A Grue Of Ice (10 page)

the war at sea had thrown up against the Royal Navy. The

Man with the Immaculate Hand we called him, and the

Merchant Navy took over the nickname in awe, because

of his uncanny ability to imitate any type of ship's radio

transmission. When I had started my long search for the

Meteor
I discovered that every ship, whether merchantman or warship, has it own idiosyncrasies in transmitting. There are as many ways of sending as there are radio operators. I looked across at his hands—yes, they were still beautifully 58

manicured as the war-time legend recounted. It was said that Captain Kohler of the
Meteor
had first called him The Man with the Immaculate Hand ; the German Navy passed it on to their propoganda radio ; the Royal Navy perpetuated it as we hunted, month after month, in the Southern Ocean while the
Meteor
struck again and again.

A chill struck through me, even in the warm, drinkladen atmosphere of the factory ship's cabin, as I remembered the standard distress-signal I had heard so many times, often blurred and incomplete as the raider's shells smashed home, from the ships placed under my charge in the wastes of the Southern Ocean.

First, the frightened " QQQ "-" I am being attacked . . ." invariably followed by " rout "—" I am being shelled by a warship . . ."

I jerked myself back into the present and crossed the room to Pirow. I looked at him steadily. " Is that a message from Seekriegsleitung, that it's so urgent?"

For a moment his glance faltered as I dropped into the jargon of the operational staff of the German Navy High Command, and then he laughed. " I wondered how long it would be before you recognised me, Herr Kapitan." There was a spurt of anger behind the pale eyes which made the calm poise of the master technician-faker more sinister. "It was no thanks to that stupid clot of
a
radio operator of yours that you came in with the torpedoes. The last thing Kapitan zur See Kohler said to me was, I wonder if the British torpedoes will run true? Ours always

gave trouble."

" Bruce!" said Upton peremptorily. He drew me aside. " Here!" He thrust the signal into my hand. He wasn't drunk. The caffeine in his strange tipple offset the effects of the alcohol. The pink flush of anger was there, though.

I read the signal, written in Pirow's neat, post-office handwriting.

"
Urgent. Repeat Urgent. Mikklesen skipper whalecatcher
724/004
Falkland to Norwegian destroyer Thorshammer via
Tristan da Cunha meteorological station. British Sir Frederick
Upton has discovered breeding-ground blue whale. Inside
Norwegian territorial waters vicinity Bouvet Island. Upton
has no permits. Expedition factory ship and four Norwegian
catchers starting ex Tristan dawn to-morrow. Suggest appro-
priate action."

Under it was the reply.
"Thorshammer to Mikklesen.
59

M e s s a g e a c k n o w l e d g e d . H e a d i n g a l l p o s s i b l e s p e e d f o r
Tristan. Await my orders there."

Upton jerked his head at the group of captains. " Walter!" Walter read it slowly. " The bastard!" he started to say. " The bloody, two-faced bastard . . ."

" Shut up!" snapped Upton in a low voice. " Keep those boys drinking. Carl, come to the radio office. We've got plenty of time, and the Southern Ocean
is
a big place." Pirow gave his half-smile, •half-sneer. " Except that
Thorshammer
is about twenty miles away—just the other side of Nightingale Island."

"How do you know?" rapped out Upton.

"I got a D/F bearing on her," said The Man with the Immaculate Hand. " She'll be here in an hour."

