by Anne Perry
Below he had eaten in the officer’s mess, listening a great deal more than talking. The food was good enough, but they were newly provisioned and he expected it to get worse. At least there was enough of it, and they were not under fire. He was a lot better off than Joseph had been most of the time.
He wondered about Joseph, aware that his conscience had driven him to go to Flanders in the first place, and perhaps it was all that made him consider returning now. His physical injuries were healing, but the wound to his mind and his emotions appeared to be deeper. Something in him had changed, and here in this close, crowded room with other men who also faced the enemy every day, and the possibility of mutilation or death, Matthew found that the change grieved him. Joseph was not a soldier in fact, but he was in spirit. He was as much part of the regiment and of its battle to survive and win as any other man.
Matthew ate silently, answering only if he was spoken to, and he watched the others. He had no idea if the man here to steal the prototype was an officer or a seaman. He must learn everything he could of each man, because his life might depend on seeing the tiniest element that did not fit in. He may not be given more than one chance before it was too late.
The crew was complete without him. They had a bond he would never be part of. They were not unkind, but they knew his inexperience and mistrusted it. He would have to earn his place. The jokes passed over his head. He did not understand the teasing, the laughter, the references to one man’s boots, another’s compulsive tidiness, a third’s lapse of memory. They were based on terror and violence shared and endured together, tolerance of moments of weakness easily understood, the loss of friends, and above all, the knowledge of horror yet to come, and that they might not survive it. They knew each other’s values, and that tomorrow or the next day their own survival might hang on that courage and willingness to sacrifice even life for the good of the many.
Matthew slept badly, aware all night of the shifting and turning of the ship, the sound of footsteps along the narrow passage on the other side of the door, and of course every half hour the ship’s bell ringing the time. About three in the morning he heard running, and a brief burst of gunfire, but there was no alarm. He lay rigid in his bed, gulping air.
With jarring reality he became aware of physical war, shells tearing apart the metal of the ship, men injured. He was not afraid of pain; he never had been. But since the murder of his parents, violent death horrified him in a new way. The reality of it reached inside him and touched his innermost being. Now the knowledge that he was on a warship that might become involved in the slaughter and injury of battle made him nauseated and a little cold. But at least it would not be personal, face to face, as it was for Joseph. He might see the injured or the dead, but they would be people he barely knew, and above all, he would not have to inflict injury himself. The enemy would be distant, a ship, not men. Except, of course, for the one man on the ship that he had come here in order to find.
It was more than an hour before he went to sleep again. His rest was uneasy and full of violent dreams.
The next two days were difficult and exhausting. It took all his concentration simply to learn his job and he was embarrassed at the mistakes he made. Ragland was patient with him, but he made no allowances. He could not afford to. At home in St. Giles, Archie was a friend. They had known each other for over fifteen years, but mostly at family occasions, bound by a love for Hannah, taken much for granted. Here on the ship his word was law, his decisions governed the life of every man on board—and very possibly the death also.
On the one occasion Matthew passed him in the narrow passage up toward the signals room, he remembered to salute only just in time, and received a brief acknowledgment in reply, an instant meeting of the eyes. Then Archie was past him and on the steps up to the bridge, and the isolation of command.
It was a strange, artificial situation, and yet unbreakable. Here the sea and the enemy were the only realities. Friendship and duty were the core of survival, but neither must ever trespass upon the other. In his own way, Archie was every bit as alone as Matthew could ever be, and with a burden of trust enough to break the mind, if you allowed yourself to think about it. Better not to. Just act, each moment for itself. Do your best.
At the end of the third day, Matthew lay on his bunk staring up at the ceiling and realized he ached in every muscle and his head throbbed from the tension of concentrating on getting each decision right, and drawing no attention to himself. He hadn’t had any chance at all to try to find the man sent here to steal the prototype.
Presumably they would be ambushed by a U-boat. There would be no point in torpedoing them. The last place the Germans wanted the prototype was on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Time was short. What would he do, in their place? Have a U-boat shadowing them, stalking, and keep in touch with them somehow. Radio signals. A sharp burst, too quick for anyone on the Cormorant to detect. Just sufficient to keep in touch and mark their position. A destroyer was not an easy target to disable adequately enough to be certain of getting the prototype off before sinking it. They carried four four-point-seven-inch guns, two pairs of pom-pom guns, and four torpedo tubes, and they could move through the water at twenty-five knots. They were the wolves of the sea—swift, maneuverable, and often running in packs. But even alone, they would fight hard for their lives. It would take two U-boats at least to be sure.
Whoever was on the Cormorant had to be one of the new men on this voyage. It was a matter of elimination. He must begin immediately in the morning, even if he had to get Archie’s permission to delegate some of his signaling watch duties to somebody else.
But he did not get the chance. He woke in the dark to the urgent sound of alarms. All hands on deck. He scrambled into his jacket and boots and, heart pounding, he made his way up to the bridge, feet slipping on the steps.
The ship seemed to be alive with movement, men running, shouting orders, manning the gun turrets. The wind was rising, sharp and startlingly cold for the end of May. The ship bucked and slithered on the long Atlantic swell. Over in the southeast there was a gray blur across the horizon. It would be dawn in half an hour.
