by David Black
‘Slick’ was the word that leapt to Harry’s mind. But the words ‘utter shit’ swiftly followed. Neat, clipped, pressed and polished smooth to a narcissistic perfection, the clean-shaven de Vatry stood to attention in a leisurely fashion. His uniform looked as though it had been newly whitewashed, and his gold braid looked like real gold. Syvret introduced himself and saluted. There was a mild quiver of de Vatry’s nostrils; as if he had detected something slightly malodorous but was too polite to say, and then he clicked his heels and looked around him, taking in the Fusiliers Marins, Poulenc, at whom he nodded, and Harry in his RN uniform, whom he sized as if for a coffin. Dix, he ignored.
‘Where is M’sieur Tassereau?’ he asked, without even bothering to look at Syvret.
‘Under arrest, Sir,’ replied Syvret.
‘Who ordered that?’
‘The island’s authorities.’
‘In the absence of M’sieur Tassereau, I think you’ll find I am the island’s authorities.’
‘The civil authorities have instructed me to ascertain your intentions, Captain,’ said Syvret, ignoring him. ‘But first, allow me to introduce the representative of His Britannic Majesty’s government . . .’ turning to Harry.
‘No,’ said de Vatry, at last deigning to look at Syvret. ‘Is there somewhere we can go and talk privately?’
And off they went, followed by their daisy chain of flunkies. All except Harry, who had no intention of being snubbed again by Capitaine de Vaisseau Bourdon de Vatry. He walked to the edge of the jetty, leaned over and nodded a smile down at Durandal’s motor-launch crew, who had sat out the encounter, bobbing on the harbour swell, moored alongside mere feet away. They all looked totally pissed off, and they returned his gesture with a surly sneer.
‘Cigarette?’ Harry offered. ‘Lucky Strikes. American.’
Bought off the crew of the Pascagoula, he could have added, but he didn’t have to; the grins said, yes please. They must have exhausted their stocks bought while in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. So Harry threw a packet down, and a lighter, and sat on the steps.
‘So what’s a set of nice girls like you, doing in a place like this?’ he said in his near perfect French, with a huge smile on his face; just one sailor talking to another.
Syvret looked at his watch again; it was the closest Harry had ever seen him to becoming nervous. The two of them were up on the parapet of Fort Saint Louis watching Durandal rise and fall on a long swell, about a mile out from them now; her bows, and with them the barrel of her 12-inch – or should Harry say, her 304.8mm – gun, pointing towards the town behind the cathedral. It was two minutes to ten, the morning after Durandal had first appeared, and at ten a.m. sharp, the submarine was going to commence bombarding Fort-de-France, and was going to continue doing so until the island’s so-called Free French administration had surrendered, along with Radegonde and her mutinous crew; and M’sieur le Gouverneur, his wife and all the other political prisoners had all been released. Those had been Capitaine de Vaisseau Bourdon de Vatry’s final words and conditions. Until they were met, the island would also be held under close blockade, with no vessel being allowed to arrive or depart.
The Skipper of the Pascagoula had gone directly to the Hotel des Poste and booked a telephone call via the undersea cable to the new US Navy base on Antigua; one of the bases Churchill had so thoughtfully donated to them only last year in return for fifty ancient four-stacker Great War destroyers that the US Navy no longer needed and the Royal Navy did to augment its woefully inadequate convoy escort forces.
‘Help!’ was what the operator reported the Skipper had yelled down the phone when he’d got through; yelling it very loudly, apparently. Harry, meanwhile, had radioed Halifax, and Fleming. So now everybody knew, but will the cavalry get here in time, thought Harry.
‘Political prisoners,’ said Syvret. ‘That’s how he described that collection of ninnies. Good grief! What one of them has a political thought in their body? Tassereau’s only screaming blue murder because he’s had the till drawer slammed on his fingers, and Madame, because suddenly there is no one to wipe her bum for her!’ He stopped to look at his watch again. ‘Thirty-five seconds.’
The little Besson seaplane was swooping and zooming over the town doing a reprise of its impression of a Singer sewing machine. Harry stared up at it from under the metal rim of his poilu helmet – Syvret was wearing one too. They all were; the civil administrators had ordered them handed out as part of the island’s preparations for this newly arrived war.
