Decoy (36 page)

‘A Coastal Command Liberator fitted with radar, a Leigh light and depth-charges will jump us at night as soon as we make a blip on his radar screen. Ned, my old mate, nobody (on our side, I mean) trusts a U-boat. Guns, depth-charges, Leigh light – but sink on sight!’

The Croupier carefully traced his eyebrows with a wetted finger. ‘What Jemmy’s trying to say tactfully is that collectively we smell.’

‘There was a second point I was going to make,’ Ned said mildly.

‘Are you still alive?’ Jemmy asked ironically. ‘They sank me with a 4.7 inch shell hit on the conning tower as I waved a pair of Joan’s knickers in a friendly sort of way.’

‘Always thought you were a bit of a pansy,’ the Croupier said unsympathetically.

‘I didn’t know Joan
had
any knickers,’ Ned said, ‘but listen. If somehow we managed to get ourselves captured and managed to get the cash register and the Triton manual safely on board the other ship, we’ve got another security problem. At the moment only twenty-three of us, chosen men and sworn to secrecy, know we’ve captured a U-boat. Maybe half a dozen of us really know why. None of us will ever talk. The German prisoners will be kept in a special isolated prison camp. So the chances of the Germans discovering that we’ve captured one of their U-boats and thus Enigma Mark III and Triton are nil.

‘But bring a destroyer into it… A hundred men of the ship’s company see it happen, some will take photographs, all will be as proud and excited as hell. I don’t see anyone swearing every one of them to secrecy. Nor do I see all of ’em surrendering camera film. If even one roll of film stayed in someone’s pocket and was developed by a photographer in some market town in the Midlands, people would talk. You can’t mistake a U-boat. So the photographer mentions to his wife and his mates in the pub – in complete confidence, of course – and they gossip… Soon the Germans will get the word: one of their boats – one of the thirty or so missing that month – was captured. And overnight – well, as soon as new manuals can be got to the boats – Triton is replaced, and we are back at square one – which is black-out. They can carry on using the came cash register, of course.’

Jemmy gave a startling series of twitches. ‘Ned, mate, with our wireless transmitter busted, there’s no chance that we can surrender at long range or pass the word to the Admiralty and stop all these people being nasty to us, so it wouldn’t matter if you had Mr Churchill, Roosevelt, the C-in-C of the Home Fleet or Veronica Lake on board; there’s just no way of surrendering to ’em. You’re in a U-boat, mate, and like a wasp at a picnic, if you sit still for a moment you’ll never get a second chance: somebody’ll swat you!’

Ned laughed, conscious that Hazell was again reporting, and said: ‘“Pariahs of the world, unite!” I’d reached all those conclusions in the lifeboat. I really wanted to explain to you why we just can’t surface and surrender.’

‘Oh, we can surface and surrender,’ Yon said. ‘It’s just that we’d never live to tell the tale, eh Jemmy?’

The four of them suddenly became conscious of Hazell’s monotonous reports.

‘HE red two oh, distant but closing…red three oh…still closing…think I can pick up the Asdic…red four oh…five oh… She’s passing on a reciprocal course, slow speed, Asdic on…’

Jemmy stood up and walked the half a dozen paces to the hydrophone room and Hazell, seeing him coming, pulled off an earpiece and proffered it.

Just then all of them heard the faint ping…ping… ping…ping… Yon walked over to the men at the hydroplane controls, although every piece of machinery in the boat was shut down. Men no longer used the head because pumping the toilet bowl would make an easily detectable noise.

‘Persistent bugger,’ the Croupier whispered. ‘A headhunter. Wants to add to his score.’

‘That’s what he’s paid to do,’ Ned said mildly.

‘Fact is,’ the Croupier muttered, ‘I tend to take against anyone trying to kill me, whether he’s a friend or foe.’

‘I’m more against him if he’s a friend,’ Ned said. ‘I wish I knew who is commanding this destroyer: it’d be fun meeting him afterwards and telling him the mistakes he made.’

‘
If
he makes any mistakes. He seems to have the textbook open at the right page!’

Hazell said: ‘He’s turning…approaching…’

Ping…ping…ping…and then, as the first of the sound waves hit the hull and bounced off, ping…ping…ping…ping… ping…ping…

‘Take her down to four hundred feet as soon as the first charges go off,’ Jemmy said.

Yon opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and said: ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘I know what he was going to say,’ the Croupier whispered.

