‘It was the Bo’sun who first came up with the suggestion. I think I agree with him. Bo’sun, tell the Captain what you told me.’
‘I’ve had time to think about this,’ McKinnon said apologetically. ‘You haven’t. From what Dr Singh tells me about the pain you must be suffering, it must be a damn hard job to think at all. It’s my belief, sir, that the Lieutenant’s Luftwaffe have sold him down the river.’
‘Sold him down—what the devil is that meant to mean?’
‘I don’t think he knew he was attacking a hospital ship. Sure, he knows now. But he didn’t when he dropped the bombs.’
‘He didn’t know! Bomber pilots, I would remind you, Bo’sun, are supposed to have excellent eyesight. All those red crosses—’
‘I don’t think he saw them, sir. The lights were off. It was half dark. As he was approaching from dead astern, he certainly couldn’t have seen the crosses on the sides and he was so low the superstructure would have blocked off any view of the for’ard cross. As for the cross aft, we were making so much smoke at the time that it might have been obscured. And I can’t imagine for a moment that Lieutenant Ulbricht would have made so suicidal an approach, so suicidal an attack on the San Andreas, if he had known there was a British frigate only a couple of miles away. I wouldn’t have put his chances of survival very high.’
‘Neither did I.’ Lieutenant Ulbricht spoke with feeling.
‘And the clincher, sir. Those four Heinkel torpedo-bombers. I know you didn’t see them, sir, even hear them, you were unconscious at the time. But Chief Patterson and I saw them. They deliberately avoided us—lifted over us—and headed straight for the Andover. So what do you make of it, sir? A Condor attacks us—I’m sure it must have been with low-power bombs—and the Heinkels, who could have sent us to the bottom, didn’t. The Heinkel pilots knew the Andover was there: Lieutenant Ulbricht did not. The Luftwaffe, Captain, would seem to have two hands, with the left hand not telling the right hand what it was doing. I’m more than ever convinced that the Lieutenant was sold down the river, sold by his own high command and the saboteur who blacked out our Red Cross lights.
‘Besides, he doesn’t look like a man who would bomb a hospital ship.’
‘How the hell can I tell what he looks like?’ Bowen spoke with, understandably, some irritation. ‘A babyface with a harp can be no less of a murderer, no matter what he looks like. But yes, I agree, Bo’sun, it does raise some very odd questions. Questions that seem to call for some very odd answers. Don’t you agree, Sister?’
‘Well, yes, perhaps.’ Her tone was doubtful, grudging. ‘Mr McKinnon could be right.’
‘He is right.’ The voice was Kennet’s and it was very firm.
‘Mr Kennet.’ Bowen turned to the bed on the other side of him and cursed, not too sotto voce, as his neck and head reminded him that sudden movements were not advisable. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘Never more awake, sir. Just that I don’t feel too much like talking. Of course the Bo’sun’s right. Has to be.’
‘Ah. Well.’ More carefully, this time, Bowen turned back to face Ulbricht. ‘No apologies for what you have done but maybe you’re not the black-hearted murderer we thought you were. Bo’sun, Chief tells me that you’ve been smashing furniture in my cabin.’
‘No more than I had to, sir. Couldn’t find the keys.’
‘The keys are in the back left-hand corner of the left drawer in my desk. Look in the right-hand locker under my bunk. There’s a chronometer there. See if it’s working.’
‘A spare chronometer, sir?’
‘Many captains carry one. I always have done. If the sextant has survived the blast, maybe the chronometer has too. The sextant is functioning, isn’t it?’
‘As far as I can tell.’
‘May I see it?’ Lieutenant Ulbricht said. He examined it briefly. ‘It works.’
McKinnon left, taking the sextant and chart with him.
When he returned, he was smiling. ‘Chronometer is intact, sir. I’ve put Trent back on the wheel and Naseby in your cabin. There he can see anybody who tries to go up the bridge ladder and, more important, clobber any unauthorized person who tries to come into your cabin. I’ve told him the only authorized people are Mr Patterson, Mr Jamieson and myself.’
