‘In tow of what?’
‘Zoroaster. She’s due to sail about 6 pm tomorrow, to relieve Allaverdi on patrol. So if you push off at about seven – an economical speed being twenty knots, you said – you could rendezvous with her off the end of the peninsula – well, off Zhiloy island – say, 9 pm. Allowing her fifteen knots, that is. Better than sailing from here in company – broad daylight and the locals’ eyes on you – especially if some Bolshevik agent knew a certain passenger had embarked. It’s no secret Zoroaster’ll be heading north, it’s a routine change-over; a clever spy might put two and two together.’
‘Do the Bolshies have clever spies?’
‘The Germans do. Plenty of their agents about. The Dictatorship may think they’ve locked ’em all up, but…’ He shrugged. ‘And they’re hand-in-glove with the Bolsheviks, aren’t they? Anyway, our mystery man will be on board, and so will I. You’ll make the rendezvous and pick up the tow, and transfer yourself to Zoroaster, while Willoughby takes your place. Or you could all pack in from the start, of course – save a bit of trouble. But the idea is to have those others crew the CMB as long as she’s in tow. With the spare MM too – if you need a mechanic on board at all when she’s in tow – d’you reckon?’
‘Safer. Tow might part – boat lost – pitch dark, foul weather…’
All right. So you’ll put Keane on board too. But you see, by making the trip in comfort you won’t be played out when the time comes to make the run inshore. You and I and McNaught, plus the passenger, will swap round with the other three for that on the following night. And your passage crew get a square meal and a sleep while we’re away.’
‘I’ll make one guess, Bob. Man we’re landing’s a Russian. Am I right?’
Glancing at him. It was so obvious: but he plainly did think he was being clever… ‘Think so, do you?’
‘Well – after all – why else would you need to come along?’
He wagged his head. ‘Brilliant, Johnny.’
It had been Count Solovyev’s suggestion, that he should be able to communicate with the crew of whatever craft was running him in to the coast, right up to the moment of landing. There could be some snag or change of plan, reason to switch to some other landing place, for instance. Or a last-minute message to send back. And as he spoke no English other than ‘How are you today?’, and neither Pope nor Henderson had any Russian other than Za vashi zdorovye – which in this Caspian flotilla had largely replaced such phrases as ‘Down the hatch’ or ‘God bless us’ – an interpreter was obviously a must.
They’d turned back towards the boat now. Bob explaining, ‘As for the pick-up – well, we’ve a bit of time yet for agreeing the details, but the best thing might be if Allaverdi stays with the patrol until we’ve put our man ashore and returned, then you and I embark in her, she takes the CMB in tow – with Henderson and Willoughby on the job again – and we steam back here. I’d thought of Petrovsk, earlier on, as it’s so much closer, but most of the Russian flotilla’s there now, could be a security risk. Anyway, from here we’d go up north again just the same way, with whichever of the flotilla’s rejoining the patrol a week later.’
‘Your man’s going to take about a week, is he, doing whatever it is he’s doing?’
‘Could be longer. That second time, we may have to stay with the patrol, make a trip inshore every second day or so.’
‘You’d better pray for your flat calm, then. I can tell you a CMB is neither designed nor in the least suited to long periods at sea. No, Bob…’
‘Might have to hoist her inboard, then.’ He thought about it – which ships had heavy lifts, which didn’t… ‘It’s a good point, thank you.’ He raised his voice. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Chris.’
Chris Henderson, Sub-Lieutenant, touched his hat to them as they joined him. ‘Secrets of State?’
‘Wouldn’t you know it.’ Pope waved Bob ahead of him to the ladder. ‘Age before beauty…’
They had the bow and stern lines rigged so that they could be cast off from down on the CMB, and Pope’s mechanic already had the 340-horsepower engine ticking over, the deep throbbing of its exhaust pulsing across the quiet water. Bob climbed down the vertical iron ladder, stepped off it on to the boat’s narrow side-decking and thence into the cockpit, where he crouched to peer in through the hatchway – in the cockpit’s forward bulkhead, the engine-space being in the midships section of the boat – to say hello to the artificer. They already knew each other, of course: there was no one in the flotilla he didn’t know, after the shared exertions of that overland haul from Basra.
