The Straits of Tsushima: An action-packed historical military adventure (Marcus Baxter Naval Thrillers Book 1)

by Tim Chant

  Baxter didn’t need to hear any more, satisfied that these were the remaining revolutionaries. There was no other reason for them to be hiding in a position to steal a boat — and someone had certainly put the boat into a state for it to be launched. All that was required was for them to swing it out over the side and lower away. He’d only waited as long as he had as he felt it only fair that he made sure before visiting violence upon them.

  Once he had that certainty, however, he didn’t give them a chance to ready themselves; there was no demand for surrender.

  He led his party forward in a rush, Vasily at his heels. Koenig and the other two, all of whom were slightly perplexed and slow having being turfed from their beds, were hesitant but followed on.

  They saw Baxter just before he reached them. The first man rose to his feet, hands coming up in fists, and went down as Baxter’s right jab connected with his chin. Vasily, not to be outdone, grabbed the second in a massive bearhug, lifting him cleanly off his feet and trapping his hands by his sides.

  The third man backed away, hands up pleadingly, as Baxter closed on him, the three sailors on his heels. He glanced once over his shoulder as Baxter reached for him, then without a word threw himself backwards over the railing, disappearing in the dark water with barely a sound.

  Koenig rushed to the rail, opening his mouth to shout “man overboard”. Baxter put a hand on his shoulder to still him.

  “Let him go — we would just shoot him anyway.” It came out in a voice that sounded tired and flat even to his ears. He felt exhausted for no particular reason. He suspected that it wasn’t the after-effects of the fever, or not that alone. They’d been living on a knife-edge of suspense and adrenalin since Ekaterina and Juneau had put their plan into operation, and now that it appeared to be concluded — to have succeeded, in fact — the tension drained out of him.

  Koenig looked back at him, surprised, acknowledgement of his point but a sense of duty to a fellow sailor warring on his face. Nobody liked to leave a man behind in the water, but his fate was already sealed. The young officer looked unhappy, but nodded.

  And with that, the menace of revolution on the cruiser appeared to have ended.

  Gorchakov’s voice was raised in anger as Baxter approached the captain’s cabin, though it sounded reedy and petulant rather than the full-throated roar he had been subject to all those months ago, when he had first come aboard against his will. It was hard to make out the words, but from the way Juneau’s voice was raised in protest he guessed the interview was not going entirely as planned.

  The sentry outside the captain’s cabin raised a hand and shook his head at Baxter’s enquiring glance. No words were needed — no admittance would be given. Baxter didn’t want to bring down Gorchakov’s wrath on the sentry by trying to challenge the situation. Instead, he retired a few steps and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The click of shoes on the decking, a long but brisk stride, announced the approach of Ekaterina. She glanced at him, one eyebrow raised, and he nodded. Mission accomplished. She gave him a smile and swept past. He glanced down and saw she was carrying a revolver in one hand, held by the barrel to make it clear she was not about to offend anyone with it. It was a type of weapon he was familiar with — a .455 Webley.

  She merely glanced at the sentry as she approached, and his hand dropped back to his side. He may have been a sailor under Gorchakov’s command, but everyone knew she was a countess and was, more to the point, not someone who took ‘no’ for an answer. He knocked on the hatch and opened it at Gorchakov’s bark, stepping back smartly. She paused just over the hatch coaming and beckoned Baxter.

  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go in there, but she beckoned again with a more impatient gesture. He sighed and straightened, stepping through after her.

  Gorchakov was breathing hard, his face flushed, and that didn’t fill him with confidence. Yefimov’s slightly smug expression confirmed his suspicions.

  “And what is he doing here?” Gorchakov ground out, his French as always flat and uninflected.

  “He is a witness to what has transpired, Captain,” Ekaterina said coolly. In comparison, her command of the language was better even than her English.

  Gorchakov turned hot, angry eyes on her. Baxter realised he hadn’t seen the man at less than a distance for months, and now that he thought about it, it had been weeks since he’d seen him at all. He looked pale, shaky, and somehow diminished.

