Audacity (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  He went down to the deck and met the Scot as he climbed the ladder, came over the side and panted, ‘Sorry, Captain! The first I knew about this was when that bloody Russian knocked on my door twenty minutes ago! This is your boat, come a day early to bring those men. They’re Royal Navy.’

  ‘Navy!’ Smith shot a glance at them. ‘Submariners?’ Some of the crews of the boats scuttled when Russia surrendered and they were left without a base? Although he thought they’d been sent home through Murmansk.

  ‘No.’ Robertson shook his head. ‘Royal Naval Air Service. Our embassy in Petrograd wanted them out of the Bolsheviks’ way in a hurry so shoved them on this boat and sent her off. Their commanding officer will tell you the details but you’ll have to give them passage. In Russia they could go to jail and if left here they’ll be interned.’ Robertson took a breath and went on. ‘Now, the Ivans want to take the cargo. I told them they were promised payment on or after the night of the fifteenth/sixteenth, not before. But I said I’d leave the final decision to you.’

  Smith made it. His orders had said the fifteenth/sixteenth but they’d also said ‘With all despatch’. And every hour Audacity lay here with the gold was another hour of risk. ‘How many of those Navy men?’

  Robertson answered quickly, ‘Eighteen.’

  Smith shouted an order to McLeod: ‘Get ‘em aboard and out of sight below as quick as you can.’ And to Ross: ‘Turn up the hands to transfer the cargo.’ He swung on Buckley: ‘My compliments to Mrs. Ramsay. Her friends are here and she’ll be leaving within the hour.’

  He watched the R. N. A. S. men climb the side of Audacity then be hurriedly shoved below by McLeod and a petty officer, to be spread through the messes of the ship. Ross’s voice, low and urgent, brought men running to the bridge. Smith showed them the hiding-place beneath his bunk and they shuffled in and out of his cabin, heaving the boxes, two men to each box. They used a block and tackle to lower them to the deck one by one. There they were stacked on a wooden grating, secured in place by netting and hooked on to the dangling wire of the derrick. Smith had already warned Ross, ‘You’ll need men on the derrick falls; we can’t use the winch.’ They could not risk its clatter arousing curiosity on shore.

  Ross had answered, ‘Told ‘em off ready, sir.’

  Good mark to Ross. Smith did not need to guess what the men were making of his cargo. They had loaded ammunition often enough, and knew these boxes were far heavier. They would reach the obvious conclusion.

  He leaned out from the wing of the bridge and made hand signals to the master of the Russian boat to work his craft along Audacity’s side until she was forward of the bridge. The Russian’s orders to his men brought her there. His crew appeared uniformly bearded, huge and shapeless in oilskins, but he himself showed in the yellow gleam from the solitary lamp on the boat as clean-shaven. His eyes glittered wolfishly in the light.

  McLeod came hurrying to the bridge and shouldered through the men labouring with the boxes. ‘The airmen are all stowed below, sir. The men in the bombers’ messes forward, the two officers in one of those new cabins aft.’ Those messes for the crews of the bomb-throwers had been empty because the throwers had been taken out and their crews not shipped for this mission. McLeod went on: ‘Chap commanding them is a Flight Commander Gallagher. He insisted he had to see you but I told him he’d have to wait.’

  Smith nodded: ‘Very good.’

  Buckley appeared at the head of the ladder then turned to hand up Elizabeth Ramsay. She wore her cape and a triangle of silk covered her hair and framed her face. In the feeble glow that spilled out of the wheelhouse Smith saw her lips were parted, her eyes shining. That was how she had looked that first morning he saw her. He remembered her saying that she had no husband, that she was in business—but not what it was. He did not want her to go.

  A dozen hands were manning the falls of the derrick, ready to heave the boxes up and over to the fishing-boat. The Russians were waiting expectantly, faces upturned. Smith pointed to their leader. ‘Can you trust him?’ he asked the woman. The man had the eyes of a hungry animal.

  Elizabeth Ramsay answered, ‘He’ll keep his distance.’ She had taught him that at the point of a knife, for she had acquired some strange harsh ways in Russia—quickly and of necessity. But she would not try to explain to this silent, withdrawn young officer with the bleak gaze. Yet—

  The net tightened around the boxes and they lifted slowly, checked, then the boom of the derrick swung and the boxes swayed out at the end of the wire to hang above the Russian boat.

