‘Four points to starboard, Charrondier.’
‘Four points to starboard it is, sir.’ The matelot spun the helm, and the Sea Devil turned slowly until she was pointing towards the crossroads in the channels.
‘Bring her amidships.’
‘Helm amidships!’
Killigrew was startled to hear footsteps on the deck behind him; one flaw in the vessel’s design was that there was no porthole facing aft from the cupola, so he could not see who it was. He scrambled back down into the body of the vessel. Everyone was staring up at the deck head, following the progress of the footsteps.
‘What is it?’ asked Aurélie.
‘Someone on top,’ said Killigrew. ‘They must have swum out after us!’
‘Did we leave someone behind?’ asked Verne.
Charrondier shook his head. ‘Only Ingres and Laval.’
The footsteps continued along the deck towards the hatch.
‘You!’ Killigrew picked out the brawniest of the matelots. ‘Get up there and brace the hatch! Don’t let them open it!’
The matelot nodded and scrambled up the ladder, gripping the wheel on the underside of the hatch. He grunted and strained with the effort of both maintaining his precarious perch and keep the hatch shut.
Killigrew looked around and found a pry-bar in a toolbox on the deck at his feet. He passed it up to the matelot. ‘Here! Use this.’
The matelot slipped the pry-bar between the spokes of the wheel so that it was wedged against the coaming. ‘There! That’s got it!’
Killigrew continued to stare up at the hatch. After a few more seconds, whoever was on top gave up trying to open the hatch and made his way forward. Killigrew stepped over the two wounded matelots and scrambled up the ladder to the observation cupola. He could hear the person moving about, and a moment later a familiar face peered through one of the portholes at him.
‘It’s Nekrasoff!’ he called down to Aurélie.
The colonel reached inside his coat, pulled out a revolver and levelled it at Killigrew’s face through the glass. There was no time to get out of the way: Killigrew instinctively threw up his arms in a defensive gesture.
Nekrasoff pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Killigrew could have laughed out loud: the powder in the chambers of his cylinder must have got soaked as he swam out after the Sea Devil.
Scowling furiously, Nekrasoff reversed his grip on the revolver and began to hammer on the glass. Killigrew had no idea how strong Bauer had made the portholes, but surely the glass could not stand up to the pounding Nekrasoff was giving it? Not that he would be able to squeeze through the port once the glass was broken; but if the glass was broken, they would not be able to submerge under the bridge between Vargon and West Svarto, and even if they could they would have to run on the surface all the way out to the Allied Fleet, with the Russian batteries no doubt throwing everything they had at the Sea Devil to stop it from falling into enemy hands.
Killigrew remembered the waterproof gauntlets and slipped his hand into one, grabbing Nekrasoff by the wrist. The colonel tried to pull his hand free, but Killigrew gripped him tightly.
‘Oh, no you don’t, you bastard!’ he shouted at the glass. ‘You’re not getting away this time!’
‘Kit!’ Aurélie called from below. ‘What’s going on up there?’
‘Just getting to grips with an old friend,’ he told her. ‘Stay by the trim control and stand by to dive.’
Nekrasoff took the revolver in his left hand and started pounding against the glass again. Killigrew slipped his other hand into the other gauntlet, and again caught him by the wrist. Now he had the colonel fast.
‘Flood the ballast tanks!’ he called to Verne. ‘Aurélie, put five degrees of dive on her! Those of you on the treadmills, resume treading! Full speed ahead!’
The Sea Devil tipped forwards and water began to rise against the portholes. Realising his peril, Nekrasoff struggled furiously, but Killigrew had him fast by both wrists and was not going to release him even if his own life had depended on it. As the water rose around Nekrasoff’s chin, he took a last gulp of air, and then the Sea Devil dragged him under. He blinked, his dark hair floating about like so much kelp. He stared wild-eyed at Killigrew through the porthole, his cheeks bulging as he fought to hold his breath. His face twisted with fury, and he braced his feet against the front of the cupola in an effort to break free. Killigrew thought of Araminta Maltravers, and all the others who had died because of the colonel’s machinations, and if anything his grip became even tighter.
