"He's got the set now, then. It's all a bloody mess."
"Where is she, Patrick? If she isn't at the embassy or one of their safe houses? I" ve got everything I can screened. They won't be able to get her out — I hope. If they want to, that is. But if she's free, where is she?"
"Why not Heat of the Day? It's where she ran for help and cover in the first place? She might have nowhere else to go."
The group?"
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
Hyde groaned as he swung his legs off the bed and sat up. He touched his ribs gingerly. "Are they sure nothing's broken?"
"Quite sure."
"Free Trade Hall, Manchester, is their next venue. Where they're staying tonight, I" ve no idea. Maybe here?"
Shelley shook his head. "Not here. Some country hotel in Cheshire. I'm having it checked out."
"You won't find the girl. She won't stick her neck out again. They could even have hidden her somewhere. She'll go to ground for the duration if the Branch trample all over the garden in their big boots."
"You can't do it yourself."
Hyde rubbed his neck and shoulder, groaning softly. Then he looked into Shelley's face. "I'll accept discreet cover, but nothing more. The girl doesn't believe me as it is. If I go in mob-handed, she'll never tell us where Dad is. You can see that, can't you?"
"Aubrey wouldn't like it."
"He might. The girl is frightened. She knows one mob is after her, one mob and me on my own. Give me until tomorrow night, and if I can find her and talk to her, she might come in. I won't lose her again."
"Petrunin won't let go of you."
"All right. But the girl's more important. It won't be any good arresting a rock band and sweating the lot of them. She has to be coaxed. She's near panic. Her father must be a mistrusting bastard. She's neurotic about us."
Shelley paced the room, one hand rubbing his chin, the other thrust into the pocket of his overcoat. He glanced at Hyde from time to time. Indecision blossomed on his face. Eventually, he said: "I don't know — I just don't know."
"Look, you work on the assumption that Petrunin has her, and I'll work on the assumption he hasn't. Get back to London and mobilise the troops. I'll go up to Manchester, and sit on my arse and wait. Get me cover, discreet cover, from the Branch up there, and then let me try to get to the girl. If she isn't in Manchester, and they won't tell me where she is, then you can take over. Okay?"
"All right," Shelley said after another lengthy pause. "All right. We'll do it your way, for the moment."
"At least I'm a familiar face."
"You won't be if you get knocked about any more." He glanced at the telephone on a folding table, next to a black medical bag. "I'll try to talk to Aubrey, though. I want him to be fully informed."
It was a tableau of activity, a frozen still-life of tension, fear close to panic, routine and emergency procedures. In other parts of the submarine, men lay in their bunks or sat on the floor. No one moved unless movement was unavoidable and essential to the survival of the Proteus. In the control room, men stood or sat as their functions dictated, and when they moved — which was rarely, and with Lloyd's express permission — it was with an exaggerated, burglar-like stealth. All unnecessary electrics had been switched off, and the control room was made eerie by the emergency lighting. Only Lloyd stalked the control room like a hunter, like an escapee.
The sonars, in passive mode, their screens illuminating the faces of their operators from beneath, making arms and chins and cheeks blue or green or red, a ghastly imitation of disco strobe-lights, revealed the Proteus's danger. Under the cloak of "Leopard" the submarine lay on the ledge almost fifty fathoms down, while Soviet submarines moved back and forth around, below and above them like prowling sharks outside a diver's cage. As Lloyd watched over the shoulder of one of the sonar operators, a bright trail on the screen slid slowly to the port like the hand of a clock, mere hundreds of yards from their position. Noise — any noise — would be like blood to that shark, and bring others.
Lloyd left the screen and stood beneath one of the emergency lights. Once more, he scanned the damage report that his chief engineer had compiled in silence and semi-darkness. They had not dared send a diver outside the hull, outside the cloak of the anti-sonar. Much of it was guesswork, or deduced from the instruments and the computer. The damage was relatively slight, but almost totally disabling. Thurston and the chief engineer had guessed at a low-charge torpedo — wake-homing, as they had known in those last seconds before it struck — which had damaged the propeller blades and the port aft hydroplane. It left the Proteus with no effective propulsion, and little ability to maintain course and depth. She needed repairs before she could go anywhere. And in that conclusion, Lloyd perceived the Russian objective.
He was calm. It was partly an act for the benefit of the crew, and yet it was genuine too. He had not known he would react in this way, in harm's way. It had little to do with the fact that the pressure hull remained undamaged, or with the invisibility bestowed by "Leopard". It was, simply, him. He had no inclination to curse MoD or to blame himself for not aborting the mission hours earlier. The past, even as recently as two hours before, was dead to him. The Russians did not know where they were and, eventually, help must come — diplomatic, military, civilian, mechanical, political.
Thurston left the navigator and Hayter, who was taking a much needed break from monitoring the functioning of "Leopard", and crossed the control room. In his hand he had a notebook and pen. He held it up to Lloyd.
Thurston had written: What do we do? Lloyd merely shook his head. Thurston was puzzled, then scribbled furiously on a fresh sheet of the notebook: We have to tell someone. Lloyd took a pen from his breast pocket, and borrowed Thurston's notebook. He scribbled: And tell them where we are? Thurston — Lloyd could not help being amused by the pantomime they were enacting — wrote: Must be Nimrod in area by now.
We can't transmit. Too risky. Lloyd scribbled.
They want "Leopard" — but how? Thurston wrote.
Salvage?
They couldn't, Thurston began writing, then his hand trailed off to the edge of the sheet. Savagely, he crossed out what he had written. Defiantly, he wrote: Have to find us first. Lloyd patted his shoulder, then wrote: Only a few days.
The sudden noise was deafening, literally terrifying to every man in the control room. It was more than two seconds before the rating at the code-signals console cut the amplification with a hand that dabbed out, as if electrified, at the switch. He stared at Lloyd guiltily, afraid, his youthful face behind his ginger beard blushing. Lloyd tiptoed across to him, his whole body shaking with reaction. The chatter of a high-speed coded signal, incoming. The rating removed his headphones, offering them like a propitiation to Lloyd, something to avert his wrath. Lloyd pressed him, firmly but not unkindly, on the shoulder, and held the headphones to one ear. He nodded, as if deciphering the signal for himself, or hearing an instruction in plain language. The rating flicked switches, and waited. His screen remained blank. Lloyd watched it, looking into a mirror, a crystal ball. Thurston arrived behind him, his breath ragged and only now slowing down. Lloyd felt the tension in the control room of the shrilling chatter of the signal, and the awareness of the Russians beyond the hull, and the knowledge that the signal was continuing. It crawled on his skin like St Elmo's Fire, or a disturbed nest of ants.