From ‘The U-boat War in the Atlantic’ – official German account: Allied methods of spreading large numbers of different rumours served to confuse the minds of our Intelligence officers. It must be admitted that our enemies showed themselves to be masters of deception.
From ‘Monthly A/S Report’ (British) for October 1942: This month the U-boats made all their assaults by night… The rough weather during the month, by reducing the efficiency of R.D.F., was to that extent at least in favour of U-boats attacking by night, but it may interest the escorts to know that… [it]… has also been a severe strain on the Germans.
‘This mission is of very high importance, you see. Perhaps even so much as to win the war, I think.’ The Count’s brown, spaniel-type eyes were fixed gloomily on Paul Everard across Ultra’s wardroom table. He added, ‘There is much danger, consequently, for yours truly.’
Paul sipped at his mug of cocoa. Ultra was on the surface and it was shivery cold inside her. For ten hours the diesels had been drawing cold night air down through the control-room hatches – ever since she’d slipped out of Malta before dusk last evening, and turned west. She’d be diving soon, before daylight, to spend the day motoring through the minefield known as QB 255, along the southwest coast of Sicily. It would be Paul’s watch at about the time they dived, which was why he’d turned out now to be ready for it.
The Count was of medium build, dark-haired, with a Mediterranean complexion, sad eyes, and soft, well-cared-for hands. Wykeham had expressed the opinion that he was no more a count than Alfred Shaw the wardroom flunky was a bishop; and the Count had only smiled and reminded him, ‘My friend, I do not request you should call me “Count”. Did I not request you call me Peter?’
His way of turning the other cheek added to a certain charm of manner. But ‘Peter’ would have been one name too many. According to the patrol orders, his name was Carlo Paoli, according to himself he was a count, but on top of this he had a Greek prayer-book which he dipped into quite often, with the name Christos Venizelos on its flyleaf. Paul had asked him about this: why an Italian would read Greek from a Greek Orthodox Church prayer-book, and who was Venizelos?
‘Christos is myself. Although I have once been Selim Zorlu, a Turk, and once also a Hungarian. But Venizelos—’ he patted himself on the chest – ‘mine own family name. My father highly important man of course, you know, everybody know.’ At this point he’d crossed himself, and Paul had let the matter drop, only exchanging glances with others in the circle; the gesture had implied that further questions might intrude on holy ground. But the Count had raised the subject again himself, in the wardroom mess in Malta, yesterday, by telling Wykeham, ‘You will know the name of Venizelos, I may assume?’
‘Well, no, Count, I don’t believe—’
‘Was Prime Minister, in Greece. In Great War.’
One had met men before who seemed to be arrant liars but whose stories, if you bothered to check up on one when there was some chance to do so, seemed to stand up. And apparently Venizelos had been Greek premier during the other war. Questioned by a Greek submarine officer, moreover, the Count had been completely at his ease in detailing his own birth date and place, and the names of brothers, sisters, uncles… it wasn’t proof of his own membership of the family, but it had convinced that Greek. The fact remained that Carlo Paoli came from Naples and was going to be put ashore in two days’ time on the north coast of Sicily. It was complicated all round, and settling for ‘Count’ was an easy way out.
He asked Paul now, ‘After this war, you go back to America?’
‘I don’t know. Really, no idea at all.’
Paul’s mother, Nick Everard’s first wife, was a White Russian. After her divorce from Nick she’d married an American industrialist, and Paul had been at college over there until 1939, when he’d ducked out of it and come over to join up.
‘You give me your address, maybe I look you up one day, in Connecticut?’
‘Why, sure, I’d like that very much.’
He’d make damn sure to do nothing of the sort. A man like the Count might be invaluable in wartime, but in peace he’d be a con-man, to be given a wide berth. Paul felt twofaced himself as he nodded again: ‘Be delighted.’
The brown eyes looked sadder than ever. Might a master of duplicity see through an amateur’s deceit?
‘I think you do not know, what for this business?’
‘Not really.’
‘You like I tell you, Paul?’
‘Perhaps you better not.’
‘Why for not?’ When the Count shook his head like that, his jowls trembled. ‘Who you tell? The fishes?’ He lifted his arms. ‘Birds?’
‘Go ahead, then, let’s hear it.’
‘On your chart, I show you.’
The way he pronounced ‘show’, it rhymed with ‘plough’. Paul leant out, reached across the gangway and pulled the chart over. ‘Here we are. What’s the story?’
They were alone in the wardroom. Hugo Wykeham had the watch, and the skipper had gone up to the bridge ten minutes ago. Bob McClure had moved out of the wardroom to make room for the Count; there was a small bunking space, more like a shelf really, in a caged section of electrical switch-gear opposite the wireless office, and this had become McClure’s berth. He didn’t like it being referred to as his cage, especially after Paul had offered to keep him supplied with bananas in there. He’d been indignant anyway, at having to move out, despite the fact that his small size suited him to that restricted space and that it would only be for two nights. They’d be sending the Count off in his canoe on the night after this next one.
‘But then taking the sod off again?’
‘And straight back to Malta. Another couple of nights, that’s all.’
McClure hadn’t argued with the captain, but to Wykeham he’d expressed strong resentment at having to surrender his bunk to a ‘fat Greek’.
‘He’s Italian, not Greek.’
‘That’s worse.’
‘Well, he’s got guts, all right.’
‘Phoney as hell. I wouldn’t trust him a bloody inch!’
‘He’s the kind they get for this sort of thing, that’s all. I agree, I wouldn’t lend him a fiver – or leave my sister alone with him for two minutes!’
‘Right.’ McClure had nodded. ‘She’d eat him alive, I expect.’
The Count’s soft-looking hands moved across the chart.
‘Here I land. You see?’
