Decoy (25 page)

The men laughed and then resumed their chatting, not looking very ‘diabolical’. Yet on second thoughts, perhaps they did. He had become accustomed to them being unshaven with hair matted, and to their dress, which ranged from roll-neck jerseys to once-gaudy but now drab tartan lumberjack’s coats.

‘Any moment now,’ Jemmy warned. ‘He’s moving aft, so he might turn up on our starboard side. Obviously he doesn’t know we’ve spotted him: expects to take us by surprise.’

Ned eased himself round so that he could watch the starboard side and told Sergeant Keeler, who was facing aft: ‘Keep a sharp lookout on the quarter.’

The grey paint on the lifeboat had obviously lasted well enough while the boat was slung in its davits on board the
City of Norwich
, but now, constantly soaked with salt water, it was beginning to peel and flake. Ned made a conscious effort to concentrate on the U-boat, and as he focused his eyes he saw the rust-streaked, grey tube poke up on the starboard beam, much closer.

’Green nine oh, fifty yards – hell, it’s gone again!’

‘Okay,’ Jemmy said, ‘this is it: he’s just taking a last look, to position himself. He’s turned, putting us to leeward of him.’

As if her captain heard Jemmy’s words the U-boat began to surface. Ned watched fascinated as first the periscopes – there were two, one much shorter than the other – rose a few feet, and then the conning tower surfaced, surprisingly small and spilling water like an enormous overfilled saucepan. There was the 88 mm gun and its platform emerging like a small twisted sea monster with a long snout. Then under the water the waves were still for a moment as finally the great whale-like dark-grey hull of the submarine surfaced, lean and menacing, its plating mottled with streaks of rust like dried bloodstains, streams of water pouring from slots in the casing. Cabbage water, Ned thought; green and smelly, the side of restaurants the patrons never saw.

‘She’s a type IX,’ Jemmy hissed. ‘Two diesels, about twenty knots on the surface, nine or ten submerged for a short period – you can see the 88 mm, and there’s a pair of 20 mm cannons on AA mountings.’

She was the first U-boat Ned had ever seen at sea, yet the visit to the prize boat had not prepared him for it: as usual, a vessel at sea seemed much larger than lying alongside in a dock.

Her bow seemed sharper and the flatness of the deck more pronounced as swell waves swept across in whorls of white and green water, and he could now hear the suck and gurgle as it swirled out of the long line of scuppers formed by the flat deck plating fitting on to the hull which, now higher out of the water, looked more like a pregnant monster.

‘Here we go,’ Ned said as he saw a figure in a peaked cap suddenly appear in the surprisingly narrow and pear-shaped conning tower. The man was followed by three more.

‘The skipper is usually first out,’ Jemmy muttered, ‘so watch for him: he’ll be the only one with a white cap cover – it’s a German affectation.’

The lifeboat now lying parallel to the U-boat soon rolled less as the comparatively huge hull, most of it still below the water, began to make a lee, a giant grey breakwater appearing out of nowhere in the western Atlantic to block the swells. The Captain’s face went black – he was obviously holding up binoculars.

‘He’s inspecting us,’ Jemmy said, as though carrying on a cricket commentary through a pause in the game.

Ned called to his men. ‘Turn and take a normal interest. Don’t wave, though: think of him as having sunk your ship last week.’

‘That’s a lousy paint job,’ Leading Seaman Jarvis said contemptuously. ‘They didn’t use a primer. Can’t put undercoat on bare metal and expect it to hold.’

‘Belt up Jarvis,’ said Keeler amiably. ‘If they hear you they’ll rig a stage special and give you a pot o’ paint and a brush.’

‘They’re not manning the Oerlikons,’ Jemmy murmured. ‘I’d been having nightmares about them using cannons to rouse us out.’

‘We’d get ’em with Stens before they could fit the magazines and cock the guns,’ Ned said. ‘That’s the main reason we’ve got the bloody things.’

‘You’re a marvel, guv’nor,’ Jemmy said sarcastically.

The Croupier grunted. ‘No good relying on you, Jemmy. You’re supposed to be the sub expert. That great lump of rusty steel over there is probably Vichy French and has got lost trying to smuggle Gauloises from Dakar to Devil’s Island. He’s simply going to ask the way. Tell him to go west until he sees land, turn left and then keep the land on his right. Bound to get to French Guiana eventually.’

