The Complete Navarone

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Doesn’t like dockyard people,’ said the man on the bow line. ‘Nor do I.’ And he put up a seaboot, and shoved.

  Mallory could have dodged, broken the man’s leg, saved his dignity. But what he wanted now had nothing to do with dignity. It was to get off this submarine, quick.

  He jumped.

  He heard the toolbox clatter on the submarine’s pressure hull. He saw the blue wink of it disappear into deep water.

  It, and its three grenades.

  Then the water was in his mouth and eyes, and he was swimming for the quay. He could hear the Kapitän laughing. He paid no attention.

  He was thinking, five minutes to destroy the third U-boat.

  How?

  Andrea was swimming too. In fact, he was swimming for his life.

  The waters of Greece were warm sapphires, blown by the meltemi certainly, but tideless, unmoving.

  The waters of Vizcaya were different. The waters of Vizcaya were dark emeralds, cold as a cat’s eye.

  And they moved.

  When Andrea had lowered his shrinking body into the water and let go of the iron rung, the eddy had taken him and spun him, so that the quays and the harbour whirled around his head. The cold had stolen his breath at first, so he trod water, and watched the harbour wheel a second time. Then he had fixed his eyes on the distant, ill-kempt masts of the Stella Maris, and started to swim.

  On the face of it, things were fine. But he knew as soon as he entered the channel that this was all wrong.

  He could breathe now. He was swimming, the great muscles of his shoulders knotting and bunching, driving his body through the cold salt water. He was swimming breaststroke. If they saw him, they would see only a head, a small head, that they would think was a seal. There had been anti-submarine nets off the end of the quays. But those nets were down now, folded away in the holds of the merchant ships, because the submarines were coming out.

  So it was just a four-hundred-yard swim to the Stella Maris. Ten minutes. Fine.

  Except that it was not working out that way.

  The tide was like a river, sweeping him out of the narrows and into the sea. The Stella Maris’ masts were sliding away upstream, fast, terrifyingly fast.

  This was new. And it was unpleasant, not because it was frightening, because nothing physical, not even death – especially not death – frightened Andrea. But Andrea’s life was based on not letting people down, and allowing the things that had been planned to come to pass. He had perfect faith that Mallory and Miller would accomplish their part of the job.

  He was beginning to have less faith that he could do the same.

  In spite of the Benzedrine, he was growing tired. Even he, even Andrea, was growing tired. He knew his reserves of strength were finite. There was no point in trying to swim straight at his objective.

  Brains, not brawn.

  He turned until he was looking at the tall black bows of the merchant ships anchored in the harbour. He could hear the clank of their windlasses as they came up over their anchors, could see a couple of launches crawling across the glossy shield of the water. He began to swim, facing directly into the current and about ten degrees to the right.

  For anyone else, it would have been instant exhaustion, suicide.

  For Andrea, it was possible.

  He swam with short, powerful strokes into the current, building a bow-wave of water on his nose. The quay where he had started had fallen away as he had been washed out to sea. But after five minutes of hard swimming, it had also fallen away to the left.

  And the inner of the two merchant ships, which had been stern-on, was now showing its starboard side.

  He did not let himself hope that he was making progress. He swam on doggedly, another two hundred strokes. He crossed a spine of white-tipped standing waves. A couple of waves smacked his face. He inhaled salt water, choked. He was really tired now. Now he had to look.

  He looked.

  The Stella Maris was a long way ahead, up-tide. But she was only some twenty degrees to the right.

  He was getting across.

  But his troubles were by no means over.

  There was a bigger lift to the waves now, a regular roll. When he looked ninety degrees left and ninety degrees right, he saw not the quays of the town or the cliffs of the Cabo beneath the walls of the fortaleza. He saw open sea.

  Andrea swam on. He was holding steady now. There was less tide out here. But he could feel in the screaming muscles of his legs and shoulders and the hammer of his heart that he was approaching the limit of his strength.

  In Andrea’s book, it was the mark of a man that he did not admit that there were limits.

