by John Harris
‘Cheeky bastard,’ Atwood said. ‘Talkin’ to a officer like he come to mend the lavatory.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Do we send the lorry to Marsjøen, sir, to fetch the women an’ kids who want to go on the ship?’
Magnusson drew a deep breath. Things seemed to be happening almost too fast. ‘We might be a bloody sight cleverer, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘if we paused to draw breath. They might be better where they are until we’ve decided what to do about this bloody submarine.’
Atwood looked faintly resentful, as if he felt everybody had to take their chances.
Magnusson sighed again. ‘Those Germans in Cuxhaven were clearly expecting her,’ he said, half to himself. ‘And if we don’t do something soon, they’ll come to find out what’s happening down here. I reckon we’d better go to Grude and have a look at her. Any volunteers?’
‘Count me in,’ Atwood said at once, and Magnusson decided he was beginning to find the sergeant’s enthusiasm just a bit exhausting.
The German-speaking Norwegian stepped forward, and – to Magnusson’s surprise – Orjasaeter, who offered to lead them to a spot where they could see without being seen. Magnusson picked two more Norwegians and two more of Atwood’s men who, if they didn’t know much about ships, were at least murderously enough inclined to be a danger to the enemy. By comparison with Atwood’s group, everybody else seemed to be on an infants’ school outing.
‘We’ll take the lorry,’ he said, and turned to Campbell. ‘Keep a sharp eye on the prisoners, because if the buggers escape, that’s it. And send a message by the car to Marsjøen to warn everybody there’s a snag and that we’ll send for ’em as soon as we’ve sorted it out. No need to tell ’em what it is.’
When he reached the lorry, Annie Egge was standing alongside the driver’s seat.
‘I thought I told you to get the hell out of it,’ he snapped.
‘Don’t shout at me,’ she snapped back. ‘I am here now, so I might as well be of help. I can speak German as well as I can speak English and I can drive the lorry. That will leave the others free.’
‘We don’t want no women,’ Atwood commented and, worried and concerned, Magnusson turned on him at once.
‘Dry up, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’ll run this show.’
Atwood retreated, his face showing his resentment, and Magnusson found himself hoping he hadn’t offended him. Men like Atwood were worth their weight in gold at a time when he needed every bit of loyalty and advice he could get.
They scrambled into the lorry and began to climb out of the village. Magnusson sat next to Annie as she drove, but neither of them spoke, and he could see she was angry, two pink spots of colour in her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually.
She drew a deep breath. ‘So am I. Not because I came, but because I have caused you unnecessary worry.’
‘Forget it. I’ll have a word with the sergeant. He’s too good a man to upset.’
The road wound along the edge of the fjord, reminding Magnusson of the roads in Scotland following the curves of the lochs. The countryside was not all that different either, for that matter – rugged, unforgiving and covered with trees. As they drove, he heard Atwood’s voice from the rear of the lorry.
‘There was me,’ he was saying, ‘standin’ there with a pint in me ’and, and there was this bint with a fag in ’er mouth and not a bloody stitch on–’
Magnusson grinned and touched Annie’s arm. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about Atwood,’ he said. ‘Somehow, I don’t think he’s the sort of man to take offence.’
After a while, the road began to rise, and among the trees Magnusson saw a livid scar where timber had been felled. They stopped and began to walk down the slope towards Grude. There was a hint of sunshine that indicated the thaw probably wasn’t very far away. Pushing their way through the woods, they came to the area where the timber cutting had been going on. Huge logs lay in the snow, and here and there among the undergrowth severed branches formed a snow-covered cheval-de-frise that made the going very difficult. When at last they found themselves staring down on the U-boat, it came almost as a shock and they retreated hurriedly into the shadow of the trees.
Below them was a house on which they could see a sign with the name, Jensen, painted across it. At the far end of the yard, where it opened to the road, was a large wooden cross and, near the water, several timbered buildings which they assumed were workshops. Across a narrow open space that lay between the buildings and the water was a wide jetty of concrete, timber and steel.
