Medusa

by Hammond Innes

  The sergeant stared at him impassively. ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Silence then, just the thrumming of the ship’s machinery, a slight trembling of the deck plates underfoot, and men everywhere around the deck waiting and watching, while down on the quay the excited, nervous babble of Maltese voices came up to us as an audible complement to the constantly shifting pattern of the waiting crowd. I could see the motor cyclist in his black leather talking and gesticulating to the little group gathered round him, and there were others, shadowy figures, among the various groups.

  The Marine sergeant was back with his men on the deck below and Gareth was glancing at his watch for the third or fourth time. The brass nozzle of a fire hose hit the ship’s side with a clang, then a sudden shout and a flurry of movement on the quay, the crowd pouring through the gap between the east wall of the shed and the neighbouring building. A horn blared, shouts and yells, and a small red car appeared in the gap, almost totally submerged in a flood of people. The noise increased, the sound of fists pounding on roof and bonnet, the horn now blaring continuously.

  Gareth raised the megaphone. ‘Searchlight.’ The white glare of it was so brilliant and so sudden that all movement ceased abruptly. For an instant there was silence. Then the car’s engine revved, nosing into the crowd, spearheading a path for the men following in its wake.

  There was a shout, one word, not a Maltese word, but French – Attaquez, and on the instant the scene changed, a rush of movement, the car was picked up bodily from one side, the engine screaming as it was pitched on to its side and the wheels came free of the ground. Screams and shouts, and the two fire hoses, run out now across half the width of the quay, bulged, their nozzles hissing like snakes, water bursting out in a broad arc. But the car and the crowd were too far away. The jets of water barely reached them. I heard Mault’s voice, but before he had even given the order, the Marine sergeant and his men, all in uniform and with bayonets fixed to their self-loading rifles, came thundering down the gangway.

  If they had moved in before the shore party had reached the quay, if they had broken up the crowd, grabbed the ringleaders and the other agitators … But that would have meant taking the initiative with the Navy blamed for everything that followed. As it was, the men forming up in a compact body at the foot of the gangway and then advancing might still have been sufficient intimidation to get the sailors back on board. Instead, the sergeant ordered them to charge, and that was just the catalyst needed to turn an ugly little incident into a political bombshell.

  The crowd round the car were already opening out. In a moment they would have run. But then it happened, a spurt of flame, the sound of a shot, and Lieutenant Kent, climbing out of the car, all of his torso reared up in the open window on the driver’s side, threw up his hands and began to scream. And as he lost consciousness, his body sagging to lie crumpled across the side of the vehicle, I saw the man who had fired the shot drop his pistol, turn and slide away to the rear of the crowd.

  I saw him, but I don’t think the others did, for their attention had switched to the armed party. They had suddenly stopped, the sergeant’s voice ringing out as he gave the order to fire over the heads of the crowd. The volley was ragged, but the noise of it and the sight of those men in blue with their rifles raised and the bayonets glinting in the glare of the searchlight was enough. The crowd broke and ran, melting away so quickly that for an instant the only figure left on the scene was the motor cyclist trying to kick-start his bike into life. Finally he threw it down and ran.

  I think the enormity of what had happened was immediately apparent to Gareth, for he stood there on the bridge wing, his face white with shock, too stunned, it seemed, to take command. It was Mault who ordered the armed party back on board, sent for the medical orderly and a stretcher party to get the young lieutenant to the sick bay, and had the shore party drawn up at the foot of the gangway and checked against a list of names to make certain nobody was missing. They were coming back on board and the damage control men were rolling up their hoses before Gareth finally came out of his state of shock. ‘Lieutenant Commander Mault.’

  Mault turned, an interrogatory lift of his straight, very black eyebrows.

  ‘Time we got out of here. Come to immediate notice for sea and go to harbour stations as soon as you’re ready. We’ll move out into the open harbour and anchor seaward of that Russian cruiser. After that we’ll see.’ He turned abruptly, going back into the bridge housing. ‘Find Chief Petty Officer Gordon and tell him to have a word with me,’ he said to one of the seamen. ‘I’ll be in my cabin.’ And he disappeared hurriedly through the door at the back.

