A Bridge Of Magpies (28 page)

'I came to Possession looking for one thing. I found another . . . bigger . . . no, biggest.'

`Go on.'

'J'm someone
who grew up
by fits and starts-painfully. I'

ve waited a long time to establish where I stand in the world'

Where
is that?

She came close to me and touched my lips with hers. She could control that, but not the tremors that rippled all down the length of her neck and breasts and thighs when I held her tight.

'Here.'

'Darling, darling:

'I'm not firing blanks this time, my love.'

We couldn't hear the swishing of the gale past the port188 holes for the sound of
our
hearts beating, together. She said, 'All these years I've felt I've been playing a part not being an insider to myself because of it. Now you've come along and transplanted a heart into me and everything is bright and fresh and
new.
I'm scared of losing it through Kaptein Denny and
U-160.
Scared for you too, my darling.'

She held me fiercely with her hips and thighs. If all this was .a revelation of the sort of woman she really was, she was my woman.

'I'll make it work–
for
you!

'Maybe I love you too much or not enough yet. J can't go along with this crazy
U-160
business. I can't be sure in my own mind about Kaptein Denny.'

'It's too late to go back on it now.'

'That's what I'm afraid of. We're being squeezed between Kaptein Denny and
Sang A."

'Not if we get the Book of Tsu..

What if you do? Kaptein Denny won't let you keep it, you can be certain. Did you see his eyes just now?'

I
had. Once we'd salvaged
U-160,
the chase might only be starting. I hadn't planned that far.

J said, 'I have you. That makes all the difference now.' 'I want it to, my very dear love. Just look after what's most precious to me, will you?'

We held one another so long that
I
was worried Kaptein Denny would come looking for us. So we went back to the bridge.

'What's
the dell for
U-160?'
I
asked him. The contraction started to go from his pupils when he heard my acceptance. He kept his voice on a neutral level for the reply. The effort it took showed how keyed-up he'd been.

We can't be sure when she'll show up. She
may
be
coming our way at this very moment.'

There's no such thing as zero visibility but the Bridge
of
Magpies gale was doing its best to create it. The sand being carried along doubled the normal effect on the sea's surface, of a gale tearing in one direction while a current drove against it from the opposite quarter. It was milky-coffee, churned-up, short and steep; and the sand had a stinging, maddening quality like wind-fired bird shot. You couldn't get away from it, even inside the cutter.

189

Ichabo
was corkscrewing at the end of the tow, and every time it went slack and took up again she jerked and lurched violently. In spite of the fact we were so close, we couldn't make out the scimitar-like curve of the coast, as there was only a frail wash of light from the sun. Waves of a hundred centuries had fragmented the rock of the coastline into a loose series of offshore reefs, stacks, pinnacles and blinders. The biggest of them is Albatross Rock and the worst-Penguins Turning. They form a half-circle of about three-quarters of a mile from land, extended in a south-westerly direction only, like a comet's tail. Between them – apparently known to Kaptein Denny –ran a deep-water channel, scoured, since the Sperrgebiet was young, by the action of the incoming stream of the upwell cell. Even the
Africa Pi!ot-
whose language is usually as unemotional as a judge's verdict, becomes charged when describing the dangers of the patch we were heading into.

'We go in the moment we sight her-' Denny said. 'You'll take
Ichabo. I91
have
Gaok We make
the cutters fast-one on either side of the U-boat. We rig a couple of cables under her keep and secure them to the boats. They'll act as pontoons. They, plus the lifting effect of the upwell cell, will combine lo keep her above water while we cut open the hatch.'

'With what?'

'I've brought aJong
an
oxy-acetylene cutting torch, with special long leads to the gas cylinders. That means we won't have to carry them around.'

'A lot depends on the state of the metal.'

'Her hull's in fine nick still.'

'All the worse for us.'

'No. All the better. Otherwise
it
might collapse underwater –

anywhere, any time'

'Will two cutters be enough for a U-boat's deadweight tonnage of – how much?'

'Eleven hundred and twenty on the surface, twelve thirty submerged.'

