There were hamlets and fishing villages on small indentations and coves along the gulf’s northern shore, and several of them had been in Bolshevik hands in recent weeks. Some would be now. Temporary bases of a kind a mine-sowing operation might be run from, for instance. And quite a large place further west, right at the entrance to the gulf, small town called Mariupol that even had a single branch-line of the railway connecting to it – and deep water, so access from the sea would pose no problems – Mariupol had changed hands three times in a month. Which was why he and Everard – and Hackett, the cruiser’s navigator, before that – had rejected it as a possible landing place. That railway line would be highly insecure, in any case – even if it was still intact. But from there or any of the coastal villages these boats could have come.
Carrying what? Mines – a raiding party – supplies to Bolshevik partisans?
They were launches, was all one could say for sure. The second of them passing ahead now – a low, dark shape that wouldn’t have been detectable at all if it hadn’t been for the fringe of white around its stem. But – it was audibly detectable, suddenly, a mutter of diesel propulsion coming softly but clearly on the wind. And that smell – diesel exhaust, for sure. Hadn’t either heard or smelt the first one: had been too startled at that stage, perhaps, hadn’t settled to it…
Granger was right, of course, they could be friendly. Whites engaged in some clandestine operation or patrolling to intercept some expected Bolshevik intrusion.
But wouldn’t they have been keeping a better lookout, then?
Seconds crawling by. Thinking, Better safe than sorry, anyway. Bearing in mind the local tendency to let rip and answer no questions afterwards: as demonstrated so recently by the one-eyed Grusjenko, giggling behind that gun…
‘Port side – one stroke, lads!’
Bob spoke for the first time in several minutes: ‘Reckon we’ve seen the last of them. Agree, Sub?’
‘Yes… But – crikey, good thing you had your eyes peeled, sir!’
‘May as well push on, uh?’
They’d been lying stopped for something like ten minutes. So if Cruickshank had been right about the half-knot tidal set, the boat would have been carried westward about one sixth of a thousand yards – for a round figure, say 150 yards.
It wasn’t worth mentioning, he decided – having thought it over as they got under way again. Navigation wasn’t going to be all that accurate tonight in any case, and adjusting for this would – if he was right – only be compounding Cruickshank’s error. He still believed that the seasonal factor – rivers iced-up, their outflow thus either reduced or stopped completely – should have been taken into account. In other words, that there’d be no such current. And when after a few more minutes he sighted the rock he knew he’d been right. Not that any great feat of genius had been involved…
The rock was dead ahead, if anything a degree or two to port. Breaking seas were spouting vertically as they smashed across it: undoubtedly a rock, not anything that floated.
‘Sub – rock, right ahead – cable’s length—’
‘Oars!’ Hayes hadn’t waited for an order. Bob finished, to Granger, ‘Come thirty degrees to port, if I were you.’
Helm over… ‘Cherry-packer?’
‘No other, is there?’
‘Give way, starboard…’
To help her round. The three starboard oars swung forward, dipped raggedly… Granger shouted, ‘Must have reckoned a bit wrong somewhere – strength of the set, or—’
‘Yes.’
The sub-lieutenant hadn’t been present when Bob and Cruickshank had had their disagreement. But remembering Everard’s later comment – ‘You’d be missing your landfall altogether’ – well, they would have. As it had turned out, all was well, but if Cruickshank’s estimate had been of a whole knot, say – which wouldn’t have been all that much more serious a misjudgement – in this low visibility they’d have seen neither that rock nor the point of land, they’d have gone plugging on and finished up plain lost.
Hayes peered into the compass. ‘North thirty west, sir?’
‘Steer thirty-five west.’ Granger yelled at Bob. ‘Bit of a dog’s leg, I’m afraid. Sorry, sir.’
‘Not your fault.’ Shouting across the wind… ‘Take it into account going back though, won’t you? Assume there’s no set, your course will be – what, south twenty east?’
The wind was from over the starboard bow, on this new course, but within about ten minutes there was much less of it and less movement on the sea. Getting into some shelter from the land, of course – and the oarsmen’s job a lot easier for it. The so-called Cherry-packer, he remembered, was about 1,500 yards offshore; so now, slanting in as they were after that alteration, you could reckon on having about a mile to go.