Thorshammer's
message threw my doubts into sharp relief. Either I would go now with Upton, or
get
ashore with no hope of ever seeing Bouvet. The presence of The Man with the Immaculate Hand had shaken me. What was a brilliant, if perverted, radio operator like Pirow doing with an expedition like this? You don't need radio to hunt whales, and wireless traffic in the Antarctic, as I knew from my long vigil at Cape Town listening to it, consisted mainly of weather reports and catchers' reports, all of it deadly dull. Pirow was there for some sinister purpose, that I knew. Was it his mastertalent in deception that Upton wanted, or some knowledge from his days aboard the
Meteor?
In either event, the Blue Whale story was simply a cover ; but a cover for what? On the surface, one could not fault Upton's story, except that it was a
little
too slick. Even the lack of biomycin on board was not decisive—whalermen are naturally conservative and slow to adopt new ideas: but why did Upton want me so

urgently? What knowledge, or part-knowledge, did I share with Pirow, assuming that the Blue Whale story was a fabrication or a blind? Despite the risk, I knew what I had to do: I must assume command and go. The knowledge of what Upton, Pirow and Walter were really about might prove my justification if the Norwegians caught me.

I turned to Upton. " We can't talk here. Let's get to Pirow's office." Upton started to object when Sailhardy came too, but I waved it aside. We skirted the bridge to get to the radio office. I was struck by the radio set. It was a powerful instrument, and the tuning dials were twice the size of any I had seen. Upton, Pirow, Sailhardy, and I crowded into the small space.

60

" Sir Frederick," I said. " I now have a condition for coming to Bouvet. I must have sole and complete command

of this ship, and the catchers must operate under my orders." Upton shot a quick glance at Pirow. " I'll be damned!

Why this sudden assumption of responsibility?"

" You can make up your mind, and it will have to be quick," I said. "Thorshammer can't be here in an hour with this sea running. She can't make more than fifteen knots. I
know. Thorshammer
is one of the new British Whitby class they sold to Norway. She's big—every bit of two thousand tons. Even so, I feel sorry for anyone in her to-night. It'll be coming green right up to the bridge. Western Approaches stuff. But she'll catch you before you ever see Bouvet."

" Unless you are in command," he said. He didn't wait. H e p i c k e d u p P i r o w ' s t e l e p h o n e . " B r i d g e ! " h e s a i d . " Captain Bjerko! From now Captain Wetherby will take

over command of this ship. You will act on his orders, and give him the fullest co-operation." He turned to me. " Satisfied?" I nodded. " Get on with it, Carl! Do something about it!" Pirow looked at me with that half-smile. " I have your permission, Herr Kapitan?" I nodded, and he sat down at his transmitting key.

The thoughtful pause with the hand held high was pure Rubinstein. It was not a gesture to the three of us who stood round him at the key. It was the thought-mustering prelude of the artist. He was projecting himself into his medium. The left hand came down by the side of the key with the thumb and first finger splayed, the third and fourth slightly crooked. The right hand felt delicately for the key, live now as he put on the transmitting switch. He paused and looked up at me." " It was a South African who sent Mikklesen's message," he said. " He sent
breeding-grond '
instead of
breeding-ground '.
He was an Afrikaner—he spelled ` ground ' as it is spelt in Afrikaans. One must therefore send like an Afrikaner—deliberately, thoroughly, one must search out in his make-up the essential puritan, and one must manifest it in one's sending."

He depressed the key. I read the Morse as he sent. Carl Pirow as such was no more. This was The Man with

the Immaculate Hand, and these were the hands of a superb, corrupt artist.

"
Mikklesen to Thorshammer, via Tristan meteorological
station. Upton and catchers up-anchoring."

61

The old thrill of the chase welled up inside me, despite

my forebodings.

" The course, Herr Kapitan! The course! I must not break or they will guess!"

Deception course. The lay-out of Tristan da Cunha and the anchorage rose to my mind's eye.
Thorshammer was
approaching from the south-west. I must blanket her radar behind the cliffs which towered along the line of Hottentot Gulch at the back of the settlement. Blanket her to give my fleet a flying start, and then double back. I would keep the catchers with the factory ship inside the kelp line round by Jew's Point and Blacksand Beach—that would put the island and its peak between
Thorshammer
and us until I could run the factory ship straight at him in the storm. I would break out from the southern tip of the island just as he started to come by Anchorstock Point on the other side towards the roadstead —

he'd never think of using his radar to scan the south when he believed his quarry to the north and east. In this weather, I could slip past him within half a mile.

