Sunset (23 page)

Nobody questioned him. He was known as a crack wireman.

Ginger Kellock tried again. ‘Look, Hookey, it can't do any harm if I just
see
the Skipper, now can it?'

Aller glared at him. ‘Just stow it, will you! I've had just about a jugful of you an' your Chinese bird! She's probably a bloody tom for all you know, after your money-belt!'

Pop Usher grinned up at them, sweat mingling with grease on his tanned face.

‘All set, gents! Here we bloody well go!'

It purred into life and Aller thought of all those other times in the Western Ocean.

‘Tell the bridge, Ginger. We've got our white stick again!'

They all suddenly froze and stared at one another with shock and disbelief.

Aller moved swiftly. ‘Shift your arse, Ginger!' The others watched as he took the controls very carefully until the tell-tale echo pinged back into the receivers.

His voice was quite calm as he spoke into the voicepipe to the bridge.

‘Strong echo, sir, bearing one-one-zero. Stationary!'

Pop Usher muttered, ‘That'll stop them farting in church!'

At that moment, the alarm bells began to ring.

‘Ship at action stations, sir!'

Brooke acknowledged. If only there was light.

Calvert asked, ‘Could it be a wreck, sir?'

Brooke recalled his earlier remarks about the depth hereabouts, and Chau's thoughtful reply.

‘Who's on the Asdic?' He already knew. He was merely fighting for time. Had he known earlier that this might happen? He seemed to feel the hair rise on his neck in spite of the damp heat. Suppose this was the Atlantic? They would be sitting ducks.

Kerr said, ‘Aller, sir. A moaner, but he's a good operator.'

Brooke moved to the voicepipe. ‘Asdic, this is the Captain. What do you make of it, Aller?'

‘Strong echo, sir. No change.'

Brooke returned to his chair and used it as a crutch while the ship lifted and dipped beneath him.

Suppose it
was
a wreck? It was a common enough mistake in the Atlantic. But not here, surely?

‘Another flare, sir! Fine on the starboard bow! Damn – it's gone out!'

‘Slow ahead both engines!' It would make the motion worse, but there would be less risk of a collision.

‘Scrambling nets ready. In case we can't get alongside.' He felt the chill on his spine and could sense the presence out there in the darkness. Like a hunter. An assassin.

He made up his mind. ‘Searchlight!'

Like a long bar of ice the big searchlight hissed out across the water, somehow magnifying the troughs and the breakers into moving glass valleys.

The beam settled on the vessel and held it. The light must be blinding to them, Brooke thought.

A familiar sight. He found he could study it through his glasses, his mind detached, even callous. The coaster was drifting without power or lights; he could see her rust-dappled bilge, the extent of her crippling list. Shifting cargo? It didn't much matter now.

He said, ‘We must take off her crew, Number One. A tow is out of the question in this sea. I don't want to risk our chaps' lives.' He had seen the small huddle of crouching figures below the solitary, spindly funnel.

The interpreter had forgotten his seasickness completely. ‘Know ship, sir! I have seen her many times!'

‘Switch on all navigation lights!'

He recalled his own words to
Serpent
's company.
A ship of war
.

‘Asdic – Bridge! Contact on same bearing but moving left!' Even Aller sounded shocked.

Brooke snapped, ‘Make a signal to C-in-C.
Am in contact with submarine, position so-and-so
. . .'

‘
Bridge!
Torpedo running to starboard!'

The explosion when it came was so loud and violent that the stokers and artificers down in their world of noise and steam must have thought for a split second that they were the target. Fragments of metal splashed down between the bows and the place where the crippled coaster had been; some scraped across the forecastle deck like bomb splinters.

Brooke said, ‘
Am attacking!
Now send it off!'

He gripped a rail. ‘Starboard twenty! Steady! Steer one-one-zero!'

‘Asdic – Bridge.' Aller sounded subdued. ‘Ship breaking up.'

Brooke imagined the blasted and broken hull dropping so slowly into that great yawning valley of perpetual darkness.

‘Stand by depth charges!'

‘Asdic – Bridge. Lost contact.'

‘Keep on with the sweep.' He heard the hardness in his voice. The Atlantic had not released its grip after all.

