‘Glad I’m not the Russian captain. Any idea what class of submarine?’
‘No. It was a dark night and it had no lights. They say it was very big.’
‘Good girl. This is a marvellous news item. I’ll get it off right away. How’s your father?’
‘Not so good.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you really, Gunnar?’
‘That’s unkind, Inga.’
‘Well. You know the way things are.’
Gunnar Olufsen’s seamed face set hard. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Only too well.’
‘Cheer up. It’s not the end of the world.’
He laughed without humour. ‘Anyway, thanks for the story. More news of it will be welcome.’
‘Okay, Gunnar, I’ll do my best. Look after yourself.’
‘You too. Maybe I’ll be coming over soon.’
‘That’ll be great. Time you did.’
‘Bye now.’
‘Bye, Gunnar.’
For a moment he sat thinking about Inga Bodde. As Vrakoy’s only telephone and teleprinter operator she was for him an invaluable source of information. Vrakoy, the most westerly of the islands off the Norwegian coast, had a considerable fishing fleet. The men who manned it often brought news of naval units, both Soviet and NATO, operating in the Norwegian and Barents Seas. To Gunnar Olufsen, professional gatherer of information and accredited stringer for news agencies in Oslo and London, this was important. Inga didn’t expect payment. They were in love. It was a long-standing affair. Too long, he decided, as he thought of her. He’d lost his wife many years earlier in a car accident. There were no children. He was forty-five, Inga ten years younger. Devoted to an invalid widowed father who would not leave Vrakoy, she’d not married. Marriage to Gunnar Olufsen was only practical if he moved to Vrakoy but that was not on. He had often explained to Inga that he had no intention of becoming a fisherman, the only occupation open to him on the island, while there was much to do in Bodo.
One hundred and fifteen miles south of Vrakoy, this port was a thriving trade, traffic and tourist centre. With its busy harbour at the mouth of Saltenfjord, the Nordland railway terminal and large airport, it lay on the west coast between Narvik in the north and Trondheim in the south. It happened also to be the military headquarters of Norway’s Northern Command.
Shrugging away his thoughts, Olufsen wrote a brief account of Inga Bodde’s news and punched it on to teleprinter tapes. When it was ready he fed the tape for the London agency into the teleprinter. That for the Oslo agency he delayed for an hour.
In a sleazy upstairs office in a newsagency tucked away in Essex Street off the Strand, a girl read the message from Bodo as the flicking keys of the teleprinter typed it. When they stopped she tore the sheet against the cutter bar and took it to the long-haired young man with dark glasses who sat at the desk behind her.
‘From Bodo,’ she said. ‘It’s got a YY.’
The young man read the message as he bit into a hot-dog. The time of dispatch concluded with the letter Y. He took another mouthful and reread the message.
‘Better get on with it, hadn’t you?’ she said.
He pushed back the chair and stood up. ‘Okay, love.’
‘It’s immediate for them, isn’t it?’
They’re going to get it immediate, aren’t they?’
He went through the back door to a small sound-proofed room, unlocked the door, turned on the light, shut and locked the door, picked up the telephone handset, set the scrambler and dialled a number.
A girl answered. ‘You are?’
He swallowed the last of the hot-dog. ‘Frank-seven two-zed-four-seven.’
‘Go ahead, Frank.’
‘Plain language Y teleprint from Gunnar Olufsen, Bodo.’
He read the message slowly, careful not to slur the words, knowing it was being tape-recorded at her end. He did this very efficiently.
‘That’s all,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Frank,’ she said.
She sounds okay, he thought. Wonder if she’s a dish? He reset the scrambler, hung up the handset, turned off the light, shut the door, locked it and went back into the office. He stopped behind the girl, put the teleprinter message in his pocket, slipped his hands over her shoulders and felt her breasts. ‘Know why you’ve got two?’
She shook him away. ‘Take your filthy hands off me, you sex maniac.’
‘Okay. No need to get your knickers in a twist. You know you like it.’
‘I do,’ she agreed. ‘That’s the trouble.’
‘No trouble, love.’ He kissed the back of her neck. ‘Now shake it up and get on with your work.’
‘You’re a bastard,’ she said.
In an office in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall Commodore Oliver Rathouse, a small man with a pucklike face and peppery manners, looked at the lieutenant-commander who’d just come in. ‘What is it, Briggs?’
‘Message from Bodo, sir. From Daffodil.’
‘What’s he been up to?’
‘Rather interesting, sir.’
The commodore took the message. When he’d finished reading he said, ‘It’s not only interesting, Briggs. It’s extremely important.’ He picked up one of several phones and dialled an internal MOD number. It was quickly answered. ‘Lewis here.’
‘Hullo, Freddie. Ratters here.’
‘Hullo, Ratters. What’s the trouble? One of your lot sinking?’
‘Not this time. There’s a big Soviet submarine aground on the rocks off Knausnes on Vrakoy. That’s the most westerly of the Vesteralen Islands.’
‘Yes. I know. Our geography’s rather good. We fly over the maps.’
‘She went on about midnight last night. Probably a ballistic missile job. Listen. She might be the Zhukov.’
‘Christ. How bloody marvellous.’
‘Would be if she were. Remember Clematis reported her sailing from Leningrad on October first. Bound for Polyarnyo.’
‘Yes, I do. I’ll get on to 120 Squadron at Kinloss right away. We’ll push a Nimrod up there. Should have photos within a few hours.’
‘Splendid. Watch out for Norwegian air-space, mate. They’re sensitive.’
‘Not to worry. We have good friends there.’
‘By the way, NATO is not in on this. Not yet, anyway. We’ll keep it that way for the moment.’
‘Okay. I’m with you.’
‘Many thanks, old boy.’ He put down the phone. ‘Get me that BMS/USSR file, Briggs. I’d like another look at the Clematis report.’
His short title in Whitehall was VCNS — Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff. He was a dark lithe man with a strong face that fitted the title.
‘I see they were taken within minutes of 1100 this morning,’ he said, examining a set of aerial photographs. High altitude shots, some oblique, others vertical. The commodore (Intelligence) slid sections cut from the large photos into a stereoscope. ‘Look at them now, sir. The photo enlargement of these cut-outs is a factor of six. The stereoscope enlarges them again by a factor of ten. So you’re looking at the thing enlarged sixty times.’
The VCNS put his eyes to the stereoscope. What had been a minute object, no more than a tiny scratch close to a line of rocks, became a submarine, its whole length visible but for the submerged bows. The details of its hull could be seen quite clearly.
‘Taken at high water.’ said the commodore. ‘There was a good deal of cloud. The Nimrod had problems.’
‘So you think it’s the Zhukov, Rathouse?’
‘Pretty certain, sir. One — it’s a class we’ve never seen before. Two — the hull configuration resembles closely reports we’ve had on the Delta Twos. Three — there’s only one at sea, the prototype. That’s the Zhukov. Four — we know from the Clematis report that she sailed from Leningrad on the first of October, bound for Polyarnyo to join a BMS Squadron. Today is the sixth. So the time and place of her grounding are consistent with those movements.’