'I will, will I?' I said. 'Well, I don't know what you call "expert", but the man we already recruited spent nearly four years as an Italian frogman. He once spent a night standing in pitch darkness on the floor of Gibraltar Harbour mending a timing device while the Navy threw every grenade they could find into the harbour. They only stopped in the morning because they calculated no one could be alive down there. Then he swam up under the North Mole, fixed a charge weighing 550 Ib. to a tanker and swam back to Algeciras. He did that twenty years ago when you were wearing a Mickey Mouse gas-mask and saving your coupons for a Mars bar. If you are going to work here there's not going to be any half-way for ladies and it'll mean being a lot smarter than you've been so far. Why do you think London sent that message in code to the embassy? Why do you think Lisbon couldn't send me a wire? They trusted you with it because they wanted to make sure it didn't get intercepted, and yet as soon as I bend a little muscle at you you broadcast it.' I waved down his explanations. 'Go and get your equipment,' I said. , Giorgio made some quiet remarks about Clive's bright-green undersea gear, but it was much more professional than I feared it might be. As- for Charlotte, I'd never seen her before, but there were two things about her one could never forget. However, she set to work in the kitchen in a way that surprised me. They were both dying to prove how efficient and tough they were.
After breakfast we had a conference. Joe spread the linen Admiralty charts across the table and showed us the way the U-boat was lying. The echo-sounder charts were strips of electrolytic paper about seven niches wide. Down each was a thick black uneven band (the ocean floor) and a thin black uneven band, separated by a quarter-inch of white. The thinner of the two bands was fish or objects lying along the ocean floor. On one chart a shape could be interpreted. I was prepared to take an expert's word that it resembled a U-boat According to Singleton, Naval Intelligence were very keen to get the log of the U-boat as it was of a new type about which they had very little information. I asked Giorgio and Joe what the chances were.
Joe said, 'If the log wasn't dumped overboard before the sub. sank, it's easy.'
'You know where to find the log book? I can ask London about stowage procedures.'
Giorgio said, 'It will not, I think, prove necessary. I have encountered some experience of the life aboard the German craft.' We exchanged thin grins.
'And if they did jettison it?'
'In that case it depends upon: one,' Giorgio tapped his index finger, 'how far the boat traversed between the jettison and sinking, and two, if the Kelvin Hughes apparatus will encounter such a small flat objective which will likely submerge into the mud, and three,' the gold ring on his finger flashed in the bright sunlight, 'if the boat has been moved much distance by means of the underwater currents which I suspect are strong.'
After that Giorgio asked Joe about tidal movement at surface, absolute slack-water times and slack-water duration, and they discussed ways of setting out a diving timetable in order to use those facts to advantage.
Charlotte brought in a large tin pot of coffee and a plate of black figs. She said, 'After I've drunk my coffee I'll go and do the bedroom.' There was a moment or two hi which we were all alone with our thoughts.
There was no point hi getting the boat into position so late in the day. I told everyone to relax that afternoon, we'd have another briefing that night and go out on the morning tide for a reconnaissance.
Dawlish had cleverly realized that the way to prevent someone deserting from a situation was to put him in charge of it.
The sea was kicking idly at the beach that Friday after noon. Charlotte was nearly inside a white bathing suit, Giorgio was doing handstands that had her ooing and clapping her brittle little hands together, and Singleton was jumping in and out of the water like a yo-yo. I told Giorgio to swim out to sea with Singleton and let me know what sort of endurance he had.
'Go out about two hundred-and fifty yards and come in again. Don't hurry him, but let him know you're watching him.'
'Yes, it is understood,' said Giorgio, and went to tell Singleton.
I watched them run across the soft damp sand lengthening the curved imprints that marry space and time in huge dotted arabesques. Then Joe talked about the echo-sounder.
'I put the sounder in when we first got a whisper of this job three - no, nearly four - weeks ago; we've used it for fishing ever since. It's deadly efficient and some of the fishermen have been talking about buying them for themselves.'
'Isn't there a possibility that they'll follow us out to locate the fish?'
'No, I disconnected it yesterday and I told the old man to say it had gone wrong.' He paused, carefully designing a sentence that wouldn't sound impertinent. 'Why doesn't London do this operation through official channels - and get local cooperation?'
'The whole thing stinks, Joe. To tell you the truth, I have an awful feeling that we are sitting out here bleating like a goat in a tiger trap. That message Singleton brought about the log book. It doesn't ring true. The only department still interested in Nazi U-boats is the Historical Department. How could it be of importance to a modern intelligence department?' I told Joe about my being followed by the two cars, and how one of them belonged to Henry Smith, the Cabinet Minister. I told him about Butcher, Smith's dirty-work man who had sold us the ice-melting documents. I told him that I thought it all connected up. 'And what about this Giorgio character?' I finished. 'Why does he have to meet me at a weird little place like Los Palacios?'
'He's been doing a job underwater inside a gasometer in Seville.'
'Where is his equipment?' I said immediately.
'He leaves a set there,' Joe said. 'It's a contract job. He really is O.K.; he's been checked and re-checked, but there is an American living here in the village that I'm not at all sure about...'
