Storm Warning
Storm Warning
Jack Higgins
Classic adventure from the million copy bestseller Jack HigginsIn the end all roads lead to hell.It’s 1944 and Germany is facing its final defeat. Five thousand miles across the Allied dominated Atlantic, twenty-two men and five nuns aboard the Barquentine Deutschland are battling home to Kiel.Among them are a U-boat ace captured in a raid on Falmouth. A female American doctor caught in the nightmare of flying bombs. A gunboat commander who’s fought from the Solomons to the Channel and a rear admiral desperate to get some of the action.Allies and enemies, men and women, the hunters and the haunted all drawn into the eye of the storm.
JACK HIGGINS
STORM WARNING
For John Knowler – with oak leaves
From the Journal of Rear Admiral Carey Reeve, USN
… and this I find the greatest mystery of all – the instinct in man to sacrifice himself that others might live. But then, courage never goes out of fashion, and at no other time in my life have I seen it better displayed than in the affair of the Deutschland. In the midst of the greatest war history has known, people on opposite sides in that conflict were able to come together for a time, take every risk, lay themselves on the line, in an attempt to save a handful of human beings from man’s oldest and most implacable foe – the sea. I have never seen the tragic futility of war better demonstrated nor felt prouder of my fellow men than at that time …
Contents
Title Page (#ubfd1165a-4d13-50e0-8292-e45625085e0b)Dedication (#u34f68c10-07d6-5761-b072-e67277f1109d)Chapter One (#u4b2ac3da-bfc1-5f49-bd3c-4dd906235d54)Chapter Two (#u792342b1-0121-5675-8076-5d92d7cacaef)Chapter Three (#ua0a0c785-87fd-5563-b686-7711a40b4359)Chapter Four (#udd1e62e9-2fe4-580b-b1d0-e0d1e7161ed9)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Also By Jack Higgins (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland 26 August 1944.Eleven days out of Rio de Janeiro. At anchorage in Belém. Begins hot. Moderate trades. Last of the coal unloaded. No cargo available. In ballast with sand for run to Rio. Hatches battened down and ready to sail. Rain towards evening.
As Prager turned the corner, thunder rumbled far out to sea and lightning flashed across the sky, giving for one brief moment a clear view of the harbour. The usual assortment of small craft and three or four coastal steamers were moored at the main jetty. The Deutschland was anchored in midstream, distinctive if only for the fact that she was the one sailing ship in the harbour.
Rain came suddenly, warm and heavy, redolent with rotting vegetation from the jungle across the river. Prager turned up the collar of his jacket and, holding his old leather briefcase under one arm, hurried along the waterfront towards the Lights of Lisbon, the bar at the end of the fish pier.
There was the sound of music, muted yet plain enough, a slow, sad samba with something of the night in it. As he went up the steps to the verandah he took off his spectacles and wiped rain from them with his handkerchief. He replaced them carefully and peered inside.
The place was empty, except for the bartender and Helmut Richter, the Deutschland’s bosun, who sat at the end of the bar with a bottle and a glass in front of him. He was a large, heavily-built man in reefer jacket and denim cap, with long, blond hair and a beard that made him look older than his twenty-eight years.
Prager stepped inside. The bartender, who was polishing a glass, looked up. Prager ignored him and moved along the bar, shaking the rain from his panama. He dropped the briefcase on the floor at his feet.
‘A good night for it, Helmut.’
Richter nodded gravely and picked up the bottle. ‘A drink, Herr Prager?’
‘I think not.’
‘A wise choice.’ Richter refilled his glass. ‘Cachaca. They say it rots the brain as well as the liver. A poor substitute for good Schnapps, but they haven’t seen any of that since thirty-nine.’
‘Is Captain Berger here?’
‘Waiting for you on board.’
Prager picked up his briefcase again. ‘Then I suggest we get moving. There isn’t much time. Has anyone been asking for me?’
Before Richter could reply a voice said in Portuguese, ‘Ah, Senhor Prager, a pleasant surprise.’
Prager turned quickly as the curtain of one of the small booths behind him was pulled back. The man who sat there, a bottle of wine in front of him, was immensely fat, his crumpled khaki uniform stained with sweat and bursting at the seams.
Prager managed a smile. ‘Captain Mendoza. Don’t you ever sleep?’
‘Not very often. What is it this time, business or pleasure?’
‘A little of both. As you know, the position of German nationals is a difficult one these days. Your government is more than ever insistent on a regular report.’
‘So, it is necessary that Berger and his men are seen by you personally?’
‘On the first day of the last week in each month. Your people in Rio are most strict in this respect.’
‘And the good Senhora Prager? I am given to understand she was on the plane with you.’
‘I have a few days’ leave due and she has never seen this part of the country. It seemed the ideal opportunity.’
Richter slipped out without a word. Mendoza watched him go. ‘A nice lad,’ he said. ‘What was it he used to be? Chief helmsman on a U-boat. Obersteuermann, isn’t that the word?’
‘I believe so.’
‘You’ll have a drink with me?’
Prager hesitated. ‘Just a quick one, if you don’t mind. I have an appointment.’
‘With Berger?’ Mendoza nodded to the barman who poured brandy into two glasses without a word. ‘When does he leave to go back to Rio? In the morning?’
‘I believe so.’ Prager sipped the brandy, on dangerous ground now. He was sixty-five, an assistant consul at the German embassy in Rio until August 1942, when the Brazilians, enraged by the torpedoing of several of their merchant ships by U-boats, had declared war. Little more than a gesture, but it had presented the problem of what to do about German nationals – in particular the increasing number of sailors of the Kriegsmarine who found themselves washed up on her shores.
Prager, having spent twenty years in the country, and being acceptable in high places, had been left behind to cope with that. There were, after all, five thousand miles of ocean between Brazil and Germany so no need to set up expensive internment camps. The Brazilian government was content with the monthly reports he presented on his fellow citizens. As long as they were gainfully employed and not a charge on the state, everyone was happy.
Mendoza said, ‘I’ve been harbourmaster here for two years now and for most of that time the Deutschland has been coming in regularly. Say every couple of months.’
‘So?’
‘A boat of that size usually manages with a master, mate, bosun, probably six foremast hands and a cook.’
‘That is correct.’
Mendoza sipped a little of his wine thoughtfully. ‘According to my information, Berger has a crew of something like twenty this trip.’
He smiled genially, but the eyes in the fat face were sharp. Prager said carefully, ‘There are many German seamen in Rio.’
‘And more each day. The war, my friend, does not go well for you.’
‘Berger is probably trying to employ as many as possible.’
Mendoza smiled beautifully. ‘But of course. That explanation had not occurred to me. But I mustn’t keep you. Perhaps we’ll have time for another drink tomorrow?’
‘I hope so.’
Prager went out quickly. Richter was waiting on the verandah by the steps. Beyond, the rain hammered relentlessly into the ground. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ Prager told him. ‘He knows something’s going on. But how could he possibly suspect the truth? No one in his right mind would believe it.’ He clapped Richter on the shoulder. ‘Now let’s get moving.’
The bosun said, ‘I didn’t get a chance to tell you inside, but there was someone asking for you.’
There was a movement behind and, as Prager turned, a nun in tropical-white habit stepped into the light. She was a small woman, not much over five feet tall, with clear, untroubled eyes and a calm, unlined face.
‘Sister Angela,’ Richter said.
‘… of the Sisters of Mercy from the mission station on the Rio Negro. Introductions are not necessary, Helmut. Sister Angela and I are old acquaintances.’
He took off his panama and held out his hand which she clasped briefly in a grasp of surprising strength.
‘It’s good to see you again, Sister.’
‘And you, Herr Prager. I think you know why I’m here.’
‘Why, yes, Sister.’ Otto Prager smiled warmly. ‘I believe I do.’
An anchor light hung from the Deutschland’s forestay, as required by marine regulations, and this they saw first as Richter worked the dinghy across the harbour. Then suddenly she was very close, her masts and spars dark against the sky.
Prager looked up with conscious pleasure as he climbed the Jacob’s ladder. She was a three-masted barquentine built by Hamish Campbell on the Clyde in 1881 and built with love and understanding and grace, with an elegant clipper bow to her and an extended jib-boom.
She had spent a lifetime in trade; Newcastle-on-Tyne with steam coal for Valparaiso; Chilean nitrates for America’s west coast; lumber for Australia; wool for Britain … an endless circle, as sail died in a doomed attempt to combat steam, one owner after another through three changes of name until, finally, she had been bought by the Brazilian firm of Mayer Brothers, a family of German extraction, who had rechristened her Deutschland and put her to the coastal trade. Rio to Belém and the mouth of the Amazon – just the craft for such waters, having a draught of only eight feet fully loaded.
Prager went over the bulwark and extended his hand to Sister Angela. Richter was close behind on the ladder. Three seamen by the main mast gazed in astonishment as the little nun came over the side, and one of them hurried forward to take her other hand.
She thanked him, and Prager said to her, ‘I think it would be better if I spoke to Captain Berger alone to start with.’
‘Whatever you think best, Herr Prager,’ she said tranquilly.
He turned to Richter. ‘Take the good sister down to the saloon, then wait for me outside the Captain’s cabin.’
Richter and Sister Angela descended the companionway and Prager went aft towards the quarterdeck. Berger’s cabin was underneath. He hesitated, then braced himself, knocked on the door and went in.
The cabin was small, spartan in its furnishings – narrow bunk and three cupboards and not much else except for the desk behind which Berger sat, making a measurement with parallel rulers on the chart spread before him.
He glanced up, and there was relief in his eyes. ‘I was beginning to get worried.’
He was at that time forty-eight years old, of medium height with good shoulders, his wiry, dark hair and beard flecked with grey, and his face weathered by sea and sun.
‘I’m sorry,’ Prager said. ‘We ran into a bad electric storm on the flight from Rio. The pilot insisted on touching down at Carolina until the weather cleared. We were there for four hours.’
Berger opened a sandalwood box and offered him a cheroot. ‘What’s the latest war news?’
‘All bad.’ Prager sat in the chair opposite and accepted a light. ‘On the fifteenth of this month American and French forces landed on the Mediterranean coast. Two days ago French tanks entered Paris.’
Berger whistled softly. ‘Next stop the Rhine.’
‘I should imagine so.’
‘And then Germany.’ He stood up, crossed to one of the cupboards, opened it and took out a bottle of rum and two glasses. ‘What about the Russians?’
‘The Red Army is on the borders of East Prussia.’
Berger poured rum into the glasses and pushed one across. ‘You know, Otto, we Germans haven’t had to defend the soil of the Fatherland since Napoleon. It should prove an interesting experience.’
‘Brazil might be the best place to be for the next year or two,’ Prager said. ‘A hell of a time to go home.’
‘Or the only time,’ Berger said. ‘It depends on your point of view. Have you got the papers?’
Prager put his briefcase on the desk. ‘Everything needed and I’ve checked again on the barquentine you mentioned when you first spoke of this crazy affair, the GudridAndersen. She’s still in Gothenburg harbour. Hasn’t been to sea since the first year of the war.’
‘Excellent,’ Berger said. ‘Plain sailing from here on, then.’
‘You are fully prepared?’
Berger opened a cupboard and took out a lifejacket which he dropped on the desk. The legend Gudrid Andersen – Gothenburg was stencilled on the back.
‘And this, of course.’ He produced next a Swedish ensign. ‘A most important item as I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He smiled. ‘Everything is ready, believe me. The official change of name we’ll make once clear of the coastal shipping lanes.’
‘And the log?’
‘I’ve already prepared a false one in the name of the Gudrid Andersen for use with our friends from the other side if we should be so unlucky as to run into them. The true log of the Deutschland I shall continue to keep privately. It would not be correct to do otherwise.’ He put the lifejacket and ensign back in the cupboard. ‘As for you, old friend, what can I say? Without your hard work during these past few months, the information you have obtained, the forged papers, we could not have ever begun to contemplate such an enterprise.’
Prager said carefully, ‘There is just one more thing to discuss, Erich.’
‘What’s that?’
Prager hesitated, then said, ‘Seven passengers.’
Berger laughed harshly. ‘You must be joking.’
‘No, I’m perfectly serious. You’ve carried them before, haven’t you?’
‘You know damned well I have.’ There was something close to anger in Berger’s voice. ‘I have accommodation for eight passengers. Two cabins on either side of the saloon, two bunks to each. I should also point out that this ship is amply crewed by ten men including myself. At the moment, we are twenty-two, as you very well know. Seven passengers would mean that the additional crew would have to bunk elsewhere. An impossible situation.’
‘But you’ll be in ballast.’ Prager said. ‘No cargo, and surely genuine passengers would only strengthen your cover story?’
‘Who are these passengers?’
‘Germans, like you and your men, who want to go home.’ Prager took a deep breath and carried on. ‘All right, you might as well know the worst. They’re nuns. Sisters of Mercy from a mission station on the Negro. I’ve been visiting them regularly for the past two years, just like all the other Germans on my list. Every three months; a special dispensation from the authorities as the place is so difficult to get to.’
Berger stared at him in astonishment. ‘For God’s sake, Otto, am I going out of my mind or are you?’
Prager got up without a word and opened the cabin door. Richter was standing outside smoking a cigarillo. Prager nodded and the bosun hurried away.
‘Now what?’ Berger demanded.
‘I brought one of them on board with me. The others are waiting on shore. At least hear what she has to say.’
‘You must be out of your head. It’s the only conceivable explanation.’
There was a knock at the door. Prager opened it and Sister Angela stepped inside. He said, ‘Sister, I’d like you to meet Fregattenkapitän Erich Berger. Erich, this is Sister Angela of the Little Sisters of Mercy.’
‘Good evening Captain,’ she said.
Berger looked down at the tiny nun for a moment, an expression of astonishment on his face, then he grabbed Prager by the arm and pushed him outside into the rain, pulling the cabin door behind him.
‘What in the hell am I going to do? What am I supposed to say?’
‘You’re the captain,’ Prager told him. ‘You make the decisions and no one else, or so I’ve always been given to understand. I’ll wait for you here.’
He walked to the mizzen shrouds on the port side. Berger cursed softly, hesitated, then went back in.
She was standing behind the desk, leaning over the chronometer in its box under a glass plate. She glanced up. ‘Beautiful, Captain. Quite beautiful. What is it?’
‘The seaman’s measure of the heavens, Sister, along with a sextant. If I can check the position of the sun, moon and stars then I can discover my own exact position on the earth’s surface – with the help of tables as well of course.’
She turned to the desk. ‘A British Admiralty chart. Why is that?’
‘Because they’re the best,’ Berger told her, feeling for some reason incredibly helpless.
‘I see.’ She carried on in the same calm voice. ‘Are you going to take us with you?’
‘Look, Sister,’ he said. ‘Sit down and let me explain.’ He pulled another chart forward. ‘Here we are at the mouth of the Amazon and this is the route home.’ He traced a finger up past the Azores and west of Ireland. ‘And if we get that far, there could be even greater hazards to face.’ He tapped at the chart. ‘We must pass close to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, a graveyard for sailing ships, especially in bad weather – which is usually six days out of seven up there. And if we survive that, we only have the Orkneys passage, the run to Norway, then down through the Kattegat to Kiel,’ he added with heavy irony. ‘Five thousand miles, that’s all.’
‘And how long will it take us?’
He actually found himself answering, ‘Impossible to say. Forty, maybe fifty days. So much depends on the weather.’
‘That seems very reasonable, under the circumstances.’
Berger said, ‘Tell me something. When you first came out here, how did you make the trip?’
‘A passenger liner. The Bremen. That was just before the war, of course.’
‘A fine ship. Comfortable cabins, hot and cold running water. Food that wouldn’t disgrace a first-class hotel. Stewards to fetch and carry.’
‘What exactly are you trying to say, Captain?’
‘That on this ship, life would be very different. Bad food, cramped quarters. A lavatory bucket to empty daily. Salt water only to wash in. And a blow – a real blow under sail – can be a frightening experience. In bad weather we can spend a fortnight at a time without a dry spot in her from stem to stern. Have you ever strapped yourself into a bunk in wet blankets with a full gale trying to tear the sticks out of the deck above your head?’ He rolled up the chart and said firmly, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t see any point in prolonging this discussion.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Tell me something. How does a German naval officer come to command a Brazilian trading vessel?’
‘I was captain of a submarine supply ship, the Essen, camouflaged as the US fuel ship George Grant. We were torpedoed in the South Atlantic on our third trip by a British submarine, which wasn’t taken in by the disguise. You may consider that ironic in view of the fact that I intend to try and pass the Deutschland off as a similar ship of Swedish registration.’
‘And how did you manage to reach Brazil?’
‘Picked up by a Portuguese cargo boat and handed over to the Brazilian authorities when we reached Rio. The Brazilians have been operating a kind of parole system for any of us who can find work. The Mayer Brothers, who own the Deutschland, are coastal traders, Brazilian citizens but German by origin. They’ve helped a great many of us. We make the run from Rio to Belém and back once a month with general cargo.’
‘And you repay them now by stealing their boat?’
‘A point of view; for which I can only hope they’ll forgive me when they know the facts. But we don’t really have any choice.’
‘Why not?’
‘The Brazilians are starting to play a more active part in the war. Last month they sent troops to Italy. I think things could get much more difficult for us here.’
‘And the other reason?’
‘You think I have one?’
She waited, hands folded, saying nothing. Berger shrugged, opened the drawer of his desk and took out a wallet. He extracted a snapshot and passed it across. It was badly creased and discoloured by salt water, but the smiles on the faces of the three small girls were still clear enough.
‘Your children?’
‘Taken in forty-one. Heidi, on the left, will be ten now. Eva is eight and Else will be six in October.’
‘And their mother?’
‘Killed in a bombing raid on Hamburg three months ago.’
She crossed herself automatically. ‘What happened to the children?’
‘Herr Prager got word about them for me through our embassy in the Argentine. My mother has them in Bavaria.’
‘Thank God in his infinite mercy.’
‘Should I?’ Berger’s face was pale, jaw set. ‘Germany is going under, Sister, a matter of months only. Can you imagine how bad it’s going to be? And my mother’s an old woman. If anything happens to her …’ A kind of shudder seemed to pass through his body and he leaned heavily on the desk. ‘I want to be with them because that’s where I’m needed, not here on the edge of the world, so far off that the war has ceased to exist.’
‘And for that you’ll dare anything?’
‘Including five thousand miles of ocean dominated completely by the British and American navies, in a patched-up sailing ship that hasn’t been out of sight of land in twenty years or more. An old tub, that hasn’t had a refit for longer than I care to remember. An impossible voyage.’
‘Which Herr Richter, your bosun, is apparently willing to make.’
‘Helmut is a special case. The finest sailor I’ve ever known. He has invaluable experience under sail. Served his time as a boy on Finnish windjammers on the Chilean nitrate run. That may not mean a lot to you, but to seamen anywhere …’
‘But according to Herr Prager there are another twenty men in your crew who are also willing to make this so-called impossible voyage.’
‘Most of them with a reason roughly similar to mine. I can think of at least seventy men in Rio who would gladly stand in their shoes. They held a lottery for the last ten places in a German bar on the Rio waterfront two weeks ago.’ He shook his head. ‘They want to go home, Sister, don’t you see? And for that, to use your own words, they’ll dare anything.’
‘And my friends and I are different, is that it? We too, have families, Captain, as dear to us as yours. More than that, because of what lies ahead, home is where we are needed now.’
Berger stood staring at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. In any case, it’s too late. You’d need Swedish papers, that’s an essential part of the plan. Prager’s arranged them for all of us.’
She got to her feet, opened the cabin door and called, ‘Herr Prager!’
He moved in out of the rain. ‘What is it?’
‘My papers, please. May I have them now?’
Prager opened his briefcase. He searched inside, then took out a passport which he dropped on the desk in front of Berger.
Berger frowned. ‘But this is Swedish.’ He opened it and Sister Angela stared out at him from the photo. He looked up. ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to step outside for a moment, Sister. I’d like a few words with my good friend here.’
She hesitated, glanced briefly at Prager, then went out.
Prager said, ‘Look, Erich, let me explain.’
Berger held up the passport. ‘Not something you can pick up at twenty-four hours’ notice, so you must have known about this for quite some time. Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I knew you’d react exactly as you are doing.’
‘So you thought you’d leave it until it was too late for me to say no? Well, you made a mistake. I won’t play. And what about this mission station they’ve been operating? Is it suddenly so unimportant?’
‘The Brazilian Department of the Interior has changed its policy on the Indians in that area; moving them out and white settlers in. the mission was due to close anyway.’
‘They’re a nursing order, aren’t they? Surely there must be some other outlet for their talents up there.’
‘They are also Germans, Erich. What do you think it’s going to be like when those first Brazilian casualty figures start filtering through from Italy?’
There was a long pause. Berger picked up the Swedish passport, opened it and examined the photo again. ‘She looks like trouble to me. She’s been used to getting her own way for too long.’
‘Nonsense,’ Prager said. ‘I knew her family from the old days. Good Prussian stock. Her father was an infantry general. She was a nurse on the Western Front in nineteen-eighteen.’
Berger’s astonishment showed. ‘A hell of a background for a Little Sister of Mercy. What went wrong? Was there some sort of scandal?’
‘Not at all. There was a young man, I believe. A flier.’
‘… who didn’t come back one fine morning so she sought refuge in a life of good works.’ Berger shook his head. ‘It’s beginning to sound like a very bad play.’
‘But you’ve got it all wrong, Erich. The way I heard it, he simply let her think he was dead. She had a breakdown that almost cost her life and was just coming out of it nicely when she met him walking along the Unter den Linden one day with another girl on his arm.’
Berger held up both hands. ‘No more. I know when I’m beaten. Bring her back in.’
Prager went to the door quickly and opened it. She was standing outside talking to the bosun.
Berger said, ‘You win, Sister. Tell Richter to have you taken ashore to collect the rest of your friends. Be back here by two a.m. because that’s when we leave, and if you aren’t here, we go without you.’
‘God bless you, Captain.’
‘I think he’s got enough on his plate at the moment without me.’ As she moved to the door, he added, ‘Just one thing. Try not to let the crew know before they have to.’
‘Are they likely to be disturbed by our presence?’
‘Very much so. Sailors are superstitious by nature. Amongst other things, sailing on a Friday is asking for trouble. Taking any kind of a minister along as a passenger, the same. We should certainly pick up all the bad luck in the world with seven nuns sailing with us.’
‘Five, Captain. Only five,’ she said and went out.
Berger frowned and turned to Prager. ‘You said seven passengers.’
‘So I did.’ Prager rummaged in the briefcase and produced two more Swedish passports which he pushed across the desk. ‘One for Gertrude and one for me. She, too, is waiting on shore with our baggage which includes, I might add, that wireless transmitter you asked me to try and get you.’
Berger gazed at him in stupefaction. ‘You and your wife?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Good God, Otto, you’re sixty-five if you’re a day. And what will your masters in Berlin say?’
‘From what I hear, the Russians are far more likely to get there before I do, so it doesn’t really matter.’ Prager smiled gently. ‘You see, Erich, we want to go home, too.’
* * *
When Berger went up to the quarterdeck just before two it was raining harder than ever. The entire crew was assembled on the deck below, faces pale, oilskins glistening in the dim glow of the deck lights.
