Dust On the Sea (7 page)

As Balfour busied himself with the glasses and Plymouth gin, he added, ‘Royal Marine Commandos are involved.' He sighed. ‘Bloody regulars, by the sound of it. That's all I need!' He held up the glass. ‘Not
that
small, for God's sake!'

The orders were vague, but to Falconer they seemed to shout out loud. The commandos would be landed on an island. Intelligence had discovered a new detection device, a big advance on the enemy's radio direction finder, more like radar, which was never mentioned. The brass might have good reason to be worried.

Nobody had really believed that Monty's Eighth Army would be able to hold out against Rommel's giant Tiger tanks, but they had. Few had expected the attack to be turned into a retreat, but it was. The Germans were on the run, and showed no signs of standing and counter-attacking the Desert Rats. Falconer had become as sceptical as all the others, but as day followed day he had allowed himself to believe that the impossible was happening.

The Allies would have to take advantage of it without delay, and attack the enemy-held mainland. They would have enough choice: apart from Sweden, the whole of Europe and Scandinavia were under the German heel. Invasion would need landing craft, machines and men, above all
men
, and they would have to be transported by sea. It would be costly enough without the enemy putting some advanced detection device into the market-place. The other hush-hush boys, the schooner force, many of whom were based in Beirut, would also be taking part. Madmen, he thought. Sometimes forty knots seemed too slow; five or six must be suicide.

Balfour said quite seriously, ‘I hope it won't interfere with Christmas, sir.'

Falconer stood up and seized his cap. ‘If that's all you're worried about, John, it must be all right!'

Balfour stared after him. He had not heard him laugh
like that since he had joined the boat. And he had called him by his first name.

He looked at the nude pin-up on the notice board, and grinned. Things could be a lot worse. He was accepted. Almost.

There was another pause while the vast wall map was replaced by another on a larger scale. Blackwood took the opportunity to glance around the operations room. A long, low-roofed building, full of scrubbed tables and hard chairs, it was more like a converted boatshed, which was exactly what it had been in the King of Egypt's day. A corrugated iron roof made the interior sweltering under normal conditions, and if there was rain, which was rare, the noise drowned out every word.

Unsuitable and certainly uncomfortable as these premises were, there was no doubting the easy efficiency of those men gathered here. Veterans, no matter what age they were.

They were a very mixed bunch, but he was used to that: a small group of naval officers from the motor gunboats which had been pointed out to him, a Met officer, two intelligence officers, and a Royal Navy commander in full uniform, the only one who looked completely untroubled by the lack of air and the drifting pall of tobacco smoke. Blackwood also found time to notice that the commander's uniform was clean and perfectly pressed, as if he had just collected it from the wardroom stewards.

His name was Walter St John, and by his appearance he was a man who would take no nonsense from anybody. Aged about thirty, and a regular officer, he had a face which seemed to belong in another time; it
reminded Blackwood of the paintings at Hawks Hill. A face which would not have been out of place at Trafalgar. St John was in charge of Special Operations in Alexandria, an extension of Commander Diamond and Major-General Vaughan in London.

Blackwood became aware of someone watching him, and saw another Royal Marine at one of the littered tables look away.

Lieutenant George Despard, who had been in Alexandria with the advance party of commandos, was an impressive character, tall, straight-backed and muscular; his arms, propped on their elbows, were almost covered with tattoos. He had a tough face, which could change completely if he smiled. Despard had come up the hard way, through the ranks; it was difficult to discover why or how he had ended up in the commandos. He was a Channel Islander, and that, too, marked him apart: the islands were the only part of Britain under German occupation.

Blackwood had first met him as a corporal, and their paths had crossed several times since. Despard was a man you would trust with your life, never short of ideas, or courage when he was in a tight spot. Equally, he was one you would never know in a thousand years. Not like Paget, not like anybody.

Commander St John eyed the new map, and waited for all the throats to be cleared, the feet to stop shuffling. Then he said, ‘This is it. The island of Vasili.'

