Читать книгу Alistair MacLean Sea Thrillers 4-Book Collection: San Andreas, The Golden Rendezvous, Seawitch, Santorini - Alistair MacLean, Alistair MacLean, John Denis - Страница 15

It was shortly after ten o’clock in the morning that the snow came again. McKinnon had spent another fifteen minutes in the Captain’s cabin, leaving only when he saw the Lieutenant was having difficulty in keeping his eyes open, then had spoken in turn with Naseby, Patterson and Jamieson, who was again supervising the strengthening of the superstructure. All three had agreed that Ulbricht was almost certainly correct in the assessment he had made: and all three agreed with the Bo’sun that this fresh knowledge, if knowledge it were, served no useful purpose whatsoever. McKinnon had returned to the bridge when the snow came.

He opened a wing door in a duly circumspect fashion but, for all his caution, had it torn from his grasp to crash against the leading edge of the bridge, such was the power of the wind. The snow, light as yet, was driving along as nearly horizontally as made no difference. It was quite impossible to look into it, but with his back to it and looking out over the bows, he could see that the wave pattern had changed: the dawn was in the sky now and in its light he could see that the last semblance of serried ranks had vanished and that the white-veined, white-spumed seas were now broken walls of water, tending this way and that in unpredictable formless confusion. Even without the evidence of his eyes he would have known that this was so: the deck beneath his feet was beginning to shake and shudder in a rather disconcerting manner. The cold was intense. Even with his very considerable weight and strength, McKinnon found it no easy task to heave the wing door shut behind him as he stepped back into the bridge.

He was in desultory conversation with Trent, who had the helm, when the phone rang. It was Sister Morrison. She said she was ready to come up to the Captain’s cabin.

‘I wouldn’t recommend it, Sister. Things are pretty unpleasant up top.’

‘I would remind you that you gave me your promise.’ She was speaking in her best sister’s voice.

‘I know. It’s just that conditions have worsened quite a bit.’

‘Really, Mr McKinnon –’

‘I’m coming. On your own head.’

In Ward B, Janet Magnusson looked at him with disapproval. ‘A hospital is no place for a snowman.’

‘Just passing through. On a mission of mercy. At least, your mule-headed friend imagines she is.’

She kept her expression in place. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht?’

‘Who else? I’ve just seen him. Looks fair enough to me. I think she’s daft.’

‘The trouble with you, Archie McKinnon, is that you have no finer feelings. Not as far as caring for the sick is concerned. In other ways too, like as not. And if she’s daft, it’s only because she’s been saying nice things about you.’

‘About me? She doesn’t know me.’

‘True, Archie, true.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But Captain Bowen does.’

McKinnon sought briefly for a suitable comment about captains who gossiped to ward sisters, found none and moved into Ward A. Sister Morrison, suitably bundled up, was waiting. There was a small medical case on a table by her side. McKinnon nodded at her.

‘Would you take those glasses off, Sister?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the Lothario in him,’ Kennet said. He sounded almost his old cheerful self again. ‘He probably thinks you look nicer without them.’

‘It’s no morning for a polar bear, Mr Kennet, far less a Lothario. If the lady doesn’t remove her glasses the wind will do the job for her.’

‘What’s the wind like, Bo’sun?’ It was Captain Bowen.

‘Force eleven, sir. Blizzard. Eight below. Nine-ninety millibars.’

‘And the seas breaking up?’ Even in the hospital the shuddering of the vessel was unmistakable.

‘They are a bit, sir.’

‘Any problems?’

‘Apart from Sister here seeming bent on suicide, none.’ Not, he thought, as long as the superstructure stayed in place.

Sister Morrison gasped in shock as they emerged on to the upper deck. However much she had mentally prepared herself, she could not have anticipated the savage power of that near hurricane force wind and the driving blizzard that accompanied it, could not even have imagined the lung-searing effect of the abrupt 80°F drop in temperature. McKinnon wasted no time. He grabbed Sister Morrison with one hand, the lifeline with the other, and allowed the two of them to be literally blown across the treacherous ice-sheathed deck into the shelter of the superstructure. Once under cover, she removed her duffel hood and stood there panting, tenderly massaging her ribs.

‘Next time, Mr McKinnon – if there is a next time – I’ll listen to you. My word! I never dreamt – well, I just never dreamt. And my ribs!’ She felt carefully as if to check they were still there. ‘I’ve got ordinary ribs, just like anyone else. I think you’ve broken them.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ McKinnon said gravely. ‘But I don’t think you’d have much fancied going over the side. And there will be a next time, I’m afraid. We’ve got to go back again and against the wind, and that will be a great deal worse.’

‘At the moment, I’m in no hurry to go back, thank you very much.’

McKinnon led her up the companionway to the crew’s quarters. She stopped and looked at the twisted passageway, the buckled bulkheads, the shattered doors.

‘So this is where they died.’ Her voice was husky. ‘When you see it, it’s all too easy to understand how they died. But you have to see it first to understand. Ghastly – well, ghastly couldn’t have been the word for it. Thank God I never saw it. And you had to clear it all up.’

‘I had help.’

‘I know you did all the horrible bits. Mr Spenser, Mr Rawlings, Mr Batesman, those were the really shocking cases, weren’t they? I know you wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. Johnny Holbrook told Janet and she told me.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t like this place. Where’s the Lieutenant?’

McKinnon led her up to the Captain’s cabin, where Naseby was keeping an eye on the recumbent Lieutenant.

‘Good morning again, Lieutenant. I’ve just had a taste of the kind of weather Mr McKinnon has been exposing you to. It was awful. How do you feel?’

‘Low, Sister. Very low. I think I’m in need of care and attention.’

She removed oilskins and duffel coat. ‘You don’t look very ill to me.’

‘Appearances, appearances. I feel very weak. Far be it from me to prescribe for myself, but what I need is a tonic, a restorative.’ He stretched out a languid hand. ‘Do you know what’s in that wall cupboard there?’

