He’d decided he’d take off on Monday. He lay on his back now, hearing the rain first ease off and then stop, so that he was listening to a desultory dripping from trees and eaves—with her face on his shoulder, her breath fanning his ear, an arm and a leg across him; she was as softly and warmly relaxed as a sprawling puppy. But Monday—the day after the Sunday which would be dawning soon—after she left the house to go wherever she did go every weekday, he’d sneak off, hide himself somewhere near the bicycle until dark, then pedal south to find the frontier. The ankle was a lot better, and he still had all Sunday and Sunday night to rest it. To go suddenly, without goodbyes, would be far the easiest way. He’d tell her—using the calendar again—one more week. It would seem like a long time, and it might well seem long enough—her nervousness, fear of discovery, might even incline her to see him on his way before that.
A continuing tattoo of the rain’s aftermath: soft drumming in the darkness, the wind’s murmur in the trees. Her breathing was light and even in his ear: that, and the interminable dripping. Drip, drip, drip …
No. It was “break,” not “drip.” Sea, not rain.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
Thoughts, for instance, of Fiona. Who’d be amused, when he described this interlude. Or disbelieving … He’d make her laugh, anyway … It would have been pretty frightful if Fiona had married Nick—as she’d fully intended. She’d been Nick’s mistress for several years, on and off. Jack wondered how Nick, even married to his Australian, would react to the announcement of Fiona’s marriage to his young half-brother. And where Nick might be now. Paul, one knew about—Paul would be in his submarine in the Malta flotilla, where survival chances were said to be about fifty: fifty—had been at the beginning of the year, anyway. And if Paul should happen to get his come-uppance then he, Jack, would be in line for the Everard baronetcy if anything similar happened to Nick. It was a thought one had entertained for quite a while now. A new element, however, was Nick’s marriage to the Australian, because if they started a family any son would take precedence over a half-brother.
They’d better keep Nick at sea. And the Australian in Australia!
The shutter had moved.
Or—he thought it had.
He was straining his eyes towards the indistinct, slightly lighter rectangle that was the window. He could still hear that sound in his head, behind the continuing drip, drip, drip. Not exactly a creak, more a sound of sliding …
He moved sideways out of Heidi’s embrace, and off the bed. She’d sighed, rolled the other way. He went to the window, seeing the shutters’ slats like bars against a sky turning starry now. The cold breeze made him shiver as he felt for the rod with a hook on it which had held the shutters in this half-open position. But he couldn’t find it. Then his hand pushed against one shutter, and it swung back. The hook—he found it now, hanging loose—had been disengaged.
For a minute, it had him worried. Then he realised—she most likely hadn’t fixed it properly. So the wind had moved the shutters and dislodged it. The movement of the shutter would have been the sound he’d heard.
He hooked it firmly, this time, and went back to bed. Cold, glad of the bed’s warmth and hers. He put his arms round her, and she turned back, snuggling against him. Kissing, then, while she was still more asleep than awake and he was still listening, for sounds other than the wind and the noise of the rain as it began again. She murmured sleepily with her mouth against his, while he assured himself that there couldn’t possibly have been anyone out there.
“Three minutes to go, sir!”
Hugo Wykeham called it up the helmsman’s voice-pipe. Ruck, who had Paul Everard in the bridge with him, answered, “Depth under us now?”
“Still one hundred fathoms, sir.”
He’d just checked it. The hundred-fathom line at this point was six and three quarter miles from land. McClure, Ultra’s navigator, had just left the chart and gone to the ladder, was scuttling up it to the bridge where he’d stay and watch shore bearings—Cape Matifu to the east, Cape Caxine in the west, and some leading marks ashore as well. The bight of land inshore of them was Algiers Bay: Ultra was in position and on time, on the spot she’d been detailed to occupy while serving as a navigational beacon. She was slightly nearer the coast than the other submarines who were performing the same task in other sectors—Unrivalled was to the east of her, on the other side of Matifu, P 48 was off the town of Algiers itself, and Shakespeare was lying as marker off the western sector beaches.