There was no further contact. A signal was received from the C-in-C.
Discontinue action. Return to Sector Charlie Zebra immediately.

Kerr watched as Brooke listened to the curt signal.

‘What are you going to do, sir?'

Brooke slumped in his chair and realised that the motion and the violence of the sea were easing. They had missed the worst of it.

He shrugged. ‘I'm going back to find out if anyone survived. There's always a chance.' He sounded drained.

Calvert said, ‘It might have hit
us,
the bastards!'

Brooke looked towards his head, framed against the sky.

‘It was meant to.' How easily it came out. Then he said, ‘Fall out action stations but remain at defence stations.'

Through the mouth of an open voicepipe he could hear the regular ping of the Asdic. He knew the attacker had gone. Somehow, he simply felt it.

It had probably been the sudden and unexpected blinding glare of the big searchlight. The eyes at the hidden periscope had been momentarily shocked, blacked-out.

He glanced around the pale figures of the watchkeepers. Unsteady on their feet as if they were too stunned to adjust to the ship's movements. They did not even know what they had interrupted merely by responding to the S.O.S. They only knew that they had nearly died.

At first light they discovered some small charred fragments of flotsam spread over a large area, like spent matches in a pond. They also found an elderly survivor, clinging half-dead to a hold-cover which must have been hurled clear from the coaster by the explosion.

The man was so badly burned that when he was hauled aboard and carried carefully to the sickbay he looked more dead than alive. The Petty Officer S.B.A., Twiss, did what he could with the ointment which was issued for extreme burns; he had used it many other times when a merchantman had been torpedoed.

Brooke handed over the bridge to Kerr and went down to the
sickbay. ‘Sister' Twiss's expression was like stone as he worked with each piece of dressing. It was doing more harm than good.

John Chau was bent over the old man's body, his face so close to him that some burned skin was sticking to his immaculate white tunic.

The dying survivor was in fact the vessel's master. He probably did not even know what had happened. It was usual under such circumstances.

Twiss said quietly, ‘He's gone, sir.'

Brooke took the burned and sodden identity card from the interpreter. ‘You did well, Mr Chau.'

He saw the deep hint of pleasure in his dark eyes.

‘Have him sewn up. We shall bury him in the forenoon.' He glanced at the interpreter. ‘Perhaps you would help me by reading something for him?'

‘Of course, sir. An honour.'

He climbed the ladders to the swaying bridge, each step an effort.

As he walked to his chair he looked around, then aft to the gaff where the ensign made a bright display against the heavy clouds.

It was suddenly a clean and decent place.

After the overwhelming heat of Hong Kong harbour as
Serpent
's motor-boat had dashed towards the moored flagship, the atmosphere between the cruiser's decks seemed cool and peaceful.

Serpent
had entered harbour the previous afternoon and had managed to get alongside the dockyard wall before dark. Brooke had received a brief message to report on board
Dumbarton
as soon as was convenient: that was an improvement on the last time. He had nevertheless been kept waiting for some ten minutes after being piped aboard.

The commodore's secretary, a nervous-looking paymaster lieutenant-commander, had ushered him below, where he had been given a seat.
Dumbarton
was certainly an experience, he thought wryly. The gleaming passageway with white paint so glossy he could almost have shaved in it; framed photographs of the ship in other livery, white hull and buff funnels, or steaming along what looked like the coast of Africa. Portraits of previous captains: grinning boats' crews after a victory at some regatta. Crossing the Line, a ship's boy dressed in captain's uniform, doing Rounds on Christmas Day. The story of the ship herself.

Brooke had noticed that the anchor cable, which was shackled to the mooring-buoy, had been painted white, and he wondered when the old
Dumbarton
had last put to sea. He had also observed that the ship's anti-aircraft armament consisted of outdated four-inch guns and no automatic weapons at all. He
recalled the screaming Stuka dive-bombers: they would have this ship on the seabed in minutes.

Most of her class, the
Danaë
s, had already been converted into anti-aircraft light cruisers, invaluable for convoy work. How had
Dumbarton
slipped through the net? And would
Serpent
escape conversion like her remaining sisters? He could not contemplate her as a minelayer.

