by Alan Evans
He said, ‘It was dangerous.’
The girl shrugged her shoulders inside her cloak. ‘It was that or destitution. I stand on my own feet. I have to.’
‘Does the Admiralty know?’
‘About my share?’ One corner of the wide, painted mouth lifted in a wry smile. ‘No. They understand patriotism and duty but on the Board of Admiralty there are no penniless young women trying to make their way in the world. Well?’ Now she was challenging. ‘Do you blame me?’
‘I’m not sitting on a court.’
‘No, but I used some hard words last night and you’re entitled to your say.’
He might have wondered why his opinion mattered to her, but he did not. He asked, ‘Suppose the Russians had refused to agree to your having a share? Would you still have gone through with it?’
Elizabeth Ramsay was startled by the question but answered without hesitation. ‘There’d have been no need for me to go back to Russia. But you mean: would I have gone on with the plot while I was in Petrograd, acting as go-between? I was told it was vital the Russian Fleet did not fall into German hands. Of course I would have seen it through.’
‘Then I don’t blame you.’
The girl did not turn at the rail this time and he stood beside her. His eyes swept the horizon, as he had done a dozen times as they walked and talked. The sea was empty.
She asked, ‘You’re going to try to escape from the Baltic?’
His orders ruled that it would be impossible once Audacity’s true identity was known, but: ‘By God, I am!’
His intensity surprised her but his answer did not. She said, ‘The men say you’ve sworn to take this ship back to Rosyth.’ And when he nodded: ‘What if the Germans catch up with you?’
He said, ‘My orders are that I can’t dump the gold except in danger of capture. That means fighting a losing battle while we throw it over the side. And if we’re taken afterwards then my men may be treated as spies.’
Elizabeth Ramsay was in no doubt what fate would await her if she was captured. ‘I see. Then we’re all in the same boat, in both senses.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I’m just a passenger.’
‘Not necessarily. McLeod says you’re a better interpreter than he is. If I think you can be of use, I’ll call on you.’ Not ask; he was the captain.
She took the point and nodded. ‘Of course.’ Then she climbed down the ladder and he turned back to his pacing. At the end there was still that current between them, as there had been all through their talking. An awareness and a memory of that moment at Kirkko, the pressure of his body on hers.
‘Land off the port bow, sir!’ The hail came from the lookout on that side of the flying bridge. Smith did not check in his pacing, nor did he when McLeod came running up the ladder.
The navigator said, ‘That should be the north end of Oland, sir.’
Oland was a narrow island, sixty-five miles long and seven across at its widest point. It belonged to Sweden and ran southwards along the Swedish coast. A channel, the Kalmarsund, ran between Oland and the mainland. That channel was Swedish water and Smith would steer clear of it, taking Audacity south and to seaward of the island, outside the three-mile limit.
McLeod was stooped over the compass and now he straightened his thick body and said cheerfully, ‘Where it should be, sir, right on the bearing.’
‘Very good.’ The bearing was to the lighthouse on Storgrundet, an islet close off the northern tip of Oland.
‘Smoke on the starboard beam, sir!’ That call came from the lookout and now Smith halted, set the glasses to his eyes, focused them and found the smoke. The ship itself still lay over the horizon, as did the Swedish mainland. He thought it was probably a coaster running down to Kalmar, in Swedish territorial waters it had to be, but…
‘Watch her.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
McLeod went down to the chart and Smith returned to his pacing and his planning. It was impossible to reach and pass through the Sound, more than two hundred miles away, this night. That passage had to be made in darkness throughout. So when they turned south they would steam slowly down off the coast of Oland, anchor out of sight of land before sunset and spend the night so. Tomorrow they could close the Sound—and before that he hoped to be rid of his prisoners. That was his intention but the reality might be different. He had tried to lay a false trail in order to draw off the main pursuit, but the closer he got to the Sound the more likely he was to meet the enemy. There could be destroyers coming out of Kiel, brought from the High Seas Fleet by way of the Kiel Canal—
‘She’s a coaster, sir. An’ I think I can see the loom of the land beyond her.’
Smith acknowledged the lookout’s report: ‘Thank you.’ So he had been right.
