North Strike

by North Strike (retail) (epub)

  Annie Egge’s hut was close to the water’s edge near the fish oil factory, with the words, Sjømanns Misjonen, on a lighted board over the door. The interior was warm and cheerful. Several seamen were drinking coffee and tucking away food with the delicacy of mechanical diggers, and Magnusson recognized German, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish being spoken. A dance was going on with local girls to partner the sailors, and somehow, after Oulu, their very cleanness made them look frightening, with their hair so neat and their lips so red. The men were curiously shy, only the German sailors dancing, strutting round the floor in that curious march that passed with them for a quickstep.

  Annie Egge handed him a coffee and suggested he sat in the office with her to drink it. It was a warm room, the walls lined with pitch-pine, the chairs covered with red cushions. On the wall was a text, beautifully embroidered.

  Må ej din hand

  Så hardna uti striden

  Att den till bön ej knäpps,

  Då dag år liden.

  ‘It is Swedish,’ she said. ‘It is a good text for sailors and a better one for our mission. It means “May hands never be too hard-worked to prevent them from being clasped in prayer when day is done.”’

  ‘A fine sentiment.’

  ‘Norwegians are a devout people. We are Lutheran, but there are a few Catholics at odd villages down the coast. Up here in the north –’ she smiled – ‘there is even talk of trolls, huldrefolk and oskurei.’ She paused and pulled out a sheet of paper from a drawer. ‘But you didn’t come for a talk on religion. Your two ships which left here three days ago have been torpedoed. They were caught within two hours of each other and less than four hours after leaving Norwegian waters. The submarines were waiting for them.’

  ‘Who warned them?’ Magnusson asked. ‘Cuxhaven? My radio officer thinks Cuxhaven has a powerful transmitter.’

  She gave him a cool look. ‘I think so too,’ she said. ‘But I have never seen any sign of it.’

  ‘You’ve been aboard her?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘They didn’t invite me.’

  ‘I have a few advantages over you. There are a great many men aboard her, and I don’t think all of them are sailors. I have known sailors all my life and these don’t move like men who follow the sea.’

  ‘What about Altmark?’

  ‘We’re wondering if she’s going straight to Bergen, and from there to Kiel or Hamburg. Fil let you know if I hear. It’s thought she passed undetected between the Faeroes and Iceland during the bad weather a few days ago, but she must make a landfall soon, and it ought to be somewhere in northern Norway. We think she will hide during the day and move only at night.’

  * * *

  Nothing had been heard when the signal came.

  Willie John appeared in Magnusson’s cabin with an excited look on his face. ‘We’re on the move, boy! The code letter’s arrived.’

  ‘Right. We’ll go with the tide at first light. There’s a fresh wind that’ll take us down the fjord.’

  Picking up a launch to Narvik, Magnusson sought out Annie Egge again. The hut was being run by the old man who handled her launch, so, discovering where she lived, Magnusson headed through the narrow streets of painted wooden houses up the hill. The night was sharp and frosty and his feet crunched in the packed snow. Small windows glowed yellow through the darkness, and here and there under the overhanging eaves of the bigger buildings he saw the notices that heralded the approaching thaw – ‘Beware of falling ice.’

  For some reason, he hadn’t expected her to have a family, assuming from her temperament and the work she was doing that she lived alone. But the door was opened to him by a man with the weathered face of someone who worked constantly out of doors. With the grave courtesy of the Norwegians he introduced himself as Annie’s father and invited Magnusson inside where, almost at once, they were joined by Annie’s mother and grandmother. They all had the opal-eyed, northern attractiveness of Annie herself, who was the last to appear.

  Magnusson had expected to be able to talk to her alone, but this was clearly going to be impossible as the whole family pressed him to sit down and join them in coffee and cake.

  ‘I was a sailor, once,’ Herr Egge said. ‘I came here from the Lofotens. My son is a sailor. He is serving his period with the Navy in a patrol vessel stationed at Oslo. We have a nephew who is a sailor too. He is in the coastal defence ship, Eidsvold. I think he is fond of Annie.’

