‘Quite. But never mind. Our information came from Alexandria very recently. There are boats, and it shouldn’t be much of a problem either to snitch one or to get a fisherman to take you out. You’ll have money with you, after all, and no use for it after that, eh?’
They did indeed have money. Five-pound notes, rolled up with their identity papers inside knotted French letters.
Emilio thought suddenly, Five-pound notes. Sterling. For Christ’s sake… In Egypt – where they used Egyptian currency! How the hell hadn’t he thought of it before? Or that fellow Scalambra, the Arabic-speaking genius, why hadn’t he?
Tell them now?
But – all you’d get would be recriminations. There was no way you’d get Egyptian pound and piastre notes out of the air. Not a thing anyone could do. And maybe – maybe, they’d get those notes changed. Yes – that was it.
Borghese had changed the subject, was talking to de la Penne about the navigational difficulties he was facing, and the locations of minefields in the approaches to Alexandria. The two problems were closely linked, as he was explaining… His Intelligence summary was so vague – even unintelligible, in parts – that he’d decided to ignore it, simply trust to luck. Or luck plus common sense. Over the final hundred kilometres for instance he’d decided he’d keep to a depth of not less than sixty metres; they’d be in soundings of 400 metres and less by then, water shallow enough to be mined, and on the premise that even anti-submarine mines wouldn’t be moored deeper than about fifty metres he reckoned he’d pass safely under them. But then again, staying deep would exacerbate the navigational problem. He’d be running blind, in a situation that called for exceptional accuracy in order that the pigs should be released in exactly the right position. Otherwise they might have a problem – one they didn’t need, on top of others that went with the job… But also, he hadn’t been able to get any information on what navigational marks – lights, in particular – might or might not be visible when he finally was able to come up for a look.
Anyway, that was his business. He spent hours of each day poring over charts, sometimes with his navigators – Benini and Olcese – at his elbows, sometimes alone. And on the 17th he had a long conference with de la Penne on the subject of the pigs’ approach route, from the point of release to the harbour entrance. De la Penne would be leading the others until they were at or inside the entrance, after which they’d go their individual ways. Emilio, as it happened, having further to go than any of the others. De la Penne, Marceglia and Martellotta each had roughly 3000 yards of harbour to cross – give or take a few hundred – but the submarine depot ship was in the inner harbour, beyond the coaling arm and the small inner breakwater, at a distance from the entrance of nearer 4000 yards, two sea miles. (Reckoning in yards and miles now since those were the measurements on the British Admiralty chart and harbour plan, which for obvious reasons they were using.) But after he’d done the job under his target, Emilio would have another 1500 yards to cover, in the course of his own escape. Back-tracking, in fact. He’d be alone then; he and Maso were to part company as soon as they’d fixed their warhead to the target’s bilge. Maso would have a comparatively short swim, to land in the vicinity of what had been the Imperial Airways jetty; but he’d also – Emilio reckoned, but there’d have been no point in mentioning it – stand a better chance of being taken prisoner, or shot, as soon as he got ashore. Especially if the alarm had been raised by that time. This in fact applied to all of them. Emilio was the only one who would not be landing at some point in the dockyard close to his target.
* * *
On the evening of the 17th, when Sciré was on the surface charging her batteries – the weather was moderating by this time, although there was still a lively sea – a signal from Ernesto Forza confirmed that both battleships were still at their moorings. Borghese came for’ard in high spirits to give them the good news.
‘Looks like you’ll be going in tomorrow night, boys. Clear weather’s coming, too. The big one’s really on at last, eh?’
He dived the boat at 0300, taking her down to sixty metres, and as well as his meticulous calculations of underwater currents as applied to the ship’s run by log, and having his best men on the wheel so as to steer as fine a course as possible, he made use of seabed contours constantly to check the navigation from there on. Meanwhile, during that last forenoon, the pilots and divers got out their rubber suits and breathing-gear, checked that oxygen bottles were full and valves working properly, and so forth; later in the day de la Penne presided over a final conference with the charts of the harbour and its approaches spread out on the table between them. The divers took part in this, sitting alongside their pilots, and when it was over, in the silence when no-one had any further questions or suggestions, Emilio noticed that his own number two, Fabio Maso, was looking rather cynically around at all of them.