He gripped the rail, leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. ‘I won’t say much. You all know the score. It’s one hell of a trip, I’m not going to pretend any different, but if you do as I tell you, we’ll make it, you and I and the old Deutschland together.’
There was a stirring amongst them, no more than that, and he carried on, a touch of iron in his voice now. ‘One more thing. As most of you will have observed, we’re carrying passengers. Herr Prager, once assistant consul at our embassy in Rio and his wife, and five nuns from a mission station on the Negro.’
He paused. There was only the hissing of the rain as they all waited. ‘Nuns,’ he said, ‘but still women and it’s a long journey home, so let me make myself plain. I’ll personally shoot the first man to step over the line, and so enter it in the log.’ He straightened. ‘Now everyone to his station.’
As he turned from the rail his second-in-command moved out of the darkness to join him. Leutnant zur See Johann Sturm, a tall, fair youth from Minden in Westphalia, had celebrated his twentieth birthday only three days earlier. Like Richter, he was a submariner and had served in a U-boat as second watch officer.
‘Everything under control, Mr Sturm?’ Berger enquired in a low voice.
‘I think so, Captain.’ Sturm’s voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I’ve stowed the wireless transmitter Herr Prager brought with him from Rio in my cabin, as you ordered. It’s not much, I’m afraid, sir. A limited range at the best.’
‘Better than nothing,’ Berger told him. ‘And the passengers? Are they safely stowed away also?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ There was a hint of laughter in the boy’s voice. ‘I think you could say that.’
A white figure appeared out of the darkness and materialized as Sister Angela. Berger swallowed hard and said in a low, dangerous voice, ‘Could you now, Mr Sturm?’
Sister Angela said brightly, ‘Are we leaving, Captain? Is it all right if I watch?’
Berger glared at her helplessly, rain dripping from the peak of his cap, then turned to Sturm and said, ‘Haul up the spanker and outer jib only, Mr Sturm, and let the anchor chain go.’
Sturm repeated the order and there was a sudden flurry of activity. One seaman dropped down the forepeak hatch. Four others hauled briskly on the halliard and the spanker rose slowly. A moment later there was a rattle as the anchor chain slithered across the deck, then a heavy splash.
Richter was at the wheel but, for the moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Sister Angela, glancing up, saw through a gap in the curtain of rain, stars pass across the jib.
‘We’re moving, Captain! We’re moving!’ she cried, as excitedly as any child.
‘So I’ve observed,’ Berger told her. ‘Now will you kindly oblige me by going below.’
She went reluctantly and he sighed and turned to the bosun. ‘Steady as she goes, Richter. She’s all yours.’
And Richter took her out through the harbour entrance, drifting along like some pale ghost, barely moving, leaving a slight swirl of phosphorescence in her wake.
Fifteen minutes later, as Captain Mendoza sat playing whist in his booth at the Lights of Lisbon with a young lady from the establishment next door, the man he had assigned to keep watch on the fish pier burst in on him.
‘What is it?’ Mendoza demanded mildly.
‘The Deutschland, Senhor Capitan,’ the watchman whispered. ‘She is gone.’
‘Indeed.’ Mendoza laid his cards face down on the table and stood up. ‘Watch her, José,’ he called to the barman. He picked up his cap and oilskin coat and went out.
When he reached the end of the fish pier, the rain was falling harder than ever in a dark impenetrable curtain. He lit a cigar in cupped hands and stared into the night.
‘Will you notify the authorities, senhor?’ the watchman enquired.
Mendoza shrugged. ‘What is there to notify? Undoubtedly Captain Berger wished an early start for the return trip to Rio, where he is due in eight days from now, although it would not be uncommon for him to be perhaps one week overdue, the weather at this time of the year being so unpredictable. Time enough for any official enquiry needed to be made then.’
The watchman glanced at him uncertainly, then bobbed his head. ‘As you say, Senhor Capitan.’
He moved away and Mendoza looked out over the river towards the mouth of the Amazon and the sea. How far to Germany? Nearly five thousand miles, across an ocean that was now hopelessly in the grip of the American and British navies. And in what? A three-masted barquentine long past her prime.
‘Fools,’ he said softly. ‘Poor, stupid, magnificent fools.’ And he turned and went back along the fish pier through the rain.
2 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland. 9 September 1944.Lat. 25°.01N., long. 30°.46W. Fourteen days out of Belém. Wind NW 6–8. Hove the log and found we were going twelve knots. In the past twenty-four hours we have run two hundred and twenty-eight miles. Frau Prager still confined to her bunk with the sea-sickness which has plagued her since leaving Belém. Her increasing weakness gives us all cause for concern. Heavy rain towards evening.
The morning weather forecast for sea area Hebrides had been far from promising: winds 5 to 6 with rain squalls. Off the north-west coast of Skye, things were about as dirty as they could be – heavy, dark clouds swollen with rain, merging with the horizon.
Except for the occasional seabird, the only living thing in that desolation was the motor gunboat making south-west for Barra, her Stars and Stripes ensign the one splash of colour in the grey morning.
Dawn was at six-fifteen, but at nine-thirty visibility was still bad enough to keep the RAF grounded. No one on board the gunboat could have been blamed for failing to spot the lone Junkers 88S coming in low off the sea astern. The first burst of cannon shell kicked fountains of water high into the air ten or fifteen yards to port. As the plane banked for a second run, the 13mm machine-gun firing from the rear of the cockpit canopy loosed off a long burst that ripped into the deck aft of the wheelhouse.
Harry Jago, in his bunk below trying to snatch an hour’s sleep, was awake in an instant, and making for the companionway. As he reached the deck, the gun crew were already running for the twin 20mm anti-aircraft cannon. Jago beat them into the bucket seat, hands clamping around the trigger handles.
Suddenly, as the Junkers came in off the water for the second time, heavy, black smoke swirled across the deck. Jago started to fire as its cannon punched holes in the deck beside him.
The Junkers was making its pass at close to four hundred miles an hour. He swung to follow it, aware of Jansen on the bridge above him working the Browning. But it was all to no purpose, and the Junkers curved away to port through puff-balls of black smoke and fled into the morning.
Jago stayed where he was for a moment, hands still gripping the handles. Then he got out of the seat and turned to Leading Seaman Harvey Gould, who was in charge of the antiaircraft cannon.
‘You were five seconds too late, you and your boys.’
The men of the gun crew shuffled uneasily. ‘It won’t happen again, Lieutenant,’ Gould said.
‘See that it doesn’t.’ Jago produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and stuck one in his mouth. ‘Having survived the Solomons, D-Day and the worst those E-boat flotillas in the English Channel could offer, it would look kind of silly to die in the Hebrides.’
The pilot of the Junkers, Captain Horst Necker, logged his attack as having taken place at 09.35 hours precisely. A hit-and-run affair of no particular importance which had served to enliven an otherwise boring routine patrol, especially for a pilot who in the spring of that year, during the renewed night attacks on London, had been employed by the elite pathfinder Gruppe 1/KG 66 with the kind of success that had earned him the Knight’s Cross only two months previously.
It had been something of a come-down to be transferred to KG 40 based at Trondheim, a unit specializing in shipping and weather reconnaissance, although the JU 88S they had given him to fly was certainly a superb plane – an all-weather machine capable of a top speed of around four hundred miles per hour.
His mission that morning had one purpose. To look for signs of a convoy expected to leave Liverpool for Russia that week, although the exact day of departure was unknown. He had crossed Scotland at thirty thousand feet to spend a totally abortive couple of hours west of the Outer Hebrides.
The sighting of the gunboat had been purest chance, following an impulse to go down to see just how low the cloud base was. The target, once seen, was too tempting to pass up.
As he climbed steeply after the second attack, Rudi Hubner, the navigator, laughed excitedly. ‘I think we got her, Herr Hauptmann. Lots of smoke back there.’
‘What do you think, Kranz?’ Necker called to the rear gunner.
‘Looks like they made it themselves to me, Herr Hauptmann,’ Kranz replied. ‘Somebody down there knows his business and they weren’t Tommis either. I saw the Stars and Stripes as we crossed over the second time. Probably my brother Ernst,’ he added gloomily. ‘He’s in the American navy. Did I ever tell you that?’
Schmidt, the wireless operator, laughed. ‘The first time over London with the port engines on fire, and you’ve mentioned it on at least fifty-seven different occasions since. I suppose it shows that at least one person in your family has brains.’
Hubner ignored him. ‘A probable then, Herr Hauptmann?’ he suggested.
Necker was going to say no, then saw the hope in the boy’s eyes and changed his mind. ‘I don’t see why not. Now let’s get out of here.’
When Jago went up to the bridge there was no sign of Jansen. He leaned against the Browning and looked down. The smoke had almost cleared and Gould was kicking the burned-out flare under the rail into the sea. The deck was a mess by the port rail beside the anti-aircraft gun, but otherwise things didn’t look too bad.
Jansen came up the ladder behind him. He was a tall, heavily-built man and in spite of the tangled black beard, the knitted cap and faded reefer coat with no rank badges, was a chief petty officer. A lecturer in Moral Philosophy at Harvard before the war and a fanatical weekend yachtsman, he had resolutely defeated every attempt to elevate him to commissioned rank.
‘A lone wolf, Lieutenant.’
‘You can say that again,’ Jago told him. ‘A JU 88 in the Hebrides.’
‘And one of the Reichsmarschall’s later models, to judge by his turn of speed.’
‘But what in the hell was he doing here?’
‘I know, Lieutenant,’ Jansen said soothingly. ‘It’s getting so you can’t depend on anyone these days. I’ve already checked below, by the way. Superficial damage. No casualties.’
‘Thanks,’ Jago said. ‘And that smoke flare was quick thinking.’
He found that his right hand was trembling slightly and held it out. ‘Would you look at that. Wasn’t it yesterday I was complaining that the only thing we got to fight up here was the weather?’
‘Well, you know what Heidegger had to say on that subject, Lieutenant.’
‘No, I don’t Jansen, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘He argued that for authentic living what is necessary is the resolute confrontation of death.’
Jago said patiently, ‘Which is exactly what I’ve been doing for two years now and you’ve usually been about a yard behind me. Under the circumstances, I’ll tell you what you can do with Heidegger, Jansen. You can put him where grandma had the pain. And try to rustle up some coffee while I check over the course again.’
‘As the Lieutenant pleases.’
Jago went into the wheelhouse and slumped into the chart-table chair. Petersen had the wheel – a seaman with ten years in the merchant service before the war, including two voyages to Antarctica in whalers.
‘You okay?’ Jago demanded.
‘Fine, Lieutenant.’
Jago pulled out British Admiralty chart 1796. Barra Head to Skye. South Uist, Barra and a scattering of islands below it, with Fhada, their destination, at the southern end of the chain. The door was kicked open and Jansen came in with a mug of coffee which he put on the table.
‘What a bloody place,’ Jago said, tapping the chart. ‘Magnetic anomalies reported throughout the entire area.’
‘Well, that’s helpful,’ Jansen said. ‘Just the thing when you’re working out a course in dirty weather.’
‘Those islands south of Uist are a graveyard,’ Jago went on. ‘Everywhere you look on the damned chart it says Heavy Breakers or Dangerous Seas. One hazard after another.’
Jansen unfolded a yellow oilskin tobacco pouch, produced a pipe and started to fill it, leaning against the door. ‘I was talking to some fishermen in Mallaig before we left. They were telling me that sometimes the weather out there is so bad, Fhada’s cut off for weeks at a time.’
‘The worst weather in the world when those Atlantic storms start moving in,’ Jago said. ‘God knows what it must be like in winter.’
‘Then what in the hell is Admiral Reeve doing in a place like that?’
‘Search me. I didn’t even know he was up here till I was told to pick up that dispatch for him in Mallaig and deliver it. Last I heard of him was D-day. He was deputy director of operations for Naval Intelligence and got himself a free trip on the Norwegian destroyer Svenner that was sunk by three Möwe-class torpedo boats. He lost his right eye and they tell me his left arm’s only good for show.’
‘A hell of a man,’ Jansen said. ‘He got out of Corregidor after MacArthur left. Sailed a lugger nearly six hundred miles to Cagayan and came out on one of the last planes. As I remember, he went down in a destroyer at Midway, was taken aboard the Yorktown and ended up in the water again.’
‘Careful, Jansen. Your enthusiasm is showing and I didn’t think that was possible where top brass was concerned.’
‘But this isn’t just another admiral we’re talking about, Lieutenant. He’s responsible for an excellent history of naval warfare and probably the best biography of John Paul Jones in print. Good God, sir, the man can actually read and write.’ Jansen put a match to the bowl of his pipe and added out of the side of his mouth, ‘Quite an accomplishment for any naval officer, as the Lieutenant will be the first to agree?’
‘Jansen’, Jago said. ‘Get the hell out of here.’
Jansen withdrew and Jago swung round to find Petersen grinning hugely. ‘Go on, you too! I’ll take over.’
‘Sure thing, Lieutenant.’
Petersen went out and Jago reached for another cigarette. His fingers had stopped trembling. Rain spattered against the window as the MGB lifted over another wave and it came to him, with a kind of wonder, that he was actually enjoying himself, in spite of the aching back, the constant fatigue that must be taking years off his life.
Harry Jago was twenty-five and looked ten years older, even on a good day, which was hardly surprising when one considered his war record.
He’d dropped out of Yale in March 1941 to join the navy and was assigned to PT boats, joining Squadron Two in time for the Solomons’ campaign. The battle for Guadalcanal lasted six months. Jago went in at one end a crisp, clean nineteen-year-old ensign and emerged a lieutenant, junior grade, with a Navy Cross and two boats shot from under him.
Afterwards Squadron Two was recommissioned and sent to England at the urgent request of the Office of Strategic Services to land and pick up American agents on the French coast. Again Jago survived, this time the Channel, the constant head-on clashes with German E-boats out of Cherbourg. He even survived the hell of Omaha beach on D-day.
His luck finally ran out on 28 June, when E-boats attacked a convoy of American landing craft waiting in Lyme Bay to cross the Channel. Jago arrived with dispatches from Portsmouth to find himself facing six of the best that the Kriegsmarine could supply. In a memorable ten-minute engagement, he sank one, damaged another, lost five of his crew and ended up in the water with shrapnel in his left thigh, the right cheek laid open to the bone.
When he finally came out of hospital in August they gave him what was left of his old crew, nine of them, and a new job: the rest that he so badly needed, playing postman in the Hebrides to the various American and British weather stations and similar establishments in the islands in a pre-war MGB, courtesy of the Royal Navy, that started to shake herself to pieces if he attempted to take her above twenty knots. Some previous owner had painted the legend Dead End underneath the bridge rail, a sentiment capable of several interpretations.
Just for a month or two, the squadron commander had told Jago. Look on it as akind of holiday. I mean to say, nothing ever happens up there, Harry.
Jago grinned in spite of himself and, as a rain squall hurled itself against the window, increased speed, the wheel kicking in his hands. The sea was his life now. Meat and drink to him, more important than any woman. It was the circumstance of war which had given him this, but the war wouldn’t last forever.
He said softly, ‘What in the hell am I going to do when it’s all over?’
There were times when Rear Admiral Carey Reeve definitely wondered what life was all about. Times when the vacuum of his days seemed unbearable and the island that he loved with such a deep and unswerving passion, a prison.
On such occasions he usually made for the same spot, a hill called in the Gaelic DunBhuide, the Yellow Fort, above Telegraph Bay on the south-west tip of Fhada, and so named because of an abortive attempt to set up a Marconi station at the turn of the century. The bay lay at the bottom of four-hundred-foot cliffs, a strip of white sand slipping into grey water with Labrador almost three thousand miles away to the west and nothing in between.
The path below was no place for the fainthearted, zigzagging across the face of the granite cliffs, splashed with lime, seabirds crying, wheeling in great clouds, razorbills, shags, gulls, shear-waters and gannets – gannets everywhere. He considered it all morosely for a while through his one good eye, then turned to survey the rest of the island.
The ground sloped steeply to the southwest. On the other side of the point from Telegraph were South Inlet and the lifeboat station, the boathouse, its slipway and Murdoch Macleod’s cottage, nothing more. On his left was the rest of the island. A scattering of crofts, mostly ruined, peat bog, sheep grazing the sparse turf, the whole crossed by the twin lines of the narrow-gauge railway track running north-west to Mary’s Town.
Reeve took an old brass telescope from his pocket and focused it on the lifeboat station. No sign of life. Murdoch would probably be working on that damned boat of his, but the kettle would be gently steaming on the hob above the peat fire and a mug of hot tea generously laced with illegal whisky of Murdoch’s own distilling would not come amiss on such a morning.
The admiral replaced the telescope in his pocket and started down the slope as rain drove across the island in a grey curtain.
There was no sign of Murdoch when he went into the boathouse by the small rear door. The forty-one-foot Watson-type motor lifeboat, Morag Sinclair, waited in her carriage at the head of the slipway. She was trim and beautiful in her blue and white paint, showing every sign of the care Murdoch lavished on her. Reeve ran a hand along her counter with a conscious pleasure.
Behind him the door swung open in a flurry of rain and a soft Highland voice said, ‘I was in the outhouse, stacking peat.’
Reeve turned to find Murdoch standing in the doorway and in the same moment an enormous Irish wolfhound squeezed past him and bore down on the admiral.
His hand fastened on the beast’s ginger ruff. ‘Rory, you old devil. I might have known.’ He glanced up at Murdoch. ‘Mrs Sinclair’s been looking for him this morning. Went missing last night.’
‘I intended bringing him in myself later,’ Murdoch said. ‘Are you in health, Admiral?’
He was himself seventy years old, of immense stature, dressed in thigh boots and guernsey sweater, his eyes grey water over stone, his face seamed and shaped by a lifetime of the sea.
‘Murdoch,’ Admiral Reeve said. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying precisely nothing?’
‘So it’s that kind of a morning?’ Murdoch wiped peat from his hands on to his thighs and produced his tobacco pouch. ‘Will you take tea with me, Admiral?’ he enquired with grave Highland courtesy.
‘And a little something extra?’ Reeve suggested hopefully.
‘Uisgebeatha?’ Murdoch said in Gaelic. ‘The water of life. Why not indeed, for it is life you need this morning, I am thinking.’ He smiled gravely. ‘I’ll be ten minutes. Time for you to take a turn along the shore with the hound to blow the cobwebs away.’
The mouth of the inlet was a maelstrom of white water, waves smashing in across the reef beyond with a thunderous roaring, hurling spray a hundred feet into the air.
Reeve trudged along in the wolfhound’s wake at the water’s edge, thinking about Murdoch Macleod. Thirty-two years coxswain of the Fhada lifeboat, legend in his own time – during which he had been awarded the BEM by old King George and five silver and two gold medals for gallantry in sea rescue by the Lifeboat Institution. He had retired in 1938, when his son Donald had taken over as coxswain in his place, and had returned a year later when Donald was called to active service with the Royal Naval Reserve. A remarkable man by any standards.
The wolfhound was barking furiously. Reeve looked up across the great bank of sand that was known as Traig Mhoire – Mary’s Strand. A man in a yellow lifejacket lay face-down on the shore twenty yards away, water slopping over him as one wave crashed in after another.
The admiral ran forward, dropped to one knee and turned him over, with some difficulty for his left arm was virtually useless now. He was quite dead, a boy of eighteen or nineteen, in denim overalls, eyes closed as if in sleep, fair hair plastered to his skull, not a mark on him.
Reeve started to search the body. There was a leather wallet in the left breast pocket. As he opened it, Murdoch arrived on the run, dropping on his knees beside him.
‘Came to see what was keeping you.’ He touched the pale face with the back of his hand.
‘How long?’ Reeve asked.
‘Ten or twelve hours, no more. Who was he?’
‘Off a German U-boat from the look of those overalls.’ Reeve opened the wallet and examined the contents. There was a photo of a young girl, a couple of letters and a leave pass so soaked in sea water that it started to fall to pieces as he opened it gingerly.
‘A wee lad, that’s all,’ Murdoch said. ‘Couldn’t they do better than schoolboys?’
‘Probably as short of men by now as the rest of us,’ Reeve told him. ‘His name was Hans Bleichrodt and he celebrated his eighteenth birthday while on leave in Brunswick three weeks ago. He was Funkgefreiter, telegraphist to you, on U743.’ He replaced the papers in the wallet. ‘If she bought it this morning, we might get more like this coming in for the rest of the week.’
‘You could be right,’ Murdoch crouched down and, with an easy strength that never ceased to amaze Reeve, hoisted the body over one shoulder. ‘Better get him into Mary’s Town then, Admiral.’
Reeve nodded. ‘Yes, my house will do. Mrs Sinclair can see him this afternoon and sign the death certificate. We’ll bury him tomorrow.’
‘I am thinking that the kirk might be more fitting.’
‘I’m not certain that’s such a good idea,’ Reeve said. ‘There are eleven men from this island dead at sea owing to enemy action during this war. I would have thought their families might not be too happy to see a German lying in state in their own place of worship.’
The old man’s eyes were fierce. ‘And you would agree with them?’
‘Oh no,’ Reeve said hurriedly. ‘Don’t draw me into this. You put the boy where you like. I don’t think it will bother him too much.’
‘But it might well bother God,’ Murdoch said gently. There was no reproof in his voice, in spite of the fact that, as a certificated lay preacher of the Church of Scotland, he was the nearest thing to a minister on the island.
There was no road from that end of Fhada, had never been any need for one, but during the two abortive years that the Marconi station had existed, the telegraph company had laid the narrow-gauge railway line. The lifeboat crew, mostly fishermen from Mary’s Town, travelled on it by trolley when called out in an emergency, pumping it by hand or hoisting a sail when the wind was favourable.
Which it was that morning, and Murdoch and the admiral coasted along at a brisk five knots, the triangular strip of canvas billowing out to one side. The dead boy lay in the centre of the trolley and Rory squatted beside him.
Two miles, then three, and the track started to slope down and the wind tore a hole in the curtain of rain, revealing Mary’s Town, a couple of miles further on in the north-west corner of the island, a scattering of granite houses, four or five streets sloping to the harbour. There were half-a-dozen fishing boats anchored in the lee of the breakwater.
Murdoch was standing, one hand on the mast, staring out to sea. ‘Would you look at that now, Admiral? There’s some sort of craft coming in towards the harbour out there and I could have sworn that was the Stars and Stripes she’s flying. I must be getting old.’
Reeve had the telescope out of his pocket and focused in an instant. ‘You’re damned right it is,’ he said as the Dead End jumped into view, Harry Jago on the bridge.
His hand was shaking with excitement as he pushed the telescope back into his pocket. ‘You know something, Murdoch? This might just turn out to be my day after all.’
When the MGB eased into the landing-stage a woman was sitting on the upper jetty under an umbrella, painting at an easel. She was in her early forties, with calm blue eyes in a strong and pleasant face. She wore a headscarf, an old naval-officer’s coat, which carried the bars of a full captain on the epaulettes, and slacks.
She stood up, moved to the edge of the jetty, holding the umbrella, and smiled down. ‘Hello there, America. That makes a change.’
Jago went over the rail and up the steps to the jetty quickly. ‘Harry Jago, ma’am.’
‘Jean Sinclair.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m bailie here, Lieutenant, so if there’s anything I can do …’
‘Bailie?’ Jago said blankly.
