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

  You heard it bang open, and the rush of escaping air. Eaton meanwhile pulling the trim-pump lever back, then pushing it over to starboard, which would start it sucking on the midships tank. It was a four-position lever, a very neatly arranged control; the first part of each movement opened or shut the necessary valves, and the second part started or stopped the pump.

  “Back in your hutch, Bomber.”

  That too would help to level her. Paul realised that his pulse had been racing, that he was slightly breathless. Until now he’d been too busy to know it. Lanchberry muttered, craning round, “Nasty. Highly insalubrious, you might say. Scourge must’ve stuck her arse up like a bleeding duck, and …”

  “Right.” X-12 was quivering under the motor’s thrust. Paul told Eaton, “Group down. Half ahead.”

  It was a lesson learnt, a lesson mostly for Scourge and for Vallance her captain, primarily that in anything approaching rough weather he had to take care to dive in slow time when he had a midget in tow. Scourge had been head to sea, she’d been diving into a lot of turbulence, and—well, Jazz Lanchberry had summed it up well enough … Lanchberry added a minute later, when X-12 was lifting slowly, in excellent control again and not as yet high enough to come into the influence of the waves, “No bloody stopping her, I reckoned. Could’ve hit the putty, smashed up good an’ proper!”

  “Still had about forty feet under us when we checked her, Jazz.”

  The ERA’s head turned. Crewcut dark head, blue-black jaw, a derisive slant to the thin, wide mouth. Paul added, pressing the “rise” button of the periscope and watching as the tube slid up to its full nine-foot extension, “Thirty, anyway.”

  Lanchberry let out a snort of amusement, and winked at Brazier. Brazier’s head poking out of the W and D like a tortoise’s from its shell. Eaton reported, “Periscope depth, sir.”

  Eaton was a fairly new sub-lieutenant, and he used the word “sir” a lot. Ordinary, full-sized submarines were less formal than surface ships—no less well disciplined, but not as pompous about it—and X-craft crews were slightly more relaxed still. More socially relaxed than Scourge, for instance, could afford to be. Paul didn’t want to embarrass Eaton, and he hadn’t said anything about it yet; left to himself, he’d catch on, soon enough. Paul had his eye at the periscope, scanning grey-green wave slopes. “Bring her up to eight feet, Dick.” Nine feet was all right in flat conditions, in harbour conditions, fjord conditions such as they’d expect to have on this operation. In truly smooth water you’d only need an inch of glass showing above it. Now he needed an extra foot or so, to see over the waves. No higher than necessary, because the shallower you were the more you got slammed around, but he did need to see where Scourge was before he surfaced.

  Shortly after that, passing a new tow, he’d be getting very, very wet, despite the waterproof suit.

  Lanchberry muttered as he turned back to his wheel and gyro display, “I dunno …”

  Referring, presumably, to Paul’s equanamity over X-12’s recent dash towards the sea-bed. But it truly hadn’t worried him. The accident had been foreseeable, and he’d accepted the risk of it when he’d told Eaton to shift the weight for’ard. Then it had happened, and he’d been ready for it and dealt with it, with no more hesitation than a man driving fast on a wet road would have in reacting to the beginning of a skid. Afterwards, there was time to be scared.

  And for dreams. The nightmares were bastards. He’d never suffered from anything of the sort before: and they did, frankly, worry him. It was the suspicion that they had to mean something, that there could be a canker of fear inside you. The theory of “no smoke without fire,” and dread that some day it might show itself—in waking hours.

  Bloody silly. He’d been a submariner long enough to know he didn’t have even the slightest tinge of claustrophobia. The nightmares recurred, he told himself, only because he allowed himself to think about them. It was tantamount to inviting them back. And if people got to know about it— in view of the strict medical and psychiatric supervision of all the X-craft personnel—well, if the medical department realised it, he’d be out of this operation like a dose of salts!

  He told himself, Forget it.

  That was the one good answer. The basis of the worry was that old spectre, fear of fear. You could only beat it by ignoring it.