‘No.’ Her tone was severe. ‘I don’t know. I can guess, though.’

‘Well, I thought, perhaps – in the circumstances, you understand –’

‘Those are Captain Bowen’s private supplies.’

‘May I repeat what the Captain told me?’ McKinnon said. ‘As long as Lieutenant Ulbricht keeps navigating, he can keep on broaching my supplies. Words to that effect.’

‘I don’t see him doing any navigating at the moment. But very well. A small one.’

McKinnon poured and handed him a glass of Scotch: the expression on Sister Morrison’s face was indication enough she and the Bo’sun placed different interpretations on the word ‘small’.

‘Come on, George,’ McKinnon said. ‘This is no place for us.’

Sister Morrison looked faintly surprised. ‘You don’t have to go.’

‘We can’t stand the sight of blood. Or suffering, come to that.’

Ulbricht lowered his glass. ‘You would leave us to the mercy of Flannelfoot?’

‘George, if you wait outside I’ll go and give Trent a spell on the wheel. When you’re ready to go back, Sister, you’ll know where to find me.’

McKinnon would have expected that her ministrations might have taken ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Instead, almost forty minutes elapsed before she put in an appearance on the bridge. McKinnon looked at her sympathetically.

‘More trouble than you expected, Sister? He wasn’t just joking when he said he felt pretty low?’

‘There’s very little the matter with him. Especially not with his tongue. How that man can talk!’

‘He wasn’t talking to an empty bulkhead, was he?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ McKinnon said reasonably, ‘he wouldn’t have kept on talking if you hadn’t kept on listening.’

Sister Morrison seemed to be in no hurry to depart. She was silent for some time, then said with a slight trace of a smile: ‘I find this – well, not infuriating but annoying. Most people would be interested in what we were saying.’

‘I am interested. I’m just not inquisitive. If you wanted to tell me, then you’d tell me. If I asked you to tell me and you didn’t want to, then you wouldn’t tell me. But, fine, I’d like you to tell me.’

‘I don’t know whether that’s infuriating or not.’ She paused. ‘Why did you tell Lieutenant Ulbricht that I’m half German?’

‘It’s not a secret, is it?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re not ashamed of it. You told me so yourself. So why – ah! Why didn’t I tell you that I’d told him? That’s what you’re asking. Just never occurred to me.’

‘You might at least have told me that he was half English.’

‘That didn’t occur to me either. It’s unimportant. I don’t care what nationality a person is. I told you about my brother-in-law. Like the Lieutenant, he’s a pilot. He’s also a lieutenant. If he thought it his duty to drop a bomb on me, he’d do it like a shot. But you couldn’t meet a finer man.’

‘You’re a very forgiving man, Mr McKinnon.’

‘Forgiving?’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘I’ve nothing to forgive. I mean, he hasn’t dropped a bomb on me yet.’

‘I didn’t mean that. Even if he did, it wouldn’t make any difference.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

McKinnon didn’t pursue the matter. ‘Doesn’t sound like a very interesting conversation to me. Not forty minutes’ worth, anyway.’

‘He also took great pleasure in pointing out that he’s more British than I am. From the point of view of blood, I mean. Fifty per cent British to start with plus two more British pints yesterday.’

McKinnon was polite. ‘Indeed.’

‘All right, so statistics aren’t interesting either. He also says that his father knows mine.’

‘Ah. That is interesting. Wait a minute. He mentioned that his father had been an attaché at the German Embassy in London. He didn’t mention whether he was a commercial or cultural attaché or whatever. He didn’t just happen to mention to you that his father had been the naval attaché there?’

‘He was.’

‘Don’t tell me that his old man is a captain in the German Navy.’

‘He is.’

‘That makes you practically blood brothers. Or brother and sister. Mark my words, Sister,’ McKinnon said solemnly, ‘I see the hand of fate here. Something pre-ordained, you might say?’

‘Pfui!’

‘Are they both on active service?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded forlorn.

‘Don’t you find it funny that your respective parents should be prowling the high seas figuring out ways of doing each other in?’

‘I don’t find it at all funny.’

‘I didn’t mean funny in that sense.’ If anyone had ever suggested to McKinnon that Margaret Morrison would one day strike him as a woebegone figure he would have questioned his sanity: but not any longer. He found her sudden dejection inexplicable. ‘Not to worry, lassie. It’ll never happen.’ He wasn’t at all sure what he meant by that.

‘Of course not.’ Her voice carried a total lack of conviction. She made to speak, hesitated, looked down at the deck, then slowly lifted her head. Her face was in shadow but he felt almost certain that he saw the sheen of tears. ‘I heard things about you, today.’

‘Oh. Nothing to my credit, I’m sure. You can’t believe a word anyone says these days. What things, Sister?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ The irritation was as unaccustomed as the dejection.

McKinnon raised a polite eyebrow. ‘Sister? But you are a sister.’

‘Not the way you make it sound. Sorry, I didn’t mean that, you don’t make it sound different from anyone else. It’s like those cheap American films where the man with the gun goes around calling everyone “sister”.’

He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t like you to confuse me with a hoodlum. Miss Morrison?’

‘You know my name.’

‘Yes. I also know that you started out to say something, changed your mind and are trying to stall.’

‘No. Yes. Well, not really. It’s difficult, I’m not very good at those things. I heard about your family this morning. Just before we came up. I’m sorry, I am terribly sorry.’

‘Janet?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s no secret.’

‘It was a German bomber pilot who killed them.’ She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘Along comes another German bomber pilot, again attacking innocent civilians, and you’re the first person to come to his defence.’

‘Don’t go pinning any haloes or wings on me. Besides, I’m not so sure that’s a compliment. What did you expect me to do? Lash out in revenge at an innocent man?’

