San Andreas (27 page)

‘Sounds pretty good to me,' Jamieson said.

‘I wish I could say the same. It's far too easy, too cut and dried, and there's always the possibility of the Germans figuring out that that's exactly what we will do. Probability would be more like. It's too close to a counsel of desperation, but it's the least of all the evils I can imagine and we have to make a break for it some time.'

‘As I keep on saying, Bo'sun,' Jamieson said, ‘it's a great comfort having you around.'

The time wore on to midnight and still the Condors kept away. Apart from two men on watch in the engine-room, Naseby and Trent on the bridge and Lieutenant Ulbricht and McKinnon in the Captain's cabin, two hospital look-outs and two night nurses, everyone was asleep, or appeared to be asleep, or should have been asleep. The wind, backing to the north, had freshened to Force four and there was a moderate sea running, enough to make the
San Andreas
roll as she headed steadily west but not enough to inconvenience one.

In the Captain's cabin Lieutenant Ulbricht looked up from the chart he had been studying, then glanced at his watch.

‘Ten minutes to midnight. Not that the precise time matters—we'll be making course alterations as we go along. I suggest we take a last sight, then head for the Shetlands.'

Dawn came, a cold and grey and blustery dawn, and still the Condors stayed away. At ten o‘clock, a rather weary McKinnon—he'd been on the wheel since 4.0 a.m.—went below in search of breakfast. He found Jamieson having a cup of coffee.

‘A peaceful night, Bo'sun. Does look as if we've shaken them off, doesn't it?'

‘So it would seem.'

‘Seem? Only “seem”?' Jamieson looked at him speculatively. ‘Do I detect a note of something less than cheerful confidence? A whole night long without a sign of the enemy. Surely we should be happy with our present circumstances?'

‘Sure, I am. The present's just fine. What I'm not so happy about is the future. It's not only quiet and peaceful at the moment, it's too damn quiet and peaceful. As the old saying goes, it's the lull before the storm, the present the lull, the future the storm. Don't you feel it, sir?'

‘No, I don't!' Jamieson looked away and frowned slightly. ‘Well, I didn't, not until you came along and disturbed the quiet and even tenor of my way. Any moment now and you'll be telling me I'm living in a fool's paradise.'

‘That would be stretching it a bit, sir.'

‘Too quiet, too peaceful? Maybe it is at that. Cat and mouse, again—with us, of course, in the role of mouse? They have us pinned and are just waiting for a convenient moment—convenient for them, that is—to strike?'

‘Yes. I've just spent six hours on the wheel and I've had plenty of time to think about it—two minutes should have been enough. If there's anybody living in a fool's paradise it's been me. How many Focke-Wulf Condors do you think they have in the Trondheim and Bergen airfields, sir?'

‘I don't know. Too damn many for my liking, I'm sure.'

‘And for mine. Three or four of them acting in concert could cover ten thousand square miles in a couple of hours, all depending upon how high they are and what the visibility is. Bound to locate us—us, the most valuable prize on the Norwegian Sea. But they haven't, they haven't even bothered to try. Why?'

‘Because they know where we are. Because we didn't manage to slip that submarine after sunset.'

McKinnon nodded and propped his chin on his hands. His breakfast lay untouched before him.

‘You did your best, Bo'sun. There was never any guarantee. You can't reproach yourself.'

‘Oh yes I can. It's a thing I'm getting pretty good at—reproaching myself, I mean. But in this case, not for the reason you think. Given only the slightest degree of luck we should have shaken him yesterday evening. We didn't. We forgot the Factor X.'

‘You sound like an advertisement, Bo'sun. Factor X, the secret ingredient in the latest ladies' cosmetics.'

‘What I mean, sir, is that even if we slipped him—moved out of his Asdic listening range—he could still have found us, Asdic or not, Condors or not. A good archer always carries a second string for his bow.'

‘A second string?' Jamieson put his cup down very carefully. ‘You mean we have a second of those damned location transmitter bugs aboard?'

‘Can you think of any other solution, sir? Luck has made us too smug, too self-confident, to the extent that we have been guilty of gravely underestimating the ungodly. Singh or McCrimmon or Simons—all three of them, for all I know—have been smarter than us, smart enough, anyway, to gamble on the likelihood of our missing the glaringly obvious, just because it was too obvious. Chances are high that this won't be a transceiver, just a simple transmitter no bigger than a lady's handbag.'

