A thousand yards farther out, Blade shipped the paddles and began laying out three hand grenades. Three grenades exploding at one-minute intervals was the agreed-upon signal for the submarine to surface and make pickup.
Blade had the first grenade in his hand, ready to pull the pin, when a long, thin metal tube slowly crept out of the sea two hundred yards away. A faint wake trailed away behind it. Then the wake died, the tube rose higher out of the sea, and the rest of the submarine followed the periscope. Foam swirled away from the stern as the officers on the bridge maneuvered their ship toward Blade.
A line darted across the water from the three sailors standing on the deck. Blade caught it and pulled the raft in hard against the gleaming black steel of the submarine's hull. The sailors moved cautiously down the hull toward the water until they were practically hanging on their safety lines. Blade sprang up lightly from the raft onto the hull, and all four men joined together in heaving up the raft.
Blade let his breath out with a long sigh of relief, saw that the three sailors were gently lifting the courier, and headed for the bridge ladder. There was one more thing to be done before he would be satisfied with the night's work. As he scrambled up onto the bridge, he saw the submarine's captain leaning against the railing, binoculars around his neck.
«Welcome back, Mr. Blade,» said the captain.
«Thank you, sir,» said Blade. «Now, if you can manage it, I think we'd do well to pick up a prisoner or two from that destroyer.»
The captain shook his head. «I'm sorry, Mr. Blade. It might be useful, but it would also be dangerous. We can't afford to stay around here much longer, and certainly not on the surface.»
«But-«
«No, I'm sorry. We were able to get rid of that destroyer only by using-by using something we didn't expect to have succeed so well. I'm not going to risk my ship any further, now that we've got you aboard.» He smiled politely but turned away with a finality that suggested he would not be polite if Blade pushed the matter any further.
Blade shrugged. Both he and the captain were right, in different ways. The captain was right in not wanting to endanger his ship any further. On the other hand, a prisoner or two from the destroyer might tell Englor much, possibly even something about their ship's mission.
But aboard his own ship there was no arguing with the captain. There was nothing to do but accept his decision and hope the courier lived to talk.
The diving alarm hooted. Blade stepped aside to let the lookouts and the officer of the watch plunge down the hatch, then followed them.
Chapter 9
The captain might have been reluctant to risk his ship to pick up prisoners, but nothing else seemed to bother him. He took the submarine north and snaked her through a narrow and little-used channel just north of Tagarsson Island. Clear of coastal waters and Russland patrols, he ordered flank speed, and the submarine raced out across the Nord Sea. The turbines whined, the decks vibrated, and things not fastened down crept across tables and decks.
The mad rush took them across the Nord Sea in fourteen hours, but that wasn't fast enough for the courier. He regained consciousness once, long enough to know where he was and to hear Blade tell him of the destroyer's sinking. That made him smile in deep satisfaction-three hundred or more Russland sailors gone in return for his wife. It wasn't enough to save him. An hour later he lapsed into unconsciousness again.
The submarine pushed on, eventually surfacing five miles off Whitby. Then a helicopter was called, and the courier and Blade were loaded aboard it and flown to a hospital.
The courier was dead when they took him from the helicopter.
R wasted no time. He arrived to debrief Blade only three hours after the courier's death. Blade found himself whisked off to a «secure» room and kept there for the next twelve hours. Blade kept going-he was determined not to let a man so much older than he was outlast him. Besides, he was used to such exhausting debriefings. J's fondness for Blade had never let him be easy on the younger man in professional matters. R was a man cast in the same mold.
After Blade had finished telling every detail of his mission at least five times, R called an end to the debriefing and ordered in a meal. Blade went through the steak-and-kidney pie, grilled mutton chop, Brussels sprouts, and gooseberry tart with cream as if he were eating his last meal. Then he poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned back in his chair, full, content, relaxed, and quite ready for anything else that R might throw at him.
R pulled out cigars, offered Blade one, then lit one for himself. After a few puffs he fixed Blade appraisingly with his one eye.
«I was under the impression we'd handed you a fairly straightforward mission, Mr. Blade.» He seemed to be expecting a reply.
Blade nodded. «I was under that impression too.» He matched R stare for stare. «I don't think I can be held responsible for the complications, though.» His omitting «Sir» was deliberate. It was high time to learn a few things from R. Not what Special Operations already knew about Richard Blade-that would always be out of reach. But he might learn something about what they were planning on doing with Richard Blade in the future.
«Not for the complications that actually took place, perhaps,» said R. «But what about your bringing out the courier? What about your request that the submarine try to pickup survivors from the destroyer?»
They'd been over these points before. Blade knew that, and he also knew that R knew it. Presumably R had some particular purpose in pushing the matter. That didn't make it any less annoying, and Blade didn't see any reason to go on concealing his annoyance. He didn't have to give the impression that he would tolerate being treated like a child. So when he spoke, his voice was clipped and as chilly as liquid oxygen.
«We've been over that several times, sir.. I doubt if there's any profit or purpose in doing it again. The courier stated in plain English that the network in Nordsbergen had been blown. It seemed likely that he might be able to give useful information on how this had happened.»
«Why not interrogate him yourself?»
Blade realized that R was asking the question in perfect seriousness. «As it happened, it was impossible. We had too many-ah, unexpected visitors, of one sort or another.» The phrase drew a thin smile from R. «Even if we hadn't been busy fighting, I would have preferred to bring him out. It would have been better to have him interrogated by someone who knew more than I did about the background of Imperial intelligence operations in Nordsbergen.»
«Such as myself?» said R.
Blade nodded. «In any case, the courier was hit. I could have tried to take a prisoner from among the Russland wounded, but I don't think any of them were in much better shape than the courier. That would have also meant leaving the courier behind. I wouldn't do that.»
«And the destroyer's survivors?»
«The average deckhand probably wouldn't know why his ship was where it was. But an officer who knew something more might have survived. It seemed worth investigating.»
«Not to the submarine captain, though.»
«No, not to him. I'm not sure either of us was really in the right or in the wrong. We had different missions, and so we thought along different lines.»
«You think the submarine had something to do other than deliver you and pick you up?»
There was nothing in R's voice to give a clue to anyone less perceptive than Richard Blade. To Blade, R's polite question blazed like a signal flare, lighting up things that had been in the dark until now.