Since he could not tell them these things he persisted with the denials. No, Krasnov had never done or said anything which could possibly have suggested defection. At least, reflected Gerasov, that was true. Krasnov had at no time hinted at defection.
Within an hour the inquiry had been completed. Gerasov was placed under close arrest and informed that he would be sent for court martial on Zhukov’s arrival in Murmansk. Milovych was leaving no stone unturned in his search for a scapegoat. If he couldn’t implicate the captain, at least he could Gerasov.
During the afternoon Gerasov told the seaman on armed guard outside his cabin that he wished to visit the lavatory. When after some time he had not returned, the seaman gave the alarm and the door was forced. The sub-lieutenant was found hanging from a lamp bracket in the deckhead, his braces round his neck.
While Milovych was relieved to learn of this development, which he took to be an admission of guilt, he was disappointed that the sub-lieutenant had evaded a court martial. Before a naval court, in those circumstances, Milovych felt he could have done much to protect his own position.
In the early hours of morning there was considerable activity by Soviet naval units north-west of Vrakoy. It was through these waters that Bluewhale and Rockfish were travelling, now some twenty miles apart.
Both submarines had gone deep and had picked up at long range two fast-moving surface contacts approaching from the south-west. In due course they heard the new contacts’ sonar transmissions and propeller noises and independently identified the sound signatures as those of Kashin class destroyers. It was cold comfort to the submarines’ captains to recall that these Soviet guided-missile destroyers were equipped with anti-submarine homing rockets and VLR search sonar. There was no real danger that Soviet units would attack NATO submarines at sea in international waters in peacetime. But the consciences of Bluewhale and Rockfish’s captains — and certain of their passengers — were by no means clear and this tended to blur the truth: that it was not unusual for anti-submarine units of either side to hound each others’ submarines and use them as ‘targets for exercise’ whenever they found them. On the contrary, what was in the captains’ minds was the old and recurrent fear of NATO submariners: that Soviet surface vessels might fire A/S homing rockets ‘for exercise’ and protest ignorance of submarines in the area if called to account.
Before long, however, tension was relieved by the appearance on the submarines’ sonar screens of more fast-moving contacts. These proved by their sound signatures to be three of the US Navy’s Belknap guided-missile frigates. From their behaviour it was evident they intended to remain in close company with the Kashin destroyers for whom they were more than a match. The submarine captains knew that the Belknaps would already have Bluewhale and Rockfish on their sonar screens and have identified them as NATO units.
It became evident shortly afterwards that helicopters from both sides had joined in the fun for the submarines picked up dunked sonar buoy transmissions and found by computer comparison that they were those of both the United States and Soviet Navies.
At daylight the Soviet destroyers had evidently had enough for they disappeared in a south-westerly direction, accompanied by their helicopters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At noon course was altered to the south-west.
A light wind from the north had dispersed the fog. The day was fine, the sky an abstract of blues and whites, the sea calm above the undulations of a long swell.
Bluewhale, still submerged, had travelled a hundred and twenty miles to the north-west since picking up Krasnov and the Liang Huis. By mid-afternoon, in company with Belligerent and Aries, she had arrived in area GVF. Soon afterwards Belligerent made the executive signal for Phase Two of Kilo Zulu. Outward signs of the exercise were the constantly-changing dispositions of the surface ships, a surge in the volume of radio traffic, and increased activity by helicopters which executed complicated search patterns, often hovering close to the surface, tell-tale cables leading down like umbilical cords to dunked sonar buoys. The centre of all this, the target for the ASW scientists in Aries, was understood to be Bluewhale.
What was happening in Aries’ laundry in the stern of the ship was known only to her captain and the Portland boffins. Like them, he knew a number of other things the ship’s company didn’t know. For example, that McGhee, the chief scientist, was the same Superintendent McGhee of the Special Branch who’d been at the Zhukov briefing in the Surrey farmhouse, and that Krasnov had been given the cover name of NORTON for the purposes of Daisy Chain.
When darkness fell, weather still fine, sea calm, the submarine and its consorts were two hundred and fifty miles south-west of Vrakoy.
At eight o’clock Bluewhale surfaced. Belligerent was in sight but Aries, twenty miles to the south, was well below the horizon. A few minutes later the approach of Belligerent’s helicopter was reported to the submarine’s bridge. Bill Boyd ordered the first-lieutenant to stand by to transfer survivors. Krasnov, recovering from heavy sedation but able to walk with assistance, eyes still covered by the head bandage beneath which his ears were plugged, was taken up to the casing with the Liang Huis, Hamsov and Brough. All wore orange life-jackets. The first-lieutenant, a petty officer and two seamen accompanied them.
It was cold and dark under a clouded sky as the submarine, running at slow speed on main diesels, rolled gently to the swell, all that remained of the recent north-westerly gale. They heard the jet engines before the winking lights showed up in the distance and there was a stir amongst the little party on the casing when the first-lieutenant called out, ‘There she is. Fine on the port quarter.’ As it approached, the helicopter’s landing lights came on, illuminating a moving circle of sea beneath it.
The first-lieutenant signalled with neon-lit orange wands and the helicopter closed in, its rotor blades shimmering in reflected light, the noise of the jets and the beat of the rotors transcending all other sounds as it stationed itself on the port quarter. The neon wands waved again and the Wessex V crabbed in sideways, hovering above the casing. A line was lowered, helping hands slipped Tanya Liang Hui into the harness and she was winched up; Krasnov, Li Liang Hui, Brough and Hamsov followed in quick succession. The wands were waved once more and the helicopter lifted to swing away in a sharp turn to port.
The little blip on Bluewhale’s radar screen moved purposefully towards the bigger blip which was Belligerent where it was finally swallowed. The radar operator watching the screen then knew that the Wessex V had landed on the assault ship. Soon afterwards another small blip broke away from Belligerent and travelled southwards until it, too, merged with a larger blip and disappeared. He knew then that it had reached Aries. What he didn’t know was that in the course of its brief visit to Belligerent no one had left the helicopter. It had crouched on the flight deck, rotors turning, lights flashing, until it took off a few minutes later and made for Aries.