‘You? Don’t be silly. Well, no, maybe I was silly to say it, but you know very well what I mean. I also heard Petty Officer McKinnon, BEM, DSM and goodness knows what else was in a Malta hospital with a broken back when he heard the news. An Italian Air Force bomber got your submarine. You seem to have an affinity for enemy bombers.’

‘Janet didn’t know that.’

She smiled. ‘Captain Bowen and I have become quite friendly.’

‘Captain Bowen,’ McKinnon said without heat, ‘is a gossipy old woman.’

‘Captain Bowen is a gossipy old woman. Mr Kennet is a gossipy old woman. Mr Patterson is a gossipy old woman. Mr Jamieson is a gossipy old woman. They’re all gossipy old women.’

‘Goodness me! That’s a very serious allegation, Sister. Sorry. Margaret.’

‘Gossipy old women speak in low voices or whispers. Whenever any two of them or three of them or indeed all four are together they speak in low voices or whispers. You can feel the tension, almost smell the fear – well, no, that’s the wrong word, apprehension, I should say. Why do they whisper?’

‘Maybe they’ve got secrets.’

‘I deserve better than that.’

‘We’ve got saboteurs aboard.’

‘I know that. We all know that. The whisperers know that we all know that.’ She gave him a long, steady look. ‘I still deserve better than that. Don’t you trust me?’

‘I trust you. We’re being hunted. Somebody aboard the San Andreas has a transmitter radio that is sending out a continuous location signal. The Luftwaffe, the U-boats know exactly where we are. Somebody wants us. Somebody wants to take over the San Andreas.’

For long moments she looked at his eyes as if searching for an answer to a question she couldn’t formulate. McKinnon shook his head and said: ‘I’m sorry. That’s all I know. You must believe me.’

‘I do believe you. Who could be sending out this signal?’

‘Anybody. My guess is that it is a member of our own crew. Could be a survivor from the Argos. Could be any of the sick men we picked up in Murmansk. Each idea is quite ridiculous but one has to be less ridiculous than the others. Which, I have no idea.’

‘Why would anyone want us?’

‘If I knew that, I’d know the answer to a lot of things. Once again, I have no idea.’

‘How would they take us over?’

‘Submarine. U-boat. No other way. They have no surface ships and an aircraft is out of the question. Praying, that’s what your whisperers are probably at – praying. Praying that the snow will never end. Our only hope lies in concealment. Praying, as the old divines used to say, that we will not be abandoned by fortune.’

‘And if we are?’

‘Then that’s it.’

‘You’re not going to do anything?’ She seemed more than faintly incredulous. ‘You’re not even going to try to do anything?’

It was quite some hours since McKinnon had made up his mind where his course of action would lie but it seemed hardly the time or the place to elaborate on his decision. ‘What on earth do you expect me to do? Send them to the bottom with a salvo of stale bread and old potatoes? You forget this is a hospital ship. Sick, wounded and all civilians.’

‘Surely there’s something you can do.’ There was a strange note in her voice, one almost of desperation. She went on bitterly: ‘The much-bemedalled Petty Officer McKinnon.’

‘The much-bemedalled Petty Officer McKinnon,’ he said mildly, ‘would live to fight another day.’

‘Fight them now!’ Her voice had a break in it. ‘Fight them! Fight them! Fight them!’ She buried her face in her hands.

McKinnon put his arm round her shaking shoulders and regarded her with total astonishment. A man of almost infinite resource and more than capable of dealing with anything that came his way, he was at an utter loss to account for her weird conduct. He sought for words of comfort and consolation but as he didn’t know what he was supposed to be comforting or consoling about he found none. Nor did repeating phrases like ‘Now, now, then’ seem to meet the case either, so he finally contented himself with saying: ‘I’ll get Trent up and take you below.’

When they had arrived below, after a particularly harrowing trip across the upper deck between superstructure and hospital – they had to battle their way against the great wind and the driving blizzard – he led her to the little lounge and went in search of Janet Magnusson. When he found her he said: ‘I think you’d better go and see your pal, Maggie. She’s very upset.’ He raised a hand. ‘No, Janet, not guilty. I did not upset her.’

She said accusingly: ‘But you were with her when she became upset.’

‘She’s disappointed with me, that’s all.’

‘Disappointed?’

‘She wants me to commit suicide. I don’t see it her way.’

She tapped her head. ‘One of you is touched. I don’t much doubt who it is.’ McKinnon sat down on a stool by a mess table while she went into the lounge. She emerged some five minutes later and sat down opposite him. Her face was troubled.

‘Sorry, Archie. Not guilty. And neither of you is touched. She’s got this ambivalent feeling towards the Germans.’

‘Ambi what?’

‘Mixed up. It doesn’t help that her mother is German. She’s had rather a bad time. A very rough time. Oh, I know you have, too, but you’re different.’

‘Of course I’m different. I have no finer feelings.’

‘Oh, do be quiet. You weren’t to know – in fact, I think I’m the only person who does know. About five months ago she lost both her only brother and her fiancé. Both died over Hamburg. Not in the same plane, not even in the same raid. But within weeks of each other.’

‘Oh Jesus.’ McKinnon shook his head slowly and was silent for some moments. ‘Poor bloody kid. Explains a lot.’ He rose, crossed to Dr Singh’s private source of supplies and returned with a glass. ‘The legendary McKinnon willpower. You were with Maggie when this happened, Janet?’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew her before then?’

‘Of course. We’ve been friends for years.’

‘So you must have known those two boys?’ She said nothing. ‘Known them well, I mean?’ Still she said nothing, just sat there with her flaxen head bowed, apparently gazing down at her clasped hands on the table. As much in exasperation as anything McKinnon reached out, took one of her wrists and shook it gently. ‘Janet.’

She looked up. ‘Yes, Archie?’ Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ McKinnon sighed. ‘You, too.’ Again he shook his head, again he remained silent for some time. ‘Look, Janet, those boys knew what they were doing. They knew the risks. They knew that, if they could at all, the German anti-aircraft batteries and night-fighter pilots would shoot them down. And so they did and so they had every right to do. And I would remind you that those were no mere pinpoint raids – it was saturation bombing and you know what that means. So while you and Maggie are crying for yourselves, you might as well cry for the relatives of all the thousands of innocent dead that the RAF left behind in Hamburg. You might as well cry for all mankind.’