If there were any lights on the Taganrog shoreline, in fact, they ought to be visible pretty soon. Searching for some, he used a semi-frozen fingertip to wipe salt out of his eyes. Thinking that the pull back to the ship, with the wind astern, would be a much quicker trip than this had been. Not only the wind – they’d be steering the correct course, instead of two sides of a triangle – and in the final stages they’d have Terrapin’s searchlight to guide them in. All adding up to the conclusion that young Everard, owing no thanks to his navigating officer, instead of having to waste the pre-dawn hours searching for this whaler would stand a good chance of getting to the church on time.
Lucky beggar.
Or was he? He certainly thought he was. And he’d resented the suggestion that he might be marrying his countess primarily to save her neck. But what about her motives?
Everard wouldn’t have any doubts at all. Being in love, and therefore blind… But suppose she was not anything like in love. Only in fear. Being trapped there, and knowing how Bolsheviks treated people of her kind when they got their hands on them… Could anyone blame her if she’d snatched at the one and only chance? In fact – wouldn’t you be ready to marry her yourself, without any element or even pretence of love, if the alternative was leaving her to that?
Remembering the scene in a country house at a place called Enotayevsk, ancestral home of the Solovyevs. A line of ropes dangling from the gallery, their lower ends dark and stiff with human blood: and Nadia, for God’s sake—
Granger’s shout pulled him out of it: ‘Lights to starboard, sir!’
Half-rising – one hand grasping the gunwale as insurance, the other shielding his eyes against the wet… Seeing them at once – three pinpoints of light, flickery like stars on a night with hazy cloud. And above, beyond them, a vague lightening in the sky – dome-shaped, reflection of a town’s lights and fires in the low, oppressive overhead. Taganrog, like Sevastopol, evidently had generators that still functioned.
Sitting again, he could still see the lights. A line of them – they’d be along the waterfront, of course.
‘Steer for the middle, Sub. Until we see what’s what.’
There’d be some kind of challenge soon. With things as they were, Bolshevik pressure and infiltration, the quays would hardly be left unguarded. This place with its railway yards on such a strategically important route – main access route to the Caucasus, no less – would be a prime target for the Reds.
The whaler was on course for those lights. Water almost calm, making the rowing a lot easier. Well, you were in a bay, of sorts. The five crewmen were working in perfect unison, regatta-style, the stroke precisely synchronized and the oarsmen’s elbows – in the time-worn pulling instructors’ idiom – ‘polishing their ribs’… Sleet still heavy, though, maybe more so than it had been. It would be the sleet that had created the flickering effect – which was already a thing of the past, the lights’ glow now steady although weak enough. Seven or eight of them: and – he realized what he’d been staring at – in silhouette against the right-hand section, the skeletal outline of a dockside crane.
Programme, now – now that one might begin to think further than the coastline… One, get
ashore – preferably without being shot at. Two, get through the town to the railway station. Then – well, trust to luck… But the railway junction and yards were shown clearly on the chart as being on the town’s north side, inland of the built-up area and about two miles from the docks.
‘Hey—’
Incredibly white light, as it were jumping out of the darkness – flaring out, a white beam growing out across ruffled, still white-streaked water, the beam scything round towards them then seeming to intensify as it settled on the boat and held it.
So they were on their toes all right, ashore there. Next thing – any moment – they’d open fire.
And why not – in their shoes? Why take chances?
‘Keep going. Keep going…’
He stood up, feet well apart for balance, spread both arms up above his head – gesture of surrender, peaceful intentions, whatever – then on second thoughts took off his cap and began to wave it. Balancing to the whaler’s plunging motion, and completely blinded – Hayes meanwhile growling encouragement to his crew, the oars sweeping steadily to and fro, spray from the lifting blades flying like drops of silver in the searchlight’s beam; he was hoping to God they didn’t have any Grusjenkos here.
