Surface With Daring

by Douglas Reeman

  Jenkyn moved to the release gear and spat on his gloved hands.

  ‘Fer what we’re about to receive …’ He looked Seaton straight in the eyes. ‘You’re a good bloke, sir.’

  ‘You’re not so dusty yourself.’

  Jenkyn turned away and gripped the basket-wheel. There were fifteen minutes left to run on the fuse. And the one under the floating gantry.

  The submarine was starting to yaw and roll through a larger and larger arc. Seaton could hear the frantic movements on the casing as the three men fought to hold on. XE 16 was broaching-to and pitching from one trough to the next like a steel bottle in a tideway.

  Jenkyn gasped, ‘Gawd, it shows ’ow important a good cox’n is, dunnit?’ He heaved again. ‘Come on, you bloody cow! Move your bleedin’ self before the ’ole boat comes to bits in me ’ands!’

  The passage from Bergen, mostly surfaced and through lively water and swift currents, must have had some effect. That, plus the boat’s uncontrollable rolling.

  The red light above the wheel was suddenly extinguished, and Jenkyn fell back with a gasp. ‘Gone! Bloody well gone!’ He scrambled across to the steering position and spun the spokes, his features screwed up to withstand the explosion.

  The hatch was dragged open and Drake yelled wildly, ‘Nothing happened! Dear Jesus, it’s gone deep!’

  Seaton said nothing but stared at the clock, seeing instead the great, curved charge falling and pirouetting deeper and deeper into darkness. And it was deep hereabouts, with some great underwater canyons not even properly surveyed.

  Then he said, ‘Take your positions. Passenger to the control room!’ As Drake struggled through the hatch, tugging off his life-jacket and showering cold spray over everything, he added, ‘Regain original trim and increase to maximum revs. We’re heading into open water in ten minutes.’

  Gjerde groped past him, touching his arm like a blind man, unable to speak or help himself.

  Seaton watched him. Nina. If only she and not her brother were here.

  Exactly at the set time the faulty side-cargo exploded, the force of the detonation muffled deeply in the unknown place where it had come to rest.

  XE 16 had dived by then, feeling her way through the islands and into the waiting sea. They all felt it. A sensation, shielded by the islands, but somehow triumphant just the same.

  Their twisting and difficult passage through the various fjords to the open sea completely prevented their hearing the one in Bergen.

  It was a very grey dawn, with an obvious build-up of more snow and sleet to come.

  A few minutes after Seaton had made his last calculation and marked it on the stained chart, Niven reported. ‘Submarine surfacing, starboard bow.’

  After that it was a matter of picking up the tow from the other boat and waiting for a passage crew to be sent across in a rubber dinghy.

  While some of the ratings from the towing submarine were fixing and testing a telephone wire between the two ill-matched craft, Seaton watched Gjerde being taken with his precious oilskin bag up and through the hatch to the dinghy.

  The control room was full of figures, or so it seemed as the passage crew hurried to their stations and the temporary skipper knelt down to say, ‘God, David, you look rough. You’ll be all right when you get to the other boat.’

  Drake called down, ‘Ready, Skipper?’

  Seaton shook his head. ‘Not going.’ He reached out and touched the dripping metal. ‘Not this time.’

  The relief skipper stood up and nodded. He thought he understood. ‘Clear the casing. Cast off dinghy. Call up the sub’s C.O. and tell him what’s happening.’ He looked around at the wet hull and disorder, the litter of voluntary imprisonment. It must have been quite a show, he thought grimly.

  Somehow Seaton got himself through both watertight doors and then sprawled out on the bunk-boards above the ranks of batteries.

  Once more, they had made it. As weariness and pain closed over him again he thought of the girl he had left behind in Norway. Loss, and not survival, had become paramount.

  David Seaton recalled very little of his return across the North Sea. The lieutenant commanding the passage crew had given him a new type of pain-killer with the instant effect of a club across the head. When some of his senses resumed working, nothing seemed to focus in his mind, so that time and distance became blurred and meaningless.