‘But we've already searched, Bo'sun. Very thoroughly indeed. If there wasn't anything there then, there won't be anything now. I mean, transmitters just don't materialize out of thin air.'

‘No. But there could have been one before we made our search. It could have been transferred elsewhere before that—it's entirely possible that any or all of the three Flannelfeet may have anticipated just such a search. Sure we combed the area of the hospital, cabins, store-rooms, galleys, everything—but that's all we did search.'

‘Yes, but where else—‘ Jamieson broke off and looked thoughtful.

‘Yes, sir, the same thought had occurred to me. The superstructure is no more than an uninhabited warren at the moment.'

‘Isn't it just?' Jamieson put down his cup and rose. ‘Well, heigh-ho for the superstructure. I'll take a couple of my boys with me.'

‘Would they recognize a bug if they saw one? I don't think I would.'

‘I would. All they've got to do is to bring me any piece of equipment that has no place aboard a ship.'

After he had gone McKinnon reflected that Jamieson, in addition to his engineering qualifications, was also an A.M.I.E.E. and, as such, probably able to identify a bug.

Not more than ten minutes later Jamieson returned, smiling widely and in evident satisfaction.

‘The unfailing instinct of your true bug-hunter, Bo'sun. Got it first time. Unerring, you might say.'

‘Where?'

‘Cunning devils. Suppose they thought it would be ironic and the last place we would look. What more fitting place for a radio device than a wrecked radio room? Not only had they used one of the few undamaged batteries there to power it, they'd even rigged up a makeshift aerial. Not that
you would ever know that it was an aerial of any kind, not just to look at it.'

‘Congratulations, sir. That was well done. Is it still in place?'

‘Yes. First instincts, of course, were to rip the damn thing out. But then, wiser counsels, if I can use that term about myself, prevailed. If they have us on that transmitter, then they have us on their Asdic.'

‘Of course. And if we'd dismantled our set and stopped the engine and generator, they'd just have poked their periscope above the surface and located us in nothing flat. There'll be a better time and better place to dismantle that bug.'

‘During the night, you mean, Bo'sun—if we're still afloat by nightfall?'

‘I'm not rightly sure, sir. As you infer, it all depends upon what condition we're in come the dark.'

Jamieson looked at him in what could have been a faintly disbelieving speculation, but said nothing.

McKinnon, in an empty cabin next to that of Captain Andropolous, was sound asleep when Johnny Holbrook shook him half an hour after noon.

‘Mr Naseby is on the phone, sir.'

McKinnon sat up in his bunk, rubbed his eyes and looked with something less than favour at the
teenage ward orderly who, like Wayland Day, walked in awe of the Bo'sun.

‘Couldn't somebody else have spoken to him?'

‘Sorry, sir. Specially asked for you.'

McKinnon moved out into the mess-deck where people were already gathering for lunch. Patterson was there with Jamieson and Sinclair, together with Margaret Morrison and Nurse Irene. He picked up the phone.

‘George, I was in a better world right now.'

‘Sorry about that, Archie. Thought you'd better know. We have company.' Naseby could have been talking about the weather.

‘Ah!'

‘Starboard. About two miles. A bit under, perhaps. Says to stop or he will fire.'

‘Oh.'

‘Also says that if we try to alter course he will sink us.'

‘Is that so?'

‘So he says. May even mean it. Shall I turn into him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Full power?'

‘I'll ask for it. Up in a minute.' He replaced the phone.

‘My word,' Margaret Morrison said. ‘That was an intriguing conversation. Full of information, if I may say so.'

‘We bo'suns are men of few words. Mr Patterson, could we have full power?' Patterson
nodded heavily, rose without speaking and crossed to the telephone.

Jamieson said in a resigned voice: ‘No need to ask, I suppose?'

‘No, sir. Sorry about your lunch.'

‘The usual—ah—direct tactics?' Sinclair said.

‘No option. Man says he's going to sink us.'

‘He's going to say more than that when he sees us altering course towards him,' Jamieson said. ‘He's going to say that the
San Andreas
is crewed by a bunch of unreconstructed lunatics.'

‘If he does, he could well be right.' As he turned to go Ulbricht put out a restraining hand.

‘I'm coming too.'

