Sunset Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgements

  1. Colours

  2. Scars

  3. Of One Company

  4. Rumours

  5. A Night to Remember

  6. Another World

  7. Lotus

  8. Boarding Party

  9. Monsoon

  10. Friends

  11. A Ship of War

  12. Destiny

  13. Favours

  14. Unlikely Event

  15. No Turning Back

  16. Prelude

  17. Victims

  18. Sunset

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  About the Book

  1941. To the residents and defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the war in Europe remains remote. Even the massive build-up of Japanese forces on the Chinese border cannot dent their carefree optimism.

  Yet one man suspects the truth. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke, captain of HMS Serpent and a veteran of the cruel Atlantic, sees all too clearly the folly and incompetence of Hong Kong’s colonial administration. To Brooke, attack by Japan seems inevitable.

  But, in war, there will always be some who attempt the impossible, even in the face of death. This is the story of one ship and her company who refuse to accept the anguish of defeat and surrender to a merciless enemy . . .

  About the Author

  Douglas Reeman Joined the Navy in 1941, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches. He did convoy duty in the Arctic and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats. As he says, ‘I am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring interest for people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal triangle of man, ship and ocean, particularly under the stress of war, produces the best qualities of courage and compassion, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the conflict. The sea has no understanding of righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’

  Apart from the many novels he has written under his own name, he has also written more than twenty historical novels featuring Richard and Adam Bolitho, under the pseudonym of 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

  The Greatest Enemy

  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 First to Land

  The Volunteers

  The Iron Pirate

  Against the Sea (non-fiction)

  In Danger’s Hour

  The White Guns

  Killing Ground

  The Horizon

  A Dawn Like Thunder

  Battlecruiser

  Dust on the Sea

  For Valour

  The Glory Boys

  Knife Edge

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  Sunset

  Douglas Reeman

  For Kim –

  orchids in the rain and so many memories,

  with all my love.

  We are all islands in a bitter sea.

  Chinese Proverb

  Acknowledgements

  The author wishes to thank his friend Robert Cheung, and the Royal Navy at H.M.S. Tamar, Hong Kong, for their ready assistance.

  1

  Colours

  The khaki staff car rolled to a halt, and after some hesitation the Royal Marine driver offered, ‘No boat there yet, sir.’

  ‘That’s all right, I’ll send for one. Take my gear down to the hut on the jetty. Then you can go back to H.Q.’

  The marine shrugged. He was used to the ways of regular naval officers; at least he thought he was. His passenger had spoken no more than a few words on this early morning drive from Kirkwall, but had looked directly ahead along the deserted road as if he was preparing for something.

  Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke climbed from the big Humber car and stamped his feet on the stone paving. He was stiff, weary from the long journey from the south, and was surprised that he had been unable to sleep in the small, spartan cabin they had found for him in Kirkwall. It was early morning, and he saw some gulls bobbing on the undulating water. Even they were not ready to start their search around the many anchored warships for scraps flung over the side.

  It was just that he could not bring himself to wait any longer, go through the business of having breakfast with other officers on transit whom he would not know and might never see again.

  He shivered and watched the great expanse of gently moving water. Quiet, deceptively so for this place so well known to sailors in two world wars: Scapa Flow, a safe anchorage for big ships and the many other smaller vessels needed to protect their every move. The sky was colourless and only the sea’s horizon, resting between the islands of the Flow like the water in some huge dam, showed any life. Like an unending silver thread, he thought.

  This was the first week of April, 1941. Southern England, which he had left three days ago, was already responding to the hope of spring, if nothing else. Here in Scapa only the weather changed. The islands that crouched around this protected place were bleak and weathered, and the sea’s face could alter here within an hour, with currents that could make even the most experienced commander grit his teeth when his ship suddenly seemed to be under a greater control, and rain, sleet and murderous winds that chilled a man to the bone.

  This was Scapa’s rarer face. But to Brooke this was not just another day.

  The marine clicked his heels and saluted. ‘All done, sir.’ He hesitated, still unsure. ‘If you’re certain, that is?’

  Brooke nodded. ‘Thank you, yes.’ He turned as the man strode away and crashed the car’s gears to show what he thought about it.

  Esmond Brooke was twenty-nine years old, but felt ten years older. He examined his feelings again. It was easier without the watching eyes, the curiosity of the H.Q. staff who regarded newcomers as a link with all they had left behind. Scapa was a refuge and a retreat, while the war which had raged in other parts of the world for some eighteen months had seemed like another existence.

  He looked at the water below Scapa Bay. Sheltered, yes, but the war had intruded even here. In the second month of hostilities a German submarine had risked everything to breach the booms and defences, and had torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak while she rested at her moorings, with the appalling loss of over eight hundred lives. Like many others, Brooke had been stunned in those early days by the apparent ease with which the attack had been executed. But that had been then, when the whole nation had still believed in the invincible might of the Royal Navy. Peace or war, it had seemed the one sure shield they could rely upon.

