“Guido Orsini, at your service, signorina,” he said gallantly and saluted. “If you come with me I’ll see you safely on board. We sail in thirty minutes.”
She turned to Martineau. “I’ll see you later then, Max.”
“In Jersey.” He nodded calmly.
She went out, Orsini holding the door open for her. Dietrich said, “A charming girl.”
“I think so.” Martineau leaned over the chart table. “Are we to enjoy an uneventful run tonight? I understand your convoys are often attacked by RAF night fighters.”
“Frequently, Standartenfiihrer,” Schroeder told him. “But the RAF will be busy elsewhere tonight.”
“Terror bombing the civilian population of our major cities as usual,” Martineau said because it was the kind of thing they would expect a Party fanatic like him to say. “And the British Royal Navy?”
“Yes, their MTBs are often active in the area,” Dietrich admitted and tapped the map. “From bases at Falmouth and Devonport.”
“And this doesn’t worry you?”
“Standartenfiihrer, there are more of them these days, but our E-boats are still the fastest thing of their kind afloat, as I will certainly have the chance to show you tonight.” He gathered up his charts. “Now. if you will follow me, we’ll go on board.”
The convoy left just after ten o’clock, eleven ships in all, including the barges. S92 led the way out of harbor, then swung hard to port. There was a light rain falling, and Dietrich stood on the bridge, probing into the darkness with his Zeiss night glasses. Martineau was at his right shoulder. Below them the wheelhouse was even more cramped with the helmsman and engine room telegraphist in there and the navigating officer at his small table behind. The wireless room was down a passage farther on.
“Not much room on these things,” Martineau commented.
“All engines, that’s what we say,” Dietrich told him.
“And armaments?”
“The torpedoes. Bofors gun aft, twenty-millimeter cannon in the forward well deck. Eight machine guns. We manage.”
“And radar, of course?”
“Yes, but that’s a difficult one in these waters. Lots of reefs, rocks, small islands. It makes for a lot of clutter on the screen. When the Tommies come down here they do exactly what 1 do when I’m operating out of Cherbourg and hitting their convoys.”
“What’s that?”
“Turn off our radar so they can’t find us with their loca tion equipment and maintain radio silence.”
Martineau nodded and looked astern at the other ships bulking in the dark. ‘What speed will the convoy maintain?”
“Six knots.”
“You must feel like a racing horse pulling a cart sometimes.”
Dietrich laughed. “Ye¯, but I’ve got two thousand horses under me.” He slapped the rail. “Nice to know just how fast they can get up and go when I ask them to.”
On the bridge of the Victor Hugo it was like being in a safe and enclosed world, rain and spray drifting against the glass. Savary stood beside the helmsman, and Sarah and Guido Orsini leaned over the chart table.
“This is the convoy route, what the Navy call Weg Ida. from Granville, east of the Chausey Isles.”
She liked him a lot, had from the moment he’d turned to look at her in the hut on the quay He was certainly good-looking. Too handsome, really, in a way that Latins could be sometimes, but there was strength there too, and when he smiled
His shoulder was touching hers. He said, “Come to the saloon. I’ll get you a coffee and you can use my cabin if you’d like to lie down.”
Savary turned. “Not just now. Count. I want to check the engine room. You’ll have to take the bridge.”
He went out. Sarah said, “Count?”
“Lots of counts in Italy. Don’t let it worry you.”
He offered her a cigarette and they smoked in companionable silence, looking out into the night, the noise of the engines a muted throbbing. “I thought Italy capitulated last year?” she said.
“Oh, it did. except for those Fascist fanatics who decided to fight on under the Germans, especially when Otto Skor-zeny hoisted Mussolini off that mountaintop and flew him to Berlin to continue the holy struggle.”
“Are you a Fascist?”