Spy Story by Len Deighton Page A

– and its offensive-defensive posture – was directly comparable with both sides putting their nuclear subs up close to the coastal cities of the enemy. For such a move inhibited attacks on them (for fear the submarine’s atomic missiles would be triggered by depth charges and their cities destroyed). Pulling the bishops out through the gaps could be likened to the fighting for the northern coastline of Arctic Norway, for the Russian Navy needed ice-free ports to utilize its full surface fighting strength in the Atlantic.
    The winter struggle for ports below the drift-ice limits was more a matter of luck than judgement. The invasion of Norway by Russian land forces was not designed by Red Suite. Ferdy had to read it off the big computer. Its progress depended upon strategic games played by NATO and USN at other places and other times. A Russian air-supplied move through the long finger of Finland that pointed at Tromsö leaves the naval arm to pursue its own war. But an amphibious bid for the port of Narvik relegates the submarines to defensive roles and puts Red Suite into the intricate business of ice-breaking, Northern Route patrols, convoy escorts; and it means devoting all the air to defensive umbrellas.
    Ferdy was lucky; the current strategic theory was that Sweden and Finland would resist an overland movement, and this centred the fighting too far east to drain Northern Fleet resources. Ferdy breathed a sigh of relief when he read the Land Forces report off the teleprinter.
    He offered me one of his best cigars. I waved it away. ‘I’m trying to stop.’
    â€˜Bad timing,’ said Ferdy. He carefully cut the Punch Suprema and offered one to the American submariner who was acting as his aide. ‘A stogie, kid?’
    â€˜No thanks, comrade.’
    Ferdy puffed gently as the cigar started to glow. ‘And I’ll want air recce and the exact limit of the drift-ice.’
    â€˜We’ve got that,’ said the submariner.
    â€˜We’ve got the seasonal average. I want it exactly.’ He scribbled a request for the air reconnaissance and a clerk typed it onto the teleprinter that was connected to Schlegel’s Control Balcony.
    â€˜The forecast is two miles with a four thousand foot ceiling,’ said the weather clerk.
    The clerk at the teleprinter waited for Control to reply before reading off the answer. ‘They are giving us two Be-10 Mallow flying boats, out of Murmansk.’
    Ferdy ran a red chinagraph pencil across the map, making a line to divide the White Sea from the Barents Sea at its narrowest place. The clerk at the teleprinter took the Be-10’s punch card and asked the computer the arming details of the jet flying boats that Ferdy was going to use. They were equipped with rockets, homing torpedoes and depth charges. Ferdy nodded and passed the print-out to the submariner.
    â€˜Put them up earliest,’ said Ferdy. He turned to me. ‘Schlegel will bring that cloud down and write those flying boats off, you see.’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid, Ferdy. That weather comes off the computer, you know that.’
    Ferdy smiled grimly.
    I’d continued to use the personal locker in the Red Ops, more because clearing it might have offended Ferdy than because it was very convenient to me. I went through into the narrow locker room and let the door bang closed behind me before switching on the lights.
    There were eight lockers there, one for each of the Ops Room staff, and a couple of spares. Mine had a
Playboy
nude stuck on the door, a legacy from its previous owner. The erotic effect was not enhanced by the portrait of Beethoven that Ferdy had carefully matched and pasted over the head of it. Or by the football boots that some unknown collage artist had added a week later. By that time, there were not many people who didn’t know whose locker it was. So now that the corner of the door had been bent at right angles with a blunt instrument, and