San Andreas Part 24

McKinnon moved out into the mess-deck where people were already gathering for lunch. Patterson was there with Jamieson and Sinclair, together with Margaret Morrison and Nurse Irene. He picked up the phone.

'George, I was in a better world right now.'

'Sorry about that, Archie. Thought you'd better know. We have company.' Naseby could have been talking about the weather. Thought you'd better know. We have company.' Naseby could have been talking about the weather.

'Ah!'

'Starboard. About two miles. A bit under, perhaps. Says to stop or he will fire.'

'Oh.'

'Also says that if we try to alter course he will sink us.'

'Is that so?'

'So he says. May even mean it. Shall I turn into him?'

'Yes.'

'Full power?'

'I'll ask for it. Up in a minute.' He replaced the phone.

'My word,' Margaret Morrison said. 'That was an intriguing conversation. Full of information, if I may say so.'

'We bo'suns are men of few words. Mr Patterson, could we have full power?' Patterson nodded heavily, rose without speaking and crossed to the telephone.

Jamieson said in a resigned voice: 'No need to ask, I suppose?'

'No, sir. Sorry about your lunch.'

'The usual - ah - direct tactics?' Sinclair said.

'No option. Man says he's going to sink us.'

'He's going to say more than that when he sees us altering course towards him,' Jamieson said. 'He's going to say that the San Andreas is crewed by a bunch of unreconstructed lunatics.'

'If he does, he could well be right.' As he turned to go Ulbricht put out a restraining hand.

'I'm coming too.'

'Please not, Lieutenant. I don't believe our new acquaintance is going to sink us but he's sure as h.e.l.l going to try to stop us. The primary target will be the bridge, I'm sure. You want to undo all the good work Dr Sinclair and the nursing staff have already done, the st.i.tching and bandaging all over again? Selfish. Margaret!'

'You stay where you are, Karl Ulbricht.'

Ulbricht scowled, shrugged, smiled and stayed where he was.

When McKinnon reached the bridge the San Andreas, under maximum helm, was already beginning to slew round to starboard. Naseby looked round as McKinnon entered.

'Take the wheel, Archie. He's sending.' He's sending.'

Naseby moved out on the starboard wing. Someone on the conning-tower of the U-boat was indeed using an Aldis lamp but transmitting very slowly - almost certainly, McKinnon guessed, because a non-English-speaking operator was sending letter by given letter. For'ard of the conning-tower three men were crouched around the deck-gun which, as far as the bo'sun could judge at that distance, was pointed directly at them. The signalling ceased.

'What does he say, George?'

'"Regain course. Stop or I fire".'

'Send him that bit about a hospital ship and the Geneva Convention.'

'He won't pay a blind bit of attention.'

'Send it anyway. Distract him. Give us time. The rules say you don't shoot a man when you're having a conversation with him.'

Naseby started transmitting but almost immediately jumped back inside the bridge. The puff of smoke from the gun was unmistakable, as was the shock and sound of a sh.e.l.l exploding inside the superstructure almost immediately afterwards. Naseby gave McKinnon a reproachful look.

'They're not playing by your rules, Archie.'

'So it would seem. Can you see where we've been hit?"

Naseby went out on the starboard wing and looked below and aft.

'Crew's mess-deck,' he said. 'Well, what was the crew's mess-deck. n.o.body there now, of course.'

'Not what they were aiming for, you can be sure of that. A Force four is nothing to us but it makes for a very unstable gun-platform on a submarine. I don't like that very much, George, they're liable to hit anywhere except where they're aiming for. We can only hope that the next one is as high above the bridge as that one was below it.'

The next one came straight through the bridge. It shattered the starboard for'ard window - one of those that had been replaced after Klaussen's machine-gunners had destroyed them - penetrated the thin sheet-metal that separated the bridge from what had been the wireless office and exploded just beyond. The sliding wooden door, now hi a hundred jagged fragments, blew forward into the bridge and the concussive blast of the explosion sent both men staggering, McKinnon against the wheel, Naseby against a small chart table: but the razor-sharp shards of the sh.e.l.l casing had flown in the other direction and both men were unhurt. Naseby recovered some of the air that had been driven from his lungs. They're improving, Archie.'

