‘I’ve no idea, Pilot,’ Clark said, putting the pencil back in the rack, ‘but it certainly sounds as if he ought to have done.’
Alarm!
June 1942
Immediately after the sighting of the Focke Wulf Condor, Clark had warned Barrington to be especially alert as they monitored the Northern Zone frequencies. He was certain the Admiralty would soon transmit some information, if only as a wake-up call, for there must have been some anxiety in London, or at least Clark hoped so, even if it was only on Gifford’s part. If Olsen was growing concerned about the run-down of fuel, so should Gifford, for all their long-range tanks. Sooner or later, if things dragged on much longer, they would have to steam to Bell Sound and refuel from a fleet oiler. But that ran the twin risk of their being off-station at the critical moment or attracting the attention of German reconnaissance aircraft like that damned Condor!
He had also closed the ship up to defence stations, placing the ship’s company on a higher state of alert than hitherto. The change in tension was palpable and he found himself worrying about minor details, like the discharge of the ship’s garbage.
‘It must go in the water, Number One,’ he insisted. ‘I don’t want it chucked on to passing floes where it could conceivably attract notice.’
Clark began to appreciate the virtues of those old sea officers of Nelson’s day who had remained on blockade duty outside the great French naval arsenals for months, even years, at a time, irrespective of the weather and with no thought of their personal lives whatsoever.
Two days later, still having heard nothing from the Admiralty, they suffered a minor breakdown. It was nothing much, Olsen informed the bridge, and would take about an hour to fix. Clark, having seen the Sheba drift safely against a large, flat adjacent floe, returned to his cabin and a book. Half an hour later Frobisher appeared in his cabin doorway.
‘Excuse me, sir. I’ve just come down from the bridge. They’ve had word from the engine room that Olsen’s going to be another half an hour. Apparently it’s taken longer than expected.’
‘Blast it!’
‘Look, the ship’s safe enough nudged up to this big floe. D’you mind if I let the men have a kickabout on the ice? I’ll run some moorings out.’
Clark stood, stretched and peered out through his cabin port. ‘If they think they can play football on that, good luck to them,’ he said, yawning dismissively.
‘You don’t mind then?’
‘No, do ’em good.’
When Frobisher had gone, Clark stared for a while longer at the expanse of ice visible from his port. It was a big floe and the area immediately alongside was flat enough. About a hundred feet away it hummocked up. Rafts of old ice had obviously impacted during previous years and the whole lot had frozen into one amalgamated mass. A watery sunshine played across the ice, brighter patches alternating with the grey cloud shadows. It was not the Arctic at its best, Clark concluded and returned to his book. Shortly afterwards he dozed off to sleep.
He woke suddenly, his heart thumping with premonition. For a moment he looked down at the book, as though it was the source of his alarm, then at his watch, for the hour for the Admiralty’s transmission was approaching. Then he heard the shouts and laughter of the men and the thump of a football on the ship’s side somewhere below him.
‘Here, Charlie, pass it to me…’
‘Hey, Spud…!’
‘Oh, you tosser, Charlie…!’
And then a cheer as the ball hit the side of the ship again. Someone had scored a goal against the shell plating.
Shaking his head and thinking himself a fool, or even a tosser like Charlie, Clark rose to his feet and, rubbing his eyes, went and pressed his forehead against the damp cold of the armoured port glass. His cabin was too hot, that was why he had dozed off. The other goal was directly abeam, on the edge of the rafted ice, made up of two piles of duffel coats. Harding was keeper there and immediately below him he could see the back of Barrington’s head as he guarded the goal against the ship’s side. The rest of the men were dodging about in midfield, skidding on the ice, slipping and sliding, happy as the boys they had all once been, mucking about in a park. Somewhere, heaven knows where, they had acquired a real football and, as this spun into view, it immediately provoked a fiercely contested tackle in which two men collided, one of whom was left tumbling on the ice. Clark could see him roll over and nurse a knee. He was swearing.
‘Lincoln, you bollocky bastard, I’ll get you for that!’
‘Get back in defence, you little bugger,’ Harding was roaring as the tussle round the ball moved towards him. ‘You’ve no fucking business playing forward!’
