"Not much room on these things," Martineau commented.
"All engines, that's what we say," Dietrich told him.
"And armaments?"
"The torpedoes. Bofors gun aft, twenty-millimeter cannon in the forward well deck. Eight machine guns. We manage."
"And radar, of course?"
"Yes, but that's a difficult one in these waters. Lots of reefs, rocks, small islands. It makes for a lot of clutter on the screen. When the Tommies come down here they do exactly what 1 do when I'm operating out of Cherbourg and hitting their convoys."
"What's that?"
"Turn off our radar so they can't find us with their loca tion equipment and maintain radio silence."
Martineau nodded and looked astern at the other ships bulking in the dark. 'What speed will the convoy maintain?"
"Six knots."
"You must feel like a racing horse pulling a cart sometimes."
Dietrich laughed. "Ye¯, but I've got two thousand horses under me." He slapped the rail. "Nice to know just how fast they can get up and go when I ask them to."
On the bridge of the Victor Hugo it was like being in a safe and enclosed world, rain and spray drifting against the glass. Savary stood beside the helmsman, and Sarah and Guido Orsini leaned over the chart table.
"This is the convoy route, what the Navy call Weg Ida. from Granville, east of the Chausey Isles."
She liked him a lot, had from the moment he'd turned to look at her in the hut on the quay He was certainly good-looking. Too handsome, really, in a way that Latins could be sometimes, but there was strength there too, and when he smiled
His shoulder was touching hers. He said, "Come to the saloon. I'll get you a coffee and you can use my cabin if you'd like to lie down."
Savary turned. "Not just now. Count. I want to check the engine room. You'll have to take the bridge."
He went out. Sarah said, "Count?"
"Lots of counts in Italy. Don't let it worry you."
He offered her a cigarette and they smoked in companionable silence, looking out into the night, the noise of the engines a muted throbbing. "I thought Italy capitulated last year?" she said.
"Oh, it did. except for those Fascist fanatics who decided to fight on under the Germans, especially when Otto Skor-zeny hoisted Mussolini off that mountaintop and flew him to Berlin to continue the holy struggle."
"Are you a Fascist?"
He looked down into that appealing young face, aware of a tenderness that he had never experienced with any woman in his life before. It was perhaps because of that fact that he found himself speaking so frankly.
"To be honest, I'm not anything. I loathe politics. It reminds me of the senator in Rome who's supposed to have said: 'Don't tell my mother I'm in politics. She thinks I play the piano in a brothel.' "
She laughed. "I like that."
"Most of my former comrades are now working with the British and American Navies. I, on the other hand, was seconded on special duties to serve with the Fifth Schnell-boote Flotilla in Cherbourg. When Italy decided to sue for peace, there wasn't a great deal I could do about it, and I didn't fancy a prison camp. Of course, they don't trust me enough to allow me to command an E-boat anymore. I suppose they think I might roar across to England."
"Would vou?"
Savary returned to the bridge at that moment, and the Italian said, "Right, let's go below now and get that coffee."
She moved ahead of him. As he watched her descend the companionway he was conscious of a curious excitement. He'd known many women, and many who were more beautiful than Anne-Marie Latour with her ridiculous dyed hair. Certainly more sophisticated. And there was something about her that was not quite right. The image was one thing, but the girl herself, when he spoke to her, was something else again.
"Mother of God, Guido, what's happening to you?" he asked softly as he went down the companionway after her.
Captain Karl Muller, the officer in command of the Secret Field Police in Jersey, sat at his desk in the Silvertide Hotel at Havre des Pas and worked his way though a bulky file. It was wholly devoted to anonymous letters, the tip-offs that led to whatever success his unit enjoyed. The crimes were varied. Anything from possession of an illegal radio to helping a Russian slave worker on the run or involvement in the black market. Muller always insisted on his men tracking down the writers of anonymous letters. Once uncovered, they could be used in many ways because of his threat to expose them to friends and neighbors.
It was all very small beer, of course. Nothing like it had been at Gestapo Headquarters at Rue des Saussaies in Paris. Muller was not SS, but he was a Party member, a onetime Chief Inspector of Police in the Hamburg Criminal Investigation Department. Unfortunately, a young Frenchwoman in his hands for interrogation had died without disclosing the names of her associates. As she had been involved with the principal Resistance circuit in
Paris, it had been a matter of some importance. To his superiors he'd botched things badly by being too eager. The posting to this island backwater had followed. So now, he was a man in a hurry, seeking any way he could to get back into the mainstream of things.
He stood up, a shade under six feet, with hair that was still dark brown in spite of the fact that he was in his fiftieth year. He stretched, started to the window to look out at the weather, and the phone rang.
He picked it up. "Yes."
It wasn't a local call, he could tell by the crackling. 'Captain Muller? This is Schroeder, port officer at Granville."
Ten minutes later he was standing at the window, staring out into the dark, when there was a knock at the door. He turned and went to his desk and sat down.
The two men who entered were, like Muller, in civilian clothes. The GFP never wore uniform if they could help it. The one who led the way was broad and squat with a Slavic face and hard gray eyes. This was Inspector Willi Kleist, Muller's second-in-command, also seconded from the Gestapo and, like Muller, a former detective with the Hamburg police. They had known each other for years. The man with him was much younger with fair hair, blue eyes and a weak mouth. A suggestion of perverse cruelty there, but when confronted with Muller, so eager to please that it showed. This was Sergeant Ernst Greiser, who had been transferred from the Army's Field Police to the GFP six months earlier.
