From their identification papers, Ardenyev knew them to be Thurston, the first-lieutenant of the submarine, and Hayter, the officer responsible for "Leopard". Because of their importance, he had allowed them to remain with Lloyd in the control room of the Proteus after the remaining officers and ratings had been confined to the wardroom and crew quarters "for security reasons".
Ardenyev had watched Lloyd come round, come to an almost instant wakefulness, and he had immediately warmed to the man and granted him his respect and his wariness. Lloyd would now sabotage "Leopard" in a moment, if he could. Ardenyev stood before the captain of the submarine and his two senior officers at attention, like a junior officer presenting his compliments. It was part of the charade he was now required to play.
"As I was saying, Captain," he began again, having been interrupted by an expletive from Thurston, "we very much apologise for the manner in which we were required to board your vessel. However, it is lucky that we did. Your purification system had developed a fault that would almost certainly have proved fatal had we not arrived." He said it without a flicker of amusement or self-mockery. The truth did not matter.
His men, his team were missing, presumed dead. Vanilov, brokenly, had told him he had seen Kuzin catch a whipping, freed tendril of steel cable across his back, and he had seen him flung away into the dark, his body tumbled and twisted in a way that would have been impossible had it been unbroken. Nikitin had fallen beneath the weight of the Proteus, forgetting in surprise to loosen his hold on the cutting gear. Stabs of blue flame had come from the cutting-pipes as the silt had boiled round, and swallowed, Nikitin. Shadrin he had not seen at all. Teplov and Vanilov alone had clung to the submarine, been dragged through the water and the boiling mist of silt and mud, rested dazed and exhausted and were slowly being poisoned by nitrogen in the blood until Teplov had trawled back to the stern and found Vanilov and boarded the Proteus through the aft escape hatch, into the electric-motor room. They had waited in the slowly-draining compartment for five minutes, until it was safe to emerge into the submarine. Dizziness and exhaustion, yes, but not the bends. Teplov had put the neutralising agent through the aft purifiers, and then come seeking his commanding officer.
Ardenyev felt his left cheek adopt a tic, the last, fading tremors of weariness and shock. These men in front of him had killed three of his men, indirectly killed Blue Section. The knowledge that he would have done precisely the same, threatened as they had felt they were, intruded upon his anger, dimming it. Lloyd, the captain, was watching him carefully, weighing him, the expression on his face like a suspicion that they had met before, or always been intended to meet.
"Fucking piracy, that's what it is," Thurston offered into the silence, and Hayter rumbled his agreement. "How do you explain the guns if you're here to help us?"
Ardenyev smiled innocently. “We understand your concern with security. We would not wish to be blamed for any — mistakes you might make, any damage you might cause to sensitive equipment. It is merely a precaution."
"Locking up my crew is just another precaution, I presume?" Lloyd asked sardonically, sitting in a relaxed manner in one of the sonar operators" chairs, which he swung to and fro slowly, almost as if he intended mesmerising the Russian. A relaxed, diffident, confident child. Ardenyev was pricked by his seeming indifference to the fate of Nikitin and the others.
"Captain, I would understand, even expect, some reaction such as that of Commander Thurston translated into action, either from one of your officers, or some of your men. That would only complicate an already complicated situation. We are here to help you — " Here, sincerity seeped into his voice in a measured, precise dose —"because it is our fault that you are in this situation."
"You admit it, then?"
"What else can we do? The captain and officers of the submarine Grishka will be severely disciplined for their provocative action."
"This is unreal —!" Thurston exploded.
"Not at all — is it, Captain?" Ardenyev said with a smirk. "It will be the agreed version of events."
"How do you explain the cuts and bruises on two of my officers?" Lloyd enquired. "The air purifiers struck them, I suppose?"
"Falling to the deck, I suppose," Ardenyev replied, "overcome by the lack of oxygen. I came aboard when your signals from inside stopped — you tapped out one word, HELP, before that happened. You don't remember?"
Lloyd shook his head. "No, I don't. Oxygen starvation plays tricks with memory, obviously."
Ardenyev sighed with pleasure. "I see we understand each other. Captain."
"What happens now?"
"From the damage report, there will be some repairs, to your buoyancy and to your hydroplanes. Then you will be towed back to Pechenga, our nearest naval base, for sufficient repairs to allow you to return to Faslane under your own power." He spread his hands innocently in front of him. "It is the least we can do, apart from the sincerest diplomatic apologies, of course. It will take little more than a day or two before you are on your way home." He beamed.
"If your mission is so humanitarian, why is your petty-officer carrying a Kalashnikov with the safety-catch in the “Off” position?" Thurston remarked sourly.
"Security." Ardenyev sighed again. He was tiring of the charade. It was not important. Everyone knew the truth. "Now, I will have to contact the rescue ship Karpaty and arrange for divers and equipment to be sent down to us."
"I'm sure you're reasonably familiar with our communications?" Lloyd remarked with forced lightness, as if his situation had come home to him in a more bitter, starker way.
"Thank you, yes." Ardenyev's hand released the butt of the Makarov pistol thrust into the belt of his immersion suit. He tousled his hair in an attempt to retain the mocking, false lightness of his conversation with the British officers. He wanted to clamber back into the fiction of a terrible accident, a life-saving boarding-party, apologetic repairs in Pachenga, as into a child's tree-house. But he could not. Whipping steel cables, boiling flame from a crashed helicopter, accompanied him vividly to the communications console.
As if admitting that the fiction could not be sustained, he drew the Makarov and motioned the three British officers to the far side of the control room before he seated himself in front of the console.
* * *
"These pictures were taken forty minutes after the previous set," Aubrey remarked. "You are telling me, Captain Clark —" the excessive politeness seemed designed to stave off any admission of disaster — "that since no divers have resurfaced, they must be on board Proteus"?
"Right."
"Why?"
"They couldn't stay down more than ten minutes at that depth. Then they'd come back up slowly, but by now they'd be back on board the launch. Sure, the launch has returned to take station on the port beam of Karpaty —" Here Clark nodded in Copeland's direction — "but as far as I can make out, they're loading heavy cutting gear from the rescue ship. And these men on deck. More divers. In full rig, not scuba gear. They're going down. Therefore, you can bet Ardenyev's men are on board."
"But why and how would Lloyd have allowed him on board?" Aubrey asked in exasperation. He was baffled and plagued by the murky high-resolution and light-intensified photographs transmitted from the Nimrod. Clark seemed to be reading tea leaves. The whole matter seemed like a fairy tale.
"He wouldn't need to —"
"The escape hatches," Copeland blurted out. "After Phaeton went down a couple of years ago, all the hatches had to open two-way. They'd know that, dammit!"