Most of the town’s population, however, had evacuated themselves up the hill out of the way and Harbinson had set up a mini makeshift infirmary way back at Baptiste the gendarme’s post, to treat anyone who might twist their neck straining to see the action. And Thierry had been all action too: ‘I have stationed my force to cover key positions around the town,’ he had assured Captain Syvret. Where exactly those positions were, or how he intended to ‘protect’ them from a 12-inch gun, Harry hadn’t a clue. Radegonde, under the command of Poulenc, had meanwhile cast off, motored into the middle of the port’s main basin, and dived. She was now sitting somewhere on the bottom of the harbour, hopefully safe from any flying debris the immanent shelling might throw her way.
Harry saw the flash, seconds before the noise . . .
BUDUD-DDUMMM!
. . . and the shock wave rolled over them.
‘Well, he wasn’t joking, our Capitaine de Vatry,’ said Harry.
‘He didn’t strike me as the joking kind,’ said Captain Syvret, as they both looked behind into the town. Above them came the sound of tearing cloth, then the ground shook and another shockwave hit them like a punch, they felt pressure in their ears, and their eyeballs distort; and from the town, slightly to the right of centre, a huge bouquet of smoke and debris rose up like a speeded-up cine film of a blossoming plant; Harry even recognised a telegraph pole in the middle of it, sailing through the air like a tossed caber.
Syvret sighed. ‘Now what does he fucking imagine he’s going to achieve doing that? Stupid, stupid bastard’, and then he turned and shouted out over the water to where the Durandal lay, far too far away to hear him, ‘Those are people’s houses, you arsehole!’
Another three shells were fired at the town, with rather long pauses between each shot. Harry wasn’t sure whether the pauses were to allow the townspeople and the civil administration to meditate on the error of their ways, or whether Durandal’s gunnery wasn’t that good. Or maybe they actually felt a little guilty, firing on a French town; being Frenchmen themselves.
One thing Harry did observe, though, was the tremendous pounding the submarine was inflicting on itself, just by firing that bloody great gun. Looking through a pair of borrowed binoculars, it was as if her whole hull seemed to judder to the fearsome recoil, and he wondered, big though she was, whether Durandal’s hull was a strong enough platform for a gun of that calibre. She looked as if she was shaking rivets loose left, right and centre every time the bloody thing went off.
It was mid-afternoon when something changed aboard the big boat. Syvret spotted it first. ‘Oh-ho,’ was all he said, peering through the binoculars. ‘Something’s up.’
The big submarine had just finished manoeuvring, turning her gun on the port area, before firing again. A big warehouse had been demolished with the next round; Harry had watched its roof timbers pirouette in all directions, including into the basin, and he had hoped Radegonde’s pressure hull hadn’t been speared by a stray plank. He looked back to Durandal, and to his amazement, the sub was now under helm, and looked to be heading back out to sea. Something else seemed to be happening with her. The little Besson seaplane spotter had noticed it too; it was banking steeply, its little engine straining away, and diving directly at the giant sub.
‘What did you say about those Durandals you talked to from the motor boat?’ asked Syvret, still looking through the binoculars.
‘Well, they hated me and everything Royal Navy, for a start,’ said Harry,
‘and they didn’t mind smoking my cigarettes to prove it!’
‘No, no. About them being pissed off and wanting to go home.’
Harry shrugged, remembering, but wondering about the relevance. ‘As far as they were concerned, the war was over; Jerry had won. They hated the communists on principle; and the English on principle and because they were war criminals too, who’d slaughtered their mates at Mers el-Kebir. But, as Jerry was going to beat them, that didn’t matter so much. And as for themselves, they were buggered if they were going to carry on fighting for some deranged French army officer who thought he was Joan of Arc grown a pair of bollocks . . . especially if it meant taking orders from the English. And they hated their officers, because they were all jumped-up bastards who were liable to get them all killed for the honour of France, whatever the fuck that is these days . . .’
Syvret put the binoculars down and gave him one of his looks. ‘I get the picture,’ said Syvret.
Harry shut up, then after a moment, ‘. . . and they just wanted to go home and forget all about it.’