‘The water there is deep,’ Orjasaeter said. ‘Very deep. Big ships can lay alongside.’
The submarine looked black and menacing. Its attack periscope was cocked at an angle as if it had been damaged. The jumping wire hung over the side, as though it had been severed at the same time, and men were working on it, splicing with spikes. There were two machine-guns mounted on the conning tower and a gun on the fore casing. It looked as if it were a 75-mm and that, he knew, was quite big enough to blow Cuxhaven’s bow off. If they tried to tackle this fellow, he thought, what had happened to Oulu would look like a Sunday School picnic.
For a long time, with Atwood alongside him, he peered downwards.
‘They’re not carrying arms,’ Atwood pointed out.
‘Sailors are no’ like soldiers,’ Willie John said mildly. ‘They dinnae make a habit o’ loadin’ themselves doon wi’ weapons. It isnae all that easy ye’ll understand, tae haul on a rope wi’ a machine-gun slung round y’r neck an’ hittin’ ye in the balls every time ye bend doon.’
Atwood grinned, unoffended. ‘Well, it’ll be a help, sir,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got two machine-guns now.’
‘Not as big as those two they’ve got down there,’ Magnusson pointed out. ‘And machine-guns can’t do much against a steel casing.’
‘Don’t make a blind bit o’ difference, sir. We could blow the buggers off the deck and prevent any more coming up till the ship’s safely past.’
‘What happens to the chaps with the machine-guns?’
‘They’d get left behind, I reckon.’
‘Who do you think would volunteer for that then?’
Atwood considered. ‘I expect I would, sir,’ he said simply. ‘Maybe you could pick me up further down the fjord.’
Magnusson looked at him warmly. ‘I appreciate your offer, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘But we ought to be able to come up with something better than that.’
He watched the submarine for a while longer. It lay almost a hundred feet below, the waters of the fjord touched with colour where oil had leaked overboard.
‘I suppose we couldn’t capture the bastard, could we, sir?’ Atwood asked.
‘And then what?’
‘Take her home?’
‘I’m not much of a hand with submarines, Sergeant. Are you?’
Atwood grinned. ‘’Ow about on the surface? Wouldn’t it be like an ordinary ship?’
‘I doubt it. I’d rather put the bastard out of action and sail past her.’
‘’Ow, sir?’
‘That, old lad, is the problem. One shell from that gun of hers would be enough to put paid to the lot of us and we’ve got sixty or seventy people relying on us now to get ’em to England.’
Magnusson turned, staring about him. The woods were silent, gloomy despite the brightness of the morning.
‘Even if we disable her,’ he said, ‘she’ll still have a radio to call for help. There could be a destroyer waiting for us as soon as we leave.’
Even Atwood had no answer to that one.
‘We’d ’ave to disable ’er, destroy ’er guns and put ’er radio out of action all at the same time,’ he said. ‘Only one thing would do that – explosives.’
‘There are explosives,’ Orjasaeter said unexpectedly.
Magnusson swung round to him. ‘What sort of explosives?’
‘Blasting gelignite.’
‘We can hardly chuck it at the submarine
, and I don’t know anything about it.’
‘I do,’ Orjasaeter said. ‘I told you. I handle the explosives for the timberyard. I could blow a fly off your nose without breaking the skin.’
Magnusson’s heart thumped for a moment, then it subsided again. ‘So what are we going to make? It’s shells or bombs we need.’
‘Perhaps I can think of something.’
‘And then we’ve got to get ’em up against the submarine. I can’t see ’em letting us.’
They were still staring down at the submarine, all of them disappointed and frustrated, when Magnusson noticed that Annie had joined them.
‘Those logs must weigh hundreds of tons,’ she observed, pointing towards a great square stack of timber; thick, thirty-foot logs held in place by huge steel girders driven into the ground by a pile driver to stop them rolling down the slope.
