The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5

by Alexander Fullerton

  Harbinger’s firing on the U-boat astern of the convoy hadn’t achieved anything, except that no subsequent attack had developed from that quarter, so it might have been scared off. And Paeony had come near to being rammed by the William Law when the freighter had charged out at the U-boat. Paeony had been going after it at the same time, rushing down close to number one column. Guyatt had picked up the U-boat on his 271 when he’d been returning to station after losing the contact he’d been chasing out on the bow; he’d spotted the U-boat in the glare of the William Law’s snowflakes, and altered course to ram. He’d been so close that his four-inch gun had time to get off only two shots as he tore in: he’d passed right over the top, he’d said, couldn’t have missed by more than a foot or two, but the German had crash-dived remarkably fast. The skipper had told Guyatt he shouldn’t have tried to ram. With so few escorts, and the fact that ramming invariably damaged the rammer as well as her victim, it was now forbidden. Guyatt should have held off and used his gun to better effect than he had: and if he’d been as close as all that, why on earth hadn’t his shallow-set depthcharges been effective?

  Astilbe had depthcharged a U-boat that had dived in front of her, too. Graves had said his asdics had lost contact almost as soon as he’d picked it up, after the disturbance of the explosions had faded; he suspected it might have been one of the deep-diving boats. He did have some “heavies” in Astilbe, but there’d been no chance to use them. He’d made two other contacts during the night, but with no end result. So—summing it up—with only three or four U-boats at them, they’d lost two ships and nothing to show for it.

  Hardly surprising, Mr Timberlake thought, that there was a slight air of grumpiness up here. “Signals, sir?”

  CPO Bearcroft was at the skipper’s elbow, with the log for his perusal.

  “Anything of interest?”

  He’d taken the log, and was leafing through the night’s messages.

  “Not really, sir. We got a BBC news, though—more ’eavy fighting in the desert. Aussies made a big advance, it said.”

  “Good for them.” He handed the log back. “Thank you, Chief.”

  The news bulletins still weren’t revealing much, though. So little, in fact, that he wasn’t feeling as optimistic as some of the announcers sounded. If the Eighth Army didn’t break through soon they’d run out of steam, and then it might be Rommel’s turn. Glancing round as the HF/DF bell rang, Nick saw Timberlake with his beak in the pipe: listening, and scowling … Then he looked up, and met his captain’s stare, “U-boats transmitting on oh-two-seven, oh-four-eight and oh-six-one, sir, ranges nineteen, sixteen and eighteen miles.”

  “Ask him if they’re the same ones he heard earlier.”

  Apparently two of them were not. One, Gritten said, had been around yesterday, but two were newcomers, probably just arrived and getting their orders and the convoy details.

  Convalescents embarked at Durban. Would their nurses have embarked there too?

  He heard Carlish order “Starboard fifteen!” There was no reason to imagine one of the nurses might have reached Durban from Australia; there was every reason not even to consider the possibility.

  “More of ’em with us now, sir, I’m told.”

  Warrimer, at his elbow. Nick looked round at him.

  “Now you’re here, Number One, I’ll take an hour’s rest in my sea-cabin.”

  “Good idea, sir. Why not make it several—”

  “Paeony—” the skipper pointed, as he cut Warrimer short— “Paeony is to oil as soon as Astilbe finishes. I want a shake when she’s done it. Alternatively wake me if there’s any contact within twelve miles.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Carlish ordered, “Midships!”

  Mr Timberlake watched the skipper slide off his high seat, hang his binoculars over the back of it by their strap, and turn aft to leave the bridge. Nick Everard was a thickset, hard-looking man, with dark hair greying at the temples. The scar he’d collected in some fracas out East was camouflaged by an embryo beard. He’d stopped, and he was looking quizzically at the gunner.

  “All right, Guns?”

  Timberlake nodded. “Top line sir.”

  “Plenty of depth bombs in hand?”

  The red-rimmed eyes blinked. No smile: Mr Timberlake knew when his leg was being pulled. “Dare say they’ll last out, sir.”

