They passed her house. She strained to see it through the small pane, half expecting to see John Black’s van parked in the drive. Nothing there.
Viktor turned right. She had to think for a moment where they were going. It was a narrow tarmaced road, little used, that ran round the back of the village, re-entering the main street beyond the church, and just short of the quay. Along the way they would pass a farm and three labourers’ cottages, she remembered; one of them was for sale.
After less than a minute the van turned left off the road and jolted its way down a short track. Viktor swung right again and stopped. She heard him get out and walk round to the back.
‘Okay. Out now,’ he said softly, as he opened the door. He took her by the arm to help her to the ground.
She looked round. They were behind a cottage, hidden from the road.
‘I was thinking of buying this house,’ he smiled. ‘To be near you.’
He led her round to the front. A large ‘For sale’ sign was fixed to the gatepost. From his pocket, he pulled a key attached to a label.
‘Very trusting, the estate agent.’
The rooms were bare, and smelled of rot.
‘Wait here.’
He climbed the steep, narrow stairs to the upper floor.
After a few moments he called to her to come up.
He was leaning against the wall, to one side of a window.
‘You stand the other side and tell me if you see anyone coming. This way we look both ways at once.’
She did as he asked, conscious of wanting to calm her own breathing, but not being able to.
‘Now we can talk.’
He pulled off his wig, folded it carefully, and pushed it into a pocket. He still looked strange to her with his hair, that had been long and blond, dyed brown and trimmed short.
‘That’s better,’ she smiled.
‘Have you heard anything more? About Philip?’
‘They haven’t managed to stop him; that’s all.’
‘And I risk this meeting, just for you to tell me that?’
His voice grated. His eyes flicked back to the window nervously.
‘I was lonely. I wanted to see you again,’ she heard herself say.
For a few moments he was silent, then he chuckled.
He pulled her away from the window. She felt limp, paralysed.
‘You’re a child,’ he told her, putting his arms round her in a tender embrace. ‘A beautiful, sensual woman. But also a child.’
Then he crushed his mouth to hers and, cupping his big hands round her behind, he pressed against her hungrily.
Sara struggled for breath. She wanted to stop him, warn him it was a trap, yet she felt powerless.
‘Please, no,’ she protested feebly.
‘Please, yes. It’s the last time I’ll see you.’
His voice grated in his throat like gravel.
‘I have to go away. It’s dangerous for me here. But I can’t go without feeling you again. Having you one more time.’
He pulled up her guernsey and tugged her blouse free of her jeans so he could slip his hands underneath to caress her.
‘Gunnar… don’t.’
He teased at her mouth with his lips, silencing her, and began to fumble with the zip of her jeans. He tore at it, breaking the button.
He unclasped the belt of his trousers.
Then he heard the helicopter.
He froze.
Sara whimpered. She’d heard it too.
Viktor seized her by the shoulders and held her so he could see her eyes. She looked away.
‘You? You knew?’ he whispered.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘Your police? Coming for me?’ he hissed.
‘I’m sorry.’ She began to cry. ‘They… made me.’
He let out a howl of rage. ‘Bitch!’
Drawing back his right hand, he balled it into a fist, and smashed it into her face.
Sara crashed to the floor, blood spurting from her mouth. Her midriff was bare, pullover pushed up, trousers on her hips.
Kovalenko darted to the window. The noise of the helicopter was deafening; it was landing in the meadow behind the house. They must not take him. Moscow’s orders.
In terror and pain, Sara began to scream for help.
Kovalenko stared in shock at the woman whose sweet body had blinded him so fatally. Anger overwhelmed him. He calmly re-buckled his trousers and reached into the side pocket of his coat.
The first bullet ripped into Sara’s groin, the second into her chest. The scream froze in her throat.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she stared. She looked suddenly surprised.
Viktor aimed again and blasted a hole in the centre of her forehead.
He flung himself down the stairs. At the back of the house he could hear voices, and the helicopter turbines still whining.
The van started at first turn of the key. He slammed into reverse and swung the vehicle round to face the road. Left or right? It didn’t matter.
He turned left, away from the village. He raced up through the gears, foot jammed hard down on the accelerator. There was a bend ahead. He rounded it, barely keeping the wheels on the road.
Just fifty yards ahead a South West Electricity Board van was slewed across the road.
His mind raced. Could he stop? No room! His foot moved to the brake, touched it lightly, then swung back desperately to where it was before.
John Black crouched behind the van, an automatic pistol in his right hand. The expected drop in the engine note never came.
‘Fucking hell!’ he exploded, and hurled himself sideways into the ditch, as the van carrying Viktor Kovalenko smashed into the roadblock and exploded in flames.
‘Contact confirmed, sir. It’s a Trafalgar ahead of us.’
‘Watch stand to!’ called Commander Biddle on the loudspeaker. Then he said to the weapons engineer, ‘All tubes to the action state! Hammerfish torpedoes.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ The WEO looked startled, but scuttled down the companionway to the forward weapons compartment.
Biddle stood next to Tinker.
‘At bloody last!’ he hissed.
‘We’re only eight miles from the Rybachiy Peninsula. Well inside their twelve-mile limit,’ Andrew warned. ‘If we don’t get it right, and we cripple him here, the Soviets’ll have a whole Trafalgar class submarine to play with!’
‘It’s your decision, Andrew.’
‘Don’t I bloody know it!’ he replied drily. ‘We need to know the distance.’
‘Steer zero-nine-five, revolutions for fifteen knots!’
The course change was to compute the range.
‘Aircraft overhead!’ squawked the communications box. ‘Sounds like a MAD run!’
MAD stood for Magnetic Anomaly Detector. A tail ‘sting’ on the Soviet IL-38 anti-submarine aircraft could pick out a large metal submarine from its interference with the earth’s magnetic field.
‘Steer zero-three-five!’ Biddle called. ‘Keep one-hundred-and-seventy-five metres!’
They’d need to go in for some fast evasive action.
‘That’s all we sodding well need!’ Andrew cursed.
‘Stony ridge ahead, sir, rising to one-two-five metres!’ the navigator shouted. ‘Distance on the new course, about three miles!’
‘Got that, thank you,’ Biddle answered calmly.
They’d been navigating a deep-water trench some six miles wide, which led southeast into the Kola Inlet. Turning at a right-angle to evade the aircraft, they now risked smashing into the ridge at its northern edge.
The two commanders made the calculation simultaneously. Twelve minutes before they hit the rocks.