"Exactly," Clark said drily. "Ardenyev would have let himself in."
"Eastoe reports a change in position of Proteus."
"Lloyd trying to get rid of his guests," Clark commented acidly. "Someone's in there, you can bet on it."
"Then none of our messages got through?" Aubrey asked forlornly. “Leopard” will not have been destroyed."
"I'm afraid not."
"Clark — what will they do now, for heaven's sake?" Aubrey's eye rested on Giles Pyott's expressionless face with a glance of pure malevolence. Pyott's implacability refuted the accusation of the gaze. Clark cleared his throat, breaking the tension between the soldier and the intelligence agent. Aubrey shrugged.
"Raise her — depending on the damage, or simply take what they want down there. The situation's complicated by the fact that “Leopard” isn't operational at present. I guess they'll raise her and tow her into port."
"What?" Pyott asked in disbelief. "That would be piracy. The international repercussions would be — enormous."
"You'd declare war?" Clark asked ironically.
"Don't be stupid."
"Then the shit hitting the fan will have been worth it. What will you do? All of you. You won't go to war, we won't go to war on your behalf, you won't tell anyone because it's all too embarrassing — so nothing will happen. “Leopard” will belong to both sides or to none. That'll be the only outcome."
"What can we do, Clark?" Aubrey demanded with the impatient emphasis of a frustrated child on a wet day. He was almost shaking with rage and frustration.
"You" ve been outboxed, Mr. Aubrey."
"Don't be so damned American," Pyott drawled. "So insufferably smug and patronising."
"Sorry, Colonel Pyott," Clark apologised. He could not mask his grin completely, even though he sensed the gravity of the situation as completely as anyone else in the room beneath the Admiralty. It was so — so caricatured, this panic in the dovecote. The new shiny toy was missing. There was an absence of concern for the crew of the Proteus that Clark resented on their behalf, even in Aubrey. He also felt, and admitted, a sneaking admiration for the man he felt must have masterminded the boarding of the submarine, Valery Ardenyev. He could remember the man's face and build now, and he could entirely believe in the Russian's ability to successfully surprise and overcome a crew of over one hundred.
Everything depended upon the degree to which Proteus was damaged. The nearest NATO units were twenty hours" sailing from the present position of the submarine, except for certain small Norwegian units which the government in Oslo would not deploy in the Barents Sea. They could watch, by radar, sonar and aircraft, but they could not intervene. If it took more than twenty hours to raise and tow the Proteus, then the full five acts of the disaster might not be performed. Unless Ardenyev and his men simply unplugged "Leopard" and took it away with them. Clark was inclined to doubt this. The Russians would preserve, at some effort, the bland, apologetic face they had begun to present via the Soviet Ambassador in London.
"Can we rescue it — them?" Aubrey asked. "Can we get out of the elephant trap that has been dug for us?" he insisted, worrying at the insuperable problem as at a bone. There had to be some hope within the situation, surely?
"Rescue?" Copeland blurted in disbelief.
"I can't see how," Clark said more carefully as Aubrey glared at the young Royal Navy officer. The map-board loomed over them all, all its lights gleaming and unmoving, except for the plotted course of the Nimrod on-station as it was updated every few minutes. A fly buzzing above the scene, a carrion bird over a kill.
"I don't see why they need to raise the sub," Pyott said. They're interested in only one thing, surely?"
"Ardenyev's done maybe a half-dozen of these rescues on Russian boats in his career. Board and raise operations. He's an expert at it. They needed him to get on board, sure — but they maybe want his expertise at raising boats, too."
"I must talk to “C” at once," Aubrey remarked. "Our talking is pointless at the moment. We must establish what the Soviet authorities intend."
Clark shrugged, unoffended that Aubrey doubted his prognosis. His respect for Aubrey had seemed to waver during the past twenty-four hours, like a light revealed and obscured by the movement of clouds. Yet the American, despite the clarity of his own mind, realised he still expected a solution to occur to Aubrey; even a successful solution.
Aubrey made no distinction of security between himself and the "Chessboard Counter" team, and used one of the battery of telephones in the underground room. Cunningham, he knew, was with the Foreign Secretary, having been summoned to a second meeting with the Soviet Ambassador. He heard Cunningham at the other end of the line within half a minute of placing the call to the Foreign Office.
"Yes, Kenneth? What news?" Cunningham sounded breathless. Aubrey supposed it stemmed from events rather than exertion.
"Expert opinion — " Aubrey could not suppress an involuntary glance towards Clark and the tight-knit group around and beneath the map-board — "has it here that the Russians may have boarded Proteus.""
"Good God, that's outrageous!"
"The Ambassador hasn't confirmed as much?"
"He's talking of rescue, of course — but not of boarding. Not directly. Not as yet, that is."
"How does he explain the incident?"
There was a chilly chuckle in Cunningham's voice, the laugh of a man succeeding, just, in appreciating a joke against himself. "The captain of the Russian submarine suffered a nervous breakdown. He ordered the firing of the torpedo in question before he could be relieved of his command by the usual heroic young officer, loyal to the Party and the cause of world peace."
"That is perhaps the unkindest cut of all, that they can get away with such a ridiculous tale, knowing we can do nothing to refute it. And nothing to rescue our submarine."
"The Foreign Secretary has informed the PM, Kenneth. She's monitoring the situation. Every effort is being made to pressurise the Soviet Union into leaving the area and leaving Proteus to us."
"And—?"
"Very little. They insist, absolutely insist, on making amends. For the lunacy of one of their naval officers, as the Ambassador put it."
"Washington?"
"The President is gravely concerned — "
"And will do nothing?"
"Is prepared to accept the Russian story at face value, for the sake of international tension, despite what his military advisers tell him. I don't think he quite grasps the importance of “Leopard”."
"I see. We are getting nowhere?"
"Nowhere. What of this man Quin?"
"Nothing. The girl is the key. I'm waiting for a report from Hyde."
"Would it help if we recovered him, at least?"
"We might then destroy “Leopard”, I suppose."
"The PM will not risk the lives of the crew," Cunningham warned sternly. "The Foreign Secretary and I were informed of that in the most unequivocal manner."
"I meant only that we could attempt sabotage, or Lloyd could if Quin was in our hands again."
"Quite. You don't think “Leopard” had been damaged by Lloyd or his crew?"
"It is possible, but I think unlikely. None of our signals reached the Proteus.""
"Very well. Kenneth, I think you'd better come over here at once. You may have to brief the Foreign Secretary before he sees the PM again. Leave Pyott in command there."
