A Ravel of Waters

Chapter 23

Molot was the riddle which bugged our long day in captivity in the ship's sick-bay. The ‘hospital' was situated underneath the port wing of the bridge — in exactly the same position but on the opposite side of my captain's suite. It had two curtained-off cubicles and a minute double 'ward' containing two surgical beds. A glass partition separated the sick-bay itself from an outer reception office, designed for a medical orderly. The sickbay did not seem to have had much use except as a junk room for ship's odds and ends. One of these was a survival suit stored on a hanger which, Tideman explained, was used in icy seas for inspection of Jetwind3 s drop keels.

'Molot?' I asked Tideman for the hundredth time. 'Where the hell is Molot?'

'It must be the base from which the attack on the Falklands will be launched,' he replied. 'That's about all I can guess.'

'But Grohman is heading away from the Falklands,' I pointed out. 'He's kept Jetwind going like a bomb all day. Away from his objective. There is no land — whatsoever — between the Falklands and Gough Island.'

'Perhaps Molot is a place we know by a different name — like Malvinas,' suggested Tideman. 'Even then, I don't get it. Grohman is holding Jetwind on the course you selected for Gough.' 'He's not doing it too badly either.'

'There's nothing wrong with his sailoring,' replied Tideman. 'He's sailing by computer. Maybe we could get an extra knot or two out of her manually.'

'The only possibility of land is the South Sandwich group,' I went on. 'But they're far to the south of our present course.'

'South Sandwich it might be,' said Tideman. 'But that doesn't mean much. Most of the islands are volcanic. They're all coated with ice being so near Antarctica. I've heard that the only way to land is by helicopter. They would be totally unsuitable as a base. What if Molot is another name for Gough?'

'No, John. Gough is a South African weather station. It's important — it's the only weather station in the central part of the Southern Ocean. Group Condor couldn't take it over without provoking a massive retaliation.'

'The same objection applies to Tristan da Cunha which is only a couple of hundred miles northwest of Gough,' he answered. 'If Group Condor occupied either of them, it would prejudice the Falklands attack in advance because the secret would be out. Also, any assault force would then have to cross twenty-one hundred miles of ocean in order to reach the Falklands.'

'Poor Paul!' I said. ‘I wonder if he got wind of Grohman's plans?' 'I'm in the same boat as Paul,' Tideman replied quietly.

'Grohman doesn't suspect a thing,' I reassured him. 'If he had, you wouldn't be here, John.'

'You're also living on borrowed time, Peter. Until Molot, Grohman said.'

It all came back to Molot. When night came, we were no nearer an answer. Suddenly the outer sick-bay door opened. 'Kay!' I jumped up to go to her.

'Keep back!' Grohman appeared behind her threatening with the UZI.

Kay and I looked at one another for a long moment. Her eyes told me everything. She was still pale but smiling. The guard warily pitched her suit-case inside.

Grohman looked strained. Holding down a crew of twenty-eight could not have been easy.

'She's to stay here,' he said briefly. 'It's not for the pleasure of your company, let me assure you. It's because I can't spare one man solely to guard her.' 'What do you expect me to say to that?' I asked.

'Listen, Rainier,' he said angrily. 'You and Tideman are expendable, understand? The final decision does not rest with me or else you'd have been overside already. This woman is not in the same category. She is valuable to us. Just as in another way Sir James Hathaway is valuable to us. A million dollars will help finance Group Condor's operations.'

I deliberately tried to rattle him. I would have been prepared to risk the second gun if I could have grabbed his automatic. Tideman, I knew, would back me to the hilt — the hilt of that wicked dagger, which he had managed to keep.

'You're going back to the Malvinas, you say — but you're heading in the opposite direction!'

Kay broke in. 'What possible use can I be to Group Condor! Who'll pay a million dollars for me?'

'You are an expert in sail aerodynamics — that is why you are valuable’ replied Grohman.

'Sail aerodynamics!' she exclaimed. 'What has that to do with killing and murder and unsuspecting attacks?'

'You play the innocent well,' said Grohman. 'But it doesn't wash. At Molot you will be transferred to Soviet protection. I have been notified that afterwards you will be transferred to Kyyiv in Russia itself where secret experiments are being conducted into sail aerodynamics.'

I was stunned; Kay was speechless. If Grohman got wind of Tideman's connection with the Schiffbau Institut's tests, he was a dead man.

Grohman looked triumphant. Perhaps it was his paranoid temperament which compelled him to boast of his superiority — in the face of murder.