McLeod was back on the flying bridge, to ask permission for the change of course. But now the port side lookout reported, ‘Smoke on the port beam, sir.’
Smith crossed the bridge to stand at his shoulder, lifted his glasses and looked out, searching the arc of the horizon. The lookout muttered, ‘You should be just about on it now, sir.’ Smith was, seeing the black blip on the curving line where sea met sky: the smoke of a ship, or ships, below the horizon. Going away? No, because if it had crossed ahead of Audacity they would have seen the smoke long before now. So it was on a northerly course and closing them. Smith shifted uneasily. It might be a neutral merchantman—or several German warships.
He lowered the glasses. McLeod waited for the order to change course. Turn to port, towards that smoke? Or turn away and run north? There would be no running away from a destroyer with a ten-knot advantage in speed. Smith said, ‘Alter course to take us into the Kalmarsund, Mr. McLeod.’
McLeod blinked, then, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ He dropped down the ladder to the bridge and his chart again. Seconds later Audacity’s head edged slightly around to starboard and settled on the new course, still roughly at a right angle to the unknown threat.
Smith was aware that the placid domestic scene below had changed. The work went on but now the carpenter and his mates, the men grouped around the Camel, glanced out every few minutes to that distant horizon, then up at Smith high on the flying bridge. They waited, and so did he. He wondered what kind of ship was steaming towards Audacity and went over his plans again, the options open to him. And eventually, inevitably, the gold intruded on his thoughts. Whenever he had a few moments of relative peace, not coping with shoals, ice, minefields, fog, whenever he was trying to plan what the hell to do next, thought of the bullion returned to plague him. Besides his ship and all aboard her, he had always to keep in mind the bloody gold.
He swore, and saw the starboard lookout’s shoulders twitch as Smith turned in his striding only inches away. So the lookout knew the supposedly imperturbable Smith was in a foul temper over something. Was he? Or was this just a sign of unease, some instinct warning him of danger? The same instinct that prompted him to order the course for the Kalmarsund?
He paused by the port side lookout, raised his glasses again, stared out at the distant smoke and asked, ‘Can you make anything of that ship?’
‘No, sir. She’s still hull-down.’
Nor could Smith. So aboard that ship too they would see only his smoke, not yet his ship. He let the glasses hang and swung on his heel to look out to starboard and the coaster. If you drew a line from the smoke to Audacity and then extended it, it would pass through the coaster as near as dammit. He faced forward. Audacity was closing the channel, the lighthouse on the northern end of Oland a bare mile away now. By the time that distant ship steamed up to this point, Audacity would be far down the Kalmarsund with the coaster just entering it. The lookouts on the ship to the south would have seen the coaster under her smoke for some time and might have no reason to suspect there had been two ships under that pall of smoke when they had first sighted it.
‘Mr. Ross!’
‘Sir!’
‘Stand by to send away the motor-boat in ten minutes from now.’ Smith wa
nted to know what ship it was coming up from the south.
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
So when Audacity rounded the northern end of Oland and was into the Kalmarsund, she stopped. The motor-boat was lowered, a petty officer in command, and headed back towards the lighthouse. The coaster was still some three or four miles north of the entrance to the Kalmarsund, but as Audacity steamed on down the channel at a lazy five knots the coaster slowly made up on her.
Smith watched the coaster. She would pass within a half-mile of Audacity and no doubt her master would spare a glance for this apparently German tramp, might even study her through glasses. Smith’s gaze went to the deck forward of the bridge. The lid was off the box holding the Camel, the airmen still working on the machine, but the captain of the coaster would see the box only from the side, as a deck cargo of timber. The carpenter and his mates hammered and sawed away on the fo’c’sle now but that particular activity would seem innocent enough.
A lookout reported, ‘Motor-boat’s coming after us, sir.
Smith nodded. Audacity was five miles into the Kalmarsund now and Hornsudde Point lay two miles ahead off the port bow, jutting out from a steep and wooded shore. There was no smoke to be seen past the coaster, astern of them to the north, but he picked out the white feathers of a bow-wave marking the motor-boat. She would be cracking on at her best speed, about seven or eight knots in this sheltered water. The third, mystery ship seemed to have gone on past the end of the channel.
