The Kremlin Device Part 15

"We haven't got time to p.i.s.s about." In my mind I added, A great big feller like you, too!

But I knew his hang-up was getting to him.

A few seconds later he said unsteadily, "I'm all right now.

"Come on, then."

I moved forward, counting. For 102 paces the floor of the tunnel remained level. Then it began to descend.

"Going down under the river," I said.

"Aye," Pavarotti agreed.

"I reckon."

At the start of the slope was a big heap of debris. Such a chunk had fallen out of the upper right-hand wall and roof that the pile of bricks stretched across the tunnel floor to the base of the opposite wall, and we had to scramble over the lowest part of it. When I directed my head-lamp at the raw wall where the bricks had been, I saw that it consisted of moist grey clay.

"At least we can dig into that," I muttered.

"Pity we can't put the b.l.o.o.d.y thing in right here. Save messing about.

"It's too far from the proper site."

We were still talking in whispers, partly out of habit, partly because we reckoned any sudden noise in a place that had been silent for generations might precipitate a further collapse of roof or wall.

We crept on again, but after a few more steps I stopped. My torch was picking out some difference in the texture of the floor ahead. Instead of light grey, it looked black. I stared for a minute, then said, "s.h.i.t! It's water. The f.u.c.ker's flooded."

"Never," said Pavarotti.

"If part of the tunnel was flooded, the whole thing would be full of water I saw the logic of what he said but he was wrong. At the point where the water started the floor was still dropping away, so that as we continued forward the flood gradually deepened.

The water was cold and black and stank of decay, and we had no option but to wade into it until we were knee, then thigh, then b.o.l.l.o.c.k deep. Only when the surface was above our waists could we see that, a few more yards ahead, it came right to the roof.

"Jesus Christ!" said Pavarotti.

"We're knackered. We can't get through this lot."

We pulled back and started wringing the filthy, black water out of our trousers.

"Pretty obvious, isn't it?" said Pay.

"Of course it's going to be flooded, under the b.l.o.o.d.y river."

For a minute I sat on the deck, holding my head in my hands, trying to think constructively.

"There's no way we're going to get closer to the Kremlin anywhere else."

"Why not forget this b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" Pay suggested.

"Get the other one in first and then see?"

"No, no," I told him.

"This is the one they want. I'm sure of that. We've got to crack it. What we need to get through this lot is breathing gear and dry-suits."

"Yeah. But how do we know what happens the other side of the water? If there is another side. If the rest of the tunnel's flooded we're b.u.g.g.e.red. Jesus, I hate this!"

"It must be quite a small leak," I said.

"Otherwise, like you said, the whole tunnel would be full. Maybe the pressure's equalised itself somehow or mud's filtered into the fissure."

"Let's get the h.e.l.l out, anyway.

I'd been planning to sweep away our footprints behind us, but I realised now that, even if we went to that trouble, we'd still leave fresh marks and it would be obvious that somebody had been down here. In any case, the chances of anyone else coming down in the next few days seemed infinitesimal.

We were back under the access shaft just twelve minutes after leaving it. Eighteen minutes to wait. I tried the radio again but got no response. I wasn't going to shout, just in case some Russian was pa.s.sing the old stable up top. I imagined Toad, on the lurk up there, and Whinger, on standby in the Volga somewhere along the embankment. Maybe they were chatting to each other on the radio.

"Have to wait," I whispered.

"Let's take a stroll in the other direction."

That didn't get us far. This time I wasn't counting the steps, but about a hundred metres to the south the tunnel was blocked by a major fall. The damage to the roof and walls was so extensive that I felt sure they'd been bulldozed in or deliberately dropped by hand. Bricks, rubble and clay were tumbled in an impenetrable ma.s.s.

Back under the shaft, we waited. We peeled off our sodden overalls, but still we were soaked to the waist and higher. Soon we were pretty cold. I went over the various levels of our fall back plan in my mind. The first was that if Toad got accosted in the yard, he'd pretend he was drunk and had staggered in there to sleep it off The next level was that if we three didn't reappear, Whinger would park the car out of the way and come looking for us. The final stage laid down that if all four of us weren't back in camp by 6:00 a.m." the rest of the team would come out to search. I knew that in an emergency we could seek sanctuary in the grounds of the Emba.s.sy, but that could only be a last resort because it would blow the whole Apple programme.

Spot on 2150 we heard faint metallic noises above our head a clinking and sc.r.a.ping. Then came a slight change of pressure as Toad lifted the cover. A few seconds later the ladder-end flicked down beside us. I sent Pay up first, and heard him grunting with effort as he climbed. When the ladder twitched twice, I started up myself.

In the blackness of the shed I whispered, "OK?" and Toad said, "Fine' as he undid the ladder, closed the hatch and slipped the original padlocks back through the securing rings.

We pulled some of the rotten hay back over the cover and stood listening in the doorway.

"There's still something on in the church," said Toad quietly.

"People keep coming back and forth. They're crossing to that doorway with the light showing.

We were so wet and filthy we looked like a couple of drunks who'd fallen in the river, so even if we did meet someone there was a chance they'd pay no attention.

"Let's go," I said.

We hustled along the edge of the yard, past the church door, back to the entrance gate. We'd hardly crossed the road on to the pavement beside the river when we saw a car coming in our direction.

In my earpiece Whinger's voice went, "I have you visual," and I knew it was him. Ten seconds later he pulled up beside us, and we were safely on board.

"All quiet up top?" I asked.

"Beautiful. But, Christ, what have you been doing?" He turned and glared at me.

"Eating caviar and drinking vodka," I told him.

"What's the matter?"

"You stink like the a.r.s.e hole of the universe."

