Hyde woke, and reacted instantly to the cold air that had insinuated itself into their burrow. It was damp. He knew there was a fog or heavy mist outside, even though he could not see beyond the bush. There was greyness there, which might have been the dawn. He felt his shoulder protest with a sharp pain as he tried to rub his cold arms, and he stifled his groan as he remembered what had roused him. The running feet of deer along the track behind the rifle range, past the bush and the entrance into their hole. He looked immediately at the girl. She was soundly asleep.
He listened. And tested his shoulder, moving fingers and wrist and elbow and forearm. Slightly better. He touched the crude, dirty bandage. Dry and stiff. He investigated his resources. His body felt small, shrunken, empty and weak. But not leaden, as the previous night. His head felt more solid, too, less like a gathering of threads or misty tendrils. There was some clarity of thought, some speed of comprehension. He would have to do as he was. He was all he had, all they had.
The hoofbeats of the three or four deer who had fled past their hiding place died away, swallowed by what he was now convinced was a heavy mist. He listened to the silence, slow and thick outside the hole. He stretched his legs carefully, not disturbing the girl, felt the expected cramp, eased it away, rotated his pelvis as well as he could while hunched in a seated position. His back ached. He flexed his fingers once more, aware of the small of his back where the gun had been. Having completed his inventory, he pronounced himself incapable, with a slight smile. Some stubbornness had returned during the few hours" sleep he had had.
Noises. Slow, regular, cautious footsteps outside. He reached up and pressed his palm flat against the roof of the hole. The sand was damp. He levered himself out of his sitting position, and stepped over the girl's drawn-up knees. Her head rested on her chest, and her blonde hair, dirty and hanging in stiff, greasy tails, was draped like strands of cloth over her knees. He leaned forward, then slid towards the entrance to the hole. The branches of the bush became clear, as if he had focused an inward lens on them, and beyond them the heavy mist was grey and impenetrable. One chance. Don't wake up, darling —
The figure of a man emerged from the mist, bent low to study the track, the slim, pencil-like barrel of the rifle he carried protruding beyond the bulk of his form. He was little more than a dark shadow in the first light seeping into the mist. Then he saw the bush, and might have been staring into Hyde's eyes, though he registered no sign of having seen him. The gun moved away from his body, and Hyde recognised it, with a chill of danger and a strange greediness, as a Kalashnikov. Stubby, with a folding steel stock and plastic grip and the curving thirty-round ammunition box beneath the magazine. It was infinitely desirable, and deadly. The small R/T set clipped to the pocket of the man's anorak was similarly desirable and dangerous. Hyde coveted them both.
He held his breath as he felt one of the girl's feet touch his shin. Don't let her wake up, not now —
The man moved closer to the bush, the Kalashnikov prodding out in front of his body. Hyde flexed his fingers, keeping his head as close to the lip of the hole as he could, watching the man intently. The girl's foot stirred again, and Hyde prayed she would not make a noise in the last moments of her sleep. He felt her foot shiver. The cold was beginning to wake her. The stubby barrel of the rifle moved among the leafless branches, disturbing them, brushing them to one side. He squashed himself flat against the damp sand. He felt, through her foot, the girl's whole body stir, then he heard her yawn. Immediately the man's head snapped up, alert, cocked on one side as he listened, attempting to gauge the direction of the sound, waiting for its repetition. His eyes glanced over the bank, the rifle's barrel wavered in the bush, pointing above the hole. The girl groaned with stiffness. Hyde reached out, grabbed the stubby rifle, one hand on the barrel the other on the magazine. The man jerked backwards in surprise and defence, and Hyde pushed with his feet and used the man's response to pull him out of the hole and through the bush. He cried out with the sudden, searing pain in his arm and shoulder, but he held on, twisting the barrel of the rifle away from him, rolling down the sand to the track, pulling the man off balance.
The man almost toppled, then jerked at the rifle. Hyde had to release the grip of his left hand because the pain was so intense, but he had rolled almost to the man's feet. He kicked out, using his grip on the rifle as a pivot, and the man overbalanced as Hyde's shins caught him at the back of the legs. The Russian held on to the rifle, and Hyde felt the heat before he heard the sound of the explosion as a round was fired. Hyde used the rifle like a stick, an old man assisting himself to rise from a deep armchair, and as the man made to turn on to his side and get up, Hyde kicked him in the side of the head. The grip on the Kalashnikov did not loosen. Hyde, enraged and elated, kicked the man once more in the temple, with all the force he could muster. The man rolled away, his head seemingly loose on his shoulders, and lay still. Hyde could see the man's chest pumping. He reached down for the R/T, and a hand grabbed at the rifle again as Hyde held it still by the barrel. The man's eyes were glazed and intent. Hyde staggered away, taking the rifle with him. He had no strength, he should have killed the man with one of the kicks, it was pathetic —
The man was sitting up. He heard Tricia Quin gasp audibly. He fumbled the rifle until it pointed at the man, who was withdrawing his hand from his anorak and the hand contained a pistol, heavy and black and coming to a bead. Hyde fired, twice. The noise of the shots seemed more efficiently swallowed by the mist than the cries of rooks startled by the gunfire. The man's pistol discharged into the earth, and he twitched like a wired rabbit. Hyde, angry and in haste, moved to the body. He swore. One bullet had passed through the R/T set, smashing it. Tricia Quin's appalled groan was superfluous, irrelevant.
Hyde knelt by the man's body, searching it quickly with one hand. He had had to lay the rifle down. His left arm was on fire, and useless to him. He hunched it into his side, as if he could protect it or lessen its pain by doing so. He unzipped the anorak. No papers. The man didn't even look Slavic. He could have been anybody. He patted the pockets of the anorak. Yes —
Triumphantly, he produced a flask of something, and a wrapped package of sandwiches.
"Food!" he announced. "Bloody food!"
The girl's face was washed clean of resentment and fear and revulsion. She grabbed the package eagerly. The sandwiches had some kind of sausage in them. She swallowed a lump of bread and sausage greedily, then tried to speak through the food.
"What —?" was all he heard.
Hyde looked around him. "Help me get this poor sod into the hole. It might hide him for a bit. Come on — stop stuffing your face, girlie!"
Tricia put the sandwiches reverently, and with much regret, on the track, roughly rewrapped. He took hold of one arm, she the other, averting her eyes from the man's face, which stared up into the mist in a bolting, surprised way. They dragged the body to the bank, hoisted it — Tricia would not put her shoulder or body beneath the weight of the man — and Hyde with a cry of pain and effort tumbled the body into the hole.
"His foot," the girl said as Hyde stood trembling from his exertions. Hyde looked up. The man's walking boot was protruding over the lip of the hole.
"You see to it."
