The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6 Page 3

  “I had a job. Official. Little diversion here, is all … You got the message, eh?”

  The driver’s home was on the shore of Kafjord, he ran this old banger as a taxi and regularly drove Tirpitz officers into and out of town—this town being Alta, at the south end of the main fjord. The other man asked him. “Where’s she gone?”

  “God knows. All I know is what I see. Or rather, don’t see. But your question should be where have they gone.”

  “The others too?”

  “Lützow’s still here, but Scharnhorst’s out and so are ten destroyers.”

  “How do we know that? Scharnhorst, I mean?”

  The 26,000-ton Scharnhorst’s berth was in Langefjord, ten miles away. The driver said, “Young Wielding Christoffersen. He was crewing in the Ellefsens’ boat. Played truant yesterday—his mother’s furious, but—”

  “He’s a fine kid. But he’d better be damn careful … Listen, does Torstein know?”

  A nod. “Just left him. He’ll be putting the news out—right away, not waiting for the routine time.”

  “Dangerous.”

  “Well. It’s an emergency, if ever there was …”

  “Funny we didn’t get even a whisper of this in advance, isn’t it?”

  “Last-minute orders, maybe. A convoy at sea, or something. The girls surely didn’t know a thing, they were on their way down to the landingstage before they realised.”

  By “the girls” he meant some local women whom the Germans employed on board their battleships as cleaners and cooks. They made sure of hearing whatever was being said, they read every notice that was pinned to the bulletin boards, and whatever they picked up went off to London over clandestine radio the same night. The wireless was operated by the man these two had referred to as “Torstein.” A couple of years ago the Gestapo had been getting close to him and his underground activities, and he’d escaped to Sweden and from there to London, where he’d been trained, equipped and sent back. Now he lived in Alta and had a job in the Highways Department; he’d set up his transmitter in that building, linking it before each transmission to a German officer’s private receiving aerial. His sources of information included the taxi-driver and the women workers, and also some crew members of boats which supplied Tirpitz with fresh provisions. The bits and pieces, when they were strung together, added up to a substantial flow of valuable intelligence, and in recent months London had absorbed every single item and still begged for more. Even the smallest detail of shipboard routine in the German squadron seemed to be of profound interest to the British.

  He straightened from the taxi’s window. There’d be a Bosch patrol along at any minute, and there was no point in hanging around now.

  “See you this evening?”

  “Yup.” A gloved hand lifted. “Maybe we’ll have had news.”

  “Only that single fact, sir—that Tirpitz and Scharnhorst have sailed from Altenfjord.”

  Mid-forenoon in the Admiralty building in London. The news from Norway, a very unusual daytime transmission, had compelled the man at the table to switch his mind from the Italian surrender—news of which hadn’t been generally released yet—and the imminent landings at Salerno, codenamed “Avalanche,” to events in the cold north.

  “PQ 19 is now—where, precisely?”

  “Here, sir. Best estimate—not precise.”

  An arm with a mere three stripes on it had stretched to tap the chart with a pencil. The position of convoy PQ 19 was marked, and so was another to the west of it. This was only an updating brief before the man sitting at the table joined the team on duty in the Operations Room; before he got in there he wanted to be au fait, have his own perspective as clear as his subordinates’ would be.

  Clearer. Because the picture he’d have in mind would be much broader.

  The commander cleared his throat. “That’s if the convoy’s up to schedule, sir. And this is the position—again, only estimated—of the fighting escort. They’ll be altering course from north to north-east about now, to overhaul the convoy before dark.”

  “We had reason to discount the possibility of any surface attack on this convoy on its way north, did we not?”

  “That’s so, sir.”

  It had been a very convincing intelligence appreciation, asserting that there’d been a decision at the highest level—meaning Adolf Hitler and Admiral Dönitz—that the German surface units based in northern Norway would only be used against southbound convoys—meaning against Arctic convoys on their way back to Iceland and the United Kingdom.

  “So the escort’s somewhat light. And those cruisers are too far away to be any use to us if Tirpitz is steering directly to intercept. It would be rather too much of a coincidence that she’d have sailed at this juncture for any other purpose, so—well, I suppose we have to expect the worst …” Impassive: like a man studying a chess-board. “Battle squadron still in Akureyri, of course.”

