Love For An Enemy

by Love For An Enemy (retail) (epub)

  ‘No.’ Emilio knew for sure that his father had been anything but a coward. In fact he doubted whether he himself could ever have mustered that particular kind of courage. Lonely courage, had been its special quality. Even though that high degree of obstinacy had plainly been – well, misguided. Emilio saw it this way himself – fundamentally, much as his uncle did. He had his doubts in regard to some of the vice-admiral’s assertions – whether for instance Emilio’s father would have emerged from the island camp a patriot, ready to join up and die for Fascism – but he’d smothered them, partly out of wishful thinking but also because differing with Uncle Cesare never did anything much for anyone. Obstinacy as a family characteristic?

  ‘He’d have been proud of you.’ Cesare’s hand had gripped his nephew’s shoulder. ‘Proud of you, boy – as I am.’

  * * *

  By midnight Sciré was at the northern end of the long bay, at the top where the river Guadarranque empties into it. There were fifteen metres of water here. Borghese surfaced her, and she lay trimmed low in the sea while her wireless operators took in the signal which came exactly on time from Supreme Naval Command in Rome. It updated what the consular official in Cadiz had told them: ships at this moment in Gibraltar harbour included one battleship – of the Nelson class – one aircraft carrier, three cruisers, three destroyers and seven tankers, most of these latter at the Detached Mole. The battleship was at the South Mole, the carrier at anchorage No. 27, the cruisers at other numbered anchorages. And there were now no fewer than seventeen merchantmen in the roadstead. Borghese had indeed seen merchant ships’ anchor lights through his periscope on the way up through the bay.

  In Sciré’s control room, he allocated targets to the four teams. Catalano and Vesco were both to attack the battleship, while Visintini and Caracciolo were to go for the aircraft carrier. If for any reason these targets were not attainable, others were to be selected in the order cruisers, tankers, destroyers.

  ‘Any questions?’

  There weren’t.

  ‘Well, then.’ He wasn’t a man to blather. ‘Good luck, lads.’

  The submarine’s conning-tower was only just awash, the top hatch a metre or so above the surface. The eight men climbed out and went over the side, down on to the casing into thigh-deep water, two teams going forward and two to their cylinders aft. The cylinders had to be opened and the pigs hauled out and checked for damage; on previous sorties some had been found to have become defective in various ways – presumably through being banged around in rough weather – so this was a fairly crucial stage, on which success or failure might well hang. Meanwhile the half-surfaced submarine was extremely vulnerable; Borghese would be waiting impatiently to have them gone, so he could then dive and begin his own withdrawal from the bay.

  Emilio and Grazzi got the door of their cylinder open, floated the pig out and began checking it over. The other team were doing the same thing close by, each keeping out of the other’s way. Emilio was well aware meanwhile of the east wind and choppy sea, which was likely to make the passage to the harbour-mouth distinctly less comfortable than it might have been.

  The pig’s luminous compass seemed to have gone on the blink. But Gibraltar town’s lights were easy enough to see. As long as you had your head above water, you’d be all right. Not so good when you were submerged, of course, but—

  ‘Ready, Chief?’

  ‘Sure.’ Launching to starboard. The other team were on the port side. Nobody would wait for anyone else: each pig had its target and would get to it as best it could. There was nothing to be gained from sharing each other’s problems: you had simply to cope with your own, get on with it… Speaking of which – problems – the pig was a bit heavy aft, Emilio found. Floating slightly stern-down. Not that this constituted any major problem on its own – nothing an adjustment of the trim wouldn’t fix, in a minute – but one had to wonder what had caused it. Some leak, for instance: and if that was the trouble – well, you still had it… Then, a second problem – the trim-pump’s operation seemed to be erratic. Fits and bloody starts.

