For Kingdom and Country (23 page)

Lock unfastened the strap around his chin and eased the torch off his slouch hat. With his palm over the lens, he switched it on and then off again to check it still worked. He crouched down and began to untie his sodden jacket from around his neck, and removed his boots. He untied the socks and pulled out the Beholla, placing everything on the wooden deck in front of him. He felt for the bayonet that he’d stuffed in his waistband. It was gone. Bugger, must have been snatched away by the current. Idiot.

Lock discarded the socks and, after wringing the water out as best he could, pulled his damp jacket on. He poured the excess water out of his boots and worked his feet into them, cursing at their pinching, damp, cloying tightness. Taking the Beholla, he tipped it barrel down to let any excess water drain out. He then opened the breech and blew as hard as he could. He retrieved the magazine from within his hatband, and slammed it home. He adjusted his slouch hat, the only dry item of clothing he had on, then pulled himself to his feet.

Looking left to right, Lock strained to hear any sound above the water lapping against the hull and the distant crack and pop of the fire burning to astern. Satisfied, he began to ease his way along the greasy gangway aft on the starboard side.

About five feet along the bulkhead was the door to the captain’s stateroom. It was wide open. Lock hesitated, his back pressed against the metal of the bulkhead, Beholla raised and ready. He waited. All was silent. He stole a glance inside. The room appeared to have been ransacked. Lock clicked the torch on and stepped cautiously inside.

Shining the light around the room, the beam picked out random items of clothing scattered over the floor: a pair of socks, a left boot, a pair of longjohns, one half of a leather gaiter. Books, stacked haphazardly, still lined the railed shelves, but the desk against the wall was bare, its drawers
open and cleared. The bunk still had bedding on, unkempt, as if its occupant had been woken suddenly from his slumber, perhaps when the
Marmaris
was hit, Lock thought. There was a carafe and a glass, smashed, at the side of the bunk, the Persian rug on the deck stained dark with whatever liquid had been inside.

Lock scanned the cabin further, shining the torch into each and every corner. There were a number of loose-leaf papers littering the floor, but on closer inspection he dismissed them. They were nothing more than memorandums relating to ship’s duties, menus, stores and alike. Not too dissimilar to what had been in the cardboard folder he’d found with the
liva amiral
. The stateroom disappointingly offered nothing significant. Lock switched the torch off, stepped back out onto the gangway, and continued aft.

The rest of the upper deck, from the edge of the captain’s stateroom to the open section aft that housed a second 1-pdr gun, was covered by a canvas awning. It was ripped and torn and hung loosely down from its wooden frame in a number of places. Lock moved underneath, and stooping under a torn piece of canvas, passed between the funnel and the stairwell, and made his way to the port side where the radio room backed onto the captain’s stateroom. However, this too proved to be empty. If there had been any codebooks they were gone.

Lock stared at the telegraph set and its cold, lifeless wires. He cursed. This was taking too long. He shone the beam onto his wristwatch. He’d been on board for fifteen minutes now and was no further on than he had been when stood on the deck of the
Shaitan
. He crossed back to the stairwell and peered down into its gaping mouth. There was a tangled mass of cabling and wires running all the way down from the telegraph mast that had collapsed and come crashing down through the canvas roof. But the way down looked passable. Just. He could see part of the main deck below, illuminated by the flickering flames, but the hold
further below still looked to be nothing more than a deep black hole of trouble. He bit his lip and scratched at his stubbly chin. He flexed the grip on his Beholla and began to pick his way down the stairs.

Lock stopped at the first level, the main deck, which was again open to the elements. This would house an office and the galley, with a large section amidships being the enclosed upper section of the engine and boiler rooms. Unlike the upper deck, here the gangways were lined with strips of cocoa matting to try and give something of a footing.

Lock made his way forward for no other reason than it was away from the flames. The bulkhead of the section up ahead was riddled with bullet and shrapnel holes the size of fists. Lock could hear the familiar drip-drip of a faulty faucet coming from the other side and smell mouldy damp. There were three doors, one of which had a sign written in Turkish,
Tuvalet
. These were the bathrooms.

