Mirror Image

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The South Harbor district of Helsinki is famous not just for the crowded market square that adjoins the Pressidential Palace, but for the boat rides which leave for Suomenlinna Island several times a day. Nestled at the entrance to the harbor, this imposing "Gibraltar of the North" is home to an open-air theater, a military museum, and an imposing eighteenth-century castle. Adjacent Seurasaari Island is connected to the mainland by bridge and is the site of the Olympic Stadium, which hosted the 1952 games.

At night, the landmarks are dark silhouettes against the darker skies. Had they been visible, Peggy James still would not have seen them. Major Aho had given her an automobile and explicit directions. Fifteen minutes after he'd gone to the airport with two decoys in his command, she'd driven herself and Private George to the harbor and the cruiser that would take them to Kotka and the mini-sub. She had no time nor interest in sight-seeing. She had just one thing on her mind— getting into St. Petersburg. What mattered most was finishing the job Keith Fields-Hutton had started. Finding and killing the person or persons responsible for his death was not as high a priority, though she was prepared to do so if the opportunity presented itself.

The cruiser was a sleek Larson Cabrio 280, and after the password and response had been given the duo boarded the twenty-eight footer. Carefully placing her own backpack on the floor between her feet in the athwartship berth, Peggy sat beside George as the boat spun into the night. The operatives spent the bulk of the ninety-minute trip reviewing the maps of the Hermitage and the terrain between their landing point and the museum. The plan she had worked out with Major Aho before George's arrival was for the mini-sub to let them out in a rubber raft near the Southern Coastal Park, a short bus ride from their target. In a way, she preferred this masquerade to a wetsuit-type operation at night. Foreign authorities were more inclined to believe cover stories about daylight operations, since most operatives weren't reckless enough to try them.

The mini-sub was berthed in a windowless shed on the gulf. She would have preferred to fly, dropping rubber boats and parachuting just outside the target zone. But night dives into icy-cold waters were too risky. If she or Private George landed too far from the boat, they could die of hypothermia before it reached them. Besides, the jump might damage her delicate equipment, and it was imperative that that not happen.

After producing their photos, the agents were admitted by a young man dressed in a dark blue sweater and trousers. He had a square face and deeply cleft chin. His blond hair was cut almost to the scalp. He shut the door quickly behind them. A second man stepped from the shadows. He flicked on a flashlight and held a gun on the pair. Peggy shielded her eyes from the glare as the first man compared the photographs to the copies of the shots she'd faxed over bearing the Palace's ID number on top.

"That's us," Peggy said. "Who else would claim to look that awful?"

The man handed the photographs and faxes to his companion, who lowered the light to study the pictures. Peggy could see his face now, which was lean and hard and sharply chiseled as if it had been chipped from a two-by-four. He nodded.

"I'm Captain Rydman," he said to the newcomers, "and this is Helmsman Osipow. If you'll follow me, we can get under way."

Turning, he led Peggy and Private George on a walkway that went around the sides of the dark shed. The other man followed close behind.

They passed several sleek, new patrol boats bobbing gently on the water and stopped by a slipway in a corner of the shed. There, rocking gently beside a short aluminum ladder, was the dark gray mini-sub. The hatch was open though no light came from within. Having read a file en route to Finland, Peggy had learned that the midgets were brought up every six months for maintenance, hauled from the water by ropes run through eyebolts welded to the hull, then literally cracked like an eggshell by unbolting the engine room from the forward bulkhead. Only fifteen meters long, the steel cylinders were capable of carrying four passengers at a top speed of nine knots. The trip to St. Petersburg would take until two o'clock, local time, which also included the vessel breaking surface after six hours to extend the induction mast and let the diesel engines run for a half hour to restock the batteries and air.

She was not claustrophobic. But peering into what looked like a large thermos bottle with its cap on the side, she knew that an uncomfortable ten hours lay before them. Peggy saw three seats, and very little room aft to sit or even stand. She wondered where the captain was going to be.

Osipow climbed down the ladder into the darkness and threw a switch. The midget marauder's dim lighting came on and the helmsman took his seat at the steering controls— a short column with a joystick for maneuvering and an autopilot switch to maintain depth and azimuth. Beside it was a pump used to siphon off the condensation that collected inside the tight cabin, and a portside mine release handwheel. After Osipow had checked to make sure the controls, engine, and air were working, Rydman told George to enter.

"I feel like a monkey's fist," the Private said as he limboed to his seat, thrusting his chest up and twisting to the right, one arm behind him, steadying himself on the chair as he slid in.

"Ah, you've sailed," said Osipow, his voice nasal but strangely melodious.

