Audacity (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Ross muttered savagely, ‘Of all the bloody rotten luck!’

  The lieutenant stared at the ‘deck cargo’ and strode over to finger it, bang on it with his fist. He could see it was a box and turned on McLeod, his hand going to the holstered pistol.

  Smith stepped out of the wheelhouse. He spoke in English. ‘Good day, Lieutenant.’ And as the Swede gaped at him, ‘This is a British ship, I am her captain and an officer of the Royal Navy.’ The lieutenant did not answer and Smith asked, ‘You speak English?’

  ‘Yes, I speak it. Not so good as German but I speak it.’

  ‘Good.’ Smith dropped down the ladders to the deck, saluted, and held out his hand to the lieutenant. ‘I am Commander Smith. ‘

  The Swede returned the salute, hesitated, then shook the hand once, released it. ‘Johanssen.’ Then: ‘This is a British ship? A ship of the Royal Navy?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Johanssen thumped the box again with his fist. ‘There is a gun in here?’ He pointed at the other one forward: ‘In there?’

  ‘No.’

  The Swede eyed Smith suspiciously. ‘Then what?’

  ‘That is my business. But not guns, you have my word.’ The guns were elsewhere in the ship but that was not Johanssen’s business either.

  He accepted Smith’s word with a nod, but: ‘You are a belligerent.’

  Smith smiled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Passing through the Kalmarsund. You will understand I cannot tell you were I am bound.’

  The lieutenant nodded again but said stiffly, formally, ‘These are Swedish waters, neutral waters. You are a belligerent and I must tell you that you may only shelter here for twenty-four hours. You entered the Kalmarsund this morning. You must leave tomorrow morning.’

  ‘That is understood. No doubt the same restrictions apply to German ships. You spoke of one at the mouth of the channel?’

  Johanssen said, ‘A minesweeper.’

  ‘A warship, then?’

  ‘She has a gun, yes.’

  ‘She is not in Swedish waters?’

  ‘No. She patrols across the channel just outside Swedish waters. I am sure of that. I have been to her twice.’

  ‘Today, and… ?’ Smith let the question hang.

  Johanssen answered, ‘Yesterday. She has been here two days now. Her captain has orders to stop and interrogate every ship entering or leaving the Kalmarsund. He does so. In the day he lies at anchor with steam up and in the night he patrols with a big light—you know?’

  Smith thought that he had been right not to try to run. He said, ‘A searchlight.’

  Johanssen went on, ‘He investigates every ship. When there is no ship he plays chess or writes to his wife in Hamburg.’

  Smith’s eyebrows raised. ‘You know him well.’

  ‘Not well. I call on him. We drink coffee and talk, exchange views.’ He paused, then: ‘There was a report that a German ship was captured off Kirkko by a White Russian ship with a British captain.’ He looked questioningly at Smith. ‘I think, maybe, he watches for you?’

  Smith shrugged. ‘Who can tell?’ Clearly that would be all Johanssen knew about Audacity. The story of the more recent action in the Gulf of Riga might have been wirelessed to the minesweeper, but her captain would not have told the Swede about that.

  Johanssen asked, ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I will anchor—for now.’

  ‘For now? And later?’

  ‘That is my affair. What do you intend?’

  Johanssen was silent. Smith could guess at his thoughts: he should report the presence of this ship but the patrol-boat had no wireless. If he left her to go to Kalmar, twenty miles north, she might well sneak away, running close inside Swedish waters to evade the German minesweeper. He could not allow her to violate the laws of neutrality like that.

  Johanssen made his decision. ‘I will stay with you.’

  ‘And see me safely clear of Swedish waters.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘I understand. In your position I would do the same.’ Probably. But in any case Smith wanted the patrol-boat here until the morning. That way at least Audacity’s presence here would not be public property before the next day. Smith turned towards the side and Johanssen took the hint, turned with him. Smith said, ‘Your English is very good.’

  Johanssen shrugged off the compliment. ‘You are kind. I think it is not bad. My German is better.’ And that reminded him of the minesweeper at the mouth of the Kalmarsund. ‘You will fight, Captain?’

