A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

  ‘I’ll tell them, Mister McKenzie,’ Evans said. ‘If they find me that is. Right now you’d better remove those epaulettes of yours or you may have an opportunity to collect that receipt in person.’

  I had a nasty feeling we were going to need a formal receipt for the whole bloody ship before they were through, but I didn’t say anything. The Old Man took a final deep breath before, squaring his shoulders, marching erect towards the forward ladders. I moved to follow then suddenly wondered if anyone had told the amateur bodyguard outside the radio room to shove off.

  ‘I’ll nip below round by the radio shack, Sir. Just to check the after decks are clear.’

  The Captain nodded. ‘Aye, and we’ll have a good look forward as we go, John. The Chief and I will take number one boat away if you would be so good as to look after number three.’

  He disappeared down the ladder ahead of McKenzie while I hurried nervously aft along the boat deck. It was very quiet aboard Cyclops now. All I could hear was the faint hum of the main generators below: the only sound to dilute the cone of silence over Quintanilha de Almeida. Occasionally I could hear the squeak of oars from the starboard side and, once, a guttural shout from the hidden U-boat followed by a distant, and unmistakeable, metallic rattle.

  Then, insidiously, I became aware of another sound which seemed to go on and on with irregular persistence.

  I stopped just before I turned the corner of the radio room at the after end of the centrecastle. There it was again—a sort of tapping noise, vaguely familiar. What in God’s name was it? It was almost like a ... well, like a Morse key.

  A MORSE key? Oh, please ... no!

  It couldn’t be. Larabee had been ordered to sabotage the W.T. equipment, then abandon ship with the rest of the crew, and somehow I couldn’t convince myself that Sparks was of the hero mould.

  Yet someone was transmitting.

  And then, suddenly, I knew who it had to be ...!

  *

  With startling clarity it all fitted together ... Curtis! Our generally impassive Third Mate ... the one man who had left the bridge with ample time to lose himself until the rest of us had abandoned ship. The one man who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the right time, like on the afterdeck only minutes after our own bloody gun had obliterated Athenian’s W.T. room. I remembered the shocked surprise he'd displayed as we'd heeled under full helm to avoid the U-boat attack, and his strangely thoughtful mien when she vomited her crewmen into the slashing shells from Mallard and ourselves. I’d assumed, then, that he, like me, had been sickened by the carnage but, if he was a Hun sympathiser, he wouldn’t exactly have been waving a joyful Union Jack right then.

  ... If he was.

  And if he wasn’t? If he was putting out a genuine call for help, thinking that the rest of the crowd were already safe in the boats ...? Our transmitting so close to them must have had the U-boat's telegraphist clutching at his earphones in Teutonic agony. Aw Jesus, but I wished that all bloody gung-ho heroes could be locked up as soon as a war started .

  Flattening myself against the cold steel plates of the deck housing I sidled aft, towards its rounded corner and the radio room door. It was beginning to get dark fast now, that time of night when colours appear muted yet clear-cut, with every detail standing out sharply, like when you don a pair of Polaroids on a blindingly sunny day. I shivered suddenly and felt very exposed up there on the empty deck.

  The tap-tap-tapping continued and I became so stressed that I had to hesitate and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. The image of that bloody U-boat’s foredeck gun kept forming in my mind. Maybe it was already swinging on to the W.T. room. Maybe I was one half second away from a violent, exploding death. They must be picking up our signals and monitoring every word we sent. So why, in God’s name, hadn’t they already fired? I had to get away quickly, into the safety of the boats. Evans and the Chief must have left the ship by now and what was it that White Cap had promised? Any man found remaining aboard Cyclops would be shot immediately?

  It was then that the full enormity of the risk I was running hit me. I’d completely overlooked the fact that our irascible Chief Engineer had stayed behind. Evans and I hadn’t met him until we’d left the bridge. The U-boat commander had obviously thought there were only the two of us still aboard the last time he’d hailed us, and now they would have seen two men climbing down the boat ladders. They’d assume that Cyclops was already deserted, the boarding party could be on its way across this very minute. Jesus! Perhaps if I ran round to the starboard side and signalled, they’d realise it was all a mistake and let me ...?

