Storm Warning

2

Barquentine Deutschland. 9 September 1944. Lat. 25°.01N., long. 30°.46W. Fourteen days out of Belém. Wind NW 6–8. Hove the log and found we were going twelve knots. In the past twenty-four hours we have run two hundred and twenty-eight miles. Frau Prager still confined to her bunk with the sea-sickness which has plagued her since leaving Belém. Her increasing weakness gives us all cause for concern. Heavy rain towards evening.

The morning weather forecast for sea area Hebrides had been far from promising: winds 5 to 6 with rain squalls. Off the north-west coast of Skye, things were about as dirty as they could be – heavy, dark clouds swollen with rain, merging with the horizon.

Except for the occasional seabird, the only living thing in that desolation was the motor gunboat making south-west for Barra, her Stars and Stripes ensign the one splash of colour in the grey morning.

Dawn was at six-fifteen, but at nine-thirty visibility was still bad enough to keep the RAF grounded. No one on board the gunboat could have been blamed for failing to spot the lone Junkers 88S coming in low off the sea astern. The first burst of cannon shell kicked fountains of water high into the air ten or fifteen yards to port. As the plane banked for a second run, the 13mm machine-gun firing from the rear of the cockpit canopy loosed off a long burst that ripped into the deck aft of the wheelhouse.

Harry Jago, in his bunk below trying to snatch an hour’s sleep, was awake in an instant, and making for the companionway. As he reached the deck, the gun crew were already running for the twin 20mm anti-aircraft cannon. Jago beat them into the bucket seat, hands clamping around the trigger handles.

Suddenly, as the Junkers came in off the water for the second time, heavy, black smoke swirled across the deck. Jago started to fire as its cannon punched holes in the deck beside him.

The Junkers was making its pass at close to four hundred miles an hour. He swung to follow it, aware of Jansen on the bridge above him working the Browning. But it was all to no purpose, and the Junkers curved away to port through puff-balls of black smoke and fled into the morning.

Jago stayed where he was for a moment, hands still gripping the handles. Then he got out of the seat and turned to Leading Seaman Harvey Gould, who was in charge of the antiaircraft cannon.

‘You were five seconds too late, you and your boys.’

The men of the gun crew shuffled uneasily. ‘It won’t happen again, Lieutenant,’ Gould said.

‘See that it doesn’t.’ Jago produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and stuck one in his mouth. ‘Having survived the Solomons, D-Day and the worst those E-boat flotillas in the English Channel could offer, it would look kind of silly to die in the Hebrides.’

The pilot of the Junkers, Captain Horst Necker, logged his attack as having taken place at 09.35 hours precisely. A hit-and-run affair of no particular importance which had served to enliven an otherwise boring routine patrol, especially for a pilot who in the spring of that year, during the renewed night attacks on London, had been employed by the elite pathfinder Gruppe 1/KG 66 with the kind of success that had earned him the Knight’s Cross only two months previously.

It had been something of a come-down to be transferred to KG 40 based at Trondheim, a unit specializing in shipping and weather reconnaissance, although the JU 88S they had given him to fly was certainly a superb plane – an all-weather machine capable of a top speed of around four hundred miles per hour.

His mission that morning had one purpose. To look for signs of a convoy expected to leave Liverpool for Russia that week, although the exact day of departure was unknown. He had crossed Scotland at thirty thousand feet to spend a totally abortive couple of hours west of the Outer Hebrides.

The sighting of the gunboat had been purest chance, following an impulse to go down to see just how low the cloud base was. The target, once seen, was too tempting to pass up.

As he climbed steeply after the second attack, Rudi Hubner, the navigator, laughed excitedly. ‘I think we got her, Herr Hauptmann. Lots of smoke back there.’

‘What do you think, Kranz?’ Necker called to the rear gunner.

‘Looks like they made it themselves to me, Herr Hauptmann,’ Kranz replied. ‘Somebody down there knows his business and they weren’t Tommis either. I saw the Stars and Stripes as we crossed over the second time. Probably my brother Ernst,’ he added gloomily. ‘He’s in the American navy. Did I ever tell you that?’

Schmidt, the wireless operator, laughed. ‘The first time over London with the port engines on fire, and you’ve mentioned it on at least fifty-seven different occasions since. I suppose it shows that at least one person in your family has brains.’

Hubner ignored him. ‘A probable then, Herr Hauptmann?’ he suggested.

Necker was going to say no, then saw the hope in the boy’s eyes and changed his mind. ‘I don’t see why not. Now let’s get out of here.’

When Jago went up to the bridge there was no sign of Jansen. He leaned against the Browning and looked down. The smoke had almost cleared and Gould was kicking the burned-out flare under the rail into the sea. The deck was a mess by the port rail beside the anti-aircraft gun, but otherwise things didn’t look too bad.

