Skydancer (28 page)

‘I quite understand.'

Alec was startled by the other's conciliatory tone.

‘You mean you agree?'

‘Utterly. Nothing must be allowed to compromise the success of this operation.' Black oozed sincerity.

‘But upstairs they were
insisting
. . .'

‘Just a little misunderstanding. There'll be no surveillance, I promise you.'

John Black stood up and extended his hand.

‘Good-bye Mr Anderson, and good luck!'

Reluctantly Alec shook the offered hand, but had no idea whether the security man had been telling the truth.

Black took a last lungful of smoke, crushed the cigarette on to the lid of his ashtray, and shredded the stub between his fingers.

Buxton and Beckett were waiting for Peter Joyce when he returned to the sixth floor. Both looked worried.

‘Did Black manage to sort that out?' Sir Marcus asked.

‘I didn't stay to see,' Peter responded.

‘He'll let us know if he's got any problems, I'm sure,' the field-marshal soothed.

‘Now, look here, Joyce,' Sir Marcus said hurriedly. ‘I think we'd better clarify
your
position a bit. Officially, you're still suspended on full pay pending a security enquiry, but that's pretty impractical in the circumstances. You're right in the middle of this business and . . . well, your uncovering of Anderson was pretty sharp, let's face it.

‘So, the Defence Secretary has authorised me to lift
your suspension as of this morning, and the fact that it occurred will be struck from the record. That's not the end of the matter, however. There will still be an enquiry into your disregard of security procedures, and your reinstatement today will not prejudice the outcome of that. But you can forget about the suspension.'

‘Thank you,' Peter answered non-committally.

‘Right. Well, I'll leave you to it.' Beckett rubbed his hands, and left the room.

Field-Marshal Buxton lowered himself into the large chair behind his desk.

‘Now, Peter. About the missile test. I've decided it'll take place this afternoon,' he announced, ‘
if
they can get their act together down in the Atlantic. But they've got a spy to deal with first.'

Carrying a brown leather briefcase marked with his monogram, Alec Anderson walked along the Embankment until he came to the pair of telephone boxes described to him by Karl Metzger. The briefcase had been a rather ostentatious present from Janet several Christmasses ago. He did not normally take it to work, preferring the more anonymous black variety supplied by the MOD; but he had chosen the brown bag today because it did not immediately identify him as a civil servant.

He looked at his wristwatch again, even though he had already studied it just seconds ago. It was still only five to twelve.

The closest of the two kiosks was the one where he had been told to expect the midday call. He cursed silently: it was occupied. Of course, it would be! A large, fat black woman seemed in no hurry to finish her conversation.

Alec slackened his pace and tried to look relaxed. Pretending to have lost his way, he turned his head as if looking for street names. He was searching for faces, though, for any sign of anyone deliberately watching him. A shiver ran down his spine; he felt so exposed.

In the distance Big Ben began to chime the preamble to the hour. Still there was no sign of the black woman ending her chat. She saw him waiting and pointed to the other box.

‘Doesn't work,' Alec mouthed.

What would they do? What would happen if they could not get through to him at noon? A harsh wind off the Thames chilled the sweat gathering under his armpits.

‘Arl right now,' the black woman smiled at him, exposing broad gaps in her teeth. ‘Sahry now to be so long.' She squeezed her way out of the phone-box, pulled her coat tight, and bustled away towards an underground station.

Alec hurried into the kiosk, recoiling from the smell of potato chips. A greasy paper bag lay on the floor. Opening the door again with his shoulder, he kicked it into the street. Almost immediately a man in an anorak occupied the booth next to him; a woman with a small child waited outside. He lifted the receiver, trying to conceal the fact that his fingers were holding down the rest.

His heart pounded and the sound of his anxious breathing seemed amplified by the confines of the booth.

At the first hint of a ring, he lifted his finger, and recited the number of the telephone.

The voice that answered him was not one he recognised.

