Strange Conflict (12 page)

Early next morning Sir Pellinore rang de Richleau up to tell him that he had made an appointment for him at the Admiralty, at eleven o'clock. On presenting himself there the Duke duly signed his name in the book and was taken straight up to the Admiral's room.

For a little time they discussed the theory of spies smuggling portable wireless transmitters on to one of the ships
in each convoy, and the Admiral tried hard to pump his visitor about this line of investigation. But the Duke was a wily man, and although he actually knew very little about beam wireless he inferred that he was in touch with a civil radio expert who had certain original ideas on the subject and official access to B.B.C. apparatus which would enable him to make the necessary tests.

‘You'll have to give this fellow particulars of the route, then,' said the Admiral glumly.

‘No. That is not necessary,' de Richleau quickly reassured him; ‘I can keep that part of it to myself.'

‘Thank God,' the Admiral grunted. ‘This business is getting us all down, but the fewer people who know how badly we're up against it the better, and I've already told you of the extreme care with which we guard the secret of each route from the moment it is decided. For that reason I must ask you to carry in your head the information which I shall give you. On no account must you write it down or make any notes about it afterwards, in case they fall into wrong hands.'

‘Fortunately I have an excellent memory,' smiled the Duke.

‘Very well, then. This is the situation. Our convoys are made up in various ports, mainly on the west coast and the north-east coast of Scotland. A convoy leaves every two or three days and the next one to sail is due to weigh anchor in the Mersey at eleven-fifteen tonight. It will proceed at a speed of approximately nine knots, the pace of the slowest ship, north-west by west to a point south of the Isle of Man. It will then pass through the North Channel between Ulster and Scotland until it has Malin Head, North Ireland, upon its beam, when it will set a course north-west by north to a point 58 degrees north and 12 degrees west. At that point its escort will leave it and it will turn west by south, continuing on that course until it reaches the twentieth meridian west, upon which it will turn south-west. I need not bother you with particulars regarding the latter half of its journey, since during that the convoy will have passed out of the danger area.'

Richleau repeated the particulars several times, then he said: ‘I take it, then, that the sinkings all occur within
two or three days of each convoy having been left by its escort?'

‘Not all; but certainly eighty-five per cent of them take place within forty-eight hours of the escort's having turned for home.'

‘Wouldn't it be possible, then, for the escorts to continue with convoys for an additional two days?'

The Admiral sadly shook his head. ‘That is the obvious solution, but it just can't be done. Owing to our commitments in the Mediterranean, and the necessity for maintaining a strong fleet constantly in Home waters to repel any attempt at invasion, we simply have not enough destroyers to go round. Last spring we had virtually got the submarine menace under, but the collapse of France altered all that. The Italians would never have dared to come in if France hadn't cracked, and however much we may despise the cowardice of the Italian Navy it cannot possibly be ignored as long as it has warships which are capable of putting to sea and bringing their guns to bear upon either our shipping in the Mediterreanean or the coast towns of our Allies and ourselves.'

Turning in his swivel chair he pointed to a large wall map and went on: ‘As you can see at a glance, the coasts of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Libya, the Dodecanese, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland together stretch for literally thousands of miles. They require a deal of watching to prevent Italian units skulking from port to port and massing somewhere so that they might suddenly emerge and take small portions of our Mediterranean Fleet by surprise. But that's not the end of the story. As Italy came in, throwing this huge additional task upon our shoulders, France went out. A number of her lighter ships came over to Britain with General de Gaulle, but the great bulk of the French Fleet was lost to us. In consequence, the Navy has ever since been faced with the positively Herculean labour of maintaining the freedom of the seas against two still considerable enemy Navies and the enemies' powerful long-range bombers, entirely on its own.'

