A Bridge of Magpies

C H A P T E R S I X T E E N

It didn't need a crystaJ ball to see that the upwell cell was breaking up. The gale was down to a mere stiff breeze and was changing direction. It wasn't hot any more because it was veering away from the desert seawards. By virtue of the fog's condensation, the muck was coming out of the sky like muddy rain and forming a coating over everything – decks-rigging, railings and U-160's conning-tower, which appeared rustier still because of it. The silver had completely disappeared from the sea.

I crossed to Gaok as soon as we had settled on a steadier course.

'We've something like four hours until sunrise,' I said to Kaptein Denny and Jutta. 'We're the nut in the cracker's jaws. One jaw is time, the other is Sang A. If we're going to achieve anything with the cutting equipment, now's the time.'

'We'll start in right away,' Denny replied.

It wasn't as simple as that. In the first place a thick skin of barnacles overlay the steel plating of the hatch on U-160's bridge. At first try Kaptein Denny used the cutting blowpipe on them, but the result was a loathsome fish-fry smell which choked us, in the confined space, without getting at the metal. So we set about smashing off the shellfish with hammers. Jutta also took a hand, but it was a reluctant, silent hand. We had to use the spotlight to see what we were doing. To me it had assumed the proportion of the biggest advertising sign in Piccadilly Circus.

Finally we cleared a patch and Kaptein Denny slipped on his anti-glare visor and attacked the steel itself with the torch. Without eyeshields, Jutta and I were forced to turn our backs on the brilliant blue-white flame but we couldn't miss the showers of sparks which went everywhere. If Sang A was around and hadn't spotted that Brock's Benefit, all I could think was that every man jack of them was on another trip. The length of time Kaptein Denny went on made me wonder whether his enthusiasm had taken him right down into 206 the U-boat's control-room.

'Through yet?' I asked.

He cut the flame. His eyes had a curious expression as though only part of him were there at all.

The incision wasn't through; it hadn't begun. Four inches of toughened steel scarcely showed a mark.

I made a quick calculating survey. Not only was the hatch itself secure but the frame surrounding it was distorted and sealed by rust. I experienced some of the frustration he himself must have known the first time, when he'd boarded U-160 all those years before and realized there was nothing he could do to get inside her. The situation didn't seem to have changed much. I knew in my heart that it was a dockyard job, but I wouldn't admit we were licked.

Both Kaptein Denny and Jutta were regarding me as though I had a solution ready: I hadn't. Jutla's eyes were very big and there were dark circles under them. The furrows in Denny's face were deeper.

'We're wasting our time with that thing,' I said. 'We'll use up all our gas without making a hole big enough to get your finger into. What we reaJly need is an explosive bolt fired through the pressure hull at the end of an air line. Then the hull should be pumped full of compressed air to give it buoyancy. The next requirement is a couple of powerful derricks to get rid of the mine and torpedoes-plus a skilled demolition squad. After that, relays of men with special gear to slice her open.'

Kaptein Denny looked stockier and grimmer on hearing my evaluation of the situation. When he looked at me, some sort of change was in process behind his eyes. His voice held a threat.

'Is that what you suggest?'

'Give me a chance to think.'

'Think then, because I want you to understand one thing very plainly: U-160 is never going to fall into Sang A's hands.'

With or without U-160, we looked like being the losers. I wasn't going to say that to him, though. My mind fumbled with the problem. Explosives. Mine. Torpedoes. There was an embarrassment of riches in that direction. Embarrassing enough lo blow a hole in the sea-bed..

The word sea-bed sparked a solution. The idea tumbled out rough-cut and unformed, because I hadn't had time to think it out.

'I've got it-we'll blow her open. We'll use the salvage bomb I filched from Sang A to do it with?

'Excellent!' Denny replied. The strange unseeing look went. from his eyes. 'Excellent! That's it! That's what we'll do!

Where's the bomb?'

'Still in the dinghy.'

'Struan – listen I' exclaimed Jutta, who had flinched at my suggestion. 'It won't work! A small bomb like that won't accomplish what a salvo of depth charges failed to do!

That hatch is fast. If you use the bomb anywhere else on the hull shell come apart at the seams and go down like a stone.'

`Jutta's right-' said Kaptein Denny unexpectedly. 'That doesn't mean to say the idea's basically unsound.' He indicated the mine. 'That could go up in sympathy with the bomb if we detonated it on the conning-tower. The torpedoes, likewise.'