  But then I finally registered what the Morse key on the other side of the W.T. room door was actually saying ...

  ... and forgot all about U-boats and Cyclops, and those Schmeissers under Kriegsmarine fork-tailed caps.

  *

  Subconsciously I suppose I’d been reading the key all the time, but it was only now that the full import of the transmission penetrated the cloud of fear fogging my mind. My hand hovered over the door handle while I stood for a brief space, staring out over the mortuary of our poop with our shredded Red Ensign still hanging lifelessly from its splintered staff, and listened to the deft professionalism of the operator’s keying. I was proficient at Morse, I’ve already said so, and it wasn’t difficult for me to pick up at least the basic text of that remote tapping—the last signal from M.V. Cyclops.

  S ... S ... S ... S ... MV CYCLOPS TO ALL SHIPS: URGENT RELAY TO ADMIRALTY: TORPEDOED AND SINKING ...

  What the hell? A plain language distress call, and the U-boat wasn’t even attempting to cut it short, even though she must be listening by now. And torpedoed ...?

  The deftly-keyed rattle continued ... POSITION P3215 - P0330: MASTER AND OFFICERS DEAD NO HOPE OF SAVING SHIP WE ARE ABANDONING ...

  I stood stock-still, brain reeling. What was this nonsense? We were neither torpedoed nor sinking. Most of the officers were still alive and safely boating on the unruffled calm of Quintanilha de Almeida under the morose eye of our allegedly-dead Captain Evans. And there was always hope of saving the ship—even if we were eventually torpedoed she would only sit upright on the bottom with her lower decks awash, so ...?

  ... which was when an ice cold hand reached from my bowels to claw at my gut. That position the still-anonymous operator was passing—it was several hundred miles to the north-west of this blood­stained circle of rocks!

  According to what I’d heard just then the Admiralty would now be assuming that we’d sunk in the deep waters of the open Atlantic many miles away from our real location? But they already knew we were heading for Quintanilha. Damn it, they bloody told us to come here themselves ...

  The key rattled briefly again as I gathered myself, depressing the handle cautiously. ALL SHIPS ALL SHIPS URGENT ... FORWARD BULKHEADS GIVEN WAY ... WE ARE GOING NOW GOOD-BYE TRANSMISSION ENDS ...

  And it did, too, as I wrenched the door open and slammed into the equipment-packed cabin fast. Almost fast enough to beat the gun that was snatched from the operator’s table by a worryingly steady hand. It was only a little gun really, but, pointed at me the way it was right then, it looked as big as that 4.1-inch on the German’s casing.

  Whereupon I further discovered that my latest - and I still argue, entirely logical - conclusion that only 3/O Curtis could possibly be our on-board Fifth Columnist, had been a little premature after all.

  ... because Larabee smiled quite nicely and said, ‘You shouldn’t be here, Mate. This boat’s just gone and sunk.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  At first I'd just stared at the Second Sparks, feeling the cabin starting to spin while watching the black hole in the blued gun-barrel gaping wider and wider while, behind it, the trigger finger slowly whitened as it took up first pressure.

  Almost pleadingly my voice forced its way from somewhere deep down in a sandpaper throat.

  ‘Wha ... what was that message you just sent, Larabee? And why the gun? Why, f'r that matter, aren’t you
down with the rest of the crowd in the boats?’

  The smile hardened a bit, but, with sick relief, I saw the finger relax fractionally and turn pink again as the blood pumped back into it. The trouble was, it still didn’t waver one millimetre.

  ‘’Cause I don’t think it’s a very good idea to go yachting right now, Kent.’

  ‘It’s a bloody sight better than sitting here till some Nazi hood blows the back of your head off with a Luger. But that signal you were transmitting - why, Larabee? This ship isn’t sinking, not yet, and certainly not in the position you gave.’

  He shrugged but the movement didn’t travel as far as the pistol in his hand.

  ‘I know that, and you know that, Mate ... but the Admiralty - they don’t know any different. As far as they’re concerned, Cyclops has just gone down in two miles of water a long way from here. They should be sending out the next-of-kin telegrams any time now.’