De Richleau lit one of his long, fat Turkish cigarettes. ‘Yes. I've never had any illusions as to what the collapse of France really meant for Britain. I was born a Frenchman myself, but I should be the very first to urge that when the
war is over men of Bordeaux and Vichy should be dealt with without mercy. It's not only the crook politicians like Laval who are responsible; without adequate support they could not have done what they have done. I should say that if one includes high officers of the Navy, Army and Air Force, politicians and bureaucrats, there are at least two thousand Frenchmen who should be shot for the part they have played in disgracing the fair name of France and jeopardising the freedom of the world.'

‘You're right there, and I only hope that our leaders will not show any stupid sentimental weakness once we're in a position to call these fellows to account. But the devil of it is that, although I would never admit it outside these four walls, our Victory still remains horribly uncertain. I tell you, Duke, sometimes at night during the past few weeks I've wakened up in a cold sweat. The treachery of France is only now beginning to have its full effect through these terrible shipping losses which we're sustaining in the Western Atlantic. When I think of our ships going down night after night with hundreds of decent sailormen and all those cargoes, the safe arrival of which alone can give us the power to break the Nazis, I could cheerfully cut the throat of every Frenchman indiscriminately.'

The Admiral paused for a moment, then went on with quiet grimness. ‘Still, it's no good jobbing backwards; the foul deed of betrayal is history now, and it's left for people like you and me to try to counter the appalling results. I'm hanged if I can see why you should be able to do anything about it which we can't do here, and I don't get this beam wireless idea of yours at all. However, like a drowning man I'm prepared to clutch at any straw, and there's something about you which somehow gives me the wild hope that instead of a straw you may prove a solid wooden spar.' He stood up and held out his hand. ‘For
God's
sake do your damn'dest.'

‘I will,' said the Duke, and he added a phrase of which he alone knew the true significance. ‘I'll get to the bottom of this even if I have to go to Hell to do it.'

As de Richleau sped back to Worcestershire that afternoon it caused him considerable amusement to speculate on what the Admiral's reactions would have been had he remarked on parting: ‘I am not experimenting with beam wireless at all, but with something very different; the sort of thing which enables me to tell you, without ever having seen you undressed in the flesh, that you have a large red mole on the left side of your behind.'

But he knew that any such mischievous impulse would have been exceedingly ill-timed and that it was very much better that with the exception of Sir Pellinore the authorities should continue to believe him to be no more than an amateur in counter-espionage who had been called on the off-chance that he might produce an original idea which would furnish a key to the problem that was driving them all nearly insane with worry.

When he reached Cardinals Folly he asked Marie Lou to provide him with a light, early dinner so that he would be able to settle down in the pentacle for the night by nine o'clock. He had long since acquired the power to sleep at will and it was his intention to make an early start that night so that he could witness the departure of the convoy. By quarter-past nine, with Rex beside him as guardian for the first watch, he dropped off into an easy sleep and a few seconds later he was above Liverpool.

He did not know the whereabouts of Admiralty Headquarters there, but the impulse to reach it carried him to a big building down near the docks.

Soundless and invisible, he entered the building and made a tour of the first-floor rooms. It was there that he expected to find the office of the Admiral commanding the station and he was reasonably confident that it was in the Admiral's office that the sealed orders would be handed over to the O.C. convoy escort. For some moments he searched fruitlessly. It then occurred to him that in view of the air-raids which Liverpool was sustaining it was probable that the Admiral's quarters had been transferred to the basement, where there would be considerably less risk of any important papers, to which he and his immediate staff alone had access, being destroyed by fire or explosion.

Dropping down, he found that the whole basement had been strengthened with girders and was air-conditioned. The upper rooms—which were now evidently used only for routine work—were three-parts empty, but in spite of the lateness of the hour the basement was a hive of activity. Steel and gas-proof doors shut each compartment off from the other, and with the naval officers hurrying to and from the place had a definite similarity to a scene below-decks on a warship.

