Convoy (46 page)

The
Echo
, a dark blob beneath the blue fighting light with a smudge of grey showing where her bow wave was curling up, was cutting across the next column halfway between the fourth ship, which he had been using for practice, and her next ahead, and heading diagonally across the gap between the columns towards the
Penta
, second in the next column.

‘Quartermaster, stand by!’

He walked over to the engine-room telegraph and put a hand on the handle of each indicator. The metal was cold. The throbbing was his heart beating, not the
Penta
’s diesels. A few seconds too late or too early and he would wreck everything: perhaps hit and sink the
Echo
and she would go down with all those depth charges set to explode shallow.

The forward side of the bridge helped hide the glare from the arc lamps, but although the
Penta
must look an extraordinary sight, Johnny would see the stem black and sharp like the edge of a cliff, the
Penta
herself towering over the frigate. He looked over his right shoulder – time was slowing down and the black blob with a grey smudge under the blue light was now recognizably a frigate racing along in the darkness, slicing wavetops into sheets of spray. Johnny would be under that blue light, standing on the bridge, peering up at the
Penta
which was now broad on his bow. It was, Yorke thought inconsequentially, as if the
Penta
was an express train thundering down towards a converging level crossing with Johnny driving a small sports car along the road and trying to cross the track before the engine could hit him.

The
Echo
now seemed almost bows on, with the glare from the arc lights sending out flecks of reflection from her bow wave and making it seem she was chasing a swarm of fireflies.

Men were grouped round her forward gun and the reflection of the lamps began catching the front of her bridge; Yorke imagined he could see a row of heads, Johnny Gower in the middle. More men were crouched aft, by the depth-charge throwers. Johnny had a hell of a responsibility. If he got it right he blew up a German U-boat; if he got it wrong he blew up a Swedish ship and killed everyone on board.

And, for God’s sake, blew up all the evidence! If Johnny got it wrong they would crucify him at the Admiralty for suddenly going mad and sinking a neutral. The
Echo
’s signal log recording the brief messages from the late Lieutenant Yorke would not help; they were too brief, and gave no proof that the late Lieutenant Yorke himself had had any proof – or even that he had sent the signals…

Here she comes, like the sports car at the level crossing, her bow abreast the
Penta
’s stern, overtaking at nine knots.

‘Quartermaster!’ he shouted, ‘hard a-port!’ and as he shouted he gave the double jerk on the two telegraphs, one forward, one back: he heard the ring –and the ring in reply. Now the
Penta
’s bow would turn to port and her stern would swing out to starboard – would Johnny allow enough distance for the swing?

Suddenly the
Penta
began vibrating; a heavy shuddering as though a blade had come off a propeller: what the hell was going on down there in the engine room? Jenkins was shouting ‘What ho, she bumps!’ with Reynolds screaming with excitement, ‘Just look at that!’

Yorke looked back hurriedly at the
Echo
but she was not there – she had vanished. No, the
Penta
had turned sharply so the frigate would be…

A great booming thunderclap seemed to come up from the depth of the ocean, followed by a greater double boom and then a single one: the
Echo
had dropped a diamond pattern of depth charges where the
Penta
would have been had she not suddenly swung to port. On where the unsuspecting U-boat should be, unaware until the last few seconds that anything untoward was happening overhead.

Over on the starboard beam Yorke saw a great flat, boiling mass of water at each of the four points of a diamond and, even as he watched, each spurted up a great column like wet volcanoes.

Suddenly he thought of the
Penta
heading for the ships in the next column to port.

‘Quartermaster! – hard a-starboard,’ he yelled as he felt Mills bring the revolutions back to normal and looked back on the quarter where the
Echo
’s searchlight was now lighting up the area of boiling water as she desperately tried to turn back to get over it.

The searchlight caught the
Marynal
, lumbering along; still in her correct position in the column and about to pass through the mass of disturbed water.

Then Yorke saw it, just ahead of the
Marynal
: like a black log in a millstream to begin with, then surfacing like a whale, and a few moments later high enough in the water so that he could see it, was the U-boat.