The U-boat captain’s face reappeared as he let the binoculars drop to hang on their straps. He bent his head, obviously to speak to someone below, and then lifted something like a stubby and bulbous trumpet.

‘Here we go,’ said Jemmy. ‘We now sing “The Ride of the Valkyries”, royalties payable to
B der U
.’

The voice over the loud-hailer was curiously distorted and had an echo like a cry from a deep cave.

‘Vot sheep?’

‘Tell him we’re Bo-Peep and we’ve
lost
our sheep,’ growled Jemmy.

Ned stood up, careful to make sure that the four gold bands on his sleeve were visible, so the German Commander would know he was either the chief engineer (since at this distance he would be unable to distinguish the coloured stripes that engineers wore next to the gold) or the captain.

‘The
Silver Star
,’ Ned shouted through cupped hands, slurring the words and giving his men more time to size up the task. He could vaguely hear Sergeant Keeler giving last-minute instructions.

‘Vot sheep? I no hear!’

‘The
Silver Star
.’

‘Ah, see
Zilver Zaar
. Ja?’

‘Christ, he’ll have me talking in rhyme soon,’ Ned muttered, and then to add to any confusion, shouted back: ‘No, the
Silver Star
!’

‘Ja, I hear.
Zilver Zaar
.’

Ned waved an affirmative and sat down.

‘Now for it,’ he murmured. ‘Have they given up collecting captains, or are they tossing grenades to the starving seamen…’

‘I’d like to take off the top of his skull with a burst from my Sten,’ the Croupier said. ‘I’ve got Indian blood in me.’

‘
Ja
, ver’ gut,’ the disembodied voice came across the water. ‘The captain – stand up!’

Ned stood up, carefully miming reluctance and cursing as the two black bangers in his left-hand pocket jabbed his bottom rib and made him gasp.

‘You look very stern and determined,’ Jemmy said. ‘As the Press photographers say: “Hold it, sir, just one more!”’

‘Bringk you boat alongzide.’

Ah yes, Ned thought. ‘Come into my parlour’ said the spider, but don’t let us make it seem easy. Nor too hard, he suddenly realized. Now the U-boat Commander had the sunken ship’s name (or thought he had), a couple of grenades tossed in the boat would finish the job. Still, captains could be questioned about convoy routes…

He turned forward and gave orders to the men to ship the oars. ‘Be lubberly about it, though: merchant seamen don’t often row.’

‘Lucky bleeders,’ Able Seaman Coles said loudly, betraying his Cockney origin.

‘And make sure you’re sitting on your Stens,’ Ned cautioned. ‘Your grandmothers may have warned you it’d give you piles, but that fellow over there has a pair of Zeiss eight-fifties slung round his neck and can spot which of you hasn’t washed behind your ears.’

By now the oars were in the rowlocks, but the men were taking a delight in being lubberly.

‘Capitan – I do not haff all
die Nacht
.’

‘We’re coming!’ Ned called, his voice quavery. ‘Very weak…no food.’

‘
Ja, ja
. Hurry!’

‘Croupier, stay at the tiller,’ Ned said. ‘Jemmy, get these beggars rowing evenly. I want to sit here like a poacher waiting for a rabbit to pop out.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Jemmy complained, ‘we’ll be lucky if I don’t pop the boat on top of that son of a bitch.’

‘Leave it to my unerring eye,’ the Croupier announced.

‘Row you buggers!’ Jemmy suddenly bellowed. ‘In…out…in…out… Mortlake Bridge coming up, Oxford leads by a canvas…in…out…half of you sods are Cambridge… in…out… That’s the time. My learned colleague will now bash us all against that horrible rusty monster. Abide with me…’

Ned, hand in each pocket, turned the black bangers so that the safety pins were uppermost. The Sten was uncomfortable to sit on. Looks as though bringing them was a waste of time. Jesus, only a few more yards to go.

Every man in the lifeboat had his orders about what to do next; every man had practised it on the prize U-boat. So here we go. Clumsily Ned stood up to make his way to the bow.

‘No change in plan,’ he said to Jemmy and the Croupier, and as he threaded his way past the rowers, careful not to be hit by a loom or upset the careful lack of rhythm, he repeated to all the men, ‘no change…no change.’

Then he was standing at the bow, clear of the oarsmen, and he saw that the Croupier was steering the boat so that it would go alongside just beneath the gun platform, whose guard rails stuck outwards like the bottom set of buck teeth.