  Jane knew. Since the night he’d woken screaming in her arms …

  Scourge had just surfaced, emerging streaming from the suds a couple of hundred yards away, her stern towards X-12’s periscope—which was about as thick as a walking stick. A sharp underwater thud, followed by two more, was Vallance’s three-grenade signal telling Paul to come on up. Vallance was no doubt anxious, scared that X-12 might not be capable of coming on up … Paul pressed the other periscope-control button—they were both enclosed in a rubber bag on the end of a wandering lead, and you had to select the right one by feel—and sent the tube sliding down.

  “Stand by to surface.”

  She was rolling now, feeling the waves. And there was a very strenuous and uncomfortable half hour or so to come, getting a new tow passed and secured. All good practice, because it could become necessary on the way to the target area too. When the balloon went up, the eight midgets would be setting off with their towing ships on the surface and themselves at forty or fifty feet, but closer to the target area—which was in the Arctic Circle— the whole outfit would duck out of sight. Closer still, the tows would be slipped and the X-craft would go in under their own power.

  A thousand miles of underwater tow was an astonishing thing to contemplate. You just had to accept the fact you were going to do it. Then, penetrate nets, defended anchorages …

  Plugging in towards Loch Cairnbawn four hours later, following Scourge but no longer in tow from her, X-12 was more in the waves than on them. Paul, standing on his boat’s flat top—the midgets had no conning towers—stood upright, swaying and bending to the rise and fall, with one arm wrapped around the raised induction trunk. The trunk was a man-high pipe that hinged at deck level and when raised acted as a conduit of air for the diesel engine intake, also as the communication link between himself up here and the dry, warmer people down inside. The hatch was shut: it had to be, or the boat would have filled, since the sea was sluicing right over her, swirling around Paul’s legs. All that mattered was that the top of the pipe was clear. Diesel pounding throatily, exhaust spluttering through the froth astern, fumes unpleasant on the following wind. The engine was a four-cylinder, forty horsepower Gardner diesel, the same one that drove London buses.

  Any crofter on that headland, as X-12 approached the entrance to the loch, would either have sworn to give up the malt or rushed straight home for a restorative dram. All he’d have seen, with the midget’s low, flat top hidden in the waves, would have been a man not only walking on the water but gliding over it at a smart 10 knots … Not, in fact, that there could have been any bemused shepherd to have seen it. Security was tight, Loch Cairnbawn and its surroundings a restricted area. Precautions had been intensive right from the start, but from the first day of this month— September of 1943—the clamp-down had become total. No leave was being granted, no private telephone calls were allowed, and no mail was being taken ashore. You could write your love-letters but they wouldn’t be posted—for a while.

  So Jane could write—he’d had a letter from her only yesterday—but she wouldn’t be hearing from him. He’d warned her it would happen, that for a certain period he’d be incommunicado …

  “How long?”

  “Absolutely not the faintest.”

  She’d frowned. “That’s exactly what Louis said.”

  Louis being the man—Louis himself believed—who really counted in her life.

  “What is it all about, Paul?”

  She didn’t know anything at all about the X-craft, didn’t even know such things existed. Only a small handful of people did know anything—that they’d been designed for breaking into enemy harbours and anchorages, destroying
major warships that couldn’t be got at any other way. For a long time Paul and his friends hadn’t known in any detail what their objective was to be: there’d been guesses and assumptions, but no certainty. They knew they’d been training for one specific operation, and that it had originally scheduled for March, then postponed for six months. Training had continued: and now they all knew that their primary target was the Tirpitz—43,000 tons, 800 feet long, ten decks deep, clad in armour plating fifteen inches thick, carrying a devastating punch and currently lurking—with Scharnhorst and Lützow and a big pack of destroyers—in a deep fjord in the remote north of Norway, out of range of bombing or any other kind of attack.

  Except by midget submarines—if they could gatecrash the anchorage. One part of her that was not armoured was her belly: and this was where you’d hit her. But—a thousand miles away, and in a narrow fjord approachable only through other narrow fjords, guarded by minefields, steel nets, acoustic detection gear, patrol craft, shore guns and probably fixed torpedo batteries.

  Paul’s father, Nick Everard, had asked him—in a London restaurant, about eight weeks ago—“What are you up to now? You’re not standing-by Ultra in her refit, are you?”

