Northlight

2 SPODE

'I regard this as a deliberate act of war.'

Spode everywhere, on the marble mantlepiece and in glass cabinets in the corners of the room and along the windowsills. Spode, Turners and Chippendale, and an atmosphere of controlled shock.

'Unless the ambassador believes that in fact the submarine was actually within the twelve-mile limit.'

This was Lord Cranley, Foreign Secretary. I'd recognized him when Frome had brought me in, but only from photographs I'd seen of him. I'd never been here before, but I'd seen most of their pictures: the prime minister, US ambassador, foreign secretary, three or four members of the cabinet and the leader of the opposition. The others were aides and assistants. Frome had been here before I'd arrived: the Bureau had obviously sent him ahead on the assumption that they'd somehow get me here. He'd met me at the front door when the constable on guard had knocked, and led me to this room.

'The meeting's already begun, but in any case you won't be introduced. You're just here to listen.'

Frome was in a dark suit, his grey hair smoothed back on his narrow head, his eyes watchful, his skin dead-looking and with a sanatorium pallor; they said he'd got cancer. He hadn't spoken since he'd shown me where I was to sit; no one had spoken to him, nor even looked at him, or me.

'If the submarine was in Soviet waters,' Ambassador Morris said deliberately, 'it was there by navigational error, or some mechanical breakdown with the steering gear or something like that.' He was a heavy man, sitting with his hands along the arms of his small fragile chair, his head lowered as if prepared to charge. It had said in one of the news reports I'd seen that he'd had a nephew on board the submarine, but that in any case his personal feeling was that if the entire Soviet fleet were to be blasted out of the oceans it would express the attitude of the United States with accuracy. 'If it was there within the twelve-mile limit, the Soviets should have warned the crew in the normal way, by dropping depth charges and sonar buoys. It could have been done, it should have been done, and it was not done.'

The PM said at once, leaning forward in her chair, 'That is why I regard it as an act of war. But unfortunately we have not only to put our own personal feelings into the background, Mr Ambassador, but to do all we can to damp down public concern to the minimum.' She leaned back again, resting a slim hand on the arm of her chair. 'It won't be easy.'

The foreign secretary looked at the ambassador. 'You don't think there's even the slightest chance of your president simply saying that unless the Soviets come across with an immediate and generous apology he'll call off the summit meeting?'

'I would like to think so. I do not, however, think so.'

'There's not the slightest chance,' someone said impatiently, 'that they'd apologize anyway. They've denied any blame and they'll go on denying it.'

'Are your people still trying to locate the submarine?'

'Yes. So are NATO investigators. But those waters are within the Arctic Circle and it's midwinter, with rough seas running.'

'Mr Ambassador, if the vessel could be found, would it be possible for divers to see whether it was an explosion on board, as the Soviets claim, or an armed attack that sent it down?'

'I think there's no question of that. But it's academic; I'm told there's almost no chance of the submarine being found, in those conditions.'

'Wouldn't the crew have signalled by radio if the ship had been in some kind of distress?'

'If they could have surfaced to do it, yes. They might not have been able to do that.'

'Do you think it was a depth charge — a warning depth charge the Soviets had in fact dropped but later decided to deny — that sank the submarine?'

Two or three of them looked at the thin man who sat with his legs crossed, tall in the chair. I put him down as Admiralty. 'It would need a great number of depth charges to sink a vessel the size of the SSN Cetacea. Again, the Soviets could have dropped a very great number, without coming anywhere near the target. The boat would have normally surfaced perhaps a couple of times a day to spread her antenna and signal base; in those waters, where in midwinter there's no sunlight at noon, she could have done this quite close to the Russian coast without being seen. In other words, I don't think for a moment that she was unaware of her location at any time; and if the captain had heard one depth charge going off, he would have surfaced — or changed course at once towards the open sea.'

'Can we be sure that the Soviets did in fact detect the presence of the Cetacea off their shores?' The PM.

'Not completely sure, ma'am.' He recrossed his long thin legs. 'But it would have been difficult for them not to. In those waters, very close to their largest naval base at Murmansk, they have underwater listening stations in a very wide array. Transonar-transducers would pick up the presence of an alien vessel easily enough, and relay the information to manned posts. Of the Soviet's six hundred or so active submarines, about four hundred are obsolescent diesel-powered boats used for patrolling the shores of the entire continent of Asia. A good few of these patrol the Barents Sea, to protect Murmansk, and they could well have picked up the noise of the Cetacea. They would-'

'But with all their own submarines around, how could they distinguish-'

'Every boat makes its own personal kind of noise, and a fast nuclear-powered Los Angeles class submarine sounds vastly different from a Soviet diesel.'

