The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6 Read online

  Brazier pointed out, “You’ll be better off when we make the changeover. Only three in the passage crew, instead of the four of us.”

  “But we’ve got to put up with you for a whole week, first?”

  “Eight days, Chief.”

  Massingbird, the engineer, shook his head. “Bloody hell …”

  MacGregor glanced at him. “Hospitable little ray of sunshine, isn’t he?”

  Paul turned in early, using Soames’ bunk, Soames having gone up on watch. He was taking the midnight-to-two watch himself, so he left it to Eaton to make the 2200 communications check, and made another himself when the control room messenger shook him at ten minutes to midnight. It was Ozzie Steep who answered: Gimber was off-watch, he said, asleep in the fore end. That bow compartment was the only place in the X-craft where a man could stretch out full length, on top of the wooden cover of the battery. Steep said everything was all right: plenty to do, but no problems. From the background “Trigger” Towne shouted, “No problems yet, chum!” Paul said, “Give Trigger my regards and tell him he should have more confidence in his own machinery.”

  Steep repeated it. Then, “I won’t tell you what his answer is.”

  “I can guess. Tell him to get stuffed too. Listen, I’m going on watch now, I’ll contact you again just after two. You’ll be due for a surfacing then, but tell Louis to wait for my call first, will you?”

  The routines wouldn’t have to be spelt out, after a day or two. But Towne was right, you did have to expect problems, defects, sooner or later. None of the X-craft had been run for a solid week, for instance, until now. Also, the passage crews were going to be kept busy—checking machinery performance, carrying out constant maintenance and keeping the boat dry. Condensation would be a problem, and damp would be a threat to insulation, and thus all the electrical equipment. There’d be a lot to do, all round the clock, for the two men on watch, and as well as maintenance and mopping up there’d be meals to prepare. The food was all tinned stuff and concentrates, and the cooking equipment consisted of one gluepot for heating things in, and a kettle. But the maintenance, of course, would have one vitally important purpose—to have the boat in tiptop condition when they reached the Norwegian coast and switched crews.

  Keeping his watch in Setter’s bridge, alone except for the two lookouts behind him while the submarine drove northward at a steady ten knots, Paul was constantly aware of Gimber down there at the end of the towrope. Of the fact that they were friends—on the face of it—and also relied on each other for their lives … Feet braced apart against the submarine’s jolting, wave-bashing motion: binoculars at his eyes in a constant lookout for enemies, searching the surrounding darkness, black sea and an horizon that was no sharp division, only a vague merging of sea and sky … One of the discomforting aspects of his involvement with Jane was that it would really devastate Louis Gimber if he ever found out about it. To start with it hadn’t seemed so serious: there’d been the phrase “all’s fair in love and war” in mind, and the fact that wartime relationships had tended to be—well, transient; girls like Betty, for instance: nothing so very serious or long-term. But Paul knew he was hooked now, he couldn’t have given her up, despite the fact that if Louis got to know about it, it would kill him.

  He stooped to the voicepipe.

  “Control room … Tell the W/T office to call X-12 and ask if they’re

  OK.”

  It was an hour since he’d spoken to Ozzie Steep. No harm in an extra check.

  He’d asked Jane, a few months ago, why she didn’t break it off with Gimber. Why not tell him she didn’t love him, so there could be an end to pretence. Jane’s answer had been, “Because I’m really fond of him. Don’t you see? I don’t want to hurt him, Paul, why should I?”

  “But aren’t you deceiving him? You’ve told me he wants to marry—if you let him believe it’s on the cards—when it isn’t, is it? So he has to find out some time, you can’t string him along for ever!”

  “I can’t just brush him off, either—when he’s so kind, and …”

  “But when it gets to a point when he’s actually pressing you to marry him?”

  “That’s just him, it’s not my fault. He knows very well that as far as I’m concerned marriage is out of the question. I’ve told him so—oh, fifty times … I’ve been married—and you know what happened.”

