A Bridge Of Magpies (32 page)

He said in the same quiet and compelling way he'd had when he told us about being Master of the Equinoxes'

'What I must do now I must do alone. This is
hara-kiri.
I
must admit that the method of dropping a mine on a load of torpedoes is rather unique. Crude, but effective. The first ceremonial cut in the stomach is called
seppuku.'
The pain lunged at him and he caught his breath. 'There won't be time for the rest of the procedure.' He tried to smile. 'Traditionalists even have a warrior's meal of dry chestnuts and cold sake beforehand. How close is
Sang A?'

'Out of range, but she's got a heavy machine-gun mounted for'

ard . .

'I know.'

Jutta and
I
also knew now that he was as sane as we were. 214

Only his eyes looked a little tired and his face was sallower and finer-drawn - from the blood he was losing-probably.

'I said-"the Girl goes to join the Lover". Now go.'

We didn't take it in for a few moments that he was giving us our lives. Then Jutta broke the spell. She went towards him-to kiss him I think-but he waved her back gently. `

Sorry, you mustn't touch a dead man, Miss Jutta. After
seppuku
I'm dead.'

She knelt on the rusty plating and he sat on the jumpstool with his right leg stretched out in front of him to ease the pain. He took the Taisho from his belt, slipped a shell out of it-scratched some words on the blade of the knife, and gave it to Jutta.

'Mei fa tzu - it is fate,'
he quoted.

`What do you want me to do?'
I
asked hoarsely. `

First cut away the old mine cable.'

I put a match to the blowpipe. It was only a matter of seconds before the section of rusty cable snapped under the flame and thumped against the conning-tower. The new piece I'

d fitted still held the mine suspended.

'Good,' he said. He handed me his pistol. 'Now I want you to take
Gaok -have
her afterwards for yourself-and fire four shots as a signal. When
Sang A's
close
enough,
do you understand?'

'I understand, Kaptein Denny.'

'I won't be able to get up and judge the range,' he went on. '

You'll be my eyes. I want the signal distinct because
Sang A
will be firing too. One-two. One-two. Then
I'll
know. Where's
Sang A
now?'

There was a burst of machine-gun fire from the black ship.
I
ducked involuntarily.

'Out of range. That'll be Kenryo trying his hand?

'That machine-gun of theirs can't train completely for'ard because of the whaleback,' he said.
'Sang A
will have to sheer slightly to one side when she comes closer, to bring it to bear. She'll lose ground by doing so.'

I shot an anxious glance at the approaching ship. '

Anything more?

'No. You weren't a headman, of course?'

'No. Navy.'

'Give my regrets to your chief.

do that.'

215

Jura. said in a strangled whisper-'Master of the Equinoxes!'

He said, `Kaptein Denny was a long, long act. It's good to be myself again. Now run for your seventh life!'

Jutta clung tight to me and I half-led-half-carried ha down the ladder off the bridge. There was another spatter of fire from
Sang A
when they saw us but they were still loo far away to do us any harm.

I slipped the rope cradle which held
Gaok
to
U-160
and gunned the engine.
Gaok
pulled away from the U-boat.
Sang A was
pushing hard, and the water was white under her bows. She sheered to one side in order to brlng the heavy machine-gun to bear,
as
Kaptein Denny said she would have to, enabling
Gaok
to gain some valuable distance. There was a staccato ra-tat-tat but the volley fell short. Twenty yards short. Extreme range.

Sang A
pulled back on to her coarse:
Gaok
was worklng up to full speed but the black ship wasn't interested in us –

yet.

Then
she
veered again and the next burst spanged off the conning-tower. They're in range now. Judge it, I told myself, judge it and don't panic because a few yards will make all the difference between life and death when the moment comes.
Gaok's life
and death. Ours.

The machine-gun cut off abruptly. They'd got wise to that mine. Then came several isloated, lighter shots. Sniper. That's Kenryo's gun. He's trying to pick off Kaptein Denny. He'll be all right if he doesn't show himself from
behind
the protection of the conning-tower. I daren't wait any longer!
Sang A's
coming on like an express. Two or three other automatics joined in with Kenryo's.