"Thanks, mate. That's what it's like down there. Stinking. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d tunnel's lined with s.h.i.t and what's more, it's full of water.

"Could you get through it?"

"Not this time. We waded as far as we could, but we need breathing kit and dry-suits. Head for base, Whinge. We're soaked to the b.l.o.o.d.y skin."

Back at Balashika I called straight through to the duty officer in Hereford on the secure Satcom link. We'd set up our equipment in the office-c.u.m-ops room, with the dish aerial on the roof of the building. Daily sweeps for bugs showed that the microphone in the kitchen was still live, so n.o.body talked any kind of shop in there; but there'd been no reaction to Steve's disabling of the bug in the office, and we reckoned that room was secure.

We were back at 10:40 Moscow time; England was three hours behind, and I knew the duty officer would be around in the ops room in Stirling Lines. Technically, the connection was perfect; if it hadn't been for the half-second lag in transmission as the message went up to the satellite and down again, I might have been in the next room rather than 2,000 miles away.

I recognised the voice at the other end as that of Bill Bravington: I'd spoken to him a couple of times already since our deployment, and had no need to fill him in on background.

"Bill," I said, 'we've hit a problem. The Apple site. The approach is blocked by water.

"Wait one.

I imagined him reaching for a notepad.

"All right," he went.

"Carry on.

"We can't tell if the site itself is flooded. If it is, we'll need an alternative. But even to recce it we need breathing kits, dry-suits and half-hour tanks. Plus some of those Boat Troop rubber bags for the components. And two big underwater torches. Can you organise all that soonest?"

"No problem. How many suits?"

"Two. Correction: three suits and three tanks. Plus rubber bags."

"Number?"

"For three pieces. You know two big, one small. But we'd better have spare small bags as well. Say half a dozen small."

"Got it. Fins?"

"Sorry?"

"Will you want fins?"

"No, thanks. The distance isn't great enough."

"OK'.".

"And Bill listen. We need this stuff right away."

"We'll get it all to London tonight, for the next Diplomatic Bag."

People must have pulled their fingers out all along the line, because the kit reached the Emba.s.sy on Monday afternoon, less than forty-eight hours after we'd found the water. On Tuesday night Pavarotti and I were back in the tunnel, with the same back-up team on watch above. On a weekday evening there was more traffic along the quay and more pedestrians about, but we made it into the stable undetected, and down below everything was precisely as we'd left it: the marks I'd sc.r.a.ped in the dirt on the floor were still fresh, the surface of the water still one inch below a horizontal line I'd scratched in the slime on the wall.

The discovery of water and the sight of the various falls had led me to change our plan. I reckoned that if we managed to reach our destination on this second recce, we might as well start opening up the site for the CND. My reasons were: first, that the chances of any inspection team coming through the water within the next few days were zero, and second, that even if somebody did come snooping, a hole in the wall wouldn't in itself excite suspicion as there were plenty of other natural cavities already.

So it was that this time we had jemmies and small picks in a bergen. Having zipped each other into dry-suits over our clothes, we fitted our tanks and breathing kits and waded into the inky water. On our outward trip the water was fairly clear, and our torch beams reached a few feet ahead enough for us to spot two submerged heaps of rubble before we blundered into them.

We'd been through all the measurements again, and I'd calculated that the fully flooded section of the tunnel couldn't be more than fifty or sixty metres long. So I wasn't surprised when, after two minutes half-walking, half-swimming, my head broke the surface again. As we continued to advance, an upward slope lifted us steadily clear of the water. Soon we were back on dry land.

The original distances given us by the Firm turned out to be spot-on. A total of 340 metres from the old stable, we came to a circular hole in the roof- the ventilation shaft. When I stood upright with my head in the bottom of it, my helmet lamp revealed that it did not rise vertically, but turned at an angle to my right. I could feel cool air flowing down, so I knew it was open at the top.

"s.h.i.t hot," I told Pay. I brought out my tape and held it across.

"Twenty-eight inches. That's easily big enough to accept the SCR and anyone making visual checks down the manhole won't be able to see round this corner. Made to measure.

Five metres beyond it, the tunnel had been sealed with a wall of concrete blocks. Yet providentially, just on our side of the barrier was another big fall.

"Look at that," I said to Pay.

"Made to measure again."

"Yeah and we won't even need to move any spoil. We can just add whatever we bring out to the heap that's here already."

We'd prearranged with Toad that we would stay down for ninety minutes. That gave us an hour of work-time, so we stripped off our dry-suits and took turns to put in concentrated attacks on the clay subsoil. Soon we were both in a muck sweat and having problems with our breathing, perhaps because the air was so damp. None the less, before our hour ran out we had enlarged the cavity to about half the size we needed. We kept the overhanging roof and edges rough, and left a pile of rubble on the base of the hole so that, when we returned to install Apple, all we'd have to do would be to enlarge the hole, clear the bed and lift the components about two feet from the floor before pushing them sideways into their final resting place.

Our return to the surface posed no problems, and once again the pick-up went without a hitch.

"So it's a foot on the brake, is it?" Whinger asked as we drew away.

"What's that?"

"Piece of cake."

"I wouldn't call it that. But it's possible wouldn't you say, Pay?"

"Oh, yeah," he agreed.

"It's definitely on."

So we drove back, feeling quite chuffed.

But as we arrived in camp, the s.h.i.t hit the fan. We hadn't even drawn up at the back of the accommodation block when Mal came running down the steps to meet us.

"Geordie," he said, "I need to have a word."

"Walk this way, then."

We went a few yards down the track into the woods, and as soon as we were out of earshot Mal said, "Somebody's been tampering with number two lap-top."

"How d'you know?"