Paul nodded. It would be his job to get the folboat up to the casing and launch it. They were carrying two, but only in case one got damaged. The operation of surfacing in the dark, getting the fore hatch open and the canoe out and the hatch shut and clipped again while it was being launched – timing had to be split-second, so as to have the hatch open for only a minimal time, in case of enemy interference and a need to dive – had been rehearsed in Malta, in Marsamxett Creek at night. The Count would go up through the bridge hatch and climb down to the casing, and by the time he got there Paul’s team would have the canoe in the water alongside, ready for him to step into it. In fact none of these arrangements pleased the Count, who’d claimed that on previous occasions he’d been provided with a commando boat-handler to do the paddling for him, taking the folboat back to the submarine and bringing it in again a few nights later to pick him up. This time he was required to hide the canoe on shore, and do his own paddling both ways.
The landing spot was near Termini, about fifteen miles east of Palermo.
‘You want I should tell you what for I risk my life in this business?’
The Count did seem to be acutely aware of his own intrepidity. Paul shook his head. ‘Not unless you want to. Naturally I’m curious, but it’s your neck.’
‘Make no difference, you see… So – here. Other side Palermo, that is Golfo di Castelammara. And my place for landing – here. Now – you see this coast between Capo Zafferano and Capo Cefalu? For landings, both sides Palermo. Many, many men. With tanks, guns. Big, big army, both these places. Battleships, many ships – bombarding first – and aircraft carriers with fighters over… So then very quick is Palermo captured, then all Sicily – huh?’
‘My sainted aunt…’
‘You are surprise, huh?’
‘How the heck do all the ships arrive at those places without the enemy getting wind of it and being ready for ’em?’
‘Problem for others.’ The Count brushed it off. ‘Me, I land, meet with Resistance leaders – friends… But wait: as yet I do not tell you all… Here, also!’
‘Sardinia?’
‘I know this, but private, is not my official informations. True, however – at the same time, landings here also, southwest, with this port Cagliari between – you understand?’
He’d closed his hands like pincers.
‘Here Palermo, here Cagliari. Sardinia, Sicily – huh?’
‘I’ll be damned.’
He was rather flattered, that the Count should have chosen him to tell this to. Paul did like him, despite a certain caution in his attitude; perhaps because he was such an original, but also because there was a loneliness about him that drew one’s sympathy. Drew his, anyway. And what he’d described made sense, all right. With Palermo and Cagliari in Allied hands, both islands could be invested and captured quickly. With those ports and airfields then you’d leapfrog into Italy, or the south of France even.
‘Please not to remark I am telling you these matters. Is not so important, but I am not suppose—’
A voice behind Paul exploded: ‘Now where’s the bloody chart, for shit’s sake!’
Bob McClure. Like an angry gnome bristling in the gangway. Paul handed him the chart. ‘Who let you out of your cage?’
‘Diving any minute now. Cape Marco’s ten miles abeam.’
‘How’s the shelf?’
‘No more than painful, long as you don’t raise your head. If you do, you get electrocuted.’ He asked the Count, ‘My bunk nice and comfy?’
‘I am most appreciating—’
The diesels cut out. In the suddenly contrasting silence McClure muttered, ‘Here we go.’ There was a rush of movement down the ladder into the control room, then Ruck’s voice funnelled down the pipe: ‘Open main vents!’ He was diving her quietly ‘on the watch’ so as to allow men who were off-duty to continue sleeping. Paul heard Wykeham order, ‘Eighty feet.’
It was a well-established route through this minefield. You dived to eighty feet and then spent fifteen hours at four knots on a course of 300 degrees, passing five miles off Cape Granitola. Then you surfaced off Marettimo – in darkness again by that time – and went wherever the patrol orders directed you: in this case north and then east, around the western end of Sicily.
Ruck arrived as Paul was edging out into the gangway, on his way to the control room. He’d take over the watch as soon as Wykeham had caught a trim – as soon as he’d got the boat in balance and neutral buoyancy at that depth. For the ten hours’ dived passage there’d be nothing for officers of the watch to do except watch the trim, making adjustments now and then by pumping a few gallons this way or that. It would be a warm, quiet, sleep-ridden day: as long as nobody’d moved any of the mines since they’d last passed through.
‘Well, Count.’ Ruck was shedding bridge clothing and hanging it behind the water-tight door. ‘We’re right on schedule. This time tomorrow you’ll be ashore in Sicily.’
‘Yes.’ The Count had his Greek prayer-book open again. He nodded, licked his lips. ‘Thank you.’ The troubled look in his spaniel eyes was perhaps habitual. They flickered up now as McClure came in and squeezed on to the padded bench, bringing some paperwork with him. The Count asked Ruck, ‘How far from the shore—’ he shook his head – ‘How near distance to the shore will you take me?’
‘Half a mile.’ Ruck swung up on to his own bunk. ‘Half a nautical mile, that is. One thousand yards.’
‘Thousand yards.’ Opening his hands, looking at their soft palms. Then closing them into fists. ‘Why is it I am not allow a soldier for the boat?’
A canoe-handler, he was griping about again. Ruck sighed. ‘I gather there were no commandos available. Until now we’ve had a squad attached to the flotilla – for impromptu raids and sabotage – well, as you know. But they’ve been whisked off somewhere.’
The Count nodded. ‘I can guess what is that purpose.’
‘Then you know more about it than I do, Count.’
‘Is possible.’
Ruck lay back, and shut his eyes. The answer he’d given had not been the true one. And the orders concerning this part of it had been given verbally. Nothing on paper, and the explanation had been strictly private, offered over a glass of gin. He heard Count Peter, alias Carlo Paoli, alias Christos Venizelos and Selim Zorlu, explaining, ‘It is not only for the work of paddling the boat that I am concern. On other times the commando have also tommy gun for protecting me. You see…’ He’d turned to McClure now, for want of a better audience. ‘I leave my boat – this time not, I must hide him – I am saying times before this… So I have sand or rocks I must pass over. But on the sea the boat is not difficult for persons on shore to be seeing: so when I come on land I am – how you say—’
‘Exposed.’