  He was dimly aware of being transferred to a depot ship, where his injuries were examined and re-dressed. Then he was wafted out to a destroyer’s sickbay, where after a painful injection his mind slipped away again.

  It was like dying, he thought, with everyone around you imagining you already dead. Ship, ambulance, gentle hands, quiet voices.

  And then one morning he awoke in a room with pale sunlight shining across a medicine cabinet and a small rectangle of carpet. Even without the smells he would have known he was in a hospital of sorts. But it was very quiet. So quiet it seemed to press on his eardrums.

  He moved his hands, feeling the splint on his finger, the constricting pressure of plaster bandages. The worst pain had gone, however, leaving him with a feeling of being badly bruised. And weak.

  The door opened and a male nurse stood looking at him.

  Seaton asked thickly, ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Hospital, sir.’

  Seaton groaned. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

  When he looked again the man had gone. Hospital. It was better than a mortuary. He felt terribly hungry. All of a sudden, and without any sort of warning. Ravenous.

  The door opened again and a doctor bustled into the room. A surgeon commander, well, that was something. At least it was Navy.

  ‘Glad to have you with us again.’ The doctor took his pulse, his face frowning with concentration. ‘You even look a bit better.’

  ‘How long, sir?’

  The doctor held up a bedside calendar and watched Seaton’s head fall back on the pillow.

  Seaton said with disbelief, ‘Two weeks since the attack.’ It sounded impossible.

  The commander replaced the calendar. ‘At least your eyesight is not impaired.’ He placed Seaton’s hand on the bed. ‘Fact is, you’ve had a rough time. Much worse than your Norwegian doctor really knew. One lung was scarred, and the fractures, due to the way you treated yourself after escaping, looked nasty.’

  Seaton smiled ruefully. He could feel it now. Perhaps he had always known.

  But the doctor had heard all about the attack and what had happened. So he was obviously in the know.

  As if reading his mind the doctor explained, ‘You are in a small hospital just on the fringe of Edinburgh. It is at the disposal of Special Operations. People come here to recover quietly. ’ His eyes were sad.

  Or die, Seaton thought.

  He said, ‘Have you heard anything, sir? I – I mean, about the others?’

  ‘A little. Your people were debriefed pretty thoroughly, and Captain Venables has been up here in the hopes of speaking with you. Now your companions are having a bit of leave.’

  Seaton closed his eyes. His father would ask cheerfully, ‘Home again? What do you chaps do in the Navy?’

  ‘What about my passenger, sir?’

  ‘Not my department.’ The doctor grinned. ‘Even if I knew I wouldn’t be able to say, but I don’t.’

  ‘I want to get up.’ Seaton moved his legs gingerly. They felt like lead.

  ‘Possibly.’ The doctor sighed. ‘Frankly, you’re a mess. You’re lucky to be in one piece.’

  ‘Luckier than some.’ He did not hide the bitterness.

  The doctor walked to the window. ‘Yes. So I heard.’ He shrugged. ‘But you are my concern. I can’t pop you off home, can I? No wife, and I gather your father is not used to looking after bomb-happy lieutenants?’

  ‘No, sir.’ God, they were thorough. Venables probably had a file on his father’s latest girl friend. ‘But I can’t stay here.’

  ‘I’ll have a word. Something might be arranged. But Captain
Venables won’t stand for you being placed in one of these convalescent homes, y’know.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘German spies under every bed.’

  He turned by the door. ‘I gather you did rather well. Pity you can’t get away on leave right now. But you know how it is in this regiment.’

  The door closed.

  Telephones must have got busy, for within a couple of hours Venables arrived. He got straight to the point.

  ‘Sorry you had such a difficult time. It was not as I intended.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘But neither was blowing that gantry, by the way.’

  Seaton looked at him. ‘Was it destroyed, sir?’

  ‘According to aerial reconnaissance, the place is a shambles. Gantry, with two supporting barges, blown to bits, and the top of the crane itself fell across a minesweeper and put her down, too.’ His voice hardened. ‘I am not sure if I should congratulate you. You had the device and the passenger by then. You might have lost both by your display of bloody-mindedness.’