  “Let’s hope so.” A gesture of one hand—northeastward, where the U-boats were chattering to each other. “I’d say we’re going to need all we’ve got.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  From “The U-boat War in the Atlantic”—official German account:

  Allied methods of spreading large numbers of different rumours served to confuse the minds of our Intelligence officers. It must be admitted that our enemies showed themselves to be masters of deception.

  From “Monthly A/S Report” (British) for October 1942:

  This month the U-boats made all their assaults by night … The rough weather during the month, by reducing the efficiency of R.D.F., was to that extent at least in favour of U-boats attacking by night, but it may interest the escorts to know that … [it] … has also been a severe strain on the Germans.

  “This mission is of very high importance, you see. Perhaps even so much as to win the war, I think.” The Count’s brown, spaniel-type eyes were fixed gloomily on Paul Everard across Ultra’s wardroom table. He added, “There is much danger, consequently, for yours truly.”

  Paul sipped at his mug of cocoa. Ultra was on the surface and it was shivery cold inside her. For ten hours the diesels had been drawing cold night air down through the control-room hatches—ever since she’d slipped out of Malta before dusk last evening, and turned west. She’d be diving soon, before daylight, to spend the day motoring through the minefield known as QB 255, along the southwest coast of Sicily. It would be Paul’s watch at about the time they dived, which was why he’d turned out now to be ready for it.

  The Count was of medium build, dark-haired, with a Mediterranean complexion, sad eyes, and soft, well-cared-for hands. Wykeham had expressed the opinion that he was no more a count than Alfred Shaw the wardroom flunky was a bishop; and the Count had only smiled and reminded him, “My friend, I do not request you should call me ‘Count.’ Did I not request you call me Peter?”

  His way of turning the other cheek added to a certain charm of manner. But “Peter” would have been one name too many. According to the patrol orders, his name was Carlo Paoli, according to himself he was a count, but on top of this he had a Greek prayer-book which he dipped into quite often, with the name Christos Venizelos on its flyleaf. Paul had asked him about this: why an Italian would read Greek from a Greek Orthodox Church prayer-book, and who was Venizelos?

  “Christos is myself. Although I have once been Selim Zorlu, a Turk, and once also a Hungarian. But Venizelos—” he patted himself on the chest—“mine own family name. My father highly important man of course, you know, everybody know.” At this point he’d crossed himself, and Paul had let the matter drop, only exchanging glances with others in the circle; the gesture had implied that further questions might intrude on holy ground. But the Count had raised the subject again himself, in the wardroom mess in Malta, yesterday, by telling Wykeham, “You will know the name of Venizelos, I may assume?”

  “Well, no, Count, I don’t believe—”

  “Was Prime Minister, in Greece. In Great War.”

  One had met men before who seemed to be arrant liars but whose stories, if you bothered to check up on one when there was some chance to do so, seemed to stand up. And apparently Venizelos had been Greek premier during the other war. Questioned by a Greek submarine officer, moreover, the Count had been completely at his ease in detailing his own birth date and place, and the names of brothers, sisters, uncles … it wasn’t proof of his own membership of the family, but it had convinced that Greek. The fact remained that Carlo Paoli came from Naples and was going to be put ashore in two days’ time on the north coas
t of Sicily. It was complicated all round, and settling for “Count” was an easy way out.

  He asked Paul now, “After this war, you go back to America?”

  “I don’t know. Really, no idea at all.”

  Paul’s mother, Nick Everard’s first wife, was a White Russian. After her divorce from Nick she’d married an American industrialist, and Paul had been at college over there until 1939, when he’d ducked out of it and come over to join up.

  “You give me your address, maybe I look you up one day, in Connecticut?”

  “Why, sure, I’d like that very much.”

  He’d make damn sure to do nothing of the sort. A man like the Count might be invaluable in wartime, but in peace he’d be a conman, to be given a wide berth. Paul felt two-faced himself as he nodded again: “Be delighted.”

  The brown eyes looked sadder than ever. Might a master of duplicity see through an amateur’s deceit?