  Anyway, Grazzi was astride the pig now, it obviously would at this point be a touch stern-heavy. Emilio mounted, pushed off with his left foot from the bulge of Sciré’s No. 2 starboard main ballast, and put the pig into first gear. The motor was running, all right. But still this angle – even with the hydroplane tilted to hard a-rise. Things might improve as one got some way on her, he hoped. Trying the trim-pump again: it did work – after a fashion – but with the after trimming tank empty she was still stern-heavy. Some degree of flooding in some part of the after section, he guessed. He had his mask on now, knew Grazzi would have too, although neither of them would start breathing from his oxygen supply until he had to. Reason for wearing masks at this stage was that bashing directly into wind and sea, this damn chop, you simply needed them. Anyway, speed-through-the-water plus keeping the horizontal rudder at the tail at hard a-rise should see us right, he thought. Hoped… Hold her stern end up, counter whatever the weight was in her. Bloody hell, though… Glancing back, changing gear into second as he drove the pig around the submarine’s submerged, shark-like bow, he was relieved to see that his number two’s head was at least above water. Small mercies. But (a) how long might this reasonably acceptable state of affairs persist – because one knew damn well that when something went wrong it tended to get worse, without attention – and (b) unless he was imagining it there was a second – or rather third – compounding problem now: the motor seemed not to be delivering the power it should have, in this gear.

  Battery chamber flooded?

  Clear of the Sciré now, easing the rudder, setting her on course for those distant lights and shifting into third gear. Town lights, not harbour. From this distance at sea-level one wouldn’t have seen any lights that might have been showing from the harbour; there probably wouldn’t be any, anyway. But the town’s lights where the land rose stood out brightly against the solid blackness of the Rock.

  Maybe the compass was working. But sluggishly, not as it should be. And its glass was badly misted. Water in that too, perhaps. He was keeping her in this gear for a few more minutes – still getting nothing like the response he should have. If the battery chamber had sprung a leak, that would account for it. Account for the heaviness aft too. Probably was the answer. Waves were bursting in his face, lapping right over the windshield. Mental arithmetic meanwhile telling him that at this rate of progress – if one could maintain it, if the batteries didn’t give up the ghost completely – the transit to the harbour mouth was likely to take about – God, three hours?

  Working the figures again. Shifting finally into fourth gear, full power. For better or for worse… And having to accept the answer – that it would take all of three hours. If nothing else went wrong, or got worse…

  Looking behind him again, at the salt-washed outlines of Grazzi masked and goggled. Grazzi lifted one hand, thumb-up. Although there’d be no need to tell him that current prospects weren’t all that bright. Hell of a good guy, old Grazzi. There’d been a lesson in that thumb-up gesture: you were intact, under way, had a mark to steer on and a job to do – with a slight handicap or two, what the hell…

  An hour from the start, they were among the anchored merchant ships, passing between two lines of them. The ships all wore anchor lights, and on some of them other patches of radiance were visible here and there, a gleam or two visible through a port or doorway. But by and large they were ships asleep, manned by crews who were also asleep and watchkeepers – if any – who had to be at least half asleep.

  Visualizing the chart and the sketch-maps from the earlier Gibraltar operations, he knew that from here on he’d be among anchored shipping most of the way to the harbour mouth. If there were as many as seventeen of them. The bay – the Gib roadstead – was an assembly point for convoys; the ships mustered here until there were enough of them to justify a strong naval escort, and were then herded out either northbound for British ports or southbound
for West Africa and the Cape of Good Hope.

  At least this slow progress meant one wasn’t making enough wash to be noticed by any sentry who did happen to be awake and looking out. And it was all broken, tumbling water, seething white among the black. He’d be back here later, he told himself, if he found he couldn’t get into the harbour. The prospect of which was fairly daunting now, since with so little power you’d be hard put to it to get out again – if the defenders had woken up to the fact they were being attacked by then: or even with dawn approaching… But these steamers were the soft targets, the easy ones. Worth sinking, well worth sinking, only not quite as worth it as a battleship or an aircraft-carrier. The psychological and propaganda effect of penetrating a major naval base wasn’t to be sneezed at either.

  Please God. Please.

  If only to make certain of being included in the team for the Alexandria attack. And with this in mind, one had of course not only to score but also to get clean away. No use ending up as a P.O.W., for God’s sake.

