The White Guns (1989) (30 page)

Marriott tried to make himself comfortable. Flensburg was about eighty miles from here. On these seats they would feel every one of them.

As the car bumped towards the main gates Marriott asked, 'How long would it take to drive to Eutin?'

Knecht tore his eyes from the gates. 'But Herr Leutnant, that is in the other direction!' But he saw Marriott's expression and added, 'Fifteen minutes, no more.'

They passed through the gates and Marriott returned the sentry's smart salute. Then he said, 'I don't want to
visit
anybody there, you understand?'

'Yes, Herr Leutnant.' Knecht's blue eyes gleamed in the driving mirror. 'You give the orders, I obey.'

He thinks me mad. He is probably right.
Marriott watched the green countryside flashing past. I
only want to see where she lives, that's all.

Knecht relaxed slightly. It was a strange experience to be driving one of the old enemy. Stranger still that he was able to enjoy it. What was in Eutin that meant so much? He glanced at the lieutenant's profile. How different from some of the officers he had served in his time. When they returned from Flensburg he would tell his wife all about it, and make her laugh. That would be the best part.

Marriott winced as the wheels bounced over a loosely filled bomb-crater.

Dreaming of a girl he could never hope to know, being driven by an ex-U-Boat sailor who had spent his war trying to blow the backsides off British warships and merchantmen alike. And soon to put to sea again with a cargo of deadly poison gas. The schoolfriend who had been playing jazz on the organ in a bombed church, and rescuing von Tripz's son from one of their own allies.

By comparison his war seemed almost sane and commonplace.

Marriott moved the overhead light very slightly and concentrated on the Baltic chart, all its latest references and bearings marked with surprising neatness. By glancing to starboard he could see the vessel's master, a solid, rugged-faced professional sailor, peering beneath the peak of his battered cap, his hands thrust into his bridge-coat pockets. It was hard to imagine those same hands making such delicate calculations.

He straightened his back and looked at his friend, who was leaning on the chartroom voicepipes, an unlit pipe clenched between his jaws. Such a different feeling from the motor gunboat, he thought. Strange and alien. Not the thrusting, uneven rolls when throttled right down to minimum revolutions, or planing across the crests when at full throttle; the big German salvage tug
Herkules
felt as if nothing could resist her. Also, unlike the base or Kiel harbour, everyone around him was speaking German, and only when directly addressed would one of the petty officers translate his wishes into direct action.

He said, 'About twenty minutes.' He walked to the rear of the wheelhouse and studied the long towing hawser, the obedient merchant ship which had dragged astern at a mere five knots, all the way from Flensburg Fjord. To navigate the narrows and busier parts of the journey they had had the assistance of a second tug,
Tail-end-Charlie,
which had controlled the towed ship's progress with a long stern-wire. They had passed Bornholm in the night, and had altered course to the north-east when the other tug had left them to it. Marriott was glad they had made contact with that island under cover of darkness. In his mind it would always represent something bad, where men and women had died to no sane purpose.

Together Marriott and Kidd walked out on to the open bridge wing on the opposite side, leaving the German master to his privacy. He doubtless knew these waters and this kind of work better than anyone; certainly a lot better than two ex-Coastal Forces officers. But he seemed content to accept their instructions. Maybe only because he had no choice.

Beri-Beri said, 'We'll board her and then I'll take you below. It's dead simple really, but you'll be doing it on your own next time. Don't want to lose my
old mate
now that I've only just found him!'

Marriott raised his binoculars and levelled them on the vessel under tow. She had been in service until the last year of the war, when she had sustained a near-miss from a heavy bomb which had put her engines and shafts out of alignment. Too costly to repair, she had been patched up and used for various other tasks, from accommodation vessel to prison hulk for Russians captured on the Eastern Front. Now, loaded with tons of poison gas, in shells and bombs, cylinders and all the deadly equipment required to release it on the enemy, she was on her final voyage. There was something sad and yet menacing about her spartan outline. Stripped of everything except some emergency rafts, she must offer little comfort to her small passage-crew of German sailors. They would give a sigh of relief when the powerful
Herkules
went alongside for the last time and took them off.