Now.

I stepped out on deck with Jutta. I raised the Taisho and fired into the air.

One-two. One-two.

I crushed Jutta to me.

'There!' she whispered.

Above
U-160's
conning-tower the blue-while flame of the blow-torch was brighter than the daylight and there was a little cascade of sparks where Kaptein Denny attacked the wire at the point where it looped over the bridge coaming.
Sang A was
close to her, well within the explosion area, 216

and firing non-stop.

Then the sparks flared up.

I pulled Jutta to the deck with me.

Gaok's
steel rail rolled up like fencing as the blast from the explosion hit her. She leapt and bottomed again with a keel-shaking crash. Water, bits of glass, metal, rope and planks rained on us. We lay there until they had stopped. Then we picked ourselves up-and I held her, and we looked. Her heart was hammering away against my chest. The sea was empty. There
was
no sign, through the yellow
haze
of the shock-wave, of either
U-160
or
Sang A.
The surface of the water, where they had been such a short while before, was llttered with steaming-blackened fragments and unidentifiable pieces of ship, sizzling as they sank. Landwards the mushroom of the explosion towered above the Bridge of Magpies. It
wasn't
smoke. It was a million birds. We stood silent, trying to comprehend the swift totality of the catastrophe. The silence was as total
as
if our eardrums had burst. The only thing that stirred
was
the yellow haze over the water.

It was because I was watching the movement of those wisps, rising like a ghost from a body, that I spotted another movement out at sea, above the low promontory where Black Prince Cove was situated. It, too, was wraith-like – a tall lattice
mast
with radar scanner and aerials, swinging slightly with the roll of ship to which it belonged.

I stared at the disembodied thing above the point of land, as if I'd never been a Navy man and had never seen a frigate's top-hamper before.

`Jutta I The frigate! She's here!'

Like a film image growing out of the island's extremity, the bow of the frigate emerged, then the low lean midships section, and finally the stern with its boil of white thrown up by engines going full speed ahead.

Jutta said, Kaptein Denny must have got off your message after all.'

`No, Jutta. He assured me he had not. There's some other explanation.'

The sound of engine-room bells came across the water. The
Fairest Cape
went full astern when she sighted us, and altered course to avoid the stained patch of debris on the sea's surface. She skirted it and came slowly towards
Gaok.
217

White-clad figures were at her rail and on her bridge, gawp. ing unashamedly. All you could say for
Gaok
was thal she was still afloat.

The frigate lost way and stopped. They threw us a line. '

Come on up,' said a voice from her deck. 'Have you any casualties?'

'No casualties.'

Jutta went first up the rope ladder and I followed. When I got level with the warship's rail there was a shrilling of bo'

sun's
pipes.
For one impossible moment I thought they were for me. But no navy extends an ex-captain an admiral's honours. They were for the C-in-C. He came along the deck towards us and I found myself wanting to jump to attention at the sight of so much brass-until I remembered my stained, torn headman's rig.

The little admiral held out his hand to me. He barely spared Jutta a glance.

'Glad to see you, Struan. What was the big bang?' '

A mine and an old sub full of torpedoes.'

He gave me a shrewd, penetrating glance and the other extreme of his vision took in the dirty patch of sea. Reaction began to hit me. All I wanted was a drink. Maybe two.

'Rough?'

'Pretty rough.'

'I was hanging around out of sight below the horizon. I couldn't get here in time when things started to get hot. The sandstorm put paid to using the ship's helicopter-of course. In addition we didn't want to scare
Sang A away – I'd
also had fake radio signals sent off to bluff her into thinking that the frigate was hundreds of miles away.'

They worked, aJl right.'

Resentment–and a strange wave of feeling for Kaptein Denny–swept over me at the thought that almost within reach had been the help we'd so desperately needed to pull off our plan. The little bastard all in white and gold braid had used me as a bait while he sat at the ringside watching the final drama take place on a radar screen, safe out of harm's way of mines, torpedoes and
Sang A's
guns ...

