Sea Leopard

Chapter One: BAIT

The office of Tamas Petrunin, Trade Attaché at the Soviet embassy in London, looked out upon Kensington Palace Gardens, across the lawns of the embassy grounds. The straight lines of bare plane trees marked the boundary between himself and the western city he both despised and coveted. A fierce early spring wind searched for, and found, the remains of last autumn’s leaves, and hurried them along the road and beneath the wrought-iron gates into the drive of the embassy, finally scattering them like burnt secret messages and papers over the gravel and the grass. The sky was unrelievedly grey, and had been threatening rain all morning. Tamas Petrunin had leisure to reflect, as he listened angrily to the tape cassette from the duty room and its recorded conversation, that London irritated him particularly at that time of year. There was no snow. Wind, and rain — an umbrella threatening to turn inside out carried by an old man passing the gate, unceremoniously jostled by the wind — wind and rain, but little snow. Only sleet in the evening air sometimes, turning instantly to slush in the gutters, like a promise broken. In Moscow, there would be inches of snow, and everyone rotund and animalised in fur coats and hats.

The Scotsman’s recorded voice enraged him. Almost always it did. Now nasality and meaning combined to grip his stomach with an indigestion of rage.

"We have been trying to contact you for two days," the authoritative Russian voice insisted. Ruban, the Naval Attaché who worked under the auspices of Petrunin and the KGB at the embassy. "You fully understand how difficult movement outside London is for our people here. Why have you not contacted us on schedule? Now you say the submarine has sailed."

There was an additional nasality, and a promoted, cultivated cough in the Scot’s voice when he replied. "I’ve been in bed with the flu. It’s no’ my fault. I havena been to work all week. I’ve been in my bed, y’understand?" The whine was almost rebellious.

"We do not pay you to be ill, MacFarlane."

"I couldna help it. I still feel lousy. I got up to come to the phone. There's fog, too." A small, projected bout of coughing followed the weather bulletin. Petrunin, in spite of his anger, could not suppress a smile.

"When did the submarine sail from Faslane?"

"Three nights ago, early hours."

"What? Three nights? What else did you learn?"

"I couldna ask, could I? Just that she sailed three nights ago."

"You are useless to us!" stormed Ruban on the tape behind Petrunin. One of the embassy chauffeurs was walking, leaning against the wind, towards a parked black Mercedes saloon. His black uniform trousers were flapping around his legs, and he was holding his peaked cap firmly on his head.

"I couldna help it — it was no" my fault if I caught the damn flu, was it?"

"Was the equipment on board? Do you know that much for certain?"

"I heard it was."

"You don't know?"

"Yes, dammit, it was on board!" The Scot sniffled on the tape. Petrunin pictured him. Pale, rat-faced, unshaven, untrustworthy. Trash. He was poor material with which to start a blaze. Ruban thought so too, by the sound of his voice. Ruban would have to report to Murmansk, via himself, and they would have to decide, on MacFarlane's word alone, whether the British submarine Proteus was carrying the "Leopard" equipment or not when she slipped out of Faslane into the Atlantic three nights before.

"You're guessing," Ruban said after a pause. "You can't know for certain."

"I'm sure, dammit! Nothing was taken off the ship after she returned from sea trials with this “Leopard” stuff!" MacFarlane had forgotten his habitual ingratiating manner. "I found out that much. Nothing came off the ship."

"And where is she now?"

"I dinna know." MacFarlane retreated from anger into surliness.

"And that ends your report?"

In the silence that followed, Petrunin moved to his desk and switched off the cassette player. Then he returned to the window of his office, rubbing his chin. In no more than thirty minutes, he would have to summon Ruban, and they would have to make a decision before five or five-thirty as to the nature of the signal they would send to Moscow Centre and to Red Banner Northern Fleet HQ, Murmansk, EYES ONLY Admiral Dolohov. Damn MacFarlane and his attack of influenza.

"Leopard". Was it on board? If so, then the likelihood that Proteus was on her way to map the location and extent of the newest Soviet sonar-grid across the Barents Sea from North Cape to Murmansk was transmuted into a virtual certainty. The only way to do that was by means of a submarine indetectable by sonar; which would mean Proteus using the "Leopard" equipment. Ethan Clark, the American expert, was in London on liaison work, Proteus had sailed on secret orders to an unknown destination as soon as her sea trials were complete. It was a likelihood — was it a certainty?

Petrunin paced the room carefully, keeping to the border of the patterned Turkish carpet, studying his footsteps with apparent intentness, rubbing his chin lightly with thumb and forefinger in a ceaseless motion of his hand. Proteus had to reach North Cape in order for the Red Banner Fleet's cock-eyed plan to be put into operation. If she were sailing elsewhere, all the preparations would have been a waste of time and effort.

Petrunin found himself before the window again. The newly-imprisoned leaves seemed to be scurrying aimlessly across the embassy lawns, seeking escape. He shook his head. Proteus's target had to be "Chessboard". The development of "Leopard" had been violently accelerated during the past six months, the sea trials had been conducted with maximum haste; both facts implied an urgent task for the equipment. After all, there were no other "Leopard" units as yet, none fitted to any submarine or surface ship in the Royal Navy. Just this one priceless example of anti-sonar equipment, being used for one special task —

Yes. He nodded vigorously. He would go over it again with Ruban in fifteen minutes or so, but he had decided. They would signal Moscow and Murmansk that Proteus was on her way north, making for North Cape. Then it was up to the Red Banner Fleet.

And, he reminded himself, not for the first time that afternoon, there then devolved upon himself the task of finding Quin. Quin, the inventor and developer of "Leopard". Disappeared without trace. Not under protective custody, because British Intelligence, the Directorate of Security and Special Branch were all looking for him. Quin. More important — at least in Petrunin's estimation — than "Leopard" itself. Where was he?

He realised, with a mounting disappointment, that his decision with regard to Proteus was no decision at all. Merely a side-issue, a piece of self-indulgence, a war-game for sailors. Quin was what mattered. And Quin could not be found.

It had become routine, watching the house in Sutton Coldfield, in a quiet, residential street between the roads to Lichfield and Brownhills. A pre-war detached house, standing a little back from the road and elevated above its level, partially screened by a stone wall and a dark hedge. Leaded windows, trained ivy like an artificial ageing process climbing wooden trelliswork around the front door, and cherry blossom trees waiting for the spring. The street was still stained from the recent rain, and the slim boles of the trees gleamed green. Routine, boring routine. The young officer of the Special Branch unit attached to the West Midlands constabulary knew the facade of the house in which Quin's divorced wife lived with a familiarity that had become sour and stultifying. She worked part-time in the elegantly refurbished premises of an antique shop a hundred yards away. She was there now. The Special Branch Officer had parked his unmarked Ford Escort so that he had a clear view of the house and the entrance of the shop. He had observed well-dressed women, the occasional couple, a small delivery van, but no sign, none whatsoever, of Quin or of his daughter who had disappeared from her teacher training college in Birmingham at the same time that he had vanished. And there had been no visitors to the house except the milkman, the grocery delivery on a Thursday, the fish van on Wednesdays —

Sugden found himself idly flicking through the leaves of his notebook, rehearsing the boredom of two weeks" surveillance of the quiet street in a quiet suburb, shook his head, and snapped the notebook shut on the seat beside him. He put another cigarette to his lips, lit it, looked at his watch — Mrs Quin would be coming home for a salad lunch in another half-an-hour — and slid lower in the driving seat, attempting to stretch his legs. He yawned. He and Lane, day and night for two weeks, just in case the missing man contacted the wife he'd left four years before, or in case the daughter turned up.

No chance, he told himself with a spiteful satisfaction that seemed to revenge him on the London superiors who had placed him in his present limbo, no chance at all. It was even duller work than preparing for the visit of the Queen to a Lichfield school a couple of years before, or Princess Margaret's opening of another Lichfield school before that, just after he had joined the Branch in Birmingham. Dull, deadly, dead. Quin and the girl had gone over. Not voluntarily, of course. Kidnapped. Snatched. Sugden yawned again. Quin was building "Leopard" for the Soviet Union by now, watched by his friendly neighbourhood KGB man. Despite wishing to maintain a frosty contempt for his present task and for those who had given him his orders, Sugden smiled to himself. Once Mrs Quin was inside the house, a quick sandwich and a pint for him in the pub opposite the antique showroom. In the window seat, he could just about see the path up to the Quin house. Well enough, anyway. Certainly he could observe any car that parked near the house, or a pedestrian on the pavement.

He wondered why Quin had left his wife. Perhaps she had left him. They'd moved down to London when he began working for Plessey, and she'd come back to the Midlands after the separation because both of them were from the area and because the girl, Tricia, was enrolled at a training college in Birmingham. She'd repeated her first year twice, the file said, then failed her second year after the decree nisi, and only someone's pull high-up had prevented her from being expelled from the college. Now she'd disappeared along with her father. Another lever for the KGB to use on him, Sugden presumed. Mrs Quin looked pleasant and capable. Greying blonde hair, smartly turned out, could be taken for early forties. Quin, from the look of his picture — on the dash of the Escort — wasn't much of a catch, at least not in looks. The girl was pretty, but student-scruffy rather than making the most of herself. Almost drab, like the female of some brightly-plumaged species of bird.

She came down the path as Sugden rubbed his face and stifled another yawn. Tricia Quin, coming out of her mother's house. The closing of the door alerted him. She took no notice of the car, turned left, and began walking briskly down the hill towards the Lichfield Road. Frayed denims, a long cardigan in some sludgy colour beneath a cagoule, untidy fair hair. Tricia Quin.

She was almost fifty or sixty yards down the hill before his hand jerked at the door handle, and he got out of the Escort. He could not believe it, though the confirmatory photograph was in his hand. He opened his mouth, fish-slow and silently, and then slammed the door behind him with an angry curse. He appeared stupid, would appear stupid, even when he took the girl in…

A rush of thoughts then. Quin might be in the country after all — the girl, how had she got in last night, how had Lane missed her? — comfortable thought, that. Lane's fault — where was Quin? Door opening and closing in the empty house with its For Sale notice, the one he'd suggested using but permission had been denied, too much paperwork to take it over — door closing, the girl further away down the hill, oblivious of him.

Or of the squat-featured, heavy-looking man in the grey double-breasted suit coming down the path of the empty house, a taller, thinner man running behind him. Both of them running, no more than twenty yards away from him now, and perhaps a hundred or so from the girl. KGB, so obvious he wanted to laugh, so sudden their appearance he could not move and was aware only of their numerical superiority.

"Wait a minute —" he managed to say, stepping round the Escort on to the pavement. The one in the grey suit ran with his thick arm extended, palm outwards, to fend him off like a rugby player; the thinner man dodged round the offside of Sugden's car. They were going to get past him, no doubt of it. "Wait!"

He ducked outside the extended hand, felt it heave at his shoulder, then got a hold on the arm behind it, ripping the grey sleeve of the suit immediately. A heavy fist swung at the edge of his vision and caught him on the temple. He was immediately dizzy.

The heavy man said something in Russian. Mrs Quin was coming out of the shop. Sugden could see her over the roof of the car as the heavy man lurched him against it. The thinner man was galloping down the middle of the road, no athlete but certain to overtake the still unaware girl.

Sugden opened his mouth and bellowed her name. The heavy man struck upwards into Sugden's groin with his knee. Sugden doubled up, retching and groaning, his head turned sideways. The girl had become instantly alert, then had begun to run. The heavy man cursed, and moved away after aiming a foot at Sugden's head and connecting with his shoulder. Both men were running off. Sugden, groaning, his eyes wet with the latest wave of pain, knew he had to concentrate. They would want everything in his report.

Three hundred yards away, still just identifiable, Tricia Quin boarded a cream and blue bus as it pulled away, heading into the centre of Sutton Coldfield. The two Russians were just short of her, and the traffic lights were in the bus's favour. She was gone; they'd lost her, just as he had.

He rolled on to his back, still clutching his genitals, and listened to the tattoo of Mrs Quin's high heels on the pavement as she ran towards him.

Patrick Hyde hurried through the rooms of the empty house, as if their last, impermanent occupants might yet be overtaken and restrained, just so long as he displayed sufficient haste. Two camp beds in one of the bedrooms, spare linen in the airing cupboard on the landing, food still in cardboard boxes, mostly tinned stuff, the refrigerator half-full, six-packs of lager, bottles of vodka. The two KGB men must have arrived before Birmingham Special Branch began its surveillance. The almost full dustbins at the side of the house suggested they had moved in almost as soon as Quin first disappeared.

Hyde snorted with self-derision and with an anger that included himself, Kenneth Aubrey, the DS, Special Branch, everyone. Quin had simply panicked, hidden himself. Or had he —? He could even be dead, and they might want the girl for some other reason…

Quin is alive, and well, and living somewhere in England, he reminded himself.

He turned to the police inspector who had followed at his heels through the house. "No sign of them now, sport?" He dropped immediately into a strengthened accent, one he had never himself possessed but which he used always to remind others of his Australian origins — because he knew it irritated them, and it served in some way to dissociate him from their incompetence. The only person secure from its mockery was Kenneth Aubrey. "A right bloody cock-up, mate. Wouldn't you say?"

The police inspector controlled his features. He disliked having to deal with someone from Intelligence rather than from what he would have considered the "proper channels", counter-intelligence. He could see no reason why Hyde, as SIS operative, should be officially functioning inside the United Kingdom, and displaying his superiority so evidently. A bloody Aussie…

"You'd like to speak with Sugden now, I suppose, Mr Hyde?" he said through thinned lips, hardly opening his teeth to emit the sounds.

Hyde scowled. "Too bloody right, Blue. Where is he?"

The inspector pointed to the lounge window, across at the Quin house. "Mrs Quin looked after him, then he radioed in. He's still there. The doctor's taken a look at him."

"Bruised balls. He's lucky they were only playing with him, okay let's have a word with him." The inspector made as if to precede Hyde from the room. He was taller, thicker set, in uniform. Hyde's voice and manner seemed to dismiss all of it. Hyde wagged a finger at him, bringing two points of colour to the policeman's cheekbones. "And you called the Branch?"

"Sugden is their man."

"You were instructed to call me — not the Branch, or the DS, or the Home Secretary or Her Majesty the Queen Mum — me. Next time, call me direct. Reverse the charges if you have to, but call me. Quin is mine." Hyde made Quin sound like part of his diet. The inspector seethed in silence, allowing Hyde to leave the room in front of him, just in case the Australian saw his eyes and their clear message. "It's a bloody cock-up!" Hyde called back over his shoulder. "Too much bloody time has gone by!"

Hyde banged open the front door and went down the path, the same urgency possessing his slight frame. His denims and pale windcheater over a check shirt did nothing to endear or recommend him to the inspector, who nevertheless dutifully followed him across the road and up the path to Mrs Quin's door. Hyde rang the bell repeatedly.

“The woman's had a shock, you know," the inspector cautioned.

Hyde turned on him. "She bloody well knew we wanted her husband and her daughter. Did she ring? No bloody fear. She almost got her precious daughter nobbled by the KGB —"

Mrs Quin opened the door on its safety-chain. Her hair had freed itself from the restraint of lacquer, and two separate locks fell across her left eye. She brushed at them. Hyde showed her no identification, but she studied the uniformed inspector behind him, then released the chain on the door. Hyde walked past her into the cool, dim hall. Mrs Quin caught up with him. Her mouth trembling. The inspector closed the door softly.

"Where is he, Mrs Quin?"

"In the lounge, lying down." Her tone was apologetic. She offered Sugden's comfort as a token of her good intentions. "Poor man."

"I'll talk to him. Then I'll want to have a word with you, Mrs Quin."

"Mr Hyde —" the inspector began.

Hyde turned to look at him. Too late for that."

Hyde went into the lounge and closed the door behind him. Sugden was lying on a chaise longue, his face still pale, his tie askew, jacket draped over the arm of an easy-chair. His face arranged itself into a memory of pain, through which guilt thrust itself like the outbreak of some malady.

"Mr Hyde —" he began.

"Don't apologise, sonny, it's too late for that," Hyde pulled an armchair in front of the chaise.

"But I am sorry, Mr Hyde. I just didn't know they were there."

"You cocked it up, son. You didn't expect the girl, you didn't expect the heavy mob — what did you expect?"

Sugden tried to sit up, to make himself feel at less of a disadvantage. Hyde waved him back, and he slumped on the chaise, his hand gently seeking his genitals. He winced. Hyde grinned mirthlessly.

"I don't know."

Hyde took out a notebook and passed it to Sugden. "These are your descriptions of the two men?" Sugden nodded. “They don't ring any bells with me. They could have been brought in for this. The KGB has trouble travelling. They didn't get the girl?" Sugden shook his head vehemently. "Neither did we. When did she arrive?"

"Mrs Quin didn't say."

"She will. You know what it means, mm?"

"They haven't got Quin?"

"Too true they haven't. Shit, we should have guessed they didn't have him!" Hyde slapped his hands on his thighs. "Why the bloody hell did we assume they did? Too many post-Imperial hang-ups in Whitehall, sport — that's the bloody answer. Quin's gone, we're so incompetent and wet, they must have him. It's what we British deserve." He saw Sugden staring at him, and grinned. The expression seemed to open his face, smooth its hard edges. It surprised Sugden as much as his words had done. "My hobby-horse. I race it around the track once in a while. Trouble is, I fell for it this time."

"You don't think much of us, do you?"

"Too right. Not a lot. You're all a lot more sophisticated than us Aussies, but it doesn't get you anywhere, especially with the KGB. Bloody Russians wouldn't last five minutes in Brisbane." Hyde stood up "OK, sport, interrogation's over for now. I'm going to have a word with Mum. She has a lot of explaining to do."

He found Mrs Quin and the inspector sitting in the breakfast kitchen, sipping tea from dark blue and gold cups.

"Mr Hyde —"

"Very cosy," Hyde sneered, and the inspector coloured. Mrs Quin looked guilty, and defiant, and Hyde was brought to admire the manner in which she stared into his eyes. She was afraid, but more for her daughter than herself.

"Tea, Mr Hyde?" she offered.

Hyde felt pressed, even ridiculed, by the scene; by the pine furniture, the split-level cooker, the pale green kitchen units. Only he expressed urgency, was in haste.

"No time." He stood over the woman. The inspector played with his gloves on the table. "Will you check with the bulletin on Miss Quin, Inspector?" The policeman seemed reluctant to leave, but only momentarily. Hyde remained standing after he had left. "You weren't going to tell us, were you, Mrs Quin?" She shook her head, still holding his gaze. "Why not, for Christ's sake?"

"Tricia asked me not to."

"We'd have looked after her."

"She said you couldn't, I don't know why not. She didn't explain." Her hand shook slightly as she lifted the cup to her lips. They quivered, smudging pink lipstick on to the gold rim of the cup.

"She knows where her father is, doesn't she?" Mrs Quin nodded, minimising the betrayal. There was nothing in her eyes but concern. She cared for her daughter, it was evident, but regarding her husband she was composed, perhaps indifferent. "Did she say where?"

"No."

"Has she gone back to him now?"

"I don't know." The exchanges had achieved a more satisfying momentum which disguised the emptiness behind the answers. The woman knew little, perhaps nothing.

"Where has she gone?"

"She wasn't supposed to be going out." Mrs Quin waved her hands limply. They were as inanimate as gloves at the ends of her plump arms. "I don't know where she is." The voice cracked, the mouth quivered.

"She came to put your mind at rest, is that it?" Mrs Quin nodded. "And she said nothing about your husband — her father?" Mrs Quin shook her head. Her face was averted from Hyde's eyes now. But she was concealing nothing, except perhaps inadequacies that belonged to her past. She was keeping only herself from him, not information. "She gave you no clue?"

"No, Mr Hyde. Except that he's well, and is in hiding. I think she hoped I would be pleased at the news. I tried to show I was." The confession stuck into their conversation like a fracture through skin.

"She's been with him?"

"Yes."

"Since his disappearance? She disappeared with him?"

"Yes, Mr Hyde. And then she came back here. She's always bounced between us, ever since the divorce." Mrs Quin tried to smile. "She is a trier, even if she's a failure." Assumed cynicism was an attempt to shut him out, he realised.

"Where might she be now, Mrs Quin?"

"I have no idea whatsoever. Back with him, I suppose. But I have no idea where that might be."

Hyde breathed out noisily. He looked at the ceiling, his hands on his hips. The texture of their conversation had become thickened, clogged with personalities. There might be clues there as to the girl's character, behaviour, whereabouts, but such enquiries possessed no volition, no urgency. Hyde was impatient for action. The girl was vital now, and he and the KGB both understood that. She'd been shown to them like some tempting prize which would be awarded to the swiftest, the strongest, the most ruthless.

Thank you, Mrs Quin. I may be back. I just have to use your telephone —"

Mrs Quin dismissed him with a slight motion of one hand. The other rubbed at the edge of the pine table, erasing memories. Hyde went out into the hall.

Aubrey had to know. The Deputy Director of SIS had been with the Foreign Secretary when the call from Birmingham had finally been routed through to Queen Anne's Gate. Hyde had left a message, but now Aubrey had to know the extent of their problem, and their hope — or lack of it.

He was dialling the number when the front door opened, and the inspector reappeared. Hyde ignored him and went on dialling.

"Whoever you're reporting to," the policeman remarked with evident, hostile sarcasm, "you'd better mention the car that just drove past. I'd say it contained the two men who worked Sugden over."

"What —?" The telephone was already ringing in Aubrey's offic even as Hyde examined a residual sense that he had once more blundered into, and through, a private world. Mrs Quin hadn't deserved the way he had treated her. Yet, had he altered his manner, even though he might not have bludgeoned there would have been little gentleness, almost no sensitivity. He took the receiver from his cheek. "You" ve got them?"

