‘Hey, Bob.’ Burtenshaw looked round. Nick beckoned him: ‘Down here.’
Back into the great ship’s guts. There’d be messdecks pretty well all through her, for’ard of the machinery spaces. So the route had to be downward and certainly no further aft. He explained, ‘We must find another messdeck and swap this gear for sailor-suits.’ One could see that the idea didn’t much appeal to the Marine. And he himself was aware of two obvious dangers in it. One: being caught in the act of stealing the uniforms and shifting into them; the answer to it was to be very quick, get it done before the ship relaxed into watchkeeping routines. Two: there was a risk that the theft might be discovered and the soldiers’ uniforms found, and an alarm raised. But it was still a better chance, he thought, than continuing to parade around in these clowns’ outfits. He led the way down: into a wider passageway with a row of doors with German labels on them. Officers’ cabins? Not far enough aft for that, surely. Offices, perhaps. Not wanting to waste time in asking Burtenshaw to tell him, he’d turned for’ard, looking for another down-ladder: and a voice barked, ‘Halt!’
Burtenshaw, behind him, gasped.
It was the Kapitan-leutnant who’d come strutting down the gangway and looked like stopping them and then, at the sight of Liman von Sanders’s name on the cases, thought better of it. There was a one-striper – Oberleutnant? – and also an older man, some kind of senior rating, with him.
‘Ziegen Sie hier! Aufmachen!’
Burtenshaw was stuttering uselessly: his nerve had gone, and so apparently had his linguistic powers. It seemed to be the suitcase again that the German was interested in. Burtenshaw looked round despairing at Nick, then back at the trio advancing on them. Nick snapped, ‘Here, quick …’ He turned back towards the ladder they’d just come down; but the CPO, whatever he was, barred his way, while behind him the other two had grabbed Burtenshaw and the empty case.
Chapter 13
‘Smoke, all right. Lots of it.’
Wishart, hunched at the for’ard periscope, muttered it to himself. Hobday, who’d been keeping the periscope watch ever since they’d dived before first light, and who’d spotted the smoke and shaken Wishart, was terrier-like with excitement.
Goeben?
‘Port ten.’
‘Port ten, sir … Ten o’ port wheel on, sir.’
That was Louis Lewis at the wheel. Finn was on the fore ’planes and Morton, stripped to his bulging waist and as usual shiny with sweat, was on the after ones. Depth-gauges showing twenty feet. Wishart told Lewis, ‘Steer oh-three-nine.’
‘Oh-three-nine, sir.’
It was the bearing of the Horn, according to a fix Hobday had taken a few minutes ago. Jake, disturbed by the flurry of activity, had rolled out of his bunk and sloped over to the chart. Distance to the Horn nine point five miles. If Goeben was coming out she could be passing over this spot in half an hour.
Wishart was taking a careful all-round look. No good getting excited about a target and letting some patrol boat jump on you from the other direction. No good getting excited anyway – not even if it did turn out to be Goeben; and the odds were heavily against that dream coming true so fast. The smoke might be from a factory or a fire or from a freighter of some sort. Jake, slumped across the chart table, begged silently Please God, let it be Goeben.
Wishart was motionless again, with the periscope trained on that north-easterly bearing. All their eyes on him – on as much of his facial expression as was visible. Faces ready for disappointment, but with hope in them too. Wishart glanced sideways, at Hobday’s sharp alertness.
‘Close the hands up, Number One.’
‘Diving stations!’
A swift, quiet rush of men … They’d gone to diving stations a thousand times, and quite often there’d been some degree of tension or expectancy. This was different: if you hadn’t known it, Jake thought, watching them as they settled to their jobs, you’d have read it in their faces.
Goeben: the big one, the one they’d come for, through steel nets and minefields.
‘I want a word with Rinkpole.’
‘Pass the word for the TI!’
