Rogue Raider (10 page)

Lauterbach stood stark naked and ready-soaped staring at von Mueller's silhouette up in the wheelhouse. The captain sat tightly buttoned in his baking deckchair, shuffling manifests, maps, shipping-lists, marking, penciling and tutting- the world reduced to a manageable thing of paper. Pigeons preened and cooed in a loft attached to the masthead and tethered cattle examined in puzzlement the green anti-slip paint of the prow as if it were some new and unsatisfactory kind of grass. But von Mueller ignored them and stared purposefully out ahead, deliberately unaware that around him was not a ship of fools but of nudists. A mood of truancy had descended over the vessel.

To the left of Lauterbach, burly, tattooed stokers disrobed and displayed hirsutely on the forecastle, while Two, Three and Four cowered coyly behind a sheeted screen on the afterdeck that reduced them to a public display of bony ankles. Apart from von Muecke, who was on duty on the bridge, all the other officers congregated in bashful nakedness on the poop, gripping Elysium soap before their privities. Lauterbach was sure that von Muecke considered physical processes a military inefficiency while to von Mueller they were simply vulgar.

Von Muecke's job was to chase the tropical thunderbursts so that the men could refill the tanks of drinking water and benefit from the rare treat of a fresh shower. Salt water dried and cracked the skin. Over time, seeping wounds like chilblains formed under the armpits and festered between the shoulders and toes. Heels gaped with raw flesh. Boils nested and suppurated between the buttocks. Lauterbach posed in the posture of a classical statue against the sun, an unplinthed satyr amongst hairless fauns, big-bellied and shameless, a thing to frighten schoolgirls in a herbaceous border. Fikentscher nudged von Guerard.

“So it's true about the Lauterbach torpedo,” he whispered in awe, nodding. Dr Schwabe, ears ever-pricked for innuendo, edged closer, fumbling at his left nipple for the pencil he usually kept- in his top pocket, peered through his glasses against the lens-flashing glare. “Mein Gott!” There was a Freudian crash of thunder and sudden warm, clean rainwater hosed down on their gasping, searing skins like a blessing. Salt water formed no lather but this rain gushed instant white foam. They cheered and frotted and groaned and danced on the spot orgiastically, desperately washing, afraid that they would emerge from the cloud's rainshadow before they could rinse. But this was a good downpour not one that left you soaped and sticky. Time to wash the hair, to let the sweet rain slosh down your face and into your mouth, to grow chill and shiver and rush laughing and towelling for shelter. They wrapped themselves in bathrobes, filched from their twenty-two victims, emblazoned with names such as
Diplomat, King Lud
, and
Clan Grant
and played rough boyish games of tag in blood heated by the burden of seed that had gone too long unspilled, undischarged lightning looking for any rod. Von Guerard laughed and danced in the outpouring of a benevolent Nature, his eyes sparkling with pure joy. But Lauterbach, classically clad in white towelette
Troilus
, was not laughing. He contemplated them with unsolaced sadness as he wrung grey water from his pubes. Earlier they had deliberately steered away from any new prey they sighted. He had been told to set a southerly course towards the Island of Penang, off the coast of Malaya. The shower, the change of clothes. It was standard preparation for battle and meant some of them were about to die. For him the stench of death overpowered even the thick and sickly perfume of Elysium brand toilet soap.

At two in the morning, there was no sound except the regular thwack of waves against the bow and the acidic hiss as seawater dissolved into foam. They were alone, the colliers
Buresk
and the more recently captured
Exford
were elsewhere, steaming slowly towards the next rendezvous.

“Lighthouse sighted, sir.”

The men were still burping over their morning meal of milk soup, followed by ghastly British tinned sausages and Indian coffee but wide awake. Von Mueller scanned the horizon through British naval glasses.

“Rig the fourth funnel, Number One.”

Lauterbach was sweating. Damn von Mueller and his military ambition. Merchant vessels were too easy for him, he had to go after warships, into the lion's den armed with nothing but a peashooter. This was not a repeat of Madras, a civilian port with its broad seafront. Lauterbach, feigning enthusiasm, had examined the chart of Penang harbour earlier that night. This was a military base built for defence. The entrance was a narrow tube from the north. The southern exit was too shallow for them so they would have to make a tight turn to escape back up it. Officially there were no modern fortifications but it still looked like a deathtrap, a narrow throat to get stuck in like a fishbone. There would be heavy warships in there with good thick armour they could not hope to hurt with their own small bore weapons. Only a torpedo would do and that could only be relied upon at close range. They would be like, like … a duck quacked from the menagerie outside, neatly providing the image Lauterbach was searching for.

