Shadow Hunter (16 page)

For a moment her face didn't move. Then she frowned.

‘Would you mind saying that again?'

Andrew began to explain. The Admiral had told him to tell her only what was necessary for her to form a medical opinion.

‘This is utterly confidential. I can't give you all the details, but the blunt facts are these; the CO in question discovered his wife had been regularly unfaithful while he was away. That was bad enough, but then he found out one of her lovers was a Soviet agent.'

‘Wow!'

‘And it's beginning to look as if he's decided to get his own back on the Russians, using the weapons on his submarine.'

‘Crikey!'

His words had shaken her out of her morning stupor.

‘But that's appalling! Surely he'll be stopped by his crew.'

‘Yes, but only if the other officers can see something's wrong and do something about it. That's why I'm here. I'm hoping you can give us some idea of how he'll be behaving down there.'

‘I see.' She looked flustered. She'd never met a situation like this before. ‘You'd better start again. Tell me what you know, from the beginning.'

As she listened, she took a note from time to time, usually just a single word to jog her memory.

‘It's difficult without knowing the man himself. What you've described is a tragically common state of affairs. Infidelity is part of the human condition, and when the offended partner finds out about it, the effects can be devastating. It can tip someone over the edge into doing something wild, but that's usually a spur-of-the-moment thing. If I understand you correctly, you suspect that this man has planned some quite elaborate revenge. That implies a certain rationality – an irrational rationality, if you follow me.'

‘Er . . , not altogether.'

‘Let me explain. The initial reaction to marital breaks is the obvious one – anger and despair. That can lead to a depression which can become clinical – a sense of helplessness, loss of self-esteem, crying, physical disorders, thoughts of suicide. Now, if that's what your man is going through, it should be obvious to the other officers on board. He'll be unusually irritable, off his food, and
above all indecisive. What sort of a CO is he, by the way? Easy-going or a stickler for discipline?'

‘Definitely the latter, I would say. Not the most popular of captains. Gets the respect of his crew, but not their affection.'

‘Pity. That'll make it more difficult for his first lieutenant. If he was a more relaxed type, his irritability would be more obvious. But it's odd. I'd expect a man like that to stick to the rules, whatever his personal problems. He might even find some comfort in the familiarity of discipline and order. Yet he's not doing that, you say. He's scrapped the rule book and taken matters into his own hands. He faces a court-martial for what he's doing, and if he does something nasty to the Russians, he's risking his own life and those of his crew and a great deal else besides. That suggests something much more serious than depression. He may be psychotic – unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. But again, that should be pretty obvious to his junior officers . . .'

She was thinking aloud, tapping one end of her ballpoint on the pad, turning it over and tapping it again.

‘Tell me more about him. I don't have a picture of the man yet. I'd get his file from the registry, but it's too early in the morning.'

‘He's a year younger than me, and I'm forty. We trained at Dartmouth together – shared a cabin. He worries; always thought I had the edge on him because I'd spent a year in the big, wide world before joining up, even though I'd only driven a delivery van most of that time.

‘Anyway, he'd come straight from school. A bit unworldly, I suppose; still is. Nervous of women, very few girlfriends before he met Sara. Certainly prefers the company of men, so he should be well suited stuck in a steel tube for months at a time!'

‘Latent homosexual perhaps?' she asked casually.

‘Oh, no. I don't think so. We slept in the same room for nearly a year; I just don't think he's very interested in sex.'

Commander Felicity Rush knew that no man was
uninterested in sex and wrote down the words ‘acute sexual repression' followed by a question mark.

‘Are his parents still alive?'

‘I seem to remember his father died when Philip was a kid. He was in the Navy, also a submariner. His boat disappeared up north, somewhere. I'm not sure they ever discovered what happened.'

‘How old was Philip when that happened?'

‘Don't know. Quite young, I think.'