CPO Rinkpole came aft looking interested but calm. He was too old a hand to get excited all that quickly. Wishart stepped back from the periscope and McVeigh sent it hissing down.
‘TI – presently we’ll stand by all five tubes. That means your chaps’ll have to slap it about a bit.’
Rinkpole ran a horny hand over the dome of his head. ‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘She’s worth everything we’ve got. If we get the chance to use it. But we certainly shan’t get two chances.’
‘One’ll do us, sir.’
‘Yes.’ Wishart nodded. ‘All right, TI.’ He looked towards McVeigh and moved his hands slightly, and the periscope came rushing up. Rinkpole went aft to lecture his beam- and stern-tubes’ operators – Finn with stokers Lindsay and Burrage amidships, and Smith assisted by Peel in the after ends. Hobday was using the trim-line to get her back in balance after the move to diving stations. Trim would be vital now: if you lost control during an attack you could lose your target: and the effort of the entire operation felt cumulative now – minefields, nets, near-suffocation, everything, building towards this coming moment in which you’d hit or miss. To miss was in fact unthinkable, and Hobday wanted his trim right to the nearest half-point. From that point of view, Rinkpole’s meanderings through the boat were a nuisance. Wishart was circling quickly; he paused to check the bearing of the smoke and then began another circle much more slowly in high power. Back on the smoke: a long, careful study of it, while the low eastern sun blazed down the tube and threw discs of fire into his eyes.
‘Down periscope. Half ahead both.’ He looked fleetingly at Jake and told him, ‘The bearing’s steady.’ Jake had the stop-watch ready on his plotting diagram, instruments and sharpened pencils at hand. It was extraordinary how brittle pencil-leads became in times of stress. The fact of the target’s bearing being steady could mean that E.57 was in the right place; alternatively, and if this was their target, that she hadn’t cleared Seraglio Point yet. In which case she might alter course sharply as soon as she was clear, and then the submarine might be in very much the wrong place.
It would, anyway, be quite a while before they knew for certain what sort of a hand they were being dealt: and slightly longer than that, even, before they’d be in a position to attack.
* * *
Burtenshaw had finally regained the power of speech, and asked to be directed to the admiral’s quarters. The request had seemed to annoy the kapitan-leutnant, who’d had them frogmarched to the lower bridge instead. There he and the ship’s captain had questioned them. The captain was a tall, angular man with hooded, birdlike eyes; he wanted to know where was the other suitcase and what had been inside the empty one. He spoke reasonably good English, and Burtenshaw didn’t have to translate as he’d been doing for the other man, the two-striper.
Two sailors with bayonets on their rifles guarded them from the rear while the questioning continued. Burtenshaw had said he didn’t know what had happened to the other case; the captain swung round to fix his sharp stare on Nick.
‘You; you will tell me. Kapitan-leutnant Heusinger has reported that you came with two cases from the shore. Now we see only one case. Where is the other one?’ Nick looked surprised. ‘Other one?’
The expression turned colder.
‘You know that I can order you to be shot, since you are not wearing your own uniform?’
‘Well …’ He was about to say something about the end of the war being imminent, and how pointless it would be – which seemed rather a weak argument unless he could frame it better – when he saw the commodore arriving. A medium-sized, intelligent-looking man in his middle or late forties; he had a face that could easily have been English. The captain saw Nick’s glance shift, and looked round; then he drew aside, making way for the senior man.
‘Which of them is Everard?’
The
question had been put in German, but Nick heard his own name. He was taking a quick check on the surroundings as the land fell away astern; the ship was under helm, altering from a course of south-southwest to about west-south-west. A course which would take her, he hoped, to where Aubrey Wishart should at this moment be waiting for her. And if the Germans could be stalled for that length of time, he thought, if they could be dissuaded from ordering up the firing squad until E.57 got her attack in, the execution might with any luck be postponed indefinitely. They’d be within their rights to do it, certainly, and he thought bird’s-eyes quite likely would have; but this commodore had rather a gentlemanly, civilised look about him.
