Strike from the Sea (1978) (7 page)

Ainslie did not know how he knew, but he was sure the moment had arrived. Perhaps it was what Poulain wanted now that his original plan had been stopped dead. Either way, Ainslie had more than the
Soufrière
to worry about now, he had his men and the French sailors to contend with.

He stood up. ‘Number One, carry on with the plan. Lucas and his assistant will help the Chief, the rest is up to you.’ He hesitated. ‘Tell Menzies to hoist another ensign –’

‘Non!’
Just one word, but it sounded as if it had been torn from Poulain’s throat. He recovered slightly and picked up his cap. ‘I will lower my flag first.’

Ainslie followed him out and towards the gleaming control room.

Farrant said in a sharp whisper, ‘What are we waiting for, Number One? We’re sitting ducks!’

Quinton glared at him. ‘Stow it! D’you imagine for one bloody minute the skipper doesn’t know that? Get up top and prepare to cast off, to cut the moorings if so ordered!’ He watched the lieutenant stride away, his neck red above his shirt. ‘Stupid sod!’

Lucas said, ‘I’ll go aft. I must stick the labels over the controls for your men to read.’

Quinton clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Too bloody right! Who speaks French anyway?’

On deck once more Ainslie could feel the change. Most of the French sailors had vanished below, where they would be watched but not harassed. It had been that easy.

He heard Voysey yell, ‘Attention on deck!’

Very slowly the tricolour came down, to be replaced instantly by Menzies’s second white ensign.

There ought to have been a ceremony, Ainslie thought, later there probably would be. But then it would be too late. Meaningless. Here, a man was losing his ship, his own visible sign of hope. And he was doing it with dignity. The British seamen watched impassively, a French mechanic was sobbing uncontrollably, as Poulain gathered up the flag and in turn saluted Ainslie’s.

Ainslie said, ‘I am getting under way, Captain, I will understand your feelings if you wish to go to your quarters, but . . .’

Poulain looked at him across the folded flag and said proudly, ‘She is ready to move. She has always been so, since the day she was built.’ He turned to look around once more. ‘I will stay with you until you have the same satisfaction as myself. Then . . .’ He did not go on.

How strange it was to stand on the bridge and look down past a pair of long guns. The transition was almost complete. Ainslie’s own men were moving about the fore-casing while others ran along the pier, slackening mooring lines and releasing the brow.

Ainslie looked at the voice-pipes and handsets below the bridge screen, recalling all the photographs and plans he had studied of this same array back in England.

Taking his hesitation as uncertainty, Poulain said, ‘This one.’ He tapped a speaking tube.

‘Control room, this is the captain.’

He heard Quinton’s voice immediately. Very sure and unruffled. ‘Ready, sir.’

‘Lookouts to the bridge. Clear away main armament. Fast as you like.’

Men were clambering up through the conning tower hatch, and on either side a powerful machine-gun was mounted, the belts trailing down through the hatch like brass snakes.

The bridge gave a sudden tremble, and from aft Ainslie saw a cloud of blue smoke rising above the longhouse as the diesels coughed throatily into life.

‘Take in the springs!’

Ainslie stood on the steel gratings watching his men as they struggled with unfamiliar lashings and wires. In spite of the responsibility, and the possible danger that the Japanese boat might try to stop him from leaving, Ainslie could feel the excitement rising within him like a drug.

‘Main armament closed up, sir. Cox’n on the wheel. Ship’s head two-three-zero.’

Ainslie glanced at the gyro repeater by the screen and took a quick bearing of the nearest headland. Across one side of his vision he could see the other submarine, standing quite still like a basking shark.

‘When we get under way, Number One, tell Guns to train his turret on the other sub and load with semi-armour-piercing. She’ll be at about green four-five.’ A war of nerves. One torpedo from the Japanese boat would put paid to everything. The sight of these big guns would have to do the trick.

Quinton came back again. ‘Captain, sir? Guns says he can’t manage it, for Christ’s sake!’

Ainslie licked his lips. It was all too fast. But for the Jap they would have had time for Farrant to get the hang of it.

He made himself reply calmly, ‘Not to worry, we’ll manage.’

Voysey was yelling up from the fore-casing, ‘Singled up to ’ead and stem ropes, sir!’

