He wondered again whether the sensible thing might not be to give himself up. He had one lump of hard bread in his pocket and no idea where the next bite after that might come from … The worst aspect was he hadn’t got far enough from the place where he’d jumped—and where they’d have found Frank Trolley’s body, which he’d had no time or way of doing anything about. The reason for this, of course, was the sprained ankle, which had slowed him down so much.
There was still no movement below: but smoke rising from a chimney and a bicycle propped against a gatepost showed there were people around somewhere. If he just stood up now, hobbled downhill, surrendered?
What made him reluctant to do so was the fact it would be so irreversible an action. Here and now he had his options open, to some extent. There was no guard with a rifle trained on him, no wire, lights, machine-guns on towers. If he got up and staggered down to the houses, there damn soon would be. Earlier when he’d considered this there’d been troops about, and he’d stayed put for fear they’d shoot if he moved: it would have saved them trouble. But giving oneself up to civilians might provide some small measure of insurance: there’d at least be witnesses to the fact he had surrendered. On the other hand he’d be putting himself back in their trap, possibly for years. And Fiona alone in London: or before long not alone …
Hold out for just a day, he told himself. Then maybe another—until the leg was back in commission and the local hue and cry might have died down. They might give up, thinking he’d got away? Then it would only be a matter of moving south until one hit either the frontier or Lake Constance. Which could be negotiated—somehow …
But that was it: the state of freedom, uncomfortable as it was at the moment, had taken a lot of achieving and did not have to be thrown away if it could be (a) prolonged, (b) endured. The priority had to be Food, Acquisition of: then some kind of shelter, and eventually, mobility.
Move north, initially? Which the searchers would not expect? If one could move at all, go north, lie up for a few days and then slip southward to the border?
Having come this far—and cost old Frank his life?
Frank Trolley wouldn’t have made the train-jump if he—Jack—hadn’t been so set on it. Even then he’d had his doubts about it. Jack remembered sitting there beside him and thinking while the train beat out its drumbeat rhythm for mile after mile, He doesn’t have the compulsion that I have: with him it’s only duty …
He’d have been alive now, if one hadn’t—
Aircraft. He turned his head slowly, carefully, and saw it flying into sight over the wooded shoulder of the hill on a course parallel to the south-leading lane. On that course it would pass almost right overhead, and it was at no more than—he guessed, having turned his face down and pressed himself into the trough of muddy weeds—three or four hundred feet.
From the air, he supposed this might look like a hide. And perhaps a man on his face in a shallow groove in the middle of a field of stubble would be seen from up there for precisely what he was. The din was growing, a loud bang-banging from the light plane’s engine: it was a monoplane, small, khaki or green in colour, clattering through the sky. A military spotter-plane, probably.
Getting fainter now … Turned away?
He didn’t move. No point at all in moving … His quick glimpse of the plane was imprinted on his brain, and to get rid of it he turned his thoughts to the road below and the pasture on its other side—and wondered whether if the flyer had seen him he’d find some place to land. But of course, he’d have a wireless … Definitely receding now, in any case. Thinking of the road, crossroads and houses, he saw again in his mind’s eye that bicycle leaning against a gate.
The plane was flying south. On a weaving, searching course—which accounted for its swing away just at this point—but definitely leaving. For the moment, anyway.
A bicycle wasn’t a difficult thing to hide, even in open countryside. He was thinking ahead, to a time when he’d need to get rid of it … If at dusk it was still there: and if one could crawl to the far hedge and then down in its shadow to the lane, then—hobbling—over to the gateway where the bike might still be. Then, if it was, the question would be whether an ankle you couldn’t walk on might be sound enough to push a pedal.
Mike Scarr, swaying to the ship’s wild motion and with his sextant at his eye, yelled “Now!” The bosun’s mate’s bark into the voice-pipe matched that shout, and in the plot Scarr’s assistant recorded the chronometer time to within half a second. Scarr peered closely at the sextant, to read off the altitude of Deneb, the last of the three stars he’d shot; he’d get position lines from the three of them that would intercept to give Harbinger’s precise position. He knew already that Madeira was roughly 170 miles on the starboard bow, but until he’d worked these sights out he couldn’t have guaranteed the dead-reckoning position within ten miles or so.