  “They’re raising steam, sir. C-in-C Home Fleet’s signal—”

  “But screened only by Hunts.”

  To provide a fighting escort of fleet destroyers, at the same time as a climactic battle on the North Atlantic convoy routes was drawing every small ship that could be whipped in—as well as all available escort carriers—the Home Fleet’s battle squadron at Akureyri in north Iceland had been robbed of its escort of fleet destroyers and provided with a temporary screen of the smaller, short-range Hunt class. This imposed drastic limitations on the movements of the big ships: effectively they could only operate to the west of Jan Mayen Island, which meant that in support of the Archangel-bound convoy they could hardly be seen as anything but a very long-range bluff.

  On the other hand if this was subterfuge, if the enemy were only using PQ 19 as an excuse for putting to sea, with the real intention of making a dash out into the Atlantic and joining in the convoy battle—well, the British battle squadron would be well-placed west of Jan Mayen.

  “We’ve had no sighting reports at all—from aircraft, submarines, anyone. We haven’t any clues at all, no idea what they’re up to.”

  It had sounded like a statement, but the upward flicker of the man’s blue eyes made it a question.

  “No clues at all, sir,” the commander added, “and visibility up there is bad. Sleet-showers, and fog on the ice-barrier.”

  That last piece of information would have come from the Norwegian weather station on Spitzbergen, relayed via the W/T station at Seidisfjord in Iceland. Wireless links were far from reliable in those latitudes … The man at the table was silent, deep in thought as he leant over the chart. He asked, finally, “Has Admiral Barry been told his birds have flown?”

  “Indeed he has, sir.”

  Rear-Admiral Barry was Flag Officer, Submarines. His target date for an attack on the Tirpitz by midget submarines was 20 September. One might guess that the enemy ships would be back in Altenfjord by then, but until their return could be positively confirmed Operation Source and almost a year’s training and preparation were in the balance.

  But here and now, that was a side issue. The immediate concern had to be for the convoy.

  “Would you consider turning them back, sir?”

  PQ 19 was already 250 miles north-northeast of Iceland. So any German ships looking for it could just as easily be to the south of it as anywhere else. Turning it back, therefore, might amount to turning it into danger. It was only a small convoy, northbound, the main object of the operation being to bring back merchantmen who’d been marooned up there all through the summer; the “empties” were badly needed, in view of a general shortage of shipping as well as Churchill’s promise to Stalin of regular Murmansk runs during the winter months. In fact there was a slight complication just at this moment—a Churchill-Stalin row brewing; and the nights weren’t yet long enough for operations in those northern waters. The go-ahead had been given despite these factors, and the timing was planned so that the southbound convoy would sail from North Russia after the X-craft operation should have elimi
nated Tirpitz as a danger to it.

  Further considerations in the mind of the man at the table were one, that the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, attending the “Quadrant” conference in Quebec at which Churchill and Roosevelt were approving outline plans for an invasion of the European mainland next year, had suffered a stroke and was returning to England as an invalid. You had a feeling of vacuum at the top, a sense of flying blind … And two, that convoy PQ 17, which had been thought to be under threat of surface attack very much as PQ 19 seemed to be now, had been thrown to the wolves as the result of a panic decision here in London. One of the lessons of that tragic episode was that tactical decisions should be taken by the commander on the spot, not by “chair-borne warriors” hundreds of miles away.

  “Who’s commanding this fighting escort?”

  “Captain Sir Nicholas Everard, sir. In …”

  “Calliope. Yes, of course …”

  Motionless, gazing at the chart, like a clairvoyant staring into a crystal ball.

  Calliope, at twenty-two knots, plunged and swayed over the long following swell. A string of flags at her yardarm whipped multicoloured in grey, cold air over a sea that was grey-green slashed with white where the ships’ hulls carved and split it. Nick Everard, on his high seat in the starboard for’ard corner of the bridge, had a pipe in his mouth and binoculars intermittently at his eyes, examining the surrounding wilderness of grey Norwegian Sea enclosed by an horizon that was hazy at best and in the north obscured by what looked like cotton-wool. At this moment, though, his attention was on the screening destroyers, ahead and on both bows—low, thrashing hulls with white bow-waves curling, mounds of foam boiling under their pitching sterns. At each of the five destroyers’ yards now a blue and white Answering Pendant had been hauled close-up, indicating that Calliope’s flag signal had been read and understood.