The inspector shook his head. "Foot down and away, as soon as they saw my lads. The registration number won't be of any use either, I shouldn't wonder —"

"Shit!"

"I beg your pardon!" Aubrey's secretary demanded frostily at the other end of the line.

Ethan Clark, of the US Naval Intelligence Command (ASW/Ocean Surveillance), had been made to feel, throughout the week since he had joined the "Chessboard Counter" team in the Admiralty, very much like an executive of some parent company visiting a recently taken over small firm. He was present in both his USN and NATO capacities, but these men of the Royal Navy — of, more precisely, the Office of Naval Intelligence (Submarine Warfare) — exuded a silent, undemonstrative resentment of him. Which, he well knew, made any doubts and hesitations he had concerning the mission of HMS Proteus seem no more to them than American carping. The commodore and his team in this long, low room in the basement of the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall were dry-land sailors playing a war-game, and thoroughly and blithely enjoying themselves.

Clark supposed it had its basis in a buried sense of inferiority. For years, the contracting Royal Navy had belied its great history, and now, quite suddenly, they had developed "Leopard" and installed it in a nuclear-powered fleet submarine and were engaged in mapping the "Chessboard" sonar grid in the Barents Sea. Their high summer had returned. NATO needed them as never before, and the USN wanted greedily to get its hands, and its development budgets, on the British anti-sonar system.

Nevertheless, he told himself again as he sipped coffee from a plastic cup and observed the British officers waiting for the ritual serving of afternoon tea, "Chessboard" should have waited. NATO and the Navy Department had required of the Royal Navy that they install the only operationally-functioning "Leopard" unit in a submarine, rush their sea trials, then send it racing north to the Arctic Circle. The British had responded like a child doing everything at top speed to show its willingness and its virtue. Even before they had paid Plessey the bill for what they had, and before they had ordered any more "Leopard" units. With that kind of haste, things often got smashed, plates got dropped. Boats had been lost before. It would be a great pity if "Leopard" was lost; a tragedy if anyone else found it.

The long room, with its officers seated at computer terminals in front of their screens, its maps, wires, cables, fold-away tables, was dominated by a huge edge-lit perspex screen which stood upright in the middle of the room. The perspex secreted a multitude of optic fibres which registered the input of the computers that controlled the screen. The lighting at the edges of the perspex allowed the team to use chinagraph for temporary handwork additions to the computer-fed information. At that moment, much as it had done for the last week, the screen displayed a projection of the fjordal north coast of Norway, from North Cape to Murmansk. The coast was green and brown, the sea a deepening shade of blue as it reached northward. A fine grid of red lights, no larger than dots, was shown off the coast, as if some current in the screen were knitting, or marking a school register. Other lights moved slowly or remained stationary, units of the Red Banner Northern Fleet, ships and submarines. One or two NATO units. The Commodore's team seemed to scuttle round the base of the perspex screen as if propitiating some idol.

The room was now quiet, orderly. An hour before, Proteus had come up to periscope depth for one of her periodic, random but pre-determined transmissions. The transmission, using RABFITS (Random Bit Frequency Intelligence Transmission System) and via a satellite link, had contained every detail of the mapping work of the submarine since the previous message. This had been fed into the map-board's computers, updating the network of red spots which marked the "Chessboard" sonar grid.

Clark could not but admire, and envy, the "Leopard" equipment. He had been aboard Proteus as an observer during some of the sea trials, and he had also been aloft in the RAF Nimrod as the specially equipped plane tried to find the submarine. The Nimrod had been unable to locate, fix or identify the submarine, not even once, either in the Channel, the North Sea, or the north Atlantic. Not even in conjunction with the US-laid sonar carpet in the north Atlantic. No sonar trace, little and poor infra-red, nothing. It worked. Even pitted against surveillance satellites, it worked.

Perhaps, he told himself, his concern arose — like smoke, unformed but dense and obscuring — solely from the fact that when he had lunched with Kenneth Aubrey at his club at the beginning of the week, he'd learned that the man who had developed "Leopard" at Plessey had gone missing, presumed lost to the Russians. "Leopard" was both useless and unique, if that were so.

"It's going splendidly, Captain Clark, don't you agree?" Clark snapped awake from his unseeing contemplation of the dregs in the plastic cup. Lt.-Commander Copeland, the anti-submarine warfare expert on the "Chessboard Counter" team, was standing in front of him, six inches shorter and exhibiting a grin that shaded into smug mockery. The lights of the perspex map were bright behind him. "You don't seem to be too pleased," Copeland suggested with a more pronounced mockery. He waved an arm towards the glowing map. "Everyone else is feeling on top of the world."

"You're really pleased, aren't you, Copeland."

"Your people will be delighted, too, and NATO will be over the moon."

"Sure." Clark shifted his weight on the edge of the desk where he had perched.

"Really, Clark!" Copeland's exasperation was genuine. "Neither the United States nor ourselves have been able to send a ballistic missile boat, or any other sort of submarine for that matter, east of North Cape for two months, ever since the Ohio was first traced, shadowed, and escorted from the area." Copeland turned to study the huge map-board. "We're helpless up there until we know how big, how good, and of what kind “Chessboard” is." He turned back to Clark. "Your Chief of Naval Operations saw that quite clearly, so did Supreme Allied Command, Atlantic. Proteus has the most distinguished sponsors." Again, the silent, mocking smile.

"What if we lose her? Then we" ve lost “Leopard” for good."

"Lose? Lost? What do you mean? Oh, Quin, I suppose."

Copeland shrugged. "If Quin is over on the other side, then “Leopard” will be useless in a matter of months, don't you agree?" Clark nodded. "Well, then? We must neutralise “Chessboard” now, while we have the means."

Clark looked up at the board again. A trelliswork of red dots. The carpet of active and passive sonar buoys, and other detection devices, began inside Norwegian territorial waters, less than four miles out, and extended, at present indication, perhaps fifty or more miles north into the Barents Sea. It could be a hundred miles. Proteus was moving between North Cape and Kirkenes like a tractor ploughing a field. The work could take weeks. Copeland was right, of course. The northern flank of NATO was imperilled by "Chessboard". The Norwegian coast was prohibited to British or American submarines, the coast of the Soviet Union rendered inaccessible to short-range attack; the Barents Sea finally transformed into a Russian lake.

"Sure. Yes, you're right, Copeland. You're right."

Copeland smiled with evident relief, and looked very young and enthusiastic. "I'm so glad you agree," he said without irony.

"Just one thing," Clark added maliciously, pointing towards the map. "Don't you think there's just too little Soviet naval activity up there?" The board's computer was feeding into the map display whatever the North Cape monitoring stations, the surveillance satellites, and air patrols were supplying via SACLANT's huge central computers. "Two “Kotlin”-class destroyers, one “Sverdlov”-class cruiser, two “Romeo” submarines and one “Quebec”. They're usually crawling all over the Barents Sea. Where are they?"

"Our information is Murmansk, old man. Perhaps they're taking things easy now they" ve got “Chessboard” to do their work for them." The suggestion was in earnest.

"Maybe."

Copeland was about to reply when the door opened and a Wren wheeling a tea-trolley appeared. "Ah, tea," he exclaimed. "Excellent!"

Richard Lloyd, captain of HMS Proteus, was suddenly aware, on entering the cramped computer room aft of the main control room and its almost cathedral-like spaciousness, of the claustrophobia that most people imagined was the inevitable lot of the submariner. He did not experience it, merely understood what it must be like for people who never inhabited submarines; or who had served in them forty years before. The computer room was more cramped than ever, since at least half of its available space was now taken up by the "Leopard" equipment.

"Don," he said, nodding. His senior electronic counter-measures officer, Lt.-Commander Hayter, had been nominated as trials officer for "Leopard" because of his existing special navigation and electronic warfare qualifications. Lt.-Commander Hayter's comprehension of the equipment had relieved Lloyd from all but superficial knowledge of the effects and benefits of" Leopard". Hayter was seated in front of a computer screen, watching the pinpricks of light that emerged from its bland grey surface blankness, then slowly faded. As Lloyd watched, one pinprick brightened while two others were fading. They formed a vague triangle on the screen. Then one was gone while another emerged, glowing brighter. To the left of the screen was another, an acoustical holograph screen which displayed the buoys seemingly in three dimensions, giving them an identity, a shape. Neither Lloyd nor Hayter regarded the holograph display. There was something more obsessive about the silent, brief lights.

"Sir," Hayter acknowledged. "Welcome to the broom cupboard."

"They had submarines smaller than this room in the last war," Lloyd observed dismissively. He glanced from the screen to the holograph display, then at the accompanying print-out.

"Weird," Hayter said, as if to himself. "Really weird."

"What?"

"This feeling I have that we don't exist. Not for any practical purpose, that is. Sonar buoys, temperature transducers, hydrophones —" He pointed at the holograph as the shape of a sonar buoy formed in light. "Mile after mile of them, but we just don't exist as far as they're concerned. Like limbo. Yet I ought to feel excited, sailing east." He turned to Lloyd, grinning. "Oughtn't I, skipper?"

"Something's missing from your diet, obviously."

"Much activity?"

"Very little."

"You sound puzzled?"

"Maybe. No, not really. I suppose they're relying on this stuff—" He indicated the two screens. They must be relying on “Chessboard”. One or two surface vessels, a few submarines. Something moving well to the north, one of their “Echo-II” missile boats off to take up station on the eastern seaboard of the States, no doubt. It wouldn't be much interested in us, even if it could spot us. Apart from those few items, nothing in the shop today."

"I can't say I'm sorry."

"You're not running down your pride and joy, are you?"

Lloyd nodded in the direction of the main cabinet of the "Leopard" equipment.

"No. But utter reliance on an incredibly complicated system of matching sonar signals, and emission dampers and the like — it's not the same as having a big stick in your hands or a suit of armour on, is it? “Chessboard” is the most advanced, extensive and thorough submarine detection system ever laid down. We both know that. Like tip-toeing through a minefield, or burgling the Chubb factory —" He smiled. "And here we are, same old faces and same old submarine, but now we're invisible. Mm, I think I feel excited, after all."

"How much of it have we mapped — just a guess? I won't hold you to it."

"My computers don't make rough guesses — just mistakes." Hayter typed on the computer keyboard below the screen. He waited for a few seconds before a message appeared, superimposed on the pin-pricks of light, making them more ghostly and unreal than before. "See. Twelve days and a few hours more."

That means this sonar carpet must extend at least a hundred and fifty to two hundred miles out into the Barents Sea." Lloyd's tone was one of surprise, even though he had half-expected "Chessboard" to be as impressive as he had now learned.

"It could be bigger. There's an assumed twelve to fourteen per cent error built-in at the moment. That'll get less the more we chart." Hayter turned to Lloyd again. "I'm willing to bet that there's a similar sonar-buoy carpet being laid to stretch south and west from Novaya Zemlya. The Russians, I think, are going to close the Barents completely as far as we're concerned."

Lloyd rubbed his chin, "Could be. Not our worry, old son. Even if we end up doing trips round the Isle of Wight because there's nowhere else we can go. Okay, twelve days it is. Don't let the men find out, will you?"

The intercom crackled above Lloyd's head.

"Captain to control room, please." It was the voice of his first-lieutenant. Calm and urgent. Lloyd recognised the puzzled imperative in the guarded tone.

"So you think," he said, "that if ever “Leopard” conked out or was developed by the other side, we'd see the end of NATO's submarine strike power?"

"I wouldn't be at all surprised," Hayter replied without looking at him, and not entirely without seriousness.

"Captain to control room."

Lloyd shook his head at Hayter's back, and left the computer room, passing through the open watertight door into the control room of the Proteus. He straightened, stretching the unaccustomed stoop from his shoulders. Artificial light was almost his natural visual medium. The control room — his control room — was light, almost airy after the cupboard-under-the-stairs in which Hayter spent much of his time.

Lloyd's first-lieutenant, Lt.-Commander John Thurston, was standing near the main bank of communications monitors, leaning over one of the operators, a headphone pressed to one ear. He looked up with something akin to relief when he saw Lloyd at his side.

"What is it, John?"

"Listen to this, sir." Thurston pressed the headphone set into Lloyd's hand. The communications petty officer twisted in his chair, watching for his captain's reactions. A brief splash of code, repeated again and again. Lloyd looked questioningly at Thurston.

"One of ours — distress code isn't it?

"Not one of ours. The computer identified it as a quite low-priority Soviet submarine code, one we broke three months ago. Distress, yes."

"When did you start picking it up?"

"About fifteen minutes ago, sir," the petty officer replied. "It's being transmitted regularly. I fed it into the signals computer, and it came out as a distress call."

"Any ident?"

"Yes, sir," Thurston replied, acclaiming the drama he perceived in the situation by a lengthening of his saturnine face.

"Well?"

"It's a “Delta”-class ballistic missile submarine. The full works."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"What the hell is the matter with her, using a low-grade code? What's her trouble?"

"Massive explosion in the computer room. Most of their ECM systems have gone, and there's gas in the air-purification system. They" ve shut down almost everything. They're sitting on the bottom."

Lloyd screwed his face up. "They're very descriptive."

"Panic, sir. Sheer bloody panic."

"Any idea where?"

"Yes, sir."

Again, Lloyd looked puzzled. "How did we get a fix?"

"We didn't. They told us where to find them. They're screaming for help. They could begin transmitting in clear any minute now, they're so scared."

"Where are they?"

Thurston, who had evidently prepared the little scene between himself and Lloyd in minute detail, nodded towards the chart table against the aft bulkhead of the control room. Lloyd followed him across.

"Here," Thurston said. "Right here." His finger tapped the chart. He had drawn a livid red cross, dramatic and oversized, on its surface. Tanafjord."

"What? You must have got it wrong —"

Thurston shook his head. "No, sir. They're wrong to be there, and to be using a broken code to transmit their position. But they're inside Tanafjord. They're in Norwegian waters in a ballistic missile submarine, and they're scared they're going to die!"

"My God," Lloyd breathed. He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "We'll break radio silence for this one. Run up a transmission buoy. We'd better tell the Admiralty — and the sooner the better!"

Admiral of the Red Banner Northern Fleet Dolohov paced the gantry, his footsteps and those of his aides ringing on the metal catwalk. Continually, he stared down into the well of the fleet's central Operations Room beneath Red Banner headquarters in Murmansk. Below him, the huge map table glowed with light. He had just arrived, and the warm lighting of the room, and the pin-point glows in fairy-light colours from the computer-projected map seemed to celebrate and promise. It was a welcome. He paused, placed his hands on the rail of the catwalk, and turned to his aide. He might have been on the bridge of a ship.

"Sergei — status report, if you please."

The younger man smirked with pleasure, real and anticipated. "Sir. The British submarine is in this area—" He clicked his fingers, and a chart was passed to him. It was attached to a clipboard, and over the exposed fold was fixed a transparent plastic sheet. There were faint, reddish smudges on the plastic, one or two firmer images. "The infra-red satellite picked these up, sir. Very, very faint, but there. It must be the Proteus." He pointed out one of the brighter images. "This is the cruiser in the area. A clear image, even with the cloud cover. The faint smudges —"

"It works, then? This anti-detection equipment, it really works as well as we have been led to believe?"

The aide considered the possible implications of the question, then said, "The weather satellites promise the break-up of the cloud cover. It will improve our chances of getting a good infra-red trace."

"I didn't mean that, boy!" Dolohov snapped, his pale eyes fierce and alert. "I understand that it is a hit-and-miss, even with our new geostationary satellite and every unit of the fleet looking for this submarine. I am delighted that it works, that the prize will be worth the game."

"I see, sir — " the aide said shamefacedly. "When the submarine moves closer to the Norwegian shelf, into shallower water, we may have a better trace. Not much better, but enough, sir," he added with solemn candour. Dolohov laughed.

"It is a gamble, Sergei, a great game!" he explained. "As long as the prize is sufficient, then one accepts the chances of losing the game." He transferred his intent gaze to the map table below. The plotters moved about it busily, yet expectant, knowing that they were as yet simply filling in time, rehearsing.

"Oh, the prize is a good one, sir. It works, only too well. We have had nothing from our sonar carpet, nothing, even though the British have been in the area for two days now."

Dolohov turned his back to him, his eyes vacant, his gaze inward. The smile still hovered around his mouth. He nodded, like a very old, semi-senile man. Sergei would not have been surprised had an unregarded spittle appeared on his lips.

Then Dolohov was alert again. "Yes. Satisfactory." He looked down into the well of the huge room, at the map table. The different coloured lights. Cruisers, destroyers, the carrier Kiev, submarines, the special salvage vessel Dioklas and the submarine rescue ship Karpaty, all ready to sail from Pechenga and Poliarnyi, as soon as the word was given. Hours — mere hours — away from the Tanafjord and the distress signal. The thought spoiled his almost complete satisfaction. He turned to Sergei again. "If only we knew the precise moment when the Proteus picked up the distress call and her computers broke the code — eh, Sergei? Yes, I know when they transmitted to London, I know that. I would have liked to have known when they picked it up, though. The precise moment. What they thought, and felt, and said. Everything." He laughed. Then he spoke more softly, looking down on the map table once more. "Come, let us begin. Set course for Tanafjord, and sail into our elaborate trap. Come."

Chapter Two: CONTACT

The commodore was still closeted with a hastily assembled committee of staff officers, arguing for an investigation by Proteus of the distress signals from Tanafjord. In the "Chessboard Counter" room, Clark found himself a lone voice, disregarded and even derided, as he argued against any diversion of the submarine from her mission.

He could not have explained to himself the reasons for his reluctance. The cleanly-shaven, smartly-uniformed young men who surrounded him beneath the huge perspex map-board enraged him with their confidence, their boyish enthusiasm. It was their cheerful dismissal of any doubts on his part that had stung him to contempt and counter argument. He repeated himself again and again, and the baffled, kindly smiles and the frowns of dismissal greeted every statement he made. He knew it was the commodore he needed to convince, yet he once more reiterated the central thrust of his argument in a snapping, irritated tone. He justified his own stubbornness by reminding himself that he was the Navy Department's — America's — only and solely responsible representative.

"Look, you guys — " Lips twisted in derision or disdain. "You already know her type, you might even verify which boat she is. Only ten per cent of their ballistic subs are out of Murmansk at any one time. If she's screaming for help, then there may be nothing left to investigate by the time Proteus reaches the fjord." He could see the disbelief opening on their faces, livid as blushes. It angered him. "Hell, why should she be in a fjord in shallow water with limited sea room if she was going to play rough? Use a nuke depth bomb on her — it might work out cheaper than sending in “Leopard”."

"Really, Clark, you're quite the hysterical virgin this morning," Copeland remarked waspishly.

Clark was about to answer when the door opened. He recognised Giles Pyott as soon as he entered the room. Pyott was in army uniform, and the commodore, who entered behind Pyott, was also in uniform. A glassy, urbane, impenetrable officialdom had suddenly settled on the room, the kind of formality that the Pentagon or the Navy Department could never muster or imitate. Thank God, Clark added to his observation. Pyott, grey hair immaculate, part of his pressed, polished uniform, looked pleased and elated. Clark was again reminded of children and their haste to please or to upstage.

"Shall I tell them, Commodore, or will you?"

"Carry on, Colonel Pyott," the commodore demurred, a smile leaking into his face and warping the firm line of his lips.

"Very well." The two men had approached the group beneath the map. Pyott studied it theatrically, glanced at Clark and nodded to him, then spoke to the group of Royal Navy officers. His manner implied that Clark had left the room. "Gentlemen, it has been decided that Proteus be ordered to proceed, with the utmost caution and all practicable speed, to the area of Tanafjord." A sigh of communal satisfaction, one or two murmurs of congratulation and pleasure; the empty compliments of sycophancy, they appeared to Clark. He was a man in a grey suit with a pocketful of unfamiliar and rather despised credit cards. Not a gentleman, they might have said of him. Worry twisted in his stomach again, and he knew he could not keep silent. "Yes, gentlemen," Pyott — who was from some faceless and important MoD/NATO committee called StratAn — continued, "the first Sea Lord and the Chiefs of Staff assign the gravest import to this intrusion into NATO territorial waters — " Again, the murmur of support. "The government of Norway, when informed, officially requested our assistance. Proteus will be instructed by yourselves to carry out a monitoring and surveillance action at the mouth of the Tanafjord." He smiled, at once the headmaster with his junior staff. "I leave the form of the task orders and encoding to you."

"We'll get on with it, Colonel," Pearson, the communications officer, offered, wiping his spectacles. Without them for the moment, he seemed more to suit the dark uniform and the gold cuffs. Returning them to his aquiline nose, he became clerkish again.

"Are you certain of all this, Pyott?"

It was as if Clark had cheered for an opposing team. Pyott turned a lordly glance to the American, who was as tall as he was and more muscular but who did not pose his figure in quite the same seignorial manner.

"I beg your pardon, Captain Clark?" The mention of rank was a reminder of good manners and the proper forms of address. "I don't quite catch the drift of your question." Outsider, the tone cried. Buccaneer. Pyott took in, with a raking glance that went from face to feet and back again, the civilian clothes, the muscular chest and shoulders, the tanned, square features. Clark was evidently a pretender engaged in some dubious masquerade.

"I asked if you were certain? Are their Lordships certain? Are the Chiefs of Staff certain? Is NATO certain?"

"The proper channels, the protocol, all have been observed, Captain Clark," Pyott replied frostily.

"What in hell do they think the Russians are up to in Tanafjord, with a ballistic missile boat?" Clark almost bellowed, goaded by the imperturbable arrogance and self-assurance of the army officer. Like a line of automatons, the operators in front of their screens and terminals snapped to attention in their seats. The group beneath the map seemed to move slightly away from him, as if he had begun to exude a powerful, offensive body odour. "You think they're invading Norway, starting the next war?"