Reluctantly, the girl reached up, and pushed. The man's knee seemed locked by an instant rigor mortis. The girl obtained a purchase for her feet, and heaved. The foot did not move. She cried with exasperation, and wriggled and thrust until the foot disappeared.
"Bloody, bloody thing!" There was a crack from inside the hole. She covered her mouth, appalled. She turned accusing eyes on Hyde.
"We can all be shitty when we try hard," he said, eating one of the sandwiches. Then he added, "Okay, pick the rest of them up — " He thrust the Makarov pistol into his waistband, and hefted the rifle in his good hand. The girl pocketed the sandwiches, looking furtively sidelong at him as she ate a second one. "Come on, then." He looked around him. "Bad luck and good luck. No one's going to find us in this."
They walked up the track behind the bank. The girl looked guiltily back once, still chewing the last lump of the second sandwich.
* * *
Clark ground his teeth in frustration, and clenched his hands into claws again and again as if to rid them of a severe cramp. The sight of what he had done enraged and depressed him. The plastic charges were taped and moulded to the back-up system, lying across the wiring and the circuitry like slugs, the detonator wires like the strands of a net that had dredged up the equipment from beneath the sea. He had done as Aubrey asked — commanded — and then he had requested Quin to set him another task, like an over-eager schoolboy. More power lines, and still nothing.
"Clark?" For a moment, he was tempted to curse Aubrey aloud. Part of him, however, admitted the correctness of Aubrey's decision.
"Yes?"
"It's time for you to rig the main “Leopard” system. Good luck." There was no sense of possible argument or disobedience. Aubrey assumed he would behave like the automaton he was intended to be.
The bleeper on the R/T in his pocket sounded. He pulled the set out and pressed the transmit button. "Yes?"
"Clark? I think Panov's about to make an appearance. The technical team are streaming out of the Proteus, lining up like a guard of honour. I" ve just seen them."
"Where are you?"
"Hurry, Clark. You do not have much time — " Aubrey said in his ear.
The officers" bathroom."
"Your guard?"
"Clark listen to me —"
"Outside."
"Mood?"
"Pretty sloppy. He's waiting for his relief at eight."
"Clark, you will abort “Plumber” immediately and proceed to destroy “Leopard”. Do you understand me?"
"Well?" Lloyd asked with a nervous edge to his voice.
"Get as close to him as you can, preferably the side of his head or under the jaw, and squeeze the trigger twice."
"Clark, you will rescind that instruction to Lloyd —"
"What about “Leopard”?" Lloyd asked.
"I'll give you “Leopard” in working order!" Clark snapped. "Where is Thurston, where's Hayter?"
The First-Lieutenant's in the cabin next to mine, Hayter's in the wardroom with the others."
Then —"
"Clark —!"
"Time for Quin to earn his money!" Clark almost shouted, with nerves and relief and the adrenalin that suddenly coursed through his system. "Help me get this fucking back-up working, Quin!"
"Clark — Clark!"
"Go or no go?" Lloyd asked.
"Go — GO! Kill the bastard!"
"I'll be in touch."
"Clark — you are insane. You will never get out of Pechenga without “Leopard”. You have not, you cannot repair it. You have just sentenced Commander Lloyd and his crew to imprisonment, possibly even death. You are insane." The last word was hissed in Clark's ear, serpentine and venomous.
Clark felt a heady, dangerous relief, and a pressing, violent anxiety. "For Chrissake, Quin — help me get this fucking thing to work! Help me!"
* * *
Aubrey stared at Quin. He could not believe in what Clark had put in motion, could not apprehend the violent and dangerous half-motives that had prompted him. In its final stage, the Proteus business was escaping him again, running on its own headlong flight unhindered by reason or caution or good sense. In a split-second over which he had. had no control, Clark had made the decision not to abort. Now, everyone would face the consequences of that decision.
"Quin? Quin?" he snapped at his companion. The scientist tossed his head as if startled from sleep.
"What?"
"Can you help him?"
Quin shrugged. "We" ve tried everything we can. There's nothing wrong —"
There must be, dammit!""
"I don't know what it is!" Quin almost wailed.
Aubrey leaned towards him. "That bloody American has set the seal on this affair, Quin. Lloyd will either kill his guard, or be killed. If the former, then they will kill others, picking up weapons at each death, until they can open the gates and sail Proteus out of Pechenga. Without “Leopard” in an operational condition, they will be a target for every naval unit in the port. I would not wish to assume that the Russians will be prepared to let her sail away scot free! What can you do? Think of something!"
Quin began flipping through the "Leopard" manual, most of which he had written himself. Aubrey recognised an unseeing, desperate gesture. Quin knew the manual, nothing would come from it. The man's hands were shaking. He had collided with a brute reality. Aubrey shook his head with weariness. Tiredness, the sense of being utterly spent, seemed the only feeling left to him. Clark had reneged on reason, on authority. He could understand how it had happened. The American had simply refused to acknowledge defeat.
He heard Eastoe's voice tinnily in the headphones resting around his neck. He placed the set over his head. The microphone bobbed in front of his mouth.
"Yes, Squadron Leader?" He had not meant his voice to sound so waspish and dismissive.
"Mr Aubrey. We're out of range again. I can try to get back, but I won't be able to hold station for very much longer. I can give you a couple of minutes, perhaps."
Aubrey wanted to rage at the pilot, but he acknowledged the weariness in the man's voice. The MiGs — there was one on the port wing again, turning silver in the beginning of the day — were making patterned flying impossible. Slowly, inexorably, the Nimrod was being shepherded away from the Soviet border.
"Do what you can, Squadron Leader. We're in your hands."
"Very well, Mr Aubrey. I'll give you as long as I can."
The nose of the Nimrod dipped, and then when Eastoe judged he had lost sufficient height, the aircraft banked savagely, rolling away towards the east and the sun. The porthole in the fuselage became a blaze of gold, blinding
Aubrey. He felt as old and thin and stretched as a ghost. Transparent in the sudden light.
"Quin, come on, man — suggest something. We don't have much time."
Quin groaned aloud, and rubbed his face with his hands, washing off his present circumstances. He looked Wearily at Aubrey, and shook his head.
"There is nothing."
"There must be. Some faulty system, something you disagreed with Plessey about, something you" ve always suspected or disliked about the system — anything!" Aubrey spread his hands around the communications console, which hissed at him. It was as if he were about to jettison it as useless cargo. A MiG, gold-bright, popped into his view, just off the port wing. Craning his neck, Aubrey could see the grey sea, the misted coast below them. The MiG ducked beneath the Nimrod, and Aubrey saw it bob like a cork into the starboard porthole opposite him. "Something —please!"
The console crackled. Clark's voice was faint. The coast and sea below moved, and Aubrey could hear the Spey engines more loudly. Eastoe was running for the border with the Soviet Union in a straight, desperate line.
"You must help —"
"For Chrissake, Quin — say something!" Clark bellowed from the receiver.
