by Alan Evans
McLeod murmured, ‘There’s the church, presumably the one they named the port after. That’s what Kirkko means: church.’
Smith saw it, set amid the straggle of houses that made up the town, hardly more than a village. There were a few solid-looking sheds and warehouses lining the quay and a sawmill with a jetty. The only other ship in the port lay alongside the jetty. She was loading sawn timber and flew the black, white and red ensign of the German merchant marine.
The guns’ crews stood down from their action stations. Smith took Ross and McLeod into his cabin and told them, ‘I expect to be approached by a Mr. Robertson who is in business here as a shipping agent. You’ll keep this under your hats.’
Ross answered, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’
McLeod asked, ‘Any idea when, sir?’
‘No.’
They left the cabin, silent but thinking.
Just ten minutes later a lookout reported a boat putting off from the shore and heading for Audacity. Smith told Ross, ‘Pass the word, we have visitors. The minimum of men on deck and make sure they all look the part and act deaf, dumb or stupid.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Audacity’s deck stayed empty of men, save for a small party on the fo’c’sle and another on the poop, for appearances’ sake because a totally deserted ship might excite suspicion. Neither party would be within talking distance of the boat when it came alongside. Smith took shelter in the wheelhouse with Ross while McLeod went down to the deck to meet the boat.
Ross muttered, ‘Suppose it’s the P. M.O., sir?’
Smith had been told the agent here would prevent a visit from the Port Medical Officer. By what means? Bribery? And suppose Robertson had failed? Smith said, ‘McLeod will tell the doctor we’ve no illnesses on board and no one’s going ashore.’
Ross said doubtfully, ‘What if he insists on coming aboard to see for himself?’
The doctor would only have to talk to the crew for a few seconds to know they were not Scandinavian. Smith answered, ‘We can’t weigh and run for it; that would look suspicious. So the doctor and his boatman will have an accident.’
‘Sir?’ Ross shot him a startled glance, not liking what he heard.
Smith said drily, ‘Not murder, Mr. Ross. I’d keep them below and capsize their boat. There’d be enquiries but with any luck we’d have completed our business before they became pressing.’
Ross probably wanted to ask what that business might be, but he held his tongue. And Smith was glad of that, listening for McLeod. He heard a voice, the words indistinguishable, garbled by distance, but then he recognised McLeod’s bass rumble. Ross was chewing his lip anxiously, well aware of the danger. Smith stood with his hands in pockets, striving to appear unconcerned, but he let out a breath softly when McLeod’s boots thumped on the ladder and the pilot said, ‘It’s Mr. Robertson, sir, the ship’s agent here.’
Robertson followed him into the wheelhouse, a ruddy-faced man, stocky in a heavy fur coat, a homburg on his head. He looked from Smith to Ross in their shabby jackets without any badges of rank and asked, ‘Captain?’
Smith answered: ‘I command.’ He shook Robertson’s hand then gestured to the others. ‘My officers.’ He gave no names.
Robertson shook their hands. ‘Guid to see you.’ The Scots accent was soft but clear.
Smith said, ‘We thought you might be the P.M.O. Can we expect a visit?’
‘No.’ Robertson took off the homburg and ran fingers through short, grizzled hair. ‘There’s only the one doctor here and he’s away up country to see a case. When he comes back I’ll tell him you’re only here for instructions from me, that you’ve no disease aboard and you won’t be coming ashore. He’ll take my word for it. I’ve done business here as a shipping agent, and he’s been the doctor in this town, these twenty years past.’
Smith spoke to Ross. ‘Tell the steward we have a guest.’ Then he ushered Robertson into his cabin and shut the door, offered the single chair to the agent and sat down on the couch.
Robertson said, ‘I didn’t expect you so soon. Ye’ve made a fast passage, Captain.’
‘Those were my orders.’
Robertson chuckled. ‘Admiralty were pessimistic. The coded telegram I got said Lulea might arrive tomorrow. It also authorised me to raise cash locally, if you didn’t get here, and try to persuade the Russians to take coin and paper for doing the job.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s a non-starter. There might be ways and means of getting the money but my courier has talked to the Russians and he said they made it plain they’ll take only gold—and the lassie has to go with it. He’s arranged the transfer for tomorrow night.’