Goeben’s captain had returned to his bridge. The commodore, flanked now by the kapitan-leutnant and a young commander – rather, corvetten-kapitan – was staring at him interestedly.
‘Your father is Admiral Sir Hugh Everard, perhaps?’
‘No, sir. That’s my uncle.’
‘Indeed.’ The commodore nodded. ‘You should be proud of such an uncle.’
‘Yes.’ Nick nodded. ‘I am.’
‘I should regret very much to be forced to deprive him of a nephew. Or to deprive you, of the possibility of following in his footsteps in your Royal Navy.’
His English was almost perfect, with only the slightest trace of accent. Coupled with his appearance and pleasantly affable manner, it felt as if one was having a friendly chat with a fellow countryman.
But the affability was fading.
‘As I have heard Captain Steinhoff remind you, you are in a position to be shot, you know. And since we are not particularly stupid we must believe that your other portmanteau contained some kind of explosive charge. It would spare me the discomfort of ordering your execution if you were to tell me where it had been placed. The ship is being searched, of course, and it is probable that we will find it quite soon in any case; I am simply giving you this opportunity to save yourself…’ Glancing at Burtenshaw: ‘Yourselves, I should say. How do you decide?’
‘There’s nothing I can tell you, sir.’
The German looked at Burtenshaw.
‘You, sir?’
Burtenshaw shook his head. The commodore sighed, and asked the kapitan-leutnant, ‘I am told you have an idea of the approximate location?’
‘That is correct, Herr Commodore. The point of entry was at the for’ard gangway with two cases, and taking that into consideration with the place where they were apprehended with only one case I believe the other must be somewhere amidships, roughly.’
‘And below the waterline, of course.’
The kapitan-leutnant agreed. The commodore added, ‘The explosion, moreover, might occur at any time.’ He looked thoughtful, not at all worried. In spite of what he’d just said – which was true, the charge could explode at any moment … Nick wondered how long that fuse was: it was a point which, in the tension and rush of getting aboard and placing the charge, he hadn’t raised. Meanwhile, the commodore was a man in full control of himself as well as of his surroundings, he’d know the fuse would be burning and that getting excited wouldn’t slow it. But there was anger in him too – and – as he turned his head and stared at Nick – menace, suddenly. Quiet menace, much more frightening – if one gave way to fright – than rage or threats would have been. He was a quiet man who worked logically: and cold logic wasn’t noisy, any more than a snake was before it struck – well, most snakes … He’d nodded slightly as he reached a conclusion, and now he’d swung to face the man with three stripes.
‘My compliments to Captain Steinhoff, and I suggest that all men not essential to the working of the ship below decks should be brought up. These two—’ one hand gestured towards Nick and Burtenshaw — ‘are to be confined below, amidships, in the bottom of the ship. You—’ glancing sideways at the kapitan-leutnant – ‘will go with them. Should they attempt to escape, you will shoot them dead. If on the other hand they should decide to disarm or remove their bomb from wherever it may be, you will permit them to do so and then bring them back here. Is that understood?’
* * *
Jake Cameron had fingers crossed on both hands. He heard the soft thump as McVeigh pushed the telemotor lever to ‘raise’ and the tube began its upward slither; then the sound of the handles clicking down as Wishart grabbed them. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw the skipper circling, checking the surroundings before he settled on the crucial bearing. Rinkpole passed through the control room on his way for’ard.
‘Ah …’
The men whose jobs allowed them to watch Wishart brightened suddenly as they caught the sudden gleam of pleasure in his face. He said, ‘I can see her foretop. It’s Goeben. Stand by all tubes. Down periscope.’
McVeigh sent it down like a shiver of yellow light. Everyone taut with excitement now. Anyone of them would have said that in all their lives they’d hardly expect anything to matter quite so much: that was how it felt – like a moment you’d lived for and would live on afterwards. Glancing round, Wishart saw them feeling it, and murmured, ‘Easy does it, now. This’ll be an attack like any other … Slow together. Up periscope.’
