A Bridge of Magpies

C H A P T E R S E V E N

It wasn't-guns, of course. But what was it?

Kaptein Denny and I ran outside, but Jutta kept to the doorway. Denny stood listening and swinging his head about like a radar scanner. The fog was warmer and clammier. The past was unwinding and rewinding like Jutta's tape machine. It underscored Gousblom's act of blind courage. I said in a murmur to Jutta, as if a human voice could possibly have erased the mysterious sound, 'In the Royal Navy it is a captain's prerogative to steer for the sound of guns – Nelson started it'

`What… what…?' she began, but Koch yelled from his bunk, `Struan-what the hell gives?'

I shut him up. It was only nerves-because you couldn't miss that deep horizon-thudding sound again.

We waited. We strained our ears. It didn't come again. Then Kaptein Denny asked, as softly as a hoarse whisper could be soft, 'What did you say about guns?'

I gave him a collapsed version of the Convoy WV. 5BX affair… 'Here!' I exclaimed, 'why am I telling you this? You were at Possession that night! If Gousblom heard gunfire, you must have-too.'

Perhaps it was the distorting effect of the fog, but there seemed to be a dead-fish gleam in his eyes which I couldn't get past. He'd got control of his voice since his tension-shot whisper earlier: it was dry and flat now,

'I heard it'

'Go on, man!'

'It was heavy gunfire… somewhere south of the island.

The sound was carried on the wind. It was very loud-louder. than tonight – and frightening.'

'Did you see the gun flashes?' asked Jutta.

`No. It was a dark, stormy night'

I said, 'It might have been guns in wartime but it couldn't be guns tonight'

It couldn't be guns tonight,' he echoed.

'Don't stand there repeating what I say,' I snapped. It 84 could have been some side-kick to the main event-then. What is it now?'

'I don't know.'

'You've been fishing here for thirty years and you don't know.. .?'

He remained silent under my stare. Breekbout and Koch joined us.

Breekbout said-'It's that ghost leaping up out of hell. It happens when she comes.'

'Bly stil- pipe down!' ordered Koch. 'What are you talking about guns for? All that's over-years ago.'

I went closer to Kaptein Denny- as if that way I might get at what he knew… if he knew. There were new dark stains under his eyes, which were as unreadable as fog-clouded lenses.

'Let's have it!'

'I've heard it now and I heard it then. I don't know what it is any more than you do.'

It was impossible to get anything more out of him. I didn't believe him. The man's duplicity underlined my belief that the decision to break up the Jutta-Denny party the next day was a right one.

We all stood around near the door in uncomfortable silence-until it became too cold. There was no repetition of the sound. I told myself there must be some explanation for itbut what? Sonic boom? Not in the pre-jet era of 1943. Thunder? It never rains on the Sperrgebiet. Man-made? If so, how? After all, you don't mock up a 16-inch broadside on an uninhabited coast just in order to entertain the birds and seals. They'd never heard of Nelson.

Finally we all went inside and had coffee. At 1.30 a.m. the human brain is supposed to be at its lowest ebb and I couldn't get anything out of mine to make sense out of my suspicions about Kaptein Denny, though I was broad awake and on edge. We all were Jutta decided to come to the bunkhouse for what remained of the night, and I fetched her blankets and shoes from the cottage. We kept a light going. Even indoors the condensation dripped from the lamp-glass and made a mini-sound which jarred in the silence. None of us slept much.

It wasn't much of a way to start our passage to Luderitz next day. Kaptein Denny remained uncommunicative and 85 dampened any breakfast sparkle Koch or Breekbout might have been capable of. Jutta and I said perfunctory goodbyes to the others. Breekbout ferried us out to my official boat, the cutter Ichabo. The anchorage was blotted with fog and layers of cloud lay low down on the south-western horizon. A slight northerly breeze rippled the channel. The Ichabo was a sharp contrast to Kaptein Denny's boat. She was spartan, neglected and dirty. The diesel hadn't been cared for and it sounded pretty rough after I'd battled to start it. I headed for the gap between the Kreuz shoals and Possession's northern tip: Gousblom's short cut to get at U-160. Making it dangerous was Broke Rock, an evil fang which stuck like a bone in the throat of the passage. Jutta was distant and unco-operative. She stood on deck all the time I was busy with the preliminaries of getting under way; staring at what she could make out of the liner wreck and shore, with the intentness of a lovesick teenager. I was working my way past the reefs before standing off the coast to avoid squalls as Kaptein Denny had advised, when the engine died.

'Jutta!' My temper was shot to hell-by the danger combined with her attitude.

'Forget that view: lend a hand here with the wheel while J fix the engine.'

'I don't know the first thing about steering.'

'You don't have to. Hold it steady, that's all. And keep your eyes skinned, straight in front of you.'

She did as I said, reluctantly. I went below; I tinkered with this and tinkered with that but the diesel wouldn't fire. After a while I put my head out of the box which was the engine room and took a look at the sea. Ichabo was being carried towards Broke Rock by the seaward set of a fairly strong current that was pushing northwards up the channel at a couple of knots.

'The bloody thing won't start,' I told Jutta. 'Ira in a shocking state.'

`That means we'll have to go back?'

