‘Hitchens?’
She nodded.
‘She’s having problems with Simon. He’s going to be thirteen soon and still hasn’t got used to boarding school. His headmaster’s accused him of vandalizing microscopes in the biology lab. Sara’s worried he’ll turn to arson next!’
‘That’s appalling! Philip sailed today. He ignored my salute! Not like him at all. Perhaps he was worrying about Simon. Last thing you need when you’re going to sea.’
‘Last thing a mother needs at any time,’ she stressed pointedly. ‘Particularly Sara. You know how unstable she is.’
‘Over-emotional, that’s all.’
‘You fancy Sara, that’s your trouble!’
‘I just feel sorry for her. She’s not so good at coping as you are. And I have to take an interest. Simon’s my godson.’
‘Ohh! Well remembered!’ Patsy mocked. ‘When did you last even see him? Last year? Year before?’
‘Oh, come on…’
‘Sorry. That wasn’t fair. Here’s your sandwich.’
She passed him a plate and they sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I’m afraid we’re out of beer.’
She smiled apologetically.
‘Welcome home!’
Commander Philip Hitchens had seldom experienced claustrophobia, but now the cabin felt as narrow as a coffin, as HMS Truculent hummed towards the Atlantic depths.
For eight hours after leaving Devonport, Philip had hardly left the control room. Inshore waters were the most dangerous, and avoiding collisions took maximum concentration. He didn’t trust the watch; all young men, their minds wandered when he wasn’t around.
They’d kept at periscope depth in the Channel; the sea was calm and visibility good. The sonar produced a jumble of tanker traffic, confused by echoes from the sea-bed, but he could see the ships clearly enough through the periscope up to five miles away.
Keeping busy had served another purpose, too; to distract his mind from the nightmare of the past three months, a personal nightmare of duplicity, the depth of which he had yet to fathom.
Now it was evening. South of Ireland, they were away from the shipping channels. Time to leave it to the watch. He withdrew to his cabin, to his solitary hell. Once there, he sat hunched at the foot of his bunk like a child. It was the furthest he could get from his work-table, from the framed photograph of Sara. Every time he looked at her picture, the shock, the misery, the pain engulfed him anew.
Betrayal! The word echoed in his mind like a slamming door; not just her — the bastard Russians, too!
He’d thought of putting the photograph in a drawer so as not to look at her, but ruled it out. Everything had to stay normal; no one must know. His cabin was also his office, visited by others. Family photographs were like icons in officers’ quarters. Their absence would be quickly noticed.
He couldn’t stop thinking of her. The night before they’d sailed he’d stayed on board, unable to sleep, knowing she was seeing that man again. She’d promised it was to say goodbye, to tell him they’d never meet again. But did he believe her? Could he believe anything she said, any more?
As for Simon — he couldn’t imagine, didn’t dare think, what his future would hold now. His son was the one restraint on what he planned. But he was at a good school; they’d see him right. Nothing must stand in his way.
There was a debt to be settled, vengeance for a past wrong, a terrible wrong which transcended all other considerations.
‘Captain, sir! Officer of the Watch!’
The tannoy loudspeaker above his desk startled him.
He leapt up from the bunk and clicked the microphone switch.
‘Captain!’
‘Sound room’s got a sonar contact. They think it’s a trawler, sir.’
‘I’m coming now.’
His cabin was just yards from the control room. He was there within seconds, glad of the distraction. Trawlers were the bane of submariners’ lives in coastal waters. Fouling their nets could mean the early end of a patrol.
He headed for the navigation plot. The submarine’s position was being provided by SINS, the Submarine Inertial Navigation System, a gyroscopic device that had proven remarkably accurate.
The navigator and officer of the watch was Lieutenant Nick Cavendish, a twenty-five-year-old on his first patrol with Truculent.
‘Depth?’
‘Seventy metres, sir. Thirty metres under the keel.’
‘Should be okay at this depth. What’s the contact’s bearing?’
‘Ten degrees on the starboard bow. Range unknown.’
He stared at the chart. They were approaching the edge of the continental shelf west of Ireland. A few more hours and the sea bed would drop thousands of metres, giving them all the water they could want to avoid hazards trailing from the surface. The chart showed no obstructions for miles.
‘I need more sea room. They’re bloody long, those trawl wires. Officer of the Watch, come round to 210.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Helm! Port thirty. Keep course two-one-zero.’
Best to take no chances; trawl nets were undetectable until their hawsers scrapped the acoustic tiles off the casing, by which time it was too late.
‘Anything else on sonar?’
‘One other surface contact up to the north-west, very distant. Sounds like a tanker. No submarines, sir. And none expected for the next twenty-four hours, according to the intelligence sitrep.’
Philip shot a glance round the control room. In the centre, the oiled steel periscope shafts glistened in their deck housings. About a dozen men, ratings in blue shirts, officers in white, were concentrating as the boat manoeuvred. The planesman at the one-man control console operated the stick that ‘flew’ the submarine through the water, marine engineers monitored gauges for the trim valves and propulsion system, and seamen, some of them not much more than eighteen, peered at the amber screens of the tactical systems.
Those who caught the captain’s eye looked away quickly. They didn’t like him much, the men of Truculent, but they respected him, and that was what mattered. He’d need that respect when the crunch came in a few days’ time.
Across the room at the weapons control console, the weapon engineer officer, Lieutenant Commander Paul Spriggs was talking to a rating. Hitchens liked Spriggs; the man was crisp and concise in the way he handled his men, everything by the book. Spriggs would be vital to him at the end, a WEO who wouldn’t question orders.
Philip hovered by the chart table, pulling out the sheet for the north of Scotland and the water between Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands. Known as the GIFUK (Greenland, Iceland, Faroes, UK) Gap, this was NATO’s underwater front line, a strategic barrier through which Soviet submarines should not be able to pass undetected on their way to the central Atlantic.
A ridge of sand, mud and rock ran between the land masses, along which the US Navy had laid a string of hydrophones known as SOSUS, SOund SUrveillance System, able to detect the passing of almost any submarine. Sonar-equipped surface ships and aircraft patrolled above, to complete the barrier.
Truculent was taking part in Exercise Ocean Guardian, which involved over a hundred NATO ships and submarines, practising the reinforcement of Norway and control of the Norwegian Sea.
‘Are we going tactical on the transit, sir?’ asked the WEO. ‘See how many Yank skimmers we can zap before they get a whiff of us?’
‘Certainly not!’
Heads turned at the sharpness of Philip’s reply.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Spriggs mumbled. ‘Thought that was the plan.’
‘No,’ Philip repeated softly, conscious of his overreaction. ‘We’ve got to avoid any risk of detection. We’re blue at first, as you know. But then we go unlisted.’