“Yes. Yes …”
“You volunteered for it, didn’t you?”
McClure disliked him, quite apart from the trivial business of the bunk. He’d made it obvious before this, and Wykeham had pulled him up about it … The Count hadn’t answered that last question: only frowned slightly as he looked down at the prayer-book. Ruck’s head had swung over, though, and his eyes were open.
“That’s an extremely brave man you’re talking to, McClure. Takes a hell of a lot of guts, his kind of work.”
The Count’s eyes shifted. He murmured, “Thank you, captain. You are very kind.”
It was noon before the truck reached Singen. It pulled up outside the police station, the tailboard crashed down, and there was a ring of soldiers in the roadway with levelled rifles. The two who’d brought Jack and Trolley from the village ordered them out, and the soldiers hustled them inside, where they were separated and locked into one-man cells.
Now there’d be some interrogation, Jack guessed. Or a firing squad. In principle you didn’t believe in that outcome—not really, that the Germans would flout international law and the Hague Convention to that extent: but having been threatened with it more than once by men who clearly would have enjoyed doing it, you were aware it could happen. If, for instance, the Gestapo took you over: if they decided it was the thing to do, and reckoned they could get away with it.
Perhaps not this close to the Swiss border. People gossiped, and they’d be sensitive to the risk of publicity. Which only meant they might transport them elsewhere first …
The meal of leftovers in the village last night had been excellent, and their captors had been quite pleasant. They were some variety of Home Guard, and pleased with themselves for having pulled it off. But the food had been splendid. Here, it was thin soup and black bread, the soup tasting as if floor-mops had been wrung out in it. It was early evening by this time. Jack was considering the discomfort that the night ahead now promised—a plank bed and a single blanket, no pillow, under the glare of an unshaded bulb—when a guard unlocked the cell door and ordered him out, pushed him into a room where Cockup and Barmy, standing at ease and with a rifle covering them, brightened at the sight of him. He noticed that they both had cut lips, black eyes and bruises.
“Hey, Jack’s the boy!”
“Wotcher, me old cock sparrer!”
“You stupid buggers …”
“Barmy—what did he say?”
An officer at a desk in the corner had taken notes of this conversation, although it couldn’t have made much sense to him. And now Trolley was marched into the room. The seated officer scribbled a signature on a piece of coloured paper, banged a rubber stamp on it and then handed it to a sergeant. Then he rose, came over to stand in front of them with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Speak German, anybody?”
Nobody seemed to have heard him.
“Very well. I tell you this in English. You will be returned to your camp now, on the train. You will of course be under guard, and they will have orders that if you attempt escape, or disobey or cause other trouble, they are to shoot you dead. Is this now understood?”
Jack began, “Shooting unarmed prisoners, in terms of the Hague Convention—”
“Silence!”
The officer’s face thrust close to Jack’s.
“When you escape from the Offlag, was not one of you armed?”
Cockup said, “I don’t even know anyone called Ahmed.”
Jack said as the laughter ended, “Old drill rifle. Rusted solid, and no ammo.”
“We could shoot you for this.” A slow nodding. “If you give more cause, we will!”
Jack said stolidly, “We’re unarmed prisoners, and it would be murder.” He heard Barmy suggest, “Tell him to take a running jump, old boy.”Then Trolley muttered, “I’d let it ride, Jack, if I were you.” The officer was chuntering away in German to the sergeant and corporal; when he’d finished and they’d both shouted “Jawhol!” he turned to glare at Jack again. “Understand what I say to them?”
“How the hell could I?”
“I say if you make trouble, he must shoot to kill, and shoot you the first. You understand this perhaps?”
Cockup drawled, “Fellow’s English is really quite good, you know.”
They were marched to the railway station through dark, deserted streets. Trolley urged Jack in a murmur, en route, “Shouldn’t push ’em too far. I mean they’re Nazis, remember?”
Barmy Morrison said, “Knocked us about something shocking. Whole pack of ’em on that train.”
“Serve you damn right.” Jack meant it. “Of all the bloody stupid things to do!”
