Why, it was Matt, of course, this fine man who’d been so giving and forgiving, who’d aided and supported her. He’d shared so sincerely in her success, the evening’s musical novelty before the Broadway elite—just a fleeting moment, perhaps, but the dream of her girlhood. For that to be followed by this…marvel, the miracle of sexual completion! And somehow too a healing, a shaking off of everything that went before.
It was the evening itself, too, the social blossoming and the inspired company, a turning point that had to be memorialized and made part of one’s deepest being.
But even more, in a way, it was the ship. Sweet Lusitania, this wonderful gathering-place and transition-point, that brought so many different people together from so many lands, to create within its splendid realms true magic and excitement—and love! Alma could see why her parents had been so devoted to this kind of adventure. Now it was hers.
“You don’t think it’s wrong, what we’ve done?” she asked Matt as he stirred sleepily beside her.
“How could it be wrong? It’s the only possible thing, the one true thing.”
“Yes, you’re right, it is. But will we remember that by daylight? Can you possibly still respect me in the morning?”
“In the morning, if it ever comes—I hope it never does—but yes, I’ll respect you! I’ve learned to respect you tremendously, in so many ways—as a gentle nurse and divine singer. A very private secretary, and the greatest lover since Cleopatra—”
“Quiet, you.”
“Anyway, why worry about the future? We’re headed into—who knows what? How can we control it? The best we can do is to survive this madness, and try to end it. We only have right now, my love—and perhaps, just perhaps, a future.”
“Yes, but for now—”
“I am a bit worried about when the others finally come back,” he said. “Can we stay here together, do you think?”
“We can stay.”
“Winnie won’t mind?”
“No, she won’t mind. Flash won’t mind it either, I can promise you.”
“I don’t suppose he will. Mmm, shipboard romance, there’s nothing like it.”
“That’s enough, you!”
Chapter 26
The Plot
The Map Room at the Admiralty House in Whitehall was hushed in expectancy. Sea Lord Jackie Fisher, fresh from his daily church attendance at Westminster Abbey, sat waiting by the broad chart table. He sensed that his sullen presence caused the room’s usual bustle to be muted. But he didn’t care. The Sea Lord’s mood this morning was dark, and he made no effort to conceal it by polite chatter.
This war was going badly for England, both on land and sea. Now Fisher, as much as anyone, stood to be held accountable. The Admiralty, whose decisions loomed large in both areas, appeared to be in turmoil over it. It seemed crystal-clear to the old seafarer that the weather must change, and soon.
His Lordship Jackie, as they all knew, had fought his way up “through the hawsehole” to his high position, starting out at the rank of novice seaman in an old square-rigged sailing ship. Now at the peak of naval power, as his reward for talent and persistence, he found himself under the thumb of an over-ambitious Public School boy who’d never even been to sea. Shades of HMS Pinafore; the comic opera was less funny now. He’d never expected to be the butt of the joke.
True, the young Lord Winston had been pleasant enough to work with at the start. Churchill and Fisher were both reformers, both with visions of the future to impose on the crusty, centuries-old naval establishment. They had begun as a team, but now Churchill was clearly more intent on his own visions of glory than on the slow, patient task of shepherding a navy. He had pushed forward this grand wager of a Turkish invasion, drawing Fisher and others reluctantly along, and now that it was failing, someone would have to pay. With the trenches dug deep in Europe and an undersea blockade bleeding England dry, the young firebrand was casting about for some other schoolboy exploit to break the deadlock and win acclaim. Between the demands of war and overweening personal ambition, tensions had been growing that must soon lead to a fracture. All sensed it.
The staff worked on silently, avoiding the gold-braided curmudgeon brooding in his armchair and awaiting the young firebrand. They spoke in whispers as they shuffled their papers and updated the charts.
