by Jay Garnet
Early on 6 October the wind dropped again. Kohlmeyer was forced to widen the circle of those who knew of the possible hijack. He needed time, and in order to win it he had to fix the Stephaniturm over the Edinburgh as long as possible. He called in the diving supervisor and explained matters, allowing him only three minutes of incredulous questions.
‘We have to dive,’ he said, ‘or explain why we are staying here. Can the divers make it again?’
‘I don’t know. Those guys need fresh air. They’ve got ten days of decompression ahead of them. We’ve already established a record for diving at depth in suits. And these conditions are hell. By rights, they should all be dead on their feet with exhaustion. OK, I shouldn’t do it, but I’ll challenge them to go down for one more shift.’
Which is exactly what happened. By midday on Wednesday 7 October, the Stephaniturm had on board four hundred and forty-one ingots, with only a further twenty-four left on the seabed. That afternoon the diving supervisor reported back to Kohlmeyer.
‘That’s it. No more diving,’ he told him.
‘Which means,’ Kohlmeyer said to Finlay, ‘we have to go. We can’t sit here doing nothing.’
He sent a message to Aberdeen asking for guidance.
The reply came: ‘Sit tight. Await help.’
All four men – Kohlmeyer, Finlay, Mike and the diving supervisor – read this reply together, hunched over the table in the communications room. Mike had completed another shift. Strangely, though he was the direct cause of the present predicament, he was still an accepted member of the community. In the knowledge they shared, in their common danger, they were as one, and any feelings of bitterness towards him were, in the present crisis, suppressed.
‘For God’s sake,’ Finlay said. ‘We’re not even sure yet that there is a sub down there. And if there is, we don’t know whether there is anybody to rescue us or not.’
Kohlmeyer shrugged. ‘We have no choice. If we stay here, they will see we have stopped diving. We shall be a standing duck.’
‘Sitting,’ muttered Finlay.
‘Standing, sitting, duck, bird, chicken. What’s the difference? We have to go. Are the divers up? The bell is locked on?’
‘Yes, they’re all resting. I’ll tell them to start decompressing. They’ll be relieved.’
‘They’re lucky,’ Kohlmeyer said with a wan smile. ‘They get less pressure, we get more, eh?’
The captain went through to the bridge, Finlay remained in communications and the diving supervisor went below. Kohlmeyer spoke into the ship’s intercom: ‘We have good news. We have the gold, or almost all of it. No more diving. We go home now!’
At once he ordered full steam ahead, due south.
Full speed, thought Mike; she’s not meant for speed. Ten knots cruising speed, twelve knots flat out. What was that against a sub that could touch twenty-five knots? If they had their wits about them they’d be up in five minutes and alongside in another five. Good God, that might even allow them enough time to get away with it.
He went out on deck and looked back over the stern, past the A-frame beside which he had spent so many hours. He leant against the gas storage cylinders, most of them used up now that the diving was almost finished.
For ten minutes the Stephaniturm ploughed southwards. Below decks diving support personnel who had been tense and exhausted for lack of sleep for a month opened some of the few bottles of wine that had been brought on board for just such an occasion. In the decompression chambers divers slept, drank fruit juice or ate, or chatted to friends on the intercom. In the wheelhouse Kohlmeyer prayed there would be no hijack, that Mike was crazy, that there would be no need for a response from anyone.
He was, of course, disappointed. Just twelve minutes after the Stephaniturm left the site of the Edinburgh a dark-grey shape rose through the icy swell half a mile to the east and a fraction to the north. For perhaps ten seconds no one saw her. Mike was looking aft, Kohlmeyer forward. It was someone on the mess deck, sipping a Coke and staring out through a porthole, who spotted her first. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he shouted. ‘What the fuck’s that?’
Everyone in the mess crowded to a porthole and then stumbled out into the chill wind on deck.
Simultaneously a call up to the bridge informed Kohlmeyer, who veered off to starboard.
On deck Mike gripped the rails, stood watching with the others and said nothing. There were half a dozen, a dozen, a score of men with him, each shouting his own comment or replying to another.
