by Dudley Pope
The German stopped screaming and looked up at Yorke. ‘You…you shot me!’
‘That’s the first one,’ Yorke said crisply. ‘Sit up because I’m going to count to five again, and if you haven’t answered I’m going to shoot you a second time. Only this will be the last and in the stomach. I can’t risk deafening myself, you know. Deuced noisy things, guns. I wish this one had a silencer. Now – one…two…’
As Yorke counted he hoped desperately that Pahlen would answer. He knew he could not shoot the man in the stomach in cold blood but shooting him in the other foot would tell the German that the ‘English’ would not kill him.
The German broke at four.
‘He’s still underneath us!’ he shouted. ‘Where else do you think, you fool!’
Yorke nodded, and Baxter looked at him admiringly. This lieutenant was a cool one. That Jerry ran it close: another second and the Lieutenant would have shot him in the stomach, that’s for sure. Now he still has two other questions to answer.
Baxter kept an eye on Ohlson, but the Swedish captain was white as a sheet and from the look of it, pressing himself against the bulkhead to stop himself from fainting. Now Mr Yorke was talking to the Jerry again, coolly, conversationally almost. Not even almost – it bloody was conversational. More to the point, though, if that bleedin’ Jerry did not answer quick and Mr Yorke continued shooting bits off him, they would all be deaf before he used up all the cartridges in that gun.
‘The second question, Mr Pahlen, which I’ll repeat in case you’ve forgotten it: when does the U-boat go off to her attacking position?’
Answer, you bloody fool, Baxter thought; Mr Yorke’s going to save 150 of our men so you don’t count for a puff of smoke. He’s cocking the gun again. It’s a double-action job but the heavier pull needed means that for accuracy it’s best to cock it, reducing the trigger pressure to a couple of pounds or so.
‘I’m going to count, Mr Pahlen, because unless you co-operate at once it will be quicker to get the answers from Captain Ohlson. So this is your last chance and in case you decide not to answer…’ Baxter saw Yorke give a slight bow, ‘we’d better take our farewells now. One…two…three…’
Come on, Baxter tried to will the man; talk, because that bloody gun makes such a bang!
‘…four…’
‘Stop!’ Pahlen flung himself sideways and crouched, his hands over his stomach, his left foot waving in the air and dripping blood.
‘Well?’
‘I tell you,’ Pahlen gabbled, ‘but don’t shoot me in the stomach…’
‘Tell me, then,’ Yorke said coldly. ‘Tell me all about it.’
Just like a headmaster determined to hear all about some pupil’s villainy, Baxter thought, and swishing a cane in the air as he spoke.
‘The U-boat, he leaves us about 1930, half an hour before he attacks.’
‘You make no signal?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Pahlen said, hastily, sitting upright, his eyes fixed on Yorke’s revolver and quite oblivious of the blood now dripping from his torn shoe. ‘We reduce the revolutions on the port engine for half a minute – applying corrective helm, of course. That tells him that no escorts are inside the convoy – or within sight, anyway.’
‘How many revolutions do you drop?’
‘Twenty-thirty… The chief engineer just slows the engine when we telephone down to him. That answers both your other questions.’
Yorke nodded. ‘Most obliging of you, but they raise others. Supposing you do not make the signal…?’
‘He would stay in position beneath us.’
‘What does he do once he’s completed his attack for the night?’
‘He dives and stops and waits for the convoy to pass clear.’
‘And then?’
‘Once he’s sure… I’m feeling faint, can’t I get this leg bandaged?’
‘You’re alive,’ Yorke said unsympathetically. ‘The convoy passes clear. Then what?’
‘He surfaces when he’s sure it’s safe so that he can run his diesels and charge batteries. Then next day we drop back…’
‘Come on, come on!’ Yorke suddenly snarled.
‘Well, we drop back and meet him, and he follows us on the surface so we block any radar beams from the escorts until we get close, then he dives and stays under us. We rejoin the convoy slowly so he does not have to use up much of the electricity in his batteries.’
‘Is this a German ship?’ Yorke asked suddenly.
