Convoy North (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  He reached the sick bay: it was a funny thing but it was like when you’d gone to the expense of buying a new washer and when you came to fit it the bloody tap had stopped dripping...the pains had gone from his chest. He gave a racking cough to stir them up but without success. His long, mournful face lengthened still further: the quack would go and say he was swinging the lead, malingering, but he wouldn’t say that if he could only see Napper’s stock of medicines aboard the Hardraw Falls: if you were just a lead-swinger you didn’t go to that sort of expense, not on a Po’s rate of pay. Stood to reason, did that. As he waited for the quack he felt a little twinge in his chest and hope returned, but not for long. In the first place he was seen by a surgeon lieutenant, which was a disappointment. As, in a sense, a guest patient from a merchant ship he’d expected the surgeon commander. No such luck, and the surgeon lieutenant was brief and preoccupied. Preoccupied with bugger all, Napper thought, naval quacks hadn’t much to do normally.

  Napper was told to remove his upper clothing.

  ‘Been using camphorated oil,’ the surgeon lieutenant remarked.

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Quite a stench. Good stuff though, camphorated oil.’

  ‘Yessir. I —’

  The inevitable stethoscope interrupted Napper’s discourse but his time came when the quack asked what his symptoms had been. There had been many and Napper detailed them at some length, interspersing them with nasty coughs.

  ‘Yes, yes, I see. There’s nothing to worry about, just a touch of fibrositis.’

  ‘I smokes a lot, sir —’

  ‘So do we all.’ The quack’s fingers, Napper had noticed, were yellow with nicotine. Napper, thinking he might as well make the most of his visit, began to go through his ailment list. He spoke of his bowels, which was a mistake brought on by nervousness and the feeling that he was on a loser as usual. Given an opening on bowels, the quack cut him short, told him to get dressed and nodded at the leading sick-berth attendant, who seemed to understand without a word being said. When Napper was once again dressed, the LSBA handed him a glass of dark liquid.

  He said unnecessarily, since Napper knew it of old, ‘Black Draught, Po. Number Nines in liquid form you might say.’

  Mutinously, Napper drank it up: bowel mixture! In the Andrew, so long as your bowels were regular, you were fighting fit. Regularity cured even chests.

  V

  Captain Theakston had seen the whisky bottle: Kemp had made no attempt to hide it, seeing no reason why he should act like a maiden caught being chastely kissed.

  ‘I know you don’t drink, Captain — but you’d be welcome enough to join me, of course.’

  ‘Thank you, no. Life-long abstinence has suited me well enough. You were in the liners, of course.’ Theakston said that as though the liners were the iniquitous jaws of hell, leading inevitably to the everlasting fires. In some respects that would have been a fair assessment, Kemp knew. Too much cheap liquor, too much time on one’s hands, and always the temptations provided by the passengers. Women and drink: parties always going in the cabins, in the many bars, ship’s officers very welcome. Many had fallen by the wayside and Theakston would be aware of this. There was a stiffness about the master’s manner, more so than usual, and Kemp hoped he wasn’t in for a sermon: Theakston had a somewhat pulpitish look about him. But it appeared that that was not his current mission. He said, ‘Your visit to the shore, Commodore. I was wondering, are there any orders?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes, there are. I was intending to tell you, Captain.’ A grin came to Kemp’s face along with a sudden wicked desire to shock. ‘I’m afraid the bottle intervened briefly.’

  ‘Aye...’

  That expressive face of Theakston’s was off-putting: one look from the Captain of the Hardraw Falls was the equivalent of a speech in Parliament and much more to the point. Kemp knew he should not have given way to an impulse to tease; he felt almost as though he were back again to his apprentice days, hauled up before the master for some omission — or for smuggling a flask of whisky aboard. He had to rehabilitate himself somehow, not an easy task under the stare of Theakston’s formidable eyes. Best leave it...

  He said, ‘There’s a special job for us, Captain.’

  ‘For the Hardraw Falls, or for the convoy?’