‘Zero’ McNaught – hunched, craggy-faced, brilliantly blue eyes blazing in a lean, tanned face – was squatting on his wooden seat. An eyebrow rose: ‘Com’n’ out for a spin, sir?’
He nodded. ‘Thought I should put in a bit of sea-time, you know.’
‘Aye… Sir – if you don’t mind me asking – seeing as you might be in the know – is it true what they say, there’s another six or twelve boats as’ll be wi’ us soon?’
It was true that there was such an intention – to give the flotilla a full set of sharp teeth, to counter the Bolsheviks’ growing naval strength at Astrakhan. But those CMBs were in the Black Sea, waiting to be railed overland from Batoum to Baku when or if this Azerbaijani end of the railway could be secured against the Turks.
Not that any such development seemed exactly imminent, the way things had been going lately; rather the reverse, in fact. Bob confirmed, ‘The boats are ear-marked for us, I gather. It’s getting ’em here is the snag.’
McNaught and these others would be glad to have other CMB men here. They were a close-knit lot, many of them having served together in other theatres – notably in the Channel, out of Dover and Harwich. And Bob was quite used to seagoing officers and men asking him such questions; they knew that his interpreter’s job made him privy to a lot of restricted information.
He was under instruction now, though. Pope telling him, ‘Torpedo firing gear here, Bob. I know we won’t be taking the fish with us, but I might as well give you a proper education…’
* * *
They stayed out at sea for about an hour and a half, in the lee of the peninsula, in a sea that was choppy despite that shelter, and he learnt to handle the boat reasonably well. The point of doing so being that as he’d be taking Henderson’s place later on, he should be able to do his share of the work. In fact since accidents can happen, especially on dark nights in unfamiliar waters in high-speed boats, he had to be capable of taking over, at a pinch, even if necessary of bringing the CMB back on his own. Pope, he guessed, would be taking this fact of life for granted.
‘Want to take her in now, Bob?’
‘All right…’
‘Just remember the engine can’t be put astern. So if you’re travelling too fast there’s no way to slow her, your only hope is to have room to go round in circles while the way comes off her.’
He thought about it – about piling the CMB into some jetty, wrecking not only the boat but also their best way of putting Solovyev down on that coastline – and stood back from the wheel. ‘Show us how, Johnny…’
He was ashore in time to be only a few minutes late for his next appointment – with the flotilla navigating officer, in President Kruger’s charthouse at noon. The Commodore wouldn’t have approved the navigational aspects of the plans without Lieutenant-Commander Snaith’s imprimatur on them, and in any case Bob wanted the benefit of his advice in regard to that north coast, the local so-called ‘charts’ being notoriously unreliable.
Snaith, like Bob, was RNR, formerly a Merchant Navy officer. Red-faced over a pepper-and-salt beard, and with the reputation of having drunk a bunch of Cossack officers under the table – drinking vodka, their own tipple, at that… He listened to Bob’s outline of the plan, glanced at some notes he’d made, and shrugged. ‘You’re on a hiding to nothing, of course.’
‘D’you think so?’
‘For instance – we haven’t a n
otion which channels are open, dredged or silted. Or the depths in any of ’em, or what kind of defences there may be – or where – guardships, offshore patrols…’
Bob said – stonewalling, rather – ‘Just have to feel our way in. Slowly and quietly. The CMB’s silhouette being as low as it is—’
‘Quietly?’ Snaith jeered. ‘They sound like aeroplanes, those things! But anyway, d’you have some reason to think the eastern edge of the delta is a better bet than elsewhere?’
The mouths of the Volga extend over an east-west breadth of about eighty miles. A mass of channels and winding waterways, islands, lakes and swamps. The town of Astrakhan is at the delta’s apex, more or less, some forty miles in from the open sea.
Bob said, answering Snaith’s question, ‘Only that it’s the farthest from Astrakhan and the wider channels – which I’d have guessed might be the most heavily used and therefore guarded. And might they not be using these anchorages in the north-west corner? Unless the water’s too shallow, of course…’
‘Float a rowing-boat, nothing much bigger.’
