It usually worked and saved hours of fruitless discussion. In a ship of this size there were plenty of original ideas lying dormant amongst her three hundred and fifty officers and seamen.
Rietz walked to the bridge screen to see if the launch was alongside. He hated hanging about. It was far too risky. He had been successful because of his ingenuity and his persistence, and, although he would dismiss it, his courage most of all. But he never took risks.
Looking down from his high perch there was little to show the raider’s power. Her eight big five-point-nine guns were either concealed behind steel shutters cut in her hull or beneath false deck-houses, as were her two new Arado seaplanes and their catapult. Torpedo tubes, mines and six other cannon completed her armament, and her maximum speed of eighteen knots made her hard to catch.
Storch, his first lieutenant, strode into the bridge and saluted smartly.
‘The prisoner is aboard, sir!’
Rietz was staring at the motionless ship. He never got used to it. A fight he understood, pitting his wits against the enemy he sometimes enjoyed.
He said, ‘Bring him.’
Rietz was forty years old but appeared younger. He was slightly built with dark, glossy hair and brown eyes. He looked more French than German, a composed, thoughtful man with little to show of the hunter, the corsair.
The Swedish captain stepped into the wheelhouse and opened his mouth to protest.
Rietz held up one hand. ‘
Please, Kapitän
. We are wasting time. My boarding party signalled to me what you are carrying, where from and where bound. Coal from the north of England, on passage for Port Said, yes?’
Even as he said it Rietz could sense the man’s despair. All those hundreds of miles. In or out of convoy, hazardous enough at the best of times. Then taking the long route around the Cape rather than risk being stopped at Gibraltar or sunk in convoy through the Mediterranean. So near and yet so far. It was over. The
Patricia
’s cargo of coal would have been used by the Tommies.
The Swedish captain said huskily, ‘I am a neutral. Sink her and I lose my livelihood.’
Rietz shrugged and pointed down at his own ship. ‘This is my livelihood,
Kapitän
.’
A lookout called, ‘The rest of the prisoners are being brought across, sir!’
Rietz looked at Storch. ‘Make them comfortable. We will release them later. But now. . . .’ He turned to the Swedish officer. ‘We cannot risk your keeping silent.’
Storch said, ‘Torpedo, sir?’
Rietz smiled gently. ‘I have to tell you too often, Rudi. Waste nothing. Signal the boarding party to set charges. The coal will do the rest.’
A petty officer touched the Swede’s arm, impatient to get it over with, but Rietz shook his head.
‘Stay if you wish,
Kapitän
.’ To Storch he murmured, ‘No word from
Bremse.
The British cruiser must have caught her.’
Storch nodded. He was just twenty-six, and was still very conscious of his scarred face and the black glove which covered a disfigured left hand. He had been the navigating officer of a destroyer in the Baltic which had been attacked by Russian dive-bombers. Badly injured and scarred though he was, he was still a first class navigator and had been sent as such to the
Salamander
. He had felt it badly, like some sort of stigma, a temporary appointment for an expendable officer and ship.
Rietz had changed all that, and when the senior lieutenant had been sent back to Germany in command of a captured whaling ship, Storch had been promoted to his position. He no longer felt anything but pride in the ship and his work, and he would have died willingly for his commander.
Half an hour later, as froth mounted once more from the raider’s screws, the abandoned
Patricia
lifted slightly, as if she was shuddering. The demolition charges barely made more than an echo against the raider’s bilges, but as she gathered way, with the sunset just able to paint her poop and frothing wake in bronze, the victim leaned over and began to settle down. When the coal shifted to crash through the protective barriers and machinery broke loose in the hull, her end came more quickly.
The Swedish captain watched in silence. If he had not depended on the neutrality of his flag and he had urged his radio officer to wireless their position, the end would have been the same. He turned wretchedly and saw the German captain lighting a cigar. But at least he would have had the satisfaction of helping to finish the raider’s career, he thought.
Storch heard the door slam as the latest captive was escorted below
‘What would you have done in his place, sir?’
Rietz blew out a stream of smoke. It was one of his last. Perhaps they would have brought some from the Swedish ship.
