swept for electronic devices which made it impossible to bug him. Such was the painstaking technique of surveillance.
Finally, one day, while Stratton was shadowing the diplomat’s car from a hilltop using a skidoo, it stopped by the edge of the lonely fjord and he climbed out. It was a quiet road with hardly more than a vehicle an hour, less during winter. Stratton climbed off the skidoo and took out his petrol cooker and makings so he could have a quick brew while he kept an eye on his man several hundred feet below.
After a quick check around him the diplomat busied himself removing several items from his boot and set about constructing something. He was moving quickly and positively, having obviously rehearsed whatever he was doing. His next noticeable step was to start pushing something up and down with his foot that turned out to be a pump. Within minutes a rubber dinghy began to grow on the verge beside his car. When it was fully inflated, he placed a pair of paddles in it and carried it down a rocky bank to the water’s edge a few feet away. He came back to the car, collected his briefcase and a fishing rod, and went back to the boat.
He climbed in, paddled into the fjord for several hundred metres, picked up the fishing rod and lowered a device of some kind on the end of the line into the water. He sat there for quite some time as if fishing, waiting for a bite, when eventually the end of the rod bowed to the water several times and the diplomat quickly reeled in his line, removed the device and replaced it with his briefcase, which he then lowered into the water. A moment later he retrieved the end of his line, now minus the briefcase, and paddled back to his car. Within a few minutes, he had deflated the boat, packed everything back into the boot and was driving down the road on his way back to Oslo.
The diplomat had obviously made a drop to a mini submarine and, as a result, two months later Stratton’s team took part in the capture of a Russian submarine, a full-sized one, which was the mother ship of the mini-subs used to rendezvous with Russian spies and diplomats. It was not a complete success though. Two Russian mini-sub drivers, Russian Special Forces or Spetsnaz, got away after the trap was sprung. Stratton and several of his team gave chase along the bank of ankle-breaking rocks and ice but the Spetsnaz ran with a recklessness the SBS were not prepared to match that day. The Russians had far more to lose than their freedom if they were caught, and had the SBS closed in, the fight would have been a bitter one with survivors on one side only. They had an ambiguous respect for the Spetsnaz, mainly because hardly anything was known about them. It was assumed they were of a high standard although there was no evidence to support that. They were undoubtedly tough, illustrated by the operations they mounted, and, like their British counterparts, preferred training in the worst possible conditions. Stratton had met members of most country’s Special Forces but never a Spetsnaz.
As he pondered his route across Norway, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and checked the screen but there was no indication of the number. His first thought was the camp and one of the secure lines. Perhaps it was an operational recall. He was technically on standby, even though on leave, since he was attached to an operational squadron. It continued to ring. There was a time when he would never have considered not answering. It was indicative of his mood these days that he would forgo the opportunity of an operation just to go skiing. He might have continued to let it ring but he was cursed, and, like a drug addict, could never resist a fix.
He pushed a button and put it to his ear. ‘This is Stratton,’ he said.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
It was Sumners. Stratton could only wonder what the man wanted. He had given him every piece of information during the debrief, at which he was cross-examined by Sumners and two other MI6 non-ops. Stratton had an urge to ignore him and turn off the phone, which would piss him off no end. He might be Stratton’s superior but he was Military Intelligence and Stratton was SF