For the second time a word gave me the clue to a solution. This time it was torpedo.

'I see a way!' I said quickly. 'We'll draw that half-fired torpedo out of its tube -we we can manage it in shaJlower water with a dragline attached to one of the cutters! All that will then stand between us and the interior of the sub will be the torpedo-tube door. The salvage bomb will take care of that!'

And send her to the bottom in the process,' objected Jutta. '

It won't work…'

'It wi! l,' retorted Denny. 'We'll make it work. We'll beach her, that's what we'll do. Well put her ashore on her side at the Bridge of Magpies – it's the only place hereabouts. We'll dump the mine in the channel. We can do that once she's ashore by using Gaok's mainboom as a derrick…'

It sounded good to me-not to Jutta.

`You both talk as if you expect the night is never going to end!' she exclaimed. 'What about Sang A while you're busy beaching her and blowing her open? What about…?'

But Denny went on, as if he hadn't heard her, 'We've time! We'll tow her! We'll use the up-channel current in our favour!'

`How far is the Bridge of Magpies, do you reckon?' I asked.

Jutta stood back, resentful and mistrustful.

'Seven-eight miles,' he replied.

We've come less than two in the past three hours. We've got to do better than that.

We will. We must?

It was a desperate last-chance throw; and we both knew it. We both knew, too, that we were discounting the signs in the sea and the wind. The writing was on the wall that the salinity lift had dropped-and U-160's buoyancy with it: the casing aft the conning-tower, which had been a good foot above the water when we'd first come aboard, was now occasionally awash. For'ard, it was almost continuously so. Our race against the sea and Sang A was likely to turn out a very close-run thing.

'I'd like to have Julia with me in Ichabo now,' J said. '

Right,' he replied. 'We'll work up speed gradually. We can manage six knots if we try?

Maybe we could have done so if it hadn't been for that misfired torpedo, which we couldn't draw until the water shallowed. We safely crashed the two-and three-knot barrier on a north-easterly course towards the channel mouth and the Bridge of Magpies, when suddenly U-MO yawed, and wheeled at right angles. We fought her with both cutters' engines until we brought her to a halt. Lights. Engines. Shouts. Time. Time. Time.

Where was Sang A?

'She's sinking slowly by the head,' I called across to Kaptein Denny in Gaok, on the opposite side of the U-boat. 'We've got to do something to stabilize her and offset the torpedo's drag.'

When I looked at the sodden hulk I began to have secret doubts: the odds were mounting against us. The U-boat was riding-if her dead action could so be described-so low that most of the time now the deck was flooded. Attached to the dead-weight by the hawser cradle, the cutters, too, were beginning to wallow.

'No time I' answered Denny. 'It's still too deep here. Try again!'

We got going and worked up a little speed-crabbing through the water, then with a sudden swirl we swung broadside on and the U-boat and cutters became unmanageable again. It takes twenty minutes and two-and-a-half miles 209 for a supertanker to come to a halt. It didn't take us two-anda-half miles, but it did take twenty minutes. It also needed another ten to bring the U-boal on to a rough course again towards the Bridge of Magpies,

For the next few hours we threw the book at U-160- short and long bursts ahead and astern-jointly and independently, full and half rudder or simply no rudder at all. Nothing helped, really. We may have gained half-a-mile-a distance the current would have carried us, anyway. The only difference in the later stages was that the acute swinging gave way to a long sweeping eddy-like molion as we cavorted up the coast into the mouth of the channel at its southern entrance. Jutta stood with me in Ichabo's wheelhouse and watched the first light of dawn tarnish the eastern edge of the sky. Ichabo was to port (the seaward side) and Gaok to starboard ( landwards). Sperrgebiet dawns are something all of their own. They're not grey but sand-coloured and you first see a long shape loom out of the blackness; and it takes on the form of the top of a dune while night still hangs around the base. The light comes quickly, too: the fact that we began to make out the long lines of the dunes ashore was ominous. They should have been hidden in dense fog at that hour, but the disintegrating upwell cell had thrown everything out of kilter.

Jutta asked in a small, thin voice, 'How far to go still, Struan?'

'It depends on how much mileage is left in the sub.'

There didn't seem to be much. It was a marvel, really, that she was still with us. The sea, which had moderated to a swell, swept clean across the casing now, though the stack of torpedoes was still above water. The deeper she sank the more the current took hold of her-and of us. We were in one of the relatively quiet phases, when U-160 was heading the way we wanted and the cutters were just nudging her along. The wind was only a fresh breeze now, but it had changed direction completely and settled in the south-west, its true quarter.