‘Ah. Well… But another point is that our man’s got to make his way up-river. Way up, well north of Astrakhan. If we put him ashore in this area he’d have this vast area of water to get round. Add miles to his route.’
‘That’s a valid point.’ Snaith stroked his beard. ‘You know what’s to be done ashore, I don’t… But look here, now – as regards the eastern flank – we’ve heard of military activity in that area. Two Bolshevik armies, we’re told, starting a deployment eastward to attack Guriev – here – presumably not before next spring because it’s slow going. They’re moving their stores in barges in tow of tugs, and the coast’ll be iced-up solid before they’re more than halfway. And if that is the case, you might well run into covering naval forces – torpedo boats or TBDs, for instance. The tugs might be armed, for that matter.’
It was worth being forewarned, obviously. But you could as well spin a coin, Bob thought, or shut your eyes and stab with the point of a pencil – there’d be uncertainties and risks whatever bit of coast one picked on, and Snaith’s comments were so vague that it was obvious he was to some extent guessing. Also, there was the consideration of Solovyev’s convenience – his route, and the distance he’d have to cover. It was a fact that the easier you could make it for him, the easier it would be for everyone else as well, the shorter the odds against success.
The odds were against it. In all the circumstances – especially after this length of time – they had to be. And meanwhile, here and now, time was leaking away: Bob had arranged to meet Solovyev at the Dunsterforce headquarters mess for lunch, and to report progress to the Commodore soon after.
‘Unless you’d actually disagree, sir, I’d imagine the best place might be about – here. We’d be running in from the eastern end of the patrol line – hereabouts – so we’d have Ukatni island as a mark on our way in. Then we’d slip in here, between these islands, and put him in his skiff about – well, here. Subject to how it looks when we get in there, of course. Then it’d be up to him how far he can get by water from there on. But he’d have dry land to the east – even a road to follow. And – here, the railway – if he can make use of it. I don’t know, I’ll ask him… But I’d creep in there very cautiously, watching for guardships, tugs etcetera, and if it didn’t look too good we could sheer off to starboard, try again farther east.’
They settled on this, largely for the sake of having an outline plan on paper for the Commodore to approve. It could always be changed in detail later. Bob committed it to a signal-pad, in pencil and in note form, with a carbon under the top sheet, and Snaith appended his initials to both copies.
The blind leading the blind, Bob thought, heading up into town under the blinding midday sun. The truck wasn’t in its usual place, unfortunately: so it was to be Shanks’s pony all the way and he was going to be late getting to the headquarters. Sweating, carrying his cap because sunstroke seemed preferable to its weight and the clammy warmth of its leather headband. Running over in his mind as he hurried through the dockyard the things that would need to be done once this plan was approved. The CMB’s torpedo to be landed, and a skiff of suitable size and weight to be found and requisitioned. Also – something he’d thought of during the session with Snaith – suggest to Pope that after landing the fish it might be an idea to go out and swing his compass: the accuracy of the landfall was, after all, going to be fairly vital.
What else…? Well, the other MM to be drafted temporarily to HMS Zoroaster. Rations to be ordered for the passage crew. Orders to be drafted for the captains of Zoroaster and Allaverdi. And weapons – check whether Solovyev had a pistol of his own – he almost surely would have – and draw a revolver from Mr Dewhurst for himself. Pope and McNaught had better be issued with pistols too. And perhaps – one thought led to another – there ought to be a rifle and a few grenades in the boat. Just in case.
3
Bob, Nikolai Solovyev and Johnny Pope leant on Zoroaster’s white-painted rail at the after end of the promenade deck, gazing out over the ship’s afterpart to where the CMB was towing fifty yards astern. Like staring into a fire: that kind of vague absorption… Zoroaster was steaming at fifteen and a half knots, her wake a wide spread of churned sea in the centre of which, just where it began to smooth itself out again into the surrounding blue-black gloss, the CMB’s bow-wave was a brilliant-white arrowhead, the boat’s dark-grey shape distorted even from this distance and angle by the skiff which she was carrying piggy-back.