Clark chuckled, then, looking down at Barrington again, thought of the next monitoring period. He frowned, thinking Barrington should have been on watch and then wondered who was manning the wireless office. Perhaps he should go on the bridge. He rubbed his eyes. He ought to clean his teeth first, after falling asleep. Having once sailed with a master who suffered from the most appalling halitosis, he hated the thought of exhaling foul breath over anyone. He took one final paternal look at the lads as they contested Harding’s goalmouth.
And then Clark saw the bear. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, cannoning out through his door and making for the wheelhouse companionway.
Frobisher had the watch and he turned from the rail where he had been leaning, watching the football game. ‘What on earth…?’
‘Stand clear!’ snarled Clark as, eyes blazing intently, he cocked the rifle he had snatched from the small arms rack at the rear of the wheelhouse, steadied it against the Hotchkiss mounting and took aim.
Frobisher spun round, staring over the heads of the footballers. Then, just as the Lee Enfield bellowed in his ear, he saw the bear. It must have been watching and stalking the men for some time, for it was almost on top of Harding. At the moment Clark fired, it reared up, though whether in agony at the impact of the bullet or in preparation for striking Harding, they would never know.
What happened precisely in the next few seconds was afterwards the subject of wild speculation. From the bridge wing Frobisher and Clark saw the huge bear rear up and turn away, saw it land heavily on all fours and run off, hidden a moment later behind the hummocked ice on the far side of the floe. Clark reloaded and stood ready, his heart thundering in his breast, his breathing laboured. He was roused to a pitch of concentration after the exertion of his extraordinary dash up the companionway and his seizure of the rifle. Only two minutes earlier he had been slumped in his chair, dozing stupidly over his book.
While Clark watched for any further sign of the bear, Frobisher’s attention was drawn to the men. Up until the point of the rifle fire, the footballers had been utterly oblivious of the presence of the polar bear. They had all been concentrating on the half-serious, half-amusing scrap for possession of the leather ball, a dozen men in grunting concentration. The goalkeeping Harding had been dancing from one foot to the other, sliding occasionally as he strove to keep his balance, his woolly-mittened hands held out in anticipation of catching the ball as the opposing team booted it for the net. The heavy crack of the gun brought the game to an abrupt stop: the men straightened up and looked wildly about them, seeking the source of the explosion. The ball, escaping their kicking feet, rolled away inconsequentially as some saw Clark and Frobisher on the bridge wing, the gun smoking between them. Others saw the bear, some claiming they had heard it roar as it reared up, others that they saw the red of the wound, that the impact of the bullet had thrown the gigantic animal backwards. Others thought that preposterous, the bear had been too big, larger than they had ever imagined a polar bear could be.
Perhaps Barrington, as the unoccupied goalie, with his back to the ship’s hull and already facing the other end of the extemporised field, had the best view. He was intent on what was happening, though not as much as the threatened Harding. Barrington thought he had shouted a warning even as the gun went off above his head, but he was quite certain that th
e bear had reared in order to strike down at Harding.
As for Harding himself, he scarcely knew what had happened. His first impression was confused. Aware of the tearing wind of the passing bullet, he bellowed with instinctive outrage, fearing the ball had flown past him. Then the smack of the rifle’s discharge made him look up to see the two officers and, for an outraged second, all the force of his class-conscious hatred persuaded him that the Old Man had gone mad and was trying to shoot him. This seemed right, for the game in front of him had stopped, and everyone seemed to be staring at him. Had he been set up? Were they all staring at him expecting him to die? He was aware of his wavering popularity, though he would not have attributed this to his bullying ways below decks, only to the bad luck that had dogged him since boyhood when his mother had died and he had outgrown the last pair of shoes she had saved for from the pay packet of his drunken father. Now the bastards had ganged up on him to have him shot! And the fuckers were smiling now…
‘You lucky sod, Harding!’ someone shouted.
‘Look behind you!’