"Very well. In fifteen minutes."
Aubrey replaced the receiver. The room was quiet with failure. Clark watched him steadily, some of the younger men regarded him with hope. Pyott appeared resigned. It was, he admitted, a complete and utter intelligence disaster — precisely the kind he could not tolerate or accept.
"Giles," he called, and then thought: where the devil is Hyde?
Quin beckoned like a light at the end of a dark tunnel. A false, beguiling gleam, perhaps, but he had no other point of reference or hope.
* * *
Hyde wished he could call Aubrey from the row of telephones with their huge plastic hair-dryer hoods that he could see through the glass doors of the cafeteria. He was afraid, however, of leaving the girl for a moment. He was afraid of letting her out of his sight for any length of time, however short, and afraid, too, that she was beginning to regret her earlier decision. And he was also wary, treading delicately on the fragile, thin-ice crust of the trust she meagrely afforded him, of reminding her that there were other, more faceless, more powerful people behind him. The kind of people her father had fled from originally.
The telephones remained at the edge of his eyesight, in the centre of cognition, as he sipped his coffee and watched her eagerly devouring a plate of thin, overcooked steak and mushrooms and chips. For himself, beans on toast had been as much as he could eat. Tension wore at him, devouring appetite as well as energy. Quin was somewhere in the north of England — the girl had said nothing more than that, and he refrained from pumping her further for fear of recreating the drama of obsessive suspicion in her mind. He behaved, as far as he was able, as a driver who was giving her a lift north. The adrenalin refused to slow in his veins. He was nervous of pursuit — though he had seen no evidence of it — and he was suffering the stimulant effects of their escape from Petrunin.
"How's the tour going?" he asked conversationally.
She looked at him, a forkful of chips poised at her lips, which were shiny with eating. Her face was amused, and somehow obscurely contemptuous.
"I didn't have time to notice."
Hyde shrugged. "I thought you might have heard. I hope they do well."
"You expect me to believe that's all that's on your mind — the profits of an over-thirties rock band?" she sneered, chewing on the mouthful of chips, already slicing again at the thin steak. The cafeteria of the motorway service station was early-hours quiet around them. One or two lorry drivers wading through mountainous plates of food, a carload of caravanners avoiding the traffic of the day by travelling by night, smuggling their way to their holiday destination, the two waitresses leaning at the cash register, grumbling. Just south of Lancaster. Hyde hoped that Quin was somewhere in the Lake District. The sooner he got to him, the better.
He shrugged. "No, I don't think you're that stupid. Just filling in time, trying to lull you into a false sense of security." He grinned in what he hoped was an unsuspicious, engaging manner.
She studied him narrowly. Her plate was empty. "You're odd," she said eventually. "And too bloody clever by half. Don't pull the dumb ocker stunt with me."
She was still in control of their situation, leading him by the hand to her father, only because her father had agreed. She would tell him nothing until the last minute, to retain control.
"Thank you. Tell me, why did your father up and away like that? He wasn't really frightened of us, was he?"
She screwed her face up in thought, then released the skin into clear, youthful planes and curves again. With a bit of make-up, Hyde thought, she wouldn't look bad. They all wear a sneer these days.
"He was frightened of them — people like the ones tonight," she said. "And he didn't believe people like you —" An old and easy emphasis lay on the words like a mist. Pigs, Fascists, cops, the fuzz. The necessary vocabulary of her age and her education. The silence after the emphatic last word was strained, and she looked down, suddenly younger, more easily embarrassed.
"I see," he said. "We would have looked after him, you know."
"No you wouldn't!" she snapped, looking up again. "They watched him all the time. Your people took time off for meals, and the pub, and to go for a piss — they didn't! They were there all the time. Dad said there were a hundred times he could have been kidnapped while your lot weren't there or weren't looking!" She was leaning forward, whispering intently, a breathy shout. "You wouldn't have taken care of him — he took care of himself."
"I agree we're not as efficient as the KGB," Hyde said evenly. "But he wasn't in any real danger." Immediately, he was sorry he had uttered the words. The girl's features were rich in contempt, and he had no business defending the DS. Quin had been right, in a way. The KGB might have lifted him, any time. "Sorry," he added. "No doubt he was right. Sloppy buggers, some of them." Her face relaxed. "But he's safe now?" Her eyes narrowed, and he added: "Do you want coffee?" She shook her head.
"You?"
"No." He hesitated, then said, "Look, you have to trust me. No, I don't mean because you realise I'm trying to save you and your old man from the baddies — you have to believe I can do it. I'm not tooling around Britain waiting for you to make up your mind."
She thought for a moment, then said, "You'll have to turn off the motorway at the exit for Kendal." She watched his face, and he suppressed any sign of satisfaction.
It was the importance of it, he decided. That explained her almost fanatical care for her father. She was the key, even to herself. Importantly useful for the first time in her parents" lives. Crucial to her father's safety. She clung to her role as much as she clung to her father. "Ready? Let's go, then."
The man near the telephone booth in the car park watched them approach the yellow TR7, get in, and drive off down the slip-road to the M6. There was just time for the brief telephone call to Petrunin before they set off in pursuit. Once clear of Manchester and on to the motorway, Hyde had not driven at more than sixty or sixty-five. If he kept to that speed, there would be enough time to catch him before the next exit. He dialled the number, then pressed the coin into the box. Petrunin's voice sounded hollow and distant.
"I may have some trouble getting away. A slight delay. Keep me informed."
"Trouble?"
"No. I must, however, be careful leaving Manchester. I am known by sight. Don't lose them."
The man left the booth, and ran across the car park to the hired Rover and its two occupants. They were less than a minute behind the yellow TR7.
* * *
Lloyd was still angry. The effort to keep his appearance calm, to portray acquiescence to the inevitable, seemed only to make the hidden anger grow, like a damped fire. His father, encouraging the first fire of the autumn by holding the opened copy of The Times across the fireplace in the morning room. He smiled inwardly, and the memory calmed him. His stomach and chest felt less tight and hot. It was worse, of course, when the Russian was there — even when Thurston with his impotent raging and coarse vocabulary was in the same room.
There was nothing he could do. With his crew confined to their quarters and one guard on the bulkhead door, and his officers similarly confined to the wardroom, three men had held them captive until a relief, augmented guard had arrived from the rescue ship and the damage repair team with their heavy equipment had begun their work on the stern of the Proteus. Ardenyev forced one to admire him, and that rankled like a raging, worsening toothache. The effort of three weary, strained men to drag unconscious bodies through the submarine to monitor the essential, life-supporting systems, to inspect "Leopard", and only then to call for help, surprised him. Enraged him afresh, also.
