by Dudley Pope
‘To be snubbed by the handsome wounded young war hero who had a girl in every port?’
The ticket machine remained silent after the coins were inserted and Ned shook it. It whirred and reluctantly produced a ticket. Then, as if ashamed of its previous tardiness, it ejected the second ticket. At almost the same instant Ned felt through the floor the vibrations of a stick of bombs landing nearby.
Ned had just sat down at his desk next morning, the first to arrive in the room, when Joan came in carrying a cup of coffee and greeting him cheerfully. ‘With Captain Watts’ compliments,’ she said and put the cup on his desk. ‘As soon as you have drunk it — he was emphatic that you take your time because this is the good coffee — he requests the pleasure of your company.’
‘Where’s Jemmy?’
‘I left him trying to sharpen a safety razor blade with a new glass sharpener he’d just bought.’
‘Honing it on the inside of an ordinary tumbler is as good as anything.’
‘That’s what he was discovering as I left.’
‘Why doesn’t he use a cut-throat?’
‘With that twitch of his? He’d cut his head off!’
She obviously wanted to say something serious and Ned gave her time, slowly stirring the coffee and folding an old newspaper whose crossword he had not finished.
‘Ned, I’m a bit worried about Jemmy. Can I say something very personal?’
‘Dunno, girl. Shut your eyes, take a deep breath…!’
‘He thinks of very little but sex. It’s almost an obsession with him. There, I’ve said it now and I’ve probably broken all the rules, like “Never discuss women in the mess, chaps”.’
Ned shook his head. ‘If you’re worried, come to Uncle Ned. But answer some questions. Are his demands bothering you?’
‘No, not bothering me; in fact — ’ she broke off, embarrassed.
‘You look well on it. You enjoy it?’
‘Yes. Just like the next girl.’
‘So what are you really worried about?’
‘Well, I feel he ought to have other interest than just me — and bed.’
Ned raised his eyebrows and looked at her directly. ‘If you love each other — and I don’t want to hear about that,’ he said hastily — ‘then think of what else he could get obsessed by. As a submariner, and with this bombing, obviously he could get obsessed with death. As a lieutenant, considering what we get paid, he could be obsessed about money. The way things are going out in the Atlantic — ’ Ned waved at a wall chart showing the ocean from Europe to the coast of the United States ‘ — he could be obsessed by U-boats, the progress of the war… There’s plenty to be obsessed about. To be obsessed about sex with the girl you love — well, compared with death, money, bombs, torpedoes or losing the war, it seems a good choice!’
Joan reached out impulsively to grip his shoulder. ‘You’re right. That’s how it is with you and that nurse, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, we try to live just for each day — and each night.’
‘She must have been terrified when you went off to sea with that convoy.’
‘She didn’t say. I was, though.’
‘That’s hard to believe,’ Joan said, gesturing at the two medal ribbons.
‘I’ve a very special reason for staying alive now,’ Ned said quietly. ‘It makes a difference…’
‘I hope it will with Jemmy. But you know his problem?’
‘The confidence business?’
‘Yes. It isn’t cowardice,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s just that the responsibility for other people’s lives is more than he can take.’
‘Now,’ Ned amended.
‘Yes, now. He was all right for months. Obviously he was, since he’s regarded by the Press as one of our submarine aces. But…’
‘It happens easily enough. But command is like riding a bicycle. You never quite forget how to do it, although after a bad crash you might be nervous for a while.’
‘Ned, you’d better go in to see Uncle. But thanks for listening. You’re right. I feel a lot better already.’
‘I should leer and say you’ve been looking better for quite a while. Does wonders for a girl’s complexion, they do say!’
He found Captain Watts smoking a cigar, the wreathing smoke making him seem a handsome Satan smiling a welcome at an outer door of hell. Ned’s view of the head of ASIU as satanic was increased as the welcoming grin enquired if he had enjoyed his coffee. ‘Would you care for a cigar?’
‘Too early for me, sir,’ Ned said warily, thinking that a cigar this early rated with a tot of whisky to get the world in focus.