There was a kind of basic despair about Jutta when she surveyed the scene-as if she couldn't break out of a trap of inner darkness.

She asked suddenly, Struan-what if he's mad? Really mad?'

I glanced across at Gaok. Kaptein Denny stood like a statue at the wheel.

It was both a question and a call for reassurance. She added, 'Master of the Equinoxes, Lord of the Solstice – it sounds like something out of a phoney old-time operetta.'

'He isn't a phoney. Nothing could have sounded more way-out before than his story of U-160 returning. Yet she did.' I gestured. 'You couldn't have more concrele proof – we're not lashed fast to a dream-Jutta.'

'I know-I know. But I can't go along with the rest of it, Struan. Maybe he suffers from some kind of delusion – paranoia, schizophrenia, or whatever they call his particular brand of mania.'

'We'll prove his genuineness, one way or another, pretty soon, when we blow the sub open and see what's inside her.'

'What happens then?' Her attitude implied, 'if'-not 'when'.

'After we've got the Book of Tsu, I'll take it from there.'

She looked so cast down that I put one arm round her and drew her close to me.

'Look, there's our target.'

Ahead, wisps of fog clung to the Bridge of Magpies. It appeared more brown than black in the muted light.

'It's not far-only about a mile to go. Fog lifting. Clear day. Empty horizon. Moderate sea. Not a thing in sight.'

'I want you to know that- whatever happens in the next few hours, I love you more than any words of mine can say.'

'And I you, Jutta.'

But her body against mine was hard and unresponsive and tension-shot. She went on. Her voice was higher pitched-vibrated with nerves.

'Where is Sang A, Struan? Where? What if she's tracking us at this very moment with her radar, now that the sandstorm's over; just waiting to pounce when it suits her-watching us..

'Steady,' I said. 'Steady. There's not a sign of her. We'll win out yet.'

'It's all too quiet! Everything's cooking up underneath! I feel it, Struan I Isn't there anything you can do? The waiting's sending me crazy!'

'Ahoy there!'

It was Kaptein Denny from the sub's conning-tower. I was surprised to see him there. J reckoned he must have left Gaok's bridge, unnoticed; while we'd been occupied.

'Come up here, will you? Both of you. And bring the bomb along too.'

'Right,' I called. 'I'll fetch it from the dinghy.' To Jutta I said quietly, wonder what he's got in mind-we shouldn't need the bomb until we beach her.'

She didn't answer, but cast an anxious glance round the widening horizon.

I collected the bomb and we sloshed across the wet deck and up the rusty ladder to the U-boat's bridge-stepping over the rubber cables which led to the cutting torch. After that long effort previously, we'd changed cylinders and connected up to full ones in Ichabo. We'd switched them from one boat to the other, to obtain a better weight distribution. Kaptein Denny was seated on the Captain's jump-stool, to which I'd secured the emergency wire which held the mine. The brass nozzle of the blowpipe cutter was hooked on to the coaming which encircled the bridge at chest-level. I was surprised to see Sang A's sub-machine-gun on the floor. I looked up to question Denny about it – I was more curious than apprehensive-and immediately I was aware of a great change in him. What had previously disquieted me about his eyes, when we'd been deadlocked over the problem of opening up U-160, had now become a reality: they were slightly hooded with tiredness but clear and intense, with a kind of exultation. He had a smile of welcome for Jutta. He might already have found the Book of Tsu rather than be facing a day of peril and difficulties.

What do you want the bomb for at this stage?' I asked. He replied with a question. 'How secure is that mine?'

'If it lasted last night it'll last today. The sawing effect of the sea's gone, as you can observe for yourself.'

What I mean is-if your emergency cable broke suddenly, would the original cable still hold?'

Probably. It took my weight for a short while when I fixed it.'

I noticed then that he had his Taisho pistol in his belt-along with an odd-shaped knife with a flat handle I hadn't seen before.

'Put the bomb down,' he went on.

I did so.

'Would you agree with me that we're heading north?' `

North – sure. But why.

J didn't complete my question because something crossed his face which sent an adrenalin-charge of fear and doubt racing through me.

'Good,' he said. `Good. In Japan the dead always face north, both ships and men.'

He got to his feet and pointed ahead, changing the subject rapidly before our apprehension had time to crystallize. Took!'