  I realised then that he had understood more than any of the officers around him, including his First Lieutenant, the full implications of what had happened – an armed party had landed from a Royal Navy ship and had opened fire on a crowd of Maltese. Never mind that they had fired in the air, that their action had been provoked and an officer had been shot, it had been done on Maltese soil. An invasive and hostile act, that’s how it would be presented, to the Maltese and throughout the Third World and the non-aligned states. He had forgotten all about my presence on the ship, and I couldn’t blame him.

  The main broadcast suddenly blared out, Mault’s voice ordering the crew to harbour stations. I waited until he had finished his announcement, then suggested he signal Thunderflash to come and collect me, but he shook his head. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to wait until we’re anchored.’ He had hung up the mike and now had glasses trained on the main dock area where a crowd had gathered at the slip by Somerset Wharf. ‘The whole place will soon be in an uproar.’ He turned to the chart table, shaking his head. ‘Bad business.’

  He shouldn’t have said that, not in front of me, and certainly not with the Navigating Officer standing beside him. And the way he said it, as though it were nothing to do with him – I knew then that he was trying to distance himself from his captain. At the time, of course, I put it down to the fact that he was older, a resentment at being passed over. Later I was to discover his grandfather had been an admiral in the First World War, his father killed at sea in the Second, and he himself had come up through the traditional officer education of the Navy, Pangbourne, Dartmouth, then service at sea. What had damaged his career was volunteering for submarines and then, when he was posted to HMS Dolphin for a submariners’ course, finding he was subject to claustrophobia and unable to concentrate when submerged.

  In the circumstances it was a bit hard to find himself serving under a man who had joined the Navy as a boy seaman at Ganges and been commissioned out of the lower deck, was several years his junior and newly promoted to Lieutenant Commander, a rank he had held more years than he cared to remember. Added to which, he had never had command of a ship in his life, and now this raw young Welshman was plunging him straight into a first-class Mediterranean balls-up. That was his choice of words, and he went on: ‘There’s Chinese in the dockyard here, one of the latest Russian cruisers anchored in Grand Harbour, and the Libyans barely two hundred miles away. We should never have come to the wharf here. We should never have agreed to tie up alongside.’ He turned away, muttering something that sounded like, ‘He should have had more sense.’ Then he was giving orders for singling up and sailors were letting go all but the head and stern ropes and the springs.

  The bridge had now filled up with the special sea duty men, the Navigator standing in the middle by the pelorus. Mault, watching from the bridge wing, finally told him to inform the Captain the ship was singled up and ready to proceed.

  I was watching the quay, so I didn’t see Mault’s face as the Pilot put the phone down and told him the Captain was in the main communications office and he was to take the ship out to the new anchorage himself, but I did notice the sharpness in his tone as he gave the order to let go aft and, picking up the mike to the wheelhouse below, said, ‘Port thirty, slow ahead port, slow astern starb’d.’

  I could feel the beat of the engines under my feet, saw the s
tern swing clear of the quay, then we were backing out past the rust-patched freighter moored at the Parlatorio Wharf. ‘Harbour launch, sir, coming away from Gun Wharf, heading towards us.’

  Mault nodded his acknowledgement of the lookout’s report, the ship still going astern and turning. As soon as we were clear of the freighter and had sea room to complete the 180° turn, he went ahead, the long arm of the harbour opening up in front of us as we turned the end of Senglea Point with the massive fortress of St Angelo showing beyond it. The harbour was a broad lane of flat water ablaze with lights on either side and at the end of it the swinging beam of the St Elmo light flashing three every fifteen seconds, with the small light on the end of the breakwater winking steadily.

  Mault moved to the chart table, calling to the Pilot to join him. ‘Plan to anchor about there,’ he said, pointing his finger to a position roughly south-west of what used to be Gallows Point but was now shown on the chart in Maltese as Il-Ponta Ta’Ricasoli.

  ‘Right in the fairway?’

  ‘Well no, a little in towards Bighi Bay.’

