For a moment, the prime minister seemed lost for words.
‘What possible relevance does this have today?’ the air vice marshal asked.
‘As I understand it, the technology at the heart of the research is still extremely important,’ Ashmore explained.
‘As you understand it?’ Townscliff said.
‘I’m not a scientist, sir, but we have a team of experts who have been investigating this matter. The CIA are involved and we have been working closely with them.’
‘I see,’ Townscliff said. He brought a hand to his chin. ‘Perhaps it is the Americans’ problem then.’
‘It is a joint matter, sir,’ Wilberforce interjected. ‘We sank
Phoenix
in Norwegian waters in 1954. It was a joint British–American Intelligence operation that
got Grenyov out of Moscow and MI6 has been involved in tracing the location of
Phoenix.
’
Townscliff had his hand up again. ‘Gentlemen, this sounds like the plot to a 1960s B movie. No other way to describe it.’
Wilberforce went to speak, but the PM cut across him. ‘
Ark Royal
must not take
any
pre-emptive action. You understand?’
Ashmore said nothing. Frobisher and Johnson nodded.
‘Understood,’ Frobisher said crisply.
‘I want to be kept informed of everything as it happens; every detail, nothing is too small. This is delicate, very delicate. Could open up a whole bloody can of worms. The last thing we
all need is a major international incident. I’ll have to talk to the White House . . . and the Norwegians. Christ!’
‘Sir?’ It was Seth Wilberforce.
The prime minister settled his gaze on Ashmore’s assistant.
‘Perhaps we haven’t made it clear just how important the document could be.’
‘You don’t need to, young man,’ Townscliff replied. ‘The all-important word in that sentence was “could”.’
North Sea. 9.17 a.m.
Kate looked down at Grenyov’s frozen body. ‘He died from hypothermia. His flesh is well preserved, and that expression – I’ve seen it before in old
photographs from Scott’s expedition.’ Her voice was shaky.
‘You sure you’re OK, Kate?’ Lou asked.
She nodded and swallowed hard. ‘Yes . . . let’s just get on with it.’
They searched the bunk for the attaché case, but there was no sign of it.
‘Give me a hand,’ Lou said, bracing himself by standing on the lower bunk and pushing back on the top bed across the passage a few feet away. Kate reached round and gripped the dead
man’s shoulders. Between them they lowered the corpse to the floor. He was as stiff as a plank.
It was awkward manoeuvring in the narrow space, but they managed to remove the Russian scientist’s clothes, his thick overcoat, threadbare suit, shoes. They opened up the pockets that had
frozen shut, the fabric laced with ice. Finding nothing, Lou removed a knife from the belt of his suit and ripped open the lining of the overcoat. Again nothing.
Lou handed the coat across Grenyov’s body to Kate. She tossed it into the space behind her. Lou was just getting up when they felt the first explosion and the sub juddered. He stumbled
forward, went to grab one of the struts supporting an upper bunk, missed it and crashed onto the body lying on the floor.
‘Mayday, Mayday.’ The sound spilled from their comms, the voice of Commander Ester Lamb. ‘Lou, Kate . . . Mayday, Mayday. Please respond.’
‘
JV3
? Come in, Commander,’ Kate responded.
‘We have a situation on the surface. A Chinese sub has shown up.’
‘Fuck!’ Lou exclaimed.
‘Suggest you abort the mission and get back immediately, over.’
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘Not yet. We haven’t been able to locate the document.’
‘We have a second problem,’ Lamb said. ‘Hull stability . . . Levels are falling.’
‘How bad?’
‘Some parts of the sub are reaching dangerous levels. According to my scans,
Phoenix
has shifted almost five feet inside the rock formation it is caught in. There’s a real
risk of her breaking free. If that happens . . .’
‘Yeah, we get it,’ Lou responded. ‘How long have we got?’
‘It’s impossible to—’
‘Ball park?’
There was a brief silence down the line. The two scientists could hear Lamb’s breath coming fast and loud through the receiver. ‘Five, maybe ten minutes.’
‘OK. The living and operations sections are so small and interconnected, we can get outta here in sixty seconds if we have to. We’ve got to find the document, or it’s all been
a waste of time.’
‘Yes but—’
‘Sorry, Commander.’ Lou clicked off the comms.
‘We’ll have to go through the corpses one by one,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll take these three pairs of bunks, you take those.’ She pointed across the gap. ‘If we
have no luck, we’ll move on to the next set, agreed?’