There was a knock at his cabin door. Presumably the guard.
"Yes?"
Ardenyev was looking tired, yet there was some artificial brightness about his eyes. He was obviously keeping going on stimulants. Lloyd tried to adopt a lofty expression, feeling himself at a disadvantage just because he was lying on his bunk. Yet he could not get up without some admission of subordination. He remained where he lay, hands clasped round his head, eyes on the ceiling.
"Ah, Captain. I am about to make an inspection of repairs. I am informed that they are proceeding satisfactorily."
"Very well, Captain Ardenyev. So kind of you to inform me."
"Yes, that is irony. I detect it," Ardenyev replied pleasantly. "I learned much of my English in America, as a student. Their use of irony is much broader, of course, than the English — I beg your pardon, the British."
"You cocky bastard. What the hell are you doing with my ship?"
"Repairing her, Captain." Ardenyev seemed disappointed that Lloyd had descended to mere insult. "I am sorry for much of what has happened. I am also sorry that you killed three members of my team. I think that your score is higher than mine at the moment, don't you?"
Lloyd was about to reply angrily, and then he simply shrugged. "Yes. You haven't —?"
"One body, yes. The youngest man. But that is usually the way, is it not? The others? No doubt they will be awarded posthumous medals. If I deliver your submarine to Pechenga."
"What happened to the fraternal greetings bullshit?"
"For public consumption, Captain. That is what our ambassador will be telling your foreign secretary, over and over again. I'm sorry, but your inconvenience will be shortlived and as comfortable as possible. My interest in the affair ends when we dock. Now, if you will excuse me — "
Lloyd returned his gaze to the ceiling, and Ardenyev went out, closing the door behind him. The guard outside Lloyd's door was stony-faced, and his Kalashnikov was held across his chest, stubby metal butt resting lightly against one hip. Ardenyev nodded to him, and passed into the control room, His own team should have been there, he reminded himself, then wished to quash the reminder immediately. The pills, damned pills, juicing up the emotions, making pain easy and evident and tears prick while they kept you awake —
They would have a steering crew brought down from the rescue ship once the repairs were complete. Under his command, they would raise the submarine in preparation for towing to Pechenga. Teplov looked up from monitoring the life-support systems, and merely nodded to him. Vanilov was slumped in a chair, his head on his arms next to a passive sonar screen. Teplov was evidently letting him rest.
Ardenyev went out of the control room and into the tunnel which passed through the reactor housing to the aft section of the Proteus. He ignored the windows into the reactor chamber, and passed into the manoeuvring room above the huge diesel generators. Empty. Then the turbine room, similarly empty. The silence of the submarine was evident in the huge aft section, despite the banging and scraping, setting his teeth on edge, that thrummed in the hull; the noises of the repairs under way. Empty, silent, to the imagination beginning to smell musty with disuse. He passed through the bulkhead door into the room housing the electric motors, where the aft escape hatch was located. His replenished tanks waited for him on the floor by the ladder up to the hatch.
He checked the air supply, then strapped the tanks on to his back. He adjusted his facemask, and fitted the mouthpiece. He breathed rapidly, re-checking the air supply. Then he climbed the ladder and opened the hatch. He closed it behind him, and turned the sea-cock to flood the chamber. Water rushed down the walls, covering his feet in a moment, mounting to his ankles and knees swiftly.
When the chamber was flooded and the pressure equalised with the depth and weight of water outside, he reached up and turned the wheel of the outside hatch. He pushed it open, and kicked upwards, drifting out into the sudden blind darkness of the sea, his eyes drawn by pinpricks of white light and the flashes of blue light at the stern of the submarine. He turned, swimming down the grey back of the submarine where streaks of turning, swirling small fish glided and winked in the passing light of his lamp. Slowly, he made out the tiny figures working on the damaged stern, outlined and silhouetted by the flare of their cutting and welding gear and by the arc lamps clamped to the hull.
He crouched on the hull of the Proteus, next to the underwater salvage chief from the Karpaty, a man he had trained with for the past three months, Lev Balan. Beyond them, the hydroplanes and the rudder were being patched. The force of the seawater against their damaged, thin steel skins as the Proteus moved on after being hit by both torpedoes had begun stripping the metal away from the ribbed skeleton of steel beneath. The effect, Ardenyev thought, was like exposing the struts and skeleton of an old biplane, where canvas had been stretched over a wooden frame, and doped. Or one of his old model aeroplanes, the ones that worked on a tightened elastic band. The repairs were crude, but sufficient to prevent further damage, and to make the minimal necessary use of rudder and hydroplanes now possible. The propeller would not be needed, but the evidence of the MIRV torpedo's steel serpents was being removed twenty fathoms down rather than in the submarine pen at Pechenga. The hull around the propeller and even forward of the rudder and hydroplanes was scarred and pocked and buckled by the effect of the whiplash action of the flailing steel cables as they were tightened and enmeshed by the turning of the propeller.
As Ardenyev watched, one length of cable, freed from the prop, drifted down through the light from the arc lamps in slow motion, sliding into the murk beneath the submarine. A slow cloud of silt boiled up, then settled.
"How much longer, Lev?"
"Two, three hours. In another hour we should be able to start attaching the tow lines." Lev Balan was facing him. Within the helmet of the diving suit, his face was vivid with enjoyment and satisfaction. Airlines snaked away behind him, down to the huge portable tanks of air mixture that rested on the ledge near the submarine. "We'll have to come in for a rest before that. Temperature's not comfortable, and my men are tired."
"Okay — you make the decision. Is the docking prop damaged?" Balan shook his head. "What about the ballast tanks?"
"When we get her up to towing depth, we might have to adjust the bags. We" ve repaired one of the tanks, but the others can't be done down here — not if we're sticking to your timetable!" Despite the distortion of the throat-mike; Balan's voice was strong, full of inflection and expression, as if he had learned to adapt his vocal chords to the limitations of underwater communication.
"Okay. Keep up the good work."
"Sorry about your boys."
Ardenyev shrugged helplessly. "Don't they call it operational necessity?"
"Some shits do."
"I'll get the galley operating ready for your men."
Ardenyev registered the drama around him once more. Now that his eyes had adapted completely, the arc lamps threw a glow around the scene, so that figures appeared caught in shafting sunlight, the minute sea life like moths and insects in summer air. He patted Balan on the shoulder, and kicked away back towards the hatch. As he travelled just above the hull with an easy motion of his legs and flippers, a curious sensation of ownership made itself apparent. As if the submarine were, in some part, his own, his prize; and some kind of repayment for the deaths of Kuzin, Nikitin and Shadrin.