  The Navigating Officer nodded. ‘Nine Fathoms Bank. You’ll have eighteen to nineteen metres. That do you?’ He had the plot going and there was a PO on the radar. Through the sloping windows I could see the Russian cruiser looming large and brilliantly lit. ‘Harbour launch on the port quarter, sir. About one hundred metres off. He’s signalling us to stop.’

  ‘Thank you, Stevens.’

  There was a little group closed up around the capstan on the fo’c’s’le and I could see men on the deck of the cruiser. She looked enormous as we ran close down her starb’d side and it crossed my mind that if the Russians became involved in any way it really would be an international incident. And then I saw a man with a rag in his hand waving from the open door of the helicopter hangar aft and the thought was suddenly absurd.

  ‘Matey, isn’t he?’ The Pilot smiled at me. ‘The way they behave sometimes you’d think they were our comrades-in-arms. And that’s one of their Kresta class – very lethal!’ He was a short man with a round face, a puggy blob of a nose and a twinkle in his eyes. ‘My name’s Craig, by the way. Peter Craig. I’m supposed to see my lords and masters here don’t scrape their bottom along the seabed or hit a headland.’ He waved at the chart. ‘That’s where we’ll be anchoring.’ He indicated a little cross he had pencilled in. ‘Then we’ll start explaining ourselves to the harbour master.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Twenty-two minutes to go till the next news. Think they’ll have it on the World Service?’

  A sub-lieutenant, standing beside the chart table with his back to the bulkhead, said quietly, ‘If the BBC includes it in the news, then the PM will be tearing the guts out of the C-in-C and we’ll be in the shit good and deep. Thank your lucky stars, Pilot, you’re just a common navigator. I wouldn’t be in Taffy’s shoes right now …’ He stopped then, glancing at me apologetically. ‘Sorry, sir, no disrespect, but all Welshmen are Taffy to the boys, just as anybody called Brown is Buster and anybody with a name like Randolph, our Chief, becomes Randy. No disrespect, you see.’ Like the Pilot, he was a Scot, a Glaswegian by the sound of his voice. His name was Robinson and he was a seaman officer-under-training, one step up from midshipman. I thought he was probably not more than nineteen or twenty years old.

  The Pilot was concentrating now on the approach to the anchorage and it was an older officer standing by the radar who answered him. ‘You shoot your mouth off like that and it’s you who’ll be in the shit.’ And he added, ‘Right now nobody wants to be reminded what could happen following that little incident, so forget your old man’s on the ITN news desk and keep your trap shut. Okay?’

  There was a juddering under my feet and I turned to see the ship was slowing: ‘Harbour launch close abeam, still signalling Stop.’ Mault ignored the report. He came back to the chart table, took a quick glance at the position the Navigating Officer had pencilled in, then asked him to report how far before letting go the anchor as he moved to the port bridge wing and took up one of the microphones. Everyone was silent now, waiting, the ship slowing, small alterations of helm, the shore lights barely changing position. ‘Let go!’ I felt, rather than heard, the rumble of the chain, then the voice of the officer on the fo’c’s’le was reporting how many shackles of cable had gone out.

  ‘Well, that’s that.’ Craig checked the time, entered it on the chart against the fix he had taken as the anchor was let go. Behind him, the bridge began to empty. ‘Care to join me for a drink in the wardroom, sir?’

  I hesitated, then nodded. Lloyd Jones would be as anxious to get rid of me as I was to go, so no point in making a nuisance of myself. Besides, I was interested to know what his officers thought of it all.

  The wardroom was two decks down on the starb’d side. Half a dozen officers were already there and all of them silent, listening for Big Ben on the loudspeaker set high in the corner. It came just as Peter Craig handed me the horse’s neck I had asked for, the solemn tones of the hour striking, then the announcer’s voice giving the headlines. It was the third item and followed bomb blasts in Belfast and Lyons – ‘A frigate of the Royal Navy on a courtesy visit to Malta was involved this evening in an incident in which a shore party had to be given protection. Shots were fired and one officer was injured.’ That was all.

