by Wilbur Smith
– 62 –
Flynn stood up with slow dignity from where he had been leaning against the bole of the palm tree.
‘Where are you going?’ Rosa opened her eyes and looked up at him.
‘To do something you can’t do for me.’
‘That’s the third time in an hour!’ Rosa was suspicious.
‘That’s why they call it the East African quickstep,’ said Flynn, and moved off ponderously into the undergrowth. He reached the lantana bush, and looked around carefully. He couldn’t trust Rosa not to follow him. Satisfied, he dropped to his knees and dug with his hands in the loose sand.
With the air of an old-time pirate unearthing a chest of doubloons, he lifted the bottle from its grave, and withdrew the cork.
The neck of the bottle was in his mouth, when he heard the muted beat of the returning aircraft. The bottle stayed there a while longer, Flynn’s Adam’s apple pulsing up and down his throat as he swallowed, but his eyes swivelled upwards and creased in concentration.
With a sigh of intense pleasure he recorked, and laid the bottle once more to rest, kicked sand over it, and set course for the beach.
‘Can you see them?’ he shouted the question at Rosa as he came down through the palms. She was standing out in the open. Her head was thrown back so that the long braid of her hair hung down to her waist behind. She did not answer him, but the set of her expression was hard and strained with anxiety. The men standing about her were silent also, held by an expectant dread.
Flynn looked up and saw it coming in like a wounded bird, the engine stuttering and surging irregularly, streaming a long bluish streak of oily smoke from the exhaust manifold, the wings rocking crazily, and a loose tangle of wreckage hanging and swinging under the belly where one of the landing-wheels had been shot away.
It sagged wearily towards the beach, the broken beat of the engine failing so they could hear the whisper of the wind in her rigging.
The single landing-wheel touched down on the hard sand and for fifty yards she ran true, then with a jerk she toppled sideways. The port wing bit into the sand, slewing her towards the edge of the sea, the tail came up and over. There was a crackling, ripping, tearing sound; and in a dust storm of flying sand she cartwheeled, stern over stem.
The propeller tore into the beach, disintegrating in a blur of flying splinters, and from the forward cockpit a human body was flung clear, spinning in the air so that the outflung limbs were the spokes of a wheel. It fell with a splash in the shallow water at the edge of the beach, while the aircraft careened onwards, tearing herself to pieces. A lower wing broke off – the guy wires snapping with a sound like a volley of musketry. The body of the machine slowed as it hit the water, skidding to a standstill on its back, with the surf washing around it. Da Silva hung motionless in the back cockpit, suspended upside down by his safety-straps, his arms dangling.
The next few seconds of silence were appalling.
‘Help the pilot! I’ll get Sebastian.’ Rosa broke it at last. Mohammed and two other Askari ran with her towards where Sebastian was lying awash, a piece of flotsam at the water’s edge.
‘Come on!’ Flynn shouted at the men near him, and lumbered through the soft fluffy sand towards the wreck. They never reached it.
There was a concussion, a vast disturbance in the air that sucked at their eardrums, as the gasoline ignited in explosive combustion. The machine and the surface. of the sea about it were instantly transformed into a roaring, raging sheet of flame.
They backed away from the heat. The flames were dark red laced with satanic black smoke, and they ate the canvas skin from the body of the aircraft, exposing the wooden framework beneath.
In the heart of the flames da Silva still hung in his cockpit, a blackened monkey-like shape as his clothing burned. Then the fire ate through the straps of his harness and he dropped heavily into the shallow water, hissing and sizzling as the flames were quenched.
The fire was still smouldering by the time Sebastian, regained consciousness, and was able to lift himself on one elbow. Muzzily he stared down the beach at the smoking wreckage. The shadows of the palms lay like the stripes of a tiger on the sand that the low evening sun had softened to a dull gold.
‘Da Silvar?’ Sebastian’s voice was thick and shured. His nose was broken and squashed across his face. Although Rosa had wiped most of the blood away, there were still little black crusts of it in his nostrils and at the corners of his mouth. Both his eyes were slits in the swollen plum-coloured bruises that bulged from the sockets.
