Niven said nothing but stared down at the activity alongside, where two launches were dipping and swaying against the moored XE 16.
The towing submarine had already cast off, and Seaton saw the pale sweaters of her crew on the after casing as they arranged the towing gear. They had had plenty of practice, which was something, he thought.
Heaving lines snaked out of the gloom, and more men appeared on the tug’s deck below the bridge. Seaton took a deep breath. Time to move on again. He said, ‘Let’s get started.’
He walked to the ladder, knowing some of the tug’s crew were staring as he passed. Envy, pity, it was hard to guess. He imagined Venables on the bridge watching their departure, but dismissed the thought at once. Not him. He was no Trenoweth. Venables would be getting ready to leave. Most likely back to the Admiralty, a million miles away.
Seaton had noticed that neither of the other midgets had been mentioned. If XE 16 was destroyed, no doubt the next boat would already be standing by in the Shetlands, and the third after that. He chilled. It made sense if you could stomach it. If he and his command were captured, he would be unable to tell the enemy anything, no matter what they did. For he would know nothing. It was another war entirely.
Jenkyn went first, cat-footed and easy, his boots not even catching a droplet of spray which sloshed amongst the swaying hulls. As if he were eager to go.
Niven next, not looking down, his face deeply shadowed with determination.
Then Drake, his lips pursed in a silent rendering of South of the Border, and lastly, as tradition decreed, the captain of this tiny but deadly craft, David Seaton.
Diesels coughed and spluttered before settling into a steady beat, and the lithe shape of the towing submarine angled in towards the tug, the heaving lines swiftly bent on to the towing wires. The last of the tug’s seamen secured the tow and then leapt back into their own launches, one calling, ‘Give ’em a bloody nose, sir!’ Someone always said that.
Seaton glanced along his own little deck, shining like black glass in the gloom. No conning tower or structure of any sort to break the low silhouette. He gripped the periscope guard and yelled, ‘Cast off!’
He saw the big submarine moving slowly away, almost crabwise as she took the strain on the tow. He felt the first pressure, saw an arrowhead of choppy water widening between XE 16 and the tug’s bulbous hull.
His mind recorded all these details and yet remained firmly on the main points of his job. To get clear of the anchorage and wait for the signal to dive. After that it was a question of adjusting the right trim and depth, following in the other vessel’s wake like a snared shark.
Two-and-a-half days. It would be the first time without a passage crew. An extra strain on all of them.
He swung himself down the after hatch and noted that his companions were all in their positions. Drake sitting aft and facing to starboard, working the pump controls, while Jenkyn sat loosely at the wheel, his eyes on the gyro as it ticked round obediently to the pull of the tow.
Niven, whose work of diver was shared with that of navigating officer, had already removed the bunk from the chart table and was busy with parallel rulers and pencil.
Seaton slammed down the hatch and secured it, feeling his ears react to the pressure. He pressed the button of the periscope hoist switch and crouched to meet and control it as it slid out of its well.
Not much to see. Lapping white crests, and then the narrow stern of the other submarine. Further away a frigate, one of their escorts, was sliding into darkness. In fact, she was anchored, and added to Seaton’s sense of separation.
He sighed and swung the periscope in a slow circle. Time to begin the checks, before they got into open water. He felt the boat sag and shudder against the tow. He looked at his hands on the periscope grips. They were quite steady, although he felt far from cool. Here we go. ‘South of the Border’.
The passage went more smoothly than Seaton would have believed possible. After the hazardous business of getting clear of the Shetlands, with an angry sea and short, steep rollers, they had dived in the wake of their towing submarine.
Again, luck stood by them, and unlike a previous mission when the slender telephone link between the two hulls had parted at the first dive, communications had remained excellent.
The first day had been a busy one. Checking every gauge and circuit again. Stores, some carelessly stowed by depot ship ratings, had to be rearranged, the trim of the boat adjusted to compensate.
Seaton found he had been able to delegate more things to the others, and it had been then, perhaps for the first time, that he had realised they had all become professionals in their trade without noticing it. This was no groping, anxious procedure, with startled eyes and embarrassed grins when something went wrong, when the nearness of danger had insinuated itself within the damp steel plates. Each man did his job with minimum comment. Every task for the passage was shared, helm, pumping controls, food, sleep.
Four men, moving back and forth, barely pausing to consider their slow-moving shell, its unreality when compared to the world above.
Seaton took great care to study his secret orders. To memorise some points, and to discuss other details with his companions.
Everything seemed to depend on the agent they would have to contact. He often recalled Lees’ words about seeing and feeling an enemy for the first time. Flesh and bone like yourselves.
Drake, who had kept a close eye on the pumps and the boat’s trim from the first moment of getting under tow, marvelled at the way Seaton appeared so matter of fact whenever he disclosed titbits from his intelligence folio.
He looked on Seaton as a friend in the fullest sense. Seaton would come and help him, if he needed him. No matter if it were here or they were to become separated by two oceans. Drake felt the same towards him. They never discussed it. It was just there.
But back in the tug’s chart room he had accepted the one difference between them. When that pompous ass Venables had been going on about the agent, and Seaton had asked calmly, ‘Suppose I’m not entirely satisfied with what he says?’
