“Quiet,” Bimble said, damning Harland for his obvious attempt to gain attention. “Continue,” he said to Macready.
“At 0934 Nottingham reported that the enemy ship was engaging her. Nottingham reported that they were speedily, his expression exactly, trying to disengage but that the enemy appeared to be intent on a fight.”
“We shall have to get some Very Long Range aircraft up there immediately,” Bimble said.
“Yes, sir,” Elwes said. “Unfortunately the area is socked in. Low cloud cover. Coastal Command had to call their chaps back several hours before all of this happened.”
“Well,” Bimble said, stroking the gray beard that earned him the nickname Father Neptune. He was no Jellicoe of Jutland and there were some reports that he and Winston, when Churchill was the first sea lord, had disagreed on nearly everything including the color of the sky, but he was imperturbable. “Give him his pipe and a cup of tea,” one member of his young staff had said, “and he is quite willing to face Armageddon.”
“I’ll have them up and that’s that. You must tell the fellows at Coastal Command,” he said to Elwes, “that we have a mystery on our hands. As you gentlemen know, I don’t fancy mysteries.”
Harland kept quiet. He felt that he’d given the old man too much of an opportunity to make a fool of him as it was.
“Captain Harland.” Bimble’s voice caught him off guard. “You shall be my eyes and ears at Scapa Flow. Nottingham is telling them and then they are telling us, but I don’t like getting my information secondhand. I trust that you’ll get me everything that I need.”
Harland felt his stock rise a hundredfold. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
“Macready,” Bimble said, “we need to know who this is. She can’t have materialized without someone being aware of her. Track her down, find out what you can of her. Find out what she is about and how we can destroy her.”
“Yes, sir,” Macready said.
“Thank you, gentlemen.”
The officers quickly left the conference room, knowing that Bimble used those three words to close every meeting. When they were gone, Bimble leaned over the back of his chair and looked at his secretary. Hawthorne finished his notes and returned the admiral’s glance.
“Mr. Churchill,” Hawthorne said.
“Yes,” Bimble said. “That bloody old fool is out there. I shall have to let Their Lordships know about this latest development. The prime minister, despite his belief in his considerable capabilities, does not control the German navy.”
“Sir Joshua,” Hawthorne said, “there is something else. Perhaps totally unrelated to either the German ship or Mr. Churchill’s voyage.”
“Yes?”
“Morning dispatches highlighted increased U-boat activity. U-boat radio transmissions indicate that something out of the ordinary is happening.”
“That’s all that we have, Hawthorne?”
“Yes, indeed, Sir Joshua. At the moment there aren’t any more details to pass on. U-boats are on the move and they’re being most vocal. That is all.”
“Have you an opinion?” Bimble said, prompting his secretary.
“None worth sharing. Nothing can be done until we gather more information. I suspect, however, that we must be quick about it.”
“Of course,” Sir Joshua said sourly. “In other words, we wait until we know more.” He turned back around and gathered the briefing notes left by his place at the conference table by his staff. “I’ll meet with Their Lordships immediately. It irritates me that I have very little to tell them, but what little there is, is troubling.”
Prader watched as the first shells from the distant ship landed far off the starboard quarter of H.M.S. Nottingham. Giant columns of white water, tinged with yellow dye from the High Explosive shells, erupted out of the sea, hung above the base of their own creation, and slowly fell away.
The huge shells sounded like locomotives when they came over — an unnerving, heavy, chugging roar that seemed to draw the air out of a man’s breath. Certainly fifteen-inch guns. Perhaps sixteen-inch guns. Whatever they were and whoever mounted them, H.M.S. Nottingham could not match them with her puny eight-inch guns.
“Masthead reports,” Trunburrow said. “Unable to determine class. Large ship, four turrets times three.”
Prader slipped his binoculars to his eyes and grunted in response. “She may be powerful but we are fast. Revolutions to thirty knots, Number One. Take evasive action, stand by to make smoke. Inform Harrogate that we are under attack. Contact the Flow—”
Another rumble filled the air and the gray-green sea to port and starboard of Nottingham exploded in towering geysers seventy feet high.
Splinters from the high-explosive shells peppered Nottingham, beating an angry tattoo, nearly ripping off the main fire-director tower and antiaircraft tower. They sliced through her thin skin into the for’ard galley and sick bay, and wiped out the for’ard searchlight station.
They stripped Nottingham of her wireless antenna. She was deaf and dumb.
“My God, they’ve got us straddled!” Prader shouted. “Starboard thirty. Where is my smoke? I must have my smoke.” As if his voice commanded the ship itself, huge volumes of black smoke erupted from the cruiser’s twin stacks, rolling down over her superstructure and then up again, masthead height. She had to get the smoke between her and the enemy vessel; she had to make a place for herself to hide in the rolling swells of the gray waters.
The W.T. telephone rang and a yeoman of signals answered it. “Captain, sir,” the yeoman said. “W.T. reports they have no signal, sir. They can’t raise anyone.”
“What?”
“The antennas must be down, sir.”
“All of them? That’s impossible. Have them checked. That can’t be.”
Trunburrow watched the flashes of light in the dark bulk of the distant enemy ship. Those were shells coming his way — the battleship would kill them with impunity.
Turm Oberbootsmannmaat Statz knew himself lucky to be in Bruno. Anton was lower and closer to the bow and she leaked every time a wave rolled over the Atlantic bow and exploded against the breakwater. She had no independent sighting system because water came into the range-finder housing on either side of the turret. Statz thought little of Anton.
But Bruno was a different matter and now she was proving it.
“Enemy cruiser in sight at twenty degrees,” the loudspeaker in the turret blared. “Range…” The rest of the message was distorted — probably a short in the speaker wiring. No matter; the range was not important to Statz. He knew that the enemy was many kilometers away and probably running as if the devil himself were after her. “Course two-four-oh degrees,” the loudspeaker said.
Statz and his crew could see nothing. They depended on the loudspeaker to tell them what was happening. He could tell from practice how the turret trainer was moving the turret and about where she was pointed to port or starboard. He knew from the gun’s breech when she fell or rose how many degrees the gun layer had plotted in. But for everything else he had to depend on the loudspeaker encased in a heavy steel cage behind a protective steel grid to tell him what was happening outside.
“Enemy making smoke,” the speaker said.
“They’re afraid of us,” Hoist Operator Matrosengefreiter Manthey said. “They’re running away.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Steiner said.
“Request permission to fire,” the speaker said. That was the gunnery officer in the forward fire-control tower. Statz could hear the excitement in his voice. There was no reply from the Kapitan. What was he waiting on? Let’s get this thing over with.