Storm Warning

‘You may proceed.’ Berger spelled out. ‘Happy voyage and good luck.’ He turned to Sturm, his face calm. ‘My maternal grandmother was English, did I ever tell you that?’

‘No, sir.’

Berger tossed his cigar over the side. ‘She’s all yours, Mr Sturm. Let’s get under way again as soon as may be.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

Sturm turned, raising his voice to call to the men below, and Berger descended to the deck. He stood in the entrance to the companionway, aware of the stench, of Sister Angela’s pale face peering up at him.

‘Did it work?’ she called softly.

‘Remind me, when I have the time, to tell you what a very remarkable woman you are, Sister.’

‘At the appropriate moment, I shall, Captain. You may be certain of that,’ she said serenely.

Berger turned away. The Guardian was already departing towards the south-west. He watched her go, and behind him Helmut Richter emerged from the forrard hatch and came aft. His body was streaked with filth, but he was smiling.

‘Can the lads come on deck and wash off under the pump? They smell pretty high after those bilges.’

‘So I observe.’ Berger wrinkled his nose. ‘Give it another twenty minutes until our British friends are really on their way, Helmut, then turn them loose.’

He went into his cabin and Richter stripped his shirt from his body, worked the deck pump with one hand and turned the hose on himself. As he did so, Sister Lotte came out on deck clutching a full pail of slops in both hands. She got as far as the starboard rail and was about to empty it when Richter reached her.

‘Never into the wind,’ he said. ‘That way you get the contents back in your face.’ He peered down in disgust. ‘And that, you can definitely do without.’

He carried the pail to the port rail, emptied it over the side, then flushed it out under the pump. She stood watching him calmly.

She was small and very slightly built, a lawyer’s daughter from Munich who looked younger than her twenty-three years. Unlike the other nuns, she was still a novice and had been transferred to Brazil, by way of Portugal, the previous year, only because she was a trained nurse and there was a shortage of people with her qualifications.

She picked up his shirt. ‘I’ll wash this for you.’

‘No need.’

‘And the seam is splitting on one shoulder, I’ll mend it.’ When she looked up, he saw that her eyes were a startling cornflower blue. ‘It must have been horrible down there.’

‘For you also.’

He handed her the pail, she took it and for a brief moment, they held it together. Sister Angela said quietly, ‘Lotte, I need you.’

She was standing in the entrance to the companionway, her face calm as always, but there was a new wariness in her eyes when she looked at Richter. The girl smiled briefly and joined her and they went below. Richter started to pump water over his head vigorously.

Berger sat behind the desk, surveying the wreckage of his cabin – not that it mattered. It could soon be put straight again. He was filled with a tremendous sense of elation and opened his personal journal. He picked up his pen, thought for a moment, then wrote: I am now more than ever convinced that we shall reach Kiel in safety …

4 (#ud1b3f7fd-41dc-57f3-ad87-d40e42440297)

Barquentine Deutschland, 14 September 1944.Lat. 28°.16N., long. 30°.50W. Frau Prager died at three bells of the mid-watch. We delivered her body to the sea shortly after dawn, Sister Angela taking the service. Ship’s company much affected by this calamitous event. A light breeze sprang up during the afternoon watch, increasing to fresh in squalls. I estimate that we are 1170 miles from Cobh in Ireland this day.

Night was falling fast as Jago and Petty Officer Jansen went up the hill to St Mungo’s. They found the burial party in the cemetery at the back of the church. There were twenty or so islanders there, men and women, Jean Sinclair and Reeve standing together, the admiral in full uniform. Murdoch Macleod in his best blue serge suit, stood at the head of the open grave, a prayer book in his hands.

The two Americans paused some little distance away and removed their caps. It was very quiet except for the incessant calling of the birds, and Jago looked down across Mary’s Town to the horseshoe of the harbour where the MGB was tied up at the jetty.

The sun was setting in a sky the colour of brass, splashed with scarlet, thin mackerel clouds high above. Beyond Barra Head, the islands marched north to Barra, Mingulay, Pabbay, Sandray, rearing out of a perfectly calm sea, black against flame.

Reeve glanced over his shoulder, murmured something to Jean Sinclair, then moved towards them through the gravestones. ‘Thanks for coming so promptly, Lieutenant.’

‘No trouble, sir. We were on our way to Mallaig from Stornoway when they relayed your message.’ Jago nodded towards the grave into which half-a-dozen fishermen were lowering the coffin. ‘Another one from U-743?’

Reeve nodded. ‘That makes eight in the past three days.’ He hesitated. ‘When you were last here you said you were going to London on leave this week.’

‘That’s right, Admiral. If I can get to Mallaig on time I intend to catch the night train for Glasgow. Is there something I can do for you, sir?’

‘There certainly is.’ Reeve took a couple of envelopes from his pocket. ‘This first one is for my niece. Her apartment’s in Westminster, not far from the Houses of Parliament.’

‘And the other, sir?’

Reeve handed it over. ‘If you would see that gets to SHAEF Headquarters personally. It would save time.’

Jago looked at the address on the envelope and swallowed hard. ‘My God!’

Reeve smiled. ‘See that it’s handed to one of his aides personally. No one else.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’d better move out, then. I’ll expect to hear from you as soon as you get back. As I told you, I have a radio at the cottage, one of the few courtesies the Navy still extends me. They’ll brief you at Mallaig on the times during the day I sit at the damned thing hoping someone will take notice.’

Jago saluted, nodded to Jansen and then moved away. As the admiral rejoined the funeral party, Murdoch Macleod started to read aloud in a firm, clear voice: ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower …’

Suddenly it was very dark, with only the burned-out fire of day on the horizon as they went out through the lych-gate.

Jansen said, ‘Who’s the letter for, Lieutenant?’

‘General Eisenhower,’ Jago said simply.

In Brest, they were shooting again across the river as Paul Gericke turned the corner, the rattle of small-arms fire drifting across the water. Somewhere on the far horizon rockets arched through the night and in spite of the heavy rain, considerable portions of the city appeared to be on fire. Most of the warehouses which had once lined the street had been demolished by bombing, the pavement was littered with rubble and broken glass, but the small hotel on the corner, which served as naval headquarters, still seemed to be intact. Gericke ran up the steps quickly, showed his pass to the sentry on the door and went inside.

He was a small man, no more than five feet five or six, with fair hair and a pale face that seemed untouched by wind and weather. His eyes were very dark, with no light in them at all, contrasting strangely with the good-humoured, rather lazy smile that seemed permanently to touch his mouth.

His white-topped naval cap had seen much service and he was hardly a prepossessing figure in his old leather jerkin, leather trousers and sea boots. But the young lieutenant sitting at his desk in the foyer saw only the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves at the throat and was on his feet in an instant.

‘I was asked to report to the commodore of submarines as soon as I arrived,’ Gericke told him. ‘Korvettenkapitän Gericke. U-235.’

‘He’s expecting you, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If you’d follow me.’

They went up the curving staircase. A petty officer, a pistol at his belt, stood guard outside one of the hotel bedrooms. The handwritten notice on the door said Kapitän zurSee Otto Friemel, Führer der Unterseeboote West.

The lieutenant knocked and went in. ‘Lieutenant-Commander Gericke, sir.’

The room was in half darkness, the only light the reading lamp on Friemel’s desk. He was in shirt-sleeves, working his way through a pile of correspondence, steel-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and an ivory cigarette-holder jutting from the left corner of his mouth.