  But then, he is diminished. Baxter didn’t know much about the man, but he was clearly no seaman, no more than he was a capable captain. He had gradually relinquished command to Juneau, since well before the storm that had nearly done for them all.

  “As are you, no doubt?” Gorchakov said, his voice so far beyond polite it bordered on churlish.

  “I am, yes, and I am also one of his intended victims,” Ekaterina replied, gesturing sharply to the prisoner. She gave no hint of having been offended by his tone. She carefully laid the pistol on his desk. “This is the weapon, I believe, that was discharged at me in Gabon. You will see, if you break it, that two rounds have been fired.”

  Yefimov had paled when he saw the weapon. Gorchakov merely glanced at it dismissively. “I have never known a man,” he said, his voice shaking with growing anger, “so determined to prove his point and undermine a subordinate, that he would go to such lengths and draw so many people into his madness!”

  They all stared at Gorchakov, surprised despite themselves. Even Ekaterina, normally so poised, seemed taken aback by Gorchakov’s determination to bend and twist the facts until they suited him.

  “Sir…” Juneau began.

  “Enough!” Gorchakov bellowed. His rage seemed to lend him strength again, if only for a little while. “This will end! Mr Yefimov, you may go about your duties with my apologies. Captain of the second rank Juneau, you may consider yourself warned — if this occurs again, I will break you. I shall consider any necessary disciplinary measures. As to your so-called witness here — confine him to his quarters, where he belongs.”

  Baxter couldn’t help the look of utter contempt that crossed his face. “You may be interested to know,” he said, in slow and deliberately insolent Russian, “that I have captured the remaining revolutionaries. They await your pleasure in irons — all but the one who chose self-murder.”

  He had the satisfaction, at least, of seeing Yefimov’s mask crumble, before Gorchakov’s temper properly snapped.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Of all the absurd, blind, obstinate idiocies visited upon us and this squadron!” Juneau stormed, pacing the length of his cabin — not a great many strides, even for a short man like him. “This has to be the most iniquitous!”

  “I might even be tempted to suggest the Gorchakov is in on it as well,” Ekaterina said, her voice dark.

  Baxter watched them both, surprised they couldn’t see what was going on. But then, they were both used to being on the right side of this sort of situation. “It’s nothing like that,” he said mildly. “As you’ve said yourself, Juneau, Yefimov is his favourite. Would have been his first officer if you hadn’t been foisted upon him.”

  Juneau accepted that with a gracious wave that also invited him to keep speaking.

  “I’m quite prepared to believe that Gorchakov has accepted everything you both said to him, and just doesn’t want to admit to having favoured a man in the pay of British Intelligence. Or he has just come down on the side of his man, rather than the man imposed upon him. Either way, you have become an embarrassment to him.”

  Ekaterina cocked her head and gave him a shrewd look.

  Juneau looked unhappy, but nodded. “Justice, it seems, is quite a mutable thing.”

  “For your kind,” Baxter said, his voice harsher than he’d meant it to be, “yes.”

  Somewhere above, a drummer began beating; the summons for off-duty crew to come and witness punishment. Juneau put on his dress uniform cap, his unhappy expression deepening. Once again Gorchakov had a
bdicated responsibilities to him, and he would have to oversee the execution of the remaining — or what they hoped were the remaining — mutineers. They had been convicted at a summary court martial the day before and would soon be marched onto the cruiser’s foredeck.

  “And meanwhile, Yefimov goes about his business, appointed a de facto aide to the captain,” Juneau said bitterly, then strode from the cabin without another word.

  Ekaterina and Baxter remained seated. What was about to transpire on deck was not for the eyes of civilians, and on the off chance that Gorchakov actually appeared for the proceedings Baxter remained below. Juneau had studiously ignored his orders to have Baxter confined to quarters again, knowing he would get away with it as Gorchakov so rarely left his cabin.

