He wanted the story to be true, wanted desperately to bring his father home to England, back to life. But he had to guard against self-deception.
Think. Think hard. Then decide. He mustn’t have doubts when the time came.
The last time he’d seen his father had been in Guernsey in August 1962. Philip had been fourteen. That summer he’d felt closer to his father than ever before.
That’s how he remembered it anyhow. Had it really been like that?
His father had been such a confident man, with firm views on everything — never a moment’s doubt in his own judgement. Whenever he came home from sea, Philip would follow him round the house like a dog, he remembered, drawing strength from being close to him.
His father had been an aloof man, however, and in truth there’d been few occasions when the two of them had been really close.
It had rained most of that summer. Much of the holiday had been spent indoors playing Monopoly, or even bridge whenever his father managed to bully a fellow holidaymaker into making up a four. Philip had no brothers or sisters; his mother had confided once that giving birth to him had been such a ghastly experience, she’d determined never to repeat it.
He’d sensed an unusual tension between his parents that summer. Perhaps his mother had known his father was about to embark on a spying mission; perhaps it was something personal. He would never know now.
When the news came that his father’s boat was Missing Presumed Lost, his mother retreated into extended mourning, bitter at the world for taking away her husband.
Philip shuddered. Looking back on his unhappy boyhood would do nothing to answer the questions in his head.
What would Andrew do in his situation?
He often asked himself that — an old habit acquired soon after the two of them began their naval training together at Dartmouth. To Philip, every decision Andrew Tinker took seemed effortless; the man knew instinctively what to do, while he himself floundered in uncertainty and self-doubt.
He’d used Andrew as a life-raft when they were students; uncomfortably aware of it, he’d wondered that his room-mate tolerated him so gladly. One day in a flash of insight, he worked out why; for all Andrew’s decisiveness and competence, there was one ingredient for a naval career which he lacked. Background.
And that was something Philip had plenty of. With a dead hero for a father, and a grandfather who’d been a Rear Admiral, it was ‘background’ that had brought him into the Navy and ‘background’ which he’d hoped might offset any lack of brilliance as an officer.
Coming from a family with no naval connections, Andrew had hungered for the true taste of the Navy and its traditions. It was a knowledge Philip could provide.
The complementary nature of their original friendship had turned later into good-natured rivalry in everything they did — even marriage. Philip knew it had been Andrew’s engagement to Patsy that had spurred him to find a wife for himself.
He and Sara had been wildly in love when they married. Dreams, all dreams. A nightmare now.
Andrew Tinker sat huddled over the wardroom table of HMS Tenby and chewed his thumbnail. Spread before him were charts of the underwater landscape north of Norway and inside the Kola inlet.
‘What we really need is a mind-reader,’ Andrew sighed.
‘He’s been sitting in that boat for nearly a week,’ Commander Biddle reminded him. ‘Even if he were planning to blow up some Russians because a KGB man poked his wife, surely he’d have thought better of it by now?’
Andrew nodded. His own thoughts exactly.
‘And if he hasn’t, he must be really off his head. Somebody on board should have twigged.’
‘But they haven’t,’ Biddle said. ‘There’s just been a signal in from FOSM. No news at all. No sign of the Truc since the “crabs” found and lost her yesterday.’
‘The Nimrod should be airborne again by now.’
‘That’s confirmed. They’re starting at twenty degrees east and working west.’
Andrew found the longitude line on the chart and nodded.
‘’S’ about right. Couldn’t have got any further than that if he’d gone flat out. Where are we?’
Biddle’s finger traced a line northeast from where they’d picked up Andrew the previous evening.
‘We’re doing eighteen knots. Means we can listen on sonar and still end up in front of him. We’ll sit tight off North Cape and wait for his signature as he comes steaming up behind us.’
‘I can’t for one moment believe it’ll be that easy.’
Andrew pulled towards him the chart showing the Kol’skiy Zaliv, the Kola Inlet where the Soviet Northern Fleet had its headquarters.
‘We can’t be sure that’s where he’s going,’ Andrew continued.
‘Best place if he’s looking for Sovs to shoot.’
‘Ah, but is that what he’s planning? I’ve known Phil a long time. This picture we’re painting of a man ready to risk war to avenge his wife’s indiscretions — it just doesn’t fit.’
‘No? What about the mental breakdown theory?’
‘I’ve thought a lot about that, and I don’t buy it either. If Phil had a breakdown, he wouldn’t be able to conceal it. He’d just go to pieces. Tim Pike’s his first lieutenant; he’s a good hand and he’d soon sort him out.’
‘But he hasn’t.’
‘Exactly. Which is why I’m convinced there’s something else behind it. Something much more complicated.’
‘Such as?’
‘Christ! If I knew that…’ Andrew spread his arms wide and stretched.
‘Would it be worth getting FOSM to look in his personnel file?’
‘Maybe. I’ll send a signal. Trouble is, I don’t know what they should look for.’
They fell silent. Tenby’s wardroom began to fill up with officers finished with the night watch, but not yet ready to get their heads down. There were thirteen officers on board, but the dining table only had seats for ten. In a corner by the door was a small refrigerator containing beer and soft drinks. Andrew had been offered a beer the night before, but had noticed none of Biddle’s officers drank when at sea, and had declined it.
‘We’ve got a satcom slot at 12.20. But we can do an HF burst sooner than that, if you want.’
‘Okay. I’ll draft a signal.’
Instinctively Andrew made as if to return to his cabin, but checked himself in time. His sleeping quarter was a mattress pallet, clipped to the torpedo rack in the forward weapons compartment. Biddle had offered the use of his own quarters as an office, but it was desperately small, which was why they’d chosen to sit in the wardroom. He pulled out a small notebook and turned to a clean page.
‘Captain, sir!’ the loudspeaker crackled.
Biddle stood up and pressed the microphone key.
‘Yes, Murray.’ It was the executive officer.
‘Got a contact. At least, TAS says we have.’
‘On my way.’
They both headed for the sound room.
‘The trouble with being the trials boat for a new sonar system,’ Biddle explained, ‘is the shortage of background data. Without more experience with the gear, we don’t know whether we’ve really got a contact or whether the transputer analyser’s imagined it!’
The green-glowing sonar displays in the big grey, shock-mounted cabinets looked the same as the ones on his own boat, but Andrew had been told that both the hydrophones trailed astern and the computer that analysed and categorized the different sounds had been developed a step beyond his own equipment.