‘This is suicide, Herr Fleck. Both suicide and worse — it is murder too.’
‘Very well then, it is suicide and murder. So be it!’ Fleck, under control again, smiled coldly, a smile that turned his mouth into a thin, crooked grimace, more Satanic than ever. ‘Nevertheless, we shall have achieved our objective — if Schillenhorst is quick enough. Are you afraid, Captain Lindrath?’
Lindrath shook his head and looked penetratingly at Fleck. There was contempt in his eyes; he was showing all his years now, all his old man’s wrinkles. He said heavily, ‘No, Herr Fleck, I am not afraid, no more than any man is afraid of death. Not for myself.’
‘Then for whom?’
‘The world. What you intend to do, Herr Fleck, will have its repercussions in every part of the globe.’
Fleck laughed. ‘Certainly! That is the whole point, is it not?’ He swayed a little as the ship lurched down a wave, sliding bodily as though down a mountain-side, then he recovered himself. ‘But I have neither the time nor the desire for a discussion on ethics and principles. We will do that afterwards, if you insist—’
‘Afterwards! There will be no afterwards for us, Herr Fleck. The American will do as he says — he will blow us out of the water the moment we use our radio!’
‘That remains to be seen.’ Fleck dug a finger into the old man’s ribs. ‘You will now listen to me. We are within range of the cruiser’s turrets at this moment, which is why I was forced to agree to their suggestions, but we shall have the initiative, remember. It appears that they will do nothing until we transmit, which is very foolish of them. They must react quickly, very quickly, after Schillenhorst’s first transmissions, and they must also react with perfect accuracy. There will be a little time for them to make ranging shots — their first salvo must hit us. For our part, we have to ensure that it does not, that we shall have the time we need. You, therefore, Captain Lindrath, will be ready to zig-zag when I tell you, and you will also increase speed again to our maximum when I tell you. Do you understand, Captain Lindrath?’
The old man nodded. ‘I understand, Herr Fleck.’ He brought his heels smartly together and gave a tight, formal bow. Then he turned away and walked into the chart-room. For some minutes he looked almost unseeingly out of a port, staring down at the wild waters and the wheeling gulls, his face sombre as he looked at the seas on which he had started his seafaring life, it must have been almost sixty years before. Then he moved over to a table where the chart of the area was laid out with the Moehne’s present track drawn upon it in pencil, the ship’s last calculated position marked by a neat cross. He frowned down at this chart, thoughtfully. Then a curious and fleeting excitement showed in his eyes and he took up a pencil and a pair of dividers. For a minute or so he was busy with these and with the parallel rulers and then he straightened and went back to the bridge.
He glanced at the clock on the bulkhead.
It was 1145 hours.
Shaw felt stifled, up there on the North Dakota’s bridge. He could hear his own heart, thumping away as if it had shifted into his eardrums. The risk he was asking MacKail to take… was it justified? It scared him now, the more so as he’d landed the responsibility squarely on MacKail, who would carry the memory of it to his grave if anything should go wrong.
Was this a case of his being too security-minded, a case of an agent being blinded to the real human issues? Was he looking too much to the future which, for millions of Americans in a mere few minutes’ time, might simply cease to be?
There was a clock, just below the glass screen. It was ticking. It was marking those passing minutes, second by second… were they to be the last minutes of a way of life? Shaw felt an almost overwhelming impulse to cry out to MacKail, to admit to him that he’d been wrong, to get him to open fire — now, while he had the time.
But he didn’t.
This wasn’t the first time Shaw had been in a tricky situation where minutes, seconds, could make all the difference. You had to keep a clear head, he reminded himself, see the thing whole. In point of fact they did have the time to destroy the Moehne after the first transmissions, as he had said… and international relations were still important, were still vital enough to warrant the risk involved in preserving them as intact as possible.
MacKail was pacing the bridge restlessly now, up and down, up and down again. MacKail’s facial twitch — it was almost that now — and the explosive oompah were so regular that they were stretching men’s nerves to screaming-point, but all hands held back because they instinctively recognized one thing: that if MacKail didn’t pace up and down and blow out his cheeks like that then his nerves would scream out and after that he’d be done. So today more than any other day in all their lives, the Captain’s nerves were the most important of all. They couldn’t, literally, survive without MacKail.
So MacKail paced and blew and no one’s nerves broke surface.
By this late hour, all that could be done had been done. The radar was giving minute-by-minute checks on the German vessel’s range; all the North Dakota’s forward heavy guns, and all the forward and midship close-range weapons, were manned and bearing on the Moehne, constantly bearing, following each tiny alteration passed to them electrically by the control position. When finally the cruiser swept in to deliver her punch, MacKail would turn her so that all the other guns as well, every gun in the ship, would be brought to bear. A loudspeaker had been switched on from the radio-room, where a monitoring watch was being kept on the Moehne, so that reports could reach MacKail and, through him, the guns, with the absolute minimum of delay. When that loud speaker talked, so would the guns. It was as simple as that. And the range was down now to a little over a mile. When the time came — if it came — they couldn’t possibly miss.… In theory at any rate, the Moehne would vanish instantly in a great welter of smoke and flame and fragmented metal.
As they continued to drop so far to the south — and they were well south of the Horn now, after some seven hours’ steaming at varying, but mainly comparatively high, speeds — the weather began to show signs of a change. The wind was dropping and the seas were tending to flatten out, and the air was sharper, colder, harder; these were dangerous waters, and there was the occasional sign of ice, and there were occasional flurries of snow or hail as the North Dakota passed through a squall. The sun was a red blob smouldering in an icy sky.…
‘Radio-room to bridge!’ The metallic voice, breaking suddenly into all their thoughts and fears, made everyone jump. ‘Canaveral reports, All Systems Go.’
MacKail nodded.
Canaveral, without even now mentioning Warmaster or her functions, was giving a running commentary on the launching and would follow the missile to its target area in the closed section of the Pacific. Just one more big missile to such people as were interested… but try to tell that to the crew of the North Dakota! Shaw had the feeling that they all sensed the truth; there was a kind of radiated tension. Glancing across at MacKail, he saw the Captain’s face whiten, saw his hands reach out and grasp the handles of the engine-room telegraph as though he could will his engines onward even faster. Everyone was watching MacKail; in those hands of his lay the whole security, the whole future of America — and the lives of many of the ships’ companies’ families.