‘Excellent,’ Bowen said. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht, we may yet call upon your services.’ He paused. ‘You are aware, of course, that you will be navigating yourself into captivity?’
‘Not a firing squad?’
‘That would be a poor return for your—ah—professional services. No.’
‘Better a live prisoner-of-war than floating around and frozen to death in a rubber raft, which I would have been but for Mr McKinnon here.’ Ulbricht propped himself up in his bed. ‘Well, no time like the present.’
McKinnon placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Sorry, Lieutenant, it’ll have to wait.’
‘You mean—Dr Singh?’
‘He wouldn’t be too happy but it’s not that. Blizzard. Zero visibility. No stars, and there’ll be none tonight.’
‘Ah.’ Ulbricht lay back in bed. ‘I wasn’t feeling all that energetic, anyway.’
It was then that, for the third time that day, the lights failed. McKinnon switched on his torch, located and switched on four nickel-cadmium emergency lights and looked thoughtfully at Patterson. Bowen said: ‘Something up?’
‘Sorry, sir,’ Patterson said. He had momentarily forgotten that the Captain couldn’t see. ‘Another blasted power-cut.’
‘Another. Jesus!’ The Captain sounded less concerned and angry than just disgusted. ‘No sooner do we think we have cleared up one problem than we have another. Flannelfoot, I’ll be bound.’
‘Maybe, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘Maybe not. I don’t imagine the lights have failed because someone has been drugged or chloroformed. I don’t imagine they’ve failed because someone wanted to douse our topside Red Cross lights, because visibility is zero and it would serve no point. If it’s sabotage, it’s sabotage for some other reason.’
‘I’ll go see if they can tell me anything in the engine-room,’ Patterson said. ‘Looks like another job for Mr Jamieson.’
‘He’s working in the superstructure,’ McKinnon said. ‘I was going there anyway. I’ll get him for you. Meet you back here, sir?’ Patterson nodded and hurried from the ward.
On the now relatively stable upper deck the lifelines were no longer needed as such but were invaluable as guidelines, for, with the absence of deck-lights and the driving snow, McKinnon literally could not see an inch before his face. He brought up short as he bumped into someone.
‘Who’s that.’ His voice was sharp.
‘McKinnon? Jamieson. Not Flannelfoot. He’s been at it again.’
‘Looks like it, sir. Mr Patterson would like to see you in the engine-room.’
On the deck level of the superstructure the Bo’sun found three of the engine-room crew welding a cross-plate to two beams, the harsh glare of the oxy-acetylene flame contrasting eerily with the utter blackness around. Two decks up he came across Naseby in the Captain’s cabin, a marlin-spike, butt end cloth-wrapped, in his hand and a purposeful expression on his face.
‘No visitors, George?’
‘Nary a visitor, Archie, but it looks as if someone has been visiting somewhere.’
The Bo’sun nodded and went up to the bridge, checked with Trent and descended the ladder again. He stopped outside the Captain’s cabin and looked at Naseby. ‘Notice anything?’
‘Yes, I notice something. I notice that the engine revs have dropped, we’re slowing. This time, perhaps, a bomb in the engine-room?’
‘No. We’d have heard it in the hospital.’
‘A gas grenade would have done just as well.’
‘You’re getting as bad as I am,’ McKinnon said.
He found Patterson and Jamieson in the hospital dining area. They were accompanied, to McKinnon’s momentary surprise, by Ferguson. But the surprise was onl
y momentary.
‘Engine-room’s okay, then?’ McKinnon said.
Patterson said: ‘Yes. Reduced speed as a precaution. How did you know?’
‘Ferguson here is holed up with Curran in the carpenter’s shop, which is as far for’ard as you can get in this ship. So the trouble is up near the bows—nothing short of an earthquake would normally get Ferguson out of his bunk—or whatever he’s using for a bunk up there.’
Ferguson looked and sounded aggrieved. ‘Just dropping off, I was, when Curran and me heard this explosion. Felt it, too. Directly beneath us. Not so much an explosion as a bang or a clang. Something metallic, anyway. Curran shouted that we’d been mined or torpedoed but I told him not to be daft, if a mine or torpedo had gone off beneath us we wouldn’t have been alive to talk about it. So I came running aft—well, as fast as you can run on that deck—it’s like a skating rink.’
