A Bridge Of Magpies (27 page)

'I remember that day like yesterday–the Jmperial Palace in the snow, the patrols, the shooting, the street barricades. They let me pass because I was in full-dress uniform, and the Navy was supposed to be sympathetic to the revolutionaries. I was young and terrified during the audience with the Emperor, who made me promise that whenever he sent for me I would return to Japan with the Book of Tsu. Then I went back through the patrols with the Book wrapped in a brown paper parcel under my arm and friends smuggled me aboard a ship leaving for Cape Town. My ultimate destination was Luderitz, which my father had designated.'

'A Jap in pre-war Cape Town! You must have stood
out
like a sore thumb!'

'That's what I thought. Language was no problem–I'd learned English, French and German at the famous Nakano School for Spies. It was my face. But I saw my break when
we
actuaJly reached the Cape. Malays are Orientals and there are thousands of them there. I'd easily
pass as
one. So I jumped ship and went to ground in Cape Town's
gamat
Casbah among the cut-throats. I had plenty of money and in those days, there-you could buy a man's soul for a dollar. A year later I emerged –a fully-fledged
gamat
myself, complete with patois. After that it was simple to ship to the guano islands. After a season among the zombies I bought a boat and started fishing out of Luderitz. My cover was complete.'

The Master, the Book of Tsu, and no employment for them,' I said.

'It looked like
that, after
Pearl Harbour and the fantastic run of Japanese victories which followed. They were Yamamoto's, of course. Do you know we conquered the whole of South East Asia-from the Philippines to Singapore, from Burma to the outskirts of Australia, for the loss of one 182

destroyer? The new admirals and captains believed it was due to their own fighting skill–who among them had ever heard-or cared-about the Book of Tau?'

'Except Yamamoto,' said Jutta.

'Even the greal Yamamoto overreached himself. He hadn't the Book of Tsu to rely on any more. The Battle of Midway finished him–and the Japanese Navy. Then Yamamoto was shot down and killed in a plane by the Americans in the Solomon. The writing was on the wall for Japan. Traditionally the Navy–the hard inner core of top brass–turned to consult the Book of Tsu. It wasn't there; it was with me at Luderitz. The Emperor knew; so in greatest secrecy the pickup was arranged.'

'But why a German U-boat?' Jutta demanded.

'Swakop–the man who was to raise a pm-Nazi rebellion in South West Africa–was in Japan.
U-160
was refitting at the Japanese naval base at Penang: we let the U-boats use our East Indies bases after they'd been driven out of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. And
U-160's
skipper was an ace who knew the Cape well. He'd served in two wolf-packs,
Seehund
and
Eisbar, in
these waters. The whole set-up provided perfect cover for
U-160's real
mission:

'No wonder my researches ran dead!' exclaimed Jutta. '

You know the rest,' added Kaptein Denny.

'Except why you were left behind.'

"The Japanese officer in
U-160
who was to be my aide was a stickler for rank and protocol, and the Master was more than someone. He was set on doing me all the honours; he wasn't
even going
to allow me to wet my feet. He'd first taken the Book of Tsu out to the U-boat's dinghy, intending to come back and piggy-back me out. Then the liner alarm went and the dinghy raced away back to the
U-160.
I was left standing on the beach.'

That's that, then.' Jutta's voice was flat and empty. I added, 'I appreciate now why you don't want
Sang A to
know where
U-160 sank.'

'She didn't sink,' said Kaptein Denny. 'She's due any time now
at
Albatross Rock:

183

It felt as if there'd been some delayed blow-back into my brain from my paralysed hearing earlier. It simply wouldn't function to accept what Kaptein Denny said. The paralysis seemed to have spread to my vocal chords too.

Jutta's incredulity took the common form of demanding
a
repeat of a statement that you'd heard perfectly well in the first place, anyway.

'What did you say?'

Then her voice wobbled and went temporarily lame. Denny said,
'U-160
didn't sink. Bul she didn't remain afloat either.'

'For Chrissake,'
I
interjected-'you can't have it both ways!' '

You can–and the U-boat did.'

