“My father was at Jutland too. He was in a destroyer. He’d been in a battleship’s gunroom in Scapa Flow, in the Grand Fleet. Hated it—he was ‘under report,’ supposed to be a failure. Then he got this break—I think his uncle Hugh pulled a string and got him the draft-chit to this destroyer— Lanyard, her name was … Anyway, she was in the thick of it, and he finished up as the only officer left alive—he was a sub-lieutenant then, not quite twenty-one—and he brought her back, three-quarters wrecked, having torpedoed a Hun destroyer en route.” Paul smiled. “Then promptly got into hot water over something else. I forget what—but he was never what anyone would call orthodox.”
“Your mother’s a White Russian?”
“Well, she’s American now. But yes—he married her in the Black Sea in 1919, when we were trying to help the Whites against the Bolsheviks. But they split up when I was still a child. He has a new wife now—a real honey.”
“Might say he has it made, then.” Crawshaw could have been envious. “Terrific reputation, a honey of a wife, you say, a title, medals by the yard, big house, land in—Yorkshire, you said?”
“West Riding.” Paul accepted one of Massingbird’s cigarettes. “Thanks, Chief.”
Henning, the navigator, was on watch, and Dick Eaton was up there with him. Brazier was sitting next to Paul, but he hadn’t contributed a word to the conversation. He’d never been exactly talkative. Crawshaw asked. “Mind a personal question, on the subject of your family?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Are you in line for the baronetcy? I mean, are there any other Everards ahead of you?”
“No, there aren’t. So if I survived my father—yes, I am. But that’s a tossup, really, in present circumstances.” He lit the cigarette, in a general silence. No-one wanting to agree with him, when that would imply that chances of survival from the X-craft operation were slim. Which they were, of course—and knowing it was good enough reason not to mention it. Paul added, “My stepmother’s had a baby son, a year ago. Named Hugh, after the great-uncle. So if my father was knocked off and I was too, that’s who’d inherit.”
“I’m sure we all hope that neither your father nor you will get knocked off, as you call it!”
“Thank you, sir.” Paul glanced up at the electric clock. “But if you’d excuse me now, I have to go and make a phone call.”
X-12 and the three men in her were never out of his mind. Particularly now, with the weather turning bad. He went aft through the control room, through the cold rush of air which the pounding diesels drew in from the hatch; he slid back the wireless office door, pulled it shut again behind him to keep out the noise and cold.
“Evening, Colbey.”
The telegraphist moved over. He was grey-headed, unusually old-looking for a submariner. Paul sat down in the spare chair, pulled the telephone closer and cranked its handle. All he got was static: he waited, anxious, remembering a dream he’d had last night. He’d been doing this, trying to get through—but no sound at all, the wire had gone dead, tow-rope parted, X-12 lost … Then Gimber’s face and staring eyes seen through a film of water, Gimber’s body floating on its back—inside the craft, and the realisation suddenly that he, Paul, was also inside it with the corpse and trapped, water-level rising swiftly, roaring as it always did when it jetted in under pressure … He remembered too the psychiatrist, Claverhouse, asking him “What about dreams?” A truthful answer would have been, I have them quite often, and they’re terrifying … He’d cranked the handle again, and now Gimber’s voice came through loud and clear: “What’s for supper in the Grand Hotel, then?”
“You sound cheerful, Louis.”
Gimber adopted the voice of Mona Lott, a character in Tommy Handley’s ITMA programme: he whined, “It’s being so cheerful keeps me going … Actually I have an unpleasant feeling that things are becoming bumpy. Any worse than this, we’ll have to trim her heavy for’ard. What’s the forecast now?”
He could visualise them, in that cramped space a hundred feet under the sea, the other two with their eyes and ears on Gimber, dreading the answer to that question. Paul told him, “It’s not too good, I’m sorry to say.”
“So what is it?”
“Force four, southwesterly.”
Actually the forecast had been for winds force four and five, sea rough to very rough. There didn’t seem any point in laying it on thicker than you had to. It would happen anyway, you couldn’t do anything to stop it … Paul added, “We’ve coped with a lot more than force four on exercises, Louis.”
