“Then why take a risk?” Renouf said. His tone suggested he’d played his ace.
“It’s Flight Lieutenant Silk, isn’t it?” Skull said.
Pulvertaft breathed deeply. “What on earth makes you say that?”
“My low threshold of boredom, sir. Also, I worked it out from what I read in The Guardian.” Skull turned to the others. “Intelligence starts at breakfast. You can pick up quite a lot in the political columns.”
“Silk’s wife’s an MP,” Pulvertaft said. “She supports CND, in fact she’s one of the brains behind it. She’s their liaison with similar bodies abroad, France, Germany, Italy, Greece. Organizes conferences and so on.”
“Organised subversion,” Renouf muttered.
“I haven’t got time for The Guardian,” Allen said. “It puts a slant on everything.”
“Not its racing tips,” Skull said sharply. “I’m a hundred pounds to the good this season already.”
“What does that prove?” Allen asked.
“Proves sometimes the papers get something right,” Skull said. “Roman Warrior romped home at Kempton Park yesterday. Six to one.”
“Enough.” Pulvertaft rapped his desk. “Silk. What’s to be done?”
Nobody spoke. Everyone was thinking the same thing. What if some grubby journalist stumbled on the truth? Irresistible story. V-bomber pilot shares a bed with top anti-nuke campaigner. The Press would milk it. She bans, he bombs.
“Blame MI5,” Renouf said. “It’s their job to check out Silk.”
“They did,” Pulvertaft said. “He was clean when he rejoined the Command. She wasn’t active in CND then.”
“Even if she had been, it’s not a criminal offence.” Skull linked his hands behind his head and stretched his legs. “If you get rid of Silk now, it amounts to accusing him of being a security risk. On what evidence?”
“This is absurd.” Renouf was too restless to stay in his chair. “Don’t tell me there’s no risk. What if the silly bugger talks in his sleep? He could recite the entire squadron targeting plan! And never know it!”
“I can’t see Zoë Silk making shorthand notes in bed at four in the morning,” Skull said. “Her mother was Lady Shapland. Very rich. The Tatler made Zoë deb of the year.”
“And dope of the century,” Renouf said. “If she had her way we’d be dropping CND leaflets on the Kremlin.” He saw a crease in the carpet and stamped on it.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Pulvertaft said. “Skull, you know him best. Suppose he got posted somewhere safe. Transport Command, say. In Singapore. Would he go quietly?”
“He’d raise merry hell,” Skull said. “He’d appeal to C-in-C Bomber Command and Zoë would ask questions in the House. They’d allege victimisation.”
“Which it is,” Allen said.
“It would look as if we’re sniping at CND,” Pulvertaft said. “Punishing the wife through the husband.”
“Which we are,” Allen said.
“I’d snipe at CND with an elephant gun, if I could,” Renouf muttered.
“I can think of six wives of aircrew in 409 who belong to underground Nazi organisations,” Skull declared. “They all want pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Soviet cities now.”
“Good God. How did you discover that?” Pulvertaft asked.
“I didn’t. I made it up, in the interests of balance. But suppose we discover an AEO whose wife is a Quaker. Maybe she’s brainwashing him. Quakers will stoop to anything in order to thwart the nuclear holocaust: honesty, decency, even prayer. Pacifist subversion may be twisting that AEO’s brain. The humanitarian weevil may be boring into his soul. Or not. Dare we risk it? Should we sack him? Just in case?”
“Sweet Jesus,” Allen said unhappily. “I can’t start an inquisition into aircrew wives. Morale would fall through the floor.”
“And what about CND in bed with a Vulcan pilot?” Renouf said. “Will that be good for morale?”
“Whatever we do is wrong,” Skull said. “The question is, how wrong are we willing to be?”
Pulvertaft wasn’t listening. “I’d better see him,” he said. “Where is he?”
“Over Benbecula,” Allen said. “Jamming the seagulls.”
The Benbecula task was routine: cruise the 400 miles to the Isle of Lewis, arrive at forty thousand feet, fly straight and level towards the Signals Unit while Nick Dando switched his electronic gear on and off at various strengths, then do it again and again on different bearings.
Silk flew the Vulcan. Quinlan kept the blinds up and got an occasional glimpse of the Western Isles. They looked like emeralds scattered over blue velvet, which meant they were no place to make an emergency landing. Very few places were. You couldn’t put a hundred tons of Vulcan down on a field of sheep and walk away from it.
Their route home was clockwise around Britain. Ten minutes after they left Benbecula, Tucker told Quinlan that the aeroplane was being illuminated by somebody’s radar.
“From below? We’re nowhere near land.”
“So it’s a ship. Strong signal.”
“Cheeky devil.” To Silk he said, “Russian trawler. No fish, of course. Stuffed with electronic gubbins. They’re snooping on us. Okay, I’ve got control. We’ll go down and see.”
Tucker guided Quinlan down the radar signal. The Vulcan fell easily in the thin air. The signal vanished but by then Tucker had found the ship on his own radar, and soon Quinlan saw it: a black blob trailing a short white wake. He circled, shedding speed, creeping closer. “They’ve got antennae like my dog has fleas,” he said.
“Now they’re transmitting on a VHF channel,” Dando said. “Sounds familiar.” Quinlan told him to put it on the intercom. The crew listened to the lazy strut of a jazz trumpet. Its volume rose and fell as the trawler climbed and dipped in the Atlantic swells. “That’s Kenny Ball,” Silk said. “Midnight in Moscow. Unmistakeable.”
Quinlan banked and flew directly at the ship. The Vulcan was three hundred feet above the sea. “Full throttle,” he said, “now.” The bomber stood on its tail and went up as near to vertically as made no different. The trawler got the deafening blast of its roar, and the hammering backlash of its power. He took it up to ten thousand and levelled out.
“All transmissions have ceased,” Dando said.
“Maybe they were just trying to be friendly,” Silk said.
“I don’t like friends,” Quinlan said. “Never have.”
The crew walked into debriefing and Skull told Silk the station commander wanted to see him. Now. The others turned and looked. “He probably needs my advice,” Silk explained. “I saved his life several times in 1943, over Berlin. Or was it Bremen?” Tucker raised his right leg and broke wind, loud and long. “He always says that,” Hallett remarked.
Silk got shown straight into the station commander’s office. Pulvertaft told him to take a seat. “Why didn’t you inform us that your wife is up to her neck in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?”
Silk’s head recoiled as if he had been punched between the eyes. “Christ Almighty,” he said. “Why didn’t you inform me?” Pulvertaft glared. “Sir,” Silk added. Short silence. Then: “Crikey. It’s a bugger, isn’t it? Sir.” Which wasn’t what Pulvertaft wanted to hear but he couldn’t disagree. So he started talking about the implications, the consequences, the risks.
Silk was only half-listening. He felt as if a shutter in his mind had been thrown open and the light was dazzling. Now he understood what Zoë had been saying to him, and also not saying, in recent weeks. He realized how much he had contributed to his own ignorance: nothing mattered more than flying, so nothing mattered except flying. Not true: being with Zoë mattered. But each of them had somehow made a tacit agreement: your business is your business, not mine. Until now. Suddenly, her business was his business, and vice versa. He was looking at a head-on collision. No escape, no survivors… Pulvertaft was talking about the indivisibility of peace and security. “Shit and corruption,” Silk said. “I’m for the chop, aren’t I? Sir.”