That was the guts of the whole thing. Not we, but I. Seaton was in command, and right or wrong it would have to be his decision alone.
Drake hoped he would be able to react in the same way if he were offered a command. But he doubted it.
He had thought a lot about Niven’s wife, too. Decia. Just thinking of her name felt like betrayal. Once or twice he had tried to place her and Niven together in his mind. Knowing all the while he was testing his own will, or the lack of it. Get this job over and in the bag and I’ll forget the whole thing. Even a straightforward lie like that did not seem to help any more.
Jenkyn kept himself busy all the time, and the only moments he was not crawling through his engine space, watchkeeping or doing some mechanical work or other he was trying to sleep. For the passage he shared his watch with the skipper, which suited him very well. Seaton trusted him completely, and it was mutual as far as Jenkyn was concerned.
Keeping active helped to put his last leave to the back of his thoughts. The spread table. The clock. His mother with her patient smile. What the hell would she do, or become, when she allowed her mind to accept the truth? It was enough to make a bloke go round the bend.
Apart from checking their snail’s-pace on the chart and sharing watchkeeping duties with the others, Niven had little to do. His diving gear was ready. So, he told himself, was he.
Whenever he looked at the small watertight door which led to the W & D compartment he could feel a kind of elation. Apart from being the ‘heads’ for the boat, it also led to the adjoining compartment in the bows. Used for those purposes it was hard to see it in its more important role.
Sitting there, feeling the water rising around you. Knowing Seaton would be watching through the toughened-glass scuttle in the door. It always made him feel a man apart. Worthwhile. And that was important to Niven, or it had become so since marrying Decia.
She alw
ays seemed to crave some kind of excitement. Riding, or driving fast cars, for which she always seemed able to get petrol when nobody else could. And the way she could goad or tease him whenever she felt like it. His defences always flew to the winds, and he had felt like hitting her more than once.
She was beautiful, passionate and demanding, and he wondered how she still managed to find energy for all her other interests.
By and large, the four-man crew of XE 16 managed to conceal their personal worries. Seaton imagined that one of the reasons for discarding a passage crew was so that nobody would find time to brood on his immediate future. They were part of Venables’ master plan. They were also expendable.
Then, on the morning of the second day, everything changed again. The waiting was over.
After tidying up the boat they went quietly to their stations, and after one final check started the main motor. It barely made a vibration as the hull continued to fight against the tow.
Seaton looked at the bulkhead clock and consulted his watch.
‘Stand by to surface.’
He found he was sweating, despite the clammy, lifeless air around him.
Drake crouched over his controls, his face set in a frown as he manipulated the pumps which trimmed the water back or forth between the tanks. After a moment he was satisfied and moved the hydroplanes very gently, studying the immediate response on his inclinometer. If the craft was badly trimmed, or if the tow-line snapped at the moment of surfacing, XE 16 might plunge headlong to the bottom before they could gather power on their own single screw.
It already seemed more spacious in their tiny control room as Niven was in the W & D waiting to leave via the fore hatch and slip the towing shackle. It was all vaguely casual.
The door to the compartment was open, and muffled against the cold and wrapped in a watertight suit Niven sat on the heads and regarded the others with his usual level gaze.
The hull vibrated and hummed, and Seaton said quietly, ‘Soon now.’ Sighing against the sides he heard and felt the subdued roar of compressed air as the towing submarine blew her main ballast and began to surface.
Seaton was suddenly very calm. Detached even.
Drake said, ‘Check complete.’
‘Very good,’ Seaton shot him a smile. No unnecessary jargon. They knew each other too well. ‘Two-five-oh revolutions. Periscope depth.’
The electric motor purred more insistently through the after bulkhead and the hull gave another slow shiver. Drake was juggling with his levers, his eyes unblinking on the depth gauge. ‘Nine feet.’
Jenkyn’s shoulders flinched as the periscope hissed up from its well and Seaton bowed almost to his knees to peer through it.
The boat was sliding rather than rolling, and Seaton watched the little picture take shape through the lens. Jagged waves and black-sided troughs. He could feel them lifting the boat but could hear nothing. Like going deaf. Being drowned. Like nothing else on earth. The sky was very dark, for it was still early morning. But the other submarine was already up and waiting, men vaguely visible on her casing.
He pressed the periscope button.
‘Surface!’
The deck tilted, and with the tow giving them added impetus XE 16 lurched violently to the surface.
Seaton handed Niven the weighted bag with Venables’ secrets inside and snapped, ‘Open up, Richard. Slip the tow.’ He clung to the periscope as the hull staggered violently and added, ‘Make sure you’ve got your harness clipped on!’ He thought that Niven hated being reminded of something so routine. But he could take no chances. A resentful diver was more use than a dead one.
He raised the periscope again, holding firmly to the grips as the little hull was pitched about. He saw a brief splash as the weighted bag went over the side. Too bad if he had forgotten anything now.
He saw Niven stooping and fumbling along the casing, like a mis-shapen giant in the crosswires.
Seaton made himself stop counting seconds. Niven was doing his best.