  Audacity’s lookout called huskily, ‘Ship bearing—’

  Smith spun on his heel and saw it, knife-edged bow pushing in past the headland. The gun on her fo’c’sle was manned and he thought he could make out figures on the bridge. As the searchlight mounted there sparked into life he grabbed the girl, dragged her into the wheelhouse and behind the open door, pressed her into the narrow space between door and chart table, protecting her instinctively with his body. The beam of the searchlight fell on the water of the channel beyond the fishing-boat, twitched on to it and Smith heard one of the Russians yell. The beam shifted again and now lit the dangling net with its three-quarter-ton burden, the bridge of Audacity and the men on it. From the wheelhouse Smith saw McLeod, with his hands lifted against the glare.

  The girl whispered, her breath on his cheek, ‘What is it?’

  ‘German destroyer.’

  He recognised her type, T class, two four-inch guns and three torpedo tubes. About ten years old. He remembered Robertson saying: ‘…a few a bit newer but all dangerous to you.’ The voice-pipes to the guns were only feet away from him. Audacity could fight if she had to, but not well, lying at anchor, stopped and tied up to the fishing-boat. She was expected to fight long enough to be rid of the gold but it could not be dumped here, in sight of the enemy and in barely four fathoms of water.

  A voice hailed them in German. Smith could not make out the words but the tone held authority. He called, ‘What did he say?’

  McLeod answered, ‘Wants to know what we’re doing, sir.’

  ‘Tell him we’re a neutral ship in a neutral port so what the hell has it to do with him!’

  Smith saw the destroyer slide slowly into view from the wheelhouse, and stop right abeam as McLeod bawled his answer to the German challenge. Smith could see the other captain now, out on the wing of his bridge, hand lifting a megaphone.

  The voice hammered back, guttural and angry. McLeod interpreted: ‘He says the Finns have asked the Germans to help and Von Goltz is landing at Hango with fifteen thousand men…He himself is escorting ships carrying a regiment, to land them here…and is an ally of the Finns so has the right to ask questions.’

  A regiment. One thousand, maybe two thousand men. Another ship was easing in cautiously around the headland. The gun on the destroyer’s fo’c’sle, another aft, were both trained on the bridge of Audacity. A ransom in gold hung on the end of a wire rope, turning slowly.

  Smith swallowed, then spoke: ‘Grovel a bit. Say we bought some fish from the boat. We’re giving them canned goods in exchange and doing it now because the fishermen want to sail.’

  McLeod shouted the information, wheedled into it a tone of apology and respect. The megaphone lifted again and this time the rattle of German was less peremptory.

  McLeod answered, then muttered, ‘The bastard said my German was bloody awful. And he asked about Red Guards here. I said there weren’t any.’

  ‘Sehr Gut!’ That echoed over the water as the destroyer edged forward slowly until she lay just ahead of Audacity and there came the rumble of her cable as her anchor plummeted down. The other ship came on, creeping, until she lay abeam of Audacity then she, too, anchored. There was a second troopship, just clear of the headland, but she followed suit and anchored there.

  Smith rasped, ‘Tell Ross to carry on.’

  McLeod flicked a hand at Ross on the deck below. The laden net descended steadily and the wire went slack a
s the load disappeared inside the open hold of the boat. The searchlight’s beam swung away from Audacity to sweep slowly around the harbour instead. On the bridge they were almost blind in that sudden darkening. Smith was still a moment, acutely conscious now of the girl’s body under the pressure of his own, breast to breast, leg to leg.

  He took a pace back and said, ‘There’ll be a ladder over the side, just forward of the bridge. Ross will see you down. Tell the Russians to get out of here. Not in a mad scramble that might make the Germans suspicious, but with no delay, either.’ His voice sounded oddly formal, strange even to him.

  He could hear the girl’s quick breathing. She did not answer but in the door she looked back at him. Then she turned away to the ladder. But it was out in the open now. All the glances, the distant, awkward conversations, were done with. They knew too much about each other now. Like it or not.

