Spy Story by Len Deighton Page B

the contents ransacked, I was inclined to take it personally.
    â€˜My locker’s been forced, Ferdy.’
    â€˜I noticed that,’ said Ferdy.
    â€˜Thanks a lot,’ I said.
    â€˜Shouting won’t help things,’ said Ferdy.
    â€˜How’s about letting me in on what will help things,’ I said.
    â€˜Is anything missing?’ the American boy asked.
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘Not as far as I can see.’
    â€˜Well, there you are,’ said Ferdy.
    â€˜I’ll toddle,’ I said.
    â€˜You’ll tell Schlegel I want weather?’
    â€˜I’ll tell him,’ I said. ‘But he’ll get it off the computer like I told you.’
    â€˜You put some weather on the line,’ said Ferdy. ‘Or don’t bother about dinner tonight.’
    â€˜You don’t get out of it as easy as that,’ I said. ‘See you at eight.’
    Ferdy nodded. ‘Now we’re going to put some sonobuoys into the Kara, and we’ll start a search with the Mallow flying boats. Take a good look at the weather reports and then place them.’
    The young American submariner had removed his uniform jacket and now he loosened his tie. He pushed the plastic markers that were the Russian flying boats along the line of the ice-limits. The ocean, which had always seemed so empty to him, was now a network of detection stations and seabed sonar. The flying boats were the most effective weapon of all, for they could land on the water and lower their detectors into it to get beneath the anticline of the layered water. Then they could bring out their short-range Magnetic Anomaly Detectors to confirm that it was a big metal sub down there, and not just a whale or patch of warm water.
    â€˜What about the ice-limits?’ the boy asked.
    â€˜Forget it – bang your flying boats down wherever you want them to start the search.’
    â€˜On the ice?’
    â€˜They’ve got wheels – either the ice is thick enough to take the weight of them or they’ll float.’
    The boy turned to me. ‘Did the Russians ever do that?’
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘But it would certainly change the tactical maps if it was possible.’
    â€˜It’d shake up the electronics,’ said the boy. ‘It’s about forty tons of airplane – she’d be a thin scattering of rivets and radio tubes if you did that with her.’ He held the plastic marker in his hand, hovering above the deep water channel where the attacking US submarines would probably turn to reach the Russian coastline.
    â€˜Place those damned markers,’ said Ferdy. ‘This is a war, not a safety week.’
    â€˜Jesus,’ whispered the boy, and now he was out there in the freezing ocean with those two Mallows, laden with ASW equipment, right over him. ‘There’s just no place to hide if you do that.’
    It’s a rare event that I’m home early enough to worry about the parking regulations. Marjorie was even earlier. She was already dressed up and ready to go to Ferdy’s dinner party that evening. She was relaxed and beautiful and determined to mother me. She made a big pot of coffee and added a plate of Florentina sticky cakes to the tray placed within arm’s reach of my favourite chair. She offered to put her car in the lock-up so that there would be room for mine on the meter. And before she went to move both cars herself, she told me for the third time that my suit was laid out on the bed and there was a clean shirt in the top drawer. And she was beautiful, clever and she loved me.
    The bell rang only two minutes after she’d gone downstairs. I chuckled in that patronizing way that men do when women forget keys, can’t open a tin or stall in traffic. ‘Put your door-keys on the same ring …’ I said, but when the door was open far enough, I saw two men in black overcoats and one of them carried a burnished metal case that might have