The top of the Bridge of Magpies was catching the first sun. The soaring arch wasn't composed of rock but of feathers

– hundreds of thousands of dun-coloured little birds that had been blown out of the desert by the gale and had found shelter on the arch's seaward side.

'They aren't real magpies, of course, but little desert birds they give that name to.' He was speaking rapidly, as if time were running out on him and he had something important to say before it did. 'It was like that the day you were born, Miss Jutta. There's an old Hottentot superstition. Once a year, they believe, on the day after the great gale, the Girl walks across the Bridge of Magpies and joins the Lover.. I glanced at Jutta, who stood taut and poised, a mixture of pity and growing horror in her eyes. Outwardly she was composed but I knew she was very close to the edge. She'd been right about his sanity. The unconnected prattle and mercurial leaps from subject to subject meant only one thing. His next words to me confirmed it.

'I'd like you to cut the old mine cable with the blowpipe. Leave the new one you used for the repair. Here, where I can reach it.'

He restated himself on the jump-stool and plucked al the wire. I noticed that he put his foot on the sub-machine-gum

'Kaptein Denny.. There was a rising note in Jutta's voice.

The dead always face north, both ships-and men, Miss Jutta. We're now facing north.' The final clincher on the fact that he was out of his mind came when he added, 'I'm going to drop that mine on the stack of torpedoes and blow up U-160.'

Kamikaze. That's a good word for what's happening, J thought, my eyes fixed on Kaptein Denny's seamed, exalted face. That's the way the kamikaze, or divine wind spirit, worked in the Jap fliers who plunged their bomb-laden planes to self-destruction through the Yanks' withering ack-ack fire and on to their carriers' decks. Kamikaze -Sperrgebietstyle. Divine wind spirit gone bad. The thing's eaten into his mind all the years and now he's at the end of the line. I wonder what the C-in-C will say when he gets to hear of it? He won't know what happened-of course, because there won't be any survivors. Kaptein Denny wasn't reacting to my scrutiny. His face was remote. In his last moments he was remembering things and places we'd had no part of. The external world-our world-meant nothing to him.

`You can't… 1' exclaimed Jutta.

'Why?' I demanded peremptorily. I had to get past that mental state of his. 'Why?'

I did get past: 'There!' he pointed.

There was no mistaking Sang A's whalebacked snout and low hull. She was rounding the southern end of Possession, past the tiny horseshoe-shaped curve called Black Prince Cove, and heading into the channel. At yus. He must have spotted her out to sea before he crossed to U-160 from Gaok. Jutta and I stood rooted. Then from behind us there was a smothered noise from Kaptein Denny. We swung round. He'd pulled up his jersey and jabbed that odd knife into himself. He covered up the wound right away but we'd seen the rush of blood. Jutta's face screwed up.

He said in the same quiet and compelling way he'd had when he told us about being Master of the Equinoxes'

'What I must do now I must do alone. This is hara-kiri. I must admit that the method of dropping a mine on a load of torpedoes is rather unique. Crude, but effective. The first ceremonial cut in the stomach is called seppuku.' The pain lunged at him and he caught his breath. 'There won't be time for the rest of the procedure.' He tried to smile. 'Traditionalists even have a warrior's meal of dry chestnuts and cold sake beforehand. How close is Sang A?'

'Out of range, but she's got a heavy machine-gun mounted for' ard..

'I know.'

Jutta and I also knew now that he was as sane as we were.

Only his eyes looked a little tired and his face was sallower and finer-drawn – from the blood he was losing-probably.

'I said-"the Girl goes to join the Lover". Now go.'

We didn't take it in for a few moments that he was giving us our lives. Then Jutta broke the spell. She went towards him-to kiss him I think-but he waved her back gently. `

Sorry, you mustn't touch a dead man, Miss Jutta. After seppuku I'm dead.'

She knelt on the rusty plating and he sat on the jumpstool with his right leg stretched out in front of him to ease the pain. He took the Taisho from his belt, slipped a shell out of it-scratched some words on the blade of the knife, and gave it to Jutta.

'Mei fa tzu – it is fate,' he quoted.

`What do you want me to do?' I asked hoarsely. `

First cut away the old mine cable.'

I put a match to the blowpipe. It was only a matter of seconds before the section of rusty cable snapped under the flame and thumped against the conning-tower. The new piece I' d fitted still held the mine suspended.

