‘Do you surrender?’ The voice came again in English.
‘You outnumber us and you are armed.’
‘You speak German. Tell your men to stop paddling and you must all raise your hands!’
‘Do as he says,’ Clark said. Storheill, Carter and Harding stowed their paddles and put up their hands. The Carley float spun slowly until the German inflatable bounced alongside and their grab lines were seized.
Clark stared at his captor in stunned disbelief. ‘Good day, Fregattenkapitän Petersen,’ he said in German, recognising his cousin Johannes. ‘It is fate.’
‘My God! Jack?’ Clark saw the frown of incomprehension clear and Johannes almost smiled. Then he recollected their circumstances. ‘You have sunk my boat and killed a lot of my men…’
‘You are going to shoot us then, are you, Hannes? Just like a good Nazi…’
‘That was a foolish thing to say!’ snapped Petersen.
‘But necessary,’ Clark said, slipping into English, ‘to stop too many questions by your men.’ He resumed German, adding, ‘You have sunk my ship and, with the exception of the handful in this abominable raft, killed all mine. They were good seamen like yours.’ He paused and let the effect of the words tell on the enemy, who were regarding the exchange between their commander and this English officer with incredulity. How had he known their commander’s name? Was that why his ship had lain in ambush?
Clark quickly nailed any suspicion, lest the notion that he had had any special intelligence about the super U-boat should grow, by looking at them and saying, ‘This is an incredible coincidence: first we are up here gathering weather data and we find you here too and finally your captain is a distant relative of mine. I suggest, if we are to stand any chance of survival after having done our duty, we pool our resources. We are unarmed and, if it makes you feel better, surrender to you.’
Petersen looked at Clark, his face full of suspicion. ‘You were in command of a weather ship?’
‘Why not? I was a merchant-marine officer before the war and I have been to the Arctic before.’ Clark shrugged. ‘It is more incredible that you are here, not me, and in a U-boat the like of which I could not imagine! My God, what calibre were those guns? No, don’t tell me, you can’t, but what are we to do now, eh? You have airbases in Norway…’
‘They will not help us.’
‘Why?’
‘They do not know we are in trouble. Our only chance is to make for Spitsbergen. We may get to a weather station or find a British oiler in Hornsund.’
‘So, we make a truce between us, eh?’
‘Yes. We will take you aboard here. There is room, and your float –’ Petersen looked with contempt at the net floor where their feet were immersed in seawater – ‘is not good for you. You will have frostbite in your feet soon. Come.’ He beckoned them and they clambered into the German craft. Clark noticed the smell of the German sailors, the foreign smell engendered by a lack of washing in their confinement and a different diet. They would be thinking the same about their uninvited guests.
‘Be good boys,’ Petersen said in English as Storheill, Carter and Harding took the places assigned to them among the German sailors. Some – no most – seemed mere boys, Clark thought.
‘This is not a British officer,’ Petersen said, pointing at Storheill’s insignia.
‘I am Norwegian,’ Storheill said in passable German, ‘in British service.’
‘Ah, you are a patriot,’ sneered Petersen.
‘He is entitled…’
‘Don’t tell me what he is entitled to,’ snapped Petersen at Clark. ‘Just make certain he does not do anything stupid.’
‘I have a chart, Kapitän Petersen,’ Clark said, drawing the folded paper from his breast. ‘I suggest we agree on our position and strategy.’ Clark unfolded the sheet and spread it on his knees, Petersen motioned for the sailor next to Clark to move over and then squatted down next to his cousin.
‘This is our weather grid,’ Clark said, ‘along the ice edge. I think we are here.’ He pointed to the last plotted position of the Sheba.
‘Hmm, I think we may be a little further west. But it does not make much difference. Petersen then pointed to a spot some forty miles to the west-north-west. ‘I think we should land here. Most appropriately, alongside the Hambergbreen, the Hamburg glacier. We may then make a march over the isthmus to Hornsund. It is less than twenty miles to Gashamna.’
