by Stuart Slade
“Ops room here. The plot is clear now. That Macedonian trawler turned up again, the Nikogas Nevidel. She hung around Stanley for a few hours before dawn and then left.” The speaker’s voice paused. “At least she is supposed to be on the Macedonian registry, Sir, but I can’t find her on it and Lloyds of Bombay don’t make mistakes like that.”
“Funny that. You’re right, Lloyds don’t make mistakes. Not forgetting whole ships anyway.” Captain Anthony Ralph frowned. He didn’t like mysteries.
Blaise sounded thoughtful. “Last cruise we made before West Indies Station was Mediterranean Station, based in Cyprus. We had a lot to do with the Macedonians back then. Even picked up a bit of the language. You know what nikogas ne videl means in that language?”
Ralph shook his head.
“Odd story; a legend really. It means ‘the never-seen.’ The nikogas ne videl is a sort of folk-lore ghost. You can only see it out of the corner of your eye. If you try to look at it, the thing vanishes. And that is a very good thing because the only time you see it clearly is when you are dying.”
HMS Glowworm, King Edward’s Point, Grytviken, South Georgia.
The harbor at Grytviken looked even more like a decomposing scrapyard than it had done before the war. In addition to the wrecks of the Argentine ships that now obstructed the decaying wharves, damaged British ships were anchored, awaiting the temporary patching that would allow them to take the long voyage home. If some of them would be able to take that journey. Looking at Glorious it was hard to see her going anywhere. Her island was a crushed wreck, her flight deck plowed up by bomb hits, her hull riven by near misses. HMS Afridi was alongside her, helping with the repairs. Afridi was an old destroyer, destined for the scrap heap but had been hurriedly converted into a forward repair ship. Now, there were more modern destroyers and cruisers lined up waiting for her help.
Glowworm was one of them. She was badly damaged enough to need months of repair work, not badly enough to go to the head of the queue. She would have to wait her turn. Lieutenant Baxter was contemplating the prolonged stay when a voice startled him. “Simonstad.”
“Sorry Sir?” Baxter turned to face his Captain.
“We’re going to Simonstad in South Africa for repairs. There’s not enough yard capacity in Britain to repair the ships that need it. So, we’re going to Simonstad when we’re seaworthy. Then back to West Indies Station. The Jamaicans have challenged us to a re-run of the pack gun race on our return.”
Officer’s Mess, HMS Furious, South Atlantic
With the daunting prospect of a blank piece of paper in front of him, Ernest Mullback didn’t know what he wanted to say or how to say it. He’d sat down, meaning to put down everything that had happened during the great carrier battle and the operations that had taken place before and after that struggle, but he couldn’t do it. The experience was too much to grasp, too much for him to absorb himself, let alone try to explain to somebody else. It had come as a profound shock to him to discover that his mind had become turned around during the fighting. Once he had regarded Furious and its shrinking air group as being a strange other-world and his home in England normality. Now, it was the gray steel world of the aircraft carrier that was normal and the concept of home and safety the alien other-world.
The facts were easy enough to put down. By the time the fighting had ended, the British carriers had lost 34 of the 40 fighters they had brought and 30 of the 40 bombers. Alasdair Baillie, Paul Carter and Freddie Kingsman had all gone. The truth was that almost everybody he had known in the squadron had gone. Furious’s hangar deck was a cavernous tomb now, populated by the ghosts of the pilots and aircraft who had once lived there. How to explain that to somebody who hadn’t been there?
Mullback was suddenly aware that the world was divided into two groups of people, those who had fought and those who hadn’t. The gap between the two was a yawning chasm that defied easy bridging. The language simply didn’t exist to do it. All the literary works that had presumed to bridge that gap had been judged shallow and trite because they had attempted to convey something that language hadn’t been created to describe. Mullback couldn’t write the letter to his wife that he wanted to write and the letter that he could write, one that she would understand, wasn’t what he wanted to say.