When he dropped through the inner hatch again, he passed through the compartments of the huge submarine as a prospective purchaser might have strolled through the rooms of a house that had taken his fancy.
Teplov was waiting for him in the control room. Vanilov was sheepishly awake, and seated at the communications console.
"Message from Murmansk. The admiral wants to talk to you, sir," Teplov informed him. Obscure anger crossed Ardenyev's features.
"Weather and sea state up top?"
"It's no better," Teplov answered, "and then again, it's no worse. Forecast is for a slight increase in wind speed and a consequent slight worsening of sea state. The skipper of the Karpaty is still in favour of waiting the storm out."
"He doesn't have the choice, Viktor. In three hours" time, we'll be on our way home. Very well, let's talk to Murmansk, and endure the admiral's congratulations."
The feeling of possession and ownership had dissipated. The congratulations of the old man in Murmansk would be empty, meaningless. It wasn't about that, not at all. Not praise, not medals, not promotion. Just about the art of the possible, the art of making possible. And he'd done it, and Dolohov's words would make no difference, and would not bring back the dead.
* * *
"I see. Thank you, Giles. I'll tell the minister."
Aubrey put down the telephone, nodded to the Foreign Secretary's Private Secretary, and was ushered into the minister's high ceilinged office. Long gold curtains were drawn against the late night, and lamps glowed in the corners of the room and on the Secretary of State's huge mahogany desk. It was a room familiar, yet still evocative, to Aubrey. The Private Secretary, who had been annoyed that Aubrey had paused to take the call from Pyott, and who had also informed him that His Excellency the Soviet Ambassador was waiting in another room — protocol first, last and all the time, Aubrey had remarked to himself, hiding his smile — closed the double doors behind him.
Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs rose and came forward to take Aubrey's hand. In his features, almost hidden by his tiredness and the strain imposed by events which brought him unpleasantly into collision with the covert realities of the intelligence service, was the omnipresent memory that he had been a junior boy at Aubrey's public school and, though titled and wealthy, had had to fag for the son of a verger who had come from a cathedral preparatory school on a music scholarship. It was as if the politician expected Aubrey, at any moment and with the full effect of surprise, to remind him of the distant past, in company and with the object of humiliation.
"Kenneth. You were delayed?"
"I'm sorry, Minister. I had to take a telephone call from Colonel Pyott. The Nimrod has been picking up signals from the Proteus, as have North Cape Monitoring." The minister looked immediately relieved, and Aubrey was sorry he had chosen an optimistic syntax for what he wished to convey. "Russian signals, I'm afraid," he hurried on. "We can't break the code, but it is evident that the Soviets are in command of the submarine."
"Damnation!" Cunningham offered from the depth of the Chesterfield on which he was sitting. The Foreign Secretary's face dropped into lines of misery.
The PM must be informed at once," he said, returning to his desk. "Find yourself a seat, Kenneth." He waved a hand loosely, and Aubrey perched himself on a Louis Quinze armchair, intricately carved, hideously patterned. Cunningham looked at Aubrey, and shook his head. The Foreign Secretary picked up one of the battery of telephones on his desk, then hesitated before dialling the number. "Is there anything you can suggest, Kenneth? Anything at all?" He put down the receiver, as if to display optimism.
"Minister — I'm sorry that this incident has had to spill over into legitimate diplomacy. I can only recommend that all diplomatic efforts be maintained. There is nothing else we can do. We must press for details, of course, and demand that one of our people in Moscow is in Pechenga when the Proteus docks. He must be allowed immediate access, and there must be every attempt to preserve — by complaint, fuss, bother, noise, whatever you will — to preserve the security of “Leopard”." Aubrey spread his hands on his knees.
"Pechenga?"
"The nearest naval base. Murmansk if you prefer — or wherever?"
"One of your people?"
Cunningham did not reply, but looked towards Aubrey.
"If you wish, Minister," Aubrey answered. "But I would prefer someone rather senior on the embassy staff, and someone legitimate."
"Very well. I'll put that in motion."
"I think, however," Aubrey pursued, "that the Russians will delay the travel permits, and that sort of thing, so that by the time our people are on the scene, they will have done whatever they wish and be waving Proteus goodbye from the quayside."
"I'm inclined to agree," Cunningham murmured.
"Then there is absolutely nothing we can do!" the Foreign Secretary fumed, slapping his hand repeatedly on the surface of his desk. He looked towards Aubrey as if he were to blame for the situation. Aubrey's features were impassive. "This really is not the way to play the game. The Russians have disobeyed every rule of international behaviour. It really is not good enough." There was a peculiarly old-fashioned inflection to the voice, to accompany the outdated sentiments.
"They are inclined to do that," Aubrey observed mockingly and received a warning glance from Cunningham. "I agree, Minister. Obviously, the Kremlin has fully involved itself with, and sanctioned, this covert operation. Because they have done so, they place us at a considerable disadvantage. It is, indeed, a mixing of the legitimate and the covert which is both improper and very difficult to counter. And it has worked. This sort of mixed marriage usually flops badly — like the Bay of Pigs. The Russians seem to have more success than we do."
"You imply that any remedy is strictly the concern of the intelligence service?"
"I have no answer."
"The PM will give her blessing to any counter-operation, I'm quite sure of that. Our hands are tied, as you say. We do not even wish to become involved. Our people are in no danger, they will be released within the next couple of days. Our submarine will be repaired. Only “Leopard” will no longer be our property. Therefore, if you can prevent the loss of “Leopard”, do so. But it must be— and the PM would wish me to stress this, even at the same time as she gives you her blessing— it must be an intelligence operation. It will be disowned, it must not endanger the crew of the submarine or any non-intelligence personnel, and it must be done immediately." The Foreign Secretary smiled glumly, though there was a snuff-pinch of pleasure in his gloom because he considered he must have discomforted Aubrey. "Is there anything, anything at all?"
Aubrey cleared his throat. "NATO naval units are too far from the area to intercept. The Soviet government wish to apologise to us by repairing the damage they have inflicted. I have one agent-in-place in the Pechenga district. He is a grocer. I do not have a satellite-mounted laser beam whereby I can secretly and silently destroy half of the Red Banner Fleet— therefore, Minister, I am inclined to conclude that there is very little I can effectively do to secure the secrecy of “Leopard” and the remainder of the sensitive equipment aboard HMS Proteus."
"Very well," the Secretary of State said tightly, "I will inform the PM of the state of play, and recommend that we have only the diplomatic alternative." Again, he picked up the receiver and placed it to his ear.