After visiting a number of the cell-like offices he found the Admiral's room and, to his satisfaction, that both the Admiral and Captain Fennimere were in it. The Admiral was a shrewd-looking man with thin, dark hair brushed straight back, and de Richleau noticed that the handkerchief with which he was blowing his nose had, instead of a monogram, a small black crab embroidered in one corner. Fennimere was sitting opposite him clasping his steel despatch-case on his knees though his life depended upon his not putting it down even for one moment. Two other senior officers were present, one of whom wore the ribbon of the V.C., and from the conversation that followed it transpired that he was O.C. anti-submarine devices for the Western Approaches.

Then a short, grizzle-haired Captain joined them and it soon became clear that he was the officer commanding the escort. One of the staff-officers gave him a sealed packet containing his own orders—which he was not to open until both convoy and escort were clear of the Mersey—and Fennimore handed over the steel despatch-box which would be passed to the O.C. convoy, according to the
Duke's reckoning, three nights hence when the escort was about to turn for home. The Admiral said a few words about some new special precautions which had just been instituted, and wished the grizzle-haired man luck; upon which he saluted and took his departure.

De Richleau followed him upstairs to the hall, where he was met by a lieutenant of Marines and two privates with fixed bayonets, who had evidently been detailed to act as his escort. All four of them got into a car and drove slowly through the black-out, down to the dockside. There they transferred to a naval pinnace and were taken out to the flotilla leader. The Captain went straight up to his bridge and locked the despatch box in a safe. Half an hour after he had come on board the big destroyer put to sea.

For the best part of an hour de Richleau moved over the dark waters, visiting first one ship of the convoy and then another, until he had had a look at the captains of all eighteen ships included in it. About the two other destroyers that formed the remainder of the escort he did not bother, as he felt satisfied that none of their personnel could be responsible for any leakage; it must lie somewhere between the captain of the escort and the officer commanding the convoy. Therefore, when he had completed his tour, which was through by half-past twelve, he returned to Cardinals Folly, woke himself up, and after a short chat with Simon, who was on duty, they both went upstairs to spend the remainder of the night in their comfortable beds.

On the following night de Richleau went to sleep within the pentacle at his usual hour and at once proceeded in search of the convoy. He found it emerging from the North Channel and no great distance from Malin Head. A choppy sea was running and the cargo-steamers wallowed through it while the destroyers slowly circled round their charge. Having counted the ships de Richleau found that so far none of them was missing; so he went aboard the flotilla leader and entered the Captain's bridge cabin. The grizzle-haired sailor was lying dozing on his bunk, but fully dressed even to his sea-boots so that in the event of an alarm he could jump up, run out on to the bridge and take immediate control.

After glancing at him de Richleau moved towards the safe and—just as he could pass through walls or floors in
his astral state—the steel safe presented no barrier to his superhuman sight. He saw at once that the despatch-box was lying there, on the second shelf, in the exact position which the Captain had left it the night before and that the document inside had not been tampered with. Satisfied on this point, there was nothing else that he could do, so he returned home, woke himself up and went upstairs to bed.

On the second night of the convoy's voyage he followed exactly the same procedure, and with the same results. The despatch-box had not been opened or even moved. He had not thought it likely that it would be, but the journey took him little time and he considered it well worth while to make absolutely certain of his facts at each stage of the investigation.

According to his estimate, based on the speed of nine knots, at which average the convoy was travelling, he anticipated that it would reach the spot where its escort was to leave it at about five o'clock in the morning on the third night out, but it might do so earlier if conditions proved unexpectedly favourable or be several hours late if it met with bad weather. He assumed that at whatever time it reached the spot the sealed orders would be handed over and opened and it now seemed clear that it was from that moment that treachery was to be expected.

As it was unthinkable that the captains commanding convoys were all traitors the probability was that in each convoy leader the Germans planted somebody who was able to get access to the route instructions once they had been opened. So far there had been no indication of any kind that the Nazis were using the occult as a means of communication, and the Duke felt that it was quite on the cards that it might, after all, transpire that Nazi agents were smuggling aboard some new type of small but powerful wireless transmitter by which they could give the convoy's position once they had discovered it.