Two tears trickled down her cheeks. ‘You, McKinnon, are a heartless fiend.’

‘I’m all that.’ He rose. ‘If anyone wants me I’ll be on the bridge.’

Noon came and went and as the day lengthened the wind strengthened until it reached the screaming intensity commonly found in the hurricanes and typhoons of the more tropical parts of the world. By two o’clock in the afternoon when the light, which at best had never been more than a grey half-light, was beginning to fade, what little could be seen of the mountainous seas abeam and ahead of the San Andreas – the blizzard made it quite impossible to see anything abaft of the bridge – were as white as the driving snow itself, the shapeless troughs between the towering walls of water big enough to drown a suburban house or, to the more apprehensive eye, big enough to drown a suburban church including a fair part of its steeple. The San Andreas was in trouble. At 9,300 tons it was not a small vessel and the Bo’sun had had engine revolutions reduced until the ship had barely steerage way on, but still she was in trouble and the causes for this lay neither in the size of the ship, nor the size of the seas, for normally the San Andreas could have ridden out the storm without much difficulty. The two main reasons for concern lay elsewhere.

The first of these was ice. A ship in a seaway can be said to be either stiff or tender. If it is stiff, it is resistant to roll, and, when it does roll, recovers sharply: when it is tender it rolls easily and recovers slowly and reluctantly. Tenderness arises when a vessel becomes top-heavy, raising the centre of gravity. The prime cause of this is ice. As the thickness of ice on the upper decks increases, so does the degree of tenderness: when the ice becomes sufficiently thick the vessel will fail to recover from its roll, turn turtle and founder. Even splendidly seaworthy ocean-going trawlers, specially built for Arctic operations, have succumbed to the stealthily insidious and deadly onslaught of ice: and for aircraft carriers operating in the far north, ice on their vast areas of open upper decks provided a constant threat to stability.

McKinnon was deeply worried by the accumulation of ice on the decks of the San Andreas. Compacted snow from the blizzard had formed a certain thickness of ice but not much, for apart from the area abaft of the superstructure, most of the snow had simply been blown away by the powerful wind: but for hours now, according to the ever-changing direction of the constantly shifting masses of water, the San Andreas had been shipping copious amounts of water and spray, water and spray that turned to ice even before it hit the decks. The vessel occasionally rode on an even keel but more and more frequently it lurched into a sudden roll and each time recovered from it more and more slowly. The critical limit, he was well aware, was still some time away: but without some amelioration in the conditions, it would inevitably be reached. There was nothing that could be done: sledgehammers and crowbars would have had but a minimal effect and the chances were high that people wielding those would have ended up, in very short order, over the side: on those lurching ice-rink decks footing would have been impossible to maintain. For once, McKinnon regretted that he was aboard an American-built oil-burning ship instead of a British-built coal-burning one: boiler ashes spread on the deck would have given a reasonably secure footing and helped considerably towards melting the ice. There was nothing that one could do with diesel oil.

Of even more immediate worry was the superstructure. Except when on even keel the overstressed metal, shaking and shuddering, creaked and groaned its protesting torture and, when it fell into the depths of a trough, the entire structure shifted quite perceptibly. At the highest point, the bridge on which he was standing, McKinnon estimated the lateral movement to be between four and six inches at a time. It was an acutely uncomfortable sensation and a thought-provoking one: how much of a drop and how acute an angle would be required before the shear factor came into operation and the superstructure parted company with the San Andreas? With this in mind McKinnon went below to see Lieutenant Ulbricht.

Ulbricht, who had lunched on sandwiches and Scotch and slept a couple of hours thereafter, was propped up in the Captain’s bunk and was in a reasonably philosophical mood.

‘Whoever named this ship the San Andreas,’ he said, ‘named it well. You know, of course, that the San Andreas is a famous – or notorious – earthquake-fault.’ He grabbed the side of his bunk as the ship fell into a trough and juddered in a most alarming fashion. ‘At the present moment I feel I’m living through an earthquake.’

‘It was Mr Kennet’s idea. Mr Kennet has, at times, a rather peculiar sense of humour. A week ago this was still the Ocean Belle. When we changed our paint from grey to the Red Cross colours of white, green and red, Mr Kennet thought we should change the name too. This ship was built in Richmond, California. Richmond is on the Hayward’s Fault which is a branch of the San Andreas. He was of the opinion that San Andreas was much more of a romantic name than Hayward’s Fault. He also thought it was an amusing idea to name it after a potential disaster area.’ McKinnon smiled. ‘I wonder if he still thinks it was an amusing idea.’

‘Well, he’s had plenty of time for reflection since I dropped those bombs on him yesterday morning. I should rather think he’s had second thoughts on the matter.’ Ulbricht tightened his grip on the side of his bunk as the San Andreas fell heavily into another trough. ‘The weather does not improve, Mr McKinnon?’

‘The weather does not improve. That’s what I came to talk about, Lieutenant. Force twelve wind. With the darkness and the blizzard – it’s as strong as ever – visibility is absolutely zero. Not a chance of a starsight for hours. I think you’d be far better off in the hospital.’

‘Certainly not. I’d have to fight my way against a hurricane, not to say a blizzard, to reach the hospital. A man in my weakened condition? Not to be thought of.’

‘It’s warmer down there, Lieutenant. More comfortable. And the motion, naturally, is much less.’

‘Dear me, Mr McKinnon, how could you overlook the most important inducement – all those pretty nurses. No, thank you. I prefer the Captain’s cabin, not to mention the Captain’s Scotch. The truth of the matter is, of course, that you suspect that the superstructure may go over the side at any moment and that you want me out of here before that happens. Isn’t that so?’