  ‘The Hardraw Falls. NOIC —’

  ‘Because you’re aboard, because my ship carries the Commodore?’

  Straight to the point, like any Yorkshireman. Theakston hadn’t come down with the last shower. Kemp said, ‘Yes, that is so. We’re to rendezvous with a British submarine coming south, round the North Cape from Murmansk —’

  ‘Position?’

  ‘68°10’ north, 12°40’ east. Off the Lofotens.’

  ‘Close to the Norwegian coast. Too close.’

  ‘It has to be accepted, Captain —’

  ‘Is there a Norwegian involvement?’

  Kemp nodded. ‘Yes. The submarine will have picked up a man coming out in a fishing boat from the Norwegian coast north of the rendezvous position, too close inshore to divert a ship from the convoy safely — too close navigationally and as regards the Germans. The man is obviously regarded as important, and —’

  ‘Do you know his identity, Commodore?’

  Kemp hesitated for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Yes, as it happens I do. I know him personally...that’s why we’ve been landed with the job. He travelled frequently to and from Australia before the war, in my company’s ships —’

  ‘Do I take it he’s British, not Norwegian — a British agent?’

  Kemp said crisply, ‘Neither. He’s German. This is strictly be-tween the two of us, Captain — us and Cutler. I’m under the strictest orders.’

  Theakston nodded, his eyes never leaving Kemp’s face. ‘I understand. I’ll ask one thing only: this man, this German — I take it he knows you are aboard the Hardraw Falls and because you have sailed together he trusts you, and has asked to be brought aboard to join you.’

  Kemp gave a heavy sigh and shook his head. ‘Wrong, Captain. He knows nothing of my appointment. I’ve been chosen by Whitehall because they know we’d become good friends — this man’s pre-war business interests in Australia are known to Intelligence, and naturally, when asked, the company’s London offices co-operated in making passenger lists, pre-war ones, available.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Then —’

  ‘When he boards, yes, he will know me, of course. That’s going to be the hard part.’

  Theakston looked at him critically for a few moments, then said, ‘I’m going to make a guess or two. This German, now. For some reason he’s to be landed in Archangel — else, they’d have waited for the QP homeward. Again for some reason — I’ll not ask what in either case — he’s to give you his trust. It’s your job to encourage that.’ When there was no response from Kemp, Theakston leaned forward and put a heavy hand on the Commodore’s shoulder. ‘And now I think I know the reason for the whisky bottle. And I don’t blame you.’

  VI

  The facts were simple enough once a straight line was drawn through the intrigue and skulduggery that were part and parcel of the Intelligence services on both sides. Simple but dirty: again, part of Intelligence. NOIC hadn’t liked it any more than Kemp, but the excuse was, of course, that the man was an enemy agent and nothing else could be allowed to count. Truth, decency, honesty were out for the duration. Kemp felt it was going to be like the massacre of Glencoe all over again, the hospitable MacDonalds as it were to fall again to the Campbell treachery. He remembered Gunther von Hagen very well indeed, had always been pleased to see his name in the passenger list, had always, once he’d gained command as master, had the German seated at his table in the saloon. Many an after-dinner drink they’d taken together in his quarters. Von Hagen was a chess player, so was Kemp, and they had been of about equal standard. Von Hagen had worked for a firm of London wool importers, and had much business at the Australian end. It seemed that shortly before the outbreak
of war von Hagen had returned to his country and had been co-opted into German Military Intelligence, in which he was now a colonel. His sphere of operations, NOIC had told Kemp, had been Norway — digging out the Resistance groups, a dirty game certainly, but he had never so far as was known operated against the British themselves. Kemp had been able to confirm that von Hagen, at any rate before the war, had been very much an Anglophile and had felt at home in England.

  Kemp also knew that the German’s bete noir had been the Russians. Communism he had detested; he and Kemp had had many discussions as to the way the world had been going. Kemp had never concealed his own hatred of the Nazis and their regime, but von Hagen had been non-committal; he was, Kemp believed, a Nazi but a lukewarm one, one who merely accepted rather than fully supported, except as regards his loathing of communists. But all that was unimportant now. Von Hagen had done his duty, NOIC had said, quoting British Intelligence, and had done well — or bloodily — in Norway. That was, until he’d slipped up and had been taken prisoner by the Resistance, who were now handing him over to the British.