‘So do I,’ Ned said. ‘That with the charges set to go off at different depths, we’re liable to drop into a sandwich.’

‘Yes, and Yon said these ’orrible tubs are designed for a maximum of three hundred feet.’

Ned dredged his memory of the last anti-submarine course he had attended at Portland, just before Dunkirk. ‘There’s some nonsense theory that the deeper you go and the greater the water pressure, the less the effect of the depth-charge. I don’t remember the figures, but the strength of the bang is lessened by the square of the distance, or something equally improbable.’

‘Yes, I did that course, too. Not very convincing. They’d done trials on an old wreck. I’d have thought the greater pressure of the water increased the pressure wave from the charge…’ His voice tailed off. ‘No, of course the greater water pressure would
reduce
the charge –’

He broke off as the Asdic pings bounced off the hull as though a boy was throwing pebbles.

‘I bet that bastard wears the grommet in his cap,’ the Croupier whispered. ‘All Leslie Howard and Noël Coward and cucumber sandwiches. If you hear a bump it’s because he’s dropped a charge on to our bridge.’

‘Depth-charges…two…four… Just four, sir,’ Hazell said unbelievingly. ‘No, there’s two more. I bet someone’s getting a bottle over that!’

Depth-charge patterns were very carefully worked out. Projectors could hurl them out to port and starboard, well clear of the ship, but the two intended to burst in the ship’s wake were usually rolled off the stern on special rails. Hazell’s ‘bottle’ referred to the Navy’s slang for a reprimand, which was usually a polite word describing a string of oaths from a petty officer.

The first pair of explosions, separated by two or three seconds and showing that the hydrostatic valves were set to detonate them at different depths, seemed to be above and below the submarine, squeezing it as though it was a horseshoe being shaped on a blacksmith’s anvil. The lights went out again, glass clattered on to the steel floor plates, there was the sound of water spurting under pressure.

The roaring finally convinced Ned that the boat was sinking and he thought bitterly that Clare would never know he had succeeded. A moment later he realized that most of the noise was more water sluicing into the ballast and trim tanks, and the electric motors were running to spin the propellers and, with the hydroplanes, drive the boat deeper – just as Jemmy had ordered moments ago.

The next two explosions were the most violent yet: the whole boat creaked under the double blow, there was more water spurting, and Yon called for lights, and for damage reports.

Jemmy’s face suddenly appeared on the far side of the control room, a satanic grin on his face, which was lit by the reflection of the torch he was holding up to the depth gauge.

‘Going down…fourth floor, ladies’ wear; third floor, garden implements; second floor, a bloody big pair of bangs!’

And they came: even nearer than the first two, Ned was certain. The next two would be game and set: a thunderous crash, a roar of water, and it would all be over: the crushed U-boat would be on its way down and no one on board would ever know whether it reached the bottom or stayed suspended…

But the depth-charges continued. Eleven…twelve… Ned found himself counting and at the same time listening to the mad dance of the deck plates, the groaning and crunching of the almost circular ribs which formed the skeleton of the boat over which the hull plating was welded (and riveted, too: God, if any of those rivets started popping).

Yon was shouting orders again, the electric motors stopped whining, the emergency lights came on and Jemmy said in a low voice: ‘We’re at 425 feet. Just twenty short of the deepest I’ve ever tried.’

The Croupier, who had also been listening to the creaking hull – to creaks that came from the pressure of the depth, as well as from the pressure waves radiating out from the exploding charges – said languidly: ‘Jemmy, old sport, I’m sure you don’t want a couple of surface types like Ned and me being able to make the same boast as you, so as far as we are concerned, 425 feet
is quite enough
, old son. Too much, some might say.’

Jemmy was still grinning. Ned was startled at just how satanic he looked, and he glanced up at the depth gauge again, as if hoping it would show another fifty. ‘Lads, three of those charges burst
below
us.’

‘Let’s go up to fifty feet and fool them,’ Ned said promptly.

‘You won’t fool these boys, and they’d have to turn down the volume on their Asdic to stop being deafened by the returns.’

‘What are these metallic cracks we keep hearing?’ Ned enquired.

‘Metallic what?’ demanded Jemmy.

‘Well, sort of sharp creaks. There! And there!’

‘Oh, don’t let
that
worry you,’ Jemmy said, as though reassuring a nervous aunt having her first ride in an Underground train. ‘That’s just the water compressing the hull. Actually at this depth our cubic displacement will be less because of it.’