Smith asked, ‘Courier?’
‘I have several; Russians and Finns, men who travel on their own business and also make some enquiries, run some errands on my behalf.’
‘Trustworthy, I assume.’
‘Absolutely.’ And Robertson pointed out drily, ‘My life depends on it, and has done for some years now.’
Smith took the point and nodded. There came a tap at the door and he opened it, took the tray from Wilberforce and closed it again. As he busied himself with the bottle and glasses he realised that Admiralty had considered Audacity’s mission unlikely to succeed, a desperate gamble they had taken because they had to; the outcome of the war could hang on it. He held out a glass and asked, ‘You know the girl?’
Robertson took the glass and held it up, toasting. ‘Liz Ramsay? Aye. I met her when she passed through Finland on her way home. The railway from Russia runs just a few miles inland. She’s quite a girl. But I can’t understand why the Russkies insist she goes with the package, and I don’t like it.’
Neither did Smith, but he asked, ‘The transfer? When and where?’
Robertson savoured the whisky, then swallowed. ‘A drop of good stuff, Captain. Aye, well, our Russian friends sail from Petrograd in a fishing-boat, like a wee trawler, tonight. They’ll be posing as fishermen and they’ll follow the Russian coast as far as Kurgala Point, then cross the Gulf to Kirkko.’ The Gulf of Finland was only fifty miles wide between Kirkko and Kurgala. ‘They’ll be here for the transfer tomorrow night then return the same way but not to Petrograd. That’s too risky so they’ll put into a quiet little port where they have friends, not far from Kurgala. It could be any one of a score and they haven’t told me which. I don’t blame them.’
Smith frowned: ‘We make the transfer here? In the anchorage? In sight of the town and a German ship?’
Robertson lifted one finger of the hand holding the glass. ‘I can understand you not liking it, but wait a while. The Russkies don’t fancy the idea of a rendezvous on the open sea. There’s always the chance some other vessel might come along or that there might be bad weather which would make the transfer impossible.’
Smith had a mental vision of two ships pitching and rolling while a fortune in gold swung precariously between them.
‘Aye.’ Robertson went on: ‘And you’ll know the situation in Finland. Mannerheim is leading the Finns, many of them German-trained, in a fight for independence from Russia, trying to throw out the Red Guards, Russian or Russian-supplied. There are Red Guards all along this coast. We might pick a quiet bay where there are none, or we might choose a wrong ‘un and land up in trouble. But I know this town and harbour are free of them, there’s not one within miles. And anyway, you’re well away from the town. The German ship loading timber won’t sail till the morning of the sixteenth, so she’ll still be here tomorrow night, but you’re a good half-mile away from her, too. You’ll have no bother.’
Smith still did not like the plan but this was the way the Russians wanted it. He could not contact them until they arrived the next night. Any attempt he made then to arrange a different rendezvous would mean delay and his orders were to deliver his cargo with all despatch. ‘All right.’ He would not say ‘very good’, because it wasn’t. ‘You spoke of the political situation here. What do you know of German naval strengths and movements, patrols and
so forth?’
Robertson pursed his lips. ‘Very little. I only know what my couriers see, what I see myself, as we go about our business. There are destroyers and torpedo-boats, most of them ten or fifteen years old, a few a bit newer, but all dangerous to you. Some are based at Reval, others at Riga. There’s a guard-boat that patrols outside of Reval, another in the Irbensky Strait—though I understand she lies more or less permanently at anchor at one side of the deepwater channel through the Strait.’
Smith pictured the chart in his mind: the Irbensky Strait was the main entrance to the Gulf of Riga. The other—
Robertson went on, anticipating his thought: ‘The other way into the Gulf, through Moon Sound, is blocked by minefields. They were laid by the Russians last year when they were still at war and the Germans haven’t bothered to sweep them yet.’
Interesting, though not relevant to Smith. He waited and Robertson said, ‘As for patrols, there is the destroyer that comes out of Reval, sweeps all along this coast and goes back to her base. It may not be the same one all the time, but one of them shows up pretty frequently, every day or two.’