  Moloch dead ahead, Laureate and Legend to starboard, Leopard and Lyric on the other bow. Moloch’s captain, the senior destroyer officer, was Tommy Trench; he’d been Nick’s first lieutenant in Intent in 1940, when they’d survived a fairly hair-raising adventure in the Norwegian fjords and wound up by taking a hand in the second battle of Narvik. Trench was now a commander, with a DSO as well as the DSC he’d won in Intent.

  “Captain, sir?”

  The short, pink-faced character at Nick’s elbow was Instructor Lieutenant “Happy” Bliss. A sheet of signal-pad—it was about the shade of pink to match the schoolmaster’s complexion, thus indicating secrecy, a cypher as opposed to an ordinary, unclassified signal—flapped in his hand, and he seemed to be flapping too. But whatever was so exciting would have to wait a minute: Nick swung round to tell the navigator, Bruce Christie, “Executive.”

  “Haul down!”

  The signals yeoman of the watch yelled the order to his minions on the flag deck, the hoist bellied outward on the wind as it came tumbling down, and at the same time the officer of the watch ordered Calliope’s wheel over to starboard. The hauling-down of the flags signalled the order to act on their message, and destroyers were racing—one ahead and two to port, while the other two cut their speed and angled outward—to take up positions that would leave them in proper station when the squadron steadied on its new course.

  Calliope heeled to the turn as her rudder gripped the sea and hauled her round. Nick turned to the schoolmaster. “Now, then.”

  “Secret Immediate, sir, from Admiralty!”

  Bliss’s excitement was slightly irritating. Behind him the officer of the watch—Halcrow—ordered, “Midships …”

  SECRET IMMEDIATE

  FROM: Admiralty

  TO: AIG311

  SBNO N. Russia

  Tirpitz and Scharnhorst reported to have sailed from Altenfjord with 10 destroyers approximately midnight. No indications of intentions or present position yet available.

  Glancing at a three-quarter profile of Laureate sheeted in foam as she raced to adjust her station, the first reaction in his thoughts was, We’re for it, then … Then eyes down again, rereading, and noticing from the signal’s time-of-origin that it had been drafted nearly two hours ago. The next reaction was to ask, What help can I count on?—and the quick and easy answer was, None at all—you’re on your own. Because surface attack had been virtually ruled out of the likely contingencies, and consequently the battle squadron temporarily based on Akureyri wouldn’t be able to play any part at all in whatever was about to happen. The German force—according to this signal—had been at sea since last night, and Akureyri was nearly 300 miles astern; in any case those Home Fleet battle-wagons’ range was strictly limited by their lack of a fleet destroyer screen. The distance-and-time factor also applied to Rear-Admiral Kidd’s close-support cruiser squadron. It was a safe bet that C-in-C Home Fleet, from his flagship in Scapa Flow, would be ordering Kidd out of Akureyri at about this moment; and as the cruisers would already have had steam up, they wouldn’t take long to put to sea. But they wouldn’t be of much use either, if the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst were steaming directly to intercept the convoy.

  Turn the convoy back?

  He nodded to Bliss—who with Marcus Plumb, the chaplain, had the job of cyphering and decyphering all secret signals.

  “Don’t tell us much, do they.” He was talking to himself as much as to the schoolmaster. “Ask the commander to join me in the chartroom, will you?”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  But Bliss, poor fellow, seemed disappointed—no doubt at his captain’s impassive acceptance of the dramatic news. It was dramatic, too: Tirpitz, sister to the late and unlamented Bismarck, was the most powerful fighting ship afloat in the Atlantic Ocean, and at close quarters with a lightly defended convoy she’d be like a great white shark in a school of mackerel. Bliss would be looking for a more electric reaction now from Commander Treseder … Nick, on his way to the rear end of the forebridge, saw that his ship had been steadied on her new course—064 degrees, up the convoy’s track so as to overtake it from astern—and that all five destroyers were in station. Trench had a well-drilled team, there. He told Bruce Christie, his navigator, “I’ll need you too, pilot.” He rattled down the port-side ladder: one level down, he slid back the chartroom door. There was a chart-table at the back of the bridge too, but with no chance of sighting land for several days now they weren’t using it.

