He had no word from the Admiralty, or from Holland on the Hood, though he assumed that this force was still steaming on a parallel course to his own. As evening colored the sky with deep violet, the enemy made their move. Yet thankfully, the keen eyes of the lookouts on Kenya still kept the tall superstructure of the Bismarck in sight—though the inverse was not true. The ‘Pink Lady’ was out in her finest satin mauve dress at this hour, her coloring blending perfectly into the skyline. No one on Bismarck sighted her, or knew they had even been seen as the big ship made her getaway turn to the south.
The watchman in the high crow’s nest on Kenya’s main mast was shivering with the cold and queasy with the rolling seas. The winds buffeted him fiercely, but he stolidly kept his eyes on the target ahead, until it seemed the shadow of the enemy battleship deepened in hue and grew larger. His first thought was that the ship had turned to confront its pursuers, intent on battle at dusk, and he sent as much down the line to the bridge, warning “Bismarck turning on our position, right ahead!”
Kenya flashed the news behind her via lamp to the waiting eyes of Captain Patterson on King George V.
“She’s turning sir, coming round for a fight.”
“At this hour?” Tovey did not put the prospect out of his mind for a single minute, but the thought that Bismarck would now seek battle jarred him. He gave the order to hold course until Kenya confirmed the sighting. As it happened, a loose cable in the ship’s mast has served to keep the admiral waiting far too long.
Kenya’s lookout soon realized he had made an error. The big ship was turning, alright, but not coming round for a battle. He marked her new bearing, estimated it at 180 degrees south, and sent this along, though the message was not received on the bridge when the communications cable was jarred loose by a sudden lurch of the main mast in the unsteady seas. By the time lookouts further down had made the same observation, and passed it via voice tube to the bridge, which passed it back to the aft lanterns, and thence off to King George V, nearly twenty minutes had transpired.
Tovey knew he was not in for another fight ten minutes after the first warning came. If Bismarck had turned they should be seeing her by now, yet Kenya, was barely visible to his own eyes, the only ship on the darkening horizon. He knew in his gut that Bismarck had turned to run south—so they must turn as well. He discussed the matter with Brind.
“But which way, sir?” his Chief of Staff questioned. “We can’t make a heading change until we have confirmation.”
“Blast it!” Tovey was angry again. “What in blazes is taking Kenya so long?”
Minutes later his assumption was proved correct when he got the signal via lamp that Bismarck was headed due south. He immediately gave the order to the fleet to turn as well. “And code it well to the Admiralty. Send that Jerry is out on Whitehall from the Strand. That should do it.”
If the Germans would think to look closely at a map of London they might put that together and see that a man on Whitehall Street, and coming from the Strand, would be surely walking due south. To an Englishman it would be immediately apparent, and Tovey, ever wary that the Germans could decode his signals, had wrapped his message in yet another grey overcoat, hoping it would confound his enemies for a few precious hours more.
The Admiralty got his message well enough, as did Sir Lancelot Holland on HMS Hood, and when he heard it the admiral smiled and turned slowly to Captain Kerr.
“Come sixty degrees to port,” he said quietly. “Assume a new heading, at 180 degrees due south.”
The chase was still on.
Part VII
Second Thoughts
“Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches”
“Among mortals, second thoughts are wiser.”
Chapter 19
It took some time, but the Golems had begun to sample the Resonance within an hour or so of Kelly’s wireless broadcast. The Arch had pierced a hole in Time and he sent through his thin stream of dots and dashes, the barest trickle of energy it seemed, yet the impact on events was immediate and profound.
“Good lord!” Paul was aghast. “What a house of cards this is! It seems our first attempt here has done more than we imagined.”
“I’ll say,” said Maeve. “Care to have second thoughts about this?”
Their trick had worked alright. British intelligence picked up the faint signal over London and it rattled through the teletypes and message tubes and into the heads and minds of captains and admirals all across the North Atlantic. The ‘Lonesome Dove’ had quickly become an eagle, descending on the course of events and clawing at them with sharp talons of variation. Admiral Tovey had set out a full day early, yet strange unforeseen events had continued to crop up, bewildering in their effect on the outcome.
“Why would Lütjens decide not to make for the Denmark Strait?” asked Paul. “There was nothing in our message that should have prompted that decision.”
“He had any number of choices,” said Maeve. “Perhaps he had second thoughts as well.”
“This time he chose the Iceland Faeroes Gap,” said Kelly, “and that decision had far more impact on what happened than anything else.”
“I agree,” said Paul. “When Arethusa spotted Bismarck, in this altered history Admiral Tovey could really only steer one heading to best intercept her. Any seasoned commander would have done as much.”
“So there’s no great variable there,” said Maeve.
“Right. But he runs afoul of this U-boat and all hell breaks loose!” Paul ran his hand through his hair, still flustered that his first command had come to an untimely and unexpected result.
“Tovey’s dispositions were sound,” he said, well convinced. “He had Hood and Prince of Wales coming about and back-tracking from the Denmark Strait, and he had King George V and Repulse well in hand. That’s four capital ships that should have easily been able deal with the Germans.”
“The U-boat was the odd variable in the equation,” said Maeve. “That lucky torpedo hit took Repulse out of the battle and Bismarck brushes aside the British and rages south.”