(2013) Collateral Damage

by Colin Smith

  ‘Can’t you see it?’ The lieutenant-commander sounded impatient. They had a lot to do, and every second they spent at that speed made them a better target for a U-boat.

  Ponting ignored him. A flash of white in the lens vanished when the vessel rolled again and he found himself looking at what appeared to be a stone wall on a terraced slope. He took another deep breath, put his legs slightly further apart, and jammed his knees against the bulkhead of the open bridge. He found the tower again and went to ten, no, eleven o’clock. He managed to steady the glasses on it this time. Behind the sheet were the three windows of the wood house’s upper storey, and beyond its sloping roof a bunch of tall conifers.

  Ponting let his field glasses hang on the short strap around his neck and took another large gulp of air. He felt the nausea rise from his innards. It was going to happen.

  ‘Can you get any closer?’ he asked. ‘It will save time.’

  ‘A bit – but we have to be careful of mines. They’re difficult to spot in this light.’

  Ponting grunted. He had become quite well acquainted with the Royal Navy during the last six months, and was not all that impressed. They were always being careful about something. He sometimes had the feeling Nelson wouldn’t recognise the service.

  Nevertheless, HMS Monegam turned towards the shore and a couple of sailors went on her bow with a plumb line to test the depth. Gun crews turned their pieces towards the medieval stonework on the promontory while teenage boy sailors took eight-inch shells off the hoists that came up from the magazine.

  Now that Ponting no longer had to look through the binoculars he felt a little better. He extracted one of the Egyptian cigarettes he had become fond of lately. Suddenly the cigarette got to him and he stumbled down to the bowl in his cabin with his hand over his mouth, hating the sailors he bumped into for not being sharp enough about giving him gangway.

  By the time he was back on the bridge the ship was steadier and they were closer to the shore. Although it was almost dark by now he could distinctly make out feathery-leaved tamarisks on the beach, and beyond them a few scraggy-looking palms.

  ‘Boat to starboard,’ called a lookout.

  Ponting, determined to redeem himself, spotted it before the lieutenant-commander. It was an Arab fishing boat with a high bow and a small triangular sail, a design basically unchanged since the Phoenicians. The sailcloth appeared to be brown or blue, he could not tell which in the dying light. He guessed that they had chosen it so that they would be less visible to a casual watcher from the shore although he was willing to bet there were nets and lines on board in case they were challenged.

  The little boat tacked towards them, taking advantage of every scrap of wind. ‘He knows his business,’ murmured the lieutenant-commander. ‘And a good thing too. We don’t want to be hanging about.’

  It was the naval officer’s first involvement with cloak and dagger stuff. From what he could see it was all cloak and no dagger. This particular job involved Ponting collecting and sending messages via the courier who then returned to shore. He assumed it was difficult to equip these spies with the kind of wireless telegraphy equipment that would be easy to operate and, in any case, wireless messages were almost invariably intercepted by the enemy. As long as weather conditions didn’t make the rendezvous difficult, the whole operation wasn’t supposed to take more than ten minutes. Even so, it was very hard on the nerves. The captain was sure he would rather be in a pitched battle between cruiser squadrons than endure all this creeping about an enemy coast with the army breathing down your neck and making it plain that they thought you an absolute pansy if you weren’t over-keen about risking your ship.

  He was pleased that Ponting had been sick, because it should make him as anxious to get away as he was. The trouble with the army, he mused, was that officers like the good major had no idea what it was like to be in charge of thousands of pounds of equipment. All they knew was what it was like to be in charge of thousands of men and, if the way they spent them was anything to go by, they didn’t come all that expensive. It seemed one could lose an awful lot of soldiers before anybody wondered if you might be being a bit extravagant. As far as the Admiralty were concerned, big or small, it wasn't at all like that with one of His Majesty's ships.

  The fishing boat was almost alongside now. There were three occupants. Two of them appeared to be Syrian fishermen for they wore the keffiyeh chequered headdresses they favoured. The third, who was seated in the stern alongside the man on the tiller, wore a straw hat held in place with a scarf that was tied under the chin. It occurred to the lieutenant-commander that it was the kind of thing that back home a woman might wear for a motoring trip on a summer’s day.

  The Monegam’s engines were already on slow. Now he ordered the port screw to be set in reverse. This made the monitor revolve slowly in the water, able to spring away at the first whiff of danger from the enemy coast.

  A Jacob’s ladder was put over the side and a couple of sailors with boat-hooks pulled the fishing boat towards them. The captain looked over his bridge to see how things were coming along just as the figure in the stern of the boat stood up. My God, it was a woman! A young, European-looking woman, quite pretty too if you like them a bit on the plump side. She was wearing a light blue, high-collared dress which ended just above her ankles. A sailor seized her firmly by the arm and, as she stepped off the Jacob’s ladder, the blue dress rose high enough to reveal that she was not wearing any stockings.

  The lieutenant-commander turned to say something to Ponting but he was no longer there. He looked down again and saw that the major was down by the rail and welcoming her aboard with all the proprietary airs of some jumped-up mill owner receiving guests aboard his gin palace during Cowes Week.

  ‘Good evening,’ the captain heard him say. ‘I do hope we weren’t late. Any news of Daniel?’

  He spoke to her in French.