by Dudley Pope
Up the ladder and pause at the top while Jenkins caught hold of his coat to re-form the line of men. Ahead was the wireless cabin, where Watkins and his mate should be in control. Still the slow shuffle. The eye usually spotted a sudden movement but rarely saw anything moving slowly. This trudge was bad for the nerves – his nerves, anyway. He could usually steel himself for a quick dash but hated the slow build-up. Abreast the wireless cabin now. He pressed Jenkins back a little, the signal to stop, and broke away to tiptoe over to the big steel box. No one outside the door and no shouting inside. Watkins was in control, he could be sure of that.
He turned back towards Jenkins and was pleasantly surprised to see how little the group of men showed up in the darkness. Against a dark background, a bulkhead for example, they would be invisible.
The bridge was one deck higher, up that steel ladder. Captain Ohlson’s cabins were here, in the section just below the bridge, on the same level as they were standing. Yorke again stopped; nudged Jenkins and pointed to the door into the cabins. ‘Count to ten and then go in!’ he muttered as Jenkins and another man glided away.
Yorke began pulling himself up the steel ladder, Reynolds and the rest of the men following him. He paused for a moment to reach under his coat for the revolver tucked into his trouser band. He cocked it carefully, and although the clothing muffled the click it sounded very loud. Very loud indeed to someone with his thumb on it who was half scared that the tug of a piece of clothing would result in the gun firing, with dire results to his manhood.
He pulled out the gun and put it into his jacket pocket, found a grenade in the way and pushed it down the front of his jacket, not daring to risk banging it against the steel ladder if he held it in his hand as he climbed. The top of his head was level with the top rung, and he paused a moment, finishing his count…eight, nine, ten. Jenkins would be opening Ohlson’s door now.
A few steps up, his right hand reaching for his gun as he cleared the top, left hand dipped into his pocket for a grenade.
On the forward side of the bridge, hunched over with his elbows on the bridge rail, concentrating on looking at the ship ahead, was the Swedish officer of the watch and Yorke recognized him as the one who had met them on deck when they had climbed up the scramble net and escorted him to the bridge. Yorke tiptoed over to him and then paused for a moment, feeling foolish: did you knock out someone using the butt of a revolver, gripping it by the barrel, or just hold the gun in the palm of the hand and give him a good clout with the side of it? What a hell of a time to have to decide. The gun was cocked: a sudden jar and it might go off.
He stuck the gun back in the top of his coat, returned the grenade to his pocket, tapped the Swede on the right shoulder with his left hand and hit him on the jaw with a wild right-handed punch as the startled man turned to look over his shoulder. The man gave a mild grunt as he slid to the deck and for a moment Yorke felt he had smashed every bone in his hand.
‘Starboard side of the bridge secured,’ he reported to himself ironically and turned to go into the wheelhouse. Now he needed the revolver and he reached into his coat, conscious that someone behind him was pushing impatiently.
He stepped into the wheelhouse from the wing of the bridge and the impatient person passed him, proving to be Cadet Reynolds making for the wheel. Another seaman took his place and walked across to the helmsman who, almost hypnotized from concentrating on the dimly-lit compass bowl, was slow to react. As he walked across the wheelhouse to go out to the other side of the bridge, Yorke saw the seaman jabbing his revolver into the helmsman’s ribs and pushing him away to make room for Reynolds at the wheel.
There was one man standing out there in the darkness, a thin man whose shoulders were slightly hunched and who, like the other officer, was looking forward with his elbows resting on the bridge rail.
‘Mr Pahlen,’ Yorke said softly. ‘Good evening.’
The officer swung round with a muffled curse. ‘English? Yorke is it? What the devil are you doing up here? And who are these people with you?’
Yorke moved to one side to let the two seamen immediately behind him get out of the wheelhouse.
‘Stand back from the rail,’ Yorke said sharply, remembering that the button for the action-stations alarm would be fitted close to the binocular box on the after side of the coaming.