Two minutes to zero hour.
McClure was at the gyro repeater, constantly watching the shore bearings. The diesels were growling through muffled exhausts, one charging the battery and the other driving one screw at low revs, holding the submarine in position by stemming the westerly set. If you made even a small mistake on this kind of job you’d be sending assault troops ashore in the wrong place; navigational accuracy equated to men’s lives and the success of the invasion. Ruck and Paul both had their glasses up, sweeping all round but concentrating mostly on the seaward sector. A minute to go … Farther out to sea, at 6 pm—four and a half hours ago—convoy KMF(A)1, which had been at sea since leaving the Clyde on 26 October, had split into separate detachments for the various landing beaches in this sector, and one part of the landing force should be appearing here at any moment.
“Blue lamp on, Sub.”
Paul dropped his binoculars on their strap, and raised the lamp. He aimed it out to sea and pressed the trigger.
Ruck asked McClure, “Bearings all right?”
“Spot on, sir.”
Quiet voices in the quiet, apparently empty night. But you knew it was far from empty. And this would be happening simultaneously—at Oran, two hundred miles west. At Oran the beacon submarines were P 54 and Ursula.
“Twenty-two thirty-five, sir!”
Wykeham, from below … and the LSIS—Landing Ships Infantry—were now five minutes late. It didn’t augur well—after so long a passage, so much preparation in the surrounding areas. Paul thought of the Count—who’d most likely be dead by this time—and of the Germans and Italians who’d be on the alert for invasions of Sicily and Sardinia, who’d have had reports today of very large convoys steaming east into the Mediterranean all through the daylight hours. They would not have known that under cover of darkness all the convoys had turned south. But they’d know the convoys had been covered by battleships and aircraft carriers as well as squadrons of cruisers and flotillas of destroyers, and a host of smaller support ships.
“Ah. Better late than bloody never.”
Ruck’s tone was of relief, but not excitement. What had been expected was now happening, ten minutes late. The landing ships would stop at this point, lower their swarms of assault craft which would then form up and head in to the beach, returning to the LSIS for follow-up waves of troops. The ships would have moved in closer, by that time, to speed up the flow. A primary target from this sector would be the Maison Blanche airfield, only a few miles inland from the landing place.
McClure warned Ruck, “We’re getting too far east, sir. If we could stop for about a minute, the set would—”
“Stop port!”
You could see the oncoming ships now. A silent, purposefully approaching column growing powerfully out of the night, spearhead of an army which, astonishingly, had been brought in secrecy across two thousand miles of sea and would be ashore before light came.
It was now Sunday 8 November, and for as much as was left of SL 320 it had been a quiet night, so far. Wesley had put down a U-boat six miles ahead of the convoy about an hour after dusk, and kept it in asdic contact for long enough to drop several patterns on it. Nick had been thinking of sending one of the others to join in, but he’d decided to wait in case it might turn out to be a concerted attack from other directions as well—as indeed it did, when torpe
does were fired at the convoy from somewhere ahead to starboard. Two tracks were seen, one passing close down the starboard side of the Sukow Trader and the other streaking right under Astilbe. Graves had said it was seen too late for any evasive action to have been effective: all he’d done was hold his breath.
Then Paeony had had a contact, about two hours after midnight, she’d lost it while Nick had been on his way over to help. And that was all. By this convoy’s standards, a very quiet night indeed.
Having those two destroyers would make a difference, of course. You could often relate the aggressiveness of U-boats directly to the weakness of a convoy’s defence. As Cruance, among others, had well known.
Convoy speed was four knots. The Burbridge could have done better, but the Lossiemouth’s master had said he might not be able to maintain even this speed for long. His pumps were holding their own, but only just, against the extensive flooding in his foreport. Harbinger’s condenser leak was no worse, thank God.