He replied, ‘Ask me again. When it happens, eh?’ He walked to the chartroom. ‘Now we must move ourselves.’
He switched on the deckhead lights above the specially built plot and chart tables. Opposite, pinned to the bulkhead, was the front page of a Sydney newspaper.
Captain Richard Blake, vc, arrives in Aussie! Hero of the
Andromeda
a welcome visitor
!
Rietz smiled grimly. So much for security.
The German secret agent who had put the newspaper in with the last pack of despatches had marked one line in pencil.
Why is he here? What is his mission
?
Aloud Rietz said, ‘I expect
we
knew that before he did!’
He peered at Blake’s picture and added, ‘At least we shall recognize him when we meet!’ He bent over the chart and added curtly, ‘To work. We will assume the
Patricia’s
appearance tonight. Put both watches to painting and
remarking the hull.’ He took down the bulky recognition manual. ‘Swedish flag, so I hope we’ve plenty of yellow paint.’
Night closed in around the darkened ship, while far astern there was nothing left to betray that the raider or her victim had ever existed.
Captain Jack Quintin dabbed his mouth with a napkin and nodded approvingly to Moon.
To Blake he said, ‘Damn good lunch.’ He glanced around the cabin. ‘You could have given me baked beans and I’d not have complained. Just to be aboard a ship again.’ He shook his head. ‘But I’m interrupting. You were saying?’
Blake waited for Moon to remove his plate. He had barely noticed what he had been eating nor that he had been speaking with hardly a break since Quintin and his Wren had stepped aboard.
She was sitting at the opposite end of the table, her hair shining in the sunlight from an open scuttle, so that her expression was in shadow. She had said very little, and then mostly to her boss, to clarify some point or other, which she immediately noted on a pad which had lain beside her throughout the meal.
It had been more like an interrogation than a casual encounter, Blake thought. Perhaps that was how they did things. He knew little about intelligence work, other than the people in the field. The hard men, the cloak-and-dagger brigade whom he had dropped on enemy coastlines to recover weeks later, tired, ragged but grimly pleased with themselves.
Blake said, ‘That’s about it, sir. I spoke with the prisoners and the survivors from the
Bikanir
and the
Evertsen.
I’ve a team aboard who plot the findings on a special chart and vet all the W/T signals we can pick up.’ He shrugged. ‘As for the
Bremse,
well, we may never know about her. She was probably going to another rendezvous even without knowing it until she got her secret signal with the co-ordinates of the next grid position.’
The girl said suddenly, ‘If the
Bremse
had been less heavily attacked. . . .’
Blake met her gaze calmly. ‘I know. I acted on the assumption she was the raider. I was wrong.’
Quintin held up his hand. ‘Easy now, Claire. It’s not that simple. Commodore Stagg gave the instruction.’
Blake kept his eyes on the girl, wondering if she was trying to antagonize him or if she and Quintin were acting as a trained team.
He said, ‘But you are right, of course. Unfortunately, in war there’s never enough time, no margin for a perfect decision. If we had captured the German supply ship intact we might have discovered something more, codes or not.’
Quintin relaxed slightly. ‘Anyway, Stagg was probably thinking about
Devonport
’s loss.’
Blake placed his hands on his knees below the table.
Here we go
. What it’s all been building up to.
He said, ‘That’s just it. But for
Devonport
, I think I could almost accept the “official” view.’
The girl wrote something in her pad and Blake felt the same surge of unreasonable anger.
‘I know we’re in a critical phase of the war. I
know
that. They’ve been telling us long enough.’ He expected Quintin to interrupt but he was sitting very still, an unlit cigarette in his hand, as if afraid to divert Blake’s train of thought. ‘Convoys round the Cape and between the major theatres of war have always been a headache. Long-range U-boats in the Atlantic, supplied by their milch-cows, pocket-battleships and minelaying aircraft, they’ve all made their mark, and deeply. But the cheapest weapon is still the commerce raider, and at this moment, when so much depends on preparing for the invasion of Europe to coincide with a massive offence by the US forces in the Pacific against the Japs, it could be the most dangerous.’