‘It’ll stunt our growth,’ Ned protested, and looked round at Hazell, who had again put on his headset, and was turning the dial of the hydrophone, hunting for sounds and reminding Ned of an old man with an ear trumpet.

’No HE, sir,’ he said to Jemmy.

Jemmy glanced at Ned. ‘Up to his old tricks, that destroyer: he’s sitting up there, a hand cupped behind his ear, just listening.’

‘Can he hear all this waterworks?’ Ned waved to the dozen or so streams of water criss-crossing the boat from dials and broken gauges.

‘No, but we’re mending ’em as fast as possible because our bilge pumps are noisy. Hello, Keeler, you look worried!’

The Marine sergeant had just squeezed through the circular hatch and once inside the control room spotted Ned in the dim light and stood to attention. ‘Sorry to report a casualty aft, sir. Two, actually, both dead.’

‘No damage to the ship?’

‘Oh no, sir,’ Keeler said in a shocked tone. ‘No, a couple of Jerries who’d been a bit upset with that first lot of depth-charging got very agitated when they heard the ’lectric motors start up with the second lot. Then when we started going deeper and things began creaking they started screaming and ran amok. Both were trying to open a valve, with all their mates screaming at them to stop. We didn’t know how urgent it was, sir…’

‘Knife?’

‘Only way, sir with both of ’em. We were getting a whiff of battery gas, so we didn’t want any sparks to fly – if you get my meaning, sir.’

‘Did it quieten down the rest of them?’

‘Oh yes, worked a fair treat, sir. They’d never seen commando knives before.’

‘Commando knifework, you mean! Very well, Keeler. Any ideas about the bodies?’

‘No hurry about them, sir: they don’t upset us, and they remind the rest of the Jerries to behave, or else’. Keeler grinned and continued: ‘Wish our chaps up there were not so good!’

Ned pointed at Jemmy. ‘We’ve got a live one here, you know!’

‘Yes, I’ll remind our lads o’ that, sir.’ He turned to Jemmy. ‘Best o’ luck, sir. I’m a betting man meself, ’specially over the sticks.’

Jemmy nodded in agreement. ‘This flat racing stuff is very tame. Start a book on how many depth-charges we’ll get!’

‘Oh, we have, we have, sir,’ Keeler assured him earnestly. ‘I picked thirty-eight. Reckon I’ve got a chance?’

Jemmy nodded. ‘Twelve down and twenty-six to go, eh? Well, your guess is as good as mine.’

With that a cheerful Keeler squeezed back through the hatch just as Hazell reported: ‘No HE except I can hear his pumps and generators. No direction, though: I think he’s right above us.’

Jemmy said to Ned: ‘I was watching the sea water temperature as we came down that last hundred feet. By luck we’ve dropped into a cold layer, so his Asdic isn’t working so well. If we can stay in or under it, we should be all right. But if it slides around – they do, sometimes, nudged by currents – we may be all naked again, like the fan dancer whose ostrich feather moulted.’

Hazell said: ‘HE effect sir, I think I heard splashes. Four – two and then two. Screws – increasing speed…’

‘If they sit there they’ll be blown up by their own charges,’ Yon said, a querulous note in his voice implying that by moving the destroyer’s captain was cheating.

‘Four,’ commented Jemmy. ‘They’re not sure.’

The first explosion was enormous: Ned felt it slam up through his feet; it seemed to crush his chest while battering on his ear drums, and no sooner had the floor plates dropped back into position and the last piece of glass tinkled out, burst by the sudden and enormous pressure, than the second charge burst: a repetition which seemed certain to crush a boat already bruised and strained from the previous explosions.

But there was Jemmy, inspecting gauges with his torch, and the other moving light was Yon. Both men were stepping round or ducking under spurts of water, and Ned realized that the other blobs of light were the torches of the two men who had been seated at the hydroplanes and were now busy shutting valves.

Ned heard Sergeant Keeler calling from the circular hatch and he walked over to see what he wanted.

‘That German Engineer, sir,’ Keeler explained. ‘I know he was sort of collaborating with Mr Heath when we started. Now he’s all excited and keeps pointing along here and jabbering away. I
think
,’ Keeler said carefully, ‘that he’s offering to help. Anyways, I’ve brought him along so you can talk to him.’