Convoy (45 page)

There was a knock at the door and Baxter switched on the torch as the door opened and then closed again. A red-bearded seaman, Barbarossa’s cousin, if not a younger brother, stood there with a revolver in one hand a knife in the other. ‘Jenkins sent me, sir.’

‘Help Baxter guard these two,’ Yorke told him. ‘Shoot if necessary,’ he added, more to discomfort Pahlen and Ohlson than threaten them. He pointed to the canvas bag on top of the chart table. ‘The pair of you guard this, too. In an emergency, that’s all we need to save.’

‘The evidence, sir?’ Baxter asked.

‘Exactly.’ He gave Baxter a wink, knowing neither Ohlson nor Pahlen could see it. ‘We don’t need these two prisoners as long as we have the papers.’

Yorke turned to Ohlson and pointed to the red-haired seaman, Harris. ‘Go with this man and switch on our navigation lights.’

‘Lights?’ Ohlson repeated incredulously.

‘Port, starboard, masthead and stern lights. Hurry!’

The helmsman was shouting through the door that Reynolds wanted him.

The frigate was signalling but just as Yorke’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and could see the blue light, he read the Morse letters ‘AR’ and saw the reflection of Reynolds’ single-letter reply, ‘R’. Message ended, message received.

Reynolds put the signal lamp back in its box and said: ‘The frigate asked us to light up our bow at the right moment, sir, if we can. That’s not the exact wording but it’s what he meant.’

‘Very well.’

Damn and blast it, why hadn’t he thought of it himself? But how? The light would have to be kept inboard just in case the U-boat looked through its periscope while submerged and saw above it an eerie green light – that’s how a floodlight would look from, say, fifteen fathoms down. Floodlights! The arc lights merchant ships used in foreign ports where there was no blackout so that unloading or loading could go on through the night. They were like huge inspection lights on long leads with a wire mesh across the front to protect the bulb.

There was only one man who could get a couple of arc lights out of the store and plugged in in time and that would be the
Penta
’s electrician. He turned and hurried back into the wheelhouse, where Ohlson was turning switches.

‘Christ, the navigation lights are coming on!’ yelled a seaman.

‘That’s all right; they’re supposed to be,’ Yorke answered. Then to Ohlson he said: ‘Are they all on?’ When the Swede nodded, Yorke said: ‘This seaman is going to take you down to the saloon. There you must find your electrical officer and order him to get two arc lights – floodlights you understand, like you use in the holds – on to the fo’c’sle and alight within five minutes. Look at your watch, and you too, Harris. If they’re not alight in five minutes, Harris will shoot you, Captain Ohlson.’

The Swede bolted for the wheelhouse door, followed by Harris, who had seen Yorke’s wink. He seemed to be winking a lot tonight; but he was having to make these bloodcurdling threats to keep the Swede and the German tractable. Tractable was a nice word and it was the right one. Nothing like the threat of a bullet in the stomach to make a man tractable. And did Jenkins send that fellow Harris on purpose? Harris was in fact an amiable ox of a man, immensely strong, and his red beard stuck out round his face like the petals of a sunflower. His laugh, though, was fantastic. When he chuckled he sounded like a mass murderer doing away with his hundredth victim. Yorke suspected that the man would have to steel himself to shoot a pigeon; but at the moment this did not matter. Ohlson and the rest of those prisoners in the saloon, including the electrician, would see only a smiling swashbuckler with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other and a laugh that sounded like a thousand corpses rattling down a ramp to eternal damnation.

He went back outside to the starboard wing of the bridge. ‘Call up the
Echo
and say we’ll have the bow lit up within ten minutes.’ The extra five minutes might be needed, and it would be five minutes of agony for Ohlson and seem like an extension of life. It also left it to Johnny whether he slowed up and waited for the light before he attacked. It was a godsend that he had known Johnny for so many years. Johnny’s extra half stripe meant one had to put the odd ‘submit’ or ‘propose’ into a signal, but Johnny knew him well enough to accept without question what must be one of the most bizarre signals made so far in this war. Not dramatic, just bizarre. ‘I have a U-boat at the bottom of the garden
de ma tante
.’