'Good,' he said. He handed me his pistol. 'Now I want you to take Gaok -have her afterwards for yourself-and fire four shots as a signal. When Sang A's close enough, do you understand?'

'I understand, Kaptein Denny.'

'I won't be able to get up and judge the range,' he went on. '

You'll be my eyes. I want the signal distinct because Sang A will be firing too. One-two. One-two. Then I'll know. Where's Sang A now?'

There was a burst of machine-gun fire from the black ship. I ducked involuntarily.

'Out of range. That'll be Kenryo trying his hand?

'That machine-gun of theirs can't train completely for'ard because of the whaleback,' he said. 'Sang A will have to sheer slightly to one side when she comes closer, to bring it to bear. She'll lose ground by doing so.'

I shot an anxious glance at the approaching ship. '

Anything more?

'No. You weren't a headman, of course?'

'No. Navy.'

'Give my regrets to your chief. do that.'

Jura. said in a strangled whisper-'Master of the Equinoxes!'

He said, `Kaptein Denny was a long, long act. It's good to be myself again. Now run for your seventh life!'

Jutta clung tight to me and I half-led-half-carried ha down the ladder off the bridge. There was another spatter of fire from Sang A when they saw us but they were still loo far away to do us any harm.

I slipped the rope cradle which held Gaok to U-160 and gunned the engine. Gaok pulled away from the U-boat. Sang A was pushing hard, and the water was white under her bows. She sheered to one side in order to brlng the heavy machine-gun to bear, as Kaptein Denny said she would have to, enabling Gaok to gain some valuable distance. There was a staccato ra-tat-tat but the volley fell short. Twenty yards short. Extreme range.

Sang A pulled back on to her coarse: Gaok was worklng up to full speed but the black ship wasn't interested in us – yet.

Then she veered again and the next burst spanged off the conning-tower. They're in range now. Judge it, I told myself, judge it and don't panic because a few yards will make all the difference between life and death when the moment comes. Gaok's life and death. Ours.

The machine-gun cut off abruptly. They'd got wise to that mine. Then came several isloated, lighter shots. Sniper. That's Kenryo's gun. He's trying to pick off Kaptein Denny. He'll be all right if he doesn't show himself from behind the protection of the conning-tower. I daren't wait any longer! Sang A's coming on like an express. Two or three other automatics joined in with Kenryo's.

Now.

I stepped out on deck with Jutta. I raised the Taisho and fired into the air.

One-two. One-two.

I crushed Jutta to me.

'There!' she whispered.

Above U-160's conning-tower the blue-while flame of the blow-torch was brighter than the daylight and there was a little cascade of sparks where Kaptein Denny attacked the wire at the point where it looped over the bridge coaming. Sang A was close to her, well within the explosion area, 216 and firing non-stop.

Then the sparks flared up.

I pulled Jutta to the deck with me.

Gaok's steel rail rolled up like fencing as the blast from the explosion hit her. She leapt and bottomed again with a keel-shaking crash. Water, bits of glass, metal, rope and planks rained on us. We lay there until they had stopped. Then we picked ourselves up-and I held her, and we looked. Her heart was hammering away against my chest. The sea was empty. There was no sign, through the yellow haze of the shock-wave, of either U-160 or Sang A. The surface of the water, where they had been such a short while before, was llttered with steaming-blackened fragments and unidentifiable pieces of ship, sizzling as they sank. Landwards the mushroom of the explosion towered above the Bridge of Magpies. It wasn't smoke. It was a million birds. We stood silent, trying to comprehend the swift totality of the catastrophe. The silence was as total as if our eardrums had burst. The only thing that stirred was the yellow haze over the water.

It was because I was watching the movement of those wisps, rising like a ghost from a body, that I spotted another movement out at sea, above the low promontory where Black Prince Cove was situated. It, too, was wraith-like – a tall lattice mast with radar scanner and aerials, swinging slightly with the roll of ship to which it belonged.

I stared at the disembodied thing above the point of land, as if I'd never been a Navy man and had never seen a frigate's top-hamper before.

`Jutta I The frigate! She's here!'

Like a film image growing out of the island's extremity, the bow of the frigate emerged, then the low lean midships section, and finally the stern with its boil of white thrown up by engines going full speed ahead.

Jutta said, Kaptein Denny must have got off your message after all.'

`No, Jutta. He assured me he had not. There's some other explanation.'