At 4.30 the men were called to attention and the speed increased to 18 knots as they ran for the inner harbour, ignoring the waiting pilot boat. Like Madras, the whole port was all lit up invitingly. The first dawn light probed the horizon. Somewhere on shore a bird sang with heart-wrenching beauty and then suddenly there was a huge target right in front of them, crisp in morning light. Von Muecke was furiously thumbing through a book of naval silhouettes, hissing excitedly through his teeth.

“Russian, I think, a cruiser, light probably. Wait. One of three possibles.” He flipped pages wildy.

“
Zhemteg
,” pronounced Lauterbach tiredly, eyeing the cyrillic letters swarming over the bow. “We're close enough now to
read
the bloody name.” He had got hospitably drunk on her once in Vladivostock on raw vodka, danced, sung and vomited over the rail. The captain was a good egg. Now he was about to repay his hospitality.

At three hundred, Franz Josef was at last allowed to let loose one of his pampered torpedoes. In the coffin-like bay beneath the deck the dials glowed, the electric contacts crackled and the needles danced behind their celluloid screens as the glorious word “Fire” flashed up as he had so often seen it in his dreams. He completed the contact and tore up to the deck to see the effect, fixing the trail as it shot across the gap between the two vessels and clutching the rail, trembling, like a boy finally losing his virginity.

Von Mueller was all crisply starched authority. “Starboard guns open fire. Rapid salvoes.” The guns blazed fire and thunder as the torpedo struck the Russian aft, more or less where Lauterbach had voided his stomach, detonating mightily and somehow lifting the whole vessel. He watched with the horrified relish of fear as the great guns swivelled and bore down on them but no answering fire came from the Russian. Their own shells riddled the superstructure and raked the decks, starting fires and explosions till her sides swiftly glowed red hot. Their captain was ashore with a lady friend and many of the crew promptly abandoned ship and sought to join him, swimming, grasping their caps in their hands. In the Russian navy there was no charge for losing your entire ship but they fined you a whole month's pay if you lost your hat. While in port, their own torpedoes had been disarmed and only a dozen rounds were available for the guns and, then, when the sleeping Russians finally got one of them working, it simply strafed the friendly merchant vessels around her. But now other shells were flying overhead. There were French warships in there with a proper watch being kept and plenty of ordinance. Now that they should be smartly running off, the
Emden
's response was to stop dead and begin to turn and manoeuvre with painfully slow engines and whirring screws. As the prow came round, the port side guns opened up and another of Franz Josef's torpedoes swirled off towards the Russian foe. At first it seemed that nothing had happened.

“A bloody dud,” hissed Lauterbach, clenching his hands about his head.

Then a blaze of flame ripped abruptly through the ship, engulfing her in a pall of choking yellow and black smoke. Huge chunks of iron rained down, clanging onto their decks and skidding into the sea. They must have hit a magazine. A gust of wind cut through the billows of smog and she was revealed in naked agony, sliced in half. Only mastheads remained above the water.

“Flippin ‘eck.”

“Open fire on the merchantmen, sir?”

Von Mueller wheeled round, aghast. “Certainly not, Number One, we cannot be entirely assured of their nationality or the destination of their cargoes.” Lauterbach howled silently and gibbered at the sky. He life was in the hands of fools who wanted only to kill him.

“Torpedo boat at harbour entrance, sir.” Sure enough, there she was, small, grey-painted, billowing smoke and coming at them fast with menace. In the narrow space there would be no possibility of avoiding a torpedo. It would be lethal. Lauterbach had marked down the nearest lifebuoy. Now he began edging towards it. The
Emden
's guns swivelled and fired as they charged. The torpedo boat scuttled out of their way, being, after all, only an unarmed vessel of the harbourmaster. But now they were already heading out of port at speed and did not dare turn yet again and sail towards a battle-ready, superior enemy. Cursing his ill fortune in passionate whispers, von Mueller ordered them to run for the open sea.