'I don't need a nursemaid–then or now,' I snapped. He grinned-and I hated him the more for it. 'It scans you've got yourself one. You haven't introduced me.'

'Jutta Walsh; I said. 'She's part of the story.'

218

He shook her hand and then swung on his heels, linking his arms in both of ours and leading us along the deck between the crew. I wasn't sure who was more astonished-they or us.

Ànd it's a long story–from both sides,' he added.
'I
think we all could use a drink.'

I'd downed my second pink gin, sitting with the admiral and Jutta in a big private cabin, by the time I'd given hint an outline of the events which led up to the last fatal explosion. Because it was nearest in time and so vivid still,
I
started with it, relating events backwards. When I told him about the Book of Tsu and its naval significance he stirred unhappily in his chair, but he let me finish. Then he asked, 'When did you get wise to
Sang A?'
found out she had a machine-gun mounted for'ard . .

'Ah I' he exclaimed. 'That machine-gun That's what gave her away to us-too ..

'Us?'

Weeks
ago, when you were
still enjoying the delights of Santorin, one of our long-range maritime reconnaissance planes located
Sang A
about three hundred miles south of the Cape. We caught her with her pants down. They were exercising with that gun. We photographed her. It confirmed
our
earlier suspicions.'

'Earlier? What d'ye mean?'

'Sang A
first came to the Navy's notice when she arrived at Mauritius aboul two months ago. An agent of ours there reported her –we we keep an eye on all the Red Navy's comings and goings now thal they use Mauritius as a base for the Indian Ocean. It was a routine report which
wasn't
routine.
Sang A
was at that stage sailing in company with a Soviet
Amur-class
naval repair ship, the
PM 129,
and a modified
Akademik Kurchatov-class
oceanographic ship. At first glance she appeared to be a salvage vessel which the Reds were using in conjunction with the other two. What intrigued Silvermine, however, was that such an old-fashioned type of vessel should be in use with all the modern stuff Russia has nowadays. That ancient funnel and whaleback, At that stage
Sang A was
no more than a tantalizing sus. picion. We decided to watch her.

'She sailed from Mauritius–alone. We thought we'd lost her until one of our planes found her again at extreme range 219

between the Cape and Marion Island. The fact that she was so far away from normal shipping mules chalked up another black mark against her. She was photographed and shadowed. The pictures showed she was doing eighteen knots–not bad for
the
type of old crate she pretended lo be. They aJso revealed something else–part of her underwater lines, as she rolled in the rough seas of the Roaring Forties. We decided that her hull was a modified
Kashin-class
destroyer with all that junk on top as a bluff.'

I refilled my glass. 'It would have helped me if you'd told me some of this?

'By hindsight yes-by foresight no. What did Silverman really know? We have suspicious ships passing the Cape all the time. The other day we had an entire Red squadron, complete with the new
Kresta
It-class guided missile cruiser
Marshal Vorashilov.
Our long-range planes shadowed them, too.'

'What made
Sang A
any different?'
I demanded.
Ill tell you. We kept tabs on her as she approached the Cape, both by means of long-range flights and Silvermine's own top-secret electronic detecting apparatus. Then, as J said before, a plane spotted her gun in action. But it was when she used her radio that she gave herself away?

`What did she say?'

'Jt's not what she said
bat the way she
said
it!
don't get you.'

`We'd been monitoring her signals, of course. They'd ostensibly been directed to the
Basjkiriya,
the ocean research vessel she accompanied to Mauritius, which was then working in the southern Indian Ocean. Incidentally, the
Basjkiriya
was much too near the Kerguelen Islands (where the French intend building a naval base) for anyone's liking.
Sang A's
signals were in code, naturally, but we had a pretty fair idea of what they were all about.' He chuckled ironically at some inner amusement. 'Weather. Sea. And so on. Another bluff?

`How'd you know they were?'