‘Don’t you dare give me orders!’ Pahlen snarled, then stepped back quickly as one of the seamen cocked his revolver with a click which in the tense atmosphere sounded like a steel bar snapping.
‘Kapitänleutnant Pahlen,’ Yorke said calmly, ‘we’ve taken the ship. You are a prisoner of war. However, since the Swedish Government will never admit you were on board, nor will the German Government, we are free to toss you over the side, dead or alive, without anyone shedding a tear. Go to the chartroom. One silly move and I doubt you’ll even feel the splash…’
The two seamen bundled Pahlen back into the wheelhouse and then to the chartroom. Yorke, left standing on the port side of the bridge, was congratulating himself on trapping Pahlen. The man had not protested that he was Swedish when Yorke had given him a German rank and told him he was a prisoner of war. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was alone on the bridge. No one was keeping a lookout and if Reynolds was a few degrees off course, there would be an almighty collision with one of the ships in the next column to port or starboard.
Reynolds was obviously wasted at the wheel; he would have to be the officer of the watch for the next half an hour or so. Yorke hurried back into the wheelhouse, found one of the seamen capable of acting as a quartermaster, and told Reynolds to go out to the starboard side of the bridge to keep a lookout and make sure the young Swedish officer was still unconscious.
‘We’ve got ’im ’ere,’ one of the seamen said, gesturing into a dark corner of the wheelhouse. ‘That chap wot you ’it, sir. Still asleep, ’e is. We’ve tied him up with electric flex that Watkins sent along.’
They all froze for a moment, then Yorke realized it was a telephone, not buzzing but giving a sharp, urgent, high-pitched ring. A seaman passed Yorke the receiver. Where the devil was the call coming from? He grunted into the mouthpiece, a word which could be ‘Ja’ if you were expecting a German to answer or ‘Yeah’ if you were English.
‘Is that you, Mr Yorke?’ The alarm in the voice was palpable.
‘Yes, Mills: how are things down there?’
‘Fine. Got ’em all bundled up, no one hurt very much. None of us, anyway. Same revs?’
‘Yes, we’re staying in the convoy for the time being. I’ll use this telephone for passing orders, not the telegraphs.’
‘Very well, sir,’ Mills said. ‘How are things on the bridge?’
‘Fine – we have it. Wireless cabin secured. I’m just waiting to hear from Jenkins that Captain Ohlson is locked in the lavatory like the three old maids, then we’ll secure the rest of the people.’
He put down the telephone to find Jenkins grinning at him. ‘That’s just where he is, sir. So surprised he never spoke a word. I’ve left a man watching the door.’
Yorke glanced at the compass bowl, saw the seaman was keeping a good course despite the sea coming in on the port bow, and said to Jenkins: ‘You’re absolutely sure you can get the rest of this ship’s company out of their cabins and into the saloon?’
‘How important is it that we don’t kill any of them sir?’ the seaman asked carefully.
‘It does not matter now, because the Penta isn’t a neutral: at least one of the officers is a German. Still, I don’t want you acting like a lot of wild cowboys down there.’
He paused as the second signalman came into the wheelhouse. ‘Message from Watkins, sir,’ he said as soon as he saw Yorke. ‘Wireless room secure, operator tied up, one receiver tuned to the Echo’s working frequency, and a transmitter and receiver on the distress frequency.’
�
�Good, so Watkins can be left?’
‘Yes, sir, he told me to report and then lend your chaps a hand. He’s got a phone. Ah, that’ll be him,’ he said as a phone rang. He picked up the instrument. ‘Bridge here, that you, Watkins?’ He listened a few moments, said ‘Yes, and I’m sure he sends his love, too,’ put the receiver down and said: ‘’That’s the phone to the wireless cabin, sir. Second one along.’
‘Right. Now Jenkins, I need a guard for Pahlen, and you’ve left one with Ohlson, so you’ve got…’ he counted them up in his head, ‘four.’ Not many, to capture perhaps twenty men. Unarmed and sleepy men, admittedly. ‘Is that going to be enough? Wait, bring Captain Ohlson up here and put him in the chartroom: that’ll give you the guard as an extra man. Five and yourself.’
