by Antony Trew
Rohrbach rescued her. “Yes. Or we shall have gone. We have not much longer here.”
She was relieved, all right. No mistaking that.
A few nights later they met at the summer-house on the cliff drive below the Polana. The night was cool after a hot day, and an easterly wind came in from the sea. The Newt arrived first. Irritable because they were late and he’d left Di Brett with a sugar planter from the Zambesia Province who was making a heavy pass at the young widow. The hell of it was, she seemed to enjoy it.
When he’d complained she said: “Jealousy doesn’t become you, James. I’m only being polite to him.”
“You’re encouraging him.”
“James! That comes badly from you. You’re a married man and look how you’ve encouraged me.”
“Well,” blast her, he thought, she’s adding embarrassment to my frustration. “I adore Betty, but she’s six thousand miles away. Anyway—there’s a war on.”
“One wouldn’t think so, James, from your behaviour.” Illogically, that remark of her’s hurt, and he left in a temper, and then this long wait in the dark for Johan and David. Blast their eyes, too.
But they had a good excuse; they’d been watching the drill at Ponta Vermelha.
“Saw the whole thing from A to Z,” said Rohrbach. “It’s a piece of cake. The ships are blacked out except for navigation lights. When they’ve rounded number nine buoy and headed up the dredged channel, they make their signal letters by lamp to Ponta Vermelha and the signal station acknowledges. No permission to proceed or any bull like that. We saw four of them go through the same drill.”
“Fair enough,” said Johan. “They’ve got pilots on board at that stage, so there’s no need for anything else.”
The Newt lit a cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating their faces for a moment.
“I was swotting up the Admiralty sailing directions and charts this afternoon. The South Channel’s the normal one out of this harbour but it’s fantastically complicated. Buoyed and lighted, but stinking with hazards. Navigator’s nightmare—shoals to the left of you, shoals to the right of you …”
“God, what a cliché,” said Johan.
The Newt sighed. “It’s not funny. Out towards Cabo da Inhaca, there’s a chain of shoals across the entrance to the bay. The channel runs through them—Canal do Sul—it’s a ninety degree turn on to it. Then a run up to Inhaca on a transit of two lights. Gave me the twitch reading about it. That’s where our troubles will start, unless Steve agrees to use the northern channel. Not buoyed and lighted and only used by fishing craft and Portuguese coasters, but there’s plenty of water.”
“My bet,” said Rohrbach quietly, “is that our troubles will start in the anchorage.”
The Newt puffed at his cigarette. “If you really want to be gloomy, remember that when we reach Inhaca there’s a pilot cutter waiting for us—slap in the fairway.”
Johan made a rude noise. “Let’s go the whole hog. Beyond the pilot cutter there are U-boats and Jerry raiders. So what!”
The Newt cleared his throat and fingered his moustache. “I checked up on the Hagenfels’s gangway routine. She doesn’t keep a quartermaster on it all the time. Only when a boat comes off. When it’s gone, they hoist the foot about six feet clear of the water.”
“Could be a nuisance,” Rohrbach didn’t sound happy.
“Saw an interesting bod go off to the Hagenfels this afternoon, David.”
“Who was that, Newt?”
“The shipping agent—gent known as Herr Stauch. Got his name from Artur.”
“What did he look like?”
“Large, fat Hun, perspiring freely. Very busy, important character. He came ashore later with the Captain, this Lindemann chap. He looked a good type. Salt horse, I’d say.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really.”
They told him about their night out with Mariotta and Cleo, the possibility of a party in the Hagenfels, and Mariotta’s remark: It will have to be soon or not at all.
The Newt said: “Doesn’t know how right she is. But is a party on board wise, David? Hell of a risk, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. She knows I’m German. She reckons Johan’s English-hater number one in these parts. It’ll be marvellous to get on board and have a look-see. With the vino flowing and the girls giggling, somebody’ll spill the beans.”
The Newt was sceptical. “Probably, Johan. I wonder what Steve’ll think?”
