To Risks Unknown Page 12

  Crespin took her hand and gently moved it aside. Her fingers felt smooth but ice cold. He could feel her eyes watching him as he read through the remainder of the orders.

  Then he said dryly, ‘A diversionary action, I think they call it.’ He felt vaguely light-headed. ‘It doesn’t allow much time.’

  She stood back. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ Her voice was trembling.

  ‘What else is there to say?’ Crespin looked round the shabby wardroom feeling suddenly trapped. ‘I’m to take this ship to a point north-west of Sicily and cover a raid with a force of marine commando. Scarlett’s intelligence officers have assured him that the local Sicilian “underground” is ready to launch an attack from inland to coincide with ours, so that the Germans will have to withdraw some pressure from the southern beaches.’ He pushed the papers across the table. ‘Always assuming, of course, that Jerry hasn’t got the whole place covered as it is!’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Crespin stared at her. ‘I don’t have any choice in the matter!’

  Wemyss stepped quietly into the wardroom, his smile fading as he saw the expressions on their faces.

  Crespin said, ‘We’re getting under way again at 2100. I shall speak to the ship’s company before that time, but I’ll fill you in on details right now.’ He gestured towards the table. ‘Sit there and read that lot. It’ll give you something to think about.’

  Across Wemyss’ shoulder he studied the girl and said, ‘I take it you have to get back?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m late already.’

  Crespin walked with her into the passageway, conscious of her nearness, the touch of her arm against his sleeve as he guided her to the ladder.

  She stopped suddenly and faced him. ‘I’m sorry about this. I really am.’

  ‘I was looking forward to that drink, too.’ He tried to move his mouth into a smile but it would not come.

  ‘I didn’t mean that!’ Her eyes flashed in the grey light. ‘When I heard what you’ve been asked to do I wanted to hide. Then I thought it would be better if I brought the orders myself. I had to see you before you left.’

  Crespin listened to the whine of wind against the moored ship. So it was as bad as that?

  He said quietly, ‘I’m glad you came. I mean it. Otherwise I’d have thought …’

  She interrupted, ‘You’d have thought what you did think. That my relationship with Captain Scarlett was something more than official.’

  Overhead a voice called wearily, ‘Hands to tea! Men under punishment to muster!’

  Another world. The ship living her separate, controlled existence, as if nothing else mattered.

  He said, ‘If I get back perhaps we can keep that date?’

  She nodded firmly, and he saw that her eyes were shining with something other than the reflected light.

  ‘When you get back! And I shall hold you to it!’ Then she turned and ran quickly up the ladder.

  Crespin followed her and watched as she climbed down the brow and into the waiting jeep. She looked very small against the background of bombed buildings and angry clouds. As the jeep moved away into the swirling dust she turned and shouted against the wind. He could see her white teeth, the hair flapping rebelliously from under the oversize sou’wester. She could have been calling good luck, he thought. Or goodbye.

  He turned and walked slowly towards the bridge, his mind dragging itself reluctantly back to those orders.

  When he reached the deserted bridge he glanced down at the place where the seaman had died. That man, and the one who had deserted, would be well out of it, he decided bitterly.

  Then he crossed to the chartroom and slammed the door behind him.

  Perhaps the inexperienced officers who commanded the landing craft were better off after all. They at least would go into battle knowing nothing of the odds against them.

  He opened the chart and stared for several minutes at the craggy coastline before marking the point of the proposed gesture with a small cross.

  In his mind’s eye he could picture the place quite well enough, although he had never been within a hundred miles of it.

  Small, rocky and backed by high, featureless hills. A place where people had scraped a bare living since time began without knowing why.

  He picked up a pencil and parallel rulers and began to work. In a few days they would have something to remember, he thought bitterly. It was to be hoped they would appreciate it.

  7. Better to be Hated

  FAR FROM IMPROVING, the weather got steadily worse, and within twenty-four hours of leaving harbour the Thistle was crashing into the teeth of a great north-westerly gale. The short, steep waves were replaced by long ranks of towering rollers with savage-looking crests which broke across the reeling ship in a continuous procession and even burst high over the bridge.

