A classic position for a dived attack, incidentally.
Harbinger was alone at the convoy’s rear, zigzagging four thousand yards astern of it. The convoy’s own zigzag would cease now, as darkness fell and made such manoeuvring dangerous for ships so cheek-by-jowl. Paeony and Astilbe were leading from up front—roughly six miles between them and Harbinger, in fact—with the trawler Stella between them but farther back, two thousand yards ahead of the front rank of merchantmen. Opal was a mile to port of the convoy, Gleam the same distance to starboard. And Guyatt should have been telling Opal now by morse light—because the trawlers had no radio-telephones, and in this half-light probably would not have been able to read flags—what he was doing. That was Opal’s side of the convoy, and if there was a U-boat there the nicotine-stained Kyle ought to know about it. If … Nick wondered, Seconds out of the ring? This soon? However much you prepared for it, that sudden TBS call had still been totally unexpected. He was resisting the temptation to take Harbinger across to that side of the convoy. There was no confirmation that it was a U-boat Paeony’s asdics had picked up, and if there were some around anything could develop in any other direction too; with so few ships you could be badly caught if you committed too much of your defence too soon to one single threat. He was suppressing another urge as well: to call Guyatt on TBS and check that he was keeping Opal in the picture. He was holding back on this because he wanted to be able to assume it was happening, not set a precedent by reminding them of procedures he’d spent hours drumming into them in Freetown, and which in the last couple of days they’d practised half a dozen times.
He’d check afterwards. And rub Guyatt’s nose in it if he hadn’t. As the light went, the ships ahead were becoming indistinct, merging like phantoms into the dirty-water shades of dusk. The horizon to port was still bright, but cloud had been gathering during the afternoon and that small area in the west was the only clear sector now. Admiralty weather forecasts, supported by falling barometric pressure, made it obvious that the tropic calm and heat astern could be forgotten; not far ahead the Atlantic was becoming more like its old self, and you could feel the breath of it already. Harbinger was learning how to roll again as Carlish brought her round, maintaining a zigzag across the convoy’s rear.
The only reason for not having expected U-boats this far south was that the Intelligence reports had laid stress on the Azores-Canaries as primary danger area. Their logic would be, Nick guessed, that the enemy believed (as Cruance had been confident they would) that surface forces were moving against Dakar, and to disrupt any such move the Azores air gap would be the obvious place to picket. There was a long haul yet, moreover, before the convoy would be anywhere near it—the Cape Verde islands were at this moment 120 miles abeam to port, Dakar about 150 on the starboard quarter, the Canaries something like 700 miles away and the Azores more like 1250. And the convoy was making a bare seven knots. So the longer action could be postponed, the better. Once the U-boats found them and concentrated, SL 320 was going to start losing ships; no matter how efficiently this handful of escorts was made use of, it was inevitable.
Behind Nick in the creaking, jolting bridge, Chubb observed to Warrimer, “Hell of a long investigation by friend Paeony. Ask me, they’ve lost the bloody thing.”
TBS crackled into speech, Eagle, this is Gannet: contact confirmed, attacking!
Warrimer murmured to Chubb, “Now perhaps you’ll understand why we very rarely do ask you.”
“Bring her round to three-oh-oh degrees, Sub.”
“Three-oh-oh—aye aye, sir …”
To get over to that side, where he might be able to help Paeony and where an attack might be expected if the U-boat evaded Guyatt, now out to the west of the convoy as the mass of ships, near-invisible now in gathering darkness, forged on northwestward. If the contact remained firm and seemed worth staying with, Harbinger might take it over from Paeony, allowing the corvette to start clawing back up to her station in the van. Harbinger’s higher speed would enable her to catch up again afterwards much more quickly: which was why she was going to have to do most of the leg-work.
“Course three-oh-oh degrees, sir!”
“Very good.”
