Rogue Raider (13 page)

“Damn and blast these bloody British dials.” In the absence of von Muecke, the
Exford
had resumed a more civilian air. Hagendurst, a dumpy, unshaven petty officer with ten years' service, was sweating through a torn singlet, fag pluming smoke, a beer bottle open on the table. There would be no problem from the potato-eaters till the beer ran out and they would be harder for him to shoot. Hagendurst was surrounded by squat black boxes that he thumped occasionally and snaking wires looped together with string. It was unbearably hot though the door was propped open with a large lump of coal. His hands on the knobs were slick with sweat.

“Juli-bumm, what's 400 meters in feet?” He flicked ash and mouthed at the soggy fag-end.

“Don't even the British use meters for broadcasting?”

“Do they?” His hand dropped from the switch he had been twisting and his mouth gaped open, the fag staying glued to his bottom lip. “Bugger. That explains a lot, then.”

“Just do the best you can, Hagendurst.” Captains, he realised, said stupid things like that all the time – most captains –von Mueller was the exception, never saying a word that was not strictly necessary. Most captains showered words over their commands as a sign of their authority while proper radio-operators were silent creatures with permanently cocked ears. But Hagendurst was not a real operator and his conversation was all chatter and static.

“Can I have a go at transmitting? It's a British set so they'd all think we were some poxy British vessel – which we are. I could ask for war news, ask about the location of the
Emden.
” Eagerness shone in his eyes.

“Best not.” Lauterbach put fat regret on his face. “Our orders are quite precise, to preserve ourselves, whatever the sacrifice, for the mother ship. Carry on Hagendurst.” Everyone was bored. It hurt him to admit it but von Muecke was right. You had to keep them busy. He must think of something.

A rash of bleeps fought through the hiss of the loudspeaker. Hagendurst grabbed a pad and pencilled away furiously, crossing out and revising, then froze, looked up and held the tip to his lips as the transmission died. Schwabe would have liked that.

“It's Tsingtao,” he said, puffing sternly. “That was a British merchant vessel. The place has been shot to hell but the siege is over and the city's surrendered to Japan. The British gave them a hand. So that's that and all about it.” He slammed down the pencil. There were real tears in his eyes.

Lauterbach sighed. In his innocence, never having seen a major land battle, he did not think immediately of destruction, carnage and suffering – no cliches of smoking ruins, blasted flesh and violated maids peopled his imagination. Instead he pictured the absurdity of Japanese officers in British uniforms and shiny boots sitting there stiffly in their Bavarian landhouses, ruling over Chinese in
Dirndl
dresses and
Lederhosen.
They would be busy changing all the street names as their first priority. There would be some keen, humourless Japanese who looked just like von Muecke in charge of that. One day they would have a word for such nonsense. Anyway, he knew the Chinese. Those
Dirndl
and
Lederhosen
would be slipped off and
kimonos
shrugged lightly on. The shopkeepers would quietly take down the framed portrait of the German Kaiser, put up that of the Japanese Emperor, hung from the same nail, and indifferently reopen their shutters for business the next day. Maybe they would have time to put the prices up a little. He liked Chinese.

Lauterbach plodded back to the captain's cabin, heavily and frowsily furnished in dark wood, its one comfort a fat man's bed with a frilly counterpane. It came ready equipped with tinted photographs of a large and ugly wife and two vacuous children with buck teeth and as he lay there at night, he found himself slipping into the skin of his predecessor, inventing stories about them. Her name was Blodwyn. They lived in Cardiff. Sexually unresponsive, she had yet been viciously unfaithful with a rippling muscular Lascar stoker. When he got back he'd give her what for. In this blistering heat, he often fell asleep thinking about giving her what for.

As he opened the door a big rat stood up on its hind legs, looked at him with brief surprise and sneered before darting away under the bed. Inspiration flashed into his head like Morse. Of course, now there was the answer to the boredom! They could no longer hunt British ships so they would hunt British rats. In the morning, he would set the men to clearing the ship of them.