Lock pressed on, passing between two hatchways that he knew would lead to the magazines below the hull. He halted once he reached the open forecastle deck at the bow. Here there was a second flight of stairs leading down into the hull. It smelt of brine, oil and sweat. The crew’s quarters. He turned the torch on and followed the beam down into the bowels of the ship.

The temperature was higher down here, and Lock’s wet uniform was already beginning to steam. As he descended the stairs, he listened for any sounds of human activity, but there was still nothing to hear but the click and creak of shifting metal, the distant crackle of fire and a muffled throb of engines on the water. The British flotilla was near to hand. He really was running out of time.

As Lock’s boot came off the bottom step and hit the metal deck of the hold, the entire ship shuddered. He grabbed out for the stair rail with his gun hand to steady himself. The Beholla knocked against the metal of the rail sending an echoing clang all the way to the upper deck.
Lock cursed at his clumsiness and remained still, his head cocked slightly to one side. He could make out a dull but distinct thud thud thud of running footsteps. Then they abruptly stopped.

‘Wha—’

Lock felt his mouth go slack, as a huge explosion appeared to bend the air about him. A shockwave knocked the feet from under him and he slammed to the deck. Pain screamed across his temple. Then he felt nothing.

Lock didn’t know if he’d been out for a minute or an hour when he opened his eyes. He took a moment to collect himself, mentally running a hand down his body. Nothing was broken, nothing sprained. He was lucky. His face was wet and his left eye stung. There was a metallic taste on his tongue and his bottom lip felt swollen. He was aware that he was lying on his front, his head pointing to one side. The floor beneath him felt hot and his nostrils were full of cordite. He blinked and tried to clear his blurred vision. He still had a tight grip on the torch and its beam was shining directly under the bunk opposite. He could see a pair of boots, an old newspaper and the barrel of a gun. It was pointing directly at him. He blinked again. No one was holding the gun; he could see that now. He groaned softly and tried to will the fuzz away from his stunned brain. Where was he? He shifted his eyes to the far left where he could just make out the foot of the stairs and a number of other bunks around him, all screwed to the deck.

Yes, he remembered now. He was in the crew’s quarters. In the hold. On the
Marmaris
. But what else? The ship had run aground and was listing. And she was on fire.

The explosion!

The aft magazine in the hold must have gone up. Lock forced his neck up and to the side. It was like trying to lift a cannonball. Thick smoke
was clinging to the ceiling and billowing up the stairwell.

‘Move, Kingdom,’ Lock muttered, and he pushed his hands against the slick metal deck and forced himself up onto all fours.

He grunted, and fighting off a wave of nausea, wiped his eye and looked at his palm. Blood. He tentatively felt his head. There was a fresh gash just above his ear. Not too deep. He felt a little higher. Thankfully his old wound was all right. He sucked in his teeth and sat upright.

‘I really must start wearing a topi,’ he muttered.

Spotting his slouch hat, Lock scooped it up and pulled it on. Where was his gun? He scanned the area and then moved across to the bunk opposite, remembering the barrel he had seen when he was lying on the floor. Feeling underneath, he pulled out the Beholla. He checked it over. It was undamaged.

The footsteps.

Lock spun round. Someone else was on the
Marmaris
with him.

The dinghy. Yes, of course. That was the slosh of water he thought he’d heard in the early hours before the moon came up. It was the dinghy passing by in the dark, the careless splash of its paddle.

‘Shit, Kingdom, you’re being slow.’

Lock grabbed hold of the bunk frame and pulled himself to his feet. He stood unsteadily for a moment, then leant forward and vomited. Gasping, he ran the back of his hand across his mouth and wiped it on the blanket hanging down from the upper bunk nearest to him.

Thud thud thud.

Lock flashed the torch in the direction of the stairs. Someone was up on the main deck. Lock switched off the torch and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. Cautiously, taking one step at a time, trying to keep his head out of the rising smoke, he began to ascend the stairs. He paused at each step, straining to hear anything above the burning and creaking ship. The smoke thickened when he was just at the top and, stifling a cough, he
popped his head up through the top of the stairwell, quickly stealing a glance left and right, before ducking back down again. The ship appeared as deserted as before.