  Brooke thought of the ship he had just left: H.M.S. Murray, one of the fleet’s big flotilla leaders, built in the mid-thirties, a new ship when compared with all the veterans that had been flung into the front line of war when the Germans had marched into Poland.

  The Murray had been taken out of commission at Portsmouth while she underwent a complete and much needed overhaul, with new weapons to
be fitted, and men who were trained to use them in what had become a very different sort of war. He had left behind, too, a different Portsmouth. Acres of bombed and blackened buildings, whale-like barrage balloons on the hills and beyond the city to snare any hit-and-run bombers, while in the dockyard men worked all hours to repair the damaged ships, turn them round and get them to sea again without delay.

  Brooke’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. When they were not on strike, he thought bitterly.

  Murray’s people would be scattered to the demands of the fleet. To fight through the hard-pressed convoys which were somehow keeping Britain from starvation, to cover the troops as they fell back from one military disaster after another. Holland, France, Norway and now Greece and Crete; the list seemed endless. Murray had taken part in most of it. Brooke had been first lieutenant to the flotilla leader, the Captain (D), a four-ringed skipper of the old school, who had feared nothing but had been totally unprepared for what had been expected of him and his handful of destroyers.

  Somewhere in the far distance Brooke heard a bugle call. From one of the battleships most likely, where the hands would be already turned-to, washing down decks, spit-and-polish, war or no war.

  Then breakfast, Jack’s favourite: bacon and eggs, except that after a year and a half of war spam had replaced bacon and the eggs came out of a tin. The thought made his stomach contract. He could barely recall when he had had a proper meal. No wonder the Royal Marine had given him such a strange glance. Another one going round the bend, he had probably thought.

  And now he was here. The moment which had denied him sleep was a reality. He walked to the edge of the jetty and watched the water rising and falling against the weathered stone, as if some great sea creature was about to break surface.

  He thought about his captain, the last handshake before Brooke had quit the ship to make way for the dockyard maties and their murderous cutters and welders. It seemed unlikely that the captain, old for his rank, would face the fury of a full gale again. To a new training establishment, perhaps? One of the many which overnight had acquired war-paint, with a White Ensign to make the transformation official, and where, equally, schoolboys were transformed into temporary officers in three months, and clerks and fishmongers into gunners, torpedo men and stokers. Even in Murray there had been a couple of hostilities-only officers called ‘Wavy Navy’ because of their stripes, and accepted with affection or otherwise as their efficiency dictated. Within another year there would be more reservists than regulars. Brooke bit his lip. If we survive that long.

  He heard another car coming down the narrow road and knew that his isolation was over.

  It was a small van, and an equally small Wren slid from behind the wheel and gave him a brief but searching glance.

  Brooke wore a plain raincoat, and his cap was the same as that of any other naval officer below commander. She would not know who he was. He turned and looked back towards the town and saw a touch of pale sunshine light up the weather vane on the top of St Magnus’s Cathedral steeple.

  He was wrong. The girl saluted, something quite rare up here except for senior officers. The Wrens could be choosy. After all, there were some six hundred sailors to every one of them.

  She said, ‘Commander Brooke, sir?’ She looked concerned. ‘You shouldn’t have been kept waiting like this!’ She sounded indignant for one so small and young. ‘I’ll ring H.Q., sir.’

  Brooke smiled. ‘It’s quite all right. I needed to think.’ He guessed she was from naval headquarters. They seemed to know everything even before you did.

  She nodded. ‘You’re Serpent’s new commanding officer.’

  He looked at the Flow again. ‘Yes.’

  She kicked a stone into the water. ‘I’m waiting for the NAAFI manager’s boat.’ In the pale light she might have blushed. ‘He’s trying to get me some stockings. Silk ones.’

  Brooke smiled again. The truly important things against the dull panorama of war.

  She persisted, ‘They’re not expecting you at this hour, sir.’

  The girl watched him curiously. At H.Q. you soon got used to sailors, especially the officers, more especially the married ones, and the Wrens had a quarters officer who had been a teacher in a very smart school for young ladies at Harrogate. A real battleaxe, and she made sure that her ‘chaps’, as she called them, were kept out of harm’s way. Most of the time.

  This one was different, a bit like some of the other young officers from the battered escort vessels that came and went as frequently as the tides. Young, grave faces; strain in their eyes and around their mouths that spoke of a war she could only imagine, despite the maps and charts in the H.Q. plotting rooms. Crosses to mark slaughtered convoys, or familiar names which had been wiped away like chalk from a blackboard.