‘That’s enough, sir,’ Jenkins said cheerily. ‘A bullet ricocheting down the steel corridor will be worth a dozen men, if I have to fire one. If you’ll take the man you want as guard for here, I’ll get Captain Ohlson up and start sorting out the bastards below.’
Yorke knew that for a guard he needed an unimaginative man who was not squeamish. ‘Leave me Baxter. Warn any Swede who speaks English that the bridge and engine room are already under our control; they can telephone the bridge to confirm…’
As Jenkins went down to fetch the Swedish captain, Yorke gave Baxter his instructions for guarding Pahlen and Ohlson in the chartroom. ‘Watch the one who looks like an albino. He’s in there already. He’s dangerous, but I want to question him in a few minutes, so don’t…’
‘I won’t, sir,’ said Baxter, ‘but the captain…?’
‘Not so important.’
‘And the officer outside that we wired up with flex?’
‘Just check from time to time that he’s not getting free.’
Out on the starboard wing of the bridge Yorke found Reynolds keeping a sharp lookout with a pair of binoculars – obviously appropriated from the binocular box – slung round his neck.
‘Can you see a signal lamp anywhere?’ Yorke asked.
‘Yes, sir, I kicked the box just now. It’s a sort of Aldis, smaller than ours. Already plugged in, so watch out for the flex. Ah,’ Yorke heard wood scraping against wood as the cadet dragged the box out of a corner, ‘here it is.’
Yorke picked it up, pressed the glass against his body and touched the trigger. ‘That’s lucky, it has a blue shade on it. Now, look round with those binoculars of yours and see if you can spot the Echo. She’ll be over on the starboard quarter of the convoy.’
As the Cadet looked, Yorke heard a shuffling and grunting but did not look round: Jenkins was bringing Captain Ohlson up to the chartroom. Captains that pass in the night.
Half the job was done. No perhaps a third. Capturing the Penta, providing Jenkins and his men managed to secure the rest of the Swedish crew, had seemed a difficult enough task when they were all locked up in the cabin aft, but it was only a small part of the hunt for the insider. Just how small was shown by the fact that he was now standing on the Penta’s bridge, for all intents and purposes in command, fairly certain there was a U-boat underneath him, and still utterly helpless; as helpless as if he was sitting astride a wooden horse on a runaway merry-go-round. Helpless, that is, until he found out from Pahlen what was going on, and passed the word by signal lamp to Johnny Gower in the Echo. Even so, if he found there was definitely a U-boat beneath the ship, what the hell could he or Johnny do? There was no way of destroying the U-boat without blowing up the Penta at the same time…
‘You’ve got about ten minutes to spot the Echo,’ Yorke said. ‘In the meantime keep a good lookout ahead and astern and watch the revolutions: use your own judgement. Don’t drop back so the Marynal rams us or I can imagine Captain Hobson’s comments!’
‘So can I, sir,’ Reynolds said with a shiver, swinging his binoculars astern. ‘She’s there all right, on station.’
Yorke walked back into the wheelhouse, getting a confident grin – that was all the binnacle lamp illuminated – from the man at the wheel, and pushed open the door into the chartroom, going through and shutting it quickly so that the light came on: it was the moment of darkness that might give Ohlson or Pahlen a chance to try to escape.
Pahlen was lounging on the settee at the after side of the chartroom, Ohlson standing against the bulkhead on the other side from the door. Baxter made the apex of a triangle joining the three, a cocked revolver in his right hand and a grenade in his left. Baxter had a heavy piece of line round his waist. At first glance it seemed to be keeping his trousers up. Then Yorke saw it was a lanyard which he had tied through the ring on the safety pin of the grenade. Baxter had only one hand for the grenade yet throwing was usually a two-handed job: a finger of the left hand went through the ring and pulled out the safety pin while the right hand kept down a safety lever until the grenade was flung. Baxter’s method was excellent: he had only to jerk the grenade and the safety pin would come out, letting the lever spring up as it went through the air. Baxter was, in the confined space of the chartroom, a one-man army.
