Battlecruiser (1997) (7 page)

He paused beside the table, and Sherwood could smell his after-shave lotion, strong and powerful, like the man.

‘In Iceland we shall be joined by
Seeker
, a new escort carrier.’ He smiled, and watched his cigar smoke being drawn into the overhead fan. ‘She’s no giant, but it’s a start. We’ll be a small, self-dependent force. There’ll be a lot more before long.’ His smile broadened into a grin. ‘But there’s only one
Reliant
!’

The grin vanished, as though its effect had been calculated. ‘I shall want you with me when we visit the
admiral-commanding in Iceland. Our destroyers can refuel, and I’ll want a full report on why
Montagu
lost a boat. Her commanding officer has a very inflated opinion of himself . . . that’ll stop him farting in church.’

There was a sound, and he turned and exclaimed, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! I told them I wasn’t to be disturbed!’

The door opened slightly. It was Rhodes again. ‘Signal from Admiralty, sir.
Minden
is reported back in harbour. She was sighted heading for the Lofoten Islands.’

Stagg asked sharply, ‘Where do
you
think she is, Pilot?’

Rhodes answered without hesitation. ‘Bodø, sir. A big fjord on the Norwegian mainland. The Jerries built a military airfield there.’ He saw the rear-admiral raise his eyebrows. ‘It was in A.I.s, sir.’

Sherbrooke said, ‘What else?’

Rhodes looked at him directly. ‘
Minden
made contact with a Russian destroyer and some minesweepers.’ He turned to the rear-admiral, but Sherbrooke knew he was still speaking to him. ‘She sank all of them. No survivors.’

Sherbrooke repressed the memories. There was nothing they could have done. It was far more important to discover why
Minden
had come out and had headed for the one anchorage where there was strong air cover, and where she would be better placed for another sortie further south, or even an attempt to enter the Baltic and return to Germany.

But the cold reason of strategy eluded him. All he could see was the dark, crouching shape of the cruiser, her guns firing and reloading with the precision of a machine, a single weapon.

Stagg said, ‘Keep us informed, Pilot.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I shall stroll aft . . . for some
lunch.
’

Then he replaced his cigar case in one pocket, his face deep in thought.

‘We shall be working-up with
Seeker
for a few days until the two big convoys are through. Who knows, we might get a crack at your bloody
Minden
, eh? But I doubt it. Now, if it was
Scharnhorst
, that would really be a feather in the proverbial cap.’

Sherbrooke felt the tension draining away. Perhaps Stagg was right after all. Hold personal feelings at a distance. Eyes always on the main chance . . . He almost smiled. Stagg would be a vice-admiral at this rate before anybody realized what had happened!

Stagg remarked in an almost matter-of-fact tone, ‘We’ve been so damn busy I didn’t have a chance to speak to you about the funeral. Many there?’

Sherbrooke shook his head, seeing again the drab clothing, the vice-admiral and his unsmiling Wren driver.

‘Just a few relations – some of our lot, too.’

Stagg regarded him thoughtfully. ‘What about Jane . . . ah, Mrs Cavendish? Was she taking it well?’ He laughed, without humour. ‘Of course – I forgot. You were quite keen on her once yourself, weren’t you?’ He picked up his cap, regarding the two rows of bright gold leaves. ‘Well, now’s your chance, Guy.’

When he had gone, still smiling, Sherbrooke waited for a few moments, signing Rhodes’s log book, giving himself time.

He thought of her face when they had spoken together, the poise and the strength of the woman. He thought, too, of the smart Armstrong-Siddeley car in which Captain Charles Cavendish had died alone. Like the shattered photograph, it had been no accident, and Stagg knew as much.

He heard feet outside the door, probably Rhodes, waiting to announce the next alteration of course. The ship needed him, but not as much as he needed her.

He strode out of the chart room, and saw the relief on Rhodes’s bearded face. After all, ships were bombed, torpedoed and sunk by shellfire every day of the week. It was their world: survival was the only prize.

He climbed into his chair, realizing that he had not eaten since the previous evening. ‘Dodger’ Long would not be happy about that.

He leaned forward to peer at the wide, flared bows, the sea lifting and falling away on either side as the stem sliced through it, the deck glistening with spray.

‘Time to alter course, Pilot?’