‘What you’d call a magistrate.’
Jago grinned. ‘I see. You mean you’re the law around here.’
‘And coroner and harbourmaster. This is a small island. We have to do the best we can.’
‘I’m here with dispatches for Rear Admiral Reeve, ma’am. Have you any idea where I might locate him?’
She smiled. ‘We have a saying in these islands, Lieutenant. Speak of the devil and you’ll find he’s right behind you.’
Jago turned quickly and got a shock. When he’d received his Navy Cross from Nimitz at Pearl, Admiral Reeve had been one of those on the platform, resplendent in full uniform with three rows of medal ribbons. There was no echo of him at all in the small, dark man with the black eye patch who hurried towards him now wearing an old reefer coat and sea boots. It was only when he spoke that Jago knew beyond a doubt who he was.
‘You looking for me, Lieutenant?’
‘Admiral Reeve?’ Jago got his heels together and saluted. ‘I’ve got a dispatch for you, sir. Handed to me by the Royal Naval officer in command at Mallaig. If you’d care to come aboard.’
‘Lead me to it, Lieutenant,’ the admiral said eagerly, then paused and turned to Jean Sinclair. ‘I found Rory. He was with Murdoch at the lifeboat station.’
Her eyes were lively now and there was a slight amused smile on her mouth. ‘Why, Carey, I thought you were going to ignore me altogether.’
He said gravely, ‘I found something else down there on Traig Mhoire. A body on the beach. A German boy off a U-boat.’
Her smile died. ‘Where is he now?’
‘I left him at the church with Murdoch.’
‘I’d better get up there then. I’ll pick up a couple of women on the way. See the lad’s decently laid out.’
‘I’ll be along myself later.’
She walked away quickly, her umbrella tilted to take the force of the rain. ‘Quite a lady,’ Jago remarked.
The admiral nodded. ‘And then some. As a matter of interest, she owns the whole damned island. Left it by her father. He was a kind of feudal laird round here.’
‘What about that naval greatcoat, sir?’ Jago asked, as they descended the ladder.
‘Her husband’s. Went down in the Prince of Wales back in forty-one. He was a Sinclair, too, like her. A second cousin, I believe.’ He laughed. ‘It’s an old island custom to keep the name in the family.’
The crew were assembled on deck and as the admiral went over the rail, Jansen piped him on board. Reeve looked them over in amazement and said to Jago, ‘Where did this lot spring from? A banana boat?’
‘Chief Petty Officer Jansen, sir,’ Jago said weakly.
Reeve examined Jansen, taking in the reefer, the tangled beard and knitted cap. He turned away with a shudder. ‘I’ve seen enough. Just take me to my dispatch, will you?’
‘If you follow me, Admiral.’
Jago led the way down the companionway to his cabin. He took a briefcase from under the mattress on his bunk, unlocked it and produced a buff envelope, seals still intact, which he passed across. As Reeve took it from him, there was a knock at the door and Jansen entered with a tray.
‘Coffee, gentlemen?’
Reeve curbed the impulse to tear the envelope open and said to Jago as he accepted a cup, ‘How’s the war going, then?’
It was Jansen who answered. ‘The undertakers are doing well, Admiral.’
Reeve turned to stare at him in a kind of fascination. ‘You did say Chief Petty Officer?’
‘The best, sir,’ Jago said gamely.
‘And where may I ask, did you find him?’
‘Harvard, sir,’ Jansen said politely, and withdrew.
Reeve said in wonderment, ‘He’s joking, isn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid not, Admiral.’
‘No wonder the war wasn’t over by Christmas.’
Reeve sat on the edge of the bunk, tore open the package and took out two envelopes. He opened the smaller first. There was a photo inside and a letter which he read quickly, a smile on his face. He passed the photo to Jago.
‘My niece, Janet. She’s a doctor at Guy’s Hospital in London. Been there since nineteen-forty. Worked right through the blitz.’
She had grave, steady eyes, high cheekbones, a mouth that was too wide. There was something in her expression that got through to Jago.
He handed the photo back reluctantly. ‘Very nice, sir.’
‘You could say that and it would be the understatement of the year.’
Reeve opened the second envelope and started to read the letter it contained eagerly. Gradually the smile died on his face, his eyes grew dark, his mouth tightened. He folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket.
‘Bad news, sir?’
‘Now that, son, depends entirely on your point of view. The powers-that-be are of the opinion that the war can get on without me. That, to use a favourite phrase of our British allies, I’ve done my bit.’
Jago opened a cupboard behind him and took out a bottle of Scotch and a glass which he held out to the admiral. ‘Most people I know wouldn’t find much to quarrel with in that sentiment, sir.’
He poured a generous measure of whisky into the glass. Reeve said, ‘Something else that’s strictly against regulations, Lieutenant.’ He frowned. ‘What is your name, anyway?’
‘Jago, sir. Harry Jago.’
Reeve swallowed some of the whisky. ‘What kind of deal are you on here? This old tub looks as if it might be left over from the Crimea.’
‘Not quite, sir. Courtesy of the Royal Navy. We’re only playing postman, you see. I suppose they didn’t think the job was worth much more.’
‘What were you doing before?’
‘PT boats, sir. Squadron Two, working the Channel.’
‘Jago?’ Reeve said and his face brightened. ‘You lost an Elco in Lyme Bay.’
‘I suppose you could put it that way, sir.’
Reeve smiled and held out his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, son. And those boys up top? They’re your original crew?’
‘What’s left of them.’
‘Well, now I’m here, you might as well show me over this pig boat.’
Which Jago did from stem to stern. They ended up in the wheelhouse, where they found Jansen at the chart table.
‘And what might you be about?’ Reeve demanded.
‘Our next stop is a weather station on the south-west corner of Harris, Admiral. I was just plotting our course.’
‘Show me.’ Jansen ran a finger out through the Sound into the Atlantic and Reeve said, ‘Watch it out there, especially if visibility is reduced in the slightest. Here, three miles to the north-west.’ He tapped the chart. ‘Washington Reef. Doesn’t it make you feel at home, the sound of that name?’
‘And presumably it shouldn’t?’ Jago asked.
‘A death trap. The greatest single hazard to shipping on the entire west coast of Scotland. Two galleons from the Spanish Armada went to hell together on those rocks four hundred years ago and they’ve been tearing ships apart ever since. One of the main reasons there’s a lifeboat here on Fhada.’
‘Maybe we’d be better taking the other route north through the Little Minch, sir.’
Reeve smiled. ‘I know – it’s a hell of a war, Lieutenant, but it’s the only one we’ve got.’
Jansen said solemnly, ‘As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascination. When looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. Oscar Wilde said that, sir,’ he said helpfully.
‘Dear God, restore me to sanity.’ Reeve shook his head and turned to Jago. ‘Let me get off this hooker before I go over the edge entirely.’
‘Just one thing, sir. Do you know a Mr Murdoch Macleod?’
‘He’s coxswain of the lifeboat here and a good friend of mine. Why do you ask?’
Jago unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out an orange envelope. ‘The Royal Naval officer in command at Mallaig asked me to deliver this telegram to him, sir, there being no telephone or telegraph service to the island at the moment, I understand.’
‘That’s right,’ Reeve said. ‘The cable parted in a storm last month and they haven’t got around to doing anything about it yet. In fact at the moment, the island’s only link with the outside world is my personal radio.’
He held out his hand for the envelope which he saw was open. ‘It’s from the Admiralty, sir.’
‘Bad news?’
‘He has a son, sir. Lieutenant Donald Macleod.’
‘That’s right. Commanding an armed trawler doing escort duty on east-coast convoys in the North Sea. Newcastle to London.’
‘Torpedoed off the Humber yesterday, with all hands.’
Reeve’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘No one was saved at all? You’re certain of that?’
‘I’m afraid not, Admiral.’
Reeve seemed to age before his eyes. ‘One thing they obviously didn’t tell you, Lieutenant, was that, although Donald Macleod was master of that trawler, there were four other men from Fhada in the crew.’ He passed the envelope back to Jago. ‘I think the sooner we get this over with, the better.’
The church of St Mungo was a tiny, weather-beaten building with a squat tower, constructed of blocks of heavy granite on a hillside above the town.
Reeve, Jago and Frank Jansen went in through the lychgate and followed a path through a churchyard scattered with gravestones to the porch at the west end. Reeve opened the massive oaken door and led the way in.
The dead boy lay on a trestle table in a tiny side chapel to one side of the altar. Two middle-aged women were arranging the body while Murdoch and Jean Sinclair stood close by, talking in subdued tones. They turned and looked down the aisle as the door opened. The three men moved towards them, caps in hand. They paused, then Reeve held the orange envelope out to Jean Sinclair.
‘I think you’d better read this.’
She took it from him, extracted the telegram. Her face turned ashen, she was wordless. In a moment of insight, Reeve realized that she was re-living her own tragedy. She turned to Murdoch, but the admiral stepped in quickly, holding her back.
Murdoch said calmly, ‘It is bad news you have for me there, I am thinking, Carey Reeve.’
‘Donald’s ship was torpedoed off the Humber yesterday,’ Reeve said. ‘Went down with all hands.’
A tremor seemed to pass through the old man’s entire frame. He staggered momentarily, then took a deep breath and straightened. ‘The Lord disposes.’
The two women working on the body stopped to stare at him, faces frozen in horror. Between them, as Reeve well knew, they had just lost a husband and brother. Murdoch moved past and stood looking down at the German boy, pale in death, the face somehow very peaceful now.
He reached down and took one of the cold hands in his. ‘Poor lad,’ he said. ‘Poor wee lad!’ His shoulders shook and he started to weep softly.
3 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland, 12 September 1944.Lat. 26°.11N., long. 30°.26W. Wind NW 2–3. Overcast. Poor visibility. A bad squall last night during the middle-watch and the flying-jib split.
Some five hundred miles south of the Azores, Erich Berger sat at the desk in his cabin entering his personal journal
… our general progress has, of course, been far better than I could ever have hoped and yet our passengers find the experience tedious in the extreme. For most of the time, bad weather keeps them below; the skylight leaks and the saloon is constantly damp.
The loss of the chickens and two goats kept for milk, all swept overboard in a bad squall three days out of Belém, has had an unfortunate effect on our diet, although here again, it has been most noticeable in the nuns. Frau Prager is still my main worry and her condition, as far as I may judge, continues to deteriorate.
As for the prospect of a meeting with an enemy ship, we are as ready in that respect as can reasonably be expected. The Deutschland is now the Gudrid Andersen to the last detail, including the library of Swedish books in my cabin. The plan of campaign, if boarded at any time, is simple. The additional men carried beyond normal crew requirements will secrete themselves in the bilges. A simple device admittedly, and one easily discovered by any kind of a thorough search, but we have little choice in the matter.
The Deutschland stands up well so far to all the Atlantic can offer, although there is not a day passes that shrouds do not part or sails split and, this morning, Mister Sturm reported twelve inches of water in the bilges. But, as yet, there is no cause for alarm. We all get old and the Deutschland is older than most …
The whole ship lurched drunkenly and Berger was thrown from his chair as the cabin tilted. He scrambled to his feet, got the door open and ran out on deck.
The Deutschland was plunging forward through heavy seas, the deck awash with spray. Leutnant Sturm and Leading Seaman Kluth had the wheel between them and it was taking all their strength to hold it.
High above the deck, the main gaff topsail fluttered free in the wind. The noise was tremendous and could be heard even above the roaring of the wind, and the topmast was whipping backwards and forwards. A matter of moments only before it snapped. But already Richter was at the rail, the sea washing over him as he pulled on the downhaul to collapse the sail.
Berger ran to join him, losing his footing and rolling into the scuppers as another great sea floated in across the deck, but somehow he was on his feet and lending his weight to the downhaul with Richter.
The sail came down, the Deutschland righted herself perceptibly, the continual drumming ceased. Richter shouted, ‘I’d better get up there and see to a new outhaul.’
Berger cried above the wind, ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes out there on that gaff in this weather. It’ll have to wait till the wind eases.’
‘But that sail will tear herself to pieces, sir.’
‘A gasket should hold her for the time being. I’ll see to it.’
Berger sprang into the ratlines and started to climb, aware of the wind tearing at his body like some living thing. When he paused, fifty feet up and glanced down, Richter was right behind him.
There was a foot of water in the saloon, a sea having smashed the skylight and flooded in. Sister Angela went from cabin to cabin, doing her best to calm her alarmed companions.
When she went into the Pragers’, she found the old man on his knees at his wife’s bunk. Frau Prager was deathly pale, eyes closed, little sign of life there at all.
‘What is it?’ Otto Prager demanded in alarm.
She ignored him for the moment and took his wife’s pulse. It was still there, however irregular.
Prager tugged at her sleeve. ‘What happened?’
‘I’ll find out,’ she said calmly. ‘You stay with your wife.’
She went out on deck to find the Deutschland racing north, every fore and aft sail drawing well, yards braced as she plunged into the waves. Sturm and Kluth were still at the wheel. The young lieutenant called to her, but his words were snatched away by the wind.
She made it to the mizzen shrouds on the port side, the wind tearing at her black habit, and looked up at the ballooning sails. The sky was a uniform grey, the whole world alive with the sound of the ship, a thousand creaks and groans. And then, a hundred feet up, she saw Berger and Richter swaying backwards and forwards on the end of the gaff as they secured the sail.
It was perhaps the most incredible thing she had ever seen in her life and she was seized by a tremendous feeling of exhilaration. A sea slopped in over the rail in a green curtain that bowled her over, sending her skidding across the deck on her hands and knees.
She crouched against the bulwark and, as she tried to get up, Berger dropped out of the shrouds beside her and got a hand under her arm.
‘Bloody fool!’ he shouted. ‘Why can’t you stay below?’
He ran her across the deck and into his cabin before she had a chance to reply. Sister Angela collapsed into the chair behind the desk and Berger got the door shut and leaned against it. ‘What in the hell am I going to do with you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There was panic down below. I simply wanted to know what had happened.’
He picked up a towel from his bunk and tossed it across to her. ‘A line parted, a sail broke free. It could have snapped the topmast like a matchstick, only Richter was too quick for it.’ He opened a cupboard and reached for the bottle. ‘A drink, Sister? Purely medicinal, of course. Rum is all I can offer, I’m afraid.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Berger poured himself a large one and she wiped her face and regarded him curiously. ‘It was incredible what you were doing out there. You and Herr Richter, so high up and in such weather.’
‘Not really,’ he said indifferently. ‘Not to anyone who’s reefed main t’gallants on a fully-rigged clipper in a Cape Horn storm.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Tell me, do you still think we’re bad luck? A positive guarantee of contrary winds, wasn’t that what you said at our first meeting? And yet we’ve made good progress, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Oh, we’re making time all right,’ Berger admitted. ‘Although she shakes herself to pieces around us just a little bit more each day.’
‘You speak of her, the Deutschland, as if she is a living thing. As if she has an existence of her own.’
‘I wouldn’t quarrel with that. Although I suppose your Church would. A ship doesn’t have one voice, she has many. You can hear them calling to each other out there, especially at night.’
‘The wind in the rigging?’ There was something close to mockery in her voice.
‘There are other possibilities. Old timers will tell you that the ghost of anyone killed falling from the rigging remains with the ship.’
‘And you believe that?’
‘Obligatory in the Kriegsmarine.’ There was an ironic smile on his face now. ‘Imagine the shades who infest this old girl. Next time something brushes past you in the dark on the companionway, you’ll know what it is. One Our Father and two Hail Marys should keep you safe.’
Her cheeks flushed but before she could reply, the door was flung open and Sister Else appeared, ‘Please, Sister, come quickly. Frau Prager seems to be worse.’
Sister Angela jumped to her feet and moved out. Berger closed the door behind her, then picked up the towel she dropped and wiped his face. Strange how she seemed to bring out the worst in him. A constant source of irritation, but then perhaps it was simply that they’d all been together for too long in such a confined space. And yet …
For most of the afternoon, HMS Guardian, a T-class submarine of the British Home Fleet, en route to Trinidad for special orders, had proceeded submerged, but at 1600 hours she surfaced.
It was the throb of the diesels that brought her captain, Lieutenant-Commander George Harvey, awake. He lay there for a moment on the bunk, staring up at the steel bulkhead, aware of the taste in his mouth, the smell of submarine, and then the green curtain was pulled aside and Petty Officer Swallow came in with tea in a chipped enamel mug.
‘Just surfaced, sir.’
The tea was foul, but at least there was real sugar in it, which was something.
‘What’s it like up there?’
‘Overcast. Wind north-west. Two to three. Visibility poor, sir. Slight sea mist and drizzling.’
‘Succinct as always, Coxswain,’ Harvey told him.
‘Beg pardon, sir?’
‘Never mind. Just tell Mr Edge I’ll join him on the bridge in five minutes.’
‘Sir.’
Swallow withdrew and Harvey swung his legs to the floor and sat there, yawning. Then he moved to the small desk bolted to the bulkhead, opened the Guardian’s war diary and in cold, precise naval language, started to insert the daily entry.
There were three men on the bridge. Sub-Lieutenant Edge, officer of the watch, a signalman and an able seaman for lookout. The sea was surprisingly calm and there was none of the usual corkscrewing or pitching that a submarine frequently experiences when travelling on the surface in any kind of rough weather.
Edge was thoroughly enjoying himself. The rain in his face was quite refreshing and the salt air felt sweet and clean in his lungs after the hours spent below.
Swallow came up the ladder, a mug of tea in one hand. ‘Thought you might like a wet, sir. Captain’s compliments and he’ll join you on the bridge in five minutes.’
‘Good show,’ Edge said cheerfully. ‘Not that there’s anything to report.’
Swallow started to reply and then his eyes widened and an expression of incredulity appeared on his face. ‘Good God Almighty!’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it.’
In the same instant, the lookout cried out, pointing, and Edge turned to see a three-masted barquentine, all sails set, emerge from a fog bank a quarter of a mile to port.
On board the Deutschland there was no panic, for the plan to be followed in such an eventuality had been gone over so many times that everyone knew exactly what to do.
Berger was on the quarterdeck, Sturm and Richter beside him at the rail. The bosun was holding a signalling lamp. The captain spoke without lowering his glasses. ‘A British submarine. T-class.’
‘Is this it, sir?’ Sturm asked. ‘Are we finished?’
‘Perhaps.’
The Guardian’s gun crew poured out of her conning-tower and manned their positions. For a moment there was considerable activity, then a signal lamp flashed.
‘Heave to or I fire,’ Richter said.
‘Plain enough. Reply: As a neutral ship I comply under protest.’
The shutter on the signal lamp in the bosun’s hands clattered. A moment later, the reply came. ‘I intend to board you. Stand by.’
Berger lowered his glasses. ‘Very well, gentlemen. Action stations, if you please. Take in all sail, Mr Sturm. You, Richter, will see the rest of the crew into the bilges and I will attend to the passengers.’
There was a flurry of activity as Sturm turned to bark orders to the watch on deck. Richter went down the quarterdeck ladder quickly. Berger followed him, descending the companionway.
When he entered the saloon, four of the nuns were seated round the table listening to a bible-reading from Sister Lotte.
‘Where is Sister Angela?’ Berger demanded.
Sister Lotte paused. ‘With Frau Prager.’
The door of the consul’s cabin opened and Prager emerged. He seemed haggard and drawn and had lost weight since that first night in Belém so that his tropical linen suit seemed a size too large.
‘How are things?’ Berger asked.
‘Bad,’ Prager said. ‘She gets weaker by the hour.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Berger addressed his next remark to all of them. ‘There’s a British submarine on the surface about a quarter of a mile off our port beam and moving in. They intend to board.’
Sister Käthe crossed herself quickly and Sister Angela came out of the Pragers’ cabin clutching an enamel bucket, her white apron soiled.
When Berger next spoke, it was to no one but her. ‘You heard?’
‘Yes.’
‘We had a bad night of it, Sister – a hell of a night. You understand me?’
‘Perfectly, Captain.’ Her face was pale, but the eyes sparkled. ‘We won’t let you down.’
Berger picked up a broom that leaned against the bulkhead, reached up and jabbed at the skylight again and again, glass showering across the table so that the nuns scattered with cries of alarm.
He tossed the broom into a corner. ‘See that you don’t,’ he said and went back up the companionway.
There was total silence, the nuns staring at Sister Angela expectantly. With a violent gesture she raised the bucket in her hands and emptied the contents across the floor. There was the immediate all-pervading stench of vomit and Sister Brigitte turned away, stomach heaving.
‘Excellent,’ Sister Angela said. ‘Now you, Lotte, go to the lavatory and fetch a bucket of slops. I want conditions down here to be so revolting those Tommis will be back up that companionway in two minutes flat.’
She had changed completely, the voice clipped, incisive, totally in command. ‘As for the rest of you, complete disorder in the cabins. Soak your bedding in seawater.’
Prager tugged at her sleeve. ‘What about me, Sister? What shall I do?’
‘Kneel, Herr Prager,’ she said. ‘At your wife’s bedside – and pray.’
As the Guardian moved in, Harvey observed the activity on the deck of the Deutschland closely through his glasses.
Edge came up the ladder behind him. ‘I’ve checked Lloyd’s Register, sir. It seems to be her all right. Gudrid Andersen, three-masted barquentine, registered Gothenburg.’
‘But what in the hell is she doing here?’
Harvey frowned, trying to work out the best way of handling the situation. His first officer, Gregson, lay in his bunk with a fractured left ankle. In such circumstances to leave the Guardian himself, however temporarily, was unthinkable. Which left Edge, a nineteen-year-old boy on his first operational patrol – hardly an ideal choice.
On the other hand, there was Swallow. His eyes met the chief petty officer’s briefly. Not a word spoken and yet he knew that the coxswain read his thoughts perfectly.
‘Tell me, Coxswain, does anyone on board speak Swedish?’
‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’
‘We must hope they run to enough English over there to get us by, then. Lieutenant Edge will lead the boarding party. Pick him two good men – side arms only. And I think you might as well go along for the ride.’
‘Sir.’
Swallow turned and at his shouted command, the forward hatch was opened and a rubber dinghy broken out. Edge went below and reappeared a few moments later buckling a webbing belt around his waist from which hung a holstered Webley revolver. He was excited and showed it.
‘Think you can handle it?’ Harvey asked.
‘I believe so, sir.’
‘Good. A thorough inspection of ship’s papers and identity documents of everyone on board.’
‘Am I looking for anything special sir?’
‘Hardly,’ Harvey said drily. ‘The Germans last used a sailing ship as a surface raider in nineteen-seventeen, if I remember my naval history correctly, and times have changed. No, we’re entitled to check her credentials and I’m consumed with curiosity as to the nature of her business, so off you go.’
Sturm waited at the rail as the dinghy coasted in. Edge went up the Jacob’s ladder first, followed by one of the ratings and Swallow, who carried a Thompson gun. The other rating stayed with the dinghy. Of Berger, there was no sign.
Sturm, who spoke excellent English, pointed to the ensign which fluttered at the masthead. ‘I must protest, sir. As you can see, this is a Swedish vessel.’
‘Ah, good, you speak English,’ Edge said with a certain relief. ‘Lieutenant Philip Edge of His Britannic Majesty’s submarine Guardian. Are you the master of this vessel?’