Pahlen shook his head weakly. Baxter saw that shock, pain and the bleeding were beginning to take effect, but he knew the Jerry was going to have to try deep breathing or something, because Mr Yorke was going to get all of the story that he needed. In the meantime, though, what the hell was he going to do about that U-boat underneath them?
‘She’s Swedish then – but under charter to some fake German-owned company?’
‘Yes, she is.’ The answer came from Ohlson. ‘All the papers are in that safe – or enough for your purposes: charter party, and all the rest of it. There are only two Germans on board the ship – him, and the second officer, the one who met you when you climbed up the net. Everyone else is Swedish.’
‘You bastards,’ Yorke said bitterly. ‘You hide in a British convoy and help the Germans sink the ships. And you get a double profit – the British pay you for carrying a cargo, the Germans for chartering them the ship so they can put naval officers on board.’
At that moment Yorke knew he would have no trouble in shooting a man in the stomach, only it would be Ohlson, not Pahlen. Pahlen was fighting a war. Ohlson…
Baxter was thankful when he saw the lieutenant stuff the pistol in his pocket: for a moment he was sure Mr Yorke was going to shoot Ohlson: he had gone dead white, as though he could see those torpedoed ships – like the Florida Star which had burned, and the Hidalgo, which had blown up last night – and he had realized that a double-crossing neutral was even more to blame than a German.
‘Sit the two of them together there on the settee, Baxter. If they move, shoot ’em.’ Yorke turned to Ohlson, hoping his voice had sounded fierce enough. ‘Is that safe locked?’ When the Swede nodded, Yorke said: ‘Open it, now. Key or combination?’
‘Both.’
Yorke picked up a notebook and pencil. ‘Write down the combination.’
The Swede wrote, and Yorke ripped off the page and said: ‘Now dial the combination as I watch you.’
The Swede turned the dial back and forth four times, to numbers corresponding to those he had written down. ‘Now you use the key,’ he said.
‘Use it, then.’
The Swede took a key from his pocket, unlocked the safe and pulled the door open.
‘Give me the key,’ Yorke said. ‘Now sit back there. Baxter, keep them away from that.’ He pointed to the safe.
‘But you can’t leave it open!’ Ohlson protested. ‘All those papers are secret!’
‘They were, but not now. However, if either of you so much as point at the safe, Baxter will shoot you. Don’t forget, I know all I need to know, and I have the evidence. Your lives…’ he snapped a finger and thumb. He turned to the seaman. ‘Here’s the torch. If anything happens, these two must not escape alive.’ Then he bent over the chart table, writing hurriedly on the pad, which he took with him.
Out on the starboard wing of the bridge Cadet Reynolds said: ‘I’ve spotted the Echo, sir, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to point her out to you. Do you want me to pass a signal?’
‘Yes, it’s long and I’ll read it out word by word. Call up the Echo.’
The blue light from the signal lamp was ghostly: its flickering lit the planking of the bridge deck and Yorke saw it was newly scrubbed. Dot-dash, dot-dash, dot-dash: ‘A,A,A,’ the Morse letter for calling up another ship. A tiny blue pinpoint in t
he distance, a dash, the letter ‘T’. ‘They’re answering, sir,’ Reynolds said.
Yorke stood where he would be able to read from the notebook by the flickering light of the signal lamp. ‘Right, I’ll just read the signal word by word, as you transmit, beginning now:
Lancaster I have seized Penta stop submarine beneath which departs to attack only on Penta signal stop submit you drop charges shallow setting closest possible across my bow while I go astern with helm hard over so submarine overshoots stop because usual attack begins figures 2000 suggest you attack soonest Yorke end message.’
Reynolds lowered the signal lamp with a sigh. ‘Phew, that’s the longest I’ve ever sent, sir.’
Yorke noticed that there had not been one hurried sequence of dots, the ‘E,E,E’ standing for ‘erase’. ‘You didn’t make a single mistake. Good work. But stand by for the reply.’