‘HE right ahead, sir.’ Weatherspoon added, ‘About three hundred revolutions, sir.’
‘Goeben’s maximum is about three-twenty.’ Jake said it for Wishart’s information. He’d done his homework. Wishart had finished a precautionary all-round search and he was rock-still again, watching his target.
‘Stand by to start the attack.’
‘Standing by, sir.’ Jake’s finger on the button of the stop-watch.
‘Starboard ten.’
‘Starboard ten, sir.’ Roost span his wheel. Even Roost, behind those flashing spokes, was under tension. Muscles at each side of his square jaw bulged in and out like pulses, and for Roost this was about the equivalent of a fit of hysterics. ‘Ten ’o starboard wheel on, sir.’ ‘Start the attack. She bears – that. Range—’ Jake noted range and bearing and began to lay it off on the plotting sheet. ‘Masts are in line bearing—’ He checked it, and it hadn’t changed. So enemy course was two-two-oh, Jake noted. Wishart said, ‘I’m opening off-track on her starboard bow. Midships.’
‘Midships, sir.’
‘Down periscope. Steer oh-one-oh.’
‘Steer oh-one-oh, sir.’
The time of starting the attack was zero minutes. Jake marked Goeben’s position on the diagram accordingly. When Wishart gave him a second fix on her he’d measure the distance between the two points and estimate her speed. Meanwhile he had to keep the submarine’s own track, her courses and speed, up to date, extending the pencil record of it every few seconds, because the second enemy range-and-bearing wouldn’t be taken from the same place as the first had been.
‘Course oh-one-oh, sir.’
‘Half ahead together.’
Agnew pushed the telegraphs around. Wishart would be visualising the oncoming battlecruiser – her course, speed, range, her bearing from the submarine, the boat’s own movements and the two ships’ shifting positions relative to each other. You needed a kind of insight and a sportsman’s eye and a touch of gambler’s instinct too. Hobday, intently watching the trim, was ready to correct the smallest imbalance if one showed up. The greatest hazard was the possibility of varying densities, hitting a freshwater patch or an area of increased salinity. Such a phenomenon could hit them at any second, and if he or his ’planesmen were too slow to react and counter the change, the result could be disaster. You stuck to your own job and at the same time there was a moving picture in your brain of the shape of the developing attack. Wishart was taking the submarine out clear of Goeben’s track so as to get into position to fire from her starboard bow. The torpedoes would be sent out ahead of her so that they’d strike her finally at an angle of ninety degrees, on her beam. If they were aimed right and she held her course, they and Goeben would converge and meet.
‘Slow together. Up.’ The periscope was already rising. McVeigh watched him all the time and acted on pe
riscope orders before they could be uttered. McVeigh was like a fighter poised for the bell to start the fight: on his toes, crouched a bit, beard bristling. As if he had springs inside him. Wishart, with his eyes at the lenses, asked Jake, ‘Masthead height’s what, a hundred and sixty?’
‘Hundred and eighty, sir.’
You needed that height, for periscope ranging. You took the angle subtended by waterline and masthead; the periscope’s graticulated glass was marked off in one degree spaces. (In high power you had to remember to divide the angle by four.) With that angle, and knowing the vertical height, you had a range that was the baseline of a right-angled triangle. Wishart gave Jake his second range-and-bearing, and pushed the handles up. ‘Down. Half ahead together. Starboard ten.’
Circling round to port, increasing the off-track range slightly as he brought her right around to end up on a firing course. Joining Jake now at the chart table.
‘Two-two-oh’s dead right if she hasn’t altered. And twenty knots won’t be far out. Give you another set of figures in a minute.’ He’d absorbed the plot’s information and now he was going back to the periscope. ‘Ease to five.’
Patrol to the Golden Horn Page 28
