Within an hour of leaving his flat Shaw was stopped at the entrance to the R.A.F station at Ashenden, in Kent. He handed his identity card through the window. The sentry examined it, handed it back, waved the driver on, and then crashed to attention and saluted as the driver let in his clutch. Soon after that Shaw was in a helicopter and heading seaward across the Kent coast and over the approaches to the London River and the ships from all the world making port. Far out in a steely sea he saw the floating deck, looking, from above, like a great aircraft-carrier, and now in the care of four tugs dispatched from Harwich and Gravesend. Another vessel, which would be the Trinity House vessel, was lying off the dock’s starboard quarter.
The helicopter dropped to within six feet of the top of one of the dock’s high sides, and a rope ladder was lowered through a hatch. Shaw clambered down and alighted on the dock, a cold wind ruffling his crisp brown hair, the hair that was prematurely grey over the ears as a result of dangerous living and years of heavy responsibility. The sea was far below him to one side, the long drop into the dock on the other. Once Shaw was down, the helicopter rose and headed home. Shaw had been dropped near a small group of men, and one of them, a large bluff man with white hair and a leathery brown face, came towards him, picking his way over the impedimenta of the dock.
‘Hullo there,’ he called in a bull-like roar. ‘I suppose you’ll be Commander Shaw. We were warned to expect you. I’m Bennett — Trinity House.’
Shaw nodded, smiled, and reached out a hand. It was taken in a massive, crushing grip. He said, ‘Glad to meet you, Captain.… Curious business, this. Have you found out anything new?’
‘Tell me what you know so far, and I’ll complete the picture if necessary.’ Bennett’s eyes looked right into him — watchful, suspicious that things were going to be taken out of his hands by the Admiralty. ‘I must say your people haven’t wasted much time.’
Shaw told him what he knew from Carberry. He added, ‘I gather the dock’s from a Hamburg yard. Right?’
Bennett smiled, the eyes almost vanishing in the folds of weathered flesh. ‘Right so far,’ he said. ‘She’s German all right. Brand-new construction with a good many new features, and obviously going a long way. Or meant to be, rather!’
Shaw looked at him sharply. ‘How d’you work that out, Captain?’
Bennett gestured impatiently. ‘Why, just look around you! She’s well secured for a lengthy passage and bad weather for one thing and for another her build strikes me as being out of the ordinary run. Almost as if she’s strengthened to withstand ice.’ He paused.
‘There’s another thing that strikes me as odd too, now I’ve had time for a good look round. She’s fitted out as a kind of floating workshop…’
Shaw lifted an eyebrow. ‘Not surprising for a dock, is it?’
‘Well — no. Not in the normal way, perhaps. But this one appears to have extensive facilities for maintaining radio and radar installations.’ He rasped a heavy hand across his chin, staring unblinkingly at Shaw. ‘I’ve never heard of that in a floating dock before.’
‘Come to that, neither have I,’ Shaw murmured thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean…’ He looked round at the sea, kicked up into small white horses by the wind; a biting wind that seemed already to have left his face pinched and numb; he didn’t like that freshening weather and neither did he like the look of the horizon. A floating dock was not going to be a very comfortable spot in a gale. ‘Looks like a blow coming up,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better start right away by having a general look round, if I may, before the weather really does deteriorate?’
‘Of course. I’ll take you round now. There’s undoubtedly some dirty weather in the offing.’ Bennett, too, was glancing up at the sky and noting the thin, elongated trails of cloud, indications of the blow to come. ‘With that in mind, I’d like a decision as soon as possible as to what’s to happen to this dock — for which, let me tell you, I’m by way of being responsible. I assume that once you fellows have done, I can make my own arrangements?’ He gave the agent another of his direct looks. He was a man well accustomed to having his own way.
Shaw grinned briefly. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure, Captain, except that we’ll naturally bow to your wishes on the point of navigational safety. Anything else’ll have to depend on what I find — if anything.’
Bennett asked curiously, ‘What the devil d’you expect to find?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Shaw told him frankly. ‘I dare say I won’t find anything at all… but I must confess my curiosity’s been aroused by the way the dock’s just been cut adrift and left.’
‘And mine. I don’t understand it. Damn queer.…’
Bennett turned away, Shaw following. The Trinity House man led the way to a hatch, a hatch protected by a windbreak and with a steel ladder leading down a hollow shaft to the interior of the dock’s raised side. As they went down this ladder, which was a long one and vertical, the daylight became a mere pinpoint in the hatchway overhead, and Bennett switched on a powerful torch. The beam showed up bare steel bulkheads dripping with moisture — the very air they were breathing was damp and clammy — and their footsteps echoed eerily on the rungs of the ladder as they descended the cylinder. At last they stepped off on to a steel deck and found themselves in a long alleyway leading into dark distances fore and aft.
Bennett said, ‘This goes the whole length of the dock. There’s a similar alleyway on the starboard side. See those doors?’
He shone his torch on to a succession of heavy doors set in the inboard side of the alleyway, and Shaw nodded. ‘Store-rooms?’
‘Yes, store-rooms. None of them were locked, only clipped and bolted on the outside. I’ve been in them all. Come and look for yourself, Commander.’
He knocked off the clips of the nearest of the doors and walked in ahead of Shaw, flashing his torch over the compartment. Shaw walked round. The whole store — and it was a sizeable one — was crammed with radio and radar spares of every conceivable type.
‘Not,’ Bennett observed, ‘at all the normal complement of a floating dock, as I said! All the other compartments on this side are the same, except for a couple that are workshops pure and simple.’
‘Don’t tell me they’re radar maintenance workshops?’
Bennett gave a short laugh. ‘That’s exactly what I am telling you! Now, I’m no expert on radar, apart from making use of the navigational information it gave me when I was a seagoing shipmaster — but I’d say it’s all very advanced equipment. Some of the stuff in the other compartments looks like something out of a nightmare, but I’ll be quite honest and say it has me beat as to what kind of installation it’s all intended to maintain and service. It doesn’t look like a ship’s outfit to me, or at any rate not an ordinary trading vessel. Could be for a warship, I suppose.’ He flicked his torch around again and added, ‘I’d like to know where it was all bound for — and why!’
‘Quite. And there’s still the big question — why did the towing vessels sheer off.’ He glanced at Bennett. ‘Any ideas?’
Bennett shrugged. ‘I told you, I don’t understand it. It’s a mystery to me. Unless they were simply scared of the consequences of hitting the lightship.’
‘Yes, but…’ Shaw frowned and rubbed his chin in perplexity. For the moment he was utterly stumped; strictly speaking, this wasn’t quite his usual kind of job. ‘What about the twin alleyway on the starboard side?’ he asked, going back to the matter in hand. ‘What have you found there?’
Bennett shrugged. ‘Same sort of compartments, but mostly full of quite normal stuff for ship maintenance and repair. But there again… well, there’s something queer. Some of the stuff is what I’d call bosun’s stores pure and simple — rope, wire, paint, anti-fouling, spun-yarn, codline… you know what I mean. Perhaps you’d expect to find some of all that aboard a floating dock, but there’s a hell of a lot of it. And two compartments are odder than that. Much odder. They’re the two biggest compartments of all and they’re both crammed to the deckheads with — tinned food! There must be tens of thousands of tins, literally. Beef, vegetables, soup, stews, fruit — there’s even tinned rice pudding.’