Understrike Read Online Free

Playboy firing trials. The documents ran into six foolscap pages of opaque jargon, from which the Second-in-Command gleaned nothing fresh about America’s latest nuclear-powered launching pad. From the statistics at the end of her sea trials, Playboy was very fast and, on paper, an admirable ramp for the Trepholite — a missile about which there were no statistics, only rumours carried back and forth by worried-looking Naval Attachés. And if these ruddy-faced, preoccupied young men from the Admiralty were anything to go by (Mostyn contemplated), the Trepholite was the supreme deterrent. Literally the last word. So the firing trials from its undersea emplacement were of considerable importance to everyone’s peace of mind.
    The final page outlined the duties of Special Security’s observer, and with it came hope. Boysie would be one of eight experts—and inexperts—who had to sit sober on board Playboy while the Weapons Officer lit the blue touch paper (metaphorically speaking). It was also heartening to see that the Trepholite would be fired “cold”—without its holocaustic warhead. Perhaps the Chief was right. Even though this was far from Boysie’s usual line of country, he couldn’t really get into any trouble. As for the report, well the American boys would feed him a certain amount of data and, if the worst came to the worst, the Department could, with a little subtle persuasion, always get their grubby hands on a copy of the Admiralty observer’s report before Boysie wrote his. The important thing was they should have someone from the Department actually there in the flesh; and, whatever else you could say about Boysie, he was very expert in the flesh.
    An hour later, Mostyn came to the conclusion that Boysie’s presence in San Diego would simply be nominal. A couple of quick gins at the club on his way home should soon dispel the tiny lone butterfly that fluttered angrily at the back of Mostyn’s conscience. Again he buzzed his secretary, and began to fill in a set of cablegram forms: one to the Chief of US Naval Security, North Island, San Diego; one to his opposite number at the Pentagon; one to their undercover man in New York (a personality unknown to all departments of US Intelligence, including the CIA. Such is the trust of allies): and one to Mr Brian Oakes, passenger on board the Queen Elizabeth . Mostyn sealed each of the buff forms in a separate envelope, initialled them and added the requisite code designations. The first two were marked Top Sec A ; the latter couple Sub - Text : Normal .
    His secretary, a bouncily efficient girl with undisguised false breasts, carried the forms up to the top floor and handed them to the Duty Cypher Officer. In the Cypher Room—where, behind double metal doors, Britain’s secrets and clandestine orders are filtered out in a jumble of letters—the daughter of a retired Major-General translated Mostyn’s scrawl into the required coding series. Boysie’s cablegram remained almost as Mostyn had written it:
    RETURN PASSAGE POSTPONED STOP DELIVER ORDER AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS REFERENCE OPENING NEW SALES AREA STOP BRANCH MANAGER TO CALL AT YOUR HOTEL STOP DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE STOP REGARDS UNCLE
    Boysie ’s cablegram was handed to one of the trainee cypher operators. He left the building ten minutes later and within half an hour telephoned the message through the ordinary GPO channels from a Paddington number. Boysie’s instructions were off on their journey to the Queen Elizabeth’s radio room. On arrival, the cablegram lay in the delivery tray—with seven other freshly-received personal messages—for half an hour before being popped into its little crested envelope and hurried down to Cabin B236. From the moment it left Mostyn’s hand to the time Boysie hurriedly tore it open at least twelve people had seen its contents.
    *
    They got Khavichev out of bed around two-thirty in the morning. He gave three sets of orders over the scrambler telephone in