The sound of engine-room bells came across the water. The Fairest Cape went full astern when she sighted us, and altered course to avoid the stained patch of debris on the sea's surface. She skirted it and came slowly towards Gaok. 217

White-clad figures were at her rail and on her bridge, gawp. ing unashamedly. All you could say for Gaok was thal she was still afloat.

The frigate lost way and stopped. They threw us a line. '

Come on up,' said a voice from her deck. 'Have you any casualties?'

'No casualties.'

Jutta went first up the rope ladder and I followed. When I got level with the warship's rail there was a shrilling of bo' sun's pipes. For one impossible moment I thought they were for me. But no navy extends an ex-captain an admiral's honours. They were for the C-in-C. He came along the deck towards us and I found myself wanting to jump to attention at the sight of so much brass-until I remembered my stained, torn headman's rig.

The little admiral held out his hand to me. He barely spared Jutta a glance.

'Glad to see you, Struan. What was the big bang?' '

A mine and an old sub full of torpedoes.'

He gave me a shrewd, penetrating glance and the other extreme of his vision took in the dirty patch of sea. Reaction began to hit me. All I wanted was a drink. Maybe two.

'Rough?'

'Pretty rough.'

'I was hanging around out of sight below the horizon. I couldn't get here in time when things started to get hot. The sandstorm put paid to using the ship's helicopter-of course. In addition we didn't want to scare Sang A away – I'd also had fake radio signals sent off to bluff her into thinking that the frigate was hundreds of miles away.'

They worked, aJl right.'

Resentment-and a strange wave of feeling for Kaptein Denny-swept over me at the thought that almost within reach had been the help we'd so desperately needed to pull off our plan. The little bastard all in white and gold braid had used me as a bait while he sat at the ringside watching the final drama take place on a radar screen, safe out of harm's way of mines, torpedoes and Sang A's guns…

'I don't need a nursemaid-then or now,' I snapped. He grinned-and I hated him the more for it. 'It scans you've got yourself one. You haven't introduced me.'

'Jutta Walsh; I said. 'She's part of the story.'

He shook her hand and then swung on his heels, linking his arms in both of ours and leading us along the deck between the crew. I wasn't sure who was more astonished-they or us.

And it's a long story-from both sides,' he added. 'I think we all could use a drink.'

I'd downed my second pink gin, sitting with the admiral and Jutta in a big private cabin, by the time I'd given hint an outline of the events which led up to the last fatal explosion. Because it was nearest in time and so vivid still, I started with it, relating events backwards. When I told him about the Book of Tsu and its naval significance he stirred unhappily in his chair, but he let me finish. Then he asked, 'When did you get wise to Sang A?' found out she had a machine-gun mounted for'ard..

'Ah I' he exclaimed. 'That machine-gun That's what gave her away to us-too..

'Us?'

Weeks ago, when you were still enjoying the delights of Santorin, one of our long-range maritime reconnaissance planes located Sang A about three hundred miles south of the Cape. We caught her with her pants down. They were exercising with that gun. We photographed her. It confirmed our earlier suspicions.'

'Earlier? What d'ye mean?'

'Sang A first came to the Navy's notice when she arrived at Mauritius aboul two months ago. An agent of ours there reported her -we we keep an eye on all the Red Navy's comings and goings now thal they use Mauritius as a base for the Indian Ocean. It was a routine report which wasn't routine. Sang A was at that stage sailing in company with a Soviet Amur-class naval repair ship, the PM 129, and a modified Akademik Kurchatov-class oceanographic ship. At first glance she appeared to be a salvage vessel which the Reds were using in conjunction with the other two. What intrigued Silvermine, however, was that such an old-fashioned type of vessel should be in use with all the modern stuff Russia has nowadays. That ancient funnel and whaleback, At that stage Sang A was no more than a tantalizing sus. picion. We decided to watch her.

'She sailed from Mauritius-alone. We thought we'd lost her until one of our planes found her again at extreme range 219 between the Cape and Marion Island. The fact that she was so far away from normal shipping mules chalked up another black mark against her. She was photographed and shadowed. The pictures showed she was doing eighteen knots-not bad for the type of old crate she pretended lo be. They aJso revealed something else-part of her underwater lines, as she rolled in the rough seas of the Roaring Forties. We decided that her hull was a modified Kashin-class destroyer with all that junk on top as a bluff.'

I refilled my glass. 'It would have helped me if you'd told me some of this?