  “Wouldn’t it be less hurtful in the long run to let him know he doesn’t stand a chance?”

  “But why should I hurt him like that? When he knows I don’t intend marrying anyone while this bloody war’s still going?”

  Round and round. Leading nowhere.

  “Bridge!” He bent to the pipe. The helmsman told him, “Lieutenant Gimber says all’s well, sir!”

  “Very good.”

  Straightening, resuming the careful all-round search. Behind him the two lookouts, one each side of the bridge, pivotted slowly, each man sweeping from bow to stern and across the stern and then back again. Diesels rumbling through submerged exhausts while the sea rushed and boomed over the curve of the pressure-hull a dozen feet below the perforated platform that he stood on, and white foam seething, leaping, all along the submarine’s slim, plunging length.

  All Jane knew about Paul’s job or Gimber’s was that they were submariners and in the same flotilla. When they’d been down in Hampshire, and as often as not free for weekends in London, she’d asked him why none of them ever seemed to go away to sea. She’d said, “You’re like a fighter squadron. A crowd of you all part of the same outfit and—well, always around!”

  His mind hadn’t been on the question—war, fighter squadrons, X-craft, anything like that.

  “You’re sensational. Really absolutely …”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  She’d been on top, looking down at him, her face in darkness because of the brilliance of the chandelier in the middle of the room behind her. They’d booked into the Savoy, that weekend. Jane’s idea—the Savoy being one of a handful of places where you could be just about sure of not running into any of your friends.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just sit here, I shan’t move!”

  “That’s all right. I like the view.”

  “Please, tell me?”

  “I’ll do the moving.”

  “About time …”

  “Submarine patrols can be quite short. And some people are what’s called spare crew, not permanently in any one boat … Did I mention you’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw?”

  “Bridge!”

  He leant down. “Bridge.”

  “Relieve lookout, sir?”

  “Yes, please.” So it was now fifteen minutes to the hour. Lookouts and OOWS changed over at staggered times so there’d always be some eyes up here that were already tuned to the dark.

  At ten past the hour he was in the W/T office and had Gimber on the telephone. X-12 was due to come up now, to “guff-through”—meaning to get the stale air out and fresh air in.

  “How’s it going, Louis?”

  “Like always—stuffy and damp. We’re porpoising a bit, but not too badly. Any new met forecasts?”

  “Not that I know of. Keep your fingers crossed, we might get this weather the whole way over. But stand by, now—we’re slowing down.”

  Engine noise, and the rush of cold air past the wireless office, lessened as diesel revs decreased. Gimber’s voice distantly over the line, “Stand by to surface,” then the click as he hung up and the wire went dead. This was to be the routine for the eight days of towing: four times a day, so thirty-two surfacings and a total of eight hours up top during the whole period. The last surfacing would be for the changeover of crews, close to the entrance to the fjords. Thinking of that as he put the telephone down, Paul was looking forward to the moment, probably as much as Gimber would be: he wanted to get there, get it over.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  The telegraphist was holding back an earphone, uncovering the ear on this side
. “Asking about weather forecasts, was he?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “On the log, sir. Be on the chart-table now, most likely.” “Thanks.”

  He edged out, slid the door shut and moved for’ard. MacGregor was coming the other way, dressed for the bridge, and the helmsman was shouting up the pipe to Crawshaw, “Captain coming up, sir!” MacGregor asked Paul, “Been talking to them?”

  He nodded. “Surfacing now, sir.”

  The signal log was on the chart, and the new meteorological report was the top sheet in the clip. At first glance, the first words he saw were bad enough: he began again, getting the detail, wanting that first impression to have been wrong. It had not, though. What this promised was a new weather-pattern approaching from west-southwest and reaching the Norwegian Sea by tomorrow night or the day after—a deep depression accompanied by south-westerly gale-force winds.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  . . .

