Shadow Hunter (38 page)

‘The name of the boat, by the way –
Truculent
– I looked it up in a dictionary. It means “of merciless temper”!'

‘How fitting. But if we are to destroy her, then we must be of even more merciless temper, mustn't we?'

* * *

Admiral Belikov took off his heavy-framed spectacles and polished them with his pocket handkerchief. The waiting was dragging on his nerves. In the command bunker, the big screen was marked with dozens of triangles, denoting contacts detected by the maritime patrol aircraft and helicopters.

They couldn't all be
Truculent,
scattered widely over 4000 square kilometres of sea. The question was whether any of them were. None of the contacts had been confirmed, since the chance discovery of the vessel west of Nemetskiy Point. Infuriatingly the helicopter had had no spare fuel to give chase, so they'd had to start the search all over again. The Royal Navy was damnably good at silencing its boats.

It had been a gamble, ordering the message about Helsinki to be transmitted to the boat they'd discovered. He hoped it was clear enough to persuade Commander Hitchens to adhere to his arrangement with the KGB, but sufficiently mysterious for the rest of his crew to ignore it.

They'd know soon. Four helicopters were dunking transducers into the waters round Ostrov Chernyy. If Commander Hitchens delivered the Moray mine there, they'd be sure to hear the submarine's bow caps opening. If he didn't, they'd know he had a more sinister intent, and would concentrate the search closer inshore.

All aircraft had now been loaded with homing torpedoes or depth charges.

He replaced the spectacles and looked again at the screen. A fresh symbol had appeared, at the mouth of the Zapadnaya Litsa fjord – a circle this time, denoting one of his own submarines.

‘Captain Lieutenant!' he spluttered. ‘What the hell is that?'

The briefing officer hurriedly checked his computer terminal.

‘The PLA
Ametyst
, Comrade Admiral. Sailed from
Bolshaya Litsa an hour ago. Vice-Admiral Astashenkov is listed as being in command.'

Belikov stared at the small circle on the screen, transfixed. He dared not speak, knowing his voice would betray his horror; dared not reveal that his own deputy was acting without his knowledge!

A red flush spread upwards from his neck. He was conscious of a dozen pairs of eyes turned towards him. Every man and woman in that room knew the instructions that had been issued to all shipping in the Kol'skiy Zaliv, including their own submarines; to stay in harbour until the enemy boat had been located and neutralized.

What the hell was Astashenkov playing at? Trying to rid the Rodina of the submarine threat single-handed? Playing the glory seeker, at his age?

Suddenly he sensed the dabbling hand of Moscow. Someone was playing for power.

For his own deputy to risk everything, the orders must have come from the very top. From Sergey Grekov, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, or Nikolai Savkin – the President himself.

But why? What was their plan? They knew the risks. It was Grekov himself who had ordered boats confined to port.

It had to be Savkin. If the
Ametyst
were destroyed by a Western mine, he'd have an international incident of mighty proportions to exploit for political ends. And if she found the
Truculent
and sank her, Savkin would also have a political feather for his threadbare cap.

He couldn't lose.

And himself? He needed an insurance policy.

His eyes focused on the screen again, looking north of the Rybachiy Peninsula.

‘All the ships inbound to Kol'skiy Zaliv – have they hove to, as ordered?'

‘Yes, Comrade Admiral,' answered the Captain Lieutenant. He pointed with a light pen to the northeast tip of the Ribachiy. ‘The supply vessel
Boris Bubnov
is waiting off Voronkovskiy Point. She's the closest to harbour.'

‘And the PLA
Ladny
? What's her position?'

This was the
Victor III,
detected by
Truculent
and
Tenby
earlier that morning.

‘At last report she was following the
Boris Bubnov
in case the
Truculent
was using her as cover. She's due to report again in half an hour.'

‘When she does, I have new orders for her,' Belikov intoned. ‘Tell her that if she finds the
Truculent
within five kilometres of the Kol'skiy Zaliv, she's to sink her!'