"Unless," Aubrey began, amazed at his empty temerity and observing his own words as if spoken by another; and that other a pompous ass without sincerity or resolution. "Unless we can get one man into the naval dockyard at Pechenga or wherever, with a brief to destroy the “Leopard” equipment before the Soviets have time to inspect it."
Aubrey was intensely aware of the eager, then disbelieving gazes of Cunningham and the Foreign Secretary. But, he told himself, attempting to justify what some obscure part of his mind or imagination had prompted him to utter, the whole capture of Proteus was the work of little more than one man, in the final analysis. Why not the reverse, then? The question echoed in his mind, but no answer appeared. Not so much as the first whisper of an answer. He asked himself a second, perhaps more pressing question.
Where the blazes was Hyde, and where the devil was Quin?
* * *
Kendal was asleep and windy. At one set of traffic lights, a board advertising ice cream outside a newsagent's shop, where the lights were on within as the proprietor marked up the morning editions for delivery, blew over in a gust, noisily startling the girl who was dozing in the passenger seat. Hyde had watched her face in repose from time to time since they left the M6. Her lips pouted, still greasy from her meal, and her features were pale, small and colourless. Obscurely, he felt responsible for her. She had passed from being the object of a search, the key to a security problem, into a chrysalis stage where she was almost a person, with human rights and human demands upon his time and energies. She hovered, waiting to be born into his emotional world. He did not welcome the change. It complicated matters. It was a pity he seemed to understand her. It would have been easier had she been a replica of her Left-wing, feminist friend Sara, whom he could have comfortably disliked.
He paused on the outskirts of Kendal and waited, but no cars approached in his mirror or passed him. He relaxed until they passed through Staveley and turned west on the main Windermere road. Headlights followed him out of the village, keeping behind him for almost two miles before turning off down a narrow track. He discovered himself sweating with relief the instant the headlights disappeared. Like a cat being woken by a tension in its owner, the girl stirred and sat up.
"Anything wrong?"
"Nothing. Go back to sleep."
"I'm not tired any more."
"Great. Pity you can't drive."
The girl subsided into a sullen silence. There were people on the streets of Windermere, standing at bus stops, walking with bent heads beneath black hoods of umbrellas in the misty drizzle that clung to the town. The roof of a train gleamed darkly in the lights of the station, which lay below the main road.
By the time they were on the outskirts of Windermere again, the dog-leg of the long ribbon of the lake lay to their left, its further shore tree-clad, wreathed with a chill mist, its steep sides buttressing the low cloud that was just turning from black to grey. It was a slow, wintry, unwelcome dawn as they crossed Trout Beck, heading for Ambleside.
"I reckon Wordsworth lived in Croydon and made it all up," he remarked. "He never said it was always pissing with rain while he was having his visions of nature."
"You have no soul," the girl replied lightly. She seemed to warm herself at humour as at a small fire. He looked at her. She glanced away.
"It's all right," he offered, "I'm not about to pull the car into the side and take advantage of you."
The girl did not reply. A tinge of colour in her cheeks, but no other reaction. He glanced at her from time to time, but she continued to gaze out of the side window, watching the far shore of Windermere slide past, the cramped, heavy firs crowding down to the water like a herd or an army, then giving way to damp, grassy outcrops, almost colourless under the low cloud cover. The land climbed away on his side of the car above the tree-line to bare-sided, long-backed hills, scalily wet and monstrously slumbering. Ambleside was shiny in its hollow between the hills and the grey water.
He pulled into a lay-by overlooking the northern end of the lake, just south of the town, and turned to the girl.
"Where to now, sweetheart? I" ve driven as far as Ambleside on trust, now where?"
She got out of the car without replying, and walked to the edge of the lay-by. Hyde followed her. She turned and looked up at him. She appeared to be entertaining another bout of distrust, even fear of him. She shook her head, and looked away towards the perspective of the long lake stretching away south. Water and sky merged no more than a couple of miles: from them into a non-existence. Hyde found the scene extraordinarily depressing. He touched her shoulder, but she shook his hand away.
"You have to trust me," he said.
"I know!" she almost wailed, so that he wondered whether she might not be psychologically disturbed. She certainly seemed neurotically suspicious. "I — can't…"
Anger welled up in him. Stupid little bitch. He bellowed at her: "You're wasting my bloody time, girlie! I don't know what's the bloody matter with you, or what the hell the world could have done to make you act like this — but I'm interested in what happens to a hundred blokes at the bottom of the sea relying on your old man's invention!"
In the silence that followed, he heard the water lapping gently out of sight below the verge of the lay-by, some water bird calling, the hum of a generator from somewhere behind them, the noise of the chain-saw from the trees on the far shore, and her quiet sobbing. Then she spoke without turning to him.
"You're a bloody shit, you are." Then, as if intending to be both more precise and younger, she added, "A bully."
"Sorry." He began to consider that Mrs Quin was the strongest member of the family, and felt a preconceived anxiety about the girl's father, and his similarity to his daughter. He found her, at that moment at least, too helpless to be a sympathetic figure.
"It's a cottage, off the road between Ambleside and Coniston. Less than half an hour in the car. I'm ready to take you there now."
The noise of the car startled him, appearing round a bend in the road that had masked its noise until it was almost upon them. His reaction was instinctive, but it revealed also the stretched state of his nerves. Before he assimilated the Renault and its trailing white-and-brown caravan and the two mild faces behind the windscreen, the pistol was in his hand, and beginning to move up and out into a straight-arm firing position. A moment later, it was behind his back again, being thrust back into the waistband of his corduroy trousers. But not before the girl, at least, had witnessed the tiny incident. She appeared terrified, hands picking around her face like pale bats.
"Don't be bloody stupid," he told her, his hands shaking as he thrust them into his pockets, an inward voice cursing his jumpiness. "What do you think it is, a bloody game?"
She hurried past him towards the car.
* * *
"What's the time?"
"Eight-thirty."
The blip's stopped moving and the signal strength is growing. Listen."
"All right, turn it down. That means the car's stopped somewhere, less than a couple of miles up the road."
"Great. Stop at the next phone box, and we can call Petrunin."
"And sit around all day waiting for him to get out of Manchester, I suppose? Marvellous!"
"Don't grumble. With a bit of luck we" ve got Hyde, the girl, and her father. Ah, there's a phone box. Pull off the road."
* * *
"Yes?" Ardenyev prevented an anticipatory grin from appearing on his lips, until Lev Balan nodded and rubbed his hand through his thick dark hair with tiredness and relief. "Great!" Ardenyev hugged Balan, laughing, feeling the man's helmet digging painfully into his ribs as Balan held it under his arm. "Great! We can go?"