'Trust Jutta to know,' Kaptein Denny permitted himself
a
smile.

I persisted. 'You're well heeled. You could have got the services of all the
gamat
fishermen and their cutters from Luderitz on the basis of winner-take-all from the hulk . . 190

'Listen–' I'd been misled by that passing smile–'Listen very carefully to me! The Book of Tsu is a secret–one
of
the wor!d's great secrets. My country's secret. It's not for spreading around a bunch of blab-mouthed wreckers! Or among prying officials who'd follow them once the story of a floating sub spread from the pubs. Only five people in the world, besides myself know about it: you two, Kenryo, Miki and Emmermann.'

We drove on, the silence in the wheelhouse thick and heavy. Later-the tension eased a bit when we had to exchange technicalities about the final run-in to Albatross Rock. At Penguins Turning we swung starboard on to a south-westerly heading. The fang looked like its name, a penguin who had turned its back to the land all black and shining and its chest to the sea, all white with the smash of the upwell cell.

The manoeuvre–a keel-shaking jolt which had the two boats weaving like drunks while they shaved past the outliers of Penguins Turning–brought the wind fine on the port quarter. It also put us heading deed-on into the current. This race created a whirlpool in the lee (or landward side) of Penguins Turning that didn't help our sea-keeping problems. We inched onwards, a dreary yard-by-yard slog.

Visibility was no more than a couple of hundred yards. But that was good for morale, because though
we
could hear, we couldn't see the crash of the seas on every hand. Albatross Rock finally heaved in sight.

I said, 'I understand now what the pig-boat saying means – " by guess and by God"!

'U-160 can
only come this way.' Kaptein Denny was very tense.

'So can Sang A.' Jutta voiced the doubt which had been nagging at the back of my mind all the time.

'Leave it alone!' snapped Denny. 'Leave it alone, Miss Jutta, I say!'

I speculated what his reaction would be if I asked what he intended to do if
Sang A
surprised us working on
U-160,
with both cutters immobilized. I only hoped Emmermann was an ardent reader of the
Africa Pilot.
At best Kaptein Denny couldn't count on more than a few hours in which to slice open a hull specially toughened
to
withstand four hundred feet of water pressure and the explosion of enough 191

amatol in depth charges to blow the bottom out of the attacker's own hull if you didn't get clear quick enough after dropping them. How deep the U-boat would lie depended on the density of the water in the upwell cell. Only the tip of the conning-tower might emerge if its density was weak. That, only God and
U-160
knew. Also, once the radar-blinding screen of sand fell
–as as
if must do with the decline of the gale–we'd be a sitting duck for
Sang
A's search scanner. Silence fell again.

We cased the ocean for
U-160.

Finally Kaptein Denny brought both cutters to anchor.
It
was a back-breaking, muscle-fagging business and the spot he chose could have been anywhere except that there was a triangular blur to seaward which he said was Albatross Rock. His hard-line approach was an effective questionstopper. All that lead-footed afternoon the gale roared over us like a dirty snowstorm.

All that afternoon the desert fall-out swamped the ships. All that afternoon Kaptein Denny stood-short and brown and frozen-faced, alone with his thoughts-watching the foamlashed sea. Sunsets on the Sperrgebiet are usually spectacular
affairs
because of the dust in the air, but ours didn't stand
a
chance of penetrating the dark clouds rolling out to sea from the desert. The sun went down in a faint bleary blur and the gale thundered on hot and dirtily. The fog, too,
was
heavier
and earlier than usual because of the hot-cold clash of the air and sea. It became a profitless business continuing the look-out for
U-160. We
couldn't have sighted her unless and until she was right under our noses.

Kaptein Denny's silence and tension were catching and Jutta and I were infected. We went below and I occupied myself with stripping and cleaning the sub-machine-gun. J

also greased and checked some running gear that I thought might be useful when–and if –
U-160
showed up. I also tested Denny's blow-pipe cutter which he'd brought for the U-boat's hatch.