‘A bloody sub!’
‘What’s she up to?’
‘Anyone see any markings?’
‘Nah!’ This from someone with binoculars. ‘Not a dicky-bird.’
‘Is she heading our way?’
‘She’s fucking closing on us!’
‘Who the hell are they?’
‘Cutting us off!’
‘I know that silhouette! That’s an old American sub! Haven’t seen one of those since Korea!’
Steadily, the evil grey shape closed on the Stephaniturm until she was running abreast less than a quarter of a mile away.
Kohlmeyer was shouting into his radio: ‘There it is! Um Gottes Willen! Right beside us, distance three hundred, four hundred metres. Bearing ninety degrees. Now there are men on deck . . . they’re loading the gun . . .’
On the Stephaniturm’s stern, thirty men watched, stunned into silence by the sight of three figures bringing the four-inch gun on the submarine’s bows to bear on the ship.
There was a puff of smoke, followed in a sequence of microseconds by a dull boom and a splash a hundred yards to starboard. The trajectory had been low. The shot had clearly been intended for the wheelhouse. It must have passed only a few feet over the top. The silence on deck was broken by a stream of shouts.
‘Blow us apart!’
‘What the hell is . . . ?’
‘Bloody Russkies, trying to take all the gold!’
‘Russkies on a Yankee sub? Get away!’
‘Look out! She’s having another go!’
Kohlmeyer radioed from the wheelhouse: ‘What are you people doing? Where is this protection? Two hundred metres! She can’t miss!’ It seemed to him he was staring straight down the barrel of a gun.
‘Full astern!’ he yelled, and threw a lever. At once the two Deutz twenty-four-hundred-horsepower diesel engines died, to pick up again in a shuddering reverse thrust. On the stern the crowd of men tottered forward, grabbing at each other and the railings to counteract the change of direction.
At that moment the submarine’s gun fired again. The shell had been perfectly aimed. But in the instant of firing, the Stephaniturm’s propellers had begun to slow her. The shell, which would have driven straight into the wheelhouse, killing Kohlmeyer outright and removing the radio, passed immediately in front of the wheelhouse’s windows. It actually clipped the top of the line of railing that ran round the bridge deck.
On the submarine the three-man gun crew stared in amazement at the plume of spray that leapt up a hundred yards beyond the Stephaniturm. It must have seemed to them that the shell had passed clean through the bridge.
Ten seconds went by. The Stephaniturm began to drop astern of the submarine, which suddenly switched direction, heeling to port as it swung to starboard. The gun crew staggered, righted themselves and attempted to realign the gun, but for several seconds were unable to counteract the port list.
‘That was too close!’ Kohlmeyer bawled into his radio. ‘We should all be dead! One hundred and fifty metres and closing! I thought you said you sent help!’
Meanwhile Mike had edged his way round the deck, along with a dozen others, to stand at the bow rails, staring at the submarine as it slowed in the path of the Stephaniturm, her propellers clawing her to a standstill.
‘This is it!’ he said. ‘This is bloody it!’
He saw the barrel of the four-inch gun swing round again. The range was no more than eighty yards. It’d be like hitting a barn door with a twelve-bore.
The Stephaniturm was, in Kohlmeyer’s words, a standing bird.
* * *
But the gun did not fire, for at that moment, above the gusting wind and beat of the engines, another sound broke through. Mike’s attention had been so riveted on the submarine that he had not seen what would otherwise have been as obvious as a punch in the eye – a Hercules transporter sweeping in over the waves at no more than two hundred and fifty feet. After its fifteen-hundred-mile, four-hour flight from Gosport, it had zeroed in on the Stephaniturm’s coordinates and was heading straight for the submarine.
The gunners looked up, registered, swung the gun, paused, glanced towards a gesticulating figure in the conning tower, then abandoned the gun for the safety of the hatch.