Ruck had offered this, without opening his eyes.
‘Yes. This is why it is much better, infinitely, for having other man with the tommy gun, you understand?’
McClure nodded, without looking up from his work. ‘Have to take your chances.’
‘Yes. Yes…’
‘You volunteered for it, didn’t you?’
McClure disliked him, quite apart from the trivial business of the bunk. He’d made it obvious before this, and Wykeham had pulled him up about it… The Count hadn’t answered that last question: only frowned slightly as he looked down at the prayer-book. Ruck’s head had swung over, though, and his eyes were open.
‘That’s an extremely brave man you’re talking to, McClure. Takes a hell of a lot of guts, his kind of work.’
The Count’s eyes shifted. He murmured, ‘Thank you, captain. You are very kind.’
It was noon before the truck reached Singen. It pulled up outside the police station, the tailboard crashed down, and there was a ring of soldiers in the roadway with levelled rifles. The two who’d brought Jack and Trolley from the village ordered them out, and the soldiers hustled them inside, where they were separated and locked into one-man cells.
Now there’d be some interrogation, Jack guessed. Or a firing squad. In principle you didn’t believe in that outcome – not really, that the Germans would flout international law and the Hague Convention to that extent: but having been threatened with it more than once by men who clearly would have enjoyed doing it, you were aware it could happen. If, for instance, the Gestapo took you over: if they decided it was the thing to do, and reckoned they could get away with it.
Perhaps not this close to the Swiss border. People gossiped, and they’d be sensitive to the risk of publicity. Which only meant they might transport them elsewhere first…
The meal of leftovers in the village last night had been excellent, and their captors had been quite pleasant. They were some variety of Home Guard, and pleased with themselves for having pulled it off. But the food had been splendid. Here, it was thin soup and black bread, the soup tasting as if floor-mops had been wrung out in it. It was early evening by this time. Jack was considering the discomfort that the night ahead now promised – a plank bed and a single blanket, no pillow, under the glare of an unshaded bulb – when a guard unlocked the cell door and ordered him out, pushed him into a room where Cockup and Barmy, standing at ease and with a rifle covering them, brightened at the sight of him. He noticed that they both had cut lips, black eyes and bruises.
‘Hey, Jack’s the boy!’
‘Wotcher, me old cock sparrer!’
‘You stupid buggers…’
‘Barmy – what did he say?’
An officer at a desk in the corner had taken notes of this conversation, although it couldn’t have made much sense to him. And now Trolley was marched into the room. The seated officer scribbled a signature on a piece of coloured paper, banged a rubber stamp on it and then handed it to a sergeant. Then he rose, came over to stand in front of them with his hands clasped behind his back.
‘Speak German, anybody?’
Nobody seemed to have heard him.
‘Very well. I tell you this in English. You will be returned to your camp now, on the train. You will of course be under guard, and they will have orders that if you attempt escape, or disobey or cause other trouble, they are to shoot you dead. Is this now understood?’
Jack began, ‘Shooting unarmed prisoners, in terms of the Hague Convention—’
‘Silence!’
The officer’s face thrust close to Jack’s.
‘When you escape from the Offlag, was not one of you armed?’
Cockup said, ‘I don’t even know anyone called Ahmed.’
Jack said as the laughter ended, ‘Old drill rifle. Rusted solid, and no ammo.’
‘We could shoot you for this.’ A slow nodding. ‘If you give more cause, we will!’
Jack said stolidly, ‘We’re unarmed prisoners, and it would be murder.’ He heard Barmy suggest, ‘Tell him to take a running jump, old boy.’ Then Trolley muttered, ‘I’d let it ride, Jack, if I were you.’ The officer was chuntering away in German to the sergeant and corporal; when he’d finished and they’d both shouted ‘Jawhol!’ he turned to glare at Jack again. ‘Understand what I say to them?’
‘How the hell could I?’
‘I say if you make trouble, he must shoot to kill, and shoot you the first. You understand this perhaps?’
Cockup drawled, ‘Fellow’s English is really quite good, you know.’
They were marched to the railway station through dark, deserted streets. Trolley urged Jack in a murmur, en route, ‘Shouldn’t push ’em too far. I mean they’re Nazis, remember?’
Barmy Morrison said, ‘Knocked us about something shocking. Whole pack of ’em on that train.’
‘Serve you damn right.’ Jack meant it. ‘Of all the bloody stupid things to do!’
‘We most likely wouldn’t have got through anyway, Jack.’
Trolley, pouring oil on troubled waters. But the plain fact was, Jack thought, that as a direct result of Cockup’s lunacy he and Barmy had been bagged, and then the Bosch had started looking for two more in the same area. Consequently he was not now on his way to London and Fiona. It had been vitally important that he should be, but instead he faced incarceration in the Straflager, which as likely as not would mean for the duration of the war.
In a way, it would be preferable to be shot. He began to sweat, at the thought of it. The prospect of years in Offlag IVC, with Fiona on the loose in London; or rather, Fiona alone in London and half a million men on the loose around her. She wasn’t the sort to sit at home and knit seaboot stockings. He knew exactly how she was, and he was crazy about her. There was no question of blaming or judging – any more than he’d blame himself for being the way he was. He’d pinched her from Nick – who’d ratted on her, admittedly, but she hadn’t known it at the time – and he was quite certain in his understanding of her. She was his, and exactly as he wanted her.
‘Frank.’
Trolley’s head turned slightly. A minute ago the sergeant had yelled at Barmy to shut up. Jack whispered, ‘Make a train-jump, if we get a chance?’
‘What sort of chance?’
‘A slowish stretch, and soft ground to land on. The others could start scrapping or something, to divert the goons.’
‘Then what?’
‘We jump. Hours of darkness left – with luck – to get hidden… Frank, we’re out now, but once they lock us in the Straflager—’
‘Halt!’
They were outside the station. There was a military check-post at its entrance and the sergeant was showing them the movement order. Jack told Trolley. ‘If you don’t want to, I’ll go it alone.’