'Could they have known how far off shore the submarine was?'

'You mean whether it was beyond the twelve-mile limit, ma'am?'

'Precisely.'

'They would have had a fair estimation. I wouldn't go further than that.'

'Do you think, Admiral, that the Soviets attacked and sank the submarine?'

The silence came in like a Shockwave.

I watched the prime minister. She was leaning forward again, not taking her eyes off the admiral. He was studying his thin veined hands, giving himself time; but he didn't need very long. 'Yes, Madam Prime Minister, I believe they attacked and sank it.'

'Without warning?'

'We can't even guess at that. There were no survivors. Only the Soviets know.'

'Wouldn't it have been to their advantage to warn the submarine before attacking, to avoid a grave international incident?'

The admiral uncrossed his legs and got up stiffly. 'If you'll excuse me, I need to stretch a little-'

'Of course-'

'Thank you.' He took a pace or two, his hands tucked behind him. 'I would have thought, yes, that they would have warned the boat first, if they'd given themselves time to consider.'

'Do you see any parallel-' this was the US ambassador now — 'between this act and the downing of the Korean airliner?'

'Several. But the aspect common to both acts is unfortunately that we in the West haven't got full information.'

'No survivors.'

'Quite.' The admiral took another turn across the Persian carpet. 'I should point out that although we might regard the sinking of the Cetacea as an act of war, the Soviets might claim with equal justification that the presence of a NATO submarine in their waters and within the proximity of their major naval base is also an act of war.'

'But they don't claim that.'

'Not at present. Their line at present is simply that they had no knowledge of the Cetacea until the Norwegian coastguard sighted debris drifting from the east.'

'That's typical of them,' said the Foreign Secretary, and got up too. 'If you don't mind, Madam Prime Minister-'

'We should move about, of course. This is going to be a long session, gentlemen.'

'Typically,' Cranley went on, 'they start out by denying everything in a case like this. It gives them time to think, and avoids the risk of putting their foot in their mouth. Today they're saying that the submarine must have exploded of its own accord. Tomorrow they'll start screaming that it shouldn't have been in their waters anyway.'

The PM was still in her chair, and I watched her, not getting up like most of them. I hadn't got the drift yet. I couldn't see why Britain was so involved as to call a high-level meeting in Downing Street. Or why the Bureau was involved.

'Wouldn't you say, Admiral Cummings, that a major incident like this, entailing the loss of more than a hundred lives and a nuclear submarine, would come under the terms of the Incidents at Sea Treaty we all signed with the Soviets in 1972?'

'Oh yes. I tried to telephone Admiral Novoselov in Moscow as soon as I heard the news of the sinking, but they told me he was unavailable. That's unusual.'

'In the case of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk,' said the US ambassador, 'our people were able to contact Novoselov immediately.'

'There's not so much in common, Mr Ambassador, with the two incidents. True, the damage to your carrier by the Soviet submarine was in the region of two million dollars; but the collision occurred in international waters in broad daylight, and was the obvious result of poor seamanship on their part.

Also there was no loss of life. In the present case we have a death toll of one hundred and five sailors on active duty and the presence of a NATO submarine in waters close to the Soviets' major naval base. With the Kitty Hawk there were a few red faces and the dismissal of one Soviet submarine commander. With the Cetacea, we already have your president's declaration of a national day of mourning throughout the United States of America.'

The PM got up at last, and took an elegant step across to the fireplace, standing with her back to it. The central heating was having a job to cope with the winter temperatures outside; from where I was sitting I could feel a cutting draught coming through a gap in the curtains.

'Let me ask you, Admiral, whether you've reached any kind of construction, in your own mind, of what actually happened in the Barents Sea four days ago. Perhaps that's not quite a fair question, but it's an important one.' In a moment she added: 'You don't have to commit yourself, of course.'