" Three hundred degrees," I said.

Pirow tapped out the figures. " You and I would have

made a great team, Herr Kapitan."

" Finish that the way Mikklesen might," I added.

"
Am awaiting your further orders. Anchored in nine
fathoms off Julia Reef. Julia Point bearing
174
degrees."
Upton was visibly excited. " Walter must know, but not the others," he said.

" They're risking their necks, just the same as Walter . . ." I began.

" They won't, if they know there's a warship only twenty miles away. I
need
those skippers. They'll simply evaporate if they hear about
Thorshammer."

All my doubts came rushing in. Upton's concealment of

the danger underlined the importance of his mission.

" Very well," I said slowly. " But they won't be very thrilled at up-anchoring in a blow like this."

" Thrilled or not thrilled, they'll do just what I tell them. Any special briefing for them, Bruce?"

" I'll leave the explaining to you—as much as you care to explain," I said. " I want them to keep in my lee, about a quarter of a mile apart on the port quarter of the
Antarctica.
We'll sneak past Thorshammer not very far from where Helen rescued Sailhardy and me. If I know anything about

the radar scanner of the
Thorshammer
class, he won't want 62

to swing it more than is necessary in this wind. There must be no sudden opening up of the catchers' engines. They'll give a sudden spurt of flame in the darkness if they do. The convoy will work up speed gradually—nine knots at first, then eleven for twenty minutes, and then up to the maximum we

can make into the gale."

Pirow's receiver started to chatter.

"
Thorshammer to Mikklesen. Keep me informed. Heavy
weather makes interception difficult. Will use searchlights and
starshells. Keep clear of Upton's fleet."

"
Will he, hell," I growled. Maybe the Southern Ocean brings out the essential man, the eternal hunter ; for all the ennui, the frustration, of the long intervening years of study and research, fell away. I had a ship under me ; I was at sea on a night as wild as the Creation. Upton must have managed the skippers, and from the bridge I saw the half-drunken, truculent men make their way by dinghy to their ships, and in less than half the time it would take
Thorshammer
to intercept us, my small fleet was at sea.

The gale hit us with a vicious left hook
as
we swung clear of Stonyhill Point, the southern extremity of the island, and took the full force of the storm after the shelter of Tristan's lee. The Kent clearview screen in front of the big bridge telegraph seemed to check for a moment in its quick , orbit. The only light was the main engine revolution indicator —

out of sight of whatever searching eyes there might be in
Thorshammer.
The squadron was blacked out on my orders to the mystification of the skippers. I was not used to such luxury on a ship's bridge. The nine large windows exposed

one to the eyes of the night, and every time the fancy clock which struck the time by ship's bells gave its melodious chime, I jumped. I went over to the telegraph on the port wing of the bridge and rang for more revolutions: the Ray's patent revolution indicator quickened its tempo.

W e m a d e f o r
T h o r s h a m m e r .
I s p o k e t o t h e l o o k o u t through the telephone by the starboard doorway. " See anything, lookout?"

The coarse voice came back. " Nothing, sir. Niks. Niks at all."

I double-checked on the bridge to see that everything was in order. " I'm glad I'm not on a destroyer's bridge to-night," I said to Upton. " Raw steel ; raw sub-zero."

" What if
Thorshammer
spots us?" asked Upton.

" She won't," I replied.

63

" No," said Pirow, who glanced at his sleeked hair in the reflection of the small light. " She won't. Not with Captain Wetherby in command."

The bridge phone rang. " Lookout, sir.
Aurora
coming
in
very close."

" Tell her to sheer off,"
I
told Pirow. " Make quite sure the signalling lamp doesn't point
Thorsharnmer's
way." He smiled thinly at my precaution, superfluous to someone like himself.
Antarctica
yawed and trembled under a violent squall. Sailhardy, whom I had ordered to the small brass wheel, held her beautifully. The Chernikeef log chuckled to itself. We waited, silent, tense.