“We most likely wouldn’t have got through anyway, Jack.”
Trolley, pouring oil on troubled waters. But the plain fact was, Jack thought, that as a direct result of Cockup’s lunacy he and Barmy had been bagged, and then the Bosch had started looking for two more in the same area. Consequently he was not now on his way to London and Fiona. It had been vitally important that he should be, but instead he faced incarceration in the Straflager, which as likely as not would mean for the duration of the war.
In a way, it would be preferable to be shot. He began to sweat, at the thought of it. The prospect of years in Offlag IVC, with Fiona on the loose in London; or rather, Fiona alone in London and half a million men on the loose around her. She wasn’t the sort to sit at home and knit seaboot stockings. He knew exactly how she was, and he was crazy about her. There was no question of blaming or judging—any more than he’d blame himself for being the way he was. He’d pinched her from Nick—who’d ratted on her, admittedly, but she hadn’t known it at the time—and he was quite certain in his understanding of her. She was his, and exactly as he wanted her.
“Frank.”
Trolley’s head turned slightly. A minute ago the sergeant had yelled at Barmy to shut up. Jack whispered, “Make a train-jump, if we get a chance?”
“What sort of chance?”
“A slowish stretch, and soft ground to land on. The others could start scrapping or something, to divert the goons.”
“Then what?”
“We jump. Hours of darkness left—with luck—to get hidden … Frank, we’re out now, but once they lock us in the Straflager—”
“Halt!”
They were outside the station. There was a military checkpost at its entrance and the sergeant was showing them the movement order. Jack told Trolley. “If you don’t want to, I’ll go it alone.”
“Three-four-oh revolutions!” “Three-four-oh, sir …”
No sinkings yet. But the night was young, and only in the last half-hour had the U-boats stopped talking to each other and begun to close in around the convoy. A few of them seemed to be held back in reserve, much farther ahead, but they’d no doubt be moving in when they considered the time was ripe.
The skipper was at the binnacle, taking her straight up the middle, Astilbe angling out to starboard and Paeony to port as Harbinger drove up between them. The contact they were going after happened to be on the convoy’s course, the course they were steering now. Trying out new tactics, Warrimer appreciated, in keeping with new orders issued earlier to the other escorts: he hadn’t discussed any of it with his first lieutenant—as he usually had done in the past with Graves—and now he wasn’t talking much at all. Just hunched there, grim-faced, binoculars at his eyes—to keep them open, maybe, Chubb had suggested. Warrimer said into his telephone, “Very good …” He called, “All guns loaded, sir, starshell in A, SAP in B and X!”
The odds were it would dive before they got a shot at it. Not that anyone was likely to run short of targets; there were certainly no fewer U-boats around them than there had been last night. Only one on the 271 screen so far, but Gritten had identified about six different ones ahead of the convoy and there was also one out to starboard and a shadower back on the port quarter. The ones ahead had been talking fit to bust, then abruptly fallen silent, and there’d
been a tense wait before RDF had picked up this one that Harbinger was now thrashing out to find. If the skipper had anything like a proper escort group at his disposal, Warrimer thought, and if it hadn’t been for the “no-diversion” rule, he’d have deployed several escorts ahead while the convoy made a big emergency turn. By leaving the convoy and tearing out like this—he’d moved Stella to guard the rear—he was actually breaking the rules he’d laid down himself at those sessions in Freetown: but since last night and the night before the system hadn’t paid off, it was reasonable to try another one.
“Bearing is oh-three-eight, range five miles, sir!”
That was Carlish, tending the plot voice-pipe. Warrimer heard the skipper order, “Steer oh-three-eight, cox’n.”
A gun’s crew would already be soaked to the skin, at this speed and on this course. Wind and sea were still from the northwest and about the same as they’d been for the past three days, but even with it on the beam at thirty knots the stuff was fairly sheeting over.