Matthew scanned the surface of the sea for any sign of the black presence of a U-boat, but he saw nothing except the glimmer of waves as the half-light caught their backs, and the occasional paler tips of spume.
“You won’t see them,” Ragland said from beside him.
“What do we do?” Matthew asked.
“Wait,” Ragland replied. “Listen. Be ready to act.”
Minutes dragged by. There seemed to be noise everywhere, the wind on the metal of the ship, whining in cables, wires, against the housing of the bridge, the rhythmic hiss and crash of the water, and now and then footsteps of men. Matthew found his breathing was ragged; his muscles ached, and he was so cold his legs were numb below the knee.
Suddenly the order came and they changed course dramatically, swinging to the west, and a few moments later back again. The light was broadening in the sky. Then he saw it, a long silver trail in the water to the left. He knew what it was: a torpedo. It had missed them, but somewhere under that dark, heaving sea was the U-boat that had fired it.
A moment later there was another, closer this time. The U-boat commander had anticipated their turn and moved more rapidly.
The Cormorant replied with a torpedo of its own, but no one expected to see wreckage on the paling water.
They zigzagged again, avoiding more torpedoes, and discharged their own sporadically, not to waste shot. The game of hunter and hunted went on for four more hours, tense, eyes aching. The torpedoes shot past in glistening trails, many times far too close. Twice they knew the U-boat passed directly under them. The depth charges exploded with deep rumbling violence, churning up gouts of water, but still no wreckage.
If this was the U-boat sent to take back the device, why only one? Was another going to appear and take them down? Hit them where they would sink slowly enough for one man
at least to leave them and board the U-boat with the prototype, presumably the man on the ship who was signaling them? He was here, wasn’t he? One of the seven other new men on this voyage?
Matthew stood in the signal house, cold, hungry, eyes aching, his muscles locked with the tension of waiting. He turned to the east and in the sunlight bright on the water saw for an instant the black conning tower of another submarine. An instant later the Cormorant’s guns blazed in a deafening roar.
Matthew was totally unprepared for the sheer noise of it. Then he was thrown off balance as the ship veered again, and he felt a violent jolt as if they had been slammed in the side of the hull. They had been struck! This was it. They would begin to sink. That ice-cold sea would suffocate them after all. At least he must make sure they did not lose the device. The Germans must never know it did not work.
He swung around to Ragland. “I’ve got to get below, to the torpedo room!” The man would go for the prototype. At least Matthew would get him before they went down. Then he was filled with white-hot rage. The whole crew would be lost, and this man was responsible for it. God knew how many women would be widowed or lose their sons and brothers. Hannah! Even thinking of that choked him so he gagged for breath. She would lose her husband and her brother in one night. How would she bear it? How did anyone?
And Joseph. He would never see Joseph again. Would he go back to the trenches, or would this imprison him in St. Giles . . . ?
Ragland’s hand was on his arm, hard enough to hurt. It was the pain of his fingers digging in that stopped him.
“It didn’t explode,” Ragland shouted at him. “They’ll deal with it. Get on with your job.”
Matthew felt the sweat break out on his body, in spite of the cold. But it was not over. This would happen again and again, until one time it really was the end. How in God’s name did they bear it?
There were shouts, commands, followed by a long raking salvo of gunfire on the starboard side toward the east, and the sea erupted in water, smoke, and flying debris. Then the Cormorant changed course again, and again. Torpedoes streaked past the sides and disappeared.
An hour later Matthew was standing in the captain’s cabin and Archie was leaning back in his chair. He looked pale and haggard from lack of sleep, but calmer than Matthew felt. How many times had he been through this?
“Was that an ambush for the prototype?” Archie asked.
“Yes, sir, I think so,” Matthew replied. The sir had come to him so naturally he only realized it afterward. Archie was no longer his brother-in-law; he was his captain. They had sunk a U-boat, killing the men on it suddenly and violently. They had looked back and seen the other U-boat combing the seas, but there were no survivors visible.
In one morning he had learned with his heart and his gut what war was. Nothing like the imagination, even the knowledge of the figures from all the battle zones of the world. This was as intimate as one’s own churning stomach, the blood and bile in the mouth, the sweat on the skin, the dark water waiting to swallow them all.
“How close are you to finding him?” Archie asked. His voice sounded far away, an intrusion into Matthew’s racing mind and its horrors.
He wanted desperately to give him a positive answer, but he knew the cost of lying, even by implication.
“There are seven new men on this voyage, apart from me,” he said. “Coleman is only seventeen, which excludes him from having the knowledge or the connections. Eversham’s just lost a brother in France and I think his grief and his anger are both real. That leaves Harper, Robertson, Philpott, MacLaverty, and Briggs.”
“It’s not Briggs,” Archie said flatly. “His parents were killed in a zeppelin raid on the east coast. I know that’s true. Knew his elder brother as well. That leaves you four. You haven’t much time.”
“I know. We have to assume that was only the first attempt, and there’ll be more.”
Archie nodded, lips thin. “Apart from that, how are you getting on?”