There were no cats on the
Exford
but even if there had been, the rats were more than big enough to take them on and win. The bored ratings threw themselves delightedly into the hunt as into a new sport, called up old sea-dog skills in knotwork to make elaborate traps of stout wire that would snare and choke and draped the gangways with them but succeeded only in wounding each other nastily about the ankles. But Genscher, one of the machinists and a big, slow straw-haired country lad, had his family firm-rooted in poaching and the lore of country life. His hands still recalled landlubberly, ancestral craft that he now applied, humming quietly to himself, in dark corners, twisting wire and string and knocking great nails into the woodwork. Lauterbach let him be. They would not be discussing with any landlord the wear and tear on the decor. And bait? What about cheese? Genscher laughed. “Chocolate, captain,” he said with quiet emphasis. “For rats, chocolate.” They plundered the stores for sickly English dairy milk, a sweetmeat that the rats would appreciate more than the men and the use of chocolate somehow lent Lauterbach's mission a dimension of moral retribution. For days Genscher stalked the ship, a smirking executioner, clutching fat bunches of garotted rats, their faces clotted with blood and cream chocolate.

The giggling Chinese sailors preferred more active, communal methods, driving the pests like hungry ghosts, from one end of the ship to the other with firecrackers and hellish symphonies beaten out on the bottoms of saucepans. Perhaps ghosts would be frightened away too, so, after the rat-cleansing, they would be twice-blessed. At the other end of the drive, crouched the leering Chinese cooks, their trouserlegs tied up with string, hidden behind the sacks. At last they had found a use for the dried potato. They were all adept in the handling of wicked steel choppers that they swung indifferently to whittle firewood, dice cabbage or trim their toenails and as the rats dashed past, they leapt out, stamped out a fandango dance among them, swiped, sliced and eviscerated with cries of glee, to such effect that many rats died and one cook's assistant lost a finger. That evening, the Germans were appalled by the delicious smell of fresh-cooked meat that suddenly wafted from their quarters and engulfed the entire ship. They sat on deck, arms crossed across their chests, desperately puffing cigarettes to overcome the growling of stomachs simultaneously attracted and repelled.

Lauterbach lay in the stagnant heat of his cabin, resisting the smell for hours, then rose, lumbering, at midnight from his bed and crept, both dribbling and nauseous, to the big, ugly sideboard that he opened with slow hands. Inside, gleamed a great stack of ancient cans, mostly nostalgic English treats such as bloated steak and kidney pudding, left by the former master, though with the occasional oriental novelty of crickets in brine or sago grubs in vinegar to trap the unwary. The tins were dappled with rust and the labels had long unwound in the damp air and been lost. To dine here was a gastronomic lottery. Lauterbach seized a great tubular tin and sloshed it by his ear, appraising the heft, the liquidity of the contents. Whatever was inside was big and mobile but could, with equal possibility, be pilchards in tomato sauce or toads in syrup. He seized the tin opener from the top of the sideboard and hammered through the lid, sliced through the metal in great tears and prised it up carefully. Tins were dangerous. You could cut yourself. Apricot halves. He fingered one out and let it drool down his throat. Then another. Then another. Enough. It was time to set a new course for Padang in the Dutch East Indies, a week's sailing time away, but an agreeable place to either draw new supplies or be snugly interned for the rest of the war. There they would finally be safe.

The rain gushed down as if from some cosmic drainpipe. They had long since sluiced away their accumulated stench and grime in it and profited from the chance to refill their fresh water tanks but there was just no end to the downpour that filled sky and sea, obliterating the small space in between. It was no longer a blessing but a curse. Lauterbach had always been wisely modest about his skills as a navigator and now visibility was nil and all he had been given as a chart was an old school atlas in alphabetical order whose end pages were flaking away. He could no longer take them to Zululand. And the compass was four points off true anyway. For all he knew they could already be ten miles inland.

“Dead slow ahead.” A little native boat with sails of brown matting had tacked to avoid them and disappeared back into the hissing curtain of water with a cheery wave. It was thinning a little, out over the prow. There was land out there somewhere. Soon he would have to risk using the radio to try to contact the nearest harbourmaster, asking for a pilot and hoping he was already in the protection of Dutch waters. And then, all at once, they sailed into the stillnesss of a small sunlit glade in the forest of rain … and there, in their path, was a huge ship flying the English white ensign, an armed auxiliary of the Royal Navy. With the
Exford
's wallowing pace there was no chance of ducking back into hiding, so now they were on the receiving end of what they had so often handed out. A crump and a puff of smoke and a live round was put across their bows.