5
Terrapin lay head to wind, tugging at her chain cable, the blanket of sleet enclosing her and restricting visibility range to no more than a hundred years. Nick Everard – on the bridge at this moment, while his navigator and first lieutenant had their heads down – reluctantly admitted to himself that it was quite a bit thicker than it had been, and was glad he’d thought of using the searchlight as a beacon. Not yet: he didn’t want to advertise his ship’s position to all and sundry before he had to. But there was no doubt of it, this muck was coming down a lot faster than it had been when the whaler had pushed off into it, and even with the searchlight to help him young Granger had better be steering pretty fine.
One knew, from personal experience, how tricky it could be, finding one’s ship from a small boat in foul weather. At Scapa, this had been, in thick fog, when he’d been a midshipman in charge of a battleship’s steam picket-boat, with a five- or six-mile journey across the Flow to the anchored dreadnought – which he’d hated, loathing everything about the Navy at that stage, and had loathed even more after he’d made a hash of finding her and then been physically beaten and put ‘under report’ for what the ship’s commander had called ‘sheer bloody-minded incompetence’.
Jutland had changed everything. Hundreds of times since that last day of May and first of June 1916, he’d thanked God for Jutland.
‘Closing in on us, sir.’ McKendrick – gunnery officer, Australian-born and still sounding like it – had come to stand beside him. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’
He grunted. Not much wanting to say anything at all about it, at this stage.
‘Boat’ll be about inshore by now, I suppose.’
‘Well. Hardly…’ Moving to the binnacle, stooping to use its light to check the time by his pocket-watch, but glancing sideways as some newcomer arrived in the bridge.
‘Captain, sir?’
‘Why aren’t you asleep, Pilot?’
‘I was, sir – until this cypher came in.’ Cruickshank was signals officer as well as navigator. ‘PO telegraphist saw fit to have me shaken to decode it. Net result being…’
He’d broken off to yawn.
‘Being?’
Impatience sprang from sudden dread – of an emergency of some kind, orders to proceed elsewhere than to Theodosia… Cruickshank muttering, ‘It’s by no means good news, sir…’ Bent double now, close to the binnacle’s glow, stooped over like that not only to get close to the light but also to keep the signal dry. Everard told him – having to control the impatience – ‘Look, that’s no good. Bring it down to the chartroom.’
Thinking, on the way down one level – all right, not good news… But Cruickshank didn’t know the underlying purpose of the Theodosia call. Nobody did – not even Harriman, who was going to be Best Man, if the Orthodox ritual called for one. And being thus unaware of the vital importance of putting in there, why should Cruickshank see a diversion from it as ‘not good’?
So – something else – please God…
Switching on the chart-table light, he snatched the sheet of signal-paper from this constantly yawning navigator, and leant over under the light to read it.
TERRAPIN FOR LT.CDR.COWAN: FROM SO(I) CONSTANTINOPLE
KHARKOV FRONT HAS BEEN OVERRUN, VOLUNTEER ARMY ATTEMPTING WITHDRAWAL BUT UNDER THREAT OF ENCIRCLEMENT BY RED CAVALRY. IN THESE HIGHLY ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES THE CHANCES OF SUCCEEDING IN YOUR MISSION ARE SEEN AS INCOMMENSURATE WITH RISK. YOUR ORDERS ARE THEREFORE CANCELLED AND YOU ARE TO REMAIN IN TERRAPIN FOR PASSAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE.
He put the flimsy pink sheet down on the chart, asked himself as much as Cruickshank, ‘What the blazes am I supposed to do about that?’
‘They can’t have known our programme, sir… I suppose Caledonian—’
‘Yes. Temple must’ve…’ His voice tailed off. It was a fact that he’d deliberately left his timetable rather open when drafting the signal which Captain Fellows had sent to Constantinople, so as to leave himself as much latitude as possible. Partly with the Theodosia call in mind. Although Temple would have made his own calculations, surely… There again, one could imagine the SO(I) bunging out this signal within minutes of receiving that intelligence – just on the off-chance of getting it through in time.
‘Anyway –’ Cruickshank had re-read the message, put it down again – ‘there’s no way we could get him back now. Well, obviously… But in the strategic sense it’s rather frightening news, sir – wouldn’t you say?’
