‘Frank Topper,’ he said close to the chest. ‘Diving officer.’

  We all said hello again and I wished to Christ we could cut out the garden party and get moving. Ferris had a nervous smile switched on against any doubts in his mind and I began feeling bloody annoyed because my left hand should have had some kind of treatment and I was still in mild aftershock from the station wagon thing and London was pitching us right into a crash-access operation and that meant something had come up on the board and they’d started to panic.

  ‘Cheers,’ one of the officers said.

  There seemed to be a lot of noise from the fans and blowers but nobody took any notice. Then there was the slam of a steel hatch and two seamen came down and disappeared through a doorway and Ackroyd took us back into the control room. The helmsman was in his seat and there were needles crawling all over the dials and Ferris stood there watching everything with his bright glass eyes and a ruff of hair sticking out where he’d brushed his head on the companionway coming down. Everything had suddenly gone quiet.

  ‘All right,’ Ackroyd said. ‘Slow ahead both.’

  There wasn’t any appreciable movement but the bug started glowing across the chart on the DRT and in ten minutes we were out of the harbour. Five minutes later there was another sudden period of inactivity and Ackroyd said:

  ‘Pull out the plug and ease her down to periscope depth.’

  The deck began sloping by degrees and I looked at the instruments.

  Time 00.31. Course 220 .

  Ferris was watching me and I felt like kicking his teeth in because his stare was critical and I knew that if I showed any signs of nerves or fatigue or anxiety he’d have this ship turned about and taken back into harbour. I didn’t like being assessed at this phase of a mission: if I felt incapable of going in or doing a decent job I’d say so, he knew that. Better than Loman, perhaps, or Porterfield: they’d send you into the target zone with your nerves in rags and your eyes out of focus from fatigue if they thought you could finish the course without dropping dead.

  ‘We’ll slope off,’ Ferris said with a bright smile, ‘and do some more chatting.’ He led me into the wardroom and we sat down and went over the whole thing again. I got it right at the third go and then he filled me in about the liaison and rendezvous patterns, ‘The routine rdv’s will be prearranged by radio. Ackroyd says we can’t risk coming in closer than a. mile from the rig, so if you can swim that distance you’ll navigate by the north star and listen for the call of the sea swallow -I’ll play you the tape in a minute. Swordfish will pick you up on the sonar and moved slowly to rendezvous.’

  This was typical Ferris: in less than twenty-four hours he’d had the call of the sea swallow put on tape and dug up a radio from the American stores and pushed London to give us a ship through the Navy.

  ‘If you’re not in a condition to swim as far as that — or any distance at all - we can do you a straight emergency pick-up through the distress channels and send in a coastguard chopper with a net. If -‘

  ‘You can’t do —’

  ‘Oh yes we can. It’d expose our hand but if I can get you back alive without blowing the mission that’s what I’m going to do.’

  I knew he meant it but as I looked at him in the flat white light of the wardroom I wondered whether he’d always been so considerate towards his executives in the field, or whether he was trying to atone for what they’d sent him to do that time in Brussels.

  ‘Can I come in?’ The captain was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Of course,’ Ferris told him. ‘We were just chewing the fat.’

  For a submarine skipper Ackroyd looked too young but that might have been partly due to the apple-red glow on his cheeks, which I put down to the gin. His eyes were small and quick and he gave explosive little laughs, trying to cover them by tugging at the creases of his tropical slacks or scratching an ear. He looked about the last man to want to creep about under the sea in the confines of a tin coffin.

  ‘Would you like to know anything about this tub? She’s “S” Class, commissioned only last year and built for patrol -got two diesels and all mod cons. She’s fast, silent and difficult to detect. Just the job for you, what?’ He tugged energetically at his creases.

  Through the doorway I could hear the pinging of the sonar transducer above the rush of the blowers. There was almost no vibration from the screws.

  ‘Lucky to find ourselves on board,’ said Ferris.