He could imagine Johnny Gower now reading the signal. He would be holding the pad against the dim red light over the chart table, his eyes going back and forth across the hurriedly-written pencilled message. This would be the first news Johnny had that the Penta definitely had a U-boat under her and the first news he would get that Yorke had actually seized the ship, instead of continuing to pose as a survivor. Blast, Johnny must know one more fact which he had forgotten to include in the signal.
‘Quick, call him up again!’
There was the tiny blue flash and Yorke began dictating:
Lancaster have secured Penta’s German officers prisoner Yorke end message.
He could imagine Johnny’s sigh of relief. German officers were the justification for everything: for Yorke seizing the ship and for the Echo trying to sink the U-boat and risking the Penta. He had just told Baxter that it did not matter if he shot them, but to hell with it. There were papers in the safe that were probably far more important as evidence.
He saw the blue pinpoint of the Echo’s signal lamp. Yorke could read it but preferred to have Reynolds speaking it as he wrote in the dark:
Yorke on my way stop switch on navigation lights Lancaster.
‘Christ,’ Reynolds exclaimed, ‘all the electrical switches are marked in Swedish.’
There was a clattering on the companionway ladder behind them. ‘That you, sir?’
Yorke recognized Jenkins’ voice. ‘Yes, what’s happened?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ Jenkins said composedly. ‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘Do you mean that…’
Realizing he had been misunderstood, Jenkins explained hastily: ‘No sir, we’re holding everyone in the saloon. I meant there’s been no trouble. One door’s locked, and a couple of chaps are juggling grenades at the other. The Swedes are all lying down flat looking like a bunch of wogs when the muezzin sounds off and the old codger calls ’em to prayer.’
‘Have you any spare men?’
‘Yes, sir, I thought you’d need ’em. Me here, and three seamen waiting at the bottom of the ladder.’
‘Send a man with a revolver to help Baxter guard those two in the chartroom. The rest of you stay here. No, send one man over to the other side of the bridge as a lookout.’
He turned and went back into the chartroom. Pahlen was trying to tie up his bleeding foot with his jacket, watched by an alert Baxter and a completely unhelpful Ohlson who, from the look on his face, was regretting, on behalf of himself and his owners, ever getting mixed up with the German Navy, or whoever chartered the Penta. Presumably several other Swedish ships were involved because there could be no doubt now that the Penta was only one of a squadron of neutrals helping to play the insider trick in different convoys.
Yorke found the ship’s log on the chart table and then bent down and took out the papers in the safe. A hundred or so pages of different shapes and sizes, some with wax seals and looking like contracts, all typewritten, and here at the bottom of the pile signed letters from addresses in Stockholm and a German firm in Berlin. Presumably some apparently innocent company set up by the German Navy.
There was the usual canvas bag for secret papers at the back of the safe, open at one end with brass eyelets and a drawstring, and a lead bar inside. Yorke took out the lead bar, slid the papers into the bag with the log, tightened the drawstring, and put the bag on the chart table. That would be all the written evidence needed, he hoped.
The Echo would be working up to full speed now, cutting through the lines of darkened ships in the convoy, watching for the one that carried something rarely seen in wartime – navigation lights. Red on the port side of the bridge, green to starboard; a white light on the foremast, another several feet higher on the mainmast, and a stern light. They would all help the Echo see exactly where the Penta was. Johnny was going to have to get it right the first time with his depth charges; there would be no second chance for anyone.
There was a knock at the door and Baxter switched on the torch as the door opened and then closed again. A red-bearded seaman, Barbarossa’s cousin, if not a younger brother, stood there with a revolver in one hand a knife in the other. ‘Jenkins sent me, sir.’
‘Help Baxter guard these two,’ Yorke told him. ‘Shoot if necessary,’ he added, more to discomfort Pahlen and Ohlson than threaten them. He pointed to the canvas bag on top of the chart table. ‘The pair of you guard this, too. In an emergency, that’s all we need to save.’
‘The evidence, sir?’ Baxter asked.
‘Exactly.’ He gave Baxter a wink, knowing neither Ohlson nor Pahlen could see it. ‘We don’t need these two prisoners as long as we have the papers.’