‘Is that the Stock Exchange?' a man asked. He had the hint of an accent.

‘No. It's the Maid's Head public house and we're closed,' Alec answered, reciting the code that Metzger had instructed him to use.

‘Listen carefully,' the voice continued. ‘Walk to Charing Cross Station. Go in from the Strand. Just inside on the left is a row of phone booths. Use the third from the right. I'll call you there in ten minutes. Got that?'

‘Yes. I . . .'

There was a click, then the dialling tone. Frantically Alec tried to remember exactly what he had been told.

He looked at his watch again. He had ten minutes.

It took less than five to walk to Charing Cross, but he stopped at several shop windows and looked round furtively to see if he was being followed.

He located the row of telephone boxes without difficulty. Third from the right – that was what the man had said. It was unoccupied. Lucky this time!

He quickly stepped into the booth and studied the directories while waiting for the call. At precisely twelve-fifteen the phone rang.

‘Stock Exchange?' the voice asked again.

‘Still the Maid's Head,' Alec replied.

‘What's your name?'

‘Anderson. What's yours?' he demanded with sudden boldness.

There was a snort of laughter at the other end.

‘In front of you there is a shelf,' the voice continued. ‘Put your hand under it. Do you feel something?'

‘There's something stuck here. Something metal.'

‘Correct. It's the key to a left-luggage locker. Do you have it now?'

Anderson peeled the sellotape from under the shelf and held the key in his hand.

‘Yes. It's here.'

‘Pick up a small suitcase from the locker. Take it to the gents' toilet. Go into a cubicle and look inside the case. There will be instructions to tell you what to do next.'

‘But when do I . . .?'

The line went dead.

Anderson backed away from the phone. Sudden panic set his stomach churning. Perhaps the suitcase was a bomb? Were they trying to kill him?

Calm down, he told himself. Where were the left-luggage lockers anyway? Breathe slowly.

The station looked enormous. One or two people in the lunchtime crowd were staring at him – or was it his imagination? Suddenly he felt certain: someone
was
watching him.

The man on the phone, could he be here at the station? Was he being controlled by someone he could actually see?

Quiet, he told himself. Keep cool! Find that bloody luggage locker and get on to the next clue in this paper-chase!

It was twenty yards away, clearly marked with a sign. He started to walk, stifling an instinct to run.

The key slid stiffly into the lock, and the door sprang open. Inside was a maroon overnight bag.

Alec selected a cubicle at the far end of the row in the gents'. He flushed the lavatory in case anyone was listening, then sat on the seat.

The case had a zip-fastener which he undid slowly, covering the sound by clearing his throat.

Inside were a shirt, a pair of pyjamas, a washbag and shaving kit, and a large brown envelope. What the hell . . .?

With shaking hands he slit open the envelope and
emptied out a British passport in the name of W.J. Allenby. He opened it and saw that the photograph inside was of himself.

There was a British Airways ticket issued in the same name, for a flight to West Berlin leaving Heathrow at three-fifteen that afternoon.

Berlin! The handover was to be in Berlin! Oh God! He would be entirely at their mercy there! A sense of dread began to overwhelm him.

A typewritten list of instructions told him to travel to Heathrow airport on the underground immediately. He must make no attempt to inform anyone where he was going. When he reached Berlin he should take a taxi to Friedrichstrasse, and cross over into the East. He would be expected.

Oh God, oh God, oh God! Suppose they held him there until they checked the Skydancer plans? Suppose they decided the blueprints were fakes? They'd kill him, wouldn't they? Torture him first perhaps?

Anderson gulped. He had to control himself, get a grip!

He opened the passport again. It looked a perfect forgery. There was money in the envelope too, pounds sterling and West German marks. There was even an underground ticket to the airport. They had thought of everything.