He looked around now, lowering the sextant and holding it against his belly to keep it out of the intermittent spray. The horizon was almost invisible as the last of the daylight leaked away. Half a minute after taking that last sight he couldn’t have taken another, for that lack of an horizon. The ships of the convoy, spread from right ahead to broad on the starboard bow, were becoming indistinct, so that each looked exactly like its neighbours and all of them merging into darkening seascape, encroaching night.
“I’ll go down, sir.”
They were still closed up for dusk action stations. The skipper—on his high seat, and as usual with binoculars at his eyes—only grunted. It was about as much as anyone was getting out of him, at present. He’d seemed to come out of his shell—or try to—twice during the first dog watch, though: once when he’d told Carlish, “After this trip, Sub, I can see no reason why I shouldn’t sign a watch-keeping certificate for you”—and Carlish had been overjoyed—and then a bit later he’d asked Matt Warrimer whether everything was all right below; meaning in effect whether Warrimer felt he’d got control of things in his new role as second-in-command. Warrimer had assured him quickly that there were no problems: and he’d been noticeably glad to be asked, to be putting on record the fact he’d slipped so effortlessly into that very demanding job. Scarr had seen and recognised this; and as a rather easygoing RN officer himself, Warrimer the Volunteer Reserve man’s go-getting attitude rather amused him. Scarr thought Warrimer would probably be just the same when he was back in the City in his bowler: a thruster, dedicated to a kind of cheerful one-upmanship.
The skipper had a deckchair set up behind his tall seat now, and he’d been taking catnaps in it during the day. Since dawn this morning he hadn’t been off the bridge for more than a few minutes at a time.
Starsights had been possible because a rising wind had ripped holes in the cloud-cover, permitting glimpses of the heavens. The wind was about force five, with a sea to match, and the forecast was for an increase to force six. Scarr realised, taking another glance upward as he left the bridge, that there’d be some patchy moonlight later. It might be a factor to the advantage of the U-boats, who’d been doing a lot of talking, up ahead and on the convoy’s beams. Gritten had come to the bridge earlier and told the skipper, “Never ’eard so much yacking from one pack, sir!”
They’d be planning their night’s tactics. And a moon would help them—if they used it carefully—by reducing the advantage of the escorts’ RDF.
He was in the chartroom, working out his sights with the aid of logarithm and cosine tables, when he heard the order passed to relax from action stations. So it would be dark up there now: the ship’s company would get down to a hasty supper, getting it finished and the messtraps cleared away as fast as possible, before the night’s troubles started.
There … He had the position. A neat intersection, and the DR estimate hadn’t been far out either. Having pencilled the date and time against it on the chart, he entered the latitude and longitude in his notebook. At the moment, SL 320 was pretty well up to schedule—thanks to having been a few hours ahead of it yest
erday. He was shutting the notebook, finishing, when the door slid open and the skipper came in. “Know where we are?”
“Close to where we reckoned, sir.” Scarr moved over. “And where we’re supposed to be.”
“That won’t apply much longer.”
At four knots, the Burbridge’s best speed now, they’d be losing something like seventy miles a day. Even without any more diversions. He was checking it out on the chart, walking the dividers up the marked track. He muttered, “Just how late we’ll be getting to position B …”
“Shall I—”
“No. Go and get something to eat, pilot. Or some fresh air. You’ll be stuck in the plot again all night.”
Scarr glanced at his captain again, as he turned away. Telling him he needed this, that or the other, for God’s sake! Everard looked about ten years older than he had a few days ago. Warrimer had mentioned it to Ian Mackenzie, the doctor, and Mackenzie had reacted irritably … “If he doesn’t sleep, won’t eat, and worries himself sick, what can I do about it?”
Scarr had never thought of his captain as a worrier.
