The Greatest Enemy Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  1 Change of Command

  2 Room to Bustle in …

  3 Exercise Action!

  4 The Boarding Party

  5 Ships in the Night

  6 One for the Queen …

  7 ‘The Navy’s Here!’

  8 A Matter of Security

  9 Only Human

  10 Morning Departure

  11 Storm Warning

  12 At the Captain’s Discretion

  13 Aftermath

  14 Between Friends

  15 The Only Place

  16 A Full Cargo

  17 The Bombay Queen

  18 Sixty-five Days

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  About the Book

  1970. Twenty-five years ago HMS TERRAPIN was part of a crack hunter-killer group in the Battle of the Atlantic. Now she is working out her last commission in the Gulf of Thailand.

  To Lieutenant-Commander Standish, the frigate seems to mark the end of his hopes of a career in the Navy. Then a new captain arrives, a man driven by an old-fashioned, almost obsessive patriotism. And under his stubborn leadership Standish and the crew discover a long-forgotten unity of purpose.

  About the Author

  Douglas Reeman did convoy duty in the navy in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea. He has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty bestselling historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  A Prayer for the Ship

  High Water

  Send a Gunboat

  Dive in the Sun

  The Hostile Shore

  The Last Raider

  With Blood and Iron

  H.M.S. ‘Saracen’

  The Deep Silence

  Path of the Storm

  The Pride and the Anguish

  To Risks Unknown

  Rendezvous – South Atlantic

  Go In and Sink!

  The Destroyers

  Winged Escort

  Surface with Daring

  Strike from the Sea

  A Ship Must Die

  Torpedo Run

  Badge of Glory

  The Volunteers

  The Iron Pirate

  Against the Sea (non-fiction)

  In Danger’s Hour

  The White Guns

  Killing Ground

  The Horizon

  Sunset

  A Dawn Like Thunder

  Battlecruiser

  Dust on the Sea

  For Valour

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  The Greatest Enemy

  Douglas Reeman

  To Gerald Austin

  a good and valued friend

  Author’s Note

  Over recent years there have been several cases where individual captains have been criticized, even reprimanded for using what they considered to be their right of initiative and personal judgment. Yet in time of war where would a nation’s security lie? If a captain cannot demand unquestioning loyalty from his subordinates and the respect for his integrity from his superiors, it might be argued that future strategy will be decided by a computerised bureaucracy which will allow for little beyond the talent and skill of a limited few.

  A case which came to my attention when I was researching for this book was that of an American officer, Lieutenant-Commander Marcus Arnheiter, who after being in command of the radar picket destroyer Vance off Viet Nam was relieved of his appointment without trial or warning. The Vance was a notoriously slack ship and Arnheiter, within the short span of ninety-nine days, set to work to put her to rights, to restore discipline and efficiency where it was most needed. On the face of the available evidence it would seem that his main crime was his eagerness to serve his country, to take his ship where she would be of the most use and purpose. His zeal it appears was not shared by some of his officers, and the way in which the captain was destroyed would not seem out of place in Wouk’s Caine Mutiny.

  The Arnheiter Affair, as it came to be known, was one of the the worst naval disputes of the decade, and until some sort of ruling is made to prevent its happening again, there will be many captains who might be tempted to hold back when they are most needed.

  The command structures of the American and British Navies are different, but basically the ideals and traditions which have guided and moulded them over the years are very similar.

  My story is and must be fiction, but the questions are still there. Was the captain of the Terrapin a fool or one whose real strength lay in his pride of country and his own beliefs?

  If pride is indeed an enemy, then surely so too must be complacency.

  1 Change of Command

  THE TOWERING SIDES of the fleet supply ship shone in the blazing sunlight like polished granite, and while her derricks swung busily above two frigates moored alongside the seamen employed on deck moved with equal vigour, if only to end the work and escape to the shade of their messes.

  It was halfway through the forenoon watch, and already the searing heat across Singapore’s wide naval anchorage had rendered movement, even thought, an unbearable effort. There was not any sort of breeze, and scattered at their buoys the moored warships seemed to crouch beneath their taut awnings, etched clearly above their motionless reflections like part of a vivid seascape. But it was Sunday, and only aboard the supply ship and the two frigates taking on stores was there any sign of activity. A few gaunt junks idled on the sluggish current, but without wind in their strange, batlike sails it was hard to tell if they were anchored or making a feeble attempt to quit the harbour.

  In his cabin below the bridge of the outboard frigate, Lieutenant-Commander Rex Standish lay naked on his bunk staring up at the deckhead fan. It was quite motionless, and already he could feel the air thickening in the small compartment, bringing with it the usual irritation and frustration. He raised one hand towards the bulkhead telephone, the small movement fetching a rush of sweat to his chest and armpits, and then changed his mind. What was the point? The fans, like just about everything else, broke down too often for comment.

  He wedged his hands beneath his dark, unruly hair and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind from the fog of heavy drinking left over from the previous night’s party.