The focus of their labors was the Plot, a large map covering one twenty-foot-tall wall of the broad room. On it, ruled over with a grid of latitudes and longitudes, were the outlines of Europe, England, Ireland, the Atlantic and all of the adjacent seas, bordered by Africa and the Americas. The known positions of significant merchant vessels and warships, be they friend, enemy or neutral, were pinned onto the map as color-coded disks of various size, all marked with arrowheads to indicate the vessel’s last known direction. Each disk was large enough to cover the approximate area of open sea that a ship’s lookout could survey from the height of its crow’s nest. In that way, search patterns could be easily set up for all ships–or at least those visible on the surface, not the submersibles.
Inversely, as Jackie knew, the size of each disk also showed the area of sea from which a ship of that height could be sighted–though not necessarily figuring in the smoke-plume, which could make a large ship an even easier target to spot, depending on weather conditions.
Now, from sightings and orders passed along by other departments, including the secret wireless intercepts of Room 40, the staff was busy updating ship positions on the Plot in preparation for the regular morning briefing. From his seat, Admiral Fisher watched the unfolding situation with a gloomy sense of foreboding.
The door opened…to Rear Admiral Henry Oliver, the Admiralty’s Intelligence Officer. Fisher barely acknowledged him with a nod, leaving it to the lesser commander to start a conversation.
“Morning, Jackie,” Oliver said as he took a seat across the table. “I’m sure you know that, in Churchill’s absence, I am to be Deputy First Lord in addition to my regular duties. If you have any suggestions or special requirements for the Admiralty—”
“Splendid, just peachy!” Fisher interrupted him, not troubling with excessive courtesy. “You’re behind and overworked already, as am I, so now your responsibilities and mine are to be doubled, while Winston takes off to Paris to court the Italians.”
“Yes, and doubtless pay a visit to his French Mistress as well.” Oliver’s gossip was delivered sotto voce with a wry smile. “Now that things are looking glum here in the Navy, our friend spends his time courting Field Marshall John French over there on the land battlefront. Word is, he’s thinking of becoming a doughboy.”
Well now, this was truly outrageous. After digesting it a moment, Fisher had to speak out. “While he’s off on a jolly, Admiral, instead of taking on new tasks, you’d do well to attend to the job you’ve already got.”
Oliver finally took offense at this. “Now, Jackie, I’m sorry to hear that you feel behind par and overworked, but I wouldn’t describe my own operation in quite the same way—”
“Is that so, Admiral?” Fisher retorted. “Then why is it that reports from Ewing’s code room take from twelve to twenty hours to reach me, or any others who can do anything about them? Ewing with his bright fellows isn’t the bottleneck. So it must be your in-box, where they sit for half the day waiting for you to censor and water them down.”
Oliver flushed and glanced around, obviously nervous about the open discussion. “Really, Jackie,” he began, “the demands of secrecy—”
“Secrecy? If you ask me, there’s too much of it around here, secrecy from the people who count! I’d do better to ask our First Lord’s mistress than wait for the facts from you.” Fisher’s eyes rolled as he shot a look around the room, challenging anyone to raise an eyebrow. “Could it be that there’s a secret reason behind all this secrecy? I sometimes wonder.”
“Jackie, excuse me,” the chastened Oliver murmure
d in reply, “but you really should know that, when the wags here talk loosely about Churchill’s French mistress, they are merely referring to Marshall French—”
The door opened then, cutting off all talk. Through the open half of the double panels came a man’s backside, attired in pinstripe trousers and tailcoat, backing in as if the new arrival were chatting and bidding farewell to someone outside the room. Then he closed the door, still facing away as if fussing with the lock. He finally turned to greet those inside, giving a polite tip of his black top hat as he removed it. It was Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, coming down from his residence upstairs.
“Greetings, chaps,” he said, setting his black top hat and cane on the broad tabletop. “Jackie, hello. I hope all is well on this morning of my departure. We soon shall find out, I trust.”
Sea Lord Fisher found himself a bit subdued at the appearance of young Churchill, whom he had usually considered a friend. But his bitter spirits rallied him to speak up. “It’s a wonder to me that you can depart at all in these difficult times. Isn’t your presence needed more urgently here?”
