“No, sir. On Sunday night at midnight. I go on the night shift next week.”
“I’ll have to ask you to work right on through,” said the governor. “Of course, well make up the time to you later with a generous bonus. But I’d like you right on top of the job from here on. Agreed?”
“Yes, sir. Whatever you say. I’ll get on with it now.”
r /> The governor, who liked to adopt a comradely attitude with his staff, came around the desk and clapped the man on the shoulder.
“You’re a good fellow, Jahn. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
Squadron Leader Mark Latham stared down the runway, heard his takeoff clearance from the control tower, and nodded to his copilot. The younger man’s gloved hand eased the four throttles slowly open; in the wing roots, four Rolls-Royce Spey engines rose in pitch to push out forty-five thousand pounds of thrust, and the Nimrod Mark 2 climbed away from the RAF station at Kinross and turned southeast from Scotland toward the North Sea and the Channel.
What the thirty-one-year-old squadron leader of Coastal Command was flying he knew to be about the best aircraft for submarine and shipping surveillance in the world. With its crew of twelve, improved power plants, performance, and surveillance aids, the Nimrod could either skim the waves at low level, slow and steady, listening on electronic ears to the sounds of underwater movement, or cruise at altitude, hour after hour, two engines shut down for fuel economy, observing an enormous area of ocean beneath it.
Its radars would pick up the slightest movement of a metallic substance down there on the water’s surface; its cameras could photograph by day and night; it was unaffected by storm or snow, hail or sleet, fog or wind, light or dark. Its Data Link computers could process the received information, identify what it saw for what it was, and transmit the whole picture, in visual or electronic terms, back to base or to a Royal Navy vessel tapped into the Data Link.
His orders, that sunny spring Friday, were to take up station fifteen thousand feet above the Freya and keep circling until relieved.
“She’s coming on screen, skipper,” Latham’s radar operator called on the intercom. Back in the hull of the Nimrod, the operator was gazing at his scanner screen, picking out the area of traffic-free water around the Freya on its northern side, watching the large blip move from the periphery toward the center of the screen as they approached.
“Cameras on,” said Latham calmly. In the belly of the Nimrod the f/126 daytime camera swiveled like a gun, spotted the Freya, and locked on. Automatically it adjusted range and focus for maximum definition. Like moles in their blind hull, the crew behind him saw the Freya come onto their picture screen. From now on, the aircraft could fly all over the sky, but the cameras would stay locked on the Freya, adjusting for distance and light changes, swiveling in their housings to compensate for the circling of the Nimrod. Even if the Freya began to move, they would still stay on her, like an unblinking eye, until given fresh orders.
“And transmit,” said Latham.
The Data Link began to send the pictures back to Britain, and thence to London. When the Nimrod was over the Freya, she banked to port, and from his left-hand seat Squadron Leader Latham looked down visually. Behind him and below him, the camera zoomed closer, beating the human eye. It picked out the lone figure of the terrorist in the forepeak, masked face staring upward at the silver swallow three miles above him. It picked out the second terrorist on top of the funnel, and zoomed until his black balaclava filled the screen. The man cradled a submachine carbine in his arms in the sunshine far below.
“There they are, the bastards,” called the camera operator. The Nimrod established a gentle, rate 1 turn above the Freya, went over to automatic pilot, closed down the engine, reduced power to maximum endurance setting on the other two, and began to do its job. It circled, watched and waited, reporting everything back to base. Mark Latham ordered his copilot to take over, unbuckled, and left the flight deck. He went aft to the four-man dining area, visited the toilet, washed his hands, and sat down with a vacuum-heated lunch-box. It was, he reflected, really rather a comfortable way to go to war.
The gleaming Volvo of the police chief of Ålesund ground up the gravel drive of the timber-construction, ranch-style house at Bogneset, twenty minutes out from the town center, and halted by the rough-stone porch.
Trygve Dabi was a contemporary of Thor Larsen. They had grown up together in Ålesund, and Dahl had entered the force as a police cadet about the time Larsen had joined the merchant marine. He had known Lisa Larsen since his friend had brought the young bride back from Oslo after their marriage. His own children knew Kurt and Kristina, played with them at school, sailed with them in the long summer holidays.
Damn it, he thought as he climbed out of the Volvo, what the hell do I tell her?
There had been no reply on the telephone, which meant she must be out. The children would be at school. If she was shopping, perhaps she had met someone who had told her already. He rang the bell, and when no one answered, walked around to the back.
Lisa Larsen liked to keep a large vegetable garden, and he found her feeding carrot tops to Kristina’s pet rabbit. She looked up and smiled when she saw him coming around the house.
She doesn’t know, he thought. She pushed the remainder of the carrots through the wire of the cage and came over to him, pulling off her gardening gloves.
“Trygve, how nice to see you. What brings you out of town?”
“Lisa, have you listened to the news this morning on the radio?”
She considered the question.
“I listened to the eight o’clock broadcast over breakfast. I’ve been out here since then, in the garden.”
“You didn’t answer the telephone?”
For the first time a shadow came into her bright brown eyes. The smile faded.
“No. I wouldn’t hear it. Has it been ringing?”
“Look, Lisa, be calm. Something has happened. No, not to the children. To Thor.”
She went pale beneath the honey-colored outdoor tan. Carefully, Trygve Dahl told her what had happened since the small hours of the morning, far to the south off Rotterdam.
“So far as we know, he’s perfectly all right. Nothing has happened to him, and nothing will. The Germans are bound to release these two men, and all will be well.”