"I do not know," Pyott said icily, his face chalk white. "I do not make assumptions, especially ones that might be dismissive and therefore comforting. That is why Proteus must do our investigating for us. Your own Navy Department has been consulted, and has agreed. Brussels is in agreement. You are out of step, Clark."

"Proteus has “Leopard” on board. Doesn't that worry you?"

"That fact weighed heavily with everyone at the meeting, and with everyone consulted. It is to our inestimable advantage that Proteus is the submarine on station, so to speak —"

"Bullshit! Crap and bullshit, Pyott! You people — you want to play games, you want to really try out your shiny new toy. You want to walk close to the cliff. Now I understand —"

"Perhaps we could continue this conversation outside," Pyott remarked through pressed, almost unmoving lips. His face was now livid with anger. The naval officers, including the commodore, had moved away from them, sensitive of the embarrassment they knew Pyott must be experiencing.

"I wouldn't want the time of day from you, Pyott. You're an asshole. A pompous asshole, at that."

Clark brushed past Pyott, who avoided him like an experienced matador. Clark had allowed the situation to escape him. He was angry with himself, angry that it was Pyott he resented more than Pyott's suggestion concerning Proteus. As he prepared to slam the door of the "Chessboard Counter" room behind him, he could hear Pyott already reiterating StratAn and NATO's orders concerning Proteus to the assembled company. His voice was laconic, controlled, smooth as glass.

It enraged Clark, and he knew he had to talk to Kenneth Aubrey. Something in him, deep as a lust as yet unfocused, knew that he had to stop this adventure with "Leopard" and Proteus.

He slammed the door loudly behind him.

Aubrey studied Hyde's face. It was evident the man's challenge with regard to the fact of Quin's disappearance was intended to irritate, and intended also to disguise the Australian's own new doubts.

Aubrey smoothed the last, vestigial wings of grey hair above his ears, and leaned back in his chair. Shelley, his aide, watched Hyde from the tall windows of the office in Queen Anne's Gate.

"You're not sure now, are you?" Hyde repeated.

"Don't jump to conclusions," Aubrey remarked severely. "What you saw was the girl. We know that she is unreliable, something of a failure, a drop-out. Is there any reason to suppose that she knows where her father is? She wasn't just trying to keep her mother calm?"

“The KGB chased her to the bus stop. Those two blokes were like rape on legs."

"Perhaps Quin won't play ball with them in Moscow without having his daughter with him?" Hyde shook his head vehemently. "Your own source at the Russian embassy gave you quite clear — almost categorical — indications that a snatch squad had stayed overnight, and left again on Aeroflot the day after Quin disappeared. You believed your man then. Why not now?"

"Wait till I see him again. I was led up the garden, taken walkabout if you like. I admit that. But don't you go on believing there's nothing we can do. Quin dropped out of sight for his own reasons — he could have had a breakdown, for all we know — and the girl's gone back to him now, or she's on her way back. I know the Russians haven't got him yet, but they will have as soon as they get their hands on the girl." Hyde was patting Aubrey's desk, gently and continuously, to underline his words. He looked at Shelley when he had finished speaking, then asked, "You think they" ve got him?"

Shelley shrugged. Hyde, understanding his influence with Aubrey, wanted him on his side. Shelley plucked at his bottom lip with thumb and forefinger, then said, "I don't know. There's some room for doubt, I think. It seems too good to be true, after the last few weeks —"

"I will make the assumption — because it is preferable to do so — that the appearance of the girl means that the KGB have not taken Quin to Moscow, Patrick," Aubrey said slowly. Hyde exhaled noisily and relaxed in his leather chair. "I still believe that Quin has gone east —" He held up a liver-spotted, wrinkled hand. "Until there is stronger evidence to the contrary. Therefore — " he smiled slightly, "your first task is to contact your helpful but possibly misleading friend at the Soviet embassy."

Hyde nodded. "Today's pick-up day. He's not likely to stay away after yesterday, whether he's straight or crooked."

"I suppose we might have to consider him planted, or at least re-turned?" Aubrey mused.

The abortion was a long time ago. Perhaps he's back in favour with his bosses," Hyde suggested.

"Ask him. Then find the girl. Simply that. What about her college, for instance?"

"CID talked to some of her friends last night. Nothing."

"You will go back over the ground. And you will be careful, Patrick, if you are going to begin crossing the path of the gentlemen who were in Sutton Coldfield yesterday. You'd better draw a gun." He waited for Hyde's reaction. The Australian nodded after a lengthy pause. "Good. Don't draw attention to yourself. If your theory is correct, then they might soon begin following you as their best lead to Miss Quin."

"Anything else?"

Aubrey shook his head. "Not for the moment." Then he added, “This girl — " He tapped a file near his right hand. "Unreliable. Unconventional. Is that your impression?"

"Her Mum loves her. If she isn't just a nut-case, then she might be more difficult to find."

"I think we'd better find her, don't you? She's in danger, whether Quin is in the country or not. They want her, apparently."

"How much time is there?"

"I don't know. We have “Leopard”. It can be manufactured in large numbers, eventually, without Quin. From that point of view, there is a great deal of time. But we are no longer alone. The girl's time, at least, would seem to be running out."

"I'll get on with it, then," Hyde said, getting up. The leather of the chair squeaked as his frame released it. "Pardon," he said with a grin. "You can talk about me when I'm gone. I'll let you know this afternoon what Comrade Vassiliev has to say." He smiled, and left the room.

Aubrey's returned smile vanished as soon as the door closed behind Hyde.

"What do you think, Peter?" he asked.

Shelley rounded Aubrey's desk to face him. Aubrey indicated the Chesterfield, and Shelley sat down, hitching his trousers to preserve their creases as he crossed his long legs. Shelley lit a cigarette, which Aubrey watched with a dry, eager concentration. He had obeyed his physician for more than a year in the matter of smoking. The occasion when the service lift at his flat had not been working for a week, and he had had to walk up three flights of stairs every evening — shortness of breath, body's fragility indicated to him like a sound blow on his shoulder. No more cigarettes, not even the occasional cigar.

"I'm afraid Patrick's right, however irritating that may be." Shelley smiled.

"We have been misled — and principally by his source of information at the Soviet embassy."

"Agreed, sir. But we all accepted Vassiliev after Hyde cleared up the matter of the abortion and the girl in the case was paid off. Vassiliev had walked into our honey-trap, we let Hyde go with him as chief contact. If Vassiliev is forged, then he's an expert job. Of course, he may just have been trying to please Hyde. The swagman's not often fooled. That's why he's so angry now. I can't say that I blame him."

Shelley exhaled, and Aubrey ostentatiously wafted the smoke away from himself by waving his hand. Shelley appeared not to notice the inconvenience to his superior.

"This incident in Sutton wasn't an elaborate charade, for our benefit?"

"I doubt that, sir."

"So do I. The problem is, this “Leopard” business is so damned important. It really is one of those pieces of military technology the Russians haven't even begun to develop. Or so they tell me at MoD and Plessey. It would put us perhaps years ahead in the anti-submarine warfare game. I really would like to believe that they haven't got Quin. It just seems too good to be true."

"Agreed. But there is such a thing as not looking a gift horse, et cetera, sir —"

"Perhaps. Another thing that worries me — what price the safety of Comrade Vassiliev? If he fed us duff gen at their orders, then they know Hyde will be coming back now with more questions." Aubrey shook his head. "I don't like that idea."

"Bruce the Lifeguard can take care of himself."

"I hope so. Peter, get some Branch people to check around Bracknell again — the avenues we haven't explored or didn't give much credence to. Holiday rentings, cottages, that syndrome. People usually run for the hills not the city if they want to hide. I don't know why that should be."

"Very well, sir."

"And this file —" He tapped Tricia Quin's folder. "Get all the material out of it for Hyde. A list of people and leads. I have the distinct feeling that very little time is available to us, don't you?" Aubrey looked up at Shelley as the young man got to his feet.

"No comment, sir."

"Well?" Lloyd, slumped in his chair, seemed to embrace the small, neat captain's cabin of the Proteus as he opened his hands for an answer. Then, as if drawn by some new and sudden gravity, his hands rested on the chart on his desk. Thurston had brought the chart with him from the control room. He and Carr, the navigator, had marked the course of the Proteus as far as Tanafjord. Thurston sat opposite Lloyd, Carr standing stockily and red-haired behind the first-lieutenant, Hayter leaning against the closed door of the cabin. The air conditioning hummed like a sustained note of expectancy. "Well, John? You two? Any comment?"

Thurston cleared his throat, and in the sidelong movements of his eyes Lloyd saw that these three senior officers had conferred. They were some kind of delegation.

"No," Thurston said at last, "not now we know its position."

"Why not?" Lloyd looked up. "You two are in on this, I presume?"

Carr said, abruptly, "It makes the whole thing messy, sir. I can't understand what MoD thinks it's playing at, ordering us to the mouth of Tanafjord. It smells, sir."

"It does, sir," Hayter confirmed. "A “Delta”-class sub in a fjord. Why? What good can it do there? It could loose any missile it wanted to from its berth in Murmansk as well as from that fjord. Why was it there in the first place? Shallow water, no sea room. Sir, we both know it's a very unlikely beginning to the next war." Hayter smiled, ingratiating his nerves with his captain.

Lloyd rubbed his face, drawing his features into a rubber mask, then releasing the flesh. It assumed a kind of challenged look. Thurston observed Lloyd's expression with a mild dismay.

"You're suggesting we disobey a highest priority instruction from the Admiralty?"

"No. Let's request confirmation. We could do that —"

"We could." Lloyd looked down at the chart again. "How many hours" sailing, rigged for silent running, taking all precautions?"

"A little over thirty-seven," Carr replied. Hayter looked at him in reproach, as if he had changed allegiance or betrayed a secret. "But I think we should request confirmation, skipper."

"Thirty-seven." Lloyd tapped the chart with his forefinger. "Our course alteration is minimal for the first six hours or more. We're to continue our work on “Chessboard”. For six hours, at least, nothing's changed." He smiled. "In that time, we'll send one signal to MoD, asking for confirmation, and for a fuller definition of our mission status. Does that satisfy you trio of doubting Thomases?"

"I still don't like it," Thurston volunteered.

"You were as excited as hell when we picked up the signal from our Russian friend, John. What's changed?"

"I used to like watching boxing — it never tempted me to take it up as a hobby."

"Don, I want a full tape test and computer check run on “Leopard” as soon as we alter course."

"You'll get it."

"Are we still getting signals from the Russian boat?"

Thurston nodded. "Sandy's been monitoring them since we got a reply from MoD."

Carr said, "She's broadcasting in clear now. Being careful, of course. But the power's down on the transmission. I think they're using a low-power emergency backup set, and they're altering the frequency with preprogrammed cards. It's a bloody mess."

"Any more details?"

"No. Code-names, damage indications in some Cyrillic alphabet sequence. Can't decipher that. The letters and numerals could refer to anything."

"What other traffic?"

"Murmansk's been pouring out coded stuff — " Carr shook his head at the light in Lloyd's eyes. "We don't have it broken. Code of the day only, frequency-agile transmissions, the lot. But there's a lot of it. They're panicking all right."

"Okay. Sandy, time to fetch Lt.-Commander Hackett."

Lloyd nodded at the cabin door, and Hayter moved out of his way as the navigator went in search of the engineering officer. When Hayter closed the door again, Lloyd said, "You don't really think MoD are wrong on this one, do you?"

Thurston pulled a melancholy face. "They aren't infallible. I think they like the idea of the game, that's all."

"We're risking this ship, and ourselves, and “Leopard” on this wild goose chase," Hayter added with a quiet vehemence. That doesn't seem to have struck their lordships. I think the intelligence yield from this “monitoring action” won't be worth a candle, anyway."

"I agree with Don."

Lloyd was silent for a time, his hands over his face, the fingers slightly parted as if he were peeping child-like at them or at the chart on his desk. Then he rubbed his eyes, and shrugged himself upright in his chair.

"I'll ask for confirmation from MoD. Meanwhile, we'll rig for silent running — and I mean silent from now on." A grin, unexpected and gleaming, cracked the seriousness of his expression. "It isn't for real, you two. We won't be responsible for starting the next war. Nothing is going to happen to us. It's Norwegian, the Tanafjord. Cheer up. Just look on it as another sea trial."

Thurston was about to reply, but fell silent as they heard a knock on the cabin door. Lloyd indicated to Hayter that he should open it. The grin was still on Lloyd's face when Carr ushered Hackett into the cabin.

The wind seemed to follow Hyde into the entrance of Lancaster Gate underground station, hurrying pages of a copy of the New Evening Standard ahead of him, with chocolate bar wrappers. He hunched against the wind's dusty, grubby touch at his neck. He went through the barrier, and descended past the framed advertisements to the Central Line eastbound platform. A woman's legs, gigantic and advertising tights, invited him from the opposite wall. Lunchtime had swelled the numbers of passengers. Hyde lounged against the wall and observed Vassiliev further down the platform. Even here the wind moved the dust in little eddies or thin, gauzy scarves along the platform. Vassiliev wore a dark overcoat across his shoulders, over a pinstriped suit. He looked English enough despite the high Slavic cheekbones and narrow nose, yet he appeared nervous beneath the clothes and the residential veneer England had given him. Hyde was still unsure of him; whether his crime was one of omission or commission.

The train slid into the arched bunker of the platform. Hyde watched Vassiliev board it, then waited until he was the last still person on the platform, then he got into another carriage as the doors shunted together behind him. He stood watching the retreating platform as the train pulled out. Nothing. There was nothing to be learned from nothing.

He and Vassiliev left the train at Tottenham Court Road, Hyde staying twenty yards behind the Russian, closing with him as they transferred to the Northern Line and then getting into the same carriage of the first northbound train. He studied the carriage and its passengers until they pulled into Euston, then took a seat next to Vassiliev. The Russian embassy official, in making a pronounced movement away from him, squeezing himself against the window, suggested either dislike or nerves. Hyde placed his hand on Vassiliev's arm in a gesture which he knew the man — superficially confident of his heterosexuality but with sexual doubts nagging at him like toothache spoiling good looks and appetite — loathed. The arm jumped beneath his touch.

"Now, sport, you and me have some talking to do, don't we?"

Vassiliev looked out of the window. Mornington Crescent. The name slowed and materialised, like oil adopting a mould. "I–I knew you would question me," he offered.

Too bloody right, mate! You sold me the wrong stuff, Dmitri — told me Quin was over on your side. Taken away by the bogeymen."

Vassiliev turned at the pressure on his arm and stared at Hyde. Sitting, he was slightly taller than the Australian. His face was thinly imperious for a moment — Hyde, seeing the expression, was strangely chilled — then it subsided quickly into nervousness and apology.

"I am not a member of the KGB, you know that. I am not privy to the things they do. What I told you was a fact. I also heard rumours of who their objective was, I passed these on to you. I can do no more."

Vassiliev glanced away from Hyde, into the lightless tunnel.

"I don't pay you for crap, Dmitri. I don't blackmail you for rubbish. Now, what do you know?"

Vassiliev shook his arm impatiently, and Hyde released it, thrusting his hand into his pocket and slumping more theatrically in his seat, feet on the seat opposite, to the irritation — silent and frightened — of an elderly man.

"I — it is difficult to ask, I can only listen. In the staff restaurant, there is talk of what happened yesterday. I–I am, well, yes, I am almost certain that they are still looking for this Quin — " Hyde listened, every sense aware of the man in the seat next to him. Body temperature coming through the thin sleeve of his windcheater, thigh trembling slightly against Hyde's own, the faint body odour noticeable above the dusty, greasy smells of the carriage and the mothball scent from the old man. The voice, grabbing at sincerity, the breathing somehow artificially fast. The words broken by intelligence rather than emotion; thought-out hesitations. "I have not seen the two men — they were low-grade sleepers, I understand, without accreditation to the embassy — " The officialese flowing now like a broad, uninterrupted stream, but not quite because of habit. Learned, Hyde thought; but he remained silent. Quiver gone from Vassiliev's body. He believed he had acted sufficiently well. "However, there was talk about them, and about the girl — and I'm sure now it is their way of getting to the father —"

"You picked up a lot yesterday and this morning," Hyde remarked laconically.

"I am trying," Vassiliev pleaded, turning his face to Hyde. Mirror of helpfulness, of urgent sincerity. The eyes expressionless. "I knew what you would want. I was as surprised — shocked — as you must have been. What else can I tell you?"

CamdenTown, slowing down outside the window. Hyde swiftly surveyed the passengers on the platform, those who entered their carriage. He could not believe that they would have let Vassiliev out by himself, without a minder, with such an important role to play. But he could not find his companion. What role was he playing, anyway? Why admit that Quin was still at large?

"I want more detail, more information, Dmitri. That's what you can tell me, and I want it tonight."

"I can't do that!"

Hyde stared into the Russian's face. "Yes, you can. Oh yes, you can. After all, you're my creature, I" ve got the arm on you. It's not the other way round, is it?" Hyde watched the face. Mouth sloping downwards in admission, cheekbones colouring slightly with a sense of shame, brow perspiring in tiny silver beads — ignore, the temperature in the carriage and the overcoat explained it — the eyes quizzical, blank, then striving for the hunted look Hyde expected. Finding, losing, catching and holding it. Vassiliev was playing with him, at the orders of the London Resident or one of his senior staff. Again, he felt momentarily chilled.

"Yes, I will try," Vassiliev said mournfully.

Highgate. A moment of silence, no one getting on or off the train. Stillness. Then the doors breathing noisily as they closed again. The lights elongating, the words smudged, the darkness of the tunnel, the walls pressing close to the window. Hyde shook off the awareness of himself, the pressing vulnerability. He was being led by the nose, being set up to do their work for them.

"You're sure?" he asked, staring at his feet.

"Of what?" Vassiliev asked, momentarily confused.

"He hasn't been taken over?"

"The man Quin?"

"Yes."

"No. No, they do not have him." East Finchley. Vassiliev began to look uncomfortable, as if he had entered unexplored territory. "They think the girl will lead them to him. I am sure that is what they think." He looked pleadingly at Hyde.

"You were sure they had him three weeks ago."

"I am sure now. Then, I was wrong. There was no talk, then. This time, there is gossip." He was looking over Hyde's shoulder as the lighted platform slipped away behind them, then he glanced at his watch. "I must get off — I am sure. Mr Hyde, I am sure this time!"

"Okay, okay."

"Gossip, that is all I bring. You know that. You knew that when you — found me"

"Saved your bloody neck, sport — don't forget that."

Vassiliev blushed with dislike. "I do not forget." The train was slowing into Finchley Central. Vassiliev was eager to get up. "Where do we meet tonight, what time?"

Hyde hesitated, then: "The club. Eleven."

"Good — good. Yes, yes, I will be there —" The train had stopped, the doors had slid back. Hyde, shifting his weight, moved his feet and Vassiliev brushed past him, hopping out of the carriage. He immediately lit a cigarette, but Hyde, looking quickly up and down the carriage and the platform, did not consider it a signal. Then Vassiliev hurried into a patch of windy sunlight towards the southbound platform.

Hyde watched him disappear, then settled back in his seat, putting his feet up again. The old man still smelt of mothballs. He closed his eyes. The smell of relatives from England coming out to Wollongong, bringing clothes they hadn't worn for a long time, uncertain of the Australian climate. Big bosoms — Aunti Vi, Auntie Maud, Auntie Ethel — covered by cardigans that smelt of mothballs. He with bare feet and shorts, like an urchin or a school-boy marooned in Australia. Mothballs. And the voices through his bedroom wall, conveying the magic of England, the rain and snow, the television.

Woodside Park. He bolted upright, eyes wide. His spine was cold. The childhood memories, evoked like a cloud of masking ink, faltered and retreated. He was being played. They would be one step behind, or alongside, every moment of the journey.

Aubrey had not enjoyed Ethan Clark's narrative. It was too easy, and perhaps correct, to regard it as tales out of school. He had lunched with the American, as a protegé of various senior CIA officers of long acquaintance, when Clark had first arrived in London the previous week. At numerous points, he had wanted to protest, request Clark to desist, even to leave. Gradually, however, he had become intrigued, then alarmed.

Clark described the "Delta"-class submarine in the Tanafjord, then his voice faltered and he fell silent. Aubrey, his face gilded by weak sunshine from his office window, sat with his eyes closed and in silence. On an inward screen, he could see Quin's face, and knew that his mind had forged some obscure yet inescapable link between the man and his invention. A link of mutual danger?

"What did Giles Pyott say?" he asked at last.

"He didn't listen —"

"What did he say?"

Clark choked back his anger. "He said," he began slowly, "that it was none of my damn business and that everyone, including my own Navy Department, agreed with sending Proteus in."

"I can hear him saying it, though not quite in those words," Aubrey remarked acidly. "Everyone agrees, through to Brussels?"

"Yes,"

Aubrey sat bolt upright. He appeared unconvinced, even unconcerned, then he said, "You" ve told me about the Russian submarine. Tell me about “Chessboard”. That is important?"

"It is. “Chessboard” could close the Barents to us unless we map it."

"And “Leopard”. That is of inestimable value, you assess?"

"While it's unique and while the Russians don't have it, yes."

"I agree. But, what if, as we discussed the other day, Quin, its developer, is with the Russians?"

"Then the sooner we map “Chessboard”, and use “Leopard” for whatever else we want to know before the Russians develop it themselves, the better."

Then I must tell you, Ethan, that it appears that Quin may not be with the Russians after all. How would that affect your thinking?"

Clark was silent with surprise at first, then with concentration. Clouds played shadow-games across Aubrey's carpet, across the man's head. Then he said. "It makes all the difference."

"You do believe this distress signal is genuine?"

"It — seems to be."

"I see. We know the Russians know about “Leopard”. They must have had someone inside Plessey at some time. They were interested in acquiring Quin's services on a permanent basis. They still are. Perhaps they would like “Leopard” instead?"

"You can't be serious?"