Poulain stood at his elbow, watching everything. He said suddenly, ‘The men in the turret will obey me. I could have them brought up to instruct your gunners, yes?’

Ainslie smiled at him gravely. ‘Too late, I’m afraid.’

He shouted, ‘Let go aft!’ He saw the other ensign above the listing
Kalistra
suddenly vanish and wondered how she would fare now. Probably better under the Japanese than her original
owners. A few more years, a few more weary passages. ‘Let go forrard!’

He heard Voysey acknowledge and then yell, ‘All clear, sir!’

Ainslie took a quick breath. ‘Slow ahead, both engines.’ He listened to the water foaming around the screws, and then saw the rickety pier begin to slide astern.
They were moving
.

Very slowly the
Soufrière
’s blunt bows slid from beneath the makeshift longhouse, her periscope standards tearing away the matting and allowing the new ensign to flap in the hot breeze.

‘Clear the upper deck.’ Ainslie raised his glasses and studied the outlet channel. ‘Close all watertight doors.’ Men bustled past, glancing at him, or staring quickly at the sky as if expecting to see neither again. ‘Steer two-three-five.’

Gosling’s familiar rumble. ‘Course two-three-five, sir.’

Ainslie could picture him, his fat bulk hanging over the steel chair as he had seen it a million times.

Menzies said abruptly, ‘The Jap sub’s signalling, sir!’

Ainslie raised his glasses again as the yeoman read the winking light. ‘Request we heave to, sir. To parley.’

It came to Ainslie like a cold shower.
The Japs dare not fire
. Not because of international law, but simply for self-preservation. If they fired a torpedo into
Soufrière
at this reduced range it would be like igniting one gigantic bomb.
Soufrière
’s tubes were all loaded, and Quinton had already said that she carried forty spare torpedoes. All that, plus ammunition, fuel and probably the exploding oil from the
Kalistra
would reduce the whole lagoon to one devastating furnace.

‘Make to the Japanese, Yeo. Request refused. His Majesty’s Submarine
Soufrière
is leaving harbour.’

Menzies sucked his teeth and then trained his lamp, well pleased with Ainslie’s signal.

Ainslie turned to see how Poulain had taken his remarks, but the little Frenchman had disappeared below. He stepped from the gratings and crossed to the after part of the bridge. The pier was already well astern, but there was no sign of anyone in the village or anywhere else.

He heard a slight squeak and saw the turret begin to turn, the right and then the left gun moving up and down to emphasize their readiness. It might be a lie, but it would have a great effect on the Japanese, whose deck gun was no more than
a three-inch. He returned to the fore part of the bridge and took another bearing from the gyro.

There was the open sea, held between the twin headlands like blue glass.

He touched the screen, feeling the strength beneath him. He smiled.
The beast
.

Menzies said, ‘The Jap’s not following, sir.’

Ainslie leaned over the voice-pipe. ‘Number One. Tell Chief to increase to full revolutions. Just until we get clear. It will give them something to remember us by.’

Moments later, with a bow wave creaming away on either side to wash over the rocks and the flotsam left from
Kalistra
’s ramming, the big submarine pushed her way out into the open water, her wake ruler-straight like a long white tail.

Only when he was certain the other submarine was not following did Ainslie fall out his men from their action stations.

He added for Quinton’s benefit, ‘See if you can get some food and drink going round. It will break the tension. Then put our people to work. Back to school. When we get back to Singapore I want us to be halfway to being a going concern.’

Up the voice-pipe he heard Quinton chuckle and say, ‘The catch of the season, eh?’

If the
Soufrière
resented the sudden change of ownership and command she did not show it. But her previous commander,
Capitaine de Frégate
Michel Poulain, a man who had needed to believe that some day, all on its own, things would be as before, could not accept it. After leaving Ainslie on the bridge he went quietly to his cabin and shot himself through the head.

As darkness closed around the surfaced submarine, Poulain, wrapped in his own flag, and Petty Officer Osborn, draped in his, were buried at sea.

Ainslie closed the prayer book and replaced his cap. Perhaps the simple burial was an omen. Or, better still, a symbol.

4

The Real Thing

COMMANDER GREGORY CRITCHLEY
followed Ainslie into the
Soufrière
’s spacious cabin and said, ‘Better shut the door, Bob. I don’t want the whole boat to hear.’