‘Three-four-oh revolutions!’
‘Three-four-oh, sir…’
No sinkings yet. But the night was young, and only in the last half-hour had the U-boats stopped talking to each other and begun to close in around the convoy. A few of them seemed to be held back in reserve, much farther ahead, but they’d no doubt be moving in when they considered the time was ripe.
The skipper was at the binnacle, taking her straight up the middle, Astilbe angling out to starboard and Paeony to port as Harbinger drove up between them. The contact they were going after happened to be on the convoy’s course, the course they were steering now. Trying out new tactics, Warrimer appreciated, in keeping with new orders issued earlier to the other escorts: he hadn’t discussed any of it with his first lieutenant – as he usually had done in the past with Graves – and now he wasn’t talking much at all. Just hunched there, grim-faced, binoculars at his eyes – to keep them open, maybe, Chubb had suggested. Warrimer said into his telephone, ‘Very good…’ He called, ‘All guns loaded, sir, starshell in A, SAP in B and X!’
The odds were it would dive before they got a shot at it. Not that anyone was likely to run short of targets; there were certainly no fewer U-boats around them than there had been last night. Only one on the 271 screen so far, but Gritten had identified about six different ones ahead of the convoy and there was also one out to starboard and a shadower back on the port quarter. The ones ahead had been talking fit to bust, then abruptly fallen silent, and there’d been a tense wait before RDF had picked up this one that Harbinger was now thrashing out to find. If the skipper had anything like a proper escort group at his disposal, Warrimer thought, and if it hadn’t been for the ‘no-diversion’ rule, he’d have deployed several escorts ahead while the convoy made a big emergency turn. By leaving the convoy and tearing out like this – he’d moved Stella to guard the rear – he was actually breaking the rules he’d laid down himself at those sessions in Freetown: but since last night and the night before the system hadn’t paid off, it was reasonable to try another one.
‘Bearing is oh-three-eight, range five miles, sir!’
That was Carlish, tending the plot voice-pipe. Warrimer heard the skipper order, ‘Steer oh-three-eight, cox’n.’
A gun’s crew would already be soaked to the skin, at this speed and on this course. Wind and sea were still from the northwest and about the same as they’d been for the past three days, but even with it on the beam at thirty knots the stuff was fairly sheeting over.
Warrimer was guardedly aware of a growing feeling of hopelessness. In himself and also, he thought, in others. Nobody admitting to it… Last night they’d lost four ships: the Carl Jansen, the Timaru, the Lord John and the Tarcoola. The Timaru had had half the Carl Jansen’s crew in her when she’d been blown in half. The trawler Stella had claimed to have scored a direct hit with her four-inch gun on a U-boat which had then turned away and dived, and Tony Graves had been sure he’d been close to finishing one off with depth charges when the skipper had had to order him to resume station ahead of the convoy. This had been unavoidable because at that time Paeony had developed some defect in her asdic training unit, so that for a while there’d been no asdic cover at all in the van of the convoy. In normal circumstances this would have been unthinkable: especially when one remembered how professional and successful they’d been with their own escort group up north. In fact if you thought too much about it, it was heartbreaking.
Thank God, Guyatt had reported at dusk this evening that his asdics were now operable. Not one hundred percent reliable, but working, pinging.
There’d been another reorganisation of the convoy this morning. It was still in seven columns but the outer two columns on each side were now of only four instead of five ships. So the rearmost line-abreast was of only three ships, on the three centre columns only. That trio consisted of the Harvest Moon in the centre, flanked by the Leona to starboard and the Mount Trembling – she’d taken the Timaru’s job of rescue ship – to port. The Burbridge had moved up to become third ship in column three, and the two oilers were also in billets well surrounded by other ships. The tankers were the ones you could least afford to lose, and the Burbridge with her wheelchair patients and crowd of nurses had to be given as much protection as possible.
‘Bearing is oh-three-six, sir, range four miles!’
‘Steer oh-three-six… Starshell stand by.’
Warrimer told A gun’s sightsetter, ‘Stand by starshell. Target U-boat on the surface right ahead. Set range oh-seven-oh.’ He heard the sight-setter repeating the order in a high-pitched yell; the telephone line also carried the noise of sea battering that gunshield. Behind him, Chubb was telling Mr Timberlake over the depth charge telephone, ‘Shallow settings, Guns.’
Guesswork: chancing his Australian arm.
‘Bearing right ahead, range oh-seven-three, sir!’
All over the bridge, binoculars moved slowly, sweeping the white-streaked, camouflaged surface.
‘New contact oh-oh-eight, six miles, sir!’
‘I only want to hear about the first one.’
‘Aye aye, sir…’ Carlish was passing that down to Scarr. Then: ‘Bearing oh-three-five, range oh-six-eight, sir!’
Six thousand eight hundred yards, that meant: just under three and a half miles. The skipper lowered his glasses. ‘Tell the plot to keep up-to-date bearings and ranges of other contacts from us and also from Paeony and Astilbe, for passing by TBS if they get by us.’
Carlish stumbled over the words as he rattled that off to Mike Scarr. It made good sense to Warrimer – who needed to make sense of it, to interpret for his own satisfaction what was not being explained and had not been discussed in advance… If Harbinger was busy with this contact and another U-boat moved in past her to become a closer threat to the convoy, warning could be passed to the appropriate corvette before the blip actually showed up on her 271 screen. In this way Harbinger was an advance scout as well as a striker. The snag, of course, was it might not be just one, it could be four or five of them, Harbinger tied-down here while the pack moved in behind her. But you couldn’t be there and here, you had to make a choice…
‘Range oh-six-three, sir, bearing oh-three-three!’
‘Steer oh-three-two.’
It ought to be possible to spot the U-boat before it saw the danger coming. As one knew exactly where to look.
‘Range oh-six-oh!’
