‘Told you this would happen!’
‘We have no sonar contact, sir,’ yelled the CPO in the sound room. ‘Classified as active sonar from a Haze helicopter.’
Suddenly a high-pitched whistle issued from the loud-speaker at the back of the control room.
The underwater telephone!
The men froze.
The whistle stopped. A voice spoke, in a heavy Slav accent.
At first the words were terrifyingly incomprehensible, but then became mystifyingly clear.
‘Helsinki is arranged. Helsinki is arranged.’
The voice repeated the words about ten times and then ceased.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ exploded Biddle.
‘God knows!’ Andrew answered, his mind racing.
Biddle stood over the Action Information console like a predator, pre-occupied with getting his boat away from the Russian aircraft that had so dangerously and embarrassingly found him.
Andrew felt himself in the way, and walked to the empty wardroom, where he slumped into an armchair.
The message from the Soviet helicopter could not have been meant for them. The Soviets wouldn’t have known they were the Tenby. Yet it was intended for an English boat. The voice had spoken English.
Truculent. The Russians thought they were Truculent.
Suddenly the unbelievable possibility that Philip Hitchens had done a deal with the KGB seemed more real.
Helsinki. Was that where Phil was to see his father again, after leaving a Moray mine at Ostrov Chernyy?
The Russians had taken a hell of a risk with that underwater message, a risk of giving it to the wrong boat, or of arousing suspicion in the control room of HMS Truculent. Why would they do that?
Because they were scared. It had to be that. Scared that Phil intended to renege on their deal, because of the KGB’s seduction of Sara.
Andrew looked up from his thoughts. The communications officer walked in to the wardroom.
‘Signal for you, sir. Came in on SSIX. Just finished unscrambling it.’
‘Thanks.’
He took the page of printout and the youth left.
FLASH 230630Z OCT
FROM CINCFLEET
TO HMS TENBY
TOP SECRET
PERSONAL FOR CDR TINKER
STILL CONSIDER IT MOST LIKELY CDR HITCHENS UNDER PRESSURE FROM KGB TO DELIVER NEW MINE.
ALTERNATELY HE MAY USE MINES TO ATTACK SOVIETS. UNCLEAR. CONSIDER ALL POSSIBILITIES. CANNOT ADVISE FURTHER.
INTERNATIONAL SITUATION VERY TENSE. ANY OFFENSIVE ACTION BY TRUCULENT WOULD BE SERIOUS THREAT TO WORLD PEACE. DOWNING STREET ORDERS YOU STOP HITCHENS. IMPOSSIBLE TO GIVE YOU OTHER SUBSURFACE ASSETS AS BACKUP.
ALL NOW UP TO YOU. USE WHATEVER RPT. WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY TO STOP HIS ACTIONS.
GOOD LUCK. GODSPEED.
FOSM.
Andrew swallowed hard. All up to him, now, the signal said. To stop an old friend from doing something unspeakably stupid.
‘Phil! What have you got into?’ he moaned. ‘You crazy bastard!’
He strode back to the control room. Peter Biddle looked puzzled.
‘That Haze. He’s made no effort to track us, as far as we can tell.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t need to. If the Sovs think we’re the Truc, they may reckon they know where we’re going.’
‘Ahh. Got you.’
Biddle took him by the elbow across to the chart table.
‘We’re heading for a position thirty miles northeast of Nemetskiy Point.’
He indicated the tip of the Rybachiy Peninsula, the most northerly point on the Kola. South of them lay the densest concentration of military bases anywhere in the Soviet Union.
Andrew shivered as a wave of fear swept through him, from seeing on the chart just how close they were to the Russian bases.
‘The Truc has to be west of us,’ Biddle continued. ‘She won’t be doing more than eighteen knots, and taking a line from where the Nimrod lost contact puts her somewhere here.’
He indicated a wide arc of sea. Without the help of aircraft, it was a hopelessly large area to search. Tenby would need to be within five miles for her sister boat to have any chance of hearing her.
‘We have to narrow the search area,’ Andrew decided.
He moved his hand down the chart to the mouth of the Kola Inlet, which led to the Coastal Defence Headquarters and main submarine base at Polyarny, and the Soviet Northern Fleet HQ at Severomorsk.
To the west of the inlet the approach was narrowed by the protruding mass of the Rybachiy Peninsula. Twenty miles east of Rybachiy, beyond the main channel into the inlet and about ten miles north of the main Kola coast lay the island of Ostrov Chernyy.
‘That’s where Philip’s going; into that gap. And that’s where we’ve got to be, Peter. Looking straight up the nostrils of the Russian bear!’
Biddle chuckled, nervously.
‘Bit heavy on the melodrama?’
‘I’m not so sure. The Sovs are waiting for Philip. They don’t know whether he’s going to give them a mine, or try to sink some of their submarines. They’re going to be using every asset they’ve got to keep track of him. We’ve got to find him before they do.’
‘There’s plenty of cover about. The AIO plot’s filling up.’
They crossed the control room to the Action Information display.
‘Talk us through it, Algy.’
The TAS officer pointed to the symbols on the screen.
‘All surface contacts. We’ve lost touch with the Victor III. That’s the main shipping lane into the inlet. Most of it’s civil, freighters and fishing vessels probably going up river to Murmansk. But there’s at least one military vessel identified. A naval supply ship. She’ll be astern of us when we turn east. She’s listed in the NISUMS.’
These were the Naval Intelligence Summaries carried on board every submarine.
‘She’s based at Severomorsk. Going home, I presume.’
‘Mmm. If I was Phil Hitchens, I think I’d have found a comfy spot somewhere underneath that one. They’d never hear him with all that racket going on.’
Andrew agreed.
‘And we need to keep ahead of her?’
Biddle nodded. When Truculent reached the target area, they had to be waiting.
Andrew pulled Biddle to one side, out of earshot of the others.
‘Look, we’ve been ordered to stop him by any means possible. If we don’t get close enough in time to use the underwater telephone, or if he takes no notice, then it’ll have to be a torpedo.’
Biddle winced.
‘You’ve got the new ones on board here, haven’t you? The Hammerfish?’ Andrew asked.
‘That’s right. We’re still doing trials. They’re supposed to be very clever, but their reliability’s not proven yet.’
‘Tell me what they can do.’
Biddle led him to the firing display next to the AI consoles.
‘They’re like Tigerfish, in that they’re controlled from the submarine by wire. Guided either by the boat’s sonar or by the torpedo’s. But there are two big differences. First, they’re much faster. Seventy-five knots they can do! And second they have a high-frequency, high-definition sonar that turns on two-hundred metres from the target.’
‘What’s the point of that?’
‘Gives us a precise outline of the target, on this display here. It means the weapon operator has a couple of seconds to choose the precise spot where the torpedo will strike. Soviet subs are well protected, but if you can hit the right place on the hull…’
‘Clever. Very clever. And that could be just what we need. Not to ensure we destroy the Truculent, but to ensure that we don’t!’