'I need a shot of
dop-en-dum –
without the
dune

`Gousblom's
attack put
U-160's
ballast pumps out of action and wrecked aJl her valves. It's there
on
the tape. I came to the same conclusion when I saw her first.'

'Saw? First?'

I felt a tide of excitement rising inside me. If
I
could get my hands on the Book of Tsu, the C-in-C would gel more than he'd bargained for.

'I've watched her surface every winter for close on thirty years.'

'That accounts for the X-ray-eye weather watch.' '

Aye.

It's
the upwell cell, of course?'

'Yes and no, but mainly yes.'

'You must have seen the spot where she went down, and marked it and now with the upsurge of water . .

'That isn't the way it works. I myself didn't witness what happened to
U-160.
All I know is that there was a long oil patch next morning, after the action round Broke Rock, and a couple of mines floating about. Everyone said they'd got
U-160.
There was no mason to doubt it?

'Until?'

'Until after the war and J was on my way home–sick 184

and disillusioned and feeling not a little guilty about the whole tragedy of losing the Book of Tsu. Jn fact, at one stage J seriously contemplated committing
hara-kiri.
I was taking myself to Cape Town in
Gaok,
preliminary to shipping to Japan. It was winter, as now, and the weather was the same. I didn't know about the upwell cell in those days; off Albatross Rock I sighted what I thought was a whale on the surface. When I got closer I saw it wasn't It was a waterlogged submarine. And when I got closer still I made out her recognition number –
U-160.
I thought I had gone out of my mind. I nearly did, when I went aboard.
The
conning tower and its escape hatch were smashed fast. Inside that floating steel coffin was a whole crew – and the Book of Tsu. There was nothing I could do to get at it. The last straw came a couple of hours later when the U-boat started to go down under my feet and I had to abandon her. That was near the Bridge of Magpies, where the current had carried her. I followed the sinking hulk up the channel and to the open sea-when it vanished altogether. I think I was a little insane that night,'

'It's not possible – that she should go and come back?' '

That's what I thought For the second time I'd lost everything that
was
most precious to me.'

'She'd got caught in a dense salinity layer and that brought her to the surface?' I asked.

'Yes, that's it I didn't rationalize it like that at the time, though. You don't, when a ghost shows up and you live with it for a few hours and then it slips back
again into
its grave.
U-160
was damaged at the critical moment when they were flooding her tanks to dive. Because of that, she couldn't blow them and she couldn't fill them. She had to go on, half - submerged. The crew was trapped. It must have been an awful death. Escape was so near and yet so far.'

'That
is
why she never signalled U-boat headquarters as she promised,' interjected Jutta. There was a lurking dismay behind her eyes,
as
if she feared she had no option now bul to live out whatever trouble was in store for us. I think she also secretly mistrusted Kaptein Denny.

'If she went down at the northern entrance to the channel-what are we doing here in the south?' I demanded. 'Perhaps
Sang A's
location wasn't so far out after
all'

'They're wrong.' His eyes looked as old and tired as if he'd 185

been watching over the Book of Tsu all its eight hundred years. 'I found it all out the hard way. I became possessed with Possession. I lived, sailed, sounded, searched: everything I knew; everything I remembered about the hulk's course; and about tides, winds and currents to try to find her again. Nothing. Salvage can be frustrating enough when you have modem gear; imagine what I felt like using primitive means like sounding leads and fishing trawls and nets, trying into the bargain, to bluff everyone that I was a simple fisherman?'

'But you knew where she went down!'

'So
I thought, so I thought. It was only a year later that I discovered that
U-160
didn't go down, but away.' 'What
are
you saying?'

The waterlogged U-boat was carried away from the coast by the current. The farther she went the less the density of the sea became, and the deeper under the surface she went. God alone knows where in the South Atlantic she drifts, under
water, all year –Brazil?
Antarctica? The Falklands? The West Wind Drift? I've given up trying to work it out. All I know is that it's a regular cycle, because she comes back and surfaces each year when the Bridge of Magpies wind blows.'