“He’ll be all for it,” Johan was emphatic. “Right up his alley. I know, we were shipmates.”
They decided they now had enough information for the rest of the party to come down. It was the fifteenth of November and the period of no moon was drawing closer.
Next morning Rohrbach handed in a telegram at the post office on the Avenida da Republica and it read: Many happy returns. Wish you were with us. Love from all. Peterkins.
It was addressed to Stephen Widmark.
Chapter Six
The long car journey with McFadden took some sleeping off, and it was almost eight o’clock when Widmark woke to the screech of seagulls.
He went to the window and looked out across the bay. It had rained during the night and the sky was overcast, the sea beneath it a steely grey. In the distance Chefine Island and Cape Inhaca stood out on the skyline, etched in deepest blue, the tongue of land enclosing the bay clearly visible. To the east, the line of the horizon revealed the break where the bay opened to the sea.
In the fairway he could see the marker buoys, some fishing boats, and a dredger low in the water puffing out into the bay to dump its load. A breeze, cool and refreshing, came in over the water, and there was a steady drip from the trees and shrubs in the garden below him.
Dressed as a tourist, Widmark spent much of the morning in the docks checking various details, but speaking to no one; he wore dark glasses, something he now wished he’d done at the frontier posts. For some time he watched the four ships in the anchorage below the coaling berths, sorting them out and putting names to them on the basis of the information he had collected in Cape Town. As he looked he felt once again the exhilaration that precedes action: the stimulating synthesis of fear and excitement. For months he had been scheming and planning, and here at last was the object of it all: the big freighter with the raked bow, cruiser stern and squat funnel. He wondered about the men on board: what they looked like and what sort of account they’d give of themselves when the day came. Later he drove about the town, refamiliarising himself with its layout and the names of the wide tree-lined avenidas. Opposite the Old Fort near the harbour he found the Port Captain’s office, the high gable decorated with a frieze above which hung the Portuguese flag. The whites and greys, the tessellated balconies, the deep shadows behind the tall doors and french windows, gave the building a cool tranquillity.
Widmark parked the car and walked down past the dry-dock to the boat harbour; beyond it he could see the upper works of two Portuguese gunboats at the Gorjao Quay, Wondering what rôle they might play in the events that lay ahead, he went into the boat harbour. The Catembe Ferry was taking on its load of Africans, the women wearing bright sarongs and coloured doeks, the men in khaki shorts and white singlets. The women carried a variety of things on their heads: sacks of beans, crates of fowls, jars of water and sometimes parcels. When he’d seen all he wanted to he drove back to the Polana where he found an envelope which had been pushed under the door of his room. The note read: Number nine hooks are best. Peter. It was from the Newt and confirmed the rendezvous for nine o’clock that night on the road to Peter’s.
For the next hour or so he wrote up his diary. Something he’d not done for days.
Then, after a bath and change, he went down to the cocktail bar and brooded in the shadows over a dry martini, thinking of what lay ahead.
Later, on his way through the dining-room, he saw Olympia Stavropoulus, voluptuous, magnificent, the glitter of her jewels heightening the illusion of majesty. His mild pa
nic was followed by relief and embarrassment, for she was looking through him; there was not a flicker of recognition.
At his table on the veranda he breathed deeply, shrugging his shoulders. What shattering luck that he should have run across her here when she ought to have been safely bedded down in Alexandria. Of course there was nothing exceptional about her being in L.M.; a lot of wealthy women, and some of their men, had hurried down to Southern Africa when Rommel threatened Cairo and Alex. Olympia Stavropoulus would certainly be in the van of that sort of exodus: she had no loyalties, no cause, only beautiful clothes, priceless jewellery and a thirst for pleasure which little Dimitri Stavropoulus, engrossed in expanding his millions, seemed to encourage, perhaps to expand the area of his own freedom.