Quin's face was an agony of doubt.
"Come on, Quin, come on, come on," Aubrey heard himself repeating.
"I can hear shooting!" Clark yelled. Aubrey knew it was a lie, but a clever one. And perhaps it only described events that had already occurred. Lloyd dead, a guard dead, two guards, three?
"Change-over — automatic change-over," Quin murmured.
"What's that?" Clark snapped.
The MiG on the starboard wing — two of them now, one above the other, moving on a course to head off the Nimrod. There was a slim shadow taking and changing shape on the port wing. One of the MiGs was above them, appearing almost as if it might be lowering itself on to the wing, to snap it in half. Eastoe dropped the nose of the Nimrod again, dropping towards the sea and the rocky coast that seemed to lurch up to meet them. The port wing and the starboard window were swept clean for a moment. Aubrey felt Eastoe begin to turn the aircraft. He'd given up. They were on their way back, and out of range.
"The automatic change-over from the main system to the back-up. I argued time and again, with the Admiralty. No trust in completely automatic systems. They insisted —"
"Tell him!"
Quin leant towards the console. "Clark," he began, "you must check the automatic change-over on the power supply from the main system to the back-up. Locate the power supply box…"
Aubrey ceased to listen. The Nimrod had completed its turn, through the brief blinding sunlight on the porthole, and was now heading west once more. Eastoe had dropped the aircraft's speed, but it was a matter of mere minutes until they would no longer be able to talk to Clark.
And, in Pechenga, with whatever outcome, the killing had undoubtedly begun.
One of the MiGs bobbed back into view, off the port wing. The Russian interceptor appeared to be flying a little further off, as if its pilot, too, knew that the game was up.
* * *
Lloyd hesitated for a moment, on the threshold of the bathroom, straddling the body of the guard who had only had time to half-turn before the small Astra, pressed against his side, had exploded twice. Lloyd had had to take him into an embrace, feel the man's final shudder against him, and lower him to the deck. One guard only in the corridor. Lloyd had been surprised at the small, muffled sound the gun had made when pressed into the spare flesh the man was carrying. It was as if the pistol had been fitted with a silencer.
He saw the guard outside the wardroom door at the end of the corridor, and hoped, as he studied the man's movements and saw the Kalashnikov turn in the guard's hands and draw a bead on himself, that Thurston would not blunder into the line of fire out of the cabin next door to his own. Then he prayed his hands would move more swiftly to bring the small pistol up to the level of the guard's trunk.
He could not believe that he would move more quickly than the trained marine, but some realisation that the clock was ticking away precious seconds only for him, came to him as he fired. He had moved inches faster, reaction had been milliseconds quicker, because he had an imperative the Russian did not share. The guard thudded back against the wardroom door, and slid down, feet out, to a sitting position with his head lolling. The pistol now made much more noise, and would have attracted attention.
"Come on, come on!" he yelled, banging on Thurston's door as he passed it. Then he was stooping to retrieve the Kalashnikov, which felt immediately bulky and menacing in his grip. He flung open the wardroom door. Surprised faces, half a dozen of them, mostly unshaven, were grouped around the table above mugs of steaming coffee. Thurston was behind him now. He passed the Astra back to his first-lieutenant. "Get the others out — now!" he snapped, feeling the dangerous, elating adrenalin running wildly through his body.
* * *
Seven twenty-one. Clark had recognised, almost subliminally, the two shots, then the third after a slight delay. He imagined that the same small Astra pistol had made all three reports, but he could not quite believe it, until Lloyd's voice could be heard plainly, coming from the R/T which was clipped to the breast of his immersion suit, ordering his officers to remain in the wardroom until the control room had been recaptured. Then there was the awful, cloth-ripping stutter of the Kalashnikov on automatic — Clark presumed feverishly that it was the one Lloyd had taken from the wardroom guard. It was. Lloyd yelled at Hayter to recover the gun of the man he had just killed. Clark nodded to himself. Lloyd would go on now until he became exhausted or until someone shot him. He was high on escape, even on death.
Clark lifted the lid of the power supply box, as Quin had instructed him. LIFT HERE ONLY. He had undamped the lid, and obeyed its command, stencilled in yellow.
"Clark?"
"Yes. The box is open," he told Quin. Communications were already weakening as the Nimrod moved towards the fringes of reception. Aubrey had told him what was happening, then patched in Eastoe. The pilot did not enjoy admitting his weariness, his loss of nerve, his failure, but he had done so. The Nimrod was shot, finished. It was on its way home. Eastoe had dropped the airspeed as much as he could, but they were gradually moving out of range, taking Quin with his manual, his diagrams and his knowledge with them. He had, at the Nimrod's present speed, no more then five minutes. Seven twenty-two.
"Switch SW-Eight-R should be off." Clark followed Quin's instruction. Lloyd's breathing was audible to him in the confined, lamplit darkness from the R/T against the submarine captain's chest. Running —? Cries, yells —? Come on, Quin —
"Okay."
"Press the yellow button marked PRESS TO TEST. Have you got that?" A faint, weak voice, like a man dying in the next room.
"Okay?"
Firing.
"Lloyd, what's happening?" He knew he should not have called, that it might be fatal to distract Lloyd now. Yet the sounds tormented him, made his body writhe with an uncontrollable tension and anxiety.
Firing.
Quin said something he did not catch. He prayed it was only his inattention."… through top… cover?"
"Repeat, please," he requested loudly, holding his breath. Lloyd's breathing roared on his chest like an illness he had contracted.
"… contacts move… clear top…?"
"Repeat, repeat!" Clark shouted, almost as a relief for the hours of whispering and silence he had endured and partly because he was panicking. The irreversible had begun. Lloyd had killed, the officers were armed with two Russian Kalashnikovs and were in the control room of the Proteus. He had begun it — he had. "Repeat. I say again, repeat your message." The words were formal, the voice running out of control.
"Right. Hold them over there — no, get them off my ship, now!" Lloyd's elation, his success, drummed in the cramped space between the two hulls. "Clark?"
"Yes?"
"What's wrong?" Even in his excitement, Lloyd was responsive to tone, to nuance.
"Nothing."
"We have the control room in our hands again."
"Good —" Clark paused. There was a spit of sound, but when the tape had been slowed, there was only the ether, mocking him. A gauzy, sad, distant voice mumbled behind it. Christ, what have I done? "Outside?"
"Thurston's taking a look. I" ve despatched three men, two of them armed, to the control booth for the gates. A couple of minutes now —?" the statement ended as a question. Another spit of sound, Clark's heart pounding as he waited for it to replay more slowly in his earpiece, Quin's voice broken and racked by the interference.
"Can you see… through top… moving?"
Contacts, contacts, he recalled. Can you see the contacts moving through the clear top of the cover?