'It's blowing now.' There was a curious tightening in my throat.

'And she's coming. She always does. Her landfall's always the same–Albatross Rock. Captain Schlebusch himself couldn't do better. Then she works her way up-channel, on the surface.'

Jutta said, in a carefully controlled voice, 'You need have no fear that you haven't kept faith with your office. Keeper. Watcher Isn't it enough? Thirty years –
it's
a whole life? He said, more gently than I'd
ever
heard him speak, '

Keeper. Watcher. True. But it's
not
enough, Miss Jutta. I wonder if you or anyone else could know how it feels to have an inch of rusty steel plating of a dead U-boat's hull stand between you and everything that matters in your world

–and your country's?'

The wraps
were off him
now.

Snap
out of it, I told myself, don't buy this Eastern line of a magic staff in one hand and a gun in the other. He's had nearly thirty opportunities, on his own admission, lo take 186

a crack at opening up
U-160--alone-
or with the help of others.

I couldn't keep the sceptlcism out of my voice. 'From what you say
U-160
should have been a piece of cake as far as salvage goes. A tug or a ship to assist and the Book of Tsu would have been in the bag.'

He gestured at the coffee-and-cream whitecaps streaming in from the south; and the desert gale overhead sandblasting their crests to dirty foam.

'Take a look at the risk element. As an ordinary salvage proposition a U-boat is worth peanuts. You've said so yourself. Just after the war you couldn't have sold one for a thousand pounds, even to a film company. With the exception of the Book of Tsu,
U-160
carried nothing of value. Add to that the fact that you can only attempt anything with
U-
160
just at a time when all the risks are at their maximum. The skipper of a Japanese trawler I prevailed upon to try it nearly lost his ship on Penguin's Turning. He was an exNavy man himself, and I sold him a yarn about
U-160
carrying important naval documents. I think he's cursing me still.'

'You're not the only one in all this time who must have seen
U-160
surface-' I said.

'No? Think It's never for more than a few hours that she shows up. A non-scary accompaniment is a sandstorm. There's fog. By the nature of things-she submerges shortly after the Bridge of Magpies wind drops.
A few hours.
Zero visibility. The most dangerous shore probably in the world.'

'The guano workers ..

'Forget it. It's the birds' breeding season. Possession's deserted. J don't have to lell you that. The mainland's Sperrgebiet-
verboten.
There's not a soul about.'

'Except
Sang A.'

'You're wrong. Except us. We're going in to take the Book of Tsu out of
U-160
when she shows up.'

J, too, had to get in there with him. Intelligence-wise-the Book of Tsu could be the biggest bonanza since American Combat Intelligence broke the Jap code before Midway, and had the fleet's plan of attack handed to them on a plate.
If
it was aJl Kaptein Denny claimed, it was bigger than even the C-in-C himself could imagine. The odds against two men and a girl pulling it off
were
astronomical. Three's a crowd187 ten's a team. And you,d need a damn fine team of ten experts, backed by a shipload of equipment, to swing the
U-160
odds in our favour.

When I stood turning aJl this over in my mind and did not reply immediately, the pupils of Kaptein Denny's eyes contracted like a cat's out hunting when confronted by a sudden light. As sinister, too.

Jutta noticed it and said quickly, 'Come down to the cabin a moment, Struan. I've something to say to you-alone.'

The light in the cabin was dim because of the sand cloud, and the dark mahogany panelling didn't help what little sunlight penetrated it. Jutta stopped-turned, and faced me, looking
as
if there were something very complicated in her mind which had to be brought out into the light of day. She had about her a remoteness which made her seem vulnerable - and dear. I looked in the deep green of her eyes but found no answer. She made a little gesture which was hail-deprecation-halfsomething I couldn't define.

'My search for a father has turned into something
else.
It's still open-ended and likely to remain so'

' U - 1 6 0 . . :

'J wasn't meaning
U-160.
Me. I tried to tell you before I was a woman who hadn't found herself:

'Was?'

Her tone was quite different from that night we'd been alone in the bunkhouse.