“Bimble sent you up here?” Townes roared. “And may I ask, sir, what are you to do? Hold my hand? Wipe my nose? This is Scapa Flow, young man, we are the Home Fleet. We are certainly aware that Nottingham has run into difficulty and that something is about in the Denmark Strait.”
Harland stood at rigid attention while Townes’s staff pretended to work diligently. They had probably been at the receiving end of one of Townes’s barrages and knew enough to keep low.
“Sir, if I may?” Harland said.
“What is it, young man? Speak up. Harland, correct? Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, come to, Harland. What’s this all about? What’s Bimble up to?”
“Sir, it is not Sir Joshua. It is information that we have come across concerning the actions in the Denmark Strait.”
“Prader’s ‘battleship’? Nonsense. No such animal exists. Case of nerves, that’s all. First time that he smells powder and he’s beside himself. What we’ve got from him is scattered at best. Nothing of use. Nothing complete. Bits and pieces of radio messages. Suppose this German chap is a pocket battleship, maybe a battle cruiser, or perhaps a cruiser. Where is it now, Harland? What hole has he popped into? There are convoys out there that need protection, and protection I can give them if, if I know where that German chap has gone. It would bloody well please me to know what I’m fighting.”
“Admiral Townes, Sir Joshua has requested reconnaissance flights from Coastal Command and the RAF. The weather.”
“In the Denmark Strait,” Townes said sarcastically, “a poor sailor can hardly see from port to starboard on his own ship. They must fly nevertheless. These ships of mine need service, Harland. Bismarck handled them roughly enough, but even before the encounter they were past due for attention. Send them out I will but with damned more in my hand than what you’ve given me.” Suddenly Townes cooled a bit. He motioned Harland to a chair next to his nearly bare desk. “Like a squall,” Townes’s temper had been described to him, violent one moment, virtually nonexistent the next. Harland was relieved to see Townes becalmed.
“Now see here, Captain Harland,” Townes said in a surprisingly soft tone. “I’ve got poor old Repulse out with Kensington and three destroyers covering a territory that rightly belongs to three battleships and a dozen cruisers. K.G.V., Nelson, and Rodney are laid up for repairs and if I send them out now they’ll be cluttered with workmen. Renown and Victorious are with Force J and just coming into Gibraltar, so even if I were to recall them it would take some time before they arrive. My other carrier, Ark Royal, is escorting a convoy and I won’t be able to get my hands on her for seventy-two hours at least. I haven’t heard from Nottingham, which frightens me no end; and Harrogate, as crippled as any ship can be with out-of-date engines, is steaming back to her sister’s last-known position to find out what the dickens has happened. You see my situation?”
“Yes, sir,” Harland said. “Quite.”
“You can stay here and report to Sir Joshua Bimble all you like,” Townes said. Harland prepared himself for another outburst, but the moment passed. “I shall have some of my chaps make accommodations for you. But this is a case of I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
“Sir?”
“I need eyes, Harland. Very Long Range eyes. I’ve got to have Coastal Command aircraft, Royal Navy aircraft, anything that you can find that flies out there looking for what Nottingham tied into. If I can’t find it, I can’t defeat it.”
“Yes, sir,” Harland said. But it troubled him that Townes left out the obvious need to fight the intruder, whoever she was. They had gotten Bismarck right enough, but they had given up Hood with only three of her crew surviving the battle. At first Harland was going to chastise himself for disloyalty or at least being a pessimist, but he decided that his concerns had value. In between finding the German vessel and defeating her, lay the very uncertain matter of fighting her. And all indications were that she was a fighter.
Chapter 19
Cole watched Rebecca sit on the floor next to the fireplace. She had built a small fire — she was always cold, she said — and tended it carefully, lost in the effort. She searched through the coal bucket with the tongs, pushing aside piece after piece until she found one that suited her. Then she trapped it in the tongs and set it into the fire with deliberation. When she felt the need, she found a piece of wood and wedged it between lumps of glowing coal, careful not to raise a cloud of black smoke.
She sipped her drink delicately and when the mood struck her, talked. As the evening wore on and the alcohol began to take its toll, her movements were awkward. She was drinking more and late into the night she would make her way to the couch in a drunken stupor and collapse. Cole, covering her with a cotton blanket, knew that it was the only way that she could silence the screams of the wound, and hide the truth about her infidelity from herself.
“We had a bad lot today,” Rebecca said, her eyes never leaving the tiny flames that curled up around the lumps of coal. “Firemen. Six of them. Poor chaps were fighting a blaze near the museum. The UXB boys told them to fall back, that there was an unexploded bomb buried in the rubble.” She took a drink. “The fire chaps said no, we can hear people in there. What did they expect to find? Everyone had been burned to a crisp. Better to let them die than try to save them.” Another drink — stir the fire. “It went off. The bomb. Most were killed. The chaps we got were burned beyond recognition. They were alive, if you can call it that. But…” Another drink, emptying the glass. “Be a dear and make me another, will you?” she said, shaking the glass at him. “No lectures now. I’m learning how to hold my liquor, you know.”
He took the glass and made her another drink, as strong as the one she would make for herself. He took it back, handed it to her, and sat down in a wing chair. She had become sullen lately and Cole knew that it was because of him, because he did not have courage enough to walk away. Because he wasn’t decent enough, or strong enough, to say, “It’s over, Rebecca.”
“They were all burned black and torn open, you see. The strangest combination of colors — bright red on coal black. Have you ever seen such a thing?”
“No.”
“No? One would have thought that you had. Do you suppose that’s how Greg looks now?”
“It won’t do any good to think about it. What’s done is done.”
“‘What’s done is done’? What a bloody cold thing to say,” she said calmly, taking a long drink. “I worry about it though. How he will be, how I will be when he comes back.” She smiled at him thinly. “How it will be with you. Do you have an answer for that question, Jordan?”
“No,” he said.
“I am so very confused,” she said to the fire. “Fix me another, there’s a dear.”
He sat motionless in the chair.
“Jordan? Well then, I shall do it myself,” she said, struggling to her feet. She made her way unsteadily to the liquor cabinet and made herself another drink. “No empathy, wasn’t it? Your fiancée…” She sat down heavily in front of the fireplace and stabbed at the fire.
“Yeah. That’s me all over.” He hated to see her this way. She was destroying herself and all he could do was be angry. At her. At himself.