‘And the PLA Ladny? What’s her position?’
This was the Victor III, detected by Truculent and Tenby earlier that morning.
‘At last report she was following the Boris Bubnov in case the Truculent was using her as cover. She’s due to report again in half an hour.’
‘When she does, I have new orders for her,’ Belikov intoned. ‘Tell her that if she finds the Truculent within five kilometres of the Kol’skiy Zaliv, she’s to sink her!’
John Black took a cigarette from the half-empty packet that had been new that morning, and offered one to Sara Hitchens.
She lit it and inhaled hungrily. Her face, ghostlike from sleeplessness and emotional stress, paled yet again when he told her what they wanted her to do.
They were closing the net. Orders from on high.
The day before, a police helicopter had followed Gunnar on his motorbike to Bristol, Black explained, but the Russian had abandoned it in a public car park there, and vanished on foot.
He wouldn’t use the machine again, Black guessed. He’d be too careful for that, now he knew they were looking for him. The only chance they had of catching him was for Sara to lure him into a trap.
‘You’re sure he didn’t say what time he’d ring you?’ Black pressed for the third time.
‘Quite sure,’ Sara snapped, exhaling smoke. ‘He just said it’d be this morning. But he’s probably thought better of it. He could be on his way to Moscow by now.’
Privately she hoped he was.
For Sara, waiting was an agony. John Black would tell her nothing. She’d not recognized the M15 man when he’d knocked at the door clad in blue overalls and clutching a tool bag. His Electricity Board van was parked out in the drive.
As she moved about the room, her right shoe felt heavy with the weight of the small radio transmitter fitted inside the heel. She was terrified it would show, despite Black’s insistence that it didn’t.
‘You got your words sorted out?’ he pestered. Women couldn’t be trusted. ‘You know what to say when he rings?’
‘No, Mr Black. I’ve forgotten!’ she answered sarcastically. ‘I think you’d better talk to him!’
He turned away, embarrassed at the sharpness of her tone, then looked at his watch.
‘I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ve been here quite long enough to have fixed your cooker. Remember, we plan to grab him after your meeting’s over, but we may need to move sooner than that, so if you hear me shout, do whatever I say and do it fast. Okay?’
‘What are you going to do to him?’
Black picked up his toolbag, and stubbed out the remains of his cigarette.
‘Ask him a few questions. If he doesn’t co-operate, we’ll throw the book at him.’
‘He told me he wanted to defect.’
‘We’ll see, won’t we?’
Sara watched as he climbed into the van and reversed it into the road.
With the M15 man gone, the house became eerily silent. She could almost hear the walls breathe.
At night, during the past week, she had lain awake for hours, ears straining to catch the sounds of the darkness, imagining footfalls and twigs breaking. She could stand it no longer, being alone in the house. She would telephone Simon’s school and persuade his housemaster to let him come home for a few days.
Philip would never return from his crazed voyage to the Arctic Circle, her certainty of that had grown stronger. It was time Simon knew what had happened, time for her to prepare him to understand that he’d never see his father again.
The shrill ring of the telephone had her leaping to her feet. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to stem the panic. The phone rang four times before she picked it up, praying that her voice wouldn’t fail her.
‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Hitchens?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s the TV man. The repair to your set? You wanted to fix a time for me to do it?’
Viktor Kovalenko had gone back to his Swedish accent.
‘Oh, yes. That’s right. This morning some time?’
The steadiness of her voice surprised her.
‘Ten o’clock. As we discussed yesterday.’ The voice was tense, clipped. ‘Please make sure there are no other tradesmen with you. I like to work alone. Understood?’
Sara almost choked.
‘Yes, of course,’ she whispered, but the line was already dead.
He’d guessed it was a trap. He must have.
She ought to tell John Black, but there was no time. She had to get to the same car park they’d gone to yesterday, on the far side of Plymouth. It was already nearly half-past-nine. It would take nearly thirty minutes to get there. She’d have to leave immediately.
As she turned out of the drive, she was gripped by an urge to flee, to head away from Plymouth, anywhere to escape.
The M15 man had bullied her mercilessly before she’d agreed to help, threatening her with prison if she didn’t co-operate.
It was a ridiculous threat; she’d done nothing illegal. Nothing really wrong either, she decided. Whatever appalling plan Philip had conceived, the cause lay way back in his own past. Her infidelity couldn’t have provoked that strong a reaction.
And Gunnar — Viktor, as he called himself now? She believed he really had loved her; maybe he still did. Perhaps she’d even loved him too. And now she was going to betray him.
She braked the car gently into a sharp bend, beyond which was a turning into a farmyard, disused since the farmer gave up milk production. She rounded the corner.
Suddenly, a figure leaped into the road waving. Sara braked hard and swerved.
The man had long, straggly hair and wore an old raincoat. He banged on the bonnet of the car and shouted as she tried to avoid him.
‘Sara!’
The voice was Gunnar’s; so was the face beneath the greasy wig. She stamped on the brake. He wrenched open the passenger door and threw himself inside.
‘Drive on! Left into the farm!’ he barked, twisting round to see if any car was following.
Sara obeyed, heart thudding.
A rutted track led to a group of farm buildings which had fallen into disrepair.
‘In there,’ he pointed to an open-sided barn. ‘Next to the van.’
The car bumped over a broken brick floor; the van belonged to a firm of feed-merchants.
‘Who knows you’re meeting me?’ he demanded, gripping her arm so tightly she thought he’d break it.
‘No… no one,’ she stammered. ‘I came straight here after you rang.’
‘You had a visitor this morning.’
She felt her lower lip trembling.
‘The cooker. A man came to mend it. A hot plate had burnt out.’
He was frightening her. His eyes had never looked so cold. She squirmed.
‘That wig. It’s awful. Can’t you take it off?’
‘Not yet. Come. Get out. Into the van.’
He pulled open the rear doors and looked her up and down. She was wearing jeans and a dark blue guernsey.
‘In those clothes you’ll be all right in the back. There’s some sacking to sit on.’
‘Why? Where are we going?’
‘Not far. Somewhere safe. Just a few minutes. Get in.’
She knew he’d accept no argument. The sacking smelled of fertilizer. He closed the door behind her. The only light came through a small window to the driving compartment.
He reversed backwards over the bumps. Where the track met the road, he turned right, back to the village.
She thought of the electronic bleeper in the heel of her shoe. The M15 men were expecting a rendezvous miles away. Would they be able to track her here? Half of her hoped they wouldn’t.