“Stop engines. Do not use wireless.”

Lauterbach obeyed and watched appalled as, in a dream, a boat was swung out to bring an armed boarding party over to them, taking an oddly detached and professional interest in the niceties of the proceedings. In a matter of minutes, they were there, no English Lauterbach at their head but a trim, golden-haired child of twenty in a sparkling lieutenant's uniform. There would be no three cheers from the German crew.

He saluted. “In the name of His Britannic Majesty I take command of this ship and declare you and your men prisoners of war.” He made it sound like some sort of congratulations.

Lauterbach looked down at the old-fashioned rifles, clutched awkwardly in the hands of the British sailors, unused to this manoeuvre, and up at the huge guns trained on them from what was – he now saw – the
Empress of Japan.
They were nervous. They had never done this before. Try bluster. You could never tell.

“We are in Dutch territorial waters. This is an outrage. I protest. You will please leave my ship immediately”

The waif shrugged and grinned, waggled his ears, an old party trick. He had a big schoolboy spot full of pus on his chin.

“Not according to our reckoning, old cock. You're slap bang in international waters. Not that it matters much anyway. My commander's given his orders and you're nicked. May as well make the best of it, old socks. ”

Cocks? Socks? What was all this? Did he know, then, that he was dealing with Lauterbach of the socks song fame?

“I shall protest to the highest authorities. I shall …” Oh what the hell. Grease. It was like cleaning boots, there was a moment to switch from stiff bristle to smarmy grease. “I bear you no personal grudge, lieutenant. You are only obeying orders, which is the right thing for a military man to do. You will have noticed that I have a largely Chinese crew. I trust you will honour their neutrality and put them ashore in the nearest Dutch territory? Do you like Chinese food by the way?” Lauterbach slipped a paternal arm around him and guided him towards the mess room. “I have an excellent cook who would be glad to offer you some lunch, something really special, very fresh.”

The lieutenant disengaged himself. “Sorry chum. No time for that now and as for the other, we're bound for Singapore. Me for rest and recreation. You for a prison camp, unless I'm very much mistaken. I dare say your Chinese crew will be released, though. Would you tell your chaps to lay down any arms they may be bearing and I'll take a quick shufty round the ship and we can all get under way again.” He saluted, formal again. “Please be ready to leave the ship immediately with all other naval personnel. Personal effects may be taken.”

Lauterbach stiffened. His money was down there, locked in a trunk, subject, no doubt, to seizure by some light-fingered British official. He must get it safely stuffed in the cummerbund pocket double quick. What was this child waffling on about and smirking?

“What?”

“I said that it was not all bad news. In special recognition of your gallantry, the First Sea Lord has exceptionally decreed that members of the
Emden
may retain their swords.” Lauterbach was speechless. He made a face like a man who has silently broken wind on a crowded omnibus and wants to pretend it was one of the horses.

“A sword?” What the hell was he to do with a sword? Were there more rats to be killed on the English ship?

“But you may as well tell me right now where the others are hiding and save us all a lot of trouble. You can't hope to keep them hidden for long.” The child did a sort of comic yawn and stretch routine and waggled his ears again.

Now Lauterbach was totally perplexed. “Others? What others?” His mouth gaped clownishly. His piggy eyes half glimpsed an opportunity here to be exploited.

“Oh come on.” The boy was picking at his spot and making it bleed. Lauterbach had a terrible urge to smack his hand away. “The landing party from Cocos Keeling, three officers and forty-five men, the First Officer of the
Emden
and the rest.”

“The landing … You mean von Muecke?” Lauterbach felt suddenly unbearably weary, a terrible, unfaceable truth was about to be confirmed. Smothering in a blanket of fatigue and frustration, he leant against the rail and took a deep breath. It was one of those situations you got into with women, where your total ignorance of what it was you had done was the ultimate proof that your offence was unforgiveable. “Perhaps, lieutenant,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “you had better fill me in. I have, you see, no idea what happened to either my ship or my men …”