  Although if you’d sunk a battleship or a carrier you’d be in for a Gold medal, for certain. So that wouldn’t be too bad, in the long run. Even in Uncle Cesare’s view, he thought wrily, one would have upheld the honour of the family.

  Cesare was nuts about the Caracciolo family honour. Really obsessed by it. Making up for his brother, of course. Mostly that, anyway. Having that brother, Emilio’s father, as a black mark against him. Against him personally. This was the crux of it: his own reputation and ambition, his own future in the Navy. Or in politics maybe. In, say, the Navy at the hands of the politicians including the Duce himself. At all events, having had the late Felice Caracciolo for a brother was a spoiling factor which he was determined to overcome, and his nephew Emilio was duty-bound to help him do it. And there again, Felice wasn’t the only stain on the family escutcheon, there were also Felice’s widow and daughter, who’d ‘deserted’. Cesare had actually used that word, once, and Emilio had protested ‘But my mother is French, Uncle. Left without a husband, she went to live with her brother, that’s all. Surely one could imagine an Italian woman in my mother’s situation – if she’d been living in France, say, married to a Frenchman—’

  ‘Your mother is French, that’s true. But your sister is the daughter of an Italian. She bears our name, boy!’

  Lucia had always been much closer to her mother than to her father. Even as a little girl in the uniform of the Piccole Italiane she’d managed to be more French than Italian. And by the time he – Emilio – had left Egypt, she’d been French entirely: chosen French friends, read French magazines and novels, lived and thought in French. While Emilio had become more Italian than ever. He’d had the Balilla training under his skin, and with his own emergence into manhood and the approach of war and a flow of letters from his uncle – well, he’d loved his mother very deeply – still did – but patriotic instincts were by far the strongest. He remembered arguing with Lucia about it – Lucia having challenged him as to how he could reconcile his conscience with making their mother so miserably unhappy, and his answer had been that in time of war men did have to leave their women.

  Shaking his head at the recollection. He’d been a boy, then. Sixteen. A precocious brat, no doubt, in older people’s eyes. While to his mother he must have seemed callous to the point of cruelty. Now, at twenty, he was a man. He could still weep at his memories of his mother’s tears, but at the same time admire that boy’s strength of mind. Remembering her asking him how he could for even one second contemplate aligning himself with his father’s murderers: his answer to this had been that his father had made his own deliberate choice, in that sense had killed himself.

  His father had been an intellectual, which Emilio certainly was not. He mourned him, cherished his childhood memories of him and admired him for his courage, integrity and so forth. Even though hindsight did indicate that he’d been on a wrong track. Emilio didn’t know, acknowledged to himself that he lacked the intellectual capacity to make such judgements. All he did know was that he was an Italian, and that with Italy on the brink of war as she’d been then he’d had no doubts as to where he ought to be. He could still see the tears in his mother’s eyes. Blue eyes, blue as the sea on a summer’s day. Her pallor, and her headshake as she’d murmured, ‘That Balilla. That damnable, criminal Balilla…’

  But the Ballilla had made a man of him, Emilio thought. Taught him its values, which to a large extent had become his own. You couldn’t live for ever clinging to your mother’s skirts, or on the memory of a father who’d dug his own grave.

  * * *

  The pig’s angle in the sea had steepened. Grazzi’s head was above water still, but only just. With still an hour to go – at least. To the harbour mouth, at that – you might say, to the starting line. The others might be inside by this time, he guessed. Coping – please God – with the patrols which were still dropping their damn charges. The others would be somewhere close in there, anyway – where those things were blasting off. From this distance you heard the explosions loud and clear, but you didn’t feel them. What was a problem was the increased stern-down angle. It had worsened, was probably worsening gradually all the time. All right, so Grazzi could start breathing from his oxygen supply, when he had to. You had six hours’ endurance from those bottles. Or should have. In point of fact there’d been quite frequent failures with the breathing sets in previous operations, but, (a) these had been carefully checked over on board Sciré only a few hours ago, (b) certain improvements had been made to them in recent months, and (c) there was a spare set, if he should need it, in the tool locker which doubled as his backrest.