Ainslie unslung the binoculars from around his neck and placed them beside his cap on the desk. Outside the pressure hull it was early morning and, as ordered, he had entered Singapore’s naval anchorage at dawn, to be met by a solitary tug and a watchful guardboat.

It had been an exciting passage from the little island, and Ainslie was proud of the way his company had got down to work to put their training and skills into operation. There had been several mistakes, but nothing really bad, and certainly nothing Lieutenant Lucas and his companions could not put right with a swift translation from French to English, or by taking over the offending instruments themselves.

Now, tied up to a high-sided depot ship, all but hidden from the base and the rest of the world, it was like an anticlimax, a slap in the face.

Critchley had been aboard the old depot ship, waiting, watching them as they had made fast alongside. He had said little so far, but Ainslie knew him well enough to recognize the signs. Frustration, anger, despair. He even managed to look his old crumpled self in his white shirt and shorts. There was a smudge of grease on his cap cover like a mark of defiance.

Ainslie said quietly, ‘She’s a fine boat, Greg. With a bit of work and a few spares I could get her on top line again. She was built when yards had time and money for good results. And to think that all we wanted to do was get her away from the wrong hands.’

Critchley watched fixedly as Ainslie poured two large Scotches, then almost snatched his glass as he exclaimed. ‘They’re all raving, bloody mad here!’ He put the glass down empty and
stared at Ainslie. ‘When we got the signal that you’d pulled it off, I went straight to the chief of staff. I thought he’d be jumping up and down like me. Not a bit of it. Everything’s changed again, that is, if it ever did change originally as we thought! You saw the new arrivals, did you?’

Ainslie nodded. It had been impressive in the dawn glow. While they had picked their way through the buoys and anchored vessels, he had seen the two great warships towering above all else like grey cities. The hew battleship
Prince
of
Wales
and the battle cruiser
Repulse,
the most powerful units Singapore had welcomed for a long while. They might give heart to anyone who feared the Japanese would lose interest in their conquest of Indo-China and turn their attention nearer home. On the other hand, the people Ainslie had met so far on the island might see the show of force as further proof of their own invincibility.

Critchley exploded, ‘The fool said that the Navy is going to operate this new squadron much as the Germans are using their
Tirpitz
in Norway. A reminder, a warning if you like, to tie down enemy forces.’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘So I went to see the admiral, no less. But he was well genned up already if you ask me. He even suggested that the fact there was no protest from Tokyo or the Japanese Navy about your seizure of the
Soufrière
from under their noses proves their disinterest in us, and that they have no evil intentions towards Britain.’ He downed another whisky. ‘I ask you, Bob, what can you do?’

Ainslie watched him, picturing him darting from one office to another. ‘Well, we’ve got what we came for.
Soufrière
is still the biggest sub in the world. Put to proper use she will make a fine addition when we most need her. She could even run stores and ammunition to Malta, she’s big enough.’

Critchley said abruptly, ‘I’ve made a signal to the Admiralty. We’ll see who they back up. In the meantime I’ll do what I can about your spare parts, you know that.’

He looked around the cabin, seeing it for the first time since his outburst.

‘What a boat! I see what you mean. She’s different. Like something alive and breathing.’ His glance fell on the strip of carpet by the desk. ‘All the comforts.’

Ainslie also looked at the carpet. There was a bright patch on it where Sawle had cleaned away the bloodstain. Poulain
had appeared even smaller, lying on his side, his eyes tightly shut at the moment of the pistol shot.

Critchley stood up and groped for a cigarette. ‘Word to the wise, Bob. If you want to keep this command, I suggest you get started right away.’ He watched the smoke being dragged into a deckhead fan. ‘The admiral and most of the top brass from miles around will be visiting the
Prince of Wales.
There’s a big party arranged for tonight, by the way. Nobody senior will be available to see you, or give you the praise you deserve for what you’ve just achieved. So put out your feelers, and do what you can to carry out the repairs. A vessel ready for sea is always a better argument than a dockyard job!’ He laughed shortly. ‘You’re still on the secret list. So far as the outside world is concerned, you are living aboard the tender,
Lady Jane
.’