  Or so he believed. In fact he was to be taken on to Russia once the transfer from the submarine had been made. In Archangel he was to be handed over to the security police: the men in the Kremlin had a use for his knowledge of Norway and the German defences there. Kemp’s job was the simple part: he was under orders to talk to an old friend and find out all he could about German Intelligence, on a basis of the old pals’ act, before von Hagen was handed over to whatever awaited him after his interrogation by the Russians: probably Siberia, possibly death. His lever was to be a promise that von Hagen would not in fact be handed over to the Russians. A promise that was not to be kept.

  No job for a convoy Commodore; but the orders had been very strict and were to be carried out to the letter. No jiggery-pokery on Kemp’s part, no back-tracking for an old friend. Whitehall had no wish to upset the Kremlin.

  FOUR

  I

  So now Iceland lay behind as the PQ convoy headed on its course for the rendezvous behind the busily sweeping A/S screen. The commanding officers of the escorting warships had been put in the picture only to the extent of being informed at the departure conference of the British submarine’s presence ahead of the convoy, and this had added a new dimension of danger: the submarine would proceed on the surface whenever possible but might have to submerge at any time; no Asdic contacts in the relevant area were to be attacked until the identity had been positively established, which in effect meant that no contacts at all could be attacked whilst submerged. The submarine’s human cargo was not to be put at risk.

  The senior officer of the escort, Rear-Admiral Fellowes, had been informed in Hvalfiord of the full facts, the only one apart from Kemp who had, and he had been livid. ‘It’s damn lunacy! Putting the whole convoy at risk for a blasted Nazi! Who the hell dreamed this one up, can you tell me that?’

  NOIC had shrugged. ‘It comes from high up, I believe, sir. But enough said — I can’t exceed my brief or my guts’ll go for garters.’

  ‘I’d like someone’s guts laid bare,’ Fellowes said in a voice like ice. ‘I’ll tell you one thing — I’ll be putting my representations to Their Lordships in very plain language once this is over. Too late, I know — but good for the blood pressure just to have it to look forward to!’

  II

  Kemp, who normally liked to take a ship’s company into his confidence when it was safe to do so, letting them know the risks and chances, knew that this time it would not be safe even if the orders for silence had not been so rigid. At any moment the convoy could come under attack, the Commodore’s ship could be sunk, conceivably some men could be picked up by a U-boat or a German destroyer — unlikely perhaps but the possibility couldn’t be disregarded — and they might be made to talk. The presence off Norway of the submarine must not become known. So nothing at all was said; even so, by some curious alchemy of ship life, it was known even before the Hardraw Falls had cleared away from Hvalfiord that something was in the wind and that this was no ordinary Russian convoy.

  As so often happened aboard ship, the source had been the Captain’s steward, a plump man named Torrence who reckoned he could tell from Theakston’s mood what the future held. Not just Theakston — any captain, and that included Commodore Kemp, upon whom also he was attending. Little bits of preoccupation, a show of irritation over trifles, the gesture of a hand and the expression of a face, they all told their story to Torrence, who was a great putter together of two and two.

  ‘Something up,’ he remarked to the chief steward in the latter’s office.

  Buckle cocked an eye at him. ‘Oh, yes, and what, may I ask?’

  ‘Don’t know that, not yet. But Kemp...he came back from the shore looking pretty sick. Had some nasty news I reckon, Chief.’ Torrence wiped the back of a hand across his nose. ‘Went on the bottle an’ all.’

  ‘Measured, did you?’

  ‘I always keeps a check.’

  Buckle nodded; it was a steward’s duty to see that an officer’s stock was kept up, not an onerous duty in the case of Captain Theakston, but Buckle also knew that Torrence was not above helping himself to the odd tot, a steward’s perks in Torrence’s view. He asked sardonically, ‘How much, eh?’

