Her task was to slowly criss-cross the North Cape current, silently and undetected, listening to the world go by. At this she was extremely effective. Powered by a 1,700 horse-power electric motor, she was completely noiseless when moving at a mere five knots.
Every twelve hours or so, within the shelter of the Norwegian coast, she’d raise a breathing tube for her oxygen-hungry diesels to recharge the batteries.
Tonight there was excitement on board, suppressed but still almost tangible. The young conscript crew had heard things they’d never heard before.
Sea creatures and passing tramp steamers were the normal acoustic diet of their bow-mounted sonar, but tonight there’d been submarines, friendly boats whose details should have appeared in the day’s intelligence summary, and hadn’t.
Norway’s navy co-operated closely with Britain’s, and expected to be informed when British boats passed through Norwegian waters.
The first contact had passed from west to east at about fifteen knots, two hours earlier. The noise signature had been that of a Trafalgar class submarine.
They’d guessed it passed within four miles for them to have heard it at all. Trafalgars were notoriously quiet.
The Storm had turned south again.
Then came the second surprise — an almost identical signature, moving more slowly this time, but on the same eastbound track.
The commander of the Storm smiled to herself and guessed they were heading for the Kola Inlet.
They must be on an intelligence operation, nothing to do with Exercise Ocean Guardian. That’s why the British had said nothing.
This was the sort of thing her own navy would never indulge in. Living right next to ‘the bear’, caution and correctness were the catchwords for neighbourliness.
Another twelve hours and their patrol would be over. She’d report what they’d heard to her intelligence officer, but it would go no further. An ally’s secret would be safe with them.
Peter Biddle spread a chart on his bunk.
‘Nothing from the sound room. Not a trace. Looks like we’ve missed him. Hope to God the Nimrod does better.’
Andrew sighed.
‘Look, if the Russians are ever to find the mine, Phil’s got to give it to them on a plate.’
‘Eh?’
‘So, let’s look at the chart, and see if we can find a plate.’
Biddle frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’
The sheet covered a fifty mile stretch of the Soviet coastline, with the Kola Inlet at its centre. The main Soviet naval bases were clearly marked in the bays around the fjord. A peninsula to the west curved north and east creating a natural shelter against the Arctic storms.
‘That’s the place!’ Andrew exclaimed, pointing to a mark east of the Inlet. ‘Has to be. That rock, ten miles off the coast, “Ostrov Chernyy”. The chart shows a radar site on it, nothing else. But there’s an underwater spit running north from it, covered with fine sand. Water’s sixty or seventy metres deep, and the spit’s not more than a hundred metres across. It’s easy to find with bottom contour navigation; large enough for him to lay the mine safely; and small enough for the Russians to search with their bottom crawlers.’
Mission impossible? Not so impossible, after all.
He pushed the chart to one side and sat down on the bunk. Biddle dropped into his chair.
Andrew closed his eyes trying to remember exactly what had happened to the old HMS Tenby all those years ago, and to imagine the effect on a teenage boy of losing a father in such circumstances.
‘It’s an odd feeling, being on board an HMS Tenby in circumstances like these.’
‘Bit spooky, really,’ responded Biddle.
‘Phil must’ve been shattered to lose his old man like that.’
‘No corpse to grieve over.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They say you can’t complete the process of grieving unless you have the body to bury or burn. Makes it final. In Phil’s case, perhaps the grieving process never finished.’
‘And now he finds his father’s alive. It’s enough to send anyone nuts. Do you know the story of the old Tenby? You must have a potted history on board, Peter. Previous ships that’ve borne this glorious name, etcetera.’
‘Sure, but it’s all pretty bland. You won’t learn much from that. Tell you what, though; Murray Watson’s done some digging. I think he got a look at some secret files at Bath, once. Keeps threatening to write a book on it and tell the “real” story.’
‘Pull him in here, can you? Before he gets his head down.’
Biddle stepped into the corridor and reappeared a few moments later with his first lieutenant, looking puzzled.
‘I gather you’re a historian, Murray,’ Andrew explained.
‘Far too grand a title, sir. But I know a bit about the old Tenby.’
‘All I remember is that she disappeared in the Barents without trace, and they concluded her torpedo magazine had gone up.’
‘Yes, well; that was a load of cobblers. But they were so mystified by the disappearance, they spent a fortune on analysing the design. A sharp engineer, keen to make a name for himself, calculated that there was a theoretical fire hazard. The scenario he dreamed up only had a I in 100,000 chance of happening, but it was the only conclusion the enquiry was able to reach. So, they spent millions refitting the boats.’
‘But you don’t reckon there was a fire?’
‘No.’
‘So what did happen to Tenby?’
A shutter seemed to close on Watson’s face.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Listen, Murray. What happened in 1962 is connected with what’s happening to us at this very moment.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not going to give you all the details; there’s no need for you to know. But Truculent’s commander, Phil Hitchens: his father was first lieutenant on the old Tenby.’
‘I knew that, sir.’
‘Of course. You would if you’ve studied the case. Well, whatever Commander Hitchens is doing with Truculent, it seems directly connected with the death — or disappearance — of his father on Tenby.’
‘Ah…’
Watson was intrigued.
‘So, what I want to know is what the old Tenby was doing in the Barents Sea, and what you guess happened to her.’
‘Well… she was spying. But the stories about watching Soviet nuclear torpedo trials are only half true. That was a cover for her real task.’
‘Which was…?’
Watson hesitated, as if he’d said too much.
‘If I tell you, sir, you must never let on you heard it from me. I saw some documents once that I shouldn’t have, see? And if the security people ever found out, they could trace it back to the bloke who showed me.’
‘Agreed. We won’t tell.’
‘Well, then… Tenby was after a new Russian radar site. The intelligence bods suspected it was a long-range over-the-horizon type that could track NATO warships 1500 miles away. The installation was on a tiny island, no more than a rock really, about ten miles off the Kola coast.’
A little flag went up in Andrew’s brain.
‘The boat was to stay out of sight,’ Watson continued, ‘while a small reconnaissance team went by inflatable onto the island at night. It was to have been two marines from the Special Boat Squadron, but one of them got ill. Appendicitis. Lieutenant Commander Hitchens said he’d go in his place. We know that because the sub sent a signal just before the operation began. Last signal she ever sent —’