"Got you!" Then, immediately, he cried, "They're not moving!"
"Clark, what the devil's wrong?"
"I can't —!" Clark cried despairingly. "I don't know what's wrong!"
"For God's sake… " Lloyd breathed. "Oh my God!" Clark stared desperately at the contacts, which remained unmoving. Then he jabbed his finger on the test button again and again.
Spit of sound in his ear. What is wrong? What is the matter?
"Examine the relays," he heard Quin say quite clearly in a calm, detached voice. Then the interference rushed in to fill the small silence after he had spoken.
Relays, relays —
"What do I do?" Lloyd asked peremptorily, a sense of betrayal in his voice.
"Open the fucking gates!" Clark snarled. "You got nowhere else to go!" Relays, relays —
One of them is undamped, one of them is undamped.
"Chief — get the men to their stations, immediately. Engine room?"
"Sir, we're clear down here. "
"Run up electric power. Well done, Chief!"
"Thank you sir."
"Sandy, clear the ship of all Soviet personnel — all of them, mind you."
"One of them is unclamped!" Clark yelled into his throat-mike, as if he expected Quin to be able to hear him in an identical freak reception spot.
"What?" Lloyd asked.
"You do your thing, Lloyd — let me do mine!"
"Is it go?"
"It was go a long time past! Let's get out of here!"
"What about “Leopard”?"
"I'll give you “Leopard”, dammit!"
"What about you? You can't be outside the pressure hull when we dive."
"You worry about your business, I'll worry about mine."
"Very well. Thurston's opening the gates now."
"Get with it."
Faulty fitting, he told himself. The relay, one single fucking relay, lying there on the base of the case. His fingers trembled as he reached down to it, touched it almost reverently, fearfully. His fingers stroked, embraced, lifted it. The vibration caused by the torpedo damage had shaken it out of place, disabling the back-up system, preventing the automatic change-over from working.
There was another spit of sound in his ear, but he ignored the slowed-down, true-speed voice of the storm and the air. Quin was invisible, inaudible somewhere behind it, but he no longer mattered.
Clark pressed home the detached relay, flipped over the retaining clamp, then removed his fingers from it. They came away clammily. The electric motors of the Proteus thrummed through the pressure hull.
His back ached. He groaned with the sudden awareness of it and of his cramped and twisted body and the rivulets of perspiration running down his sides and back.
Lloyd's stream of orders continued, murmuring on his chest like the steady ticking of his heart, slower and calmer and younger then his heart felt.
"Slow astern."
"Slow astern, sir." Thurston's voice was distant, but Clark could still hear it repeating the captain's instructions. They'd got the gates to the pen open, they'd cast off their moorings at bow and stern. How many men had they lost, just doing that?
"Clark?"
"Yes."
"Have you finished?"
"Yes. I hope to God, yes."
"Get back in here — now."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Clark turned, still on his knees. He could hear a siren through the outer hull of the Proteus. "Leopard" had to work —
He turned to look at the back-up system — the grey carapace lay behind it. He tore at the wiring and at the wads of explosive, huddling them into his chest then thrusting them back into the pack in pure elation. Then he lifted the grey metal casing, fitted it, fidgeted in his pocket for the screws, fixed them one at a time, feeling the submarine moving slowly backwards on her batteries, out of the pen. Yes, yes.
Pack, pack — left hand bad. The other could stay. Whatever happened, he would not be coming back. He took hold of the pack, and turned once more to make his way back to the hatch following the wire of his aerial. He shunted the pack and his lamp in front of him, hurrying now, winding through the tree-like stanchions like an obstacle course.
The Proteus lurched forward, as if freed from some constraint.
Clark slipped, and began to slide into the abyss, into the dark. His lamp slid away, wobbling its light back at him for a moment before leaving him in entire darkness, his body weighted by the pack in his right hand — left hand bad — beginning to pursue the fallen lamp. He crooked an arm round one of the stanchion trees, heaving his body into stillness, into a quiver that was devoid of downward movement. He felt sick. He felt exhausted.
"Clark — Clark, where are you, man?"
Clark groaned. He swung the pack until it rested on the level top of the pressure hull, then grabbed the stanchion with his right hand, changing the agonising hold of his crooked arm for a two-handed grip. He heaved at his leaden body, feeling the revolutions of the motors rise in speed. Proteus must be almost out of the pen.
He pulled himself up, aided by scrabbling feet and knees, and lumbered along the top of the pressure hull, reached the hatch and thrust it open. He hefted the explosives through, and let them roll away down the outer hull. Then he clambered after them, closing the hatch and locking it behind him.
The stern of the submarine had already passed into the concrete tunnel leading to the harbour. On her docking prop, Proteus was sliding through the tunnel, out to sea.
He watched as the sail of the submarine slid into the shadow of the tunnel. Above the bellow of the siren, he could hear shooting in the distance, like the pinging of flies against a windscreen. Then he ran crouching along the hull, almost slipping twice, until he reached the aft escape hatch, lifted it, stepped on to the ladder inside the chamber, closed the hatch and locked it. Then he felt his legs go watery and he stumbled to the bottom of the escape chamber, bent double with effort and relief.
"Prepare to dive," he heard Lloyd saying, then: "Clark? Clark, where are you?"
"Inside."
Thank God. Well, does it work?"
"Switch on, and pray."
"You don't sound too hopeful —"
"Switch the damn thing on!" Clark bellowed with rage and relief and tiredness.
* * *
Valery Ardenyev instinctively placed himself in front of Dolohov and Panov. The scene in the pen had no precise focus, nor did it possess a great deal of movement — certainly not sufficient to suggest panic — yet Ardenyev knew what was happening. One guard was firing, the technicians who must have been lining up like an honour guard to await Panov's arrival were shuffling like a herd smelling the first smoke of the grass fire. Also, there was someone clambering up the side of the Proteus's sail, making his way back into the submarine. Ardenyev had the immediate sense that events were already minutes old, even though the white-coated group of figures seemed only now to be reacting to them. Yes. The gates were wide open, and there were two uniformed bodies lying dead on the concrete, alongside the Proteus.
He heard Dolohov say, in a strangled old voice, "No —!", and then he ushered them back through the door by which they had entered the pen, pushing them against the officers who had accompanied them, then had stood deferentially aside so that the three of them might be the first of the party to see the captured British vessel.
"Close the door — give the alarm!" he snapped, then he was pushing through the jostle of technicians towards the submarine.
The Proteus slid away from him. As he passed the huddled bodies he believed he recognised the face of the guard on Lloyd's cabin, the man who had patrolled behind the British officer when he had brought Lloyd lunch and told him about Panov.
