“Buoy coming up on to starboard right. Prepare for hard starboard helm. Don't cut that buoy too fine.“ The buoy marked the grave of Unlimited, sunk a few months before. She'd strayed out of the cleared channel somehow and been mined. Nine months after the war had ended. About half her crew had got out; the bodies of the rest had been recovered by divers.
These were still dangerous waters, for three years the Americans and the Germans had played a little game around here, the same one they'd played off all the ports in Europe. Who could lay the largest number of mines off the ports with bonus points for the most complex fusing. Magnetic, acoustic, pressure, magnetic-acoustic, all fitted with counters. Antenna mines, even, now and then, a good old contact mine. There were thousands off this port alone, hundreds of thousands around the UK, millions around Europe.
The newer ones couldn't be swept at all; there was only one way to get rid of them. They had to be found, one at a time, a diver had to go down, place a demolition charge against the mine and then retreat to a safe distance, it took about an hour in all, not very long really. Some humorist had calculated that it would take a diver, working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, a full 6,000 years to clear all the mines around Europe. And a lot of the mines were booby-trapped, cunningly enough for the divers to get danger pay and be refused life insurance.
“Mines Robert?”
“Damned things. I'm not that confident even in this safe channel. They drift, and some have thirty or forty-hit counters. Watch it helm, the water's always ebbing here, even when the tide is in flood.”
“Could be worse Robert. The Americans have enough atomic bombs now that they're thinking of other ways to use them. Nuclear mines is one. Lay one in the seaway of a port, let the first ship to find it wipe the harbor out. The tidal wave and contamination from an underwater burst would be horrible.”
“Damn, Swampy, haven't they done enough damage? Thank God, we're out the rain at last.”
Xena had slipped under the stepped overhang that protected the caisson to the concrete submarine pen. The sail crew straightened up now without the rain beating down on them. Fox ordered full astern, slipping his submarine neatly into place inside the basin. Cables snaked across the water and were made fast. “Finished with main engines and steering.'“ The shore party were already warping Xena in to where the dockside crews were waiting to take her over. It was a sign of the times that the waiting dockies included a man with a Geiger counter to check the hull for radioactive contamination.
Submarine Bunker, Faslane, UK
“Julia darling! Been waiting long?'' It had taken Fox a couple of hours to finish off the job of handing Xena over to the portside watch. Now, he had a few hours for his family. Julia took a careful sniff and decided the first of those hours would be spent getting him into a bath. Like all submariners after a longish deployment, Fox was ripe. A mixture of foul air, slightly off food, diesel fuel and a shortage of water all made for an eye-watering cocktail,
“Not long Robert, I saw her coming in and I’ve been a Navy wife long enough to know the drill.” Unconsciously Julia had used the word “her” edge-uppermost. Secretly, she looked on her husband's command the way she would look upon a woman she suspected, but wasn't quite sure was his mistress. “How was it out there?”
Fox looked around. “Dreadful. The southern end of the North Sea and the Baltic Approaches, they're, oh I don't know what word to use. So foul nobody would want to go there. The North Sea will be a mess for years and the Baltic must be even worse, we couldn't even get in there. The only bright side, for us anyway, is that the filth coming out of the Baltic is staying well to the east. Water around here is cleaner. Anyway, that's for later. How are you settling in, House all right?”
Julia pulled a face. House was a nice word for it. Faslane had been heavily bombed and while the American fighter-bombers were accurate, they weren't that accurate. Still, it was better than Portsmouth. The stories were that Pompey had been hit so hard it looked like the surface of the moon. According to legend, the few people left lived in holes in the ground there and were fortunate to call them home. Up here, there were houses and work building replacements had started. Cheap, quickly-thrown together replacements that were barely more than a pre-fabricated wooden shack. Designed for a lifetime of five years, to give people walls and a roof until something better could be built.
“It’s not the house Robert, its, ohh, now I don't know the word for it. it’s the whole thing about living here. The people here hate us, did you know that? Wives aren't supposed to go outside the base area, it’s not safe. I can understand why.” She waved her hand in front of herself. “These clothes aren't new but I bought them in America and they're so much better than anything people have here. We're the ones who left and lived in 'luxury' in America while people here suffered. Nobody spits on us but we get the feeling they'd like to.”
Fox's face tightened although he didn't say anything. His arm gathered his wife just a touch more protectively to him.
“Something else you should know Robert.'“ Julia was now Mrs. Captain, advising her husband of things he ought to know about the families of his crew. “There's a lot of women around here selling themselves. I know its always been like that around naval bases but this is different. It’s not the women you'd expect to do that, it’s also the ones you never thought would. The ones before the war we'd have called respectable married women. And some of them are mixed up with pretty ugly people. There's already been cases of sailors being knifed after going out with one of them.”
“Julia, would you like to get away from here. I don't mean for a trip, I mean get away, never come back?''
“Can we?”
“That's a yes isn't it? You remember Jimmy Forrester? He ended the war in Australia, driving Clyde one of the old River class boats. The Australians loved them and they're building up a submarine arm out there. Jimmy elected to stay under the Imperial Gift and they've made him flotilla commander. They're short of submarine drivers, most of the gang had ties to Canada and elected to go there. Jimmy says, if we elect to go out under the Imperial Gift, he'll see that I get a boat for sure. Probably one of the modernized T-boats to start with.”
“Does the Gift apply to us, we're here?”
“I don't think it was intended to but the way the agreement is worded, any Royal Navy officer can elect to settle in any country that accepts the Gift. Australia's going to be no picnic. They're broke out there and the end of the war flipped them into recession but they're a better bet for the future than here. They've got food and a future.”
Julia nodded. Secretly, she'd been dreading living in the gray, hopelessness of Faslane. At least in Australia they'd have something to build. And Robert would still be able to play with his boats.
Office of Sir Martyn Sharpe, Chief of Staff to the President, New Delhi, India
“Sir Martyn, have you heard the news?”
Sir Martyn Sharpe lifted up his head. He'd heard the news from Thailand a few minutes before and he'd been weighing its consequences. As far as he could see, none of them would be good. “We need to talk to Sir Gregory Locock. And, of course. The Ambassador although I suspect she may be too busy to speak with us right now. Eric, the situation hasn't really changed since 1941. Thailand's still our forward line of defense. Singapore and Malaya can only be defended on the Mekong, if we lose that, we lose almost everything.”
“I didn't mean that Sir Martyn, although God knows, that situation is bad enough. I meant the news from South Africa. They're out.”