The Sea Break (14 page)

Cleo Melanides was alone in an arm-chair opposite
Lindemann
.

The introductions had been performed with much bowing and heel clicking. Now they were talking, but the conversation was stilted and the party seemed bogged down, uncertain, the guests ill at ease.

Moewe and Kuhn got up from time to time to pour drinks and go round with the snacks.

The room was clouded with cigarette smoke, and though the large insect-screened portholes were open and there were two fans and a punkah-louvre at work, it was hot. The main door to the cabin was open, but inside it a light screen-door kept out mosquitoes.

Günther Moewe had gone the rounds with a plate of
sandwiches
, finishing up next to Rohrbach. “So, Herr Rohrbach,” he said in German. “You are a Bavarian?”

“Yes. From Munich, Herr Moewe.”

“When did you last see Bavaria?” Moewe watched him intently, the morose eyes expressionless,

David Rohrbach half smiled, shaking his head. “Some
things one cannot mention before strangers, Herr Moewe.” He nodded in the direction of the Newt, who was listening to their conversation,

“Quite, Herr Rohrbach. One cannot be too careful, though I doubt if he speaks German.” As he said it, Moewe’s mouth curled with contempt; there was no doubt in his mind, now that he had seen him, that this fellow Rohrbach was a Semite. No wonder he was a traitor to the Fatherland.

“As you say, Herr Moewe, one cannot be too careful. Maybe he does speak German. Who is he?”

Günther Moewe resented having to continue this game but he had no option. “An Englishman who lives in Portugal, I understand.”

Rohrbach’s eyebrows went up and he turned to look at the Newt. “An
Englishman
! I am surprised you have him on board a German ship!”

“In time of war one does strange things, Herr Rohrbach. We would even invite
pigs
to our ship, if necessary.”

Rohrbach drew deeply on his cheroot before blowing a cloud of smoke into the second officer’s face. “Quite, Herr Moewe.” He’d blown the smoke into the man’s face to get rid of him; he didn’t like him standing at his side, looking down on him—the automatic and shoulder-holster felt unpleasantly conspicuous. The smoke trick worked and, disgusted, Moewe went over and sat next to Hester Smit who was carrying on a lively
conversation
in Afrikaans with Johan, her eyes shining—details which the German noted with irritation.

There was a lull in the conversation. Lindemann chose it to lean across Di Brett and say to Kuhn, quietly but in a voice all could hear: “I saw you had the shore engineers on board this afternoon, Kuhn. Any progress?”

Kuhn shook his head. He looked careworn. “None, Herr Kapitän. They examined it in their workshops yesterday and to-day. They cannot repair it here and they have not the resources for local manufacture.”

Lindemann frowned. “That is serious, Kuhn.”

“Are you having engine trouble, Kapitän Lindemann?” Rohrbach sensed a calamity,

Lindemann looked round the room, lowered his voice. “Unfortunately, yes. The main crankshaft has a fracture. Due to metal fatigue, Herr Kuhn tells me.”

Rohrbach’s stomach knotted with anxiety. This was shattering news. “Operation Break Out” could only end in
disaster
. There was about to be a fight for the
Hagenfels
—no way of stopping it now—but when they’d got control they wouldn’t be able to move her. It meant, at the least, internment in a Portuguese gaol for the rest of the war. With difficulty he fought down his rising panic. There was no way of getting word to Widmark. It was too late! Then the words used by Kuhn, still ringing in Rohrbach’s ears, soaked through to the inner recesses of his mind:
They
examined
it
in
their
workshops
yesterday
and
to-day
. A main crankshaft would take the best part of three days to dismantle and lift out of the engine-room and yet from the Gorjao Quay yesterday, he and Johan had seen the froth of disturbed water under
Hagenfels
’s stern as the engines were turned. She was a single-screw ship so somebody was lying, or he had not heard aright.

“Fortunate that you have plenty of time for repairs, Kapitän Lindemann,” he heard himself saying, and he tried to smile. “But how did you discover the trouble here? I mean, with the ship in harbour like this?”

Kuhn chipped in then. “Sometimes in harbour we turn the main engines to keep them in condition. When we last did this”—he looked thoughtful—“about a week ago, we found excessive vibration. We knew at once that something was wrong.”

“Is it a big job taking out the main crankshaft, Herr Kuhn?”

“A very big job. With the few men I have here and some help from the shore it took us four days.”

Rohrbach hoped that his face didn’t show his relief. He felt like jumping up and hugging the little chief engineer. But why had they troubled to tell such an elaborate lie? With this
thought uppermost he followed Kuhn’s remark with: “How many men
have
you got on board, Kapitän?”

Lindemann made a small gesture of despair. “Not enough to take the ship to sea. Less than half our complement.”

Rohrbach wondered what it was, but didn’t like to ask. The Newt’s tugboat friend had said about twenty; he was probably not far off the mark.

With the aid of alcohol the conversation brightened and within half an hour the ice had broken, both sides privately pleased with the night’s work so far. The Germans were pressing hosts—not holding themselves back—and this
complicated
the slow drinking act, for there were limits to how slow it could be without arousing suspicion. Fortunately Johan acted as barman for the third round and managed to pour ginger ale only for his companions’ “Horses’ Necks,” the drink they’d agreed on with an eye to leaving out the brandy whenever possible. Hester Smit and Johan’s interest in each other grew with the night, to Moewe’s intense annoyance; the Newt and Di Brett concentrated on each other, and Mariotta and Lindemann flirted so openly that Rohrbach suspected they were more than old friends. Perhaps she’d had a romance with him when she’d travelled out in the passenger ship of which he was chief officer before the war. It was none of his business, but it seemed to explain Mariotta’s influence with the Captain.

Only Cleo, sitting by herself in the big arm-chair, pale and withdrawn, seemed out of the party. Occasionally the Newt would speak to her, and once or twice Johan tried to cheer her up, but she smiled sadly and when he chided her she said she didn’t feel well. At that, Hester Smit whispered in his ear: “She’s in love. Madly! With a South African she met the other night at Costa’s. He promised to phone her and never did.
Men
!
” She shook her head.

“You’d be miserable without them.”

“Drop dead!” She squeezed his hand on the side away from Moewe who was sitting on her right.

The Newt had a hand in his coat pocket and was fingering
the sodium seconal capsules, wondering how and when, if ever, he could use them, when Lindemann invited Mariotta to accompany him to the bridge to settle an argument they were having about the stars. Rohrbach heard them and looked at his watch. It was 2140. There were unlikely to be any stars on view, but in ten minutes’ time the fishing boat would begin moving down on the
Hagenfels
‚ and the fewer people on the upper deck of the German ship the better. There was nothing he could do, however, but pray. Pray that they might go no farther than the chart-house—that love and not the stars was the object of the exercise. He suspected it was.

It was now time to put into operation a small detail of the plan. He stood up and said to Kuhn in German: “Excuse me, Herr Kuhn, but—the toilet?” He spoke with the slight embarrassment which overcomes young men in mixed company on these occasions.

Kuhn smiled understandingly, nodding towards the door leading into the Captain’s sleeping cabin. “Through that door and to the left.”

Rohrbach looked over towards Johan and the Newt and said: “Hookey’s this way, chaps.” In the sleeping cabin he found the door which led into a small W.C. with wash-basin. Soon he was joined there by the Newt and Johan, who had left the Germans in the cabin suspicious but powerless to do
anything
about this altogether plausible move. In a whisper Rohrbach told them of Kuhn’s and Lindemann’s pretence that the main engines were out of order, and how he knew they were lying.

“Thank God for that!” breathed Johan. “Nearly went round the bend when Moewe told the same sad tale to Hester and me. I’d forgotten about the engines turning yesterday.”

The Newt nodded. “I heard Moewe telling you. Must say I felt a bit put out, too. It looked as if we were bitched at the start.”

Rohrbach looked at his watch. “Another fifteen minutes and the balloon goes up.”

Through his coat the Newt patted his shoulder-holster. “Comforting, aren’t they?”

Johan, towering above him, said: “Telling me!”

“I’m going to beat it,” whispered Rohrbach. “Don’t be too long.”

Mariotta and Lindemann were still missing when he got back to the day-cabin, Moewe was in a corner laying down the law about something to Hester Smit, who was saying: “Don’t be so childish, honey! He’s a nice guy, that’s all. I’m helping your party along.”

Di Brett had been talking to Kuhn, but as Rohrbach came in she stopped and went over to Cleo. Then Johan and the Newt came back and Moewe insisted on pouring them all drinks. Johan made a bee-line for Hester.