  It surprised Magnusson to learn that Annie Egge was warm enough to have someone fall in love with her. He glanced quickly at her, but she was pouring coffee, remote, sure of herself, contemptuous of his opinion, and he wondered what it needed to rouse in her emotions other than hatred for the Germans.

  Herr Egge was still talking. ‘Eidsvold is due here in Narvik soon. When she comes, we shall have a celebration because my son will be coming on leave soon afterwards also and we shall have the whole family with us.’

  They sat around making small talk for an hour until, growing desperate, Magnusson said he would have to go. Annie immediately reached for her coat and the red woollen hat she wore.

  ‘I’ll come to the end of the road with you, Captain,’ she said. The dog needs a walk.’

  Outside the air seemed twice as biting as before and they walked in silence until they were away from the house. She came straight to the point.

  ‘It’s thought that Altmark will not come here now,’ she said. ‘She’s believed to have arrived off Norway and to be doing as we expected and hiding in one of the smaller fjords, or behind one of the islands, and moving only after dark. If she’s seen, we expect she’ll pose as a warship and claim immunity for the legal limit of seventy-two hours, which is enough for her to pass down the Leads. I think your navy has lost her.’

  ‘I thought I’d better check.’

  She gave him a cool glance. ‘1 suspect you were also checking that I lived alone and were hoping that I did.’ Magnusson shrugged. ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘Doubtless you would prefer even to be in my bed.’ Magnusson smiled. ‘I’m not all that big,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t take up much room.’

  She frowned. ‘I do not think you are approaching your job in the right spirit,’ she snapped.

  ‘The British were always noted for their lightheartedness.’

  ‘Not with me!’ For a while she studied him, then spoke in her usual crisp manner. ‘I think your country has let us down,’ she said. ‘We asked for help. Not once but many times. When the Abyssinian war started and you applied sanctions against Italy, Norway took them seriously and, while your country didn’t suffer, we paid dearly for our conscientiousness with rotting fish we couldn’t get rid of. When the German tourists came in 1939 we tried to warn you they were here only to take photographs and spread their propaganda. When the war started we arrested German spies and sent them home. What did you contribute? You sent us British officials who knew so little Norwegian they could scarcely say “Skål.”’

  It was a depressing litany of truth and she spared nothing. ‘Finally, when we decided something must be done, and told you the Germans were passing information from here to their submarines and asked for help, all we got in return were three amateurs who think war is a game to be played like football. No fouls. No bad language. All very sporting. I’m sorry your captain had a heart attack. Perhaps he would have had more sense of responsibility than you have.’

  8

  The breeze was blowing from the east as they made sail the following morning. Narvik was outlined against the yellow glow of the sun, with snow-covered roofs and the spire of a tiny church. Behind the hills, trees rose like a dark curtain. Out of the sun the water looked black.

  With the anchor aweigh, Oulu began to pay off before the wind until, as she gathered headway, the square sails rattled down. As the wind fell aft, the topsails and foresails were sheeted home and the jibs lowered. Glancing up at the arches of canvas above him, with the salt wind on his face, Magnusson found himself
thanking God that Cockayne had picked him for this job, because there was nothing so beautiful as a ship under sail.

  Oulu was sluggish at first, then slowly she began to edge down the coast towards the sea. As they left Ofotjord, the sea route widened and the mountains fell back. Willie John was on deck as they slipped out towards the Leads, his hangdog face corpse-white from the cold.

  ‘Have you coded the signal?’ Magnusson asked.

  Willie John turned. ‘Did I no’ spend half the night o’er the bluidy thing?’ he said.

  As they left Vestfjord behind them and the humps of the Lofotens began to dwindle, the radio behind the grain sacks in the hold began tapping out its message. Willie John reappeared on deck, pleased with himself.

  ‘Gone, boy,’ he reported. ‘No problems at all.’

  Spring had still shown no signs of arriving in the northern latitudes, and the land to port – towering walls of black rock and snow, with patches of green and the darker verdure of pine trees – was depressing. There were coils of thick mist about that made visibility uncertain, and a surprising amount of traffic in the Leads.