Lou didn’t answer, just started on the nearest bed.
It was a difficult and extremely unpleasant task. The first two bodies Lou tried were particularly awkward to search, the men had wrapped their arms about themselves in a futile attempt to stave
off the freezing cold. Pulling an arm back, Lou heard the fragile bones snap. Feeling a sudden rush of nausea, he was forced to blank his senses as he shifted from bunk to bunk, from corpse to
corpse until he had finished his three sets.
‘Anything, Kate?’ He turned to see her straighten up from her last body and shake her head. She looked very pale through her visor.
It was the same story for the next set of six, and the six after that.
Kate paused for breath, leaning back on the enamelled steel frame of the end bunk. ‘Nothing,’ she said.
Lou searched through the last body on his side, pulling off the blanket tucked under the corpse, stripping away the coat, two sweaters, a shirt and a thermal vest. He felt around the flesh,
rigid against the gloves of his suit. Finally, he checked the sides of the bunk and under the pillow, running his fingers along an alcove in the wall adjacent to the bed. There he found a Bible and
a photograph of a dark-haired woman in a flowery dress clutching two small children to her legs.
‘Nothing,’ Lou sighed.
A tremor passed through the crew quarters. Kate grasped a steel strut to steady herself as the sub shook from bow to stern. A loud grinding sound stuttered through
Phoenix
, rumbling
around like a thunderclap in their headsets. She lost her grip, stumbled and started to fall back against the nearest bunk. Lou managed to grab her arm. She spun round, slipped and they both
crumpled to the metal floor.
Another burst of sound, louder this time. It ricocheted around the walls. A terrifyingly squeal like a thousand fingernails scraping down a blackboard crashed into their headsets.
‘Kate? Lou? Come in.’ Ester Lamb sounded desperate. ‘You have to get to the PAT.’
Lou dragged himself upright and helped Kate to her feet. ‘You OK?’
She nodded then spoke through her external comms. ‘Commander. How bad?’
‘My sensors are screaming at me! The sub is close to breaking up. You have to—’
‘Understood, Commander. We’re heading back into the control room.’
Kate led the way, pulling herself forward as fast as she could go, using the struts of the bunk beds to help her along. In a moment, they were back in the control area. Taking a side each, they
searched under seats, behind pipes and in every crevice of the sub’s infrastructure. Lou pushed Captain Jacobs’s body to one side and searched around his seat. He could find nothing
resembling papers, or a case of any sort.
‘Shit!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come on.’
Another crunch, a scream of metal grinding against rock. The sub lurched. A steel box came free from its support straps a foot above Lou’s head. It started to shake free.
‘Lou!’ Kate screamed through her comms.
He glimpsed the box and slid aside as it smashed to the floor a foot away.
Gradually the squalling faded, the shaking subsided.
‘Go!’ Lou shouted.
It took only a few seconds to reach the room below the conning tower. They stumbled over to the body of the first dead sailor they had seen. The sub started to rock again.
This time the movement was almost soporific.
‘Kate? Lou? The sub is caught in a resonance wave. The structure won’t hold. The oscillations will keep building . . . Get out . . . Now!’
‘We’re going,’ Kate gasped and dived into the opening of the PAT. ‘Lou . . .’
He looked away, scouring the room.
‘Lou! Now!’
Kate pulled him towards her and crouched down, keeping her eyes on him. Shifting to her left, she started to crawl. Lou lowered himself and swivelled round, to get through the portal. He turned,
cursing with frustration as he scanned the room beneath the conning tower one last time. He saw something.
Bracing herself against the sides of the PAT as it swayed with the movement of the sub, Kate started to move a few feet back towards
JV3.
She glanced back and saw Lou stop, crane his
head and start to move back towards the stricken vessel.
‘No!’ she bellowed through her comms. ‘Lou . . . stop!’
North Sea. 9.30 a.m.
Commander Ester Lamb exhaled heavily, cut the comms and buried her head in her hands. ‘Bloody scientists!’ she hissed.
She had a throbbing headache and a ball of anxiety in her stomach. On her screens she could see parts of
Phoenix
breaking away from the main body of the sub. Along the port side a gash
at least six feet long had appeared. A vortex of water slithering inside the hole flooding the sealed-off chambers towards the stern. The hull could crumble at any moment.