Warrimer was guardedly aware of a growing feeling of hopelessness. In himself and also, he thought, in others. Nobody admitting to it … Last night they’d lost four ships: the Carl Janse’n, the Timaru, the Lord John and the Tarcoola. The Timaru had had half the Carl Jansens crew in her when she’d been blown in half. The trawler Stella had claimed to have scored a direct hit with her four-inch gun on a U-boat which had then turned away and dived, and Tony Graves had been sure he’d been close to finishing one off with depthcharges when the skipper had had to order him to resume station ahead of the convoy. This had been unavoidable because at that time Paeony had developed some defect in her asdic training unit, so that for a while there’d been no asdic cover at all in the van of the convoy. In normal circumstances this would have been unthinkable: especially when one remembered how professional and successful they’d been with their own escort group up north. In fact if you thought too much about it, it was heart-breaking.
Thank God, Guyatt had reported at dusk this evening that his asdics were now operable. Not one hundred percent reliable, but working, pinging.
There’d been another reorganisation of the convoy this morning. It was still in seven columns but the outer two columns on each side were now of only four instead of five ships. So the rearmost line-abreast was of only three ships, on the three centre columns only. That trio consisted of the Harvest Moon in the centre, flanked by the Leona to starboard and the Mount Trembling—she’d taken the Timaru’s job of rescue ship—to port. The Burbridge had moved up to become third ship in column three, and the two oilers were also in billets well surrounded by other ships. The tankers were the ones you could least afford to lose, and the Burbridge with her wheelchair patients and crowd of nurses had to be given as much protection as possible.
“Bearing is oh-three-six, sir, range four miles!”
“Steer oh-three-six … Starshell stand by.”
Warrimer told A gun’s sightsetter, “Stand by starshell. Target U-boat on the surface right ahead. Set range oh-seven-oh.” He heard the sightsetter repeating the order in a high-pitched yell; the telephone line also carried the noise of sea battering that gunshield. Behind him, Chubb was telling Mr Timberlake over the depth-charge telephone, “Shallow settings, Guns.”
Guesswork: chancing his Australian arm.
“Bearing right ahead, range oh-seven-three, sir!”
All over the bridge, binoculars moved slowly, sweeping the white-streaked, camouflaged surface.
“New contact oh-oh-eight, six miles, sir!”
“I only want to hear about the first one.”
“Aye aye, sir …” Carlish was passing that down to Scarr. Then: “Bearing oh-three-five, range oh-six-eight, sir!”
Six thousand eight hundred yards, that meant: just under three and a half miles. The skipper lowered his glasses. “Tell the plot to keep up-to-date bearings and ranges of other contacts from us and also from Paeony and Astilbe, for passing by TBS if they get by us.”
Carlish stumbled over the words as he rattled that off to Mike Scarr. It made good sense to Warrimer—who needed to make sense of it, to interpret for his own satisfaction what was not being explained and had not been discussed in advance … If Harbinger was busy with this contact and another U-boat moved in past her to become a closer threat to the convoy, warning could be passed to the appropriate corvette before the blip actually showed up on her 271 screen. In this way Harbinger was an advance scout as well as a striker. The snag, of course, was it might not be just one, it could be four or five of them, Harbinger tied-down here while the pack moved in behind her. But you couldn’t be there and here, you had to make a choice …
“Range oh-six-three, sir, bearing oh-three-three!”
“Steer oh-three-two.”
It ought to be possible to spot the U-boat before it saw the danger coming. As one knew exactly where to look. “Range oh-six-oh!”
Harbinger shouldering up white foam that flew arcing across the bridge. Binocular lenses needing to be dried twice a minute, however much you tried to shield them.
“Range—”
“Starshell open fire!”
The skipper had caught sight of his target:Warrimer yelled “Starshell, fire!” and with less than a second’s interval A gun had crashed and recoiled, Warrimer ordering “B gun, range oh-five-six, open fire when you bear. A gun with SAP load, load, load!”
“Range oh-five-five, sir!”
“Set range oh-five-three, target right ahead!”