‘No, my name is Larsen. First mate. Captain Nielsen is in his cabin getting out the ship’s papers for you. I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess. We had a bad night of it. Almost turned turtle when a squall hit us during the middle watch. It caused considerable damage.’
Edge said to Swallow, ‘You handle things here, Coxswain, while I have a word with the captain.’
‘Shall we take a look below, sir?’ Swallow suggested.
Edge turned, taking in the watchful gun crew on the Guardian, the Browning machine-gun which had been mounted on the rail beside Harvey.
‘Yes, why not? he said and followed Sturm towards the quarterdeck.
The young German opened the door to the captain’s cabin and stood politely to one side. Edge paused on the threshold, taking in the shambles before him. A porthole was smashed, the carpet soaked, the whole place littered with books and personal belongings.
Berger stood behind the desk, face stern, the ship’s log and other papers ready on the desk before him.
‘I’m afraid Captain Nielsen doesn’t speak English so I’ll have to interpret for you.’ Which was far from the truth for Berger’s English, though modest, was adequate. ‘The captain,’ Sturm added, ‘is not pleased at this forcible boarding of a neutral vessel about her lawful business.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Edge said, considerably intimidated by the stern expression on Berger’s face, ‘but I’m afraid I must insist on seeing your ship’s papers and log, also your cargo manifest.’
Berger turned away as if angry. Sturm said, ‘But we carry no cargo, Lieutenant, only passengers.’ He picked up the ship’s log, soaked in sea water, its pages sticking together. ‘Perhaps you would care to examine the log? You will find all other relevant papers here also.’
Edge took it from him, sat down in Berger’s chair and tried to separate the first two water-soaked pages which promptly tore away in his hand. And at that precise moment, Richter and the eleven other members of the crew secreted in the bilges with him, were lying in several inches of stinking water, aware of Swallow’s heavy footsteps in the hold above their heads.
Edge left the cabin fifteen minutes later, having examined as thoroughly as he could an assortment of papers and clutching the Swedish passports offered for his inspection.
Swallow emerged from the companionway, looking ill. Edge said, ‘Are the passengers down there, Coxswain?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Swallow was taking in deep breaths of salt air rapidly. ‘Five nuns, sir, and an old gentleman and his wife – and she doesn’t look too healthy.’
Edge advanced to the top of the companionway and Swallow said hastily, ‘I wouldn’t bother, sir. Not unless you feel you have to. They’ve obviously had a rotten time of it in last night’s storm. Still cleaning up.’
Edge hesitated, turned to glance at Sturm, Berger glowering behind, then started down.
The stink was appalling, the stench of human excrement and vomit turning his stomach. The first thing he saw in the shambles of the saloon below were four nuns on their knees amongst the filth with buckets and brushes, scrubbing the floor. Edge got a handkerchief to his mouth as Sister Angela appeared in the doorway of the Pragers’ cabin.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked in good English.
‘Sorry to trouble you, ma’am. My duty – you understand?’ He held out the passports. ‘International law in time of war. I’m entitled to inspect the passenger list.’
He glanced past her at Prager who knelt beside his wife. Her face was deathly pale, shining with sweat, and she was breathing incredibly slowly.
‘And this lady and gentleman?’ He started to sort through the passports.
‘Mr Ternström and his wife. As you can see, she is very ill.’
Prager turned to look at him, the agony on his face totally genuine, and Edge took an involuntary step back. Lotte chose that exact moment to be sick, crouching there on the floor like some animal. It was enough.
Edge turned hastily, brushed past Sturm and went back up the companionway. He leaned on the starboard rail, breathing deeply, and Swallow moved beside him.
‘You all right, sir?’
‘God, what a pest-hole. Those women – they’ve been through hell.’ He pulled himself together. ‘You’ve checked the holds thoroughly Coxswain?’
‘Clean as a whistle, sir. She’s in ballast with sand.’
Edge turned to Sturm who stood waiting, Berger a pace or two behind. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘For many months we work the coastal trade in Brazil,’ Sturm told him. ‘Then we decide to come home. As you may imagine, no one seemed anxious to risk a cargo with us.’
‘And the passengers?’
‘The good Sisters have been stranded in Brazil for more than a year now. We are the first Swedish ship to leave Brazil during that time. They were grateful for the opportunity for any kind of passage.’
‘But the old lady,’ Edge said. ‘Mrs Ternström. She looks in a bad way.’
‘And anxious to see her family again while there is still time.’ Sturm smiled bitterly. ‘War makes things difficult for us neutrals when we want to travel from one place to another.’
Edge made his decision and handed the passports back. ‘You’ll want these. My apologies to your captain. I’ll have to confirm it with my commanding officer, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to proceed.’ He moved to the head of the Jacob’s ladder and paused. ‘Those ladies down there …’
‘Will be fine, Lieutenant. We’ll soon have things shipshape again.’
‘Anything else we can do for you?’
Sturm smiled. ‘Bring us up to date on the war, if you would. How are things going?’
‘All our way now, no doubt about that,’ Edge said. ‘Though they do seem to be slowing down rather in Europe. I don’t think we’re going to see Berlin by Christmas after all. The Germans are making one hell of a fight of it in the Low Countries.’
He went down the ladder quickly, followed by Swallow and the other rating, and they cast off. ‘Well, Coxswain?’ he asked as they pulled away.
‘I know one thing, sir. I’ll never complain about serving in submarines again.’
On the quarterdeck Berger smoked a cigar and waited, Sturm at his side.
‘What do you think, Herr Kapitän?’ Sturm asked. ‘Has it worked?’
In the same moment, the signal lamp on the bridge of the Guardian started to flash.
‘You may proceed.’ Berger spelled out. ‘Happy voyage and good luck.’ He turned to Sturm, his face calm. ‘My maternal grandmother was English, did I ever tell you that?’
‘No, sir.’
Berger tossed his cigar over the side. ‘She’s all yours, Mr Sturm. Let’s get under way again as soon as may be.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Sturm turned, raising his voice to call to the men below, and Berger descended to the deck. He stood in the entrance to the companionway, aware of the stench, of Sister Angela’s pale face peering up at him.
‘Did it work?’ she called softly.
‘Remind me, when I have the time, to tell you what a very remarkable woman you are, Sister.’
‘At the appropriate moment, I shall, Captain. You may be certain of that,’ she said serenely.
Berger turned away. The Guardian was already departing towards the south-west. He watched her go, and behind him Helmut Richter emerged from the forrard hatch and came aft. His body was streaked with filth, but he was smiling.
‘Can the lads come on deck and wash off under the pump? They smell pretty high after those bilges.’
‘So I observe.’ Berger wrinkled his nose. ‘Give it another twenty minutes until our British friends are really on their way, Helmut, then turn them loose.’
He went into his cabin and Richter stripped his shirt from his body, worked the deck pump with one hand and turned the hose on himself. As he did so, Sister Lotte came out on deck clutching a full pail of slops in both hands. She got as far as the starboard rail and was about to empty it when Richter reached her.
‘Never into the wind,’ he said. ‘That way you get the contents back in your face.’ He peered down in disgust. ‘And that, you can definitely do without.’
He carried the pail to the port rail, emptied it over the side, then flushed it out under the pump. She stood watching him calmly.
She was small and very slightly built, a lawyer’s daughter from Munich who looked younger than her twenty-three years. Unlike the other nuns, she was still a novice and had been transferred to Brazil, by way of Portugal, the previous year, only because she was a trained nurse and there was a shortage of people with her qualifications.
She picked up his shirt. ‘I’ll wash this for you.’
‘No need.’
‘And the seam is splitting on one shoulder, I’ll mend it.’ When she looked up, he saw that her eyes were a startling cornflower blue. ‘It must have been horrible down there.’
‘For you also.’
He handed her the pail, she took it and for a brief moment, they held it together. Sister Angela said quietly, ‘Lotte, I need you.’
She was standing in the entrance to the companionway, her face calm as always, but there was a new wariness in her eyes when she looked at Richter. The girl smiled briefly and joined her and they went below. Richter started to pump water over his head vigorously.
Berger sat behind the desk, surveying the wreckage of his cabin – not that it mattered. It could soon be put straight again. He was filled with a tremendous sense of elation and opened his personal journal. He picked up his pen, thought for a moment, then wrote: I am now more than ever convinced that we shall reach Kiel in safety …
4 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland, 14 September 1944.Lat. 28°.16N., long. 30°.50W. Frau Prager died at three bells of the mid-watch. We delivered her body to the sea shortly after dawn, Sister Angela taking the service. Ship’s company much affected by this calamitous event. A light breeze sprang up during the afternoon watch, increasing to fresh in squalls. I estimate that we are 1170 miles from Cobh in Ireland this day.
Night was falling fast as Jago and Petty Officer Jansen went up the hill to St Mungo’s. They found the burial party in the cemetery at the back of the church. There were twenty or so islanders there, men and women, Jean Sinclair and Reeve standing together, the admiral in full uniform. Murdoch Macleod in his best blue serge suit, stood at the head of the open grave, a prayer book in his hands.
The two Americans paused some little distance away and removed their caps. It was very quiet except for the incessant calling of the birds, and Jago looked down across Mary’s Town to the horseshoe of the harbour where the MGB was tied up at the jetty.
The sun was setting in a sky the colour of brass, splashed with scarlet, thin mackerel clouds high above. Beyond Barra Head, the islands marched north to Barra, Mingulay, Pabbay, Sandray, rearing out of a perfectly calm sea, black against flame.
Reeve glanced over his shoulder, murmured something to Jean Sinclair, then moved towards them through the gravestones. ‘Thanks for coming so promptly, Lieutenant.’
‘No trouble, sir. We were on our way to Mallaig from Stornoway when they relayed your message.’ Jago nodded towards the grave into which half-a-dozen fishermen were lowering the coffin. ‘Another one from U-743?’
Reeve nodded. ‘That makes eight in the past three days.’ He hesitated. ‘When you were last here you said you were going to London on leave this week.’
‘That’s right, Admiral. If I can get to Mallaig on time I intend to catch the night train for Glasgow. Is there something I can do for you, sir?’
‘There certainly is.’ Reeve took a couple of envelopes from his pocket. ‘This first one is for my niece. Her apartment’s in Westminster, not far from the Houses of Parliament.’
‘And the other, sir?’
Reeve handed it over. ‘If you would see that gets to SHAEF Headquarters personally. It would save time.’
Jago looked at the address on the envelope and swallowed hard. ‘My God!’
Reeve smiled. ‘See that it’s handed to one of his aides personally. No one else.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’d better move out, then. I’ll expect to hear from you as soon as you get back. As I told you, I have a radio at the cottage, one of the few courtesies the Navy still extends me. They’ll brief you at Mallaig on the times during the day I sit at the damned thing hoping someone will take notice.’
Jago saluted, nodded to Jansen and then moved away. As the admiral rejoined the funeral party, Murdoch Macleod started to read aloud in a firm, clear voice: ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower …’
Suddenly it was very dark, with only the burned-out fire of day on the horizon as they went out through the lych-gate.
Jansen said, ‘Who’s the letter for, Lieutenant?’
‘General Eisenhower,’ Jago said simply.
In Brest, they were shooting again across the river as Paul Gericke turned the corner, the rattle of small-arms fire drifting across the water. Somewhere on the far horizon rockets arched through the night and in spite of the heavy rain, considerable portions of the city appeared to be on fire. Most of the warehouses which had once lined the street had been demolished by bombing, the pavement was littered with rubble and broken glass, but the small hotel on the corner, which served as naval headquarters, still seemed to be intact. Gericke ran up the steps quickly, showed his pass to the sentry on the door and went inside.
He was a small man, no more than five feet five or six, with fair hair and a pale face that seemed untouched by wind and weather. His eyes were very dark, with no light in them at all, contrasting strangely with the good-humoured, rather lazy smile that seemed permanently to touch his mouth.
His white-topped naval cap had seen much service and he was hardly a prepossessing figure in his old leather jerkin, leather trousers and sea boots. But the young lieutenant sitting at his desk in the foyer saw only the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves at the throat and was on his feet in an instant.
‘I was asked to report to the commodore of submarines as soon as I arrived,’ Gericke told him. ‘Korvettenkapitän Gericke. U-235.’
‘He’s expecting you, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If you’d follow me.’
They went up the curving staircase. A petty officer, a pistol at his belt, stood guard outside one of the hotel bedrooms. The handwritten notice on the door said Kapitän zurSee Otto Friemel, Führer der Unterseeboote West.
The lieutenant knocked and went in. ‘Lieutenant-Commander Gericke, sir.’
The room was in half darkness, the only light the reading lamp on Friemel’s desk. He was in shirt-sleeves, working his way through a pile of correspondence, steel-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and an ivory cigarette-holder jutting from the left corner of his mouth.
He came round the desk smiling, hand outstretched. ‘My dear Paul. Good to see you. How was the West Indies?’
‘A long haul,’ Gericke said. ‘Especially when it was time to come home.’
Friemel produced a bottle of Schnapps and two glasses. ‘We’re out of champagne. Not like the old days.’
‘What, no flowers on the dock?’ Gericke said. ‘Don’t tell me we’re losing the war?’
‘My dear Paul, in Brest we don’t even have a dock any longer. If you’d arrived in daylight you’d have noticed the rather unhappy state of those impregnable U-boat pens of ours. Five metres of reinforced concrete pulverised by a little item the RAF call the Earthquake bomb.’ He raised his glass. ‘To you, Paul. A successful trip, I hear?’
‘Not bad,’
‘Come now. A Canadian corvette, a tanker and three merchant ships? Thirty-one thousand tons, and you call that not bad? I’d term it a rather large miracle. These days two out of three U-boats that go out never return.’ He shook his head. ‘It isn’t nineteen-forty any longer. No more Happy Time. These days they send out half-trained boys. You’re one of the few oldtimers left.’
Gericke helped himself to a cigarette from a box on the table. It was French and of the cheapest variety, for when he lit it and inhaled, the smoke bit at the back of his throat, sending him into a paroxysm of coughing.
‘My God! Now I know things are bad.’
‘You’ve no idea how bad,’ Friemel told him. ‘Brest has been besieged by the American Eighth Army Corps since the ninth of August. The only reason we’re still here is because of the quite incredible defence put up by General Ramcke and the Second Airborne Division. Those paratroopers of his are without a doubt the finest fighting men I’ve ever seen in action, and that includes the Waffen SS.’ He reached for the Schnapps bottle again. ‘Of course they were pulled out of the Ukraine to come here. It could be they are still euphoric at such good fortune. An American prison camp, after all, is infinitely to be preferred to the Russian variety.’
‘And what’s the U-boat position?’
‘There isn’t one. The Ninth Flotilla is no more. U-256 was the last to leave. That was eleven days ago. Orders are to regroup in Bergen.’
‘Then what about me?’ Gericke asked. ‘I could have made for Norway by way of the Irish Sea and the North Channel.’
‘Your orders, Paul, are quite explicit. You will make for Bergen via the English Channel, as the rest of the flotilla has done, only in your case, someone at High Command has provided you with what one might term a slight detour.’
Gericke, who had long since passed being surprised at anything, smiled. ‘Where to, exactly?’
‘It’s really quite simple.’ Friemel turned to the table behind, rummaged amongst a pile of charts, found the one he was looking for and opened it across the desk.
Gericke leaned over. ‘Falmouth?’
‘That’s right. The Royal Navy’s Fifteenth MGB Flotilla operating out of Falmouth has been causing havoc on this entire coast recently. To be perfectly honest, it’s made any kind of naval activity impossible.’
‘And what am I supposed to do about it?’
‘According to your orders, go into Falmouth and lay mines.’
‘They’re joking, of course.’
Friemel held up a typed order. ‘Dönitz himself.’
Gericke laughed out loud. ‘But this is really beautiful, Otto. Quite superb in its idiocy, even for those chairbound bastards in Kiel. What on earth am I supposed to do, win the war in a single bold stroke?’ He shook his head. ‘They must believe in fairy stories. Someone should tell them that when the tailor boasted he could kill seven at one blow he meant flies on a slice of bread and jam.’
‘I don’t know,’ Friemel said. ‘It could be worse. There’s a protecting curtain of mines plus a blockship here between Pendennis Point and Black Rock and a temporary net boom from Black Rock to St Anthony’s Head. That’s supposed to be highly secret, by the way, but it seems the Abwehr still have an agent operational in the Falmouth area.’
‘He must feel lonely.’
‘Ships in and out all the time. Go in with a few when the net opens. Drop your eggs, up here in Carrick Roads and across the inner harbour and out again.’
Gericke shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Why?’
‘We may get in, but we certainly won’t get out.’
Friemel sighed. ‘A pity, as I’ll be going with you. Not out of any sense of adventure, I assure you. I have orders to report to Kiel and as the land routes to Germany are cut, my only way would seem to be with you to Bergen.’
Gericke shrugged. ‘So, in the end, all roads lead to hell.’
Friemel helped himself to one of the French cigarettes and inserted it in his holder. ‘What shape are you in?’
‘We were strafed by a Liberator in Biscay. Superficial damage only, but my engines need a complete overhaul. New bearings for a start.’
‘Not possible. I can give you four or five days. We must leave on the nineteenth. Ramcke tells me he can hold out for another week at the most. No more.’
The door opened and the young lieutenant entered. ‘Signal from Kiel, sir. Marked most urgent.’
Friemel took the flimsy from him and adjusted his spectacles. A slight, ironic smile touched his mouth. ‘Would you believe it, Paul, but this confirms my promotion as Rear Admiral in command of all naval forces in the Brest area. One can only imagine it has been delayed in channels.’
The lieutenant passed across another flimsy. Friemel read it, his face grave, then handed it to Gericke. It said: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PROMOTION IN THE FULL AND CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU AND YOUR MEN WILL DIE RATHER THAN YIELD ONE INCH OF SOIL TO THE ENEMY. ADOLF HITLER.
Gericke passed it back. ‘Congratulations, Herr Konteradmiral,’ he said formally.
Without a flicker of emotion, Friemel said to the lieutenant, ‘Send this message to Berlin. Will fight to the last. Long live the Führer. That’s all. Dismiss!’
The young lieutenant withdrew. Friemel said, ‘You approve?’
‘Wasn’t that Lütjen’s last message before the Bismarck went down?’
‘Exactly,’ Rear Admiral Otto Friemel said. ‘Another drink, my friend?’ He reached for the bottle, then sighed. ‘What a pity. We appear to have finished the last of the Schnapps.’
It was still raining heavily in London at eight-thirty on the following evening when JU 88 pathfinders of Gruppe 1/KG 66, operating out of Chartres and Rennes in France, made their first strike. By nine-fifteen the casualty department of Guy’s Hospital was working at full stretch.
Janet Munro, in the end cubicle, curtain drawn, carefully inserted twenty-seven stitches into the right thigh of a young auxiliary fireman. He seemed dazed and lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Janet was being assisted by a male nurse named Callaghan, a white-haired man in his late fifties who had served on the Western Front as a Medical Corps sergeant in the First World War. He strongly approved of the young American doctor in every possible way and made it his business to look out for her welfare, something she seemed quite incapable of doing for herself. Just now he was particularly concerned about the fact that she had been on duty for twelve hours, and it was beginning to show.
‘You going off after this one, miss?’
‘How can I, Joey?’ she said. ‘They’ll be coming in all night.’
Bombs had been falling for some time on the other side of the Thames but now there was an explosion close at hand. The whole building shook and there was a crash of breaking glass. The lights dimmed for a moment and somewhere a child started to wail.
‘My God, Jerry certainly picks his time,’ Callaghan remarked.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, still concentrating on the task in hand.
He seemed surprised. ‘Don’t you know who’s here tonight, miss? Eisenhower himself. Turned up an hour ago just before the bombing started.’
She paused and looked at him blankly. ‘General Eisenhower? Here?’
‘Visiting those Yank paratroopers in ward seventy-three. The lads they brought over from Paris last week. Decorating some of them, that’s what I heard.’
She was unable to take it in, suddenly very tired. She turned back to her patient and inserted the last couple of stitches.
‘I’ll dress it for you,’ Callaghan said. ‘You get yourself a cup of tea.’
As she stripped the rubber gloves from her fingers, the young fireman turned his head and looked at her. ‘You a Yank then, Doctor?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Got any gum, chum?’
She smiled and took a cigarette-lighter from her pocket. ‘No, but I can manage a light.’
She took the cigarette from his mouth, lit it and gave it back to him. ‘You’ll be fine now.’
He grinned. ‘Can you cook as well, Doc?’
‘When I get the time.’
Suddenly, the effort of keeping her smile in place was too much and she turned and went into the corridor quickly. Callaghan was right. She needed that cup of tea very badly indeed. And about fifteen hours’ sleep to follow – but that, of course, was quite impossible.
As she started along the corridor, the curtain of a cubicle was snatched back and a young nurse emerged. She was obviously panic-stricken, blood on her hands. Turning wildly, she saw Janet and called out – soundlessly, because at that moment another heavy bomb fell close enough to shake the walls and bring plaster from the ceiling.
Janet caught her by the shoulders. ‘What is it?’
The girl tried to speak, pointing wildly at the cubicle as another bomb fell, and Janet pushed her to one side and entered. The woman who lay on the padded operating table, covered with a sheet, was obviously very much in labour. The young man who leaned over her was a corporal in the Commandos, his uniform torn and streaked with dust.
‘Who are you?’ The tiredness had left her now, as if it had never been.
‘Her husband, miss. She’s having a baby.’ He plucked at her sleeve. ‘For God’s sake do something.’
Janet pulled back the sheet. ‘When did she start?’
‘Half an hour, maybe longer. We was in the High Street when the siren went, so I took her into the underground. Borough Station. When she started feeling bad I thought I’d better get her to hospital, but it was hell out there. Bombs falling all over the place.’
Another landed very close to the hospital now, followed by a second. For a moment, the lights went out. The woman on the table cried out in fear and pain. Here eyes started from her head as the lights came on again and she tried to sit up.
Janet pushed her down and turned to the young nurse. ‘You know what’s wrong here?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the girl said. ‘I’m only a probationer.’ She looked at her hands. ‘There was a lot of blood.’
The young Commando pulled at Janet’s sleeve. ‘What’s going on? What’s up?’
‘A baby is usually delivered head first,’ Janet said calmly. ‘This is what’s known as a breech. That means it’s presenting its backside.’
‘Can you handle it?’
‘I should imagine so, but we haven’t got much time. I want you to stand over your wife, hold her hand and talk to her. Anything you like, only don’t stop.’
‘Shall I get Sister Johnson?’ the young nurse asked.
‘No time,’ Janet said. ‘I need you here.’
Bombs were falling steadily now and from the sound of it, panic had broken out amongst the crowd that waited in general casualty for treatment. She took a deep breath, tried to ignore that nightmare world outside and concentrated on the task in hand.
The first problem was to deliver the legs. She probed gently inside until she managed to get a finger up against the back of one of the child’s knees. The leg flexed instantly and so did the other when she repeated the performance.