  She was accompanied on the first part of the journey by a powerful new fleet destroyer, for to give her sudden disappearance from Sousse some recognizable purpose to any interested enemy agent the stage had to be properly set. The destroyer had taken on some impressive wooden crates a few hours before sailing, each left on the jetty just long enough to be noted, and clearly addressed: ‘Flag Officer in Charge, Gibraltar. Naval Stores’. Once, on the first day out, a flimsy Italian seaplane had dived out of the clouds to be met by a few sporadic bursts from their anti-aircraft guns and had immediately returned to the safety of the clouds, no doubt satisfied that this was just a small unit of enemy ships en route for the Western Mediterranean. So perhaps the clumsy precautions were justified after all.

  Few aboard the Thistle cared much one way or the other. Watchkeeping was sheer misery, and below decks for a brief respite it was even more wretched. For crammed between decks were two hundred Royal Marine commando, complete with their ammunition and weapons, scaling lines and numerous other bundles of nameless equipment which made movement from one part of the ship to the other almost impossible. Only once before in her lifetime had the little corvette carried nearly that number of passengers. Wemyss recalled that during a particularly bad Atlantic winter when the Thistle had been tail-end Charlie on an eastbound convoy she had picked up the survivors of some ten torpedoed merchantmen. One hundred and twenty to be exact, so this new situation was even worse. Everywhere you went you seemed to fall over sleeping marines or stacks of weapons, and all the while the ship rolled and staggered, dived and lifted her bows to the scudding clouds as if to tear herself apart.

  Watching the big destroyer from the upper bridge gave everyone some idea of what the Thistle must look like. The ship showed her bilge keel, and then her upper deck as her masts and superstructure swung back and forth across the yellow-fanged waves in a sickening motion which increased as both ships left the shelter of the land and butted out into the open sea.

  At the close of the second day the destroyer’s signal lamp blinked across the tossing water, ‘Good luck. Give our love to Mussolini.’ Then with a rising surge of power from her forty-eight thousand horsepower she headed away into the murk and was almost at once out of sight.

  Painfully, waiting for the right moment, the Thistle altered course to the north-east, quite alone, a tossing fragment of grey steel against the wilderness of empty sea. Only the chart showed visible evidence of that other danger. Like the jaws of a great trap the islands of Sardinia and Sicily lay one hundred miles from either beam, a hostile sea, with Italy across the bows as the final barrier.

  But if the weather was terrible, it was also an ally. Not once did they sight an aircraft or ship, for the enemy probably assumed that no one in his right mind would take a ship alone and unaided into these waters, especially in this sort of weather.

  As Crespin lived out each day within the staggering world of his bridge he felt inclined to agree with such reasoning. No one in his right mind would have sent the Thistle in such conditions.

  Slowly but surely he guided his ship around the north-west corner of Sicily. It was as if the Thistle
was held to the coastline by an invisible thread, as a child will hold a captive model aircraft with himself as the centre of its flying circle.

  Three days to the hour after slipping her moorings found them a bare twenty miles north-north-east of Cape St. Vito, a craggy prong of land which guarded the final approach to Castellammare Bay and their objective.

  Just twenty miles from enemy territory, but as Crespin swung his glasses over the screen he thought it could have been a thousand. There was no sign of land and the visibility was next to nothing. It was a wild panorama of broken wavecrests and bursting spray, the latter being so continuous that it might have been tropical rain. They had a beam sea now, the most dangerous of all, and although the hands had been at action stations for several hours it was in name only. The four-inch gun on the forecastle was abandoned, the crew hiding somewhere abaft the bridge, and as the sea thundered up and over the side of the hull and sluiced greedily the full length of the deck the gun stood alone and desolate like a half-submerged rock.

  Crespin readjusted the sodden towel around his neck. His skin felt raw and chafed and his body bruised from the constant pounding.