Beri-Beri pointed over the rail to the after deck which, with all the weight of the two pulling against her, was almost awash.

'Look at him. Happy as a sand-boy!'

Marriott nodded and smiled. The young German Willi Tripz was squatting on a hatch-cover, his legs crossed and arms wrapped around his knees as he stared at the activity around him. His feet were bare, and his fair hair was blowing unchecked in the wind, as if he felt no discomfort from the spray which pattered over the hull like tropical rain.

He was here at his father's request. It had come through Meikle's office, so he had obviously approved it for unknown reasons of his own.

Beri-Beri grinned. 'Real bit of hero-worship, that one!'

Marriott looked at him. 'Don't be so bloody daft! I think you were out in Burma a bit too long!'

Beri-Beri was unmoved. 'He follows you everywhere. All kids need a hero – you happen to be it. At the moment anyway.'

Marriott shrugged. 'I'd have thought he'd seen enough of the Baltic after the last run.' He thought of the swastika carved on the boy's shoulder, and wondered if he would always carry it.

He swung away and shouted across the chartroom, 'Stand by, Kapitän!'

The tug's master, whose name was Horst Krieger, raised one massive fist, then strode unhurriedly to a voicepipe.

Beri-Beri murmured, 'I can just see him at Jutland, eh?'

The tug's small crew turned-to and bustled aft to prepare for casting off. A signal lamp clattered from the upper bridge and a diamond-bright acknowledgement came instantly from the vessel astern.

Marriott turned his eyes from the bridge. He had almost expected to see Long John Silver there.

Beri-Beri was watching him. 'More memories, Vere?'

'A few.' He heard the winches whine into action, felt the tug's tightly packed hull lift its thousand tons of iron and steel, her screws thrashing astern to take off the way.

Marriott wrapped one arm around a compass-repeater and felt the hull swaying over into a deep trough.
A cross on a chart.
Who would ever question the sense of what they were doing, or even remember it? Fifty fathoms down, three hundred feet, where all that cargo of poison and mustard gas would lie harmless in the depths.

Beri-Beri jammed his cap more tightly over his unruly hair and watched as the tow was cast off, and the big winches brought it whining through the water and up to the stern swivel before it could snare a shaft or some hidden, unmarked wreck.

Marriott saw how well the crew worked together. Few orders, hands and arms moving like machines. One man dropped a spanner and the boy Willi Tripz snatched it up and handed it to him, then turned and looked up to the bridge, as if to seek him out.

Beri-Beri smiled gently.
'Told you.'

Even now
Herkules
was swinging round, butting into the choppy crests with disdain as she altered course towards the drifting hulk. They had lowered fenders and two ladders; were wasting no time, Marriott thought.

Then he and Beri-Beri hurried down to the raised forecastle and waited while the gap narrowed between the two hulls, and the other ship seemed to tower over them like a flaking cliff.

'Up we go!'
Beri-Beri judged the moment then swung on to the ladder, climbing fast while Marriott waited for the two hulls to fall apart, spray spurting up between them, before he could follow his example and swing himself across. It was a matter of timing. Too soon and you might fall. Too late and you could be crushed between the hulls as they surged together again.

Up and over the bulwark where they stood, regaining breath, staring around at the deserted and abandoned decks. The eyeless bridge where anxious lookouts had watched for aircraft and the tell-tale periscope. Storms and frozen nights in the Baltic, hopes, fears, all the things which every ship must know.

Beri-Beri led the way. Down one ladder, through a watertight door, where battery-driven lamps lit the handrails and catwalks, and then down the next.

The deeper they went the more distant and muffled the sea sounds became. It was eerie, creepy, as they groped along the shining catwalks where countless men had gone before them. On and off watch, to enter or leave harbour. As the ship had carried many wounded back from the Russian Front, it was more than likely there had been many sea-burials too.