  Somewhere, Andrea found a reserve. With that reserve he started to move forwards. Progress heated his blood, and the heat of his blood helped progress. He found that he was moving up the slack water off the beach on the San Eusebio side of the channel, and that the quays, with their double ranks of fishing boats end-on, were coming closer.

  He trod water for a moment.

  His feet touched bottom. He looked back the way he had come. Except for a strip of deep green in the middle of the passage, the water on either side of the channel was paling. It looked as if it dried out at low tide. Ahead, the water was also pale, darkening only where the channel swept in under the quay where the fishing fleet was moored.

  It had been a big swim.

  But if he had waited another five minutes, he could probably have walked most of it.

  Another man might have laughed, or cried, or felt relief. As far as Andrea was concerned, none of that was necessary. An exhausting set of conditions had ceased to apply, and a less exhausting set now obtained. The objective remained: to get aboard the Stella Maris within the next – he glanced at his waterproof watch – four minutes.

  He began to wade.

  Hauptsturmführer von Kratow did not like Spain. Latins were a slovenly bunch, racially suspect and entirely lacking in culture. But von Kratow did realise that to an operation such as Project Werwolf, they had their uses. It was just, he mused, trotting up the stone stairs of the fortaleza to report to the Herr General, that there seemed to be something in the air. Organising an embarkation should not be difficult. But there was a spirit of … well, mañana … that made even SS order and system show a tendency to buckle.

  Still, everything was in order now. The attack at the main gate seemed to have been a false alarm. The embarkation was almost complete. All that remained was to report to the General, who would be highly delighted. A bastard, the General, with his Turkish tobacco and what his troops reckoned was the limpest artificial wrist in the Reich. But an appreciative bastard, particularly if, like von Kratow, you were a cleancut Junker with a nice leg for a jackboot, and you did your work correctly. Von Kratow was pretty sure that three repaired submarines and a smooth embarkation would mean promotion.

  He pushed open the elaborate door of the General’s quarters, and sniffed for the Turkish tobacco.

  There was no Turkish tobacco.

  Von Kratow frowned.

  For as long as he had been the General’s ADC, there had been a cigarette smouldering between the General’s artificial fingers. The only time he was not smoking was when he was asleep. He would not be asleep now, not with the evacuation nearly finished.

  Von Kratow opened the door.

  A buttery morning light was pouring through the part of the Gothic window not covered by the curtains. The tobacco smell hung stale in the air, and last night’s fire had died to bitter ashes. Von Kratow walked across to the desk, and collected himself a handful of Turkish cigarettes from the box. The General would never notice. The Luftwaffe brought him new supplies weekly; God knew where they found them nowadays.

  Von Kratow yawned and stretched. It had been a long night, in a long series of long nights. But now it was over.

  Beyond the stone fretwork of the windows the harbour was a sheet of green glass lit by a heavy yellow sun glaring just above the mountains to the east. The
merchant ships were up over their anchors, the launches heading back on what must be almost the last of their journeys to pick up the now diminished clods of men from the quay. Down in the repair facility, the Werwolf boats were emitting a blue mist of exhaust. The inshore boat had dropped her shore lines and seemed to be nosing towards the exit.

  So that’s it, thought von Kratow. Mission accomplished. Time to catch the boat. Time to make sure the Herr General caught the boat.

  Von Kratow was a tidy-minded man. Before he went to knock on the bedroom door, he drew back the heavy brocade curtain that was half-obscuring the window.

  That was when he found the General.

  For perhaps ten seconds von Kratow stared stony-faced at the oyster silk underwear, the ivory-white skin of the face, the black flow of dried blood from the right ear. Then his hand went to the cigarette box on the desk. He lit one of the General’s cigarettes and thought, silk underclothes.

  Then he put out a deliberate finger, and pressed the button behind the curtain.

  The general alarm button.

  Suddenly, the Cabo de la Calavera was full of bells.

  Mallory crawled up the iron rungs on the granite wall, coughing water. The quays opened in front of his eyes: a sheet of granite paving and drying puddles, studded with cranes, riven by the three great crevasses of the submarine docks. The innermost submarine was moving. From behind him there came the clatter of diesels, and the churn of water blowing from ducted screws over rudders. That submarine – his submarine – was on the way out too.