'I have been to Kyyiv,' he said. 'We admit that the Schiffbau's experiments are ahead of ours. This ship proves it. You will be a valuable asset to our research team.' 'Kyyiv! Me! I won't go!'

Grohman stroked the finning along the UZI's barrel. It was a cat-like, sinister gesture.

'The decision is not mine whether to force you or not,' he said. 'That rests with Command at Molot. But I advise you not to push your luck too far.' 'Soviet Command, you mean?' I asked. He looked surprised. 'Who else?'

'Nothing will make me go to some secret test ground in Russia under threat!' Kay burst out.

'You have about three days to think it over before we reach "Moiot,' replied Grohman. 'Think about it well, Senorita Fenton. You will be treated well if you cooperate. Otherwise…' He shrugged. 'You bastard!' I said. 'You crazy bastard!' He swung the automatic on me. For a moment his eyes went kill-blank. Then he relaxed. 'Three days — that is all you have, Rainier!'

He backed out of the sick-bay; the guard took up his previous position behind the glass partition.

I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. For fully a couple of minutes we all stood rooted. Finally, I broke the silence.

'I'll put your case in a cubicle, Kay — any particular choice?' 'The closer to you both, the better.'

I started to pick up the case and she said, 'They let me bring my transistor radio. It might help pass the time — until Molot.' She was close to tears. 'What is Molot? Peter? John?'

'I wish we knew,' replied Tideman. 'We've been racking our brains all day.'

She went into her cubicle. I followed. Inside, there was no need to say anything. She came into my arms. I could feel the dry sobs from her throat through her breasts against me. Her lips were a warm pulse of agony and denied ecstasy, wet with tears.

'Just when I've found the man I want, I'm to lose him!' she whispered brokenly. 'Why didn't you just let me go this morning? It would have been better all round. Oh, my love, my darling!'

I held her close and said those things which can only be said in the presence of new love. Finally her sobs quietened.

I said, more to comfort her than with any plan in mind, 'Three days is a long time, Kay. Anything could happen before we reach Molot.'

'Molot!' she echoed. 'How I hate that name already! What is it? What does it mean? It has an evil ring, like Trolltunga.'

'It's Russian, that's for sure. What it means is as much a mystery as where it is.' -

Then we joined Tideman in the main 'ward'. He was listening to Kay's radio, turning it every way to try and improve reception.

'I had the Cape Town news’ he said. 'It reported concern because no signals had been received from Jetwind for a day. There was an interview with Thomsen. I couldn't hear clearly — something about no contact with the ship.'

Kay voiced the concern uppermost in all our minds. 'John — Peter — why should the Russians be interested in me? I haven't any secrets!'

Tideman switched.off the radio with a significant gesture. He said gravely, 'You have, Kay.' 'I? Secrets?'

He waved us into a couple of hard chairs round a low table. He opened a drawer by his bed and produced a pack of cards, obviously provided for patients. He nodded towards the watching sentry.

'If we hold a discussion in the ordinary way I'm sure we'll rouse his suspicions,' he said quietly. 'We'll pretend we're playing cards. I'll explain.'

Kay's hand was shaking when Tideman dealt the first round. 'Secrets?' she repeated incredulously.

'Aye, secrets, Kay. Remember when the Schiffbau Institut was making the final wind-tunnel tests of Jetwind's sails and masts?'

'Sure — I was there!' she exclaimed. 'You were there, too. That's where we met.'

'I was — at the invitation of Axel Thomsen himself. He'd heard of my runs round the Horn as a member of the British Services Adventure Scheme and thought I might be able to contribute something practical to the theoretical tests.' 'I stressed the same thing to Thomsen,' I interjected.

'That's what probably made him interested in you as a skipper — your practical experience in Albatros.' He looked anxiously round the sick-bay. 'I take it this place isn't bugged, is it? If so, we might as well say goodbye in the light of what I'm going to say now.' 'Grohman hasn't had any opportunity,' I replied.

'Here goes, then. Both of you know, of course, that Jetwind's sails are made of dacron, not canvas.'

He stressed his statement so carefully that Kay said, 'Of course, John — but that's no secret.'

'Bacron is tougher and smoother and therefore more aerodynamically efficient than canvas.'

Kay was staring at him, and he warned, 'Try and keep your eyes on your cards, Kay.'

She gave a little shake of her head, half reproach, half incredulity.

'Dacron is also far more expensive than canvas,5 Tideman went on. 'Therefore it is worth protecting in a way canvas need not be. Jetwind’s sails alone cost a fortune.'