“Oh what bad luck, sir.” Lauterbach consoled cheerfully. His heart laughed. He was alive!

“Ship off the starboard bow, could be an auxiliary cruiser, sir.” Damn and Blast! No not an auxiliary – thank God – the
Glenturret
carrying explosives. Lauterbach set off, smirking, with a prize crew. This would make a very big bang indeed which would calm his nerves. Wait, no. Hold everything. Another ship out there. A French warship, the destroyer
Mousquet.
Lauterbach was called back as he was about to step into the boat, von Muecke cheerily waving from the bridge.

“Quick Lauterbach. A scrap at last. You wouldn't want to miss this to save your life!”

The
Emden
opened fire at 4,700 yards and the French made their first and last mistake. Instead of attacking frontally, they turned to port, presenting their whole side to be raked with devastating fire. A hit on the boiler room and she was dead in the water, to be destroyed at leisure. After a dozen salvoes, her guns were silenced but no obvious attempt was made to surrender. Another ten were pumped into her and she sank, laying further concerns about her battle-readiness to rest.

Having tried to kill the French, they now sought to save them The men had never seen the horror of naval wounds before, the terrible burns, the limbs blasted off, the great holes that steel shrapnel would tear in soft human flesh so that a man's entrails were tipped out hot into his hands. At last Schwabe had something useful to do, dressing crushed stumps and festering wounds agonised by immersion in seawater. Some of the younger ratings wept. They had never meant to do this. They had not known. They, mumblingly, brought humble gifts of chocolate and cigarettes to undo the harm done by shredding metal. Meanwhile the Frenchmen tried to escape their efforts to rescue them, swimming desperately away from their boats. They had been told the Germans massacred prisoners. Only one swimmer made it back to shore Many others drowned. Over the next days, von Muecke busied himself with honourable burials, heel-clicking, flags, trumpets, nice neat little ceremonies, speeches and three cheers for the Kaiser that reassured the men about the honourability and decorum of war. Military pomp and circumstance, Lauterbach saw, were simply something both sides put in place of an avoided issue. A little later, they took another British ship, unsinkable for its neutral cargo, and unloaded the prisoners and wounded Frenchmen into her for prompt hospital treatment. Their officer asked for an
Emden
hatband as a memento and was given one. Normally these were the souvenirs bestowed upon ladies.

“It seems that the French captain lost both his legs to one of our shells,” von Muecke explained lustily over dinner, eyes shining, to Lauterbach and eating with good appetite. “But had himself gallantly strapped to the bridge so he could go down with his ship rather than live with the dishonour of having seen some of his men dive over the side to save themselves. What a fine officer! And it was magnificent the way those men fought on and joyfully embraced death long after all hope of victory had been lost, simply for the glory of their nation. Pity, in a way, we came out of it untouched. There is nothing improves a fellow's looks so much as a good, deep duelling scar.” He ran his fingertips lightly along the groove that scored along his own left cheek. “It is a sign, Lauterbach, that a man has honourably engaged the world.”

Lauterbach looked down and saw that his hands had begun to shake. He dropped knife and fork and gripped his own knees until the spasm passed. Again they had escaped death but it was moving ever closer, attracted towards them by the likes of von Muecke. He could
feel
it, see its shadow on the stairs. He saw not just the obscenity of torn bodies but, in the crew, a whole vision of those who died unwived, the unbegotten, the bereaved, the hole ripped by their deaths in the close-stitched fabric of history. As he took the potatoes, Lauterbach began to wonder seriously at just what point in an engagement he would be obliged to shoot Number One. Henceforth he would make sure to wear sidearms at action stations. He could pretend it was to save time in case of being ordered to form a boarding party.

“The only thing that puzzles me is that they mistook us till the very end for a British vessel, even allowing for all the confusion, the dark and so on.” Von Mueller chewed happily, sipped wine, swallowed, rapped militarily with his fork handle. “That shows bad seamanship. They could have sunk us if they'd gone about it in proper fashion and not exposed their starboard side. One or two of their men even swore it happened because we were flying the white ensign, which is clearly not the case.” He threw his head back and sniggered. “As if we would!”