‘The cranes take them to the saw mill,’ Orjasaeter said. ‘If they are going by sea as deck cargo, they are taken by lorry and lifted aboard by the ship’s winches. Sometimes if the tide’s right, they’re rolled down the hill further along, towed alongside and lifted up by the ship’s derricks. When the tide’s making, they float into the bay there–’ his hand jerked to where a small spit of land jutted into the fjord hiding Fjållbrakka and Cuxhaven. ‘If it’s ebbing, they float up against the barrier there.’
Following his pointing finger, they saw that a barrier had been built in the fjord. Several logs looped with rope lay against it.
Magnusson stared at the logs, feeling sure they ought to suggest something, but his mind seemed blank and it was Annie who hit on the solution.
‘If we could remove the girders,’ she said, ‘the logs would then roll away. Some might perhaps reach the submarine.’
Orjasaeter shook his head. ‘Once, twenty years ago, after the thaw, the girders came loose and five hundred tons of logs went down the slope. In those days the timberyard was directly below. Seventeen men lost their lives. They swept away every single building and smashed into a ship at the jetty. After that, Jensen moved the sawmills to Marsjøen and built the stands further back. The logs wouldn’t reach the water from there. They’re too far back, the bank’s been sloped upwards at the lip and it runs to the water behind the jetty.’
‘Suppose,’ Magnusson said slowly, ‘that the edge of the bank was removed and sloped downwards instead, and that the slope was changed towards the jetty.’ He paused. ‘And then we shifted the girders.’
Orjasaeter shrugged. ‘That is different! But it would take a lot of men with a lot of strength a long time to do all that.’
Magnusson frowned. ‘Or,’ he said, ‘one man with a lot of explosives only a short time.’
Six
They stared at him, their mouths open. Annie’s eyes had grown bright and a smile was beginning to curl Atwood’s mouth.
‘It would destroy the jetty,’ Orjasaeter said.
‘It’d destroy the bloody submarine, too, I reckon,’ Atwood said cheerfully. ‘All them logs coming down on it brisk as a bleedin’ kipper. One or two bouncing about on top of the guns’d be enough to put a bend in ’em enough to shoot round corners. It’d probably bung up that deck thing, too, where the periscopes come out–’
‘Conning tower,’ Magnusson said.
‘What you said. It would fetch down the aerials, bend that periscope a bit more, bust that there direction finder, mebbe jam the controls, and give anybody who ’appened to be on deck a severe ’eadache.’
Magnusson grinned at Atwood’s enthusiasm. ‘You’ve put it in a nutshell, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’ He turned to Orjasaeter. ‘Could you do this?’
‘Of course.’ Orjasaeter looked faintly shocked. ‘I’m an expert. I’ve been using explosives all my life.’
‘This isn’t a tree stump.’
Orjasaeter smiled. ‘Sometimes, the government employs me when they’re building roads – to remove things just like that – change slopes and alter banks of earth on the sides of hills so they can run their road through. That’s what I’d be doing here.’
‘It raises another point, though,’ Magnusson said. ‘Would you do it? You wouldn’t be able to stay here afterwards.’
Orjasaeter frowned. ‘The wireless says they are shooting anybody who resists them or causes them trouble. They would know at once where the explosives came from and who placed them. I’m the only man round here who can do it.’
Magnusson shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. We’ll take you with us, of course. If it works. If it doesn’t and they manage to stop us getting away, then I’m afraid I can’t do anything to help you.’
The Norwegian considered for a moment. ‘Will my wife and children be allowed to go?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think others, too, will wish to come. Now. My wife has told me.’
‘Cuxhaven can carry as many as wish to leave.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’ Orjasaeter smiled suddenly. ‘Perhaps in England I can show the English how to do it too, and they will then perhaps return and blow up the Germans.’
‘God willing.’
‘When must this be done?’
Magnusson considered. ‘It’ll have to be tomorrow. We now have Jakka and Støregutt, and Cuxhaven’s got an auxiliary which will take us down the fjord to find the wind. We could get everybody aboard and be ready by this evening.’
Orjasaeter seemed eager to get to work. ‘We shall need picks and shovels,’ he advised. ‘And as many men as we can get. We shall have to dig out part of the bank and the slope to plant the explosive. That will entail deep holes in three places. I can also plant charges below the girders that hold the logs. If we do as I say there’ll be no mistake.’