Several streams of tracers suddenly tore across from the
Echo
, but Yorke saw that she dare not fire her bigger guns in case she hit the
Marynal
. Now red lines of tracer were darting from the
Marynal
as her machine-guns and twin 20mm cannons opened up on the U-boat. The
Echo
’s searchlight lost the U-boat as her bridge section masked the beam in her desperate turn to get into position for another attack on the submarine, which had obviously been forced to the surface and could not dive because of damage.

Yorke noticed a thin trail of sparks rising diagonally into the sky from above the
Marynal
’s bridge and then curving over, bursting a moment later into a brilliant ‘Snowflake’ parachute flare, perfectly placed right above the U-boat, its harsh light dramatically white against the dull red of the streams of tracer below which were bouncing off the U-boat’s hull and then richocheting at crazy angles from the waves in a cobweb of childlike squiggles.

Yorke sighted the
Penta
’s next ahead in the column and shouted a course correction, then looked over the quarter again at the U-boat, black and evil in the magnesium white of the flare, and which now seemed to be moving slowly ahead out of the great pond of white froth. The
Echo
had her helm hard over to avoid a merchant ship; Johnny Gower would now have to do a figure of eight before he could get back to the U-boat. And that bloody fool Hobson was getting well off course with the
Marynal –
he would block the way if and when Johnny ever got the
Echo
round again.

What was Reynolds shouting about? Yorke checked that the
Penta
was more or less back in the column and not likely to hit the ship ahead and then ran to the after side of the bridge, where Reynolds was dancing up and down with excitement and yelling ‘He’s going to ram the bugger! Oh do look, sir, he’s going to ram the bastard! Oh, do look…’ while Jenkins was cheering like a drunken football fan.

The
Marynal
was increasing speed: the light from the Snowflake flare showed her bow wave getting bigger, the dark water at her stern now curling up and over into a white moustache – a hundred yards to go, probably less. And there’s a trail of sparks from another flare going up from the
Marynal –
Hobson had seen that the U-boat’s one hope of escape was to get out of the circle of light from the first one into the safety of darkness.

‘Those bloody Snowflakes,’ Jenkins snarled angrily, ‘we’ve carted ’em halfway round the world and now the first time we use ’em I ain’t even on board!’

‘You’re getting a better view from here,’ Yorke said unsympathetically, looking forward again and just managing to spot his next ahead’s stern as the second Snowflake flare exploded in an almost blinding white glow beneath its parachute.

‘We don’t need those arc lights now,’ Yorke told Jenkins. ‘Get them doused.’

The seaman walked to the forward side of the bridge, rested his revolver on the rail, and started firing. It took three shots to put out the first one but he missed with the rest.

‘Send someone down to pull out the plug,’ Yorke said impatiently, his ears ringing. ‘Look sharp, there’s a war on!’

He turned back to watch the
Marynal
. The Snowflake lit up the whole merchant ship, the portholes on the forward side of the accommodation looking like the reflection on rows of buttons. There were two or three black figures on the bridge. Spurts of flames were coming from the Hotchkiss machine-guns at each end of the bridge and from the twin Oerlikons on the monkey island and turning into tiny red darts of tracer. It was curious how tracer seemed to start off slowly and then speed up as it approached the target. That burst from a twin Hotchkiss ricocheted off the conning tower, the tracers scattering like sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil. They may not be doing any damage but the Teds would hardly dare put their heads up for a look around.

The
Marynal
ploughed on, a great lumbering elephant determined to crush a wounded black serpent.

Would Hobson remember he did not have to go for the conning tower; that a U-boat was like an iceberg, most of it beneath the water?

Hell, the old
Marynal
must be making twelve knots already and still increasing speed. The chief engineer must – then Yorke saw that the chief engineer most certainly would not be pleased: the
Marynal
’s funnel was squirting sparks like a Roman candle as the sudden increase in speed blasted out all the loose carbon accumulated in the past few days of six knots…

Forty yards to go, perhaps less. The
Marynal
’s
stem was now very close to the submerged after section of the U-boat. The
Echo
’s searchlight suddenly came on but Yorke saw that it was blinding old Hobson on the
Marynal
’s bridge. Just as suddenly as it came on it went out: Johnny Gower had spotted that too.