‘No!’ Flynn shook his head. ‘He didn’t make it.’
‘Dead?’ whispered Sebastian.
‘We buried him back in the bush.’
‘What happened?’ asked Rosa. ‘What on earth happened out there?’ She sat close beside him, protective as a mother over her child. Slowly Sebastian turned his head to look at her.
‘We found the Blücher.’ he said.
– 63 –
Captain Arthur Joyce, R.N., was a happy man. He stooped over his cabin desk, his hands placed open and flat on either side of the spread Admiralty chart. He glowed with satisfaction as he looked down at the hand-drawn circle in crude blue pencil as though it were the signature of the President of the Bank of England on a cheque for a million sterling.
‘Good!’ he said. ‘Oh, very good,’ and he pursed his lips as though he were about to whistle ‘Tipperary’. Instead he made a sucking sound, and smiled across at Sebastian. Behind his flattened nose and blue-ringed eyes, Sebastian smiled back at him.
‘A damn good show, Oldsmith!’ Joyce’s expression changed, the little lights of recognition sparkled suddenly in his eyes. ‘Oldsmith?’ he repeated. ‘I say, didn’t you open the bowling for Sussex in the 1911 cricket season?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘Good Lord!’ Joyce beamed at him. ‘I’ll never forget your opening over to Yorkshire in the first match of the season. You dismissed Graham and Penridge for two runs – two for two, hey?’
‘Two for two, it was.’ Sebastian liked this man.
‘Fiery stuff! And then you made fifty-five runs?’
‘Sixty-five,’ Sebastian corrected him. ‘A record ninth wicket partnership with Clifford Dumont of – one hundred and eighty-six!’
‘Yes! Yes! I remember it well. Fiery stuff! You were damned unlucky not to play for England.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Sebastian in modest agreement.
‘Yes, you were.’ Joyce pursed his lips again. ‘Damned unlucky.’
Flynn O’Flynn had not understood a word of this. He was thrashing around in his chair like an old buffalo in a trap, bored to the point of pain. Rosa Oldsmith had understood no more than he had, but she was fascinated. It was clear that Captain Joyce knew of some outstanding accomplishment of Sebastian’s, and if a man like Joyce knew of it – then Sebastian was famous. She felt pride swell in her chest and she smiled on Sebastian also.
‘I didn’t know, Sebastian. Why didn’t you tell me?’ She glowed warmly at him.
‘Some other time,’ Joyce interrupted quickly. ‘Now we must get on with this other business.’ And he returned his attention to the chart on the desk.
‘Now I want you to cast your mind back. Shut your eyes and try to see it again. Every detail you can remember, every little detail – it might be important. Did you see any signs of damaged?’
Obediently Sebastian closed his eyes, and was surprised at how vividly the acid of fear had engraved the picture of Blücher on his mind.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There were holes in her. Hundreds of holes, little black ones. And at the front end – the bows – there were trapezes hanging down on ropes, near the water. You know the kind that they use when they paint a high building …’
Joyce nodded at his secretary to record every word of it.
– 64 –
The single fan suspended over the table in the wardroom hummed quietly, the blades stirred the air that was moist
and warm as the bedding of a malarial patient.
Except for the soft clink of cutlery on china, the only other sound was that of Commissioner Fleischer drinking his soup. It was thick, green pea soup, scalding hot, so that Fleischer found it necessary to blow heavily on each spoonful before ingesting it with a noise, not of the same volume, but with the delicate tonal quality, of a flushing water closet. During the pause while he crumbled a slice of black bread into his soup, Fleischer looked across the board at Lieutenant Kyller.
‘So you did not find the enemy flying-machine, then?’
‘No.’ Kyller went on fiddling with his wine glass without looking up. For forty-eight hours he and his patrols had searched the swamps and channels and mangrove forests for the wreckage of the aircraft. He was exhausted and covered with insect bites.
