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  ‘Is that all, sir?’

  ‘No, it’s not!’ Scarlett pushed his face closer. ‘Admiral Oldenshaw told me that he might be considering you for this command in my place. I was against it, of course, but I suppose he had his reasons.’

  ‘And now he’s dead.’ Crespin looked past Scarlett’s head towards the ship’s small wake. Gradz had already disappeared in the gathering darkness.

  ‘Exactly.’ Scarlett checked himself. ‘And that’s an end to it.’ He turned his back and made for the chartroom.

  Wemyss came back, dragging his feet noisily across the gratings.

  Crespin asked, ‘Everything all right?’

  He nodded. ‘All positions checked, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Crespin walked to the chair and leaned against it. ‘After the attack we will return to Gradz. Coutts will pick up the partisans and withdraw to Korcula Island. It’s nearer for him and no Germans left there to hinder things.’ His voice sounded toneless and he added sharply, ‘By that time the Germans on the mainland should be too busy to bother about us. The raid and demolition of the Tekla base is the general signal for other partisan attacks up and down the coast. It’ll be a long day all round.’

  Wemyss said quietly, ‘I heard about Third Officer Forbes, sir. We all got to like her a lot. She was sort of part of our little community.’ He was fumbling for words. ‘And I know what she meant to you.’

  Crespin gripped the chair with all his strength. ‘Thank you.’

  Wemyss added, ‘It’s different from the Atlantic. Out here it’s women and kids, everyone. Coutts was telling me how the Yugoslav children climb on the Jerry tanks to ask for food and then drop grenades or petrol bombs into them.’ He faltered. ‘That’s why it was good to have her out here with us, sir. It evened the score in some way.’

  Crespin closed his mind like a steel door. ‘Thank you, Number One, and now let’s forget it, shall we? Later there may be time, but right at this particular moment there’s no damned time for anything.’

  He saw Wemyss move heavily back to the chart table and felt sickened by what he had said. He wanted to call him, to tell him that he felt just as he did. That his heart was aching with the pain of loss and despair.

  In the same instant he knew it would be useless, even dangerous. Just as he had known it was pointless to argue with Scarlett, to tell him that he knew the true reasons for the dead admiral’s decision to remove him. Tired, overworked, they were old words. Scarlett’s role had gone when the tide of Allied defeats had started to turn the other way. Gestures and brave headlines were no longer enough. Four years of war had pared away the glamour and the frail beliefs in such things. Perhaps Scarlett belonged to another era, when war was kept at a distance, when women and children were spared, and the harvest of battle was confined to casualty lists and a yearly service around the Cenotaph.

  When Wemyss spoke again he sounded quite normal. ‘Time to alter course, sir. New course is three-three-zero.’

  Crespin climbed into the chair and felt the steel arms pressing against his ribs as the ship heeled gently to an offshore swell. ‘Very good. Take her round, Number One.’

  Below in his wheelhouse Petty Officer Joicey spun the polished spokes in response to the first lieutenant’s voice from the bell-mouthed tube by his face.

  He said, ‘Steady on three-three-zero, sir!’

  Feet scraped on the deck overhead and he could imagine the officers and lookouts swaying and crouching below the screen. By comparison the wheelhouse was snug and warm, and to a stranger it would seem almost oppressive. The steel shutters were clipped over the windows, and the unmoving air was heavy with damp and the mixed smells of oil and Brasso, the latter being kept to maintain the binnacle and fittings in perfect order.

  In the glowing compass light Joicey could see the telegraphsman and a bosun’s mate squatting on lockers, their bodies rising and falling with the ship, their heads angled to avoid the condensation which ran from the bulkhead like rain. It was all familiar and strangely comforting. For Joicey had stood on this very grating for more times than he could remember. In and out of harbour, under air attack, and chasing the elusive U-boats. He almost knew what the ship was going to do before an order was passed to him.

  He thought suddenly of the one moment when he had left the wheel. The first time ever in his life he had broken his code of discipline. But he had needed to see the Germans die. Burn and die like so many tortured shapes in hell.

