Cold Harbour

René returned and got behind the wheel. ‘We’d better get moving, Mamselle. It’ll take us an hour to get there.’

She pulled down the flap under the seat. ‘In you go like a good boy.’

Craig did as he was told and peered out at her. ‘I’m the one who’s going to have the last laugh. Dinner at the Savoy tomorrow night. The Orpheans playing, Carroll Gibbons singing, dancing, girls.’

She slammed the flap shut, climbed in and René drove away.

Leon was a fishing village so small that it didn’t even have a pier, most of the boats being drawn up on the beach. There was the sound of accordion music from a small bar, the only sign of life, and they drove on, following a rough track past a disused lighthouse to a tiny bay. A heavy mist rolled in from the sea and somewhere in the distance a foghorn sounded forlornly. René led the way down to the beach, a flashlight in his hand.

Craig said to Anne-Marie, ‘You don’t want to go down there. You’ll only spoil your shoes. Stay with the car.’

She took off her shoes and turned, tossing them into the back of the Rolls. ‘Quite right, darling. However, thanks to my Nazi friends, I do have an inexhaustible supply of silk stockings. I can afford to ruin one pair for the sake of friendship.’

She took his arm and they went after René. ‘Friendship?’ Craig said. ‘As I recall, in Paris in the old days it was rather more than that?’

‘Ancient history, darling. Best forgotten.’

She held his arm tight and Osbourne caught his breath sharply, aware that his wound was really hurting now. Anne-Marie turned her head and looked at him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Damned arm hurting a bit, that’s all.’

There was a murmur of voices as they approached and found René and another man standing beside a small dinghy, an outboard motor tilted over on its stern.

‘This is Bleriot,’ René said.

‘Mamselle.’ Bleriot touched his cap, acknowledging Anne-Marie.

‘This is the boat, I presume?’ Craig demanded. ‘And what exactly am I supposed to do with it?’

‘Around the point and you will see the Grosnez light, Monsieur.’

‘In this fog?’

‘It’s very low lying.’ Bleriot shrugged. ‘I’ve put a signalling lamp in and there’s this.’ He took a luminous signal ball from his pocket. ‘SOE supply these. They work very well in the water.’

‘Which is where I’m likely to end up from the look of the weather,’ Craig said as waves lapped in hungrily across the beach.

Bleriot took a lifejacket from the boat and helped him into it. ‘You have no choice, Monsieur, you must go. Grand Pierre says they are turning the whole of Brittany upside down in their search for you.’

Craig allowed him to fasten the straps of the lifejacket. ‘Have they taken hostages yet?’

‘Of course. Ten from St Maurice, including the Mayor and Father Paul. Ten more from farms in the surrounding area.’

‘My God!’ Craig said softly.

Anne-Marie lit a Gitane and passed it to him. ‘The name of the game, lover, you and I both know that. Not your affair.’

‘I wish I could believe you,’ he told her as René and Bleriot ran the dinghy down into the water. Bleriot got in and started the outboard. He got out again.

Anne-Marie kissed Craig briskly. ‘Off you go like a good boy and give my love to Carroll Gibbons.’

Craig got into the dinghy and reached for the rudder. He turned to Bleriot who held the boat on the opposite side from René. ‘Pick up by MTB, you say?’

‘Or gunboat. British Navy or Free French, one or the other. They’ll be there, Monsieur. They’ve never let us down yet.’

‘So long, René, take care of her,’ Craig called as they pushed him out through the waves and the tiny outboard motor carried him on.

Rounding the point and facing the open sea, he was soon in trouble. The waves lifted in white caps, the wind freshening, and water slopped over the sides so that he was already ankle-deep. Bleriot was right. He could see the Grosnez light occasionally through gaps in the fog blown by the wind and he was steering towards it when suddenly the outboard motor died on him. He worked at it frantically, pulling the starting cord, but the dinghy drifted helplessly, pulled in by the current.

A heavy wave, long and smooth and much larger than the others swept in, lifting the dinghy high in the air, where it paused in a kind of slow-motion, water pouring in.

It went down like a stone and Craig Osbourne drifted helplessly in the water, buoyed up by his lifejacket.

It was intensely cold, biting into his arms and legs like acid so that even the pain of his wound faded for the time being. Another large wave came over and he drifted down the other side into calmer water.

‘Not good, my boy,’ he told himself. ‘Not good at all,’ and then the wind tore another hole in the curtain of the fog and he saw the light of Grosnez, he heard a muted throbbing of engines, saw a dark shape out there.

He raised his voice and called frantically. ‘Over here!’ and then he remembered the luminous signal ball that Bleriot had given him, got it out of his pocket, fumbling with frozen fingers, and held it up in the palm of his right hand.

The curtain of fog dropped again, the Grosnez light disappeared and the throb of the engines seemed to be swallowed by the night.

‘Here, damn you!’ Osbourne cried and then the torpedo boat drifted out of the fog like a ghost ship and bore down on him.

He had never felt such relief in his life as a searchlight was switched on and picked him out in the water. He started to flail towards it, forgetting his arm for the moment and stopped suddenly. There was something about the craft, something wrong. The paintwork for example. Dirty white merging into sea green, a suggestion of striping for camouflage and then the flag on the jackstaff flared out with a sharp crack in a gust of wind and he saw the swastika plainly, the cross of the upper left-hand corner, the scarlet and black of the Kriegsmarine. No MTB this but a German E-boat and as it slid alongside, he saw painted on the prow beside its number the legend Lili Marlene.

The E-boat seemed to glide to a halt, the engines only a murmur now. He floated there, sick at heart, looking up at the two Kriegsmarine ratings in side-caps and peajackets who looked down at him. And then one of them threw a rope ladder over the rail.

‘All right, my old son,’ he said in ripest Cockney. ‘Let’s be having you.’

They had to help him over the rail and he crouched, vomiting a little on the deck. He looked up warily as the German sailor with the Cockney accent said cheerfully, ‘Major Osbourne, is it?’

‘That’s right.’

The German leaned down. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood from the left arm. Better take a look at that for you, sir. I’m the sick berth attendant.’

Osbourne said, ‘What goes on here?’

‘Not for me to say, sir. That’s the skipper’s department. Fregattenkapitän Berger, sir. You’ll find him on the bridge.’

Craig Osbourne got to his feet wearily, fumbling at the straps of his lifejacket, taking it off, stumbling to the small ladder and went up. Then he went into the wheelhouse. There was a rating at the wheel, an Obersteuermann from his rank badges, Chief Helmsman. The man in the swivel chair at the small chart table wore a crumpled Kriegsmarine cap. It had a white top to it, usually an affectation of U-boat commanders, but common enough amongst E-boat captains who saw themselves as the elite of the Kriegsmarine. He wore an old white polo neck sweater under a reefer coat and turned to look at Osbourne, his face calm and expressionless.

‘Major Osbourne,’ he said in good American. ‘Glad to have you aboard. Excuse me for a moment. We need to get out of here.’

He turned to the coxswain and said in German, ‘All right, Langsdorff. Leave silencers on until we’re five miles out. Course two-one-oh. Speed, twenty-five knots until I say different.’

‘Course two-one-oh, speed twenty-five knots, Herr Kapitän,’ the coxswain replied and took the E-boat away with a surge of power.

‘Hare,’ Craig Osbourne said. ‘Professor Martin Hare.’