‘Well.’ McKinnon touched the outer bulkhead. ‘It is a bit unstable.’

‘While you remain, of course.’

‘I have a job to do.’

‘Unthinkable. The honour of the Luftwaffe is at stake. You stay, I stay.’

McKinnon didn’t argue. If anything, he felt obscurely pleased by Ulbricht’s decision. He tapped the barometer and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Three millibars?’

‘Up?’

‘Up.’

‘Help is at hand. There’s hope yet.’

‘Take hours for the weather to moderate – if it does. Superstructure could still go at any time. Even if it doesn’t, our only real hope lies with the snow.’

‘And when the snow goes?’

‘Then your U-boats come.’

‘You’re convinced of that?’

‘Yes. Aren’t you?’

‘I’m afraid I am, rather.’

Three hours later, shortly after five o’clock in the afternoon and quite some time before McKinnon had expected it, the weather began to moderate, almost imperceptibly at first, then with increasing speed. The wind speed dropped to a relatively benign Force six, the broken and confused seas of the early afternoon resolved themselves, once again, into a recognizable wave pattern, the San Andreas rode on a comparatively even keel, the sheeted ice on the decks no longer offered a threat and the superstructure had quite ceased its creaking and groaning. But best of all, from McKinnon’s point of view, the snow, though driving much less horizontally than it had earlier on, still fell as heavily as ever. He was reasonably certain that when an attack did come it would come during the brief hours of daylight but was well aware that a determined U-boat captain would not hesitate to press home an attack in moonlight. In his experience most U-boat captains were very determined indeed – and there would be a moon later that night. Snow would avail them nothing in daytime but during the hours of darkness it was a virtual guarantee of safety.

He went to the Captain’s cabin where he found Lieutenant Ulbricht smoking an expensive Havana – Captain Bowen, a pipe man, permitted himself one cigar a day – and sipping an equally expensive malt, both of which no doubt helped to contribute to his comparatively relaxed mood.

‘Ah, Mr McKinnon. This is more like it. The weather, I mean. Moderating by the minute. Still snowing?’

‘Heavily. A mixed blessing, I suppose. No chance of starsights but at least it keeps your friends out of our hair.’

‘Friends? Yes. I spend quite some time wondering who my friends are.’ He waved a dismissive hand which was no easy thing to do with a glass of malt in one and a cigar in the other. ‘Is Sister Morrison ill?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘I’m supposed to be her patient. One could almost term this savage neglect. A man could easily bleed to death.’

‘We can’t have that.’ McKinnon smiled. ‘I’ll get her for you.’

He phoned the hospital and, by the time he arrived there, Sister Morrison was ready. She said: ‘Something wrong? Is he unwell?’

‘He feels cruelly neglected and says something about bleeding to death. He is, in fact, in good spirits, smoking a cigar, drinking malt whisky and appears to be in excellent health. He’s just bored or lonely or both and wants to talk to someone.’

‘He can always talk to you.’

‘When I said someone, I didn’t mean anyone. I am not Margaret Morrison. Crafty, those Luftwaffe pilots. He can always have you up for dereliction of duty.’

He took her to the Captain’s cabin, told her to call him at the hospital when she was through, took the crew lists from the Captain’s desk, left and went in search of Jamieson. Together they spent almost half an hour going over the papers of every member of the deck and engine-room crews, trying to recall every detail they knew of their past histories and what other members of the crew had said about any particular individual. When they had finished consulting both the lists and their memories, Jamieson pushed away the lists, leaned back in his chair and sighed.

‘What do you make of it, Bo’sun?’

‘Same as you do, sir. Nothing. I wouldn’t even begin to know where to point the finger of suspicion. Not only are there no suitable candidates for the role of saboteur, there’s nobody who’s even remotely likely. I think we’d both go into court and testify as character witnesses for the lot of them. But if we accept Lieutenant Ulbricht’s theory – and you, Mr Patterson, Naseby and I do accept it – that it must have been one of the original crew that set off that charge in the ballast room when we were alongside that corvette, then it must have been one of them. Or, failing them, one of the hospital staff.’

‘The hospital staff?’ Jamieson shook his head. ‘The hospital staff. Sister Morrison as a seagoing Mata Hari? I have as much imagination as the next man, Bo’sun, but not that kind of imagination.’

‘Neither have I. We’d both go to court for them, too. But it has to be someone who was aboard this ship when we left Halifax. When we retire, Mr Jamieson, I think we’d better not be applying for a job with Scotland Yard’s CID. Then there’s the possibility that whoever it is may be in cahoots with someone from the Argos or one of the nine invalids we picked up in Murmansk.’

‘About all of whom we know absolutely nothing, which is a great help.’

‘As far as the crew of the Argos is concerned, that’s true. As for the invalids, we have, of course, their names, ranks and numbers. One of the TB cases, man by the name of Hartley, is an ERA – Engine-Room Artificer. He would know about electrics. Another, Simons, a mental breakdown case, or an alleged mental breakdown case, is an LTO – Leading Torpedo Operator. He would know about explosives.’

‘Too obvious, Bo’sun.’

‘Far too obvious. Maybe we’re meant to overlook the far too obvious.’

‘Have you seen those two? Spoken to them, I mean?’

‘Yes. I should imagine you also have. They’re the two with the red hair.’

‘Ah. Those two. Bluff, honest sailormen. Don’t look like criminal types at all. But then, I suppose, the best criminals never do. Look that way, I mean.’ He sighed. ‘I agree, with you, Bo’sun. The CID are in no danger from us.’

‘No, indeed.’ McKinnon rose. ‘I think I’ll go and rescue Sister Morrison from Lieutenant Ulbricht’s clutches.’

Sister Morrison was not in the Lieutenant’s clutches nor did she show any signs of wanting to be rescued. ‘Time to go?’ she said.