  From above, they could hear Juneau reading the charges and sentence, as the regulations required, then the rattle of rifles being prepared and the sharp bark of orders. An odd silence, not peaceful in any way, settled over the ship. It wasn’t a complete silence, because a ship was never completely silent, but quiet enough that they could hear someone sobbing. He could only guess it was one of the men about to die.

  Juneau’s voice, almost gentle, cut through the sobbing. The rifles cracked, not quite as one, and two heavy thuds told Baxter the deed was done. He cocked his head as he heard an officer call for a coup de grâce, and a moment later a pistol popped, discharged at close range into the head of a mortally wounded prisoner to put him out of his suffering.

  Not a duty Baxter would have relished.

  “They deserved it,” Ekaterina said quietly. He couldn’t tell if her voice was filled with certainty or whether she was trying to convince herself.

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” he said shortly, rising and crossing to a porthole. The crew sounded muted as they dispersed from their solemn duty of witnessing the executions — the Marxists may have come close to killing them all, but few men enjoyed the spectacle of a former crewmate’s body being torn by heavy bullets fired at close range. It would be worse, of course, for the firing squad. No doubt Juneau had already ordered an extra tot of vodka for the men who’d had that unpleasant task.

  The ships of the reunited squadron sprawled off to port, once again lost to the sight of the world and their own high command. The enormous armada was hoved to and taking on coal, and judging from how high the colliers sat in the water it was the last of their immediate supply. The Yaroslavich, under sail as she had been for some days, was at least spared this.

  “Always in such a rush,” he murmured. Normally that would have suited him — indeed, he had been aching to be at sea after the weeks of enforced inactivity in the last idyllic bay they had rested him. He just felt … drained. As though he needed time to rest and gather his strength again. “I’m surprised Rozhestvensky is in such a hurry to meet with Togo.”

  “I am told the admiral is less concerned with finding the enemy, and that we are to run the Japanese gauntlet for Vladivostok after all,” she said drily. “The problem is we are being pursued — by ships of our own navy no less.”

  For Baxter, it summed up the madness of the whole expedition. Rumour had it that Rozhestvensky had stopped communicating with his superiors and certainly refused to let them know where he was. The Admiralty had ignored everything he said to them and had fallen in with Captain Klado’s idea to try to swamp the enemy with enough ships that they would not be able to deal with them all, even when those ships had no business being out of coastal waters or were so old and decrepit they were liable to sink with no provocation.

  “He runs from his own countrymen like the French ran from Nelson,” Baxter grunted.

  “Let us hope we do not succumb to the same fate,” Ekaterina said by his side — close by his side. He was acutely conscious of her presence, the warmth of her body so close to his. “Alas, your and my husband’s plan for us all to go ashore in Hong Kong will be foiled by Yefimov still being at large.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to stop us from…” Baxter started saying, before his brain caught up with his mouth.

  “As soon as he manages to get ashore, he will make for the nearest telegraph office and communicate with his handlers, and at that point they will know … what I am, and that you have been helping us. We cannot risk going ashore, even here. Ironically, this is probably the safest place for us now.”

  “Their reach cannot be that far. The nearest land is French Cochin, after all, and there’s no love for Britain there.”

  “We cannot know that — attempts on our lives have been made in a French colony before.” She smiled at him, raised a hand as though to lay it on his cheek and then dropped it suddenly, gaze lowering. “And thank you for confirming what you had cooked up with Cristov.”

  He knew then that he would never out-think her or out-manoeuvre her. “Your husband is now safe from the revolutionaries,” he pointed out. “Your work is done — if you went ashore here…”

  “The quickest way back to Russia and relative safety is to remain aboard — we are bound for Vladivostok after all. We are bound together, all of us, and will see this through to the end. I do not think you ever intended to leave the ship, in truth, though you may not have realised that yet. I just worry that, as we have failed to stop Yefimov, he will manage to put in motion some sort of display off Hong Kong that will drag our two countries into war. That we put that idea into his head.”