* * *

John Black took a cigarette from the half-empty packet that had been new that morning, and offered one to Sara Hitchens.

She lit it and inhaled hungrily. Her face, ghostlike from sleeplessness and emotional stress, paled yet again when he told her what they wanted her to do.

They were closing the net. Orders from on high.

The day before, a police helicopter had followed Gunnar on his motorbike to Bristol, Black explained, but the Russian had abandoned it in a public car park there, and vanished on foot.

He wouldn't use the machine again, Black guessed. He'd be too careful for that, now he knew they were looking for him. The only chance they had of catching him was for Sara to lure him into a trap.

‘You're sure he didn't say what time he'd ring you?' Black pressed for the third time.

‘Quite sure,' Sara snapped, exhaling smoke. ‘He just said it'd be this morning. But he's probably thought better of it. He could be on his way to Moscow by now.'

Privately she hoped he was.

For Sara, waiting was an agony. John Black would tell her nothing. She'd not recognized the M15 man when he'd knocked at the door clad in blue overalls and clutching a tool bag. His Electricity Board van was parked out in the drive.

As she moved about the room, her right shoe felt heavy with the weight of the small radio transmitter fitted inside the heel. She was terrified it would show, despite Black's insistence that it didn't.

‘You got your words sorted out?' he pestered. Women couldn't be trusted. ‘You know what to say when he rings?'

‘No, Mr Black. I've forgotten!' she answered sarcastically. ‘I think
you'd
better talk to him!'

He turned away, embarrassed at the sharpness of her tone, then looked at his watch.

‘I'll leave you to it, then. I've been here quite long enough to have fixed your cooker. Remember, we plan to grab him after your meeting's over, but we may need to move sooner than that, so if you hear me shout, do whatever I say and do it fast. Okay?'

‘What are you going to do to him?'

Black picked up his toolbag, and stubbed out the remains of his cigarette.

‘Ask him a few questions. If he doesn't co-operate, we'll throw the book at him.'

‘He told me he wanted to defect.'

‘We'll see, won't we?'

Sara watched as he climbed into the van and reversed it into the road.

With the M15 man gone, the house became eerily silent. She could almost hear the walls breathe.

At night, during the past week, she had lain awake for hours, ears straining to catch the sounds of the darkness, imagining footfalls and twigs breaking. She could stand it no longer, being alone in the house. She would telephone Simon's school and persuade his housemaster to let him come home for a few days.

Philip would never return from his crazed voyage to the Arctic Circle, her certainty of that had grown stronger. It was time Simon knew what had happened, time for her to prepare him to understand that he'd never see his father again.

The shrill ring of the telephone had her leaping to her feet. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to stem the panic.
The phone rang four times before she picked it up, praying that her voice wouldn't fail her.

‘Hello?'

‘Mrs Hitchens?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's the TV man. The repair to your set? You wanted to fix a time for me to do it?'

Viktor Kovalenko had gone back to his Swedish accent.

‘Oh, yes. That's right. This morning some time?'

The steadiness of her voice surprised her.

‘Ten o'clock. As we discussed yesterday.' The voice was tense, clipped. ‘Please make sure there are no other tradesmen with you. I like to work alone. Understood?'

Sara almost choked.

‘Yes, of course,' she whispered, but the line was already dead.

He'd guessed it was a trap. He must have.

She ought to tell John Black, but there was no time. She had to get to the same car park they'd gone to yesterday, on the far side of Plymouth. It was already nearly half-past-nine. It would take nearly thirty minutes to get there. She'd have to leave immediately.

As she turned out of the drive, she was gripped by an urge to flee, to head away from Plymouth, anywhere to escape.

The M15 man had bullied her mercilessly before she'd agreed to help, threatening her with prison if she didn't co-operate.

It was a ridiculous threat; she'd done nothing illegal. Nothing really wrong either, she decided. Whatever appalling plan Philip had conceived, the cause lay way back in his own past. Her infidelity couldn't have provoked that strong a reaction.