‘Ja,’ Fleischer nodded solemnly. ‘It fell only a short way, but it did not hit the trees. I was sure of that. I have seen sand-grouse do the same thing sometimes when you shoot them with a shot-gun. Pow! They come tumbling down like this …’ He fluttered his hand in the air, letting it fall towards his soup, ‘ … then suddenly they do this.’ The hand took flight again in the direction of Commander (Engineering) Lochtkamper’s rugged Neanderthal face. They all watched it.
‘The little bird flies away home. It was bad shooting from so close,’ said Fleischer, and ended the demonstration by picking up his soup spoon, and the moist warm silence once more gripped the wardroom.
Commander Lochtkamper stoked his mouth as though it were one of his furnaces. The knuckles of both his hands were knocked raw by contact with steel plate and wire rope. Even when Fleischer’s hand had flown into his face, he had not been distracted from his thoughts. His mind was wholly occupied with steel and machinery, weights and points of balance. He wanted to achieve twenty degrees of starboard list on Blücher, so that a greater area of her bottom would be exposed to his welders. This meant displacing one thousand tons of dead weight. It seemed an impossibility – unless we flood the port magazines, he thought, and take the guns from their turrets and move them. Then we could rig camels under her …
‘It was not bad shooting,’ said the gunnery lieutenant. ‘She was flying too close, the rate of track was …’ He broke off, wiped the side of his long pointed nose with his forefinger, and regarded balefully the sweat that came away on it. This fat peasant would not understand, he would not waste energy in explaining the technicalities. He contented himself with repeating, ‘It was not bad shooting.’
‘I think we must accept that the enemy machine has returned safely to her base,’ said Lieutenant Kyller. ‘Therefore we can expect the enemy to mount some form of offensive action against us in the very near future.’ Kyller enjoyed a position of privilege in the wardroom. No other of the junior officers would have dared to express his opinions so freely. Yet none of them would have made as much sense as Kyller. When he spoke his senior officers listened, if not respectfully, at least attentively. Kyller had passed out sword of honour cadet from Bremerhaven Naval Academy in 1910. His father was a Baron, a personal friend of the Kaiser’s, and an Admiral of the Imperial Fleet. Kyller was wardroom favourite, not only because of his dark good looks and courteous manner – but also because of his appetite for hard work, his meticulous attention to detail, and his ready mind. He was a good officer to have aboard – a credit to the ship.
‘What can the enemy do?’ Fleischer asked with scorn. He did not share the general opinion of Ernst Kyller. ‘We are safe here – what can he do?’
‘A superficial study of naval history will reveal, sir, that the English can be expected to do what you least expect them to do. And that they will do it, quickly, efficiently and with iron purpose.’ Kyller scratched the lumpy red insect bites behind his left ear.
‘Bah!’ said Fleischer, and sprayed a little pea soup with the violence of his disgust. ‘The English are fools and cowards – at the worst, they will skulk off the mouth of the river. They would not dare come in here after us.’
‘I have no doubt that time will prove you correct, sir.’ This was Kyller’s phrase of violent disagreement with a senior officer, and from experience Captain von Kleine and his commanders recognized it. They smiled a little.
‘This soup is bitter,’ said Fleischer, satisfied that he had carried the argument. ‘The cook has used sea-water in it.’
The accusation was so outrageous, that even von Kleine looked up from his plate.
‘Please do not let our humble hospitality delay you, Herr Commissioner. You must be anxious to return up-river to your wood-cutting duties.’
And Fleischer subsided quickly, hunching over his food. Von Kleine transferred his gaze to Kyller.
‘Kyller, you will not be returning with the Herr Commissioner. I am sending Ensign Proust with him this trip. You will be in command of the first line of defence that I plan to place at the mouth of the delta, in readiness for the English attack. You will attend the conference in my cabin after this meal, please.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ His voice was husky with gratitude for the honour his captain was conferring upon him. Von Kleine looked from him to his gunnery lieutenant.
‘You also, please, Guns. I want to relieve you of your beloved upper deck pom-poms.’
‘You mean to take them off their mountings, sir?’ the gunnery lieutenant asked, looking at von Kleine dolefully over his long doleful nose.
‘I regret the necessity,’ von Kleine told him sympathetically.