  Christie had followed him down. Nick passed him the signal.

  “Tirpitz and Scharnhorst putting in some sea-time.”

  He saw the navigator’s slow blink. Christie was a tall man, long-chinned and with deep-set, pale eyes. A Scot, and a mad-keen fisherman. Studying the message with one bushy eyebrow cocked, and no doubt resisting, Nick guessed—he was doing the same himself—an initial impression that massacre might be imminent. Taking this report at face value, assuming the worst … But as far as Nick had been able to assess his navigating lieutenant in a comparatively short acquaintance, he had him down for one who was as quick-thinking as he was calm and slow-moving. Thumb-nail sketch of the perfect dry-fly man?

  Nick’s pierhead jump into this command had landed him among a host of strangers. He thought he knew Christie reasonably well by this time, and a few others, but the great majority of his officers and ship’s company were only faces to which one had constantly to make the effort to pin names.

  “Want me, sir?”

  Jim Treseder, Calliope’s second-in-command, wasn’t tall, but he was broad enough to have to turn sideways to pass through the narrow doorway. Duffle-coated, and with his legs straddled for balance against the ship’s pitch and roll, short arms akimbo and his eyes on the pink sheet of signalpad … “Something about Tirpitz being out?”

  Christie handed him the signal. Nick bent over the chart, reaching for dividers and parallel rule. With no hard facts or even indications, the only way to approach this was to accept possibilities at their worst—assume the German battle group was informed of the convoy’s position and steaming to intercept, that it had been steaming to intercept ever since pu
tting out of Altenfjord.

  In which case the prospects were—well, inauspicious …

  Plotting it. Hearing Treseder mutter to Christie that after months of harbour time, with any luck the Huns would be as sick as dogs … Nick said, seeing one result in advance, “They could get to the convoy before we do.”

  Conceivably the two battleships and their powerful escort could intercept PQ 19—approaching it from ESE, its starboard bow—by about 1800 this evening. The convoy had its own close escort with it, of course, but that consisted only of two rather old destroyers, four minesweepers, an AA ship and a pair of trawlers. Calliope and her six fleet destroyers weren’t expecting to overhaul the convoy until about the same time. This of course could be adjusted easily enough by an increase in speed … He worked it out: increasing from twenty-two knots to twenty-eight would advance the rendezvous time by three hours.

  Bruce Christie’s mind was operating on the same wavelength. He suggested, “Come up to about thirty knots, sir?”

  “Something like that. But wait a minute.”

  You had to think beyond it, first. For instance, whether to change the convoy’s route now, signal the close-escort commander to swing the whole circus northward, steer them closer to the ice. Or even to reverse the convoy’s course, bringing them back into the protection of this stronger escort more quickly. But doing either of these things would involve breaking wireless silence—which would give away this squadron’s position and perhaps also provide an indication of the convoy’s, which might not yet be known to the enemy.

  Guesswork was about all one had to go by: the Germans could only intercept PQ 19 this evening if (a) they already knew the convoy’s position, course and speed, and (b) had steered the appropriate interception course directly and all the way from Altenfjord at no less than thirty knots. On several counts this seemed unlikely. First, there’d been no sign of the convoy’s having been reported either by U-boat or long-range aircraft. PQ 19 had sailed from Loch Ewe in northwest Scotland, instead of from Seidisfjord on the east coast of Iceland which was the more usual assembly point, primarily to reduce the chances of being spotted early on—enemy reconnaissance had been concentrated on the Icelandic east coast area. Calliope and Trench’s destroyers had set out later from Akureyri, in north Iceland, steering to pass west and north of Jan Mayen Island—which now lay about forty miles to starboard as the force pushed northeastward to catch up with the convoy … But second, one might question the German squadron’s ability to maintain high speed for such a length of time. Tirpitz would be capable of thirty knots, according to latest information, but the 26,000-ton Scharnhorst’s best speed had been estimated as twenty-eight. Another part of the equation was the known fact that German surface ships were hamstrung by an acute shortage of oil-fuel, and this cast doubt on whether those two monsters, with their huge consumption of fuel, would be allowed to burn up so much of it.