He ordered, ‘Slow ahead.’ So Audacity dawdled while the coaster ploughed past her a half-mile away to starboard and the motor-boat gradually closed on her. Audacity stopped then, and recovered the boat before steaming on again, but now working up to eight knots.
The petty officer, Armstrong, short and thickset, young and quick, came to Smith on the flying bridge and reported, ‘We lay close under the lighthouse and made out we had a spot o’ engine trouble, like you said, sir. The ship was a two-funnel destroyer, she crossed the channel entrance less’n a mile away and she was German, no doubt of that. She looked to be one o’ those big, new boats, S or V class. We couldn’t make out her number an’ she kept on to the north, making about twenty knots.’
‘Very good.’ He’d guessed right, thank God. Smith sent the man away. That destroyer might be out of Danzig, but more likely was from Kiel. Robertson had said the German destroyers in the Baltic were old ships, like those escorting the convoy in the Gulf of Riga, but this was a new boat. If she had been bound for Finland to support Von Goltz’s troops there, her course would have taken her further eastward. There was only one reason why a destroyer might sweep up this Swedish coast: in search of Audacity. Now she had gone on to the north. If Smith had tried to run north then Audacity would have been finished. That new destroyer would have overhauled her in no time and shot her to pieces. But would she return?
Audacity kept station two miles or so astern of the coaster as they steamed south past Sandvik, then Borgholm, the channel nipped-in and narrow now, until Kalmar with its castle and cathedral showed off the starboard bow. The coaster pottering ahead turned to starboard, heading in towards Kalmar but Audacity held on, following the channel through the sound. Kalmar edged down the bow, came abeam, edged away down the starboard quarter until it was two miles astern and steadily receding. Another coaster was ahead, plodding up from the south, but apart from her Audacity was the only vessel in the channel and in another twenty miles they would be clear of it.
It would be almost dusk by then—Smith glanced up at the sky—because in this weather darkness would come early. There was a stiff breeze now, carrying Audacity’s smoke away to starboard, and clouds scudding on it, dark and heavy, thickening. It would be a usefully rough night, not a storm but weather bad enough to hide Audacity, steaming without lights.
‘Boat on the starboard bow, sir!’
Smith turned at the lookout’s hail. The coaster coming up towards Kalmar from the south was passing on the starboard side and a half-mile away. The Swedish mainland was a ruffled edging to the horizon beyond her while three miles to port lay the village of Degerham on Oland. Smith lifted his glasses to examine the boat just sighted. She was too distant to show any more than that she was small, too small for a ship, and making no smoke. A motor-boat? It could be a fisherman, or a wealthy Swede cruising for pleasure, but again Smith felt a stir of unease, his instinct warning him.
He climbed down from the flying bridge and found Ross waiting for him. Smith looked at the scene forward, Gallagher and his men working on the Camel, the carpenter and his mates, Elizabeth Ramsay in her chair. He told Ross, ‘Clear the deck. Complete disguise. Everyone below save the bare minimum.’
Ross peered about him, wondering where the threat lay, then answered quickly, ‘Aye, aye, sir!’
At his bellow the scene changed. The two boxes were reassembled and the carpenter’s work hidden in one, the Camel in the other. Bennett and his mates, the airmen under their petty officer, swept the deck clean and disappeared below. A seaman took away the girl’s chair as she walked towards the bridge and her cabin. Smith turned on McLeod: ‘Be ready to do your act. And tell Mrs. Ramsay to be good enough to join me here.’
He wondered if his instinct was false and he was making a fool of himself, but he forced a grin when McLeod returned with the girl and said, ‘There may be work for you soon, as an interpreter. I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll see.’
Elizabeth Ramsay smiled wryly. ‘You did warn me I might be called on, and I understand.’
But Smith thought that none of them could understand the weight of responsibility he bore, for this ship and all aboard her, alone and hunted in the Baltic.
The lookout said, ‘She’s flying Swedish colours, sir. Her crew, what I can see of them, are in uniform and there’s an officer in her well. Leastways, there’s something like gold braid. And she’s turning to close us.’