If he couldn’t say what he wanted, he would say what he could. With that decision in his mind, Ernest Mullback started to write home to his wife.
Bastiaan van Huis’s Home, Capetown, South Africa.
“Gesondheid, Bassie and welcome home.” As lady of the household, it was the duty of Linda van Huis to welcome her husband home. She watched her brothers and sisters raise their glasses to her husband standing at the head of the table.
“Gesondheit, broers, susters en vriende. And I ask you to welcome our new friends Shumba Geldenhuys and Zander Randlehoff, who join us tonight for the first time.”
The clan turned slightly so they were facing the two guests and raised their glasses. “Gesondheit, Shumba en Zander. Welcome to our family circle and know it as your own.” Linda smiled as the formal welcome was repeated. The close-knit second generation of the van Huis, McMullen and Vermaak families had caused ribald speculation in the sleazier parts of the world press with scandalized speculation of what went on behind the sealed doors of the family compound. If the American supermarket tabloids and their British equivalents were to be believed, the families spend their time in one long orgy that would have done ancient Pompei proud. In fact, the young couples were exactly what they appeared to be, respectable and almost painfully conventional. Nowhere was it more obvious when they gathered for their evening dinner together. Apart from two couples who supervised the children while they played and monitored the watch on the compound walls, all the family were here, formally dressed for dinner and behaving with an elaborate courtesy that seemed almost a century out of date.
The fact that Shumba Geldenhuys, a Griqua, was one of their guests was the one thing that might have scandalized older parts of the South African community. That was simply a sign of the slow but steady change inside South African society. Even so, Linda van Huis knew that his presence was allowable only at a private function. He would not be at the table if this were a public banquet. That made her uneasy but she was privately convinced that another ten or twenty years would see that change also. In her opinion and that of her husband, that time would not come soon enough.
“Absent friends.” The third of the formal toasts was made. A silence fell on the room as the men remembered those who had gone off to war and not returned. Then, the men seated their wives and took their own places. A bubble of conversation filling the room as the servants started to serve.
“Speaking of friends, it is a pity Conrad Cross could not join us.” Randlehoff had a job remembering the young British Lieutenant’s first name. For some reason, it was treacherously easy to forget.
“He had to go with his unit to Britain.” Geldenhuys was quietly proud of the young man who had come through so well. “He is something rare in their army, a veteran. He will have much to teach the rest.”
“As do we.” Van Huis was unpleasantly aware of the long report he had written on the shortcomings of the Boomslang. There were a lot of changes needed, each one minor in itself but together representing a major reworking of the design. There was also the minor but economically important matter of having all the sales brochures stamped ‘Combat Proven’ to organize. That would do wonders for the sales of the Mamba and Boomslang. “But the British are back now. This is a good thing, I think. In some strange way, the world did not seem quite the same without them.”
There was a general crackle of laughter. Anders Vermaak nodded emphatically. “This is true. So, broers, susters en vriende, I propose another toast. To the Lion Resurgent.”
EPILOGUE
Major Mazza’s Home, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Would you like me to come inside with you?” The Swedish Embassy official was deeply concerned for the wom
an in the taxi with him. It wasn’t just the delicate nature of this particular mission but the unrest that saturated the city as a whole. Law and order had almost broken down across Argentina with various different factions vying for power. They did so by any means they believed necessary. That meant inconvenient people tended to disappear. Major Mazza could well consider Maja Sunderstrom to be a highly inconvenient person.
The other two occupants in the car nodded agreement. One was another Swedish embassy official who was technically a member of the cultural attaché’s department. In reality, he was a member of the Sarskilda Skydds Gruppen, the Special Protection Group. It was an elite formation of the Swedish Army tasked with protecting Swedish personnel and interests around the world. The other was an Argentine private detective who had taken on investigating the missing children scandal as his life’s work. This case was one of the few where there was even a remotely possible chance of a happy outcome.