Harbinger shouldering up white foam that flew arcing across the bridge. Binocular lenses needing to be dried twice a minute, however much you tried to shield them.
‘Range—’
‘Starshell open fire!’
The skipper had caught sight of his target: Warrimer yelled ‘Starshell, fire!’ and with less than a second’s interval A gun had crashed and recoiled, Warrimer ordering ‘B gun, range oh-five-six, open fire when you bear. A gun with SAP load, load, load!’
‘Range oh-five-five, sir!’
‘Set range oh-five-three, target right ahead!’
The starshell exploded, a white brilliance suspended on its parachute, drifting slowly downwards as its light spread across the sea’s crests and slopes, darkening the hollows in between. B gun fired, a lightning-flash and the metallic, earthumping crack of it, then A gun like an echo and the clang of shell-cases on iron gundecks, sea swamping over and the ship bow-down with a lurch to port. As she recovered, lifting, Warrimer had the U-boat in his glasses, a ray of that starshell’s last glimmer on wet black steel bedded in foam… ‘A gun, one round starshell, fire!’
‘Range oh-five-oh, sir!’
‘Set range oh-four-eight.’ He heard the skipper order, ‘Come ten degrees to starboard, cox’n.’ Both the for’ard guns had fired again; one of those rounds would be a refresher to the illuminations. The U-boat could be seen to be altering course, swinging to port, a shell spout springing up just short and new crashes from both guns as the starshell opened. Warrimer saw the German’s conning-tower tilting – diving, or it could be only pitching, its stern to the sea now. A gun cracked, then B again: it was very chancy shooting, on those moving platforms. Carlish yelled that the range was down to oh-four-eight: and that yellowish flash was a hit!
‘Set range oh-four-six…’
Closing less rapidly now, because of the enemy’s change of course: but still closing, Harbinger galloping in – and hope in the heart at least, because that hit had changed the picture dramatically… ‘A gun, one round of starshell, fire!’ The U-boat still wasn’t diving: if it had been punctured, of course, it couldn’t, and its captain would be wishing to God he’d done it three or four minutes ago when the first starshell had lit him up. Perhaps he’d thought he’d be able to run for it, get around this interference and still press home his attack. Both the for’ard guns were still firing and Warrimer had seen a number of shell spouts poke up around the target, but nothing from the last five or six. The new starshell opened, showing the German almost stern-to and rocking bow-up, its stern buried in the sea as it lifted to a wave; he told his gunners, ‘Down four hundred!’ as he passed the order Carlish shouted ‘Range oh-four-one!’ So the correction had been overdue and shots would have been passing over him. Not that there was all that much science in it, shooting as it were from horseback at the gallop, the layers and trainers sighting through salt-washed telescopes… Hit number two!
‘Range oh-four-oh, sir!’
‘Down two hundred…’
But it had not been a hit. It had been the enemy shooting back at them. He’d have a 37mm, something like a Bofors, on the back end of his bridge. But he couldn’t dive, obviously; he was at bay…
‘X gun, point-fives and searchlight stand by!’
The order came from the skipper, who’d shouted it without taking his glasses off the U-boat. Preparing to turn his ship so those other weapons would bear – from this range, instead of running in close to the U-boat’s lighter weapon. Weapons, plural: he’d have a 20mm AA gun as well as the other, if he was U-boat Mark VII… But now that had been a hit! And in the background a TBS call from ‘Fox’ – Astilbe – announcing excitedly, Contact: attacking… Bad reception, crackly: CPO Bearcroft was acknowledging the message in a tone as calm as a butler’s announcing luncheon served. There’d been a flash and some bits flying: bits of U-boat or bits of men, or both. Warrimer had passed the stand-by order to the guns aft, and Leading Signalman Wolstenholm was at the searchlight sight, talking over that intercom to its two-man crew on their raised platform abaft the torpedo tubes. The two for’ard four-inch guns meanwhile still belting out shells, while the German had fired only twice. It was on the cards that the second hit had knocked his guns out; they’d be within a yard or so of each other, on railed platforms at the back of his bridge. But this could be a kill, all right – please God… Shell spouts just short again, one quickly after the other, in time with the sequence of the guns’ firing: now a third hit – flash, and a cloud of muck obscuring the target for a moment before the wind cleared it. Harbinger still racing in, so the after guns and the searchlight weren’t getting a chance yet; the skipper would have changed that intention because of the enemy ceasing fire, he could go in close now without danger to his own people, and his object would be to finish this as quickly as it could be done. Because there’d be work elsewhere… Warrimer was not only attending to his own job, but also casting himself as understudy, needing to see the reasons and motives: it was a habit he’d acquired when his immediate senior had been Tony Graves, and it explained why he hadn’t been at all flummoxed when he’d been given promotion at a moment’s notice.
The U-boat, its engines stopped now, was slewing broadside on; and its bow was lifting, the long fore-casing rising to point like a gleaming, accusing finger at the last starshell’s dying light. Range closing fast, since the enemy was no longer running: was in fact finished, by the look of him.
‘Port ten. One-eight-oh revolutions. Searchlight on… Midships.’
Just enough of a turn to expose the light. It sprang out like a knife, a silver lance that caught the U-boat – a speared fish, dying. Men were coming out of it in a ragged stream, diving or sliding over, puppets that appeared, struggled with the blinding light and the sea breaking over, then vanished. Their ship wasn’t allowing them much time: its bow was nearly vertical now and it was visibly slipping back, stern-first. There’d be a lot of men still inside that thing.
‘Cease fire!’
X gun hadn’t fired at all. Warrimer intoned, ‘Check, check, check…’ He still had his glasses on the U-boat, and saw it disappear in a quick, drowning slide: the white turmoil where it had vanished lasted only a few seconds. The skipper was telling Carlish to take over at the binnacle, and he’d already moved to the viewing slot that looked down on the plot table and the 271. ‘What have we got, pilot?’ Scarr told him, ‘They’re all over the place, sir. Nearest bears two-three-oh, seven thousand eight hundred yards, and Paeony must have it on her screen – this blip here is her, moving to intercept it.’