Depthcharges rumbled: Paeony had made a first run over her target. The light of the western horizon had faded almost to extinction. The trawlers had no RDF, consequently needed to remain inside visibility range of the convoy; this meant that in darkness or bad weather conditions they’d be on very short leashes. Yet another limitation … And if the balloon was going up now, and the convoy did stick to its route and timing—which would mean it wouldn’t have crossed that fan of “Torch” convoy tracks until about 6 November—and it was now 25 October … Ten days?
It probably was not starting now. This would almost surely be a loner they’d stumbled on. But that was all it needed for the homing-signals to go out …
Eagle—this is Gannet. Guyatt’s tone was flat; you could guess what was coming, before he said it. Contact lost. I’ve searched all round but we don’t seem able to pick it up. I suppose it could have been non-sub—although my operator swears it was the real McCoy … Over.
Nick took the microphone.
“Gannet—Eagle. Resume station. I say again, resume station.” He told Carlish “One-eight-oh revolutions.”
Speeding up so as to get out there faster, on the off-chance of picking up the contact or catching the bastard if he tried to surface. From where he was supposed to have been to start with he might have been intending to make a dived attack, with just enough light at that time to do it by; now his alternative would be to surface and run in on the beam or quarter. He might, if he heard Paeony chugging away, and thought he’d been left to his own devices.
If he existed at all.
In Astilbe Tony Graves would have listened to the TBS messages. He’d have moved his ship across to cover some of Paeony’s ground, earlier, and this would have put him in the centre of the van. Now he’d know she was on her way back, so he’d adjust again. But during Paeony’s absence the screen ahead of the convoy—eight columns of ship with a thousand yards between columns making a front three and a half sea miles wide—had consisted of one corvette and one trawler. A U-boat commander’s idea of happiness … Nick lowered his glasses. “Come to three-four-oh, Sub.”
To scrape out closer to that corner of the convoy. Asdics pinging, searching the churned water. He’d decided to make a wide sweep out to port and then round astern. Knowing full well there might be nothing there at all, that Paeony’s depthcharges had probably only killed some school of fish: but knowing also that if there was a U-boat nearby, it would be vital to deal with it before it could whistle up its friends. He thought it would have been a single enemy: there’d been no HF/DF transmissions, none of the chatter you tended to get from a patrol line. And it was in line with the policy of aggressive defence, to leave the convoy for an hour or so, go out in search …
Burning oil, meanwhile. He’d need to fuel again tomorrow. Harbinger and the two corvettes had topped-up their tanks this forenoon, from the oiler Redgulf Star. She was number fifty-four: the other tanker was the English Ardour, in position sixty-three. It was important to keep fuel tanks as full as possible; there might come a time when it would be difficult, under pressure, to find the lull in which to do it. When you were linked by the umbilical cord of an oil-pipe to a tanker you weren’t much use as an escort.
“Course three-four-oh, sir.”
“Good …”
Harbinger lurching, taking the sea head-on, her stubby bow smashing black sea into streaming sheets of white. It felt good to be on the move: like flexing muscles that had been rested for too long.
But the hour’s search found nothing.
It probably had been fish … He’d taken her out westward and then curved back and across the convoy’s rear in a wide half-circle: the kind of off-chance, elliptical sweep he’d once or twice struck lucky with before. Asdics pinging, radar circling, a dozen pairs of binocula
rs probing the dark. There was a slight radiance now where the moon was lifting behind fast-moving cloud thin in patches; the wind was westerly and there was enough of a sea to be putting a corkscrew motion on the ship as she pounded up northwestward to rejoin. The convoy was a pattern of blips on the 271’s “poached egg”: holding together pretty well, so far, judging by the evenly-spaced line-abreast of the rear rank. Evenly-spaced except for one gap in it, a spare billet at the back of column five, immediately astern of the Redgulf Star. It was a convenient arrangement: in her present position as number fifty-four the oiler was well tucked into the protection of ships around her, while for refuelling operations it was easy for her to drop astern where she became accessible to her customers.