‘Of course not. Just to let you know I’ll be on the bridge when you want me.’ He looked at Ulbricht, then at Sister Morrison. ‘You managed to save him, then?’

Compared to what it had been only a few hours previously the starboard wing of the bridge was now almost a haven of peace and quiet. The wind had dropped to not more than Force four and the seas, while far from being a millpond, had quietened to the extent that the San Andreas rarely rolled more than a few degrees when it did at all. That was on the credit side. On the debit side was the fact that the snow had thinned to the extent that McKinnon had no difficulty in making out the arc-lit shape of the red cross on the foredeck reflecting palely under its sheathing of ice. He went back inside the bridge and called up Patterson in the engine-room.

‘Bo’sun here, sir. Snow’s lightening. Looks as if it’s going to stop altogether pretty soon. I’d like permission to switch off all exterior lights. Seas are still too high for any U-boat to see us from periscope depth, but if it’s on the surface, if the snow has stopped and we still have the Red Cross lights on, we can be seen miles away from its conning-tower.’

‘We wouldn’t want that, would we. No lights.’

‘One other thing. Could you have some men clear a pathway – sledges, crowbars, whatever – in the ice between the hospital and the superstructure. Two feet should be wide enough.’

‘Consider it done.’

Fifteen minutes later, still without any sign of Margaret Morrison, the Bo’sun moved out on the wing again. The snow had stopped completely. There were isolated patches of clear sky above and some stars shone, although the Pole Star was hidden. The darkness was still pretty complete, McKinnon couldn’t even see as far as the fo’c’s’le with the deck lights extinguished. He returned inside and went below to the Captain’s cabin.

‘The snow’s stopped, Lieutenant, and there are a few stars around, not many, and certainly not at the moment the Pole, but a few. I don’t know how long those conditions might last so I thought you might like to have a look now. I assume that Sister Morrison has staunched the flow of blood.’

‘There never was any flow of blood,’ she said. ‘As you know perfectly well, Mr McKinnon.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

She winced, then smiled. ‘Archie McKinnon.’

‘Wind’s dropped a lot,’ McKinnon said. He helped Ul-bricht on with outer clothing. ‘But those are just as necessary as they were before. The temperature is still below zero.’

‘Fahrenheit?’

‘Sorry. You don’t use that. It’s about twenty degrees below, Centigrade.’

‘May his nurse come with him? After all, Dr Sinclair went with him last time.’

‘Of course. Wouldn’t advise you to come on the wing bridge, though.’ McKinnon gathered up sextant and chronometer and accompanied them up to the bridge. This time Ulbricht made it unaided. He went out on both wing bridges in turn and chose the starboard from which to make his observations. It took him longer than it had on the previous occasion, for he found it necessary to take more sights, presumably because the Pole Star was hidden. He came back inside, worked on the chart for some time and finally looked up.

‘Satisfactory. In the circumstances, very satisfactory. Not my navigation. The course we’ve been holding. No idea if we’ve been holding it all the time, of course, and that doesn’t matter. We’re south of the Arctic Circle now, near enough 66.20 north, 4.20 east. Course 213, which seems to indicate that the wind’s backed only five degrees in the past twelve hours. We’re fine as we are, Mr McKinnon. Keeping the sea and the wind to the stern should see us through the night and even if we do wander off course we’re not going to bump into anything. This time tomorrow morning we’ll lay off a more southerly course.’

‘Thank you very much, Lieutenant,’ McKinnon said. ‘As the saying goes, you’ve earned your supper. Incidentally, I’ll have that sent up inside half an hour. You’ve also earned a good night’s sleep – I won’t be troubling you any more tonight.’

‘Haven’t I earned something else, too? It was mighty cold out there, Mr McKinnon.’

‘I’m sure the Captain would approve. As he said, so long as you’re navigating.’ He turned to the girl. ‘You coming below?’

‘Yes, yes, of course she must,’ Ulbricht said. ‘I’ve been most remiss, most.’ If remorse were gnawing it didn’t show too much. ‘All your other patients –’

‘All my other patients are fine. Sister Maria is looking after them. I’m off duty.’

‘Off duty! That makes me feel even worse. You should be resting, my dear girl, that or sleeping.’

‘I’m wide awake, thank you. Are you coming below? It’s no trouble now, ship’s like a rock and you’ve just been told you won’t be required any more tonight.’

‘Well, now.’ Ulbricht paused judiciously. ‘On balance, I think I should remain. Unforeseeable emergencies, you understand.’

‘Luftwaffe officers shouldn’t tell fibs. Of course I understand. I understand that the only foreseeable emergency is that you run short of supplies and the only reason you’re not coming below is that we don’t serve malt whisky with ward dinners.’

The Lieutenant shook his head in sadness. ‘I am deeply wounded.’

‘Wounded!’ she said. They had returned to the hospital mess-deck. ‘Wounded.’

‘I think he is.’ McKinnon looked at her in speculative amusement. ‘And you, too.’

‘Me? Oh, really!’

‘Yes. Really. You’re hurt because you think he prefers Scotch to your company. Isn’t that so?’ She made no reply. ‘If you believe that, then you’ve got a very low opinion of both yourself and the Lieutenant. You were with him for about an hour tonight. What did he drink in that time?’

‘Nothing.’ Her voice was quiet.

‘Nothing. He’s not a drinker and he’s a sensitive lad. He’s sensitive because he’s an enemy, because he’s a captive, a prisoner of war and, of course, he’s sensitive above all because he’s now got to live all his life with the knowledge that he killed fifteen innocent people. You asked him if he was coming down. He didn’t want to be asked “if”. He wanted to be persuaded, even ordered. “If” implies indifference and the way he’s feeling it could be taken for a rejection. So what happens? The ward sister tells her feminine sympathy and intuition to take a holiday and delivers herself of some cutting remarks that Margaret Morrison would never have made. A mistake, but easy enough to put right.’

‘How?’ The question was a tacit admission that a mistake had indeed been made.