McKinnon said to Patterson: ‘So you think the ship’s hull is open to the sea?’
‘I don’t know what to think, but if it is then the slower we go the less chance of increasing the damage to the hull. Not too slow, of course, if we lose steerage way then we’ll start rolling or corkscrewing or whatever and that would only increase the strain on the hull. I suppose Captain Bowen has the structural plans in his cabin?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose he has but it doesn’t matter. I know the lay-out. I’m sure Mr Jamieson does as well.’
‘Oh dear. That means I don’t?’
‘Didn’t say that, sir. Let me put it this way. Next time I see a chief engineer crawling around the bilges will be the first time. Besides, you have to stay up top, sir. If an urgent decision has to be taken the bilges are no place for the commanding officer to be.’
Patterson sighed. ‘I often wonder, Bo’sun, where one draws a line between commonsense and diplomacy.’
‘This is it, you think, Bo’sun?’
‘It has to be, sir.’ Jamieson and the Bo’sun, together with Ferguson and McCrimmon, were in the paint store, a lowermost deck compartment on the port side for’ard. Facing them was an eight-clamped door set in a watertight bulkhead. McKinnon placed the palm of his hand against the top of the door and then against the bottom. ‘Normal temperatures above—well, almost normal—and cold, almost freezing, below. Seawater on the other side, sir—not more than eighteen inches, I would think.’
‘Figures,’ Jamieson said. ‘We’re not more than a few feet below the waterline here and that’s as much as the compressed air will let in. That’s one of the ballast rooms, of course.’
‘That’s the ballast room, sir.’
‘And this is the paint store.’ Jamieson gestured at the irregularly welded patch of metal on the ship’s side. ‘Chief Engineer never did have any faith in what he called those Russkie shipwrights.’
‘That’s as maybe, sir. But I don’t see any Russian shipwrights leaving a time-bomb in the ballast room.’
Russian shipwrights had indeed been aboard the San Andreas, which had sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, as the freighter Ocean Belle, Ocean being a common prefix for American-built Liberty Ships. At the time of sailing, the Ocean Belle was neither fish nor fowl but was, in fact, a three-parts completed hospital ship. Its armament, at that stage, had been removed, its magazines emptied, all but the essential watertight bulkheads breached or partially cut away, the operating theatre completed, as were the cabins for the medical staff and the dispensary, already fully stocked: the medical store was almost finished, the galley partially so, whereas work had not yet begun on the wards, the recovery room and messes. The medical staff, which had come from Britain, were already on board.
Orders were received from the Admiralty that the Ocean Belle was to join the next fast convoy to Northern Russia, which had already assembled at Halifax. Captain Bowen had not refused—refusal of an Admiralty order was not permitted—but he had objected in a fashion so strongly as to be tantamount to refusal. He was damned, he said, if he was going to sail to Russia with a shipload of civilians aboard. He was referring to the medical staff aboard and, as they constituted only a round dozen, they could hardly have been called a shipload: he was also conveniently overlooking the fact that every member of the crew, from himself downwards, was also, technically, a civilian.
The medical staff, Bowen had maintained, were a different kind of civilian. Dr Singh had pointed out to him that ninety per cent of the medical staff of the armed forces were civilians, only they wore different kinds of uniforms: the staff on board the San Andreas wore different kinds of uniforms too, which happened to be white. Captain Bowen had then fallen back on his last defence: he was not, he said, going to take women through a war zone—he was referring to the six nursing staff aboard. A by now thoroughly irritated escort commander forcefully made three points that had forcefully been made to him by the Admiralty: thousands of women and children had been in war zones while being transported as refugees to the United States and Canada: in the current year, as compared to the previous two years, U-boat losses had quadrupled while Mercantile Marine losses had been cut by eighty per cent: and the Russians had requested, or rather insisted, that as many wounded Allied personnel as possible be removed from their overcrowded Archangel hospitals. Captain Bowen, as he should have done at the beginning, had capitulated and the Ocean Belle, still painted in its wartime grey but carrying adequate supplies of white, red and green paint, had sailed with the convoy.