'Fluke.' The San Andreas^ its superstructure beginning to vibrate quite badly as engine revolutions built up, was now bearing down directly on the conning-tower of the U-boat which, however, was still considerably more than a mile distant. 'Next one will miss the bridge by a mile.'

The next one, in fact, missed the ship completely and went into the sea a hundred yards astern of the San Andreas. It did not detonate on impact.

The following sh.e.l.l struck somewhere in the vicinity of the bows. Where it had exploded was impossible to tell from the bridge, for there was no visible uplifting or buckling of the fo'c's'le deck, but that it had done its damage was beyond doubt: the furious rattling of chain as one of the fore anchors plunged down to the floor of the Norwegian Sea could be heard a mile away. The rattling ceased as abruptly as it had begun, the fastening doubtless torn from the floor of the chain locker.

'No loss,' Naseby said. 'Who's ever anch.o.r.ed in a thousand feet or whatever?'

'Who cares about the anchor? Point is, are we open to the sea?'

Yet another sh.e.l.l buried itself in the bows and this time, there was no doubt where it had landed for a small area of the fo'c's'le deck, port side, lifted upwards almost a foot.

'Open to the sea or not,' Naseby said, 'this hardly seems to be the time to investigate. Not as long as they are zeroing in on the bows, which is what they appear to be doing. We're all that closer now so they're getting all the more accurate. They seem to be going for the waterline. It can't be that they want to sink us. And don't they know the gold is there?'

'I don't know what they know. Probably know there's gold aboard: no reason why they should know where. Not that a little shrapnel lowers the value of gold. Anyway, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies: at this angle of approach it's impossible that they can hit the hospital area.'

A third sh.e.l.l struck and exploded in the bows in almost the same position as the previous one - the already uplifted section of the fo'c's'le had heaved up almost another foot.

'That's where the paint and carpenter's shops are,' Naseby said absently.

'That's what I've been thinking.'

'Were Ferguson and Curran in the mess-deck when you left?'

'That's why I've been thinking. Can't remember seeing them, although that's not to say they weren't there. They're such an idle couple they might well have pa.s.sed up lunch for an hour's kip. I should have warned them.'

'There wasn't time for you to warn anyone.'

'I could have sent someone. I did think they'd concentrate their fire on the bridge but I should still have sent someone. My fault. Slipping, as I told Jamieson.' He paused, narrowed his eyes in concentration and said: 'I think they're turning away, George.'

Naseby had the gla.s.ses to his eyes. 'They are. And there's someone on the bridge, captain or whoever, using a loud-hailer. Ah! The gun crew are working on their gun and -yes - they're aligning it fore and-aft. This mean what I think it means, Archie?'

'Well, the conning-tower's empty and the gun crew are going down the hatch so it must mean what you think. See any bubbles coming up?'

'No. Wait a minute. Yes. Yes, lots.'

'Blowing main ballast.'

'But we're still a mile away from them.'

'Captain's taking no chances and I don't blame him. He's not a clown like Klaussen.'

They watched for some moments in silence. The U-boat was now at a 45 angle, the decks barely awash and vanishing quickly.

'Take the wheel, George. Give the Chief Engineer a ring, will you, tell him what's happened and ask him to drop down to normal speed. Then back on the course we were on. I'm going to check on any flooding for'ard.'

Naseby watched him go and knew that flooding was secondary in the Bo'sun's mind. He was going to find out whether, indeed, Curran and Ferguson had elected to miss lunch.

McKinnon was back in about ten minutes. He had a bottle of Scotch in his hand and two gla.s.ses and no smile on his face.

Naseby said: 'Their luck run out?'

'Abandoned by fortune, George. Abandoned by McKinnon.'

'Archie, you must stop it. Please stop blaming yourself. What's done is done.' Janet had intercepted him as he had entered the mess-deck - he had come down with Naseby and left Trent on the wheel with Jones and McGuigan as lookouts - and pulled him into a corner. 'Oh, I know that's trite, meaningless, if you want. And if you want another trite and meaningless remark, you can't bring back the dead.'