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Jack Higgins
Classic adventure from the million copy bestseller Jack HigginsIn the end all roads lead to hell.It’s 1944 and Germany is facing its final defeat. Five thousand miles across the Allied dominated Atlantic, twenty-two men and five nuns aboard the Barquentine Deutschland are battling home to Kiel.Among them are a U-boat ace captured in a raid on Falmouth. A female American doctor caught in the nightmare of flying bombs. A gunboat commander who’s fought from the Solomons to the Channel and a rear admiral desperate to get some of the action.Allies and enemies, men and women, the hunters and the haunted all drawn into the eye of the storm.
JACK HIGGINS
STORM WARNING
For John Knowler – with oak leaves
From the Journal of Rear Admiral Carey Reeve, USN
… and this I find the greatest mystery of all – the instinct in man to sacrifice himself that others might live. But then, courage never goes out of fashion, and at no other time in my life have I seen it better displayed than in the affair of the Deutschland. In the midst of the greatest war history has known, people on opposite sides in that conflict were able to come together for a time, take every risk, lay themselves on the line, in an attempt to save a handful of human beings from man’s oldest and most implacable foe – the sea. I have never seen the tragic futility of war better demonstrated nor felt prouder of my fellow men than at that time …
Contents
Title Page (#ubfd1165a-4d13-50e0-8292-e45625085e0b)Dedication (#u34f68c10-07d6-5761-b072-e67277f1109d)Chapter One (#u4b2ac3da-bfc1-5f49-bd3c-4dd906235d54)Chapter Two (#u792342b1-0121-5675-8076-5d92d7cacaef)Chapter Three (#ua0a0c785-87fd-5563-b686-7711a40b4359)Chapter Four (#udd1e62e9-2fe4-580b-b1d0-e0d1e7161ed9)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Also By Jack Higgins (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland 26 August 1944.Eleven days out of Rio de Janeiro. At anchorage in Belém. Begins hot. Moderate trades. Last of the coal unloaded. No cargo available. In ballast with sand for run to Rio. Hatches battened down and ready to sail. Rain towards evening.
As Prager turned the corner, thunder rumbled far out to sea and lightning flashed across the sky, giving for one brief moment a clear view of the harbour. The usual assortment of small craft and three or four coastal steamers were moored at the main jetty. The Deutschland was anchored in midstream, distinctive if only for the fact that she was the one sailing ship in the harbour.
Rain came suddenly, warm and heavy, redolent with rotting vegetation from the jungle across the river. Prager turned up the collar of his jacket and, holding his old leather briefcase under one arm, hurried along the waterfront towards the Lights of Lisbon, the bar at the end of the fish pier.
There was the sound of music, muted yet plain enough, a slow, sad samba with something of the night in it. As he went up the steps to the verandah he took off his spectacles and wiped rain from them with his handkerchief. He replaced them carefully and peered inside.
The place was empty, except for the bartender and Helmut Richter, the Deutschland’s bosun, who sat at the end of the bar with a bottle and a glass in front of him. He was a large, heavily-built man in reefer jacket and denim cap, with long, blond hair and a beard that made him look older than his twenty-eight years.
Prager stepped inside. The bartender, who was polishing a glass, looked up. Prager ignored him and moved along the bar, shaking the rain from his panama. He dropped the briefcase on the floor at his feet.
‘A good night for it, Helmut.’
Richter nodded gravely and picked up the bottle. ‘A drink, Herr Prager?’
‘I think not.’
‘A wise choice.’ Richter refilled his glass. ‘Cachaca. They say it rots the brain as well as the liver. A poor substitute for good Schnapps, but they haven’t seen any of that since thirty-nine.’
‘Is Captain Berger here?’
‘Waiting for you on board.’
Prager picked up his briefcase again. ‘Then I suggest we get moving. There isn’t much time. Has anyone been asking for me?’
Before Richter could reply a voice said in Portuguese, ‘Ah, Senhor Prager, a pleasant surprise.’
Prager turned quickly as the curtain of one of the small booths behind him was pulled back. The man who sat there, a bottle of wine in front of him, was immensely fat, his crumpled khaki uniform stained with sweat and bursting at the seams.
Prager managed a smile. ‘Captain Mendoza. Don’t you ever sleep?’
‘Not very often. What is it this time, business or pleasure?’
‘A little of both. As you know, the position of German nationals is a difficult one these days. Your government is more than ever insistent on a regular report.’
‘So, it is necessary that Berger and his men are seen by you personally?’
‘On the first day of the last week in each month. Your people in Rio are most strict in this respect.’
‘And the good Senhora Prager? I am given to understand she was on the plane with you.’
‘I have a few days’ leave due and she has never seen this part of the country. It seemed the ideal opportunity.’
Richter slipped out without a word. Mendoza watched him go. ‘A nice lad,’ he said. ‘What was it he used to be? Chief helmsman on a U-boat. Obersteuermann, isn’t that the word?’
‘I believe so.’
‘You’ll have a drink with me?’
Prager hesitated. ‘Just a quick one, if you don’t mind. I have an appointment.’
‘With Berger?’ Mendoza nodded to the barman who poured brandy into two glasses without a word. ‘When does he leave to go back to Rio? In the morning?’
‘I believe so.’ Prager sipped the brandy, on dangerous ground now. He was sixty-five, an assistant consul at the German embassy in Rio until August 1942, when the Brazilians, enraged by the torpedoing of several of their merchant ships by U-boats, had declared war. Little more than a gesture, but it had presented the problem of what to do about German nationals – in particular the increasing number of sailors of the Kriegsmarine who found themselves washed up on her shores.
Prager, having spent twenty years in the country, and being acceptable in high places, had been left behind to cope with that. There were, after all, five thousand miles of ocean between Brazil and Germany so no need to set up expensive internment camps. The Brazilian government was content with the monthly reports he presented on his fellow citizens. As long as they were gainfully employed and not a charge on the state, everyone was happy.
Mendoza said, ‘I’ve been harbourmaster here for two years now and for most of that time the Deutschland has been coming in regularly. Say every couple of months.’
‘So?’
‘A boat of that size usually manages with a master, mate, bosun, probably six foremast hands and a cook.’
‘That is correct.’
Mendoza sipped a little of his wine thoughtfully. ‘According to my information, Berger has a crew of something like twenty this trip.’
He smiled genially, but the eyes in the fat face were sharp. Prager said carefully, ‘There are many German seamen in Rio.’
‘And more each day. The war, my friend, does not go well for you.’
‘Berger is probably trying to employ as many as possible.’
Mendoza smiled beautifully. ‘But of course. That explanation had not occurred to me. But I mustn’t keep you. Perhaps we’ll have time for another drink tomorrow?’
‘I hope so.’
Prager went out quickly. Richter was waiting on the verandah by the steps. Beyond, the rain hammered relentlessly into the ground. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ Prager told him. ‘He knows something’s going on. But how could he possibly suspect the truth? No one in his right mind would believe it.’ He clapped Richter on the shoulder. ‘Now let’s get moving.’
The bosun said, ‘I didn’t get a chance to tell you inside, but there was someone asking for you.’
There was a movement behind and, as Prager turned, a nun in tropical-white habit stepped into the light. She was a small woman, not much over five feet tall, with clear, untroubled eyes and a calm, unlined face.
‘Sister Angela,’ Richter said.
‘… of the Sisters of Mercy from the mission station on the Rio Negro. Introductions are not necessary, Helmut. Sister Angela and I are old acquaintances.’
He took off his panama and held out his hand which she clasped briefly in a grasp of surprising strength.
‘It’s good to see you again, Sister.’
‘And you, Herr Prager. I think you know why I’m here.’
‘Why, yes, Sister.’ Otto Prager smiled warmly. ‘I believe I do.’
An anchor light hung from the Deutschland’s forestay, as required by marine regulations, and this they saw first as Richter worked the dinghy across the harbour. Then suddenly she was very close, her masts and spars dark against the sky.
Prager looked up with conscious pleasure as he climbed the Jacob’s ladder. She was a three-masted barquentine built by Hamish Campbell on the Clyde in 1881 and built with love and understanding and grace, with an elegant clipper bow to her and an extended jib-boom.
She had spent a lifetime in trade; Newcastle-on-Tyne with steam coal for Valparaiso; Chilean nitrates for America’s west coast; lumber for Australia; wool for Britain … an endless circle, as sail died in a doomed attempt to combat steam, one owner after another through three changes of name until, finally, she had been bought by the Brazilian firm of Mayer Brothers, a family of German extraction, who had rechristened her Deutschland and put her to the coastal trade. Rio to Belém and the mouth of the Amazon – just the craft for such waters, having a draught of only eight feet fully loaded.
Prager went over the bulwark and extended his hand to Sister Angela. Richter was close behind on the ladder. Three seamen by the main mast gazed in astonishment as the little nun came over the side, and one of them hurried forward to take her other hand.
She thanked him, and Prager said to her, ‘I think it would be better if I spoke to Captain Berger alone to start with.’
‘Whatever you think best, Herr Prager,’ she said tranquilly.
He turned to Richter. ‘Take the good sister down to the saloon, then wait for me outside the Captain’s cabin.’
Richter and Sister Angela descended the companionway and Prager went aft towards the quarterdeck. Berger’s cabin was underneath. He hesitated, then braced himself, knocked on the door and went in.
The cabin was small, spartan in its furnishings – narrow bunk and three cupboards and not much else except for the desk behind which Berger sat, making a measurement with parallel rulers on the chart spread before him.
He glanced up, and there was relief in his eyes. ‘I was beginning to get worried.’
He was at that time forty-eight years old, of medium height with good shoulders, his wiry, dark hair and beard flecked with grey, and his face weathered by sea and sun.
‘I’m sorry,’ Prager said. ‘We ran into a bad electric storm on the flight from Rio. The pilot insisted on touching down at Carolina until the weather cleared. We were there for four hours.’
Berger opened a sandalwood box and offered him a cheroot. ‘What’s the latest war news?’
‘All bad.’ Prager sat in the chair opposite and accepted a light. ‘On the fifteenth of this month American and French forces landed on the Mediterranean coast. Two days ago French tanks entered Paris.’
Berger whistled softly. ‘Next stop the Rhine.’
‘I should imagine so.’
‘And then Germany.’ He stood up, crossed to one of the cupboards, opened it and took out a bottle of rum and two glasses. ‘What about the Russians?’
‘The Red Army is on the borders of East Prussia.’
Berger poured rum into the glasses and pushed one across. ‘You know, Otto, we Germans haven’t had to defend the soil of the Fatherland since Napoleon. It should prove an interesting experience.’
‘Brazil might be the best place to be for the next year or two,’ Prager said. ‘A hell of a time to go home.’
‘Or the only time,’ Berger said. ‘It depends on your point of view. Have you got the papers?’
Prager put his briefcase on the desk. ‘Everything needed and I’ve checked again on the barquentine you mentioned when you first spoke of this crazy affair, the GudridAndersen. She’s still in Gothenburg harbour. Hasn’t been to sea since the first year of the war.’
‘Excellent,’ Berger said. ‘Plain sailing from here on, then.’
‘You are fully prepared?’
Berger opened a cupboard and took out a lifejacket which he dropped on the desk. The legend Gudrid Andersen – Gothenburg was stencilled on the back.
‘And this, of course.’ He produced next a Swedish ensign. ‘A most important item as I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He smiled. ‘Everything is ready, believe me. The official change of name we’ll make once clear of the coastal shipping lanes.’
‘And the log?’
‘I’ve already prepared a false one in the name of the Gudrid Andersen for use with our friends from the other side if we should be so unlucky as to run into them. The true log of the Deutschland I shall continue to keep privately. It would not be correct to do otherwise.’ He put the lifejacket and ensign back in the cupboard. ‘As for you, old friend, what can I say? Without your hard work during these past few months, the information you have obtained, the forged papers, we could not have ever begun to contemplate such an enterprise.’
Prager said carefully, ‘There is just one more thing to discuss, Erich.’
‘What’s that?’
Prager hesitated, then said, ‘Seven passengers.’
Berger laughed harshly. ‘You must be joking.’
‘No, I’m perfectly serious. You’ve carried them before, haven’t you?’
‘You know damned well I have.’ There was something close to anger in Berger’s voice. ‘I have accommodation for eight passengers. Two cabins on either side of the saloon, two bunks to each. I should also point out that this ship is amply crewed by ten men including myself. At the moment, we are twenty-two, as you very well know. Seven passengers would mean that the additional crew would have to bunk elsewhere. An impossible situation.’
‘But you’ll be in ballast.’ Prager said. ‘No cargo, and surely genuine passengers would only strengthen your cover story?’
‘Who are these passengers?’
‘Germans, like you and your men, who want to go home.’ Prager took a deep breath and carried on. ‘All right, you might as well know the worst. They’re nuns. Sisters of Mercy from a mission station on the Negro. I’ve been visiting them regularly for the past two years, just like all the other Germans on my list. Every three months; a special dispensation from the authorities as the place is so difficult to get to.’
Berger stared at him in astonishment. ‘For God’s sake, Otto, am I going out of my mind or are you?’
Prager got up without a word and opened the cabin door. Richter was standing outside smoking a cigarillo. Prager nodded and the bosun hurried away.
‘Now what?’ Berger demanded.
‘I brought one of them on board with me. The others are waiting on shore. At least hear what she has to say.’
‘You must be out of your head. It’s the only conceivable explanation.’
There was a knock at the door. Prager opened it and Sister Angela stepped inside. He said, ‘Sister, I’d like you to meet Fregattenkapitän Erich Berger. Erich, this is Sister Angela of the Little Sisters of Mercy.’
‘Good evening Captain,’ she said.
Berger looked down at the tiny nun for a moment, an expression of astonishment on his face, then he grabbed Prager by the arm and pushed him outside into the rain, pulling the cabin door behind him.
‘What in the hell am I going to do? What am I supposed to say?’
‘You’re the captain,’ Prager told him. ‘You make the decisions and no one else, or so I’ve always been given to understand. I’ll wait for you here.’
He walked to the mizzen shrouds on the port side. Berger cursed softly, hesitated, then went back in.
She was standing behind the desk, leaning over the chronometer in its box under a glass plate. She glanced up. ‘Beautiful, Captain. Quite beautiful. What is it?’
‘The seaman’s measure of the heavens, Sister, along with a sextant. If I can check the position of the sun, moon and stars then I can discover my own exact position on the earth’s surface – with the help of tables as well of course.’
She turned to the desk. ‘A British Admiralty chart. Why is that?’
‘Because they’re the best,’ Berger told her, feeling for some reason incredibly helpless.
‘I see.’ She carried on in the same calm voice. ‘Are you going to take us with you?’
‘Look, Sister,’ he said. ‘Sit down and let me explain.’ He pulled another chart forward. ‘Here we are at the mouth of the Amazon and this is the route home.’ He traced a finger up past the Azores and west of Ireland. ‘And if we get that far, there could be even greater hazards to face.’ He tapped at the chart. ‘We must pass close to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, a graveyard for sailing ships, especially in bad weather – which is usually six days out of seven up there. And if we survive that, we only have the Orkneys passage, the run to Norway, then down through the Kattegat to Kiel,’ he added with heavy irony. ‘Five thousand miles, that’s all.’
‘And how long will it take us?’
He actually found himself answering, ‘Impossible to say. Forty, maybe fifty days. So much depends on the weather.’
‘That seems very reasonable, under the circumstances.’
Berger said, ‘Tell me something. When you first came out here, how did you make the trip?’
‘A passenger liner. The Bremen. That was just before the war, of course.’
‘A fine ship. Comfortable cabins, hot and cold running water. Food that wouldn’t disgrace a first-class hotel. Stewards to fetch and carry.’
‘What exactly are you trying to say, Captain?’
‘That on this ship, life would be very different. Bad food, cramped quarters. A lavatory bucket to empty daily. Salt water only to wash in. And a blow – a real blow under sail – can be a frightening experience. In bad weather we can spend a fortnight at a time without a dry spot in her from stem to stern. Have you ever strapped yourself into a bunk in wet blankets with a full gale trying to tear the sticks out of the deck above your head?’ He rolled up the chart and said firmly, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t see any point in prolonging this discussion.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Tell me something. How does a German naval officer come to command a Brazilian trading vessel?’
‘I was captain of a submarine supply ship, the Essen, camouflaged as the US fuel ship George Grant. We were torpedoed in the South Atlantic on our third trip by a British submarine, which wasn’t taken in by the disguise. You may consider that ironic in view of the fact that I intend to try and pass the Deutschland off as a similar ship of Swedish registration.’
‘And how did you manage to reach Brazil?’
‘Picked up by a Portuguese cargo boat and handed over to the Brazilian authorities when we reached Rio. The Brazilians have been operating a kind of parole system for any of us who can find work. The Mayer Brothers, who own the Deutschland, are coastal traders, Brazilian citizens but German by origin. They’ve helped a great many of us. We make the run from Rio to Belém and back once a month with general cargo.’
‘And you repay them now by stealing their boat?’
‘A point of view; for which I can only hope they’ll forgive me when they know the facts. But we don’t really have any choice.’
‘Why not?’
‘The Brazilians are starting to play a more active part in the war. Last month they sent troops to Italy. I think things could get much more difficult for us here.’
‘And the other reason?’
‘You think I have one?’
She waited, hands folded, saying nothing. Berger shrugged, opened the drawer of his desk and took out a wallet. He extracted a snapshot and passed it across. It was badly creased and discoloured by salt water, but the smiles on the faces of the three small girls were still clear enough.
‘Your children?’
‘Taken in forty-one. Heidi, on the left, will be ten now. Eva is eight and Else will be six in October.’
‘And their mother?’
‘Killed in a bombing raid on Hamburg three months ago.’
She crossed herself automatically. ‘What happened to the children?’
‘Herr Prager got word about them for me through our embassy in the Argentine. My mother has them in Bavaria.’
‘Thank God in his infinite mercy.’
‘Should I?’ Berger’s face was pale, jaw set. ‘Germany is going under, Sister, a matter of months only. Can you imagine how bad it’s going to be? And my mother’s an old woman. If anything happens to her …’ A kind of shudder seemed to pass through his body and he leaned heavily on the desk. ‘I want to be with them because that’s where I’m needed, not here on the edge of the world, so far off that the war has ceased to exist.’
‘And for that you’ll dare anything?’
‘Including five thousand miles of ocean dominated completely by the British and American navies, in a patched-up sailing ship that hasn’t been out of sight of land in twenty years or more. An old tub, that hasn’t had a refit for longer than I care to remember. An impossible voyage.’
‘Which Herr Richter, your bosun, is apparently willing to make.’
‘Helmut is a special case. The finest sailor I’ve ever known. He has invaluable experience under sail. Served his time as a boy on Finnish windjammers on the Chilean nitrate run. That may not mean a lot to you, but to seamen anywhere …’
‘But according to Herr Prager there are another twenty men in your crew who are also willing to make this so-called impossible voyage.’
‘Most of them with a reason roughly similar to mine. I can think of at least seventy men in Rio who would gladly stand in their shoes. They held a lottery for the last ten places in a German bar on the Rio waterfront two weeks ago.’ He shook his head. ‘They want to go home, Sister, don’t you see? And for that, to use your own words, they’ll dare anything.’
‘And my friends and I are different, is that it? We too, have families, Captain, as dear to us as yours. More than that, because of what lies ahead, home is where we are needed now.’
Berger stood staring at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. In any case, it’s too late. You’d need Swedish papers, that’s an essential part of the plan. Prager’s arranged them for all of us.’
She got to her feet, opened the cabin door and called, ‘Herr Prager!’
He moved in out of the rain. ‘What is it?’
‘My papers, please. May I have them now?’
Prager opened his briefcase. He searched inside, then took out a passport which he dropped on the desk in front of Berger.
Berger frowned. ‘But this is Swedish.’ He opened it and Sister Angela stared out at him from the photo. He looked up. ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to step outside for a moment, Sister. I’d like a few words with my good friend here.’
She hesitated, glanced briefly at Prager, then went out.
Prager said, ‘Look, Erich, let me explain.’
Berger held up the passport. ‘Not something you can pick up at twenty-four hours’ notice, so you must have known about this for quite some time. Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I knew you’d react exactly as you are doing.’
‘So you thought you’d leave it until it was too late for me to say no? Well, you made a mistake. I won’t play. And what about this mission station they’ve been operating? Is it suddenly so unimportant?’
‘The Brazilian Department of the Interior has changed its policy on the Indians in that area; moving them out and white settlers in. the mission was due to close anyway.’
‘They’re a nursing order, aren’t they? Surely there must be some other outlet for their talents up there.’
‘They are also Germans, Erich. What do you think it’s going to be like when those first Brazilian casualty figures start filtering through from Italy?’
There was a long pause. Berger picked up the Swedish passport, opened it and examined the photo again. ‘She looks like trouble to me. She’s been used to getting her own way for too long.’
‘Nonsense,’ Prager said. ‘I knew her family from the old days. Good Prussian stock. Her father was an infantry general. She was a nurse on the Western Front in nineteen-eighteen.’
Berger’s astonishment showed. ‘A hell of a background for a Little Sister of Mercy. What went wrong? Was there some sort of scandal?’
‘Not at all. There was a young man, I believe. A flier.’
‘… who didn’t come back one fine morning so she sought refuge in a life of good works.’ Berger shook his head. ‘It’s beginning to sound like a very bad play.’
‘But you’ve got it all wrong, Erich. The way I heard it, he simply let her think he was dead. She had a breakdown that almost cost her life and was just coming out of it nicely when she met him walking along the Unter den Linden one day with another girl on his arm.’
Berger held up both hands. ‘No more. I know when I’m beaten. Bring her back in.’
Prager went to the door quickly and opened it. She was standing outside talking to the bosun.
Berger said, ‘You win, Sister. Tell Richter to have you taken ashore to collect the rest of your friends. Be back here by two a.m. because that’s when we leave, and if you aren’t here, we go without you.’
‘God bless you, Captain.’
‘I think he’s got enough on his plate at the moment without me.’ As she moved to the door, he added, ‘Just one thing. Try not to let the crew know before they have to.’
‘Are they likely to be disturbed by our presence?’
‘Very much so. Sailors are superstitious by nature. Amongst other things, sailing on a Friday is asking for trouble. Taking any kind of a minister along as a passenger, the same. We should certainly pick up all the bad luck in the world with seven nuns sailing with us.’
‘Five, Captain. Only five,’ she said and went out.
Berger frowned and turned to Prager. ‘You said seven passengers.’
‘So I did.’ Prager rummaged in the briefcase and produced two more Swedish passports which he pushed across the desk. ‘One for Gertrude and one for me. She, too, is waiting on shore with our baggage which includes, I might add, that wireless transmitter you asked me to try and get you.’
Berger gazed at him in stupefaction. ‘You and your wife?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Good God, Otto, you’re sixty-five if you’re a day. And what will your masters in Berlin say?’
‘From what I hear, the Russians are far more likely to get there before I do, so it doesn’t really matter.’ Prager smiled gently. ‘You see, Erich, we want to go home, too.’
* * *
When Berger went up to the quarterdeck just before two it was raining harder than ever. The entire crew was assembled on the deck below, faces pale, oilskins glistening in the dim glow of the deck lights.
He gripped the rail, leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. ‘I won’t say much. You all know the score. It’s one hell of a trip, I’m not going to pretend any different, but if you do as I tell you, we’ll make it, you and I and the old Deutschland together.’
There was a stirring amongst them, no more than that, and he carried on, a touch of iron in his voice now. ‘One more thing. As most of you will have observed, we’re carrying passengers. Herr Prager, once assistant consul at our embassy in Rio and his wife, and five nuns from a mission station on the Negro.’