‘What depth are we at, Major?’ he called down.
‘Eh? Oh! Two fathoms!’
‘Right the trim, Aurélie… no, that’s too much… back the other way… that’s got it!’
Nekrasoff’s expression became pleading. Killigrew just shook his head implacably. The look in the colonel’s eyes turned to desperation. Killigrew saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat as he gasped for air, but there was no air to be had. His eyes bulged in his head. The magnifying effect of the water enabled Killigrew to see the veins throbbing in his temples.
‘Three fathoms!’ called Lindström.
‘That’s enough ballast, Verne!’
The end came suddenly. Nekrasoff’s jaw fell slack, and a stream of bubbles rose from it. The light in his eyes went out, and his body became limp, his lifeless face bumping against the glass of the porthole. Killigrew counted to sixty in his head before he finally let go, and the slipstream carried Nekrasoff’s corpse past the cupola before he sank down to the depths below.
Killigrew could see rocks looming out of the gloom to port. ‘One point to port, Charrondier!’
The matelot spun the helm to port, turning the Sea Devil’s nose to starboard. ‘One point to port it is!’
Killigrew remembered to withdraw his hands from the gauntlet, and massaged his aching fingers.
‘What happened to Nekrasoff?’ Aurélie called up.
‘He got out of his depth,’ Killigrew told her grimly. ‘In over his head.’
* * *
On the quarterdeck of HMS Exmouth, Rear Admiral Seymour dragged his good eye – the other still being covered with a patch after his little accident with an infernal machine – from the spectacle before him to regard the marine on duty at the ship’s belfry, who watched the last grains of sand running through the hourglass. In less than a minute it would be time for him to ring eight bells at the end of the forenoon watch.
Such a thick pall of black smoke hung over Sveaborg, masking the sky for miles around, it was more like midnight than noon. The shells from the mortar vessels continued to smash down on what was left of the complex of fortresses. In front of the mortar vessels, the gunboats steamed in small, tight circles, firing their guns when they were lined up on the fortifications and reloading them ready to fire again before they completed another circuit. The shrieking shells left smoking trails in the air, and grey smoke rings ascended amidst the dust and flames from each explosion. The noise of the bombardment was incessant and tremendous. Each explosion hurled chunks of masonry spinning through the air. The powder in the Russians’ guns was clearly inferior, for their shots had hardly come close even to the gunboats, and they had not succeeded in hitting any. After the first hour of the bombardment, their batteries had begun to slacken: now they were too busy cowering in their bunkers to even bother returning fire.
‘Of course, I said all along that all that talk about it being folly to send wooden ships against granite batteries was so much stuff,’ Seymour said loftily, shouting to make himself heard above the incessant cannonade. He smiled to himself. For months now he had had to put up with the stigma of being associated with Napier’s desultory campaign, but the wholesale destruction of Sveaborg would wipe out that stain. Now he could claim that it had been Napier who had held him back last year, and his support for Captain Sulivan that had led to the success of today’s attack. A knighthood was as good as in the bag.
‘Where?’
‘Right below us!’
Another seaman jumped up on to the bulwark beside him. ‘I don’t see nothin’.’
‘It be there, I tells’ee! I seen it. Look!’
The second sailor glanced down again. ‘He’s right, there’s something there… it’s… it’s coming up to the surface!’
Seymour ran across to the bulwark. Even as he looked down, a long, black shape surfaced below the Exmouth’s quarter.
‘Stab me! It’s a whale!’ shouted someone.
‘Bloody rum-looking whale, shipmate.’
Seymour saw the hatch in the back of the… the thing. ‘That’s no whale. Whatever it is, it’s man-made. Corporal! Bring your men!’
A dozen marines crowded the bulwark, levelling their muskets at the iron contraption. ‘Want us to open fire, sir?’
‘Wait a moment, there’s a hatch opening.’
The hatch cover was thrown back. A dozen muskets were aimed.
The barrel of a carbine emerged, with a white shirt tied to it. ‘Whatever it is, sir, looks like it wants to surrender.’