Widmark had met them in 1941 soon after his arrival in Alex., by way of a letter from his father, who handled Dimitri’s business interests in the Union. The Stavropouluses lived and entertained on the grand scale and Widmark had dined twice in the big house above Sidi Bishr. These had been large cosmopolitan affairs, men from the fighting services sprinkled with sophisticated locals: Greeks, Frenchmen, Levantines, Egyptians; smooth, clever bankers and stockbrokers, professional men, business men and their cultured decorative wives. Olympia, superb, robust, full bosomed, presided over these gatherings with vice-regal hauteur, capturing the men and subduing the women with the sheer scale of her physical magnificence. But Widmark, still obsessed with the events in the Kasos Strait and his mother’s death, paid little attention to Olympia or her friends. Then came the occasion of his third visit to the Stavropouluses’ house; the note inviting him could not have been briefer: “Stephen dear, come and dine with us on Saturday.” And since her food was excellent and he felt pleasantly anonymous among the glitter of her guests, since Dimitri had a good billiard table and Napoleon that really was Napoleon, and because Widmark liked at times to get away from the Union Bar and Pastroudis, so full of the Services, he accepted. But when Saturday came and he was shown by an Arab servant into the vaulted drawing-room he found himself alone—that is, until Olympia arrived. If possible a more sumptuous, more statuesque Olympia, the elegant revealing frock making of her fine breasts more than if she had bared them.
She was enormously surprised. What was he doing there? Dinner? Heavens, no! It was Saturday of next week. Had the note not made that clear? But how utterly stupid of her! And Dimitri away in Beirut, and the house practically servantless for she had been going to stay with her sister in Cairo and had given them all time off but for some reason she’d had to change her plans. She would not hear of his going. And, no, certainly not! She would not let him take her into Alex to dine. What a thought! Mahmoud would prepare a meal for them. It would be simple, of course—she shrugged her shoulders and they reminded Widmark of alabaster.
The supper was exquisite; so were Dimitri’s wines and Dimitri’s Napoleon, and it was not until Mahmoud had gone—“… these dreadful Arab servants,” complained Olympia, “You may be sure, Stephen, that we shall not see him again tonight.”—that Widmark through a haze of euphoria began to suspect that neither the occasion nor the supper were extemporary, for Olympia’s importunings were remarkable. For the first time in his life he found the rôles reversed: the woman the seducer and he, the man, the defender, if not of his virtue at least of his person.
Why he had so stoutly defended this he had never been quite sure: some mixture of intoxication, obfuscation, ebullience, boredom and shock, he supposed. Perhaps because she had been so tediously obvious—in any event he had decided suddenly that not only would she not get what she wanted, but that he was bored and wanted to get back to his ship.
All that, he reflected, sitting on the veranda of the Polana, was perfectly understandable; but why had he been so rude, so brutally rude? He boggled at the recollection. Olympia like a felled giantess weeping noisily on the divan, her humiliation abject, and he lurching across the patio to the street, walking unsteadily through the blackout of the warm Mediterranean night. All terribly undignified. Then the “clip-clop” of a passing gharry which he stopped and hired for the journey to the harbour where he took a felucca off to his ship.
He had not seen Olympia Stavropoulus again—not until this night in the Polana. And her chilling bright-eyed stare confirmed what he’d long suspected: that he’d made an implacable enemy.
The launch went alongside the Hagenfels and a tall man in a tropical suit got out of the sternsheets, carrying a roll of paper under his arm. He spoke to the African coxswain in Portuguese. “Wait for me. I won’t be long.” Then he went up the gangway to the upper deck where he was met by an officer who saluted. “I am Günther Moewe, sir. Navigating Officer.” He was formal and precise.
The tall man smiled faintly. “I am von Falkenhausen. You are expecting me?”
Moewe nodded. “Of course, Herr Baron.” So this was the Freiherr! Somehow he had not expected such a big man, nor one with so much charm. He looked young for a Kapitän zur See.
