There were stretcher bearers waiting as the Wessex bumped down, rolled a few feet and halted, rattling loudly. The load master flung open the door and blustery, drizzle-laden air refreshed the oily, humid cabin. Clara jumped onto solid ground, swayed for a moment before she regained her balance and started to supervise the unloading of the four badly injured seamen.
Arkady Pavlovich Rykov, demonstrating stoic Russian phlegm attempted to disembark unaided.
The reception committee — a mixture of uniformed men and white-coated doctors and nurses under the concerned ‘command’ of a diffident middle-aged air force officer, pounced on their patient and in a moment he was laid on a stretcher.
“This man is Colonel Rykov?” The officer inquired solicitously as he and Clara fell into step beside the former KGB man’s litter.
“Yes,” the woman confirmed.
”I have arranged for you both to be transported directly to the British Embassy.” The Portuguese officer raised a hand forestalling the expected protest. “I am to assure you that your, er, friend, will be attended by the Ambassador’s personal physician.”
A tall, distinguished, still handsome man with thinning fair hair stood by the Bentley parked at the edge of the runway that the Wessex had touched down on. Behind the small stretcher party the helicopter taxied in a whirl of rotors and spray a short distance to where a small fuel bowser awaited its arrival.
Clara hadn’t seen the tall man or the Bentley until the Wessex had moved out of her line of sight. Other than a second man wearing a Homburg sitting behind the wheel of the black car, which had a small diplomatic plate on its rear bumper, there seemed to be no welcoming committee.
When Rykov’s litter was placed on the ground a few yards from the Bentley the tall man approached, smiled pleasantly but wordlessly at Clara, and crouched down beside the injured man.
“Well, well, well,” he said in a voice that was pure Oxbridge and not in any way unfriendly or threatening. “The chaps on the Rock gave you a bit of a hard time, I hear. Dreadfully sorry about that. You know how I hate violence.” He extended his hand, gripped the Russian’s left hand and slowly, patiently helped the invalid to his feet while Clara rushed to support him.
Painfully, Rykov straightened and to Clara’s astonishment formed a crooked grin on his battered countenance.
“Presumably,” he said, stifling a groan, “your boys back in Gibraltar will have spread the word that they kicked me until they wore out their boots and then they threw me off the highest point of the Rock?”
The tall man — the Russian’s head only came up to his chin — smiled a glacial smile.
“My Head of Station on the Rock, Denzil Williams, was incandescent when I told him he couldn’t toss you off the Rock.”
“He and I have history,” conceded the shorter man.
“Yes, quite.” The tall man, dressed in the sort of expensive suit that one could no longer buy from a real Savile Row tailor, looked to Clara, raising an eyebrow. “Arkady Pavlovich. Perhaps it is time you introduced me to you charming companion?”
Drops of lumpy cold rain were falling as the Atlantic storm front they’d outrun thirty minutes before in the Wessex roared onshore. The wind plucked at their coats tails, sent the woman’s hair flying in streamers.
“I have the honour to present Ms Clara Pullman,” the former Soviet KGB Colonel announced. “She has rendered invaluable and selfless service to her country. Without her by my side I could have achieved nothing.”
Clara lowered her eyes in embarrassment while she tried to sort out what seemed to be so wrong about this meeting — or rather, for Arkady Rykov and the tall man, what was obviously a reunion — on a windswept airstrip in Portugal. The atmosphere was wrong, so wrong it was unreal. And then she began to think about the respect and solicitude with which she and Arkady had been received, and subsequently treated on HMS Hermes. She’d thought there must have been a breakdown of communications and the Royal Navy, as it was with all its guests, was simply being politely hospitable. But in hindsight, it had been more than that. They’d been welcomed on board like minor homecoming heroes, VIPs, prodigals returned. And now there was this odd reception, in the one place in Portugal that nobody could possibly overhear what they were saying to each other.
The tall man held out his hand to shake Clara’s.
He held her hand a moment longer than necessary, waiting for her to look him in the eye.
“Forgive Arkady’s coyness,” he apologised, the laughter lines around his clear grey eyes quirking. “That’s a Russian trait he’s never quite conquered. In case you were wondering, Arkady and I are old acquaintances.”
Clara recovered her hand and tried to retain her equilibrium.
“Clara,” Arkady Pavlovich Rykov declared, “this is the man who has been my controller since I first made contact with British Intelligence in 1956. Let me introduce you to Sir Richard White, the Head of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.”
Clara stared dumbfounded at the Head of MI6.
“Dick,” the tall man said. “Everybody calls me ‘Dick White’.”
Chapter 17
“Down one-hundred,” Commander Simon Collingwood said in a completely normal voice which sounded deafening in the ultra quiet control room of the Royal Navy’s first, and for the foreseeable future, only nuclear powered hunter-killer attack submarine. “On the planes only, if you please.”
“Down bubble,” a voice confirmed.
“Belay trimming fore and aft,” Simon Collingwood added, probably unnecessarily but then when you were Captain of one’s nation’s single most valuable military asset, one was expected to drive it with both care and no little unction. “Sound room. Report please.”
“No new contact, sir.”
Collingwood threw a glance in the direction of his bearded, poker-faced Executive Officer, Lieutenant-Commander Max Forton. The younger man shrugged at him as they both ‘worked’ the problem. The ghost contact — sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes not there at all — might have been a whale; and if they hadn’t been playing cat and mouse with two United States Navy attack boats for most of the last forty-eight hours they’d have ignored it. But…
“Water temperature?” Simon Collingwood asked.
“Possible inconsistent gradient…”
Perhaps, either Dreadnought or the other boat had crossed through an overly saline cross-section of the water column? Or found a minutely warmer or colder deep ocean current to hide above or beneath?
The Diving Officer was softly calling out the depths.
“Three-three-five feet…”
“Three five-oh feet…”
Again, Captain and Executive Officer exchanged thoughtful looks.
“Level the boat at three-seven-five feet please.”
Forty-eight hours ago Collingwood had deliberately advertised HMS Dreadnought’s presence by running fast and deep ahead of the US boats; initially, this had succeeded in driving them some thirty miles north-west and away from northernmost elements of the Hermes Battle Group. For nearly twelve hours he’d hoped they’d gone looking for easier prey, hopefully to play games with the Ark Royal’s anti-submarine screen. However, when they’d reappeared they’d clearly been acting as a team, executing a series of horribly professional and methodical sweeps, driving Dreadnought ever farther south until now she was patrolling only twenty miles north of the eighty by thirty mile rectangle of ocean in which the Hermes Battle Group was currently operating.