As convoys to Northern Russia went, it had been an exceptionally uneventful one. Not one merchant ship and not one escort vessel had been lost. Only two incidents had occurred and both had involved the Ocean Belle. Some way south of Jan Mayen Island they had come across a venerable V and W class destroyer, stopped in the water with an engine breakdown. This destroyer had been a unit of the destroyer screen escorting a previous convoy and had stopped to pick up survivors from a sinking cargo vessel, which had been heavily on fire. The time had been about 2.30 p.m., well after sunset, and the rescue operation had been interrupted by a brief air attack. The attacker had not been seen but had obviously no difficulty in seeing the destroyer, silhouetted as it was against the blazing cargo ship. It had been assumed that the attacker was a reconnaissance Condor, for it had dropped no bombs and contented itself with raking the bridge with machine gun fire, which had effectively destroyed the radio office. Thus, when the engines had broken down some hours later—the breakdown had nothing to do with the Condor, the V and Ws were superannuated, overworked and much plagued by mechanical troubles—they had been unable to contact the vanished convoy.*
The wounded survivors were taken aboard the Ocean Belle. The destroyer itself, together with its crew and unwounded survivors, was taken in tow by an S-class destroyer. It was later learnt that both vessels had reached Scapa Flow intact.
Three days afterwards, somewhere off North Cape, they had come across an equally ancient ‘Kingfisher’ corvette, which had no business whatever in those distant waters. It, too, was stopped, and so deep in the water astern that its poop was already awash. It, too, had survivors aboard—the survivors of the crew of a Russian submarine that had been picked up from a burning oil-covered sea.* The Russians, for the most part badly burned, had been transferred, inevitably, to the Ocean Belle, the crew being transferred to an escort destroyer. The corvette was sunk by gunfire. It was during this transfer that the Ocean Belle had been holed twice, just below the water line, on the port side, in the paint store and ballast room. The reason for the damage had never been established.
The convoy had gone to Archangel but the Ocean Belle had put in to Murmansk—neither Captain Bowen nor the escort commander had thought it wise that the Ocean Belle should proceed any further than necessary in its then present condition—slightly down by the head and with a list to port. There were no dry dock facilities available but the Russians were masters of improvisation—the rigours of war had forced them to be. They topped up the after tanks, drained the for’ard tanks and removed the for’ard slabs of concrete ballast unt
il the holes in the paint store and ballast room were just clear of the water, after which it had taken them only a few hours to weld plates in position over the holes. The equalization of the tanks and the replacement of ballast had then brought the Ocean Belle back to an even keel.
While those repairs were being effected a small army of Russian carpenters had worked, three shifts in every twenty-four hours, in the hospital section of the ship, fitting out the wards, recovery room, messes, galley and medical store. Captain Bowen was astonished beyond measure. On his previous visits to the two Russian ports he had encountered from his allies, blood brothers who should have been in tears of gratitude for the dearly-bought and vital supplies being ferried to their stricken country, nothing but sullenness, indifference, a marked lack of cooperation and, not occasionally, downright hostility. The baffling sea-change he could only attribute to the fact that the Russians were only showing their heartfelt appreciation for the Ocean Belle having brought their wounded submariners back home.
When they sailed it was as a hospital ship—Bowen’s crew, paintbrushes in hands, had worked with a will during their brief stay in Murmansk. They did not, as everyone had expected, proceed through the White Sea to pick up the wounded servicemen in Archangel. The Admiralty’s orders had been explicit: they were to proceed, and at all speed, to the port of Aberdeen in Scotland.
Jamieson replaced the cover of the small electrical junction box, having effectively isolated the ballast room from the main power system. He tapped the watertight door. ‘Short in there—could have been caused by the blast or sea-water, it doesn’t matter—should have blown a fuse somewhere. It didn’t. Somewhere or other there’s a fuse, that’s been tampered with—fuse-wire replaced by a nail or some such. That doesn’t matter either. I’m not going to look for it. McCrimmon, go ask the engine-room to try the generator.’
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