As he said it Giorgio and Singleton came out of the water. Giorgio was tanned dark-brown and moving like he'd just come out of the shower. He brushed his chest as though still wearing his silver tie. Singleton had his mouth open and was gulping down deep draughts of air, throwing his head back and running an open hand through his long fair hair. They walked slowly up to where Joe and I were sitting and waited for words of praise.
'How do you feel, Singleton?' I asked.
His white chest heaved. 'O.K., sir... absolutely... first rate, sir.'
'Then I want you to go out half as far - but swim underwater there and back. Break surface only when you have to, that means I don't want a train of foam and bubbles. If you have any difficulties tell Giorgio immediately. I'm not recruiting dead heroes, I prefer live cowards. And Giorgio, stay close.'
They both nodded. 'Joe and I are going upstairs to watch you and count the number of times you come up for air. And one more thing, Singleton, you're not on parade, so try to look like an English tourist...' They turned back towards the sea... 'that is to say miserable,' I shouted after them.
'Do you think you're being a little hard on Singleton, sir?' Joe asked. We walked up the whitewashed steps to the patio.
'Probably,' I said. 'He reminds me of people who sing "There's a hole in my bucket" to a guitar at Chelsea parties.'
We went on in silence and then Joe said, 'You may be worrying for nothing, sir. It might be as easy and straightforward as it seems.' I didn't think so.
12 Sort of man
The next great green Atlantic wave sucked the wooden boat out of the surf. The old fisherman used the oars to keep it at right angles to the beach. Joe tugged the lanyard on the outboard motor. Another wave held us high in its open palm and hesitated before dashing us back on the sand. I was high in the prow and Joe was below me in the steeply angled boat. He flung his arm out and I heard the splutter of the motor like a sewing machine. The water foamed at the stern and we headed out into the Atlantic as the screw bit the sea.
The fisherman was a walnut-faced man of eighty. He flashed his brown teeth at me as I helped him ship the oars, and scuttled over to the echo-sounder to reconnect it. From the big pi
cnic hampers Giorgio and Singleton produced clear polythene bags, removed the folded rubber suits, and began to pull them on. We chugged westward.
The green skirt of the sea dashed its frilly petticoats at the yellow rocks. Each rock has its dangers and its name -'the Castle', 'the Pig', and the long stretches of vertical strata called the 'Bibliotek'. As we passed them the old man yelled the name at me and pointed at them. His finger was like a bent cigar. I repeated the name and he smiled a big yellow smile at me. The most dangerous rocks are the ones that are completely covered at high water, the huge flat stone called 'the Tartar' or the two finger-like monoliths called 'the Wolves'.
I watched the echo-sounder. It clicked away, scratching arcs across the strip of paper, building a picture of the ocean bed. Giorgio was smoking one of the cheroots he favoured. The old man was smoking one too, smiling and tugging on the lobe of his ear - in a gesture of pleasure. He guided the boat by sighting the uneven top of Penha de Alte mountain to the north and the distant Cape Santa Maria to the east.
Joe was watching the scratching sounder needle and the compass. He shouted something to Giorgio, who shrugged, and Joe walked along the boat towards me as we turned through a hundred and eighty degrees.
'We've missed it, I'm afraid,' he said, 'we are going across again. I could have put a marker buoy down yesterday, but...'
'No, you did right,' I told him, 'let's keep it discreet.'
Joe heard the sounder change note and the rusty multi-prong anchor (a great luxury in a district where most boats use a slab of concrete) splashed overboard. The old man was on his feet holding the anchor rope as it snagged the wreck and pulled us into position over it. Giorgio adjusted his compressed-air bottles. I tapped his arm. Under the rubber suit his muscles were as hard as stone. Irregular white patches of the chalk in which the suit had been carefully packed emphasized the strange non-human garb.
'Check that anchor line first thing when you descend.'
Giorgio listened carefully and nodded. I went on:
'Singleton is under your personal orders: he goes down only when and if you want.'
The boy is good. I tell you that in truthfulness, very good,' Giorgio said. He handed his half-smoked cheroot to the old man, who puffed delightedly at it.
He pulled his circular face-mask down, eased his feet into the gigantic rubber flippers and carefully put one leg over the side. In spite of the sunshine the Atlantic is cold in October. Giorgio pulled a face behind the mask and dusted a patch of talc from his arm before dropping gently overboard. The water surged over his shoulders and he pushed away from the faded blue side of the boat, kicking out his black legs.
His chunky silhouette shattered into a dozen black moving patches as he sank, and a gush of white bubbles ripped the surface. In parts of the Pacific one can see well over two hundred feet, and in the Med. a hundred is nothing remarkable. But Giorgio had quickly gone.
The old man switched off the motor. It spluttered like a candle, and there was a brief silence before the sea began its background music. Left to the disposition of the ocean the little boat was handed from wave to wave like a rich patient between specialists. At its higher movement I could see a big tanker making a lot of smoke on the horizon. Singleton tried to light a cigarette, but the wind and movement foiled him each time until he flicked the long white shape away, somersaulting it in a curve over the water. The old man saw him waste the cigarette in tacit incredulity. The bubbles continued to rise, break and disappear by the million. He gazed back towards the oyster beds that he had three times asked Giorgio to raid for him. I watched him size up Singleton with a view to tackling him on the subject.