Smith nodded. ‘We met her.’
Robertson straightened in his chair. ‘Good Lord! When?’
‘A couple of hours out. We told our tale, she looked us over and went away satisfied.’
Robertson grimaced: ‘Nasty moment, eh?’
But Smith commented tersely, ‘Not nice.’ And prompted, ‘Any other patrols?’
‘I understand there’s an armed tug or a minesweeper that patrols out of Reval and along the Estonian and Russian coasts as far as Kurgala Point or thereabouts. Our Russian schemers know about both patrols. They’ll stop a ship in case she might be carrying Russians or Russian supplies to the Red Guards—I told you the Germans were cultivating the Finns—but they don’t bother fishermen.’ Robertson paused, watching Smith, then asked, ‘Anything else you need to know?’
Smith shook his head. ‘That’ll do to be going on with.’
Robertson stood up. ‘I’ll tell them ashore that you’re cleaning your fires tomorrow. That will explain your staying here.’
‘That’s almost true, as it happens.’ Audacity’s engineers did indeed want to let out the fires and clear them of clinker. But Smith would like them to do it now, so that it would be complete before nightfall and Audacity could raise steam then. He would not have his ship lying an immobile hulk all through tomorrow.
Robertson paused at the door. ‘This is a dangerous business you’re on, Captain. If the Germans catch you, passing as neutrals in a disguised ship of war, I’m not sure how they’d regard you.’
Smith was sure: as spies. He shrugged. He could do nothing about it, except: ‘We must try not to be caught.’
‘Mind you,’ said Robertson, moving out on to the bridge, ‘they’re not averse to that kind of thing themselves. They’ve a raider out now. There was a report this morning, telegraphed from Norway, that she’d sunk a British steamer north of Bergen.’
Smith told Robertson, ‘We know her.’ He did not explain but saw the agent to the side and his boat, then returned to his cabin and called for Ross and McLeod. ‘We lie here for the next twenty-four hours, but with steam just as soon as the chief has cleaned his fires. Tomorrow night we have a rendezvous here with a fishing-boat and we’ll be transferring some cargo, three-quarters of a ton of it. It’s in my cabin now. You’ll need some strong hands to hump it down to the deck forrard of the bridge where the derrick can lower a line to it, and I want it done quietly and in record time. So make your preparations but no discussion with the men.’
Ross asked, ‘Three-quarters of a ton, sir? In your cabin?’ Smith answered him poker-faced: ‘That’s right. It’s in wooden boxes with rope handles and it takes up a space six feet by three by two.’
He could see their minds working, saw McLeod’s lips purse in a soundless whistle, and asked, ‘Understood, gentlemen?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
He went out through the wheelhouse, down the ladder to the empty wardroom below it and passed through to Elizabeth Ramsay’s cabin. She answered his tap, opening her door wide, leaning on the frame. He said quietly, ‘Tomorrow night.’
‘I’m ready.’ One corner of her mouth twitched wryly. ‘You’ll be glad to see the back of me.’
‘I don’t think you should go, Mrs. Ramsay.’
She shrugged. Then she lifted her left hand with the thick gold band on her finger. ‘I called myself Mrs. because it made matters easier in business than if I’d been a single girl. It’s a kind of protective colouring.’ She looked him up and down in his crumpled blue cap and worn old overcoat. ‘But there’s no Mr. Ramsay; there never was.’ She held his gaze a moment then shut the door in his face.
*
‘Sir! Captain, sir!’
Smith woke at the call as the light glowed over his bunk. The time was shortly after midnight. He shoved up on one elbow and blinked at the man. ‘Yes? What is it?’
‘Mr. Ross said to call you, sir. A boat just came in; about the size of a small drifter, she is, and making for the town.’ The officer of the watch had orders to call Smith at sight of any craft or of any unusual occurrence.
‘I’ll come.’ He swung his legs out of the bunk and hauled on his boots, buttoned his jacket and snatched his glasses, the old overcoat and plain blue cap from their hook on the door. He strode through the wheelhouse and out to the wing of the bridge. The night was moonless but with a bright dusting of stars.