Matthew smiled. “I think when this is over I’ll go back to intelligence,” he replied ruefully. “And work twice as hard.” He said it lightly, but he meant it. Emotions of all sorts were banked high inside him, like a spring tide; a respect for the men who defended the sea that was gut-deep, a passion, not a thought: and the beginning of a new perception of what Joseph felt, just a shadow, a glimpse of how much there was beyond it that he would never know.
“No risks,” Archie warned. “Whoever it is, he’ll kill at the drop of a hat. Remember that. He’d have sent the whole ship down last night. The only thing stopping him from killing you is that so far he may not know who you are, any more than you know who he is. But he’ll be looking for you!”
A flutter of physical terror twisted in Matthew’s stomach. His lips were dry. “I know.”
“Don’t forget it—ever,” Archie warned.
“No, sir.”
“Right. Go back to your duty.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted and left.
They steamed on northward beyond the coast of Ireland, and then east into the North Sea. Matthew moved very carefully, but he knew every hour mattered. Whoever it was would expect the sea trials of the prototype to begin, or they might suspect there was something wrong. How could the Admiralty not wish to deploy such a weapon as soon as possible?
He became so used to the movement of the ship that most of the time he barely noticed it. He still had to count the bells and work out what they meant, and think in watches: five of four hours each, and the two half-length dog watches.
He had studied the plan of the ship, but found no believable excuse to be in the engine room or the magazine. However, he knew the names and service records of every man, but the majority of them he did not recognize by sight.
Gradually he learned enough about both Philpott and MacLaverty to eliminate them, leaving only Robertson, a large gunner with a dark sense of humor and quick, intelligent eyes; and Harper, a skilled engineer in his late forties. He was lean and muscular, moving with a grace that suggested both strength and speed when necessary, but oddly colorless features and fairish brown hair as straight as rain.
The second U-boat attack came not long after midnight, about two hours into the middle watch. Again Matthew was woken by the alarm. He could roll out of bed and into his jacket and boots almost automatically now. Knowing what was coming did not make it better. In an instant he thought of going to where the prototype was stored rather than up to the bridge, but then Archie’s warning brought back some sense. To do that would give him away immediately. And it would then be only a matter of time, perhaps minutes, before Harper or Robertson, whichever it was, would kill him and put him over the side. During the battle with the U-boat would be the ideal time.
Instead he went with the other men, hurriedly. Feet were pounding along the narrow, corticine-floored, metal-walled passages and up the steps, boot soles clanging and scraping, all the way up to the bridge.
He got there before Ragland. The duty officer looked tense in the yellow glare of the lights, his eyes searching the rain-swept night, and the endless black waves around them.
“Bastards are bloody invisible in this,” he said bitterly. “The sooner we try this damn invention we’re supposed to have, the sooner we’ll have a chance! What the hell are we waiting for—Jerry to sit there in the middle of a calm sea so we can take a shot at him and see if we strike? Damn it, we can do that already.”
“Wish I knew,” Matthew said sympathetically. “Maybe it needs daylight to see the results? I’ve no idea.” That was an approximation of the truth. He did not know how they would have tested it to be certain of its abilities.
Further conversation was lost in the noise of gunfire, and it was several minutes before he realized it was not depth charges going off, nor torpedoes fired at them. It was a surface vessel opening up with its four-inch guns and the shells were landing only just short, the water shooting up in columns and falling back again. They were being attacked from both sides, s
urface and beneath.
They changed course and returned fire, orange flame blossoming from their guns. The noise ripped through the night, bruising the senses.
The next hours passed in a haze of chaos with smoke and flame so thick it choked, then ice-cold air hurting the lungs, then more guns again. Every now and then Matthew saw through the clearing smoke the silver trail of a torpedo or the pale gout of water leaping two hundred feet high as a depth charge exploded in the sea, or a shell fell wide and burst.
Then the shooting got more accurate. Shells tore into the decking, sending splinters of hot metal flying. One gun turret erupted in fire and there was a desperate scramble to get the injured men out. Matthew was sent with a message, stumbling down the gangways, choked with the acrid fumes of cordite and the smell of burning rubber from the corticine.
He saw smoke-grimed faces bent to guns, stokers heaving coal into the boilers, bodies gleaming in the red light of flames, skins almost black, other men injured, blood on their uniforms, eyes hollow with shock.
This time there was no conclusion, no strike of depth charges and wreckage spewed up and floating on the sea, no wait for bodies, just a long, slow winding down of tension and release of fear as time stretched out after the last burst of gunfire.
They had lost two men dead and thirteen wounded, most of them flesh injuries or burns. Three were serious; one would be fortunate if he survived. He had been in the gun turret that was hit.
Matthew was coming up from carrying a message to the ship’s surgeon, and on the way back up to the bridge, when he passed Robertson in the passage. For a few moments they were alone, the thrum of the engines loud, like a mechanical heartbeat, the air close, suffocating with the smell of oil and smoke and rubber, the swing and surge of the sea now so familiar they both adjusted to it without thinking.
Matthew was the senior. Robertson stood aside for him. He was broad-chested and heavy shouldered. His face was expressionless except for the illusion of lopsidedness created by streaks of oil on his nose and left cheek.