Kuhn disappeared into the pantry and the Newt found himself standing near the desk alone. The Captain and Mariotta had not returned; Günther Moewe was pouring drinks, his back towards the room and everyone else was busy talking. The moment couldn’t have been more propitious. Casually, using his left hand in which there was a cigarette, the Newt dropped the capsules into the partly filled steins left by Lindemann and Kuhn. Then he stopped in front of the bookcase, looked at his watch, and examined the titles of the books. Three minutes, he was thinking, can be an awful long time. The capsules didn’t fizz. He’d tried them out at the Polana. No fizz, but three minutes to dissolve. Twelve minutes to act. That’d be 2155!

On the far side of the cabin Rohrbach, talking to Cleo and Di Brett, was obsessed with the compulsive thought—when will Mariotta and Lindemann get back to the cabin? For Christ’s sake when will they get back? Kuhn came in from the pantry with a plate of cakes and took them round. The Newt joined up with Hester and Johan, and Günther Moewe handed out the drinks he’d just mixed. There was no escaping the alcohol this time and, indeed, the male visitors were glad of it. Waiting for the show to start was a nerve-racking business.

Moewe put the tray down and questioned the Newt about his life in Oporto and South Africa—getting monosyllabic and unhelpful replies, he switched to Johan, whom he now doubly disliked because Hester had so clearly fallen for him. What was more they spoke to each other in Afrikaans, which he couldn’t understand, and this infuriated him,

“You are a farmer, I believe, Herr le Roux?” From under thick eyebrows he peered morosely at the big Afrikaner.

Johan looked down on the German cheerfully. “That’s right.” Adroitly he changed the subject. “You must be fed up with this place, Herr Moewe. Think you’ll ever make a run for it?”

The question was so direct and unexpected that Moewe was off his guard. “Well—er—no! I mean, we can’t,” he stammered.

Johan nodded sympathetically. “The
verdoemde
Royal Navy, I suppose. I mean, you couldn’t get past them, could you?”

Moewe bristled with outraged national dignity: to think that this ape should assume that they couldn’t run the blockade! “We are not interested in the Royal Navy. We have raiders, supply vessels and U-boats operating very successfully outside.” He pointed with his stein of beer in the general direction of the Indian Ocean. “Perhaps you have seen some of the survivors coming in, Herr le Roux? The Royal Navy don’t seem to have been much help to them.”

“Of course, Herr Moewe. You Germans are so efficient. And so
brave
,” he added enthusiastically.” I mean, how could the decadent British worry you. But why is it, then, that you have not sailed?”

“I have already told you, Herr le Roux. There is a serious defect in the main engines.”

“Yes. That’s
now
, Herr Moewe. But
before
. You’ve been here since the war started. Why haven’t you sailed before?”

This was too much for Moewe. “Because, Herr le Roux, we Germans obey orders. When we are told to go, we go.” He stood erect, resentful of Johan’s height, the words more or less
hissed from a half-shut mouth. Günther Moewe was on his fourth stein of Münchener. Valour had taken over from discretion.

Amusement flickered in Johan’s eyes. “I see, Herr Moewe. So you are waiting for orders to go?”

Moewe stiffened at once. “I did
not
say that.”

“Of course. Forgive me. My mistake.” Johan patted his cauliflower ears. “These don’t work so well nowadays. They’re always getting bent in the scrum.”

Hester Smit tittered.

“I do not know what you’re talking about,” Moewe muttered; then, conscious of his blunder, he walked away.

In the alley-way outside, they heard Mariotta laughing and a moment later she and Lindemann came back. To the Newt’s dismay, she sat down in what had been the Captain’s chair and picked up his stein of beer. “My goodness, I’m hot and thirsty!” She looked at Lindemann. “Mind if I drink this, Kurt?”

“Of course not. Go ahead.”

She did. The Newt sighed. There was nothing he could do about it. To his relief, however, Kuhn had gone back to his old seat and was swallowing the Münchener.

Fifty per cent return, anyway, muttered the Newt, but poor old Mariotta …

The fly-screen door to the cabin swung open and the
conversation
stopped suddenly. Von Falkenhausen and Heinrich Schäffer stood in the doorway.

“Ah!” smiled the Freiherr, “A party. Charming. May we join you?”

Rohrbach looked at his watch. It was 2155.