Control from Kitten – French subma
‘Bloody ’ell!’
Fiddling at the set’s adjustment … Mayne pulled back the hatch to the chartroom. ‘Signal comin’ in, sir!’
Submarine captured intact and brought Constantinople where papers given commander German U-boat which now sailed intention ambush E57 at rendezvous – ends …
Reaper snatched up the pad. The door swung open behind him, banging to and fro. Mayne reached past him and shut it. Reaper drew a sharp, hard breath, as if something had kicked him in the stomach. Then, just as quickly, he’d recovered and reacted.
‘Start calling E.57.’
Michaelson’s hand began rattling the key like some kind of machine. Reaper leant between the two men and began to write on a fresh sheet of pad, Control to Wishart. German U-boat waiting at rendezvous in place of Louve. Keep clear of R/V position. Louve intact in enemy hands. Will transmit new orders midnight tomorrow Monday.
‘Code that up.’
Mayne edged over to the pile of code-books at the end of the bench. Michaelson was still tapping out E.57’s call-sign. Smoke wreathed away from the stub which Stewart had spat into a shellcase ashtray. The other two were setting the message up in five-letter code groups. Reaper asked Michaelson, ‘Are you sure it’s going out?’ The telegraphist pointed with his spare hand at a quivering needle in a dial. ‘Full power, sir.’ Reaper looked at the clock again: he was almost as white as the enamel on the bulkhead it was fixed to. In two minutes the submarine would be closing down her listening watch, and in about ninety she’d be expecting to meet Louve.
Chapter 9
E.57’s diesels rumbled steadily into the empty, pitch-black night. It wasn’t going to be pitch-black for long, though: eastward, a glimmer of brightness pushing up from an invisible horizon showed where presently the first-quarter moon would come sliding up. Wishart had lowered his binoculars and he was staring in that direction, over the submarine’s quarter as she forged slowly north-westward. Trimmed right down, she was showing very little of herself above the flat plane of the sea.
Stoker Burrage, on watch as lookout, had moved up to the for’ard side of the hatch to make way for the two telegraphists, Weatherspoon and Agnew, who’d been sent for to strike the W/T mast and aerial. They’d just about done it now; they were manoeuvring the coiled aerial and its insulators, and the dismantled mast, to the hatch; Agnew had slipped down inside, on the ladder, and Weatherspoon was passing the gear down to him. Burrage went back down the other side to the after end of the bridge; Weatherspoon reported to Wishart, ‘Mast and aerial’s struck, sir. Goin’ down now.’
‘Very good.’
They were in position, near enough, and the battery was just about fully charged. There was no point in waiting for that moon to rise and floodlight them. Wishart said quietly, matching his tone to the surrounding silence, ‘We’ll sit on the seventy-foot layer while we wait.’
Submariners in 1915 had discovered a high-density barrier at seventy feet, in this and some other areas of the Marmara, on which a boat could lie as securely as she could on a seabed. As the seabed hereabouts was two or three thousand feet below her safe diving limit, it was a useful phenomenon.
‘Stop together. Out both engine clutches. In port tail clutch. Shut off for diving.’ Wishart straightened from the voicepipe and glanced towards a vague shape in the after end of the bridge. ‘Down you go, lookout.’ Burrage vanished into the hatch like a genie returning to its bottle. The engines’ grumble died; you heard the sea now, loud because it was so close, the hiss of it along the tanks and under this platform where it swept across the pressure-hull and washed around the tower’s base.
‘You can dive her, pilot.’ The submarine wallowed sluggishly, losing way. Wishart called down, ‘Group down, half ahead together.’ Straightening from the pipe again he told Jake, ‘Give ’em a minute, then pull the plug.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ This was doing it gently, diving in slow time, being kind to men off watch who could sleep on and only discover when they woke later that she’d submerged. They’d be shaken in an hour or so anyway, in preparation for the meeting with Louve. Wishart had gone down, and Jake was alone on the bridge, thinking what luxury it was going to be – to have no passengers and all that space. He bent to the voicepipe: ‘Open main vents!’ As he was shutting the voicepipe cock the vents crashed open, air roared up out of the tanks; then the sea slid over the tanks’ tops and spray plumed up in the escaping air, salt water raining on him as he reached up to grab the hatch by its brass handle and drag it down over his head. When he stepped off the ladder into the control room the depth-gauge needles were swinging past the twenty-foot mark.
