As yet the blips appeared only on the long-range sonar-screen, the extent of whose survey carried for a thirty-mile radius around the submarine. They were at the top of the screen — and the sonar had been working in a directional sweep, when the three vessels had been picked up. Now, the blip of the escort submarine homing on them was little more than twenty miles away.
After a huge silence filled only with the quick human breathing of the crew and the reiterated pinging of the contact-echo, Seerbacker, at Gant's elbow, said, 'How long before it gets here?'
The operator didn't look up, but said: 'Can't say, sir. You know what this long-range sonar is like — distortion factor of twenty per cent, sometimes. I can't be sure, sir.'
'Hell!'
'How fast can those Russian subs move?' Gant said.
'How the hell do I know?' Seerbacker stormed, turning on him, his long face white with anger, and fear. 'I don't even know what kind of submarine it is, man! Until it transfers from the long-range screen into close-up, we can't get a 3-D image of it from the computer that'll identify it.'
'Contact bearing Red Three-Niner, and closing,' the operator called out, apparently undisturbed by the emotions of Seerbacker snarled in his ear.
'What — will you do?' Gant asked.
Seerbacker looked at him for a moment, and then said:
'I have a sealed packet for you — your route, I guess. That's the first thing. Second, I have to get our disguise out the wardrobe, and dust it off!'
Gant looked at him, puzzled.
'Contact still bearing Red Three-Niner and closing.'
Seerbacker looked at the operator's neck, as if he wished the man dead, or dumb at least, then he said: 'Give me the blower.' Fleischer thrust the microphone into his hand, and pressed the alert button at the side of the transmitter, signalling the crew to prepare for a message from the captain.
Seerbacker nodded, and then said into the microphone: 'Hear this — this is the captain. It's operate "Harmless" procedure, on the double. We have about thirty minutes, maybe less, I doubt more. Get the lead out of your asses, and move — move as fast as you've ever moved before.'
Having relieved his tension by way of bullying his crew, Seerbacker turned to Gant with a more even countenance. Smiling, he nodded towards the watertight door leading to his cabin, and Gant followed in his wake.
'What is "Harmless"?' he asked as the footsteps clicked along the companionway.
Seerbacker was silent until he turned into his cabin, Gant still behind him, and had locked the door. Then he went to a wall-safe, cranked the dial, and pulled the small door open. He handed Gant a package inside a cellophane wrapper. Gant nodded, as Seerbacker's two-fingered grip revealed the presence of an acid capsule within the clear plastic, the 'auto-destruct' for the sealed orders.
Gant unfolded the single sheet of flimsy within the envelope, studying it carefully.
'What is "Harmless"?' he repeated.
Seerbacker grinned. 'Just our little joke — only it may save our lives,' he said. 'Well go up top, in a while — you can see for yourself.'
Gant nodded, as if the answer to his question did not really interest him. His orders were simple. There was a list of map coordinates, and times, which he knew would take him at first low across the Finnish coast, east of the North Cape decoy area, across the lake-strewn landscape of Finland, towards Stockholm. Once there, where the Gulf of Bothnia encountered the Baltic, he was instructed to rendezvous with the late afternoon British Airways commercial flight from Stockholm to London. He knew why. If he tucked in behind the plane, and below it, not only would he be out of sight of the crew, but all that would show up on an infra-red screen would be the single image of the airliner's heat-source. And the airliner would be expected across the North Sea, en route and on schedule. And he was immune to any sort of detection other than visual — an unlikely possibility. No Elint ship in the North Sea warned to watch for him would guess where he was. When he arrived at a specified coordinate off the English coast, he was to call RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire on a frequency within the general aviation band, assuming the identity of a test-flight for a commercial passenger plane receiving its Certificate of Airworthiness check-up. With luck, if it worked, the Russians would lose him, if they had ever found him, off the eastern coast of Sweden, when he linked infrared images with the British Airways flight.
He read the coordinates once more, committing them firmly to memory. Then he replaced the sheet in its buff envelope, and the envelope in its wrapper. Seerbacker had already placed a large steel ashtray on the table. Gant placed the packet in the ashtray, then ground the heel of his hand on it Almost immediately, the fumes of the released acid rose pungently and the packet began to dissolve. Gant watched it until it consisted of no more than a few blackened, treacly specks. Then he nodded, as if to himself, and said: 'O.K. - let's get urgent, Captain. I want to see what progress has been made on my runway.' His eyes, surprisingly to Seerbacker, almost twinkled for a moment, and he added: 'And I want to see "Harmless".'
Of course, Aubrey reflected, he could not be certain — no, not by a very long way, not just at present. Nevertheless, he was unable quite to extinguish the small flame of hope that warmed his stomach like good brandy; the heat of success. The code activity from the Russians, combined with the success of the decoy-missions around the North Cape area, and the signal from Seerbacker aboard the Pequod that the Firefox was safely down, and refuelled — all added to his barely suppressed sense of satisfaction.
Shelley, too, he could see, could hardly keep a schoolboyish grin from his smooth features. The Americans, having swung down with the graph of Buckholz's doubts, been infected by indecision, now lifted in a rising curve again. Curtin was on the steps, adjusting the positions of Russian planes and vessels as they moved further and further into the decoy area. Aubrey glanced up at the huge map, and saw only the position of the floe, and the coloured pin representing the Firefox alongside.
Had Seerbacker risked getting off another signal, to confirm the sonar-contact with the approaching Russian submarine, or had Aubrey been aware of Vladimirov's intuition, and partial success in Bilyarsk, his mood might have been less equable, his ego-temperature somewhat lower. But he was still blinded by the brilliance of his own design, and Seerbacker had not informed him of the suspicious escort submarine in his vicinity. For Aubrey, the design had become now only a mechanical matter — as long as Gant followed instructions, it was in the bag.
Aubrey maintained that he was a man who never, absolutely on no occasion, counted his chickens — but now he did. The magnitude of what he had achieved, from inception, through planning, to execution, stunned him, shone like a fierce sun on his vanity, causing it to bloom.
'Hm — gentlemen,' he said, clearing his throat. 'I realise that perhaps this may be a little premature…' He smiled deprecatingly, knowing that they shared his mood. 'Nevertheless — perhaps we might permit ourselves a little — a modicum of celebratory alcohol?'
Buckholz grinned openly. 'You sure put it tortuously, Aubrey — but yes, I reckon we could open a bottle,' he said.
'Good.'
Aubrey moved to the drinks trolley that had stood throughout their vigil in the corner of the operations room. Suddenly, the place seemed to be without the stale, almost rancid, smell of old cigar smoke and unchanged clothing. The faces were no longer strained with tension. It was merely that they were a little tired — tired with the satisfying tiredness of a job well done, of something completed.