In marked contrast to the conditions that had existed exactly forty-eight hours previously when the mass burial had taken place, the weather was now almost benign. The wind was no more than Force three, the sea calm enough to keep the San Andreas on an all but steady keel, and the cloud cover consisted of no more than a wide band of white, fleecy, mackerel sky against the pale blue beyond. McKinnon, standing by the starboard rail of the San Andreas, derived no pleasure whatsoever from the improvement: he would greatly have preferred the blanketing white blizzard of the previous burial.
Besides, the Bo’sun, the only other attendants or witnesses – by no stretch of the imagination could they have been called mourners – at the burial were Patterson, Jamieson, Sinclair and the two stokers and two seamen who had brought up the bodies. No one else had asked to come. For obvious reasons no one was going to mourn Dr Singh, and only Sinclair had known the two dead crewmen from the Argos and even then as no more than two unconscious bodies on operating tables.
Dr Singh was unceremoniously tipped over the side – not for him the well-wishing for his journey into the hereafter. Patterson, who would obviously never have made it as a clergyman, quickly read the liturgy from the prayer-book over the two dead Greek seamen and then they, too, were gone.
Patterson closed the prayer-book. ‘Twice of that lot is twice too often. Let’s hope there’s not going to be a third time.’ He looked at McKinnon. ‘I suppose we just plod on on our far from merry way?’
‘All we can do, sir. Lieutenant Ulbricht suggests that we alter course by and by to due south. That’ll take us on a more direct route to Aberdeen. He knows what he’s about. But that will be approximately twelve hours yet.’
‘Whatever’s best.’ Patterson gazed around the empty horizon. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd, Bo’sun, that we’ve been left unmolested, or at least not located, for the better part of three hours? Since all communication from the U-boat has ceased in that time they must be very dense if they’re not aware that something is far wrong with it.’
‘I should imagine that Admiral Doenitz’s U-boat fleet commander in Trondheim is very far from dense. I’ve the feeling they know exactly where we are. I understand that some of the latest U-boats are quite quick under water and one could easily be trailing us by Asdic without our knowing anything about it.’ Like Patterson, only much more slowly, he looked around the horizon, then stood facing the port quarter. ‘We are being tailed.’
‘What? What’s that?’
‘Can’t you hear it?’
Patterson cocked his head, then nodded slowly. ‘I think I can. Yes, I can.’
‘Condor,’ McKinnon said. ‘Focke-Wulf.’ He pointed. ‘I can see it now. It’s coming straight out of the east and Trondheim is about due east of us now. The pilot of that plane knows exactly where we are. He’s been told, probably via Trondheim, by the U-boat that’s trailing us.’
‘I thought a submarine had to surface to transmit?’
‘No. All it has to do is to raise its transmitting aerial above the water. It could do that a couple of miles away and we wouldn’t see it. Anyway, it’s probably a good deal further distant than that.’
‘One wonders what the Condor’s intentions are.’
‘Your guess, sir. We’re not, unfortunately, inside the minds of the U-boat and Luftwaffe commanders in Trondheim. My guess is that they’re not going to try to finish us off and that’s not because they’ve been at great pains not to sink us so far. If they wanted to sink us, one torpedo from the U-boat I’m sure is out there would do the job nicely. Or, if they wanted to sink us from the air, they wouldn’t use a Condor which is really a reconnaissance plane: Heinkels, Heinkel Ill’s or Stukas with long-range tanks could do the job much more efficiently – and Trondheim is only about two hundred miles from here.’
‘What’s he after, then?’ The Condor was two miles distant now and losing height rapidly.
‘Information.’ McKinnon looked up at the bridge and caught sight of Naseby out on the port wing looking aft towards the approaching Condor. He cupped his hands and shouted: ‘George!’ Naseby swung round.