Maja Sunderstrom shook her head. “I’d like to go in by myself if you do not mind. Everything that had been said about Major and Madam Mazza suggests they are kind and honorable people. I do not think there will be any trouble.”
The SSG officer did not seem convinced on that point but all his training was directed towards spotting possible threats. He recognized that gave him a biased perspective. He nodded reluctantly, got out and opened the door for Mrs. Sunderstrom. While she was getting out of the car, his eyes never stopped scanning the street. His senses told him that he and the rest of the party were under covert surveillance. That didn’t surprise him. This was a guarded and gated community, something that had grown common in Argentina while the unrest grew ever nearer to a civil war.
Sunderstrom walked down the path leading to the front door and reached out to ring the bell. The door opened before she could do so. Obviously the Mazzas had been waiting for her. She guessed that they had been hoping against hope that she would not come. Perhaps they had fixed on a likely time by which her arrival could be discounted and praying for the minutes to pass until that time was reached. She felt sorry for them, realizing that the agony they were feeling now matched that she had felt waiting for news of her daughter.
“Please come inside, Madam Sunderstrom.” Mazza’s voice was grave and serious yet she could detect the tremble that lay underneath the words. When she stepped into their house, the overwhelming impression she had was one of how normal it was. She wasn’t quite sure what she had been expecting. Martial music perhaps with paintings and pictures of battle on the walls. Instead, the house was indistinguishable in character from her own home back in Sweden. Couches and arm chairs gathered around a television set, side tables with colored magazines on them, flowers in vases, painting of landscapes on the walls. The only difference was the collection of children’s toys, mostly boxed up on the floor.
“May we offer you tea or coffee? Or something a little stronger?” Major Mazza was trying hard to be a properly hospitable host to a guest who he could hardly have considered welcome.
“A cup of tea would be very nice, if that is not inconvenient.” Maja Sunderstrom was trying to be a considerate guest, despite knowing how unwelcome her presence had to be.
“I have packaged all of Jorge’s favorite toys for you. Having his things with him will make it so much easier for him to understand.” Madam Mazza had brought a tray of tea in and set it down on a small table. She was desperately trying not to start crying again. Her eyes were deeply reddened. Sunderstrom guessed she’d been counting minutes until this moment came, trying desperately to make each one last as long as she could.
“His name is Jorge?”
“Jorge Tercero.” Major Mazza busied himself with inconsequential, unnecessary things while his wife poured the tea. “Jorge is named after my father while Tercero is Antonella’s maiden name. He is, he was, their first grandchild.”
“Jorge is asleep upstairs at the moment. He will have much travelling to do and he should be well-rested before he starts.” Antonella Mazza was trying to keep her voice under control, but the anger and frustration was there.
“We have tickets on a supersonic airliner from Rio de Janeiro to Stockholm. It will only be a four hour flight once we take off.” It would be the feeder flight from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro that would take time. The trouble in Argentina was such that the big airlines had suspended flights to the country.
“Machliner or Sonic Clipper?” Major Mazza was trying to make conversation, trying to keep the event as normal as he could even though his voice was cracking. “The supersonic airliners have made such a difference to everything. Anna and I wanted to take Jorge to Italy, so he could hear the Pope speak.”
“Come upstairs; we should wake him now.” Madam Mazza led the way upstairs to the child’s room. Again, Maja Sunderstrom was amazed at how normal it was. It could have been any infant’s room, even down to the mobile hanging over the cot.
Antonella Mazza reached into the bed and lifted the child gently. Half-awake, he gave a very sleepy “Maman” and nuzzled his face into her chest. Her eyes were streaming with tears.
It was something that Maja Sunderstrom could hardly see since she was crying herself. She made her own decision then, one that she couldn’t avoid making now she knew everything.
“Madam Mazza, Major Mazza, may I ask a great kindness of you? Would you mind if I came to see you here in Argentina every year so I can visit Jorge while he grows up? Could you even tell him, when he is old enough to understand, that I am some sort of relative?”