‘Well, I wonder if they’ve just decided to do exactly that,’ said Syvret, handing Harry the binoculars.
Harry trained them on Durandal; the spray of water coming from her flanks wasn’t because she was turning hard. She was venting her ballast tanks. It wasn’t happening very fast, which was what had deceived Harry when he hadn’t been looking through the binoculars, but, yes, she was definitely diving. And the little Besson seaplane was buzzing around so much, Harry definitely had the impression it was mightily pissed off about that.
‘Well, fancy that,’ said Harry.
‘I fancy if you train your glasses twenty degrees to starboard,’ said Syvret, ‘you’re going to see the reason why.’
Harry did as he was bidden, and there, sharp in the lenses, maybe three, four miles away, coming down the coast was the USS Pruett, a huge battle ensign flying from her mainmast.
Chapter Nineteen
It was night and Harry was sitting with Bassano and Faujanet outside a street café opposite La Savane park. Three glasses and a bottle of brandy newly arrived on the Pascagoula sat before them. Dr Harbinson came walking up the street from the direction of the place and the shore, his crumpled linen suit clearly revealing its disreputable state in the light of the full moon.
‘Ah’ve jist seen the funniest thing,’ said Harbinson, taking a seat without being invited. ‘Your man, Enseigne Thierry, trying to interrogate that wee floatplane pilot, and being told to eff off.’
Durandal had dived without waiting to recover her little Besson seaplane or its pilot, despite the tiny aircraft spending the afternoon flying around spotting for Durandal’s gunners. The pilot had eventually had to put down outside the harbour, been rescued by fishermen, and, when landed on one of the jetties, immediately set upon by a handful of Thierry’s Fusiliers Marins.
Not getting any reaction, he tried another tack.
‘That daft Yank is still charging up and down out there,’ he said.
Bassano waved for another glass, and Harbinson accepted his measure without even a thank you.
‘The Pruett?’ said Harry in English. ‘He’s making sure our recent visitor stays down, or leaves.’
Faujanet was making eyes at a table of creole girls, Bassano was staring into the trees.
Harbinson squinted at him, not understanding.
Harry smiled. ‘Because there is a submarine about, a surface warship like the Pruett can’t just drop anchor or potter about. She’s moving and zig-zagging to make herself a more difficult target for a torpedo. And because she’s doing it all over the offing out there, she’s also making it impossible for Durandal to surface anywhere near Fort-de-France. And since Durandal will need to surface, because sooner or later the air is going to get bad down there, that means she’ll have to bugger off somewhere over the horizon to do it – or Pruett will see her and, well, intercept? Do whatever it is she intends to do to Durandal. Throw hot dogs at her? I don’t know. Do you? Anyway, whatever she’s doing, it’s the right thing.’
‘I hear the civil administrators want our old governor and his chums off the island,’ said Harbinson, pointedly ignoring Harry’s lengthy exposition. ‘They want to send them back to de Gaulle, for smacked botties.’
Harry had a sinking feeling; surely they weren’t going to be put aboard Radegonde. He flashed a questioning look at Bassano, who merely shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Harry.
‘They’re going to stick them on that Yank rust bucket,’ added Harbinson, ‘and pack them off to the Bahamas and get us perfidious Albions to bang them up for the duration, and then the General can get around to doing what he’s going to do with them after. Which won’t be nice. You can bet on that.’
Harry breathed again.
‘It’s just what I heard, mind,’ concluded Harbinson, then he scrutinised the company for clues of confirmation. Harry stared back. It was one of those moments when you just knew stuff was going on; stuff you knew nothing about, and weren’t meant to. He’d felt it before, when his last proper boat, HMS Trebuchet had returned from that escapade off the Soviet Union, and God knows it wasn’t the first time he’d felt it on this patrol. He was too busy thinking about it to notice Lydia until she had plonked herself on his lap, and removed his cap to place it on her own rich mane.
‘Hullo,’ said Harry. ‘Where have you just turned up from?’
She started sticking her finger in his ear, and giggled.
‘I think she wants a drink,’ observed Harbinson, dryly.