  In the afternoon, the breeze freshened and the weather began to look threatening. Dark clouds swept down on the ship, and as the sea came bubbling into the lee scuppers the air was filled with the clang of ports.

  They made a good passage towards Bodø however, though the weather steadily worsened. The sea rose and there was an awe-inspiring sunset with the ship driving towards a wall of storm cloud tinged with ochre where the sun caught it. The sea looked muddy, as if its bottom had been stirred up, and at intervals everything was blurred by squalls of rain and hail, hard and painful as they struck the face. The sun still fought to break through the masses of torn cloud but, finally the royals came in and all hands were called to furl the mainsail.

  ‘Ooh-ah! Eee! Ooh-ah!’

  They hauled with all the traditional cries of sailing ship men on a rope until one of the young Finns, trying to take in the fore upper topsail, found that the buntlines and half the robands securing the sail had jammed. Working with the spar pointing at one moment down to the boiling sea and the next upwards to the sky, he lost his grip and the wire leech of the sail started battering him about the head and shoulders. Then a block broke loose and began to flail the air like a bomb on a string, threatening to brain everybody within reach. As it swung, it tore away Willie John’s aerials.

  The wind was immense now, no longer merely blowing but roaring as if it were trying to tear apart the very atmosphere. By midnight, with only the topsails on her and her upper and lower yards naked and gleaming like old bones in the last of the light, they were hurtling along at thirteen knots.

  Because of the weather, they had to head west away from Bodø and the next morning they passed a black-hulled ship hard to see against the mistiness of the land. She lay just to the east of them, heading south through lifting seas. She had a weary appearance as she beat against the weather, a blunt dark shape with the water humping over her bows.

  ‘She’s in a hurry,’ Magnusson said, watching the distant shape creeping among the islands that hung like a chain of beads off the coast. ‘Who is she?’

  As the squall passed over them, the clouds thinned and they got a better view of her. Standing by the wheel, soaked by the drizzle in the dim, chill silence, Magnusson stared through his binoculars.

  ‘She looks bloody shifty, too,’ he said. ‘As if she didn’t want to be seen.’

  Campbell was standing alongside him, tense and excited, also watching the distant ship through his glasses, and suddenly Magnusson heard him draw in his breath with a thick hissing sound.

  ‘By God, no wonder!’ His words burst out of him excitedly. ‘It’s Altmark!’

  His handsome young face was alert and lit up with a vision of naval glory, and Magnusson saw that in his hands he had the silhouettes Cockayne had given them.

  ‘You sure?’

  Campbell gave him a cold look, as if it were impossible for a naval man – a real naval man – to be wrong. ‘If she’s not Altmark,’ he said, ‘then she’s her spitten image.’

  They were studying the other ship intently now, and Campbell drew in another sharp breath.

  ‘I can see the name on her stern,’ he said; ‘I can just make it out.’

  Magnusson lowered his glasses. ‘Get Willie John up here.’

  They were scudding before the wind now and the land was dropping behind them, the strange ship growing smaller as it headed away.

  ‘You going to warn the Home Fleet?’ Campbell snapped.

  ‘They’ve been looking for her for two months.’

  ‘It’ll probably give our own game away.’ Magnusson was undecided. ‘We’ve been told not to transmit unnecessarily.’

  ‘You’re surely not going to allow her to pass southwards unreported?’ Campbell was quivering like a terrier at a rat-hole. To him the issue was clear. There was the enemy in the open sea, and nothing else mattered. No man can do wrong who lays his ship alongside an enemy, Nelson had said, and for over a hundred years the Navy had lived by Nelson’s precepts.

  Magnusson was still trying to make up his mind when Willie John joined in. ‘Ye’ve probably forgotten, boy,’ he said coldly. ‘We havenae got a bluidy aerial at the moment, anyway.’

  ‘Then get a new one rigged, dammit!’ Campbell snapped.