The relief in her voice needled me. J wasn't going to have my plans wrecked at the outset. My irritation laid my decision slap on the line.

'No. We sail.'

'You never give up, do you?'

I'd begun to sound a bit tough-even to myself. I softened the come-back. 'No, Jutta. Especially not when I've got a thing like that-' I gestured at the Broke-which was now not more than a couple of cables' lengths away to starboard – ' almost under my keeL'

The northerly wind was backing and becoming flukier: I'd have to make a couple of sharp tacks to get clear. The sea was changing, losing its green and becoming greyer. I didn't like the look of that cloud-bank either. But there was no turning back now: I was committed.

'Steer.. I gave her some elementary helm orders while I made sail. The big high boom-the height of a man by the mast gooseneck-was designed to swing clear of the wheelhouse roof, so that the helmsman could have an unobstructed view. I wanted the cutter on the port tack. The wind was freshening all the time and backing north-west. I was afraid that the boat would be caught in irons with someone inexperienced like Jutta at the wheel but the sail took all my attention. Eventually-however, Ichabo came round slowly and clawed her away past the Broke and we moved out to sea by way of the narrow passage.

I took the wheel after that and we stood off the coast with the wind freshening still further and the squalls churning up the water in the rebound from the land, as Kaptein Denny said they would. Behind Elizabeth Point-the old ghost town site-the land was a dreary waste. Ichabo handled well: she came from the same yard as Gaok and probably had much the same underwater lines. But with that ugly menace of the storm on the southern horizon I could have wished for someone better than a girl for my crew. Still, I had gone into it with my eyes open, and by resorting to sail had made my commitment complete to the in-shore route. Yet, looking at the grim, deadly shore and the growing line of white breakers, I wondered with some trepidation what the next twenty-four hours would hold.

By afternoon it was blowing a fresh gale and the wind was steady in the south-south-west. Kaptein Denny's forecast might have been computerized for accuracy. Ichabo had begun to run towards the coast in the final leg of a somewhat Sshaped course to pick up the entrance to the inshore route, which lay well to the north of Elizabeth Point. The scud and 87 overcast were down to mast-height. Ichabo was riding well: waves would come up astern and her bow would dip on the summit as if she were crouching for some stupendous leap, then she would careen into the trough, bucking and shredding the seas. It was an exhilarating and frightening motion, all at once, to be caught in the gigantic crossfiow of energy between wind and sea. It was an uncomplicated challenge of survival. It clarified my senses and I didn't feel tired any longer. Alabama Cove was opce the famous Confederate raider's funkhole. It is roughly a funnel-shaped affair with the broad end of the funnel in the north and the narrow end in the south. The coast forms one side of it and a discontinuous line of reefs and sandbars the other. There are gaps of deep water between these hazards. From end to end the place measures three or four miles. There is a safe channel up the middle This can only be entered via the narrow section in the south. At the other extreme is Tuscaloosa Islet, a low-lying group of rocks which offers a safe anchorage in almost any weather. The islet is named after the Alabama's auxiliary and onetime prize, the Tuscaloosa. If you could put a trapdoor across the entrance-nothing could winkle out a ship inside, That half-mile-wide gap is a death-trap. You have to negotiate it-Kaptein Denny had briefed me in detail-by steering for a strange beacon made out of whale skeletons, set up at the foot of a solitary sandhill. It's called New Bedford Point. The bones were put there by American whalers that frequented the Sperrgebiet before the Declaration of Independence. The dry, salt-impregnated air has preserved the bones ever since,

J checked the briefing in my mind as I headed for the point The suspicion also arose, when I saw the holocaust ahead, that it might be a death ride Kaptein Denny had organized to take care of me. But the time for choice was almost past: astern loomed a wild, bleak and rain-scourged sea; chunks of it kept slapping in our faces like wet clothes. There was a continual lash and splutter of spray past the wheelhouse and Ichabo writhed and twisted in the mounting seas. The sky was a solid wall of cloud.

`There!' I pointed, to show Jutta.

The landmark I was homing in on-a fan-shaped patch of white among some curious black hummocks behind the whale bones-came into sight. I felt easier. They were spot on 88 where Kaptein Denny said they would be. Once again, Jutta didn't share my relief. She hung on to the grab-handle in the wheelhouse, her oilskins streaming. I had the windows open because the wipers didn't work.

In… there?'

I had to admit to myself it didn't look too good. To myself alone. Spray was exploding forty or fifty feet high on the outer chain of sand-spits and reefs. A clear line of white water demarcated it all the way down to that savage little blinder off the southernmost point. A patch of breakerless water near it was the entrance-way. lchabo was like a wild animal being driven by beaters into the mouth of a boma thornbush trap. Violent gusts and squalls bouncing back from the land stirred up the channel like a gigantic swizzle stick.

`Kaptein Denny said it'd be okay.' I couldn't think of anything else to say.

'We'll never make that tiny gap.'

'We will and we must.'

Tuscaloosa Islet, where we intended to anchor, was low and close inshore and difficult to make out. That didn't help Jutta's fears or mine. First we had to reach the channel leading to it.

I spotted discoloured water right ahead of the bow. That I meant twelve fathoms -so Kaptein Denny had said. