The Scotsman’s recorded voice enraged him. Almost always it did. Now nasality and meaning combined to grip his stomach with an indigestion of rage.
"We have been trying to contact you for two days," the authoritative Russian voice insisted. Ruban, the Naval Attaché who worked under the auspices of Petrunin and the KGB at the embassy. "You fully understand how difficult movement outside London is for our people here. Why have you not contacted us on schedule? Now you say the submarine has sailed."
There was an additional nasality, and a promoted, cultivated cough in the Scot’s voice when he replied. "I’ve been in bed with the flu. It’s no’ my fault. I havena been to work all week. I’ve been in my bed, y’understand?" The whine was almost rebellious.
"We do not pay you to be ill, MacFarlane."
"I couldna help it. I still feel lousy. I got up to come to the phone. There's fog, too." A small, projected bout of coughing followed the weather bulletin. Petrunin, in spite of his anger, could not suppress a smile.
"When did the submarine sail from Faslane?"
"Three nights ago, early hours."
"What? Three nights? What else did you learn?"
"I couldna ask, could I? Just that she sailed three nights ago."
"You are useless to us!" stormed Ruban on the tape behind Petrunin. One of the embassy chauffeurs was walking, leaning against the wind, towards a parked black Mercedes saloon. His black uniform trousers were flapping around his legs, and he was holding his peaked cap firmly on his head.
"I couldna help it — it was no" my fault if I caught the damn flu, was it?"
"Was the equipment on board? Do you know that much for certain?"
"I heard it was."
"You don't know?"
"Yes, dammit, it was on board!" The Scot sniffled on the tape. Petrunin pictured him. Pale, rat-faced, unshaven, untrustworthy. Trash. He was poor material with which to start a blaze. Ruban thought so too, by the sound of his voice. Ruban would have to report to Murmansk, via himself, and they would have to decide, on MacFarlane's word alone, whether the British submarine Proteus was carrying the "Leopard" equipment or not when she slipped out of Faslane into the Atlantic three nights before.
"You're guessing," Ruban said after a pause. "You can't know for certain."
"I'm sure, dammit! Nothing was taken off the ship after she returned from sea trials with this “Leopard” stuff!" MacFarlane had forgotten his habitual ingratiating manner. "I found out that much. Nothing came off the ship."
"And where is she now?"
"I dinna know." MacFarlane retreated from anger into surliness.
"And that ends your report?"
In the silence that followed, Petrunin moved to his desk and switched off the cassette player. Then he returned to the window of his office, rubbing his chin. In no more than thirty minutes, he would have to summon Ruban, and they would have to make a decision before five or five-thirty as to the nature of the signal they would send to Moscow Centre and to Red Banner Northern Fleet HQ, Murmansk, EYES ONLY Admiral Dolohov. Damn MacFarlane and his attack of influenza.
"Leopard". Was it on board? If so, then the likelihood that Proteus was on her way to map the location and extent of the newest Soviet sonar-grid across the Barents Sea from North Cape to Murmansk was transmuted into a virtual certainty. The only way to do that was by means of a submarine indetectable by sonar; which would mean Proteus using the "Leopard" equipment. Ethan Clark, the American expert, was in London on liaison work, Proteus had sailed on secret orders to an unknown destination as soon as her sea trials were complete. It was a likelihood — was it a certainty?
Petrunin paced the room carefully, keeping to the border of the patterned Turkish carpet, studying his footsteps with apparent intentness, rubbing his chin lightly with thumb and forefinger in a ceaseless motion of his hand. Proteus had to reach North Cape in order for the Red Banner Fleet's cock-eyed plan to be put into operation. If she were sailing elsewhere, all the preparations would have been a waste of time and effort.
Petrunin found himself before the window again. The newly-imprisoned leaves seemed to be scurrying aimlessly across the embassy lawns, seeking escape. He shook his head. Proteus's target had to be "Chessboard". The development of "Leopard" had been violently accelerated during the past six months, the sea trials had been conducted with maximum haste; both facts implied an urgent task for the equipment. After all, there were no other "Leopard" units as yet, none fitted to any submarine or surface ship in the Royal Navy. Just this one priceless example of anti-sonar equipment, being used for one special task —
Yes. He nodded vigorously. He would go over it again with Ruban in fifteen minutes or so, but he had decided. They would signal Moscow and Murmansk that Proteus was on her way north, making for North Cape. Then it was up to the Red Banner Fleet.
And, he reminded himself, not for the first time that afternoon, there then devolved upon himself the task of finding Quin. Quin, the inventor and developer of "Leopard". Disappeared without trace. Not under protective custody, because British Intelligence, the Directorate of Security and Special Branch were all looking for him. Quin. More important — at least in Petrunin's estimation — than "Leopard" itself. Where was he?
He realised, with a mounting disappointment, that his decision with regard to Proteus was no decision at all. Merely a side-issue, a piece of self-indulgence, a war-game for sailors. Quin was what mattered. And Quin could not be found.
It had become routine, watching the house in Sutton Coldfield, in a quiet, residential street between the roads to Lichfield and Brownhills. A pre-war detached house, standing a little back from the road and elevated above its level, partially screened by a stone wall and a dark hedge. Leaded windows, trained ivy like an artificial ageing process climbing wooden trelliswork around the front door, and cherry blossom trees waiting for the spring. The street was still stained from the recent rain, and the slim boles of the trees gleamed green. Routine, boring routine. The young officer of the Special Branch unit attached to the West Midlands constabulary knew the facade of the house in which Quin's divorced wife lived with a familiarity that had become sour and stultifying. She worked part-time in the elegantly refurbished premises of an antique shop a hundred yards away. She was there now. The Special Branch Officer had parked his unmarked Ford Escort so that he had a clear view of the house and the entrance of the shop. He had observed well-dressed women, the occasional couple, a small delivery van, but no sign, none whatsoever, of Quin or of his daughter who had disappeared from her teacher training college in Birmingham at the same time that he had vanished. And there had been no visitors to the house except the milkman, the grocery delivery on a Thursday, the fish van on Wednesdays —