The Lucifer Network (26 page)

The gate to the towpath was locked. Sam swiped his card and tugged, slipping through. He clicked the gates behind him just as the knife slashed down, then melted into the darkness of the towpath, telling himself the killer would have a gun, to be used if the blade proved ineffective. He ran, weaving from side to side in anticipation of a bullet. Legs brushing nettles and willow herb, he heard the clang of wrought iron as the Ukrainian climbed the railings, then a light thud as he landed on the path behind him. To his right converted barges glowed with light. Geese honked.

Sam's feet hit rock. He pitched forward, his knees slamming into something hard. Clutching the Hoffmann folder with his left, his right hand felt bricks. He remembered builders had been working on a wall here. He struggled to stay on his feet but the ground rolled away
beneath him. Scaffolding poles. He crashed on his back beside them, his hand grabbing, fingers closing on a pipe that proved mercifully short. The
shpana
loomed above him in the gloom, a faceless shape lunging down with the knife. Sam rolled and swung the pole, enjoying the thump of steel against bone. He heard a gasp and a scrabbling on the ground as the killer looked for his weapon. Sam clambered to his knees, gripping the steel tightly. He jabbed forward into the darkness, heard teeth break and a howl of pain. Then he was running again.

Ahead were the lights of the bridge. Cars passing. Behind him a couple of shots cracked out. The
shpana
was getting desperate. Weaving, he reached the steps to the roadway. A bullet chipped the stonework as he pounded up them, his head tucked below the balustrade. He flagged down the first vehicle that came his way.

‘Stop, for fuck's sake,' he hissed. ‘Get me outa here!'

But he was still holding the scaffolding pole and the car swerved and accelerated. Realising he must look like an escapee from an asylum, he ran across the road and skittered down the steps on the far side of the bridge to a low road running parallel to the river. A glance behind showed no sign of his pursuer. Dumping his weapon in a hedge, he dived into a side street. He knew his way around here and prayed that his assailant wouldn't. Left, then right, then left again and he was on the main road. A bus was disgorging a passenger at a stop thirty paces away. He ran, waving wildly, shouting to it to wait.

‘Thanks, mate,' he panted as he swung himself aboard.

‘Where to?'

‘Anywhere, chum. Absolutely anywhere. Just close that fucking door and drive.'

‘Not until you pay. Where you goin' to?'

Sam restrained his desire to reach for the door lever himself and dug into his pocket for coins. ‘Two stops,'
he croaked, having no clue where the bus was heading. He fired a wild glance over his shoulder.

‘Sixty pence.'

Sam took his ticket and slumped in a seat, conscious of other passengers looking at him. No holes in his body. No blood. A miracle. He began to tremble, the shock catching up with him. For two years he'd lived with the threat of a revenge attack by the Voroninskaya. Now it had happened. And why? Because a pretty but malicious woman had caused his picture to be plastered all over the media.

He leaned his head against the window glass. The dark side of his soul had taken over. No room for compassion any more. He needed to hurt Julie. To hurt her badly in whatever way it took. To damage her life, to perch it on the edge of a precipice in the same way she'd done to his.

DEEP BELOW THE
surface of the Adriatic Sea, some 200 kilometres east of the Italian coastline, a long black shape sped westwards, unseen, unheard and undeclared. HMS
Truculent
– 280 feet of two-inch-thick welded steel, filled with men and electronics – was moving towards a spot on the chart where a helicopter would meet them after dark that evening. The submarine's mission to eavesdrop on the rapidly developing conflict in Kosovo was over and there was a bagful of interception tapes to be offloaded. Inside the nuclear-powered hull, 130 souls had lived in artificial light and scrubbed air for two and a half months. The end was in sight, however. By Friday night they'd be in Crete for some much-needed shore leave with wives and girlfriends, before the long haul back to Britain through the Strait of Gibraltar.

On the uppermost of
Truculent
's three decks, just forward of the control room, five blue-shirted sonar specialists listened on padded headphones to the newly detected clatter of a diesel engine a few miles to the north of their course. The sound room was small. If one man moved, others had to bend their backs. A dozen raster screens filled two sides of the space, the herringbone
patterns and green smudges on their displays logging every detectable sound in the water around them.

