Go In and Sink! (19 page)

He had to shut his ears to the man’s terrible cries, to everything but the need to get the boat away.

‘One hundred metres! Group up, full ahead together!’ He pulled himself to the periscopes and wrapped his arms around the nearest one. ‘Shut off for depth-charging!’

He saw Gerrard watching him, egg around his mouth and chin. He added between breaths, ‘Liberator. Must have extra fuel tanks.’

They looked at the depth gauges and then at the telltales as the planesmen fought to pull her out of the dive.

‘Hundred metres, sir.’

Something creaked violently while the hull took up the pressure. A man jerked with alarm, as if it had been a depth-charge.

But none came, and he guessed the airmen had been as
surprised
as he had been with the sudden encounter. It was suddenly very quiet, and Buck said, ‘He’s dead, Captain.’

Marshall turned and stared at the little group below the conning-tower hatch. The dead seaman flat on his back, eyes blank and staring, mouth wide, frozen in that last desperate scream. Buck and the girl on their knees beside him, and the other lookout vomiting helplessly on to the deck. Warwick was standing slightly apart, his hands at his sides, one of them splashed with the man’s blood.

The girl looked up and said huskily, ‘It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gone up there.’ She reached out and touched Warwick’s hand. ‘You couldn’t help it.’ There were bright tears in her eyes.

Marshall recalled the darting shadow in the lens. It was always the unexpected.

‘It was nobody’s fault.’ His voice sounded flat and without emotion. ‘You must always anticipate enemy bombers even when they’re not expected to be around.’

What was he saying? It was a Liberator. One of their own. Probably winging back to base to report they had jumped a U-boat and gunned down some of the deck party. But it was somebody’s responsibility. His. Waking or sleeping, nobody else could share that.

He continued, ‘Open up the boat, and take the body to the torpedo space. We’ll bury him tonight.’ He heard her sobbing quietly, her head bowed over the dead seaman.

Gerrard asked, ‘Periscope depth again, sir?’

‘Fifteen minutes. Then we’ll take a look.’ He tried to smile. ‘Thanks for being here so quickly, Number One. It was a bad moment.’ He saw Blythe and one of the telegraphists coming aft with a folding stretcher and added quietly, ‘Our first casualty.’

Then he swung round and took the girl’s arm. ‘Come on.’

She tried to pull away, her eyes dull with shock. ‘Where?’

‘Wardroom.’ He stepped between her and the stretcher bearers. ‘We need some more coffee.’ She had stopped resisting and was watching his mouth like a lip-reader. ‘Both of us need it.’

Fifteen minutes later they returned to periscope depth, and after a careful examination Marshall found that once more they had the sea and sky to themselves.

‘Stand by to surface.’ He looked at Frenzal. ‘You can start charging again, Chief.’

Buck asked, ‘Shall I take over the watch, sir? I’m on after the sub anyway. It won’t matter to me.’

Marshall turned to Warwick. ‘It matters to me. You can manage, can’t you?’ He kept his voice very calm.

Warwick nodded dully. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Change the lookouts and keep on your toes.’ He lowered his voice, excluding the others nearby. ‘Put it behind you. It could have been any one of us.’

Warwick said haltingly, ‘But you came up to get us, sir. You didn’t have to.’

‘Standing by to surface, sir.’ Gerrard looked at them impassively.

Marshall nodded. ‘Right. Let’s get on with it then, shall we?’ He forced a smile, feeling his mouth cracking with the effort. ‘Number One wants to finish his breakfast!’

He glanced at the brass plate on the bulkhead, U-192, built in Kiel. Perhaps he had been wrong after all. She was not beaten, but was biding her time. He shuddered.

‘And when you get a moment, Chief, have your people take that bloody plate down. I don’t think any of us need reminding what it’s all about.’ He looked at the smudge on the deck where the dead seaman had lain. ‘Not any more.’

MARSHALL STOOD BY
the chart table watching Devereaux’s fingers as they skilfully managed parallel rulers and dividers. The chart looked stained where they had rested elbows or rubbed out calculations and pencilled bearings.

Around him he could feel gentle vibrations from the electric motors, the absence of unnecessary movement. The depth gauges showed they were cruising at forty metres, but otherwise there was little to identify with the navigator’s neat lines and figures.