"I am merely speculating. Would you say that Proteus might be endangered by her new orders?"

"It's closer to the Soviet Union."

"Is that why you are so disturbed by all of this?" Aubrey snapped. "Or is it because you don't like Giles Pyott or the people at the Admiralty?" Aubrey's face was fierce, even contemptuous.

"Look, I came to you in good faith —"

"You came to me to moan about your lot!"

"The hell with you, Mr Aubrey!" Clark made as if to rise.

"Sit down, Ethan!" Aubrey had turned to his desk again. His hands were calm and unmoving as they rested on its edge. "Sit down."

"Sorry—"

"Not at all. You came to me because you do feel Proteus might be endangered by her new mission. I did not like her sailing orders in the first place. I wanted her kept at sea undergoing trials, or in safe harbour, until the matter of Quin was resolved. I wished “Leopard” removed from Proteus until such time as Quin was either recovered or known to be lost to us. I was ignored — overruled. It really isn't my field, you know." Aubrey smiled. "The trouble is, MoD is occasionally — and this is one of those occasions — filled with a few too many clots for my liking or reassurance. Giles Pyott is a clever, experienced soldier. He is also a Cavalier rather than a Roundhead. I have always seen myself in the New Model Army rather than Prince Rupert's cavalry. It always seemed much more sensibly organised, and much safer — " Clark, invited to return Aubrey's dazzling, self-deprecatory smile, did so. Apparently, he had been tested, and passed. He bore Aubrey no resentment. "My problem is that I find it hard to distinguish between death rays emitting purple light and anti-sonar systems and sonar carpets laid in the Barents Sea. However, we must turn our hand to the work that presents itself." He studied Clark. "We have one extant “Leopard” system, in one British submarine, engaged upon a task of singular importance. We have one missing scientist. Until the one stray lamb is returned to the fold, I suggest we don't let the other one loose. Don't you?"

"What can you do?"

"I wonder. I would like to stop Proteus — I would like to find Quin. Ethan, I trust your judgement. I trust those intuitions that a man like Pyott would not countenance. You have worked in intelligence, he has not. We are all chronically suspicious, perhaps paranoid. However, you and I and the others like us are all we have. Perhaps all “Leopard” has. Hm. Go back to the Admiralty, apologise to Giles Pyott — yes, please — and then keep your eyes and ears open. Ring me tonight —"

The intercom's buzz interrupted him. His secretary announced the arrival of some sandwiches and the imminence of a pot of coffee. Aubrey ordered her in. Before the door opened, Clark said swiftly. "What can you do?"

"I don't know, Ethan. Unfortunately, I shall have to do something, or else I shall begin sleeping badly at night. Ah, coffee and sandwiches — splendid!"

"We" ve got her."

"When?" Dolohov asked as Sergei closed the door of the Ops. Room behind him.

"Only minutes ago. The satellite's had terrible trouble with the cloud cover —"

"Show me. Admiral — " Dolohov nodded to the Ops. Room commander, then almost snatched the folded chart overlain with its sheet of developed infra-red film. Poor, pale smudges, like smeared rust or very old blood.

"The pattern's changed, as you can see." Sergei was leaning over Dolohov's shoulder. His finger tapped the sheet over the chart. "This was her three hours ago — same intermittent smudges, her mapping course, enough for us to tell she was still following the same search pattern. Then here we think there was another trace — " The smear was almost invisible. Dolohov did not move the chart closer to his face. “Then nothing for two hours, then this — then another fifty-four minutes before we got this." It was like the last ember of a dying fire. It was out of the random yet sequential pattern, and it had moved south and east of the other smears.

"You're certain?" Dolohov was looking at the rear-admiral.

"We" ve used sonar in that area, and we got nothing. If it is a submarine, then it is the British ship."

"Excellent! It works, how well it works, mm?"

"Too well."

"Come, Admiral — no sour grapes. You have a computer prediction on speed and course?"

"We have one, based on the last three traces. We need at least two more to be at all accurate."

"Show me, man, show me!"

One of the rear-admiral's aides scuttled into the control room, Dolohov leaned over the rail of the gantry. As he watched, the rear-admiral joined him. Then a curving line appeared on the projection below, from a position far out in the Barents Sea, making south and east towards the Tanafjord. It rendezvoused with the imaginary Soviet submarine trapped in the fjord.

"In excess of thirty hours," the rear-admiral murmured, "and no longer than thirty-six. That's the best we can do without another infra-red fix from the satellite. For the moment, she's disappeared again. Possibly cloud again."

"Good man," Dolohov said incongruously. He gripped the rear-admiral's shoulder. The man was considerably younger than himself, bespectacled and clerkish. A computer expert, perhaps, an academic; scientist rather than sailor. Nevertheless, at that moment Dolohov felt an unaccustomed affinity with the man. "Good man." He turned to Sergei. "Call Leningrad. Whether they're at the Grechko Academy or the Frunze Naval School, I want Ardenyev and his team informed at once. They will depart for Murmansk immediately."

"Yes, sir."

Dolohov turned back to the rear-admiral. "Keep up the good work. If the Red Banner Special Underwater Operations Unit does its job as well as you are doing yours, then nothing can go wrong!" He laughed throatily. "Excellent, excellent! I don't care what success the KGB has now in finding the man Quin — we will be able to present Moscow with Quin's toy. The man himself will have no value, and we shall enjoy the sunshine. Excellent, excellent!" His continued laughter caused one of the map table operators to look up.

The strip club was a short walk from Oxford Street, hunched in a narrow side street on the edge of Soho, as if aspiring to membership of that district, or recently expelled from it. Hyde had used it as a meeting place with Vassiliev because clubs of its type attracted the diplomats and officials of East European embassies, especially early on in their tours of duty, and even if Vassiliev had been under surveillance by his own people, such visits would have been regarded as misdemeanours rather than as suspicious or dangerous.

Hyde glanced at the membership ledger, having bribed the doorman. One or two new members that evening, but it told him nothing. They might be Vassiliev's friends, or football fans or businessmen staying overnight in London. Vassiliev's friends would have ensured their membership some time earlier, if this was an entrapment exercise. Hyde did not consider it was. They wanted him running, moving with apparent freedom. He went down the steps beneath a dim green under-sea light, the mingled odour of sweat, smoke and tawdriness coming up to meet him. The door opened to admit him — he had heard the buzzer sound from the doorman's cubicle as he began his descent.

Disco music thumped against his ears, flat, enervating, unmemorable. Strobe lights played over the heads of the audience. The tiny stage was empty, but there was a narrow bed lit by a silvery, ghostly light at the back of it. Hyde remained by the door. The large man with cropped hair wearing an out-of-style dinner jacket loomed at his shoulder. Hyde suspected he knew his profession and did not confuse him with the Vice Squad or CID. At worst, he would assume him to be Security rather than Intelligence.

It did not matter. Rather, it legitimised the club, provided a governmental patron.

There were only a small number of people waiting for the next bout on the stage. Vassiliev — he saw as his eyes accustomed themselves to the peculiar, winking gloom — was in a corner, near the stage, mournfully staring into a glass. There seemed no one who had noticed, or become concerned at, his entrance. He threaded his way between the tables with their grubby cloths and expensive drinks towards Vassiliev. The Russian seemed relieved to see him. If there were other emotions, conflicting ones, then the strobe flicker hid them. Hyde settled in a chair which faced the door, and immediately a waiter appeared at his side. No girls on the floor of the club, no hostesses. A curious puritanism pervaded the place. Untouchable, flaunting, indescribably crude, silicon-enhanced, the women came and went on the stage, separate and inviolable.

Near them, the pianist resumed his seat. The drummer rolled softly, as if communicating with his drums. A bass player leaned tiredly over the neck and shoulders of his instrument. All of them appeared to be awaiting some summons to Ronnie's in Frith Street, two blocks away. Most of the girls stripped to records, anyway. Hyde ordered a beer. It came in a half-pint glass, and there was no change from his pound note. He clicked his tongue and winked at the waiter.

Hyde sipped at his drink. The trio drew attention to the stage with a peremptory call to attention that echoed Oscar Peterson, then slipped into the strait-jacket of "I'm forever blowing bubbles" as a bath was wheeled on.

"Oh, Christ— bath night again," Hyde murmured. "Ivy the Terrible." The subdued chatter of the audience tailed off into a silence that was weary rather than expectant. "Well, Dmitri?"

Vassiliev leaned towards him, eyes flicking over Hyde's shoulder towards the stage, as the pianist imitated a fanfare. Hyde could never decide whether Vassiliev's interest in the girls was genuinely naïve and crude, or merely a badge of his manhood, designed to be noticed by those in his company. The KGB regarded homosexuals in only one light — as victims; malleable, male prostitutes. If Vassiliev had any hidden proclivities towards men, then he was wise to hide them.

"You were wrong," he said.

It was the one statement Hyde had not expected to hear. It generated a mass of complex doubts, questions and fears in an instant. The woman on stage was young, breasts extended to unnatural size by injection and implant, face expressionless beneath the make-up. See-through negligée, towel and loofah, bar of soap. The trio vamped the only expectancy in the now darkened room. Hyde watched the stage, picking his way towards the appropriate degree of innocent surprise. "Dmitri, what do you mean I was wrong?"

"They have got Quin. They have him, but they want the girl." Vassiliev's sweat gave off the pungency of the body rub he used. It clashed with his after shave, with the girl's scent, the omnipresent cigarette smoke.

"I'm not wrong," Hyde began, but Vassiliev was already nodding eagerly. Hyde felt cold.

"Yes. Look, I risked everything this afternoon. There was no more gossip. I looked in the travel ledger. I went back and checked on the people who came in. They left with a third man — the next day. They flew to Paris in a light aircraft. I have the address, the booking. Three passengers —" He reached into his pocket, but Hyde grabbed his hand — it quivered in his grip, which was slippery against Vassiliev's skin, informing Hyde that his nerves were taking him over. The girl was testing the supposed temperature of the water in the bath, letting the negligée fall open almost to the crotch. None of the audience was watching their corner of the room.

"Three? Three? What proof's that? I don't believe you, Dmitri. I don't think you know," Hyde hissed at the Russian, still gripping the man's hand near his chest. The girl had stepped — with something less than elegance — over the side of the bath. Her negligée was drooping from one shoulder, tented by one enormous breast.

"You must believe me, you must!"

"I don't, Dmitri. Now, what bloody game are you playing?" The girl was obviously going to bath with tassels on her nipples. She slid down into the supposed water.

Then Vassiliev's eyes began moving, darting round the room. Hyde forced himself not to turn round. It did not mean there was someone in the room, only that there were others, either nearby or simply giving orders. Hyde gripped his thigh with his free hand, forcing the calm of angered puzzlement into his frame and face and voice. "What bloody game are you playing, mate?" The girl had divested herself of the" negligée, but not the tassels. She was stroking herself with the loofah.

"No game, Mr Hyde, no game!" Vassiliev was leaning towards him like a lover in the hot darkness, but he could not keep his eyes on Hyde's face. Escape, help, answers. He repeated the formula they had taught him. "Three men left in that plane for Paris. Yes, they want the girl, but they have Quin in Moscow — I'm certain of it."

"You don't know who the third man was. It couldn't have been Quin — " Hyde found himself engaged in an attempt to justify the suspicions he had voiced to Aubrey; as if he believed Vassiliev. The girl was on the point of engaging in intercourse with the loofah. Soon she would be dropping the soap. "No," he said, "you're lying, Dmitri. Why should they want you to lie?"

"They? What do you mean?" Too innocent.

"You weren't lying or mistaken at lunchtime. You knew, then. Now, you're working for them. Did they ask you how much you told me? Did they?" Hyde's face was close to Vassiliev. He could smell the man's last meal on his breath, and the brandy after dinner. Too much brandy — no, they wouldn't have allowed him more than one or two. "They knew about you all the time, but they didn't let on. Not until they realised you must have told me more than was good for me." He was shaking Vassiliev's hand, in anger and in community. The girl had dropped the soap, which did not slide across the stage. Her enormous breasts were hung over the side of the bath as she attempted to retrieve it. The trio was playing palm court music. The prissy, virginal sweetness of it assailed Hyde. "You were doing all right until you told me you thought they didn't have Quin. And you know it!"

"I — must go," Vassiliev said. Now the soap was back in the bath, but lost again. The girl was looking for it on her hands and knees. Snake-charmer music, and she rose to her feet, backside to the audience, buttocks proffered, swaying.

"You're going nowhere. Where are they?"

"Not here, not here!"

"You're coming in, Dmitri."

"No!"

"You have to. We'll take care of you. I can't behave as if I believe you. You're the one in danger now." Vassiliev had thought of it, but had ignored it. He shook his head, as if the idea was only a pain that would move, dissipate. The girl had the loofah again, standing up now, in profile to the room. The loofah was being energetically applied. "Come on," Hyde added.

"No! I can't leave with you, I can't!"

"Why not?"

"I can't!" He was pleading now. They were outside. If he emerged with Hyde, they would know Hyde had not swallowed the tale. The almost religious silence of the room was broken by hoarse cries of encouragement, underscored with what seemed like a communal giggle. The girl's body acknowledged the response to her performance.

"You can!" The gun, the gun — he'd left it at his flat, held it in his hand, almost amused, for a moment before stuffing it under a pile of shirts in a drawer. The gun —

"No, no, no — " Vassiliev was shaking his head vehemently.

"It's your only chance. Come on, the back way." Hyde got up, stood over the Russian, willing him to his feet. Vassiliev rose, and they shuffled through the tables towards the toilets. The door into the concrete, ill-lit corridor sighed shut behind them.

Vassiliev immediately turned to him. "No," he said.

“They concocted this story, right?" Vassiliev nodded, nerveless, directionless now. "Why?"

"I don't know. They told me they had known, that they had fed you the information about Quin through me, deliberately. Then yesterday happened, and while they were deciding what to do about me, we talked. I–I told them everything." A sense of shame, as sharp as a physical pain, crossed his features.

"It's all right, it's all right — was there anyone in the club?

Vassiliev shook his head. There was applause on the other side of the door. "Come on."

Hyde half-pushed Vassiliev towards the emergency exit beyond the toilet. He heaved at the bar, remembered letting in friends by similar doors in Wollongong cinemas just before the start of the main feature, then the door swung open. The windy night cried in the lightless alley. He paused momentarily, and looked at Vassiliev. Then he nodded.

They went through the door almost together, but even so the man with the gun must have been able to distinguish between them. Vassiliev cried out — Hyde hardly heard the brief plopping sound of the silenced gun before the Russian's murmured cry — then he slumped against Hyde, dragging at his clothes, smearing the front of the Australian's shirt with something dark and sticky. Then he fell back, for a moment his face green from the exit sign's light, then all of him was simply a barely distinguishable bundle of clothes on the other side of the alley. Hyde waited for the noise of footsteps above the wind's dry call, or the sound of another stone-into-water plop that would be the last sound he would ever hear.

Chapter Three: INTRUDER

The gilded French clock on the marble mantelpiece chimed twelve, a bright, pinging, musical sound. Aubrey paused in his narrative, and he and Sir Richard Cunningham, Director of the Secret Intelligence Service, listened to the sound, watching the blue-numeralled face of the clock. When the chimes had ended, Aubrey stared into his brandy balloon, aware of how out of place his employment of technological and military jargon seemed here, in the study of Cunningham's flat in Eaton Place. Books and paintings — Cunningham had a small Braque and two Picasso etchings in that room — heavy furniture, civilisation. A conspiracy to belie the reality of detection systems, anti-sonar, satellites and distress signals in broken codes. Aubrey, for a moment, wished devoutly for a double agent, for the intimacies of a debriefing or an interrogation, for the clear boundary between SIS and MoD. Clark had pushed him across that border.

Cunningham had hardly spoken throughout Aubrey's recital of events, suspicions, fears. He had assiduously filled and refilled Aubrey's glass and his own, refrained from smoking a cigar, and listened, his half-closed eyes regarding his slippered feet crossed at the ankles. The book he had been reading when Lady Cunningham had shown in Aubrey lay on the occasional table at the side of his chair, the Bach to which he had been listening lay still on the turntable, his half-glasses rested on the end of his patrician nose, and his lips were set in a firm, expressionless line. Aubrey felt extremely reluctant to continue.

Then Cunningham spoke. "What, exactly, do you wish to do, Kenneth?"

"Go in there — assess the situation for myself."

"I see. You know how MoD regards us. You know how the navy regards itself. It's tricky. You" ve no just cause or impediment, after all."

"I realise that, Richard. However, there is a mutuality of interest that might be stressed. Quin —"

"Ah, yes. MoD will tell us that he is our proper concern, one of Her Majesty's submarines more properly their sphere of authority. They will not take kindly to you suggesting they should reverse their decision. Nor will Brussels, nor will Washington. Sure you're not simply acting the old warhorse smelling the battle afar off?"

Aubrey smiled. "I don't think so."

"Mm. Neither do I. Devilish tricky, though. I can quite well see the importance of this anti-sonar system, and of Quin, and of keeping both out of Soviet hands. But we are not the experts, we are not the military. They don't seem to believe there is any risk — this man Clark, the American. Trust him?"

"And his judgement."

"Mm. Knew you did." Cunningham spread his hands, wafting them in the air. "I just don't know —"

The telephone rang. Cunningham got up heavily and crossed to it. He listened, then gestured with the receiver towards Aubrey. His face was impassive.

"Yes?" It was Hyde. Aubrey listened to the voice at the other end of the line, his eyes watching Cunningham, deep in thought in his chair.

"… they obviously didn't want the hassle of killing me — just Vassiliev out of the way. They must have known I would try to take him in if I got suspicious…"

"You're all right?" Cunningham looked up at the note of concern in Aubrey's voice.

"Unhurt, I said. What now?"

"You'll see Mrs Quin tomorrow, and take a trip to the girl's college. Someone must be able at least to guess where she might be."

"If you say so—"

"Tomorrow, you will go armed. Good night to you, Hyde."

As Aubrey put down the receiver, Cunningham stared at him. "What is it?"

"Hyde. His contact at the Soviet embassy has just been expertly dispatched in a dark alley. Before he was eliminated, Hyde had discovered that the news of Quin's removal had been deliberately leaked, and yesterday's events in Sutton Coldfield were being hidden behind a smokescreen. The KGB were on to the poor blighter, tried to turn him, realised they'd failed, and shot him."

"Our man is all right?" Aubrey nodded. "They don't have Quin, then. I think we can be certain of it now. There is still no connection between these events and the submarine."

"I agree. Could we not argue a suspension of operations employing “Leopard” until the Quin matter is settled?"

"We might. The first thing, I suppose, is to get you inside this “Chessboard” matter. Once there, it will be up to you. You will have to find the means to persuade the minister to ask Cabinet to postpone this little adventure. I suggest you go in there for a briefing on this “Leopard” business, sniff around, and weigh the worth of what's being done. If you can convince me, then we'll go to the minister together, and he can take it from there, if he agrees with us. Satisfied?"

Aubrey pursed his lips, studied his glass, and then nodded. "Yes, Richard. That will do nicely. I'll make an appointment for tomorrow — perhaps with Giles Pyott." His face darkened. "I'm too old for hunches and intuitions. But Clark is a clear-sighted, intelligent individual with a genuine talent for our work. I'm sorry to say it, but I think there is cause for concern, and I'm sure we should recall Proteus until we find Quin."

"Make certain, Kenneth. There are a great many sensitive corns in MoD. Tread softly."

"Mrs Quin, you must have some idea where we can find him! I just don't believe you can't help me."

"Have you ever been divorced, or separated?"

"No."

"Your parents?"

"No."

"What happened to some of the girls you" ve known? Where are they now — just one of them? Tell me what she did yesterday."

"It isn't the same."

"It is, Mr Hyde, believe me, it is. Tricia's coming here was one of her impulses. She spent her childhood making believe that my husband and I were happy when we weren't, and the last three years trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again." Mrs Quin sighed, and her brow knitted into deep, thread-like lines. "I'm sorry for her — sorry for myself, too."

Hyde sat back in the chair she had shown him to when she allowed him into the lounge. Occasional traffic outside, her day off from the antique shop, the Panda car conspicuous across the street. Trees still leafless, bending and moving with the wind. The gin-hour for lonely or bored suburban housewives. She had given him tea, and seemed not to resent his behaviour of two days before.

"Jesus, Mrs Quin, it's a bloody mess," he sighed, rubbing his hands through his hair. "Your daughter is in real danger— all right, you already know that, I'm sorry to remind you. Nevertheless, she is. So's your husband. She's with him, or still on her way back to him. The — the other people interested in your husband know that. They know we're interested —"

"Why did he have to involve her?" the woman suddenly cried, her voice and expression full of blame, even contempt. "No, that's not fair, I suppose. She involved herself. I know Tricia."

"I don't. Tell me about her."

"You mean you don't already know?" There was an arch, mocking sharp little smile, a glimpse of white teeth. Today, the hair was firmly lacquered in place, the clothes well chosen, the whole being groomed. "About the pop groups, the drugs —"

"Drugs? Soft or hard?"

The sort you can smoke, I believe."

"Soft. Occasionally?" Mrs Quin nodded. "OK — rock bands?"

"Not in your files?" The easy contempt. She had forgotten her alliance with the uniformed inspector, her concern for young Sugden. Neighbours had talked, asked questions, and the police were an embarrassment, a minor disgrace.

"Yes — some references. Some time ago, though?"

"She — the phrase is slept around, I believe. With them."

"A groupie?"

"I believe so. Am I entirely stupid to blame her college, and the kind of people they allow into them, and to teach in them, these days?" She evidently had little interest in his opinion.

"Probably," he said. "It's your privilege."

"It ended, anyway. But she never seemed to settle afterwards."

"Who — which group?"

"I don't know any of their names. I believe they were famous."

"Did she travel with them?" A nod. "When?"