‘Something the matter, Maso?’
He hunched his shoulders. He was a strange-looking man, with no chin at all. He never spoke much, gave away nothing of himself, and Emilio still felt he hardly knew him. When de la Penne had asked him: ‘Odd bird, your new diver, isn’t he?’ he’d only been able to tell him ‘Best candidate there was, that’s all. Once he’s in action he’s damn good. Every bit as good as poor Grazzi was, to be honest.’
‘Poor Grazzi indeed…’
Maso explained: ‘I was trying to guess where we’ll all be in – say, thirty-six hours’ time. On the ran – or dead, or in the slammer—’
‘On the run. Or as I’d prefer to put it, making our escape. We’ll meet up on the beach at Rosetta, Maso.’ He pointed at him: ‘Name the pick-up boats and their dates.’
‘Vulcano.’ The deepset eyes held his. ‘That’s the 21st. Zajfiro 22nd and 23rd.’ A faint smile. ‘Sir.’
De la Penne nodded. He didn’t like Maso. He was by nature so friendly and outgoing that you could almost feel the warmth radiating out of him, but in this last half-minute it had been just one coldly professional operator questioning another.
Back to normal now… ‘I suppose that’s about it, lads. As far as the getaway’s concerned, though, I suggest we should aim for the 21st. All of us. Least time ashore, least chance of getting nabbed. Right?’
Emilio rolled up the harbour plan, and Spaccarelli passed him the now rather battered cardboard tube in which it had been kept. There was something momentous in the act of putting it away, after so many hours in which it had been the focal point of all their concentration – and hopes, fears. But they’d finished with it now.
* * *
At 1840 that evening – the 18th – having lain for a while on the seabed in only fifteen metres of water while the hydrophone operator listened hard and heard nothing, Borghese brought his submarine gently up towards the surface.
Gesturing for the periscope: ‘Up…’
At the lenses then, waiting for the top glass to break surface Ursano, Sciré’s first lieutenant, muttered: ‘Twelve metres, sir.’
‘Hold her at eleven.’
Upper lens breaking out – now…
Flat calm. Dark – quite dark, but it would get darker yet. And no moon tonight. Weather conditions were just about ideal.
He’d made one complete circle, and was static again. More or less. Shifting fractionally this way and that… ‘Stand by to take down bearings.’
‘Ready.’
‘Light on the western mole: bearing – that.’
‘One-seven-six!’
‘Ras el-Tin lighthouse – that. Fort Silsila – that. Down periscope.’ He left it, moving quickly to the chart-table where Benini was laying off the bearings.
Cutting short a laugh: ‘You’ve done it, sir.’ Showing his C.O. the neat intersection. ‘Right on the knob!’
Not bad – after sixteen hours of running blind. Borghese checked the position for himself. Sciré was exactly – or damn near exactly – one mile north of the old eastern harbour. Benini was right, it couldn’t have worked out much better. He turned back
into the centre of the control room – making an effort to look neither surprised nor too pleased with himself – and told Ursano: ‘Take her down. Bottom nice and gently.’ He glanced at the clock and nodded: ‘We’ll surface at eight-thirty.’
It would be fully dark by then, and there’d be no problem getting the pigs on their way by nine – right on schedule.
13
In his cabin in QE, Currie was writing to his father on an air-letter form. Under the heading H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth, c/o G.P.O. London; 18 December, he’d just added:
Incidentally, I’ve been seeing rather a lot of an absolutely terrific French girl, name of Solange Seydoux. Very attractive and great fun. I’ve known the family for quite some time. I had thought that Solange was a bit young to have my comparatively senile attentions forced on her – she’s a month or so short of her 21st, as it happens – so my attitude to her as a man twelve years her senior has until recently been what might be described as avuncular. But now I’m finding it difficult to keep this up.