  But every time he tried to build a picture in his mind he kept seeing instead the communal grave, with her name up there with the rest. He was still not sure what he had expected to feel when he had watched the dying soldiers. Elation? A sense of release? But there had been nothing at all, and she was as far away from him as ever.

  He swung the spokes angrily as the gyro ticked a degree off course to mark his momentary lapse.

  He saw the bosun’s mate’s head begin to droop and snarled, ‘Git up on the bridge, you idle sod!’ The man jerked upright as if Joicey had kicked him. ‘An’ ask Jimmy th’ One if we can stew some char, right?’

  The seaman nodded. ‘If you say so, Swain.’

  Joicey glared at the telegraphsman who was again fully awake. ‘An’ you can stop gawpin’, for a bleedin’ start!’

  Outside the wheelhouse it was now pitch dark with no division between sea and sky. But the Thistle pushed her bows through the short waves without effort, seemingly indifferent to anything which might lie across her path. Perhaps, like the men who served her, she understood that the future was no longer quite so far away, and accepted it.

  16. A Face in the Past

  REACHING THE RENDEZVOUS was a feat of navigation and sheer concentrated effort. As the Thistle wound her way between the larger islands, groping from one channel to the next in total darkness, it became a matter of stop-watch timing for each alteration of course and every change of speed. Wemyss hardly left the hooded chart table for more than seconds at a time, and as Crespin concentrated on the business of conning the ship he found time to notice how they had all become a team, probably without being aware of it.

  Scarlett left the chartroom and took his position in the steel chair, his body craned forward as if to sniff out the invisible land across the bows. His return seemed to symbolize the inevitability of action, and as the ship slipped through the last narrow channel with the mainland barely two miles abeam, the tension on the upper bridge became almost unbearable.

  Crespin wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. It had gone far better than he had dared hope. No flares, no awakened coastal batteries to bracket the ship as she edged so close inshore. Somewhere ahead the two M.L.s were presumably on station, and as there had been no sudden activity ashore it was to be assumed Coutts had landed his partisans without incident.

  Wemyss’ voice was muffled beneath the hood. ‘Tekla Point bears three-two-one degrees, sir. Five miles.’

  ‘Very good.’ Crespin leaned over the voice-pipe. ‘Starboard ten.’

  ‘Starboard ten, sir. Ten of starboard wheel on.’ Joicey sounded tenser than usual.

  ‘Midships.’ Crespin thought of Wemyss’ complete confidence in his own work. A thousand watches at sea on a dozen different bridges. The Thistle was reaping the benefit of that experience now. ‘Steady!’

  ‘Steady, sir. Course three-two-zero.’ Joicey must be reading his mind.

  ‘Steady as you go, Cox’n.’

  Crespin moved back to the screen and pulled his glasses from inside the oilskin. The sky should be brightening by now, but the clouds were holding back the dawn, as if trying to delay the inevitable.

  Scarlett said, ‘I only hope that fellow Soskic knows what he has to do.’

  ‘He’ll be all right, sir.’ Crespin moved the glasses slightly to port and saw a huddle of floating gulls bobbing jerkily up and down, probably on the wake of one of the M.L.s. They looked like a garland of lilies left after a sea burial.

  Scarlett grunted. ‘He must be in position and ready to tak
e all his objectives when we give the signal. Telephone wires cut, railway blown, and the road guarded at both ends.’

  Crespin thought of the three hundred-odd partisans who were now fanning out along the hills and cliffs beyond the jutting headland. There was a concrete pillbox on the southern end of the road which led into the Nashorn’s base. Soskic’s men must have passed it by now, and there had not been a single shot. He could almost find pity for the Germans in that pillbox.

  ‘Light, sir!’ Griffin sounded very calm. ‘Starboard bow!’

  Three blue flashes, very low down on the water.

  Scarlett massaged his stomach vigorously. ‘Thank God for that!’

  The brief signal came from Coutts’ schooners which lay somewhere below the headland waiting to follow Thistle into the bay.

  Griffin said, ‘’E’s landed ’em all right then, sir.’

  ‘I should hope so!’ Scarlett was peering at his watch. ‘How much longer?’