He felt in a pocket and then crouched down, as though he was being seasick, and pressed in the rubber earplugs. Suddenly he was in a curious almost silent world where the only noise was the pumping of his own blood.

He stood up again to find the lifeboat within ten yards of the U-boat and quickly noted a line of stanchions with a single wire running along the deck beside the conning tower, obviously intended to save anyone on deck from falling overboard or being washed away by a wave. The forward side of the conning tower with the bridge above was thin and parallel sided, jam jar shaped, but the after side tapered like a wedge of cheese to form the gun platform, wide enough to give the gunners plenty of room.

The sudden surge of a swell wave lifted the lifeboat and thrust it forward, and as the stem grazed the stanchions Ned leapt on board.

Even as he jumped he realized that the deck would be more slippery than he had expected: a skin of slimy green weed mottled the steel plating like an unshaven man with a skin disease, and there were speckles of the rough pyramids of barnacles. A red shield painted on the side of the conning tower had a black battleaxe in the middle.

Just as Ned was regaining his balance on the U-boat’s deck and noting that the lifeboat was slewing round slightly, still pinned against the stanchions, an amplified voice bellowed from above: ‘Captain commen op here! Stand from the rail!’

Ned stepped back and glanced up, looking for a steel ladder or footplates. A German sailor, blond-bearded and burly, was standing beside the German captain. Ned saw him cock an ugly-looking sub-machine gun, and rest its barrel on the fore side of the conning tower. A Schmeisser – he recognized the shape. Fired more than a thousand rounds a minute.

Now they had the
Silver Star
’s captain on board they were going to use the rest of the survivors in the boat for target practice.

Ned pressed himself against the conning tower, hidden by a welded plate jutting out for twelve inches like a hat brim and obviously intended to deflect spray.

One banger might stop that blond bastard starting to shoot; a second should give the lads in the boat time to get on board.

His right hand came out of his coat pocket with a black banger and his left index finger slid into the ring of the safety pin. A quick jerk pulled it free: now only the curved handle, shaped into the grenade, stopped it exploding. As he threw it the handle would fly free, and five seconds later…

Jemmy was watching from the boat but the commandos had not moved: Ned guessed Jemmy could clearly see the man with the Schmeisser and was waiting to see if Ned could do anything before letting the men try to cut the sailor down with the Stens.

Ned took a quick step back and lobbed the grenade up into the conning tower six feet above him, ducking back under the metal skirting. Five seconds. Obviously the Germans were not expecting anything; in fact once the English captain was hauled below, that Schmeisser would open up with its distinctive whiplash noise. Three…four…five. The explosion inside the narrow cupola formed by the conning tower was shocking, despite his earplugs.

He pulled the pin from a second black banger, took a step back and lobbed the grenade upwards into the centre of what he now saw looked like a smoking stubby funnel of a coaster.

Just as he began counting and realized he was within three feet of steps welded into the conning tower, he saw his commandos and seamen rising up in the boat like crouching animals beginning to leap, and in the second before the grenade burst he realized that Jemmy, the Croupier, Sergeant Keeler and Yon were already scrambling over the stanchions.

He started up the welded steps and paused for a moment before his head topped the edge of the conning tower to get a third grenade, cursing as he changed it from his left hand to his right and pulled out the pin.

There were four men in the tiny bridge section, all holding their heads and stumbling and staggering into the stubby, waist-high periscope pedestals and the azimuth compass, obviously stunned into near stupor. What mattered now were the men still below.

Jumping on to the bridge, Ned reached for the circular hatch in the top of the conning tower, looked down and saw several white faces staring up at him. He dropped the grenade on top of them and swung the heavy hatch shut.

In five seconds’ time, he though grimly, that banger should spoil the German second-in-command’s concentration enough that he will not realize he could save his boat (perhaps at the cost of the Captain’s life) by submerging just a few feet – enough to float off his attackers. But the second-in-command can’t tell what’s happening and until the third banger explodes at his feet down there – there it goes – he only knows there have been two violent explosions up on the bridge.

Ned cursed that he had no Sten gun and wrenched the commando knife clear of the sheath inside his jacket. He stepped across to the blond seaman, who was still staggering like a hopeless drunk with the Schmeisser in his hands and suspended by the sling round his neck. Suddenly the seaman’s eyes focused just long enough for him to raise the barrel and aim it at Ned, now less than a foot away. Ned slapped the muzzle to one side with his left hand and lunged forward with his right, and as the commando knife thudded into the man’s stomach the Schmeisser fired a burst.