Johnny would come whistling up the starboard side and then turn hard a-port across the
Penta
’s bow: close enough, no doubt, to risk a glancing collision. At that moment the
Penta
should be almost stopped. Dare he risk explaining to Mills on the engine-room telephone what was needed, or should he bring the engineer to the bridge? He would try the phone to start with.

He picked up the telephone and pressed the button. Almost at once he heard Mills’ cheery, ‘Engine room here!’

‘Bridge here. Listen, Mills, this is Yorke.’ Quickly he brought the engineer up to date with the events of the last fifteen minutes and explained that the
Echo
was coming up fast, and what was needed from the engine room.

‘No trouble,’ Mills said. ‘You use the engine-room telegraph. You know they need a double pull, so when you’re ready just tweak one and then the other so they ring and I’ll go full astern on the port engine, full ahead on starboard and pray. If you bung the wheel hard over at the same time we’ll go bolting down a side road like a lame pickpocket.’

‘Listen, Mills,’ Yorke said, ‘if anyone makes a mistake, you’re going to get blown to pieces…’

‘Yes, you said that just now. But some bugger’s got to stay down here and spin the wheels and it has to be me. I recognize ’em, but all the dials are labelled in Swedish. I need one man to help me.’

‘Ask for a volunteer.’

‘You look after your end and I’ll look after mine. We’ve got a good volunteer poker game going down here. I’m five quid ahead at the moment.’

‘I’ll try and give you three or four minutes’ warning on the phone,’ Yorke said.

‘That’ll be a help; it’ll give us time to gather up the winnings. Don’t forget the “left hand down a bit” with the helm – she’ll take a minute or two to start turning with the screws: Much longer than you destroyer folk realize.’

Then Yorke remembered with a shiver that he had not warned Mills about reducing revolutions, and he passed on Pahlen’s description of the signal to the U-boat.

‘Aye, it’s damned lucky I didn’t just juggle about with one engine and then the other. Still, he’ll only have a few seconds warning down there when we do our fancy two-step; not enough time for him to say
Donner und
whatsit.’

When Yorke put down the receiver he turned to the seaman at the wheel. ‘Did you hear what I just said to Mr Mills?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So when I give the word, you put the wheel hard aport. Watch that telemotor indicator. There, the red pointer. That shows how much rudder you have on. Get it right over so the rudder is helping to stop us, as well as turning us.’

Out on the wing of the bridge, Reynolds pointed over on the quarter and Yorke saw a pinpoint of blue light. It did not wink and seemed to be moving. There was a greyish blur just forward of it and Yorke realized that the
Echo
was using it as a fighting light. She had slowed down and was abreast the fourth ship in the next column, obviously waiting for the lights to appear on the
Penta
’s bow.

Yorke looked round the convoy. Ahead of the
Penta
was one ship, the leader of the column. Astern, just visible as a bow wave, was the
Marynal
, with the old
Flintshire
the last in the column. The next column to starboard still had five ships, with the
Echo
on the far side. A sensible position, Yorke noted, because it meant that all those merchant ships’ engines masked the sound of the frigate’s approach until the last possible minute.

A night like this showed what the devil of a job the U-boat had. The Teds must rely on sound to an almost incredible degree, because even standing up here high on the
Penta
’s bridge, fifty feet or so above the waterline, it was hard to see more than three or four of the nearest ships in the convoy. Imagine trying to spot one through a periscope which stuck up briefly only a few feet above the water, frequently covered by the odd wave. About like trying to drive a car at night through heavy rain without headlights or windscreen wipers.

There was no putting off answering the next question: those Swedes in the saloon. Did he allow them up on to the boat deck, in case something went wrong? He had forgotten to ask Jenkins how many there were, but he had only three or four sailors to guard them. A determined rush by the Swedes and they would recapture the ship and the whole operation so far would have been a waste of time.

The answer was that the Swedes had to stay where they were. There was time to send a messenger down to tell the guard to let one of the Swedes out to collect all the lifejackets needed for however many prisoners were there. Yorke turned and gave instructions to Jenkins.

There was a flicker of harsh white light on the fo’c’sle, then suddenly a powerful lamp lit up the foredeck. Yorke looked down over the rail and saw the forward part of the ship, with its hatches and stowed derricks, was a complex maze of shadows. A second arc lamp came on and he saw three men on the fo’c’sle, two adjusting the lights and one standing back watching them, close enough to shoot them with a revolver, too far off to be suddenly dazzled. Harris was wide awake and wary.