  Smith said honestly, ‘I don’t know.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe our German friend will go away. The weather will be worse.’

  ‘But not so bad as that.’ Johanssen shook his head. ‘He will patrol, as always.’ He paused at the side, looked Audacity over again from stem to stern then said, ‘There is news today of a German raider. A telegram from Norway said a boat with survivors from a British ship had been found and they said the raider sank their ship just south of Trondheim. And another British ship was sunk off Bergen some days ago.’

  And yet another in the North Sea as Audacity started this voyage. Smith showed no change of expression, lifted his hand in salute. ‘Until tomorrow.’

  ‘Good day, Captain.’ Johanssen saluted in his turn and went down the ladder to his boat.

  Smith told Ross, ‘We’ll anchor.’ Ross bawled the order, then waited, expectantly. For Smith to reel off a plan already neatly prepared to meet this latest emergency? Smith snapped, ‘Normal routine, Mr. Ross. It’s time the men were fed, or had you forgotten?’

  He stalked away and climbed to the bridge, said shortly, ‘Mrs. Ramsay, Mr. McLeod. You both did well, thank you.’ He climbed again to the flying bridge, snapped at the lookouts there to get below and keep their watch from the bridge. He wanted this place to himself. They hurried away so he got the solitude he needed, and the torment that went with it. He paced alone as the sun slid slowly down the sky.

  12—‘We must take this ship!’

  Smith stared out towards the distant entrance to the Kalmarsund. He could not even see the ship that bottled him in; but she was there, hull-down below the horizon, less than ten miles away. And there were doubtless other ships like her scattered around the Baltic, patrolling the approaches to ports and watching for Audacity. The minesweeper was sent here the day after Königsberg was taken and when Audacity was reported as headed westward for the Gulf of Bothnia. It might have seemed possible to the German Command that she could go on to the Swedish coast to attack German shipping there, maybe even into the Kalmarsund. She had entered Kirkko, after all. They’d had to do a lot of guessing as to where to place their ships and this time they’d picked a winner. He shuffled again through the alternatives open to him, re-examining each one, aware that Ross, McLeod, all of them below were waiting for him to get them out of this.

  He could run north again through the Kalmarsund then back south down the long seaward side of Oland, so evading the minesweeper. But that was a diversion totalling a hundred and thirty miles, taking twelve hours or more, using his dwindling coal—and what if the destroyer that had passed the channel entrance was on her way south again? Alternatively, he could steam straight down on the sweeper and fight, and win, no doubt of that. Johanssen had said she had a gun. Just one gun meant she wasn’t one of the big minesweepers built for the job but probably a trawler pressed into service with a crew of twenty or so. But she would have wireless. Before she was finished, therefore, she would get off a signal and the hunters would know where to seek Audacity.

  Repeat the trick that had succeeded at Riga? But this German skipper sounded too much on his guard, and he’d only been here two days, not swinging around his anchor for weeks on end like the Riga guard-boat. And his searchlight meant that Audacity could not get near him without being seen.

  Smith turned away in frustration and again began to pace the bridge, glaring at the Swedish patrol-boat that lay a cable’s length t
o starboard. If he tried to slip out through the shallows and out of range of the German’s searchlight, the Swede would follow. Johanssen had made that plain. The patrol-boat’s navigation lights would attract the attention of the German and bring him down on Audacity. And Smith could hardly capture or sink the Swedish patrol-boat, a neutral in neutral waters, although it would be easy enough. She was unarmed, only slightly bigger than Audacity’s motor-boat, and—

  He halted in his prowling, standing on the starboard wing and staring out, the pieces at last clicking into place in his mind.

  He wanted to bellow but instead he called casually, ‘Mr. Ross!’

  ‘Sir?’ The first lieutenant’s voice came from almost under Smith’s feet where Ross stood, just outside the wheelhouse, his face upturned.

  ‘Send the carpenter up here. And Fenwick.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘And, Mr. Ross!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘All officers in my cabin, in ten minutes. My compliments to Mrs. Ramsay and I’d be grateful if she would join us. And bring with you a list of every man under five foot six.’