A head emerged from the hatch, facing towards Sveaborg. Then the head turned, and Seymour recognised the face at once.
‘Killigrew!’ he spat in disgust.
The commander grinned up at him. ‘Hullo, sir! Is this the right road for Piccadilly?’
‘What the deuce is that thing?’
‘It’s an underwater boat, sir. The secret weapon I tried to warn you about back in January.’ Killigrew climbed out of the hatch to stand on the back of the Sea Devil, and helped the others out after him. ‘Lord Palmerston sent me to destroy it, but when I saw a chance to steal it instead, I could hardly pass it up. Oh, may I introduce Mam’selle Plessier, the Friherre Per Stålberg, Major Vidrik Lindström, and Enseigne de Vaisseau Paul Verne and his men from La Mouette?’
Seymour fumed and glowered as the Exmouth took the Sea Devil in tow, and the Frenchmen went on board the flagship with Stålberg and Lindström, until only Killigrew and Aurélie were left on the contraption. The commander slipped an arm around her waist and made to kiss her, but she pushed him away.
‘Have you already forgotten what I told you? In espionage, it is not good to fall in love.’
He smiled. ‘But now my mission’s accomplished, I’m not a spy any more.’
She thought about it. ‘In that case…’ She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
And at that precise moment – on the dot of noon – a shell from a mortar finally penetrated the roof of the battered magazine adjoining the citadel on Vargon.
The resulting explosion was awesome. The concrete bunker was torn apart and a huge ball of flame seemed to engulf the citadel with a deafening roar. Rooftops, beams of timber, even the bodies of men were hurled high into the air, pitiful figures tossed up above the inferno like rag-dolls. Just as the fire began to turn to smoke, another explosion renewed it from within, and then another and another, as the shells and barrels of powder in the magazine exploded, a succession of overlapping blasts that poured flames into the sky and belched forth vast clouds of billowing smoke to add to the thick pall that already hung in the air for miles around. The eruptions merged into one long, dreadful roar, the astonishing conflagration lasting the best part of two minutes. The men on the deck of the Exmouth were too astounded by the cataclysm to cheer. Seymour had never seen anything like it, and he stared in open-mouthed fascination, appalled and amazed at the same time. The men in the gunboats and mortar vessels were so stunned by what they had done their guns fell silent for a few moments.
Killigrew and Aurélie broke off their kiss. ‘Did you say something?’ he asked her.
Laughing, she shook her head, and glanced up at the bulwarks of the Exmouth. No one was looking down at the Sea Devil any more: every eye on board was fixed on the vast cloud of billowing smoke and dust rising from the explosion on Sveaborg. Aurélie slipped back down the hatch and pulled Killigrew after her.
‘Make the earth move for me one more time,’ she invited him.
He closed the hatch firmly above them.
Afterword
Both sides made extensive use of spies during the Crimean War, although usually on a local level. When the British bombarded Bomarsund in the summer of 1854, a Russian officer attempted to survey the Allied batteries disguised as a woman. The disguise fooled no one, of course, and he narrowly evaded capture. According to William Don – a hospital dresser on board the Duke of Wellington during the following year’s Baltic campaign – the French captured some Finnish fishermen after the bombardment of Sveaborg and blackmailed them into surveying the ruins of the island complex to report on how much damage was done. Most intriguing of all, a man suspected to be a British naval officer arrived in Helsingfors (renamed Helsinki when Finland finally gained her independence from Russia in 1920) as the clouds of war gathered, posing as an ichthyologist and covertly attempting to recruit Finnish pilots for British ships.
There is a long history of secret policing in Russia. It is no surprise that it began when Ivan the Terrible founded the Oprichniki, a system of spies who kept a close watch on the boyar classes. The Third Section of the Imperial Chancery was founded by Nicholas I early in his reign. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Third Section had metamorphosed into the better-known Ochrana. The Bolsheviks quickly wiped out the Ochrana following the Revolution of 1917, only to replace it with the ‘All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage’, or ‘Cheka’ for short. In time the Cheka was renamed the GPU, then the OGPU, which later became part of the NKVD before being detached again and being renamed the KGB. In the Glasnost era, the KGB was renamed the Federal Security Service, or FSB. ‘New name,’ as Robbie Coltrane’s character, Valentin Zhukovsky, wryly remarks in the film The World is Not Enough, ‘same old friendly service.’
