Adam Hall: Northlight

Cummings studied his hands again, and took longer this time to speak. 'I've thought about it quite a lot, Madam Prime Minister, as we all have. From my experience as an ex-submariner, and as an observer of the Soviet thought processes in East-West relations and diplomacy, I do in point of fact have a feeling — quite a strong feeling — that what really happened in the Barents Sea was that the SSN Cetacea was not detected by the Soviets until she was close to the twelve-mile limit, and was at once attacked by a sonar-guided torpedo — or perhaps several. And I believe that no warning was given because the Soviets were taken by surprise, and thought the submarine was within their territorial waters, offering a distinct threat.'

'You mean there was no time — as in the case of the Korean Airlines disaster — for orders to be requested from higher authority before action was taken by a local commander?'

'Quite so. I'd say that the element of surprise was inevitably involved, even of panic on the part of some young naval shore-defence officer.'› 'Or simply over-zealousness? Ambition in the line of duty?'

'What we're trying to say,' the foreign secretary cut in heavily, 'is that someone blundered.'

It was gone midnight before the PM broached the real issue I'd been brought here to listen to.

'I'm glad to have had your expert opinions, gentlemen, on what is in itself a matter of grave and tragic proportions, affecting the personal lives of so many Americans, and the already critical relationship between the two great powers and their allies. But as I'm sure you've realized, what we are here to discuss is the appalling threat this incident has brought to the summit meeting that was to have taken place in less than two months from now in Vienna.'

Half an hour before we'd been moved into another room, where there were sofas and deep armchairs; a huge silver tea-tray was being cleared away, and some of the men present were holding whisky glasses. What had gone before was only the preamble to the night's work.

'The agreement by Washington and Moscow to convene the summit conference was made because of the very precariousness of the East-West relationship, and the danger it presents to world peace. And what we have to do now is to ask ourselves whether the incident in the Barents Sea — however tragic in its loss of life and however shocking in its impact on East-West relations — can be allowed to bring down our hopes for a successful summit meeting in Vienna, and our hopes that the United States and the Soviet Union can work out their differences and diminish the threat of a final and annihilating war that the whole world faces today.'

I saw the US ambassador lift his head quickly to look at her. Someone behind me reacted so sharply that the ice-cubes jingled in his glass. I looked across at the foreign secretary. His eyes were down. He'd been told what his prime minister was going to propose tonight.

'This incident' is not, of course, of major concern to Great Britain, though as a loyal ally of the United States and a member of NATO we are indirectly affected.' She lifted her wrist and adjusted the thin gold bracelet: it was the first sign of nervousness she'd shown since I'd come into the room. 'We are well placed, however, in the area of international intelligence, and may be able to make ourselves useful to the United States in the immediate future, when diplomatic relations between East and West will be critically and dangerously strained. If certain information I received earlier tonight is reliable, we may shortly be in possession of absolute proof that the US submarine Cetacea was in fact attacked and sunk by Soviet arms.'

Tension was suddenly in the room again, and we all froze.

'My God,' someone said quietly.

I didn't look at Frome. I'd see nothing in his face if I did. What did she mean, 'proof? 'The feeling of outrage among the people of the United States at this moment is so strong that there is no way the president could go to meet the Soviets in two months' time. But if we can secure irrefutable proof of their criminal act in the Barents Sea, then the United States will be in a position to demand — and with God's help extract — a full and unstinting apology from the Kremlin. And this may be the only chance we have of saving the summit conference.'

It was gone two in the morning when I left Downing Street and turned along Whitehall with the windscreen wipers on high speed to get rid of the rain. A constable with a drenched cape was guarding the only two parking spaces left outside our building and I slid into the end one and got out, just as Frome came in with his mud-caked Rover. He drove up from the country every day and never had the thing cleaned.

All he'd said to me when we'd left No. 10 was that he'd rather I didn't go home until I'd seen Croder.

We didn't talk on our way up in the lift. I didn't know how much his mind was occupied with the submarine thing and how much with the diagnosis the doctors had given him; in the flickering light he already looked like death.

He left me on the fourth floor, turning away without a word while I went into the small cramped room where the security sergeant was sitting at his desk filing his nails. He picked up one of his phones right away and poked out a number with a nicotine-yellowed finger and waited, eyeing me with a companionable stare. I heard the line open.

'Sir? Quiller's in.' He waited again and then said 'Yes sir' and put the phone down and told me: 'He'd like you to go along for a minute. Room 7. Still raining, is it?'

'Yes.'

'Shocking, isn't it? Simply shocking.'

'Then what the fuck are you waiting for?'

There were only three other people in here, sitting in the corner by the tea urn hunched over what they were saying, as if they had to keep it a secret. My God, if anyone could keep a secret in this bloody place they'd have to be deaf and dumb.

'Clearance,' I said.

The Canadian sat back in his chair and I heard it creak, or it might have been his bones. He'd been here for years now, haunting the Caff, refusing to go, refusing to spend half the rest of his life picking up his pension at the post office and other half spending it on raw bourbon and cheap tarts till they came and picked him up and dropped him into an economy-model pinewood box and shovelled the earth over him.

He sipped his tea. Daisy had laced it with whisky, as she always did, strictly against the rules but of course she'd do anything for Charlie; the last time he'd come in from a mission she'd gone over to him with the entire stock of bountiful motherhood remaining in the world and gathered him into it with the passion of a Salvation Army girl who'd found a hit and run victim in the middle of the road.

'That was a nasty one,' she'd said — I'd been there, helping him find a chair — 'but you're all right now, dear, everything's all right now.' She'd sat down at the rickety plastic-topped table with him and automatically wiped a puddle of tea away with her cloth while she stared into his face, reading his soul with those copper-dark fathomless eyes of hers until Charlie had started to laugh gently, coughing a bit at first as he always did, as the thought was borne into his mind that maybe he was all right now, maybe everything was all right. 'Go and get me some tea, you fat old whore,' he'd told her, and she'd got up and brought him some, and that was the first time she'd ever put a tot of whisky in it, and she'd been doing it ever since.

'You're getting clearance,' he asked me, 'at four o'clock in the morning?'

'Croder's phoned them. They're on their way.'

'You're going out for Croder?'

'Someone's got to.'

He watched me, sitting back in his chair because his vision had been going lately; you had to be at arm's length, like the newspaper. His hatchet-shaped face had gone quiet, as if he'd found something significant to think about. I didn't like that. Tonight wasn't for significant thoughts; it was for getting through as fast as I could without thinking about what I was doing. Only Croder could have got me back into the action within fifteen minutes flat: that's why they'd given him the job, I suppose.