After that split second of gross misperception came another of uncertainty: he had misjudged, as he had misjudged before. Just when he felt his deep-rooted anger justified, something happened to rob him of triumph. They were not trying to kill him, it was a joke. ‘Look behind you!’ was an echo of his one childhood treat in a music hall on the Caledonian Road. But some reflex deeper than his self-centred and impulsive instinct for suspicion, compelled him to spin round. He saw the rump of the bear as it moved off at a run and began to chase it.
‘Stand fast, Harding!’ Frobisher screeched from the bridge wing, but Harding had reached the first summit of the hummocked ice and saw the great animal slide, almost without a splash, into the dark water on the far side of the floe. A moment later he was flanked by the panting footballers, some muttering oaths and blasphemies, others silent as they watched the retreating bear. Then it was gone behind another nearby chunk of ice and they did not see it again. The tension broke. There was an explosion of relief, of more oaths, of backslapping on Harding’s shoulders, of smiles and acclamation of Harding as ‘a lucky sod’.
‘The bastard nearly got you…’
‘Yeah, it was right on top of you…’
‘Who the fuck shot it?’
‘The Jimmy, I reckon. That bastard’d shoot his mother!’
‘Surprised he didn’t run out an’ give it a flying toe hold…’ They chuckled companionably, recalling Frobisher’s enviable brilliance at unarmed combat.
‘It was right behind you, Harding, and much fucking bigger than you are!’
‘Made a better goalie – you let two in, you bugger!’
Walking behind Harding as the crowd wandered slowly back towards the ship, Leading Seaman Roe got up on tiptoe, stretched his hands above his head, pulled a face and made what he thought was a polar bear noise. Round him the others laughed again. From the other end of the field Barrington came towards them, his face white behind the black circles of his spectacles.
‘Seen a ghost, Barry-boy?’ someone asked.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Barrington replied with that stiff formality that separated him from almost every other rating on the ship. ‘Are you all right, Stephen?’
Harding looked at the leading wireless operator. No one ever called him Stephen and he wondered if this toffee-nosed cunt was taking the mickey. Then he found he was shaking uncontrollably and the laughter and chaffing of his messmates was rather a long way off.
‘Christ, he’s passing out!’
‘Well, I’ll be buggered…’
‘You might have been, after that bear had finished with Harding,’ one wit persisted as Harding slumped on to the ice. They were organising Harding’s recovery on to the foredeck, when the first lieutenant’s voice came down from the bridge wing.
‘There are some duffel coats and a football out there, chaps. Somebody ought to go and get them.’
One or two of the men not actively engaged looked up, then turned and stared back over their football pitch. The surface of the ice floe was wet with little pools of meltwater, marred by skid marks and the furrowings of their game, yet it was inhospitable and they shuddered at the prospect of returning across the few yards that separated them and the two piles of coats that were no longer goal markers, but cairns in the Arctic wilderness. They might have been a hundred miles away.
‘Go on, Roe. You and Wiggins go and recover that gear. I’ll keep you covered,’ Frobisher added with a grin, holding up the rifle.
Clark had handed him the gun a few minutes earlier as the men had gathered round Harding. ‘Here,’ he had said, ‘you take this!’
Somewhat surprised and thinking Clark was suffering from some nervous reaction, Frobisher took the heavy weapon and watched Clark disappear into the wheelhouse. ‘Well, well,’ Frobisher muttered to himself, returning his attention to the footballers.
Then Clark was beside him again, a pair of Barr and Stroud binoculars clamped to his eyes. ‘There he goes,’ Frobisher heard him mutter, but on looking up he could see nothing moving on the ice, only the inexorable closure of the lead lying to leeward of them as the windage of Sheba’s hull pushed the ice floe against which they lay to the north-east.
Clark watched the polar bear until its swimming head was just one more indistinguishable white speck among all the others. He was seized by an overwhelming sadness that it had to be him who fired a shot in anger, and that it had been at nothing more hostile than a polar bear. True, the polar bear would have killed one of his crew, but it was they who were the alien invaders. Clark sighed and lowered the glasses.
‘I don’t know if I winged him, poor thing, but he’s not dead yet.’
‘He was a bloody monstrous animal,’ Frobisher said. ‘He must have been ten or twelve feet tall; twice the height of Harding, and he’s no dwarf.’