Ross turned to meet him and said, ‘She came around the headland and was on top of us in seconds. She’s closing the town now. I smelt fish as she passed us.’
Smith nodded, used his glasses and saw the boat sliding in to the quay, figures moving on her deck under a light. She had a single mast forward with the long boom stretching nearly to her stern where a man stood at the tiller. Her sail was lowered and he could hear the faint putter of her auxiliary engine. Doubtless fishing-boats used this port frequently and this could be one of them, but there was another possibility: a detachment of Bolshevik Red Guards using the boat to patrol. Ross had been right to call him but there was no need for action at the moment. There were sentries on Audacity’s fo’c’sle and poop, with rifles not obvious but ready to hand.
Buckley came on to the bridge and asked, ‘Fancy a drop of kye, sir?’
Smith grunted assent and lowered the glasses. But he still watched the boat as he shrugged into the overcoat, and wondered how Buckley knew he was on the bridge. He decided Buckley had probably arranged that he should get a shake whenever the captain was called.
He drank the cocoa when it came, absently at first because he was watching the fishing-boat and so burnt his tongue. After that he blew steam from it and looked over it at the boat with its solitary light, and waited.
A half-hour passed. The night was still, the riding lights of Audacity reflecting from water like a sheet of glass. Smith saw the lights of the German freighter where she lay upstream by the jetty of the sawmill. But he heard no sound from her.
Ross muttered, ‘She’s started her engine again, sir.’
He was talking of the fishing-boat. Smith nodded, watched it ease away from the quay and the bow swing until it pointed at Audacity, and steadied on that heading. He told Ross, ‘Call all hands. Action stations. But quietly.’ And to Buckley: ‘Get a Lewis up here.’ Buckley slid down the ladder from the bridge while Ross stepped into the wheelhouse, thumbed the button concealed under the screen and set muted buzzers whirring throughout the ship. Smith turned back to the fishing-boat and as he watched it closing Audacity he felt the ship coming alive beneath his feet. There was no pounding of racing feet nor bellowing of orders, but a quiet shifting, a murmur of voices from below the gratings on which he stood. That ceased as Ross bent over the voice-pipes and said, ‘Keep silence. Boat approaching, port beam.’
McLeod stood beside Smith, fastening the toggles of a duffel coat, his plain blue cap jammed on hastily at a Beatty angle. Ross
was at the wheelhouse door, looking out to the bridge, eyes watching the fishing-boat but head cocked towards Smith, waiting for orders.
Smith said, ‘It looks like the boat we’re expecting but that’s not due for another twenty-four hours. This might be any fishing-boat—or it might be Red Guards attempting to board the ship.’
McLeod muttered, ‘Can’t see many on her deck.’ Ross answered, ‘There could be a hell of a lot below.’ He stood by the voice-pipes to the guns.
Smith said, ‘Tell the chief we may have to slip in a hurry and to stand by.’ He heard that order passed to the engine room.
The fishing-boat was closing, starting a long, curving turn to come alongside, the chug chug of her engine loud in the night, but slowing. There was a man forward on her deck, another aft, each holding a line. Two more stood in the waist and one of them raised a hand, waving.
Smith recognised the stocky figure, the homburg. ‘That’s Robertson aboard her.’
He heard a movement behind him, turned and found Buckley with a wide-barrelled Lewis machine-gun cradled in his arms. He faced outboard again as the fenders of the fishing-boat rubbed against Audacity’s side. The lines were tossed up from her and caught by the men on the deck abaft the bridge. Smith heard someone on the fishing-boat call out, the words incomprehensible. McLeod said, ‘Russian. Don’t know what he said, though—Jesus!’
Men were pouring up through a hatch on to the deck of the fishing-boat below. Smith snapped, ‘Stand by with that Lewis!’
Then Robertson called up, ‘All right! They’re ours!’
The men were not armed. They stood in a steadily growing crowd and, while Smith could not tell in the darkness whether their uniforms were khaki or navy blue, the style of their caps looked British. He told Robertson to come aboard.