What might have interested the governor more would have been the information that Maurice Seydoux was stinking rich. But it wasn’t a consideration of Currie’s own, didn’t in fact have any particular relevance, so to have mentioned it would have been misleading. He wasn’t contemplating matrimony, for God’s sake – even if Mitch and/or Lucia might be. Which incidentally he doubted. In that area, though, he could well imagine pithy parental comments on the proposition that he might be capable of behaving in an ‘avuncular’ manner towards any female between puberty and the wheelchair stage, for more than five minutes, the old man might add; on past form, which as a racing man he could hardly be expected to ignore – well, he’d have some justification, on the face of it.
What else to tell him, that would pass the censor?
Damn-all, really. Writing letters like this was only a way of keeping in touch, letting him know one was still alive, more or less compos mentis and thinking about him occasionally. Nothing of really burning interest or importance could be put down here. If in fact one had been able to record what was foremost in one’s mind at this moment, one might have filled up a page or two with something like:
Admiral Vian is at sea again with his cruisers. They sailed on the 15th, escorting H.M.S. Breconshire, which is a former merchantman converted to carry liquid fuel and currently more or less shuttling to and from Malta to supply the cruisers and destroyers who are based there. These Malta ships – Force K – sailed from there on the 16th to meet Vian and take Breconshire on into Valletta, but yesterday evening Vian sighted two Italian battleships with cruisers and destroyers between him and Malta, so he detached Breconshire southward at full speed – she’s comparatively fast, which is why she’s used for this job – while he himself closed in to attack the greatly superior enemy force. Which, characteristically, made itself scarce. But later news – the latest we have here at this time, in fact – is that with Vian already halfway back to Alex, aircraft from Malta have spotted the Italian battlewagons still hanging around between Malta and Benghazi. Having turned back again, it seems, once they reckoned the coast was clear; and presumably the convoy they were protecting must also have turned. Consequently the Malta force — cruisers Neptune, Aurora and Penelope, destroyers Kandahar, Lance, Lively and Havock – are at this moment racing south from Malta in the hope of intercepting the convoy before it gets into Tripoli. As you can imagine, we are somewhat on tenterhooks, awaiting further developments.
The censor, in his infinite wisdom – or stupidity – would have blanked out all that. While Currie might have added:
Imagine though, our C.-in-C., Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew B. Cunningham, known to us all as ‘A.B.C. ’, getting reports that an Italian battlesquadron is at sea and being totally unable to do anything at all about it. Cunningham -I ask you – who’s spent years trying to tempt them to come out where he can get at them – and then stay out long enough — and now they are out and he can’t take his own battlefleet – us – to sea because he hasn’t any destroyers here! They’re all either with Vian or on the desert coast taking convoys to Tobruk and Derna. Battleships can’t possibly put to sea without destroyers to escort them, you see. Otherwise we and Valiant would be out there now, hot-footing it to the fray…
Couldn’t write a word of that, unfortunately. In contrast, the only way he might fill in a bit more space could be to galvanize the old man with the news that he’d found someone in his ship who could beat him at squash, that they’d been playing regularly and consequently his game was improving.
Well, all right. Scribble that down.
But for heaven’s sake don’t add that this morning, 18 December, Cunningham had signalled to his fleet:
Attacks on Alexandria by air, boat or human torpedo may be expected when calm weather conditions prevail. Lookouts and patrols should be warned accordingly. Time of Origin 1025/18/12/41.
Calm weather conditions prevailed now, all right. The sky had been clear since dawn, there was no wind – light airs, at most – and the sea was flat. Air attacks were the most likely, was the general opinion, but steps had been taken to guard against human-torpedo attack as well. Admiral Creswell’s pigeon, of course: he’d ordered all available patrol craft out, dropping five-pound charges at irregular intervals inside and outside the harbour from sunset onwards.
