“An Albatross was detailed to overfly Jamaica,” the young woman reported primly.
Intelligence digests originating from ‘special assets’ always had to be ‘covered’ by such overflights, or by the presence of other ‘eyes and ears’ potentially visible to the enemy.
The C-in-C Atlantic Fleet had always known that the coming of war would test, probably to destruction, the bodyguard of lies which had thus far concealed Project Poseidon, the huge costs of which, as Director of Naval Planning, had conspired to bury in Naval Estimates year after year during his time at the Admiralty.
He sighed, quirked a wan smile at the men, and one woman, around the table.
“Serapis and her sister in theatre,” he guffawed ruefully, “wherever she is at present, could sink the whole damned Triple Alliance Fleet inside twenty-four hours.”
This drew no comment.
“Yet,” Cuthbert Collingwood continued, “we find ourselves hoist by our own petard, as it were. “If we were to so do, sink every one of the blighters, that is, the whole World would know that we tore up the Submarine treaty before the ink was dry on the damned thing. And then, we’d be in a fine old pickle!”
Nobody said a word for some seconds.
Oddly, it was the youngest, most junior person in the room who coughed, respectfully breaking the uneasy silence.
“Permission to speak, sir?” Madeline Fisher requested respectfully.
Collingwood waved for her to say her piece.
“Forgive me, sir,” she prefaced, face creased with concentration. “I’ve never been to sea on an operational warship. I make no claim to be expert in anything but my own field. Intelligence, analysis of the same, and so forth, but…”
The C-in-C found himself smiling paternally.
“Speak your mind, Second Officer Fisher. You are among friends around this table.”
“Thank you, sir.” The young woman bit her lower lip. “It is only a matter of time before our friends, and our enemies alike discover the truth about Project Poseidon. At university I studied history, and like my colleagues in PID, I was submitted to, or perhaps the correct description might be, I was subjected to a battery of security and psychological checks before I was let into the secret. The Secret of our age. I think we are wrong to believe that the German Empire will throw up its hands in horror and declare war on us when it learns what we have done.”
“Madeline,” the WREN’s boss murmured warningly.
Cuthbert Collingwood held up a hand as if to say: “Let’s hear the young lady out.”
“I think we should just go ahead and sink the whole Mexican, Cuban and Dominican navies, and start lobbing precision guided munitions into the middle of Spanish governors’ palaces and key military installations across the Caribbean and New Granada. Everybody knows we’re only in this war because of the Germans and when the people in Berlin wake up and,” Madeline Foster shrugged apologetically, speaking in a quiet, matter-of-fact monotone, “smell the Darjeeling, I think it’ll stop them in their tracks, at least for another two or three years.”
Cuthbert Collingwood arched an eyebrow.
Nobody else spoke, or dared to breathe.
Madeline Fisher concluded: “They’ll just think what everybody else will think: that you forget at your peril that when all is said and done, nobody is quite so ruthless as the English!”
Chapter 35
Wednesday 13th April
Little Inagua, West Indies
“We have to get our skates on,” the Royal Marine Lieutenant in command of the six-man Special Boat Squadron detachment on the island informed Abe at a little after midnight. Other SBS men were lifting Ted Forest onto a makeshift litter, despite his protests that he could ‘hop along’ under his own stream.
“Tell your chum that he’s not a burden and that whether he likes it or not we’re going to carry him to the pick-up site regardless of whether he likes it or not, old man.”
Abe struggled to his feet.
His left arm was in a sling, his shoulder felt deadened.
He swaying, uncertain of his balance for some moments.
He stepped over to his friend, bent down.
“Be a good fellow, old man.”
“That’s rich coming from you, Abe!” Ted Forest retorted, grinning broadly in the starlight.
They began to trudge north through the undergrowth.
“While you were having forty winks Sub-Lieutenant Forest gave me a blow by blow account of what you chaps have been up to,” the SBS officer, a man of about Abe’s age but several inches shorter carrying a bulging rucksack which ought to have broken his back as if it was virtually weightless, his black Enfield 0.303-calibre assault rifle slung across his broad chest.
“Ted has a vivid imagination,” Abe cautioned his companion.
This tickled the other man’s sense of humour.
He guffawed and shook his head.
They walked on, taking slow, deliberate steps. Two men of the six-man team, carried Ted Forest’s ‘stretcher’, another brought up the rear. The other two SBS men were on point and rear-guard duty, ranging far ahead and hanging back, just in case there were any Dominican ‘stay behinds’ in the mood for a fight.
“I still don’t understand how a doctor ends up dive bombing a German cruiser?” The SBS officer, a man with a pronounced Scottish accent queried.
Abe knew the other man was going to keep talking to him all the way across the island; if only to keep him awake.
He explained about how his brother, Alex, had taught him to fly up in Albany, and his time as a volunteer ‘flying doctor’ in Canada.
“I was number three pilot aboard the Achilles, and assistant surgeon…”
“How come you got to be such a dead-eye shot?”
Abe ended up telling the SBS man his life story.
During a fifteen-minute rest he finally got to ask a question of his own: “You said we were heading for a pick-up point, Tom?”
Lieutenant Thomas McPherson teeth flashed in a predatory smile.
“Yes. We need to be at a certain point on a certain beach approximately an hour before dawn today, or tomorrow,” he confided, “otherwise we’re stuck here for good.”
“How do we get picked up?”
“Can’t talk about that, sorry.”
Abe changed the subject.
“You chaps were spotters?”
“More coast watchers and freelance troublemakers. Observing the comings and goings through the channel between the two islands. We set up a beacon for your aviator chums to home onto. You know, to save them having to stooge around trying to find those Dago ships if it was a bit hazy. We warned them about that battleship…”
“The Reina Eugenie,” Abe put in.”
“Oh, right, we never got that close to the beggar. You didn’t see the names of the other ships, by any chance?”
“No, sorry.”
“Anyway, we warned base that the Dagoes had arranged themselves so as to protect the battleship from torpedo attack. The idea was they’d set their fish to run deep and to detonate magnetically. I know one fish ended up on the beach, no idea what happened to the other five or six that didn’t hit that old ironclad. Perhaps, their firing pistols didn’t initiate or they plugged in the bottom…”
“No, the water beyond the reef is hundreds of feet deep.”
“Whatever, two hits out of eight or nine against anchored ships isn’t that clever.”
Abe felt the need to differ.
“Attacking a ship isn’t any kind of piece of cake,” he objected.
“You seem to have got the knack PDQ?”
“I almost crashed into the deck of the Achilles the first time I tried it!”
They rose to their feet, marched onward.