Having gained his PhD in mineralogy from the University of Helsingfors in 1855, Nils Nordenskjöld continued his studies in Berlin. In 1857 he made a speech calling for Finnish independence, and was exiled from the grand duchy by Governor-General Friedrich von Berg when he refused to apologise. The following year he participated in Otto Torell’s expedition to Spitzbergen, and led further expeditions to the Arctic in the 1860s. In 1879, in the steamship Vega, he completed the first ever navigation of the North-East Passage. Paul Verne, meanwhile, retired from La Royale in 1859 and became a stockbroker. His brother Jules went on to make a name for himself as a writer.
James Tabard, QC is a fictional character, but inspired by the real-life ‘Jem the Penman,’ James Saward, QC, whose long career on both sides of the law came to an end in 1856 following his arrest for forgery. Saward is believed to have bankrolled the Crimean Bullion robbery – better known as the first Great Train Robbery thanks to Michael Crichton’s book and film of that name – the previous year.
Wilhelm Bauer was a Bavarian artillery corporal who built his first submarine, Der Brandtauscher (Fire Diver) for the Army of Schleswig-Holstein in 1850. It sank due to a fault, and Bauer and his crew only escaped after five hours at the bottom of Kiel harbour by allowing water into the submarine to equalise the outside pressure of the sea so that a hatch could be opened. In 1851 he travelled to England, where Prince Albert gave him financial support to build a new submarine. For a time he worked with John Scott Russell, a distinguished shipbuilder who worked on the Great Eastern with Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Russell then cancelled his contract with Bauer, thinking he had learned enough of the Bavarian’s secrets to design and build a submarine of his own. But Bauer was a cagey man who had always played his cards close to his chest, refusing to take out a patent for his invention because he felt he would have to part with too many of his secrets. R
ussell’s submarine sank during trials and was lost with all hands; the submarine historian A. H. Burgoyne implies its failure may have been due to modifications introduced to the design by Lord Palmerston himself!
When the Crimean War began, someone in authority decided that Bauer’s intentions were ‘subversive’ – it is possible he had already been contacted by Russian agents – and British Customs and Excise were ordered to confiscate his drawings and model if he tried to leave the country. Bauer, however, was tipped off by a friendly customs official from whom he had been learning English, and escaped unrecognised one night on a steamer heading for Hamburg. Within three hours of arriving in St Petersburg in the spring of 1855 he was in a meeting with the Grand Duke Konstantin, who was to be an enthusiastic supporter of Bauer’s next project, the Seeteufel. The Russian Admiralty was less enthusiastic about the contraption, however, and there may have been some wry humour at play when they chose to call the Sea Devil the Khimera. The real Sea Devil was not completed until 2 November 1855, but the Admiralty delayed seven months before transporting it to Kronstadt for trials. There, during the coronation ceremony of Tsar Alexander II, Bauer submerged in the Sea Devil with his usual crew, and four musicians who played the Russian national anthem, accompanied by the singing of the crew. On the surface, they could be heard 220 yards away. Alexander II was so impressed by Bauer’s work, he had the rank ‘submarine engineer’ invented for him, with a brevet and a special uniform.
Although the Sea Devil never engaged any enemy shipping – the first submarine to sink a ship would be the CSS Hunley some nine years later – it proved itself a success during 134 test dives. Later Bauer designed another, larger submarine for the Russians, with a steam-engine for surface running and a compressed air engine to drive her when submerged. She was also to be armed with twenty-four guns. When the Admiralty decided Bauer should complete his submarine in Siberia for security purposes, however, the engineer wisely decided that the time had come to leave Russia and return to Germany. His contribution to the development of the submarine is incalculable.
Killigrew and the Sea Devil Page 49