  Smith leaned over the rail of the bridge and told Ross stiffly, ‘See the lady safe aboard the Russian.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Ross answered from the deck below.

  Smith watched him hold her arms as she swung over the rail and until she found her feet on the ladder; then she was climbing down. Buckley sent her big carpetbag down after her on the end of a line.

  Movement caught at the corner of Smith’s eye, a flash of silver in the black pit of the fishing-boat’s hold. Peering, he made out men working down there and a shifting, silver flood. The Russians had stowed the gold at the bottom of the hold and now were covering it with fish—tons of it.

  The boat’s engine chugged, the lines securing her were cast off and she eased away. Smith caught a glimpse of the girl standing on the deck, her face turned up to him. Then the boat gathered way and Elizabeth Ramsay was lost, merged in the dark silhouette that held on steadily at the edge of the channel. The Russian obeyed Smith’s instructions, went without unseemly haste but without delay, either. She passed the German steamer lying in the channel, rounded the headland and was gone.

  The men disappeared from Audacity’s deck and Ross came up to the bridge. ‘That was a narrow squeak!’

  ‘It’s not over yet.’

  The German ships could not have come at a worse time. The Russians had escaped but Audacity could not. No freighter of her size and seeming tonnage could pass the German steamer anchored in the narrow channel. If Smith tried to slip out through the shoals on either side, taking advantage of Audacity’s shallow draught, it would raise suspicions. ‘We’ll have to sit here and wait until the channel is clear, probably in the morning.’

  Robertson stood at the door of the wheelhouse, mopping his face with a handkerchief. ‘I’m breathing again, but only just. And to think it was me who actually told you this was the safest place for the transfer!’

  Smith shrugged. ‘How were we to know this Von Goltz would choose tonight to invade, and land a part of his force here?’ But now he understood the curiosity of the German patrol the previous day; they must have known of the projected landings here. ‘What about you? How are you going ashore?’

  ‘Not tonight.’ Robertson was firm about that. ‘I don’t want the Germans questioning a Scottish businessman found prowling about the harbour in the middle of the night. No. I left word with my housekeeper that I was coming out to you. If I’m not back by the morning she’ll send my boatman to fetch me.’

  Smith pointed: ‘My cabin. Make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. I’ll not rest easy’—Robertson glanced towards the destroyer—‘but I’ll put my feet up for a while.’

  He retired to the cabin and Smith spoke to Ross and McLeod, ‘Stand down from action stations but crews sleep by the guns, the engine room staff stay on watch and keep steam up. I want an anchor watch on the fo’c’sle ready to slip if we have to run for it, but they keep under cover and everybody else stays below.’ Too many men on Audacity’s deck might again raise suspicions: she was supposed to be a merchantman with a crew of only twenty-odd, not the sixty she carried. He said, ‘Get some sleep yourselves. I’ll call you quick enough if you’re needed.’

  Ross hesitated, then suggested, ‘If Mrs. Ramsay isn’t coming back to the ship, sir, then I could put those two Air Service officers in the cabin she was using.’

  Smith nodded. ‘Yes, but not now. They can manage for this night.’ He offered no explanation for the departure of the girl, nor for Audacity’s mysterious cargo. These were secrets Smith had to keep.

  Ross and McLeod went away and Smith was left in the wheelhouse with Buckley and the two lookouts out on the wings of the bridge. Buckley leaned at the back of the wheelhouse and watched Smith standing silently at the front of it, arms crossed on the screen. Watching his captain Buckley felt relieved: That’s all right, then. Nothing coming off at the moment. It’s when the bugger prowls up and down like a caged lion then stops stock still that you’ve got to look out.

  He had been with Smith for a year now and knew more about him than Smith suspected. Buckley was in a privileged position but wisely asked for no favours—that was just one of the things he knew about the captain. Buckley also knew about his women, again, more than Smith suspected. The leading hand could have got cheap kudos on the mess decks by telling a few tales but he never did so. It was none of their business. Smith wasn’t a saint, Buckley knew that, but he was a bloody good man. The only one that would have got him here on this lot!

  *

  Flight Commander Malcolm Gallagher lay on the bunk in the new cabin once part of a bomb-thrower’s mess. The mattress was hard and lumpy, the blankets seemed damp. Condensation dripped from the deckhead.