One of the two leading artificers manning the ‘waterfall' screens for the bow sonar swung round in his seat. ‘One shaft, three blades, chief.' The youth was little over twenty, his accent from Plymouth,
Truculent
's home port.

Behind him on a tall stool his watch leader nodded. ‘Fishing vessel,' he confirmed, pressing the headset microphone against his lips and clicking the transmit switch. ‘Ops, sonar control.' He spoke in a high, clear voice.

Beyond a thin bulkhead, in the submarine's control room, watch officer Lieutenant Harvey Styles heard the intercom call and swung his seat to face the screens of the Submarine Automated Command System known as SMACS.

‘Bearing zero-five-seven, one shaft, three blades, diesel engine audible,' the sonar controller announced. ‘No evidence of trawl. Suggest small merchant vessel, range outside ten thousand yards.'

‘Thanks, sonar control.'

No threat to them at that range, but one to keep an eye on. Nets were a submariner's nightmare.

‘Cut it through.'

‘
Cut.
Track eight-six-seven.'

A small green square appeared on the SMACS VDU, showing the fishing vessel's position relative to the submarine. A thin line indicated its heading.

‘We have that, sonar. Thanks,' the SMACS chief acknowledged.

‘If he stays on that course we don't have a problem, men,' Styles announced. ‘But if he comes any further south to catch his squid then I can't promise to stay friends with him.' They were due at periscope depth in twenty minutes to receive a scheduled radio broadcast.

Harvey Styles was the submarine's Tactical Systems Officer, a short, broad-shouldered man in a sand-coloured shirt with a fuzz of fair hair and brown eyes. As he crossed to the navigator's station to check the chart, he spotted the captain emerging from his cabin.

‘We've got a fishing vessel at more than ten thousand yards, sir, on green zero-five-seven.'

Commander Talbot nodded and strode over to the command seat.

‘I don't see any conflict at this stage, sir,' said Styles, following him.

‘Thanks, TSO.'

Truculent
's captain was a stocky, dark-haired man with a deceptively mild expression, who wore a white, open-necked shirt with his rank insignia on his shoulders. Talbot let his gaze wander round the control room. Millions of pounds of electronics were packed in here, controlled by men whose minds were beginning to cloud with testosterone in anticipation of the upcoming ‘run ashore'. Brains in going-home mode could easily lose concentration. They needed to know he was watching them. He stared hard at the Command System screens, breathing down the necks of the operators. Then he stood up again.

‘You have the submarine, TSO.'

‘I have the submarine, sir.'

Talbot made his way forward past the conning tower access hatch and into the sound room.

‘Let me hear what you've got,' he announced, clamping on a pair of headphones.

The bow sonar operator swung the beams through the three main targets on the screens.

‘The heavy beat is the US carrier the
Theodore
Roosevelt,
sir,' the sonar controller told him. ‘Ten miles to the south. The louder three-blader's a small merchant vessel heading
for Dubrovnik and the lighter beat's the fisherman to the north of us.'

HMS
Truculent
was a ‘special fit' Trafalgar class submarine, whose primary role was intelligence gathering. She had experimental sonar processors on board as well as a sophisticated signals intercept suite.

Talbot removed the headphones. ‘You all happy bunnies in here?'

CPO Smedley eased round on his stool and slipped his own cans halfway towards the back of his head.

‘Shall be, sir, so long as I trap in Souda at the weekend.'

‘Shouldn't worry, chief. You usually do.' Smedley had a reputation for finding women ready to perform for him. ‘The wife's not coming out, then?' he needled.

‘Hates flying, sir,' Smedley answered, poker-faced.

Talbot suppressed a smile. ‘Just watch out for that ouzo,' he cautioned. No one drank alcohol on board, but they all made up for it on a run ashore.

He left the sound room, stepping into the tiny ‘trials shack' opposite, where the men from GCHQ did their stuff, huddled over scanners and frequency analysers, picking the interesting bits out of ‘enemy' radio transmissions. For most of the mission
Truculent
had loitered at periscope depth a short distance from the Yugoslav coast, with her highly sensitive domed intercept mast poking above the surface. All transmissions picked up that were deemed significant had been taped for shipment to Cheltenham and a more detailed analysis. The last batch was packed up ready for the rendezvous with the helicopter in a few hours' time.