  Emilio twisted round to look back again: touching his own mask and breathing-tube then pointing, shouting over the racket of the pig smashing and thumping through the waves: ‘Oxygen?’

  He’d got the message. Would doubtless have been thinking about it himself, only putting it off as long as possible. Knowing he might well need all six hours of it, but also because breathing from the set was hard work, over any extended period of time really took it out of you.

  Flare of light – like a white stab in the blackness…

  He’d seen it as he turned back. Adjusting course, keeping the pig aimed at the town. The light had showed for one second, then vanished. Now, there – again. Gone again, too. A searchlight, of sorts. Low on the water: patrol-boat, probably, nosing around these anchored ships: it had passed behind one, came into sight again now – the light did, a thin beam sweeping white-crested waves, the boat moving from right to left across the columns. Emilio had reacted instinctively, putting on starboard rudder to pass between two steamers, close under the bow of a freighter – 6 or 7000 tons, modern-looking – so as to put that bulk between himself and the patrol-boat and its damn spotlight. Breathing oxygen himself too now. Another charge exploding – not all that distantly. Glancing back, and getting Grazzi’s thumb-up sign. Emilio was using the breathing set in case of having to submerge – if that boat reversed its course, for instance, came back at them. Or if there were more than one boat. One hadn’t heard of the British having patrols out here in the roadstead, before. He didn’t want to submerge unless it was unavoidable having in mind the pig’s bad trim and low power-output and his doubts about the trimming-pump. Such problems tended to become chronic, under water. Like not being able to maintain depth, maybe. You’d cope – somehow – because you’d have to, but… Well. One way or another. The steamer’s side loomed high to port as he got the pig back on course. Steering by Gibraltar’s lights entirely, ignoring the compass since it was barely visible inside its misted glass. That, exacerbated by goggles which when they were wet – well, the town’s lights were a blur, most of the time.

  Clearing the steamer’s stern. Seeing nothing of the patrol boat out there, the direction in which it had been going. No boat, no light… Might have turned down between the lines of ships, he guessed. Where you’d have met it head-on. Or it could be steering for the harbour. In which case—

/>   Keep your eyes peeled, that’s all.

  Boom…

  Closer. Well, it would be. You could expect to feel those percussions before much longer. Although it was a fact as someone had remarked, on board Sciré – that one had experienced and survived such discomfort, in training. Night after night, in the mouth of the Serchio river – and elsewhere.

  Still no sight of that boat. But an end to the congregation of merchant ships. Last one coming up at snail’s pace to port now. A small tanker – in ballast, hardly worth attacking even if it did come down to picking a target out here. You’d passed several that would be worth a lot more than this. This one had probably discharged her oil in the harbour – to warships maybe – and then been shunted out to this anchorage. It would account for her being at the end of the line here. Passing her now: ahead, there’d be nothing except moderately rough sea all the way to the harbour mouth.

  Another explosion. Nothing between you and them now, either.

  Plugging on. Time – and the pig – both crawling. Time itself was an ordeal to be endured, in a sense. A few metres to the minute, and sixty slow minutes to the hour. Although now – at last – you were almost there, the North Mole a black barrier extending across the pig’s bow. Distance not easy to judge, in present conditions. Hundred metres, 150 maybe. There’d be some shelter this side of it – if you got in close enough – not only from the weather but also from the blasts of the charges that were still exploding at more or less regular intervals in the vicinity of the harbour entrance. The Mole pointed out westward from the shoreline, and connected – at a right-angle bend that was marked by a light structure, although the light itself was currently not operating – to the Coal Pier, which ran southwards from that corner to the harbour entrance. Then after that open gap of water, which had a floating boom and nets across it, came what was known as the Detached Mole, and then a second gap – alternative entrance, also netted – between that and the South Mole, which after another right-angle corner connected with the harbour’s southeastern shoreline.