It was a week since that brief, nerve-jarring confrontation with the patrolling bomber. Marshall let his eyes move back along Devereaux’s course, seeing each small cross or pencilled fix as a separate memory. Getting through the Straits of Gibraltar had been the most testing moment. Two British destroyers had been sweeping back and forth, probably carrying out their normal patrol of the area, or perhaps investigating some unexplained echo. Their presence had again reminded him of the need for speed and timing, and he had cursed Simeon and the other planners for cutting the arrangements so fine.

Fortunately, an ancient, long-funnelled freighter had come to their rescue, albeit unknowingly.

On one of his frequent searches through the periscope Marshall had seen a dense pall of smoke long before the ship had topped the western horizon and had headed for
the
Strait. He had examined her with growing interest, seeing the Turkish flags painted on her rusty hull, the careless indifference with which she had steamed towards the destroyers. It had been possible to see washing flapping from her derricks, the master himself on his bridge smoking a large pipe, his uniform cap at odds with a dirty singlet and shorts.

Cautiously they had turned to follow the unsuspecting freighter, keeping so close astern of her that the grating rumble of her single screw had sounded as if it might burst through the forward bulkhead at any moment.

The Turkish ship had obviously been so familiar to the patrolling destroyers that she had not even slowed down. Just an exchange of waves from bridge to bridge. It was unlikely that the Turkish ship would bother too much with formal signals.

Unseen past Gibraltar and along the Spanish coast, north-east to leave the Balearic Islands abeam and further still towards Corsica. Men came and went about their duties, or slept to preserve the air supply, to restore their own private reserves of strength which were tested watch by watch.

Several times they had been made to run deep as fast-moving vessels had pounded overhead, or some suspicious ship had been sighted nearby. There had been plenty of shipping in the area, Italian and neutral, and Marshall had watched one fat oil-tanker pass through his sights with a feeling of impotence. What would her crew have thought, he wondered, if they had known they were steaming within lethal distance of a full salvo? For this was enemy territory, patrolled by aircraft from Italy and Sardinia, warships from a dozen harbours, a backwater which usually lay undisturbed.

Devereaux straightened his back and laid down the pencil.

‘That’s it, sir.’ He sounded pleased with himself. ‘We will be at the rendezvous point in thirty minutes.’

Buck had joined them by the table.

‘Are you sure, Pilot?’

Devereaux glared at him. ‘I’m not stupid!’

Buck grinned. ‘Oh, it’s an act, is it?’

Marshall ignored them and studied the chart more closely. Depths and distances, the place to run and hide if things went wrong. The area to avoid, where the risks of driving aground were all too obvious.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to hold back the tiredness. They felt painful, as if they were filled with grit. His mouth and tongue tasted stale. Like the air, the smell of men penned too long without freedom of movement.

‘Captain, sir?’ A messenger hovered by his elbow. ‘Major Carter asked if you’d mind joining him in the wardroom.’

‘Yes.’ Marshall pushed his fingers through his hair. ‘I’ll come now.’

He had hardly seen any of the passengers since the Bay. Getting all the rest they could, going over their plans for their mission. For
now
.

He glanced up at the vacant space on the bulkhead. They had used the builder’s brass plate to help weight the dead lookout’s corpse for the long journey to the sea-bed. It had been a bad moment for all of them. Unable to surface fully and open the fore hatch, they had been made to drag the canvas-sewn body up the same ladder down which he had been dragged screaming and dying. Marshall and two lookouts, Petty Officer Cain and one other man who had been the dead sailor’s friend. With the dark water surging
towards
the hull and breaking over it in great clefts of white foam it had been an unnatural experience. Five oilskinned figures huddled together, shining in the half darkness like seals on a rock, while amongst them, propped upright on the side of the tower, the dead man’s paler outline had been an additional onlooker.

Marshall had not dared to use his torch to read from the prayer book. What, he had asked himself, was the point anyway? The others had watched him, embarrassed, not knowing how to break the moment.

Marshall had said, ‘Right then. Let him go, lads.’

The lookouts had turned swiftly to lend a hand. It did not take long. A quick slither, the grate of metal against the saddle tank as the weights carried the corpse clear and down.

