Trevellion sat down. The President was staring at the global chart. Then he turned to address the Secretary of Defense:
'It's a delicate business, Mr Secretary. I speak as a politician when I tell the Navy that it must not overdo it. If we take out too many of their SSBNS, the Kremlin could react in desperation. I can't risk that, gentlemen. I agree with our British friends: swift communication from our SDW boats is vital.'
'What we're doing, Mr President,' the Secretary of Defense explained, 'is showing the Soviet that we have world-wide capability. CINCPAC can take care of Soviet SSBNS in the Pacific. I'm sure our British friends can do likewise in the Atlantic. We've got to clinch deterrence if we're to bring back peace.' The dapper little civilian removed his spectacles and huffed on the lenses.
At that instant in the White House Situation Room, a gamble was being taken with the planet's existence. The greatest monolithic system which the world has ever known was miscalculating, blundering towards catastrophe. If Nato submarines failed, the men in the Kremlin would be convinced that they had succeeded in calling our bluff. Their argument was plausible and little choice would remain to us: the West: total surrender — or the nuclear holocaust. Expressing the premise differently, humanity, a helpless bystander, had but one option: the slavery of Soviet communism was as nothing to the horrors of the nuclear holocaust and a return to the cave-man. The world was at flash-point and whether the spluttering fuse reached the powder keg depended now upon the skill and resolution of a few submariners.
The silent assembly was rising to its feet as the Secretary of Defense faced the leader of the free world:
'I need your go-ahead, Mr President.'
The big man in the casual clothes imperceptibly squared his shoulders.
'Okay, Jack,' he said brusquely. 'Tell Nato and CINCPAC I'm happy with this plan. They'd better get on with it.'
He turned and strode briskly from the Situation Room.
Chapter 7
Farge was arranging his grip in the back of the Volvo when he heard the phone ringing from inside the hall of Newdyke House. He waited patiently for his father who was answering it: even with this early start, they would be pushed to catch the only train which could deliver Farge to London in time for his Northwood meeting.
'It's the Prynne daughter,' Lord Farge shouted through the doorway. 'She insists on speaking to you.'
Farge ran across to the doorway. 'Jump in, father. We've got to catch this train.' He grabbed the instrument from his father's outstretched hand.
'Julian?'
'I can't stop, Lorna. What is it?'
Her voice was low: 'I've thought it all out. I wanted you to know before you left home.'
'Quick, Lorna.'
'Will you ring me from London?'
'As soon as I get the chance. Perhaps from Barrow. I must hang up, Lorna.'
'I'll come to you,' she said softly, difficult to hear, 'wherever you are.' A short silence then: 'D'you understand, Julian?'
He did not reply at once. He could hear her breathing at the other end.
'Yes, Lorna, I've understood.'
His father was waiting in the passenger's seat. He uttered several terse comments upon Farge's abortive leave, then remained silent for the rest of the hectic drive to Taunton. As he hustled his son into the train, his parting words cut deeply:
'There isn't much point your coming to Newdyke, if you don't give me any time, my son. You might as well join your sister in town, for all the help you are to me.'
Farge watched the lonely figure on the platform fading to a blurred speck — he, Julian, had been bloody selfish. A week ago, he would have treated with amused cynicism the notion that he could be utterly captivated by an open-air girl from the moors, a farmer's daughter. He was a professional killer, trained for the past decade to seek out and destroy his enemy: his was a mind forged for the intricacies of submarine warfare, yet here he was, succumbing to this overwhelming emotion at the critical instant when his undivided intellect should be concentrating upon the coming operation….
But she loved him. Lorna loved him. In the nick of time he was experiencing the indefinable, spiritual force they loosely termed love. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had always thought 'love' was merely a respectable word for 'sex'. How else could a guy decently get the girl? That's how it had been with Margot: and once he'd had her he could never get enough of it with her… but Lorna, dear God, was different… and grinning sheepishly to himself, he opened his briefcase. A man's attitudes, even his fundamentals, were toppled remarkably swiftly, once he fell in love.
FOSM'S staff were waiting for him when, half an hour late because of a suicide on the line between Edgware Road and Baker Street, Farge was finally shown into COMSUBEASTLANT'S headquarters below ground at Northwood. There was a break in the hum of conversation around the planning tables when the staff captain, glancing at the clock on the wall, walked towards Farge. <
'I'll fetch the admiral,' he said. 'That's your seat, Farge.'
Farge settled himself into one of the three empty chairs in the centre of the front row of the semi-circle facing the blown-up charts on the wall. He flipped his notebook from his briefcase as the assembled officers rose to their feet; FOSM entered the room, a stocky red-whiskered commander at his side. They walked briskly across to the two vacant seats.
'Farge, you remember Commander Coombes,' FOSM said. 'Safari's new captain.'
'We've known each other a long time, sir,' Farge said.
'I hope the leave's done you good?'
'Fine, sir. I'm sorry I'm late.'
'I've been in the ops library with Coombes here.' Rackham pointed to the two empty chairs. 'We've got a lot to do,' he said, 'and precious little time.'
The lights dimmed immediately; the charts of the Norwegian and Barents Seas glowed on the wall behind Rackham as he began his briefing with a run-down of the past week's events. 'You'll have heard nothing more officially since SACLANT'S general signal on the twenty-second of April.' He flicked a signal from the message clip and held it up.
PRECEDENCE: IMMEDIATE SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: SECRET FROM: SACLANT TO: ALL NATO COMMAND, ALL SHIPS DTG: 221957 (ZULU) APRIL SOVIET GOVERNMENT IS REQUESTING CESSATION ALL NAVAL AND AIR OPERATIONS PENDING TRUCE NEGOTIATIONS. ALL SHIPS REVERT TO RULE OF ENGAGEMENT 14. ALERT STATE ONE REMAINS IN FORCE. MESSAGE ENDS.
'During this last week,' Rackham explained, ' a temporary truce has been agreed — and I emphasize temporary. Whether it develops into peace depends on the submariners of the free world.' He spoke then of the political horse-trading which had resulted in this extraordinary lulclass="underline" the Soviet government had demanded cessation of hostilities because of the devastating losses to their submarine fleet during the opening phase of the Atlantic battle, the battle to decide whether trans-Atlantic convoys could reinforce Europe.The Kremlin was demanding the truce. If we refused and continued with trans-Atlantic reinforcements, the Soviets would commit their ICBMS to the battle. Their SSBNS, the vital second strike capability without which no Russian power would remain, were, the Soviets claimed, invulnerable, safe in the depths of the oceans. The West had replied that, just as it had massacred their fleet and patrol submarines in the Atlantic, it could annihilate the Soviet SSBNS, their Delta us and their Typhoons, wherever they tried to hide. No way could the USSR then hope to dictate terms to the world, however devastated and desolate.