  Ultra was the submarine Paul had served in, in the Malta flotilla. She’d been near-missed by a bomb off Sfax on the Tunisian coast last November, a fortnight after the “Torch” landings, and she’d been sent back to the UK for major refit. In the week that she’d reached the Clyde there’d been an invitation to junior submarine officers to volunteer for “special and hazardous duty,” and having no idea what his next job might be, Paul had rather casually put his name in. At about the same time his promotion to lieutenant had come through.

  He’d answered that question of his father’s, “No, I’m in—another flotilla, up there.” He’d hesitated. The secrecy surrounding the X-craft had a capital S on it: the message had been driven home a dozen times, secrecy was total. So, even when you were talking to Captain Sir Nicholas Everard, Bart., DSO*** DSC* RN … An older, heavier version of himself, gazing quizzically at him across the table. Paul had mumbled in some embarrassment, “Careless Talk—all that stuff?”

  Kate, Nick’s new Australian wife, had laughed. Nick told her, “But he’s right. In fact I shouldn’t have asked, in a public place like this.”

  “My, can’t we be stuffy!”

  She’d said it to Paul, teasing Nick. Paul shook his head. “I never thought so.” Hesitating again: “In fact, all things considered”—he’d glanced at his father’s medal ribbons—“I’d say rather amazingly unstuffy.”

  “And bully for you.” Kate’s hand patted Paul’s, on the white tablecloth. “I quite like him too, would you believe it?”

  Kate was very attractive, Paul thought. His father had told him in a letter ages ago that she had a look of Ingrid Bergman, and it was a fact, the resemblance was striking. Paul remarked on it, and saw that she liked it; he liked her … It had been a happy lunch, with an air of celebration about it—despite a certain background tension—and there was reason for celebration, too. Earlier, walking to the restaurant through a light summer drizzle, he’d asked his father whether he was on leave now.

  “No. Just playing truant.” Nick had told him, “They’ve given me a cruiser. She’s finishing a bottom-scrape at Chatham, and I’ve dragged Kate down here just for a couple of days. From my point of view it’s a bit of a pierhead jump. The ship’s Calliope—Dido class.”

  “Well, congratulations!”

  Kate said, “Wait till you hear the rest of it.”

  “It’s supposed to be a temporary appointment only.” Nick explained, “I’m really just filling in. Hence the short notice, etcetera. The fact is—look, this is a secret now—”

  “OK”

  His father drew a breath. “It suits Their Lordships to keep me busy for a few months, because after that I’m in line for a cruiser squadron. Taking it east.”

  “Squadron …” Paul did a quick double-take. “My God, you mean—”

  Kate nodded proudly. “Promotion.”

  “Rear-Admiral?”

  “Isn’t it incredible?”

  Kate objected, “Not in the least!” They all laughed. Paul began, “Well, double those congratulations. And I agree, Kate, it’s not at all—”

  “But it is.” Nick Everard shrugged. “Hasn’t happened yet, anyway—I’ll believe it when it does. But considering I left the service between the wars—with consequent loss of seniority, plus the fact Their Lordships never entirely forgive a man for walking out on them …”

  “Obviously you’ve made up for it.”

  “More than made up for it.” Kate had broken in. “Exactly what I’ve been telling him. It’s time they let him take a rest!”

  Her eyes were on Nick, and she meant it. Paul was surprised. A moment ago she’d been proud of Nick’s achievement, and now she’d have rather seen him shunted into some desk job?

  Nick told him, “Kate has some loony idea about my luck running out.”

  “Oh. Well …”

  “Don’t you agree he’s been through enough, Paul?”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t disagree with that. On the other hand I can’t imagine him putting his feet up. Even if they’d let him.” He could see she was seriously concerned; he tried to make light of it. “Anyway, cats have nine lives, Kate.”