  “I think you do not know, what for this business?”

  “Not really.”

  “You like I tell you, Paul?”

  “Perhaps you better not.”

  “Why for not?” When the Count shook his head like that, his jowls trembled. “Who you tell? The fishes?” He lifted his arms. “Birds?”

  “Go ahead, then, let’s hear it.”

  “On your chart, I show you.”

  The way he pronounced “show,” it rhymed with “plough.” Paul leant out, reached across the gangway and pulled the chart over. “Here we are. What’s the story?”

  They were alone in the wardroom. Hugo Wykeham had the watch, and the skipper had gone up to the bridge ten minutes ago. Bob McClure had moved out of the wardroom to make room for the Count; there was a small bunking space, more like a shelf really, in a caged section of electrical switch-gear opposite the wireless office, and this had become McClure’s berth. He didn’t like it being referred to as his cage, especially after Paul had offered to keep him supplied with bananas in there. He’d been indignant anyway, at having to move out, despite the fact that his small size suited him to that restricted space and that it would only be for two nights. They’d be sending the Count off in his canoe on the night after this next one.

  “But then taking the sod off again?”

  “And straight back to Malta. Another couple of nights, that’s all.”

  McClure hadn’t argued with the captain, but to Wykeham he’d expressed strong resentment at having to surrender his bunk to a “fat Greek.”

  “He’s Italian, not Greek.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “Well, he’s got guts, all right.”

  “Phoney as hell. I wouldn’t trust him a bloody inch!”

  “He’s the kind they get for this sort of thing, that’s all. I agree, I wouldn’t lend him a fiver—or leave my sister alone with him for two minutes!”

  “Right.” McClure had nodded. “She’d eat him alive, I expect.”

  The Count’s soft-looking hands moved across the chart.

  “Here I land. You see?”

  Paul nodded. It would be his job to get the folboat up to the casing and launch it. They were carrying two, but only in case one got damaged. The operation of surfacing in the dark, getting the fore hatch open and the canoe out and the hatch shut and clipped again while it was being launched—timing had to be split-second, so as to have the hatch open for only a minimal time, in case of enemy interference and a need to dive—had been rehearsed in Malta, in Marsamxett Creek at night. The Count would go up through the bridge hatch and climb down to the casing, and by the time he got there Paul’s team would have the canoe in the water alongside, ready for him to step into it. In fact none of these arrangements pleased the Count, who’d claimed that on previous occasions he’d been provided with a commando boat-handler to do the paddling for him, taking the folboat back to the submarine and bringing it in again a few nights later to pick him up. This time he was required to hide the canoe on shore, and do his own paddling both ways.

  The landing spot was near Termini, about fifteen miles east of Palermo.

  “You want I should tell you what for I risk my life in this business?”

  The Count did seem to be acutely aware of his own intrepidity. Paul shook his head. “Not unless you want to. Naturally I’m curious, but it’s your neck.”

  “Make no difference, you see … So—here. Other side Palermo, that is Golfo di Castelammara. And my place for landing—here. Now—you see this coast between Capo Zafferano and Capo Cefalu? For landings, both sides Palermo. Many, many men. With tanks, guns. Big, big army, both these places. Battleships, many ships—bombarding first—and aircraft carriers with fighters over … So then very quick is Palermo captured, then all Sicily—huh?”

  “My sainted aunt …”

  “You are surprise, huh?”

  “How the heck do all the ships arrive at those places without the enemy getting wind of it and being ready for ’em?”

  “Problem for others.” The Count brushed it off. “Me, I land, meet with Resistance leaders—friends … But wait: as yet I do not tell you all … Here, also!”

  “Sardinia?”

  “I know this, but private, is not my official informations. True, however—at the same time, landings here also, southwest, with this port Cagliari between—you understand?”

  He’d closed his hands like pincers.