Rhodes gave a broad grin. ‘Course to steer is zero-one-zero, sir.’ He watched the captain’s hand touch the arm of his chair: something personal, private. Like his eyes, when the Chief Tel had brought up the signal about the German cruiser. It was something Rhodes knew he might never share, or truly understand.

‘Bring her round. Make a signal to the escorts to alter course in succession.’ He thought of Stagg’s obvious pleasure at the missing boat. ‘And signal
Montagu
’s C.O. to report on board when we reach harbour.’

Rhodes was already busy, and on either side of the bridge the signal lamps clattered in unison, each destroyer acknowledging instantly, the lights like bright chips of diamond.

Sherbrooke recalled the words of the elderly operations officer.
They would. In that ship.

He touched the chair again. So be it.

The smart launch with the rear-admiral’s flag painted on either bow dashed across the water, the roar of her engines echoing from the sides of the fjord. Fragments of ice tinkled and broke from the stem like glass, and when Sherbrooke stood up in the cockpit he felt the breeze
cutting his face, and wondered how people managed to live normal lives in Iceland.

He heard Stagg’s angry voice from the small cabin. His flag lieutenant, Howe, was getting the rough edge of the admiral’s tongue again. Stagg could not be an easy man to serve.

Everything had gone wrong, from the moment
Reliant
had dropped anchor. Their consort-to-be, the escort carrier
Seeker
, was not ready for sea. While making her final approach, she had been in collision with a local fishing trawler; it was not much, but enough to cause some damage to
Seeker
’s lower hull. Repairs had already begun at Reykjavik, but how long they would take was anybody’s guess. Stagg had been furious, especially when the admiral in charge had told him that the Icelandic authorities were considering taking action against the Royal Navy for severely damaging one of their fishing fleet.

Stagg had been unable to hide his fury, even from the officers of the local headquarters.

‘Bloody Icelanders, they hate our guts anyway! Would have preferred the Germans to get here before us! By God, I’ll lay odds that Admiral Donitz would have taught them a sharp lesson!’

They had gone aboard
Seeker
and met her captain. It had been a tense visit.

Seeker
, a
Smiter
Class escort carrier, was neither beautiful nor as grand as the big fleet carriers. A product of the Anglo-American lease-lend agreement, and converted from merchant-ship hulls, with wooden flight decks, they were unstable in any kind of bad weather, and would not last five minutes in the embattled seas of the Mediterranean, or with the Americans in the Pacific. But
Seeker
and her growing number of consorts, graceless and uncomfortable though they might be, were achieving
something which, eighteen months ago, people would have believed impossible. In the vital Battle of the Atlantic, with the mounting toll of losses of ships and their desperately needed cargoes, there had always been a vast spread of ocean where air cover could not reach. Whether the convoys originated in the U.S.A. and Canada, or from Britain and the base here in Iceland, there had always been that gap,
the killing ground
, as the old Atlantic hands called it. U-Boats had been able to surface with impunity, and use their superior speed to pursue convoys and charge their batteries at the same time. Then, at night, they would close with the slow-moving lines of merchantmen and attack. Losses rose higher and higher, outpacing the shipyards’ ability to build vessels to replace those sunk.

The little escort carrier had changed that. U-Boat crews were suddenly confronted with fast fighters and bombers hundreds of miles from any kind of base, and the lesson had been learned. Now the enemy was forced to spend more and more time submerged, and at reduced speed, their ability to track and torpedo the plodding merchantmen seriously impaired. The monthly list of kills had, at last, diminished, in the Allies’ favour.

Sherbrooke wiped his face with his gloved hand and saw
Reliant
lying directly ahead. Against the bleak side of the fjord, she looked completely white, and seemed to shimmer in the hard glare, her powerful hull, high bridges and funnels covered with a sheen of ice, and so still that she could have been an extension of the land itself, with only the flags and a thin tendril of smoke from one funnel to reveal her latent strength.

Stagg climbed up beside him. ‘A beauty, eh?’

Sherbrooke glanced at him. Calm, or resigned, he wondered.

Stagg muttered, ‘Might be weeks before we get
Seeker
in company, Guy. Bloody poor show!’

The bowman was in position, boathook at the ready. Sherbrooke saw the side-party at the top of the accommodation ladder, frozen stiff, probably, after A.C.H.Q. had sent a signal to announce their return aboard.