The man in the anorak watched Anderson come out of the gents' toilets, and walk towards the underground station. He watched him pause by a tube-map to check his route. His own instructions had been very strict, to follow at a good distance at all times. Anderson must never guess that he was being watched. Any moment, though, things could get very tricky.

He flashed a pass, and followed Anderson through the barrier towards the escalators, keeping fifty yards behind. Right behind Anderson, he noticed a man in a dark blue overcoat glance over his shoulder and look around with professional thoroughness. Anderson had collected a minder, though he did not know it yet. The next part would be a matter of luck.

A thundering in the tunnel as he reached the bottom of the escalator told him that luck was on Anderson's side that day. He walked as fast as he dared, but was well behind the two men, who were already on the platform as the train came in.

The doors hissed open and shut again. Shit! He had blown it! From inside the carriage the figure in the blue coat looked out with ice-cold eyes. The edge of his mouth turned up slightly in a mocking smile.

The MI5 man cursed. John Black was not going to be happy.

When the signaller came hurrying to his cabin, clutching a sheet from his note-pad, Commander Carrington breathed a sigh of relief. They had spent the weekend idling in the depths, successfully avoiding their Soviet shadow, and waiting with growing impatience for orders to proceed with the missile launch.

The signal received on the VLF circuit from England consisted of just three words in code. Carrington dismissed the signaller, then spun the combination lock on the wall-safe and opened it to pull out his manual for codes of the day.

It took just a minute to translate the message, and he stared at it in surprise. This was
not
what he expected. What he had hoped for was a command giving the time and place of launch and the co-ordinates of the target
area. Instead Northwood was instructing him to push his satellite terminal above the waves to receive a lengthy message from HQ. Carrington cursed. This could give away his position to the Russians.

By using burst-transmissions at predetermined times, large amounts of data could be transmitted in a few seconds, but even that could be long enough for a Soviet radar satellite over the Atlantic to pick up a minute reflection from their mast, and to report back the location of the sighting to Moscow and to any Soviet ships in the vicinity.

Carrington looked at his watch. They would have to close with the surface and push their antenna above it in just fifteen minutes.

In the control room, he checked with the navigator and the sonar operator to make sure the
Retribution
would be well away from other shipping when the satellite link-up took place. Then he ordered the long, trailing VLF aerial to be wound in, to prevent it fouling the propeller when they were just below the surface.

In the navigation centre next to the control room, he checked the time with the atomic clock whose accuracy ensured that the submarine and HQ could synchronise their actions perfectly. He made a small adjustment to his own watch.

‘Right, officer of the watch! Bring her up to periscope depth,' he ordered when the moment came.

At the engineering control panel, hands reached up to open valves. Pumps began to hum and hiss as the buoyancy was adjusted to keep the boat just below the surface.

‘Periscope depth, sir!' the coxswain reported.

‘Up periscope!' Carrington called, and the shiny tube slid upwards from the floor of the control room.

He pressed his eyes to the rubber cups, gripped the
focusing handles, and carefully scanned the horizon.

There was a light swell, but not another vessel to be seen anywhere.

The periscope hissed back into the floor.

Carrington watched the second-hand.

‘Up satcom!' he ordered. There were thirty seconds to go to their deadline.

Just two minutes later the antenna was lowered again and Carrington instructed the officer of the watch to return the submarine to the depths and to head away from the area, back towards the sector from where they expected to launch the missile.

The radio operator ripped the long sheet of paper from the teleprinter. The message was in full code.

‘For your eyes only, sir.'

Back in his cabin, Carrington set to work again with his code books. This time he knew it would take him a good quarter of an hour.

But within minutes he realised he was translating the most staggering message he had ever received.

So it began. Carrington stared in disbelief at the words and ripped a page of the code-book in his eagerness to translate the full signal.

At last it was done. It revealed that Simpson had telephoned England and talked about the secret visit to
Retribution
by the Aldermaston scientists, information which had subsequently found its way into the hands of Soviet intelligence. It was incredible!