He sighed as the tow relinquished its grip and the midget almost slewed beam-on to a large, white-crested roller.
The fore hatch thudded shut and Niven reappeared in the W & D, bringing with him a small cascade of sea-water.
Seaton heard a muffled roar as the other submarine once again dived to her proper element, her job done.
He looked at Niven and smiled. ‘Good show.’
He took a quick glance through the periscope and then pressed the button.
‘Dive, dive, dive. Thirty feet. Eight-five-oh revolutions.’ He turned to watch Jenkyn’s shoulders. ‘Course zero-nine-two.’
The corticine deck levelled and settled down into a slow, regular pitch, and Drake let out a long breath. ‘Thirty feet.’
Seaton pictured XE 16, freed from her protective tow, heading away and towards the invisible coast. They would make contact at dusk. All being well.
To Niven he said, ‘I will try to get a better fix when we’re closer inshore.’ He watched him, seeking some sort of reaction. After all, there was a bloody minefield to cross before they could do anything.
But Niven merely replied, ‘I’ll work on it, sir. We can alter course when it suits us best to make the rendezvous.’
Just like that.
Drake looked at them. ‘If you’ll take over, Skipper, I’ll make us some breakfast, or lunch, or whatever it is.’
Niven said stiffly, ‘I’ll do it, Geoff.’
The tall New Zealander grinned. ‘Thought you might.’
Seaton leaned over the chart, studying his and Niven’s pencilled calculations. The towing submarine would have fixed their position exactly. With luck the final approach should be equally efficient.
He lowered the chart light closer to the table. It was a very wild-looking coast, he thought grimly. Fjords, and scatterings of little islets, some no larger than reefs.
And there was the port of Askvoll and the diamond-shaped island almost touching it on the chart. He examined the carefully plotted rectangle which showed the minefield across their line of approach. He had never had any trouble with mines before, except once when he had grated against a cable.
Eternal vigilance. The enemy was always thinking up new devices to overwhelm attacks or to hoodwink their opponents’ defences.
He heard Jenkyn humming to himself, the occasional tick of the gyro repeater. In the fore-ends Niven was groping around for some tins of food. It was strange how you could be hungry despite all the risk and uncertainty.
Seaton studied the chart, trying to memorise each small detail and lay it in his mind beside the information which Venables’ people had collated. He thought about the agent who was somewhere out there waiting to make contact. His must be a very special kind of bravery.
Jenkyn said, without taking his eyes from the compass, ‘Ah, char up!’
Niven lurched through the oval door with his mugs and some very stale-looking sandwiches.
Drake rubbed his hands. ‘Smashing! Just like mother used to make!’
Niven exclaimed, ‘For God’s sake, there’s no fresh food left!’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry, Geoff. I’m a bit on edge, that’s all.’
Seaton took one of the sandwiches. Spam and pickle. Not too bad. While they had been sitting on the bottom of that Italian harbour waiting to attack the dock, he had devoured a stale bun and some marmalade which had tasted of diesel, and had really enjoyed it.
Perhaps because he had believed it to be his last meal ever.
He thought of Niven’s brief spark of anger. The passage had taken more out of him that he realised. Out of each of them probably.
He stood up, ducking automatically. ‘I’m going forrard to get my head down for a couple of hours, Geoff. Take over.’
Seaton crawled through into the most forward compartment, tightening his stomach muscles against the motion and the smells which seemed more condensed here. Then he laid down on the bunk boards above the ranks of batteries and closed his eyes.
At least you were on your own here. And he needed to gather his strength. Prepare himself for whatever he was required to do.
It all seemed a very long way indeed from The Lodge Hotel.
4
Trevor
SEATON PRESSED HIS ELBOWS on the chart table until they hurt. It took physical effort to stay still, and to keep his restlessness from affecting the others.
Lying in the fore-ends had not helped, and peering at the chart until his eyes blurred was no better. His head and imagination could only contain so much. After that, even a firm decision arrived at earlier became confused and uncertain.
He looked down at his wristwatch. What was worrying him? It was all going like an oiled machine. Even allowing for the drift and the powerful thrust of tide and current, they must be through the minefield. To strike one of those moored killers was unlikely in such a tiny craft, and even conventional boats had made their runs along the coast to see what they could get a shot at. Shallow-hulled motor torpedo boats had made hair-raising dashes at top speed across the same track as XE 16 to drop agents, to try and recover them later.
But there was always the chance, of course. Some submarines and small craft had vanished with neither a trace nor a claim by the enemy.
He half listened to Niven mopping down the hull with great wads of towelling. The plates were running with moisture and condensation, and but for their thick, protective sweaters and waterproof suits they would be too chilled and damp even to think properly.
Drake called, ‘Soon now, Skipper?’
‘Yes. I must get a look at the weather. Visibility is supposed to be good, but you know how it goes.’
Drake fell silent again, knowing Seaton was trying to think.
If they failed to make contact with the agent, and there was no sign of suspicious activity by enemy patrols, they would have to find a billet to set down on the bottom and wait for the next try.
The orders loomed in his mind. Use your discretion. They had probably given the same instruction in Nelson’s day, he thought.
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