Holding his breath, Lock paused and waited for a waft of thick smoke to flow past him, then using it as cover, sprang up and rolled to one side. His eyes were stinging and streaming from the effects of the smoke, and his lungs were burning, but he just ignored it, stifling the cough he wanted to choke out, and peered about searching for any sign of life.

There was nothing but stillness.

Lock pulled himself to his feet, but remained crouched low, Beholla in his right hand levelled at his hip, his left hand out straight, stiff like a chopping blade. He circled slowly, backing up towards the bow. He darted a quick look over the side. The dinghy was still there, tied as before, bobbing in the current. He gave a wolfish smile, felt along the gunwale until he came to the knot of coarse rope. Keeping an eye on the stairwell and the gangways, he untied the rope and felt it pull from his hand immediately as the current whipped the now untethered dinghy away. He glanced out to the river just to make sure. The dinghy had already drifted out some twenty feet.

‘Right,’ Lock said with a certain amount of venom, turning back towards amidships, ‘let’s see where you are, my German friend …’

By now the fire at the stern, or what was left of the stern, was raging ferociously, making the shadows cast by the flames and the moonlight dance and dodge across the deck. Lock skirted the open stairwell that was still oozing smoke up from the hull, and began to make his way down the gangway that ran along the port side of the bathrooms. Here was in dark shadow, and the deck was submerged under a few inches of water and mud. It was slimy underfoot.

Lock edged forward, his back to the bulkhead, gun held up, ears straining for the slightest sound from within one of the closed bathrooms
or just up ahead, round the corner by the central stairwell. His mouth was as dry as dust and when he swallowed, he winced. His throat felt like it was passing razor blades. The gash above his ear was stinging like mad, made worse by the sweat seeping in from his hatband and his damp hair. But at least the pain kept him alert.

At the edge of the bulkhead he paused, heart thumping in his ears. The bulkhead wall behind him ticked and popped like an erratic clock as the heat from the blaze started to expand the metal of the ship’s very frame. Lock inched his eye around the corner. Across the small, open gangway beyond the stairwell was the ship’s office and the galley. Further amidships was the enclosed section of the boiler and engine rooms. Beyond that nothing. Nothing but twisted, hot, broken metal. The propellers, the aft quarters, the sick bay, the dispensary and the rear guns were all gone. Destroyed. Lock could see the door to the office was open. A light was flashing intermittently from the inside.

In two quick strides, he moved across the open gangway, and sprang across the office threshold, his finger poised on the trigger of the Beholla.

Inside was a desk, with papers scattered across its surface, and a lamp hanging off the edge, upside down, by its flex. The lamp was flickering on and off at random intervals creating dancing shadows on the empty shelves that lined the surrounding walls. On the floor a chair lay on its side. And next to it, sprawled on his front, face turned to one side, was an officer. His arms were spread above the head, legs angled as if frozen in the act of running. There was a knife sticking in the back of the officer’s neck, just above the shoulder blades. Blood had already spread from the wound staining his white tunic dark red.

Lock’s heart skipped a beat. Could it be?

‘Wassmuss?’ he said aloud. But he knew it wasn’t the moment he spoke the name.

Lock’s mind tumbled. The body, the whole scene, looked strangely
familiar. He stepped a little closer and stopped, spun round to the open door, pistol raised. Nothing. He turned his attention back to the dead body.

The officer was wearing a well-tailored uniform of the German navy. Lock crouched down, grabbing the lamp and holding it closer to the body to get a better look at the face. The officer’s dark eyes were staring blankly back. Lock so wanted it to be Wassmuss. But it wasn’t. This man had dark green eyes. He was clean-shaven and his salt-and-pepper hair was receding. Even though the body was still warm to the touch, the colour had already drained from the lean face, and the skin had taken on that waxy pallor of the dead.

Lock’s eyes moved to the knife sticking out of the man’s back. He hesitated, his hand hovering over the hilt. Then he pulled the blade out. Wiping it off on the dead man’s uniform, he bent the flat edge in the lamplight and mouthed the inscription engraved along the flat edge, ‘
For Kingdom and Country
.’