And Gunnar – Viktor, as he called himself now? She believed he really had loved her; maybe he still did. Perhaps she'd even loved him too. And now she was going to betray him.

She braked the car gently into a sharp bend, beyond which was a turning into a farmyard, disused since the farmer gave up milk production. She rounded the corner.

Suddenly, a figure leaped into the road waving. Sara braked hard and swerved.

The man had long, straggly hair and wore an old raincoat. He banged on the bonnet of the car and shouted as she tried to avoid him.

‘Sara!'

The voice was Gunnar's; so was the face beneath the greasy wig. She stamped on the brake. He wrenched open the passenger door and threw himself inside.

‘Drive on! Left into the farm!' he barked, twisting round to see if any car was following.

Sara obeyed, heart thudding.

A rutted track led to a group of farm buildings which had fallen into disrepair.

‘In there,' he pointed to an open-sided barn. ‘Next to the van.'

The car bumped over a broken brick floor; the van belonged to a firm of feed-merchants.

‘Who knows you're meeting me?' he demanded, gripping her arm so tightly she thought he'd break it.

‘No . . . no one,' she stammered. ‘I came straight here after you rang.'

‘You had a visitor this morning.'

She felt her lower lip trembling.

‘The cooker. A man came to mend it. A hot plate had burnt out.'

He was frightening her. His eyes had never looked so cold. She squirmed.

‘That wig. It's awful. Can't you take it off?'

‘Not yet. Come. Get out. Into the van.'

He pulled open the rear doors and looked her up and down. She was wearing jeans and a dark blue guernsey.

‘In those clothes you'll be all right in the back. There's some sacking to sit on.'

‘Why? Where are we going?'

‘Not far. Somewhere safe. Just a few minutes. Get in.'

She knew he'd accept no argument. The sacking smelled of fertilizer. He closed the door behind her. The only light came through a small window to the driving compartment.

He reversed backwards over the bumps. Where the track met the road, he turned right, back to the village.

She thought of the electronic bleeper in the heel of her shoe. The M15 men were expecting a rendezvous miles away. Would they be able to track her here? Half of her hoped they wouldn't.

They passed her house. She strained to see it through the small pane, half expecting to see John Black's van parked in the drive. Nothing there.

Viktor turned right. She had to think for a moment where they were going. It was a narrow tarmaced road, little used, that ran round the back of the village, re-entering the main street beyond the church, and just short of the quay. Along the way they would pass a farm and three labourers' cottages, she remembered; one of them was for sale.

After less than a minute the van turned left off the road and jolted its way down a short track. Viktor swung right again and stopped. She heard him get out and walk round to the back.

‘Okay. Out now,' he said softly, as he opened the door. He took her by the arm to help her to the ground.

She looked round. They were behind a cottage, hidden from the road.

‘I was thinking of buying this house,' he smiled. ‘To be near you.'

He led her round to the front. A large ‘For sale' sign was fixed to the gatepost. From his pocket, he pulled a key attached to a label.

‘Very trusting, the estate agent.'

The rooms were bare, and smelled of rot.

‘Wait here.'

He climbed the steep, narrow stairs to the upper floor.

After a few moments he called to her to come up.

He was leaning against the wall, to one side of a window.

‘You stand the other side and tell me if you see anyone coming. This way we look both ways at once.'

She did as he asked, conscious of wanting to calm her own breathing, but not being able to.

‘Now we can talk.'

He pulled off his wig, folded it carefully, and pushed it into a pocket. He still looked strange to her with his hair, that had been long and blond, dyed brown and trimmed short.

‘That's better,' she smiled.

‘Have you heard anything more? About Philip?'

‘They haven't managed to stop him; that's all.'

‘And I risk this meeting, just for you to tell me that?'

His voice grated. His eyes flicked back to the window nervously.

‘I was lonely. I wanted to see you again,' she heard herself say.

For a few moments he was silent, then he chuckled.