Mike Scarr had the watch. Nick was relaxing, but not sleeping, in his deck chair. It was a rare and unexpected blessing to spend a night at only the second degree of readiness, guns’ crews and depth-charge crew actually sleeping. Not that Mr Timberlake’s teams could have won any battles to speak of, when they had only four Mark VIIS left. Fortunately this might not matter, since it did look as if the main battle might have ended. Obviously a large part of the U-boat force had been withdrawn—possibly into the Mediterranean, if the enemy had seen the “Torch” convoys streaming east from Gibraltar all day—and they must have …
He had a pipe going. He smoked slowly, enjoying the quiet passage of the hours and the comparative quiet in his own mind—which he could have established right from the start, if he’d had the courage … Thinking about her—where she was and how soon he’d have her with him: thinking also about what he knew must be going on now, this very minute, on and off the Algerian and Moroccan beaches. And whether Paul might be involved—he probably would be … Then Kate again—in London, perhaps, already there, trying to find out where he was?
Looff had taken U 702 deep, after firing a salvo of three torpedoes from which there’d been no result at all. He attributed it to malfunction, failure of the warheads’ pistols being the most likely. His hydrophone operator had heard the fish running, and on course, and then—nothing. Nothing except a destroyer coming straight at him at about thirty knots: and an insolent remark from Franz Walther, some comment muttered into his beard …
He’d fired from long range, certainly—because of those destroyers, and the corvettes a short way back on their quarters. He could have pressed in closer, to make sure of it, but he’d been on a firing track and he’d suddenly realised he could just as well loose off now—and be sure of getting his fish away. On a decision like this you couldn’t hesitate: you either did it, or you didn’t, and if he’d held on one of those bastards might have got in his way.
He didn’t know what had happened to Waldo Speyer—formerly Drachen Twelve—either. There’d been a lot of depthcharging from that side, so obviously he’d been getting it in the neck. Their attacks had been reasonably well synchronised—not that it made all that much difference, with only two attackers in place of ten … Since firing that salvo he’d been busy with his own immediate problems, too busy to take Walther up on that muttered comment: Looff had let it go, and now he wished he hadn’t; but it was too late, the engineer would have denied it, played the innocent … Anyway, the obvious thing had been to get those tubes reloaded as quickly as possible, and also to regain bearing. He’d stayed deep until he was able to surface on the convoy’s quarter, well out: he’d stayed well out, too, out of the escorts’ RDF range while steering a parallel course at high speed, getting himself back up into position for a new attack. He was dived now, deep again, nicely distanced ahead but with the propeller noise of the escorting destroyers loud and clear in the hydrophones, while up for’ard the torpedo-men hauled U 702’s last three reload fish into her tubes. The convoy was only crawling, probably because some ships in it had been crippled in earlier attacks, and it was easy to stay ahead of it, even at a speed that took very little juice out of the batteries.
Having missed with that salvo, another attack did have to be made. Unfortunately he’d have to use the search periscope; daylight was coming very soon, and the attack ’scope was out of action. The damage had been done when that shell had bounced off, when he’d been diving her just after the collision. Walther had had his artificers up there working on it, on the surface yesterday forenoon at the same time as they’d buried Oelricher. The engineer had reported finally that effective repairs were impossible. So the attack would have to be conducted from down below in the control room, using the air and sea search periscope. Which was not so good.
The leak in the engine room hadn’t amounted to anything. The air-intake valve: they’d fixed it in a couple of minutes. Walther very pleased with himself at that time, for some reason. He’d acted in those few minutes as if he’d been taking over the command! Looff’s memory of the precise sequence of events was hazy, but he did remember Walther throwing his weight about, giving orders to all and sundry. There was nothing to pin him down to now: another incident that had been let slip by default …
The two destroyers had arrived to join the escort this afternoon, so there were now six escorts to seven merchantmen. This meant stiffish opposition, and Looff had of course drawn attention to it, in one of his reports to Kernéval. It was a very significant change, coinciding as it had with the withdrawal—yesterday, Saturday—of most of the Drachen group. The group had in effect been disbanded. Ziegner—who’d been comparatively well off for fuel and torpedoes—had been sent into the Mediterranean, and the rest had been ordered south, back in to the Azores air gap where they were to rendezvous with “milch cows,” supply U-boats, for replenishments. Looff and Speyer had been told to remain with this convoy and “complete its destruction.”
