‘Copper-bottomed, the Company says.’
‘And how come Savkin doesn’t know what’s going on?’
‘It’s one of his closest friends that has changed sides, and he’s still choosing the moment to tell him. But the CIA thinks Savkin’s seen it coming — that’s why he’s been sounding off about “American aggression”. Wants a distraction. Needs one — at any price, John.’
His final words hung like a thundercloud. Their eyes met, unblinking.
‘How far would he go, Tom?’
‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand dollar question. The Soviet section chief at Langley thinks Savkin wants a shooting-match — a little one — just so long as it’s us that starts it.’
‘He’s not going to risk that!’
‘I said “a little one”. A small, contained conflict. A few shots fired, maybe one or two people killed — enough to make one hell of a big story back home to take the workers’ minds off the bread queues, and to hold together any splits in the Politburo.’
‘And how the hell do you arrange a “small, contained conflict” between the USA and the Soviet Union, for God’s sake?’
‘At sea. It already happened, a few years ago, in the Black Sea. One of our warships got rammed by one of theirs while we were exercising our right of innocent passage through Soviet territorial waters. If you take that scenario a step further, you’ll get shots being fired.
‘Right now Savkin doesn’t reckon he has much to lose. He’s just as committed to perestroika as Gorbachev was. If it fails, the Soviet Union heads back to the dark ages — that’s his line.’
‘For dark ages, read “cold war”.’
Reynolds shrugged. It was a bleak picture. If the Politburo had its way, Russian relations with the West would take a dive. Yet for Savkin to hold on to power, he’d have to sacrifice all the east-west détente that had been built up in recent years.
‘So, what’s your advice, Tom?’
‘Keep it cool. Like we’ve done with the Rostov. Don’t give them the chance to pull us into a fight.’
‘And the exercise?’
‘You mustn’t be seen to be changing any of it. But let’s check the game plan. It won’t be the surface ships that cause trouble; they’ll keep west of North Cape, the way they always do. It’s the subs that worry me. They got something different planned, but I don’t remember what it is. You got the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming to see you in an hour. Just time for me to call him, to make sure he’s briefed.’
‘Okay. Do it, Tom.’
McGuire looked at his watch. He could grab a sandwich lunch before the Admiral arrived and have everything straightened out before he called the British Prime Minister at 4pm.
Rear-Admiral Anthony Bourlet was thunderstruck. He let the telephone receiver drop onto its rest. What Captain Norman Craig had just told him had given Operation Shadowhunt a ghastly new dimension.
Suddenly they faced the possibility that Hitchens wasn’t suffering a breakdown after all, but was acting under some sort of duress, presumable from the KGB.
Bourlet checked his watch. 1700 hrs. There could still be someone at the registry. He jabbed a finger at the intercom button.
‘Do something very urgently for me, will you?’ he called his WRNS PA. ‘Get onto the registry and see what you can dig up on HMS Tenby, Not the SSN. The old T-class with the same name, back in the early sixties. Disappeared in the Barents. I want to know when, where, and preferably the inquiry report, too. Hurry now. I’m just going along to the C-in-C.’
‘He’s just left his office, sir.’
‘Well, see if you can catch him. Ring down to the security desk.’
The door to the C-in-C’s outer office was open.
‘Has he been gone long?’
‘’Bout half a minute, sir. Just missed him,’ replied Waverley’s staff officer. Just then the telephone rang.
‘Oh, yes, sir. He’s here now.’
The lieutenant commander passed the phone across.
‘Is this really urgent, Anthony? I’m in a hurry,’ came the irritated voice of Admiral Waverley.
‘Vital, sir.’
There was a pause. Bourlet heard a sigh at the other end.
‘Oh, all right. I’ll come up again.’
Within two minutes Bourlet was explaining about the unknown woman who had met Philip secretly in Guernsey earlier that summer.
‘Craig’s been onto the security services. They’re going to see Sara Hitchens again. Apparently the Russian who’s been screwing her has a wife. MI5 suspects there was some sort of double-act going on.’
‘I’m lost. What exactly do we suspect now?’
Waverley was hollow-eyed at the thought of having to break news of further horrors to the Prime Minister.
‘Remember those words of Philip’s that Sara overheard; “Dad, what have they done to you?” — something to that effect? Suggests Philip’s father is still alive. If that’s the case, the Soviets could be offering to free him — in exchange for something.’
Waverley swallowed hard.
‘Like what?’
‘Dunno. A Trafalgar class sub?’ Bourlet joked grimly.
‘Bollocks! His crew would never let him.’
‘Well then, something else.…’
‘A Moray mine?’
‘Exactly!’
‘Oh, Christ!’
Waverley pressed the flat of his hand against his brow, rubbing it back and forth as if to muffle the alarm bells ringing inside his head.
The implications were horrendous. The Moray was a British — American development. He could imagine the bad-mouthing that would pour from Washington if this nightmare came true.
‘But, but even if Hitchens had been blackmailed into giving them a Moray, what about his wife’s affair with the Russian? Are you saying he accepted that as just something else he had to put up with if his father was to be freed? Surely not.’
‘According to Sara Hitchens, when Philip found out about her and the Russian, it seemed to make up his mind for him. Make of that what you will.’
‘In other words, we haven’t a clue what he’s going to do.’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
Waverley stood up and smoothed his uniform jacket.
‘I’ll have to tell Downing Street. She’s not going to like this, you know.’
Bourlet took a certain malicious pleasure in seeing the misery engraved on the face of his Commander-in-Chief.
‘And you’d better signal Commander Tinker in Tenby, particularly as it’s his own wife who’s brought all this to light.…’ Waverley frowned. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence — the name of the SSN we’ve sent to find him. D’you think it means something?’
Back in his own office Bourlet opened Hitchens’ file, and began to read. His own memories of the events of 1962 began to return. He’d been a sub-lieutenant then, on his first posting.
The official report had been a bland document for public consumption, making no reference to the spying mission that Tenby had been engaged in at the time. But a secret annexe to the report suggested the very real possibility that the Soviets had vaporized the boat with a nuclear torpedo.
But if Lieutenant Commander Hitchens, Philip’s father, was still alive, that theory didn’t fit any more.
The Foreign Secretary, Sir Nigel Penfold, arrived at Number 10 at 8.30 p.m., half-an-hour before the call from Washington was due. In his briefcase were the notes from MI6, which offered an assessment of Soviet affairs almost identical to that provided by the CIA to President McGuire.
In the House of Commons that afternoon the Prime Minister had faced tough questions from MPs, suggesting the NATO manoeuvres were indeed provocative at a time when President Savkin needed all the help he could get. In reply she’d slammed into the ‘blatant propaganda’ emanating from Moscow, and trumpeted the right of NATO navies to exercise in the Norwegian Sea.