‘That's very interesting. A tragic loss in childhood can sensitize you; if you face something similar later you can react much more dramatically than normal. What about his mother?'

‘I don't know anything about her. He never mentioned her. Funny, that. Used to talk of “going home”, but never said who was there.'

‘What about his work? He's respected as a commanding officer, you said; what's his attitude towards the Soviets?'

‘Pretty sceptical, like most of us. Thinks they're a devious bunch of opportunists. Come to think of it, he's harder than most. Rants and raves in high glee when they get caught out.'

‘So he hates the Russians?'

‘Well, yes. He probably does.'

She arched her eyebrows and sat back, arms folded.

‘All I can say is that you'd better stop him. And soon.'

‘That may not be so easy. But that's why I want your advice. If we can get close enough to
Truculent
I'll try to talk to him – by underwater telephone. But if I say something wrong, I could make things worse.'

‘Whatever you say may be wrong, as far as he's concerned. Look; if his mental disorder were just the result of a broken marriage, either he'd have had an emotional breakdown, which would be obvious to his crew, or he'd have come to his senses and given up any daft idea of revenge. Since neither of those things has happened, apparently, I can only assume he may have some sort of psychopathic condition, that's been dormant up to now.'

‘Phil? A psychopath? That's ridiculous!'

‘A psychopath isn't just someone going berserk with a
meat cleaver,' she explained. ‘It's to do with attitudes. I'm sure Philip knows that launching an attack on the Russians is morally wrong, yet if he can't resist doing it, that's psychopathic. Such a person would be unaffected by anything you said to him. No. Your best bet is to talk to his first lieutenant. Tell him to relieve his captain of command.'

Andrew let out a deep sigh. The task ahead looked increasingly complicated.

Commander Rush suddenly leaned forward, elbows on the desk, her green eyes earnest.

‘Suppose that doesn't work. What will you do then?' she asked.

Andrew looked away. He had always had an irrational fear of psychiatrists, that they could read his thoughts.

‘That's something I haven't dared contemplate,' he lied.

* * *

A black Mercedes turned into Horseguards Parade, and stopped at the rear entrance to the Foreign Office. The driver showed a pass to the policeman in the sentry box, who peered into the back of the car, recognized the passenger and waved the vehicle on.

The driver swung the wheel to the right and let the limousine roll easily up to the Ambassadors' entrance. The Sovier diplomat got out, glancing sideways towards Downing Street, conscious that it was there his message was directed.

A junior official received him on the steps and led him to the Foreign Secretary who had just returned from his monthly breakfast with the Diplomatic Press Corps.

Twenty minutes later the ambassador had delivered his protest about ‘Ocean Guardian', and was back outside. He paused briefly for a news agency photographer to take his picture. Then the Mercedes sped him back to Kensington Palace Gardens.

* * *

12 Noon [0900 GMT].

The Kremlin, Moscow.

The news, that Monday morning, was not good. The Soviet leader could see the abyss opening before him. Strikes were spreading and he was in the throes of reimposing full censorship on the media to prevent the situation snowballing out of control.

‘
Perestroika
came too late for our people,' Nikolai Savkin muttered, half to himself, half to Foreign Minister Vasily Kalinin. The General Secretary had summoned Kalinin to his private office deep inside the Kremlin walls.

‘Thirty years too late, maybe. Too many generations have been taught by the Party to believe the State will do everything, and that they, the people, need do nothing.'

‘Such despair is not in your character, Nikolai,' Kalinin soothed. ‘All is not lost; and don't allow yourself to think so.'

Savkin laughed self-deprecatingly. He knew he was the wrong man for the job. He silently cursed the Aeroflot mechanic whose carelessness allegedly caused the tragic and untimely death of his predecessor in a plane crash. Personally he'd always suspected the KGB had a hand in it.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had been in a different league from himself. He'd had the personality of a giant; if he were still alive the strikes would be short-lived. He'd have stormed onto the factory floors and argued the toss with the workers. If Savkin tried that tactic himself they'd spit on him.