The dead man’s friend had craned over the screen, as if the truth had finally touched him. He had shouted, ‘Good-bye, Jim!’

Marshall had touched his arm. ‘That was a better epitaph than anything written,’ he had said.

Down the ladder again. Diving stations. Back to business.
Put it behind you
, he had told Warwick. He had really been speaking to himself. It had been about then he had seen the girl watching him from the bulkhead doorway. Searching his face, her expression changing again as he had looked at her. He still did not know what she had discovered in those few seconds. Perhaps fear. Of him? Of what he had become?

He shook himself from his thoughts. He was tired. Bone weary with the job of getting the boat to this pencilled cross on Devereaux’s chart undiscovered. Intact.

He strode to the wardroom and then paused in the doorway with surprise. Gone were his three passengers, as he
had
first met them. The girl was wearing a black coat and sat on one of the bench seats, a suitcase on her lap. The man called Moss had changed into a leather jacket and wore a jaunty beret on his head, a half-smoked cigarette protruding from behind his ear. As for Major Carter, he could have been any businessman anywhere in the warring countries of Europe. The overcoat, once well-cut and respectable, was neatly darned around the cuffs. His hat, even his shoes, wore all the marks of privations, shortages, the lot of civilians at war.

Carter asked slowly, ‘What d’you think, Captain? Good enough for first night at the Duchess Theatre?’ He grinned. ‘Take care of my army clobber, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll have it docked from my pay.’

Marshall nodded, unhappy to see them go. ‘I’ve told Petty Officer Cain to have your gear taken to the fore hatch.’

Carter sighed and looked at his companions. ‘Come on, Toby. We’d better check it before we leave.’ He winked at Marshall. ‘You know what these navy lads are like. Light-fingered lot.’

They strolled out of the wardroom, two strangers in an unreal world.

Marshall said quietly, ‘I hope everything goes well for you.’

She stood up and buttoned her coat. ‘Thank you. Are we at the proper place?’

He watched the shadows below her eyes, wanting to touch her. Keep her from going away.

‘Yes. Mid-way between Corsica and the island of Elba. We came round the north of Corsica during the day. It sounds quiet enough up top.’ He hesitated. ‘Is it difficult? I—I mean, will you be able to get there all right?’

She faced him gravely. ‘That part is no secret. Once we have left you we will be taken to Elba. When the time is right we shall cross in the same boat to the mainland.’

Marshall pictured it on the chart. She made it sound so simple. Yet it was over ten miles from Elba to the Italian coast. Patrol boats, guards on the shore, who could tell?

She continued quietly, ‘We will pick up the train and make our way south. To Naples.’ She shrugged. ‘Then we shall see.’

‘The major seems a pretty competent chap.’

‘Yes.’ She opened her handbag and studied the contents with a wry smile. ‘Good. One must be sure about little details.’ She shut it with a snap. ‘Yes, he’s good. We will travel together, but separately, if you understand me. If one gets——’ She looked away. ‘You know what I mean. If that happens, the others keep going.’

A voice called, ‘Ten minutes, sir.’

He did not turn. ‘You’ve done a lot of this sort of thing?’

‘Some.’

He moved closer and took her hand in his. ‘I wish to God you were staying here.’

‘So you said earlier, Captain.’ But she did not take her hand away.

‘Or that I was coming with you.’

She smiled. ‘They would sniff you out in five minutes!’ She gently removed her hand. ‘But thank you all the same. I am sorry for some of the things I said.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘In war.… Well, I can understand how men are.’

Feet padded past the curtain and he heard the murmur of voices through the control room. Everyone would be there to see them go.

He said, ‘I hope we can meet again.’

She moved to the door. ‘You’ll soon forget about me. That is good.’ She made as if to go and then said quickly, ‘But maybe we
will
meet some day.’ She picked up her suitcase and he followed her into the control room.

Gerrard said, ‘All ready, sir.’

He glanced at the clock. It was two o’clock in the morning.

‘Very well. Pass the word. Silent routine in the boat.’

He hung on the moment, watching the girl as she waited for a seaman to guide her towards the rest of her party. She turned as if to watch the transformation. From a man who wanted, needed her to stay. To being a captain again.