The Snowflake was swinging on the parachute and dropping fast. It was dimmer, too, and the magnesium was dripping, as though weeping red tears.

‘Bloody things,’ Jenkins swore. ‘They’ve only got two launchers: I’ve argued time and time again to get two more fitted. That’s the last – Christ!’

The
Marynal
’s stem hit the U-boat just abaft the conning tower. The ship seemed to stop for a few moments, the bow reared up a fraction and then she ploughed on, having cut the U-boat in half, and in the dying light of the flare Yorke saw the U-boat’s forward section point up in the air and then vanish, looking like a Christmas cracker torn in half and thrown away. Then the flare died and the
Echo
’s searchlight came back on as the frigate approached from astern, looking for survivors.

‘Reynolds,’ Yorke said, ‘get on the phone to the engine room and tell Mills what your captain has just done to that U-boat.’

‘He deserves a medal,’ Reynolds said jubilantly as he headed for the wheelhouse.

‘He’ll get one, I expect – once they’ve repaired the
Marynal
’s bow.’

Johnny Gower leaned back in one of the two metal-framed chairs in his cabin and reached up into a black, lacy brassiere swinging over his desk to take a round tin of fifty Players out of one cup, and a box of matches and an ashtray from the other. As he lit a cigarette he said to Yorke: ‘So you are certain this chap Pahlen is a German?’

‘Yes, regular German Navy I should think. And I’m sure Ohlson is German too, even though he claims he’s a Swede. More likely to be a reserve officer – probably served his time in the German mercantile marine and has a master’s ticket. Just the man to put in command of the
Penta
.’

‘Wouldn’t the Swedish owners insist on a Swedish captain?’

‘That depends on the terms of the charter. Probably a bare-boat agreement – just the hull and machinery, with the charterer responsible for maintenance, crew, insurance, and so on. And you can bet your life,’ Yorke added, ‘there’s a clause saying the owners aren’t in any way responsible for anything done by the charterers.’

‘What the hell do they think the Germans are going to do, then?’ Johnny demanded. ‘Use it for those “Strength Through Joy” cruises they were running before the war begun?’

‘Blockade running, probably. Though if the crew really are Swedes, I suppose the Swedish owners would know what she’s being used for. If they’re German, then I’d be prepared to believe they didn’t. But the Swedes chartering the ship to the Teds shows they’d sooner be on the Spree than on the Thames.’

‘On the spree?’ Johnny asked. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘The Spree is the river on which Berlin stands.’

‘Oh yes. Thanks for trying. Well, the Swedes are more Jerry than anything else; most of their trade is with Jerrylanders. I suppose they think they’re backing the winning side.’

Johnny reached up to put the cigarette tin and matches back in the brassiere cup. Noting Yorke’s amused glance he explained, ‘A gimballed smoking kit. Swings back and forth and summons up brief memories. More important, if you leave a tin of cigarettes on the desk you can be sure it’ll roll over when we heel. The lid comes off and you have forty-nine cigarettes strewn across the cabin. Anyway, I like the nostalgia. Captured and unstuffed in Rio.’

So Johnny had recovered his interest in women again. His former wife had been described to Yorke as fitting perfectly the strictest specifications for a wife for Johnny Gower. She was a good tennis player, loved classical music and was a good violinist, had a private income, was striking to look at rather than beautiful and had copper-coloured hair. She could twist misogynist admirals round her little finger and had ordinary seamen offering to mow the lawn. And she had loved Johnny so deeply that she had had a nervous breakdown because of the eternal wait for him to come back alive. She had left him for a man in a safe job. She had stayed sane – but some people reckoned Johnny had gone round the bend: he just stayed at sea and hunted U-boats.

‘You’d better write me a full report,’ Johnny said. ‘That starts it off “through channels”. I’ll cover the
Echo
’s side in another report. We’ll have one from that wild man in the
Marynal
, Hobson. And another from you describing the interrogation of Pahlen and Ohlson.’