He paused. There was only the hissing of the rain as they all waited. ‘Nuns,’ he said, ‘but still women and it’s a long journey home, so let me make myself plain. I’ll personally shoot the first man to step over the line, and so enter it in the log.’ He straightened. ‘Now everyone to his station.’
As he turned from the rail his second-in-command moved out of the darkness to join him. Leutnant zur See Johann Sturm, a tall, fair youth from Minden in Westphalia, had celebrated his twentieth birthday only three days earlier. Like Richter, he was a submariner and had served in a U-boat as second watch officer.
‘Everything under control, Mr Sturm?’ Berger enquired in a low voice.
‘I think so, Captain.’ Sturm’s voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I’ve stowed the wireless transmitter Herr Prager brought with him from Rio in my cabin, as you ordered. It’s not much, I’m afraid, sir. A limited range at the best.’
‘Better than nothing,’ Berger told him. ‘And the passengers? Are they safely stowed away also?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ There was a hint of laughter in the boy’s voice. ‘I think you could say that.’
A white figure appeared out of the darkness and materialized as Sister Angela. Berger swallowed hard and said in a low, dangerous voice, ‘Could you now, Mr Sturm?’
Sister Angela said brightly, ‘Are we leaving, Captain? Is it all right if I watch?’
Berger glared at her helplessly, rain dripping from the peak of his cap, then turned to Sturm and said, ‘Haul up the spanker and outer jib only, Mr Sturm, and let the anchor chain go.’
Sturm repeated the order and there was a sudden flurry of activity. One seaman dropped down the forepeak hatch. Four others hauled briskly on the halliard and the spanker rose slowly. A moment later there was a rattle as the anchor chain slithered across the deck, then a heavy splash.
Richter was at the wheel but, for the moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Sister Angela, glancing up, saw through a gap in the curtain of rain, stars pass across the jib.
‘We’re moving, Captain! We’re moving!’ she cried, as excitedly as any child.
‘So I’ve observed,’ Berger told her. ‘Now will you kindly oblige me by going below.’
She went reluctantly and he sighed and turned to the bosun. ‘Steady as she goes, Richter. She’s all yours.’
And Richter took her out through the harbour entrance, drifting along like some pale ghost, barely moving, leaving a slight swirl of phosphorescence in her wake.
Fifteen minutes later, as Captain Mendoza sat playing whist in his booth at the Lights of Lisbon with a young lady from the establishment next door, the man he had assigned to keep watch on the fish pier burst in on him.
‘What is it?’ Mendoza demanded mildly.
‘The Deutschland, Senhor Capitan,’ the watchman whispered. ‘She is gone.’
‘Indeed.’ Mendoza laid his cards face down on the table and stood up. ‘Watch her, José,’ he called to the barman. He picked up his cap and oilskin coat and went out.
When he reached the end of the fish pier, the rain was falling harder than ever in a dark impenetrable curtain. He lit a cigar in cupped hands and stared into the night.
‘Will you notify the authorities, senhor?’ the watchman enquired.
Mendoza shrugged. ‘What is there to notify? Undoubtedly Captain Berger wished an early start for the return trip to Rio, where he is due in eight days from now, although it would not be uncommon for him to be perhaps one week overdue, the weather at this time of the year being so unpredictable. Time enough for any official enquiry needed to be made then.’
The watchman glanced at him uncertainly, then bobbed his head. ‘As you say, Senhor Capitan.’
He moved away and Mendoza looked out over the river towards the mouth of the Amazon and the sea. How far to Germany? Nearly five thousand miles, across an ocean that was now hopelessly in the grip of the American and British navies. And in what? A three-masted barquentine long past her prime.
‘Fools,’ he said softly. ‘Poor, stupid, magnificent fools.’ And he turned and went back along the fish pier through the rain.
2 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland. 9 September 1944.Lat. 25°.01N., long. 30°.46W. Fourteen days out of Belém. Wind NW 6–8. Hove the log and found we were going twelve knots. In the past twenty-four hours we have run two hundred and twenty-eight miles. Frau Prager still confined to her bunk with the sea-sickness which has plagued her since leaving Belém. Her increasing weakness gives us all cause for concern. Heavy rain towards evening.
The morning weather forecast for sea area Hebrides had been far from promising: winds 5 to 6 with rain squalls. Off the north-west coast of Skye, things were about as dirty as they could be – heavy, dark clouds swollen with rain, merging with the horizon.
Except for the occasional seabird, the only living thing in that desolation was the motor gunboat making south-west for Barra, her Stars and Stripes ensign the one splash of colour in the grey morning.
Dawn was at six-fifteen, but at nine-thirty visibility was still bad enough to keep the RAF grounded. No one on board the gunboat could have been blamed for failing to spot the lone Junkers 88S coming in low off the sea astern. The first burst of cannon shell kicked fountains of water high into the air ten or fifteen yards to port. As the plane banked for a second run, the 13mm machine-gun firing from the rear of the cockpit canopy loosed off a long burst that ripped into the deck aft of the wheelhouse.
Harry Jago, in his bunk below trying to snatch an hour’s sleep, was awake in an instant, and making for the companionway. As he reached the deck, the gun crew were already running for the twin 20mm anti-aircraft cannon. Jago beat them into the bucket seat, hands clamping around the trigger handles.
Suddenly, as the Junkers came in off the water for the second time, heavy, black smoke swirled across the deck. Jago started to fire as its cannon punched holes in the deck beside him.
The Junkers was making its pass at close to four hundred miles an hour. He swung to follow it, aware of Jansen on the bridge above him working the Browning. But it was all to no purpose, and the Junkers curved away to port through puff-balls of black smoke and fled into the morning.
Jago stayed where he was for a moment, hands still gripping the handles. Then he got out of the seat and turned to Leading Seaman Harvey Gould, who was in charge of the antiaircraft cannon.
‘You were five seconds too late, you and your boys.’
The men of the gun crew shuffled uneasily. ‘It won’t happen again, Lieutenant,’ Gould said.
‘See that it doesn’t.’ Jago produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and stuck one in his mouth. ‘Having survived the Solomons, D-Day and the worst those E-boat flotillas in the English Channel could offer, it would look kind of silly to die in the Hebrides.’
The pilot of the Junkers, Captain Horst Necker, logged his attack as having taken place at 09.35 hours precisely. A hit-and-run affair of no particular importance which had served to enliven an otherwise boring routine patrol, especially for a pilot who in the spring of that year, during the renewed night attacks on London, had been employed by the elite pathfinder Gruppe 1/KG 66 with the kind of success that had earned him the Knight’s Cross only two months previously.
It had been something of a come-down to be transferred to KG 40 based at Trondheim, a unit specializing in shipping and weather reconnaissance, although the JU 88S they had given him to fly was certainly a superb plane – an all-weather machine capable of a top speed of around four hundred miles per hour.
His mission that morning had one purpose. To look for signs of a convoy expected to leave Liverpool for Russia that week, although the exact day of departure was unknown. He had crossed Scotland at thirty thousand feet to spend a totally abortive couple of hours west of the Outer Hebrides.
The sighting of the gunboat had been purest chance, following an impulse to go down to see just how low the cloud base was. The target, once seen, was too tempting to pass up.
As he climbed steeply after the second attack, Rudi Hubner, the navigator, laughed excitedly. ‘I think we got her, Herr Hauptmann. Lots of smoke back there.’
‘What do you think, Kranz?’ Necker called to the rear gunner.
‘Looks like they made it themselves to me, Herr Hauptmann,’ Kranz replied. ‘Somebody down there knows his business and they weren’t Tommis either. I saw the Stars and Stripes as we crossed over the second time. Probably my brother Ernst,’ he added gloomily. ‘He’s in the American navy. Did I ever tell you that?’
Schmidt, the wireless operator, laughed. ‘The first time over London with the port engines on fire, and you’ve mentioned it on at least fifty-seven different occasions since. I suppose it shows that at least one person in your family has brains.’
Hubner ignored him. ‘A probable then, Herr Hauptmann?’ he suggested.
Necker was going to say no, then saw the hope in the boy’s eyes and changed his mind. ‘I don’t see why not. Now let’s get out of here.’
When Jago went up to the bridge there was no sign of Jansen. He leaned against the Browning and looked down. The smoke had almost cleared and Gould was kicking the burned-out flare under the rail into the sea. The deck was a mess by the port rail beside the anti-aircraft gun, but otherwise things didn’t look too bad.
Jansen came up the ladder behind him. He was a tall, heavily-built man and in spite of the tangled black beard, the knitted cap and faded reefer coat with no rank badges, was a chief petty officer. A lecturer in Moral Philosophy at Harvard before the war and a fanatical weekend yachtsman, he had resolutely defeated every attempt to elevate him to commissioned rank.
‘A lone wolf, Lieutenant.’
‘You can say that again,’ Jago told him. ‘A JU 88 in the Hebrides.’
‘And one of the Reichsmarschall’s later models, to judge by his turn of speed.’
‘But what in the hell was he doing here?’
‘I know, Lieutenant,’ Jansen said soothingly. ‘It’s getting so you can’t depend on anyone these days. I’ve already checked below, by the way. Superficial damage. No casualties.’
‘Thanks,’ Jago said. ‘And that smoke flare was quick thinking.’
He found that his right hand was trembling slightly and held it out. ‘Would you look at that. Wasn’t it yesterday I was complaining that the only thing we got to fight up here was the weather?’
‘Well, you know what Heidegger had to say on that subject, Lieutenant.’
‘No, I don’t Jansen, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘He argued that for authentic living what is necessary is the resolute confrontation of death.’
Jago said patiently, ‘Which is exactly what I’ve been doing for two years now and you’ve usually been about a yard behind me. Under the circumstances, I’ll tell you what you can do with Heidegger, Jansen. You can put him where grandma had the pain. And try to rustle up some coffee while I check over the course again.’
‘As the Lieutenant pleases.’
Jago went into the wheelhouse and slumped into the chart-table chair. Petersen had the wheel – a seaman with ten years in the merchant service before the war, including two voyages to Antarctica in whalers.
‘You okay?’ Jago demanded.
‘Fine, Lieutenant.’
Jago pulled out British Admiralty chart 1796. Barra Head to Skye. South Uist, Barra and a scattering of islands below it, with Fhada, their destination, at the southern end of the chain. The door was kicked open and Jansen came in with a mug of coffee which he put on the table.
‘What a bloody place,’ Jago said, tapping the chart. ‘Magnetic anomalies reported throughout the entire area.’
‘Well, that’s helpful,’ Jansen said. ‘Just the thing when you’re working out a course in dirty weather.’
‘Those islands south of Uist are a graveyard,’ Jago went on. ‘Everywhere you look on the damned chart it says Heavy Breakers or Dangerous Seas. One hazard after another.’
Jansen unfolded a yellow oilskin tobacco pouch, produced a pipe and started to fill it, leaning against the door. ‘I was talking to some fishermen in Mallaig before we left. They were telling me that sometimes the weather out there is so bad, Fhada’s cut off for weeks at a time.’
‘The worst weather in the world when those Atlantic storms start moving in,’ Jago said. ‘God knows what it must be like in winter.’
‘Then what in the hell is Admiral Reeve doing in a place like that?’
‘Search me. I didn’t even know he was up here till I was told to pick up that dispatch for him in Mallaig and deliver it. Last I heard of him was D-day. He was deputy director of operations for Naval Intelligence and got himself a free trip on the Norwegian destroyer Svenner that was sunk by three Möwe-class torpedo boats. He lost his right eye and they tell me his left arm’s only good for show.’
‘A hell of a man,’ Jansen said. ‘He got out of Corregidor after MacArthur left. Sailed a lugger nearly six hundred miles to Cagayan and came out on one of the last planes. As I remember, he went down in a destroyer at Midway, was taken aboard the Yorktown and ended up in the water again.’
‘Careful, Jansen. Your enthusiasm is showing and I didn’t think that was possible where top brass was concerned.’
‘But this isn’t just another admiral we’re talking about, Lieutenant. He’s responsible for an excellent history of naval warfare and probably the best biography of John Paul Jones in print. Good God, sir, the man can actually read and write.’ Jansen put a match to the bowl of his pipe and added out of the side of his mouth, ‘Quite an accomplishment for any naval officer, as the Lieutenant will be the first to agree?’
‘Jansen’, Jago said. ‘Get the hell out of here.’
Jansen withdrew and Jago swung round to find Petersen grinning hugely. ‘Go on, you too! I’ll take over.’
‘Sure thing, Lieutenant.’
Petersen went out and Jago reached for another cigarette. His fingers had stopped trembling. Rain spattered against the window as the MGB lifted over another wave and it came to him, with a kind of wonder, that he was actually enjoying himself, in spite of the aching back, the constant fatigue that must be taking years off his life.
Harry Jago was twenty-five and looked ten years older, even on a good day, which was hardly surprising when one considered his war record.
He’d dropped out of Yale in March 1941 to join the navy and was assigned to PT boats, joining Squadron Two in time for the Solomons’ campaign. The battle for Guadalcanal lasted six months. Jago went in at one end a crisp, clean nineteen-year-old ensign and emerged a lieutenant, junior grade, with a Navy Cross and two boats shot from under him.
Afterwards Squadron Two was recommissioned and sent to England at the urgent request of the Office of Strategic Services to land and pick up American agents on the French coast. Again Jago survived, this time the Channel, the constant head-on clashes with German E-boats out of Cherbourg. He even survived the hell of Omaha beach on D-day.
His luck finally ran out on 28 June, when E-boats attacked a convoy of American landing craft waiting in Lyme Bay to cross the Channel. Jago arrived with dispatches from Portsmouth to find himself facing six of the best that the Kriegsmarine could supply. In a memorable ten-minute engagement, he sank one, damaged another, lost five of his crew and ended up in the water with shrapnel in his left thigh, the right cheek laid open to the bone.
When he finally came out of hospital in August they gave him what was left of his old crew, nine of them, and a new job: the rest that he so badly needed, playing postman in the Hebrides to the various American and British weather stations and similar establishments in the islands in a pre-war MGB, courtesy of the Royal Navy, that started to shake herself to pieces if he attempted to take her above twenty knots. Some previous owner had painted the legend Dead End underneath the bridge rail, a sentiment capable of several interpretations.
Just for a month or two, the squadron commander had told Jago. Look on it as akind of holiday. I mean to say, nothing ever happens up there, Harry.
Jago grinned in spite of himself and, as a rain squall hurled itself against the window, increased speed, the wheel kicking in his hands. The sea was his life now. Meat and drink to him, more important than any woman. It was the circumstance of war which had given him this, but the war wouldn’t last forever.
He said softly, ‘What in the hell am I going to do when it’s all over?’
There were times when Rear Admiral Carey Reeve definitely wondered what life was all about. Times when the vacuum of his days seemed unbearable and the island that he loved with such a deep and unswerving passion, a prison.
On such occasions he usually made for the same spot, a hill called in the Gaelic DunBhuide, the Yellow Fort, above Telegraph Bay on the south-west tip of Fhada, and so named because of an abortive attempt to set up a Marconi station at the turn of the century. The bay lay at the bottom of four-hundred-foot cliffs, a strip of white sand slipping into grey water with Labrador almost three thousand miles away to the west and nothing in between.
The path below was no place for the fainthearted, zigzagging across the face of the granite cliffs, splashed with lime, seabirds crying, wheeling in great clouds, razorbills, shags, gulls, shear-waters and gannets – gannets everywhere. He considered it all morosely for a while through his one good eye, then turned to survey the rest of the island.
The ground sloped steeply to the southwest. On the other side of the point from Telegraph were South Inlet and the lifeboat station, the boathouse, its slipway and Murdoch Macleod’s cottage, nothing more. On his left was the rest of the island. A scattering of crofts, mostly ruined, peat bog, sheep grazing the sparse turf, the whole crossed by the twin lines of the narrow-gauge railway track running north-west to Mary’s Town.
Reeve took an old brass telescope from his pocket and focused it on the lifeboat station. No sign of life. Murdoch would probably be working on that damned boat of his, but the kettle would be gently steaming on the hob above the peat fire and a mug of hot tea generously laced with illegal whisky of Murdoch’s own distilling would not come amiss on such a morning.
The admiral replaced the telescope in his pocket and started down the slope as rain drove across the island in a grey curtain.
There was no sign of Murdoch when he went into the boathouse by the small rear door. The forty-one-foot Watson-type motor lifeboat, Morag Sinclair, waited in her carriage at the head of the slipway. She was trim and beautiful in her blue and white paint, showing every sign of the care Murdoch lavished on her. Reeve ran a hand along her counter with a conscious pleasure.
Behind him the door swung open in a flurry of rain and a soft Highland voice said, ‘I was in the outhouse, stacking peat.’
Reeve turned to find Murdoch standing in the doorway and in the same moment an enormous Irish wolfhound squeezed past him and bore down on the admiral.
His hand fastened on the beast’s ginger ruff. ‘Rory, you old devil. I might have known.’ He glanced up at Murdoch. ‘Mrs Sinclair’s been looking for him this morning. Went missing last night.’
‘I intended bringing him in myself later,’ Murdoch said. ‘Are you in health, Admiral?’
He was himself seventy years old, of immense stature, dressed in thigh boots and guernsey sweater, his eyes grey water over stone, his face seamed and shaped by a lifetime of the sea.
‘Murdoch,’ Admiral Reeve said. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying precisely nothing?’
‘So it’s that kind of a morning?’ Murdoch wiped peat from his hands on to his thighs and produced his tobacco pouch. ‘Will you take tea with me, Admiral?’ he enquired with grave Highland courtesy.
‘And a little something extra?’ Reeve suggested hopefully.
‘Uisgebeatha?’ Murdoch said in Gaelic. ‘The water of life. Why not indeed, for it is life you need this morning, I am thinking.’ He smiled gravely. ‘I’ll be ten minutes. Time for you to take a turn along the shore with the hound to blow the cobwebs away.’
The mouth of the inlet was a maelstrom of white water, waves smashing in across the reef beyond with a thunderous roaring, hurling spray a hundred feet into the air.
Reeve trudged along in the wolfhound’s wake at the water’s edge, thinking about Murdoch Macleod. Thirty-two years coxswain of the Fhada lifeboat, legend in his own time – during which he had been awarded the BEM by old King George and five silver and two gold medals for gallantry in sea rescue by the Lifeboat Institution. He had retired in 1938, when his son Donald had taken over as coxswain in his place, and had returned a year later when Donald was called to active service with the Royal Naval Reserve. A remarkable man by any standards.
The wolfhound was barking furiously. Reeve looked up across the great bank of sand that was known as Traig Mhoire – Mary’s Strand. A man in a yellow lifejacket lay face-down on the shore twenty yards away, water slopping over him as one wave crashed in after another.
The admiral ran forward, dropped to one knee and turned him over, with some difficulty for his left arm was virtually useless now. He was quite dead, a boy of eighteen or nineteen, in denim overalls, eyes closed as if in sleep, fair hair plastered to his skull, not a mark on him.
Reeve started to search the body. There was a leather wallet in the left breast pocket. As he opened it, Murdoch arrived on the run, dropping on his knees beside him.
‘Came to see what was keeping you.’ He touched the pale face with the back of his hand.
‘How long?’ Reeve asked.
‘Ten or twelve hours, no more. Who was he?’
‘Off a German U-boat from the look of those overalls.’ Reeve opened the wallet and examined the contents. There was a photo of a young girl, a couple of letters and a leave pass so soaked in sea water that it started to fall to pieces as he opened it gingerly.
‘A wee lad, that’s all,’ Murdoch said. ‘Couldn’t they do better than schoolboys?’
‘Probably as short of men by now as the rest of us,’ Reeve told him. ‘His name was Hans Bleichrodt and he celebrated his eighteenth birthday while on leave in Brunswick three weeks ago. He was Funkgefreiter, telegraphist to you, on U743.’ He replaced the papers in the wallet. ‘If she bought it this morning, we might get more like this coming in for the rest of the week.’
‘You could be right,’ Murdoch crouched down and, with an easy strength that never ceased to amaze Reeve, hoisted the body over one shoulder. ‘Better get him into Mary’s Town then, Admiral.’
Reeve nodded. ‘Yes, my house will do. Mrs Sinclair can see him this afternoon and sign the death certificate. We’ll bury him tomorrow.’
‘I am thinking that the kirk might be more fitting.’
‘I’m not certain that’s such a good idea,’ Reeve said. ‘There are eleven men from this island dead at sea owing to enemy action during this war. I would have thought their families might not be too happy to see a German lying in state in their own place of worship.’
The old man’s eyes were fierce. ‘And you would agree with them?’
‘Oh no,’ Reeve said hurriedly. ‘Don’t draw me into this. You put the boy where you like. I don’t think it will bother him too much.’
‘But it might well bother God,’ Murdoch said gently. There was no reproof in his voice, in spite of the fact that, as a certificated lay preacher of the Church of Scotland, he was the nearest thing to a minister on the island.
There was no road from that end of Fhada, had never been any need for one, but during the two abortive years that the Marconi station had existed, the telegraph company had laid the narrow-gauge railway line. The lifeboat crew, mostly fishermen from Mary’s Town, travelled on it by trolley when called out in an emergency, pumping it by hand or hoisting a sail when the wind was favourable.
Which it was that morning, and Murdoch and the admiral coasted along at a brisk five knots, the triangular strip of canvas billowing out to one side. The dead boy lay in the centre of the trolley and Rory squatted beside him.
Two miles, then three, and the track started to slope down and the wind tore a hole in the curtain of rain, revealing Mary’s Town, a couple of miles further on in the north-west corner of the island, a scattering of granite houses, four or five streets sloping to the harbour. There were half-a-dozen fishing boats anchored in the lee of the breakwater.
Murdoch was standing, one hand on the mast, staring out to sea. ‘Would you look at that now, Admiral? There’s some sort of craft coming in towards the harbour out there and I could have sworn that was the Stars and Stripes she’s flying. I must be getting old.’
Reeve had the telescope out of his pocket and focused in an instant. ‘You’re damned right it is,’ he said as the Dead End jumped into view, Harry Jago on the bridge.
His hand was shaking with excitement as he pushed the telescope back into his pocket. ‘You know something, Murdoch? This might just turn out to be my day after all.’
When the MGB eased into the landing-stage a woman was sitting on the upper jetty under an umbrella, painting at an easel. She was in her early forties, with calm blue eyes in a strong and pleasant face. She wore a headscarf, an old naval-officer’s coat, which carried the bars of a full captain on the epaulettes, and slacks.
She stood up, moved to the edge of the jetty, holding the umbrella, and smiled down. ‘Hello there, America. That makes a change.’
Jago went over the rail and up the steps to the jetty quickly. ‘Harry Jago, ma’am.’
‘Jean Sinclair.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m bailie here, Lieutenant, so if there’s anything I can do …’
‘Bailie?’ Jago said blankly.
‘What you’d call a magistrate.’
Jago grinned. ‘I see. You mean you’re the law around here.’
‘And coroner and harbourmaster. This is a small island. We have to do the best we can.’
‘I’m here with dispatches for Rear Admiral Reeve, ma’am. Have you any idea where I might locate him?’