  The top of the conning tower of the last submarine was stationary. It stayed in his eye as he rested at the top of the ladder. He was tired now, Benzedrine or no Benzedrine, so tired that he could hardly drag himself up a set of rungs in the quay.

  He saw a terrible thing.

  He saw Dusty Miller on the conning tower of that submarine. Miller was arguing with a man in a cap, demanding admission, by the look of it. The man in the cap, the Kapitän, presumably, was telling him you are cluttering up the joint, and I am sailing now, so get off, before you get stuck.

  Dusty Miller won. He vanished from view.

  Quick, thought Mallory. For God’s sake, be quick.

  He looked at his watch. It was three minutes to five. Early, he thought. They’re leaving early.

  Too late.

  Mallory began to crawl away from the submarine he had visited, the submarine with the dead Petty Officer in the head –

  It was then he noticed that the harbour was full of bells.

  The conning tower into which Miller had vanished began to slide along the quay.

  Mallory could almost hear the orders: in the event of problems, move out.

  So three minutes early, the U-boats were moving out.

  And one of them had Miller on board.

  Something snapped in Mallory. He clambered to his feet, exhaustion forgotten. He stumbled along the quay after that conning tower, yelling hoarsely with rage. But the conning tower slid away faster than he could chase it down the quay.

  The three great U-boats gathered in the turning basin at the end of the quays, stemming the tide: huge grey metal whales the length of destroyers, solid as rocks with their squat, streamlined conning towers, white water churning from their propellers. Men scuttled on their decks, making the final preparations for sea. Their Kapitäns conferred, conning tower to conning tower, with the casualness of men who knew that a hundred metres of water made them untouchable.

  Mallory looked over the edge of the quay, made frantic by the bells.

  He saw a rowing boat.

  It was a small, filthy rowing boat, a quarter full of water. But it held oars and rowlocks, and it was more or less afloat.

  Mallory grabbed the painter that tied it to the bollard on the quay. He wound his ruined hands into that rope, climbed down it and cut it with his knife. The boat floated free. There was an idea in his mind, a crazy idea, born out of exhaustion. Go to that U-boat. Hammer on the hull. Tell them there had been a mistake. Dockyard matey inside. Needs taking off. Quick. Then they could go on, aboard the Stella Maris, and have at least some chance –

  He pulled with the oars. The dinghy shot across the eddy at the end of the quay.

  The tide caught it.

  Four knots of tide.

  Mallory could row at two knots, flat out.

  The U-boats were gliding past at horrifying speed. Mallory turned, tried to get back.

  Not a hope. The U-boats might as well have been in Berlin.

  With a great sickness in his heart, Mallory began to crab across the channel towards the Stella Maris. Soon the air was full of whipping sounds, and little explosions, like fireworks. Someone was shooting at him. In fact a lot of people were shooting at him, from the merchant ships. Dully, he remembered the rings of sandbags on their hatch covers, the snouts of machine guns, other guns too. They would probably hit him.

  Mallory found that he did not care. Something had gone wrong, he did not care what. They had lost Miller. A voice in his head, a voice like Jensen’s, said: if Miller had to die, this was how he would have wanted to die.

  Mallory’s own voice answered: rubbish.

  ‘Orders,’ shouted Dusty Miller to the Kapitän of the last U-boat.

  ‘From the General. I have to check the officers’ head. You do not sail for five minutes.’

  The Kapitän had a cropped bullet head and a broken nose, and a look of extreme exhaustion.

  He said to the coxswain at his side, ‘Take this man below. Make sure that he is on the quay when we sail. This is your responsibility.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said the coxswain. He was a small, pale man, and he did not look pleased to be sent off the conning tower. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘Engine room head,’ said Miller, rattling his toolbox.

  ‘There isn’t an engine room head.’

  ‘I got my orders,’ said Miller.

  The coxswain said, ‘I’ll show you, then.’ He started down the ladder, and headed towards the back end of the boat.