Yorke turned to Ohlson and pointed to the red-haired seaman, Harris. ‘Go with this man and switch on our navigation lights.’
‘Lights?’ Ohlson repeated incredulously.
‘Port, starboard, masthead and stern lights. Hurry!’
The helmsman was shouting through the door that Reynolds wanted him.
The frigate was signalling but just as Yorke’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and could see the blue light, he read the Morse letters ‘AR’ and saw the reflection of Reynolds’ single-letter reply, ‘R’. Message ended, message received.
Reynolds put the signal lamp back in its box and said: ‘The frigate asked us to light up our bow at the right moment, sir, if we can. That’s not the exact wording but it’s what he meant.’
‘Very well.’
Damn and blast it, why hadn’t he thought of it himself? But how? The light would have to be kept inboard just in case the U-boat looked through its periscope while submerged and saw above it an eerie green light – that’s how a floodlight would look from, say, fifteen fathoms down. Floodlights! The arc lights merchant ships used in foreign ports where there was no blackout so that unloading or loading could go on through the night. They were like huge inspection lights on long leads with a wire mesh across the front to protect the bulb.
There was only one man who could get a couple of arc lights out of the store and plugged in in time and that would be the Penta’s electrician. He turned and hurried back into the wheelhouse, where Ohlson was turning switches.
‘Christ, the navigation lights are coming on!’ yelled a seaman.
‘That’s all right; they’re supposed to be,’ Yorke answered. Then to Ohlson he said: ‘Are they all on?’ When the Swede nodded, Yorke said: ‘This seaman is going to take you down to the saloon. There you must find your electrical officer and order him to get two arc lights – floodlights you understand, like you use in the holds – on to the fo’c’sle and alight within five minutes. Look at your watch, and you too, Harris. If they’re not alight in five minutes, Harris will shoot you, Captain Ohlson.’
The Swede bolted for the wheelhouse door, followed by Harris, who had seen Yorke’s wink. He seemed to be winking a lot tonight; but he was having to make these bloodcurdling threats to keep the Swede and the German tractable. Tractable was a nice w
ord and it was the right one. Nothing like the threat of a bullet in the stomach to make a man tractable. And did Jenkins send that fellow Harris on purpose? Harris was in fact an amiable ox of a man, immensely strong, and his red beard stuck out round his face like the petals of a sunflower. His laugh, though, was fantastic. When he chuckled he sounded like a mass murderer doing away with his hundredth victim. Yorke suspected that the man would have to steel himself to shoot a pigeon; but at the moment this did not matter. Ohlson and the rest of those prisoners in the saloon, including the electrician, would see only a smiling swashbuckler with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other and a laugh that sounded like a thousand corpses rattling down a ramp to eternal damnation.
He went back outside to the starboard wing of the bridge. ‘Call up the Echo and say we’ll have the bow lit up within ten minutes.’ The extra five minutes might be needed, and it would be five minutes of agony for Ohlson and seem like an extension of life. It also left it to Johnny whether he slowed up and waited for the light before he attacked. It was a godsend that he had known Johnny for so many years. Johnny’s extra half stripe meant one had to put the odd ‘submit’ or ‘propose’ into a signal, but Johnny knew him well enough to accept without question what must be one of the most bizarre signals made so far in this war. Not dramatic, just bizarre. ‘I have a U-boat at the bottom of the garden de ma tante.’
Johnny would come whistling up the starboard side and then turn hard a-port across the Penta’s bow: close enough, no doubt, to risk a glancing collision. At that moment the Penta should be almost stopped. Dare he risk explaining to Mills on the engine-room telephone what was needed, or should he bring the engineer to the bridge? He would try the phone to start with.
He picked up the telephone and pressed the button. Almost at once he heard Mills’ cheery, ‘Engine room here!’
‘Bridge here. Listen, Mills, this is Yorke.’ Quickly he brought the engineer up to date with the events of the last fifteen minutes and explained that the Echo was coming up fast, and what was needed from the engine room.