JV3
’s
sensors did not lie.
She pushed the comms button on her control panel. ‘
Gladstone
? Come in,
Gladstone.
’
Nothing but static.
‘
Gladstone
? This is
JV3.
Do you copy?’
Hiss and noise.
‘Damn it!’ She slammed a hand down on the edge of the panel.
A buzzing sound came through the speaker below the monitor. A light shone red, blinked. Lamb ran her fingers over the controls, clicking pads. A small monitor among the LEDs and controls lit up.
A green trace appeared in the top left corner of the screen.
‘What is that?’
Lamb changed the uplink to the external cameras. The image of the
Phoenix
vanished. Two other camera angles flicked on, then off. A third image from the external cameras slid into view.
It showed the seabed and the expanse of water directly behind
JV3.
The commander stared at the screen in disbelief.
‘Good God!’ she breathed, her voice trembling.
‘Sir . . . comms with
JV3
have just gone down.’
Windsor and Derham strode across the bridge of
Gladstone
to a tech at the comms desk.
‘Sir, I’m picking up something,’ a second operative at the deep-sea sonar said.
‘What sort of something?’
‘Look, Captain.’ The man pointed at the flat screen. ‘Just came into range. A mini-submarine.’
‘Sir?’
Windsor spun round towards the comms officer at a control module. ‘The mini-sub has just sent a transmission to the Chinese Shang class submarine on the surface. Must be through a set of
signal boosters.’
‘It was the same transmission code the Shang used to send its warning to us earlier.’
‘What’s the surface comm situation?’ Windsor asked.
The tech fell silent for a few moments as he concentrated on his screen and tapped a series of keys. ‘Yes!’ he declared and turned to Windsor, a small smile on his face.
‘Sir,
Ark Royal
has blocked the Chinese interference.’
‘Blocked their block?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘But still nothing between us and
JV3
?’ Derham said.
The tech turned back to his screen again. ‘No, sir, nothing.’
‘Well it’s something,’ Derham said and turned to Windsor. ‘Perhaps we should talk to the prime minister again, Captain.’
‘Agreed,’ Windsor said. ‘Get me the prime minister’s office.’
‘Sir?’ It was the sonar tech. ‘The unidentified mini-sub is closing in on
JV3.
’
‘Let me see,’ Derham said.
He studied the monitor. ‘How fast is that thing moving?’
The tech typed in parameters. The image shifted, a set of numbers and symbols skittered across the screen.
‘Around thirty knots, Captain. Looks to me like it’s on an attack course.’
Lamb saw the streak of white shimmer across her monitor and a momentary flash of grey as the torpedo passed six yards off
JV3
’s bow, shot past the port side and
came within a whisker of
Phoenix
.
JV3
rocked from the shockwave.
‘Holy . . . !’ Lamb stabbed at the controls and split the view screen so she could see the PAT. She let out an audible sigh of relief. The tunnel was intact.
She threw herself back in her seat and tried
Gladstone
again. ‘Mayday . . . Mayday.’ She had her finger on the comms button but all she could hear was static.
‘Hell!’ She flicked a switch. ‘Mayday . . . Mayday. Lou? Kate? Get out now. We are under attack. Repeat . . . We are under attack.’
North Sea. 9.31 a.m.
‘Captain Windsor, I need precise details.’
The commander of
Gladstone
stared at the screen on the wall of the bridge. It was split into two. On the left was the pale face of the British prime minister, Nigel Townscliff; on the
right Admiral William Hornbee, commander of
Ark Royal.
The bridge of
Gladstone
was preternaturally quiet, the techs and crew concentrating on their screens.
‘As I said, Prime Minister, the enemy vessel has launched a mini-submarine and opened fire on
JV3.
I believe the orders were that
Ark Royal
must not take pre-emptive
action. Is that not correct, Admiral?’
Townscliff cut across the admiral as the man went to speak. ‘When you say opened fire, precisely what does that mean, Captain?’
‘
Phoenix
is extremely delicate,’ Derham interjected. ‘In fact, it is falling apart. The two scientists, Dr Bates and Dr Wetherall are still aboard. The Chinese
mini-sub fired a torpedo across the bow of
Phoenix
, missing it by a few feet. It has destabilized the old vessel even more. That is the
precise
situation . . .’ He looked at
his watch. ‘. . . as of ninety seconds ago.’