Two summers ago — all over the country, even to the Continent. And an open air festival."

"But you don't know their names?"

"Had I ever known them, I would have forced myself to forget."

"I see. Would her friends in college know anything about all this?"

"I'm sure they would have been regaled with the sordid details."

"Perhaps I should talk to them?"

"It's past now — can't you leave it?" A naked plea, the face smoothed young by concern, softened.

Hyde stood up. "If there's anything, anything at all, ring this number. A man called Aubrey. You'd like him." Hyde grinned humourlessly.

"Why didn't he come himself?" The tone knife-like.

"He's too important. Thank you, Mrs Quin." As they reached the door, he turned to her and added, "I'll get to her first, if I can. You just pray a little, mm?"

"Stop engines!"

The Soviet submarine was back. It had crossed their bows an hour earlier, fifty fathoms above them, moving away to starboard. Lloyd had ordered silent running, the engines moving them very slowly ahead, because the computer identification had been of a "Victor-II"-class attack submarine, nuclear-powered and a hunter-killer. A shark had met another shark. Then the "Victor-II" had altered course again, possibly picking up faint traces of heat emission or prop noise. And she had begun looking, knowing that there was something to find.

The Proteus hummed with tension in the new, complete silence. Electronics murmured, those aft sonars required to keep track of the Soviet submarine, someone cleared his throat softly; Lloyd even heard the movement of Carr's sleeve across his chart as he updated the Contact Evaluation Plot at his chart table. The whisper of the hydroplane control wheels as the planesmen worked continuously to keep Proteus level and unmoving, constantly balancing the submarine's own attempts to alter position and depth. A juggling act. Easier on the bottom, but they weren't on the bottom.

Lloyd crossed to Thurston, who was standing behind the sonar operator monitoring the approach of the "Victor-II" and whose screen displayed the snail-trail of light that revealed the position of the Russian vessel. Below the screen, red numerals supplied the read-out of bearing and distance. The "Victor-II" was closing.

Submarines had been lost before, Lloyd reminded himself involuntarily. There was no fear and no courage, either. Vessels encountering each other in the dark, crowded sea. Collision or avoidance, attack or retreat. The "Victor-II" was following their scent — heat, prop-wash, hull noise, the tiny skin-flakings of their passage which "Leopard" could not completely neutralise. The twin hulls that enclosed them like plasterboard walls waited to transmit any sound they might make. Closer. Bearing unaltered. Speed a cautious, stalking twelve-point-seven knots. Time to contact, five minutes.

Lloyd mouthed silently at Thurston, who nodded. The first-lieutenant framed his lips to reply in the slightest whisper, after swallowing hard.

“If she doesn't find us, she might just miss us."

"By much?"

"Not much," Lloyd's hand was on the back of the sonar operator's chair. Some transmitted electricity from his captain made the rating twitch. Lloyd moved his hand. He turned to watch the two planesmen, juggling the control wheels like nervous car drivers. As if not in control of the vehicle. Proteus remained still, lying in the dark, waiting. Other trails of light — not new, but suddenly noticed and rendered significant by heightened nerves — on the sonar screen. Four other submarines, two destroyers and what might be the carrier Kiev, flagship of the Northern Fleet. She was too distant for a positive identification, and Lloyd had tended to discount her appearance in the Barents Sea. This early in the season, she was normally still refitting in Murmansk. And the "Victor-II", brighter than all of them. Contact time, four minutes fifty. Lloyd felt, despite himself, that his hands were beginning to perspire. He opened them. The control room seemed hotter. Illusion.

Bearing unaltered. Speed constant. Cancel. New red numerals appeared in the read-out panel. Speed ten knots. The "Victor-II" was slowing. Contact time three minutes twenty-eight, seven, six —

The sonar operator turned to Lloyd, his face puzzled. The "Victor-II" was stopping, contact time and distance read-outs slowing down, then settling. Stopped. Contact time two minutes thirty-one frozen. The small, cramped space of the control room hot. Thurston was perspiring, a line of beads along his hairline. Lloyd felt the sweat dampening his shirt, running chilly down his sides. The sonar operator's hair cream, a sickly smell of which he was suddenly aware. Stomach light, disturbed.

Stopped. A third of a mile away. Six hundred yards. Close enough for temperature sensors. The movement of bare forearms in the corner of his vision as the planesmen juggled the Proteus to stillness. The auto-suggested hum of electronics, like the buzzing of an insect seemed very difficult to discount. The "Victor-II" digesting the scraps of information, her captain waiting for an answer from his computer. Is there an enemy submarine close to us?

Red numerals flicking off. A bare, dark green panel beneath the sonar screen with its bright blip of light. Then new numbers. Speed four knots, five, six. Contact time two minutes nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, fifteen, twelve, seven — one minute fifty-nine. Bearing unchanged.

Lloyd waited. He could hardly bear to see the "Victor-II" as it moved through the darkness towards them. One minute twenty. Speed ten knots. Distance two hundred yards, a little more, the little more eaten up even as he thought it. Eleven knots, bearing unchanged; as if they knew where Proteus was.

Then they listened. Two steam turbines driven by a pressurised water reactor. They would hear them, even though they were little more than idling at eleven knots.

Faces turned to the ceiling. Always that, Lloyd observed. A familiarity of orientation brought with them on to the submarine. It could be below, alongside, anywhere.

The churn of the screws. A slight, almost inaudible thrumming in their own hull. Faces tightening, the sense of fragility obvious. Louder. The illusion of a rising tremor in the eggshell of the hull. Hands sensing it where they rested damply against any part of the hull, any instrument — the planesmen juggling more violently now as the distressed water outside the hull assaulted the Proteus — feet feeling it, muscle-spasms in the calves. Louder.

Loudest, going on for what seemed like minutes, the planesmen failing to stop the submarine's bow from dropping, the whole vessel slipping forward into the beginnings of a dive, then arresting the movement, bringing the vessel back to stillness. Retreating noise and vibration. All around them the noise and motion had been, but Lloyd was certain the Soviet submarine had passed below them, slightly to port.

Then it was gone. Thurston mopped his brow enthusiastically, and grinned shakily at Lloyd.

"Close," he murmured.

"Too close." Then the idea came to him, and he voiced it before he considered its effect. "I think she was expecting us — I mean us, this boat and its anti-sonar."

"What?"

Lloyd looked down at the sonar operator, then at the others in the control room. He did not want to explain, not now. The idea, half-formed, frightened him, and he wanted to ignore it.

Thurston waited for his explanation, and Lloyd said, lamely, "That Russian has been following a very poor trail for an hour. As if he knew we were here."

"You're imagining it, skipper."

"As if he knew he was looking for a submarine that wouldn't show up on his sonar," Lloyd added.

"The evidence is in front of you, man. It may not be conclusive, but there is evidence there to suggest Grishka encountered the British submarine with its anti-sonar system working. Surely?"

"I will admit that not every trace of heat emission can be explained by temperature differences in the sea — perhaps there are identifiable traces of prop-wash and turbine activity, perhaps the faint gas traces help us —" The rear-admiral looked round at his subordinates, then shrugged. "We will pinpoint the British submarine at the position signalled by the Grishka and await any satellite confirmation there might be."

"Excellent. She is on course. ETA?"

"On the basis of our supposition, no more than eighteen hours."

Dolohov was about to reply when the door to the control room opened, and a man in civilian clothes — very Western, Dolohov noticed, a sweater, windcheater and corduroy trousers — stood in the doorway. The man came forward into the light, and Dolohov saw that he was grinning. His hair was blown awry. Dolohov returned the smile, and waved away the junior officer accompanying the man.

"Valery — Valery, my boy!" he announced, ignoring the others in the room, embracing the newcomer, kissing him on both cheeks, a greeting that was returned by the younger man.

"Admiral — sir," the younger man acknowledged when held at arm's length by Dolohov. The rear-admiral seemed surprised to discover that the civilian, in addition to having a permit of entry to his operations room, was some species of naval officer. The haircut, the acknowledgement of rank. Yet almost like a son to the admiral. A little spurt of envy flared in the rear-admiral. This man was not to be treated like a schoolboy slow at his sums, apparently.

"You" ve come straight here?" Dolohov, even as he asked, was already drawing the younger man towards the window of the control room, already extending his free arm to direct the other's gaze. He was revealing a prized object of desire. The rear-admiral bowed frostily as he was casually introduced, resenting the intimacy that had invaded his clinical, sterile control room. "Captain Valery Ardenyev, commanding the Red Banner Special Underwater Operations Unit," Dolohov explained with evident pride, almost with a proprietorial, parental tone, then ignored the rear-admiral. "Down there," he said to Ardenyev. "We" ve marked her with a green light. A colour all to herself."

"You're sure, sir?"

"We think so. She's on course, eighteen hours away from the fjord."

Ardenyev stood looking down at the map table for some time. Dolohov, like a senior priest, allowed him silence and lack of interruption to his meditations, even though there was an impatience about his flinty features that made him appear both older, and much younger.

"The weather's worsening, sir," Ardenyev said finally. "But of course you know that." Ardenyev grinned as he brushed his hair back into place.

"It isn't that bad, Valery," Dolohov replied with a touch of acid.

"Not yet. I'll have to study the reports, and the predictions."

"You have doubts?"

"Not yet, sir. Not yet."

"We" ve eighteen hours, Valery."

"We have to transfer to the salvage vessel long before that, sir. By helicopter."

Dolohov gripped his arm. "Valery — it will be all right," He was instructing Ardenyev, even the weather. Commanding them both. "It will be. We'll have her." He turned to Sergei, his aide, whose position within the small group of the rear-admiral's team seemed an obscure insubordination to Dolohov. "Sergei, get me an up-to-the-minute weather report for our area of interest. And get me all the met. predictions for the next twenty-four hours — now, Sergei." Then Dolohov turned back to Ardenyev as to a child he had indulged, and who now must become obedient. "It must be done, Valery. It must be done."

"If it's possible, sir, it will be. I promise you that."

The rear-admiral, observing the dialogue, conceived the idea that Ardenyev was not without calculation and guile. Dolohov responded by grabbing the younger man's arm, and pressing it with gratitude and what appeared to be affection. The rear-admiral recalled gossip concerning the way in which Ardenyev's career had been jealously promoted by the admiral. Some connection with Ardenyev's father, even grandfather, he had heard. For his own part, the rear-admiral had risen by loyalty to the Party, and distrusted this Soviet version of what the British called the "old boy network". And he distrusted young naval officers in civilian dress with easy manners and obvious self-confidence. Elitist adventurers.

The rear-admiral withdrew to the other side of the control room, to await the updated satellite surveillance information. A small hope that Dolohov was precipitate, even mistaken, he nourished in his stomach like the warmth of a drink.

The College of Education was a new one, built in the grounds of a Victorian magnate's former residence in the suburb of Edgbaston. The original house, having fallen into disrepair both before and after the compulsory purchase of the grounds, had disappeared. A tower block hall of residence stood on the site, bearing the same name as the grandiose house that one of Birmingham's Ozymandiases of trade or industry had erected to his own glorification. Two or three small, supposedly exclusive housing developments encroached on the perimeters of the college campus.

Hyde parked his car outside the tower block and sat for a moment considering his forthcoming interview with Tricia Quin's flatmate, Sara Morrison. Birmingham CID had talked to her the day the Quin girl appeared and disappeared, and had described her as unhelpful. Hyde had checked with the interviewing DC, who had amplified his observation by referring to the Morrison girl as a "Lefty cow, anti-police, good background — isn't it usually the case", and wished Hyde the best of luck with her. A moment of futility as dispiriting as weariness overcame Hyde, then he got out of the car and slammed the door.

The sky was overcast, sombre with rain. The downpour that it threatened was postponed only by the strong, gusty wind that swept paper and dust and old leaves across the grass and the concrete walks around the hall of residence; hurried and chafed the few figures he could see. An overriding impression of concrete and glass and greyness, a modern factory complex. He hurried up the steps into the foyer of the tower block.

A porter, uniformed and officious, emerged from a cubicle, wiping his lips. Hyde showed him the CID warrant card which avoided explanations, and asked for Tricia Quin's flat. The porter, evidently unimpressed by the length of Hyde's hair and his casual dress, begrudgingly supplied the number, and the information that Sara Morrison was in the flat at that moment. He had seen her return from a lecture half-an-hour before. Hyde went up in the lift, unamused by the mock-intellectual graffiti that decorated its walls. He gathered, however, that punk rock had achieved the status both of an art form and a political weapon.

A long corridor, blank, veneered doors. The carpet was marked and already worn, the plaster on the walls evincing settlement cracks. He knocked on the door of 405.

The girl who opened the door wore her hair in tight curls. Her face was instantly suspicious rather than intrigued or helpful. A mouth that pulled down into a scowl almost naturally, it seemed. Sallow skin, no make-up, a creased blouse and uniform denims. Her feet were bare.

"Yes?" A middle-class, south-east accent, overlain with the drawl of the fashionable urban. "What d" you want?"

"Sara Morrison?" She nodded. "Could we have a word about Tricia Quin. I believe —" the warrant card was in his hand, his shoulder against the door as she tried to shut it. "I believe she shares this flat with you."

The girl resigned herself to not being able to close the door on him.

"Past tense," she said, her eyes bright with calculation.

"Really?"

"You're Australian."

Too right." He grinned disarmingly, but the girl did not respond.

"In Birmingham?" she mocked. "An Australian pig, in Birmingham?"

"Could be. It's not only politics that travel distances. May I come in?"

The girl shrugged and released the door. He opened it on an untidy, cramped room with two single beds against opposite walls. A window in the end wall overlooked the campus car-park. Clothes draped over a functional chair, books spread across a small, cheap desk. Posters on the wall — Mao, Lenin, Sex Pistols, a Playboy centrefold with a crudely drawn moustache and glasses and even white teeth blacked out, Castro, Margaret Thatcher used as a dartboard, a Two-Tone band.

"What do you want?" the girl demanded belligerently as he observed the door leading off, bathroom and toilet. "She isn't here, you know." Her accent wavered between the glassy superiority of her background and undoubted money, and the urban snarl she felt he deserved.

"I suppose not. Someone would have seen her. The porter for instance?"

"Beria, you mean?"

Hyde laughed. "May I sit down?" The girl swept her clothes off the single chair, and squatted on the edge of her bed, feet drawn up beneath her, signalling indifference. Hyde sat down. The girl studied him.

"A trendy pig."

"We try, darling — we try."

"You fail — or should I have said, try and condemn?" She parted her lips in a mirthless grin, flashing her cleverness in that precise visual signal.

"A hit, I do confess. Can we talk about your erstwhile girlfriend?"

"What is there to say? She isn't here. End of story."

"Not her story. You know she's been seen. Have you seen her?" The girl shook her head, her face betraying nothing. "Sure?"

"I told your thick mate from CID that I hadn't seen her. Don't you believe me?"

"Not if I asked you for the right time. What would I get — the time in Moscow, or Peking?"

"Cuba," Sara Morrison replied without expression.

Hyde looked up at the ennobled poster of Fidel Castro. "He's a bit out of style, isn't he? Even Arthur Scargill's heard of him."

The girl applauded ironically. "Very funny — oh, too witty for words."

"Blimey, thanks, darling," he replied in his broadest accent. "Now we" ve both tried on backgrounds we never came from." He leaned forward in his chair. Unexpectedly, the girl flinched. He said, “This isn't France or South America, darling. Or Nazi Germany or Kampuchea or the Soviet Union. I could have you down the station, true, but your daddy would get you out by tea-time, I should think," The girl's face wrinkled into contempt, then smoothed to indifference again, as if she had revealed too much of herself. "Always too busy at the office, was he? Chased other women? Self-made man?"

"Fuck off." The obscenity came almost primly from her lips.

"In a minute. Look, Tricia Quin is in trouble — not with us, before you harangue me again, with some people who you might think you like, but wouldn't if you met them."

After a silence, the girl said, "National security bullshit, I presume."

"Sorry darling, it's the only excuse I have."

"Why can't you fucking well leave her alone!" the girl suddenly yelled at him, her face bright red with rage. The mood was sudden, manic in its swing.

"I want to. She has to be protected."

"Crap."

"Not crap. Listen to me." The girl's hands were bunched into fists in her lap, or twitched open, as if gripping some imagined weapon. There was a violence— of rage and guilt and outrage in her that found the body inadequate to express such depths of feeling. "I can't help the situation in which she finds herself. Blame her father, blame national security, blame the bloody arms race if you want to — but I'm the only chance she's got. People want her because they can get to her father through her. They won't mind what they do to her to discover her father's hiding place. And before you say it — yes, I want her father, too. But I don't want to harm him, and I want to help her."

His dismissal passed like a flicker caused by dust in her eyes. Politics in place, attitudes firmly fixed, cemented. She would not tell him. Hyde saw the weapon of threat present itself, and wanted to reject it.

"I don't know where she is — and I wouldn't tell you if I did."

"For Christ's sake, girlie!" Hyde exploded. "Some of the two hundred or so Soviet diplomats with the ill-fitting suits and the poor-diet boils are looking for your girlfriend right now! When they find her, it will be a little bit of slapping about, then the closed fist, then the bucket over the head and the baseball bats, then the cigarette ends for all I know — they won't have time to talk to her politely, some bigger bastard will be breathing down their necks for results. Even if they wanted to be nice. Your friend could tell them she was a card-carrying member of the Party and they'd pull her fingernails out until she told them what they wanted to know." He was speaking quite calmly during the last sentence, but the girl's face was white with anger and with surprised fear. There was something unselfish as well as disbelieving about her.

"You really believe all that?" she said at last. Her composure, her closed-minded prejudices, had reasserted themselves. "Christ, the perfect functionary!"

"My God, but you're stupid —"

Tricia's been frightened out of her mind — don't you realise that?" the girl shouted at him. "Before her father disappeared, she was depressed, moody, frightened. Then she left — just like that. She hadn't slept a wink the night before. Doesn't that make any impression on you?"

"Was she frightened when you saw her two days ago?"

"Fuck off, clever sod."

Both of them were breathing hard. Only the wind, moaning more loudly round the building, offered a larger perspective than the cramped hothouse of the small room. The girl's face was implacable.

Hyde stood up, then crossed swiftly to her, clamping his hand over her mouth, holding her wrists in his other hand. He pushed her flat on the bed, kneeling beside her.

"You know what's coming now, darling. You" ve imagined it, talked about it, often enough. You're Blair Peach, love — you're a Black in Detroit, you're Steve Biko. I'm untouchable, darling. It'll be an accident." He could feel spittle on his palm, and sweat, and her eyes were wide with terror. "Everything you" ve ever thought about the pigs is true. Now you're going to find out."

Then he released her, moved away, sat down. The girl wiped at her mouth, rubbed her wrists. When she found her voice, she coughed out his eternal damnation.

"Sorry," he said. "You would have told me. Your eyes were already regretting your earlier bravado." His voice was calm, casual, unemotional. "We both know that. Tricia would tell them even quicker, even though it was her father."

"For God's sake — " the girl began, but there seemed nothing she could add.

"Yes. You're right again. She came here, didn't she?"

"She bloody didn't!" He knew, with an empty feeling, that it was true. The girl appeared hurt and useless. She'd have helped — lied, hidden Tricia, given her money, taken on the pigs, anything. But Tricia Quin hadn't even asked. Hyde felt sorry. Useless energy and emotion slopped around in Sara Morrison, mere ballast for a pointless journey.

"I'm sorry about that. Tell me where she might be, then?" On an impulse, he added: "Her mother mentioned she hung out with a rock band a couple of summers ago — pot, groupie-ing, the whole naughty bag. Any news on that?"

"Those dinosaurs," the girl remarked, glancing up at the Two-Tone group posturing down at her.

"Them?" he asked, looking up. The girl laughed.

"You remember a band called Heat of the Day?"

"Yes. I liked them."

"You're old enough." The girl had slipped into another skin, represented by half of the posters on the wall, and by the cassette tapes on one of the shelves, next to a huge radio with twin speakers. Something an astronaut might have used to contact the earth from deep space. The girl was now a pop music aficionado, and he someone with parental tastes. Hyde had wondered which way the retreat into shock would take her. It looked more promising than other possible routes, but it would not last long. Eventually, she would be unable to disguise from herself the threat he represented.

"I thought they disbanded."

"They did. You don't read Melody Maker any more, obviously."

"Nor Rolling Stone. My age." He invited her to smile, but she did not respond. She did not look at him now, merely at her hands in her lap. She might have been drugged, or meditating.

"They're back together — on tour. I remember Tricia was interested."

"How did she get in with them, originally?"

"The lead singer, Jon Alletson, was in school with her brother — the one who emigrated to Canada."

"Would she have gone to them by any chance, would she still be in touch with them?"

Sara's face closed into a shrunken, cunning mask. "I wouldn't know," she said, and Hyde knew the conversation was at an end. In another minute, it would be police brutality, threats of legal action. He stood up. The girl flinched.

Thanks," he said. Take care."

He closed the door quietly behind him, hunger nibbling at his stomach, a vague excitement sharp in his chest. Rock supergroup? Friend of her brother? Perhaps the girl knew she was being chased round and round the garden, and had gone to earth where she would be welcomed and wouldn't be looked for, amid the electronic keyboards and yelling guitars and pounding drums, the hysteria and the noise and the cannabis and the young. In that thicket, she would recognise her enemies, from either side, with ease.

It might just be —

Tedium, anger, even anxiety, were all now conspiring to overpower caution. Aubrey felt within himself a surprising violence of reaction to his hour-long tour of the "Chessboard Counter" room and operation. The broaching of Proteus's diversion to the Tanafjord proved the sticking point, broke the camel's back of his discretion. Perhaps, he reasoned with himself, it was the blasé, confident, aloof manner in which the monitoring action on the stricken Russian submarine was explained that so infuriated him. But images of Quin, with their attendant fears, and the pervasive odour of a possible trap, conspired to assist the wearing of his patience. Clark, too, seemed to be waiting for his cue; expecting Aubrey to make some decisive move, influence events.