"Any time you like. My boys are knackered, by the way — not that it'll worry you." Balan's answering grin was like a weather crack opening in seamed grey rock. Only then did Ardenyev really look at him, and fully perceive the man's weariness.
"Sorry. Tell them — tell them when we get back to Pechenga, we'll have the biggest piss-up they" ve ever seen. On me!"
"You" ve done it now. You're on."
"Tow lines, too?" Ardenyev asked eagerly, surprised at his own child-like enthusiasm. Again, Balan nodded, his cigarette now pressed between his lips, in the corner of his mouth. He looked dishevelled, unkempt, and rather disreputable. Insubordinate, too. "Great. What about buoyancy?"
"We" ve got the bags on. Just sufficient to keep you at snorkel depth for towing. Any fine adjustments we'll make when you take her up. Then we'll do some more fine-tuning in the outer basin at Pechenga, before you dock. Assuming you can drive this bloody thing, of course!"
Ardenyev indicated the skeleton crew of Soviet ratings in the control room. "All volunteers," he said wryly. "They can drive it, I'm quite sure."
"Just in case, I'm on my way back outside — to watch the disaster from there. Good luck."
"And you. See you in Pechenga. Take care."
Balan walked wearily back through the aft section of the Proteus to the stern escape chamber. He strapped his auxiliary air tank to his back, requiring it until he could be recoupled to the hoses outside, and climbed through the lower hatch. He flooded the chamber, and opened the upper hatch, climbed the ladder and floated out into the darkness. His legs felt heavy, not merely because of his boots but because of the surpassing weariness that had invested itself in every part of his body. He waddled slowly and clumsily down the whale's back of the submarine, arms waving like some celluloid ghoul, or as if in imitation of one of the cosmonauts space-walking. He was bone-weary, he decided. Another half-hour's working and one of them might have made some small, fatal mistake. Any one of the cables, the jagged edges, the cutters could have injured or killed any of them.
Another underwater cosmonaut, looking ridiculous in a way that never failed to amuse Balan, came towards him from the upright aircraft's tailplane of the rudder, almost staggering with the resistance of the heavy air hoses. The two men patted each other and clung together like the automatons on a musical box, then Balan turned his back and the hoses were fitted. A moment of breath-holding, then the rush of the air mixture, putting pressure on his ears and face, then the auxiliary tank was in his hands. He looked at it, grinned, and heaved it over the side of the submarine. It floated away down into the darkness.
Balan inspected his work once more. The stern of the Proteus, in the hard light of the lamps, was a mess, but it was a mess of which he felt justifiably proud. The rudder and the hydroplanes had been patched with a skin of metal, or their plates twisted back into shape and form by use of the hammer, the rivet-gun, the welding and cutting torches. Scarred, twisted, cracked metal, blackened and buckled. The propeller had not been repaired, merely cleared of the entangling, choking seaweed of the steel cables from the MIRV torpedo. Balan thought the shaft might be out of true, but that was Pechenga's worry, not his. Then, masking the operation scars along the side of the hull, where the ballast tanks had been ruptured and the outer hull of the Proteus damaged, a lazily flapping, transparent growth idled in the currents moving across the ledge, like the attachment of a giant, translucent jellyfish to the submarine. Buoyancy bags, ready to be inflated when Ardenyev gave the order to blow tanks, they would serve in place of the unrepaired ballast tanks at the stern of the submarine, giving it a workable approximation to its normal buoyancy control.
Balan was proud of what amounted to almost ten hours" work on the British submarine. The work had been as dispassionately carried out as always by himself and his team. Unlike Ardenyev, there was no pleasure at the meaning of the task and its completion. It was merely a job well done, a task completed successfully. The nature of the submarine, its nationality, had no meaning for Balan.
He spoke into his headset. "Right, you lot, clear away. Our gallant, heroic captain is going to take this tub to the top, and I don't want anyone hurt in the process!"
"I heard that," Ardenyev said in his ear, slightly more distant than the laughter that soughed in his helmet from some of his team. "I" ve been in contact with Kiev and Karpaty. Ready when you are."
"Okay. I'm clearing the slaves from the hull now. I'll get back to you."
Balan took hold of his air hoses in one hand, checking that they did not snag anywhere and trailed away across the ledge to the pumps and the generator. Then he turned clumsily but surely, and began climbing down the light steel ladder that leant against the port hydroplane, attached by small magnets. He lowered his air lines gingerly to one side of him as he climbed tiredly down to the surface of the ledge. The crewman who had attached his lines came after him. They were the last to descend, and when they stood together at the bottom of the ladder, Balan and the other diver hefted the ladder between them, and they trudged through the restless, distressed silt to where the arc lamps had been re-sited near the generators and the sleds on which they had brought down their equipment. The small group of diving-suited figures who composed his team was gathered like nervous spectators beneath the bloom of the lights. Balan joined them, dropping the ladder on to one of the sleds and securing it before he spoke again to Ardenyev.
"Okay, chief— you can make your attempt on the world rate of ascent record now. We're safely out of the way!"
"Thanks, Lev. Don't forget our piss-up in Pechenga — if you're not all too tired, that is!"
There was a murmur of protest and abuse at the remark. Balan was almost prepared to admit his tiredness, but there were certain fictions that had to be preserved, whatever the cost; one of them being the indestructibility, the immortality of salvage men.
"We won't forget. You just bring your wallet." The banter was required, expected, all of them were recruiting-poster figures, without separate identity, without reality. Living their own fictions; heroes. Silly, silly —
"I will. Okay, here we go."
Balan studied the submarine, partly in shadow now, the light of the arc lamps casting deep gloomy patches over their repair work, rendering it somehow shabby and inadequate. The Proteus looked half-built, half-destroyed. He did not attend to Ardenyev's orders, still coming through the headset, presumably for his benefit, until he heard "Blow tanks!" and the submarine — after a moment in which nothing seemed to happen — shifted under the discharge of sea water from her ballast tanks, and then the jellyfish bags began to bloom and roll and fold and inflate. Balan felt the new currents of the submarine's movement and the discharged water. They could feel the hull grinding against the ledge through their boots; the stern of the submarine seemed to be lifting slightly higher than the bow. It would need adjustment. The bow itself was in darkness, where the tow-lines were attached. They'd have to be inspected, too.
Someone cheered in his headset, making him wince. One of the younger men, he supposed. There were sighs of pleasure and relief, though, like a persistent breeze; noises that were their right.