Sunset this evening would be at six-twenty. Currie glanced at his watch: six-fifteen, now. He wondered whether Creswell had taken delivery of his Type 271 radar set, yet. The odds were that he hadn’t, seeing that it was already about six months overdue. He capped his pen. He’d wait for the ritual bugle-calls and lowering of ensigns, he thought, then wander up on deck for a breath of air. Then a bath and change, and a quiet evening in the wardroom followed by an early night. Might even think of some way of filling up this letter-form before turning in.
* * *
‘All right, lads. You know how we’re going to do it.’
Eight-twenty. They were dressed in their rubber suits, breathing-sets strapped on and the masks hanging on their chests. The two reserves, Spaccarelli and Feltrinelli, had wheelspanners on lanyards around their waists; they had to be the first out, with the task of getting the cylinder doors open. This was a new way of making the launch, devised so that Sciré should be on the surface for only two or three minutes – and only just awash, at that. Being only a mile offshore, with the distinct possibility of detection by radar – if the British had such a thing here, on which no positive information had been obtainable.
There definitely were certain other warning systems in operation. There were detection cables on the seabed, for instance, and fixed hydrophone listening points. The intelligence summary had given no precise locations, though, so that in practical terms the information was next to useless; once again all one could do was (a) keep your wits about you, and (b) trust to luck.
‘Better start breathing from your sets, fellows.’
Sciré would be returning to the bottom as soon as they were out on her casing. Which would still be under water, in any case.
De la Penne muttered, as he put his mask on: ‘The good luck kick, Commander?’
Kicks, Borghese thought. For kids… But he obliged – a kick up the arse for each of them. He put all he had into it, too, as this was supposed to improve the luck. A peculiar ritual, but perhaps better than making speeches.
They were ready now. He told Ursano: ‘Take her up.’
En route to the surface, he paused for another minute at the periscope. To check that all was clear around them, and to take another set of bearings. Ras el-Tin lighthouse was operating, he noted with surprise. No lights in the eastern harbour – except for a diffuse spread of street-lighting behind it, along as much of the shoreline as was visible. But the town’s radiance in the background was enough to give him a clear left-hand edge on Fort Qait Bey.
‘How’s that look to you?’
Benini confirmed from the chart: ‘We’re in the same spot, sir. Within a yard o
r two.’
No surprise in it. In this calm and with no current worth mentioning, and having spent the interval bottomed… He told Ursano: ‘Surface gently – outcrop level.’
Meaning, just high enough to be sure the top lid’s clear. Just for these boys to get out, was all one needed. He went up the ladder himself, freed three of the four clips on the underside of the upper hatch, waited while the doctor – Spaccarelli – closed up below him and Ursano sang out the depths.
‘Clear, sir!’
Out. Into a swirl of dark water and the roar of sea cascading down as the tower broke up through the surface. The operators scrambling out in their black rubber suits like rats out of a hole. Bloody great big rats, most of them, two of them positively gigantic. Over the side port and starboard, down the fixed runs on the outside of the tower: they’d be head and shoulders above water when they were down there on the casing, groping their way forward and aft, having the bridge rail to hold on to initially and then a gap with no hand-holds at all until they could reach up to the jumping-wire, which slanted down from the top of the periscope standards to the bow and stern. They’d been through this drill often enough – and in much worse conditions than tonight’s.
One disadvantage of the flat calm was that they’d be more visible, under way with their heads above the surface. But – no moon, anyway. And you couldn’t have it all ways, Borghese thought. Standing close to the for’ard periscope standard, counting them out, knowing the order they’d be coming in: Spaccarelli, Feltrenelli, de la Penne, Bianchi, Marceglia, Schergat, Martellotto, Marino, Caracciolo, Maso. Out of the hatch and straight over the side port and starboard. Not rats, he thought – seals, as they slid over the side and vanished. Ras el-Tin light was still flashing in groups of three every thirty seconds, other lights showing too – white, blue, green, red – and that misty aura like a halo over the land behind.
Love For An Enemy Page 32