“You are not taking him?” Madam Mazza’s face was covered with stunned disbelief, mixed with dawning hope that the loss she had dreaded might not take place after all.
“I am an old lady, living by myself. Looking after a child as well…” She hesitated, knowing what she wanted to say but not knowing how to say it. It wasn’t helping that both she and the Mazzas were speaking in English, the only common language that they had. “It would not be fair on Jorge. He needs a proper mother and a proper father. He needs to grow up in a real family, not with an old woman haunted by ghosts. You have a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood and you are both already his true parents. This is where he belongs now.”
Madam Mazza was crying again, this time with joy and relief and she returned her son to his bed. Quietly, the three adults returned down to the living room. “Perhaps sometime we could come and visit you in Sweden. When normal times return and the supersonic flights run from Buenos Aires once again? Jorge should know the Swedish side of his heritage as well as the Argentine.”
“That would be wonderful. Now, I must go. The embassy people are waiting for me outside.” Maja Sunderstrom made her farewells and left. She didn’t start crying again until she reached the embassy limousine.
The Red Lion Inn, Solihull, Birmingham.
Lieutenant Conrad Cross entered the Red Lion with his father and mother, proudly looking around at the dining room full of guests as they stood up and applauded him. The thunder of applause seemed just like artillery fire somehow. Thus it was no surprise to him that the room exploded. The people inside were melting in the heat as his Boomslang pumped missile after missile into the building. He was burning himself, trapped inside his tank destroyer, just as the Argentine soldiers had been trapped when their tanks and armored personnel carriers had been destroyed by his Mambas. He felt the heat frying him, melting his skin . .
“It is all right, son. It is only a nightmare.” Matthew Cross shook his son awake. Allie Cross was standing in the bedroom door, her folded hand in her mouth. “Everything is all right.”
“The pub; it was blown up. I blew it up and then my Boomslang burned.”
“Just a nightmare. Everything is all right. Allie, go back to bed. This is a matter for old soldiers to talk over.” Matthew Cross gave a warped grin to his son. “I think that she is upset you dreamed about burning her pub down.”
Alice Cross nodded vigorously. She had bought the Red Lion when the previous landlord had retired and the bus
iness was thriving. Between her husband’s housepainting business and the profits from her pub, the family had become prosperous. The idea that her son had dreamed of blowing one element of that prosperity up was profoundly disturbing for her. Memories of the dreary poverty of Britain in the 1950s were still ingrained. She was about to protest but her husband waved her away before she could speak. “Con, we’d better go down to the kitchen and have a drink.”
The restaurant attached to the pub was empty of course. Conrad Cross sat down while his father went into the bar to get a bottle and two shot glasses. “Dutch Schnapps; the German original is extinct, I am afraid.
He poured out two shots and watched while his son sank the first. Then he filled their glasses again. “You were dreaming of the war? That is why you screamed.”
“In a way. I dreamed we were here then I blew us up and then I was burning in my tank destroyer. Why should I dream that? We never lost a single vehicle. We never gave the Argentine tankers a chance. We hit them from beyond the range of their guns and before they knew where we were.”
“Very sensible.” Matthew Cross spoke dryly. “Our tank destroyers in Russia did the same. Only a fool wants a fair fight. With lethal weapons, anyway. Drink up, your glass is empty.”
“There were eight or ten men each in those armored carriers and we just blew them apart.”
“Not your fault, Con. Did I ever tell you what the Russian Sturmoviks did to our vehicles? Or when the Amis napalmed us?”
Conrad had never heard his father telling real war stories before. He had heard his father tell amusing stories about the pranks he and his friends had got up to, but never stories about the real fighting and what it had been like. Now, he heard them. He told his own stories in exchange, of the Boomslangs cutting the Argentine armor apart, of watching the ships in Bomb Alley being attacked. Half way through the exchange, as the night went on, Matthew Cross got up and staggered to the bar for another bottle of Schnapps.
