A dark young man with an Annapolis fraternity ring and film star looks said, ‘Maybe I’m naive, Rod. But I see it this way. Here’s this one-off, never-again opportunity of checking their latest nuke first hand. But it’s too hot for Norway to handle. They daren’t offend Moscow. As it is they’re not happy about their NATO commitment. We know that Soviet naval units in the Northern Fleet alone outnumber their NATO counterparts by five to one. There’s constant Soviet naval activity off the Norwegian coast. But Norwegians don’t want the West to miss out on this. Without the West they’d lose their independence overnight. So they tip us off. They can’t take the risk of doing it officially. So Lund gets Martinsen to pass it to Karen. He knows she’s a CIA feedback.’
‘I go along with Ben.’ The man with the sad face of a bloodhound closed his eyes while he paused to think. ‘There’s a close relationship between Lars Martinsen and Karen. Usual bed-time story. He lets the name Zhukov slip. Forget it, he says. Shouldn’t have said that. You know. Standard bull. Karen picks it up. Feeds it back to Joe. And Keflavik’s confirmed it’s a nuke with unfamiliar configuration.’
‘I guess Ben’s right. You’re both right. That way it makes sense.’ Stocken lit a cheroot, examined the tip, stuck it into the corner of his mouth. ‘Right now the Norwegian Government is negotiating with the USSR on maritime problems. This is a highly sensitive area. Norway’s northern continental shelf pushes way out into the Barents Sea. That’s where the oil is. They can’t risk fouling up those negotiations.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Ben.
Stocken examined the tip of his cheroot again. ‘We get busy, Ben. Right now.’ He looked round the table indulging his sense of theatre. He knew they were all wondering how, when and who? Well, he’d take them up to it gently, ‘You fellows heard of Laillard’s Tern?’
They hadn’t. But they looked at the stack of reference books on his desk. That was Rod Stocken. Always did his homework. ‘It’s a variant of the Arctic Tern,’ he said. ‘Very rare. Breeds in only two places in the world. One is the island of Rost, south of the Lofotens. The other,’ he paused, leant back in his chair and exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘The other’s Vrakoy.’
‘Great,’ said Ben. ‘Where do we go from there.’
That pleased Stocken. He smiled, which was something he didn’t do easily. ‘Ed Ferret and Jim Plotz are going to learn a lot about Laillard’s Tern,’ he said. ‘And they’re going to learn fast. For a start they can read it up on the night flight to Bergen.’ He leaned over the map, the cheroot jutting aggressively, his finger on Vrakoy. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s get busy with the Gemini plan.’
‘So why’s it Gemini, Rod?’ Ben smiled indulgently. He knew Stocken’s weaknesses.
‘I’ll explain that when Vince gets here. Call him in will you, Ben.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Four of them arrived in Bodo that afternoon with light hand luggage. They’d travelled in different aircraft from Heathrow: Nunn and Sandstrom by way of Oslo, Boland and Julie via Bergen. At no stage in the journey had they recognized each other. From Bodo airport they’d made their way separately to the rendezvous, a café round the corner from Olufsen’s offices. There they’d joined forces before going into the travel agency. Nunn spoke to the girl at the counter. ‘You speak English?’
She smiled. ‘In this job, yes, of course.’ Her manner suggested it was a silly question.
Nunn realized it was. ‘We’re from England,’ he said, waving a hand in the direction of his companions. ‘I believe Mr Olufsen is expecting us.’
‘Oh, yes. You’ve come for the yacht?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wait, please.’ She went through a door to the back office. A moment later she re-appeared with a man with a weatherbeaten face and large questioning eyes. ‘This is Mr Olufsen,’ she said.
Nunn introduced himself, then the others. It was a convincing performance.
Olufsen bowed in a stiff, rather old-fashioned way. ‘I am glad to meet you. Come please into my office.’ He held open the door, they went in, he closed it behind them. ‘There’s not much room,’ he said. ‘This is only a small business.’
Nunn and Julie took the visitors’ chairs. Boland and Sandstrom sat on the edge of the desk.
Nunn winked. ‘Got a good boat for us?’
Olufsen showed no sign of having seen the wink. It annoyed him. His training didn’t permit that sort of thing. ‘A forty-foot ketch. Kestrel. In excellent condition. Sixty h.p. diesel. She makes ten knots without sail.’ The English, the trace of Scandinavian accent, the sometimes unusual word order, was not the English they’d heard at the briefing in the Surrey farmhouse.
‘Charts, fuel, food?’ said Nunn, now slightly humbled. ‘You know our plans. We want to sail round and about the Lofoten and Vesteralen Islands, starting in the north and working south with the prevailing wind.’
‘Yes. The message from Cook’s made that clear. You will find your needs in the boat.’ He looked out of the window towards the distant harbour. ‘Including food for three days. After that you have to visit shops.’
The girl said, ‘Good. That’s my department.’
‘If you will sign these documents, Mr Nunn — charter and insurance contracts — we can go to the harbour, I know you do not wish to delay.’
‘Yes,’ said Nunn. ‘We mustn’t waste precious time. It was difficult enough to find two weeks in which we could all get away together.’
Down in the yacht, basin they had a good look over Kestrel, checked her sailing gear, started and stopped the engine, tested the VHF radio, the radio direction finder, Seascan radar, and the echo sounder. When they’d asked the innumerable and inevitable questions involved in taking over a strange boat, they followed Olufsen down the companion-way to the small saloon. ‘We can talk freely here,’ he said. ‘Any problems?’
‘The inflatable skimmers and outboards?’
‘In their packs in the stern cabin with the skin-diving equipment. There are also two inflatable life rafts. In the orange packs with double white stripes.’ There was no foreign accent now and the word order was normal.
‘Good,’ said Stephen Nunn. ‘The fuel for the outboards? In the engine-room? Red tank on the port side?’
Olufsen raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes. Where I showed you.’
‘The charts?’ said Nunn.
‘Under the table.’ Olufsen pointed to the drawers under the small table in the navigator’s space at the after end of the saloon. ‘Depending on tides and currents you should make Kolhamn within fifteen to twenty hours. You’ll find the courses laid off on chart 2312. That’s for the passage after you reach the Lofoten Wall. From Lille Molla up through Raft Sund to Hadsel Fjord. Then through Sortland Sund and Gavl Fjord to a position off the Anda Light. From there it’s only seventeen miles to Vrakoy.’
‘Pity so much of it’s in the dark.’
‘Yes. The most interesting part. The scenery is superb. Particularly the passage through the Raft Sund.’
Stephen Nunn found the chart. He laid it on the small table. ‘How’s the navigation? Difficult?’
‘You’ll have to watch the currents. They can be fierce. Read up the sailing directions before you get there. They’re in the rack above the chart-table. There are lighthouses and light beacons all the way. You can’t go wrong really, especially with radar. That Seascan has a range of sixteen miles. What there is in the way of wind at the moment is north-west. You’ll be using the engine most of the time.’