“Now, Jackie,” Churchill said tolerantly, “if Italy can be brought into the war on our side— ” he paused—“it will greatly hasten our victory,” he finished with a smile.
“Victory, eh!” Fisher gained strength from his indignation. “See here, Winston, all of Italy will mean less than Gallipoli and Turkey would have, if our navy remains powerless in the teeth of a U-boat blockade. As always, the fate of England rises or falls on the sea tides.”
“Now, Gentlemen, if I may have your attention…” The three of them turned to face Sir Reginald “Blinker” Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence, who had entered from an inner office. Quick to rescue the situation, he took his place before the Plot with a long pointer in hand.
“I’m to deliver today’s briefing on the naval situation, before our chief heads away to the Continent to deal with the land war. First off, Jackie, you’re quite right, there is rather an unprecedented flurry of U-boat activity just now. It’s all to be expected, I assure you, and nothing much to worry about…merely a side-effect of troopship rumors that our division had put forth as a cover for the Turkish landings.”
“More Gallipoli nonsense,” Fisher grumbled. “That fiasco just gets costlier and costlier. I wonder how many careers it will cost,” he muttered with a glance at Churchill.
“Well,” Blinker continued, unruffled except for a flurry of eye-blinks, “we can expect the sinking of some additional merchants. The U-30, that we have identified from radio intercepts, is running home northward after a cruise off Dartmouth.”
His pointer indicated a red marker east of England and north of Ireland—a square one, not circular like the ship tokens.
“Here we see other U-boats on patrol…U-35, U-36, U-41, et cetera…” He waved the pointer to indicate a scatter of red squares around Britain. “This one, the U-20, is arriving from Emden, headed for the Liverpool Channel.” He pointed to a red chip off the southwest corner of Ireland.
“U-20 just scuttled a small freighter, the Earl of Lathom, near Fastnet Light. Here you see we have a cruiser, Juno, on station nearby.” The pointer dropped to a large blue circle slightly southward. “But she is old, the pre-dreadnought design, very vulnerable to torpedo attack.”
“Then what in God’s name,” Admiral Fisher demanded, “is she doing defending the main Atlantic sea route? Isn’t she a sister to those unfortunates, the Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy, that we lost to one U-boat in the space of an hour? Are we forming up another Live-Bait Squadron for the Huns to scuttle?”
At his use of the term “live bait,” Jackie saw Churchill scowl. The triple sinking last fall, with great loss of life, was something the First Lord had been blamed for—perhaps unfairly, since he had ordered ship reassignments that should have prevented it. But ever since then, the notion of one vulnerable vessel being targeted to lure other rescuing ships to their doom was a sore point in the navy.
“Juno is from our South Irish fleet,” Oliver said. “She’s under the command of Admiral Coke in Queenstown.”
“Coke’s Gilbert-and-Sullivan Navy,” Fisher observed with a snort. “A ruddy travesty, I’ve heard tell of it.”
“The Juno is Admiral Coke’s flagship, sir,” Hall explained, blinking furiously.
Churchill joined the outcry. “Then what is she doing there alone? Make it quick, man!”
“She is on escort duty, awaiting rendezvous with the Lusitania inbound.” Blinker’s pointer moved westward to the largest target in the Atlantic, a huge white disk whose direction arrow pointed south of Fastnet.
“Well, she must be recalled, then,” Churchill said with decision. “Send her back to port at the first opportunity.”
“Which one?” Blinker asked. “Juno or Lusitania?”
“Why, Juno, of course,” Churchill said. “The Lusitania hasn’t enough coal to return to New York, surely. And her passengers would be furious at any delay.”
“Quite right,” Fisher seconded. “Juno cannot match speeds with Lusitania anyway, and would only slow her down.”
“What shall we do for an escort, then?” Oliver asked.