  “Miaow,” Paul’s father said. “He’s right. I’m a survivor. Case-hardened. Believe me, I have more reason now to stay alive than I ever had before. Another thing—very few flag officers get drowned. So really all I have to do is last out the next few months, and I’m home and dry.” He too, Paul realised, was trying to allay Kate’s fears by sounding as if he didn’t take them seriously. Then explaining—by way of changing the subject: “But the delay, Paul—this is the secret you have to keep—is because there’s a plan to send a contingent of ships to join the Yanks and Aussies in the Pacific. We can’t do it right away, partly because we have to keep powerful forces up north—in Scapa and so on—to guard against any break-out by the Tirpitz and others into the Atlantic. Presumably there’s some expectation of eliminating that threat before long. Don’t ask me how …”

  Paul hadn’t enlightened him, although he had a pretty good idea of at least one answer. It was intriguing how the various factors meshed, forming a cohesive and logical pattern which had a surprising simplicity to it. Destroy the Tirpitz and you’d free major fleet units which could then be sent to the other side of the world to add their weight to a different struggle against another enemy. In the same blow you’d be removing the major threat to the Arctic convoys—which were vital to the whole strategy of the war—and to the transatlantic supply routes; and the trick would have been pulled by a handful of submersible bathtubs manned by young amateurs like Paul Everard …

  He shouted down the induction pipe, “Starboard ten!”

  Loch Cairnbawn’s afforested northern slopes loomed to port against grey sky. Entering sheltered water, at last. Ahead, farther up, lay the cluster of moored ships which included the X-craft depot ship Bonaventure and the other one, the old Titania, who’d arrived more recently to mother the towing submarines. Around them, dotted about in the rippling grey water of the loch, were smaller ships of various shapes and sizes, the rest of the Twelfth Flotilla’s entourage.

  “Midships!”

  The quiet, mist-shrouded scene was fascinating—when you knew what it was for, how carefully the secret had been guarded and what a far-reaching effect the operation’s success would have.

  CHAPTER TWO

  . . .

  From Norway Pilot, Volume III:

  Altenfjord. General Remarks. Altenfjord is entered between Klubbenes (70 12’ N, 22 58’ E) and Korsnes light-structure about 4? miles eastward; together with Kafjord and Rafsbotn, its continuations, it is the largest fjord in the western part of Finmark and indents the mainland for about 17 miles … The shores are irregular, forming several large bays and small inlets … Altenfjord is accessib
le for large vessels.

  Even for the largest afloat, for a 43,000-ton battleship … Which had put to sea—slipped out and vanished, during the dark hours!

  The man on the church tower stared for a few more seconds through his binoculars. Focussing on Kafjord, the main waterway’s southwestern extremity and innermost recess. It was barely daylight yet—dawn came at about 0200 here, at this time of year—and visibility was tricky, but of one thing there was no doubt: where yesterday at dusk the Tirpitz’s great bulk had lain at rest in the flat, reflective water, now there was nothing except a rectangular enclosure of buoys supporting steel anti-torpedo nets. The monster was no longer in her lair.

  One floating object which the observer could make out was an anchored battle-practice target; and against the far shore he could distinguish the shapes of a lighter and a tug at the landing place just north of the empty nets. If Lützow was still in her berth she wouldn’t have been visible from here in any case, since her box of nets was hidden by a spur of land on the inlet’s southern side.

  Pushing the glasses inside his coat, the Norwegian turned away, hurried to the belfry stairs and down them spiralling to street level. Emerging, he crossed the churchyard and turned right into the street: then stopped abruptly, drew back into the shadow …

  A blacked-out saloon came racing. Brakes squealed as it juddered to a halt. His mind racing too, providing answers to questions he’d be faced with now: what he was doing in the street at this hour, where he’d been, where he was going, what for …

  He told himself, Calm down, now. There’s no problem … A visit to the church: a private prayer. Even a German would accept that—he hoped—as damn-all to do with the Master Race … The car halted just across from where he stood motionless with his back against the grey stone wall, rigidly defensive. Then he saw the face at the window as the driver wound it down and peered out at him: his breath fogged the air in a whoosh of relief.

  “I’ll be damned. That old bus of yours looked like a Mercedes Benz, for Christ’s sake! It’s the light, I suppose.” He was at the car, stooping to the window. “What if you’re caught on the road at this hour?”