‘So we’ll leave it to her.’ He raised his voice. ‘Pack up that searchlight!’ Back to Scarr and the PPI… ‘What’s that to the southeast of us?’
A TBS message from Astilbe about losing one contact and moving to intercept another was interrupted by an explosion from the direction of the convoy. On its heels, white rockets soared. Warrimer thinking for a moment – as the searchlight beam cut off, seeming to withdraw inward along its own length as if it was being sucked back into the ship – about the Germans in the water, the ones who’d got out of the U-boat before it sank. And obviously with the convoy under attack, your people’s lives being lost and every ounce and minute needed in their defence – and that had been another torpedo hit – there could be no question of risking British lives for German… ‘Sub – three-four-oh revs, come to starboard to one-two-oh!’
Warrimer was telling A and B guns to train fore-and-aft, clear the decks of empty shell cases, refill ready-use lockers. More white rockets fizzled up, a few miles south. The skipper finished his conference with Scarr and took over at the binnacle while Harbinger was still under helm, turning to a south-easterly course. Distantly, a rumble of depth charges… Chubb was muttering at Timberlake over their private line, ‘Certainly the bastard sank!’ Then, ‘Of course not, for Pete’s sake, their pals are all over the bloody shop, didn’t you hear those two whumpfs?’
There was another whumpf now: the third torpedo hit in as many minutes. It was the sharp edge to the sound that distinguished it from others, usually; a knock, like a hammer on iron, contained inside the boom of the explosion, all of it muffled by distance and submersion.
And another…
TBS call, Eagle, this is Fox. I have no contact now. Convoy is under attack astern of me. Resuming station. Out…
Wanting permission, obviously, to turn back and help. But by the time he got there it would be too late, and in the meantime new attacks could be coming in from ahead.
‘Where is he, Sub?’
Carlish, learning to comprehend cryptic questions, passed it to the plot. Harbinger steadying on 120 degrees, wind and sea astern, funnel-fumes following and hanging over the bridge – acrid, irritating to eyes and lungs. The skipper had interrupted some confusion between Carlish and Mike Scarr: ‘What I want is the range and bearing from Astilbe of the contact ahead of us now.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’ Back to the fount of all knowledge… While a new TBS call came in: it was Paeony reporting she was in asdic contact and attacking a U-boat which Opal had engaged on the surface and forced to dive. Opal had reported having hit the U-boat’s periscope or standards with her forefoot as she ran over it, but apparently sustaining no damage to herself. Warrimer heard Chubb telling Timberlake, ‘Jesus, Guns, it’s a bloody rough-house!’ Chubb would have to be sat on, Warrimer decided. But you could understand the skipper’s frustration, his wanting to be in six places at once: with so many holes to plug, and so few ships to do it with… Carlish told him, ‘From Astilbe the bearing’s oh-one-three, range eight thousand two hundred yards.’
‘Take over here, Sub.’ The skipper had lurched back to look down at the 271 screen. ‘Chief Yeoman. Call Fox, tell him “Surface contact bearing oh-one-three range oh-eight-two from you now. Leaving it to you.” Pilot, where are the deep-field specimens?’
‘Bearings are oh-three-seven, oh-four-one and oh-four-four, sir, ranges between six and eight miles. The nearest’s the one on oh-three-seven.’
‘Come round to oh-three-five, Sub.’
Bearcroft finished passing the order to Astilbe. ‘Message passed, sir!’
‘Good. Now by W/T to the commodore, repeated to all escorts: “Request immediate emergency turn port while we try to break up second wave of assault now ten miles ahead of you.”’
The train rattled and swayed through cold German night. It was made up almost entirely of goods trucks, and even its three passenger carriages were more than it needed. They had this one to themselves – the four of them, and their escorts.
Jack observed, ‘Right sort of country for it. Nice grass bank to land on, lot of the time. Have to dive well out to reach it, remember.’
Trolley murmured, ‘Not at this speed, if you don’t mind.’
It was a slow train, but when you thought about leaping off it into the darkness its slowness was less obvious. On the other hand, the longer you stayed on it the farther you were getting from the frontier. Every clank of the wheels meant another few yards of Shanks’s mare: and yards built into miles, while the rhythm sent words whispering through his brain: With me along some strip of herbage strewn… He suppressed it: thoughts couldn’t be allowed to wander. The chance would come suddenly, if it came at all, you needed to be ready to act on the spur of the moment. Trolley would follow, all right. Frank Trolley, Jack had heard from other people, admired him for his verve and decisiveness. He was himself no sluggard: but he was disciplined, principled, which Jack was not. To Frank, prison was irksome and escape a duty: he’d think ‘I ought to’ and ‘I’d like to’ but not as Jack did, ‘I have to, now!’ Partly of course because Frank had no Fiona, no daydream of arriving at her flat in Eaton Square and throwing some swine out, damaging him somewhat in the process… It was what he wanted: far better than finding her alone. You’d get it over with, she’d see the physical proof of it, it would be over, exorcised…
He and Trolley were on the right-hand side, facing the engine, while Cockup and Barmy were beyond them on the left, facing the same way. The escorts, one corporal and one private soldier, were facing them from the other bench, backs to the engine.
Neither of the Germans understood English. The prisoners had checked this quite thoroughly by insulting them in both personal and national terms, smiling pleasantly at each other while commenting on the guards’ appearance, lack of intelligence, criminal tendencies, probable sexual deviations, etcetera, and also discussing Nazi leaders in similarly offensive terms. Even if the corporal had been trying to sit it out, he couldn’t have remained so completely unmoved if he’d known what was being said. And it had provided passable entertainment for an hour or so.