  Light from a new day’s dawn glinted on the crests of a lively, rising sea. Wind on the beam, and Calliope rolling hard; with his glasses moving slowly across the convoy’s bows Nick heard Treseder’s gruff report, “Ship’s at action stations, sir.”

  He’d only just come out of his sea-cabin, having enjoyed a few hours’ sleep. And how good or foul a day this might turn out to be would depend very largely on how soon the Luftwaffe located them. This was the main consideration, at the moment. The amount and height of cloud would be a factor in it and would reveal itself more clearly in the next half hour; but the rising wind might well break it up, however promising it might look to start with, so the wind was to the enemy’s advantage.

  Another factor was simply luck. And perhaps—recalling his own words of yesterday—no, day before yesterday—it might be unwise to count on more of that, when they’d had so much already. Torpedoes that didn’t explode, for instance; and fog in the right place at the right time; and Kidd’s cruisers taking the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s ire …

  Until dusk last evening the convoy had still been in pack-ice and its accompanying fog. In air like frozen soup, sea blotched white, a black-and-white surface rising and falling as regularly as if the ocean were taking long, deep breaths; a great ice-bound lung expanding and contracting, surviving in deep sleep, hibernation, blind to the double column of ships forging eastward through it from dawn to dusk, ghost-ships gliding through a mysterious, silent wasteland. Calliope had led the starboard column, with the commodore’s Tacora abeam and the rest of the merchantmen and the AA ship in double file astern. Up ahead the trawler Northern Glow had cleared the way where necessary, her strong hull and stem being better suited to occasional arguments with floating ice than a destroyer’s thin plating would have been.

  From dawn onwards Nick had mentally kept his fingers crossed, dreading an end to the fog-bank where the convoy could, at very short notice, have found itself steaming out into clear, bright day. In fact it had thickened, if anything; then the night was coming and finally they’d finished with it, having taken maximum advantage of its shelter. With the darkness, PQ 19 had re-formed, and steered south.

  Now, inevitably, the holiday was over. Or very soon would be.

  Northern Glow was the only trawler with them now. Arctic Prince was escorting the Bayleaf to—or towards—Hope Island. Before they’d diverted, Bayleaf had fuelled three of the destroyers, while the Arctic Prince had gone scrounging around the convoy to collect as much white paint as could be begged from close-fisted bosuns. Nick had suggested that either at Hope Island or on the way there, or wherever they might have to heave-to, both ships should paint their upperworks white. Then if, or when, the fog lifted they wouldn’t so easily be spotted.

  The other four destroyers had fuelled during the day from the Russian. Practice had improved the performance of the Sovyetskaya Slava’s part-female crew, and it hadn’t gone too badly. The Slava was back in the middle now, in the centre billet of three columns each of three ships; she had the Tacora ahead of her and the AA ship astern, and Americans—the Plainsman and the Republican—on both sides. Calliope was on her own, 400 yards ahead of the commodore, with Moloch another 1000 yards ahead and Harpy and Foremost almost abeam, on the convoy’s bows. Laureate and Legend were close to port of the block of merchantmen, Leopard and Lyric to starboard, while the rear was covered by the minesweepers and Northern Glow. Course 170, speed twelve: Cape Kanin, guarding the entrance to the White Sea, was now about 350 miles ahead.

  Improving light allowed him to see Moloch’s dark superstructure rolling crazily above the white froth surrounding her, while to port that very familiar H-class silhouette was Harpy, clearly outlined against the rising dawn. Nick’s glasses swept past Foremost, and on round to the starboard quarter. That was the Galilee Dawn leading column three; beyond her, only just visible from here, was Leopard. That was the dark side and the dangerous one, where an enemy would be hard to see but would have any of these ships clearly in his sights. Although the only enemy one would have expected here would have been a U-boat, and there’d been no sight or sound of any. All busy down south. To that extent the intelligence appreciation seemed to have been right. Much less so when it came to the shifting south of airstrength: German airmen would be watching this dawn, too—impatiently, with search planes ready for take-off, eager to seek out this target for the bomber squadrons.