  Still, it was not as bad as that billet he had shared with Johnny when they had first gone to France. The pair of them had slept in a corner of a barn, cold, draughty and with the rain coming in through the roof. That had been a good time, though. The Pups they were flying were new, and to them France was new and exciting. Johnny Vincent, always the joker when you were on the ground, had nevertheless been the wingman you could trust your life to when you flew.

  Gallagher had boxed at light-heavyweight and very well; he bore no scars. He had come a long way since France: his black hair needed cutting now and dark eyes looked out sombrely from under thick brows. It was a hard face.

  Sub-Lieutenant Edward Danby sat on the opposite bunk, fidgeting with his cap. Then he stood up to move nervously about the cabin. He was small and thin, pale and sandy-haired. Gallagher watched him with sour amusement that suddenly turned to irritation. ‘Can’t you bloody well sit still?’

  ‘Sorry!’ Danby went quickly back to his bunk and perched on the edge of it. He looked towards Gallagher for approval, was instead confronted by his glare and dropped his eyes.

  Gallagher wondered why the hell he’d been saddled with such a wet sub-lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy: Danby hardly knew one end of a ship from the other. Poking about now as if he’d never seen a mess deck before. Probably hadn’t.

  Gallagher knew ships. He was a regular officer and had been serving in a cruiser in 1914 when the flying bug bit him. He volunteered for the Royal Naval Air Service, went to Eastchurch for flying training then flew a succession of aircraft, leading up to Sop with Triplanes and Pups before transferring to Camels. He had survived—successfully—and had the decorations to prove it.

  Now his thoughts slipped back to his own last sea-time in the summer of 1917 before he had taken on this Russian job. He had been in a cruiser, flying Pups, with Johnny and a few more. Fred Rutland had been the first to fly off from a cruiser but others soon followed, Gallagher among them. Then came the Camels, Russia, and notching up more kills until on one mission he had flown into that wall of anti-aircraft fire. The Camel started falling apart around him but he got it back to that damn-awful field at Kunda Bay and landed it—just. They had carted him off to a Russian hospital—but only after telling him about Johnny Vincent. And Danby’s part in the whole bloody mess…

  He tore his mind away from that. Then he remembered the Camel, his Camel, where
it was now. He swung his legs off the bunk, stood up and looked at his watch. ‘We’ve been down here an hour. I’m going up to talk to the skipper.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’ Danby asked.

  ‘No, but you’d better. If you don’t he might think I’m hiding you for some reason.’

  Smith leaned on the screen in the wheelhouse and stared out at the destroyer. Blackledge had said that the Germans were gathering ships and troops at Riga and Danzig: he thought it might mean an attempt to seize the Russian Fleet. Wrong guess; it was this force to invade Finland. So was the Russian Fleet still at risk? Smith heard the scuff of boots on the bridge gratings, turned, and saw two figures standing at the wheelhouse door.

  The taller man asked, ‘Permission to join you, sir?’ In the dim light of the wheelhouse his face was drawn and hollow-eyed, but still hard; this was a fighter and a winner. The shorter, younger man a pace or two behind looked tired and scared. They both stank of fish. Their uniforms were khaki service-dress but the tall one boasted the two rings of a naval lieutenant on his cuffs, and wings above them, the ‘Bloody Duck’, with a star that marked him as a flight commander. The younger had the single ring of a sub-lieutenant but no wings. He had obviously borrowed the jacket because it was too big for him and hung over his shoulders, almost hiding his hands.

  Smith realised these would be the two officers who had come aboard earlier, brought by the Russians. They might well have had a hard time so, worried as he was, he said, ‘For a minute. You are?’

  ‘Gallagher, flight commander. The sub here is Danby.’ That was said with a jerk of the head.

  ‘Smith, commander, and commanding this ship.’ He held out his hand and they shook it in turn. Smith said, ‘You realise you’re no longer R. N. A. S.’

  Gallagher sniffed. ‘So we heard. Since the first of this month we’ve been part of this new lot called the Royal Air Force, us and the Flying Corps. Don’t see that it’s going to make any difference till we get home, though.’ He shrugged. ‘I see the Anna’s gone.’