‘Seventy feet.’
‘Seventy, sir.’ Hobday was at the trim. ‘Slow together.’
‘Slow ahead together, sir.’ That was Burrage at the telegraphs. Smith’s tattoo’d hands caressed the wheel. Morton and Rowbottom were on the ’planes. ERA Knight had just slammed in the main vent levers. Passing forty feet: forty-five now … Wishart sloped over to the wardroom corner, and tossed his old reefer-jacket on to his bunk. Jake ambled that way too as he peeled off a sweater. Burtenshaw was stooped over a letter he was writing, Robins was reading, and so was Nick Everard. Everard had borrowed a Sherlock Holmes story from Chief ERA Grumman and he was trying to finish it before the rendezvous with Louve. Jake rested his bulk against the edge of the chart table and waited for Hobday to be ready to hand back the watch to him. He’d be due to relieve him of it again at half-past: hardly worth changing over, really. Hobday said like a mind-reader, ‘I’ll hang on now, Cameron.’
‘Thanks.’ Decent of the little man, he thought. He was about to retire to the wardroom corner, that living-area which in an hour and a half would seem so palatial, when Burtenshaw came over to him.
‘Where are we now?’
Jake began to point out positions and future movements on the chart; then he realised the Marine wasn’t really listening. He’d brought the letter with him – the one he’d been writing – and he pushed it towards Jake. It was addressed to Colonel J.H. Burtenshaw RAMC, with a War Office address. He asked quietly, ‘D’you mind? Only – oh, you know, if one came to grief?’
Blushing with embarrassment … It wasn’t easy to imagine this schoolboy character performing usefully in a place like Constantinople. One could see him as a hero on some cricket field, but that was about the limit of it. He had Everard to hold his hand, of course; but even Everard, for all his medals and his reputation, was a destroyer man, not a cloak-and-dagger merchant. Burtenshaw murmured, even pinker now, ‘Only if things went smash, you know?’
Three-fifteen: the hands had closed up at diving stations. And only just in time, because Weatherspoon had picked up distant HE, propeller noise. He was listening to it now, and for a change all eyes were on him instead of on Wishart.
Roost had opened the twelve-pounder magazine and brought up Burtenshaw’s rucksack of demolition charges. It was under the chair that he was now sitting on, and it was all that any of the passengers would be taking with them. They had some personal kit in Louve already, and in the dhow tomorrow there’d be the Turkish gear for them to change into.
‘Starboard beam, sir. Faint, still.’
Wishart checked the ship’s head by gyro. Starboard beam: it meant that Louve was approaching from the eastward, and that was as anyone would expect. He glanced at Hobday, ‘Punctual frogs.’ Weatherspoon’s eyes rested on Wishart for a moment; he shook his head slightly, as if something was puzzling him. Now he’d looked down again, concentrating on whatever he was hearing. He was on his stool, in the doorway of the cabinet. Wishart said quietly, ‘Let’s have her up, Number One.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Hobday set the pump to work on ‘A’, which an hour ago he’d weighted to hold her on the high-density layer. Weatherspoon blurted suddenly, ‘It’s a submarine, sir – not the Frog boat, though.’
Everyone looked at him. One or two men smiled. ‘Professor’ We
atherspoon was a bit of a joke, for’ard. Wishart moved towards him, squeezing behind Hobday. ‘Think you may have forgotten what she sounds like?’ The two boats had spent a day exercising together between Lemnos and Imbros, and Weatherspoon should have had plenty of time to familiarise himself with the characteristics of Louve’s HE. But this was precisely the time for her to show up, and exactly the right place, and so far as anyone knew there were no other submarines in the Marmara. Jake looked across at the passengers: Robins was staring impatiently at Weatherspoon, and Everard looked puzzled. Wishart said, going back to his usual position, ‘See how she sounds when we’re closer. Know her then, I dare say.’ Hobday ordered, ‘Stop the pump. Shut “A” suction and inboard vent.’ He asked Wishart, ‘Twenty feet, sir?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Slow ahead together. Twenty feet.’