' Albatros’s dacron sails at the end of my run were as thin from sun damage as the Ancient Mariner's ghost ships,' I said.

'That's it — sun damage!' he went on. cJetwind’s designers realized that to prevent sun damage from infrared and ultra-violet rays the sails would have to have a plastic coating. You realize the problem this poses — what plastic could stand up to the continual flexing, reefing, furling and endless changes in wind pressure? There was also the problem of cracking and flaking. The protective coating would have to withstand that also.'

Kay said, 'I remember the headaches that caused. But the Schiffbau team came up trumps in the end.'

'It was brilliant inventiveness,' Tideman went on. 'The specialists evolved a completely new plastic in the polymer group — the same chemical group as dacron itself. It was named polyionosoprene. The day we tested the new plastic and found that it absorbed infra-red and micro-waves was sensational.'

I threw down a card at random on the table. It was the top ace in the pack.

Tideman gave value to the pause, gathering up the pack and riffling the deck like a professional card-sharp. The guard beyond the glass partition was lolling, disinterested.

'That absorption was due — we believed though we couldn't prove it — to an unknown chemical reaction occurring between the dacron and polyionosoprene.' ‘That doesn't sound too dramatic, John.'

'I was there,' Kay added. 'Everyone seemed quite pleased but not over-excited at the discovery.'

A slight smile broke the seriousness of Tideman's explanation. 'It was in fact one of the biggest strategic breakthroughs of the satellite age.

'Infra-red and micro-waves are the basic elements of American and Russian spy satellites. However, infra-red rays are strongly absorbed by water vapour, with the result that a spy satellite cannot "see" through cloud, which means restricting their use to cloud-free days.' He slapped down a card. 'Now — here is polyionosoprene, an artificial substance which similarly absorbs these rays.'

Kay looked dumbfounded. ‘I never guessed it was that important.'

'Micro-waves can actually penetrate water vapour — cloud, for example — but the deeper they penetrate the poorer becomes the resolution of the sensor image,' continued Tideman. 'I still don't quite get it,' I said.

'In the latest Nimbus series of satellite using microwave instruments, resolution is of the order of two hundred to three hundred metres. In other words, any object with a distinct water mass, say, an iceberg, with dimensions smaller than this will not show up on the spy satellite scan.' 'I still don't get the connection with Jetwind,' I said.

'The combination of heavy cloud cover and polyionosoprene-coated sails renders this ship undetectable by spy satellite,' said Tideman.

He gathered up the cards as a token gesture and reshuffled them.

'Polyionosoprene-coated sails also deflect most of what we call PECM — passive electronic counter-measures — which are used in the multi-sensor module installations of the latest American and Russian high-altitude spy-planes.' He dealt the cards.

'Jetwind's secret makes her of top strategic significance in today's world.'

Kay still seemed dumbfounded. 'Remembers John, when they told us in Hamburg that polyionosoprene was a big commercial secret and we were not to talk about it? I never dreamed it was anything as momentous as this.5

'Now then,’ Tideman went on. 'You, Paul and I discussed the importance of the Drake Passage as an antisubmarine choke point. We shall never know how much Brockton was in on what I am about to tell you now. When I learned the facts about polyionosoprene, I immediately thought of the Drake Passage, where cloud cover is total for twenty-five days in the month. A ship protected by polyionosoprene in those waters is almost undetectable by spy satellites. Even under light cloud cover conditions, Jetwind would show up on spy satellite instruments only as an amorphous white blob, indistinguishable from innumerable icebergs. In fact we have the biggest anti-surveillance breakthrough since the first spy-in-the-sky went into orbit.’

Kay made a helpless gesture. 'They simply referred to the danger of industrial espionage.’ 'What did you do about it?’ I wanted to know.

'I got back to London as fast as I could make it. After top-level discussions the Navy decided to keep the tightest security watch over Jetwind's proving voyage, which was then scheduled to take place from Montevideo to the Cape.’

'How does Mortensen's murder tie up with what you're saying now?’ I asked.

'My guess is that Grohman's Molot Command ordered him to kill him when the Soviet Navy lost track of Jetwind’

'Lost track? There was no secret about her position! Her journey was publicized throughout the world!5

'Lost track — from the sky. Satellite track. I think something happened which sent a powerful shock through the Red Fleet.' 'But why?'Kay asked.

'This ship had to be stopped from going anywhere near this Molot place, in case the alleged Soviet base was exposed.'

I said ruefully, 'And I, too, unwittingly headed for Molot from the Falklands.'