  I leaned back against the door and tried to catch up. The whole situation seemed sheer lunacy but I had a horrible awareness that it wasn’t—that everything that had happened was part of a sane, calculated operation, and that the planners weren’t British either. I stepped forward forgetfully and the gun lifted warningly,

  ‘You’re a bloody Nazi, aren't you? You’re a German agent!’

  He nodded and, just for a moment, a wry, almost wistful smile softened the corner of his mouth. ‘Been a sleeper on your British Merchant Navy's Marconi list for years, waiting to be activated on the Füehrer's order. Or do you claim it’s only the Union Jack that can stir a man to be a patriot, Mister Mate?’

  Inconsequentially I noticed that his tone was different, more precise, and I felt the rage surge within me. He’d fooled me all along the line—bluff and counter-bluff: all those times I’d seen him as too obnoxious to be anything other than genuine—and now he was still ahead, both he and his Teutonic oppos out there. I started to shake with a barely controllable hatred.

  ‘No, you’re just a bastard posing as a shipmate, Larabee,’ I grated. ‘You never had a country. You were spawned in some deep pool of filth ...’

  His trigger finger started to go white again and self­-preservation stemmed my flow of invective. Suddenly he looked very grim and sure of himself, not at all like the whining, ineffectual little man of a few hours before. I saw that he wasn’t even thin and fragile any more—he was lean and tough—because he didn’t have to play a part now.

  And he intended to kill me.

  The gun barrel lowered fractionally until it lined up neatly with my belt buckle and I felt my nails dig deep into the palms of my hands in terror-struck incredulity that this was actually happening to me, John Kent, common or garden sailorman.

  As if from a long way away I heard myself sobbing something—anything—to try and make him let me cling on to life just a little longer. ‘This whole voyage plan was a set-up, wasn’t it, Larabee? We were meant to come here right from the start. Those Goddam U-boats have been waiting for us, not following us.’

  The old sardonic expression flickered back momentarily. ‘What does it matter to you, Kent? You’re dead anyway.’

  I ignored the sweat running into my eyes. I had to keep his attention. Through the port the setting sun looked unutterably precious.

  ‘Wasn’t it, Larabee?’ I urged, not daring to move a muscle in case I triggered him, and that bloody automatic, off.

  He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘You took a lot of convincing. It needed that signal from our mutual friend Rear Admiral Tryst to bring you here, even then.’

  I stared at him again. It was getting to be a habit—staring vacantly, I mean. ‘How do you know who sent that Admiralty signal, Larabee? It was in code ...'

  My voice trailed off as I finally understood the full story. All those previous, seemingly-unconnected incidents suddenly meshed together—Foley’s lonely death, the incinerated Athenian operators, Larabee remaining as the only surviving operator in the group. God, we’d even helped them ourselves by disposing of Mallard after their own torpedoes had failed to.

  He smiled, just a little too impatiently for my screaming nerves. ‘I should know what was in that signal, Kent—I wrote it in the first place.’

  ‘And the Captain’s original request for instructions from the Admiralty?’ I growled, already knowing the answer.

  He gave it anyway. ‘... was never transmitted. So far as your Royal Navy are concerned, this ship is now lying on the bottom a long way from here.’

  ‘But that means you must already have our naval codes, man. You needed them to encrypt that fake signal from Tryst.’

  He nodded, a little more absently. I formed the impression that he was waiting for something to happen. But then, so was I. When he spoke again I knew he didn’t intend to leave me in anticipation for very much longer.

  ‘We’ve had your current Mership control codes for a long time, Kent. We’re winning this war hands down. A lot of your Allied tonnage has already been sunk, it’s not always possible for their masters to ditch their confidential bags when they’re boarded. No, it’s the replacement ones we want now ... the ones carried forr'ad in the strong-room.’

  He half-turned, almost as if he were listening for something outside again, then the dispassionate eyes switched bleakly back to me. ‘I’m sorry, Kent,’ he muttered, ‘but you really died before you passed the Formby Light. The Kent Star message, those fairy lights that shepherded you south—all put out by our U-boat flotilla out there. Though like I say: the 'whys' and 'wherefores' are all somewhat academic now ...’