The door slid shut. Alone, Nick found the answer to that question of arrival at position B, the point where they were due to alter to port again: and the answer was they’d be twelve hours late. Instead of midnight tomorrow, noon the day after. So—and here was the vital aspect of it, on top of the fact they’d be in U-boat territory for several days longer than intended—he took Cruance’s tracing out, to check how far astern of SL 320 “Torch” convoy KMS 1—the main assault force from the Clyde and Loch Ewe—would be crossing. Whether indeed there’d be any margin at all …
Well, there would be. And it would be adequate. But nothing like as much of a gap as had been intended.
Cruance, and others, who by now would have read a signal despatched from Harbinger four hours ago, would be having kittens. The signal gave them SL 320’s position, course and reduced speed, losses to date, estimated strength of the U-boat pack and the destruction of one of them, and it had ended with a request for reinforcement of the totally inadequate escort force. Cruance and company would be biting their nails down to the knuckles: they wouldn’t have any escorts available for reinforcement, and they’d be sweating at the danger to their “Torch” convoys. And understandably …
The Americans would be all right. This convoy’s track for the past three days had coincided almost exactly with the route the US assault force would be following after its loop southward. UGF 1 with its escorting Task Force 34, carrying 34,000 troops under Lieutenant General George S Patton and aiming for beaches around Casablanca, would be ploughing this very patch of ocean at midnight on the fourth—two days’ time—and they’d have a clear passage, U-boat-free water right up to the Moroccan coast.
He’d pulled out a pipe, and he was filling it when the chartroom door slid back again. PO Steward Foster edged in, balancing himself and a tray against the ship’s gyrations. And talking before he was even through the door: “Got the buzz you was off the bridge at last, sir. Thought you might care for a bite before you goes back up. Coffee, this is—strong, way you like it, sir—and in this dish ’ere …”
“Thoughtful of you, Foster.”
“‘Ave to keep body an’ soul together, sir, don’t we?” Charley Foster put the tray down on the chart. Rattling on … “Specially since they say our playmates is about to ’ave another go at us.” He was keeping up the patter, Nick appreciated, so as to get him to start eating before he remembered he wasn’t hungry. Like a nanny with a small child: except for some of the terminology … “Right lot of sods as they are …You’ll find this is quite a tasty drop of corned-dog ’ash, sir …”
“Stand by to surface.”
“Stand by to surface, sir.” Wykeham glanced round. “Check main vents.”
The Count was dressed as a Sicilian peasant. Loose trousers, rough shirt, sheepskin jacket that smelt of sheep, and a shapeless hat. He was sitting at the wardroom table, waiting, and very nervous now that the moment had almost arrived.
“Depth?”
“Forty-one fathoms, sir.”
They’d spent the last few hours of daylight making a periscope reconnaissance of the area. There’d been nothing about, either afloat or on shore, to suggest the enemy could have been expecting a visit.
The Count had asked again, this morning, “Why, truly, I do not have commando this time, for the boat and so forth?”
Ruck had spread his hands “Count, I do not know!”
“Before, you say there is no commando available for me?”
“I was guessing, that’s all—what reason there could be. I know a lot less than you do, Count. Didn’t you put this question to whoever gives you your orders?”
The Count had only shrugged. But it was obviously bothering him a lot. Paul had suggested privately to Ruck that he, Paul, might take the job on. “Wouldn’t be much to it—just paddling one of those things half a mile and bringing it back again?”
Ruck had snapped, “The hell you will!” And no explanation.
Paul was up for’ard now in the torpedo stowage compartments, chatting to CPO Ron Gaffney, the TI. The folboat had been hauled out of its rack and lay on the deck, with a line from its after end which would be taken up through the hatch when they’d surfaced. Paul and the second coxswain, Leading Seaman Lovesay, were the only two men who’d go up top; from down here the torpedo-men would manhandle the canoe up into the open hatch, and Paul and Lovesay would drag it up and launch it, while the hatch was being shut and clipped again.
The Count was carrying papers identifying him as Carlo Paoli, and a medical certificate proving he was a consumptive, which would explain his not having been enlisted. He also had a sealed package of documents taped to his ribs inside the shirt. Paul had shaken a hand that was far too soft to be either a canoer’s or a peasant’s, and told him, “See you in a couple of nights, Count.”