  ‘Don’t know about luck,’ his small quick eyes glancing from Ferris to me and back, ‘I understand you put such a squib under their lordships they haven’t come down yet!’ He scratched his ear, his cheeks glowing. ‘What are you chaps?’ leaning forward suddenly and lowering his voice. ‘Intelligence wallahs or something? MI5?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ferris. I suppose he thought if Ackroyd had. the impression that MI5 worked overseas he might as well leave it at that: a classic piece of disinformation. ‘By the way, do you think they’ll use depth-charges?’

  Ackroyd’s face snapped shut and he looked down at his hands.

  ‘You know, that’s why you chaps had so much trouble getting us to help you. If I were to take Swordfish into Chinese waters only a few miles north of here, we’d have depth charges dropped on us. No question at all.’ His bright eyes came up and scanned us in a series of flicking glances. ‘I mean unless we surfaced and explained our presence or signalled we were in some kind of trouble. Now, they can’t do that in international waters. But they might try.’ His glance took in the doorway and he began speaking close to his chest again. ‘It hasn’t escaped their lordships that if we are to drop off a frogman within a mile of an offshore oil rig whose structure is Chinese Republican territory, we might encounter objections - and of the most tangible kind. It wouldn’t be legal. But it would be understandable.’ His laugh exploded and he tugged busily at the lobe of his ear.

  Ferris gave a companionable whinny.

  ‘So it’s like that,’ he said.

  ‘It’s like that, gentlemen.’

  ‘Cross our fingers,’ said Ferris, and Ackroyd glanced at him. We could both feel the chill coming out of him, though he’d been trying to deal with it. Ferris was claustrophobic, and the idea of being inside this thing when they dropped depth charges on it wasn’t making him feel any better.

  ‘Let me explain,’ said the captain. ‘If they were worried enough about our presence so close to the rig they might try to blow us out of the water and later claim they did it when we were inside their territorial waters and that we drifted south before we bottomed. They’d have to knock us out at the first shy, or we’d start sending radio messages to the effect that we were being attacked in international waters.’ He shrugged with his small pink hands. ‘Provided they could drown us to a man before we could use the radio, how could anyone dispute their claim?’

  We didn’t say anything.

  ‘That is the position, then. Of course I’m going to make every effort to avoid an incident. I have seventy crew on board.’ His face went shut again and he looked down at the table. ‘For the duration of this voyage, gentlemen, Swordfish has been placed on a war footing.’

  ‘This was our only way in,’ said Ferris. ‘I’m awfully sorry.’

  ‘Give us something to do. You called on the right people -the Silent Service!’ A short burst of laughter while he plucked at his ear.

  ‘What time,’ I asked him, ‘do we expect to arrive off the rig?’

  ‘Come into the control room.’

  The glow of the bug was moving across the chart between Lamma and Cheng Chau Islands. ‘We’re heading north of this one, Hei Chou, and turning approximately south-east, instead of rounding this group here. The long way round, but safer. As you see, all these islands are Chinese territory and most of them maintain garrisons and of course coastguard units.’ He glanced up at the chronometer. ‘I estimate we’ll reach our position in half an hour. Let us say 01.15.’

  We went back into the wardroom to keep out of their way.

  ‘Everything going nicely,’ Ferris said, but he didn’t look at me. He was behaving rather well: every time one of the bulk head doors was slammed somewhere in the ship he gave a quick blink but that was all.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ I said, and began sorting out my gear. I didn’t know what the conditions were out there: in an air drop you can study the target zone on your way down and pick out any features that could be dangerous or difficult, but all I knew on this trip was that the sea was calm, the temperature was in the region of 82 and moonrise had taken place twelve minutes ago. It wasn’t much to know.

  In ten minutes the ship began heeling slightly as we turned south-east and headed straight for the rig, fourteen or fifteen miles distant.