She smiled. ‘We have a saying in these islands, Lieutenant. Speak of the devil and you’ll find he’s right behind you.’
Jago turned quickly and got a shock. When he’d received his Navy Cross from Nimitz at Pearl, Admiral Reeve had been one of those on the platform, resplendent in full uniform with three rows of medal ribbons. There was no echo of him at all in the small, dark man with the black eye patch who hurried towards him now wearing an old reefer coat and sea boots. It was only when he spoke that Jago knew beyond a doubt who he was.
‘You looking for me, Lieutenant?’
‘Admiral Reeve?’ Jago got his heels together and saluted. ‘I’ve got a dispatch for you, sir. Handed to me by the Royal Naval officer in command at Mallaig. If you’d care to come aboard.’
‘Lead me to it, Lieutenant,’ the admiral said eagerly, then paused and turned to Jean Sinclair. ‘I found Rory. He was with Murdoch at the lifeboat station.’
Her eyes were lively now and there was a slight amused smile on her mouth. ‘Why, Carey, I thought you were going to ignore me altogether.’
He said gravely, ‘I found something else down there on Traig Mhoire. A body on the beach. A German boy off a U-boat.’
Her smile died. ‘Where is he now?’
‘I left him at the church with Murdoch.’
‘I’d better get up there then. I’ll pick up a couple of women on the way. See the lad’s decently laid out.’
‘I’ll be along myself later.’
She walked away quickly, her umbrella tilted to take the force of the rain. ‘Quite a lady,’ Jago remarked.
The admiral nodded. ‘And then some. As a matter of interest, she owns the whole damned island. Left it by her father. He was a kind of feudal laird round here.’
‘What about that naval greatcoat, sir?’ Jago asked, as they descended the ladder.
‘Her husband’s. Went down in the Prince of Wales back in forty-one. He was a Sinclair, too, like her. A second cousin, I believe.’ He laughed. ‘It’s an old island custom to keep the name in the family.’
The crew were assembled on deck and as the admiral went over the rail, Jansen piped him on board. Reeve looked them over in amazement and said to Jago, ‘Where did this lot spring from? A banana boat?’
‘Chief Petty Officer Jansen, sir,’ Jago said weakly.
Reeve examined Jansen, taking in the reefer, the tangled beard and knitted cap. He turned away with a shudder. ‘I’ve seen enough. Just take me to my dispatch, will you?’
‘If you follow me, Admiral.’
Jago led the way down the companionway to his cabin. He took a briefcase from under the mattress on his bunk, unlocked it and produced a buff envelope, seals still intact, which he passed across. As Reeve took it from him, there was a knock at the door and Jansen entered with a tray.
‘Coffee, gentlemen?’
Reeve curbed the impulse to tear the envelope open and said to Jago as he accepted a cup, ‘How’s the war going, then?’
It was Jansen who answered. ‘The undertakers are doing well, Admiral.’
Reeve turned to stare at him in a kind of fascination. ‘You did say Chief Petty Officer?’
‘The best, sir,’ Jago said gamely.
‘And where may I ask, did you find him?’
‘Harvard, sir,’ Jansen said politely, and withdrew.
Reeve said in wonderment, ‘He’s joking, isn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid not, Admiral.’
‘No wonder the war wasn’t over by Christmas.’
Reeve sat on the edge of the bunk, tore open the package and took out two envelopes. He opened the smaller first. There was a photo inside and a letter which he read quickly, a smile on his face. He passed the photo to Jago.
‘My niece, Janet. She’s a doctor at Guy’s Hospital in London. Been there since nineteen-forty. Worked right through the blitz.’
She had grave, steady eyes, high cheekbones, a mouth that was too wide. There was something in her expression that got through to Jago.
He handed the photo back reluctantly. ‘Very nice, sir.’
‘You could say that and it would be the understatement of the year.’
Reeve opened the second envelope and started to read the letter it contained eagerly. Gradually the smile died on his face, his eyes grew dark, his mouth tightened. He folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket.
‘Bad news, sir?’
‘Now that, son, depends entirely on your point of view. The powers-that-be are of the opinion that the war can get on without me. That, to use a favourite phrase of our British allies, I’ve done my bit.’
Jago opened a cupboard behind him and took out a bottle of Scotch and a glass which he held out to the admiral. ‘Most people I know wouldn’t find much to quarrel with in that sentiment, sir.’
He poured a generous measure of whisky into the glass. Reeve said, ‘Something else that’s strictly against regulations, Lieutenant.’ He frowned. ‘What is your name, anyway?’
‘Jago, sir. Harry Jago.’
Reeve swallowed some of the whisky. ‘What kind of deal are you on here? This old tub looks as if it might be left over from the Crimea.’
‘Not quite, sir. Courtesy of the Royal Navy. We’re only playing postman, you see. I suppose they didn’t think the job was worth much more.’
‘What were you doing before?’
‘PT boats, sir. Squadron Two, working the Channel.’
‘Jago?’ Reeve said and his face brightened. ‘You lost an Elco in Lyme Bay.’
‘I suppose you could put it that way, sir.’
Reeve smiled and held out his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, son. And those boys up top? They’re your original crew?’
‘What’s left of them.’
‘Well, now I’m here, you might as well show me over this pig boat.’
Which Jago did from stem to stern. They ended up in the wheelhouse, where they found Jansen at the chart table.
‘And what might you be about?’ Reeve demanded.
‘Our next stop is a weather station on the south-west corner of Harris, Admiral. I was just plotting our course.’
‘Show me.’ Jansen ran a finger out through the Sound into the Atlantic and Reeve said, ‘Watch it out there, especially if visibility is reduced in the slightest. Here, three miles to the north-west.’ He tapped the chart. ‘Washington Reef. Doesn’t it make you feel at home, the sound of that name?’
‘And presumably it shouldn’t?’ Jago asked.
‘A death trap. The greatest single hazard to shipping on the entire west coast of Scotland. Two galleons from the Spanish Armada went to hell together on those rocks four hundred years ago and they’ve been tearing ships apart ever since. One of the main reasons there’s a lifeboat here on Fhada.’
‘Maybe we’d be better taking the other route north through the Little Minch, sir.’
Reeve smiled. ‘I know – it’s a hell of a war, Lieutenant, but it’s the only one we’ve got.’
Jansen said solemnly, ‘As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascination. When looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. Oscar Wilde said that, sir,’ he said helpfully.
‘Dear God, restore me to sanity.’ Reeve shook his head and turned to Jago. ‘Let me get off this hooker before I go over the edge entirely.’
‘Just one thing, sir. Do you know a Mr Murdoch Macleod?’
‘He’s coxswain of the lifeboat here and a good friend of mine. Why do you ask?’
Jago unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out an orange envelope. ‘The Royal Naval officer in command at Mallaig asked me to deliver this telegram to him, sir, there being no telephone or telegraph service to the island at the moment, I understand.’
‘That’s right,’ Reeve said. ‘The cable parted in a storm last month and they haven’t got around to doing anything about it yet. In fact at the moment, the island’s only link with the outside world is my personal radio.’
He held out his hand for the envelope which he saw was open. ‘It’s from the Admiralty, sir.’
‘Bad news?’
‘He has a son, sir. Lieutenant Donald Macleod.’
‘That’s right. Commanding an armed trawler doing escort duty on east-coast convoys in the North Sea. Newcastle to London.’
‘Torpedoed off the Humber yesterday, with all hands.’
Reeve’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘No one was saved at all? You’re certain of that?’
‘I’m afraid not, Admiral.’
Reeve seemed to age before his eyes. ‘One thing they obviously didn’t tell you, Lieutenant, was that, although Donald Macleod was master of that trawler, there were four other men from Fhada in the crew.’ He passed the envelope back to Jago. ‘I think the sooner we get this over with, the better.’
The church of St Mungo was a tiny, weather-beaten building with a squat tower, constructed of blocks of heavy granite on a hillside above the town.
Reeve, Jago and Frank Jansen went in through the lychgate and followed a path through a churchyard scattered with gravestones to the porch at the west end. Reeve opened the massive oaken door and led the way in.
The dead boy lay on a trestle table in a tiny side chapel to one side of the altar. Two middle-aged women were arranging the body while Murdoch and Jean Sinclair stood close by, talking in subdued tones. They turned and looked down the aisle as the door opened. The three men moved towards them, caps in hand. They paused, then Reeve held the orange envelope out to Jean Sinclair.
‘I think you’d better read this.’
She took it from him, extracted the telegram. Her face turned ashen, she was wordless. In a moment of insight, Reeve realized that she was re-living her own tragedy. She turned to Murdoch, but the admiral stepped in quickly, holding her back.
Murdoch said calmly, ‘It is bad news you have for me there, I am thinking, Carey Reeve.’
‘Donald’s ship was torpedoed off the Humber yesterday,’ Reeve said. ‘Went down with all hands.’
A tremor seemed to pass through the old man’s entire frame. He staggered momentarily, then took a deep breath and straightened. ‘The Lord disposes.’
The two women working on the body stopped to stare at him, faces frozen in horror. Between them, as Reeve well knew, they had just lost a husband and brother. Murdoch moved past and stood looking down at the German boy, pale in death, the face somehow very peaceful now.
He reached down and took one of the cold hands in his. ‘Poor lad,’ he said. ‘Poor wee lad!’ His shoulders shook and he started to weep softly.
3 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland, 12 September 1944.Lat. 26°.11N., long. 30°.26W. Wind NW 2–3. Overcast. Poor visibility. A bad squall last night during the middle-watch and the flying-jib split.
Some five hundred miles south of the Azores, Erich Berger sat at the desk in his cabin entering his personal journal
… our general progress has, of course, been far better than I could ever have hoped and yet our passengers find the experience tedious in the extreme. For most of the time, bad weather keeps them below; the skylight leaks and the saloon is constantly damp.
The loss of the chickens and two goats kept for milk, all swept overboard in a bad squall three days out of Belém, has had an unfortunate effect on our diet, although here again, it has been most noticeable in the nuns. Frau Prager is still my main worry and her condition, as far as I may judge, continues to deteriorate.
As for the prospect of a meeting with an enemy ship, we are as ready in that respect as can reasonably be expected. The Deutschland is now the Gudrid Andersen to the last detail, including the library of Swedish books in my cabin. The plan of campaign, if boarded at any time, is simple. The additional men carried beyond normal crew requirements will secrete themselves in the bilges. A simple device admittedly, and one easily discovered by any kind of a thorough search, but we have little choice in the matter.
The Deutschland stands up well so far to all the Atlantic can offer, although there is not a day passes that shrouds do not part or sails split and, this morning, Mister Sturm reported twelve inches of water in the bilges. But, as yet, there is no cause for alarm. We all get old and the Deutschland is older than most …
The whole ship lurched drunkenly and Berger was thrown from his chair as the cabin tilted. He scrambled to his feet, got the door open and ran out on deck.
The Deutschland was plunging forward through heavy seas, the deck awash with spray. Leutnant Sturm and Leading Seaman Kluth had the wheel between them and it was taking all their strength to hold it.
High above the deck, the main gaff topsail fluttered free in the wind. The noise was tremendous and could be heard even above the roaring of the wind, and the topmast was whipping backwards and forwards. A matter of moments only before it snapped. But already Richter was at the rail, the sea washing over him as he pulled on the downhaul to collapse the sail.
Berger ran to join him, losing his footing and rolling into the scuppers as another great sea floated in across the deck, but somehow he was on his feet and lending his weight to the downhaul with Richter.
The sail came down, the Deutschland righted herself perceptibly, the continual drumming ceased. Richter shouted, ‘I’d better get up there and see to a new outhaul.’
Berger cried above the wind, ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes out there on that gaff in this weather. It’ll have to wait till the wind eases.’
‘But that sail will tear herself to pieces, sir.’
‘A gasket should hold her for the time being. I’ll see to it.’
Berger sprang into the ratlines and started to climb, aware of the wind tearing at his body like some living thing. When he paused, fifty feet up and glanced down, Richter was right behind him.
There was a foot of water in the saloon, a sea having smashed the skylight and flooded in. Sister Angela went from cabin to cabin, doing her best to calm her alarmed companions.
When she went into the Pragers’, she found the old man on his knees at his wife’s bunk. Frau Prager was deathly pale, eyes closed, little sign of life there at all.
‘What is it?’ Otto Prager demanded in alarm.
She ignored him for the moment and took his wife’s pulse. It was still there, however irregular.
Prager tugged at her sleeve. ‘What happened?’
‘I’ll find out,’ she said calmly. ‘You stay with your wife.’
She went out on deck to find the Deutschland racing north, every fore and aft sail drawing well, yards braced as she plunged into the waves. Sturm and Kluth were still at the wheel. The young lieutenant called to her, but his words were snatched away by the wind.
She made it to the mizzen shrouds on the port side, the wind tearing at her black habit, and looked up at the ballooning sails. The sky was a uniform grey, the whole world alive with the sound of the ship, a thousand creaks and groans. And then, a hundred feet up, she saw Berger and Richter swaying backwards and forwards on the end of the gaff as they secured the sail.
It was perhaps the most incredible thing she had ever seen in her life and she was seized by a tremendous feeling of exhilaration. A sea slopped in over the rail in a green curtain that bowled her over, sending her skidding across the deck on her hands and knees.
She crouched against the bulwark and, as she tried to get up, Berger dropped out of the shrouds beside her and got a hand under her arm.
‘Bloody fool!’ he shouted. ‘Why can’t you stay below?’
He ran her across the deck and into his cabin before she had a chance to reply. Sister Angela collapsed into the chair behind the desk and Berger got the door shut and leaned against it. ‘What in the hell am I going to do with you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There was panic down below. I simply wanted to know what had happened.’
He picked up a towel from his bunk and tossed it across to her. ‘A line parted, a sail broke free. It could have snapped the topmast like a matchstick, only Richter was too quick for it.’ He opened a cupboard and reached for the bottle. ‘A drink, Sister? Purely medicinal, of course. Rum is all I can offer, I’m afraid.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Berger poured himself a large one and she wiped her face and regarded him curiously. ‘It was incredible what you were doing out there. You and Herr Richter, so high up and in such weather.’
‘Not really,’ he said indifferently. ‘Not to anyone who’s reefed main t’gallants on a fully-rigged clipper in a Cape Horn storm.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Tell me, do you still think we’re bad luck? A positive guarantee of contrary winds, wasn’t that what you said at our first meeting? And yet we’ve made good progress, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Oh, we’re making time all right,’ Berger admitted. ‘Although she shakes herself to pieces around us just a little bit more each day.’
‘You speak of her, the Deutschland, as if she is a living thing. As if she has an existence of her own.’
‘I wouldn’t quarrel with that. Although I suppose your Church would. A ship doesn’t have one voice, she has many. You can hear them calling to each other out there, especially at night.’
‘The wind in the rigging?’ There was something close to mockery in her voice.
‘There are other possibilities. Old timers will tell you that the ghost of anyone killed falling from the rigging remains with the ship.’
‘And you believe that?’
‘Obligatory in the Kriegsmarine.’ There was an ironic smile on his face now. ‘Imagine the shades who infest this old girl. Next time something brushes past you in the dark on the companionway, you’ll know what it is. One Our Father and two Hail Marys should keep you safe.’
Her cheeks flushed but before she could reply, the door was flung open and Sister Else appeared, ‘Please, Sister, come quickly. Frau Prager seems to be worse.’
Sister Angela jumped to her feet and moved out. Berger closed the door behind her, then picked up the towel she dropped and wiped his face. Strange how she seemed to bring out the worst in him. A constant source of irritation, but then perhaps it was simply that they’d all been together for too long in such a confined space. And yet …
For most of the afternoon, HMS Guardian, a T-class submarine of the British Home Fleet, en route to Trinidad for special orders, had proceeded submerged, but at 1600 hours she surfaced.
It was the throb of the diesels that brought her captain, Lieutenant-Commander George Harvey, awake. He lay there for a moment on the bunk, staring up at the steel bulkhead, aware of the taste in his mouth, the smell of submarine, and then the green curtain was pulled aside and Petty Officer Swallow came in with tea in a chipped enamel mug.
‘Just surfaced, sir.’
The tea was foul, but at least there was real sugar in it, which was something.
‘What’s it like up there?’
‘Overcast. Wind north-west. Two to three. Visibility poor, sir. Slight sea mist and drizzling.’
‘Succinct as always, Coxswain,’ Harvey told him.
‘Beg pardon, sir?’
‘Never mind. Just tell Mr Edge I’ll join him on the bridge in five minutes.’
‘Sir.’
Swallow withdrew and Harvey swung his legs to the floor and sat there, yawning. Then he moved to the small desk bolted to the bulkhead, opened the Guardian’s war diary and in cold, precise naval language, started to insert the daily entry.
There were three men on the bridge. Sub-Lieutenant Edge, officer of the watch, a signalman and an able seaman for lookout. The sea was surprisingly calm and there was none of the usual corkscrewing or pitching that a submarine frequently experiences when travelling on the surface in any kind of rough weather.
Edge was thoroughly enjoying himself. The rain in his face was quite refreshing and the salt air felt sweet and clean in his lungs after the hours spent below.
Swallow came up the ladder, a mug of tea in one hand. ‘Thought you might like a wet, sir. Captain’s compliments and he’ll join you on the bridge in five minutes.’
‘Good show,’ Edge said cheerfully. ‘Not that there’s anything to report.’
Swallow started to reply and then his eyes widened and an expression of incredulity appeared on his face. ‘Good God Almighty!’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it.’
In the same instant, the lookout cried out, pointing, and Edge turned to see a three-masted barquentine, all sails set, emerge from a fog bank a quarter of a mile to port.
On board the Deutschland there was no panic, for the plan to be followed in such an eventuality had been gone over so many times that everyone knew exactly what to do.
Berger was on the quarterdeck, Sturm and Richter beside him at the rail. The bosun was holding a signalling lamp. The captain spoke without lowering his glasses. ‘A British submarine. T-class.’
‘Is this it, sir?’ Sturm asked. ‘Are we finished?’
‘Perhaps.’
The Guardian’s gun crew poured out of her conning-tower and manned their positions. For a moment there was considerable activity, then a signal lamp flashed.
‘Heave to or I fire,’ Richter said.
‘Plain enough. Reply: As a neutral ship I comply under protest.’
The shutter on the signal lamp in the bosun’s hands clattered. A moment later, the reply came. ‘I intend to board you. Stand by.’
Berger lowered his glasses. ‘Very well, gentlemen. Action stations, if you please. Take in all sail, Mr Sturm. You, Richter, will see the rest of the crew into the bilges and I will attend to the passengers.’
There was a flurry of activity as Sturm turned to bark orders to the watch on deck. Richter went down the quarterdeck ladder quickly. Berger followed him, descending the companionway.
When he entered the saloon, four of the nuns were seated round the table listening to a bible-reading from Sister Lotte.
‘Where is Sister Angela?’ Berger demanded.
Sister Lotte paused. ‘With Frau Prager.’
The door of the consul’s cabin opened and Prager emerged. He seemed haggard and drawn and had lost weight since that first night in Belém so that his tropical linen suit seemed a size too large.
‘How are things?’ Berger asked.
‘Bad,’ Prager said. ‘She gets weaker by the hour.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Berger addressed his next remark to all of them. ‘There’s a British submarine on the surface about a quarter of a mile off our port beam and moving in. They intend to board.’
Sister Käthe crossed herself quickly and Sister Angela came out of the Pragers’ cabin clutching an enamel bucket, her white apron soiled.
When Berger next spoke, it was to no one but her. ‘You heard?’
‘Yes.’
‘We had a bad night of it, Sister – a hell of a night. You understand me?’
‘Perfectly, Captain.’ Her face was pale, but the eyes sparkled. ‘We won’t let you down.’
Berger picked up a broom that leaned against the bulkhead, reached up and jabbed at the skylight again and again, glass showering across the table so that the nuns scattered with cries of alarm.
He tossed the broom into a corner. ‘See that you don’t,’ he said and went back up the companionway.
There was total silence, the nuns staring at Sister Angela expectantly. With a violent gesture she raised the bucket in her hands and emptied the contents across the floor. There was the immediate all-pervading stench of vomit and Sister Brigitte turned away, stomach heaving.
‘Excellent,’ Sister Angela said. ‘Now you, Lotte, go to the lavatory and fetch a bucket of slops. I want conditions down here to be so revolting those Tommis will be back up that companionway in two minutes flat.’
She had changed completely, the voice clipped, incisive, totally in command. ‘As for the rest of you, complete disorder in the cabins. Soak your bedding in seawater.’
Prager tugged at her sleeve. ‘What about me, Sister? What shall I do?’
‘Kneel, Herr Prager,’ she said. ‘At your wife’s bedside – and pray.’
As the Guardian moved in, Harvey observed the activity on the deck of the Deutschland closely through his glasses.
Edge came up the ladder behind him. ‘I’ve checked Lloyd’s Register, sir. It seems to be her all right. Gudrid Andersen, three-masted barquentine, registered Gothenburg.’
‘But what in the hell is she doing here?’
Harvey frowned, trying to work out the best way of handling the situation. His first officer, Gregson, lay in his bunk with a fractured left ankle. In such circumstances to leave the Guardian himself, however temporarily, was unthinkable. Which left Edge, a nineteen-year-old boy on his first operational patrol – hardly an ideal choice.
On the other hand, there was Swallow. His eyes met the chief petty officer’s briefly. Not a word spoken and yet he knew that the coxswain read his thoughts perfectly.
‘Tell me, Coxswain, does anyone on board speak Swedish?’
‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’
‘We must hope they run to enough English over there to get us by, then. Lieutenant Edge will lead the boarding party. Pick him two good men – side arms only. And I think you might as well go along for the ride.’
‘Sir.’
Swallow turned and at his shouted command, the forward hatch was opened and a rubber dinghy broken out. Edge went below and reappeared a few moments later buckling a webbing belt around his waist from which hung a holstered Webley revolver. He was excited and showed it.
‘Think you can handle it?’ Harvey asked.
‘I believe so, sir.’
‘Good. A thorough inspection of ship’s papers and identity documents of everyone on board.’
‘Am I looking for anything special sir?’
‘Hardly,’ Harvey said drily. ‘The Germans last used a sailing ship as a surface raider in nineteen-seventeen, if I remember my naval history correctly, and times have changed. No, we’re entitled to check her credentials and I’m consumed with curiosity as to the nature of her business, so off you go.’
Sturm waited at the rail as the dinghy coasted in. Edge went up the Jacob’s ladder first, followed by one of the ratings and Swallow, who carried a Thompson gun. The other rating stayed with the dinghy. Of Berger, there was no sign.
Sturm, who spoke excellent English, pointed to the ensign which fluttered at the masthead. ‘I must protest, sir. As you can see, this is a Swedish vessel.’
‘Ah, good, you speak English,’ Edge said with a certain relief. ‘Lieutenant Philip Edge of His Britannic Majesty’s submarine Guardian. Are you the master of this vessel?’
‘No, my name is Larsen. First mate. Captain Nielsen is in his cabin getting out the ship’s papers for you. I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess. We had a bad night of it. Almost turned turtle when a squall hit us during the middle watch. It caused considerable damage.’
Edge said to Swallow, ‘You handle things here, Coxswain, while I have a word with the captain.’