Jansen came up the ladder behind him. He was a tall, heavily-built man and in spite of the tangled black beard, the knitted cap and faded reefer coat with no rank badges, was a chief petty officer. A lecturer in Moral Philosophy at Harvard before the war and a fanatical weekend yachtsman, he had resolutely defeated every attempt to elevate him to commissioned rank.

‘A lone wolf, Lieutenant.’

‘You can say that again,’ Jago told him. ‘A JU 88 in the Hebrides.’

‘And one of the Reichsmarschall’s later models, to judge by his turn of speed.’

‘But what in the hell was he doing here?’

‘I know, Lieutenant,’ Jansen said soothingly. ‘It’s getting so you can’t depend on anyone these days. I’ve already checked below, by the way. Superficial damage. No casualties.’

‘Thanks,’ Jago said. ‘And that smoke flare was quick thinking.’

He found that his right hand was trembling slightly and held it out. ‘Would you look at that. Wasn’t it yesterday I was complaining that the only thing we got to fight up here was the weather?’

‘Well, you know what Heidegger had to say on that subject, Lieutenant.’

‘No, I don’t Jansen, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘He argued that for authentic living what is necessary is the resolute confrontation of death.’

Jago said patiently, ‘Which is exactly what I’ve been doing for two years now and you’ve usually been about a yard behind me. Under the circumstances, I’ll tell you what you can do with Heidegger, Jansen. You can put him where grandma had the pain. And try to rustle up some coffee while I check over the course again.’

‘As the Lieutenant pleases.’

Jago went into the wheelhouse and slumped into the chart-table chair. Petersen had the wheel – a seaman with ten years in the merchant service before the war, including two voyages to Antarctica in whalers.

‘You okay?’ Jago demanded.

‘Fine, Lieutenant.’

Jago pulled out British Admiralty chart 1796. Barra Head to Skye. South Uist, Barra and a scattering of islands below it, with Fhada, their destination, at the southern end of the chain. The door was kicked open and Jansen came in with a mug of coffee which he put on the table.

‘What a bloody place,’ Jago said, tapping the chart. ‘Magnetic anomalies reported throughout the entire area.’

‘Well, that’s helpful,’ Jansen said. ‘Just the thing when you’re working out a course in dirty weather.’

‘Those islands south of Uist are a graveyard,’ Jago went on. ‘Everywhere you look on the damned chart it says Heavy Breakers or Dangerous Seas. One hazard after another.’

Jansen unfolded a yellow oilskin tobacco pouch, produced a pipe and started to fill it, leaning against the door. ‘I was talking to some fishermen in Mallaig before we left. They were telling me that sometimes the weather out there is so bad, Fhada’s cut off for weeks at a time.’

‘The worst weather in the world when those Atlantic storms start moving in,’ Jago said. ‘God knows what it must be like in winter.’

‘Then what in the hell is Admiral Reeve doing in a place like that?’

‘Search me. I didn’t even know he was up here till I was told to pick up that dispatch for him in Mallaig and deliver it. Last I heard of him was D-day. He was deputy director of operations for Naval Intelligence and got himself a free trip on the Norwegian destroyer Svenner that was sunk by three Möwe-class torpedo boats. He lost his right eye and they tell me his left arm’s only good for show.’

‘A hell of a man,’ Jansen said. ‘He got out of Corregidor after MacArthur left. Sailed a lugger nearly six hundred miles to Cagayan and came out on one of the last planes. As I remember, he went down in a destroyer at Midway, was taken aboard the Yorktown and ended up in the water again.’

‘Careful, Jansen. Your enthusiasm is showing and I didn’t think that was possible where top brass was concerned.’

‘But this isn’t just another admiral we’re talking about, Lieutenant. He’s responsible for an excellent history of naval warfare and probably the best biography of John Paul Jones in print. Good God, sir, the man can actually read and write.’ Jansen put a match to the bowl of his pipe and added out of the side of his mouth, ‘Quite an accomplishment for any naval officer, as the Lieutenant will be the first to agree?’

‘Jansen’, Jago said. ‘Get the hell out of here.’

Jansen withdrew and Jago swung round to find Petersen grinning hugely. ‘Go on, you too! I’ll take over.’

‘Sure thing, Lieutenant.’

Petersen went out and Jago reached for another cigarette. His fingers had stopped trembling. Rain spattered against the window as the MGB lifted over another wave and it came to him, with a kind of wonder, that he was actually enjoying himself, in spite of the aching back, the constant fatigue that must be taking years off his life.

Harry Jago was twenty-five and looked ten years older, even on a good day, which was hardly surprising when one considered his war record.

He’d dropped out of Yale in March 1941 to join the navy and was assigned to PT boats, joining Squadron Two in time for the Solomons’ campaign. The battle for Guadalcanal lasted six months. Jago went in at one end a crisp, clean nineteen-year-old ensign and emerged a lieutenant, junior grade, with a Navy Cross and two boats shot from under him.