  Baxter pursed his lips. “I doubt he will try that, knowing as he does now that it was a trap. He will keep his head down and try to pretend this was all a bad dream. Even if he does, there wouldn’t be enough time for Arbuthnott to organise something surreptitious in the China Station. The bastard isn’t all-powerful, after all, and as you say — we are in a bit of a rush.”

  The most frenetic activity, he realised as he squinted out of the porthole, was an increasingly fraught exchange of signals between a number of ships — the flash of signal lamps and jerky hoists of flags, to his eye, certainly looked fraught.

  “I feel, my lady,” he said, “that something is afoot.”

  “It is … inconceivable!”

  Juneau’s face was almost purple with apoplectic rage. He paced the length of the wardroom and threw himself down in one of the armchairs. Maxim rose from his place in front of the fire and laid his head on his master’s knee, staring at him with huge eyes.

  The wardroom had remained a place of odd tensions and forced formality, full awareness of what had transpired between the two most senior officers now commonplace. That meant most of the officers avoided the comfortable lounge unless they absolutely had to. Formal dinners were cold and joyless affairs that were finished as quickly as possible.

  Machinations in the rest of the force, however, were at the root of Juneau’s increasingly dyspeptic mood this day. “They have won every competition, devoured every feast of coal faster than anyone, and carried the efficiency pendant every day from the very Baltic!” he stormed.

  Baxter poured a generous brandy for his friend, and an even more generous one for himself. “Who has done what, exactly?” he asked drily.

  “That pompous ass Bukhvostoff has doomed us all!” Juneau snapped, then raised his brandy balloon in a slightly shaky hand and took a draw. It seemed to calm him. “Do you know what he said, at the formal dinner before the squadron left? ‘There will be no victory, but we will know how to die’.”

  Baxter racked his brain for the name while Juneau declaimed. “Captain of the Oryol?”

  “Alexander III,” Juneau corrected him. “An equally vital ship, but not one that should have been put in the charge of that … that … nincompoop.”

  Baxter struggled to restrain a grin at the use of the English idiom.

  “You may smile, my friend, but this man has succeeded where every machination of Britain, Japan and Mother Nature herself have failed. Contrary to the initial plan, we will not be able to strike while the iron is hot, but must now wait to resupply — as his ship is out of coal.”

  Baxter bli
nked in surprise. As Juneau had said, Alexander III had consistently feasted faster than the other ships, always being first to signal she had completed coaling. “They lied?”

  “Oh, they were not dishonest — merely lazy and incompetent. The officers made a rough assessment based on what they thought had come aboard, rather than precise measures. It only came to light because of the need for exact endurance for the run to Vladivostok. She will not make it, and as a quarter of the main battle line she is too critical to leave behind.”

  Baxter dropped into a chair across the cold fireplace from his friend. “So any attempt to break through cannot be made without resupply. Do we know what the admiral’s intentions are?”

  “I do not know that he even knows what his intentions are, and I am told he barely shares his council with Konstantin or his other staff officers anymore. The cruisers and sundry small vessels will be the last to know. Mark my words, though — this will have taken the fire out of him.

  “Shore leave has finally been granted,” Juneau said heavily some days later. “Yefimov is ordered ashore in the first boat to, ah, conduct important business for the captain. At the telegraph office.”

  The squadron rode at anchor in Cam Ranh Bay, in French Cochin. The warm water was clear and blue and a beach of white and yellow sand rose to forest in the distance. On the surface, it was a peaceful scene entirely at odds with their martial purpose. On closer inspection, though, it was clear that this had once been a powerful fortification of the French Empire. Collapsed barrack blocks, mouldering ramparts and rusty ironwork were slowly being overwhelmed by the jungle. All that remained of the colonial presence was a desperate little town of once-whitewashed buildings, hanging on despite no longer having a purpose.

  Baxter felt his mouth quirk at the irony of that. “It is madness, but a depressingly familiar one,” he sighed. “Every navy seems to be subject to this nepotism. However, I’m told we will only remain here long enough to coal, so I see little danger of him being able to get up to too much mischief.”