It was an order that couldn’t possibly be carried out. Particularly if Speyer had been lost now, or damaged. Even if he showed up again, it couldn’t have been achieved even in terms of the number of torpedoes they had left. And with the odds changed so drastically, it virtually amounted to being told to commit suicide. Punishment for failure?
Hardly … He bit his lip, thinking about it. This was a new, extremely valuable ship, with a crew of highly trained, irreplaceable men and a commander whose name had been blazoned in the national headlines. FO U-boats might be under pressure, but he couldn’t have gone completely mad.
Except there wasn’t always that much logic … Certainly not if the carpet-eater was frothing at the mouth. Admirals and generals ran for cover, then!
In any case, there was nothing to be ashamed of. Looff had personally sunk five merchantmen and one armed trawler, adding in his own estimate 30,000 tons to his bag. He’d have done better if on more than one occasion he hadn’t had rotten luck, an escort right on top of him by sheer chance at just the crucial moment: it was all on record, in the ship’s log and also in his personal notes, for inclusion later in the patrol report. But when you considered it from this point of view it was obvious that FO U-boats’ order wasn’t either a punishment or a reproof: Max Looff had commanded a group that had sunk thirty out of thirty-seven ships in one convoy—plus one of its escorts—and you didn’t reprove a man for that, you gave him a hero’s welcome!
Dawn wasn’t far away. Maybe forty minutes …
Willi Heusinger asked him, in that ingratiating tone of his, “Will you make a dived attack, sir? With the search periscope?”
Looff turned his head slowly, and stared at him. Letting him see his contempt. He had no intention of keeping Heusinger with him, after this trip. His lips twitched—some involuntary spasm which he controlled with difficulty—as he formed the words to answer cuttingly, “Since it will now be daylight, and since my engineer has found himself unable to repair the attack periscope, I have very little option, have I … Instead of wasting ti
me with stupid questions, go for’ard and find what’s making them so slow!”
Heusinger looked as if he’d hit him in the face. He muttered, “Aye aye, sir …”
Walther asked Looff in a murmur as he turned to enter the wardroom, “All right, sir? I mean—you’re feeling OK, are you?”
“Are you a doctor now?” Anger flared: anger he’d suppressed for hours. Glaring at his engineer … “What the hell are you suggesting?”
“I—beg the captain’s pardon …” Staring, as if he thought his captain might be sick, or crazy. Oil on his face, crumbs in his scraggy beard, gazing at his commanding officer like some laboratory worker studying a microbe … Looff suddenly saw clear through the bastard: “You think you saved the ship—is that it?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand at all!”
“D’you imagine I’d hesitate to deal with you, Walther? Because you’ve served with me for a long time d’you think you can get away with impertinence?”
“Sir, if I’ve said or done anything—”
“One more sample of your insubordination, Walther, and Leutnant Hopper will take over your job! D’you understand that?” “Why, yes, sir—but—but …”
He’d got him stammering, got him off-balance. That was good. He leant closer—eyes blazing, expression triumphant—“I’m Max Looff— remember?”
“Guns’ crews closed up, sir, circuits tested.” He nodded to Warrimer.
“Depth-charge crew closed up, sir.” Chubb went back to the telephone, to swap early-morning insults with Mr Timberlake. Early morning of Sunday, 8 November.
It would already be light, Nick realised, over the Algerian beaches. There was an hour’s time-lag, near enough, between here and Algiers. Light would have come to the Moroccan coast perhaps twenty minutes ago. Daylight like a curtain rising on a completely new stage in the war.
The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5 Page 38