So he decided to say nothing about the wrench, nothing about the fact that their secret presence in the area had been revealed for a couple of hours to any passing ship or plane that had cared to listen. With any luck there hadn’t been any.
All over with now. No more noises escaping to the outside world. And the pump bearing was holding up despite his fears.
Rear-Admiral Anthony Bourlet was on his third cup of coffee. At his insistence the WRNS who was his personal assistant had installed a filter machine when he took over the job of Flag Officer Submarines. He looked across his office to the brass ship’s clock on the wall next to the barometer.
Nearly eleven. The ‘crabs’ should have been airborne for several hours already. The RAF hated the Navy’s nickname for them, but Bourlet thought the tag apt. Airmen did seem to do everything sideways.
He downed a cup of Kenya blend and headed for the staircase.
‘Going down the “hole”,’ he growled to his trim, smartly-uniformed PA as he passed the outer office.
‘OPCON’s on the line, sir. There’s been a signal from Tenby.’
He swerved into her doorway and grabbed the out-stretched phone.
‘FOSM here,’ he barked, then listened. ‘Aha! Bloody good news!’ He listened again.
‘His file? Already been through that. Still, no harm in another look. On my way.’
He passed the phone back to his PA.
‘Hitchens’ file — we’ve still got it here, haven’t we?’
‘I think it’s with Commander Rush, sir. She asked to look at it first thing this morning.’
‘Ah. Get her to come and talk to me about it in an hour, would you? Or maybe a little later. Say twelve-thirty, and fix us some sandwiches — smoked salmon — and, er, a bottle of the Sauvignon, nicely chilled?’
He winked at her, which made her smile self-consciously. She knew he was a frightful lecher but she liked him anyway.
It took him three minutes to walk to the entrance of the bunker, and another three to descend to the computer-filled cavern of the OPCON centre. Thousands of signals a day were dealt with here, and stored for months on computer files.
‘It’s all happening, sir,’ the duty operations officer saluted. ‘We’ve just had the Nimrod on. They’re in contact with a Trafalgar at this very minute. It has to be Truculent.’
‘Bloody good news!’
‘She’s got a dodgy pump apparently; making a hell of a racket. But she’s doing twenty-eight knots and can’t hear herself.’
‘Where is she?’
The ops officer picked up an illuminated pointer and turned to the giant wall map.
‘About two-fifty miles west of North Cape, heading northeast.’
A signals warrant officer tore a sheet from a printer and thrust it into the Ops officer’s hand.
‘Eight Lima Golf again, sir.’
‘Thank you. Our Nimrod, sir,’ the Ops officer explained to the Admiral.
‘And…?’
‘They seem to have fixed the pump, sir. Noise signature’s almost back to normal. She’s slowed down to twenty knots. The Nimrod’s asking if you want them to let the boat know they’re there.’
‘No! Absolutely not! They must stay with her — keep tracking until the Tenby can get close. She’ll do the talking.’
‘Right, sir. I’ll send that off.’
‘And fast, before the “crabs” bugger it up.’
Philip stood in the ‘bandstand’. They were getting close to Soviet waters. Time to go ‘invisible’. He’d ordered a cut in speed to eighteen knots and told the MEO he could shut down the pump with the worn bearing. At their slower, quieter speed, Philip had ordered rapid changes of course to lose any hunters who might have tracked them while they’d been moving fast.
Philip looked at the control-room clock set on Zulu time — GMT. In ten minutes precisely, a communications satellite would beam down a stream of signals. The closer they came to Soviet waters, the more he needed the intelligence data it would include.
The sound room had reported nothing except the propeller cavitation of a couple of merchantmen butting their way round the craggy north Norwegian coast about forty miles away.
The information had not reassured him. Both his own Navy and the Soviets were bound to be looking for him. So, where were they?
At first the intelligence reports had listed the Truculent, but no more. HMS Tenby had received the same treatment. On Sunday she’d been west of Tromso, but on Monday there’d been no mention of her.
So was it the new Tenby they were sending after him? How ironic that it should be her, of all boats.
‘Revolutions for six knots! Ten up. Keep periscope depth!’ Cordell ordered.
Philip looked at the clock again, anxiously. Five minutes to their satcom slot.
Flight Lieutenant Stan Mackintosh was uncomfortably aware of his hangover. The night before, after discovering the price of Norwegian beer, he and his crew had retired to a hotel bedroom with some six-packs of lager and bottles of scotch, bought at NAAFI prices before leaving England.
‘Tosh’ had come to the conclusion that he was a bit too old for the heavy drinking the younger men could manage. His brain hurt and his stomach churned alarmingly as the Nimrod banked and turned, trying to keep track of the suddenly elusive submarine below.
He didn’t know what had prompted the Truculent to take evasive action. They’d certainly not given away their presence. They’d dropped passive buoys only, and had kept above five-thousand feet so the boat wouldn’t hear them through the water.
It had been easy at first; ‘spearing fish in a barrel’ was how he’d described it when they’d detected the boat’s noisy pump over fifty miles away. But now the AQS. 901 acoustic processor was struggling to separate anything from the normal background noise.
He peered over the shoulders of the operators at the green screens. Even on the narrow band analyser none of the buoys they had in the water at the moment had kept a hold on the Truculent’s noise signature.
‘We’ve lost the bastard,’ yelled the Tactical Navigator in exasperation.
The big round screen showed the plot disintegrating. Bearing lines from the buoys, which had converged neatly to give the boat’s position, now diverged wildly.
‘Last seen heading north but believed to be turning west. We’ve got buoys still listening on that side, and there’s nothing.’
‘Perhaps the bugger’s coming up to periscope depth,’ the AEO suggested. They hadn’t used their Searchwater radar so far. No need, and anyway its transmissions would give away their presence to any warship within a hundred and fifty miles.
Mackintosh swung his burly frame down the narrow tube of the aircraft to the radar operator’s position. The bored flight sergeant was idly turning the pages of the Searchwater manual.
‘All fired up?’ the AEO asked.
‘Red hot, sir!’
Tosh reflected for a moment. If Truculent stuck her periscope above the surface, she’d soon know the Nimrod was there. Northwood had told them to keep their presence secret. Yet if they didn’t use the radar they might never find the boat again.
‘Oh, what the hell! Give it a burst.’
The radar operator flicked the switch that brought his screen sparkling to life.
Cordell checked the control room clock. Just minutes to go.