  The gun in his hand started to twist slightly along the axis of its barrel as he increased the trigger pressure - until I could see was that little black hole that got bigger and bigger by the milli-second.

  ‘Christ, man, there’s a Geneva CONVENTION!’ I screamed, ‘I’m a prisoner of war ...’

  His face was as bloodless as his trigger finger. Maybe even a fanatic finds it hard to kill a man in cold blood from a few feet away. But he was having a good try at overcoming his distaste. The last few ounces of trigger pressure were being used up as a nervous tic dragged the corner of his thin mouth down in a wry grimace.

  ‘Mallard had the same problem, Mate,’ he muttered. ‘Her orders said “No survivors” too ...’

  The shot sounded very loud in such a confined space.

  *

  I still don’t really know what happened during my allocated seconds of killing time, largely because I'd screwed my eyes up tight and just launched towards him in a sort of airborne foetal position. I felt the white-hot smash of the round sear my shoulder, then we went down together in a welter of flailing limbs and curses.

  The tough, bucko mate inside me grinned savagely as I saw the gun skitter across the compo deck towards the door—then something hard hit me in the face and my eyes stung from the ductile tears that prevented me from seeing anything at all.

  Larabee’s foot came up into my unprotected groin and I heard myself shriek in agony while the bucko mate image disintegrated in an oblivion of pain. I felt my already-abused finger nails split as I scrabbled at the edge of the operator’s table, trying to haul myself erect while Larabee mouthed unfamiliar, guttural imprecations as he swung the heavy chair at my head.

  Frantically I ducked and felt shards of splintered glass dials lodge in my hair as the front of the gleaming grey transmitter caved in and the blue flashes of abruptly shorted H.T. circuits gave place to the sickly stench of crisping insulation.

  Any last ideas I had about actually hitting Larabee disappeared when his deck shoe caught me under the chin. I went down on my knees thinking what a bloody splendid job the Nazis did in training their agents for every contingency, then I was being sick and watching dully as Larabee snatched up the vagrant gun and backed towards the door.

  This time I just closed my eyes and waited. I couldn’t even tense my stomach muscles in anticipation ...

  *

  On reflection it was probably the curious choking noise Larabee was
making that finally dragged my eyelids open again - only to freeze wide in an uncomprehending idiot’s stare at the sight of the Second Wireless Operator pinned to the wooden door frame by an evilly curved and very rusty cargo billy-hook that someone had driven cleanly through his shoulder blade and muscles.

  And at a white-faced Third Officer Curtis, who was gazing with a look of almost frightened anticipation for my immediate reaction to this most curious phenomenon.

  ‘I heard Sparks yelling in German, Sir,’ he explained apprehensively: almost apologetically. ‘so I thought I’d better help.’

  Then Larabee started to scream in a thin, high-pitched key like an animal caught in a trap, while all the time he was fluttering on the hook the way a butterfly does when a kid sticks a pin through it. Considerately Curtis slammed him across the face with a length of four by three and I heard his nose and cheekbones disintegrate along with his consciousness.

  I groaned, ‘Thank you, Mister Curtis,’ with feeling, and watched while the Third Mate was being sick in the scuppers, which showed that he was just like me really, and that I’d been as wrong about him as I had about Larabee.

  ... until the silence of Quintanilha de Almeida was shattered by the sickening rattle of the U-boat’s Spandau machine-gun opening up, followed immediately by the measured pom ... pom ... POM of her twin-cannons, supported by the intermittent crackle of small-arms fire.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  For perhaps three million years I stood there, frozen in horror while I waited for the shells to come pumping and ripping through the wireless room bulkheads, cremating and smearing us all to an unrecognisable pulp.

  Then, gradually, I realised the shells weren’t going to arrive and, with a different kind of appalled fear, I knew what was happening out there on the sunlit water. I forgot the still suspended Larabee and clawed my way brutally past him, stumbling on the low coaming.

  Curtis’s eyes were huge with shock. ‘Jesus!’ he screamed. ‘The boats! They’re shooting up the bloody boats.’