‘Yes,’ Watts said amiably. ‘I agree. However, they help me think, and we’ve a lot of thinking to do today before the sun goes down.’
For the second time in less than ten minutes, Ned raised his eyebrows.
Watts’ grin had gone. ‘You remember what we were talking about after we saw the PM?’
Ned looked round to make sure the door was closed. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘And you have a shoal of ideas.’ It was a statement not a question.
‘No, sir.’ How did one explain that a morning spent at a Buckingham Palace Investiture was not exactly a good preliminary to thinking about Hydra and Triton? And that, he admitted, was an excuse for the fact that he had puzzled a good deal about it anyway and could think of nothing. At least, several ideas had surfaced and sunk back again, waterlogged with embarrassment.
Watts puffed at the cigar. ‘The pressure is being applied. I spent an hour with the First Sea Lord and then an hour with the First Lord. Mr Alexander is a skilful Labour politician whose only concern is to square his own yards: I had to take along a signed report, and then add to it in my own handwriting in his presence the burden of what I had just told him.’
‘What did Admiral Pound have to say, sir?’
‘Just telling me that ASIU must get cracking. Wanted to know what ideas we had. Incidentally I forgot to mention to you that any intelligence derived from Enigma is called “Ultra”. They don’t want anyone to use the word Enigma: if the Teds heard, it’d give the game away. Seems Enigma machines were on sale commercially years ago but none of our intelligence people were interested.’
‘Mein Kampf,’ Ned said sarcastically.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘It was published in the 1920s. In it, Hitler said exactly what he’d do with Germany. No one in our Foreign Office took it seriously, of course, so we missed a ten or fifteen year warning.’
‘But you’ve read it?’ Watts said, teasingly, then looked startled at Ned’s bitter reply.
‘Yes, sir. I read and understood it when I was fourteen years old.’
‘At Dartmouth, eh?’
‘Yes, sir. Very heavy going, but it’s all there. If you’d read that, then the Rhineland occupation in 1936, the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Poland the next year all fits in.’
‘What’s he going to do next, then?’
‘He’s done it. Now he has to consolidate what he’s started. Defeat Russia and defeat us, then he — Germany, rather — rules the world.’
‘What about America?’
‘He ignores the United States in this context. I think he’ll be content if he rules the Old World. There’s been no great objection from the New so far.’
‘But supposing the New World develops different ideas?’
Ned shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll have to wait and see, sir, but from what I hear the American Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral King, would be quite happy to leave Hitler to it, so that the US Navy can concentrate on the Pacific.’
Watts puffed his cigar, blew out the smoke in a stream towards the low ceiling and sighed. ‘Yes, but technically at least Admiral Ernest J
King is on our side, though I gather those of our people who have to work with him have their doubts. Nevertheless, our concern is with the Triton cipher and that dam’ machine.’
‘I’ve no ideas, sir.’
‘Just like that, eh? No ideas?’
‘Ideas yes, but none I’d want to be ordered to carry out.’
‘Ned,’ Watts said suddenly, putting his cigar in the ashtray, ‘we’re more likely to come up with something if a few of us are sitting round batting ideas back and forth.’
Ned almost sighed with relief. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking, sir, but the security clearance business seemed a problem.’
‘It has been, but I’ve asked for clearance for Jemmy and the Croupier. The four of us should be able to come up with something.’
‘We’ll sink ASIU if we don’t.’
‘That,’ Watts said dryly, ‘was the burden of Admiral Pound’s remarks.’
‘When will you get the clearances?’
‘They promised them by noon. So go back to your room and finish The Times crossword puzzle, and bring Jemmy and the Croupier here at three o’clock. A no-alcoholic-beverages lunch for the three of you, eh?’
Watts said: ‘Joan, m’dear, remove the coffee cups. I think these peasants appreciated it but we have work to do and I don’t want them to think there is any chance of a second cup. And shut the door after you: I shall be conducting the rest of the service in total secrecy.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Joan said with just the right amount of sarcasm. ‘They’ve heard the one about the Bishop of Salisbury’s wife on a bobsleigh. Try the one about the Archbishop of Canterbury planning to assault the whorehouse.’