They were already too late. Within ten seconds the plane was almost overhead. From the open ramp at the rear of its cavernous hold came a stream of objects. Two writhing black shapes that resolved themselves into automatically inflating dinghies, and a dozen men in winterized frogmen’s suits, holding weapons, cords streaming from packs that contained paragliding chutes.
With little smacking noises audible above the noise of the receding plane, the chutes opened. Even before the first of the gunners on the deck of the sub had vanished into the interior, even as the sub herself began to sink back beneath the waves, the first of the paragliders was closing on the sub, weaving and bobbing in the stiff breeze. The first man hit the foredeck near the gun too hard, slid on the slick metal and vanished down the far side. The second and third men were on target, some twenty feet behind the conning tower, landing lightly with a neat pull on their drawstrings, releasing their chutes and dropping on to their knees on the rolling deck.
By now the hatch was closed, the water foaming over the bows. The one remaining gunner, about to be sacrificed in the crash-dive, hammered briefly against the metal, then turned, hands raised, as the two men ran towards him, waving him aside with their weapons. What they could do to stop a submarine submerging, Mike could not imagine. Several others drifted down on to the sub, and a further four guided themselves towards the dinghies, now inflated and riding the icy, white-tipped swell. As they hauled themselves aboard and whipped the engines into life, the two leading men on the sub slapped what looked like limpet mines against the conning tower, while the abandoned gunner looked on aghast.
With a quick gesture to their mates, the two leapt clear, followed instantly by the others and the sub’s crewman. Dressed in heavy woollen clothing under waterproofs, he would have sunk in seconds if one of the dinghies had not been there to fish him out.
The sub, its conning tower slicing through the rising water, sank fast, leaving the SBS team gathering themselves in the two dinghies.
For a moment the crowd at the railings of the Stephaniturm watched spellbound, waiting for whatever might happen next. Clearly something was expected, for the dinghies were bouncing along in the wake of the submarine, shadowing it as it vanished from sight. As if responding to the unstated wishes of her crew, the Stephaniturm began to move, keeping Mike and the others close to the action.
Suddenly, perhaps a hundred yards from where it vanished, a gout of water exploded upwards with a dull boom.
Another blast.
Then, still driving forward under full power, the sub began to re-emerge from the depths. It was very much changed. The conning tower had practically vanished, leaving nothing but a jagged ruin of metal. The mines had blown a six-foot hole in the top of the sub, allowing water to pour in. Below the tower there would have been another set of watertight manholes, but the blast must have loosened them. The inside must have been reduced to a panic-stricken chaos of darkness, gushing water and screams. Knowing at once that to stay down would be suicidal, the captain had blown the tanks to bring her back up, perhaps hoping to outrun his pursuers on the surface.
No chance. The dinghies buzzed and bounced alongside the great grey shape, like wolves attacking the flanks of a mammoth.
Again she was boarded. Now, though, the men had access to the interior. Two men vanished into the shattered conning tower, emerging within seconds.
Again the quick gesture, the rapid retreat.
And again two blasts in rapid succession.
This time she was mortally wounded. The engines died and an oil slick, like black arterial blood, spread out from her rear end. Wallowing in the swell, she drifted to a halt, the swell surging up her flanks.
Within half a minute the Stephaniturm was twenty yards away, where she reversed thrust in response to a wave from the SBS commander.
From that position Mike had a fine view of the end of the drama. The SBS closing in, some re-boarding, arms levelled, waiting for the surrender. The appearance of the first of the crew members, hands raised. The slow, resentful emergence of the rest of the crew, fifteen men in all. Finally, the four back-and-forth journeys to the Stephaniturm, as the SBS men and the sub’s crew came aboard, in silence, to vanish below.
Once the SBS commander had checked the sub over and contacted London, it became clear that she would be no use to anyone. She was already forty years old, and outmoded in every respect. The cost of arranging to tow her back to England would be exorbitant, and the Russians certainly had no interest in salvaging her.
So she was scuttled, by two SBS men, with a hiss of escaping air and a flurry of water. As the two men pulled clear, she sank silently, dropping down to the seabed eight hundred feet below, another corpse in a graveyard of ships.