‘Mr Reynolds, call up the
Echo
. Make “Tally-ho”. Just one word; don’t bother with a hyphen.’

A fo’c’sle of blazing light played hell with night vision but made it easier on the bridge: he could see the engine-room telegraph clearly now, a tall brass pillar waist high with what at first glance looked like two clock faces on top, a dial to the left and another to the right, with a lever on top of each one. One dial was for the port engine, one for the starboard, each with various orders – stop, slow, half and full ahead, and the same for astern, plus finished with engines… And each lever, or pointer, showed the order the bridge was transmitting to the engine room.

Yorke stood behind the telegraph and experimentally held the levers. It would not matter a damn where the pointers stopped as long as he did the quick back and forth movement that made sure the telegraph bell rang in the engine room to attract attention. Not that Mills would need waking up.

And there was the
Echo
increasing speed, the grey blur of her bow wave becoming more pronounced in the black of the night and from the look of it she was crossing the bow of the fourth ship in the next column.

Yorke snatched the binoculars from Reynolds. Johnny was taking that merchant ship damned close, just shaving her stem. Now the
Echo
was turning back to starboard and slicing across the ship’s bow a second time. Then she was hidden by the ship again – Johnny must be slowing down almost alongside her. Here he comes now, first the bow wave, then the blue light – and a great swirl of water just ahead of the merchant ship as her bow wave hit the frigate’s.

Johnny was making dummy runs at various speeds across that poor beggar’s bow. Must be scaring the wits out of the officer of the watch of the merchantman. Johnny would probably have called him on the loud hailer to give him a friendly warning.

Now he was turning again, now dropping back out of sight, hidden by the merchantman. Now appearing in yet another wild dash across the bow, the
Echo
seeming tiny against the bulk of the merchant ship.

Yorke hurried into the wheelhouse, pressed the button on the telephone to the engine room. ‘Three or four minutes to go,’ he told Mills. ‘Pack up your playing cards, pay your debts, and tighten your brassiere straps. And once you hear the telegraphs and have spun all the wheels and valves, get out of that engine room fast!’

‘We’re really waiting halfway up the ladder already,’ Mills said: ‘Me and my volunteers.’

Yorke chuckled, buoyed by Mills’ cheery manner. Going out on the bridge again he bumped into Captain Ohlson being brought back by Harris, whose features, now lit by the reflection of the arc lamps, looked quite diabolical. ‘I put that ’lectrical chap back in the saloon with his mates, sir,’ Harris reported. ‘The sentry said to tell you they all had lifejackets now.’

Yorke nodded and turned away to see a blue light flashing a series of dot-dash, the letter A, from the commodore (the former vice-commodore who had taken over when the old Admiral’s ship was sunk) who must be wondering what the devil was going on – Johnny was probably too busy to report, or was keeping radio silence.

Then a signal lamp began blinking from the
Echo
, calling the
Penta
. Reynolds was acknowledging almost before Yorke had time to speak. ‘One five knots end message,’ he said. So the
Echo
would be doing fifteen knots when she made her run… Johnny hadn’t hit the practice ship – but he hadn’t been juggling with a lot of high explosive, either.

He must warn the
Marynal
! Blast, he seemed to be forgetting half the things that mattered. ‘Reynolds – call up the
Marynal
and tell her to disregard my movements. Hurry now!’

Reynolds moved quickly to the after side of the bridge and while Yorke watched for the
Echo
he heard the brisk clacking of the signal lamp trigger and mirror. He was a sensible lad, Yorke noted; by going as far aft as possible he kept that flashing blue light out of Yorke’s eyes.

This was all unreal, like a half-remembered nightmare: here he was standing on the bridge of a merchant ship in the middle of a convoy with navigation lights on and the bow and forward part of the ship lit up like a peacetime cruise liner. All the ship’s company were under guard, and there was a U-boat underneath blissfully unaware of what was going on a few feet above him… He still had grenades in his pocket and a revolver stuck in the front of his jacket. None of his men seemed to have any lifejackets… Too late to worry now: Johnny was on his way!