  Wemyss clawed his way to his side and shouted, ‘Bang on time, sir!’ He was unshaven and red-eyed, and Crespin wondered how men could stand up to this sort of thing.

  He nodded. ‘As far as we can tell!’ He ducked below the screen as a towering wall of spray lifted over the bridge and then smashed down jubilantly on the crouching men before gurgling through the scuppers and cascading down the ladders on either wing.

  He saw Shannon wedged in the opposite corner of the bridge, his face raw from spray and wind, his lips set in a tight line as he peered towards the starboard bow. He looked worn out, but something was keeping him on his feet.

  Crespin said, ‘Check with the W/T again. We might get a recall in view of all this.’

  Wemyss looked at him doubtfully. ‘Too late now, sir. We’d have heard by this time if the invasion was off.’

  ‘Check anyway.’ Crespin moved his glasses along the screen. At most other times it would be as bright as noon. But it was growing darker every minute, and the clouds if anything were thicker and faster.

  Wemyss came back shaking his head. ‘Nothing, sir!’

  ‘Very well. Take over the con. I’m going to the chartroom.’ He held up his wrist and showed Wemyss his watch. ‘There’s no point in pretending that this raid is going to be called off, so we might as well get on with it.’

  The small chartroom was so crowded with people that Crespin had to use his shoulder to open the door. The four marine officers and all the senior N.C.O.s had somehow managed to get inside, and the air was almost nauseous with tobacco smoke.

  The senior officer was a major named Cameron. He was extremely tall and as thin as a stick, and his narrow, rather haughty face was dominated by a bushy moustache and a pair of small, penetrating eyes. His green beret was set at an exact and regulation angle on his head, and in spite of the discomforts of being a passenger he had managed to shave, as had the rest of the marines present. Up to this moment Cameron had been content to remain just one more piece of cargo. Resigned was probably a better word, Crespin thought. Now, or in two hours’ time, their roles would change. Major Cameron certainly gave the impression that he was more than able to cope, no matter what was waiting for him and his men.

  Crespin stared down at the chart. The bay towards which the bows were pointing was about fifteen miles across, with the cape of the nearest headland reaching out towards them like a spiked mace. It was a terrible coast. Steep cliffs and endless reefs, with neither light nor beacon to make the approach any easier.

  Five miles inside the bay, hacked into the headland itself, was the objective, the tiny settlement of St. Martino. It could not be called a port or a village, for there was no real harbour or need for social habitation. In the great hills behind the inlet and connected to the rest of the island by a narrow gauge railway were several quarries. In peacetime they were mostly worked by convicts, the stone being used for buildings as far afield as France and Spain. Now the quarries were little used, for in time of war concrete had been proved more useful and less troublesome than the slow business of hewing out stone.

  What made St. Martino different from the rest of this inhospitable coastline was its long pier. Coasters and schooners had used it to load their cargoes of stone, and the Thistle was about to use it for a more lethal business.

  Major Cameron glanced swiftly around the watching eyes. ‘We go alongside the pier and disembark in three parties as arranged.’ He had a clipped, impatient voice, and Crespin judged that he would be a hard man to serve. ‘First party will head north and seize the coastguard station. Second will go here,’ he jabbed the chart with his finger, ‘and blow up the railway track and all the equipment adjoining it.’ A massive colour-sergeant was scribbling furiously in a notebook, and one of the young lieutenants was clasping and unclasping his fingers as he stared at the chart. Cameron said, ‘Third party will cover the coast road and remain there until our Sicilian patriot friends take over.’ He looked up sharply. ‘Right?’

  A round-faced lieutenant asked, ‘Suppose these chaps don’t turn up, sir?’

  The major eyed him coldly. ‘Well, we’ll just have to manage on our bloody own, won’t we?’ He turned his head. ‘Has anyone got anything sensible to say?’

  No one replied, and Crespin was not surprised. Cameron looked at the bulkhead clock. ‘Get to your men and prepare to disembark.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Just remember this. It is a raid we are carrying out, not a bloody suicide mission. I want plenty of noise and confusion, but no damned heroics, got it? We hit ’em and pull out.’ He shot Crespin a brief smile. ‘After that it’s the captain’s problem to get us away.’