And the smoothly running, almost mechanical individuals in the room; the obtrusive freemasonry of serving officers. The sterile hangar of the room; his own sense of himself regarded, at best, as the man from the Pru. He could no longer keep silence, or content himself with brief, accommodating smiles and innocuous questions. The excuse that he merely sought enlightenment regarding Quin's project became transparent in its flimsiness; insupportable. Even so, the vehemence evident to himself, and to Pyott and the others, in his voice when his temper finally broke through, surprised him.

"Giles, what do you hope to gain from this monitoring action?" he snapped. He waved his hand dismissively at the huge map-board.

"Our northern security is in question here, Kenneth," Pyott replied in surprise, his nostrils narrowed to slits, the tip of his nose whitened with supressed anger at Aubrey's tone. "Surely you can see that?"

"It is a point of view."

"Kenneth, you are not an expert —"

"No, this distress call, now. You don't suspect its genuineness?"

"Good Lord, no."

"What about you, Captain Clark?"

"Not really. I just don't think the matter's important enough to risk “Leopard”." He looked up at the cluster of lights on the board. They seemed to have one centre, where the wavering arrow of the light indicator being operated by Pyott demonstrated Proteus's position.

"Ah. Now, my immediate reaction, employing my own peculiar expertise, would be to suspect the distress call. I would need proof that it was genuine."

"We" ve identified the submarine concerned," the commodore explained brusquely. "We have triple checked. I don't think the matter is in doubt." He looked to Pyott for support, and received it in an emphatic shake of the head.

Aubrey was intensely aware of the opposition of the two officers. They represented an opposite pole of interests. Also, they were in some way legitimised by their uniforms. Third Murderer again, he observed to himself.

"I see. It would still be my starting point."

"What would be the object of an elaborate deception, in this case?" Pyott drawled.

"“Leopard.”"

"Good Lord, you're surely not serious —?"

"How would you react to the recall of Proteus until this chap Quin is found?"

"Utter nonsense!"

"The two matters haven't the slightest connection with one another Kenneth."

"Great idea."

"Ah. You would support such a move, Captain Clark?"

"I would." Pyott looked pained by a spasm of indigestion, the commodore appeared betrayed.

"I do really think it's dangerous, risking “Leopard” in this way without having Quin safe and sound."

"You made that point weeks ago, Kenneth. Try another record."

"Giles, the KGB have started killing, such is their interest in Quin. Am I to rate his importance any lower — or that of his project?" Aubrey pointed up at the map, then indicated the rest of the room and its occupants. "Who else is looking into this distress call?"

"It's our show."

"Your work here is important, even if I consider it precipitate. But this present adventure — Giles, what can you possibly gain?"

Aubrey saw the answer in Pyott's eyes before the man spoke.

"Kenneth, I am at liberty to inform you — you, too, Clark — that this present adventure, as you term it, has a highest category security tag on it."

"For a distress call?"

"For Proteus's mission," Pyott explained quietly and fiercely. Aubrey guessed at the nature of the mission, and was appalled. It was what he had suspected he might hear, if he needled Pyott sufficiently, and what he had wished devoutly not to hear. "The mission has been code-named —"

"You mean it's another, and extreme, sea trial for the “Leopard” system, Giles?"

"Why, yes," Pyott admitted, somewhat deflated.

"What in hell —?"

"Excuse me, Captain Clark. Giles, you mean that approval has been given to sail Proteus almost into Soviet home waters, merely to prove the efficacy of the anti-sonar system?"

"That's it precisely."

"My God, Giles, it's lunacy. Playing games. You have put the system, the submarine, her crew, at risk, just to score extra marks in the examination. It is nonsense, and furthermore, dangerous nonsense!" He studied Pyott's face, which was colouring with anger, and then the commodore. An identical, undented confidence.

"What is Proteus's ETA in the Tanafjord?"

Pyott smiled thinly. "I see no harm in telling you, Kenneth. Disregarding changes of course and speed, we estimate sixteen to eighteen hours. Some time early tomorrow morning, GMT."

"Giles, what intelligence do you have from the Norwegians?"

"They" ve backed off, fortunately."

"Aerial surveillance?"

"We have some confirmation — infra-red, naturally. We" ve more or less pinpointed the Russian boat."

"It is just an excuse, isn't it, Giles?"

Pyott shrugged, expansively; self-deprecation and dismissal featured jointly in the gesture of his shoulders and hands.

"It is an important — crucial — NATO exercise. A sea trial, as I explained. It cannot be described as an excuse."

Aubrey paused for a moment, then he said quietly and distinctly: "Giles — Giles, I am deeply sorry about this, but I must act." His throat seemed tight, and he coughed to clear it before adding, "Everything I have seen today, every instinct in my body, tells me to act." In his turn, he shrugged; a smaller, more apologetic movement. There is no justifiable reason for this mission which outweighs its inherent risks to men, boat, or security. I have no other choice."

"You'll never obtain authority to override StratAn, MoD and NATO."

"I do not need to. This intelligence mission is on the point of going critical. I shall, therefore, invoke an ETNA order. I shall apply to the foreign secretary to make Proteus's mission an SIS operation, and then I shall cancel it and recall the submarine."

Pyott was almost visibly shaking with fury. When Aubrey finished speaking, the silence of the huge room pressed in upon the tight group beneath the map; silence lapping against them like waves.

"Be damned to you, Aubrey," Pyott said at last. "I'll oppose you every inch of the way."

Aubrey regarded him for a moment. There was nothing conciliatory he could say, no palliative he even wished to offer. He said, "It should not take long. I expect to return later this afternoon with the appropriate authority — authority to stop this foolish school prefects" prank!"

Chapter Four: CLOSING

"Kenneth — I'm with the minister now."

"Yes, Richard." Cunningham had called him on a scrambled line direct from the Foreign Office.

"Your request for special status — the ETNA order —"

Aubrey grasped at Cunningham's hesitation. "C" would have talked to one of the ministers of state, and undoubtedly to the Foreign Secretary directly after lunch. As a Permanent Under-Secretary, the director of the intelligence service could command such immediate access, as might Aubrey himself, whose civil service rank was Deputy Under-Secretary. However, Cunningham had chosen to represent Aubrey's case himself, and alone. It appeared he had failed to convince the politicans.

"Yes, Richard?" Aubrey repeated, prompting his superior.

The Secretary of State has agreed to your request. The Admiralty has been informed of the decision. “Chessboard Counter” is, as of three-fifteen this afternoon, an SIS intelligence operation."

Aubrey's sigh of relief must have been audible to Cunningham. "Thank you, Richard," he said. He wanted to know more, disliked having been kept waiting upon events. "I'm sure you were most persuasive."

"I think we might say that the moment was opportune," Cunningham drawled. Aubrey understood. The Secretary of State, for his own reasons, had perceived and employed a means of impressing his authority upon another ministry. "Your authorisation will be waiting for you here. I suggest you come over right away."

They knew, and they resented him. Each and every one of the "Chessboard Counter" team, with the exception of Ethan Clark, met his entry to the underground room with silence and a carved hostility of expression. One tight group stood beneath the map-board, Pyott and the commodore were at the latter's desk, standing as if posed for some official portrait which recaptured the aloofness and distance of ancestral oils; the communications and computer operators had their backs to him not so much in gainful employment, more in some communal snub.

Aubrey went immediately to the desk, shedding his dark overcoat, taking off his hat. Man from the Pru, he reminded himself, and the image amused rather than belittled him.

"Gentlemen — I'm sorry."

"We're not simply going to lie down under this —" Pyott began, waving Aubrey's written authorisation, but Aubrey raised his hand. At the edge of his vision, Clark was moving towards them, triumphantly.

"I'm sorry gentlemen, the time for discussion is past. I regret having usurped your authority, but “Chessboard Counter” is now my responsibility. And I expect your co-operation." His voice was heavy with interrogation. The commodore appeared, strangely, more reluctant than Pyott. It was the soldier who finally spoke. Clark hovered a few yards away.

"Very well, Aubrey, you shall have our co-operation. The damage you have done today to NATO's security, and to the good relations between the various intelligence branches, is something that will only emerge with time." He paused, his lips smirking. "I shall make every effort to see that this matter is fully and properly investigated."

"I expect nothing less, Giles. When the time is right." Aubrey smiled; challenge and sadness in the expression. Then he turned to Clark. "Captain Clark, our first priority —" His voice invited the American into conference with himself and the two senior officers, "is to recall the Proteus."

"That, I'm afraid, is impossible," the commodore remarked bluntly. Aubrey realised he had been mistaken. The posed and still expressions had not expressed resentment, not in Pyott and the commodore. Rather, the closed, secret blankness of card players. They did not consider themselves beaten.

"Why, pray?" Aubrey asked frostily.

"Proteus is observing the strictest radio silence until the mission is completed and she has returned to a position off North Cape. Only then will she transmit, and be able to receive."

"Sorry, Kenneth," Pyott added. "I omitted to tell you before. It's quite true what the commodore says — no communications facility exists between ourselves and Proteus."

Inwardly, Aubrey was furious, but his face retained an icy control. "I see," he said. "Impossible?"

"Not quite," Clark remarked quietly at Aubrey's shoulder. The old man looked round and up into the American's face. It was gleaming with satisfaction, with the sense of outwitting the two senior British officers. Clark was working out his private grudge.

"Go on," Aubrey prompted.

"Proteus has pre-determined listening out times. She could be reached then. With a hydrophonic buoy."

"Dropped from an aircraft, you mean?"

"Yes. One of your Nimrods. Highest priority code, continuous frequency-agile transmission. An unbroken, one-time code. Just tell Proteus to get the hell out."

The commodore appeared deflated. Pyott was merely angry, but he kept silent.

"I want to look at the state of play," Aubrey said with gusto, as if he had come into an inheritance and was about to be shown over the property. "Ethan, come along. Giles —?"

Pyott shrugged, and followed. The group of young officers beneath the huge map-board dispersed a little. They sensed that Aubrey had won. They had been betrayed by the American who had opened the judas-gate into the castle. The enemy was amongst them; they had been routed.

Aubrey looked up, then turned to Clark and Pyott: "Well? Where is she?"

"About here." Clark flashed on the light-indicator's arrow. A cluster of lights surrounded it, very bright like falling meteors.

Those lights are all Soviet vessels, I take it?" Aubrey asked in a quiet voice.

"Right."

"Explain them to me."

Now the arrow dabbed at each of the lights as Clark talked.

"These positions haven't been updated for three hours — we have another hour before the satellite comes over the horizon and we can pick up transmission of the current picture. This is the carrier Kiev, the pride of the fleet. She's changed course three times, the last one took her from here to here —" Southwards. "She was heading west. These two are “Kashin”-class destroyers, they left Pechenga yesterday. These three are ELINT vessels, probably spy-ships rigged as trawlers, but they're not with fishing fleets — they" ve change course, here to here — " Southwards and eastwards. "This, according to some very bad satellite photography yesterday is a rescue ship, the Karpaty. She left Murmansk a couple of days ago. Why she's in the area, I wouldn't know. It may not even be her, could be another ELINT vessel, but a big one. And there are the submarines — " The arrow dabbed now at spot after spot of light. "Hunter-killers, every one."

"Thank you, Captain Clark." Aubrey turned to Pyott and the commodore, who had now joined them. Behind them, the junior officers formed a knot of silent supporters. "Is it because I am a mere layman that these Soviet naval dispositions frighten me, make me leap to one conclusion, and only one?" He paused, but there was no murmur of reply. He continued: "Gentlemen, it would seem obvious to me that the Soviets have at least surmised that Proteus is in the area and making for Tanafjord. This activity is not directed towards the rescue of the crippled submarine. What is intended I do not propose to guess. If anything happens to Proteus, I am now required to accept responsibility. If I can prevent it, nothing untoward will happen. Clark, come with me. We apparently require the cooperation of the Chief of Air staff. Commodore, a secure line, if you please."

"Thank God for sanity," Clark whispered. Aubrey turned on him.

"Ethan, it may already be too late. It is simply a matter of deciding tenses, from what you have shown me. Proteus is walking into — has walked into — a trap. Pray that the present tense still applies!"

A bright yellow TR7. It was an easy car in which to be tailed, and the two men in the Ford Granada had stuck to him from Edgbaston through the centre of Birmingham — even in the afternoon traffic — and out on to the M6 motorway. Standing in the doorway of the café near the college, the Melody Maker tucked under his arm, one hand disguising the burping indigestion that the sausage and chips had given him, he had seen the car parked across the street from his own. It had U-turned and followed him. He had never lost sight of it in his mirror, and they had never lost sight of him.

Thus he passed his turn-off eight miles further back towards Birmingham, and now the signs indicated the next service area. He signalled, and pulled off the M6, up the slope into the car park. He got out of the car without glancing at the Granada sliding into an empty place twenty yards from him, and went into the foyer of the building. He slipped into the toilet, walked the length of it, and exited through the second door, leading out again to the car park from the side of the building. He approached the corner slowly, peering round it. One of the two men was standing by the Granada, the other was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, he had followed Hyde into the service station.

Hyde waited impatiently. If the second man didn't move almost at once, he would have to go back into the toilet and attempt to shake them later. And now impatience was a nagging toothache. The man by the Granada was smoking, and picking at his teeth with the hand that held the cigarette. Come on, come on —

The man patted his stomach, which was ample, resting over the lip of his waistband. He hesitated, then he drifted towards the shop at the front of the building, moving with angering slowness out of Hyde's line of vision.

Hyde began running then. He reached the TR7, jerked open the door, and slid into the low seat. He had left the keys in the ignition. He started the engine, and squealed in reverse out of his parking space, swinging the car towards the car-park's exit. In the wing mirror, for a moment, the running figure of the fatter man, then the other emerging from the building behind him, yelling. Then he was down the slope and into the entry lane. He pulled out in front of a heavy lorry, and stamped on the accelerator. The next exit from the M6 was two miles away. He would lose them there, then double back to his intended destination. The speedometer registered ninety. He was still breathing hard, but he was grinning.

Hyde turned the TR7 into the most convenient car-park for Hall 5 of the National Exhibition Centre. The fountain in the middle of the artificial lake in front of the huge hotel complex looked cold and stiff, like dead, blowing grass. It had taken him almost an hour to backtrack the twelve miles or so to the NEC site. He had not been followed through the suburbs of Coventry, back towards the airport. They might — just might — have assumed that he was heading east, towards the M1.

Streamers bearing slogans. A queue had formed already, sleeping bags were in evidence, denim like a uniform or prison garb, combat jackets blazoned with insignia, out-of-style long hair worn by many. The audience, or part of it at least, for Heat of the Day's concert at the NEC, kick-off at eight o" clock. It was now almost five. Edwin Shirley's trucks were already unloading the sound and light equipment. Policemen.

Hyde showed his CID warrant card, and was allowed through the cordon. He immediately picked out Fat Mary, one of the formerly much-publicised road crew. Many of the faces seemed half-familiar from television documentaries when Heat of the Day were on their pinnacle. They had come back like lost disciples.

"Excuse me —"

"Piss off," the fat girl replied.

"Police, darling." He tiredly waved the warrant card.

"Nobody's carrying."

"I'm not interested. Are the band here?"

"Two hours yet. Want some autographs?" She watched two of the road crew carrying a huge mirror, and bellowed, "For Christ's sake, haven't you got all the mirrors up yet?"

"No autographs. Tell me — is Tricia Quin with them?"

A flicker, like a wasp sting, at the corner of her mouth, then the sullen look returned. "Who?"

"Tricia Quin. She was with you on the Europe tour two years ago. Her brother knew Jon."

"Oh, yes. I remember. No, haven't seen her. It's not all the same as before, you know."

"I don't suppose it is. She's not with them, then?" The fat girl shook her head. Her pendulous breasts distorted the claim on her T-shirt that she had attended the University of California. "Perhaps I'll stick around. Collect a few autographs."

"Or a few smokers."

"Who knows, Fat Mary." The girl seemed pleased at the use of her name, the recollection of a former, half-celebrity status. "Keep it in your pocket, not in your mouth. See you." The girl scowled after him.

Tricia Quin, unless he was mistaken — no, he wasn't — was with the band. Two hours seemed an intolerable length of time.

The one-time code message was lengthy, and even the computer's rendering of it into plain seemed to occupy far more time than was usually the case. Even so, when the KGB Resident Petrunin possessed the plain-language text, irritation immediately replaced impatience. He felt hampered by his instructions from Moscow Centre at the same time that he wished, fervently, to comply with those orders.

He left the code room in the embassy basement and took the lift to his office. At any cost — immediately. The girl. It was almost demeaning that an unavoidable test of competence and loyalty should have as its object an immature girl unable to cope with growing up. And it was infuriating that superior officers as eminent as the Deputy Chairman responsible for the KGB's 2nd Chief Directorate should indulge in some vulgar, glory-seeking race against the Red Banner Northern Fleet to see who could first acquire "Leopard" for the Soviet Union. All those old men belonged to the same class, the same era. Dolohov appears confident the submarine is sailing into his trap. You have little time. The girl, the girl —

He locked the door of his office behind him, and flung the high-security document case on to one of the armchairs. He thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood at the window. Lowering clouds, pulled across the sky by a fierce wind. Trees bending.

Damn those clowns in Birmingham, losing Hyde. Correction. Letting Hyde lose them. Hyde was the key, even more so than the girl. And he was at one further move from Quin, and that was another cause of anger at the unfairness of the task set him. Hyde must know something, must have discovered some clue as to the girl's whereabouts, otherwise he would not have bothered to shake the tail.

What did he know?

The girl student, the mother? Either of them? Something popping into his head as he was driving out of Birmingham? Tamas Petrunin grinned. It was impossible to know. Interesting to speculate. It was what he enjoyed. Guesswork. He rubbed his hands together, and turned his back to the window where the wind rustled tinnily outside the double glazing. Birmingham. He couldn't send anyone to see the girl Morrison, nor the mother. Not so soon after Hyde. And it might not be necessary.

Birmingham. When did he spot the tail car? Petrunin opened the wad of newspapers on his desk. Normally, they would be sent down to junior staff for analysis, but Petrunin often liked to glance through the provincial newspapers for evidence of KGB activity, actual or potential. The Birmingham Post. A rather stuffy, empty paper. He flicked through the pages. Nothing. The Evening Mail. Nothing. Hyde would not expect to find the girl at a football match.

Then where? Where would he expect to find the girl? Be Hyde, he instructed himself. Talking to the mother and the friend, then suddenly there is something to cling to, some chance of finding the girl. And the need to shake the surveillance he had discovered — clowns.

Where?

He returned to the newspapers. The girl now. What did he know about her? He crossed with rapid, bustling steps to a large filing cabinet against the far wall of the office, wood-veneered so that its function did not obtrude upon the room. He opened one drawer and removed the file on Quin's daughter. A narrow, shadowy file. He carried it back to his desk, dumping most of the newspapers on the carpet, leaving open the two Birmingham dailies. Where would Hyde expect to meet the girl?

Movements in Birmingham: he scanned the digest in the file. Clubs, pubs, cinemas, one or two exhibitions, concerts, visits to her mother. Dull stuff.

Social habits: clubs, pubs, cinemas. Sexual behaviour: Petrunin scanned the itemised digest. For the last two years, one or two casual, short-lived relationships within the college, a very brief affair with one of her lecturers, then a teacher she met while on teaching practice. Hyde had had Birmingham detectives question all these people. No one had seen her recently. When she ended an affair, she never revisited the scene of the crime. Petrunin savoured the epithet, then grew angry at the truism it contained. It was true that the girl never went back.

Alletson? Oh, the pop singer. The big affair, travelling with the pop group from place to place. Her parents had been worried by that, from all accounts. Soft drugs, promiscuity. A nightmare in Sutton Coldfield. Again, Petrunin grinned. Even Alletson had failed to make any lasting impression upon the girl. A pity.

Psychological Profile: a fine example to us all, he told himself. He skimmed through it. He already knew the girl, as well as she could be known at second hand, and even though her background and past history prompted him to indulge in stereotypes to account for her — she so easily fitted Western and Soviet myths about modern youth and permissive societies — he was certain that there was nothing in the Profile to explain why Hyde had charged off in his little yellow car.

He slapped the file back on his desk. He knew it almost by heart, it had been the merest illusion to assume that the answer would spring from its flimsy sheets. Had she been his own daughter — as he supposed she could have been, in age at least — he would have no real clue to her whereabouts. As KGB Resident, he could not walk around in her head with ease or certainty. Hyde's head bore more similarity to his own.

Where?

The newspapers. He put the file to one side. Football, cinemas, factories on strike, a Royal visit proposed for later in the year — the appropriateness of the blank crossword — share prices…

He folded the morning paper to one side, and returned to the tabloid evening newspaper from the previous day. Grinning beauty queen, footballer with arms raised gladiatorially. Cinemas, clubs, discos, concerts.

The print began to blur. He knew he was not going to find it. Picture of a queue of people, sleeping bags, combat jackets, long hair. He wasn't going to find it. Pop concert at the National Exhibition Centre. Headline to the picture caption, "Who are we waiting for?"

He flicked over the page, then the next page, before what he thought he had not bothered to read entered his consciousness and immediately caused his heart to thud and his hand to tremble. He creased the pages of the paper turning back to the picture and its caption. Other, smaller pictures underneath, of course. The heroes of yesterday. Heat of the Day. Alletson, the girl's lover. Long hair and soft, almost feminine features. The NEC, Birmingham, concert tonight.

He laughed aloud, congratulating himself. Accident, luck, good fortune, chance never disturbed him. He had placed himself in the way of it. Hyde had stumbled across this in the same kind of way. Something the Morrison girl said, or the mother, or two years ago merely popping into his head.