This was Thursday, mid-forenoon. They’d sailed as scheduled yesterday evening, pausing off Zhiloy island to pick up the tow at about 9 pm. There’d been no need for any transfer of personnel, as the passage crew had brought the CMB out, Pope and his mechanic being embarked in Zoroaster from the outset. Since then the old steamer had maintained her present speed and course – north fifteen degrees west – throughout the night. By early this afternoon she’d have Fort Alexandrovsk on the Mangyshlak Peninsula about fifty miles abeam to starboard, would then be entering the flotilla’s patrol zone and looking for her rendezvous with Allaverdi.
Solovyev asked, ‘If as you say the torpedo is carried behind the cockpit, and it’s pointing in the same direction as the boat, how on earth is it discharged?’
Bob explained, ‘It’s launched backwards, by a hydraulic ram. You’ll see it, of course, later on – but the ram has a cup-shaped end that fits over the torpedo’s nose – the warhead – and shoves it back out of the boat’s stern. As it’s thrown back, the firing-lever on the torpedo’s engine gets knocked forward, starting the engine so that the torpedo’s own propellers are turning as it’s launched. The CMB’s doing nearly forty knots, and this man here—’ he indicated Johnny Pope – ‘is aiming his boat as if it’s a torpedo itself. On a collision course with the target, in fact. Well, the torpedo’s speed is also forty knots; so as soon as it’s out of the stern he turns his boat out of its way and it just carries on – torpedo instead of CMB now on collision course with the target. D’you follow?’
A shrug. ‘I suppose…’
Pope asked Bob, ‘What was all that about?’
‘He asked me how you fire your torpedo. I’ve just explained what you taught me on Tuesday.’
‘Ah.’ Pope looked sideways at the Russian. ‘Tell me something. How’s he going to get to wherever he’s going? Won’t be landing in that uniform, obviously…’
‘Hardly.’ In fact Solovyev was already working on his disguise, by not having shaved in the last two days. Bob told Pope, ‘He’s a Bolshy – wouldn’t you know it? He’ll be in scruffy clothes – name Ivan Snodgrassovich, and believe it or not he’s on his way to Moscow to see Comrades Lenin and Trotsky – he’s got advice for them.’
‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘Not at all. I agree with him – if you’re going to tell lies, tell big ones. Much more likely to be believed. He’s got advice for them which he’s sure is vital to the success of t
he revolution. His story is that he was at Askhabad when the railway workers kicked out the Bolsheviks and hanged nine commissars in reprisal for Bolshy atrocities. There was a Cheka thug there by name Fralin – poisonous even by Cheka standards – they’d sent him down from Tashkent and he’d spent his days murdering and torturing and his nights in drunken orgies, he and his henchmen raping all the women and children, and so forth. This was what sparked the counter-revolution, the setting up of the Trans-Caspian Government – and our military missions installing themselves there… Anyway, Nick escaped, and he wants to describe it all to Lenin and persuade him to issue new directives to the Cheka – and to commissars, for that matter – to call a halt to all that counter-productive bestiality. Otherwise, he’s convinced, the revolution’s doomed to failure – as demonstrated, in Askhabad. Although Nick himself says the weakness of his case would be that men like Fralin are in fact the revolution’s chosen tools, and the Cheka’s fundamental policy is to terrorize.’
‘He’d better not tell them what he’s up to – right?’
The Cheka – secret police, corps of executioners, also known as the Red Terror – were the strong-arm of the revolution, empowered to destroy whatever stood in its way. Or in theirs. Pope was right: if the Count propounded his theory to them, they’d crush him like a beetle.
He nodded. ‘He’s counting on his acceptance of that risk as – well, proof of his bona fides. He’s come on foot from Askhabad, he’ll tell them, and he’ll have gathered some intelligence for them en route – just to show willing – about the strength of the Cossack forces at Guriev. He’d have come through there, of course.’ Bob glanced at Solovyev. ‘He’ll convince them, all right. He’s pretty damn sharp, our Count.’
Bloody Sunset Page 4