  ‘Playing it down,’ Craig said, sucking eagerly at his drink and turning to look around him. ‘Where’s young Robbie? Hey, Robinson – tell yer dad he’ll have to do better than that. The people at home should know what really happened.’ His words about summed up the view of the others. A put-up job, that was their verdict, and then Mault came in. ‘Mr Steele. The Captain would like a word with you. He’s in his cabin.’

  I nodded, finishing my drink, but waiting for the news broadcaster to come to the end of the Lyons outrage and move on to the Malta incident. It was padded out, of course, nothing new, and nothing to upset the Maltese, no indication that it was they who had fired the first shot, or that the ship had been deliberately moored alongside Hamilton Wharf so that an anti-British mob could move in from the nearby Malta Dry Docks and threaten the lives of British sailors returning from a wine party that had almost certainly been organised solely for the purpose of luring them ashore.

  I thanked Craig for the drink, excused myself and went up to the Captain’s cabin. It was empty, a cup of black coffee untouched on the desk. I went to one of the portholes. We had swung to our anchor and were now bows-on to the harbour entrance so that I was looking straight across to the cathedral and the domes of Valetta with the signal flagstaff towering above them. The harbour launch had been joined by two police launches, all three of them keeping station opposite to the bridge on the port side. An officer on the leading police launch had a loudhailer to his mouth, the words coming muffled as they reached me through the shatterproof glass: ‘You will plees to lower your gangway. I wish to come on to your ship and spik with the Captain.’ And the reply, from somewhere above me – ‘When you bring the British High Commissioner out we can discuss things. Okay?’

  The steward put his head round the pantry door. ‘Captain’s apologies, sir, but he’s been called to the MCO. Can I get you a drink?’

  I shook my head. ‘Another cup of coffee would be nice though.’

  He nodded, retrieved the untouched cup from the desk and, as he was taking it back into the pantry, he hesitated. ‘Excuse me asking, sir, but do you know the Captain well? I mean, you’re a friend of his, aren’t you?’

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I just gave a bit of a nod and waited.

  The steward stood there with the cup in his hand as though trying to make up his mind. Finally he said, ‘I can’t tell him, sir, but perhaps you can. There’s a lot of rumours going round the ship. In the seamen’s messes, I mean. They say the Captain’s –’ again the hesitation – ‘well, bad luck, if you get me. A sort of Jonah. And it’s not just the Captain. It’s the ship.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ I asked.

/>   He stood there awkwardly, feeling no doubt he had said too much already. ‘There’s quite a few – misfits on board, sir.’

  ‘Troublemakers, do you mean?’ I asked.

  He gave a little shrug, shaking his head. ‘Hard to say, sir. Toughies certainly. Real toughies. Some of the lads feel they’ve been landed with a load of shit – if you’ll excuse me – men that other ships wanted to be rid of.’ And he added, These are the comments of lads that volunteered, you understand, specialists most of them, real good lads who thought Medusa was intended for some sort of special service. That’s why they volunteered.’

  I took him up then on the use of that word ‘specialists’ and he said they had been on courses, some of them, that weren’t the usual run of courses sailors got sent on – demolition, assault, urban guerrilla warfare. ‘There’s even men on board here who’ve been trained by the SAS.’ And he added, ‘They volunteered for something out of the ordinary. At least, that’s what they thought, something that sounded to them like it was as near to active service as you could get in peacetime. Instead, they find themselves on a ship that’s got a hardcore of throw-outs in the crew. Tell him, will you, sir? Privately. He should know the feeling.’ He said that quickly, almost in a whisper, and as he turned to go into the pantry, the entrance curtain was swept aside and Gareth entered, his face white, his lips a hard, tight line, and he was scowling. ‘Get me some coffee, Jarvis.’ He had a sheet of paper in his hand and he went straight to his desk and sat there, staring at it. He seemed completely oblivious of my presence. The main broadcast began to sound through the ship, Mault’s voice ordering special sea duty men and the cable party to close up. ‘All action stations to be manned and gun crews closed up.’