  The conning tower hatch was a disc of daylight above the control room. As Miller started down the ladder, he thought he heard bells, and shouting. But he knew he had five minutes in hand. The bells must be meaningless. What was in the forefront of his mind was how he was going to get rid of this damned coxswain.

  The central alleyway of the U-boat was familiar territory to Miller now: yellow lights, heat, sweaty faces. What was not familiar was the sound of the engine. It was still a huge, clattering roar. But now it was a roar that changed pitch, went on and up, held steady, and went up again.

  The coxswain stopped. He looked at Miller. His lips moved. It was not possible to hear what he said over the racket of the diesel. But it was easy enough to read his lips.

  Miller’s heart thumped once, painfully, in his chest.

  The words the coxswain’s lips were framing were, ‘We’ve sailed.’

  For a second, Miller’s face felt wooden with shock. Then he grinned. ‘Well, then,’ he said, though he knew the other man would not hear him. ‘We’ve got a load of time.’

  The coxswain arrived at the engine room. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘No head.’

  Miller grinned, his wide, starry-eyed idiot’s grin. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said.

  The coxswain pointed back along the corridor towards the ladder. Miller could almost see the thoughts running through the man’s mind: this is not my fault, it’s because we sailed early. All I have to do is get this fool back to the Kapitän. The Kapitän has forgotten him in the heat of the moment. I will be in the clear –

  Miller stared at the coxswain, still grinning, as the coxswain made pointing gestures back towards the ladder. Miller craved that ladder like a fiend craves dope. The coxswain came back to him and shoved him towards the ladder.

  Miller hit him.

  He hit him hard in the stomach. If it had been Andrea, the punch would have killed the man. But Miller was a demolition expert, not a bare-hands killer. The coxswain who
oped and doubled up onto the deck. Miller looked round.

  There were three men in the alleyway. They were all watching.

  Miller stepped over the body on the deck, and walked smartly aft. The roar of the engines had steadied now. He walked through the watertight door into the engine room. He slammed it, and dogged the handles quickly behind him. Ahead of him, hanging from a stanchion in the deckhead, was a chain hoist. Just like a mine, thought Miller, grabbing the chain. Miller had spent thousands of hours in mines, some of them very happy. As he wrapped the chain round the door handles, he felt right at home.

  Someone was trying to undog the door now. When bare hands did not work, they started to hit the handles with what sounded like a sledge hammer. Bash away, thought Miller. We are talking good German chain here, and submarines are not built to resist the enemy within.

  In fact, enemies within were virtually unknown on submarines.

  Because when a submarine went down it went down, enemy within and all.

  Miller told himself: it had to happen, one day.

  It did not help.

  He bent and opened the toolbox, and took out the two grenades.

  Suddenly, he smelt tobacco smoke.

  Round the end of the diesel block came a pale, oil-stained man in a singlet, with an undoubtedly illicit cigarette in his mouth. He glanced at Miller’s face, the glance of a crew member who knows his shipmates and is baffled by the emergence of a new face from their midst. Then his eyes moved to Miller’s hands.

  Miller grinned at him, and put the grenades stealthily back in the box.

  The man’s eyes stayed glued to the grenades.

  He went white as an oily rag. Then he picked up a wrench, dropped his cigarette, and came at Miller.

  He was a short man, almost dwarfish, as wide as he was high. The coxswain had been out of shape because he only did whatever they did in the control room. This man was an engine room artificer, with big muscles under the white skin of his shoulders. He got both hands on his wrench, and he hefted it like a baseball bat, and he came down the aisle at Miller like an oil-stained Nibelung. Miller swung the toolbox at the man. It was an overconfident swing, inspired by too much Benzedrine and not enough judgement. It missed by a mile. The Nibelung smacked at the toolbox with his wrench. The toolbox flew out of Miller’s hand, skidding down the gratings, bursting open as it slid. Tools and grenades spilled out. Miller caught a glimpse of the grenades, unarmed, useless, skittering into the tunnel where the propeller shaft ran. Then he threw himself to one side, and the wrench whacked into the steel bulkhead where his head had been.