general with what you say.'

‘So it's a time for the Western Alliance to keep its head down. Which isn't easy with about a hundred NATO warships steaming towards the Kola peninsula! Now, we've just discussed this with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On his advice, we feel there's only one aspect of Exercise Ocean Guardian that needs to be modified to ensure we don't risk mixing it with the Russian Navy . . .'

‘Mr President!' the PM interrupted. ‘On no account must the Alliance be seen to be backing off in the face of blatant propaganda from the Soviet Union. At times like this we need to show strength, not weakness!'

‘If I may continue . . . We won't be
seen
to be backing off at all! It's the submarine operations that should be changed. Their activities are secret anyway, so no one'll know we've given them new orders.'

This was dangerous ground. Penfold's concern grew as the PM reached for her glass.

‘Go on, Mr President,' she said.

‘I'm talking of two subs in particular, Prime Minister. One of ours and one of yours. Their exercise task, as you know, is to try to penetrate the Soviet surveillance barriers and simulate the planting of the new “smart” mines at the entrances to two major Russian submarine bases. Normally that sort of operation is fair game; we don't admit we're doing it, and the Russians don't admit it if they manage to detect us doing it. But with Savkin looking for a fight, they might just blow those boats out of the water.'

‘Yes. I hear what you're saying. But that's an essential task for our submarines, in case a real war threatens. They've got to try it out, see what's possible and what isn't.'

‘Let me put it this way. This afternoon I gave orders
that the
USS Baltimore
should turn back from her mission, and join the exercises with the Surface Fleet west of North Cape. There will be no United States submarines operating within a hundred miles of the Soviet coast for the immediate future. If your boat goes in there, she'll be on her own.'

The PM's expression froze.

‘I earnestly recommend you to withdraw that boat, Prime Minister. We're all fully agreed on this side that it's the right thing to do. The operation can be set up again in six months when the Kremlin's settled down.'

‘I hear what you say, John. We'll give it most urgent thought, I promise you.'

‘Say, ah . . . there won't be any problem in recalling that boat, will there? No communications difficulties?'

‘The Commander-in-Chief Fleet communicates regularly with all the ships under his command, Mr President. Now, if there's nothing further we need to discuss, I'd like to end this conversation so that I can pursue the points you've raised.'

‘Fine by me. Glad to have talked with you. We'll stay in close touch.'