  When he removed his cap and ran his fingers through his hair as he was doing now, she saw that same look. Inner control, wariness, the inability to relax. He had unruly hair, untidy even for a regular, and she saw small flecks of grey on his sideburns. He was not yet thirty: as a regular he would have been given a more important command otherwise. She saw him start as the sound of a chugging harbour launch broke the silence.

  Brooke said, ‘Your NAAFI manager, I believe?’

  The lower deck had its own translation of NAAFI, he thought. No Ambition And Fuck-all Interest. The girl was looking at him with a little smile, as if she guessed what he was thinking.

  ‘I think I’ll cadge a lift.’ It was better than waiting and wondering. He moved along the jetty and did not notice her surprise.

  She stared past him as the launch puffed into view, followed by morning gulls and surrounded by diesel fumes.

  But not before she had seen his eyes. Tawny and very steady. It might provide the old battleaxe with a real challenge, she thought. And me.

  The NAAFI manager sent his mechanic to fetch Brooke’s luggage from the hut and passed a small parcel to the waiting Wren. ‘Best I can do, love.’

  She walked towards the little grey-painted van, then turned and saluted him again.

  ‘Good luck, sir. I – I don’t know how you all do it!’

  He looked at her for several seconds. Afterwards she thought he had been trying to remember something, or somebody.

  He said, ‘We do it for you, and those like you.’ Then he swung himself aboard the launch, which was immediately cast off.

  He did not look back, but knew she was staring after the boat.

  He said, ‘I hope this isn’t taking you out of your way too much.’

  The manager grinned. ‘No, sir. I’ve got a few “rabbits” for the old Resolution’s wardroom on board.’ He darted a glance at his unexpected passenger while the harbour launch lifted and dipped across the endless swell. It was the closest he would ever get to going to sea, if he could manage it. A destroyer type, he thought. Rather him than me.

  They moved on in silence while other small craft appeared from the moored grey shapes of capital ships or the dazzle-painted escorts. A harbour coming to life. Another day.

  Brooke removed his cap and shaded his eyes while he stared at the neat lines of small buoys that supported the webs of anti-torpedo netting protecting the anchorage. Beyond that there were green wreck marker buoys to show where a huge net had been spread over the sunken shadow of the Royal Oak and her sleeping company.

  Brooke tested his injured leg on the gratings and thought of the Wren and her black-market stockings.

  He could feel his inner excitement rising, as well as the bitterness he had carried for so long. What would the NAAFI manager say if he knew that the destroyer which had been given him to command was his first? At this stage of the war any regular was worth his weight in gold.

  He doubted if many cared or even remembered the reasons for the Spanish Civil War, especially now that their own country and survival were at risk. Brooke had been in destroyers then too, a young lieutenant with his life and career stretching out like an adventure. Like his father and grandfather before him:
it was something he accepted, took for granted. After a small boarding school in West Sussex, an establishment long approved for the sons of serving officers, he had joined the Royal Naval College as a cadet. He had been twelve years old.

  Even Spain had been an adventure, the closest thing to all that training and preparation he could have imagined.

  Then one day it had become very real to the men and ships of several nations who had been trying to protect their own people as Franco’s fascist army crushed all government resistance except in the areas of Valencia and Barcelona. Refugees, Britons working at the consulate or for the Red Cross, men and women in all walks of life were ordered to leave. The Royal Navy’s ships were given a task they had come to know so well since Dunkirk; but they were amateurs at evacuation in 1937.

  While dive-bombers had screamed overhead, piloted, it was alleged, by Hitler’s own Luftwaffe, the Royal Navy had made up for its other deficiencies with a bluff mixture of courage and patient good humour.

  It was said to have been a small mine that had blown Brooke’s whaler out of the water, killing all but two male civilians, a woman who had lost her legs, three seamen, and Brooke himself.

  Four years ago, and Brooke was not certain which hurt him more: the throbbing pain in his scarred leg and foot, which at one time had almost been removed by a surgeon in Malta, or the despair of being told he was no longer needed for active duty. In a war where he had seen men die in every sort of terrible circumstance at sea it was sometimes hard to believe he had considered killing himself. Was I the same man?

  ‘There she is, sir!’

  He nodded, holding on to the moment, not wanting to share it.

  The NAAFI manager took his silence for uncertainty.

  ‘H.M.S. Serpent, sir. Don’t build ’em like her no more!’

  Brooke barely heard him. As the launch began to turn in a wide sweep he watched the moored destroyer, his mouth suddenly quite dry. She was exactly the way she looked in her peacetime photograph, and much the same as the day she had first tasted salt water in that other war in 1916. When I was four years old. It was easy to imagine her in this very mooring when Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet had been here. Small when compared with the flotilla leader Murray, and a good sixty feet shorter, but Serpent retained a rakishness which even her old-fashioned straight stem could not fault. Apart from one remaining sister-ship she was the only three-funnelled destroyer left in service.