  At 01.00 I went back to the control room, leaving Ferris looking at a copy of Penthouse, not really his cup of tea. His face had lost all its colour now and had a sheen of sweat on it. I noticed he’d pushed back the tuft of hair that had been sticking out.

  They’d changed the chart on the dead-reckoning tracer and we were now on 341 with the glow of the bug moving midway between Yai Chou Island and the San-Men group. Our heading was 142 and the oil rig was four sea miles distant, dead on our course.

  It was quieter now in the control room and I looked up at the blower grilles.

  ‘We’ve shut some of them down,’ said Ackroyd.

  The engine-room telegraph was at half ahead both: we must have been slowing. Nobody was slamming doors any more. I looked at Ackroyd.

  ‘Same ETA?’

  ‘That’s right.’ His small bright eyes were very steady now as he watched the console.

  01.04.

  I went back to the wardroom. Ferris had pushed the copy of Penthouse to the end of the table and was sitting motionless, looking slightly upwards. I suppose that was where he was expecting to hear the crump, but the bloody things could go off anywhere, dead on our beam or below us, anywhere. He turned his head.

  ‘Are we still on our ETA?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Time to suit up, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Talc floated up under the lights as I got into the wet-suit and zipped it to the throat and started on the final checks: tank pressure, valves, harness, backpack, buckles, a quick exhalation through the mouthpiece to clear the check valves. All normal.

  ‘Have you seen the rig yet?’ Ferris asked me.

  ‘Not yet. But it’s there.’

  I hit the valves a fraction to blow out any dust, making him flinch.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t mind me.’ I aligned the regulators, turning the butterfly bolts finger-tight.

  ‘Are we slowing?’ he asked.

  I stopped work and listened.

  ‘Yes.’

  There wasn’t anything more I could do before it was time to put on the scuba so I went into the control room. Ackroyd turned his head fractionally.

  ‘We’re rigged for silent running,’ he said.

  ‘Understood.’

  We spoke very quietly. All sound background had gone: the engines were running at slow and they’d shut down all fans, blowers, pumps and auxiliary motors. Next to me I could hear the diving officer breathing.

  ‘Want to take a look?’

  I went to the periscope.

  The oil rig was dead in sights, a black skeleton structure rearing from the moon lit surface of the sea. Longitude 114 , Latitude 22 . The target for Mandarin.

  Chapter Twelve : SOLO

  It was a quick piping note: the call of the sea swallow.

  Ferris left the tape running while he helped me with the scuba.

  ‘This side okay?’

  ‘Another notch on the buckle.’

  The weight of the tanks shifted.

  A seaman came to the doorway.

  ‘The captain wants you to know they’ve got radar.’

  ‘On the rig?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The bloody harness still wasn’t right.

  ‘Back another notch on both, will you?’

  ‘Will do. There’s no hurry.’

  But I could hear his breathing. We’d passed through Chinese territorial waters between the islands and the last report from the control room was that we were now standing off the rig at one mile.

  ‘Feel better?’

  I shrugged the scuba a couple of times.

  ‘Yes.’ I tipped my head back as far as I could, without feeling the regulators.

  The nearest naval base was probably at Kitchioh or somewhere to the west along the South China coast, and even if they could send anything seaborne from Namtow they wouldn’t get here before Swordfish was under way again: it was airborne attention Ackroyd was worried about. The chart gave the depth in this area of the continental shelf as eighteen fathoms and if the garrison sent a chopper out from the rig or one of the islands we’d have to crash dive but with periscope depth at sixty feet there’d be critically limited room to manoeuvre: with the sea calm and the moon clear we’d be a sitting duck for any kind of aerial reconnaissance.

  ‘For Christ sake switch it off, will you, Ferris?’

  That bloody bird was getting on my nerves.

  He went over to the tape-recorder and pressed the stop button.

  ‘Anyway, you’ll know what to listen for.’ I thought he said it rather deliberately.

  ‘If I don’t know now I never will.’

  ‘What we call good briefing, if I may say so.’