  Wemyss said flatly, ‘Forty-five minutes, sir.’

  Crespin pulled off his oilskin and laid it by the chart table. It was very cold, but the coat’s clammy restriction was making him sweat.

  ‘Warn all guns to stand by, Number One. Not a sound out of anybody.’ He heard Wemyss speaking quietly on a handset and then thrust his head under the hood and leaned over the chart. It was a last look. In a few minutes he would have all his work cut out. It might be the last time he looked at a chart at all, he thought grimly.

  He pushed the possibility from his mind as he ran his eyes over the wavering lines and bearings, the beak of the headland and the little horseshoe bay beyond. It was a well protected place. Mountainous hills at the back, a steep headland and shelving cliffs on either side of the entrance. A very suitable lair for the ponderous Nashorn.

  Crespin withdrew his head and shoulders from the hood and stood up. The bridge already seemed lighter, with faces and hands standing out against the grey steel and the dark water beyond the screen. He tensed. This time it was not all water. The land was climbing out of the darkness, and against a paler wedge of cloud he could even see a pointed hill, perhaps far inland. And there, fine on the starboard bow was the end of the point. Sloping and sharp-edged, it ploughed into the sea like the bow of an old ironclad, the surf leaping at its foot and giving the additional impression of movement.

  He could see the M.L.s, too, falling back, their engines only giving steerage way as they waited for the corvette to lead the attack. They were both rolling heavily in spite of the sheltered water, their frail hulls shining with spray, the slender guns already trained round towards the land.

  Somewhere below the bridge a man began to bang his hands together. From cold or nerves, Crespin did not know. In the damp stillness it seemed like gun-fire. Shannon’s sharp tone reduced the unknown seaman to silence.

  Scarlett stood up and gripped the rail below the screen. Against the greying clouds his face looked impressively calm.

  The jutting stem of land was sliding towards the starboard bow now, very slowly, for the ship was still at minimum speed. There was a dull coloured hump at the top of it, and as Crespin trained his glasses he saw that it was another pillbox, the weapon slits black in the wet concrete like eyes. A man was waving to the ship far below him, a rifle above his head. It was one of Soskic’s men. One more objective taken.

  Scarlett said shortly, ‘Right then. Let’s make a start!’

  Crespin turned and looked at Wemyss. ‘Full ahead.’ He heard the telegraph and added to Griffin, ‘Get ready with the flare.’

  Magot must have been poised above his throttle for the ship responded immediately. It took the M.L.s by surprise, for by the time they had swung round to take station on either quarter the Thistle was already pushing past the point and swinging in a wide arc towards the bay.

  Crespin snapped, ‘Carry on, Bunts!’

  Griffin fired his flare and stepped back to watch as it burst in a bright green star above the cliffs.

  Crespin stood on the gratings and tried to steady his glasses against the throb and rattle of the bridge as the revolutions mounted and the bow wave streamed away in twin white banks of foam. The bay was just as he had expected. Grey and dispirited looking in the dull light, with a stone breakwater and an unlit beacon away to port, and almost dead ahead the telltale pale blobs of huddled buildings, below which lay the jetty and the extended railway where the Nashorn’s coal was delivered whenever needed.

  A Very light drifted in the wind, masked immediately in smoke as a great explosion boomed across the bay and echoed around the hills like an approaching storm.

  Wemyss said tightly, ‘Soskic’s men must have blown the railway.’

  One of the M.L.s swung away and opened fire on two moored tugs, the tracers darting across the choppy water and beating it into a mass of white feathers before fastening greedily on the deserted vessels.

  From the buildings at the top of the bay came a sudden rattle of Spandau fire, and more tracers floated over the rooftops to join with those already stabbing from a dozen different angles.

  In the growing light Crespin saw a strange, bridge-like structure clearly framed against the flickering tracer.

  He shouted, ‘Tell Shannon to open fire on that! It’s there to carry coal from the railway to the ship’s side, and should make a good target!’

  It did. After one miss the four-inch gun landed a shell directly beneath the towering mass of cross-beams and steel rails, setting it alight and bringing the seaward end crashing down across two moored lighters in a shower of yellow sparks.