The starshell exploded, a white brilliance suspended on its parachute, drifting slowly downwards as its light spread across the sea’s crests and slopes, darkening the hollows in between. B gun fired, a lightning-flash and the metallic, ear-thumping crack of it, then A gun like an echo and the clang of shell-cases on iron gundecks, sea swamping over and the ship bow-down with a lurch to port. As she recovered, lifting, Warrimer had the U-boat in his glasses, a ray of that starshell’s last glimmer on wet black steel bedded in foam … “A gun, one round starshell, fire!”
“Range oh-five-oh, sir!”
“Set range oh-four-eight.” He heard the skipper order, “Come ten degrees to starboard, cox’n.” Both the for’ard guns had fired again; one of those rounds would be a refresher to the illuminations. The U-boat could be seen to be altering course, swinging to port, a shell spout springing up just short and new crashes from both guns as the starshell opened. Warrimer saw the German’s conning-tower tilting—diving, or it could be only pitching, its stern to the sea now. A gun cracked, then B again: it was very chancy shooting, on those moving platforms. Carlish yelled that the range was down to oh-four-eight: and that yellowish flash was a hit!
“Set range oh-four-six …”
Closing less rapidly now, because of the enemy’s change of course: but still closing, Harbinger galloping in—and hope in the heart at least, because that hit had changed the picture dramatically … “A gun, one round of starshell, fire!” The U-boat still wasn’t diving: if it had been punctured, of course, it couldn’t, and its captain would be wishing to God he’d done it three or four minutes ago when the first starshell had lit him up. Perhaps he’d thought he’d be able to run for it, get around this interference and still press home his attack. Both the for’ard guns were still firing and Warrimer had seen a number of shell spouts poke up around the target, but nothing from the last five or six. The new starshell opened, showing the German almost stern-to and rocking bow-up, its stern buried in the sea as it lifted to a wave; he told his gunners, “Down four hundred!” as he passed the order Carlish shouted “Range oh-four-one!” So the correction had been overdue and shots would have been passing over him. Not that there was all that much science in it, shooting as it were from horseback at the gallop, the layers and trainers sighting through salt-washed telescopes … Hit number two!
“Range oh-four-oh, sir!”
“Down two hundred …”
But it had not been a hit. It had been the enemy shooting back at them. He’
d have a 37 mm, something like a Bofors, on the back end of his bridge. But he couldn’t dive, obviously; he was at bay …
“X gun, point-fives and searchlight stand by!”
The order came from the skipper, who’d shouted it without taking his glasses off the U-boat. Preparing to turn his ship so those other weapons would bear—from this range, instead of running in close to the U-boat’s lighter weapon. Weapons, plural: he’d have a 20 mm AA gun as well as the other, if he was U-boat Mark VII … But now that had been a hit! And in the background a TBS call from “Fox”—Astilbe announcing excitedly, Contact: attacking … Bad reception, crackly: CPO Bearcroft was acknowledging the message in a tone as calm as a butler’s announcing luncheon served. There’d been a flash and some bits flying: bits of U-boat or bits of men, or both. Warrimer had passed the standby order to the guns aft, and Leading Signalman Wolstenholm was at the searchlight sight, talking over that intercom to its two-man crew on their raised platform abaft the torpedo tubes. The two for’ard four-inch guns meanwhile still belting out shells, while the German had fired only twice. It was on the cards that the second hit had knocked his guns out; they’d be within a yard or so of each other, on railed platforms at the back of his bridge. But this could be a kill, all right—please God … Shell spouts just short again, one quickly after the other, in time with the sequence of the guns’ firing: now a third hit—flash, and a cloud of muck obscuring the target for a moment before the wind cleared it. Harbinger still racing in, so the after guns and the searchlight weren’t getting a chance yet; the skipper would have changed that intention because of the enemy ceasing fire, he could go in close now without danger to his own people, and his object would be to finish this as quickly as it could be done. Because there’d be work elsewhere … Warrimer was not only attending to his own job, but also casting himself as understudy, needing to see the reasons and motives: it was a habit he’d acquired when his immediate senior had been Tony Graves, and it explained why he hadn’t been at all flummoxed when he’d been given promotion at a moment’s notice.
The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5 Page 21