‘Waste of a day!’ Stagg’s eyes gleamed. ‘I’ll see
Montagu
’s captain when we get aboard. Just in the bloody mood for him!’

The calls trilled, and Sherbrooke noticed that Stagg made a point of climbing aboard without his greatcoat. The flag lieutenant would carry it himself.

Commander Frazier was ready to meet them.

Stagg said, ‘I’ll let you tell him the great news, Guy. I’m going aft.’ His glance shifted to a small group of seamen who were attempting to splice some eyes in a tangle of wire from the boatswain’s store. They were all very young ordinary seamen, some of the most recent replacements, and still completely lost in the new surroundings of this, their first ship.

Stagg strode over to them and nodded abruptly to a leading hand who was in charge.

To one of the new recruits he said curtly, ‘Name, boy?’

The youth stared at the broad lower stripe on Stagg’s sleeve, and seemed almost tongue-tied. ‘Baker, s-sir!’

‘
From?
’

‘Leeds, sir.’

Stagg smiled. ‘Ah, well.’ Then he took the wire from the young seaman’s nerveless hand and a marlin spike from another. ‘Like this, see? Take charge of it! Show who’s boss, right?’

It was a perfect piece of wire splicing. He thrust his hand into his pocket.

‘Like riding a bicycle, boy – you never forget!’

Sherbrooke had seen the blood on his fingers, and
wondered why he had bothered. He was respected, admired, even feared; he did not have to impress, or prove anything to any man.

Stagg strode aft, his cap at a jaunty angle.

Like Beatty
, he thought. Perhaps that was it.

Frazier followed him into his cabin, where Petty Officer Long was already waiting expectantly.

‘Drink, John?’ His eyes fell on the file Frazier was carrying under his arm. ‘What’s that?’

‘Operational reports. They came out from A.C.H.Q. while you were in
Seeker.
’ He paused. ‘Pity about her spot of bother, sir.’

Sherbrooke, looking through the file, did not answer. Then he said, ‘The admiral will want to see this.’

‘I thought it could wait, sir. There’s nothing that concerns us.’ Frazier sounded defensive.

Sherbrooke looked over at Long. ‘Later – but thanks.’ To Frazier he said, ‘I’ll take it to him.’

He found Stagg having a drink, his feet propped on a chair.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Can’t it wait, Guy?’ He was smiling, but there was no warmth in his eyes.

‘Operational folio, sir.’ He looked at him evenly. ‘And no, I don’t think it can.’

‘Oh, very well. Get on with it.’

Sherbrooke turned over a page. ‘Admiralty reported that one of our submarines torpedoed a German cruiser in the Skaggerak, believed to be the
Flensburg.
’

‘Well, bully for our gallant submariners! I told you the Jerries were more than likely going to try to move ships to the Baltic. Their troops will need all the support they can get once the weather improves.’

Sherbrooke regarded him gravely. ‘The
Flensburg
, if it was her, was heading west, sir.’

‘Let me see that.’ Stagg merely sounded annoyed that his drink had been spoiled.

Sherbrooke watched his eyes moving quickly across the folio, then more slowly, until he could almost feel the force of Stagg’s concentration.

‘The same time as
Minden
made her move.’ He shook his head. ‘No, they’d never risk an attack on another Murmansk convoy with the ice edge so low. Later on, April maybe . . . when our ships get scattered up to Jan Mayen or Bear Island.’ The hazel eyes lifted from the papers. ‘You’ve made up your mind, I take it.’

‘I think the cruiser intended to join
Minden
, sir, maybe with others, for all we know. Air reconnaissance is never reliable at this time of year.’ He saw the lingering doubt, resentment even. ‘I think they’re coming this way, sir. After the big convoy, the one nobody talks about.’

Stagg lurched to his feet. ‘They wouldn’t dare! With us here, and a cruiser squadron under Admiral Simms? Never.’

Sherbrooke waited. Seeing it. Wondering why Frazier had not thought it important enough to make immediate contact.

‘The cruisers are probably five or six hundred miles to the northeast of here. As for us . . .’ He almost shrugged. ‘We wouldn’t have been here if
Seeker
had kept out of trouble.’

Stagg nodded slowly. ‘You’re bloody right, you know. They’d not hesitate to throw a couple of cruisers to the wolves if they could get amongst that convoy.’ He stared at him, his eyes hard. ‘How many troops will it be carrying?’