"Back home, sir," said George, extending a hand to help Peggy in. "I once won a contest for who could tie the fastest fist at the end of a heavy line." He looked at Peggy when she'd squeezed into her chair. "A monkey's fist is a decorative knot you tie at the end of a line."

"Formed around a weight, though typically not on a lanyard. There isn't enough rope." She looked at George's face in the dull glow of the interior. It seemed slightly paler than her own. "You have a talent for underestimating me, Private. Or do you patronize all women?"

George settled back into the vinyl seat. He shrugged a shoulder, as though lightening the seriousness of the charge. "You're being a little touchy, Ms. James. If the Captain hadn't understood, I'd have explained it to him too."

Rydman said impatiently, "Let me explain to both of you that we're a little shorthanded. Ordinarily, I have an electrician who stays aft to monitor the engine and auxiliary electrics. But there wasn't room. So I would appreciate a minimum number of distractions."

"Sorry, sir," said George.

Instead of coming down, the Captain stood on a sixinch ring that girdled the squat tower and closed the hatch from inside. When Osipow told him that the lock signal had come on— a red light near the autopilot control— Rydman tested the periscope by turning it slowly, 360 degrees, and circling with it by stepping carefully on the narrow lip.

As he did, Captain Rydman said to his passengers, "We'll be snorkeling at eight knots for the initial part of our passage, which will take two hours. When we near Moshchnyy Island, which the Russians own, we'll submerge. Conversations will be held to a whisper. The Russians have mobile passive-sonar detectors there and also along the coast. Because they don't emit signals of their own like active sonar, but pick up radiated noise, we never know where they're listening or when. We've been able to slip through, but it helps to generate as little noise as possible."

"How will you know if they do spot us?" Peggy asked.

"The explosives dropped by the coast guard ships are difficult to ignore," Rydman said. "If that happens, we'll have to dive and abort."

"How often does that happen?" she asked, hating the fact that she didn't know. Intelligence operatives were supposed to know their equipment and target as well as they knew their own automobiles and homes. But DI6 had gotten into this so quickly there hadn't been time to prepare, other than to read the file dossier on the flight over. And there wasn't much on Finland's operations in the gulf. Agents usually went in with tour groups.

Rydman said, "It's happened three times in ten trips, though I never penetrated far into Russian waters. Obviously, this time will be different. But we won't be going in totally unprotected. Major Aho is sending out a helicopter to drop a pair of sonobuoys along our route. The signal will be monitored in Helsinki, and any incoming Russian vessels will show up as blips on Mr. Osipow's chart."

Osipow pointed toward a circular, computer-generated map roughly the diameter of a coffee saucer and located to the right of the control column.

When he finished turning the periscope, Rydman folded down a seat on the forward side of the tower and straddled it. Then he leaned toward the engine-induction mast that also served— with considerable echo— as a voice pipe to the helm.

"Ready, Mr. Osipow," the Captain said.

The helmsman switched on the engine, and it hummed with very little noise and vibration. As soon as it was on, he shut the light, leaving the vessel dark save for two shaded lights on the stern.

Peggy turned and peered out the small, circular porthole on her side of the mini-sub. Only a few small bubbles from the propeller in the stern drifted by as the submarine submerged to exit the shed. The darkness outside seemed to scowl at her and her eyes grew moist.

You've got to rein this in, she said to herself. The discontent. The frustration. The anger.

If only it were just Keith. She could mourn him and go on with her life, with difficulty but at least with a goal. But now that he was gone she realized that she had no goal, something that had been festering but sublimated for years. Suddenly, she was a thirty-six year-old woman who had chosen a lifestyle that had never permitted her to have much of a life, who had seen her country lose the fire and independence it had under Margaret Thatcher, lose its dignity because of a scurrilous monarchy. What had it all been for, all the years of toil and sacrifice, of losing her lover? She had been moving ahead because of momentum, because of the rapport and fun she had with Keith.

What is there now, she asked, if England becomes just a satellite of the European community? And not a respected one at that, unwilling to curry favor with the Germans the way the French had, unable to maintain élan and faith in the face of industrial collapse like the Spanish, or discard government after government the way the Italians had. What the hell have I lived for— and what do I continue to live for?

"Ms. James?"

Private George's whisper seemed to come from another world. It brought her back to the midget submarine.

"Yes?"

"We've got a ten-hour stretch ahead of us and it's too dark to study the maps," George said. "Could I impose on you to start me on that crash course in Russian?"

She looked at George's eager young face. Where does his enthusiasm come from? she wondered. Managing to smile at him for the first time, she said, "It's not an imposition. Why don't we start with some basic questions."

"Such as?"

She said slowly, "Khak, shtaw, and puhchehmoo."

"Which means?"

Peggy smiled. "How, what, and— perhaps most important— why?"