'By hindsight yes-by foresight no. What did Silverman really know? We have suspicious ships passing the Cape all the time. The other day we had an entire Red squadron, complete with the new Kresta It-class guided missile cruiser Marshal Vorashilov. Our long-range planes shadowed them, too.'

'What made Sang A any different?' I demanded. Ill tell you. We kept tabs on her as she approached the Cape, both by means of long-range flights and Silvermine's own top-secret electronic detecting apparatus. Then, as J said before, a plane spotted her gun in action. But it was when she used her radio that she gave herself away?

`What did she say?'

'Jt's not what she said bat the way she said it! don't get you.'

`We'd been monitoring her signals, of course. They'd ostensibly been directed to the Basjkiriya, the ocean research vessel she accompanied to Mauritius, which was then working in the southern Indian Ocean. Incidentally, the Basjkiriya was much too near the Kerguelen Islands (where the French intend building a naval base) for anyone's liking. Sang A's signals were in code, naturally, but we had a pretty fair idea of what they were all about.' He chuckled ironically at some inner amusement. 'Weather. Sea. And so on. Another bluff?

`How'd you know they were?'

Since your day we've built up at Silvermine an Intelligence service which we modestly think is as good as the Yanks used to have during the war at Pearl Harbour. In the code-busting game you never get more than ten to fifteen per cent of any signal straight the rest is a lot of inspired deduction from 220 isolated word groups. You also learn to know the "fist" of your opponent-every radio operator has his own way of transmitting. It's an individual as fingerprints. And my men recognized the "fist" of Sang. A's operator. He'd been Admiral Gorshkov's-head of the Soviet Navy-own choice for a new type of super-cruiser called the Kara. To be in Kara he would have to have been lops. We'd spotted the Kara on her maiden shakedown voyage south of the Cape.

'All this was mighty interesting, but it still didn't tell us what Sang A was up to or where she was bound for. Then, by chance, I myself came in on the code-busting. Sang A got off a long message-most of it was lost on us-but my team picked up the words U-160. It meant nothing to them. It meant everything to me. After that I was prepared to put my head on a block that her destination was the Bridge of Magpies.'

Jutta said, in a distant voice, as if she were still frozen inside by the disaster she'd witnessed, 'It's history repeating itself.'

The C-in-C gave her a considering glance and went on. '

That's when I decided that you were the man for the job. The lost city was a blind-of course..

I found myself another drink and said dryly, 'I had come to that conclusion myself. '

'You wouldn't have been the man I thought you were if you hadn't.'

He went on, brushing aside the interruption, 'If the Bridge of Magpies hadn't been Sang A's destination, no harm would have been done: Koch would have kept stringing you along. You nearly blew us sky-high when you recognized the picture of the fresco. It was Santorin's, of course. Koch louched it up a little. He is quite genuinely a midden-hunter, although he's on Silvermine's Intelligence muster.'

'Was,' I corrected. He stared at me and his face darkened. '

If you take your binoculars you can see his grave next to a burnt-out Land-Rover ashore?

I told him about it and how Kenryo's gang had killed him and Breekbout.

When I'd finished he said very quietly, 'I'd like to have been able to shake Kaptein Denny by the hand, for what he did at the end.'

After that he also got himseJf another drink and went to the porthole and stared out for a long time. Then he swung round on Jutta and said in a matter-of-fact tone:

'You're the only piece of the jigsaw which doesn't fit. You're not a relic of a vanished civilization.'

I rushed to her defence and he gave me an amused manto-man look.

'I'd like it better in her own words!

'My father.,..' she began; and told him of her search and researches. As she went along I watched his attitude change. Until now it had been brisk and business-like-with a shade of apprecialion-over Sang A. Now it softened, if a face hewn by war, sea and command could be said to soften. He went and sat on the arm of a chair next to her and swirled his drink round and round-his eyes fixed on the spinning liquid as if it were a crystal ball which was mesmerizing him by conjuring up the past. He never looked up until she had finished.

She added, 'J missed my chance to speak to you about it when I didn't get to Luderitz. But my own business has been completely lost sight of in these other terrible things that have happened. If it's worth anything now, my file's still open.

The C-in-C stood up and looked down at her with a curious, unexpected compassion. She met his eyes, startled and questioning. He held out both his hands to her and she raised herself to her feet.

'I think I have a final notation for your file,' he said. He put his arm round her shoulders. 'Come. This is for you alone. It may be something of a shock..

He opened the door and led her out on to the deck and as he did so the sun came out and shone on her bright hair.