He had spoken briefly to
Islip
's captain, who had had steam up when
Serpent
had been waiting to go alongside.
Islip
was off to Singapore to keep an eye on a naval stores vessel.

There would be no warships in Hong Kong at all at this rate. All they had were
Dumbarton
and the Dutch cruiser
Ariadne,
a cut-down destroyer similar to
Serpent
but missing her third funnel, a few M.T.B.s and the local gunboats.

The secretary was back. ‘If you will come this way.'

The big door at the end of the passage and at the sternmost section of the ship was decorated with a painted commodore's broad-pendant. It had a red ball in the upper canton of its cross to show that the officer who flew it was ‘of the second class'.

The door was opened by a P.O. steward. Brooke tried not to stare. The man was wearing white gloves.

Commodore Cedric Stallybrass was on his feet, his little button-eyes sunk in crinkles of flesh as he held out one hand in welcome.

The other man was a full captain, whom he vaguely recognised.

The commodore said, ‘This is our Chief-of-Staff, Captain Albert Granville.'

The captain was very tall, with wavy gun-metal hair and a strong high-bridged nose. Brooke thought he looked very like an actor, playing the part he was presenting now.

They all sat down while the steward and a Chinese messman arranged drinks on a brass-topped table. Another souvenir from along the way.

Granville said, ‘Found your latest report very interesting. Disquieting, too.'

The commodore waved one finger. ‘Easy, Bertie! Give the fellow time to draw breath!'

Brooke had the peculiar feeling that even that chiding remark had been rehearsed beforehand.

Granville picked up his glass and examined it gravely. Brooke could almost hear the line, ‘
Alas, poor Yorick
. . .' Instead he said, ‘If your ship had not been on a mercy mission you would not, of course, have become involved at all. The torpedo? That is something else entirely. I can only assume that it was meant for the coaster. It was foul weather so the submarine commander might have been mistaken, though perhaps it was another vessel altogether.'

Brooke found that he could relax. This was not going to be like the sinking fishing boat and its murdered crew. Too many people had seen the torpedo, and you could not prevent Jack from yarning about it.

He said, ‘A torpedo has no conscience, sir. It is impartial.'

Granville's eyebrows rose. ‘I know something of your service, Brooke. You have seen war at close hand. Maybe too close. We have an important but thankless task here. We have to uphold the peace as best we can and not provoke a confrontation.'

‘The Japanese commander did not know of our presence until the last moment, sir. Lights were off, and the Asdic set was temporarily out of use. The South China Sea is not like the Atlantic or the North Sea. You'd never see a torpedo in those waters until it was too late. My men witnessed the one torpedo passing down the starboard side, the phosphorescence was so bright.'

The commodore smiled. ‘We do not
know
it was a Japanese boat, Brooke. That is what I mean. We can never jump to conclusions which we cannot hope to prove. Perhaps it
was
Japanese, and maybe the coaster was sunk mistakenly. But to fire deliberately at a British man-of-war would be unthinkable.' He sounded outraged. Granville nodded in agreement. ‘Which is why we must not become
involved.
His Majesty's Government has quite enough on its plate without that.'

They looked to one another like conspirators. Granville said, ‘I think I am at liberty to tell you, Brooke, that the Admiralty, at the bidding of the First Sea Lord and with the authority of Winston Churchill himself, intends to reinforce the China Squadron with newer ships, and of capital importance. That suit?'

The commodore signalled to his steward. ‘Long ship, this one, Billings!'

They were trying to make it easy for him, advising him to forget it. It was not his responsibility, or anyone else's for that matter.

Granville asked casually, ‘You were in the Med during the Spanish Civil War?' But it was a statement. He already knew.

Brooke replied, ‘For a while, sir.'

‘Got knocked about too. Bad show. But now you've got a ship of your own despite all the set-backs you've had. Not new, but a good command for someone in your position. A lot of officers have been given advanced promotion – far beyond their ability, some of them, in my opinion. But you, Brooke – you're in the race again. The others will be dipped down to their proper seniority when the war's over. Do your best, as I'm sure you always will, and there's no telling where you'll end up.'