‘Ninny. You take his hand and say sorry. Or are you too proud?’

‘Too proud?’ She seemed uncertain, confused. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Too proud because he’s a German? Look, I know about your fiancé and brother and I’m terribly sorry but that doesn’t –’

‘Janet shouldn’t have told you.’

‘Don’t be daft. You didn’t object to her telling you about my family.’

‘And that’s not all.’ She sounded almost angry. ‘You said they went around killing thousands of innocent people and that –’

‘Those were not my words. Janet did not say that. You’re doing what you accused the Lieutenant of doing – fibbing. Also, you’re dodging the issue. Okay, so the nasty Germans killed two people you knew and loved. I wonder how many thousands they killed before they were shot down. But that doesn’t matter really, does it? You never knew them or their names. How can you weep over people you’ve never met, husbands and wives, sweethearts and children, without faces or names? It’s quite ridiculous, isn’t it, and statistics are so boring. Tell me, did your brother ever tell you how he felt when he went out in his Lancaster bomber and slaughtered his mother’s fellow countrymen? But, of course, he’d never met them so that made it all right, didn’t it?’

She said in a whisper: ‘I think you’re horrible.’

‘You think I’m horrible. Janet thinks I’m a heartless fiend. I think you’re a pair of splendid hypocrites.’

‘Hypocrites?’

‘You know – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The ward sister and Margaret Morrison. Janet’s just as bad. At least I don’t deal in double standards.’ McKinnon made to leave but she caught him by the arm and indulged, not for the first time, in the rather disconcerting practice of examining each of his eyes in turn.

‘You didn’t really mean that, did you? About Janet and myself being hypocrites?’

‘No.’

‘You are devious. All right, all right, I’ll make it right with him.’

‘I knew you would. Margaret Morrison.’

‘Not Ward Sister Morrison?’

‘You don’t look like Mrs Hyde.’ He paused. ‘When were you to have been married?’

‘Last September.’

‘Janet. Janet and your brother. They were pretty friendly, weren’t they?’

‘Yes. She told you that?’

‘No. She didn’t have to.’

‘Yes, they were pretty friendly.’ She was silent for a few moments. ‘It was to have been a double wedding.’

‘Oh hell,’ McKinnon said and walked away. He checked all the scuttles in the hospital area – even from the relatively low altitude of a submarine conning-tower the light from an uncovered porthole can be seen for several miles – went down to the engine-room, spoke briefly to Patterson, returned to the mess-deck, had dinner, then went into the wards. Janet Magnusson, in Ward B, watched his approach without enthusiasm.

‘So you’ve been at it again.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘No. I don’t know and I don’t care. I suppose you’re talking about your friend Maggie – and yourself. Of course I’m sorry for you both, terribly sorry, and maybe tomorrow or when we get to Aberdeen I’ll break my heart for yesterday. But not now, Janet. Now I have one or two more important things on my mind such as, say, getting to Aberdeen.’

‘Archie.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘I won’t even say sorry. I’m just whistling in the dark, don’t you know that, you clown? I don’t want to think about tomorrow.’ She gave a shiver, which could have been mock or not. ‘I feel funny. I’ve been talking to Maggie. It’s going to happen tomorrow, isn’t it, Archie?’

‘If by tomorrow you mean when daylight comes, then, yes. Could even be tonight, if the moon breaks through.’

‘Maggie says it has to be a submarine. So you said.’

‘Has to be.’

‘How do you fancy being taken a prisoner?’

‘I don’t fancy it at all.’

‘But you will be, won’t you?’

‘I hope not.’

‘How can you hope not? Maggie says you’re going to surrender. She didn’t say so outright because she knows we’re friends – we are friends, Mr McKinnon?’

‘We are friends, Miss Magnusson.’

‘Well, she didn’t say so, but I think she thinks you’re a bit of a coward, really.’

‘A very – what’s the word, perspicacious? – a very perspicacious girl is our Maggie.’

‘She’s not as perspicacious as I am. You really think there’s a chance we’ll reach Aberdeen?’

‘There’s a chance.’

‘And after that?’

‘Aha! Clever, clever Janet Magnusson. If I haven’t got any plans for the future then I don’t see any future. Isn’t that it? Well, I do see a future and I do have plans. I’m going to take my first break since nineteen thirty-nine and have a couple of weeks back home in the Shetlands. When were you last back home in the Shetlands?’

‘Not for years.’

‘Will you come with me, Janet?’

‘Of course.’

McKinnon went into Ward A and passed up the aisle to where Sister Morrison was sitting at her table. ‘How’s the Captain?’

‘Well enough, I suppose. Bit dull and quiet. But why ask me? Ask him.’

‘I have to ask the ward sister’s permission to take him out of the ward.’

‘Take him out – whatever for?’

‘I want to talk to him.’

‘You can talk to him here.’

‘I can just see the nasty suspicious looks I’d be getting from you if we started whispering together and the nasty suspicious questions I’d be getting afterwards. My dear Margaret, we have matters of state to discuss.’

‘You don’t trust me, is that it?’

‘That’s the second time you’ve asked me that silly question. Same answer. I do trust you. Totally. I trust Mr Kennet there. But there are five others I don’t know whether to trust or not.’

McKinnon took the Captain from the ward and returned with him inside two minutes. After she’d tucked him back in bed, Margaret Morrison said: ‘That must rank as the shortest state conference in history.’

‘We are men of few words.’

‘And that’s the only communiqué I’ll be getting?’

‘Well, that’s the way high-level diplomacy is conducted. Secrecy is the watchword.’

As he entered Ward B he was stopped by Janet Magnusson. ‘What was all that about, then? You and Captain Bowen, I mean.’

‘I have not had a private talk with the Captain in order to tell all the patients in Ward B about it. I am under an oath of silence.’

Margaret Morrison came in, looked from one to the other, then said: ‘Well, Janet, has he been more forthcoming with you than with me?’