  ‘Not a lot, but enough, seeing as it was morning.’

  ‘Doesn’t signify...’

  ‘Not on its own, no, maybe not. But when the Old Man come out of Kemp’s cabin...well, he looked sick an’ all and got stuck into me just because there was a speck of dust on his desk. Relieving his feelings, like.’

  ‘So what’s your deduction, eh?’

  Torrence blew out his cheeks and looked like a pale pink balloon. ‘Dunno. Early to say. But if I might hazard a guess, like...I reckon Kemp was given word of the bloody Jerries being out in strength.’

  Buckle rubbed reflectively at his jaw and looked at Torrence through narrowed eyes. Torrence often had the buzz dead to rights and that was a fact not to be disregarded. A kind of clairvoyance, or more likely a big ear to the keyhole. Thoughts of the cargo beneath the hatches went through Buckle’s mind: they were all sitting on sudden death. You didn’t usually think much about it, you got used to it, and if you did think too much you’d go round the bend sharpish. You always hoped for the best, confident that it wasn’t you that was going to get it. All the same, it was human nature to be curious, which was why the buzz-mongers always had an avid audience. This time, Torrence’s buzz wasn’t all that much.

  Buckle said, ‘That wouldn’t be news, would it?’ He pursed his lips as a sudden thought struck. ‘Think it’s anything to do with that Yank?’

  ‘Cutler? Maybe it is but I dunno yet.’

  Torrence went about his business, which currently was seeing to Theakston’s and Kemp’s laundry, also Cutler’s: Torrence, accustomed to wait upon the master only, was now a busy man, as busy as the steward who attended on the other deck officers single-handed. Buckle sat on at his desk, staring at a calendar depicting a frozen-looking semi-nude girl against a backdrop of December snow with compliments of one of the ship’s suppliers. Buckle stared without seeing. That American. Canadian uniform, odd in itself. He knew Cutler wasn’t a Canadian: the Texas accent was unmistakable. For a period of his life Buckle had served in a tanker that made frequent use of the port of Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico and he’d known many Texans. So why an American — an American on the Commodore’s staff of all things?

  It could tie up.

  Some US angle, but what?

  Buckle felt a prickle of fear run up and down his spine: there was the tang of special operations, and such could mean extra danger. Special operations, and the destination Russia. Buckle, a divorced man who had not remarried, thought of his mother, a widow living alone in Bermondsey. If anything happened to him, it would be curtains for the old lady. He was her life, and now he was moving towards some US conspiracy with the Russians, and the States not yet even in the war themselves.

 
Not yet.

  The day was 7 December; and next morning’s BBC News brought the word to the Hardraw Falls and the world at large that the Japanese had shattered the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

  III

  ‘Bastards!’ Tex Cutler spoke through clenched teeth, his face white with shock. Two waves of aircraft, a total of forty torpedo-bombers, a hundred high-level bombers, a hundred and thirty dive-bombers, escorted by around eighty fighter aircraft. Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, California — all gone. The Tennessee and the Nevada had been put out of commission. That was the big stuff and it wasn’t the full tally. There were tears in Cutler’s eyes.

  Kemp put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m desperately sorry, Cutler.’

  ‘All those ships. Jesus, I lived for the Navy! If we’d gone into the war sooner, I’d have joined.’

  ‘And I’d have lost a good officer. I’m glad I didn’t, Cutler, very glad.’

  ‘So I’m glad you’re glad.’ Cutler spoke with an intense fierce-ness, staring unseeingly across the cold grey of the sea.

  Kemp said, ‘Go below to my cabin, Cutler. You’ll find whisky in the cupboard. Help yourself.’

  Cutler seemed to take a grip. He said, ‘Thanks, sir. I guess I feel like getting stewed.’

  ‘Don’t overdo it.’

  Cutler went below. In the Commodore’s cabin he found Torrence, who was polishing around. Torrence said, ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘The Commodore’s Scotch, and fast.’