A Bridge of Magpies

`Spy?'

`The man who made the recording itself: Swakop. His name's mentioned at the beginning-remember? He was a Nazi spy. He was sent in the U-boat to stir up trouble and lead a pro-Hider movement among the German population of South West Africa.'

'That tape was dynamite if he'd been caught:

'Also an insurance policy.'

'What d'ye mean?'

If he'd been captured he could have used it as a bargaining counter with the authorities. With all its top-secret information it was worth more than solid gold in a currency crisis. I think that really must have been at the back of his mind because he kept the spool though he dumped the recorder after he left the Bridge of Magpies. He had a hazardous desert crossing before reaching Luderitz, Frau Hasler said.'

'I'd also have dumped a bulky war-time tape recorder – pre-transistor model.'

`Swakop was an opportunist. It was pure chance that the I U-boat's ship-to-shore radio was left transmitting and he was able to record all that happened inside the U-boat herself during the final action.'

'It cost U-160 her life.'

'That's part of my puzzle.'

'Why should a Nazi spy go and see Frau Hasler?'

`Her husband was the boss of the pro-Nazi underground movement. Emma Hasler wasn't one of them. Swakop holed up with the Haslers in Luderitz. She warned her husband he was playing with fire and backing the wrong horse. She was right: only a few days after they'd taken me in, someone stabbed Hasler to death.'

`Swakop?'

'No. He was in the clear. He vanished only later-Emma Hasler said he always had an eye to the main chance. She's never seen or heard of him since. Never knew his real name, even.'

'I begin to see why you felt you had to play it back where you did. What happened to the other guy, the Jap they came to pick up?'

'He is one of my ma blind alleys, Every lead on him 9R has run dead. But he must have been important. There's mention of him in German records – a conversation in the early summer of 1943-when Hitler offered his official condolences to the Japanese Ambassador, Oshima, on the death of Japan's great naval hero, Admiral Yamamoto.'

`Yamamoto! Your man must have been a big shot!'

The lead runs dead there-again! The Japanese navy records are hopeless. Who or what Tsushima was I can't find out. The Japs didn't follow the Germans' practice of logging all details of U-boats and their movements. The best I can do is to say that U-160 sailed from the Japanese base at Penang for the Bridge of Magpies on what was called "an exchange of technical information". Technical information!

Here! in the desert!'

I felt as if I'd been coshed by the past.

'Why go into all this, Jutta? Surely the answer lies-or by-with the naval officers stationed at the Cape?'

The enthusiasm she'd shown up to then ran flat and dry,

`There were 687 British officers who served at Simonstown from 1943 until the end of the war. Try asking 687 men, married and unmarried-years afterwards-whether they sired an unwanted brat who is now trying to find out who her father is! Take a look in my letter file if you want to see what the big brush-off really means!'

`Surely the naval records..

'Of course I worked that angle too. But just you watch the Navy clam up when along comes a girl trying to pin parenthood on one of its boys!'

`Right' I said. 'You've done all this sleuthing and delving and what have you got?'

'I don't know. You threw me out before I could find out.' '

Jutta..

She hurried on. 'I'm just a woman who hasn't found herself. The search has turned into the main thing in my life: a way of existence programmed by a couple of torpedoes which lammed into a ship's side; a mother who died giving me birth; and a father who didn't show up. There've been men of course. Men-and men. I told you about one type, the quid- pro-quo lot. There've been a couple of the other sort: you don't get to my age without being turned on. Then, when I thought J'd found something that was going to stick, my heart fired blanks. I couldn't.'

`So you want to find your father-in the hope that it'll put your own pieces together again?'

'That sounds a bit crude for something as deep as what I feel. Maybe you're partly right. Maybe after I've found him I' ll get direction and meaning. All I know is that the not knowing acts as a drag on me. Or perhaps I'm one of those people not lucky enough to know love. But I do know this-Struan: out there on Doodenstadt I was within reach of something.

She made a V of her hands and thrust them hard into her groin, too carried away to guess at the extent of the sexual charge the gesture threw at me.

'And I got in your way.'

`You, or your job.'

'I wish you'd told me what you were after, there by the wreck and the grave.'

'To a stranger-a policeman?'

`What's different now?'

'Nothing, really. Everything maybe. I don't know.'

She'd begun to talk as though I were thinking of changing – my mind about taking her on to Luderitz: I wasn't But she'd said enough – and hinted enough – for me not to want to leave an image in her mind of an unfeeling bastard-not any more.

'I've been a drifter for years…' I told her about the Greek islands. 'My bivouac was a boat or a bar, whichever was handier. On the primrose path to the Alternative Society, I was pretty close to becoming a juiced-up drop-out. This job is a challenge.'

`So that's why you're acting tough.'

She was unresponsive, so I went on to the story of the Walewska oil-spill. I explained that it was the C-in-C's faith which had backed me for the Possession headman's job.

`Good old C-in-C I It takes courage, loyalty and devotion to duty to protect a lot of birds!'

I was losing her-fast. I had to choose quickly. So on impulse I broke the secret of the lost city and explained why Koch and I bad banished her and Kaptein Denny. I swore her to secrecy but I wasn't fool enough not to realize, that I'd given her a weapon to use against me if she chose. Her eyes kept going over my face as I spoke. After I'd finished she came and put her hands on mine. I wanted the 100 gale to go on for ever, so that I need never take her to Luderitz.

'Thanks,' she said huskily. 'That makes everything different. You too, thank heavens.'

I was a little sandbagged by the way she'd come over to my side. But it wasn't the sort of takeover I particularly minded.

'Maybe you'll find out – for me. I'll wait at Emma Hasler's.' I couldn't meet her eyes. I knew it would be a lie if I said yes.

'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

My reply made us both miserable and after that she closed up. There wasn't any more to say and we sat silent and uncomfortable for a long time, while the gale roared overhead and plucked and boomed over Tuscaloosa as if trying to ape the sound of guns. Later I lay broad awake for hours in my bunk listening to the tumult-so similar to the one going on inside me-and to the quarrelling and clucking of inyriads of birds descending out of the night and making for their old nesting-grounds on the islet.

The gale lasted two days. You couldn't have called the Lchabo a lovers' hideaway during that time: Jutta and I were shut off from one another; so found small jobs for ourselves round the boat, discussing them in impersonal voices. The mast and boom were badly strained and kept me occupied fiddling them and fixing the rigging; and I think Jutta felt relieved when I asked her to stitch the torn sail. It was wet and unhandy, so we brought it below into the big cabin where she worked on it. I could have tinkered with the engine but didn't. It was an excuse (which I wouldn't have admitted to myself) for delaying as long as possible at Alabama Cove. On the second morning Jutta had gone on deck while, down in the cabin-I put some final touches to the sail. I heard her call above the wind. 'Struan! Struan I A boat!'