He ran faster. The Proteus shuddered against the side of the pen, then was free. The bow was still moving away from him as he raced to overtake it. He could not believe the panic appearance of the breakout. There had to have been help, and hope. Lloyd or someone else had been given a gun. He knew "Leopard" must have been repaired. Lloyd would not have risked lives, and his submarine, without knowing he could rely on the protection of the anti-sonar equipment.
The bow was behind him now. He ran closer to the hull. It rose smoothly above him. He was half-way down the pen, the only moving figure. There was rifle fire behind him, pointless but noisy. The pitons of a ladder climbed away from him. He reached for the lowest one, felt his feet lifted and dragged, his stride extending to great lunar bounds as his arms protested. Then he was pressing himself against the side of the submarine, watching the concrete wall of the tunnel approaching. He might have been half-jammed into the door of a metro train, watching the end of the platform racing at him.
He clambered up the hull, feet slipping, hands sweaty, on to its upper section. He climbed the last few pitons and stood on top of the hull as it slid into the tunnel. He ran to the forward escape hatch, unlocked it, lifted it, and clambered down into the chamber, closing the hatch behind him.
* * *
"Did he hear you, man? Did he?"
Quin shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "I really don't know."
Aubrey looked at his watch. Seven twenty-seven. They were out of range. The link between Clark and the Nimrod had been broken as certainly as if Pasvik had been shot, and his dish aerials smashed. There was nothing more to be done. As if he saw clearly into Aubrey's mind, Eastoe's voice sounded in the headset.
"That's it, Mr Aubrey. Sorry."
Aubrey looked through the porthole, out beyond the sun-tipped port wing. Ahead of the Nimrod, the sky was darker, and the land below them was tumbled and cracked in shadow. Cloud and mist wound like white, unsubstantial rivers through the peaks and the fjords. The MiG-23 on the port wing waggled its body like an athletic silver insect, dipping its wings in turn, and then it dropped away and out of sight. The Nimrod was more than a hundred and fifty miles from the Soviet border, making for North Cape.
Aubrey groaned with disappointment.
"I'm sorry," Quin said.
"Do you think he would have found anything?"
"There seemed no other place to look —" Quin shook his head and stared at the still-open manual in front of him. He closed the wirebound book. "I don't know. I could think of nothing else."
Behind them, Proteus and her crew would be breaking out — to what purpose? With what reprisals? There was blood now, instead of diplomacy or an intelligence game. People had been killed, Soviet citizens. It did not bear consideration. Aubrey surrendered instead to his utter and complete weariness of mind and body; a comforting numbness.
Seven twenty-nine.
Then the signal, in clear, that he no longer believed to be possible.
"Mr Aubrey?"
"Yes?"
"A signal from Proteus, in clear."
"No —"
"It reads — “At one stride comes the dark” — end of message. Do you understand it? Shall I ask for a repeat?"
"No, thank you, Squadron Leader. Let us go home."
"Very well, sir."
A beatific smile wreathed Aubrey's features, inflating his grey cheeks, forming his lips, screwing up his eyes. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. "At one stride comes the dark". The signal he had told Clark to make in a moment of amusement, a moment of looking for the right, witty, portentous thing for Clark to say if and when he repaired "Leopard". Somehow, he had done it.
"What is it?" Quin asked.
"It's all right. It's all right," Aubrey repeated, opening his eyes, slouching back in his seat, almost asleep already. "Clark has done it."
"Thank God," Quin breathed.
The man's daughter, Aubrey thought, his body immediately chilled. Tricia Quin and Hyde. What of them? Alive, or dead? If the latter, how would he tell Quin?"
* * *
"Admiral, we have no units capable of detecting and stopping the British submarine — not in the inner harbour," the officer commanding the defences of Pechenga explained to Dolohov, nervously standing to attention before the older, more senior man. Inwardly, he wished himself a great distance from the defence control room, set beneath thick concrete and lit by strip-lighting, but he struggled to preserve a form of dignity and an impassive expression on his face. Dolohov was evidently beside himself with rage.
"Nothing? Nothing?" Turning, Dolohov waved at the sheet of perspex marked in a grid, displaying coloured lights and chinagraph markings. The two anti-submarine nets were bright red strings of beads, the mines, represented by colours according to type, were like the knots in a fine skein, ready to be drawn about the Proteus. Beyond the first net, the units of the Red Banner Fleet at present in Pechenga appeared as a host of bright lights.
"Everything is cold, Admiral — reactors, diesels, turbines all need time to run up to operational readiness. We have been caught flatfooted — " He cut off his explanation as Dolohov turned to him again.
"Where is she? Where is the submarine?" he bellowed.
"She disappeared from our screens two minutes ago — here." The defences commandant hurried to the perspex screen in the centre of the operations room and gathered up a pointer that rested against its base. The perspex flexed and dimpled as he tapped with enthusiasm at it. A chinagraphed dotted line ran from the fifth of the submarine pens to a point marked with a circled cross, in the inner harbour. "We think she was already turning at this point —" A junior officer beside the perspex screen nodded in agreement.
"What do you intend to do about it?"
There are two patrol boats in the inner harbour now — the mines, of course, are all activated. However, the inertial navigator memory aboard the submarine may have tracked their course when they entered the harbour, if it had been left on. Even so, it is unlikely they will be able to avoid the mines with any degree of success —"
"Switch them off! Switch off all your mines, at once!"
"But Admiral —"
"Do as as I order! That submarine must be stopped, not destroyed. We cannot take the risk of doing permanent or irreparable damage to her." Dolohov paused. The political consequences would be enormous, and possibly violent, he considered. In making that judgement, he gave no thought to London or Washington or Brussels, only to the Kremlin. His political masters would not forgive the international repercussions of the destruction of the British submarine in Soviet territorial waters. That had been made clear to him, from the outset.
The commandant nodded to one of his juniors, and the order was given. Almost immediately, the fine skein of lights blinked off, leaving great areas of the perspex screen blank and grey. Every mine in the inner harbour and in the outer basin was now disarmed. The fleet vessels which had before glowed in tiny pockets of greyness, their safe anchorages clear of the mines, now beamed out in isolation; single, unmoving lights. Dolohov hated the blank areas of the screen, like areas on a map still to be explored.
"Now," he said heavily, "I want every unit in the outer basin to be prepared. You have a minelayer in port?"
"Yes, Admiral."
"With low power mines?"
"Yes, Admiral."
“Then they must be instructed to sow fresh mines along the seaward side of the inner net. Proximity fuses, or magnetic. But they must be of sufficient strength only to cripple, not destroy. Understand?"
"The inner net, Admiral, will not be opened?" The man evidently did not understand.
"You will lay the mines, by aircraft if you have to, and you will do it at once," Dolohov said with a passionate calmness. "The British captain has torpedoes, wire-guided with television cameras. He can blow a hole in the inner net. If there are mines waiting for him when he escapes through his own hole, he will go to the bottom, or be slowed down, or be forced to the surface. Now do you understand?"