“Two or three fast destroyers would make a perfect escort,” Fisher said. “Juno is worse than useless. A U-boat, freshly armed from Germany, would sink three old Junos first and serve us up the Lusitania for dessert. Anyway, this U-20 will reach Liverpool far ahead of our passenger liner, even at submerged speed, and will probably spend all of her torpedoes along the way on lesser targets. Unless she’s gunning for Lusi, that is, lying in wait and saving torpedoes.”
“Well, in any case, destroyers are in short supply,” Churchill declared. “I fear an escort is quite out of the question.”
“But what is this here?” Abruptly rising and going to a stepladder, Admiral Oliver reached up to the map and pulled down a stack of four coin-sized gray disks at Milford Haven, the southwestern port of Wales. “These are submarine-destroyers, are they not?” he asked, descending. “Indeed yes, just a few hours away, the Lion, Linnet, Lucifer, and Laverock,” he read from the disks. “I’d think they would make short work of any U-boat. Or at least, give it a good fright.”
“They’re reassigned elsewhere,” Churchill said shortly. “In point of fact, they may already have left the Irish Channel.”
“Well,” Oliver observed, setting the disks down on the table, “an escort, any escort, could at least give the Lusitania time to escape at speed.”
“You’re proposing, what, to sacrifice a Royal Navy cruiser and its crew for a passenger liner?” Fisher demanded. “We’re in the business of war, man, not peace.”
“In the past,” Oliver pointed out, “we’ve escorted or diverted passenger liners carrying valuable military goods.”
Lord Fisher rose to his feet. “I don’t even care how valuable her cargo might be. We can’t go trading ship for ship, warship for civilian!” The old admiral found himself genuinely outraged for the first time that morning.
“The Lusitania is a Royal Navy ship too, under our command,” Oliver reminded the rest. “Can we at least notify Captain Turner that his escort will be withdrawn? Otherwise he might delay in waiting for the rendezvous.”
“The more fool he, if he does,” Fisher snapped. “As far as we know, Juno could have been sunk already. And a warning message, with Germans listening posts decoding…why, man, that could bring the U-boats circling like hounds to a hunt!”
“So it’s resolved,” First Lord Churchill decreed from his place at the table. “I’m afraid that Lusitania will have to take her chances, just like any other merchant. No destroyers can be spared now, certainly not any cruisers. And I do not expect this order to be countermanded in my absence.”
Watching the young lord’s confident, decisive manner in the impossible situation, Fisher was struck by an inspiration. “Oh-h
o, I see what’s afoot here,” he burst out abruptly. “Winston, you dog! You were saying a while back that neutral shipping should be encouraged, especially American merchants…how did you put it? Oh, yes: ‘If one of them gets into trouble, so much the better.’ Well, this can be the playing-out of your scheme. Except this time it’s a British ship that’s in play, under our command, not an American one…with a thousand or more English men, women and children aboard, as well as our gullible Yankee cousins. You think it’s worth it to get the Yanks into the war?”
He glanced around the other officers in the room, but barely gave them serious consideration. “Well, so be it, Winnie. Under your tender mercies, I pray for all their souls.”
“Nonsense, Jackie,” Churchill said. “You’re just making up scandalous rumors as usual—no harm done, so long as they’re confined to this room. I’m only doing what’s necessary to preserve England’s fleet-in-being, a harsh necessity in these times. We face difficult choices, now more than ever. But in any case, I must be off to Italy and the front lines in France. Farewell.”
Jackie saw the young lord make an exit, marveling at his nerve. Well, Churchill likely was on his way out anyway, due to this Turkey foul-up, and his own youthful restlessness. Might as well hang for a horse as for a sheep, eh?
And yet a passenger tragedy, or one large enough to massively stir sentiments abroad, might by way of atonement require more heads to roll—even possibly his own resignation?
Well, why not? Maybe it was time.
Chapter 27
Buddies
Trevor felt lucky the rain had stopped for the moment. The cold, fickle drizzle had threatened to flood his small trench. And the bombardment, too–the rain of steel death and TNT concussions having retreated, or at least marched away to another part of the wasteland.
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