  “Here Palermo, here Cagliari. Sardinia, Sicily—huh?”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  He was rather flattered, that the Count should have chosen him to tell this to. Paul did like him, despite a certain caution in his attitude; perhaps because he was such an original, but also because there was a loneliness about him that drew one’s sympathy. Drew his, anyway. And what he’d described made sense, all right. With Palermo and Cagliari in Allied hands, both islands could be invested and captured quickly. With those ports and airfields then you’d leapfrog into Italy, or the south of France even.

  “Please not to remark I am telling you these matters. Is not so important, but I am not suppose—”

  A voice behind Paul exploded: “Now where’s the bloody chart, for shit’s sake!”

  Bob McClure. Like an angry gnome bristling in the gangway. Paul handed him the chart. “Who let you out of your cage?”

  “Diving any minute now. Cape Marco’s ten miles abeam.”

  “How’s the shelf?”

  “No more than painful, long as you don’t raise your head. If you do, you get electrocuted.” He asked the Count, “My bunk nice and comfy?”

  “I am most appreciating—”

  The diesels cut out. In the suddenly contrasting silence McClure muttered, “Here we go.” There was a rush of movement down the ladder into the control room, then Ruck’s voice funnelled down the pipe: “Open main vents!” He was diving her quietly “on the watch” so as to allow men who were off-duty to continue sleeping. Paul heard Wykeham order, “Eighty feet.”

  It was a well-established route through this minefield. You dived to eighty feet and then spent fifteen hours at four knots on a course of 300 degrees, passing five miles off Cape Granitola. Then you surfaced off Marettimo—in darkness again by that time—and went wherever the patrol orders directed you: in this case north and then east, around the western end of Sicily.

  Ruck arrived as Paul was edging out into the gangway, on his way to the control room. He’d take over the watch as soon as Wykeham had caught a trim—as soon as he’d got the boat in balance and neutral buoyancy at that depth. For the ten hours’ dived passage there’d be nothing for officers of the watch to do except watch the trim, making adjustments now and then by pumping a few gallons this way or that. It would be a warm, quiet, sleep-ridden day: as long as nobody’d moved any of the mines since they’d last passed through.

  “Well, Count.” Ruck was shedding bridge clothing and hanging it behind the watertight door. “We’re right on schedule. This time tomorrow you’ll be ashore in Sicily.”

  “Yes.” The Count had h
is Greek prayer-book open again. He nodded, licked his lips. “Thank you.” The troubled look in his spaniel eyes was perhaps habitual. They flickered up now as McClure came in and squeezed on to the padded bench, bringing some paperwork with him. The Count asked Ruck, “How far from the shore—” he shook his head—“How near distance to the shore will you take me?”

  “Half a mile.” Ruck swung up on to his own bunk. “Half a nautical mile, that is. One thousand yards.”

  “Thousand yards.” Opening his hands, looking at their soft palms. Then closing them into fists. “Why is it I am not allow a soldier for the boat?”

  A canoe-handler, he was griping about again. Ruck sighed. “I gather there were no commandos available. Until now we’ve had a squad attached to the flotilla—for impromptu raids and sabotage—well, as you know. But they’ve been whisked off somewhere.”

  The Count nodded. “I can guess what is that purpose.”

  “Then you know more about it than I do, Count.”

  “Is possible.”

  Ruck lay back, and shut his eyes. The answer he’d given had not been the true one. And the orders concerning this part of it had been given verbally. Nothing on paper, and the explanation had been strictly private, offered over a glass of gin. He heard Count Peter, alias Carlo Paoli, alias Christos Venizelos and Selim Zorlu, explaining, “It is not only for the work of paddling the boat that I am concern. On other times the commando have also tommy gun for protecting me. You see …” He’d turned to McClure now, for want of a better audience. “I leave my boat—this time not, I must hide him—I am saying times before this …

  So I have sand or rocks I must pass over. But on the sea the boat is not difficult for persons on shore to be seeing: so when I come on land I am—how you say—”

  “Exposed.”

  Ruck had offered this, without opening his eyes.

  “Yes. This is why it is much better, infinitely, for having other man with the tommy gun, you understand?”

  McClure nodded, without looking up from his work. “Have to take your chances.”