He pointed to a section of wooden thwart, one of three that traversed the rubber craft as a stiffener. ‘We have a compass let into that and some provisions. We are better provided for than you in that raft.’
‘I am not intending to argue with you, Johannes.’
‘Good. And I am not only your captor, but I am senior in rank, I think, so you will oblige me by not directing me, notwithstanding your earlier experience in high latitudes. And don’t call me Johannes.’
Clark smiled. It was the first lifting of his spirits since the moment he knew he should not have turned Sheba away from the enemy.
‘You are sure you were a weather ship?’ Johannes asked in English, his voice low as he bent briefly, as if to study some detail of the chart.
‘Of course I’m sure.’ Clark feigned indignation convincingly: he did not like being questioned in this manner, especially by his Nazi-fied cousin.
‘But a weather ship with torpedoes?’
It is a characteristic of the Arctic, at least in the vicinity of the Svalbard Archipelago, that its climate is less extreme than that of the Antarctic. Notwithstanding this fact, the men huddled in the inflatable boats adrift upon the waters of the Barents Sea felt the cold strike them. Many were partially wet, the British in particular, all of whom had suffered from wet feet from the defective design of the Carley raft. This chill misery was to dog them in the days that followed, to influence all their thoughts and actions, ruling their morale and dominating their ability to respond to the vicissitudes of their situation.
Clark was almost immediately impressed by two things, the first of which was the determination of the German sailors. Their youthful energy and the discipline of their conduct ensured that the two inflatables were paddled and shoved to the north-west with an assiduous care and remorseless persistence that seemed to guarantee their conjoined survival. The second was the effect that this had upon his own two seamen, Carter and Harding. Both had, for entirely different reasons, displayed tendencies that Frobisher, in Harding’s case, had described as ‘pure Bolshie’. While this would not be a description applicable to Carter, the young man’s self-esteem encouraged him not to suffer fools gladly, even when the perceived fool was his own commanding officer. This manifestation had not overly troubled Clark. A commanding officer had too many considerations to let the single-minded contempt of an individual rating rattle him, provided that rating did not exceed the boundaries of a reasonable propriety. Besides, Clark had, as has been related, trodden upon Carter’s insolence. Now Carter was no longer in the familiar environment which had, with its advanced technology, called him to manhood. He was a frightened survivor in enemy hands. Harding was made of tougher stuff, set from boyhood against the world and in no wise fazed by the overwhelming number of the Herrenvolk. On the contrary, Harding’s perverse perception of life diminished the barrier between himself and his commander. He wanted only to outshine these youthful ambassadors of the new world order, to demonstrate a tribal superiority quite as fascist as his captors’, and to emphasise that superiority by his own individual tenacity.
Carter followed his lead, noting too that neither Clark nor Storheill shrunk from the task of paddling, for the invigoration gained thereby was essential to their existence, particularly as snow and freezing showers of sleet again fell from the dismal grey sky. After eight hours the two craft met increasing floes of ice, into which they drove their frail boats, seeking out the leads that led north-westwards. From time to time these turned into narrow dead ends and, cursing and splashing, wet and chilled, they got out on
to the ice, dragging the rubber boats behind them. In this way they made seven portages of varying length, struggling over the rafted and hummocked ice, slipping and falling in their care not to puncture the vulcanised rubber fabric. Eventually, discovering a new lead, they would shove their boats back into the water, scramble in, and resume the monotonous routine of paddling. There were sufficient paddles for about one third of each party to occupy themselves and, by making their stints short, Petersen kept them all tolerably warm.
To assuage their thirsts, they found adequate supplies of fresh water lying in pools upon the ice, but for food they soon became desperate, for neither party had had time to provision their boats. All that the British had was a small quantity of water and a stock of biscuit which had been put into the Sheba’s Carley rafts before leaving Scapa Flow.