"Yes, Admiral. I will issue the orders at once."
"Good." Dolohov thought once, and briefly, of the fact that Ardenyev was aboard the Proteus, and then dismissed his image in favour of self-congratulation. In the midst of his fierce rage and disappointment, there was room for satisfaction. He had anticipated what the British captain would do to escape, and he might already have made the move that would frustrate his efforts.
He studied the perspex screen intently.
* * *
"Torpedo room— stand by."
"Aye, aye, sir. Standing by."
Lloyd studied the sonar screen in front of him. As its arm circled the screen, washing the light-pattern behind it, the bright spots and lines of the submarine net appeared on the screen. It was, as Clark had originally outlined, the only way out— through both nets.
"Range?" he said.
"Eight hundred, sir."
Torpedo room— load number one tube."
"Number one tube loaded, sir."
The Tigerfish wire-guided torpedo was ready to be fired. Lloyd looked at his watch. Four minutes and thirty-six seconds since they had cleared the pen. Speed was the essence, Clark had said. Just like killing the two guards, he reminded himself with a sick feeling in the pit of the stomach. Speed, surprise. And the gamble that Pechenga would switch off and disarm its minefield in order to preserve "Leopard".
"Range seven-fifty, sir."
"Torpedo room — fire one!"
"One away, sir."
Lloyd crossed the control room to where Thurston was studying the tiny, blank television screen set alongside the fire control console's other screens and panels of lights. The screen flickered on. Both men ignored the voice over the intercom calling the range and speed and functions of the wire-guided Tigerfish. They seemed mesmerised by the stir and rush and billow of grey water illuminated weakly by the light on the torpedo. Lloyd's wrist with its curling, dark hairs was at the edge of his eyesight. He saw, conjointly with the image on the screen, the second-hand ticking round, moving up the face of the watch, a red spider-leg.
The flash of something, like a curtain or a net though it might only have been an illusion created by the moving water. Then the screen blanked out as the torpedo operator registered the correct and chosen proximity to target and detonated the warhead of the Tigerfish. The shock-wave was a dim, rumbling shudder along the outer hull a few moments later. Lloyd grinned at Thurston.
"Let's see if you can find the hole, John, mm?"
Aye, aye, sir."
* * *
The mist had lifted, remaining in small, thin pockets only in hollows and folds of the ground. The sun had resolved itself into a hard, bright circle, and the sky was palely blue. Hyde was sweating with effort and the rise in temperature as he pulled the girl up the steep bank behind him. When they stood together on the top of the bank, Hyde could see the Chase sloping away from them. He pulled the girl down beside him, and they lay on the wet, dead ferns, staring down through the silver-boled, bare birches towards the tiny figures making their way with laborious effort up towards them. The rifle ranges were behind them, the line of huge, numbered targets perhaps six hundred yards away.
Three of them — no, four. Somehow, Hyde knew there were no others. He checked the magazine, weighing it. Perhaps ten rounds left of the thirty it had originally contained. He thrust the folding double-strut stock against his good shoulder, and looked through the tangent rear sight and the protected post foresight. The action gave him confidence. The mist had been their patron, then their betrayer. Now, the clear air and the bright, warming sun were on their side. Hyde held the high ground. The effective range of the AK-47 was three hundred metres. The four men were at twice that range. He was required to wait.
"You all right?"
"Yes."
The situation became increasingly unreal the more he considered it, the closer the Russians drew. He was in the middle of Staffordshire, these men were either accredited diplomats of the Soviet embassy or they were casuals called out from the woodwork to assist Petrunin. They were the ones on alien ground, and only now that he looked down on them, armed with one of their rifles and with the mist evaporated, could he perceive the situation in those terms. He had already won. The men down there pushed other men under buses, poisoned them with tiny metal pellets in the tips of umbrellas, pushed them on to the live rail of the underground. Maybe in the north of Scotland they could go on playing this hunting game, but not here. In a minute, a portly matron would appear, exercising a small dog, or someone from the Forestry Commission would pass them in a Land-Rover.
Stop it, stop it, he instructed himself. It was still four to one, and the police would be out in force on the M6, but not necessarily on Cannock Chase. Perhaps four hundred yards now. The four men had spread out, but until they reached the trees on the slope below they had no cover. They moved more cautiously now, probably afraid.
"Not long now," he offered to Tricia Quin.
"What isn't? What won't be?" she asked in a sullen, tired voice. "Christ, I'm tired and scared and hungry."
"That's two of us." He opened his squinting eye, and removed the gaze of his other eye from the sights of the Kalashnikov, He studied her. She had become girlish again, and his attitude to her hardened. The rest of it, anything warmer, belonged in the burrow where they had hidden and in his disordered imagination as he half slept. Now, he could not say that he even liked her particularly. She, evidently, disliked him. Their former attitudes had re-emerged, as if they both understood that they were already on the. other side of their experience. "We" ve got the advantage now."
She shook her head, staring at the rifle. It alienated her from him. He accepted her distance. She was about to climb back into the feckless skin which he had forced her to shed. She already resented the sloughing of her past self for the last few days.
He looked back. Still the four men, clambering through the wet ferns and the dead heather. A Land-Rover passed along a distant, open track behind them, and he grinned. He put down the rifle and cupped his hands.
"Petrunin! Can you hear me, Petrunin?" he bellowed. The men stopped immediately.
"Yes," came the faint reply. Petrunin remained just out of effective range of the Kalashnikov. And he knew he was out of range.
"I" ve won, you stupid joker!"
"Not yet."
"Admit it. You're finished. You'd better start making arrangements to fly out before they catch you. You're finished in England, mate!"
The four men remained standing, like an irresolute group of hikers. Just over three hundred yards away. There was nothing they could do, no way in which they could move forward into the trees without coming into range. Stalemate. Stand off.
"I think not. We are four to one." Petrunin's voice was faint, unthreatening. The Forestry Commission Land-Rover had turned into a wide, sunlit ride, and was moving away. The normality it represented did not, however, diminish. Petrunin was bluffing, his words empty.
"Piss off!" Hyde yelled with a quick, sharp delight. "You're beaten and you know it! Go home to Mother — "
The girl's gasp was inaudible, the begging of her scream merely scratched at his attention, far below the volume of his own voice, but the slump of her body at the corner of his vision attracted him, caused him to turn, his hands reaching instinctively for the rifle. It was kicked away from him, and then a second kick thudded into his wounded shoulder as it came between the walking boot and the side of his head. Tricia Quin, he had time to see, had been struck by the man's rifle stock on the temple, and her head was bleeding. He heard himself scream with pain, his whole body enveloped in the fire which ran from his shoulder. He raised one hand feebly as the man kicked again, them drove the wooden stock of his ARM rifle down at Hyde's face, an action as unemotional as stepping on an insect. Hyde attempted to roll away, but the stock of the rifle caught him between the shoulder blades, winding him, forcing all the air from his lungs so that he fell transfixed to the ground.