  ‘It was more than that, sir.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘A whole lot more.’

  ‘I’m sure. Anyway, it came off. That time. The enemy knows we were a jump ahead of him. He’ll also know before long about our Norwegian professor. I’ve had several reports of course, and he sounds quite a good catch. I have to trust the experts in that field, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that the Norwegian girl was his sister, sir.’

  ‘I didn’t see it would have done any good. We shall have to get her out when things quieten down a bit. She may blow her cover otherwise. And the wretched business of Trevor.’ He looked away. ‘Bloody awful.’

  Seaton tried not to see the gasping creature on the cell floor.

  Venables glanced at his watch. ‘She and Trevor were quite close, I believe.’

  ‘I sec.’

  Seaton bit his lip to steady himself and curb the disappointment. He had been a fool, a blind idiot. He should have known or guessed. But the realisation did not help at all.

  Venables was watching him shrewdly, ‘It often happens, I believe. Mutual trust as a first necessity, and then…’ He did not elaborate.

  Instead he became his usual formal self. ‘XE 16 is undergoing a complete refit. She’ll be ready for trials and tests in a few weeks. Then, we shall have to see.’

  Seaton asked, ‘Was it all worth-while?’

  ‘What a curious chap you are.’ Venables sat down on the room’s only chair. ‘Of course it was. Our agents in Europe have known since last year that the Germans were building ramps and launching bases for their new weapons. It was vital for us to get a foot in the door. Gjerde has given us that, and perhaps a lot more. The enemy has concrete sites from Calais to the Cherbourg peninsular, and this is not hearsay, it is confirmed by the R.A.F. Can you imagine what a serious new form of rocket could do to our invasion hopes?’ He rubbed his palms together. It sounded like dry parchment. ‘We cannot stop them all, of course, but the really big ones, like those being tested in Norway, are something else. They have to be smashed. Otherwise it’s another stalemate. You cannot win a defensive war.’ He smiled. ‘Worthwhile indeed!’

  ‘That rules us out then.’ Seaton searched his feelings. ‘I can’t see midget submarines in the streets of France.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Venables picked up his cap. ‘Anyway, I’ll be off now. But I shall be in touch.’

  Seaton nodded. Of course.

  ‘You’ve seen what happens in an occupied country. Weigh that against what you have had to do. If we make a mess of the invasion, we’ll never get another chance, believe me.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’

  ‘As much as I am about anything. If we fail, the Russians will stand fast at some carefully selected line. In time they’ll make a non-aggression pact with Hitler, just as they did before the war. The Americans will withdraw and content themselves with clearing out the Pacific and the Far East. It would all become suddenly very lonely.’

  Seaton smiled for the first time he could remember. ‘Just as well you told me, sir. I might have changed my mind the next time.’

  Venables opened the door. ‘You are getting better.’

  Drake took another slice of toast from the rack and spread some jam on it with heavy, anxious strokes.

  Around and above him the big Harrogate house was very still, although he knew Decia was in her bedroom and Niven was somewhere else speaking on the telephone.

  Why the hell had he come? Drake munched through the toast without even tasting it. He had started immediately after the debriefing. Telling Niven he didn’t want him tagging along, cluttering up the house. Niven had been insistent. Nothing had changed. Or perhaps he had felt the tension which had come between them in Bergen and on the return passage.

  Anyway, he was here, but he intended to be damn careful. Maybe he had come because he was inwardly afraid she might blurt out something about their time alone together. Fly into a temper, as he had once seen her do, and let everything out in the open. The thought made him wince.

  In fact, in the days since their arrival at the house he had watched Decia with growing astonishment. She actually seemed to be enjoying the situation. Teasing her husband, goading him with a casual comment or look. God Almighty.

  The door opened and Niven came into the room. He was wearing flannel trousers and a pullover. The typical Englishman, Drake thought.

  Niven sat down and picked up the morning newspaper.

  ‘That was Dad on the phone.’

  Drake had to think hard for a moment before he got back his memory of Niven’s father. Big, impressive, with a chest of gongs.