Nick told Scarr, through the voice-pipe to the plot, to let him know when they were back in station. He went back to his high chair. “Number One?”
Warrimer came forward. A hand on the torpedo-sight for support as the ship pitched bow-down, jabbing her stem into solid sea. Warrimer’s arms were about five feet long, but as his legs were also very long he tended to lose his balance. Nick told him, “You can fall them out from action stations. Relax to second degree … Your watch now, is it?”
Weapons would still be manned, guns’ crews sleeping on the gundecks and the depth-charge party in whatever shelter they could find aft; one man at each station would stay awake and ready to alert the others. Not too uncomfortable, in present conditions—and they were used to a great deal worse.
“Kye, sir?”
The dark shape at his elbow was the bridge messenger, Harris. “Good idea. I’d like it in the chartroom, in five or ten minutes, please.”
Alone in there—Harbinger back in station, motion and vibration much reduced once the speed was cut, he took Cruance’s transparent overlay out of an inside pocket, and fitted it to the chart. Needing to keep the wider picture in mind …
Convoy UGF1, the big American outfit, was at sea now, gathered out of several US ports into one eastbound armada. Fifty-six escorts covering thirty-eight ships was a proportion that put this little circus into perspective … And convoy KX4A, which included some Tank Landing Ships, would be out from the Clyde, southbound. KMS(A)1 and (0)1 would also be at sea: more than sixty ships in that contingent, the first wave of the assaults on Algiers and Oran.
“Captain, sir …”
He pocketed the transparency as he turned to find the doctor, Mackenzie, bringing him a signal.
“Just deciphered this one, sir.”
Holding it under the yellowish chart table light …
MV “Burbridge,” straggler from convoy TDF1, now in position 14 degrees 05 north 31 degrees 28 west, steering 045 at 12 knots to R/V with convoy SL 320 noon October 30 in position 23 degrees 38 north 24 degrees 05 west. “Burbridge” to report any further speed reduction or other change affecting R/V.
TDF1 was the convoy that had left Freetown routed for Trinidad and thence up through the American convoy system before re-crossing the Atlantic via the northern route. Cruance had mentioned it. Nick looked up from a second reading of the signal as someone else slid in and shut the door. It was his navigator, Scarr.
“All right, doc. Thank you.” He told Scarr, “Check a steamer called Burbridge in the register, will you. Burbridge with a ‘u.’”
While Scarr was getting the register out and thumbing through it, Nick checked those positions and the given course and speed. It was correct, just where this convoy should be at that time and where the Burbridge’s route would bring her to rendezvous with them. Presumably she’d had some kind of machinery breakdown—the words “any further speed reduction” indicated it—and had dropped back too far to have any hope of catching up on her own convoy.
Mike Scarr had his finger on the entry. “She’s nine thousand, eight hundred tons, sir, passenger ship, London registry nineteen-thirty-eight.”
He was reading the signal, which Nick had passed to him. Nick thinking, Passengers … All under the impression, no doubt, that by making a rendezvous with convoy SL 320 just west of the Canaries and south of the Azores they’d be kissing their troubles goodbye? They’d be in considerable danger now: alone, defenceless, watching the sea for the white feather of a periscope cutting through it: telling each other, Three days, we’ll be back in convoy …
Was it possible that the genius who’d ordered this rendezvous had not been told what SL 320 was for?
Well, sure it was. It was possible. You didn’t pass this sort of information out to authorities that didn’t need to have it. And she could be in that ship …
The odds against it would be—what, two hundred to one? At least that much. So forget it. He’d been through all that …
But he’d have liked to have had Cruance here now, in Harbinger or in one of those blacked-out freighters up ahead: there’d have been justice in putting the planner of deceptions where he’d helped to put all these people … Cruance who’d had the cheek and insensitivity to try to strike a pally note—who’d asked him, when the briefings had been finished and he was strolling out through the long, dripping tunnel at Nick’s side, “No doubt your submariner son will be playing some part in ‘Torch.’ Even though he would probably not know it yet. You’ve good news of him, I hope?”