‘Get down, get down!’ McKinnon made the appropriate gesture with his hand. Naseby raised an arm in acknowledgement and disappeared inside the bridge. ‘Mr Patterson, let’s get inside the superstructure. Now.’
Patterson knew when to ask questions and when not to. He led the way and within ten seconds they were all in shelter except the Bo’sun, who remained in the shattered doorway.
‘Information,’ Patterson said. ‘What information?’
‘One moment.’ He moved quickly to the side of the ship, looked aft for no more than two seconds, then returned to shelter.
‘Half a mile,’ McKinnon said. ‘Very slow, very low, about fifty feet. Information? Shell-holes, say, on the sides or superstructure, something to indicate that we had been in a fight with some vessel. He won’t see any holes on the port side.’
Patterson made to speak but whatever he had to say was lost in the sudden clamour of close-range fire by machine-guns, in the cacophonous fury of hundreds of bullets striking the superstructure and side in the space of seconds, and in the abrupt crescendo of sound as giant aero engines swept by not more than fifty yards away. Another few seconds and all was relatively quiet again.
Jamieson said: ‘Well, yes, I can see now why you told Naseby to get his head down.’
‘Information.’ Patterson sounded aggrieved, almost plaintive. ‘Bloody funny way they set about getting information. And I thought you said they weren’t going to attack us.’
‘I said they wouldn’t sink us. Knocking a few of the crew off would be all grist to their mill. The more of us they can kill, the more they think they’ll have us at their mercy.’
‘You think they got the information they wanted?’
‘I’m certain of it. You can be sure that every eye on that Condor was examining us very closely indeed as they passed by fifty yards away. They won’t have seen the damage to our bows because it’s underwater but they can’t have helped seeing something else that’s underwater up for’ard – our load-line. Unless they’re completely myopic they’re bound to have seen that we’re down by the head. And unless they’re equally dense they’re bound to realize that we’ve either hit something or been hit by something. It couldn’t have been a mine or torpedo or we’d be at the bottom now. They’ll have known at once that we must have rammed something and there won’t be much guessing about what that was.’
‘Dear, oh dear,’ Jamieson said. ‘I don’t think I like this one little bit, Bo’sun.’
‘Nor me, sir. Changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it? Question of the German high command’s priorities, I suppose. A question of alive or dead. Is it more important to them that they take us more or less alive or do they take revenge for their lost U-boat?’
‘Whichever they choose, there’s damn-all we can do about it,’ Patterson said. ‘Let’s go and have lunch.’
‘I think we should wait a moment, sir.’ McKinnon remained still and silent for a few moments, then said: ‘It’s coming back.’
And back it came, flying at the same near wave-top height. The second fly-past was a mirror image of the first: instead of flying stern to stem on the port side it flew stem to stern on the starboard side, again to the accompaniment of the same fusillade of machine-gun fire. Some ten seconds after the firing ceased McKinnon, followed by the others, left the shelter and went to the port rail.
The Condor was off the port quarter, climbing steadily and flying directly away from them.
‘Well, well,’ Jamieson said. ‘We seem to have got off lightly. Bound to have seen those three shell-holes on the starboard side, weren’t they, Bo’sun?’
‘Couldn’t have missed them, sir.’
‘They could be gaining bombing altitude before turning back to settle accounts with us?’
‘He could bomb us from a hundred feet without the slightest bit of danger to himself.’
‘Or maybe he just isn’t carrying any bombs?’
‘No. He’ll be carrying bombs all right Only the Focke Wulfs on the big half-circle from Trondheim to Lorient in France round the British Isles, or the ones who patrol as far out as the Denmark Strait don’t carry bombs. They carry extra fuel tanks instead. The ones on shorter patrols always carry bombs – 250-kilo bombs, usually, not the smaller ones that Lieutenant Ulbricht used. The pilot of the Condor is, of course, in direct radio communication with Trondheim, has told them why they’re not hearing from the U-boat any more, but still has been told to lay off us. For the meantime, anyway.’