‘Forthcoming? Under an oath of silence, he claims. His own oath, I have no doubt.’

‘No doubt. What have you been doing to the Captain?’

‘Doing? I’ve been doing nothing.’

‘Saying, then. He’s changed since he came back. Seems positively cheerful.’

‘Cheerful? How can you tell. With all those bandages, you can’t see a square inch of his face.’

‘There are more ways than one of telling. He’s sitting up in bed, rubbing his hands from time to time and twice he’s said “Aha”.’

‘I’m not surprised. It takes a special kind of talent to reach the hearts and minds of the ill and depressed. It’s a gift. Some of us have it.’ He looked at each in turn. ‘And some of us haven’t.’

He left them looking at each other.

McKinnon was woken by Trent at 2.0 a.m. ‘The moon’s out, Bo’sun.’

The moon, as McKinnon bleakly appreciated when he arrived on the port wing of the bridge, was very much out, a three-quarter moon and preternaturally bright – or so it seemed to him. At least half the sky was clear. The visibility out over the now almost calm seas was remarkable, so much so that he had no difficulty in picking out the line of the horizon: and if he could see the horizon, the Bo’sun all too clearly realized, then a submarine could pick them up ten miles away, especially if the San Andreas were silhouetted against the light of the moon. McKinnon felt naked and very vulnerable. He went below, roused Curran, told him to take up lookout on the starboard wing of the bridge, found Naseby, asked him to check that the falls and davits of the motor lifeboats were clear of ice and working freely and then returned to the port wing where, every minute or two, he swept the horizon with his binoculars. But the sea between the San Andreas and the horizon remained providentially empty.

The San Andreas itself was a remarkable sight. Wholly covered in ice and snow, it glittered and shone and sparkled in the bright moonlight except for a narrow central area abaft of the superstructure where wisping smoke from the shattered funnel had laid a brown smear all the way to the stern post. The fore and aft derricks were huge glistening Christmas trees, festooned with thick-ribbed woolly halliards and stays, and the anchor chains on the fo’c’s’le had been transformed into great fluffy ropes of the softest cotton wool. It was a strange and beautiful world with an almost magical quality about it, ethereal almost: but one had only to think of the lethal dangers that lay under the surrounding waters and the beauty and the magic ceased to exist.

An hour passed by and everything remained quiet and peaceful. Another hour came and went, nothing untoward happened and McKinnon could scarcely believe their great good fortune. And before the third uneventful hour was up the clouds had covered the moon and it had begun to snow again, a gentle snowfall only, but enough, with the hidden moon, to shroud them in blessed anonymity again. Telling Ferguson, who now had the watch, to shake him if the snow stopped, he went below in search of some more sleep.

It was nine o’clock when he awoke. It was an unusually late awakening for him but he wasn’t unduly perturbed – dawn was still an hour distant. As he crossed the upper deck he noted that the conditions were just as they had been four hours previously – moderate seas, a wind no stronger than Force three and still the same gently falling snow. McKinnon had no belief in the second sight but he felt in his bones that this peace and calm would have gone before the morning was out.

Down below he talked in turn with Jones, McGuigan, Stephen and Johnny Holbrook. They had taken it in turn, and in pairs, to monitor the comings and goings of everybody in the hospital. All four swore that nobody had stirred aboard during the night and that, most certainly, no one had at any time left the hospital area.

He had breakfast with Dr Singh, Dr Sinclair, Patterson and Jamieson – Dr Singh, he thought, looked unusually tired and strained – then went to Ward B where he found Janet Magnusson. She looked pale and there were shadows under her eyes.

McKinnon looked at her with concern.

‘What’s wrong, Janet?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. It’s all your fault.’

‘Of course. It’s always my fault. Cardinal rule number one – when anything goes wrong blame the Bo’sun. What am I supposed to have done this time?’

‘You said the submarine, the U-boat, would attack if the moon broke through.’

‘I said it could, not would.’

‘Same thing. I spent most of the night looking out through the porthole – no, Mr McKinnon, I did not have my cabin light switched on – and when the moon came out at about two o’clock I was sure the attack must come any time. And when the moon went I was sure it would come again. Moon. U-boat. Your fault.’

‘A certain logic, I must admit. Twisted logic, of course, but not more than one would expect of the feminine mind. Still, I’m sorry.’

‘But you’re looking fine. Fresh. Relaxed. And you’re very late on the road this morning. Our trusty guardian sleeping on the job.’

‘Your trusty guardian lost a little sleep himself, last night,’ McKinnon said. ‘Back shortly. Must see the Captain.’

It was Sister Maria, not Sister Morrison, who was in charge in A Ward. McKinnon spoke briefly with both the Captain and First Officer, then said to Bowen: ‘Still sure, sir?’

‘More sure than ever, Archie. When’s dawn?’

‘Fifteen minutes.’

‘I wish you well.’

‘I think you better wish us all well.’

He returned to Ward B and said to Janet: ‘Where’s your pal?’

‘Visiting the sick. She’s with Lieutenant Ulbricht.’

‘She shouldn’t have gone alone.’

‘She didn’t. You were asleep so your friend George Naseby came for her.’

McKinnon looked at her with suspicion. ‘You find something amusing.’

‘That’s her second time up there this morning.’

‘Is he dying or something?’

‘I hardly think she would smile so much if a patient was slipping away.’

‘Ah! Mending fences, you would say?’

‘She called him “Karl” twice.’ She smiled. ‘I’d call that mending fences, wouldn’t you?’

‘Good lord! Karl. That well-known filthy Nazi murderer.’

‘Well, she said you asked her to make it right. No, you told her. So now you’ll be taking all the credit, I suppose.’

‘Credit where credit is due,’ McKinnon said absently. ‘But she must come below at once. It’s too exposed up there.’

‘Dawn.’ Her voice had gone very quiet. ‘This time you’re sure, Archie?’

‘This time I’m sure. The U-boat will come at dawn.’

The U-boat came at dawn.