  ‘Is that good, Richard?’

  Niven smiled. ‘I don’t really know. You never do with him. Bloody man.’

  Drake asked carefully, ‘What’s he want?’

  He heard Decia’s step on the stairway and waited, his fists clenched in his lap. She brushed past him, touching his shoulder lightly.

  ‘’Morning, both. What’s new?’

  Niven said, ‘Dad phoned.’

  ‘God.’ She shook her head as Drake made to fetch one of the dishes from the sideboard. ‘No. I’m watching my figure.’

  She was wearing a black jumper which fitted her perfectly, and black slacks, the only patch of colour made by a small red scarf around her throat.

  Niven grinned. ‘I shouldn’t bother. Everyone else here is doing that!’

  Drake said, ‘Tell us about the phone call, will you?’ The blood was roaring in his skull, and he wondered why nobody else could hear it.

  ‘It was about the skipper, actually.’

  ‘Dave?’ Drake sat up. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘They’ve got him in some special hospital in Scotland. They can’t release him because he’s nowhere to go.’

  Decia touched her lower lip with her tongue. ‘We’ll have him here!’

  Drake watched her. She would too. One against the other.

  She added, ‘What’s he really like? I met him once. Looked a bit lonely.’

  Niven tried again. ‘Dad wants him down in our place in Sussex. He’s got plenty of staff, naval and otherwise. It’s not a bad idea, I suppose.’

  ‘Poor Dave.’ Drake felt uneasy. ‘I should have tried to see him before this.’

  ‘Get past Venables?’ Niven smiled. ‘You’ll be lucky, I don’t think!’

  ‘He’s a damn good bloke.’ He looked at her. ‘Brave, too.’

  Niven said, ‘He wants me to collect him myself.’

  ‘I see.’ Drake looked at his hands. ‘Sort of official?’

  ‘Yes. I feel rotten about going off like this and leaving you.’

  Drake watched the girl’s nail file flashing across her left hand. She had wanted to go with him. It was obvious. If only to get out of this place. She was bored.

  She said, ‘I wouldn’t have gone anyway. Your father’s a bit fruity for my taste.’ She pouted. ‘All heavy breathing and seven pairs of hands.’

  Niven took it well. �
��You don’t exactly hide your light under a bushel, do you, angel?’

  She chuckled. ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it!’

  Drake examined each word as it left his mouth. ‘Shall I come? I’d sure like to see Dave, talk over things.’ He gestured vaguely to the newspaper’s front page, filled with glaring headlines of the Allied progress through Italy. ‘Won’t be much left for us at this rate. We’ll be off to the Pacific to join the Yanks.’

  Niven looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You think so?’

  She exclaimed, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, you two! War, war, bloody war, is that all you ever think about?’

  She walked towards the door, her eyes flashing. But by Drake’s chair she paused and ran her hand over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll have to try and take your mind off it while Mastermind here is with his daddy!’

  Niven followed her into the big entrance hall, and Drake stiffened as he heard him say angrily, ‘Must you behave like that in front of my friends? One of these days …’

  ‘Well, what?’

  Drake could see her in his mind’s eye. Hands on hips, chin up, defying and yet tantalising at the same moment.

  A door slammed and Drake heard nothing more.

  Go as soon as he’s left the house. But if I do that he will guess what has gone on between us and imagine far worse.

  Sweat pricked his scalp. Perhaps he did know? And was deliberately forcing the pace to a point of disaster.

  He stood up and walked to a window. Everything was getting greener, and there was a swaying patch of daffodils at the end of the garden, like yellow birds.

  The war seemed a long way off. But it was still out there somewhere. He thought of Seaton’s battered face as he had been lowered through the hatch, his eyes when he had showed his determination to blow up the gantry.

  Another few minutes and XE 16 would have gone without him. Leaving him to perish aboard the launch with the others.

  But how can you know? How can you be sure?

  He knew she had entered the room and was standing just behind him.

  Drake said huskily, ‘You had me worried a moment ago.’ He turned and saw the excitement on her face.