  Willie John glared, but Magnusson gestured, faintly resentful that Campbell was usurping his own position as captain.

  ‘Fix it, Willie John,’ he said.

  Willie John made a real effort but, while his men were used to stringing aerials, they weren’t used to doing it on a sailing ship heaving about as Oulu was heaving about at that moment. Lumpy rollers were building up behind her and she was lifting stem and stern like a rocking-horse as she raced before the wind. When one of the telegraphists slipped and broke his wrist, Willie John decided enough was enough; they had better wait until the wind had dropped a little.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Campbell snapped. ‘We’re losing an opportunity!’

  Willie John gestured at the swinging masts. ‘Dhia, have I no’ already injured one of my fellers?’ he snapped back. ‘What happens if I injure the other, boy? Who’s goin’ tae work the bluidy sets?’

  ‘For God’s sake, what’s a man’s limb against an opportunity like this?’

  Willie John stared at him, shocked, and in that moment the differences in their backgrounds were glaringly obvious. Willie John, a civilian playing at being part of the Navy, had lived throughout his career by the saying, ‘One hand for yourself, one for the ship.’ To Campbell, there was no question of self, no question of safety. He had lived his life to a background of naval thinking in which a man could never be considered important against the destruction of an enemy.

  The atmosphere in the saloon that evening was tense, with Willie John and Campbell staring at each other with hatred in their eyes.

  ‘My God,’ Campbell said, ‘we’ll never get a chance like this again!’

  ‘Why do ye no’ swim then,’ Willie John snarled, his sad, good-natured face distorted by his dislike. ‘I’ll tie a message tae y’r bluidy leg if ye like. Like a carrier pigeon just.’

  As Campbell swung round in frustrated fury, Magnusson pushed him aside.

  ‘Shut up,’ he snapped.

  ‘Nelson said—’

  ‘To hell with Nelson! I’m not Nelson and neither are you! I’m an amateur with a lot of experience. You’re a professional, so far with very little. We’re supposed to be working together. That means using our loaves.’

  The morning came with a thin grey light as they passed Vassafjord. It had a narrow entrance, barely visible against the dark mountains behind, but Campbell’s sharp eyes were everywhere and it was he who spotted the ship lurking there.

  ‘She’s there,’ he snapped. ‘It’s Altmark again! She’s lying up where she can’t be seen during daylight. We should lay alongside her.’

  ‘And get ourselves blown to
smithereens for our trouble?’ Magnusson said. ‘For Christ’s sake, talk sense! It’s believed she mounts guns. All we’ve got are a few small arms in the hold and a crew of Finns who aren’t even involved in the war with the Germans.’

  He stared at the entrance to the fjord and the dark curved bulk of the German ship, then swung round to the man at the wheel. ‘Bring her about, helmsman. Get the canvas off, Campbell. There’s more than one way of killing a cat.’

  As the canvas came off, Oulu slowed.

  ‘Let go the starboard anchor!’

  The German ship was already frantically flashing morse at them as the ship swung, blocking the entrance. Campbell was staring towards her, his mouth twisted in a grim smile, his eyes gleaming with triumph and elation at the prospect of action.

  ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,’ Willie John said solemnly.

  Campbell’s head jerked round. ‘What’s that?’ he said, only half-hearing.

  ‘It means, boy, that it iss sweet an’ fittin’ tae die for yer homeland. And it iss also a load of balls! It isnae sweet an’ it isnae fittin’, and it willnae make much bloody difference tae the war.’

  Campbell’s eyes glinted. ‘You’re a novice,’ he said. ‘A mere bloody novice, motivated by nothing else but self.’

  ‘Dry up,’ Magnusson said. ‘What about that aerial?’

  ‘’Tis finished just,’ Willie John growled. ‘But we cannae send from this position, boy. They’ll pick us up straight away an’ blow us oot o’ the water.’

  ‘If we bottle them up, what will it matter?’ Campbell said.

  ‘We can’t bottle them up,’ Magnusson said. ‘Not here. Not even if we were sunk. The water here’s Christ knows how many fathoms deep.’