The Proteus, still a little bow-heavy, drifted up and away from them, out of the boiling cloud of silt, becoming a great shadow overhead, just beyond the arc lamps, then a dimmer shape, then almost nothing as it ascended the twenty fathoms to the surface. The bags round its stern like nappies, he thought, Around its bum.
"Come on, you lot. The volume on those bags is going to have to be changed for a starter! Don't waste time, get organised!"
Theatrically, the arc lamps began flicking off, leaving them in a sudden darkness, where their helmet lamps and hand-lamps glowed like aquatic fireflies. Above them, as they began climbing on to their sleds, the Proteus stopped at snorkel depth and waited for them.
* * *
"Well done, Hyde— excellent work, excellent!" Aubrey effusive, his tiredness gone in a moment, if only briefly. Hyde had Quin, beyond all reasonable expectation, and at this critical moment. Their first real piece of luck— a change of luck? They needed it. "Well done. Bring him directly to London. You'd better let me arrange for a helicopter from the Cumbria force to pick you up. I want Quin here as soon as possible— What? What do you mean?"
Hyde's voice had dropped to barely more than a whisper, something conspiratorial. Aubrey swivelled in his seat as if in response to its tone, turning his back on the underground room and its occupants. Pyott and Clark, attentive to his enthusiasm at the call that had been put through, now remained some yards away. Clark was making some point about the Proteus, his finger tracing across a large-scale cutaway plan of the submarine which Aubrey had had brought down from the second floor of the Admiralty.
"Back-up's here," he heard Clark saying. "Right out of the way — " Then he was attending to Hyde's quiet voice.
"He's in a bad way, Mr Aubrey. Out in the garden now, blowing his nose a lot and upsetting his daughter. Can you hear me all right?"
"Yes, Hyde, yes," Aubrey replied impatiently. "What do you mean, a bad way?"
"One of those who can't take isolation, even if he is a loner," Hyde replied flatly, without sympathy. "He's been up here for weeks, almost a week on his own. And when the two of them were here together, I reckon they just wore each other down with mutual nerves. Quin's a neurotic bloke, anyway."
"Spare me the psychology, Hyde."
"You have to understand him," Hyde said in exasperation. "He doesn't want to come back, he's scared stiff of his own shadow, he doesn't seem to care about the Proteus— all our fault, apparently."
"That, at least, is true."
"I" ve spent hours talking to him. I can't get through to him. He'll come back because he's scared not to, and because he thinks the opposition may have followed us here —"
"Have they?"
"No. But now we" ve found him, he thinks it'll all start up again, and he wants to hide. I don't want him scared off by a helicopter. He'll come back with me, or not at all."
"What about the girl?"
"She's the one who's just about persuaded him to trust me. I have to deliver him somewhere safe."
"I didn't mean that. What will you do with her?"
"She'll stay here. Either that, or I'll put her on a train."
"I haven't time to waste, Hyde. Is he fit to work?"
"No."
"Then he'll have to work in an unfit state. Very well. Drive back to Manchester. You and he can fly down from there. I'll arrange it. You can hold his hand."
"Yes, Mr Aubrey."
"And— once again, well done. Keep him happy, promise him anything — but he must be here this evening, and ready to work!"
Aubrey put down the receiver, and stood up, the purposefulness of his movements keeping doubt at bay. He had dozed lightly and fitfully on the narrow camp bed in the adjoining cupboard-like room without windows. The darkness had seemed close and foetid, and the light and noise under the door had drawn him back into the underground operations room. Cold water had restored a semblance of wakefulness, and Hyde's message had completed the work of reinvigoration.
"Well?" Giles Pyott asked, turning from the chart pinned to a board, resting on an easel. "What news?"
"Hyde has found Quin."
Thank God! Where is he?"
"Lake District — near Coniston Water, I gather."
"He's been there all the time?"
"Apparently. Rented a cottage through an agency."
"Can he get here today?" Clark asked more purposefully.
"He can. Hyde says that the man is in a state close to nervous exhaustion." Aubrey shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know how that complicates matters. Better have a doctor to look at him, I suppose. It really is too bad —"
"Hell, can he work?
"Whether or not, he will work." He indicated the drawing of the Proteus. "He has to do something about this, after all. Doesn't he?"
It was almost three before Quin was finally ready to depart. His luggage, which consisted of one small suitcase and an overcoat, had been a means of delaying his departure. He had driven Hyde to the edge of rage again and again, and then capitulated, afraid of the Australian in a more immediate way than of the other figures and dangers that crowded his imagination. Aubrey had telephoned the cottage at noon, and had been frustrated and angered at the further delay. After that, Hyde had handled Quin like unstable explosive; cajolement and masked threat had eventually subdued him.
He stood now at the door of the whitewashed cottage, hesitant while Hyde carried the suitcase to the TR7. Tricia Quin was at his side like a crutch, touching his arm, trying to smile him into complacency. In some obscure and unexpected way, she had strengthened during the day, adopting much of Hyde's attitude and many of his arguments. It was as if she had adopted the plight of the Proteus as a charitable cause worthy of contribution; or perhaps she sensed her father needed help, that the greatest danger to his health lay in his present solitary surroundings. Hyde wondered what Quin would have made of the Outback, even the dead centre of Australia. The unnerving silence was audible there. The Lake District hummed and buzzed with life, by comparison.
He looked away from Quin and his daughter, towards the stretch of water that was The Tarns, and then at the road and the land falling away, down from Black Fell behind him through the firs towards Coniston Water two miles away. The land pressed in upon the cottage, and Hyde admitted a claustrophobic isolation so different from the Australian hinterland. Perhaps it wasn't surprising Quin couldn't take it after all, staying in that cottage and its garden for a week without seeing another soul after his daughter left. They'd quarrelled about her going to see her mother, apparently. That might have set him off, created his sense of abandonment amid danger.
Hyde shrugged, and opened the boot. The weather was windier now, moving the low cloud but breaking it up, too. Gleams, fitful and unoptimistic, of blue sky; a hazy light through the clouds. It had, at least, stopped drizzling.
The bullet whined away off the yellow boot before the noise of the gunshot reached him. He stared at his hand. The bullet had furrowed across the back of it, exposing the flesh. An open-lipped graze which still had not begun to hurt, matching the furrowed scar on the boot lid. He looked stupidly around him.
A second shot then, chipping pebble-dash from the wall of the cottage two feet or so from Quin's head. His frightened, agape features, the girl's quicker, more alert panic, her hands dragging at her father's arm, the shrouded hills, the distant dark trees — he took in each distinct impression in the moment that he heard the heavy report of the rifle, and then the pain in his hand began, prompting him like a signal. He began running for the door of the cottage.