He went on rolling, and the man who must have doubled around behind them before they had reached the top of the slope came after him, rifle still pointed stock-first towards the Australian. There was a set, fixed smile on the man's face. The man wasn't going to shoot him, he was going to beat and club him to death. Petrunin and the others would already have started running, reaching the bottom of the slope, beginning now perhaps to labour up it to the top, through the birch trees.
Hyde kicked out, struck the rifle but not the man, who stepped nimbly aside and then came forward again. Hyde tried to get to his knees, aware of himself offering his back and neck for more blows, for execution. He could not catch his breath, which made a hollow, indigestible noise in his throat. The rifle swung to one side, then the stock swung back. Hyde fell away from it, and kicked out, catching the man on the shin, making him exclaim with the unexpected pain. The rifle stock sought his head. He pushed himself half upright on one arm, and dived inside the intended blow. His head snapped up into the man's groin, making the man's breath explode, his body weakly tumble backwards. Hyde grabbed the man's legs, squeezing them together, aware of his back exposed to the next blow. Broken back, his imagination yelled at him. Broken back, lifelong cripple in a chair. He heaved at the man's thighs against his shoulder, and they tottered in that supplicatory embrace until the ground dipped and the Russian lost his balance and fell on to his back. Hyde clambered along the man's body, aware of the shadow of the rifle and the man's arm moving to his right, holding his belt, then his shirt, then his throat as if he might have been ascending a sheer slope. He raised himself above the man, blocking the swing of the rifle with his shoulder and back, pressing down as he levered himself up on the man's windpipe. Then he released his grip, bunched his fist, and punched the man in the throat. The man's tongue came out, his eyes rolled, and there was a choking, gagging sound from his open mouth. His body writhed as if at some separate pain.
Hyde scrambled back to the lip of the slope, dragging the man's AKM behind him by its strap. He fumbled it into his hands, and flicked the mechanism to automatic. He knelt, unable to climb to his feet, and squeezed the trigger. The noise deafened him. Bark flashed from the scarred birches, ferns whipped aside, one man fell just as he emerged from the trees, twenty yards from Hyde; a second man was halted, then turned away.
Hyde released the trigger, and inhaled. His breath sobbed and rattled, but it entered his lungs, expanded them, made him cough. He swallowed phlegm, and crouched down breathing quickly as if to reassure himself that the mechanism of his lungs now operated efficiently. When he could, he yelled at the hidden Petrunin.
"Tough shit, mate! Nice try!"
Silence. He waited. The man behind him was making a hideous noise that somehow parodied snoring, or noisy eating. Otherwise, silence. He looked at the girl, and thought he could see her breasts rising and falling in a regular rhythm. He hoped it was not an illusion, but he could not, as yet, summon the strength or the detachment to investigate. Silence.
Eventually, he raised his head. Beyond the trees, three tiny figures were moving away. One of the dots supported a second dot. The one in the lead, striding ahead, Hyde took to be Petrunin, his mind already filled with images of his skin-saving passage out of the country. A small airfield in Kent, after he had arranged to be picked up by car and driven down the M1. Hop across the Channel, then Aeroflot to Moscow direct.
Hyde lay back exhausted, staring up at the bright sun in the almost cloudless, pale sky. He began laughing, weakly at first, then uncontrollably, until his eyes watered and his back and ribs were sore and his shoulder ached.
He heard a noise, and sat up. The girl was wiping her head with a dirty handkerchief, pulling grimacing faces, seeming surprised at the blood that stained the handkerchief. Hyde wiped his eyes, and lay back again. The sky was empty, except for the sun. He waited — he decided he would wait until he heard a dog bark, and then raise his head and check whether it was indeed a portly matron out exercising a runt-sized, pink-bowed dog in a tartan overcoat.
* * *
Clark looked up at the ceiling of the wardroom pantry with an involuntary reaction. A forkful of scrambled eggs remained poised an inch or so from his lips. The cook had disliked his insistence on eating in the pantry rather than the wardroom proper, but the rating now seemed almost pleased at his company. What was it Copeland had said? They "ll have to be careful, like small boys scrambling under a barbed wire fence into an orchard. Lloyd could get his trousers caught. Clark smiled. Evidently, they had found the hole they had blown in the net, but not its exact centre. The starboard side of the Proteus had dragged for perhaps a hundred feet or more against some obstacle, some bent and twisted and sharp-edged remnant of the net, and then the fin had clanged dully against the net, jolting the submarine, which had then altered its attitude and slipped beneath the obstruction.
Clark registered the scrambled egg on his fork, and opened his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. The food was good, and it entirely absorbed his attention and his energies. He picked up his mug of coffee, and washed down the mouthful of egg. He was eating quickly and greedily and with an almost sublime satisfaction. The responsibility was no longer his. "Leopard" worked. Immediately, his concussive readiness had drained from him while he lay slumped in the aft escape chamber, and he had gone into a doped and simple-minded superficiality of awareness and sensation. He realised how dirty he was, how much he smelt inside the immersion suit, how hungry and thirsty he was, how tired he was. A junior officer had escorted him to the wardroom. By that time, food had become the absolute priority, after removing his immersion suit. They gave him the disguise of his overalls to wear until he had taken a shower.
What was happening, in the control room and outside the submarine, was of no interest to him. He could not, any longer, have recited the instructions he had given Lloyd when he first boarded the Proteus. Some tape in his mind had been wiped. He could not have seen the loose relay in the back-up system now, without having it pointed out to him.
"Like some more, sir?" the cook offered, holding the saucepan out towards him.
Clark grinned, and patted his stomach. That'll do, I think, don't you? Very good."
"Thank you, sir. More coffee, sir?"
"Please."
The senior rating brought the jug of coffee towards the table where Clark sat. Then he seemed to wobble sideways and lurch against the stove. A stream of dark coffee flew from the jug, cascading down one of the walls — at least, Clark knew that would be what the coffee would do, but the lights went out before he could observe it happen, and he was flung off his chair and bundled into one corner of the pantry. His head banged sickeningly against some jutting piece of kitchen furniture, and he rolled away from it, groaning. He sat up, rubbing his head, his ears ringing with the concussion and the noise that had accompanied the shudder of the submarine, as the emergency lights flickered on, then the main lights came back almost immediately after.
"All right?" he asked.
The cook was wiping coffee from his apron, and rubbing his arm. He still had the empty jug in his hand.
"What happened, sir?"
The Proteus was maintaining course and speed, as far as Clark could apprehend.
