'That is why she never signalled U-boat headquarters as she promised,' interjected Jutta. There was a lurking dismay behind her eyes, as if she feared she had no option now bul to live out whatever trouble was in store for us. I think she also secretly mistrusted Kaptein Denny.
'If she went down at the northern entrance to the channel-what are we doing here in the south?' I demanded. 'Perhaps Sang A's location wasn't so far out after all'
'They're wrong.' His eyes looked as old and tired as if he'd been watching over the Book of Tsu all its eight hundred years. 'I found it all out the hard way. I became possessed with Possession. I lived, sailed, sounded, searched: everything I knew; everything I remembered about the hulk's course; and about tides, winds and currents to try to find her again. Nothing. Salvage can be frustrating enough when you have modem gear; imagine what I felt like using primitive means like sounding leads and fishing trawls and nets, trying into the bargain, to bluff everyone that I was a simple fisherman?'
'But you knew where she went down!'
'So I thought, so I thought. It was only a year later that I discovered that U-160 didn't go down, but away.' 'What are you saying?'
The waterlogged U-boat was carried away from the coast by the current. The farther she went the less the density of the sea became, and the deeper under the surface she went. God alone knows where in the South Atlantic she drifts, under water, all year -Brazil? Antarctica? The Falklands? The West Wind Drift? I've given up trying to work it out. All I know is that it's a regular cycle, because she comes back and surfaces each year when the Bridge of Magpies wind blows.'
'It's blowing now.' There was a curious tightening in my throat.
'And she's coming. She always does. Her landfall's always the same-Albatross Rock. Captain Schlebusch himself couldn't do better. Then she works her way up-channel, on the surface.'
Jutta said, in a carefully controlled voice, 'You need have no fear that you haven't kept faith with your office. Keeper. Watcher Isn't it enough? Thirty years – it's a whole life? He said, more gently than I'd ever heard him speak, '
Keeper. Watcher. True. But it's not enough, Miss Jutta. I wonder if you or anyone else could know how it feels to have an inch of rusty steel plating of a dead U-boat's hull stand between you and everything that matters in your world
– and your country's?'
The wraps were off him now.
Snap out of it, I told myself, don't buy this Eastern line of a magic staff in one hand and a gun in the other. He's had nearly thirty opportunities, on his own admission, lo take a crack at opening up U-160-alone- or with the help of others.
I couldn't keep the sceptlcism out of my voice. 'From what you say U-160 should have been a piece of cake as far as salvage goes. A tug or a ship to assist and the Book of Tsu would have been in the bag.'
He gestured at the coffee-and-cream whitecaps streaming in from the south; and the desert gale overhead sandblasting their crests to dirty foam.
'Take a look at the risk element. As an ordinary salvage proposition a U-boat is worth peanuts. You've said so yourself. Just after the war you couldn't have sold one for a thousand pounds, even to a film company. With the exception of the Book of Tsu, U-160 carried nothing of value. Add to that the fact that you can only attempt anything with U- 160 just at a time when all the risks are at their maximum. The skipper of a Japanese trawler I prevailed upon to try it nearly lost his ship on Penguin's Turning. He was an exNavy man himself, and I sold him a yarn about U-160 carrying important naval documents. I think he's cursing me still.'
'You're not the only one in all this time who must have seen U-160 surface-' I said.
'No? Think It's never for more than a few hours that she shows up. A non-scary accompaniment is a sandstorm. There's fog. By the nature of things-she submerges shortly after the Bridge of Magpies wind drops. A few hours. Zero visibility. The most dangerous shore probably in the world.'
'The guano workers..
'Forget it. It's the birds' breeding season. Possession's deserted. J don't have to lell you that. The mainland's Sperrgebietverboten. There's not a soul about.'
'Except Sang A.'
'You're wrong. Except us. We're going in to take the Book of Tsu out of U-160 when she shows up.'
J, too, had to get in there with him. Intelligence-wise-the Book of Tsu could be the biggest bonanza since American Combat Intelligence broke the Jap code before Midway, and had the fleet's plan of attack handed to them on a plate. If it was aJl Kaptein Denny claimed, it was bigger than even the C-in-C himself could imagine. The odds against two men and a girl pulling it off were astronomical. Three's a crowd187 ten's a team. And you, d need a damn fine team of ten experts, backed by a shipload of equipment, to swing the U-160 odds in our favour.
When I stood turning aJl this over in my mind and did not reply immediately, the pupils of Kaptein Denny's eyes contracted like a cat's out hunting when confronted by a sudden light. As sinister, too.
Jutta noticed it and said quickly, 'Come down to the cabin a moment, Struan. I've something to say to you-alone.'
The light in the cabin was dim because of the sand cloud, and the dark mahogany panelling didn't help what little sunlight penetrated it. Jutta stopped-turned, and faced me, looking as if there were something very complicated in her mind which had to be brought out into the light of day. She had about her a remoteness which made her seem vulnerable – and dear. I looked in the deep green of her eyes but found no answer. She made a little gesture which was hail-deprecation-halfsomething I couldn't define.
'My search for a father has turned into something else. It's still open-ended and likely to remain so'
' U – 1 6 0..:
'J wasn't meaning U-160. Me. I tried to tell you before I was a woman who hadn't found herself:
'Was?'
Her tone was quite different from that night we'd been alone in the bunkhouse.
'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.