‘Shall we take a look below, sir?’ Swallow suggested.
Edge turned, taking in the watchful gun crew on the Guardian, the Browning machine-gun which had been mounted on the rail beside Harvey.
‘Yes, why not? he said and followed Sturm towards the quarterdeck.
The young German opened the door to the captain’s cabin and stood politely to one side. Edge paused on the threshold, taking in the shambles before him. A porthole was smashed, the carpet soaked, the whole place littered with books and personal belongings.
Berger stood behind the desk, face stern, the ship’s log and other papers ready on the desk before him.
‘I’m afraid Captain Nielsen doesn’t speak English so I’ll have to interpret for you.’ Which was far from the truth for Berger’s English, though modest, was adequate. ‘The captain,’ Sturm added, ‘is not pleased at this forcible boarding of a neutral vessel about her lawful business.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Edge said, considerably intimidated by the stern expression on Berger’s face, ‘but I’m afraid I must insist on seeing your ship’s papers and log, also your cargo manifest.’
Berger turned away as if angry. Sturm said, ‘But we carry no cargo, Lieutenant, only passengers.’ He picked up the ship’s log, soaked in sea water, its pages sticking together. ‘Perhaps you would care to examine the log? You will find all other relevant papers here also.’
Edge took it from him, sat down in Berger’s chair and tried to separate the first two water-soaked pages which promptly tore away in his hand. And at that precise moment, Richter and the eleven other members of the crew secreted in the bilges with him, were lying in several inches of stinking water, aware of Swallow’s heavy footsteps in the hold above their heads.
Edge left the cabin fifteen minutes later, having examined as thoroughly as he could an assortment of papers and clutching the Swedish passports offered for his inspection.
Swallow emerged from the companionway, looking ill. Edge said, ‘Are the passengers down there, Coxswain?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Swallow was taking in deep breaths of salt air rapidly. ‘Five nuns, sir, and an old gentleman and his wife – and she doesn’t look too healthy.’
Edge advanced to the top of the companionway and Swallow said hastily, ‘I wouldn’t bother, sir. Not unless you feel you have to. They’ve obviously had a rotten time of it in last night’s storm. Still cleaning up.’
Edge hesitated, turned to glance at Sturm, Berger glowering behind, then started down.
The stink was appalling, the stench of human excrement and vomit turning his stomach. The first thing he saw in the shambles of the saloon below were four nuns on their knees amongst the filth with buckets and brushes, scrubbing the floor. Edge got a handkerchief to his mouth as Sister Angela appeared in the doorway of the Pragers’ cabin.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked in good English.
‘Sorry to trouble you, ma’am. My duty – you understand?’ He held out the passports. ‘International law in time of war. I’m entitled to inspect the passenger list.’
He glanced past her at Prager who knelt beside his wife. Her face was deathly pale, shining with sweat, and she was breathing incredibly slowly.
‘And this lady and gentleman?’ He started to sort through the passports.
‘Mr Ternström and his wife. As you can see, she is very ill.’
Prager turned to look at him, the agony on his face totally genuine, and Edge took an involuntary step back. Lotte chose that exact moment to be sick, crouching there on the floor like some animal. It was enough.
Edge turned hastily, brushed past Sturm and went back up the companionway. He leaned on the starboard rail, breathing deeply, and Swallow moved beside him.
‘You all right, sir?’
‘God, what a pest-hole. Those women – they’ve been through hell.’ He pulled himself together. ‘You’ve checked the holds thoroughly Coxswain?’
‘Clean as a whistle, sir. She’s in ballast with sand.’
Edge turned to Sturm who stood waiting, Berger a pace or two behind. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘For many months we work the coastal trade in Brazil,’ Sturm told him. ‘Then we decide to come home. As you may imagine, no one seemed anxious to risk a cargo with us.’
‘And the passengers?’
‘The good Sisters have been stranded in Brazil for more than a year now. We are the first Swedish ship to leave Brazil during that time. They were grateful for the opportunity for any kind of passage.’
‘But the old lady,’ Edge said. ‘Mrs Ternström. She looks in a bad way.’
‘And anxious to see her family again while there is still time.’ Sturm smiled bitterly. ‘War makes things difficult for us neutrals when we want to travel from one place to another.’
Edge made his decision and handed the passports back. ‘You’ll want these. My apologies to your captain. I’ll have to confirm it with my commanding officer, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to proceed.’ He moved to the head of the Jacob’s ladder and paused. ‘Those ladies down there …’
‘Will be fine, Lieutenant. We’ll soon have things shipshape again.’
‘Anything else we can do for you?’
Sturm smiled. ‘Bring us up to date on the war, if you would. How are things going?’
‘All our way now, no doubt about that,’ Edge said. ‘Though they do seem to be slowing down rather in Europe. I don’t think we’re going to see Berlin by Christmas after all. The Germans are making one hell of a fight of it in the Low Countries.’
He went down the ladder quickly, followed by Swallow and the other rating, and they cast off. ‘Well, Coxswain?’ he asked as they pulled away.
‘I know one thing, sir. I’ll never complain about serving in submarines again.’
On the quarterdeck Berger smoked a cigar and waited, Sturm at his side.
‘What do you think, Herr Kapitän?’ Sturm asked. ‘Has it worked?’
In the same moment, the signal lamp on the bridge of the Guardian started to flash.
‘You may proceed.’ Berger spelled out. ‘Happy voyage and good luck.’ He turned to Sturm, his face calm. ‘My maternal grandmother was English, did I ever tell you that?’
‘No, sir.’
Berger tossed his cigar over the side. ‘She’s all yours, Mr Sturm. Let’s get under way again as soon as may be.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Sturm turned, raising his voice to call to the men below, and Berger descended to the deck. He stood in the entrance to the companionway, aware of the stench, of Sister Angela’s pale face peering up at him.
‘Did it work?’ she called softly.
‘Remind me, when I have the time, to tell you what a very remarkable woman you are, Sister.’
‘At the appropriate moment, I shall, Captain. You may be certain of that,’ she said serenely.
Berger turned away. The Guardian was already departing towards the south-west. He watched her go, and behind him Helmut Richter emerged from the forrard hatch and came aft. His body was streaked with filth, but he was smiling.
‘Can the lads come on deck and wash off under the pump? They smell pretty high after those bilges.’
‘So I observe.’ Berger wrinkled his nose. ‘Give it another twenty minutes until our British friends are really on their way, Helmut, then turn them loose.’
He went into his cabin and Richter stripped his shirt from his body, worked the deck pump with one hand and turned the hose on himself. As he did so, Sister Lotte came out on deck clutching a full pail of slops in both hands. She got as far as the starboard rail and was about to empty it when Richter reached her.
‘Never into the wind,’ he said. ‘That way you get the contents back in your face.’ He peered down in disgust. ‘And that, you can definitely do without.’
He carried the pail to the port rail, emptied it over the side, then flushed it out under the pump. She stood watching him calmly.
She was small and very slightly built, a lawyer’s daughter from Munich who looked younger than her twenty-three years. Unlike the other nuns, she was still a novice and had been transferred to Brazil, by way of Portugal, the previous year, only because she was a trained nurse and there was a shortage of people with her qualifications.
She picked up his shirt. ‘I’ll wash this for you.’
‘No need.’
‘And the seam is splitting on one shoulder, I’ll mend it.’ When she looked up, he saw that her eyes were a startling cornflower blue. ‘It must have been horrible down there.’
‘For you also.’
He handed her the pail, she took it and for a brief moment, they held it together. Sister Angela said quietly, ‘Lotte, I need you.’
She was standing in the entrance to the companionway, her face calm as always, but there was a new wariness in her eyes when she looked at Richter. The girl smiled briefly and joined her and they went below. Richter started to pump water over his head vigorously.
Berger sat behind the desk, surveying the wreckage of his cabin – not that it mattered. It could soon be put straight again. He was filled with a tremendous sense of elation and opened his personal journal. He picked up his pen, thought for a moment, then wrote: I am now more than ever convinced that we shall reach Kiel in safety …
4 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)
Barquentine Deutschland, 14 September 1944.Lat. 28°.16N., long. 30°.50W. Frau Prager died at three bells of the mid-watch. We delivered her body to the sea shortly after dawn, Sister Angela taking the service. Ship’s company much affected by this calamitous event. A light breeze sprang up during the afternoon watch, increasing to fresh in squalls. I estimate that we are 1170 miles from Cobh in Ireland this day.
Night was falling fast as Jago and Petty Officer Jansen went up the hill to St Mungo’s. They found the burial party in the cemetery at the back of the church. There were twenty or so islanders there, men and women, Jean Sinclair and Reeve standing together, the admiral in full uniform. Murdoch Macleod in his best blue serge suit, stood at the head of the open grave, a prayer book in his hands.
The two Americans paused some little distance away and removed their caps. It was very quiet except for the incessant calling of the birds, and Jago looked down across Mary’s Town to the horseshoe of the harbour where the MGB was tied up at the jetty.
The sun was setting in a sky the colour of brass, splashed with scarlet, thin mackerel clouds high above. Beyond Barra Head, the islands marched north to Barra, Mingulay, Pabbay, Sandray, rearing out of a perfectly calm sea, black against flame.
Reeve glanced over his shoulder, murmured something to Jean Sinclair, then moved towards them through the gravestones. ‘Thanks for coming so promptly, Lieutenant.’
‘No trouble, sir. We were on our way to Mallaig from Stornoway when they relayed your message.’ Jago nodded towards the grave into which half-a-dozen fishermen were lowering the coffin. ‘Another one from U-743?’
Reeve nodded. ‘That makes eight in the past three days.’ He hesitated. ‘When you were last here you said you were going to London on leave this week.’
‘That’s right, Admiral. If I can get to Mallaig on time I intend to catch the night train for Glasgow. Is there something I can do for you, sir?’
‘There certainly is.’ Reeve took a couple of envelopes from his pocket. ‘This first one is for my niece. Her apartment’s in Westminster, not far from the Houses of Parliament.’
‘And the other, sir?’
Reeve handed it over. ‘If you would see that gets to SHAEF Headquarters personally. It would save time.’
Jago looked at the address on the envelope and swallowed hard. ‘My God!’
Reeve smiled. ‘See that it’s handed to one of his aides personally. No one else.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’d better move out, then. I’ll expect to hear from you as soon as you get back. As I told you, I have a radio at the cottage, one of the few courtesies the Navy still extends me. They’ll brief you at Mallaig on the times during the day I sit at the damned thing hoping someone will take notice.’
Jago saluted, nodded to Jansen and then moved away. As the admiral rejoined the funeral party, Murdoch Macleod started to read aloud in a firm, clear voice: ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower …’
Suddenly it was very dark, with only the burned-out fire of day on the horizon as they went out through the lych-gate.
Jansen said, ‘Who’s the letter for, Lieutenant?’
‘General Eisenhower,’ Jago said simply.
In Brest, they were shooting again across the river as Paul Gericke turned the corner, the rattle of small-arms fire drifting across the water. Somewhere on the far horizon rockets arched through the night and in spite of the heavy rain, considerable portions of the city appeared to be on fire. Most of the warehouses which had once lined the street had been demolished by bombing, the pavement was littered with rubble and broken glass, but the small hotel on the corner, which served as naval headquarters, still seemed to be intact. Gericke ran up the steps quickly, showed his pass to the sentry on the door and went inside.
He was a small man, no more than five feet five or six, with fair hair and a pale face that seemed untouched by wind and weather. His eyes were very dark, with no light in them at all, contrasting strangely with the good-humoured, rather lazy smile that seemed permanently to touch his mouth.
His white-topped naval cap had seen much service and he was hardly a prepossessing figure in his old leather jerkin, leather trousers and sea boots. But the young lieutenant sitting at his desk in the foyer saw only the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves at the throat and was on his feet in an instant.
‘I was asked to report to the commodore of submarines as soon as I arrived,’ Gericke told him. ‘Korvettenkapitän Gericke. U-235.’
‘He’s expecting you, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If you’d follow me.’
They went up the curving staircase. A petty officer, a pistol at his belt, stood guard outside one of the hotel bedrooms. The handwritten notice on the door said Kapitän zurSee Otto Friemel, Führer der Unterseeboote West.
The lieutenant knocked and went in. ‘Lieutenant-Commander Gericke, sir.’
The room was in half darkness, the only light the reading lamp on Friemel’s desk. He was in shirt-sleeves, working his way through a pile of correspondence, steel-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and an ivory cigarette-holder jutting from the left corner of his mouth.
He came round the desk smiling, hand outstretched. ‘My dear Paul. Good to see you. How was the West Indies?’
‘A long haul,’ Gericke said. ‘Especially when it was time to come home.’
Friemel produced a bottle of Schnapps and two glasses. ‘We’re out of champagne. Not like the old days.’
‘What, no flowers on the dock?’ Gericke said. ‘Don’t tell me we’re losing the war?’
‘My dear Paul, in Brest we don’t even have a dock any longer. If you’d arrived in daylight you’d have noticed the rather unhappy state of those impregnable U-boat pens of ours. Five metres of reinforced concrete pulverised by a little item the RAF call the Earthquake bomb.’ He raised his glass. ‘To you, Paul. A successful trip, I hear?’
‘Not bad,’
‘Come now. A Canadian corvette, a tanker and three merchant ships? Thirty-one thousand tons, and you call that not bad? I’d term it a rather large miracle. These days two out of three U-boats that go out never return.’ He shook his head. ‘It isn’t nineteen-forty any longer. No more Happy Time. These days they send out half-trained boys. You’re one of the few oldtimers left.’
Gericke helped himself to a cigarette from a box on the table. It was French and of the cheapest variety, for when he lit it and inhaled, the smoke bit at the back of his throat, sending him into a paroxysm of coughing.
‘My God! Now I know things are bad.’
‘You’ve no idea how bad,’ Friemel told him. ‘Brest has been besieged by the American Eighth Army Corps since the ninth of August. The only reason we’re still here is because of the quite incredible defence put up by General Ramcke and the Second Airborne Division. Those paratroopers of his are without a doubt the finest fighting men I’ve ever seen in action, and that includes the Waffen SS.’ He reached for the Schnapps bottle again. ‘Of course they were pulled out of the Ukraine to come here. It could be they are still euphoric at such good fortune. An American prison camp, after all, is infinitely to be preferred to the Russian variety.’
‘And what’s the U-boat position?’
‘There isn’t one. The Ninth Flotilla is no more. U-256 was the last to leave. That was eleven days ago. Orders are to regroup in Bergen.’
‘Then what about me?’ Gericke asked. ‘I could have made for Norway by way of the Irish Sea and the North Channel.’
‘Your orders, Paul, are quite explicit. You will make for Bergen via the English Channel, as the rest of the flotilla has done, only in your case, someone at High Command has provided you with what one might term a slight detour.’
Gericke, who had long since passed being surprised at anything, smiled. ‘Where to, exactly?’
‘It’s really quite simple.’ Friemel turned to the table behind, rummaged amongst a pile of charts, found the one he was looking for and opened it across the desk.
Gericke leaned over. ‘Falmouth?’
‘That’s right. The Royal Navy’s Fifteenth MGB Flotilla operating out of Falmouth has been causing havoc on this entire coast recently. To be perfectly honest, it’s made any kind of naval activity impossible.’
‘And what am I supposed to do about it?’
‘According to your orders, go into Falmouth and lay mines.’
‘They’re joking, of course.’
Friemel held up a typed order. ‘Dönitz himself.’
Gericke laughed out loud. ‘But this is really beautiful, Otto. Quite superb in its idiocy, even for those chairbound bastards in Kiel. What on earth am I supposed to do, win the war in a single bold stroke?’ He shook his head. ‘They must believe in fairy stories. Someone should tell them that when the tailor boasted he could kill seven at one blow he meant flies on a slice of bread and jam.’
‘I don’t know,’ Friemel said. ‘It could be worse. There’s a protecting curtain of mines plus a blockship here between Pendennis Point and Black Rock and a temporary net boom from Black Rock to St Anthony’s Head. That’s supposed to be highly secret, by the way, but it seems the Abwehr still have an agent operational in the Falmouth area.’
‘He must feel lonely.’
‘Ships in and out all the time. Go in with a few when the net opens. Drop your eggs, up here in Carrick Roads and across the inner harbour and out again.’
Gericke shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Why?’
‘We may get in, but we certainly won’t get out.’
Friemel sighed. ‘A pity, as I’ll be going with you. Not out of any sense of adventure, I assure you. I have orders to report to Kiel and as the land routes to Germany are cut, my only way would seem to be with you to Bergen.’
Gericke shrugged. ‘So, in the end, all roads lead to hell.’
Friemel helped himself to one of the French cigarettes and inserted it in his holder. ‘What shape are you in?’
‘We were strafed by a Liberator in Biscay. Superficial damage only, but my engines need a complete overhaul. New bearings for a start.’
‘Not possible. I can give you four or five days. We must leave on the nineteenth. Ramcke tells me he can hold out for another week at the most. No more.’
The door opened and the young lieutenant entered. ‘Signal from Kiel, sir. Marked most urgent.’
Friemel took the flimsy from him and adjusted his spectacles. A slight, ironic smile touched his mouth. ‘Would you believe it, Paul, but this confirms my promotion as Rear Admiral in command of all naval forces in the Brest area. One can only imagine it has been delayed in channels.’
The lieutenant passed across another flimsy. Friemel read it, his face grave, then handed it to Gericke. It said: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PROMOTION IN THE FULL AND CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU AND YOUR MEN WILL DIE RATHER THAN YIELD ONE INCH OF SOIL TO THE ENEMY. ADOLF HITLER.
Gericke passed it back. ‘Congratulations, Herr Konteradmiral,’ he said formally.
Without a flicker of emotion, Friemel said to the lieutenant, ‘Send this message to Berlin. Will fight to the last. Long live the Führer. That’s all. Dismiss!’
The young lieutenant withdrew. Friemel said, ‘You approve?’
‘Wasn’t that Lütjen’s last message before the Bismarck went down?’
‘Exactly,’ Rear Admiral Otto Friemel said. ‘Another drink, my friend?’ He reached for the bottle, then sighed. ‘What a pity. We appear to have finished the last of the Schnapps.’
It was still raining heavily in London at eight-thirty on the following evening when JU 88 pathfinders of Gruppe 1/KG 66, operating out of Chartres and Rennes in France, made their first strike. By nine-fifteen the casualty department of Guy’s Hospital was working at full stretch.
Janet Munro, in the end cubicle, curtain drawn, carefully inserted twenty-seven stitches into the right thigh of a young auxiliary fireman. He seemed dazed and lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Janet was being assisted by a male nurse named Callaghan, a white-haired man in his late fifties who had served on the Western Front as a Medical Corps sergeant in the First World War. He strongly approved of the young American doctor in every possible way and made it his business to look out for her welfare, something she seemed quite incapable of doing for herself. Just now he was particularly concerned about the fact that she had been on duty for twelve hours, and it was beginning to show.
‘You going off after this one, miss?’
‘How can I, Joey?’ she said. ‘They’ll be coming in all night.’
Bombs had been falling for some time on the other side of the Thames but now there was an explosion close at hand. The whole building shook and there was a crash of breaking glass. The lights dimmed for a moment and somewhere a child started to wail.
‘My God, Jerry certainly picks his time,’ Callaghan remarked.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, still concentrating on the task in hand.
He seemed surprised. ‘Don’t you know who’s here tonight, miss? Eisenhower himself. Turned up an hour ago just before the bombing started.’
She paused and looked at him blankly. ‘General Eisenhower? Here?’
‘Visiting those Yank paratroopers in ward seventy-three. The lads they brought over from Paris last week. Decorating some of them, that’s what I heard.’
She was unable to take it in, suddenly very tired. She turned back to her patient and inserted the last couple of stitches.
‘I’ll dress it for you,’ Callaghan said. ‘You get yourself a cup of tea.’
As she stripped the rubber gloves from her fingers, the young fireman turned his head and looked at her. ‘You a Yank then, Doctor?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Got any gum, chum?’
She smiled and took a cigarette-lighter from her pocket. ‘No, but I can manage a light.’
She took the cigarette from his mouth, lit it and gave it back to him. ‘You’ll be fine now.’
He grinned. ‘Can you cook as well, Doc?’
‘When I get the time.’
Suddenly, the effort of keeping her smile in place was too much and she turned and went into the corridor quickly. Callaghan was right. She needed that cup of tea very badly indeed. And about fifteen hours’ sleep to follow – but that, of course, was quite impossible.
As she started along the corridor, the curtain of a cubicle was snatched back and a young nurse emerged. She was obviously panic-stricken, blood on her hands. Turning wildly, she saw Janet and called out – soundlessly, because at that moment another heavy bomb fell close enough to shake the walls and bring plaster from the ceiling.
Janet caught her by the shoulders. ‘What is it?’
The girl tried to speak, pointing wildly at the cubicle as another bomb fell, and Janet pushed her to one side and entered. The woman who lay on the padded operating table, covered with a sheet, was obviously very much in labour. The young man who leaned over her was a corporal in the Commandos, his uniform torn and streaked with dust.
‘Who are you?’ The tiredness had left her now, as if it had never been.
‘Her husband, miss. She’s having a baby.’ He plucked at her sleeve. ‘For God’s sake do something.’
Janet pulled back the sheet. ‘When did she start?’
‘Half an hour, maybe longer. We was in the High Street when the siren went, so I took her into the underground. Borough Station. When she started feeling bad I thought I’d better get her to hospital, but it was hell out there. Bombs falling all over the place.’
Another landed very close to the hospital now, followed by a second. For a moment, the lights went out. The woman on the table cried out in fear and pain. Here eyes started from her head as the lights came on again and she tried to sit up.
Janet pushed her down and turned to the young nurse. ‘You know what’s wrong here?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the girl said. ‘I’m only a probationer.’ She looked at her hands. ‘There was a lot of blood.’
The young Commando pulled at Janet’s sleeve. ‘What’s going on? What’s up?’
‘A baby is usually delivered head first,’ Janet said calmly. ‘This is what’s known as a breech. That means it’s presenting its backside.’
‘Can you handle it?’
‘I should imagine so, but we haven’t got much time. I want you to stand over your wife, hold her hand and talk to her. Anything you like, only don’t stop.’
‘Shall I get Sister Johnson?’ the young nurse asked.
‘No time,’ Janet said. ‘I need you here.’
Bombs were falling steadily now and from the sound of it, panic had broken out amongst the crowd that waited in general casualty for treatment. She took a deep breath, tried to ignore that nightmare world outside and concentrated on the task in hand.
The first problem was to deliver the legs. She probed gently inside until she managed to get a finger up against the back of one of the child’s knees. The leg flexed instantly and so did the other when she repeated the performance.
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Jack Higgins
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Classic adventure from the million copy bestseller Jack HigginsIn the end all roads lead to hell.It’s 1944 and Germany is facing its final defeat. Five thousand miles across the Allied dominated Atlantic, twenty-two men and five nuns aboard the Barquentine Deutschland are battling home to Kiel.Among them are a U-boat ace captured in a raid on Falmouth. A female American doctor caught in the nightmare of flying bombs. A gunboat commander who’s fought from the Solomons to the Channel and a rear admiral desperate to get some of the action.Allies and enemies, men and women, the hunters and the haunted all drawn into the eye of the storm.