'Captain speaking,' he began, struggling for breath. 'Wherever you are throughout the boat, I invite you to join us in prayer for our families and our country, asking for God's mercy, asking Him to save us, if it be His will.' He cleared the phlegm in his throat.
'The prayer of Saint Chrysostom,' he began. 'Almighty God, who gives us grace at this special time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy name, thou wilt grant their requests.' He had to stop, fighting for breath. In that brief silence, his men around him, shivering in the clammy chill, heard the rattling of an anchor cable echoing against the hull. Coombes looked up, then flipped over the page to where he had marked the confession. As he concluded the supplication he heard Sims calling for him to man the underwater telephone.
'Tell 'em to wait up top,' Coombes said. 'I'll take the call when we've finished.'
Safari had been crippled for forty-three hours: a few minutes to end with the Lord's Prayer and their tribulations would be almost over.
Chapter 32
For the past two days the British staff had been at immediate notice, constricted to their homes and hotels. Trevellion was on his hotel bed, trying to keep awake, when Rear Admiral Quarrie's secretary came through on the extension.
'The meeting's convened for 1600 at the White House, sir,' she said. 'Our car's on its way to pick you up.'
Trevellion had time to run a razor over his gaunt face: crescent shadows hung beneath his eyes and the lined hollows in his cheeks were dark with stubble. Forty-seven hours si the momentous news came through of the Typhoon sinking, two days of brinkmanship supreme, America and the free' world daring not to breathe, while their citizens streamed from the cities into the countryside. For the second time that day, Trevellion offered a silent prayer of thankfulness that Rowena and Ben were safely tucked away in Cornwall, though Culdrose, presumably a prime target, was too close for comfort.
It had been 1715 yesterday when SACLANT came through with the news — 0100 Moscow time. Apparently, at the other end of the hot line, the Soviet leader had been as surly as his Motherland's national mascot, refusing to believe the President's claim: the Kremlin was waiting for C–IN-C Northern Fleet's reports. Meanwhile the threat of a nuclear first strike still hung over the West. And that, so the reports from the ops people went, was when the Soviet leader hung up. And now the telephone was purring from Trevellion's bedside. His car was waiting at the hotel entrance.
Rear-Admiral Quarrie was already in his seat when Pascoe Trevellion was ushered into the Situation Room, which Trevellion reckoned was the most elegantly and comprehensively equipped ops room he had yet encountered. But he was becoming blase, having spent much of his time here during the crisis. A vacant seat was separating Quarrie from Butch Hart who had befriended Pascoe since Trevellion first arrived in Washington.
'Hi, Butch,' Trevellion grinned, accepting the seat which Hart indicated. 'He's back from the hills, then?'
Hart nodded his grey head, his distinguished features breaking into a slow smile. 'Could be good news, Pascoe. They wouldn't have allowed the President back, otherwise, would they?'
'The first eleven's here, I see,' Trevellion added, glancing round the room packed with senior officers from the three services.
'Uh?-'
'Cricket,' Trevellion explained. 'Forget it.'
The screen along the wall glowed as the maps were projected: the usual one of the Pacific area; the other, the North Atlantic. The red and green crosses were dotted as before, concentrated in the critical areas — but now three blue crosses showed, two in the Pacific off the Kuril Islands, one north-west of Murmansk.
'Two of ours and one of yours,' Hart said.
Trevellion inclined his head, but remained silent. Though the Kremlin was claiming a sinking off Vardo, Nato refused to confirm that Orcus was missing. FOSM still had no news of her since her signal giving Safari the vital enemy report. A hard price to pay. The double-circled red cross of the Typhoon kill on the edge of the polar ice somehow failed to compensate, now that an end to this sea war was in sight.
'Gentlemen, the President.'
They stood up and the American leader, flanked by his Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Floyd, entered through the door leading from the White House. The President looked as fit as ever, but the strain of the terrible load he bore was beginning to show in his craggy face. He glanced round at them all with his humorous, shrewd eyes, bade them, with a casual wave of the hand, to be seated, then strode to the lectern on the raised platform. He waited for the Secretary of Defense and Floyd to settle in front of him. He nodded at the aide and the lights dimmed.
'Well, gentlemen,' the President began laconically, 'you've allowed me back from the hills, so I'd better not keep you waiting.' He pointed to the wall maps. 'There you have it, the irrefutable evidence, gentlemen. You've achieved in three weeks what I demanded of you: Operation so has killed twenty-one of the enemy's SSBNS.'
'One a day,' Hart murmured into Trevellion's ear.
'… culminating at 0100 yesterday, Sunday morning, with the kill I was waiting for: the enemy's untraceable, unsinkable monster submarine, one of their Typhoons.' He paused, searching amongst his audience until his glance lighted upon Quarrie. 'Gentlemen, we've got the Royal Navy to thank for ramming home the final nail in the coffin.' And as he smiled, a murmur of assent ran round the room. Trevellion remaining half turned, twitched a smile at Butch, as the President continued:
'SD's been a success, but since the destruction of the Typhoon, I've missed more sleep than during the preceding three weeks of waiting. For the past two days, I've been negotiating with the Soviet leader. The threat of failure, blackmail some would call it, is a powerful bargaining counter, gentlemen.' He paused to sip from the glass of water on the lectern. The President was firstly a politician, and his audience, the most hardened and sophisticated in the world, hung upon his words.
'Twenty-one of the enemy's ballistic missile submarines sunk in twenty-one days: the Soviet leaders cannot accept that loss-rate. The Kremlin is now convinced that the Soviet navy will be annihilated if the sea war continues.' He paused, then added sombrely:
'The Soviet leader called me twenty minutes ago. He assured me that he has cancelled his ICBM threat. All Russian forces are being ordered to withdraw from Northern Norway. The Soviet government wishes immediately to discuss practical ways of bringing about real detente, lasting peace. The Soviet leader, gentlemen, even professed interest in my insistence on his taking his armies out of Eastern Europe and so removing his threat of overrunning the West. As you all realize, gentlemen, it is that menace which forces us to have any nuclear arms at all.'
This announcement produced a momentary, stunned silence, a silence suddenly shattered by waves of cheering. The President waited for the jubilation to subside, then added quietly:
'By demonstrating our world-wide capability, I emphasize "world-wide", gentlemen, the enemy has been convinced, sobered by the brutality of the means we have been forced to adopt, that he cannot win. The success of our submarines, complementary in both oceans, has clinched the policy of deterrence which we have followed during these dangerous years.' Turning again to the wall displays behind him, he added laconically, 'Before we disperse, you should know that Vice-Admiral Jessup has just been on to me. His Striking Force has rescued the forty-six survivors from the Typhoon. The Soviet navy is co-operating whole-heartedly and is at this moment endeavouring to recover the survivors from the British submarine, Safari. We'll let you know, of course, as soon as we hear anything further.'