As soon as she had left the room Watts scratched his head. ‘Anyone know a joke about the Bishop of Salisbury? I believe he’s called Meacham? No? Dam’ funny name. Ought to be engaged to Polly Peachum, the gal in “The Beggar’s Opera”.’
He began humming as the other three men tried to get comfortable in their Ministry of Works chairs.
‘Very well, let’s hear the ideas.’ Watts started to clip off the end of another cigar, then caught Ned’s eye and said: ‘No, not black market. Friend just returned from a United States dockyard.’
The three young naval officers watched him strike a match, make sure it was burning well, and then proceed to light the cigar as though preparing it for a very rich potential father-in-law. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, sighed with satisfaction and then said, with unexpected sharpness: ‘Did I miss hearing something as I struck that match?’
Jemmy’s head jerked back in a prodigious twitch. ‘No, sir. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Ned but the Croupier and I don’t have anything.’
‘Ned?’ Watts looked questioningly. ‘Any blinding light shine on you while you were having lunch and NID were delivering the clearance for these twisted layabouts?’
‘No sir. Q-ships?’ He offered the word so carefully he felt he was pronouncing the hyphen and, seeing Watts’ expression, wished he could hide under it.
‘Q-ships? Disguised fishing vessels and merchant ships with guns hidden that wait for a U-boat to surface and capture it?’ Watts repeated unbelievingly. ‘Have you been reading some old copies of the Boy’s Own Paper?’
‘I’d been thinking on those lines, too, sir,’ admitted the Croupier, ‘although I was too shy to say so.’
‘Me too,’ Jemmy said, again twitching. ‘Shyness has almost ruined my career so far. I’m fighting it all the time.’
Watts removed the cigar from his mouth with a Churchillian flourish. ‘Tell Uncle what led you to Q-ships,’ he asked Ned. ‘You can be the spokesman for these other peasants.’
Ned was not fooled by the bantering tone. ‘Starting off with the basic problem, it seems the only answer,’ he said.
‘What pray, is the basic problem?’
Ned decided that Uncle had been listening to too many speeches by Mr Churchill and it had gone to his mouth.
‘First, we’ve got to get on board a U-boat to collect one of these Enigma machines and the manual. Second, we can only do that either by enlisting in the German Navy or capturing a U-boat, sir.’
‘Marvellous,’ Watts said. ‘that’s what comes of universal education, which ensures that all the peasants achieve the same abysmal level of stupidity!’
Jemmy’s twitch was punctuated by a sneeze, which provoked Watts to exclaim: ‘Don’t say you’re going to give us all colds. God, what a way to start the winter.’
‘It’s that dime store cigar smoke, sir,’ Jemmy said, fanning with the docket he had been holding in his lap. ‘I hope you didn’t pay customs on those cigars. They sell ’em at ten cents each in the cigar stores in the States.’
‘Damn and blast my cigar: I’m waiting for some sensible ideas from you three. You are supposed to be the bright boys, specially selected for a special unit. The brains of the ASIU.’
‘Fact is,’ Ned said gloomily, I’m more cut out to be a Naafi manager. Mars Bars for the masses: say “Please” if you want fifty Players. No Sherbert Dabs left, sergeant, and the Licorice Allsorts have gone — the colonel’s wife pre-empted the last of them. Or maybe Director of No-Coke-This-Week at the Ministry of Fuel.’
‘I’ll get you transferred to ENSA,’ Watts growled. ‘As a stand-up comic you’ll have ’em rolling off their seats — in somewhere like Aden. Anyway, let’s hear some more Comic Cuts stuff, Ned.’
The grin took the sting out of the remark.
‘Well, sir, I’d assumed we can’t get into some German base and steal one. Or, rather, that we might be able to organize the Resistance people into pinching one for us, but that’d defeat the exercise because then the Teds would know we’ve got our hands on one of their toys and would start winding them up differently, or something.
‘So we are back to getting our hands on a German warship and leading the Teds to think it has been sunk. Presumably it has to be a U-boat…’ He paused a moment as something seemed to be waving from the edge of his memory. He looked up at Watts.