  ‘Sir?’ Ross gaped at that, then remembered he’d been given an order: ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

  Smith grinned to himself when Ross had gone, bawling for the carpenter and sailmaker. Ross would find out all about it soon enough. He was too tall for the job and so were Gallagher and McLeod. Danby would be fine, though—if size was all that counted.

  The carpenter and sailmaker came up the ladder, breathing heavily from running. Bennett had been at work forward, Fenwick in his mess right aft. The sun was low in the sky. There was possibly an hour of daylight left, and much to be accomplished.

  Smith pointed at the Swedish patrol-boat, where she lay to her anchor, rocking gently. A thin drift of blue smoke came from a little funnel forward in the cabin that covered her for half of her length. She would have a head and a galley in there; a meal was cooking. The lieutenant sat in the well, a book on his knee. The blue and yellow ensign flapped from its staff in the stern by the tiller as the wind caught it.

  Smith said, ‘Take a good look, and listen to what I want you to do.’

  *

  The sun had set an hour ago. Smith stood outside the wheelhouse to port, by the motor-boat. It was chance that had dictated that the motor-boat was berthed on the side away from the Swede, but had it not been then Smith would have found some pretext to turn Audacity round. As it was, however, the wheelhouse, Smith’s cabin, the two ventilator cowls and the funnel made a screen that hid the motor-boat from the Swede.

  The boat’s disguise was ready. She was only three-quarters the size of the patrol-boat and had been open along her length, but now a cabin was set between a short foredeck and a well right aft. The carpenter had knocked up both foredeck and cabin. It was quick, rough work, the ports in the cabin mere circular holes, and the door a rectangle, but they would look real in the night. Fenwick’s hastily sewn Swedish ensign hung from a staff in the stern by the tiller.

  Smith ordered, ‘Lower away.’ They let her down by hand, quietly. There was a light on Audacity’s poop and by Smith’s order a crowd of thirty or more were bawling a ribald chorus to Wilberforce’s concertina—to cover any noise made in lowering the boat.

  Her crew climbed down into her: Buckley, a petty officer, Armstrong, and a dozen men, the Welsh second engineer, Price, and a stoker among them. Smith went last of all, preceded by Elizabeth Ramsay, her cloak wrapped around her. While she ducked into the little cabin where most of the men were huddled, he sat in the sternsheets by Buckley at the tiller. ‘Shove off!’

  Danby, standing in the bow, and Buckley used boat-hooks to push the boat away from the ship’s side. Four of the men who still sat in the well slid their oars into rowlocks and began quietly pulling as Smith ordered, ‘Give way!’

  Buckley eased the tiller over and the boat slid away from the ship, keeping Audacity between the boat and the Swede. So for a quarter-mile with Smith glancing over his shoulder at Audacity, then he ordered the oars in and the engine started. The sound would now be muted by distance, and covered by the cheerful chorus aboard Audacity.

  There was a moderate swell in the sound between Oland and the mainland; outside it would be worse. The motor-boat made good time, punching through the rippling black water at nearly eight knots. Three of the four men who had pulled her thus far were now crowded inside the little cabin. Its roof was loose and had lifted then dropped again as they squeezed in. The fourth man, Tompkins, at five foot four the smallest man of Audacity’s company, sat in the sternsheets opposite Smith.

  Buckley, at Smith’s order, ran the boat along the Oland shore and a mile or so out until they passed Gronhagen, a fishing village on the Oland shore, pin-points of yellow light marking windows. The lighthouse showed at the southern tip of Oland and now they were feeling the weather. The swell was steeper and the wind gusting strongly as they pushed out of the sheltered water between Oland and the mainland. Spray flew inboard—or was that rain? Smith rubbed at it on his face. There was no moon nor star to lighten the darkness, the boat pitched and rolled. The men in her hung on and rolled with her.

  Now Smith could see the minesweeper, or rather her searchlight, the sweeping finger of it showing over towards the mainland at first, then edging across the strait as the sweeper patrolled. Smith watched the source of that finger of light until: ‘Show the lights.’ Danby in the bow uncovered the lamps and now a green glow to starboard, a red to port, marked the boat. ‘Port your helm.’ Buckley eased the tiller over to port and that turned the boat’s head to starboard. ‘Meet her…midships…steady.’ Now they were on a course to intercept the minesweeper.