"An interesting development," Muller told them. "I've had Schroeder on the phone from Granville. Apparently an SD Standartenfuhrer Vogel presented himself on the quay with a young French woman and demanded passage to Jersey. They put the woman on the Victor Hugo. He comes on the S92 with Dietrich."
"But why, Herr Captain?" Kleist asked. "We've had no notification. Why would he be coming?"
"The bad news," Muller said, "is that he's traveling under a special warrant from Reichsfuhrer Himmler. According to Schroeder it's countersigned by the Fuhrer."
"My God!" Greiser said.
"So, my friends, we must be ready for him. You were going to take care of the passenger checks when the convoy ships get into St. Helier, isn't that so, Ernst?" he inquired of Greiser.
"Yes, Herr Captain."
"Inspector Kleist and I will join you. Whatever his reason for being here, I want to be in on the action. I'll see you later."
They went out. He lit a cigarette and went to the window, more excited than he had been in months.
It was just after eleven when Helen de Ville took the tray to her room, using the back stairs that led straight up from the kitchen. None of the officers ever used it, keeping strictly to their own end of the house. In any case, she was careful. Only one cup on the tray. Everything for one. It she chose to have late supper in her room, that was her affair.
She went into the bedroom, locking the door behind her, crossed to the bookshelves, opened the secret entrance and moved inside, closing it before going up the narrow stairway. Kelso was sitting up in bed, propped against pillows, reading by the light of an oil lamp. The wooden shutters in the gable window were closed, a heavy curtain drawn across.
He looked up and smiled. "What have we got here?" "Not much. Tea, hut at least it's the real stuff, and a cheese sandwich. I make my own cheese these days, so you'd better like it. What are you reading?"
'One of the books you brought up. Eliot. The Fou.rQua.r-tets."
"Poetry and you an engineer?" She sat on the end of the bed and lit one of the Gitanes Gallagher had given her.
"I certainly wasn't interested in that kind of thing m the old days, but this war " He shrugged. "Like a lot of people I want answers, 1 suppose. In my end is my beginning, that's what the man says. But what comes in between? What's it all mean?"
"Well, if you find out, don't forget to let me know." She noticed the snap of his wife and daughters on the bedside locker and picked it up. "Do you think of them often?"
"All the time. They mean everything. My marriage really worked. It was as simple as that. I never wanted anything else, and then the war came along and messed things up."
"Yes, it has a bad habit of doing that."
"Still, I can't complain. Comfortable bed, decent cooking, and the oil lamp gives things a nicely old-fashioned atmosphere."
"They cut off the electricity to this part of the island at nine o'clock sharp," she said. "I know people who would be glad of that oil lamp."
"Are things really as bad as that?"
"Of course they are." There was a trace of anger in her voice. "What on earth would you expect? You're lucky to have that cup of tea. Elsewhere in the island it could be a rather inferior substitute made from parsnips or black berry leaves. Or you could try acorn coffee. Not one of life's great experiences."
"And food?"
"You just have to get used to getting by with a lot less of it, that's all. The same with tobacco." She held up her cigarette. "This is real and very black market, but you can get anything if you have the right connections or plenty of cash. The rich here still do very well. The banks just operate in reichsmarks instead of pounds." She smiled. "Do you want to know what it's really like being occupied in Jersey?"
"It would be interesting."
"Boring." She plumped up his pillows. "I'm going to bed now."
"The big day tomorrow," he said.
"If we're to believe the message Savary brought." She picked up the tray. "Try and get some sleep."
Orsini had given Sarah his cabin. It was very small indeed, with a cupboard and washstand and a single bunk. It was hot and stuffy, the porthole blacked over, and the noise of the engine churning below gave her a headache. She lay on the bunk and closed her eyes and tried to relax. The ship seemed to stagger. An illusion, of course. She sat up and there was an explosion.
Things seemed to happen in slow motion after that. The ship fell perfectly still, as if everything waited, and then there was another violent shock. The explosion this time caused the walls to tremble. She cried out and tried to stand up, and then the floor tilted and she fell against the door. Her handbag, thrown from the locker top. was on the floor beside her. She picked it up automatically and tried the door handle, but the door stuck fast. She shook the handle desperately and then the door opened so unexpectedly that she was hurled back against the opposite wall.
Orsini stood in the entrance, his face wild. "Move!" he ordered. "Now! No time to lose."
"What is it?" she demanded as he grabbed her hand and pulled her after him.
"Torpedo attack. We've been hit twice. We've only got minutes. This old tub will go down like a stone."
They went up the companionway to the saloon which was deserted. He took off his reefer coat and held it out to her. "Get this on." She hesitated, aware suddenly that she was still clutching her handbag, then did as she was told, stuffing the bag into one of the reefer coat's ample pockets. He pulled her arms roughly through a life jacket and laced it up. Then he put one on himself as he led the way out onto the boat deck.
There was a scene of indescribable confusion as the crew tried to launch the boats and, above them, the machine-gun crews fired into the night. Fire arced toward them in return, raking the bridge above, where Savary shouted orders. He cried out in fear and jumped over the rail, bouncing off some bales of hay below. Cannon shell ripped into one of the lifeboats a few yards away, tearing great holes in it.
Orsini pushed Sarah down behind some sacks of coal. At the same moment there was another explosion, inside the ship this time, and a portion of the deck in the stern disintegrated, flames billowing into the night. The entire ship tilted sharply to port, and the deck cargo started to break free, sacks of cal, bales of hay, sliding down against the rail.
It had not been possible to launch a single boat, so rapidly had disaster struck, and men were already going over the rail, Savary leading the way. Orsini lost his balance and