There were six GCHQ specialists on board, each with a knowledge of Russian and Serbo-Croat. For much of the past two months they'd manned their scanners around the clock, but at this moment just one of them was
in the trials shack. Communications Technician Arthur Harris sat on a padded bench with a map spread out on his knees.

‘What're you up to, Chief Harris?' Talbot demanded. ‘Your war's meant to be over.'

‘Planning my next summer holiday, sir,' the CT answered without a moment's hesitation. Then he stood up, holding out the sheet of paper. ‘Actually, to be honest, I was hoping for one last bite of the cherry.' He pointed to an island marked on the map, which was a large-scale sheet of the Adriatic coast. ‘When we come up to periscope depth for the broadcast, sir, we'll be about fifteen miles south of Lastovo island. There's a naval base there. Just a small one, but I'd be glad of the chance to listen in.'

‘Don't want to dick around here for long,' Talbot warned him. ‘Mustn't be late for the budgie.'

‘Twenty minutes would be better than nothing, sir.'

‘I'll see what I can do.' He turned towards the door, then hesitated. ‘Oh, just a thought. If you happen across any cricket scores when you're listening in, do pass them on.' It was an old joke, wearing a little thin at this end of the tour.

‘Certainly will, sir.'

Talbot stepped back into the control room. They were cruising at fifteen knots at a depth of eighty metres, halfway between the surface and the sea bed. In a few minutes he would slow down and bring the boat shallower, ready for the raising of the periscope and radio mast – and now the intercept mast too.

Arthur Harris folded his map, deciding to fetch a smaller-scale sheet which showed all the known telecommunications sites on the Adriatic islands. He walked briskly through the control room, down the companionway to 2 deck and along the passageway leading forward. As he passed the galley he caught a whiff of pastry baking.

A few paces short of the forward bunk spaces where the junior rates had their berths, an open hatch gave onto a ladder down to the ‘bomb shop', the weapons compartment that had been the living quarters for himself and the other CTs for the past ten weeks. He swung himself onto the rungs, taking care not to bang his head on the hatch handle, and dropped down to the deck below. Long black Spearfish torpedoes and Harpoon anti-ship missiles lay strapped on racks behind the polished brass caps of the launch tubes. Some of the weapons bays were empty, however, fitted instead with bunk pallets. Feet protruded from a couple of them. In the gangway between the weaponry were boxes of spares and recording tapes for the myriad sensors on board. One of them contained the CTs' maps and manuals. To get at it Harris had to remove two others.

He was of average height with a thick shock of dark hair and a narrow, expressionless face. He was unmarried, though not by choice, but at sea he invented a wife to deter comments from the more homophobic senior rates.

He glanced up. Feet were descending from the deck above. They belonged to a young, dark-haired sailor whose pretty-boy looks prompted regular ribbing from some of the older men. The youth's name was Griffiths. Not more than eighteen, Harris reckoned.

‘Sorry to disturb you, chief. Got to clean the place.' Griffiths spoke softly so as not to disturb those sleeping.

‘That's all right. I'll be gone in a moment.'

Harris reached the box he was looking for and opened the lid. The orderliness with which he and his team had begun their mission had rather fallen apart. There was even an old paperback in there that he'd finished reading a week ago.

‘What's the book, chief?' Griffiths had come up beside
him as he made his way to the aft end of the compartment looking for anything on the deck that shouldn't be there.

‘Clive Cussler. It was okay.'

‘Never get the time, me,' Griffiths complained. ‘Only reading I do is manuals. I've got a promotion exam when I get back to England.'

‘Good luck with it.'

‘Thanks.'

Griffiths moseyed on down to the end of the compartment, then finding nothing amiss made his way back to the torpedo tubes and began rubbing their brass caps with a cloth. Harris remembered hearing that the lad had got some girl pregnant back in Plymouth and was intending to do the decent thing. Married at eighteen. The thought of so much responsibility so young made him shudder.