Paul was his son by his Russian-born first wife Ilyana, and he was in a submarine in the Malta-based flotilla. But in the next breath, barely waiting for any answer to the question, Cruance had mentioned Jack too—Jack Everard who’d been taken prisoner at St Nazaire and was now in some German POW camp.
“He’s your half-brother, am I right?”
It hadn’t been necessary to confirm it. Cruance knew as much about the Everards as Wishart had been able to tell him: which could not have included the fact that Jack was Nick’s son, not his half-brother. The lie, and Jack, were both twenty-three years old.
“Two tough eggs, eh? A submariner and a commando?”
Jack was not a commando. He’d gone on that raid with commandos, for some special task. But he was a tough egg, all right. And Cruance had obviously been at pains to commit all this family background material to memory: as soft soap, what in navalese was called “flannel.”
If Jack Everard, at this moment about two and a half thousand miles northeast, was carrying a torch of any kind, it was for a girl called Fiona: whom he’d stolen from the man he thought of as his half-brother—from whom he’d also acquired, if nothing else, the maverick quality to a high degree …
“My God. Talk about brass monkeys …”
Frank Trolley grunted, from the cubicle next to Jack’s. There were three of them at this end of the latrine. They had swing-doors without locks or bolts, a smother of multi-lingual graffiti and very small, barred window-holes up near the ceiling for ventilation. The place needed all the ventilation it could get, but winter was starting early in south Germany and from the “brass monkeys” point of view—meaning the freezing blast of a northeaster—one might have settled for the stink. Despite having two sets of clothes on—German uniform on the outside and what might pass for civilian gear under it. Trolley’s rig was that of a Sonderführer, while Jack was dressed as a private soldier. In the morning—if they were still here by morning, and not frozen stiff, stuck to the rims of the seats—the others would be bringing a rifle with them, to go with this uniform.
“Think we’ve got a prayer, Jack?”
“I’ve said mine.”
“I mean d’you reckon we’ve any real chance of getting clear?”
“Why the hell shouldn’t we?”
But they’d thought they had a good chance last time …
They were going to have to spend several more hours—the rest of the night—in this freezing, foul-smelling lavatory. Jack thought, What we do for England … Except that in his own case it wasn’t primarily for England he was doing it. As a sort of background motive, perhaps it was; but the real spur was Fiona, to get home to her and hold her to her promise—that if he came back at all, she’d marry him.
He appreciated a number of things about Fiona Gascoyne. Such as the fact that, based in London and quite exceptionally attractive, she enjoyed the company and attentions of men, was very much flesh and blood and in her own chosen ways extremely—well, the word might be “unconventional” … Jack knew he could hold her, given half a chance, he was completely confident of it; but he did not have half a chance while he was in Offlag VIIB.
For the simple reason that she didn’t have a chance. There’d be no question of blame, none whatever.
But there’d be even less chance from Offlag IVC, to which it had been rumoured he and Trolley and the others who’d been with them on their last escape attempt were soon to be transferred. This news had galvanised them into making a fresh attempt at once, as it was known that IVC—a castle, some place called Colditz, but known to POWs as the Straflager—was particularly difficult to get out of.
Not that this dump, Eichstatt, was easy. Although this time he did have a feeling they might make it. Wishful thinking to some extent, because it was essential they should get away. If they were caught now it would mean the Straflager for certain, with the distinctly possible alternative of a firing-squad. There’d been some highly realistic threats of “execution” last time: and the fact was, you never knew, with Krauts.
He murmured, “I do believe we’ll make it.”
“Huh?”
Trolley might have been dozing.
“I said I think we’ll make it. Get away.”
“Hope you’re right. But why?”
“Just a feeling. Because it’s spur-of-the-moment stuff, perhaps, instead of that careful planning. Last time we may have been a bit too clever. And there were too many helpers.”
The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5 Page 14