  They struggled through the swaying door and Cameron said flatly, ‘I think they should have called this operation by some suitable name.’ He pulled out his pistol, checked it and thrust it back into his holster. ‘Operation Bloody Miracle would be pretty apt, don’t you think?’

  Crespin looked at the clock. He wanted to get back to the bridge, and imagined he could feel a slight easing of the ship’s motion, as if she was already moving into the lee of that headland, But Cameron’s sudden change of tone, the bitter hopelessness of his words, held him there.

  ‘Tell me, what do you really think?’

  Cameron shrugged. ‘It could work, of course. I’ve been on many raids with far less preparation than this one. But we’re so far away from help, and when we light the fuses we’ll have the whole bloody island on our ears.’ He pointed towards the southern coast of the island. ‘The Americans are going to land here and here. In this weather they’ll have their work cut out to reach the right beaches in one piece. Our little diversion should draw some of the Jerry armour our way and away from them. At least in theory it should.’

  A handset buzzed and Crespin picked it from its hook. ‘Captain here.’

  Wemyss’ voice was muffled by wind and sea. ‘Ready to change course, sir.’ He paused. ‘Very dark now. Barely see more than a cable.’

  ‘Very good, I’ll come up.’ He dropped the handset and looked at the marine. ‘The main Allied invasion is scheduled to start in five hours, so we’d better get going.’ He held out his hand. ‘Good luck.’

  The major studied him intently. ‘Thanks. Just remember that if we get bogged down you’re to pull out on schedule yourself. I said no heroics. It applies to you, too.’ Then he smiled. ‘Sometimes I think of Eastney barracks, the parades and the bloody colonel’s inspections. How we used to wish for action and glory. I wouldn’t mind being there now, I can tell you!’

  A marine lieutenant poked his head round the door. ‘All ready, sir.’

  The major’s face froze into an impassive mask. ‘Right. Well, don’t stand there gaping. What do you want, a bloody medal?’ The man vanished.

  The major looked around the chartroom and grinned. ‘It’s better to be hated, you know. They don’t m
iss you so much when you get your head shot off!’

  Crespin watched him go and thought suddenly of Scarlett and the men like him who moved the flags on maps and decided who would live and die, and to what purpose. They never seemed to consider those who actually had to carry out their orders and translate the schemes into grim reality. Men like Cameron and his stolid colour-sergeant, and the pink-faced lieutenant who was so obviously afraid, yet more afraid of showing fear than of the unknown dangers ahead.

  He sighed and wiped the lenses of his glasses before thrusting them inside his oilskin. Then he opened the door and made his way quickly to the upper bridge.

  As the ship moved closer and closer inshore the wind fell away as if suddenly sealed off by a giant wall. There were no longer any leaping wave-crests to break the darkness, but a steep, undulating swell gave the ship an unpleasant corkscrew motion which made the helmsman’s work all the more difficult because of the slow speed.

  Crespin clutched the screen in the forepart of the bridge and swung his glasses slowly from bow to bow. They were less than a mile from the side of the headland and he could almost feel it like a physical force, but apart from the occasional splash of white foam around the pitching stem there was nothing to break the blackness or to give him some hint of his landfall. The radar was practically useless for this sort of thing, and it was madness to depend on it. The screen merely showed a wavering outline of coast distorted by a mass of back-echoes and nothing of any real value. What he took to be the small inlet was barely recognizable as such, and of the pier there was no sign at all. His brain told him that this was simply because of the towering cliffs at one side of the inlet which were enough to mask any such narrow object under these conditions, but his straining nerves kept playing tricks with his imagination so that it was even harder to concentrate on the final approach. Suppose the pier had been destroyed with just this sort of raid in mind? He could go on creeping forward until there was no room left to turn. He was still wearing the oilskin and could feel the warm sweat running down his body, yet he dared not take even a few seconds to remove it.