‘Disastrous’ might have been a better adjective. It signalled, as likely as not, the beginning of the end of the counter-revolution. Further proof, incidentally, of how well that fellow Trotsky had transformed his Red Army, which a year ago had been a hopeless rabble, into an effective fighting force. While by and large the Whites, despite heady interludes of glory, had never been anything but a rabble. Poor devils…
Cowan, though: whether there’d be any point in sending someone after him in the hope of catching him before he got on a train: whether the chances of doing that might be regarded as ‘commensurate with risk’…
Send McKendrick, perhaps. Put a fresh crew in the whaler when it got back…
No. Too damn late. There was no guessing how long it might be before it did get back, then that long trip again – and in deteriorating conditions. Not to mention the certainty of Terrapin being stuck in this gulf until well after daylight: which was unacceptable. So – no question – you had to leave Cowan to take his chances.
Having already decided to leave his governesses to take theirs. But that had been Staff Officer (Intelligence) Constantinople’s decision, thank God, not one’s own.
He glanced at his watch. Remembering Cowan telling him, ‘I’m a big lad, I can look after myself’.
The devil, he could: he’d bloody have to… But another recollection, sparked by images thrown into his mind by Temple’s signal, thoughts of defeat and evacuation, as of the scene at Odessa last April when the French were pulling out. He’d been there in Terrapin, had packed as many refugees into her as she could carry without turning turtle, and brought them to Sevastopol; but he knew that as long as he lived the visual memories of that day and night would haunt him: jetties still crowded with doomed men, women and children as the ships drew off, full well beyond their capacity – and British sailors, seasoned by years of war, in tears as they handled the ropes and wires.
Novorossisk, he thought, might before long see a replay of those scenes. Sevastopol, too. And – Theodosia. This was no nightmare, either, no product of exhaustion or fevered imagination: it was reality, even probability…
‘Sir?’
Back to earth: to Cruickshank waiting with a pencil poised.
‘Ah. Yes…’ He checked the time again, then dictated: ‘To SO(I) Constantinople
, from Terrapin. Your – what – ever time of origin’s on his signal – received at – the time it came in. Fullstop. Regretfully have to submit that Lieutenant-Commander Cowan landed at Taganrog at – the time the whaler left the ship. Encypher that now, but it’s not to go out until Granger’s back and we know Cowan did land. Understood?’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Still scribbling: hearing Everard mutter to himself as he started back up to the bridge, ‘Better light ourselves up, meanwhile.’
* * *
‘Oh, crikey, I’m damn sorry you’ve had this wait, sir!’
Some sort of motor had pulled up outside the shed, there’d been a shout in pidgin-Russian of ‘Keep her running – dva minuta!’ and now this boyish, pink-faced lieutenant – Bob focused on the cap-badge identifying it as that of the Royal Fusiliers – had come bursting in, pushing past the Russian sentry at the door, while the other Russian got to his feet. Bob stood up too – there were only two chairs, on which he and the older of his two guards had been sitting with the coal-burning brazier between them.
‘You are Commander Cowan – sir?’
He admitted it.
‘Tinsdale, sir. From our military mission.’ He’d halted, snapped off one of those quivery military salutes, and was now ready to shake hands. Pink-faced, blue-eyed, fair hair visible under the edges of the cap. Rather large ears… ‘I’m frightfully sorry you’ve been stuck here such an age, sir. Fact is, we were told you’d be arriving sometime around dawn. So I’d turned in, and—’
‘You had a signal about me?’
‘Landline from Novorossisk. Communications aren’t all that marvellous at the moment, but from Rostov and Novorossisk the lines are still open – and just as well – but…’
Rattling on… Bob concluding that Fellows – no, Temple, presumably – must have sent a message to be relayed from one of the ships at Novorossisk, without having done his homework properly. In point of fact there was no harm done, he hadn’t expected to have anyone here to meet him anyway… Tinsdale, still on the subject of telephones and telegraphs, was saying that there was no communications link at all from here northward. Kharkov, in particular, was as dead as a doornail. Might seem a bit ominous – what? Then, no doubt remembering that Kharkov was where this fellow wanted to go, he added that the telegraph lines up that way had been out of action several times before but had always returned to working order when someone eventually got round to doing something about it, so with any luck the present disruption mightn’t last long either.
Look to the Wolves Page 7