Agnew pushed the telegraphs around: Louve’s hydrophone would hear that noise echoing through the sea between them, and now she’d be listening to E.57’s screws as they stirred into motion. Jake thought of that little tough-nut skipper, Lemarie, the glint in his hard brown eyes as the French operator picked up the HE and reported it. One couldn’t envy Lemarie his passengers; and now he’d be very crowded indeed, for the next twenty-four hours. Jake looked over at the wardroom corner again: he’d never appreciated before how generous the designers had been, with all that space for only three officers. A bunk each, for heaven’s sake! Sixty feet on the gauges: fifty-eight … Hobday muttered, ‘Easy does it, cox’n.’ Crabb grunted; he’d already started to bring the bubble back a bit, and Hobday must have seen it, so all he’d been doing had been anticipating a similar instruction from Wishart. Fifty feet. Jake saw Weatherspoon staring fixedly at Wishart, and an urgent gleam behind the spectacles.
‘Defnitely not ’er, sir.’
Jake felt a first twinge of doubt. It came from Weatherspoon’s tone of certainty. He wasn’t a very self-confident or self-assertive man. Wishart seemed to have been pushed into a moment’s doubt, too. He was looking at Weatherspoon and frowning, hesitating. Now he’d turned away. It couldn’t, he knew, possibly be anyone but the Frenchman.
Jake wondered if Louve might have damaged a propeller — caught it against a net and chipped a blade, for instance. Anything like that would dramatically change her signature-tune.
‘Captain, sir?’
Wishart’s head jerked round towards the telegraphist. The gauges showed thirty-five feet: thirty-three. E.57 was approaching a surface that by now would be streaked with silver. Weatherspoon said doggedly, ‘Boat I’m listenin’ to ain’t Louve, sir. Certain pos’tive it ain’t. Nothin’ like ’er, sir.’
Wishart stood silent, staring at him.
‘What’s she bear now?’
Weatherspoon was right: this was not the Frenchman. Jake knew it, suddenly. Other thoughts followed quickly: the Turks had no submarines, so that left only one thing it could be. But the sheer coincidence of time and place… Coincidence? If she’d been sunk, and a survivor hadn’t stood up to interrogation?
Weatherspoon, jaw set hard, looked simultaneously determined and scared.
‘Up periscope.’
The big for’ard one. Depth-gauge needles moving more slowly as the ’planesmen levelled her towards the ordered depth. Twenty-five feet. Twenty-four. The glistening tube rose, a bronze pillar with McVeigh watching it and his hand on the lever ready to bring it to a stop. Hobday reporting quietly, ‘Twenty-two feet, sir … twenty-one …’ Wishart snatched the handles down, rose with the periscope, training it round as he straightened up. His eyes were at the lenses and McVeigh had stopped it.
‘Twenty feet, sir.’
Weatherspoon’s voice cracked across the silence: ‘Torpedo fired, starboard bow!’
‘Hard a-port, down periscope, forty feet, group up, full ahead together!’
‘Torpedo approaching starboard!’
Weatherspoon was rising from his stool — eyes dilated, finger pointing out towards the oncoming missile that only he could hear. Crouched, gesturing, gargoyle-ish as the boat swung over and angled downwards and the grouped-up full-ahead power began to drive her down. Then they all heard it: a rushing, churning noise with a steeply rising note, sound surging up, expanding: Nick sat frozen, brain-bound and muscle-bound: then it had passed, whooshing by overhead, and he found that the Conan Doyle novel in his hands was bent hard back along the spine, that he’d practically torn it in half.
‘Midships. Starboard fifteen. Group down, half ahead together. Bearing of the submarine’s HE now?’
‘Right a’ead, sir.’ Weatherspoon corrected, as the boat swung on, ‘Five to port – broadenin’—’
‘Ease to five. Twenty feet.’
‘Dead a’ead, sir.’
‘Twenty, sir.’ All calm, laconic now. Roost, mild as a church-warden, reported he had five degrees of starboard helm on. That meant five degrees of port rudder. Weatherspoon had settled back on his stool again. His breathing was short and jerky and he was still chalk-white. Gauges showed twenty-six feet: twenty-four … ‘Up.’