– 65 –
‘Well, Henry. We were right. Blücher’s there.’ ‘Unfortunately, sir.’ ‘Two heavy cruisers tied up indefinitely on blockade service.’
Admiral Sir Percy thrust out his lower lip lugubriously as he regarded the plaques of Renounce and Pegasus on the Indian Ocean plot. ‘There is work for them elsewhere.’
‘There is, at that,’ agreed Henry Green.
‘That request of Joyce’s for two motor torpedo-boats …’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘We must suppose he intends mounting a torpedo attack into the delta.’
‘It looks like it, sir.’
‘It might work – worth a try anyway. What can we scratch together for him?’
‘There is a full squadron at Bombay, and another at Aden, sir.’
For five seconds, Sir Percy Howe reviewed the meagre forces with which he was expected to guard two oceans. With this new submarine menace, he could not detach a single ship from the approaches to the Suez Canal – it would have to be Bombay. ‘Send him an M. T. B. from the Bombay squadron.’
‘He asked for two, sir.’
‘Joyce knows full well that I only let him have half of anything he requests. He always doubles up.’
‘What about this recommendation for a decoration, sir?’
‘The fellow who spotted the Blücher?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘A bit tricky – Portuguese irregular and all that sort of thing.’
‘He’s a British subject, sir.’
‘Then he shouldn’t be with the dagos,’ said Sir Percy. ‘Leave it over until the operation is completed. We’ll think about it after we’ve sunk the Blücher.’
– 66 –
The sunset was blood and roses, nude pink and tarnished gold as the British blockade squadron stood in towards the land.
Renounce led with the commodore’s penant flying at her masthead. In the smooth wide road of her wake, Pegasus slid over the water. Their silhouettes were crisp and black against the garish colours of the sunset. There was something prim and old-maidish about the lines of a heavy cruiser – none of the solid majesty of a battleship, nor the jaunty devil-may-care rake of a destroyer.
Close in under Pegasus’s beam, screened by her hull from the land, like a cygnet swimming beside the swan, rode the motor torpedo-boat.
Even in this light surface chop she was taking in water. Each wave puffed up over her bows and then streamed back greenish and cream along her decks. The spray rattled against the thin can
vas that screened the open bridge.
Flynn O’Flynn crouched behind the screen and cursed the vaunting ambition that had led him to volunteer as pilot for this expedition. He glanced across at Sebastian who stood in the open wing of the bridge, behind the canvas-shrouded batteries of Lewis guns. Sebastian was grinning as the warm spray flew back into his face and trickled down his cheeks.
Joyce had recommended Sebastian for a Distinguished Service Order. This was almost more than Flynn could bear. He wanted one also. He had decided to go along now for that reason alone. Therefore Sebastian was directly to blame for Flynn’s present discomfort, and Flynn felt a small warmth of satisfaction as he looked at the flattened, almost negroid contours of Sebastian’s new nose. The young bastard deserved it, and he found himself wishing further punishment on his son-in-law.
‘Distinguished Service Order and all …’ he grunted. ‘A half-trained chimpanzee could have done what he did. Yet who was it who found the wheels in the first place? No, Flynn Patrick, there just ain’t no justice in this world, but we’ll show the sons of bitches this time …’
His thoughts were interrupted by the small bustle of activity on the bridge around him. An Aldis lamp was winking from the high dark bulk of Renounce ahead of them.
The lieutenant commanding the torpedo-boat spelled the message aloud.
‘Flag to YN2. D … P departure point. Good luck.’ He was a dumpy amorphous figure in his duffle coat with the collar turned up. ‘Thanks a lot, old chap – and one up your pipe also. No, Signaller, don’t make that.’ He went on quickly, ‘YN2 to Flag. Acknowledged!’ Then turning to the engine voice-pipe. ‘Both engines stop,’ he said.
The beat of her engines faded away, and she wallowed in the trough of the next wave. Renounce and Pegasus sailed on sedately, leaving the tiny vessel rolling crazily in the turbulence of their wakes. A lonely speck five miles off the mouth of the Rufiji delta, too far off for the shorewatchers to see her in the fading evening light.