I called Joe over. 'If Giorgio gets a reasonable idea of what sort of shape it's in we'll give London the "contact made" signal tonight. There's nothing wrong, is there?'
Joe wasn't so lively today. He said, 'I'm not so satisfied with our communications.'
'The set's O.K.?'
'Oh, the set is all right. I raise Gib. easily enough, but it's the delay between Gib. and London. Last night, for instance, I asked for a check on Singleton and the girl as you requested, but this morning they were still deciphering the reply. I had to wait while it came through. It didn't matter being across water, but it's things like that...'
'You are right, Joe. Next time cease transmission.'
'Well, tonight I'm going to go on the air an hour early. I did think it might be better to transmit via the Lisbon embassy because Gib. are probably leaving us at the bottom of the pile.'
'Don't. There are too many ears open between here and Lisbon - the Republican Guard stations, police radio, armed forces. It's too risky. It would be crazy to be picked up for the sake of this foolish little job. Keep contact through Gib. and we'll raise hell with London if we have any trouble. Give tonight's message a TA8 priority and send the message "one cup of coffee 9.40 Yellow".'
Joe raised an eyebrow. 'I'll call them at seven and fill up the car...'
Then the old man called 'pronto pronto' and I saw the anchor rope juggling up and down, and dark patterns in the waves glued themselves into one shape as Giorgio's black-rubber head broke the surface. He unstrapped a big lantern from his wrist and passed it into the boat. He removed his dark-green flippers under water and threw those into the boat too. They landed with a wet thud. Then he grasped the gunwales with his white, bloated hands. With one great heave he came unstuck from the wave-tops and toppled into the boat. Joe had the Thermos flask of hot red vinho verde ready, and Giorgio emptied it in one gulp and held it out for more. Having finished that, he produced antiseptic from the hamper and poured it over his swollen hands. Blood was still coming from a bad cut on his left hand, and he stamped the floor of the boat with pain as the antiseptic hit the bloodstream and the brown mixture dropped from his ringers.
After that he stripped off the rubber suit and rubbed himself with camphorated oil and a rough towel. He carefully parted his hair with the aid of a small pocket mirror, slipped into a pair of carefully pressed blue cotton trousers, white shirt and black cashmere pullover before he turned to me and said, 'It is not extremely difficult.' He said there was no need for Singleton to dive, and distributed black cheroots. The old man spun the motor and wound hi the anchor and we began to wonder what Charlotte had fixed for lunch.
After lunch Giorgio used a magic marker pen to show the position and condition of the U-boat.
'This is a rock-sided trench. There is what I judge to be a five-knot current pressing the hull against it... thus.' Giorgio's command of English was on firmer ground when I
dealing with reports like this. He made arrow marks across the white paper.
'This is a type XXI U-boat,' Giorgio continued. 'Luckily this is something which I know from drawings, although this is the first I have seen. It is about eighty metres long with about seven metres' beam. That makes it a big boat. But all this...' On his side view of the submarine Giorgio now drew a line along the middle and indicated the area under his line. '... is filled with batteries. The space beneath the conning-tower has to be the control room. Beneath that are the magazine and compression tanks. Aft of it accommodation and galley. Aft of that: motors and engines. Forward of the control room there is crew accommodation. That's there. Nearly sixty sailors on this sort of boat. At that bulkhead the battery-storage ends. The next compartment uses the full depth of the hull and is very big. This is the torpedo stowage compartment. Don't get hurt going through that bulkhead - it's a long drop to the floor. This is all full of armed torpedoes, and there is a large break in the hull there,' he indicated the rear of the T.S. compartment, 'at the torpedo tank. Six tubes - three each side of the bow. All bow caps closed.'
I noticed that the cuts on the back of Giorgio's hand were bleeding again.
'The boat is lying at a slight angle; this section is completely collapsed. The main engines have fallen through the pressure hull and jammed together with broken hydroplane into this rock fissure. Lucky the engine compartment is no concern. The rea
r-most section is torn completely open and many bodies of men in advanced decomposition are visible inside here. The hull here is very sharp and is dangerous bacteriological risk due to the corpses. Anyone diving here must treat even a small cut immediately.
'The control section can be searched in twenty diving hours unless the floor has collapsed. There are ways in which the floor can fall that would make searching under it impossible without lifting apparatus. Another risk is that the hull has been rolled along the ocean floor by water movement subsequent to the control-room floor collapsing.
But this is to look on the blackest side of the coin. Tomorrow I shall go inside the hull, if the weather stays as good.'
13 More to do
London: Tuesday
In the West London air terminal they have electric coin-in-the-slot razors. There was time to shave before Jean came to meet me in Dawlish's old Riley. It was 9.39 a.m.
'Whatever could you have done for Dawlish that he loans you England's answer to the space race?'
Len Deighton - Harry Palmer 02 - Horse Under Water Page 5