Smith used his own glasses and the motor-boat came up sharp and clear. She looked smart, no fisherman this, the yellow and blue Swedish ensign flying from the staff in her stern and the seaman standing in her bow was in naval uniform, his collar fluttering on the wind. And that was indeed an officer in the well, standing on a thwart and holding on to the cabin coaming with one hand. There was braid on his sleeve, the two rings of a lieutenant. This was a Swedish naval patrol-boat.
Smith lowered the glasses and turned on Elizabeth Ramsay. ‘If that officer challenges us in Swedish then Mr. McLeod can handle it, but as we’re supposed to be a German ship he might choose to ask his questions in German. And Mr. McLeod says he isn’t too hot at understanding that. So he will make the responses but you will be in the wheelhouse with me, interpreting so that I know what’s going on and you are ready to prompt him if he needs it.’
The girl nodded agreement. ‘I’m all right in German.’
McLeod spoke frankly. ‘She talks it like a native, and thank the Lord we’ve got her. This Swede might keep his German simple like the guard-boat’s skipper did, but on the other hand he might not.’ He stepped out to the wing of the bridge in his stained and greasy reefer jacket, his battered old cap set square on his head.
The patrol-boat turned in a smooth curve as the man at the tiller put it over, to close Audacity and run alongside within easy hailing distance. The lieutenant in the well of her shouted through a megaphone, ‘Anna Schmidt! Ich…’ He continued in German.
Elizabeth Ramsay translated quickly. ‘I have just been talking with a countryman of yours!’
McLeod had understood that, answered, ‘Ja?’
The lieutenant continued, the girl whispering, ‘In the minesweeper—watching the mouth of the Kalmarsund.’ Ross muttered under his breath, ‘Hell!’
Smith hissed at him, ‘Shut up!’
Elizabeth Ramsay was still translating. ‘You have not come from Kalmar!’
Smith said rapidly. ‘No. From Finland. Passing through the channel bound for Kiel with timber.’
The girl translated instantly, calling softly t
o McLeod who bellowed her words, phrase by phrase. But inevitably there had been a pause before he answered.
There was another now. Smith, peering from the wheelhouse, breath held, could just see the lieutenant. He had lowered the megaphone and stood swaying to the motion of his boat, staring up at Audacity, head moving slowly as he surveyed her from stem to stern. It was a long pause, but then the lieutenant lifted the megaphone again. ‘I wish to come aboard, Captain.’
Smith let out the held breath in a silent sigh. He was not the only one to act on his instinct today; the lieutenant had smelt a rat. Why? Smith cast one swift glance the length of Audacity. The German ensign, the deck cargo, the men on her, everything looked the part. There was no accounting, however, for another man’s instinct.
He could always run for it. Audacity would soon leave this little motor-boat astern and she carried no wireless, there were no tell-tale aerials strung from her stubby mast. It would take her two hours or more to get to Kalmar—but then the fat would be in the fire. The Swedes would be looking for Anna Schmidt and demanding an explanation from the German consul. Then the Germans too would be looking for her, and also putting two and two together as to her true identity.
‘Tell him: “Of course.”’ He turned away and threw over his shoulder, ‘Stop her, Mr. Ross.’
He went into his cabin, took from the cupboard his uniform jacket and cap and changed into them.
Out in the wheelhouse again, Ross shot a startled look at him. Smith said, ‘We’ve got to let him come aboard, and unless he’s blind or a fool—’ He did not finish, watched as the way came off Audacity, the Jacob’s-ladder was dropped over the side and McLeod went down to the deck to meet the lieutenant as he came aboard.
He was not alone. Two tall seamen preceded him up the ladder. They carried carbines slung on their backs and when they reached Audacity’s deck they unslung the carbines and held them at the high port across their chests. Like them, the lieutenant was tall, and he wore a holstered pistol. He was a clean-shaven young man of about twenty-five. He saluted and looked around him, at McLeod, the faces of the seamen who had lowered the ladder, all of them seeming merchant hands in old clothes or overalls. He spoke harshly to McLeod, challenging, and Elizabeth Ramsay whispered, ‘He says the Anna Schmidt was here in December before the ice came. He knew her and her captain. This is not the Anna Schmidt.’