What the hell? A plain language distress call, and the U-boat wasn’t even attempting to cut it short, even though she must be listening by now. And torpedoed…?
The deftly-keyed rattle continued… POSITION P3215 — P0330: MASTER AND OFFICERS DEAD NO HOPE OF SAVING SHIP WE ARE ABANDONING…
I stood stock-still, brain reeling. What was this nonsense? We were neither torpedoed nor sinking. Most of the officers were still alive and safely boating on the unruffled calm of Quintanilha de Almeida under the morose eye of our allegedly-dead Captain Evans. And there was always hope of saving the ship — even if we were eventually torpedoed she would only sit upright on the bottom with her lower decks awash, so…?
…which was when an ice cold hand reached from my bowels to claw at my gut. That position the still-anonymous operator was passing — it was several hundred miles to the north-west of this bloodstained circle of rocks!
According to what I’d heard just then the Admiralty would now be assuming that we’d sunk in the deep waters of the open Atlantic many miles away from our real location? But they already knew we were heading for Quintanilha. Damn it, they bloody told us to come here themselves…
The key rattled briefly again as I gathered myself, depressing the handle cautiously. ALL SHIPS ALL SHIPS URGENT… FORWARD BULKHEADS GIVEN WAY… WE ARE GOING NOW GOOD-BYE TRANSMISSION ENDS…
And it did, too, as I wrenched the door open and slammed into the equipment-packed cabin fast. Almost fast enough to beat the gun that was snatched from the operator’s table by a worryingly steady hand. It was only a little gun really, but, pointed at me the way it was right then, it looked as big as that 4.1-inch on the German’s casing.
Whereupon I further discovered that my latest — and I still argue, entirely logical — conclusion that only 3/O Curtis could possibly be our on-board Fifth Columnist, had been a little premature after all.
…because Larabee smiled quite nicely and said, ‘You shouldn’t be here, Mate. This boat’s just gone and sunk.’
CHAPTER TEN
At first I'd just stared at the Second Sparks, feeling the cabin starting to spin while watching the black hole in the blued gun-barrel gaping wider and wider while, behind it, the trigger finger slowly whitened as it took up first pressure.
Almost pleadingly my voice forced its way from somewhere deep down in a sandpaper throat.
‘Wha… what was that message you just sent, Larabee? And why the gun? Why, f'r that matter, aren’t you down with the rest of the crowd in the boats?’
The smile hardened a bit, but, with sick relief, I saw the finger relax fractionally and turn pink again as the blood pumped back into it. The trouble was, it still didn’t waver one millimetre.
‘’Cause I don’t think it’s a very good idea to go yachting right now, Kent.’
‘It’s a bloody sight better than sitting here till some Nazi hood blows the back of your head off with a Luger. But that signal you were transmitting — why, Larabee? This ship isn’t sinking, not yet, and certainly not in the position you gave.’
He shrugged but the movement didn’t travel as far as the pistol in his hand.
‘I know that, and you know that, Mate… but the Admiralty — they don’t know any different. As far as they’re concerned, Cyclops has just gone down in two miles of water a long way from here. They should be sending out the next-of-kin telegrams any time now.’
I leaned back against the door and tried to catch up. The whole situation seemed sheer lunacy but I had a horrible awareness that it wasn’t — that everything that had happened was part of a sane, calculated operation, and that the planners weren’t British either. I stepped forward forgetfully and the gun lifted warningly,
‘You’re a bloody Nazi, aren't you? You’re a German agent!’
He nodded and, just for a moment, a wry, almost wistful smile softened the corner of his mouth. ‘Been a sleeper on your British Merchant Navy's Marconi list for years, waiting to be activated on the Füehrer's order. Or do you claim it’s only the Union Jack that can stir a man to be a patriot, Mister Mate?’
Inconsequentially I noticed that his tone was different, more precise, and I felt the rage surge within me. He’d fooled me all along the line — bluff and counter-bluff: all those times I’d seen him as too obnoxious to be anything other than genuine — and now he was still ahead, both he and his Teutonic oppos out there. I started to shake with a barely controllable hatred.
‘No, you’re just a bastard posing as a shipmate, Larabee,’ I grated. ‘You never had a country. You were spawned in some deep pool of filth…’
His trigger finger started to go white again and self-preservation stemmed my flow of invective. Suddenly he looked very grim and sure of himself, not at all like the whining, ineffectual little man of a few hours before. I saw that he wasn’t even thin and fragile any more — he was lean and tough — because he didn’t have to play a part now.
And he intended to kill me.
The gun barrel lowered fractionally until it lined up neatly with my belt buckle and I felt my nails dig deep into the palms of my hands in terror-struck incredulity that this was actually happening to me, John Kent, common or garden sailorman.
As if from a long way away I heard myself sobbing something—anything—to try and make him let me cling on to life just a little longer. ‘This whole voyage plan was a set-up, wasn’t it, Larabee? We were meant to come here right from the start. Those Goddam U-boats have been waiting for us, not following us.’
The old sardonic expression flickered back momentarily. ‘What does it matter to you, Kent? You’re dead anyway.’
I ignored the sweat running into my eyes. I had to keep his attention. Through the port the setting sun looked unutterably precious.
‘Wasn’t it, Larabee?’ I urged, not daring to move a muscle in case I triggered him, and that bloody automatic, off.
He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘You took a lot of convincing. It needed that signal from our mutual friend Rear Admiral Tryst to bring you here, even then.’
I stared at him again. It was getting to be a habit — staring vacantly, I mean. ‘How do you know who sent that Admiralty signal, Larabee? It was in code…'
My voice trailed off as I finally understood the full story. All those previous, seemingly-unconnected incidents suddenly meshed together — Foley’s lonely death, the incinerated Athenian operators, Larabee remaining as the only surviving operator in the group. God, we’d even helped them ourselves by disposing of Mallard after their own torpedoes had failed to.
He smiled, just a little too impatiently for my screaming nerves. ‘I should know what was in that signal, Kent — I wrote it in the first place.’
‘And the Captain’s original request for instructions from the Admiralty?’ I growled, already knowing the answer.
He gave it anyway. ‘…was never transmitted. So far as your Royal Navy are concerned, this ship is now lying on the bottom a long way from here.’
‘But that means you must already have our naval codes, man. You needed them to encrypt that fake signal from Tryst.’
He nodded, a little more absently. I formed the impression that he was waiting for something to happen. But then, so was I. When he spoke again I knew he didn’t intend to leave me in anticipation for very much longer.
‘We’ve had your current Mership control codes for a long time, Kent. We’re winning this war hands down. A lot of your Allied tonnage has already been sunk, it’s not always possible for their masters to ditch their confidential bags when they’re boarded. No, it’s the replacement ones we want now… the ones carried forr'ad in the strong-room.’