  Only minutes now. Smith wished Elizabeth Ramsay were not there but he needed her. At the briefing in Smith’s cabin all his officers had volunteered to go on the raid, when he had not asked for volunteers. He told them: ‘I’m going myself.’ He gave no reason but it was partly because he felt responsible for getting them all into this trap and so it was up to him to get them out—if he could. It was also partly that he believed he was the best man for this job. ‘I want Mrs. Ramsay to come along for her German.’ Johanssen had said his German was better than his excellent English, so whoever hailed the minesweeper had to do so in utterly convincing German, and would need to understand and answer questions quickly. McLeod was not up to that and knew it. Besides, if this raid ended in total disaster and Ross was left to command Audacity then he would need McLeod, the navigator with a specialised knowledge of the Baltic.

  Smith refused Gallagher because he was too big and anyway, if anything happened to him then the Camel would be useless. At first he had turned down Danby, even though he was small enough, because this would be work for seamen.

  But Danby had said quietly, ‘I’m no stranger to a boat, sir. For two years before I came into the Service I spent all my spare time helping a chap who had a boat. He plied for hire, taking people out to their ships in the Pool of London. We didn’t sink, and he didn’t sack me.’

  And Smith had believed him.

  Now Smith called, ‘Can you all hear me?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ from Danby.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ from the cabin.

  Smith’s voice was harsh now, with a crack in it. His mouth was dry. ‘In two or three minutes we’ll be alongside. You all know what you have to do. We must take this ship! Stop for nothing, nobody! Wounded must wait!’

  Nobody answered him. In the cabin Elizabeth Ramsay had the hood of the cloak pulled up to cover her head but she shivered, sensing the pent-up tension in the men around her. They smelt of coal smoke, sweat, tobacco and gun oil. Every man carried a pistol in a holster. They would need their hands free when the time came, so Smith had decreed ‘no rifles’. A detail, like the white armbands they wore knotted above their elbows so that they would not fire on their friends in the darkness. Details were important. This had to work.

  The searchlight’s beam swept towards the boat and Smith stood up in
the well. So did Danby right forward in the bow and Tompkins aft. The beam slid over them, past, checked and returned, lit up the boat, the standing men and the ensign snapping from the staff in the stern. It held them for a second then resumed its sweeping.

  They had passed the first test but there would be more. Smith swallowed. ‘Ready, Mrs. Ramsay?’

  She was crouched at the door of the cabin a yard away: ‘Yes.’ He could see the pale oval of her face. He was asking a lot of this girl. He could not order her but he had set before her what he considered to be her duty and she had responded.

  The motor-boat was closing the sweeper, coming in at an angle to her port side. The sweeper was the slower of the two, plodding along on her patrol at less than the eight knots of the boat and she was slowing now, stopping. Smith ordered, ‘Half ahead!’

  The boat’s speed fell away as she ran in towards the sweeper’s side, in darkness now, below the beam of the searchlight that swept overhead. Smith saw the light was mounted atop the wheelhouse. What was that old saying? Always darkest under the light? After the searchlight’s glare the night was pitch black, the sea with an oily glitter from the reflection of the beam, the rain driving silver on the wind. The night vision of the men aboard the sweeper would not be good and the motor-boat closing them was a passable replica of the Swedish patrol-boat, smaller but crewed with men to scale. The Swedish lieutenant and his crew were tall. Smith was not, nor Danby, nor Tompkins. And the hefty Buckley was seated at the tiller.

  They were barely thirty yards from the sweeper now and Smith prompted: ‘Right, Mrs. Ramsay.’

  She pushed back the hood of the cape and he saw her pale face. Then she shouted, making her voice deep and hoarse, ‘Guten Abend…’ They had rehearsed what she should say, so Smith did not bother to listen, would not anyway have understood. ‘I have some news for you! And this time I have brought the coffee!’