From time to time they saw seals and walruses, but such was the clumsiness of their approach that, though a few rounds of machine-gun fire were sent in the direction of the frightened mammals, the animals soon dived beyond reach. No better success was enjoyed against the numerous birds that they saw, for the German rapid-fire weapons did not lend themselves to sharpshooting. The need for food became critical once they reached the thicker ice, for their expenditure of energy in the portages put extra demands upon their bodies.
On the early evening of the second day the weather cleared up and the sun shone from a blue sky, broken only by a few wisps of cloud. Looking up, Clark saw the sharp peaks of Vest Spitsbergen breaking the horizon ahead. He pointed them out to Petersen, who nodded and uttered a few words of encouragement to his men.
‘They are a long way off, Captain,’ Clark cautioned in German, adding, ‘and we have to cross them to reach Gashamna.’
Petersen merely nodded. Clark caught Storheill’s eye and the Norwegian shrugged. He turned to Harding, who happened to be one of the paddlers. ‘Land’s in sight, Harding. A good way off yet, but it’s good news of a sort.’
‘What land’s that then, sir? Not Norway?’
‘No, Spitsbergen…’
‘Bloody hell. No beer on Spitsbergen then, sir.’
‘Not that I know of, though, if there is, it’ll be lager.’
‘I’m not drinking that piss,’ Harding said, digging his paddle in with a savage lunge. Clark looked at Carter. He was dozing and Clark left him in peace.
An hour later the wide polynya up which they had been confidently proceeding grew suddenly narrow, turned a corner and ended in a massive rafting of ice. The sight which met them seemed like a warning from nature. On either side of the lead, eroded floes, rising up to a yard above the water, their edges melting and dripping in the sunshine, lay upon the sea in a relatively flat surface. The hummocks and irregularities that rose and fell upon this bleak and impermanent terrain had been formed from successive changes of season as the ice migrated west and south, spinning with an infinitely slow patience around the Boreal pole. Partially melting in summer and refreezing in winter, it had split and broken up, collided with and either mounted its neighbours or itself been overridden. In the summer the warmer sea had melted it and in the winter the wind had scoured its surface as it gradually moved towards the east coasts of the Svalbard Archipelago.
From time to time much larger pieces of ice formed individual bergs. These, subject to similar attrition from collision, melting and refreezing, often assumed fantastic shapes. Occasionally, as now, a berg and a mass of overridden and rafted ice became pressed by the tremendous forces at work within the pack into a compact mass. This natural castle, hidden from their low viewpoint by the metre-high floes, confronted them with a startling suddenness.
Clark heard the oaths, but also the expressions of wonder made by the young German seamen. One spoke in awed tones of the Wagnerian quality of the obstacle, another likened it to paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. Then Petersen caught his eye and Clark noticed the uncertainty in his cousin’s expression. In their childhood games this was the point at which Kurt would have instructed them. The abstraction brought Clark to his senses. He looked from Johannes to the mass of ice and then back at his cousin.
‘I think a camp, for twelve hours,’ he said. ‘We can send out hunting parties and reconnoitre the ice from up there,’ and Clark pointed to the summit of the ramparted ice, about thirty feet above them.
Petersen nodded curtly and began giving orders, shouting across to the second inflatable that just then followed them round the corner into the cul-de-sac. Clark passed the decision on to his own men.
Half an hour later they had managed to find a floe upon whose surface both boats could be drawn up, and the men flopped down to get their breath. Petersen and one of his three petty officers – besides Johannes the most senior men to escape the conflagration aboard the Orca – drew aside. Clark and Storheill walked towards them. Petersen was instructing the petty officer to select a hunting party and he looked up at the approach of Clark and Storheill. Next to him the petty officer, armed like his commander, brought his gun muzzle up to cover the enemy officers. Clark noticed that Petersen’s eye was suddenly caught by something beyond them.
‘Hey,’ he shouted to two men and Clark turned to see a pair of the German sailors wandering off towards an angled sheet of ice some three feet thick that formed a natural buttress. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’
‘We are going for a shit, Captain!’ they called back, hastening forward with some urgency so that the men lying about on the ice laughed, and one or two also got up, similarly moved.