The thought seemed to please Atwood. ‘Five ’undred tons of softwood comin’ down on their ’eads ought to keep ’em busy.’ He grinned. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this. At least it makes a change – as the parrot said wot laid square eggs.’
Back at Fjållbrakka, Orjasaeter unlocked the explosives store, a small shed behind the house with a skull and crossbones stencilled on the doorway.
‘Jensen was always a bit worried about it being close to his house,’ he said. ‘But it’s quite safe. Without detonators it can’t go up.’
As he opened the door, he stopped and frowned. ‘We shall have to warn the watchman,’ he added. ‘He lives at the loading quay.’
‘Will he give up his home?’
Orjasaeter shrugged. ‘He admires the Germans. I’ve heard him talking. We’d better go and see him after dark. He’ll have time to collect what he wants. If he doesn’t agree, he and his wife will have to be brought away by force.’
‘There’ll be a lookout on the submarine,’ Magnusson pointed out. ‘What about him?’
‘He’ll not see us in the dark,’ Orjasaeter said. ‘And in the morning, he’ll have no chance. The logs will be on him before he can do more than shout a warning.’
‘Can’t we make up some charges to shove down the gun barrels?’ Atwood asked. ‘Or against the conning tower thing, and the rudder or whatever it is they use. Make a bloody good job of it.’
Marques had served in submarines and they decided that if they put a heavy enough charge against the conning tower, it ought to blow a hole large enough to cripple her.
‘’Ow about making up a really big charge, sir,’ Atwood said enthusiastically. ‘To drop down the ’atch of that bridge thing–’
‘Conning tower?’
‘Yes, that. Drop a couple of grenades down first to sort out everybody below.’
‘Then a bluidy big charge tae smash the controls, boy, an’ blow the ladder away so they cannae get oot,’ Willie John added.
‘Why not a charge down all the hatches?’ Atwood said briskly. ‘To blow all the ladders away.’
‘When do we do it?’ Campbell asked, his eyes shining with enthusiasm. ‘Exactly.’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Magnusson said. ‘First thing, when the hatches a
re opened. We can spend the night getting ready.’
‘Suppose the bastards come down here to Fjållbrakka to see us? They might walk it.’
‘Over nine miles? I’ve never met a sailor yet who’s prepared to walk that far.’
They spent the day preparing the charges.
‘Not too big to handle,’ Orjasaeter said. ‘But big enough to do the job. In the confined space below deck, the blast will do all we wish.’ Now that he had committed himself he had thrown off his earlier reluctance and even seemed excited.
They decided on 2lb charges, but, with most of them amateurs at the game, these took a long time to prepare. Most of the explosive was dynamite, which was contained in ten-pound tins, and it was decided that if they dropped one of these through the hatch attached to a grenade the explosion of the grenade would be sufficient to detonate the dynamite. To be safe, they made two for each hatch, in the hope that if the first one didn’t explode, the second would.
‘It also works under water,’ Orjasaeter said.
‘Then why the hell,’ Campbell asked, ‘don’t we get a rope and sling a couple over the stern where the propeller is?’
Orjasaeter smiled. ‘It could be done. I have time pencils. They are new things from America. The acid eats away a wire to fire a detonator.’
The cans produced no problem; the other charges were made from a type of explosive known as 808, which had a powerful sickly smell that made their heads ache. They made ten bombs, two each for the five hatches, bigger charges to place against the periscopes and anywhere else they felt they might be useful, and small charges to stuff into any hole that looked vulnerable.
Meanwhile Atwood was collecting tools and detailing men to do the digging. Among them were four Norwegians who normally worked with Orjasaeter and three former miners from among Atwood’s men who, if nothing else, knew how to dig.
Meanwhile, Haldursen, the captain of Støregutt, had rounded up every Norwegian who wished to go with them, and Annie Egge told them exactly what they would be allowed to take and when to be ready.
As she was reporting to Magnusson the telephone rang. The chatter stopped at once and they all looked at each other.