“Perhaps.”
The quiet hero, going to his doom. But the brown eyes were definitely scared.
“Ready to surface, sir.”
Ruck was at the periscope, circling, taking a last look round. He pulled his head back from the lenses and asked Newton, the asdic operator, “Anything?”
Enemy propellers, Newton was listening for. Patrol boats: E-boats or MAS-boats, in ambush. It had been known.
“Nothing at all, sir.”
Ruck snapped the handles up. “Surface!”
Air roared into the tanks, and hydroplanes swung to hard a-rise. The signalman pushed the lower hatch open then came down off the ladder to make way for Ruck, who climbed up into the tower—in seaboots and waterproof Ursula suit with its hood up, binoculars slung round his neck. The depth-gauge needles were circling fast now: twenty-five feet—twenty—fifteen …
“Ten feet, sir!”
At Wykeham’s yell, Ruck pulled off the second clip and flung the top lid open. Salt water rained down into the tower as Ultra lifted herself into the dark offshore silence, sea still sluicing away through the holes in her bridge deck as he climbed out of the hatch, dragged the voice-pipe cock open and took a preliminary all-round look with the naked eye. Then a more careful sweep around with glasses, while the signalman and a lookout emerged behind him. Two thirds of the surroundings consisted of black coastline; Ultra had been brought up with her stern to it, bow pointing at the open sea, but land enclosed her from beam to beam, Cape Zafferano to port and around the stern to Cape Cefalu on the other side.
Wykeham had stopped blowing. The submarine lay at rest in slightly loppy but well sheltered water. Weather-wise the canoeist should have few problems. Ruck called down, “Open fore hatch, up folboat. Ask our passenger to join me in the bridge.” The signalman and the lookout moved like automatons, slowly and steadily turning with their glasses probing the darkness. Ruck had turned his attention to the shore.
They were getting the fore hatch open: he could hear the clangs as they worked at the clips inside. Then the Count arrived, shouldering agains
t him. At that moment Ruck saw the two blue flashes.
“There’s your man.” He pointed. “Bang on time, and in the right place.”
They had to wait a full minute before the flashes were repeated. They came from the deepest recess of the bay, right astern, well to the east of the village of Termini.
Pitch dark, and very quiet. Aware of the closeness of that enemy coast, men kept their voices low … The Count didn’t speak at all. He’d been in such a sweat of anxiety all day that Ruck had been wondering how or why he’d ever got into this kind of work. But he did know a certain amount of Carlo Paoli’s background—a lot more than the Count knew he knew—and his sympathy was limited.
It had to be.
He heard the slam of the fore hatch shutting. So they’d already got the boat up on the casing and they’d be easing it over the side. He told his passenger, “Go on down, Count. Just keep your boat pointing at those flashes, whenever they show up, and you can’t go wrong. Same when we come back to collect you, aim for our flashes. And please be on time—I’m not allowed to hang around for long after I’ve shown a light. OK?”
Everard’s voice floated out of the dark: “Boat’s in the water, sir.”
“He’s on his way.” He took the Count’s arm, to help him over the side of the bridge, where footholds led down to the catwalk that ran around it. “Over you go. Good luck … See you in two nights’ time, Count.”
Carlo Paoli climbed over without answering. Ruck heard a murmur down there where Everard would be meeting him, leading him for’ard around the gun while Lovesay held the canoe alongside.
Paul murmured, “Easy does it. A bit slippery here.” The Count’s heels were noisy on the casing. He was wearing farmers’ boots, while Paul was sure-footed in rubber soles. Lovesay, in more traditional seamanlike fashion, crouched barefooted on the casing’s edge, steadying the boat and also holding the double-bladed paddle. Paul found the Count’s hand, and shook it: it was inanimate, unresponsive, like shaking a dummy’s hand. He said, “Good luck. See you soon. I’ll have a tot of rum poured ready for you.”
The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5 Page 24