'I suppose that's why Jetwind was hijacked. She had to be stopped because she was invisible to Red spy satellites. Grohman knew he was safe in the Falklands — that's why he holed up there after Mortensen's death. Then you came along and threw a spanner in. the works. He never bargained you would get past the warship which was meant to detain Jetwind — orders for which originated, no doubt, right back at Soviet Naval Command HQ.' 'God, what a mess!' exclaimed Kay. 'Keep your eyes on the cards,' Tideman warned again.

'John,' I cut in. 'Don't you think you exaggerate the whole situation? Grohman is just a puppet whose strings are being manipulated. Suppose he is to lead an attack on the Falklands. There's no way he can count on a force of any size. All he can do is lead a small group of terrorists against Stanley and occupy the place. It would be a demonstration, a gesture — not an operation of international scope such as you have in mind.'

'Unfortunately, there's more to it than.that. The Navy's anti-submarine specialist team decided that if Jetwind proved herself, a fleet of five Jetwinds would be built. Their true purpose would constitute the newest and most novel form of anti-sub weapon. The projected fleet has even been given a name, the Cape Horn Patrol.'

There was a long silence. We threw down the cards mechanically, unseeingly.

'The operational area of the Cape Horn Patrol would be the Drake Passage and its ocean approaches. It has one overriding assignment — to monitor the passage of nuclear submarines. Drake Passage presents a unique problem in tactical detection which no major navy has yet mastered. It is impossible, because of the bad weather and lack of bases, to monitor the passage of nuclear subs by conventional means. If any navy attempted warship patrols of the Passage, they would be detected within hours by satellite. Powered ships are heat-emitting. They are easy game for infra-red sensors. In addition, engines make a noise a give-away to counter-sonar tracking by submarines. Submerged subs are out of satellite reach. Never forget that a nuclear sub is a noisy machine, that is its Achilles' heel. The latest Soviet Titanium class is, fortunately for the West, the noisiest of the lot.'

'What can Jetwind do that they can't?' Kay wanted to know.

'Jetwind, being wind-driven, is the silent stalker, the silent killer,' he said. 'In Southern Ocean conditions she is fast — faster than most warships can travel safely. She also offers what no powered vessel can — a stable operations platform. Her sails hold her hull down on the water.

'So you see,' he said, 'Jetwind is in fact a fast, silent, satellite-undetectable weapon against nuclear subs in an area which also happens to be a naval choke point of major global strategic significance.' I said slowly, 'Now we have it, John.'

He shook his head. 'At present something "else alarms me — rather, did alarm me.' Kay and I waited anxiously.

'I was afraid that after the hijacking Grohman might turn back to the Falklands,' he said. 'That would have put paid to Jetwind’s major proving test.'* I felt my stomach muscles cramp. 'Is there more?' asked Kay, now even more alarmed.

He nodded. 'I told you, I'm pretty sure the Reds panicked when they couldn't pinpoint Jetwind by satellite. The United States Navy and Britain have arranged a similar sort of test. The U.S. Navy is diverting one of its latest Seascan spy satellites to check on Jetwind at a given place and time, roughly four hundred miles southsouth-west of Gough. A little over three and a half days from now Jetwind must pass at a point directly beneath the line of the Seascan satellite. This nadir position will offer the best test of her undetectability.'

'Why select that particular spot in the Southern Ocean?' I asked. 'Because drifting icebergs and ocean and weather conditions are very similar to the Drake Passage’ he answered. 'The location was very carefully chosen.' 'And if Jetwind doesn't show up?'

For the first time in many fake deals Tideman lifted his head and looked squarely at Kay and me.

'The Seascan is in transit from one secret destination to another -1 don't know where,' he replied. 'It is the once-only time and place for the test. No Jetwind at the rendezvous, no Cape Horn Patrol. It's as simple as that. The sailing ship will be dead — for ever.' 'How much did Paul know of this?'

'I wish I'd had time to find out,' he answered. 'Remember his intense interest in your so-called hallucinations? They were supposed to have occurred roughly in the Seascan rendezvous area.' He paused and added, 'And that's where the Orion crashed.'

'I have something to add,' I said, 'something I didn't mention even to Paul in regard to my "hallucinations". To. this day I'm not sure whether I saw it or not.'

Tideman leaned forward; his elbows banging on the table. 'Okay, say it now — what was it?'

'I thought I saw a submarine. She wasn't moving. She was at anchor, moored. Loading something. Then she was swallowed up by the mist.'