“Exercises lasting a few hours, not whole bloody days on end … Anyway, don’t wet your pants, we’ll make out … Any news from FOSM?”
“Not yet.”
The news they were waiting for would be the reconnaissance photos of Altenfjord, the details of the targets’ positions and net protection. When the photo-intelligence experts had completed their analysis of the pictures there’d be a signal from Admiral Barry spelling it all out and ordering one or other of the alternative attack plans.
Gimber grumbled, “I thought we’d’ve had it cut and dried by now.”
“Maybe the Catalina developed more pigeon problems.”
They’d been flying the pictures down from Russia by Catalina flyingboat; and this was a reference to Soviet red tape. The Catalinas up there had carrier pigeons in them for life-saving purposes, to carry SOS messages back to base in emergency. Soviet customs officials had impounded the birds, on the grounds it was illegal to import livestock. There were jokes now about the pigeons having to be Party members to get in.
“How’s the routine going, Louis?”
“OK. Except if you take Benzedrine to stay awake it’s bloody impossible to sleep when you come off watch. Also your mouth tastes like a garbage pail … What’s the news from Italy, if any?”
“The Bosch are said to be pulling back, above Salerno, and the Eighth Army’s linked up with the Fifth. Us and the Yanks, that means, I suppose.”
“Of course that’s what it means, and Eaton told me the same thing two hours ago.”
“It’s good news, anyway.”
“Tell you what I’d call good. A hot bath, some big eats, a night in clean sheets, a first-class warrant down to London, Jane there to meet me.”
“She will be, Louis. In due course.”
“I wonder.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Would you give a damn, anyway?”
“I’m not quite with you, Louis.”
“Say that again, old boy … But now listen. If the weather gets worse— when it does—might be sensible to check communications every half-hour instead of hourly. Can do?”
The air stank inside the midget. It was one of the things you just had to live with. “Trigger” Towne asked Gimber as he replaced the telephone, “What’s that weather news?”
“Force four’s expected.” Gimber looked at Steep. “I’ll take over, Ozzie. Get some rest.”
“But it’s your turn.” Steep looked harassed as well as ill. “I’m OK, honestly.”
Pale, dull-eyed; sweat gleamed on his face and forehead. In the last twelve hours he’d developed chronic seasickness; he was very far from “OK” and he didn’t seem to be getting any better. X-12 was porpoising on her tow-rope, depth varying all the time between about seventy and ninety feet in more or less regular undulations; she’d been doing it for two days, except for the six-hourly breathers on the surface. Steep was on his seat at the after end of the control room, with a bucket beside him which he’d been using since last night; it did nothing to improve the atmosphere, despite his emptying it into the heads—the lavatory, in the W and D compartment—at frequent intervals.
Gimber told him, “That wasn’t a suggestion, Ozzie. It’s an order. Go for’ard, get your head down.”
X-12 launching herself downward now. A fifty-foot steel cylinder weaving up and down like a kite on a string. Towne winked sympathetically at Steep as the sub-lieutenant climbed out of his seat and w
ent for’ard, squeezing past Gimber under the dome, pausing in the W and D for his own purposes and then crawling through into the fore-end, on to the wooden pallet that covered the top of the boat’s battery. All Gimber could see from this end now, looking for’ard through the openings in the two transverse bulkheads of the W and D, were the soles of his tennis shoes. He was lying on his face, head pillowed on crossed arms: he’d just crawled into that position and stopped moving. He’d left the bucket in the W and D.
Gimber said quietly, “Trigger—be a good bloke, put a lashing on that bucket?”
“Eh?” Then he caught on. Before the bucket started flying around, Gimber had meant. Towne slid off his seat and crept into the W and D. Gimber was settling himself at the controls, on the first lieutenant’s seat. Before the telephone conversation with Everard he’d been doing some mopping-up, a chore which Trigger Towne would now continue when he’d secured the pail. It was one of a number of routine chores that had to be done for several hours each day, to keep the dampness under some kind of control.
Gimber murmured, as Towne came back, “Poor sod.”
