Spy Story by Len Deighton

Author:Len Deighton [Deighton, Len]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-04-03T14:00:00+00:00

12

At the discretion of CONTROL game time can be speeded, halted or reversed so that bounds can be replayed with the advantage of hindsight. No appeal can be made except on the grounds that notice in writing was not received before CONTROL’s action.

RULES. ALL GAMES. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON

I went up to the Control Balcony when I got back. Schlegel was on the phone. It was still early; I hoped that he hadn’t missed me. ‘Sonofabitch,’ he shouted, and slammed the phone down. I wasn’t dismayed; it was just his manner. He used too much energy for everything he did: I’d seen such activity before in small thickset men like Schlegel. He smacked a fist into his open palm. ‘For Christ’s sake, Patrick. You said an hour.’

‘You know how it is.’

‘Never mind the goddamned apologies. Not content with flying boats, your friend is putting ice-breakers on a converging pattern along the Murmanskiy Bereg. Ice-breakers with sonar buoys … get it? He’ll plot both the subs by taking bearings.’

‘That’s not bad,’ I said admiringly. ‘No one’s thought of that before. Maybe that’s why the Russians keep those two nuclear breakers so far west.’

Schlegel had a lot of hands, and now he threw them at me, so that the index fingers bounced off my shirt. ‘I’ve got two admirals and selected staff from Norfolk running the Blue Control.’ He walked over to the teleprinter, fed out some paper, tore it off, screwed it up and threw it across the room. I said nothing. ‘And your friend Foxwell chooses this moment to demonstrate how well the commies can shaft us.’

He pointed down at the War Table. Plastic discs marked those spots where Ferdy had wiped out nuclear subs. The two replacement subs coming from Iceland and Scotland were moving along the Murmansk coast and would be detected by Ferdy’s buoys.

‘They should have dog-legged those subs nearer to the Pole,’ I said.

‘Where were you when we needed you?’ said Schlegel sarcastically. He picked up his jacket and stood there in his shirtsleeves, his thumb hooking the jacket of his blue chalk-stripe over his shoulder, his fingers grasping his bright red braces. He climbed into his jacket and smoothed the sleeves. That suit was Savile Row, from label to lining, but on Schlegel it was Little Caesar.

‘How do we know that in a real war the Russians wouldn’t be just as nutty?’ I said.

‘And leave the Kara Sea wide open?’ He tightened the knot of his tie.

‘It’s working out OK.’ I looked at the Game Clock, which moved according to the computer-calculated result of each bound. I picked up the pink flimsies that Blue Control had issued, trying to call the destroyed submarines.

‘They just won’t buy it,’ said Schlegel. I noticed that on the electric lights of the tote board they were still shown as undestroyed and in action.

I looked at the Master Status Report. I said, ‘We should programme Ferdy’s ideas, using every last ice-breaker available to the Russians. And we should do it again, giving every ice-breaker sub-killing capability.

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