Clark turned back to Petersen. ‘About the hunting party, Captain,’ he said, preserving a strictly formal distance between them, ‘Lieutenant Storheill here is a good shot. Like most Norwegians, he is a hunter…’
‘You are asking me to trust a Norwegian patriot with a gun, Lieutenant Commander?’ Petersen responded sarcastically.
‘I would go myself,’ Clark riposted, ‘but the horse and hounds are absent… I will stand surety for Storheill. It strikes me you cannot have a lot of ammunition.’
‘We have enough,’ said Petersen, unslinging his own machine gun, cradling it and patting its chamber with his gloved hand. ‘And enough hunters not to trouble your lieutenant.’
Clark spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders, turning away and pulling Storheill with him. The Norwegian officer was about to say something when there was a piercing shriek. The men lying down jumped to their feet and everyone stared about them for a moment until, round the corner of the upthrust ice, beyond which a latrine had been formed by common consent, rushed one of the shitters, his hands holding up his breeches. The laughter that greeted this ludicrous spectacle was short-lived, for the screaming grew louder, and was then abruptly silenced. Beside Clark, Storheill spun round.
‘Isbjørn!’ he snapped, and grabbing the machine gun from the hands of the petty officer, he ran towards the terrified, half-breeched seaman. Then, in full view of them all, he turned and fired a short burst behind the buttress of ice, after which he held the gun out at arm’s length and waited until one of the German seamen ran up and relieved him of it. They were all running forward then, all eager to see what had happened behind the ice.
As Clark and Petersen came up and shoved their way through the little cordon of puking seamen, they were confronted with a hideous sight. A gigantic male polar bear lay dead, sprawled out against a slope of ice, its paws together as if in slumber, but its head thrown back at an unnatural angle. Beyond the head, the bloody contents of its skull lay thrown out upon the ice mound. But Storheill’s intervention had come too late: at their feet lay the remains of – Clark learned later – Oberfunkmeister Otto Wahlen. His body lay face down in the snow and ice, surrounded by the paw marks of his assailant and the footmarks of his last straggle. Wahlen’s legs and buttocks were bare, his ankles encased in his leather trousers and boots. Beyond the corpse a small pile of faeces and a puddle of urine steamed. His arms were flung out and his face, turned towards them was a bloody pulp. But most horrific was his waist, whic
h was almost torn in half by the stroke of the bear’s paw and the insertion of its hungry jaws.
As the noise of retching subsided and silence fell on the horrified company, Petersen said sharply: ‘Bury him!’ and turned away.
The men turned and began to drift away while a petty officer called out the names of a burial party. Clark felt Harding loom alongside.
‘Plenty of meat on that bear, sir,’ he murmured.
The thought occurred to the Germans soon afterwards and all ideas of hunting were dismissed. There was nothing out on the ice from which to make a fire, but the butchered carcass soon yielded some raw steaks. At first few men would touch the red meat, but those that did soon grinned up at the others through bloody stubble and praised the taste of the meat. A number of hungry seamen gathered about the bear, above which a growing flock of glaucous gulls was already noisily assembling. It was then that Clark recalled the danger.
‘That meat is poisonous,’ he called in German, rising to his feet from the ice block upon which he had been resting, head in hands. Casting about to locate Carter and Harding, he repeated the warning in English. Harding was already on his way to get his share and Carter was hesitating in his wake.
‘It’s poisonous, Harding,’ Clark repeated.
‘If it’s good enough for eskimos, it’s good enough for me, sir!’ Harding called back over his shoulder.
Clark swung round and confronted Storheill. ‘You know it’s poisonous to humans, don’t you?’
Storheill shook his head. ‘I don’t know, sir. I’ve never had to think about eating it before. Now, if we could shoot a whale, even a beluga, I’d not hesitate…’
‘You get some damned bug from it,’ Clark said, turning away and striding off towards Petersen, to whom he made the same protest.
Dead Man Talking Page 28