The lieutenant with the pointer touched the coloured map. St John continued, ‘Just to the west of Rhodes, which, as you will know, gentlemen, lies at the approaches to the Aegean Sea.' He had a clipped manner of speaking, not unlike Gaillard, but there were a lot of
broad grins at the dry comment, ‘I would not wish you to be in total ignorance!'

Blackwood saw Gaillard himself sitting, legs crossed, at the commander's table. Those in the room would be watching him, measuring his chances, and their own by what they saw. The adjustment to Gaillard's battledress had already been made: a red medal ribbon with blue edges, the ‘gong' he had mentioned, the Distinguished Service Order. He was surprised at his own anger and resentment; he was being stupid, unreasonable. It was the same highly prized decoration which had been awarded to his father. Gaillard had probably been ordered to display it now, to make the right impression, rather than await an official presentation at a more convenient time. It should not have mattered. But it did.

St John was saying, ‘The secret equipment, referred to hence-forth as
Lucifer,
is on this island for several reasons. It is a bad coastline, and should deter nosy people from getting too near. More to the point, it commands two or more local channels, so that the operators will be able to test and evaluate the accuracy of their device. It may be the work of cranks.' He looked around at their faces. ‘But the human torpedo, the “chariot” as we now know it, was considered laughable when the Italians first produced it.' He raised one arm and pointed at the wall. ‘And yet, only last year, around this time, Italian frogmen were able to cut through all our defences, right here in Alex, and place their charges under two battleships, the
Queen Elizabeth
and the
Valiant.
They were both knocked out of action, and would likely have been completely destroyed but for prompt action.' He gave a wry smile. ‘And the presence of our
Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Cunningham. That no doubt speeded things along!'

There was laughter, although it had not been funny at the time, with the Eighth Army in retreat, and heavy naval losses when every ship was priceless. The destruction of two battleships, a major force of the Mediterranean Fleet, could have ended it.

Even in Burma, Blackwood had heard about it. A Royal Marine band had paraded daily aboard the
Queen Elizabeth
for Colours and Sunset, as well as giving additional performances for her working parties. To the unwelcome observer ashore, or any enemy agent, the battleship had appeared as usual, and ready to put to sea. He had also heard that it would have been possible to have driven a bus through the great hole in her hull.

St John said, ‘You will receive your orders tomorrow.' He looked in Gaillard's direction. ‘You'll have all the assistance we can offer.'

They all got to their feet as St John and his senior intelligence officer left the room. Blackwood heard one of the motor gunboat officers remark, ‘Rather them than me. It's a bloody awful place!'

He ran his fingers over the papers and the crude aerial photographs. A dicey one, then. He examined his feelings. They were always dicey. So what?

Another of the naval officers walked across, and offered his hand.

‘I'm Falconer.' He smiled. ‘David, if you prefer.'

‘Right, David-if-you-prefer.' Blackwood liked what he saw. ‘What do you make of this? You've done it before, I gather?'

‘My boat's taking you most of the way.' He hesitated, seeing it in his mind. ‘And picking you up, with
Lucifer.
'
He nodded slowly. ‘Piece of cake, if you keep your head down.' He looked at the others around them, ratings gathering up the papers, making sure that nothing was missing.

He remembered what he had said about
bloody regulars.
He had been wrong.

He said, ‘Care for a gin? Come and meet the real sailors. The Survivors Club!'

Blackwood glanced round, but Gaillard had gone.

‘I'd like that. Can I bring my lieutenant?'

Falconer nodded. ‘Bring the gin too, if you like!'

It was settled.

Michael Blackwood opened his eyes and waited for his senses to awaken. His eyelids felt as if they had been glued together; it was even painful to swallow.

He lifted his wrist and peered at his watch in the darkness, the luminous dial bringing him back to reality.

Three days ago they had transferred from the M.G.B. to one of the secret schooners, a small, dirty, two-masted vessel with a diesel engine so ancient that it had to be started with a blow-lamp.

He listened to it now, the steady
bonk bonk bonk
which said a lot for the mechanic who was in charge of it, a cheerful Cockney from the Mile End Road who had been working in a garage until he had decided to join up.