Whether the girl would be there or not, Hyde would. That was a certainty, and perhaps the only one. In which case, Tamas Petrunin would also be there. He looked at his watch. After five-thirty. He calculated. Just time, if they could get out of the centre of London without delay, to the M1. Just time —

"Is that extra signals traffic co-ordinated?"

"Sir," Sergei answered. The young aide swallowed a mouthful of bread before he answered Dolohov. Then, finding it stuck in his throat, he washed it down with tea. One corner of the Ops. Room control centre had become a preserve, marked off by invisible fences — authority, nerves, tension — from the normal staff. Around a metal chart table, Dolohov, Sergei and Ardenyev sat drinking tea and eating bread and cheese. There was something spartan and disregarded about the food and drink with which Dolohov kept them supplied, as if the three of them were engaged in the field, kept going by survival rations. Sergei began slowly to understand the feverish, self-indulgent manner in which the admiral regarded the operation. The admiral was an old man. He had selected this capture of the British submarine as some kind of suitable valediction to his long and distinguished career. Hence he attended to every detail of it himself, however small and insignificant.

"Just in case," Dolohov explained to Ardenyev, the young man nodding in a half-impatient, half-attentive manner, "in case she receives any signals, or monitors our signals, we'll appear to be making every covert effort to reach, and rescue, our own submarine." He smiled, the mouth opening like a slack pouch in the leathery skin.

"I understand, sir," Ardenyev supplied.

"You're impressed by the British equipment, Valery?"

Ardenyev paused. Sergei felt he was calculating the degree of flattery his answer should contain. "Very. We must have it, sir."

"Yes, yes — but, its effectiveness? It exceeds our expectations, mm?"

"Yes, sir."

"She'll keep on course?" Dolohov asked suddenly.

"I — think so, sir." Ardenyev seemed struck by the idea, as if he had not considered it before. "I think so. She's committed, now, under orders."

"Our activity won't discourage her?"

"I doubt that. The captain of the Proteus would have the authority to abort — I just don't think he will. As long as “Leopard” functions, he'll enjoy the cat-and-mouse of it."

"Exactly my reading of the man — of the situation." Dolohov looked at his watch. "She appears to be maintaining course and speed. We have five hours, or less. Success or failure." Sergei could hear the admiral's breathing. Hoarse gulps of air, as if the sterile atmosphere of the control room offered something more necessary than oxygen. "You'd better get off to Pechenga to join your men, Valery."

Ardenyev immediately stood up, an automaton galvanised by the order. Sergei felt the man was simply supplying an impression of instant action such as Dolohov would expect, had waited for.

"Wish me luck, sir."

Dolohov stood up and embraced the young man. "I do, Valery — I wish you luck. Bring me back the British submarine, eh?" He clamped Ardenyev's forearms again with his liver-spotted hands. Ardenyev felt the strength of desperation in the embrace. And of old age refusing to admit the growing dark. He felt sorry, and irritated. He felt himself no more than Dolohov's creature. Later, it would be different, but now it was unpleasant. He would be glad to be aboard the chopper, being flown to the port of Pechenga. "The weather won't prevent you?" It was a command, and a doubt.

Ardenyev shook his head, smiling. "Not if I can help it."

"Report in when you arrive — then wait for my order to transfer to the Karpaty."

"Of course, sir."

When he had left the room, Dolohov went on staring at the door which had closed behind him. From the concentration on his face, Sergei understood that the old man was attempting to ignore the voice of one of the rear-admiral's team who was reading off the updated weather report from a met. satellite for the Tanafjord area. To Sergei, it sounded bad.

Almost as soon as it lifted clear of the main runway at RAF Kinloss on the Moray Firth in Scotland, the Nimrod surveillance aircraft turned north-eastwards, out over the Firth, and was lost in the low cloud. A blue flare beneath the wings, the flashing red light on her belly, the two faint stars at wingtips, and then nothing except the scudding cloud across the cold grey water, and the driving, slanting rain. It had taken less than two hours to authorise a Nimrod to pursue the Proteus, carrying, in addition to her antisubmarine electronics, the encoded instruction to the submarine to return to base with all possible speed. The time was two minutes after six in the evening.

It was almost dark when they arrived. A luxury coach pulled up at one of the rear entrances to Hall 5, and Hyde, standing with the uniformed superintendent responsible for security and order at the rock concert, watched as Heat of the Day descended from it and slipped into the open door to their dressing rooms. Arrogance, self-assurance, denim-masked wealth. Hyde absorbed these impressions even as he studied the figures he did not recognise; managers, road managers, publicity, secretaries. The girl had not been with Alletson, and Hyde's immediate uncontrollable reaction was one of intense disappointment. After the hours in the car park and on the platforms of Birmingham International station and inside and outside Hall 5 — all with no sign of the KGB or the Ford Granada, but the more intensely wearing for that — there was an immediate impression of wasted time, of time run out. Of stupidity, too.

But she was there. Denims and a dark donkey jacket too big for her — was it her, certainly the jacket was too big for the present wearer? — slipping out of the coach without pause, walking with and then ahead of the two other women. The white globe of a face for a moment as she looked round, then she was through the lighted door and gone.

"Was she there?" the superintendent asked. His manner was not unfriendly, not unhelpful. Hyde had been scrupulously deferential and polite.

"I don't know." He felt a tightness in his chest. Was it her? Furtive, certainly furtive. Alletson had paused, allowed himself to be recognised, taken the limelight. Declaring he was alone, there was no girl. "I think so."

"The one with the too-big coat?"

"I think so."

"Okay. You'd better go and find out. Want one of my chaps to go with you?"

"No. I'll be enough to panic her by myself."

"Suit yourself."

"Thanks for your help."

Hyde crossed the tarmac, rounded the coach, and showed his warrant card to the PC on duty at the door. The superintendent was apprised of Hyde's real capacity, but it was unnecessary for anyone else to know. "Where are the dressing rooms?"

"Down the corridor, turn left. You'll see another bloke dressed just like me. And the press, and the bouncers and the hangers-on. Can't miss it."

"Not your scene, this?"

"I'd rather be at the Villa, yobs and all."

"They playing at home tonight?"

Too bloody true."

"Shame."

Hyde followed the corridor, and turned the corner into a crowd of pressmen and cameramen, carefully orchestrated outside the closed dressing room doors. Heat of the Day were back in business. Interest had to be stoked, and kept alight. Hyde pushed through the crowd towards the policeman on the door of one of the rooms. He waved his warrant card.

"Which one is Alletson in?"

"Who?"

"The short bloke with the wavy hair.“

"Uh — that one," the PC supplied, indicating the other door, outside which two bulky men in denims and leather jackets stood, arms folded. Hyde wondered who, precisely, they were guarding. A press or publicity secretary was informing the cameramen that they would be allowed to take their pictures just before the band went onstage. Her announcement was greeted with a chorus of groans. Hyde showed his warrant card to one of the band's security men, who seemed to loom over him.

"Who do you want?" The question was wrong, and revealing. Again, Hyde felt his chest tighten with anticipation. The girl was in there.

"I'm not after his autograph."

"So, what do you want?" Both of them seemed uncertain what to do.

"Just a security check. And I want to talk to Jon about after the concert. Getting away."

"I'll ask him."

"Don't bother. I'll talk to him." He made to reach for the door handle. A large hand closed over his own, and he looked up into a face adopting aggression reluctantly, uncertainly. "Don't be stupid," Hyde said. "It might be big trouble — will be big trouble." The two men glanced at one another, then his hand was released.

"Easy, eh?"

"I'll take it easy — don't upset the artiste, right?" Hyde opened the door without knocking. The girl turned in her chair, alert, nervous, instantly aware of what he was and why he was there. Alletson was lying on a camp bed, and the keyboard player, Whiteman, was scribbling with a pencil on stave paper.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked. Alletson's voice provided a more nervous, knowing undertone.

"Trish — what is it?"

The girl simply stared at Hyde as he shut the door behind him. Whiteman, oblivious to the other two and their anxiety, added, "Piss off, we're busy." He glanced contemptuously at the warrant card. "Autographs later," he sneered.

"Miss Patricia Quin, I presume?" Hyde asked. The girl said nothing. Her face, however, was voluble with confession. Alletson got up lithely and stood in front of her.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"The lady in the case."

Alletson took the warrant card, inspected it, then thrust it back into Hyde's hand. "Harassment?" he asked.

"This isn't about smokes or shots, Jon-boy," Hyde drawled. "It isn't really any of your business. You get on rehearsing or composing or something." Whiteman was standing now, just behind Alletson. Long blond hair, his frame bulkier with good living than two years before. He looked healthier.

"Why don't you piss off?"

"Why did they let you in?" Alletson demanded.

"They'd have been silly not to."

"What sort of copper are you?" Whiteman was a Londoner. "You're a bloody Aussie by the sound of it."

"Too true, Blue. I'm the sort that wants to help her. Can I talk to her?"

"Not unless she wants to."

"Stop it, Jon. It won't do any good." Tricia Quin pushed to Alletson's side, and held his arm. "Who are you?"

"My name's Hyde."

"I didn't think it would be Jekyll — he was the goody, wasn't he?" Whiteman sneered.

"He was. Look, Miss Quin, I'll talk to you with your friends here, if you wish, as long as they can keep their mouths shut." He looked steadily at Alletson and Whiteman, then continued. "You are in danger, Miss Quin. It's stopped being a game. You know there are people after you?"

"You are."

"No, not me. Not even my side."

"What's he talking about, Trish?"

"What do you mean?"

"The men in Sutton, at your mother's house?" She nodded, fear flickering in her pale eyes. Cleverness, too. "That wasn't us. Our bloke got kicked in the balls trying to look after you. You need protection — mine. Will you come back with me?"

She shook her head. "No, I won't. I'm safe here."

"I can't risk that, Miss Quin. We want you and your father safe. You could lead the KGB right to him." She was shaking her head violently now. Her fair hair flopped about her pale, small face. She looked vulnerable, afraid but determined.

As if her shaking head was some signal, Alletson stepped up to him and aimed his knee at Hyde's groin. Hyde bucked backwards and the blow struck his thigh. Off-balance as he was, Alletson pushed him against a tall metal locker. Hyde, watching Tricia Quin move towards the door, jarred his head and shoulder against the locker, then slumped into the corner of the dressing room.

"Trish!" Alletson called, but the girl was already out of the door. Two hopeful flash-bulbs exploded. Hyde got shakily to his feet.

"You stupid buggers!" Hyde snapped, rubbing his shoulder. "She's a menace to herself at the moment, as well as to her father. Christ — you stupid buggers!" He opened the door, and yelled to the PC on duty. "Which way did the girl go?" Someone laughed.

Towards the hall."

"Who is she?" someone asked.

"It'll be pot," someone else answered. "Poor bitch."

Hyde forced his way through the press, jabbed uncomfortably more than once by the lens of a camera, then he was running. At the far end of the corridor, the door into the hall was open. He rubbed his thigh as he ran, his resentment against Alletson growing not because of the pain but because of the girl. Stupid bugger, silly bitch, he chanted to himself, grinding his teeth at the opportunity that had been spoiled. He had had the girl safe, for a moment. It was only a matter of getting her to his car, getting her to Aubrey — shit!

In the hall, lighting gantries were being pulleyed up to the ceiling, mirrors were being positioned for the light-show that the band used, and the roadies were still working furiously to rig and test the amplification equipment. Two grubby girls passed him without a glance, pushing one of Whiteman's electronic keyboards. Up the ramp and on to the stage. He was standing just below the stage. Lights, mirrors, amplifiers, instruments — and Tricia Quin picking her way delicately like a cat through the maze of boxes and wires. She must have taken the other turn in the corridor to enter on to the stage itself.

She saw him. Part of her slow and delicate passage across the stage was due to her continual backward glances. She began to move more quickly, upstage towards the far side. Even as he moved, she disappeared into the wings. He pushed past the girls with the keyboard, and ran as quickly as he was able through the maze of cables and boxes — someone yelled at him — and then he was in the semi-darkness of the wings. He paused, listening. Above his heartbeat and breathing, footsteps. Running. He blundered forward again, sensing rationality disappearing and panic encroaching. He suddenly knew that the KGB were out there, and that she was running towards them. He shook his head, cannoning off a wall as he rounded a bend in the corridor.

Lights again. The foyer and main corridor connecting Hall 5 with its companions and with the railway station. A handful of people moving slowly, and one slight figure running. He did not call after her, merely pursued her, his feet pounding, his blood beating in his ears. He felt a sickness of self-recrimination, an anticipation of disaster.

A tunnel of lights down which she fled, a small dark shape. The scene wobbled in his vision. He seemed no nearer to her. The station concourse was at the end of the wide tunnel. She was almost there, sixty or seventy yards away.

Someone turning, moving with her, after her. She was oblivious to whoever it was, didn't even look round for him as she reached the concourse. He began running, impelled by the certainty of disaster now. Someone had recognised her — other men, two of them in overcoats, just come in from the cold of the car park outside the station, moving to intercept her.

He reached the concourse. The girl had disappeared. Two men had pushed into the small queue for tickets, one of them arguing. He hadn't imagined it. They were stereotypes. The girl must have gone down on to the platform. Two of them, three — where was the other one, the one who had turned in the tunnel, recognised her?

Petrunin. Hyde could not believe it. Standing beneath the announcement board, impatiently watching his men create the wrong kind of disturbance, then turning to the platform ticket machine and banging it because it appeared jammed or empty. No, girl, no girl —

Petrunin, London Resident. KG-bloody-B. Where the hell was the girl? Petrunin. The clever bugger must have worked it out. Tickets being issued, the small queue silenced by embarrassment. Petrunin almost hopping from foot to foot. Train announcement, the next train arriving, Petrunin turning his head from side to side as if regretting something or because he had lost something — and seeing him. Knowing him not so much by his face as by his colour and heaving chest and wary, tense posture.

Hyde ran at the barrier, Petrunin moved to cut him off, slowly drifting, so it seemed, on a collision course. The next train arriving, for Birmingham — special train? He saw the dark, frightened face of the ticket collector, then he vaulted the turnstile, almost stumbling on the far side, hearing the noise of the train. He ran headlong down the flight of steps to the platform, round the corner, skidded, righted himself, flung open the glass doors.

She was almost alone on the platform. He saw her immediately. And she saw him. Policemen, too. Clattering footsteps behind him, but it was all right. Policemen. All round them, policemen. He hadn't lost her. He called to her as she stood looking at him. The noise of the train covered his words as it slowed, then came to a stop.

One of Petrunin's men grabbed him from behind. He turned, lashed out to try to prevent a second man passing him, heading towards the girl. Then they seemed to be drowning in bodies as the special train from Huston debouched hundreds of rock fans on to the platform, every one of them intent on reaching the exit first. Noise assailed Hyde, and perfume. He was brushed aside, the only certainty the hand holding his collar. He raised his fist, but the crowd trapped it against his chest, pinning it there as in a sling. Petrunin's man had his arm above the heads of the crowd. He was waving a rubber cosh. He struck slowly down. The movement was awkward because he was being relentlessly pushed back towards the exit. Hyde lost sight of the girl, of Petrunin who seemed to have retreated back up the steps, and of the cosh which struck him across the neck and shoulder, numbing him after the spurt of fire through his head. Then the Russian's hand was gone from his collar and he stumbled forward, flung sideways to his knees. Then on to his chest. Feet pressed on his back, compressing his lungs. People began surging over him. He was drowning for a moment, then he could not breathe, and then it was dark.

Chapter Five: CRIPPLE

"Sir, why the hell is the Kiev in the area? There's no major Soviet exercise on, and she couldn't possibly be any help in rescuing those poor dead buggers in the crippled boat — so why do they need an aircraft carrier? What's her game?"

"I don't know, John."

"And the course changes — sir, we remained rigged for silent running for too long. If we'd had the magnetic and acoustic sensors working, and gone to active sonar, we'd have known sooner she was closing on us."

"I know that, John. I know we're the quarry."

"Sir, what in hell are we doing here?"

"Playing MoD's games for them, John. Undergoing our final examination."

"What?"

"I mean it. In this sea trial, the danger's all the better for MoD for being real."

"Bastards. Sir, we're being gathered into a net. The net is in the Tanafjord, and we're being driven towards it."

"Agreed."

"What do they want?"

"I should have thought that was obvious. What they want is called “Leopard”. As to what they'll do, you guess."

"What do we do?"

"ETA Norwegian territorial waters?"

"Two hours plus some minutes."

"Then we'll run for shelter. We might just get away with it, inside Norwegian waters. We'll hide, John. Hide."

"Ethan, has the Nimrod's position been updated?" "She's here, Mr Aubrey, as of five minutes ago." Aubrey stared up at the huge map-board. The cluster of lights glowed with what he could easily imagine was malevolence. A single white light had been introduced to the board to represent the Proteus. Aubrey periodically wished it had not been done. The white dot was in a ring of coloured lights representing the Soviet naval vessels in the immediate area. Far to the south and west of that cluster, a second white light shone like a misplaced or falling star over the fjordal coastline of western Norway, perhaps a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle.

"Not enough, not far enough," Aubrey murmured. The dot seemed hardly to have moved since the aircraft's previous signal.

"You can't know that, Mr Aubrey."

"Don't offer me morsels of comfort, Ethan!" Aubrey snapped, turning to the American. Heads turned, and then returned to screens and read-outs. Aubrey had subdued the "Chessboard Counter" team by cajolement and command, and by exploiting their sense of failure. The map-board had completed their change in function as it increasingly betrayed Proteus's danger. They were now a rescue team, busy and helpless.

"Sorry."

Pyott and the commodore had sought another place of residence. Vanquished, they had left the field to Aubrey. Rather, he saw them as children running away from the broken window, the smashed greenhouse.

"My apologies. What's the Nimrod's ETA?"

"A little more than an hour to Hammerfest, then maybe another twenty minutes to the Tanafjord."

Aubrey looked at his watch. "Eight-fifteen. Can we do it, Ethan?"

Clark rubbed his chin. To Aubrey, he looked absurdly young, and much too unworried to be a repository of authoritative answers. And he was tall enough to make Aubrey physically uncomfortable.

"Maybe. Then Proteus has to get the hell out."

"Why hasn't Lloyd aborted on his own initiative?"

"Maybe he wants to. Maybe he's running for the coast and keeping his fingers crossed. Who knows?"

"My God, what an impossible situation!" Aubrey's face darkened after the quick rage had passed. He leaned confidentially towards the American. "Ethan, I'm worried about Quin. I haven't heard from Hyde. He was at the NEC in Birmingham, some sort of pop concert. He thought — no, he was certain — the girl was with this group. She knows them, once travelled with them." Aubrey's face was drained of colour and expression now. "It is very hard to contemplate, Ethan, but I feel myself staring at the loss of the Proteus and of the man responsible for the development of “Leopard”. It is not a comfortable prospect."

Clark recognised, and admitted to himself, Aubrey's age. Yet he respected the man's intellect and his expertise. Aubrey might, appallingly, be correct in his diagnosis.

"Maybe," was all he could find to say.

"I think we have to consider the possibility that what is happening up there — " he waved a hand at the top of the map-board — "is deliberate." He paused, but Clark said nothing. "We have no proof that there is a Soviet submarine in distress. It has stopped transmitting, and still no Russian vessel has gone in after it. But a great many Russian ships are concentrating in the area we know contains Proteus. If they find her — and they may be attempting to do just that — then we will have surrendered an almost priceless military advantage to them. If we lose Quin, too, then we will place ourselves in an abject position indeed."

Aubrey tapped at the surface of the commodore's desk, which he had had moved to a position beneath the map-board. As if the gesture was a summons, the telephone rang.

"Shelley, sir."

"Yes, Peter?"

"I" ve just been informed of a routine surveillance report from the DS team at the Russian embassy —"

"Yes, Peter?" Aubrey found it difficult to catch his breath.

"They think Petrunin left the embassy unofficially around five-thirty this evening."

"Where was he going?"

"I" ve checked that, sir. His numberplate was spotted heading north, I'm afraid, on the M1."

"Damn!" Aubrey's lips quivered with anger. "Thank you, Peter. You'd better inform Birmingham Special Branch. Get them over to that concert at the NEC — quickly!"

Aubrey put down the telephone.

"I guess I see what you mean," Clark said slowly. "Without even really noticing, we're down to the wire."

"I think we are. The KGB Resident wouldn't charge off unofficially without good cause or strong suspicion. Hyde couldn't have lost his trail. Damn that girl and her father!" He returned his attention to the map. The dot of the Nimrod was crossing the Arctic Circle. Proteus was surrounded. The Kiev was steaming at full speed to the Tanafjord, and the rescue ship Karpaty was on station. There really was no escaping the conclusion, and little chance of avoiding disaster. Aubrey felt very tired, entirely incompetent. "I think we have already lost, Ethan. This may be the view from the canvas, from the loser's corner."

"I hope to God you're wrong about that."

"I don't think I am."

The interference crackled in front of Ardenyev's voice, masking it and giving it, to Dolohov's ears, a peculiarly unreal quality, as if the man were fading, becoming ethereal. Then Dolohov raised his voice, not to be heard but to remove the strange, uninvited perception; the whisper of failure.

"Get aboard the helicopters, Valery! you must transfer to the Karpaty now!"

"Sir, I'd really like you to have a word with one of the pilots — " Ardenyev's voice seemed more distant still, the storm smearing his words mockingly.

"No! It is too late for words! The traces are piling up. We're almost there." Dolohov looked round at Sergei, who stood obediently and silently at his elbow as he hunched over the table in front of the telephone amplifier. To Sergei, it seemed that the admiral was losing control, was dangerously elated by events, by the slipping, chasing minutes that passed and the sightings or partial and unconfirmable reports of the British submarine that kept coming in. The old man was racking them up like a score, mere multiplication stimulating his confidence and his arrogance. "We have them, Valery, in the palm of our hand. They're ours!"