Jack said, with his eyes on Trolley, ‘Listen, you two. Don’t look at me or seem interested. Don’t want these cretins to guess we’re planning anything… But the thing is, Frank and I are going to jump off this puffer. All we need is a soft landing and an uphill bit so the thing slows down a little. When we’re set to go, we’d like you two to oblige us with a bit of a diversion. Would you mind staging a fight and making it realistic?’
Trolley murmured, ‘If they’re going to start hitting each other, I’d rather stay and watch.’
Cockup addressed Barmy. ‘They’ll break their bloody necks. Don’t care much, do you?’
‘Not a hoot. But I’d say the best thing would be to get rid of one goon first, then lay on some diversion for the one that’s left. What I have in mind is I might decide I need to get to the PK in a hurry.’
‘Do talk English, old lad.’
‘The shithouse. PK stands for piccanin kaia, meaning “little house”. We Rhodesians are brilliant linguists, you should realise.’ He nudged Cockup. ‘What you could do is start peeing at the chap that’s left. That’d occupy his attention, wouldn’t it?’
‘Make him a bit too cross, though.’ Cockup had considered the suggestion, and dismissed it purely on practical grounds. ‘Tell you what, though. I could lay on one of my epileptic fits. Used to do it at school sometimes – in Scripture classes, that sort of thing. Though I say so myself, it’s pretty damn good.’
There was a silence. Then Trolley suggested to Jack, ‘We need to see our spot coming from quite a distance, if Barmy needs time to lead his stooge away before Cockup gives his performance?’
‘Good point. We’ll need a long uphill stretch.’
‘Essentially uphill. And with a sharp eye out for telegraph poles. If you’ve noticed the way they flash past?’
‘That’s all fixed then.’ He told Trolley, ‘If I say “Golly, but I’m as tired as hell”, Barmy gets the ball rolling at once. Then when we’re down to one goon, and if the terrain still looks right for it, if I let out a loud yawn then Cockup does his act. If the position’s changed I won’t yawn, so Cockup must restrain his natural instincts until he does get that signal – because if we postpone, Barmy could get another belly-ache later. Now total silence from all concerned will tell me you all agree.’
The silence lasted long enough. After a while Jack said, ‘Good. Thanks, you two… But I’m afraid we’ve lost our grass bank now, Frank.’
‘Too fast anyway.’
It was about an hour before there was a similarly promising landing ground beyond the rails. And a bit longer still before he realised there was an incline coming. He decided to stop looking out of the window, to ration himself to just an occasional glance. He sat back, shut his eyes. It was an uphill section, all right. But there was no way to be sure it was going to last. You could see the ground in the immediate vicinity of this carriage, but for only a short distance up the line. The rhythm of the wheels undoubtedly was slowing, though; and if you waited for absolutely perfect conditions you might never move at all. Except into the Straflager.
The train was beginning to labour on the gradient. Jack stretched. ‘Oh, golly, I’m as tired as hell!’
He saw a flash of fright on Trolley’s face. Barmy was staring in front of him, wide-eyed, as the penny dropped. Now he’d clasped his hands to his belly, gasping as he half rose. The corporal moved too, lifting his rifle.
‘I gotta go, me old Kraut.’ He groaned, made gestures, pointed… ‘Help!’
Cockup had been dozing. He was visibly in the early stages of catching-on to what was happening.
The other guard escorted Barmy away, on the corporal’s instructions. Barmy moaned as he mooched away without looking round, ‘Good luck, you chaps.’ The train was crawling. Jack sweating, with his eyes shut, knowing it might reach the brow of the hill at any moment and pick up speed down the other side; but he had to give Barmy time to take that soldier well away. He opened his eyes, and Trolley, looking a bit white around the gills, nodded to him. Jack squinted sideways, saw the grass bank still there. Have to clear the down-line to reach it, unfortunately. And jump right after a telegraph pole flashed by, otherwise you’d be smashed by the next. He yawned, loud and clear. Cockup wailed, slipping forward on to his knees on the dirty floor: then he was on his face, writhing, flailing with arms and legs, high-pitched animal sounds coming from between clenched teeth, eyes bulging. The corporal looked scared; he got to his feet, rifle in one hand, obviously having no idea what to do. Cockup was slobbering, banging his forehead on the floor and making sounds like cats fighting. The German began to shout down at him: then he was banging his rifle-butt down repeatedly near Cockup’s head, presumably in an attempt to attract his attention. Cockup’s arms whipped up, wrapped themselves around it, clung to it: there was a tug of war going on and Cockup still screaming, spittle flowing down his chin, as Jack moved fast, flung the door crashing back into rushing, cold, dark night, heard the whoosh of a telegraph pole rushing past, and dived… The night revolved and the noise in his ears was as if the train was passing over him, then something hit him in the face with carthorse strength while another agency tried to prise his left arm out of its socket. He thought as he somersaulted with bright lights bursting in his skull that his back might have been broken. He had his hands linked at the back of his head, forearms jammed against his ears: pain burnt like fire in that left arm. He was on his back, across a low wire fence which he hadn’t noticed before the jump: the train’s noise was dwindling, the lights in his head had stopped exploding and the world came joltingly to rest.
Wire twanged as he rolled off it. Two strands, taut between low concrete stanchions. Signal gear, most likely. He seemed to be all in one piece, and no bones broken, except possibly on his left side where a rib or two might have gone. Or it could just be bruising. Everything seemed to work, muscles and joints obeyed under initial protest. He guessed the bruises would be agonising tomorrow. Unless it was tomorrow already. He peered muzzily at his watch’s luminous face, holding it up close: it was still ticking, and the time was 3.40. He asked himself, staring round and probably only just becoming more or less fully conscious, Frank Trolley?
Even if Frank had jumped immediately behind him, he’d be as much as thirty or forty yards up the line.
‘Frank?’
The train was no more than a far-off murmur. Cockup had done marvellously: he’d pay for it now, they’d really have it in for him, he’d be in solitary long enough to get sick of his own jokes… Jack stumbled up the slope, keeping to the line of the wire. ‘Frank, you there?’