“Wouldn’t have thought it.” Towne wrung out a swab. “We had worse than this, training, and I never saw him puke.”
“It never went on this long. It’s either that or it’s the Benzedrine affecting him, some sort of reaction to it.” Gimber was moving the hydroplane control very cautiously, aiming to reduce the amount of porpoising but careful not to overdo it. A little too much plane angle could make this worse instead of better; and if you had her fighting the drag of the tow, you could easily snap it. He shook his head: “He’ll get over it. By tomorrow, I’d guess.”
“You didn’t think to tell Everard.”
Gimber shrugged. “Wouldn’t be much point.”
“Except if it goes on—or he gets worse—”
“Odds are he’ll have his sealegs by tomorrow.”
“Bloody hope so.” Towne scowling: he was on his side with his legs drawn up and his bearded face against the casing of the trim-pump, one arm reaching down into the bilge and the other doubled out of the way behind him … “How long before the next guff-through?”
Gimber checked the time. “About an hour.” He’d found the optimum angle for a permanent setting on the hydroplanes: she still porpoised, but slightly less, in slightly flattened curves. By “permanent” he meant of course in terms of present sea conditions: wind and sea were getting so it wouldn’t last for long. By morning, in fact, life might be distinctly less than comfortable. Still, he had his hands free now, so he could keep an eye on the depthgauge and the bubble but at the same time do some dryingout maintenance, wiping moisture off the inside surface of the hull, off pipelines and machinery and exposed wiring. Most of the dampness—and actual water, gathering finally in the bilges—came from condensation, and its main threat was to equipment, particularly electrics. The prime symptom would be reduction in insulation values, but electrical gear generally was at risk. The creeping damp also affected human beings—wet clothes, wet skin inside them, hair that remained wringing wet as if you’d been swimming …
Well, nobody had been expecting a joyride.
Towne was wriggling backwards, as a preliminary to getting himself into an upright or partially upright position. You couldn’t just sit up or lie down or turn around: you had to look first to see what was where and how best to fit around it. With the whole bag of tricks swooping up and down all the time. Towne swearing softly to himself as he extricated his long legs, then folded them the other way; he muttered, “I better take a shufti at the compressor. Right?”
They’d thought it was noisy when it had last been running. It was driven by the main engine, the Gardner, and its function was to compress air into steel bottles from which main ballast tanks were blown, for surfacing. Highpressure air was a precious commodity, since it was basically your ticket to the surface, and the machine that provided it was therefore a vital item of equipment. Not that any single item was superfluous: if any had been, the designers would hardly have wasted valuable space by including it. And as every single piece of gear had to be in the best possible running order when the operational crew took over in a few days’ time, maintenance was a very important part of the passage crew’s duties.
Only two of them to do it all, if Ozzie was going to be kaput for long.
Gimber frowned, remembering the end of his conversation with Paul Everard. It had just slipped out: result of the strains of the recent days, he supposed, but no less unfortunate for that. He’d have liked to have wiped it out of his own memory and Paul’s: and it was a reminder that, under pressure as they were, you needed to watch out: he hadn’t realised that the rot had already set in, to that extent …
Trigger Towne, having extricated himself from his recent Houdini-like entanglement, broke into Gimber’s thoughts.
“Compressor, then—OK? Got an hour, you said?”
He nodded, waking up. He’d been staring at the depthgauge in a sort of daze. You could get hypnotised, gazing at its shine for hours literally. Seeing nothing, or seeing—everything. Jane, for instance, and Everard’s relationship with her. If any. Her sweetness and her ambivalence, his own patience out of consideration for the dreadful hurt she’d suffered. Jane as one of the walking wounded of this war … He transferred his eyes from the bubble to Trigger Towne. “Say fifty minutes.”
“I’ll do it in more like thirty.”
Towne began to squirm aft. The compressor was in the engine compartment, the after-end. To run it—when you were on the surface or at least had the induction trunk up, because the diesel couldn’t run without air—you clutched it in at a point between the engine-clutch and the for’ard end of the main motor. It was a hell of a spot to get at; the designers didn’t have to.