‘Somewhere, sir, I’ve heard that the Teds get their long-range weather data not only from planes but, because of the distance involved, they have small weather reporting ships nipping in and out of the ice cap and playing hide-and-seek along the Greenland fjords. Could we…?’
Watts shook his head. ‘Good thinking Ned. Yes and no. Yes, the Teds did have a couple of weather ships hiding in the fog and ice floes, wirelessing millibars and wind directions to their Met people in Tedeschi land, but no we can’t go after them because they’ve already been “got”. One was scuttled but we got on board the other. This was some time ago and it yielded a Mark II Enigma without alarming the Germans that we had one. It’s the Mark III we want…’
‘Can we count that in our score?’ Jemmy enquired.
Watts took a puff and agreed.
‘Peasants one, Forces of Evil nil,’ Jemmy said.
The Croupier uncrossed his legs — a movement that, because of his height, made it look as if he was unwinding — and said in a cringing voice: ‘Speaking as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s aunt, sir, I cannot but feel you are taking a very unChristian attitude towards Q-ships.’
‘Forgive the pun, but Croupier, how full of Cantuar. What had you in mind as a Q-ship? The Queen Elizabeth, a Thames barge, the Gosport Ferry or a drifter?’
Ned leaned forward. ‘The type of ship depends on where we’d operate, sir. A U-boat’d be suspicious if she came across a Grimsby drifter in mid-Atlantic but might well surface to sink an old coal-burning merchant ship by gunfire to save a torpedo.’
‘A cautious skipper might use a torpedo,’ Watts said.
‘None of the Ted skippers are cautious these days, sir,’ Jemmy said. ‘They’re sinking so many of our ships they don’t have to be, and I’m sure Dönitz has a special sweepstake going at Kern�
�vel. The month’s top scorer gets a box of Tunisian dates, a bar of Hamburg rock and two yards of Leberwurst.’
‘So?’
‘Zo every skipper wants to make sure that each of his fourteen torpedoes gets a coconut, sir. Anything sunk by gunfire is a bonus. Even the best skipper is unlikely to get more than seven ships with fourteen fish, but let’s say he got fourteen. That’s obviously reckoned to be the top possible score of ships, but it could be equalled by some other sharp-eyed Teuton. But fourteen ships with fourteen fish, plus a couple more by gunfire, would be sure to win all the month’s coconuts — and an Iron Cross with swords, diamonds, and lettuce leaves from the Führer’s salad.’
‘Very well,’ Watts said carefully, ‘so what you want is something inconspicuous which is not worth a torpedo but is worth a few rounds from the gun, eh?’
‘And is well armed and manned by some properly-trained gunners. These Merchant Navy chaps are all right, but their enthusiasm exceeds their skill, doesn’t it, Ned?’
‘Most of the ships have DEMS gunners,’ Ned said. ‘They’re a mixture of volunteers in the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery, and Naval ratings. The men in Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships tend to have very little training and no practice, but enormous courage.’
‘I can’t see it,’ the Croupier said unexpectedly.
‘Can’t see what, blast you!’ Watts said crossly.
‘I can’t see the sequence. Or, rather, I can’t see it working.’
‘Jemmy, whisper in his ear,’ Watts said. ‘Tell him we’re all sitting close and love him: there’s no need to use a scrambler telephone.’
The Croupier grinned and apologized. ‘I was thinking aloud, sir. Let’s assume we have just the right clapped-out old coal-burner merchant ship, built in 1911. Every hour or so the bell rings and the stokers hurl into the furnace a few more shovels full of Welsh nuts — coal, not Members of Parliament — and the ancient and tall funnel suddenly emits a splendid cloud of black smoke which is visible for miles.
‘Our Teutonic Knight spots the smoke and spurs his steed into position and suddenly surfaces close to the smoker, and orders it to heave-to and not transmit. Our TK may or may not give the smoker’s men enough time to get the lifeboats away — that probably depends whether or not they’re within range of Coastal Command planes.