  The last news they’d have had of PQ 19 would have been thirty hours ago, when that Dornier would have reported it as 200 miles west of here and steering south. Since then they’d have realised it could only be hiding in the northern fog, but not necessarily that it had been pushing east. If they’d been fooled by that southerly course they might even be panicking now, imagining their target might have eluded yesterday’s searchers and practically reached its port or ports of destination. Which they might assume to be Murmansk, the Kola Inlet.

  “Anything on the screen, Swanwick?”

  The ADO said no, the 281 screen was clear. Not that one could rely on that set entirely.

  In London, admirals would be worrying, wondering where PQ 19 had got to. The last they’d have heard would have been when the convoy was under attack and losing ships.

  “Pilot.” Christie moved up closer. Nick told him, “Draft a signal to SBNO North Russia, repeated to Admiralty and AIG 311. Give him an estimated position for dawn tomorrow, and request rendezvous with local escorts, ditto fighter cover. Let me see it before you give it to Bliss to code.”

  He’d hesitated over this one. Mostly because to predict where they’d be by this time tomorrow seemed like a twisting of the devil’s tail. But chances of getting some help from Soviet destroyers and some fighter cover might be improved by putting the request in early. Also it would be as well to get everything off your chest at the first contact with an enemy, get it out when you had the opportunity and if necessary amend it later if things went badly.

  Tomblin brought breakfast to the sea-cabin. While he ate it he thought of the day ahead, his dispositions, orders to the escorts and arrangements with the commodore. Whether there might be anything he’d overlooked or that could be improved. By this time he’d already shifted Moloch to the convoy’s rear … He’d finished eating and was lighting the first pipe of the day when Tomblin came to collect the tray.

  “More coffee, sir?”

  “No, nothing else.”

  “Is it right we’re for Archangel this time, sir, not Kola?”

  He nodded. “Because that’s where the empty ships are, that we’re collecting. Moved there to be further from the German airfields.”

  The anchorage at Vaenga in the Kola Inlet was a frequent target for bombers.

  “So now it’s bring on the dancing girls, sir, eh?”

  “Except they have to find us first.” He added, “When they do, don’t let me see you without a tin hat on.”

  It would have been a shorter trip to Kola, the Murmansk approach. Better therefore from the fuelling angle too—which was partly why it had been essential to have the Bayleaf avai
lable up there—but in any case a shorter period of exposure to the bombers as the convoy ran south. But Archangel was where the empties had congregated, and bringing them home was the main purpose of this operation. Archangel being ice-free still, which in a month’s time it probably would not be.

  Radar picked up its first contact just after five in the morning. The bearing was 224, range eighteen miles.

  “One aircraft, or more?”

  “Single bogey, sir.”

  It was too early in the day to be found—with fourteen hours of daylight yet to come, and the enemy only about 300 miles away, flying-time lessening every minute.

  “Drawing left. Bearing two-two-one, range sixteen.”

  A minute later the bearing steadied. Indicating a direct approach. Then it began to draw right. Christie murmured with his hands together as if in prayer, “Turned for home. Please God.”

  “Tempt not the Lord thy God.” Treseder growled it, with his glasses up on that bearing. Swanwick reported, “Bearing two-two-five—bearing steady—range fourteen!”

  Treseder said, “Warned you, pilot.”

  A minute passed. Two minutes. The German was still coming straight for them.

  “Aircraft—green five-oh, angle of sight ten!”

  It was Merry, the leading signalman, who’d made the sighting, but suddenly everyone else could see it too. Treseder looked round at Nick. “Seems to be flying left to right now, sir.”

  “Yes, I’m on it.” It was a Blohm and Voss this time. And no Hurricane left to deal with it. Very shortly it would be delighting the Luftwaffe commanders with the information they’d been waiting for: and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.

  He saw the thing’s profile shortening, as it swung towards the convoy.

  “He’s spotted us.”

  “Yeoman—flags—aircraft on that true bearing.”