"I'm sorry about that. Tell me where she might be, then?" On an impulse, he added: "Her mother mentioned she hung out with a rock band a couple of summers ago — pot, groupie-ing, the whole naughty bag. Any news on that?"
"Those dinosaurs," the girl remarked, glancing up at the Two-Tone group posturing down at her.
"Them?" he asked, looking up. The girl laughed.
"You remember a band called Heat of the Day?"
"Yes. I liked them."
"You're old enough." The girl had slipped into another skin, represented by half of the posters on the wall, and by the cassette tapes on one of the shelves, next to a huge radio with twin speakers. Something an astronaut might have used to contact the earth from deep space. The girl was now a pop music aficionado, and he someone with parental tastes. Hyde had wondered which way the retreat into shock would take her. It looked more promising than other possible routes, but it would not last long. Eventually, she would be unable to disguise from herself the threat he represented.
"I thought they disbanded."
"They did. You don't read Melody Maker any more, obviously."
"Nor Rolling Stone. My age." He invited her to smile, but she did not respond. She did not look at him now, merely at her hands in her lap. She might have been drugged, or meditating.
"They're back together — on tour. I remember Tricia was interested."
"How did she get in with them, originally?"
"The lead singer, Jon Alletson, was in school with her brother — the one who emigrated to Canada."
"Would she have gone to them by any chance, would she still be in touch with them?"
Sara's face closed into a shrunken, cunning mask. "I wouldn't know," she said, and Hyde knew the conversation was at an end. In another minute, it would be police brutality, threats of legal action. He stood up. The girl flinched.
Thanks," he said. Take care."
He closed the door quietly behind him, hunger nibbling at his stomach, a vague excitement sharp in his chest. Rock supergroup? Friend of her brother? Perhaps the girl knew she was being chased round and round the garden, and had gone to earth where she would be welcomed and wouldn't be looked for, amid the electronic keyboards and yelling guitars and pounding drums, the hysteria and the noise and the cannabis and the young. In that thicket, she would recognise her enemies, from either side, with ease.
It might just be —
Tedium, anger, even anxiety, were all now conspiring to overpower caution. Aubrey felt within himself a surprising violence of reaction to his hour-long tour of the "Chessboard Counter" room and operation. The broaching of Proteus's diversion to the Tanafjord proved the sticking point, broke the camel's back of his discretion. Perhaps, he reasoned with himself, it was the blasé, confident, aloof manner in which the monitoring action on the stricken Russian submarine was explained that so infuriated him. But images of Quin, with their attendant fears, and the pervasive odour of a possible trap, conspired to assist the wearing of his patience. Clark, too, seemed to be waiting for his cue; expecting Aubrey to make some decisive move, influence events.
And the smoothly running, almost mechanical individuals in the room; the obtrusive freemasonry of serving officers. The sterile hangar of the room; his own sense of himself regarded, at best, as the man from the Pru. He could no longer keep silence, or content himself with brief, accommodating smiles and innocuous questions. The excuse that he merely sought enlightenment regarding Quin's project became transparent in its flimsiness; insupportable. Even so, the vehemence evident to himself, and to Pyott and the others, in his voice when his temper finally broke through, surprised him.
"Giles, what do you hope to gain from this monitoring action?" he snapped. He waved his hand dismissively at the huge map-board.
"Our northern security is in question here, Kenneth," Pyott replied in surprise, his nostrils narrowed to slits, the tip of his nose whitened with supressed anger at Aubrey's tone. "Surely you can see that?"
"It is a point of view."
"Kenneth, you are not an expert —"
"No, this distress call, now. You don't suspect its genuineness?"
"Good Lord, no."
"What about you, Captain Clark?"
"Not really. I just don't think the matter's important enough to risk “Leopard”." He looked up at the cluster of lights on the board. They seemed to have one centre, where the wavering arrow of the light indicator being operated by Pyott demonstrated Proteus's position.
"Ah. Now, my immediate reaction, employing my own peculiar expertise, would be to suspect the distress call. I would need proof that it was genuine."
"We" ve identified the submarine concerned," the commodore explained brusquely. "We have triple checked. I don't think the matter is in doubt." He looked to Pyott for support, and received it in an emphatic shake of the head.
Aubrey was intensely aware of the opposition of the two officers. They represented an opposite pole of interests. Also, they were in some way legitimised by their uniforms. Third Murderer again, he observed to himself.
"I see. It would still be my starting point."
"What would be the object of an elaborate deception, in this case?" Pyott drawled.
"“Leopard.”"
"Good Lord, you're surely not serious —?"
"How would you react to the recall of Proteus until this chap Quin is found?"
"Utter nonsense!"
"The two matters haven't the slightest connection with one another Kenneth."
"Great idea."
"Ah. You would support such a move, Captain Clark?"
"I would." Pyott looked pained by a spasm of indigestion, the commodore appeared betrayed.
"I do really think it's dangerous, risking “Leopard” in this way without having Quin safe and sound."
"You made that point weeks ago, Kenneth. Try another record."
"Giles, the KGB have started killing, such is their interest in Quin. Am I to rate his importance any lower — or that of his project?" Aubrey pointed up at the map, then indicated the rest of the room and its occupants. "Who else is looking into this distress call?"
"It's our show."
"Your work here is important, even if I consider it precipitate. But this present adventure — Giles, what can you possibly gain?"
Aubrey saw the answer in Pyott's eyes before the man spoke.
"Kenneth, I am at liberty to inform you — you, too, Clark — that this present adventure, as you term it, has a highest category security tag on it."
"For a distress call?"
"For Proteus's mission," Pyott explained quietly and fiercely. Aubrey guessed at the nature of the mission, and was appalled. It was what he had suspected he might hear, if he needled Pyott sufficiently, and what he had wished devoutly not to hear. "The mission has been code-named —"
"You mean it's another, and extreme, sea trial for the “Leopard” system, Giles?"
"Why, yes," Pyott admitted, somewhat deflated.
"What in hell —?"
"Excuse me, Captain Clark. Giles, you mean that approval has been given to sail Proteus almost into Soviet home waters, merely to prove the efficacy of the anti-sonar system?"
"That's it precisely."
"My God, Giles, it's lunacy. Playing games. You have put the system, the submarine, her crew, at risk, just to score extra marks in the examination. It is nonsense, and furthermore, dangerous nonsense!" He studied Pyott's face, which was colouring with anger, and then the commodore. An identical, undented confidence.
"What is Proteus's ETA in the Tanafjord?"
Pyott smiled thinly. "I see no harm in telling you, Kenneth. Disregarding changes of course and speed, we estimate sixteen to eighteen hours. Some time early tomorrow morning, GMT."