'True, true.' The Bo'sun smiled without humour. 'And speaking of the dead - and one should speak no ill of the dead - they were a couple of moderately useless characters. But both were married, both had two daughters. What would they think if they knew that the gallant bo'sun, in his anxiety to get at a U-boat, completely forgot them?'

'The best thing would be if^ow forgot them. Sounds cruel, I know, but let the dead bury their dead. We are alive: when I say "we" I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about every other person aboard, including myself. Your duty is to the living. Don't you know that every single person this ship, from the Captain and Mr Patterson down, depends on you? We're depending on you to take us home.'

'Do be quiet, woman.'

'You'll take me home, Archie?'

'Scalloway? Hop, skip and jump. Of course I will.'

She stood back at arm's length, hands on his shoulders, searched his eyes, then smiled.

'You know, Archie, I really believe you will.'

He smiled in return. 'I'm glad of that.' He didn't for a moment believe it himself but there was no point in spreading undue gloom and despondency.

They joined Patterson, Jamieson and Ulbricht at the table. Patterson pushed a gla.s.s in front of him. T would say that you have earned that, Bo'sun. A splendid job.'

'Not so splendid, sir. I had no option but to do what I did. Can't say I feel sorry for a U-boat captain but he's really up against a nearly impossible problem, faced with a hiding to nothing. He's under orders not to sink us so the best he can do is to try to incapacitate us as much as possible. We run at him and he hides. Simple as that.'

'The way you put it, yes. I hear you had a very narrow escape on the bridge.'

'If the sh.e.l.l had pa.s.sed through metal and exploded in the bridge, that would have been it. But it pa.s.sed through the gla.s.s instead. Luck.'

'And up front?'

'Three holes. All above the waterline. What with those and the damage that the U-boat did to us - rather, the damage we inflicted on ourselves - there's going to be a fair old job for the ship repairers when we get into dry dock. The watertight bulkheads seem sound enough. That's the good part. The bad part - and I'm afraid this is all my fault - is that - '

'Archie!' Janet's voice was sharp.

'Oh, all right. You'll have heard - Ferguson and Curran are dead.'

'I know and I'm sorry. d.a.m.nable. That makes twenty now.' Patterson thought for a few moments. 'You reckon this situation will continue for some time?'

'What situation, sir?'

'That they keep on trying to stop us instead of sinking us.'

McKinnon shrugged. 'It is much more important to the Germans that they discredit the Russians with our Government than that they get the gold. As things stand at the moment they want both to have their cake and eat it. Factor of greed, really.'

'So as long as they remain greedy we're relatively safe?'

'Safe from sinking, yes. But not safe from being taken over.'

'But you just said - '

'All they have to do is to bring up another U-boat and they'll have us cold. With two U-boats we have no chance. If we go after one the other will parallel our course and pump sh.e.l.ls into us at their leisure. Not the engine-room, of course, they want to take us under our own steam to Norway. The hospital area. First sh.e.l.l in there and the white flag flies - if we've any sense we'd fly it before the first shot. Next time I go up to the bridge I'll take a nice big bedsheet with me.'

'There are times, Bo'sun,' Jamieson said, 'when I wish you'd keep your thoughts to yourself.'

'Merely answering a question, sir. And I have another thought, another question, if you like. Only a tiny handful of people would have known of this operation, the plan to use the San Andreas as a bullion carrier. A cabinet minister or two, an admiral or two. No more. I wonder who the traitor is who sold us down the river, //we get back and if some famous and prominent person unaccountably commits suicide, then we'll know.' He rose. 'If you'll excuse me, I have some work to do.'

'What work, Archie?' It was Janet. 'Haven't you done enough for one day?'

'A bo'sun's work is never done. Routine, Janet, just routine.' He left the mess-deck.

'Routine,' Janet said. 'What routine?'

'Curran's dead.'

She looked puzzled. 'I know that.'

'Curran was the sailmaker. It's the sailmaker's job to sew up the dead.'

Janet rose hastily and left the table. Patterson gave Jamieson a sour look.