Yorke took out his own revolver as he said to Baxter, ‘All quiet?’
‘That bloody light going out when the door opens, sir: we need some warning.’
‘Tell the man at the wheel to warn everyone to knock and wait a few moments before they come in. And…’ he saw a long chromed tube on the chart table, ‘pass me that torch.’
He switched it on and said to Baxter: ‘Right, tell the helmsman now.’ He kept the beam pointing at Pahlen and made sure that as the door opened the torchlight also showed the revolver.
Baxter returned, shut the door and the chartroom was once again fully lit.
‘English,’ Pahlen said, almost casually, ‘you might just as well put that revolver away because you’ll never use it. It’s not sporting to shoot an unarmed man.’
‘You’ve been reading the wrong books about the British,’ Yorke said quietly. ‘I’d sooner shoot you than offer you a cigarette.’
‘Rubbish,’ Pahlen said, as though talking to a child.
‘Hit him, Baxter,’ Yorke said. ‘Just once, hard.’
As the big seaman walked back to the chart table, Pahlen gasped painfully for breath and then bent over, clutching his stomach. As soon as he was sitting upright again Yorke said briskly, ‘I have three questions to ask. You will answer them all.’
‘I answer nothing!’ Pahlen snarled.
‘You’d better listen to the questions. First, is the U-boat still beneath us? Second, what time does she leave to get into an attacking position? Third, an alternative: does she go when she feels like it or do you make a signal?’
‘I don’t answer,’ Pahlen said.
‘Baxter,’ Yorke said conversationally, switching on the torch, ‘just put your head round the door and tell the man at the wheel to warn Mr Reynolds not to be alarmed when he hears shots.’
The chartroom plunged into darkness except for the torch; then the lights came on again.
‘Now, Pahlen, answer the first question.’
‘You’d never shoot!’
Yorke aimed at Pahlen’s leg, glancing at the watch on his left wrist. ‘In one and a half hours that U-boat is probably due to make its first attack. Fifty British or American seamen might be killed. Then it will torpedo a second ship, killing perhaps another fifty. And then later it might get a third. One hundred and fifty Allied seamen might die. Unless, Herr Pahlen, you answer some questions correctly.’
‘It is war, English!’
‘Yes,’ Yorke agreed, ‘it is war, and I’m afraid you’re the next casualty. I’m short of time. The first question please. Is the U-boat still beneath us?’
‘Would you shoot an unarmed man, English?’ Pahlen sneered.
‘Yes,’ Yorke said. ‘I’ll count to five. Remember, a hundred and fifty of my people will die within a couple of hours
if you don’t answer.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Captain Ohlson screamed. ‘The Swedish Government will protest! This is a neutral ship. I am the master. I order you to get out of here and let my men take over again.’
‘Do you?’ Yorke said politely. ‘Very well, I’ve made a mental note if it. But don’t interrupt again, please; your turn will come should Herr Pahlen not survive his questioning.’
The flicker in Pahlen’s eyes showed Yorke that the German was beginning to get worried because he must already have realized that Ohlson was a weak link. Ohlson would talk to save his life. It was just because Pahlen was so typically a Nazi that Yorke was going to make him talk first.
‘Pahlen,’ he said, ‘I told you we don’t have much time. Baxter here can give you what they call in American gangster films “a roughing up”, but it takes five or ten minutes. I want answers in a few seconds. I’m going to count five. If you haven’t answered that question by then, I’m going to shoot you. One…two…three…four…five.’
The explosion in the confined space seemed to blast his eardrums and Baxter, as a precaution, had already half turned to face Ohlson.
Pahlen’s high-pitched scream was the first noise to get through the ringing in Yorke’s ears and the man was crouched down grasping his left foot. His hands were slowly turning red as blood dripped from the torn shoe.