Beri-Beri levered open a door and flashed his huge light inside. It was one of the ship's four holds. 'See, they've made a good job of it.' The massive piles of gas shells and bombs in this hold were covered in cement. No wonder she felt so heavy in the water despite being stripped of all her fittings.

Marriott said, 'I'm glad you've done this before. I'm bloody well lost!'

Beri-Beri's teeth gleamed in the lights. 'I studied the plan until I knew it backwards.' He dragged up another hatch and said, 'Last bit, old son.'

Here, at the very bottom of the hull, it felt even more oppressive. The sea was just a far-off booming sound, while the gurgling slap of trapped bilge-water seemed to be all around them.

Beri-Beri clung to a vertical steel ladder and studied the long array of explosives. Again, more concrete so that the full blast would go straight down, blast a hole in her bottom without breaking her back to strew the deadly cargo across the sea-bed. 'Like a bloody great Bangalore torpedo!'

Marriott stooped over the nearest pile. It had to be done this way. To scuttle the ship might take too long, so that she would drift for many miles, her final resting place unknown or wrongly marked on the charts. To blow her up by gunfire would be even more dangerous. Insanity.

They checked their watches. Up in the damp air of his bridge, Kapitän Krieger would be doing the same. He had his orders too. Marriott thought he was not the kind of man to act without or against them.

Beri-Beri remarked suddenly, 'We do meet in the oddest places.'

Then he stooped over and unclocked a well-greased metal plate. 'It's very simple really. There's a line just here which is connected to a friction-type igniter set. You pull it, and the thing fires. After that–' he grinned up at him. 'You've got fifteen minutes. Piece of cake!'

'Suppose it misfires?'

'There's a second one next to it. But I've never known one to fizzle out.' He chuckled. 'Not yet, that is.'

The hull rolled suddenly and Marriott heard a chorus of metallic groans and shudders. Like a protest. Like something alive.

He said, 'Let's get it over with.'

Beri-Beri nodded, suddenly serious. 'Let's.' He dragged at the line and there was a tiny spurt of sparks and smoke.

He stood up and licked his lips. 'Time to go. You first.' He gripped the ladder and waited for Marriott to clamber up towards the oval hatch while he stood and watched the inert mass of concrete.

Marriott gripped the rim of the hatch. He might get used to it. He had been in dying ships before, and in the Med had even helped to fit charges to vessels they had found working for the enemy amongst the Greek Islands. But this was different, although he could not explain why.

There was a sharp click beneath his feet and he heard Beri-Beri exclaim,
'Hold on!'
Then the lower half of the ladder veered round, swinging on a single bolt, before that too parted and Beri-Beri fell straight down on to the concrete.

He struggled to get to his feet and fell on his side.
'Oh, shit!
My bloody leg!'

Marriott clung to the remains of the ladder and peered down at him. 'I'm coming!
Don't move!''

Beri-Beri almost screamed. 'You can't do anything! You'll never be able to lift me up there!' He was sobbing, pleading.
'For Christ's sake get out while you can!
This lot'll go up–'

Marriott hung by his fingers for a few seconds then dropped lightly to the bottom.

He bent over his friend, felt him tense as he tried to move the leg folded under him at an unnatural angle.

'Go!
In the name of God!' He was gasping with pain and despair.

Marriott cradled his shoulders in his arms and crouched down beside him. All at once, after the stark spasm of fear, he felt completely calm.

'I'm not leaving you, you silly old bugger.' He pulled him closer, and tried not to listen to the lapping bilge-water, while the smell of the acrid fuse seemed to be everywhere like an invisible threat. Once he thought he heard a loud thud, the vague vibration of engines, and could picture the tug standing away. They had already overstayed their time. And why should Krieger risk his ship and his men? Just months back they had been fighting each other. Killing and dying. Krieger had no cause for regrets, even if he could do something.

He thought suddenly of his driver, Heinz Knecht, when he had ordered him to remain at Flensburg with the car until they returned.