‘From the docks,’ said Lydia, drinking Harry in with her huge almond eyes. ‘They’ve just finished loading the gold. Everybody was down there to watch. It’s very exciting. Being sooo close to all that gooold!’
Lydia’s drink arrived; her usual tumbler full of cloudy spirit that smelled of aniseed.
‘What gold?’ asked Harry, astonished, looking to Bassano; who was now suddenly interested in the conversation.
‘The pirate gold, of course,’ said Harbinson. Harry turned to look at him now. He’d tried to put a joking sneer in his voice, but his expression was boilerplate flat and hard; and utterly devoid of humour.
‘The gold the Émile Bertin brought—’ said Lydia.
‘The French light cruiser Émile Bertin?’ interrupted Harry.
Lydia scowled slightly; ‘light cruiser’ meant nothing to her, she only knew about the gold. ‘Tons and tons and tons,’ she said. ‘They kept it at Fort Desaix.’ She gestured up into the hills behind them. ‘Up on Morne Garnier.’
‘Oh, aye,’ sneered Harbinson again, tapping his forehead this time, and gesturing to Lydia and her drink. ‘You know what they say? Absinthe makes the mind go wander.’
But nobody laughed. Harry slid the lithe girl off his lap, and stood. ‘Fancy a walk down the docks, Henri?’ he said to Bassano, and he pulled a startled Faujanet to his feet, leaving him just enough time to blow a kiss at the creole girls before they set off.
They were in time to see the stern lights of the Pascagoula head out of the port’s main basin. A crowd of people were dispersing, mostly dock workers, but a few people from the town too, who’d been there to wave off the rusty tramp steamer and its crew of their new best friends. Three big floodlights drenched the area in a sulphurous light so that the only evidence here of the full moon was its reflection dancing on the water. Two large cranes cast a latticework of shadow along the jetty where the tramp had been moored, and standing by a gangway in their shade was a small knot of figures. Harry recognised Syvret immediately; and among a half dozen Fusiliers Marins was Thierry too. Harry had a lot of questions and he was still young enough to imagine he might receive answers.
‘Aha!’ said Syvret, walking towards them, and heading off any such questions. ‘My officers. I don’t have to send someone to look for you. We’re sailing at first light.’
Harry went back to look for Lydia to say goodbye, feeling ill at ease at how little guilt he felt a
t their liaison, and how abruptly it was about to end, for he was still young enough too, to be so conceited as to take it for granted that their summer dalliance had meant something more to her than it had to him. He didn’t find her, and given what was about to transpire it was just as well. It certainly saved him a lot of embarrassment.
He did find Harbinson, however, sitting at the same table, consoling himself with the remains of their brandy.
‘So, did you find old le corsair Beardy Noir’s gold then?’ said Harbinson, pouring a glass for Harry.
‘It sailed away,’ said Harry, ‘on the Pascagoula.’
‘So they’ve given it to the Yanks, eh? Never thought they’d do that. But what do I know? Wheel in a cog, me.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ asked Harry.
Harbinson let out a harsh, rasping laugh, then stared hard at his brandy. ‘I’ve always been here, ye daft wee shite,’ he said eventually, totally without rancour. Nothing was said for some minutes, then Harbinson began to talk.
‘Tassereau,’ he said. ‘It was how he treated the darkies that got to me. Poor darkies, eh? They always get the shitty end of the stick. I know that. I know how the world works out here. I’m no’ daft. But that bastard? That bastard turned it in to an art form. He. Did. Not. Give. A. Fuck. Up in that residence, with that harpy of a wife of his, and all his bum-lickers. Anybody can be corrupt, but he was taking fucking liberties even at that. So when that Timothy Tight-Arse turned up claiming to be a commercial traveller in desiccating machinery, and wanted to know if I’d be prepared to do my wee bit for King and Country, I said, if it involves fucking up that bastard Tassereau, fucking right I do.’
‘Who is Timothy Tight-Arse?’ asked Harry, and Harbinson gave a convincing description of Fleming, London’s man in Washington DC.
‘So what was all this about gold?’ Harry asked, embarking on another tack and naming the man he knew they were both talking about. ‘Is that what Fleming asked you about? What were you to do? Steal it? Keep an eye on it? Whose gold is it, anyway? How much of it is there?’