Only then, when the SBS started asking questions, did answers emerge. For their ears only, though. There was a lot they wanted to know, a lot to pass on to London, with as little as possible divulged to Mike. The only thing he learnt, as everyone else did, was the nationality of the hijackers.
So how did Gaddafi get to hear of this? The question ricocheted back and forth between Mike’s colleagues, who would rapidly have become ex-colleagues if they had known the answer to their question. What bastard had put our income, our chance at wealth, our lives at risk? Mike prayed no one discovered the truth before he was out of there.
An hour later Kohlmeyer, Finlay and Mike sat in the captain’s office staring at a message Finlay had decoded five minutes previously. It read:
‘MoD advise information blackout in national and international interests. HMG in full agreement with Soviet Union. Please inform Soviet delegates on board. Propose suitable explanation for majority of crew. Arrange suitable cover for disappearance of gold to be paid to Cox. Reply soonest.’
‘Well,’ said Finlay, ‘seems like they want us to do all the work. We have until tomorrow to wrap things up. But, Werner, that’s too far off. If we don’t take action soon, there’ll be a riot. The place is wild with rumour. Everyone wants to use the radio. The Russians are going spare . . .’
Kohlmeyer raised a hand. ‘I know. We have to explain things at once to the Russian and British officials. Between us, we must solve this problem of the gold for Cox.’
‘Ah, yes, the ten bars,’ said Finlay, with heavy sarcasm. ‘The most important thing of all, that. You really seem to have come out of this OK, Mike. You should give lessons.’
‘Now don’t start nothing,’ said Mike harshly. ‘You owe me. Let alone I just saved your lives, you wouldn’t be ’ere, wouldn’t ’ave no gold at all if it wasn’t for me.’
‘How do you make that out?’
‘It was only me threatening to mount a pirate operation what forced them into giving you a contract.’
Finlay huffed through his nose in disdain.
‘Gentlemen,’ Kohlmeyer cut in, ‘there is no time to argue. What of this gold?’
‘I’ve got a suggestion,’ Mike asked.
‘Thought you might have,’ Finlay muttered.
‘It’s easy enough, but I want to put it to all concerned. So perhaps we could get them in here now and put them out of their misery.’
Kohlmeyer nodded, pressed his intercom button and broadcast a call for a conference to include the Russians and the MoD representat
ives. Within a few minutes they had all crowded into the cabin and found seats, the Russians as grim as statues, the British angry and puzzled.
Kohlmeyer himself brought them up to date with the facts as he knew them.
The Russians asked to use the radio to contact Moscow, which could be done via Murmansk. Some acrimonious talk with the military authorities there eventually provided a link, and Moscow confirmed Kohlmeyer’s information.
When the conference reconvened, Kohlmeyer said: ‘Our first problem is to control the curiosity of those on board. I suggest that we should tell the truth. Only if we have absolute trust from those on board can we expect their cooperation. Do you agree?’
‘Hadn’t we better consider leaving the whole thing a mystery?’ said one of the British officials.
‘Mr Finlay and I have talked about that. It won’t do. Clearly there have been many security leaks. The Libyans knew about us. The Russians know about the Libyans. I do not believe that we can ask for total discretion when others have already been indiscreet.’
Mike coughed. ‘Then there’s the gold,’ he said. All eyes turned to him.
‘OK, Mike, let’s hear it.’
Mike had prepared his speech to seem unrepentant, assertive.
‘First, I must remind you of the agreement made with me by the British government. My life will be worth nothing if I do not disappear. I’ll have the Libyans after me and the guy who set the whole thing up. I need enough cash to last the rest of my life. That’s why I want the gold.
‘Secondly, I haven’t been greedy. I have been planning on getting the gold for years. I could have taken the whole lot on my own. You’re bloody lucky I didn’t. And I might have asked for a whole lot more. Your lives – our lives – are worth more than a million quid. Now the problem is how to hand over ten bars of gold to me and then somehow account for their disappearance. So first off, how many bars are left down there?’
