“We must wait a few minutes,” he was informed in a gloomy passageway somewhere forward of the cruiser’s third – under standard Kaiserliche Marine conventions, ‘Caesar’ – turret.
The lighting circuit in this part of the ship is down…
Good!
There was a scraping noise at Cowdrey-Singh’s back.
A chair…
“Please. I apologise for keeping you hanging around like this,” his escort told him with what seemed like entirely genuine chagrin. The man might have learned his English in the Home Counties, his diction was so perfect he could easily have been a newsreader for the Empire Broadcasting Corporation. “I believe that the Surgeon is presently attending to Admiral von Reuter’s injuries.”
“He was wounded?”
“When the bridge was hit, yes.”
Peter Cowdrey-Singh chewed on this; wondering privately, if this had had anything to do with the Lutzen suddenly closing the range with Achilles, apparently in a misbegotten bid to hasten ‘the kill’. Even in the heat of battle he had thought that was odd. The big German cruisers were shooting Achilles to pieces from a distance at which, excepting an outrageous stroke of luck, no six-inch shell could possibly penetrate to their vitals. And, as for steaming straight down the throat of Achilles’s starboard three-inch auto-cannons!
How many men had died unnecessarily on board the Lutzen as a result of that blunder?
Likewise, whoever had ordered that destroyer to come in so close to Achilles’s as yet unengaged port three-inchers before launching her torpedoes, well, that was just amateur dramatics!
But…
If von Reuter, by all accounts one of the Kaiserliche Marine’s finest minds had been incapacitated at the key moment, it explained a lot…
He was still pondering this when he was belatedly ushered into the presence of the man whose actions had killed and maimed so many of his friends and crewmates a little over two days ago.
Erwin von Reuter looked like death warmed up.
There was fresh blood on his collar, a bandage held a thick wad of gauze against the side of his throat and a freshly stitched two to three-inch long jagged gash at his right temple still wept small gobbets, which he distractedly mopped with a stained handkerchief as he stepped forward to offer the newcomer his free hand.
The Executive Officer of HMS Achilles ignored the gesture.
This man was no comrade.
The German withdrew his hand. There was an oddly poignant sadness, dull in his grey eyes, his ashen expression resigned.
“Please, take a seat Commander Cowdrey-Singh,” he sighed wearily, “I suspect that both of us probably feel even worse than we look at present. Let us at least take the weight off our feet for a few minutes.”
In his long career von Reuter had never had an uncivil conversation with an English officer. It simply was not done, until a few days ago he and the man standing before him would have been nationalities and navies notwithstanding, members of the same brotherhood of the seas. Civility would have been the unshakable bedrock of their professional respect, immutable and yet now; well, he more than any man had transgressed against a pact understood, meticulously respected ever since the end of the great War over a hundred years ago.
He had fired upon a British warship; it mattered not one jot that his Squadron had no longer been under the Eagle flag of the German Empire, flying the ‘red rag’ of Nuevo Granada. He remained, and would live and die a German officer, and he had fired upon a British ship at a time when no state of war existed between his Kaiser and the King of England.
He was damned for all time and he did not need anybody to tell him as much.
Von Reuter searched for some common ground with his guest.
The Royal Navy man had been so preoccupied with his black dog rage that he had failed to notice that there was a small, neat hole in the port bulkhead, and another across the other side of the compartment where one of the auto-cannon’s three-inch high-explosive rounds had entered, and presumably, exited the ship without detonating.
The two men viewed each other warily as they settled in their hard-backed chairs beneath the stateroom’s one open port hole on opposite sides of a small writing table. A cool breeze wafted across them.
Von Reuter followed his guest’s gaze, focusing on the holes in the hull plating.
“Several of the smaller rounds failed to explode,” he remarked, almost as if he was one navy man to another.
Peter Cowdrey-Singh refused to be drawn, to respond at all other than to shrug, a thing which caused him no little discomfort.
“Your injuries?” Von Reuter inquired solicitously, noting the pain creasing the other man’s face.
“I have several small lumps of shrapnel in my back and right calf. They think I’ve cracked my collar bone. My shoulder got dislocated when I was chucked against what was left of the catapult when one of your eight-inchers did for ‘C’ turret. My chaps put it straight back in but…”
He bit his tongue, irrationally, feeling like he was collaborating with the King’s enemies.
Von Reuter mopped at his bloody brow anew.
“They say I was unconscious for several minutes,” he forced a grimace. “Fortunately, as my friends tell me, I have a particularly thick skull!”
The Anglo-Indian could not stop himself quirking a spontaneous half-smile.
“I am sorry,” von Reuter said without preamble. “Whilst I still command the operational, day-to-day functions of my Squadron, I must obey the commands of my superior, Vice Admiral Count Carlos Federico Gravina y Vera Cruz.”
Peter Cowdrey-Singh did not care for such disingenuous sophistry.
Von Reuter leaned towards him.
“The German Empire is not at war with the British Empire, Commander.”
“Tell that to the Atlantic Fleet when it steams into the Windward Passage and settles your hash, old man!”
The normal proprietaries, respect of rank and all that tosh had gone out of the window the moment the Triple Alliance’s German mercenaries had ambushed Achilles. The Vera Cruz Squadron was not an honoured foe, it was a pirate fleet operating in contravention of all the accepted rules of war.
“I am sorry,” von Reuter groaned, rising to his feet. “I had hoped we might discuss matters like gentlemen.”
“I had hoped that my wounded would receive the medical care and attention they so badly need, and the other survivors of the Achilles would not have been locked in a stinking sweat hole on the Weser, sir!”
“Something will be done about that,” the German rasped irritably. “My medical staff has not rested since the action was joined two days ago. Normally, I would be in a position to send the most seriously injured men ashore. Here, unfortunately, because of certain ‘local’ tensions, I cannot do that at this time. Since I am unable, in good faith, to guarantee the safety of any of your men I send ashore – any less than I can my own people – I have no choice but to use the Weser as an ad hoc hospital ship. True, she is equipped for that role but for dozens, not scores of casualties. As for keeping your men cooped up below in a cargo hold, I am sorry but I cannot risk them being observed on deck.”
Peter Cowdrey-Singh was scowling.
“Why the Devil not, sir?”
“Because my bloody allies are demanding that I hand you and your men over to the Inquisition!”