‘Please not, Lieutenant. I don't believe our new acquaintance is going to sink us but he's sure as hell going to try to stop us. The primary target will be the bridge, I'm sure. You want to undo all the good work Dr Sinclair and the nursing staff have already done, the stitching and bandaging all over again? Selfish. Margaret!'

‘You stay where you are, Karl Ulbricht.'

Ulbricht scowled, shrugged, smiled and stayed where he was.

When McKinnon reached the bridge the
San Andreas
, under maximum helm, was already beginning to slew round to starboard. Naseby looked round as McKinnon entered.

‘Take the wheel, Archie. He's sending.'

Naseby moved out on the starboard wing. Someone on the conning-tower of the U-boat was indeed using an Aldis lamp but transmitting very slowly—almost certainly, McKinnon guessed, because a non-English-speaking operator was sending letter by given letter. For'ard of the conning-tower three men were crouched around the deck-gun which, as far as the bo'sun could judge at that distance, was pointed directly at them. The signalling ceased.

‘What does he say, George?'

‘ “Regain course. Stop or I fire”.'

‘Send him that bit about a hospital ship and the Geneva Convention.'

‘He won't pay a blind bit of attention.'

‘Send it anyway. Distract him. Give us time. The rules say you don't shoot a man when you're having a conversation with him.'

Naseby started transmitting but almost immediately jumped back inside the bridge. The puff of smoke from the gun was unmistakable, as was the shock and sound of a shell exploding inside the superstructure almost immediately afterwards. Naseby gave McKinnon a reproachful look.

‘They're not playing by your rules, Archie.'

‘So it would seem. Can you see where we've been hit?'

Naseby went out on the starboard wing and looked below and aft.

‘Crew's mess-deck,' he said. ‘Well, what was the crew's mess-deck. Nobody there now, of course.'

‘Not what they were aiming for, you can be sure of that. A Force four is nothing to us but it makes for a very unstable gun-platform on a submarine. I don't like that very much, George, they're liable to hit anywhere except where they're aiming for. We can only hope that the next one is as high above the bridge as that one was below it.'

The next one came straight through the bridge. It shattered the starboard for'ard window—one of those that had been replaced after Klaussen's machine-gunners had destroyed them—penetrated the thin sheet-metal that separated the bridge from what had been the wireless office and exploded just beyond. The sliding wooden door, now in a hundred jagged fragments, blew forward into the bridge and the concussive blast of the explosion sent both men staggering, McKinnon against the wheel, Naseby against a small chart table: but the razor-sharp shards of the shell casing had flown in the other direction and both men were unhurt.

Naseby recovered some of the air that had been driven from his lungs. ‘They're improving, Archie.'

‘Fluke.' The
San Andreas
, its superstructure beginning to vibrate quite badly as engine revolutions built up, was now bearing down directly on the conning-tower of the U-boat which, however, was still considerably more than a mile distant. ‘Next one will miss the bridge by a mile.'

The next one, in fact, missed the ship completely and went into the sea a hundred yards astern of the
San Andreas
. It did not detonate on impact.

The following shell struck somewhere in the vicinity of the bows. Where it had exploded was impossible to tell from the bridge, for there was no visible uplifting or buckling of the fo‘c's'le deck, but that it had done its damage was beyond doubt: the furious rattling of chain as one of the fore anchors plunged down to the floor of the Norwegian Sea could be heard a mile away. The rattling ceased as abruptly as it had begun, the fastening doubtless torn from the floor of the chain locker.

‘No loss,' Naseby said. ‘Who's ever anchored in a thousand feet or whatever?'

‘Who cares about the anchor? Point is, are we open to the sea?'

Yet another shell buried itself in the bows and this time there was no doubt where it had landed for a small area of the fo‘c's'le deck, port side, lifted upwards almost a foot.

‘Open to the sea or not,' Naseby said, 'this hardly seems to be the time to investigate. Not as long as they are zeroing in on the bows, which is what they appear to be doing. We're all that closer now so they're getting all the more accurate. They seem to be going for the waterline. It can't be that they want to sink us. And don't they know the gold is there?'

‘I don't know what they know. Probably know there's gold aboard: no reason why they should know where. Not that a little shrapnel lowers the value of gold. Anyway, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies: at this angle of approach it's impossible that they can hit the hospital area.'