  It should have been a double celebration. Bob Mitford, the captain, was flying home to England, and he, Rex Standish, executive officer and first lieutenant of the frigate Terrapin, had reached his thirtieth birthday.

  Some heavy tackle clattered across the deck overhead and he swore silently. The party had been more like a wake than a celebration, with drinks getting larger every minute, and speech becoming almost incoherent. And early this morning when he had seen Mitford over the side for the last time, without fuss or ceremony and with most of the ship’s company still in their hammocks, he had tried to find the words, both to thank him and to ease his lonely flight back to England.

  Instead, they had just shaken hands, and the work of getting alongside the supply ship had pushed the other nagging thoughts to the back of his mind. Until now.

  It was strange to realize he had been aboard the Terrapin for only six weeks, and most of that time the ship had been in the Hong Kong dockyard suffering repairs to one of her shafts. Six weeks of vague routine, with most of the ship’s company on local leave and the rest merely intent on avoiding the dockyard workers who came and went with the whistle in a jabbering human flood.

  Then the day the frigate had emerged from the dock everything seemed to happen at once. Mitford h
ad been ashore at the hospital when the signal had been received. To take on fuel and sail without delay for Singapore. Perhaps they should have expected it. In the Navy it was foolish ever to depend on normality.

  When Mitford had returned from the hospital he had received the news almost indifferently. He had merely given the necessary orders to Standish and had retired to his cabin.

  Standish turned his head and looked through the open door to the cabin on the opposite side of the narrow passageway. The other door was closed, the word Captain gleaming on the varnished wood like an epitaph.

  Without effort he could picture Mitford, as if he was still standing there. His round, glowing red face, the loud laugh, and his never-ending string of rugby stories. Now he was gone. Flown back to his wife and family to tell them what he must have suspected himself for months. That he had an incurable liver disease. That he would be dead within six months.

  Yet he had never spoken of it. All the while during those six weeks, while he had tried, and often succeeded, in lifting Standish from his own despair, he must have been thinking of it. Waiting for that final examination, phrasing his own reaction, and the way he would explain it to his family at home.

  The fan squeaked and then whirred busily into life once more, and Standish levered himself to the deck to stand directly beneath it, letting the cool air play across his tanned shoulders and chest.

  But the sudden movement brought the hammers back to the top of his skull, and he took several deep breaths to control the nausea, the bitter taste of gin at the back of his throat.

  He caught sight of himself in the bulkhead mirror and grimaced. He had had a cold bath that morning but already he looked tousled and vaguely dispirited. There was only one scuttle in the cabin and the swaying grey side of the frigate alongside held back most of the light, so that he leaned his hands on the bulkhead to study his own reflection more critically.

  Beneath the dark hair his level grey eyes seemed calm enough, but the shadows below them, and the deep lines at the corners of his mouth, told their own story. He tried to grin, the effort bringing back the youthfulness to his face but leaving his eyes as before. Guarded, and just that little bit too steady.

  There was a tap at the door and he turned to see Lieutenant Pigott, the supply officer, watching him gravely, his forehead shining with sweat and his white shirt blotchy and crumpled, as if he had been in a tropical downpour.

  ‘What is it, Bill?’ Standish sat down on the bunk and reached for his pipe and pouch. Pigott was also O.O.D., which was just as well. It was not unknown for even fleet supply ships to give short measure, and nothing would escape his careful check of the incoming stores.

  Pigott eyed him doubtfully. ‘Just had a telephone signal via the supply ship, Number One.’ He stepped into the cabin and closed the door behind him. ‘The new commanding officer will be aboard forthwith.’

  Standish stared at him. ‘What?’ He dropped his pipe. ‘Here, give me that bloody signal!’

  It wasn’t possible. Mitford barely off the ship and another here already as if poised waiting in the wings.

  He re-read the sweat-stained flimsy. Commander Hector Dalziel. His eyes moved back again. A full commander for the poor old Terrapin? He looked up and saw Pigott nodding behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘I made ’em repeat it. Dalziel’s a three-ringer right enough. He’s been out here for about a week, although no-one seems to know much more than that.’ He fell back as Standish lurched to his feet and began to pull on his shorts. ‘What d’you reckon?’

  Standish paused and looked at him. ‘I reckon we’re in one hell of a mess if he arrives before we’ve got the ship cleaned up. You’d better call away the motor boat and instruct the cox’n immediately.’

  Pigott did not move. ‘Dalziel’s no slouch, Number One.’ He gestured vaguely overhead. ‘He’s flying in by way of the supply ship’s own chopper.’ He seemed amused.

  ‘Damn!’ Standish half opened a drawer to find a clean shirt, but Pigott’s laconic announcement ruled out any such luxury. The suddenness of the new captain’s arrival, his own hangover and all the other mounting irritations made him tug on the shirt he had been wearing when he had seen Mitford ashore, the one in which he conned Terrapin alongside the supply ship in the ice-clear morning light. He fumbled with the buttons and glared at himself again in the mirror. There was an oil smear on one sleeve and altogether he looked a mess.