"Mine." Someone in Pechenga was thinking fast. He got to his knees, head aching, and the second mine threw him forward as the submarine rolled to starboard with the impact of the explosion. Darkness, slithering, the clatter of utensils, the groan of the hull, the terrible ringing in his ears, the thud of the cook's body on top of him, winding him, then the lights coming back on. He felt the Proteus right herself through his fingertips and the rest of his prone body. Over the intercom, Lloyd requested an all-stations damage report immediately. The senior rating rolled off Clark and apologised.
"Okay, okay. I think I'll just go see what's happening." The cook appeared disappointed at his departure. "You okay?"
"Yes, thank you, sir."
Clark left the wardroom pantry, his body tensed, awaiting a further explosion. He entered the control room at the end of the short corridor from the living quarters, and immediately sensed the mood of congratulation. Proteus had not been seriously, hamperingly damaged.
"Contact at green three-six closing, sir." Someone had got the Soviet ships moving in double-quick time.
"Increase speed — nine knots," he heard Lloyd say.
"Nine knots, sir."
"Net at two thousand yards."
"Contact at red seven-zero also moving. Range one thousand."
"Contact at green eight-two closing, sir."
The hornet's nest had been poked with a stick. Clark realised that the Russians needed less luck in the confined space of the harbour than they needed out in the Barents Sea, and then they had found a crippled Proteus.
"Contact at red seven-zero making for the net, sir."
"Contact at green three-six closing, sir. Range seven hundred."
Lloyd saw Clark from the corner of his eye. Clark waved to him, and grinned. Lloyd returned his attention at once to the bank of sonar screens in front of him. Moved by an impulse to see the equipment he had repaired actually functioning, Clark crossed the control room softly, and exited through the aft door. The "Leopard" room was directly behind the control room.
As he closed the door, he. heard Lloyd speak to the torpedo room after ordering a further increase in speed.
Torpedo room — load number two tube."
They would make it. Just, but they would make it.
The door to the small, cramped "Leopard" room was open. Clark, as he reached the doorway, was instantly aware of the rating lying on the floor, and the officer slumped against one of the cabinets containing the main system. And he recognised the dark-jerseyed man who turned towards the noise he had made, knocking on the door-frame in the moment before he had taken in the scene in the room.
Valery Ardenyev. It was him. Clark knew he had killed Hayter and the rating.
Seven forty-three. He saw the clock above Ardenyev's head as he took his first step into the room and the Russian turned to him, a smile of recognition on his face. Ardenyev's hand moved out, and threw the switch he had been searching for before Clark disturbed him. As the switch moved, Clark knew that "Leopard" had been deactivated. The Proteus moved through the outer harbour of Pechenga, registering on every sonar screen of every Soviet ship and submarine.
"I knew it had to be you," Clark said in a surprisingly conversational tone, warily skirting the rating's body near the door. Ardenyev had apparently killed both of them without a weapon.
"I didn't reach the same conclusion about you." Ardenyev's back was to the control console of the "Leopard" equipment, protecting the switch he had thrown. "Perhaps I should have done." The Russian shrugged, then grinned. "It won't take long. I only have to keep this stuff—" he tossed his head to indicate "Leopard", — "out of action for a few minutes."
"Sure." Clark shook his head, smiling. "You're beaten. We're on our way out, you're alone on an enemy submarine. What chance do you have?"
"Every chance, my friend. That's the Soviet Union a few hundred yards behind you —"
Clark sprang at Ardenyev, who stepped neatly and swiftly to one side, bringing his forearm round sharply across Clark's back. The American grunted and collapsed across the console, his hand reaching instinctively for the switch above him. Ardenyev chopped the heel of his hand across Clark's wrist, deadening it, making the hand hang limply from his forearm. Then Ardenyev punched Clark in the kidneys, making him fall backwards and away from the control console, doubling him up on the floor. Ardenyev leaned casually against the console, watching Clark get groggily to his knees, winded. "You're tired, my friend," Ardenyev observed. Mistily, Clark saw the red second-hand of the clock moving jerkily downwards. Fourteen seconds since Ardenyev had thrown the switch. He staggered, then tried to lean his weight against the Russian and hold on to him. Ardenyev rammed his knee into Clark's groin, and then punched him in the face. Clark fell backwards again, groaning. He did not want to get up, and did not feel he had the strength to do so. The clock just above Ardenyev's head obsessed him. Twenty-two seconds. Proteus must almost have reached the net.
He seemed to feel the submarine hesitate, and saw the attentiveness on Ardenyev's face. He heard a noise scrape down the hull. The net—
The mine exploded beneath the hull, rocking the submarine, blinking out the lights. In the darkness, Clark struggled to his feet and groped for the Russian, feeling his woollen jersey, grabbing it, striking his hand at where the Russian's face would be. He felt the edge of his hand catch the man's nose, below the bridge, felt Ardenyev's breath expelled hotly against his cheek as he cried out in pain, and grabbed the Russian to him in the dark. The room settled around them.
Ardenyev thrust himself and Clark against one of the cabinets. A sharp handle dug into Clark's back, but he hooked his leg behind Ardenyev's calf and pushed. The lights came on as they rolled on the floor together. Clark drove his head down into the Russian's face, but the man did not let go of his neck. Clark felt his throat constrict, and he could no longer breathe. He tried to pull away from the grip, but it did not lessen. Blood ran into Ardenyev's mouth and over his chin, but he held on. The fin of the submarine scraped beneath the holed outer net, the submarine jerked like a hooked fish, shuddering, and then Proteus was free.
Clark's thoughts clouded. Ardenyev was interested only in killing him. Nothing else mattered. He beat at Ardenyev's face and neck and shoulders, his punches weak and unaimed and desperate. Consciousness became more and more fugged and insubstantial, then Ardenyev's grip on his throat seemed to slacken. Clark pulled away, and the hands fell back on to Ardenyev's chest, lying there, curled like sleeping animals.
Clark looked at his own hands, covered with blood, bruised, shaking. In one of them he held something that only slowly resolved in his watery vision until he was able to recognise it as the R/T set from his overalls pocket, the one he had used to communicate with Lloyd. He leaned down over Ardenyev's chest, listening. He avoided looking at the man's battered face. He had slapped the R/T set against Ardenyev's face and head time after time with all his remaining strength, as if the movement of his arm would pump air into his lungs.
Ardenyev was dead.
Clark clambered up the cabinet, then lurched to the control console, flicking the switch back to "On". "Leopard" was activated. It was seven forty-five. "Leopard" had been switched off for almost two minutes. Long enough for Proteus to have been spotted, not long enough for her to be attacked.
He sensed the increased speed of the Proteus through the deck, as she headed for the open sea. He avoided looking at Ardenyev's body. He dropped the blood-slippery R/T to the floor and hunched over the console, wanting to vomit with weakness and disgust and relief. He rubbed at his throat with one hand, easing its soreness. He closed his eyes. Now, he wanted only to sleep, for a long time.