Might have knocked himself out. An alternative – Jack’s mind was clearing fast now – might be that Frank hadn’t jumped. If the corporal had seen what was happening – if Frank had given him time to…
He nearly fell over him.
‘Hey, Frank, what’s—’
One hand had come into contact with what had been Frank Trolley’s head. It had smashed against one of the concrete uprights that carried the wire: the post was plastered in brains, blood, shattered bone.
SL 320, clearly visible to port as dawn surrendered to the day, was a rabble which its commodore was working to reform. Groups of ships here and there: half a column out on its own, a scattering of individual ships over a wide area. Astilbe a cable’s length abeam of one straggler, her morse lamp winking.
They’d fallen out from action stations but the skipper was at the binnacle and Harbinger was hurrying south, because the worst straggler of them all was the Burbridge, who was now several miles astern with the trawler Stella in attendance. This information had only just come, by light signal from the commodore, and the skipper had immediately ordered the wheel over and increased to full speed. The thought of that easy target alone down there – or almost alone, and she was down to about half the convoy’s speed, Sandover had said – was distinctly scary. Wheelchair patients, women passengers… Warrimer heard the note of urgency in the skipper’s voice as he called down, ‘Midships… Steer one-eight-five… Here, pilot, take over, will you?’
‘Sir.’ Mike Scarr got up on the step. He was pale, from a whole night spent in the plot; and once again cloud-cover had made morning stars unobtainable.
Four ships had been lost during the night. The Ilala, whose master was the rear-commodore, and the Bannerman, had been the first two hit. They’d taken one torpedo each out of a salvo that must have been fired from well forward on the bow of the convoy. The Ilala had gone down quickly but the Bannerman remained afloat but stopped, causing the first disruption to that side of the convoy as ships astern put their helms over to avoid her. She and the Ilala had been the leaders of the starboard columns. Then another U-boat altogether had given her the coup de grace, she and the rescue ship Leona – again, two birds with one salvo – when they’d been lying close together, the Leona with two boatloads of Ilala survivors alongside. The last casualty had been the Dutchman, the Toungoo, another column leader; she’d been hit by two torpedoes soon after the convoy had made its emergency turn.
Which at least had saved it from further losses at the hands of three U-boats which had been waiting out ahead. They’d have had an easy job – the convoy in disarray, some ships isolated, trawlers already fully occupied with survivors and getting ships back into line. But now the diversion was being paid for: course was almost due east, to return to the track which according to the ‘no-diversion’ order should never have been departed from. For three hours SL 320 had slanted away 40 degrees to port, so for the same length of time now it had to shift back to starboard. But without that diversion there mightn’t have been twenty-seven ships surviving now: it could have been nearer twenty. Even twenty-seven was bad enough: mental arithmetic made it about twenty-five percent losses, in what, three nights? With the lack of sleep and nights of constant action, much of it repetitive, days ran together and you lost track of time… But the skipper’s tactics last night, Warrimer thought, had probably been as good as any could have been, losses notwithstanding. He’d told Gleam and Opal, the flank trawlers, to increase speed by a knot or two and zigzag more widely, covering more ground and making themselves more obvious, by way of deterrence; he’d moved Stella to the rearguard station, with similar orders, and given new instructions to the corvettes, restricting each of them to a radius of four miles from her own front corner of the convoy. This allowed them to shift round to the flanks in support of the trawlers if necessary. And Harbinger on her own had become the striking force – and had scored, once.
The skipper, up on his high seat now, had his glasses on the Burbridge. It was full daylight by this time. He told Scarr, ‘Pilot – bring her round ten degrees to port… Signalman – by light to him, “What is your best speed now?”’
Wolstenholm went for the lamp. Daylight was revealing tired, whiskered, anxious faces. They’d sunk a U-boat but lost too many of the ships in their charge for that to be a sufficient cause for joy. From Harbinger’s pitching, swaying bridge Stella’s upperworks were visible, some way out on the Burbridge’s starboard bow, whenever she rode up on a wave, but otherwise she was still hidden.
‘I’ll reduce speed in a minute, Chubb. Who’s on asdics?’
‘Leading Seaman Garment, sir.’
Garment was the HSD, Higher Submarine Detector, the operator who’d made such an effective partnership with Tony Graves. The skipper’s question had been in reference to the fact that as soon as he slowed the ship to something less than twenty knots he’d be relying on asdics as the defence against any dived submarine attack – a shadower closing in from the beam, for instance, and finding this very attractive target. She’d answered now, and the message was being passed. The sea was livelier, Warrimer thought, than it had been yesterday. The rough stuff coming at last: it had been promised days ago.
The Burbridge’s answer was, Making eight knots at the moment but doubtful this can be maintained. Machinery problems snowballing. Sorry to be a nuisance.
The skipper grunted: he’d read it for himself. ‘Make to Stella, “I will look after this. Rejoin convoy.”’
It would take Broad a while to do it, but not as long as it was going to take the Burbridge and Harbinger.
Warrimer saw the captain staring at the passengers who were lining the rail of the Burbridge’s main deck, one level below the boat deck. Promenade deck, they’d probably call it. The nurses were easily distinguishable, in their cloaks. Queen Alexandra’s, Warrimer thought they might be. The skipper half-raised his glasses; then lowered them again to hang on their strap – as if he’d been about to take a closer look and for some reason decided not to. Frowning, then glancing aside and finding Warrimer’s eyes on him.
‘When one corvette’s refuelled, she can take over from us here.’ He added, in a lower tone, as if talking to himself as much as to Warrimer, ‘Just hope to God this fellow can keep going.’
‘What if he can’t, sir?’
A baffled look – as if he barely knew who he was, or the question didn’t make sense… He told Mike Scarr, ‘One-eight-oh revs, pilot. Come round to port now.’
Asdics began to ping, as the ship slowed. And Stella was drawing away, making her best speed up the convoy’s wake.