‘Yes, he was an adult male, I think. They’re usually wily and reluctant to take risks. Perhaps he was old and hungry, not having had much luck with seals lately.’
Frobisher watched Roe and Wiggins pick up the duffel coats and hurry back to the ship, throwing glances over their shoulders. He smiled. Beside him Clark sighed again.
‘You all right, sir?’
Clark nodded. ‘Yes, I’m all right, but I’d rather be shooting at Jerry than a magnificent specimen like that.’
‘Didn’t you shoot them when you were here before?’
Clark shook his head. ‘No. Other members of the expedition did. They killed a female and kept the cub, but I could never bring myself to do it, perhaps because I was never threatened by one like that before. Mind you, they are bloody dangerous. One swipe of a paw will take your face off…’
‘Might have improved Harding,’ Frobisher joked.
‘That’s not funny… I expect,’ Clark went on, thinking of the polar bear’s acute olfactory nerves, ‘that that big feller could smell the men and found them irresistible.’
‘That’s not funny either, sir,’ Frobisher riposted.
‘Touché, Number One…’
‘Sir?’
Both officers turned. Humphries, the junior wireless Operator, was standing in the wheelhouse doorway holding out a signal chit. It lifted in the light breeze.
‘Signal from the Admiralty, I think sir. Repeated by Reykjavik. It’s in code, sir.’
Clark took the signal chit and saw the groups of numerals. Just then the telephone from the engine room rang. Holding the signal, Clark lifted the handset. A moment later he put it back on the hook. Seeing Frobisher’s inquisitive expression, he said, ‘It never rains but it pours. That was Olsen. He wants another half an hour. I’ll go and decipher this.’ Clark waved the signal and made for the companionway. Frobisher exchanged glances with Humphries.
‘Looks like a change in the weather,’ Frobisher said enigmatically.
* * *
In his cabin Clark took Dr Ruddick’s Dissertation from among his books and, drawing a sheet of foolscap wri
ting paper towards him, took up a pencil and began work. He instantly recognised the Admiralty’s coded identification and Sheba’s call sign for June, a group of five letters preceding the first numeric cluster. This was a date and time group and it was followed by the text of the message. He opened the Dissertation. The terse words of the brief text grew across the page. When he had finished he sat back and stared at his completed transcription. Blowing his cheeks out and then exhaling the air he read it through again:
ADMIRALTY TO SHEBA 26/1900 GMT
BATTLESHIP POCKET BATTLESHIP
CRUISER CRUISER NORTH NORWAY
GALE WARNING ENDS
And that was it! No reference to Orca whatsoever. What was he to make of it? He settled down and read it again. The excitement of the incident with the polar bear had knocked his judgement. Gifford was not a fool and Clark was certain that it had been Captain Gifford who had drafted the signal, that was the whole point of a book-based cipher.
Firstly, of course, this was an alarm call, the preliminary contact transmitted to alert them to further traffic. Clark was forbidden to acknowledge receipt of it, but so be it. Next it told him that he was not forgotten, an important factor as he was, as Gifford had doubtless calculated for himself, growing concerned for his oil reserves. Then, though there was no direct reference to Orca, there was a precise assessment of a German concentration of heavy ships in northern Norway. A battleship, clearly the Tirpitz, a pocket battleship, the Admiral von Scheer, and two cruisers, the Hipper and one other, perhaps the Prinz Eugen, he supposed – incorrectly as it happened. Supported by U-boats and aircraft, such a battle squadron could fall upon the next Russia-bound convoy and destroy it, with or without the help of the nebulous Orca. But then there were those last two words: Gale Warning. Did they refer to the battle squadron, the passage of the next Allied convoy, or to Orca?
He had no idea and consulted the appendices to his orders. The only possible reference to anything associated with such a phoney meteorological report was a short list of definitions. These were for the adjectives imminent, soon and later, words customarily prefixing gale warnings and signifying the probable time of its onslaught. They referred to timescales: imminent meant within the next six hours; soon signified six to twelve hours and later indicated a time beyond that. Clark was puzzled. Was the message just a warning? A signal that something was up, but that Gifford could not yet be specific?
Dead Man Talking Page 23