  He seized his cap and pushed past the other officer. ‘Have you nearly finished loading stores?’

  He winced as he reached the upper deck, the top part of the steel ladder burning his palms like a furnace bar.

  Pigott grunted, ‘N’other hour yet.’ He sounded defensive. ‘I’m very shorthanded y’know.’ He was a Yorkshireman, and when riled his accent became more noticeable.

  Standish hardly heard him. As he strode quickly beneath the narrow strips of awning he was conscious only of the confusion all around him. Crates and vegetable sacks, nameless boxes of tinned fruits, and all the litter of wires and blocks needed to stow it below before the sun welded it to the steel decks.

  He saw Petty Officer O’Leary, the cook, gesturing fiercely towards a pile of broken bottles. It could have been jam or pickles, but in the fierce glare it looked like part of a bad road accident.

  ‘Clear them things up!’

  The seaman addressed looked at him sullenly. ‘Not my fault, Chef! Can’t do it all on me bleedin’ own!’

  Standish said quietly, ‘Then get someone to help you.’ He saw a small spark of defiance in the man’s eyes and hardened his tone. ‘Now!’

  He could sympathize in some ways with the men working around him. They were shorthanded. The Terrapin had been built to carry fourteen officers and one hundred and forty-four ratings. He paused by the ship’s bell, its engraving almost polished away by the years and a thousand unknown hands.

  H.M.S. Terrapin. Clydebank 1944.

  Standish felt a small shiver across his neck in spite of the heat. She was twenty-six years old. Older than most of her ship’s company, and worn out by almost constant service. He tried to picture her as she must have once looked, like her framed photograph in the wardroom, bright with dazzle-paint, with the great Atlantic rollers creaming her over as she maintained station with the rest of her killer-group. For Terrapin had been designed, built and created for hunting U-boats, and no doubt many of her recent engine defects were the results of the battering her hull had received so many years back, when she had blasted the Atlantic apart with her depth-charges. He stopped the train of thought. That was too far in the past. There had been so many roles since then, even other wars. Korea, Malaya and the brave fiasco of Suez, and with each passing year the ship had been by-passed by her newer consorts, and her roles had diminished accordingly.

  And always she seemed to be getting further and further from the land where her keel had first tasted salt water. The blistering heat of patrols in the Persian Gulf, where her air-conditioning had originally been fitted, and which now, as then, hardly ever seemed to work for any length of time. To the trouble spots of the Far East, checking junks and doubtful freighters which sailed beneath ‘Flags of Convenience’, searching for unlawful refugees going one way or the other; traitors, terrorists and patriots. The latter seemed to change as often as Britain’s own policy in the Far East, and as the Navy remained aloof from the greater events in Viet Nam, so too the ageing Terrapin stayed more and more on the fringe of things about her.

  When Standish had joined the ship at Hong Kong he had been told of her more recent jobs. Strange, vague assignments, which varied from humping stores for some Red Cross missions to carrying out an oceanographic survey along the Malacca Strait, her wardroom crammed with civilian scientists and other nameless experts who had apparently viewed the ship’s voyage more as a yachting trip than one of any value.

  It had been rumoured that the ship was to be paid off at Singapore and the hands sent home by air. She was to be handed over to the Royal
Malaysian Navy, to end her days under a new name and an alien flag.

  Now, even that seemed unlikely. Whitehall was not renowned for saving manpower, but nevertheless it was pointless to see why a new commanding officer should be appointed if the ship was to be taken off the Navy List.

  A new sound intruded on his thoughts, and as he squinted up he saw the black silhouette of the supply ship’s helicopter already hovering above the tiny flight deck abaft one of the busy derricks.

  He said, ‘Muster the side-party. I’m going aboard to meet him.’

  It was strange how little he knew of Pigott or any of the others. This was the first time the whole of the ship’s company had been aboard in one body since he had joined the ship.

  There were five other officers apart from Pigott, and the whole company, wardroom included, totalled only one hundred. Not much of a command for a man of Dalziel’s rank, he thought grimly.

  By the time he had reached the circular flight deck the helicopter had already disgorged its passengers and was preparing to take off again.

  Standish stood breathing hard in the glare, conscious of his own crumpled state when compared to the supply ship’s officers who enjoyed more spacious quarters and every modern comfort.

  He watched the handful of passengers, dismissing all but two of them. The tall, distinguished man in slacks and shirt turned suddenly and climbed with easy familiarity up one of the bridge ladders. So that left just the other one.

  It was the way he was dressed which really attracted Standish’s attention. A beautifully cut suit of lightweight dove-grey material, a crisp shirt and Goat Club tie; he looked exactly like one of those men in the television ads who can allegedly travel ten times round the world in the same suit which never needs pressing.

  He was carrying a hat, and beneath his arm jutted an old-fashioned black walking-stick.

  ‘You must be Standish?’

  The clothes seemed to fade as the newcomer’s features swam into focus.

  ‘Yes, sir.’