Cummings studied his hands again, and took longer this time to speak. 'I've thought about it quite a lot, Madam Prime Minister, as we all have. From my experience as an ex-submariner, and as an observer of the Soviet thought processes in East-West relations and diplomacy, I do in point of fact have a feeling — quite a strong feeling — that what really happened in the Barents Sea was that the SSN Cetacea was not detected by the Soviets until she was close to the twelve-mile limit, and was at once attacked by a sonar-guided torpedo — or perhaps several. And I believe that no warning was given because the Soviets were taken by surprise, and thought the submarine was within their territorial waters, offering a distinct threat.'

'You mean there was no time — as in the case of the Korean Airlines disaster — for orders to be requested from higher authority before action was taken by a local commander?'

'Quite so. I'd say that the element of surprise was inevitably involved, even of panic on the part of some young naval shore-defence officer.'› 'Or simply over-zealousness? Ambition in the line of duty?'

'What we're trying to say,' the foreign secretary cut in heavily, 'is that someone blundered.'

It was gone midnight before the PM broached the real issue I'd been brought here to listen to.

'I'm glad to have had your expert opinions, gentlemen, on what is in itself a matter of grave and tragic proportions, affecting the personal lives of so many Americans, and the already critical relationship between the two great powers and their allies. But as I'm sure you've realized, what we are here to discuss is the appalling threat this incident has brought to the summit meeting that was to have taken place in less than two months from now in Vienna.'

Half an hour before we'd been moved into another room, where there were sofas and deep armchairs; a huge silver tea-tray was being cleared away, and some of the men present were holding whisky glasses. What had gone before was only the preamble to the night's work.

'The agreement by Washington and Moscow to convene the summit conference was made because of the very precariousness of the East-West relationship, and the danger it presents to world peace. And what we have to do now is to ask ourselves whether the incident in the Barents Sea — however tragic in its loss of life and however shocking in its impact on East-West relations — can be allowed to bring down our hopes for a successful summit meeting in Vienna, and our hopes that the United States and the Soviet Union can work out their differences and diminish the threat of a final and annihilating war that the whole world faces today.'

I saw the US ambassador lift his head quickly to look at her. Someone behind me reacted so sharply that the ice-cubes jingled in his glass. I looked across at the foreign secretary. His eyes were down. He'd been told what his prime minister was going to propose tonight.

'This incident' is not, of course, of major concern to Great Britain, though as a loyal ally of the United States and a member of NATO we are indirectly affected.' She lifted her wrist and adjusted the thin gold bracelet: it was the first sign of nervousness she'd shown since I'd come into the room. 'We are well placed, however, in the area of international intelligence, and may be able to make ourselves useful to the United States in the immediate future, when diplomatic relations between East and West will be critically and dangerously strained. If certain information I received earlier tonight is reliable, we may shortly be in possession of absolute proof that the US submarine Cetacea was in fact attacked and sunk by Soviet arms.'

Tension was suddenly in the room again, and we all froze.

'My God,' someone said quietly.

I didn't look at Frome. I'd see nothing in his face if I did. What did she mean, 'proof? 'The feeling of outrage among the people of the United States at this moment is so strong that there is no way the president could go to meet the Soviets in two months' time. But if we can secure irrefutable proof of their criminal act in the Barents Sea, then the United States will be in a position to demand — and with God's help extract — a full and unstinting apology from the Kremlin. And this may be the only chance we have of saving the summit conference.'

It was gone two in the morning when I left Downing Street and turned along Whitehall with the windscreen wipers on high speed to get rid of the rain. A constable with a drenched cape was guarding the only two parking spaces left outside our building and I slid into the end one and got out, just as Frome came in with his mud-caked Rover. He drove up from the country every day and never had the thing cleaned.

All he'd said to me when we'd left No. 10 was that he'd rather I didn't go home until I'd seen Croder.

We didn't talk on our way up in the lift. I didn't know how much his mind was occupied with the submarine thing and how much with the diagnosis the doctors had given him; in the flickering light he already looked like death.

He left me on the fourth floor, turning away without a word while I went into the small cramped room where the security sergeant was sitting at his desk filing his nails. He picked up one of his phones right away and poked out a number with a nicotine-yellowed finger and waited, eyeing me with a companionable stare. I heard the line open.

'Sir? Quiller's in.' He waited again and then said 'Yes sir' and put the phone down and told me: 'He'd like you to go along for a minute. Room 7. Still raining, is it?'

'Yes.'

'Shocking, isn't it? Simply shocking.'