"Sir, you don't seem to understand. It's a question of whether they can put us down on the deck of the rescue ship —"

"Don't argue with me, boy!" Dolohov thundered, his fist beating a counterpoint to his words on the surface of the table. "You have your orders — the pilots have their orders. You will board the helicopters at once and set course for the rescue ship. Understand?" There was a gap, then, of space and silence in which the storm hissed. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir. Very good, sir. Your orders will be carried out, to the best of my abilities."

Dolohov was suddenly, manically expansive and generous. "Good boy, good boy. Good luck and good hunting. Over and out." The old man flicked off the telephone amplifier and stood up. He moved with some of the robotic jerkiness of arthritis battled and temporarily overcome; or the driven, muscular awkwardness of someone possessed of an unquenchable desire. He slapped his hand on Sergei's shoulder and the young man hoped that his smile did not appear too artificial. Dolohov looked at him, however, with eyes that had little perception in them. Not glazed or dulled, rather fierce and inward-looking. "The end-game, Sergei — the end-game," he murmured in a strange, ugly, caressing voice.

The rear-admiral was punctilious, almost smirking, full of a bustle that had previously been absent. "Final positions, Admiral," he offered, indicating the computer print-out sheets in his hand.

"Good, good — come, let me see." He took the rear-admiral's arm, ushering him to the window, clutching the sheets with his other hand. Sergei realised that the rear-admiral had cast aside all doubts and reservations; whether from self-interest or because he had contracted the admiral's current illness, Sergei could not decide. Probably both. "Where?" They were at the window.

"There," the rear-admiral proclaimed, histrionically waving his hand down towards the map-table. “Kiev, Karpaty on station waiting for Ardenyev, Grishka and the other submarines — see? There, there, there, there, there —" The finger jabbed out at each of the lights below. 'the other units of the fleet in back-up positions, or sailing on deception courses." He looked at Dolohov. "It's up to them now. They have their orders. All they need is a positive ident on the British submarine."

Dolohov's face possessed a beatific expression His eyes were almost closed. Sergei, embarrassed and disturbed, realised that it was a moment of love. The cold, stern, paternal admiral was unrecognisable. Sergei did not know, however, what it was that Dolohov embraced — this challenge, the drama of the moment, the prize, or the winning of the game. Perhaps even the game itself?

"Good, good," the old man murmured again. Then, suddenly, his eyes opened and all his attention was concentrated on the voice of one of the officers behind him in the control room.

"Submarine unit Frunze reports a magnetic contact —"

Dolohov was across the room and at the officer's shoulder with the speed and physical grace of a younger man. "Where?" he demanded. "What range?" Then, before the man could answer: "Can they lock on to her course?"

The communications officer listened to his headphones after repeating Dolohov's questions, and the old man could see his head begin to shake. "No, sir — they" ve lost it. Could have been sea temperature —"

"Rubbish. It was a magnetic contact, not infra-red! It was them, you idiot!" He turned to the rear-admiral. "Order all submarine units to converge on the Frunze at once!"

"Admiral, is that —?"

"Do it."

"Very well, Admiral."

Dolohov walked aimlessly yet intently back to the window. He appeared to have little interest in the glowing map below him. The situation had been ingested in its entirety or — here Sergei corrected himself— perhaps it had always been in his head. Sergei half-listened to the rear-admiral issuing a stream of orders, half-watched Dolohov, principally being aware of himself as an unimportant cipher, something like a parcel left in one corner of the room.

Then: "Submarine unit Grishka reports another magnetic trace —"

"Magnetic trace fading, Captain."

"Thermal trace fading, Captain."

"Planesman — ten degrees down, level at eight hundred feet."

"Sir."

"Steer twelve degrees to starboard."

"Sir."

There was silence in the control room of the Grishka. The bow sonars were blank and silent, their sensors absorbed or deflected by the British anti-sonar equipment. The infrared trace was decaying, was already almost non-existent, illusory. The magnetic anomaly detection equipment was already inducing a frustrated hunching of the shoulders in its operator. The advanced, delicate, heat-sensitive "nose" was sniffing cold ocean water without trace of the British submarine. Every trail was cold, or growing cold.

"Steer fifteen degrees to port."

"Sir."

Guesswork, the captain of the Grishka admitted. A blind dog with a cold in its nose seeking an elusive scent. No prop wash even, not a trace of the trail she ought to be leaving in the sea from her movement and her turning propeller. They had picked that up once before, then lost it again.

"Nine knots."

"Sir."

Silence.

"Weak magnetic trace, sir. Bearing green four-oh, range six thousand."

"We're almost on top of her — don't lose it. Steer starboard thirty."

"Starboard thirty, sir."

"No thermal trace, sir."

"Magnetic trace fading again, sir."

"Stand by, torpedo room. Any sign of prop wash?"

"Negative, sir."

"Steer starboard five, speed ten knots."

"Magnetic trace lost, sir."

"Damn!"

"Steer port four-five."

"Port four-five it is, sir."

There was silence then in the control room of the Proteus. Whispered orders, like the rustling voices of old men, lacking authority. The sonars which, in their passive mode, were difficult for any enemy to detect with his electronic sensors, registered the movements of the Russian submarine; demonstrating the proximity of the hunter.

"Computer ident, Number One?"

"A “Victor-H”-class submarine, sir. Our friend is back."

"Range and bearing?"

"Moving away, sir. Speed approximately nine knots, range eight thousand, bearing green one-seven-oh. She's passing behind us."

"Other activity, John?"

" “Kashin”-class destroyer, range eleven thousand. “Alpha”-class attack submarine, range fourteen thousand, bearing red six-five, and closing. Kiev at range sixteen thousand, and increasing. The submarine rescue ship is holding station, sir."

"Coffee, sir?"

"What — oh, thanks, Chief. ETA Norwegian waters, John?"

"At present course and speed, eleven minutes, sir."

"Speed fourteen knots."

"Prop wash, sir?"

"Correction — twelve knots."

"Twelve knots it is, sir."

"Steer port ten."

The transmissions from the Grishka and the other Red Banner units were being received via the aircraft carrier Kiev. Dolohov had ordered the abandonment of coded signals in favour of high-speed, frequency-agile transmissions in plain language. Transferred to tape and slowed down, Dolohov then heard them broadcast in the control room. The voices, and the silences between the words, seemed equally to agitate and excite him. Sergei observed his admiral closely, worriedly. He felt like a youthful relative watching a grandparent growing senile before his eyes.

Dolohov's shoulders were hunched as he stared down into the well of the operations room, watching the moving, dancing lights and the flickering, single light that represented the British submarine. It flickered on and off as if there were an electrical fault in the board.

Sergei guessed that Dolohov had begun to entertain doubts; or rather, the doubts he had formerly crushed beneath the heel of certainty had now sprung up again like weeds. It was more than an hour since the first contact signal had been received from the submarine Frunze. Since then, the Grishka and two other units had reported traces on more than one occasion — Grishka three times — but the British submarine still eluded them. Dolohov had been able to ignore his doubts for hours, even days; but now, watching the cat-and-invisible-mouse game of the board below him, he had begun to disbelieve in success. Or so Sergei suspected.

The old man was talking to himself. His voice, in the silence from the loudspeaker, was audible throughout the room.

"Can it be done, can it be done?" He repeated it again and again, a murmured plea or a voiced fear. "Can it? Can it?" The shorter phrase became more final, more full of doubt. "Can it? Can it?" The old man was entirely unaware that he was speaking audibly, and Sergei felt a hot flush of shame invade his features. To be associated with this old man, muttering to himself in this moment of crisis like a geriatric in a hospital, was embarrassing, insulting. Others were listening, everyone in the room —

Then the voice of the monitoring officer on the Kiev silenced Dolohov, smearing across his words, erasing them. The admiral's shoulders picked up, his head inclined like a bird's as he listened.

"Submarine unit Grishka reports lost contact —"

Dolohov's shoulders slumped again. It was evident he thought he had lost the game.

"The “Victor-II” is turning to starboard, sir."

"Damn. John, insert our track and that of the “Victor-II” on to the display screen."

"Track memory is on, sir. Submarine bearing red one-six-eight, range nineteen thousand."

"Do we still have that layer of warmer water below us?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right. Let's make it much more difficult for them. Take us down through it."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Lloyd sensed the dipping of the Proteus" bow. The Russian submarine was on their tail again. They were still three minutes out into international waters, and the "Victor-II" was closing rapidly. Even though he doubted now that an imagined political line on a chart would have any beneficial effect on their circumstances, Lloyd knew of no other move he could make. The display screen traced their track over the seabed, and that of the Russian. A swifter-moving, hazy line of light was dead astern of them now that the Russian captain had altered course.

"Information on the “Victor-II” becoming unreliable, sir."

"I can see that. The warmer layer's causing ghosting and refracting. Are we through it yet?"

"Yes, sir."

"Level at eighty fathoms, cox" n."

"Eighty fathoms, sir."

"Is that the coast at the edge of the screen John?"

"No, sir." Thurston was at his side, staring down at the screen. The image of the Russian submarine was faint. The warmer layer of sea water through which they had descended would be confusing the Russian's sensors, hiding the Proteus. "It's a small plateau. Our depth makes it look like a mountain."

" “Victor-II” now bearing green one-seven-oh, range fourteen thousand, and she's in a shallow dive, sir."

Thurston looked into Lloyd's face. "We didn't fool her. She's back with us," he whispered.

"The computer confirms course and bearing, sir."

Lloyd hesitated for only a moment. Then a tight determination clamped on his features. He had accepted the evidence of his sonars and his computers.

"John," he said in a steady voice audible to everyone in the control room, "call the crew to Alert Readiness. The time for playing games with this Russian is over. He's after us, all right."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Negative contact on Magnetic, Captain."

"Maintain present course for one minute, then hard starboard — mark."

"Marked, Captain. One minute."

"Negative contact, sir."

Always the negative. The Russian captain sensed the Grishka around him, slipping through the blind darkness of the sea. He sensed the crew closed up to Action Stations, as they had been for more than half an hour on this occasion alone; and three other times he had spoken to the torpedo room, readying them, and calling his men to Action Stations. It could not go on for much longer, he would have to relax them. He was wearing them down. He sensed, especially, the torpedo crew room and the wire-guided, wake-homing torpedoes, one with reduced warhead and the second with the special MIRV warhead, the "Catherine Wheel". Once he ordered their launch, one expert crewman would guide them to their target, relying solely on his own skills. His man was good enough, and the torpedoes would do their job. Yet everything — everything — depended on tiny, delicate sensors in the bow of the boat; magnetic sensors, thermal sensors. Somewhere ahead — or below or beside or above or behind — there was a magnetic lump of metal which was emitting heat and which could not be entirely damped and rendered invisible. The British submarine was leaving faint traces, flakings of her skin, faint noises of her breathing. Somewhere in the ocean, those traces lay waiting for him to discover them.

"Coming hard round, Captain."

"Planesman — hold her steady."

"Sir."

Somewhere, out there in the dark, lay the Proteus.

"Sir, the “Victor-II” is coming hard round —"

"I have her. Engine room — plus fifty revolutions."

"Plus fifty, sir."

"Heat trace confirmed and growing stronger, Captain."

"Ten degree quarter — sixty second rate."

The captain of the Grishka leaned against the periscope housing. The range of the British submarine was still too great, and though the trace was strengthening it was still elusive. The game might continue for hours yet. He sensed the pressure on him not to fail, but more importantly he was aware of the growing, slightly desperate need for action in himself and his crew. His loyalty was, therefore, to the stifled, tense atmosphere of his control room.

"Torpedo room," he said distinctly, pausing until everyone was alert with attention to his voice, despite their own tasks. Torpedo room, load manual guidance torpedo, set it for a screw-pattern search. Set maximum range and wait for my order."

There was relief, palpable as cold, fresh air, in the set of every man's shoulders and on every face that he could see. He kept a sudden assault of doubt from his own features.

"Heat trace strengthening, Captain."

"Magnetic trace positive, Captain."

"Sonars negative, Captain."

"Range and bearing?"

"Bearing unchanged, sir. Range thirteen thousand, and decreasing. We're overhauling her, sir."

"Very well." He paused. The low-warhead torpedo was in the tube. He had four of them, and four multiple-warhead "Catherine Wheel" torpedoes. Could he risk the first one at that range? Torpedo room — fire One! Keep calling."

Tube One away, sir, and running. Sensor on, lights green. Negative readout."

The Russian captain looked at his first lieutenant standing at the depth indicator panel. He shrugged expressively.

"Torpedo sensors have made contact, Captain."

The wake-homing torpedo began its search immediately it was launched. The wire that connected it with the Grishka transmitted to its tiny computer the instructions of the experienced operator in the torpedo room. Its guidance control was tested, and responded, then the speed of the torpedo was altered a number of times in quick succession. On each occasion, the torpedo responded immediately and precisely.

The torpedo crossed the traces of the Proteus" s wake one thousand metres from the Grishka. Its corkscrewing movement through the sea, which enabled it to search in three rather than in two dimensions, took it across the wake well astern of the British submarine's position. There was, however, sufficient trace of the wake remaining for the torpedo to register it.

The torpedo nosed on through the dark water until it reached the conclusion of its next one thousand metre run, then it began retracing its course, back towards the wake. Once it crossed the wake for the second time, and its sensors registered either a stronger or a weaker trace, then it would be instructed to turn to port or starboard, and to run down the submarine's track until it made contact. Once its path was chosen, and the wake's direction established, contact was unavoidable.

The torpedo crossed the wake and turned to port almost immediately with a flick as lithe as that of some hunting sea creature. Its corkscrewing track evened out as it began tracing its way down the wake of the British submarine.

"Contact continuous, Captain."

"Excellent — keep calling." The captain of the Grishka grinned at his first-lieutenant.

"Lock on indicated… three thousand five hundred metres of run completed, sir… four thousand metres completed… heat sensor responding and locked on… command override on, sir… proximity fuse armed and on, sir… seven thousand metres of run completed… TV camera on, light on —"

"Come on, come on," the Russian captain murmured. Too long, too long, he told himself. Should have waited, she's out of range.

"Seven and one half thousand metres of run completed, sir… eight thousand metres of run completed."

"Positive contact, sir!"

"Cox" n hard astern!"

"Hard astern, sir."

"Contact identified as a torpedo, sir!"

On the tiny television monitor in the Grishka, receiving pictures from the camera in the nose of the torpedo, there was nothing more than a weakly illuminated rush of grey water, almost like a heavy, dull curtain being continually whisked aside. Then there was a blur of darker water, then the grey, whale-like shape of the Proteus as the British submarine began her turn. The torpedo seemed to dip towards the submarine, strangely hesitant, and the proximity fuse detonated the reduced warhead. The television screen at which the captain of the Grishka stared went blank, making him wince as if the flash of the explosion had been visible and had startled, even blinded him.

"Target acquired, Captain! Hit, hit, hit!"

"We" ve got her?"

"Direct hit, Captain!"

There was cheering, which he immediately silenced.

Torpedo room, load Two. Multiple warhead torpedo, set range at nine thousand. Manual guidance, direct search track."

"Tube Two ready, Captain."

"Fire Two!"

"Planesman, check that roll!"

" — can't hold the turn —"

"Emergency lights — cancel —"

"Can't hold the trim, sir!"

"Trim responding, sir."

"Engines down one-fifty revolutions."

"The dampers aren't controlling the oscillation, sir."

"All stations — immediate damage report." Lloyd wiped a hand across his forehead, his eyes riveted on the forearms of the two planesmen as they struggled to right the trim of the Proteus. The muscles flexed and strained, veins standing out, the tattoo of an anchor and chain livid on one of the arms. The whole submarine was oscillating wildly, like a bicycle out of control. A child in the saddle, feet unable to reach the pedals. The lights had come back on. His arms felt nerveless and weak as his thoughts churned like his stomach, over and over, and fused into a circuit. The Russians had fired on them, fired on them… Thurston crossed the vibrating control room towards him and lurched against the periscope housing, where he clung unsteadily. "Christ, John — they fired on us!"

Thurston's face confirmed the inadmissible. Enemy action.

"Chief engineer, sir," Lloyd heard over the control room speaker.

"Yes, Chief?"

"Initial damage report suggests external impact, sir. Pressure hull okay, outer plates and aft ballast tanks ruptured. Planes and rudders misaligned, but responding, sir. The vibration we're experiencing is linked to our revs, so there must be prop damage. Or maybe it's the shaft. Or both. The main shaft bearings are heating up."

"Can we still remain under way, Chief?"

"I think so, sir. We'll have to try various rev settings to find an optimum for remaining under way with least vibration and some degree of control. We may be lucky, if the bearings don't get too hot. They're in the orange now, sir."

"Very well, Chief. In your hands."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The multiple-warhead torpedo tracked down the wake of the Proteus, following the range and bearing instructions fed into its tiny computer. It, too, was armed with a proximity fuse. The Red Navy's experts had concluded that a reduced warhead, although capable of damaging the Proteus, might not have sufficient stopping-power to render the British nuclear submarine immobile, which condition was essential to the success of the operation. Therefore, an experimental multiple-warhead, code-named "Catherine Wheel", had been hurried through its last stages of development and its laboratory and sea trials, to fulfil the preliminary work of the reduced-warhead torpedo that would cripple, but not ensnare, the Proteus.

The TV camera switched on at an instruction from the torpedo room operator, and the light came on at the same moment. On the tiny screen, the Russian captain watched the swirling rush of water, and thought he detected the bubbles and general disturbance of the Proteus's wake. He tensed himself, almost as if he had been riding the torpedo like a horse, then the grey-black, whale-backed shape of the submarine emerged from the darkness of the sea. He imagined — saw? — the damage to the rudder and the hydroplanes, and bent his head and cocked it to one side in order to perceive the outline of the stern more easily. Then the warhead detonated, and to his intense disappointment the TV screen went blank. Memory continued the succession of images.

He had seen the "Catherine Wheel" in operation on an old sub during trials. The film had been poor, grainy and cut-about, but the images had been stark, vivid, deadly. When the separate warheads split from the body of the torpedo, they would whirl and spin and weave outwards in a net-like circle. Some of them carried small explosive charges, some barbed hooks of super-strengthened steel, some suction caps or magnets. Twelve in all, each of them trailed a length of toughened steel cable, whipped into a frenzy of whirling movement by the spinning-top effect of the small warheads. Two, three, four or more of these would make contact with the hull and rudder and hydroplanes of the Proteus and, as the submarine moved forward under power, the trailing, whipping steel cables would slash at the hull, be dragged with it, and would fasten and entangle the propellers, twisting tighter and tighter like strangling cords.

It would take no more than seconds, and little more than a minute to halt the submarine, her propeller bound and made immovable by the entangled steel cables.

He closed his eyes, seeing the drama on an inward screen, himself seated in the darkness of the briefing room as the film was shown. He did not hear, did not need to hear the exultant cry from the torpedo room, nor the cheering in his control room. He awoke when his first-lieutenant shook his elbow, startling him. The young man was grinning.

"Direct hit, sir. Another direct hit!" he bubbled.

"Good," the captain said slowly. "Well done, everyone." He stood upright. Already, the British submarine would be slowing, her crew terrified by the vibration as the cables tightened against the revolutions of the propeller, strangling it. "Very well. Send up an aerial buoy. Transmit the following message, Lieutenant. Message begins TOLSTOY, followed by target impact co-ordinates. Message ends. Direct to Murmansk, code priority nine."

"Yes, sir!"

"Retrieve the aerial buoy as soon as the transmission ends."

"It's no good, sir," Lloyd heard the voice of the chief engineer saying, "that second impact has either damaged the prop even further, or we're entangled in something." Lloyd was shuddering with the vibration, and the noise of the protesting propeller and shaft was threatening to burst his skull. It was impossible to stand it for much longer. The submarine was slowing, the prop grinding more and more slowly. The Russians had done something, caught them in a net or some similar trap, choking them.

"Very well, Chief." He could not utter the words clearly, only in an old man's quaver because of the shudder in the hull which was worsening with every passing second. He shouted his orders above the noises. They were in a biscuit tin, and someone was beating on the lid with an iron bar. "First-Lieutenant." Thurston nodded, holding on to the depth indicator panel, his legs as unreliable as those of a drunk. "John. I want a reading of the bottom as soon as we're over the plateau. If we find a flat bit, set her down!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

The tension in the control room, even though it remained filled and shaken by the increasing vibration, dispelled for a moment. He'd done what they expected of him, demanded of him. The two planesmen struggled with the increasing difficulty, veins proud like small blue snakes on their skin, muscles tight and cramped with the strain. They had to slow down, stop.

"Captain to all crew!" he yelled into his microphone, which jiggled in his hand. "Prepare for bottoming and maintain for silent running!" Silence. A bad joke. The protest of the propeller, the shaft, the bearings drummed in his head.

"Lieutenant, come about and set up another sweep pattern two thousand metres to the east. Sensor control — no relaxation. We can't have lost her! She's here somewhere. Keep looking."

"Well done, John." Lloyd tried to lighten the sudden, sombre silence. "Light as a feather." No one smiled. The tension in the control room tightened again like a thong around his temples. The din had ceased, the torture of the prop and shaft was over. Yet the silence itself pressed down on them like a great noise. "All non-essential services off. Stand down non-operational crew and safety men. Get the galley to lay on some food."

"Hayter to Captain."

"Yes, Don?"

"The “Victor-II” is still sniffing around, but I think she's lost us for the moment."

"Good news, Don."

The lights blinked off, to be replaced by the emergency lighting. The submarine seemed to become quieter, less alive, around him. They were more than twenty fathoms down on a ledge jutting out from the Norwegian coast, and the Russians would now be looking for them, more determined than ever.