Periscope shimmering greasy, wet-running as it rose. ‘Twenty-two, sir—’
‘Midships. Bearing now?’
‘Ten on the starboard bow, sir, movin’ left.’
‘Twenty feet, sir.’
Training the periscope slowly left … Then he stopped, and they heard him gasp. Weatherspoon didn’t hear it: he was on his own, reporting, ‘Very close, sir – revs increasing – very—’
‘Shut watertight doors! Group up, full ahead together, starboard five!’
Lewis and Ellery dragged the doors shut at each end of the compartment and began slamming the clips over. Jake saw Weatherspoon pull the headphones off his ears. Wishart ordered, ‘Midships … Steady!’
‘Steady, sir – oh-eight-four—’
‘Stand by to ram!’
Hunched at the periscope, not training it at all. Steady bearing meant collision course. Now he pulled his head back and snapped the handles up, grabbed elsewhere for support, clutching the ladder just as she hit the U-boat. It felt more like steaming full-tilt into a cliff-face. An enormous jolt, and from for’ard the noise of tearing metal. Some who hadn’t caught hold of solid fittings had been sent flying. Wishart shouted, ‘Stop both!’ The impact had flung her bow upwards: she’d be on top of her victim but her own foreparts might easily have been holed. There could be two victims. Bow sinking now; and still that noise of metal being wrenched apart. She felt heavy for’ard. Morton reported, ‘Fore ’planes won’t budge, sir.’
If her for’ard half was flooded—
Jake Cameron heard himself whisper, Christ, now here we go! He was sweating suddenly: he begged himself, Oh, steady now… On the other side of the compartment Nick thought, Well, here it is after all. During the passage of the straits, even in the bad moments when they’d seemed trapped and done for, the calmness of the submariners had made him doubt whether matters could be as touch-and-go as they’d seemed. Then when the torpedo had been coming straight for them he’d felt numb with hopelessness: there’d been an unexpected thought of Sarah knowing nothing of all this, living her own life and guarding her own secrets, Sarah in a world he couldn’t share with her now because he’d already left it. Now as the submarine began to plunge downward, angling steeply towards the seabed three thousand feet below, he understood suddenly that it was inevitable, that he might have known it was, if he’d let himself face it squarely. The landing business – all that – well, at least he wouldn’t have to play that game now …
But he’d glimpsed the truth, similar awareness, in several other faces. Masks had slipped, just momentarily. Even Cameron’s: and Cameron was in control of himself again now, glancing round in that mild, rather deadpan way of his … ‘Report from for’ard!’ Urgency in Wishart’s tone: even Wishart had forgotten his customary drawl. Lewis jumped to the bulkhead voicepipe and began to unscrew the cock on it. With so much bow-down angle and such a rate of descent it seemed quite likely h
er forepart might be flooded. If the TSC was full there’d be a jet of water through that voice-tube. And there wasn’t. But that still left the tube space, the bow compartment. Hobday asked Wishart, ‘Blow one and two main ballast, sir?’ Wishart shook his head: ‘No.’ But the needles were rushing round the gauges, the angle steepening. Jake Cameron thought – hoped – The seventy-foot layer’ll stop us. He’d crossed his fingers. Burtenshaw was staring at him wildly with his mouth open: Jake winked at him. Everard saw that, looked round at the Marine, smiled and said something to him. Burtenshaw seemed to have snapped out of it. E.57’s stem would be embedded in the enemy’s side, and whether or not she herself had any flooding for’ard the other boat’s weight would be dragging her down; the German would have at least one compartment torn open to the sea. Out there, just a few yards away, there’d be men dead, drowning, struggling to live. If they shouted, might Weatherspoon hear them through his earphones? Jake saw the needles passing sixty feet as Lewis reported that the tube space and TSC were dry and had sustained no damage.
‘Open bulkhead doors.’ Less than forty-five seconds had passed since the ramming. Lewis and Ellery working at the doors’ clips. And a different kind of noise from for’ard suddenly; Weatherspoon looked up and swallowed, agitating his adam’s apple.
Patrol to the Golden Horn Page 21