By daylight it was blowing force four, as promised. Setter pitching hard with the blow on her port quarter, and Paul was scared about conditions down there in the midget. Gimber wasn’t saying much on the telephone; only that it was “much as you’d expect.” Then: “For God’s sake, do I have to describe it to you?”
“Not if you don’t want to, Louis. But keep your wool on.”
“Yeah … And if you want to know, I’ll tell you—it’s fairly bloody!”
“Anyone seasick?”
“Of course we’re seasick!”
“All of you?”
“Trigger’s all right. He’s got no more belly on him than an eel has, he doesn’t know how to be sick.”
Paul heard some muttering in the background. Towne’s voice. He said, “I didn’t know you did, Louis.”
“Well, this motion is somewhat exceptional.”
MacGregor commented, when Paul told him, “I can’t imagine much worse. Seasickness on its own is bad enough—but in that tin can …”
On the surface during her last ventilation period, X-12 had hardly been visible in the waves sweeping over her. But the change of air would have more than compensated for such a minor discomfort as getting soaked. From what Gimber had said, their clothes were permanently sodden anyway, just from condensation.
Paul had been wondering about Gimber’s cryptic but hostile remark over the telephone the previous evening. It might have meant very little—a very minor undercurrent of jealousy or suspicion exacerbated by conditions. Gimber might have been having some problem with Jane and imagining she’d have discussed it with Paul. But it had sounded like more than that—like smoke indicating fire. Ordinarily Paul might have shrugged it off, thought All right, so he’s caught on, we can play it in the open now. He’d have been glad of that—ordinarily. But this was no time for emotional complications.
They were having breakfast in Setter’s wardroom when FOSM’s signal arrived. Part of the table was cleared, and Brazier and Eaton did the decyphering. Jazz Lanchberry, who’d got the buzz that the all-important message had come in, shuffled aft from the ERAs’ mess and sipped at a mug of wardroom coffee, leaning against the bulkhead door while he waited for answers. Brazie
r muttered, as they started work, “Could be they’ve taken off again. Fjords empty, no bloody targets—turn round, come home …”
Massingbird said from his bunk, “Then you’d be lucky.”
They ignored him. Eaton said, “First word is ‘reconnaissance.’ “
The aerial photographs had been analysed. Tirpitz was in her protective box at the end of Kafjord, and Scharnhorst was similarly penned nearby. Lützow was in Langfjord, in her own private enclosure; the system of nets and barriers was as it had been before. FOSM’s order to the X-craft flotilla now was “Target Plan 4.”
MacGregor was standing on one leg in the gangway, pushing the other into waterproof trousers in preparation for a visit to the bridge. Hopping on the one leg as she rolled, Lanchberry backing out of his way. MacGregor asked Paul, “What does that mean for you, Everard?”
“We go after the tiddler.”
“Lützow?”
He nodded. It was disappointing. All right, to destroy a 10,000-ton “pocket battleship” would be a good day’s work, but one had hoped to get a crack at the big one, Tirpitz. Under Plan 4, Tirpitz would be attacked by X-5, X-6 and X-7, Scharnhorst was allocated to X-9, X-10 and X-11, and Paul would share Lützow with X-8.
MacGregor said, reading Paul’s mind, “Hardly a tiddler. I’d call that a very worthwhile target.” He added, into a silence—Brazier and Eaton were looking glum too—“I wouldn’t mind.” Meaning he’d be glad to get Lützow in his sights from Setter. It was a point well made: and at least the thing was fixed now, they could get on with it. Paul got out his chart and large-scale diagrams, and settled down with the others to check over the approach route, distances and timing. X-12 and X-8 would be the last to go in, as their target was the closest and the entire attack needed to be synchronised. Otherwise if you were in the fjord when someone else’s charges went up, you could be blown to kingdom come: or a premature attack could spoil all the others’ chances. Routes for different craft were varied, but there was a minefield to be crossed to start with and for most of them the last part of the approach to Altenfjord would be through a narrow channel called Stjernsund. But X-12 was to use Rognsund—a narrower passage somewhat trickier.
The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6 Page 18