Rata and I had a snack supper below. I was pouring myself
a
brandy to anchor it when Jutta said suddenly.

'If he's mad, and the U-boat doesn't come-what's he going to do to us?'

192

J nodded towards the sub-machine-gun I'd put handy on a locker.

'That gun's living with me from now on. Closer than my shirt.'

She went on speculatively, 'It all sounds so normal when he explains it and then when you're alone and come to think about it . . . it's quite some title: Master of the Equinoxes, Lord of the Solstice.'

'It rings, all right!

'So do delusions of grandeur! Then she came to me. 'I'm afraid, Struan, afraid for us. Deep down I'm ful! of doubts.'

I kissed her but her nerves and muscles were
as
taut as
Gaok's
rigging in the gaJe.

The waiting's sending me crazy.'

J hitched up the automatic. 'Let's got up on deck!

I held her and blew out the lamp. The cabin didn't go dark. Jt
was
lighted silver-faintly, uncannily-from outside and Jutta's face was that spectral colour I'd seen in the channel.

She put her face against mine. `J'd think it
was
part of the nightmare if I didn't know the real cause.'

We went on deck. The night had a parched and eerie splendour. The sea's shimmering fire threw up a backwash of luminosity against the overhead sand curtain and made little mobile footlights to light the cutters' hulls. Albatross Rock stood out more dearly than before as each wave that broke drenched it in liquid fire. On the bridge above us Kaptein Denny's statue-still figure and stubby head resembled a silver totem pole.

I was fiddling to get the automatic comfortable and hold Jutta at the same time, so my eyes weren't on the sea.

`Look!' Jutta's intake of breath matched the wind speed. Jf it had been moving I would have said it was a torpedo whose buoyant flask was leaking air. A silver stream cascaded to the surface from under the water like
a
scuba swimmer coasting along blowing bubbles.

An upheaval of disturbed incandescence followed. It resolved itself into the outline of a ship.

'Jesus!'

Like a ghost in the grip of some primordial time machine,
0-160
rose up out of the sea.

P.M. a

193

Trip that
brake
pawl! Let fly the anchor!
Get
rid of it man, get rid of it!'

I couldn't make out Denny's face in the dark of the wheelhouse above, but I could feel his scowl.

'Now! Now! Now!'

We'd teamed the two cutters together beforehand for a snap start but we didn't anticipate that the starting chocks would have to be whipped away like this. Slipping cables is tearaway tactics. We had both boats' anchors out, from
Gaok in
the lead and
Ichabo,
streamed astern on a light hawser. You don't expect in this time and age that a U-boat will surface only a few cables' lengths away and bear down
as
if it meant business.

Kaptein Denny came racing down the bridge ladder. '

She'll foul
Ichabo .

There was no sign
in
his face that he'd registered what
I
was saying.

'Cut her loose!' he roared. 'Cut her loose!'

He went on past me to the engine-room. I smacked the pawl free. The rattle of cables going override cut through the night like a small-arms fusillade. It was nothing, though, compared with the bark of the diesel starting up. Hushkits are for jets but I'd have given a thousand pounds at that moment for a special model for fishing cutters. It sounded as if it could be heard aJl the way to Possession.

'You know the plan–move, man-move!'

Kaptein Denny
was
on his way back to the wheel.
In a
moment I
felt Gaok's
screw bite and hold her against
the
current.

'She's–beautiful!' In the hurry I'd forgotten Jutta. The unreal light from the luminescent fire showed the deadly, low-silhouette, black shape frozen in her last agony. Marine growths were strung from hat jumping-wire–the thick cable designed to slice through undersea objects like mine moorings =which which runs from bow to stern via the conning-tower. The water sparkled as it fell back into the sea. 194

There were rough lumps of barnacles everywhere. The casing was barely awash. Something-round like a buoy-hung
from
the jumping-wire immediately for'ard of the
bridge.

'Maybe she is beautiful-' I answered. It wasn't time to gawp. 'But what we have to give that hulk now
is
the kiss of life-or whatever you do for drowned subs.'