“Come this way, sir,” said Moewe, “the Captain is expecting you.” It was not yet noon and the second officer hoped that the Captain would not be drinking when this distinguished naval officer was shown into his cabin. They went along the steel deck and up two companion ladders to the accommodation below the bridge. Moewe knocked on the door and they went in. Lindemann was sitting at a desk in the large day cabin, writing. He got up at once, bowed, and shook his visitor’s hand. “Welcome on board, Herr Baron.” This was done before Moewe could perform the formal introduction he’d been rehearsing. It was not often one had the opportunity of introducing such a distinguished man. Von Falkenhausen and Lindemann were soon relaxed and at ease and this irritated the second officer, who was a stickler for ceremonial. Nor did he approve of the tray of beer and the bottle of schnapps.
Lindemann showed his visitor to a chair and sat down opposite him; Moewe remaining standing, cap under arm, until Lindemann looked up and said: “Thank you, Moewe. I shall not be needing you.” The second officer said: “Very good, Herr Kapitän,” and withdrew.
The two men made small talk while Lindemann poured the beer, and von Falkenhausen took the brown-paper wrapping from the roll he was carrying and unfolded the charts.
“These are the latest, amended and up-to-date.” He passed them to Lindemann. “They are from the British Admiralty so they ought to be good.”
Lindemann looked at him curiously, taking in the frank brown eyes, the scarred left cheek. “How did you get them, Herr Baron?”
“From a contact in South Africa. I picked them up at Ressano Garcia yesterday.”
Lindemann looked at the charts. “This is excellent. You have everything here. Eight of them. North and South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean from the East African to the Australian coasts.”
“They are small scale, but they are all we need, Kapitän.”
Still looking at the charts, Lindemann said quietly: “When do you think we go?”
“It is impossible to say. It is almost the period of no moon. I think the signal from the Wilhelmstrasse will come soon.”
“When will you join us?”
“On the night of sailing, Kapitän.”
“We shall be very glad to have you with us.” It was evident that Lindemann was sincere.
“I too. I shall be glad. It is a long time since I was at sea.”
It was a dark night, the thin moon had not yet risen, and to seaward sky and sea merged so that there was no horizon. In the headlights of the car there was little to be seen but the bush on either side of the road and occasionally the loom of a tree. The winding road was rough in places where the tar skim had broken and the car bounced and bumped. Through breaks in the dunes they saw the lights of the fairway buoys, and beyond them those of Chefine and Inhaca. A cool wind came in from the sea. A few miles down the road they turned left on to a dirt-track and soon after they saw, in the thin reflection of the tail lights of a car which had pulled off the road, two dark shapes.
Widmark slowed do
wn. “Probably them. We’ll drive past slowly.”
They passed the stationary car and the Newt and McFadden confirmed that it was the rest of the party. Widmark stopped and reversed, parking the Buick in front of the Studebaker so that both cars were clear of the roadway. They got out of the car and David Rohrbach and Johan le Roux came up to them. Hans le Roux and Mike Kent got out of Rohrbach’s car and there was some leg-pulling and laughter. They lifted the bonnet of the Studebaker and with a torch and some tools pretended to work on its engine. The others gathered round and for the next thirty minutes Rohrbach, Johan and the Newt gave the newcomers all the information they could. After questioning them Widmark seemed satisfied with what had been done.
“We’ll have to work fast now,” he said. “It’s only three days to the no moon period. What’s the latest gen on the sailing of Clan McPhilly and Tactician?”
Hans hissed, “Car coming!” and they bent over the bonnet. The headlights of the passing car lit up the scene momentarily, then it was gone.
The Newt lit a cigarette and went back to Widmark’s question. “Artur—the tugboat chap—reckons they’ll finish loading on the twenty-fourth.”
“What’s the drill after that?”
“They leave the loading berth and anchor in the stream until two or three of them are ready. Then they sail during the hours of darkness, sometimes joining up with a convoy outside or if they’re fast enough sailing independently.”
“Which of the two are we going to use?” David Rohrbach asked.
“Preferably the bigger ship, the Clan McPhilly. But I’m going to have a look at their captains before I decide.”
Widmark was keenly interested when he heard that Rohrbach and Johan might be invited to a party on the Hagenfels. “Terrific!” he said, “but you’ll have to make it snappy. There isn’t much time left, David.”