  There was an edge on his voice, the first time I’d heard it.

  ‘Are they going to put it through the loudhailer?’

  ‘With discretion.’ A wintry smile. ‘It’s not meant to be a peacock.’

  Ackroyd was standing in the doorway.

  ‘How are things getting along, gentlemen?’ He said it in a half whisper.

  ‘Fine. Where’s the head?’

  ‘Through there.’ As I turned away he said quickly, ‘Don’t flush it. We’ll do it for you later.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  They were still standing there when I came back. The silence was almost total now and I could hear the rustle of a sleeve as someone in the control room moved his arm. Nobody looked at me, but I was the only man among the whole of the complement they were thinking about. As soon as they could spit this bloody frog out of the escape hatch they could start engines and get the hell out of here before some yellow bastard spotted them.

  ‘Skipper,’ I said, ‘I’d like to take a final look.’

  ‘By all means.’

  He led me into the control room.

  I knew they wanted me out of Swordfish as fast as possible but I couldn’t help that. I had to establish the image of the rig and I had to do it now and from this precise position because later it wouldn’t be stable and I could lose my bearings. We were to the north-east of the thing and midway between it and the San-Men Islands and I wanted to memorize the rig’s configuration from this exact angle because if a sea haze covered the Pole Star and the rig’s structure sent my compass wild I’d have nothing left but this image as my guide.

  ‘Up ‘scope.’

  Ackroyd stood aside and I took the grips, turning the sights until the cross-hairs swung to centre on the rig. At this distance it reached twenty or so degrees from the horizontal and I could see its riding lights. There was some kind of flood illumination hitting the cranes and derrick from lamps on the top deck, and a flare pilot was burning with a steady flame from the tip of a stackpipe.

  At one side I could make out the black aerodynamic shape of a helicopter, the object we most feared, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Our pleasure.’

  The ‘scope was brought down and I went through to the wardroom. A young seaman was coming the other way and stood aside for me, his leg catching one of my reserve air tanks: it hit the metal bulkhead and someone said shit under his breath and the seaman’s face went white. We all stood perfectly still for a minute, trying to replay the sound in our memory to judge how bad it was.

  It wasn’t very good so I did a final synchronization check with Ferris and tugged the flippers on and carried the reserve tanks and other stuff along to the escape hatch. Ackroyd led the way personally, which I thought was civil of him.

  Ferris helped me stow the gear against the bulkhead and I checked the faceplate for misting.

  ‘Better you than me,’ Ackroyd murmured. He had a very held-in smile.

  ‘I wouldn’t want your job either,’ I said and put the mask on. They swung the door shut without making a noise and the last thing I saw was the pale and watchful face of Ferris, not much of his mind on me, most of it going through a lightning series of checks to see if we’d forgotten anything, overlooked anything, anything that could catch up on us a minute from now or an hour from now or at noon today when I was alone in the target zone and out of reach.

  Flooding began.

  The sickly rubber smell of the mask.

  I shifted the lead belt around an inch, unnecessarily.

  The water was waist high.

  The thing I had to do was simple. Difficult but simple. During final briefing I’d asked Ferris why the hell didn’t we take up station at the Golden Sands Hotel and do a snatch on Tewson the next time he was brought ashore to see his wife? There were three reasons, he’d said. One: Tewson might never go there again. Two: London wanted the evidence. Three: London wanted to know what the evidence was.

  The water touched my chin. The mask had started to mist up so I pulled it off and spat into the faceplate and wiped it clear and put it back.

  If Tewson never went to the hotel again we could lose him forever: he could disappear into mainland China and that would be that. Presumably the evidence London wanted was to be used against Tewson or through diplomatic channels against Pekin or maybe both. And the evidence London wanted was the evidence of what Tewson was doing on board the rig.

  Water above my head. Vision distorted, sound magnified as the water gushed in from the pipes. Left hand stinging: salt in the wound.