Aubrey made no distinction of security between himself and the "Chessboard Counter" team, and used one of the battery of telephones in the underground room. Cunningham, he knew, was with the Foreign Secretary, having been summoned to a second meeting with the Soviet Ambassador. He heard Cunningham at the other end of the line within half a minute of placing the call to the Foreign Office.
"Yes, Kenneth? What news?" Cunningham sounded breathless. Aubrey supposed it stemmed from events rather than exertion.
"Expert opinion — " Aubrey could not suppress an involuntary glance towards Clark and the tight-knit group around and beneath the map-board — "has it here that the Russians may have boarded Proteus.""
"Good God, that's outrageous!"
"The Ambassador hasn't confirmed as much?"
"He's talking of rescue, of course — but not of boarding. Not directly. Not as yet, that is."
"How does he explain the incident?"
There was a chilly chuckle in Cunningham's voice, the laugh of a man succeeding, just, in appreciating a joke against himself. "The captain of the Russian submarine suffered a nervous breakdown. He ordered the firing of the torpedo in question before he could be relieved of his command by the usual heroic young officer, loyal to the Party and the cause of world peace."
"That is perhaps the unkindest cut of all, that they can get away with such a ridiculous tale, knowing we can do nothing to refute it. And nothing to rescue our submarine."
"The Foreign Secretary has informed the PM, Kenneth. She's monitoring the situation. Every effort is being made to pressurise the Soviet Union into leaving the area and leaving Proteus to us."
"And—?"
"Very little. They insist, absolutely insist, on making amends. For the lunacy of one of their naval officers, as the Ambassador put it."
"Washington?"
"The President is gravely concerned — "
"And will do nothing?"
"Is prepared to accept the Russian story at face value, for the sake of international tension, despite what his military advisers tell him. I don't think he quite grasps the importance of “Leopard”."
"I see. We are getting nowhere?"
"Nowhere. What of this man Quin?"
"Nothing. The girl is the key. I'm waiting for a report from Hyde."
"Would it help if we recovered him, at least?"
"We might then destroy “Leopard”, I suppose."
"The PM will not risk the lives of the crew," Cunningham warned sternly. "The Foreign Secretary and I were informed of that in the most unequivocal manner."
"I meant only that we could attempt sabotage, or Lloyd could if Quin was in our hands again."
"Quite. You don't think “Leopard” had been damaged by Lloyd or his crew?"
"It is possible, but I think unlikely. None of our signals reached the Proteus.""
"Very well. Kenneth, I think you'd better come over here at once. You may have to brief the Foreign Secretary before he sees the PM again. Leave Pyott in command there."
"Very well. In fifteen minutes."
Aubrey replaced the receiver. The room was quiet with failure. Clark watched him steadily, some of the younger men regarded him with hope. Pyott appeared resigned. It was, he admitted, a complete and utter intelligence disaster — precisely the kind he could not tolerate or accept.
"Giles," he called, and then thought: where the devil is Hyde?
Quin beckoned like a light at the end of a dark tunnel. A false, beguiling gleam, perhaps, but he had no other point of reference or hope.
Hyde wished he could call Aubrey from the row of telephones with their huge plastic hair-dryer hoods that he could see through the glass doors of the cafeteria. He was afraid, however, of leaving the girl for a moment. He was afraid of letting her out of his sight for any length of time, however short, and afraid, too, that she was beginning to regret her earlier decision. And he was also wary, treading delicately on the fragile, thin-ice crust of the trust she meagrely afforded him, of reminding her that there were other, more faceless, more powerful people behind him. The kind of people her father had fled from originally.
The telephones remained at the edge of his eyesight, in the centre of cognition, as he sipped his coffee and watched her eagerly devouring a plate of thin, overcooked steak and mushrooms and chips. For himself, beans on toast had been as much as he could eat. Tension wore at him, devouring appetite as well as energy. Quin was somewhere in the north of England — the girl had said nothing more than that, and he refrained from pumping her further for fear of recreating the drama of obsessive suspicion in her mind. He behaved, as far as he was able, as a driver who was giving her a lift north. The adrenalin refused to slow in his veins. He was nervous of pursuit — though he had seen no evidence of it — and he was suffering the stimulant effects of their escape from Petrunin.
"How's the tour going?" he asked conversationally.
She looked at him, a forkful of chips poised at her lips, which were shiny with eating. Her face was amused, and somehow obscurely contemptuous.
"I didn't have time to notice."
Hyde shrugged. "I thought you might have heard. I hope they do well."
"You expect me to believe that's all that's on your mind — the profits of an over-thirties rock band?" she sneered, chewing on the mouthful of chips, already slicing again at the thin steak. The cafeteria of the motorway service station was early-hours quiet around them. One or two lorry drivers wading through mountainous plates of food, a carload of caravanners avoiding the traffic of the day by travelling by night, smuggling their way to their holiday destination, the two waitresses leaning at the cash register, grumbling. Just south of Lancaster. Hyde hoped that Quin was somewhere in the Lake District. The sooner he got to him, the better.
He shrugged. "No, I don't think you're that stupid. Just filling in time, trying to lull you into a false sense of security." He grinned in what he hoped was an unsuspicious, engaging manner.
She studied him narrowly. Her plate was empty. "You're odd," she said eventually. "And too bloody clever by half. Don't pull the dumb ocker stunt with me."
She was still in control of their situation, leading him by the hand to her father, only because her father had agreed. She would tell him nothing until the last minute, to retain control.
"Thank you. Tell me, why did your father up and away like that? He wasn't really frightened of us, was he?"
She screwed her face up in thought, then released the skin into clear, youthful planes and curves again. With a bit of make-up, Hyde thought, she wouldn't look bad. They all wear a sneer these days.
"He was frightened of them — people like the ones tonight," she said. "And he didn't believe people like you —" An old and easy emphasis lay on the words like a mist. Pigs, Fascists, cops, the fuzz. The necessary vocabulary of her age and her education. The silence after the emphatic last word was strained, and she looked down, suddenly younger, more easily embarrassed.
"I see," he said. "We would have looked after him, you know."
"No you wouldn't!" she snapped, looking up again. "They watched him all the time. Your people took time off for meals, and the pub, and to go for a piss — they didn't! They were there all the time. Dad said there were a hundred times he could have been kidnapped while your lot weren't there or weren't looking!" She was leaning forward, whispering intently, a breathy shout. "You wouldn't have taken care of him — he took care of himself."