Afterwards Squadron Two was recommissioned and sent to England at the urgent request of the Office of Strategic Services to land and pick up American agents on the French coast. Again Jago survived, this time the Channel, the constant head-on clashes with German E-boats out of Cherbourg. He even survived the hell of Omaha beach on D-day.

His luck finally ran out on 28 June, when E-boats attacked a convoy of American landing craft waiting in Lyme Bay to cross the Channel. Jago arrived with dispatches from Portsmouth to find himself facing six of the best that the Kriegsmarine could supply. In a memorable ten-minute engagement, he sank one, damaged another, lost five of his crew and ended up in the water with shrapnel in his left thigh, the right cheek laid open to the bone.

When he finally came out of hospital in August they gave him what was left of his old crew, nine of them, and a new job: the rest that he so badly needed, playing postman in the Hebrides to the various American and British weather stations and similar establishments in the islands in a pre-war MGB, courtesy of the Royal Navy, that started to shake herself to pieces if he attempted to take her above twenty knots. Some previous owner had painted the legend Dead End underneath the bridge rail, a sentiment capable of several interpretations.

Just for a month or two, the squadron commander had told Jago. Look on it as a kind of holiday. I mean to say, nothing ever happens up there, Harry.

Jago grinned in spite of himself and, as a rain squall hurled itself against the window, increased speed, the wheel kicking in his hands. The sea was his life now. Meat and drink to him, more important than any woman. It was the circumstance of war which had given him this, but the war wouldn’t last forever.

He said softly, ‘What in the hell am I going to do when it’s all over?’

There were times when Rear Admiral Carey Reeve definitely wondered what life was all about. Times when the vacuum of his days seemed unbearable and the island that he loved with such a deep and unswerving passion, a prison.

On such occasions he usually made for the same spot, a hill called in the Gaelic Dun Bhuide, the Yellow Fort, above Telegraph Bay on the south-west tip of Fhada, and so named because of an abortive attempt to set up a Marconi station at the turn of the century. The bay lay at the bottom of four-hundred-foot cliffs, a strip of white sand slipping into grey water with Labrador almost three thousand miles away to the west and nothing in between.

The path below was no place for the fainthearted, zigzagging across the face of the granite cliffs, splashed with lime, seabirds crying, wheeling in great clouds, razorbills, shags, gulls, shear-waters and gannets – gannets everywhere. He considered it all morosely for a while through his one good eye, then turned to survey the rest of the island.

The ground sloped steeply to the southwest. On the other side of the point from Telegraph were South Inlet and the lifeboat station, the boathouse, its slipway and Murdoch Macleod’s cottage, nothing more. On his left was the rest of the island. A scattering of crofts, mostly ruined, peat bog, sheep grazing the sparse turf, the whole crossed by the twin lines of the narrow-gauge railway track running north-west to Mary’s Town.

Reeve took an old brass telescope from his pocket and focused it on the lifeboat station. No sign of life. Murdoch would probably be working on that damned boat of his, but the kettle would be gently steaming on the hob above the peat fire and a mug of hot tea generously laced with illegal whisky of Murdoch’s own distilling would not come amiss on such a morning.

The admiral replaced the telescope in his pocket and started down the slope as rain drove across the island in a grey curtain.

There was no sign of Murdoch when he went into the boathouse by the small rear door. The forty-one-foot Watson-type motor lifeboat, Morag Sinclair, waited in her carriage at the head of the slipway. She was trim and beautiful in her blue and white paint, showing every sign of the care Murdoch lavished on her. Reeve ran a hand along her counter with a conscious pleasure.

Behind him the door swung open in a flurry of rain and a soft Highland voice said, ‘I was in the outhouse, stacking peat.’

Reeve turned to find Murdoch standing in the doorway and in the same moment an enormous Irish wolfhound squeezed past him and bore down on the admiral.

His hand fastened on the beast’s ginger ruff. ‘Rory, you old devil. I might have known.’ He glanced up at Murdoch. ‘Mrs Sinclair’s been looking for him this morning. Went missing last night.’

‘I intended bringing him in myself later,’ Murdoch said. ‘Are you in health, Admiral?’

He was himself seventy years old, of immense stature, dressed in thigh boots and guernsey sweater, his eyes grey water over stone, his face seamed and shaped by a lifetime of the sea.

‘Murdoch,’ Admiral Reeve said. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying precisely nothing?’

‘So it’s that kind of a morning?’ Murdoch wiped peat from his hands on to his thighs and produced his tobacco pouch. ‘Will you take tea with me, Admiral?’ he enquired with grave Highland courtesy.

‘And a little something extra?’ Reeve suggested hopefully.