Then there was the minority problem. Armenians, Latvians, Tartars; all were using the new freedom of expression under
glasnost
to voice the grievances of forty years. The KGB had played it cleverly; opposed to the new openness, they'd let the regional protests get out of control, so the politicians would be humiliated and have to turn to them to sort out the mess.

His control of the Politburo was on a knife edge; the
small majority still supporting his reformist views was being whittled away. He could only retain their support by buckling to pressure for the
perestroika
programme to be further diluted.

There were those in the Politburo who'd proclaimed their commitment to his predecessor's ideas, but without the man himself to hold the line now the going was tough, they'd begun to distance themselves from the policies. They had the rest of their lives to think of; if
perestroika
collapsed, and the old system of economic feather-bedding returned, Savkin thought, holding on to their jobs would be their number-one priority. Without the privileges that went with their status, life wouldn't be worth living in the chaos that followed.

He tugged at the bushy, white hair at his temples, then beat at his head with his knuckles, as if to drum sense into it.

‘You're right, Vasily. I'm thinking like a defeated man. And if I think like one, soon I'll act like one. You must stop me.'

Kalinin was more than a foreign minister; he was also Savkin's oldest friend, an ally whose loyalty he believed he could count on for ever. A curious choice for a foreign minister, many thought; Kalinin had never travelled outside the Soviet Union before taking up his appointment. Yet he had an insight into the thinking of western leaders that Savkin found remarkably astute, all the more valuable because Savkin had little insight of his own.

It was Kalinin who had had the original idea of using the threat from the West as a goad to keep the Soviet economy on course for modernization. Previous regimes had used the fear of attack from abroad to tighten belts at home. What had been done before could be done again. The armada of Western warships currently on course for the Kola Peninsula provided just the threat that was needed.

‘You know the irony of our plan, Nikolai?' Kalinin grimaced. ‘
Perestroika
is meant to curb the military budget and redirect funds to consumer goods. But if we make too much of the military threat from NATO, our beloved
generals will be demanding the expansion of their arsenals again!'

‘It's already happened. Admiral Grekov was here last night. Says he needs more ships to match the NATO navies.'

‘I hope you told the Comrade Admiral he was pissing into the wind?'

‘Yes . . . but not in those words. Something a little more refined. But tell me, what's the latest from Washington? Are they tugging at the bait?'

‘It's too early to say. The predictable reactions have already occurred. Half a dozen Republican senators and the media have been raging about a new threat from Cuba. But McGuire hasn't commented yet. Our ambassador has been given a flat denial that the American helicopters posed any sort of threat to the
Rostov,
and the administration has had nothing at all to say about the MiGs.'

‘And Castro?'

‘He'll play ball. He's desperate for the aid we've promised him.'

‘Is McGuire clever enough to know what's happening?'

‘He knows little of life outside Middle America, so he takes advice. Tom Reynolds is the one he'll be listening to. And Tom's a cautious man. “Take no action until you have to” is his motto. They may be waiting to see what we do next.'

‘And what will that be, I wonder,' Savkin ruminated. ‘Every day that passes, the bigger the distraction needed to jolt our people back into line.'

‘The Department of Naval Aviation is taking the television teams out this morning. Their film should be on
Vremya
tonight, and on the American networks. And Admiral Grekov is holding a press conference this afternoon for the foreign journalists.

‘He'll condemn NATO strategy, call it provocative and dangerous. He can be pretty aggressive when provoked. And what he says is sure to get the American TV reporters on their hind legs baying at him. He'll call on NATO to abandon their exercise. By the end of the day the West'll be digging its heels in.

‘Our own television will of course present the press conference in its true light: Grekov – the voice of reason; the American press – the hyenas of the West ready to bite into the soft and vulnerable throat of Russia. By the end of the day no one should be in any doubt there's a crisis.'