CHAPTER 3

At home in the empty flat, Kaisa felt inexplicably lonely. Her heart was still pounding when she got undressed and climbed into bed. Suddenly she jumped up and went to put

the chain across the front door. For a moment Kaisa listened for steps outside. It was dead quiet. She got back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. The streetlight shone through the Venetian blinds and formed a familiar zigzag pattern on the walls of her bedroom. What had she donned She'd given a man - a foreigner - her tele-

phone number and she'd let him kiss her. Now sober, Kaisa knew she wouldn't be able to see him again. What she'd done was bad enough already. Not only had she let him think she was free, but she'd also betrayed her fiancé. A cold shiver went through her body when she thought what Mat his mother would say if she knew.

Peter had hardly slept. The divers hadn't finished searching under the hull of the ship until the early hours of the morning. The excitement had made him sober up pretty quickly after the party at the British Embassy. Perhaps the Duty Officer had been a little jumpy calling them back when it was probably only seagulls fighting over pieces of bread in the water. But, as the Captain had told them, any suspicious activity was to be taken very seriously during this visit. By all accounts, the Russians had a more or less free hand in Helsinki, so who knew what they might try. Peter knew he shouldn't have had so much to drink on the first night ashore, but what could you do when you were required to attend three cocktail parties in one evening? He stretched his legs over the narrow bunk and smiled;  someone had to do it. Who'd have thought the cuts in the navy's budget would have such an effect on his personal first visit to Finland by the Royal Navy since the Cold War started was supposed to include three ships, but in the event only Peter '  had been sent to this small coun-try bordering the Soviet Union. It was pathetic - embarrass signet the Russians are laughing into their samovars this morning,

All the same, this was the closest to visiting a country behind the Iron Curtain Peter

would ever get, so he was planning to make the most of it. It has been a member since t t wasn't that he'd not taken heed of the Captain's talk about honey traps, but Peter believed in the old proverb,

you only live once. This was the most exciting trip of Lindvall career so far and he was sure he'd spot a KGB agent a mile off, however beautiful she was. And he could keep his mouth shut, he was sure of that too.

Last night Peter almost wished the Russians planted something -one of those mini-subs they kept hearing about - under HMS Newcastle. He could see the news-

paper headlines, 'Brave Royal Navy officer Peter Williams dis-

covers Soviet mini-sub in the Baltic' with a picture of himself from his early Dartmouth days. Of course, it would not have been him - as a sub-lieutenant, he was one of the low-

est ranking officers on board. He'd only left Dartmouth a few weeks ago, after all. And he wasn't even a diver. But thee image of him as a hero was irresistible. Something like that would have impressed the girl last night. He got up swiftly and found his mess undress jacket. The napkin was still there in the pocket, with the telephone number scrawled on it. Still legible - just. He took a long, deep drag on his cigarette and blew smoke to the side, away from his bunk

At noon Peter thought it would be a good time to calththerl. He had nearly an hour until he was on duty again.  He walked along the gangway to the wardroom. It's lover boy!' The older officer grinned. Collins was only jealous; his a wife looked like a bulldog chewing thistle But Peter liked the guy - although not his wife who,

at the last cocktail party in Portsmouth, had tried to flirt with me. He grinned at the lieutenant and lifted the receiver. He felt a pleasant twinge in his groin when he heard the phone ringing at the other end. She'd really been quite lovely. He thought back to the night before and knew she'd been smitten by him too. The phone kept ringing at thee another ended.

Your bit of foreign fluff not at home?' Collins said. He dialled again, making sure he got each digit right, and pulling the long cord with him took a step out of the

mess and out of earshot of the older man. He tried the number four times, but there was no answer. He was standing in the gangway and was about to pass him a second time and gave him a knowing look. It seemed everyone on board was talking about him and the pretty Finnish girl. There was nothing for it - he'd try ringing again after his four-hour watch on the quarterdeck.

Two days after the embassy party was a cold autumn day. The single tree outside Kaisa's block of flats had long since lost its leaves - it stood there, desolate, trying to survive the stormy winds from the Baltics that beat its tender trunk. She sighed as she watched its struggle from the narrow window of her kitchenette.  Living alone in a flat in Helsinki had seemed a glamorous year ago. Now the beige walls of the one-bedroomed place in Lauttasaari seemed restricting. The flat, which belonged to her boyfriend's family, wasn't even in Helsinki proper. There was a bus service but it took almost an hour to reach the city centre. While Tuuli could walk to Hanken, she was forced to memorise bus schedules and carefully plan her trips into the city. She was always late for lectures. When the phone rang she jumped.'Hello?  Kaisa heard the familiar voice at the other end of the

line and sat down on a kitchen chair she'd placed next to the hall table. 'No Matti, I'm not feeling any better.

She took the receiver away from her ear and looked at her reflection in the mirror above the table. Was this the face of a cheat? She listened to her boyfriend talk about thee

British ship he could see from his office window. Matti worked as a customs officer at the South Harbour. Kaisa tried to sound nonchalant. 'You can see the English people coming and going?' she asked.

Yes, their uniforms are very smart Kaisa's mouth felt dry. She couldn't speak. The thought

of Matti looking at the deck of the British ship and possibly seeing Peter walk along it made her feel dizzy. You still there?' Matti said. she could hear the irritation in his voice.

Englishmen are boring, Kaisa had told Matti when he'd called her the fourth time on the eve of the party. She knew he was desperately jealous of her and would have

forbidden her to go if he'd been able to. Now she almost laughed at her own words to her boyfriend. Oh, what a mess she'd got herself into. Perhaps Matti had been right,

perhaps she should never have gone to the embassy party.  Yes, I'm here,' Kaisa said. It took her over ten minutes to convince him that she was still ill. Matti had phoned the day before, and she'd had to put on a throaty voice to stop him from coming over. Kaisa just couldn't see him, not yet. She felt bad because she'd never lied to Matti like this before.

When he finally let her go, and she'd replaced the avocado coloured receiver, Kaisa realised the embassy party had been the first time she'd been out without her fiancé

since they got engaged. And that hadn't really been going out either - not in the way her friend from university would call going out. When Kaisa first met Tuuli, on the first day of term in the autumn of last year, her friend had been surprised to see the ring on the finger of her left hand.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***