Quintin pouted his lower lip. ‘So far I agree. Since the
Kios
sinking was reported there’s been practically no independent movement. Convoys are being marshalled at Cape Town and at the Australian end of the line. Every cargo is precious these days, especially manpower and military equipment. So until
we can find that raider, things will tend to slow down, become delayed, when we need every operation on top-line.’
Blake felt for his pipe. It was still filled and unlit from the last time.
He said, ‘According to my calculations, and
if Devenport
was sunk in the manner everyone believes, the raider has destroyed her and four other ships in a matter of weeks.’
Quintin seemed disappointed. ‘Well, I
know
that.’
Blake drew a rectangle on the tablecloth with his pipe stem. ‘Think about it, sir, just for a minute. It means that the raider has covered an area of some two and a half thousand miles west of the Cape and as far south as the forty-fifth parallel.’
He saw the girl’s pencil had stopped moving, that she was watching him intently. Quintin too was staring at the pipe stem as if he expected to see it change into something else.
Blake continued quietly, ‘It would seem that she was tearing about the ocean at full throttle, sinking ships which she just “happened” to come across.’ He looked at Quintin for several seconds. ‘And there’s another thing. Why did the German captain take such good care of the Dutch crew and that of the
Bikanir
, yet slaughter those from the
Kios
?’
He recalled the young paymaster sub-lieutenant who had interpreted for the dying Greek steward. His face as he had translated each painful whisper.
Blake added, ‘He apparently machine-gunned men in the water and left the others to die, exposure or sharks, it made no difference to him.’
Then and only then did he see the girl’s hand move. She touched her shirt beneath her breast, and when he looked at her she lowered her gaze.
He said, ‘We can’t even
guess
what happened to the survivors of the
Argyll Clansman
.’
In the sudden stillness he was conscious of the ship around them, the gentle sluice of the current beneath the open scuttle, a far-off voice on the tannoy called, ‘Out pipes. Both watches of the hands, fall in.’ It was as if the ship was ignoring them.
Then Quintin said abruptly, ‘The Germans aren’t saints. We know that. Their record is bloody enough already.’
The girl said quietly, ‘I understand, sir.’
Then she looked up, and Blake was astonished to see that her eyes were blurred, with emotion or shock, he did not know.
She continued, ‘You think there are two different men, two separate raiders.’
Quintin stared from her to Blake. ‘Now wait a minute! I’ve heard about everything now!’
Blake nodded. ‘That’s what I think. Two of them. Crossing and recrossing the area with arranged supply points whenever and wherever they are needed. It could tie down dozens of warships, hold up convoy sailings, make a mess of everything.’
Very deliberately Quintin lit his cigarette and watched the smoke until it was whipped up by the fans.
‘But surely, with all our resources, our intelligence agencies and past experience something would have leaked out?’
Blake shrugged again. ‘I don’t see why. At the start of the war the
Graf Spee
was already in the South Atlantic but nobody was ready for her. In France the Maginot Line was not long enough to keep the Germans out but nothing had been done about it. In Singapore the big guns were facing the wrong way long before the Japs invaded, but did anyone do anything about that?’
Quintin shook his head. ‘All right, enough said. Point taken.’ He stood up. ‘I’d like to use your radio.’
Blake looked for Moon’s shadow beyond the pantry. It had been there for most of the time. Like a protective scarecrow.
‘Take Captain Quintin to the W/T office, will you?’
Alone together in the spacious cabin, the girl said suddenly, ‘That was something. You really came out with it.’ She had her head on one side, watching his face, her composure apparently recovered. ‘Do you believe it?’
He smiled bitterly. ‘Will it make any difference?’
Then he said, ‘Yes, I do, as it happens. The German character has given us our one clue. A tiny lead at present, but it’s something. Two raiders, twins if you like, and that is what
I
would arrange, working an area like this one. It would make the needle and haystack problem simple by comparison.
Provided, of course, you only
believe
in one vessel.’ He broke off, suddenly tired of it, surprised he had let it burst out when he had probably jumped the gun.