This was another kind of war, a war of stealth and cunning, venturing so close inshore sometimes that it had been possible to see people going about their ordinary lives. Islands too, blue and beautiful at a distance, but, close to, some were little better than rocks, and still men and women managed to scrape a living from them. Another world, a world of islands, and an endless
procession of local shipping. Vessels like this one, shabby and hard-worked, caiques and rickety old steam boats.

He rested his head against somebody's pack and thought of the rendezvous they had made with two other schooners the previous day. One had been from the Levant Schooner Force, manned by the same mixture of men as this. The other had been Greek, the skipper of which had appeared very friendly, especially after the wine had been produced. And
ouzo
, that villainous drink beloved by Greeks. Blackwood wanted to groan aloud. He could still taste it, and feel it.

What made men volunteer for this kind of work, this isolation? The desert war seemed so far away, if not in miles then in spirit. The familiar names like Tobruk and Benghazi, and now El Alamein, were household words in England. Here, in this scruffy, overcrowded schooner, they meant very little. And to the north . . . he was forcing his mind to calculate, to react, because he knew the dangers of lethargy . . . how far? A thousand miles, maybe less, two vast armies, German and Russian, were locked in bloody combat. From the great frozen wastes to the murderous work of street-to-street, house-to-house, room-to-room fighting, men were dying every day in their thousands. With luck, it was quick. Otherwise you died slowly, freezing and forgotten.

He thought of this schooner's skipper, a young R.N.V.R. lieutenant, who, out of uniform, could have been only another wanderer or pirate.

One evening at sunset, he had joined him by the schooner's compass and they had talked. Each hanging on to something, for only a moment, before slipping away again to go their separate ways. His name was Terry Carson, and before the war he had been a student of
archaeology, moving on to Athens to continue with his studies. ‘It was one dig after another,' he had said. ‘But I couldn't leave it alone. The past became real.' He had gestured towards the gunwale. ‘Not like this.'

For him, this was a homecoming in some ways. The Greek islands; the dust on the sea, he had called them.

Blackwood sat up carefully, every bone and muscle protesting. The other marines were sprawled throughout the boat, making the best of it as only they could.

The skipper was kneeling beside him, a pale blur where there had been total darkness before.

He said, ‘We'll be able to see the place soon. We'll go in first.' He waited for Blackwood to acknowledge it. ‘The other two boats can stand off. There'll be lots of local craft about, Turkish ones too. We'll have to be careful.'

Blackwood recalled the words of an intelligence officer at Alex.

The Turks are neutral, with a very small 'n
'.
Think of them as Germany's friends. It'll be safer all round.

He thought of the two other schooners. The tough Channel Islander, Despard, was with one, and Major Gaillard was in the third: twenty-five Royal Marines altogether. Not exactly a large force, but anything bigger would have invited disaster; he knew that from hard experience. Except that this was the sea, not a jungle and that bloody river.

The skipper held out a mug. ‘Best I can do.' His teeth gleamed in the darkness. ‘It'stea. Not
ouzo
this time!'

Blackwood sipped it. Sergeant-major's brew; you could have stood a spoon upright in it, if there had been a spoon. But at this moment it was perfect.

‘I'll get back to my lads.' The skipper touched his arm.
‘These islands are guarded by Eye-Ties. They're pretty slack most of the time. But the locals don't want to spoil things. It would only bring the Krauts down on them – they're not quite so understanding. You get the occasional E-Boat, and the Stukas from Rhodes and Crete. Otherwise, they're kept too busy elsewhere.'

Blackwood could feel the other man's need to return to the deck. Dirty, clapped-out it might be, but the schooner was his command, until Special Operations dictated otherwise.

‘The informant, you trust him?'

Carson shrugged. ‘Up to a point.' Then he nodded. ‘Yes, I do. He's never let me down in the past.'

He could almost hear Gaillard's last words, before they had separated. ‘No bloody heroics. Just get the gear or blow the thing up and pull out, right?'