  The small German garrison, so rudely awakened, had at last realized the attack was coming from the sea and not just across their tried and tested positions along the road. More tracers flickered over the water, faltered and then swung back to concentrate on the nearest M.L.

  Crespin called, ‘Shift target to red four-five! Hit those machine-guns!’

  He waited until the four-inch had reopened fire and then snapped, ‘Port fifteen!’ The ship tilted and came round like a stubby dancer, the pom-pom beating the Oerlikons as it sent a necklace of flaming tracer over the M.L. in a protective barrage. The enemy guns fell silent, but more shots were coming from further inland.

  Scarlett yelled, ‘The Jerries have got some flak guns up there by the railway! Try and get them with the four-inch!’

  Crespin crouched over the compass, watching the ticking dial, judging the moment.

  ‘Midships!’ He ran to the forepart of the bridge again. ‘Give Shannon the range and bearing of that battery if you can! I’m going round the bay again!’

  A sinking fishing boat loomed out of the smoke and rocked sluggishly on the corvette’s wake. Crespin hardly noticed it as he gauged the moment to make his next turn. When he looked up again he saw that the nearest hills were already silver in the morning light, but the clouds were as thick as ever. Or it could be gunsmoke, he thought vaguely.

  ‘Port ten!’ The Thistle was almost back at the breakwater again and turning for another run-in. As he glanced quickly astern Crespin saw the spindly shapes of the four schooners coming round the headland, Coutts no doubt impatient to be in at the kill.

  ‘Midships! Steady!’ He winced as the four-inch lifted, settled and fired again. The shell burst far beyond the buildings, throwing up a bright scarlet ball of flames which grew and spread until several of them appeared to be sucked into it.

  ‘Fuel dump!’ Griffin was using his telescope.

  Scarlett rubbed his hands. ‘That’ll show the bastards!’

  The tracer from the buildings by the jetty was getting sparse and more sporadic now, but Soskic’s efforts appeared to have redoubled as grenades and mines exploded in every direction. Crespin saw a German army lorry charge from between two sheds and head for the coast road, slewing from side to side to avoid the hidden marksmen. A figure ran directly across the road, pausing only to throw something before diving headlong to escape the front wheels. It must have been a petrol bomb, for as the lorry swung
crazily across the road it burst into flames and smashed out of control into a pile of rocks before rolling drunkenly on to its side. Burning petrol ran over the road, setting alight to bracken and writhing men alike before the lorry exploded and dense smoke drifted down to blot out their final anguish.

  Both of the M.L.s were close inshore now, so near to the jetty itself that Crespin could see their gunsmoke rising in a brown wall between their hulls and the moored lighters as they fired again and again into the crumbling defences.

  Wemyss yelled, ‘W-T office has a signal, sir!’ There was a black smudge on his face. ‘Immediate!’

  Crespin stared at him. It was hard to realize that far away, in another world, men were sitting in their offices coding and decoding, having cups of tea, planning a night out … He checked himself. ‘Very well. Tell Defries to get it decoded! Things seem to be under control here.’

  Scarlett snapped, ‘That’s bloody typical that is! I suppose it’s a signal to tell us that war has been declared!’ He swung round to watch as another thunderous explosion rocked the waterfront buildings and brought down a gantry almost across the stern of the nearest M.L. ‘Tell that idiot to pull away! There’s a lot to do here yet!’

  Defries appeared on the bridge and saluted. He seemed quite oblivious to the din and smoke around him. ‘Here’s the signal, sir.’ Even his voice was detached.

  Crespin stood down from the gratings and read it quickly. ‘Intelligence report, sir.’ He looked up at Scarlett’s back as he swung his glasses from bow to bow with obvious excitement. ‘It says that the Nashorn left her berth yesterday afternoon. Destination unknown.’

  Scarlett seemed to have difficulty in tearing his attention from the destruction ashore. Then he snapped, ‘Yesterday afternoon? What are the bloody fools playing at?’ He swore savagely. ‘Intelligence officers? Stupidity officers, I call ’em!’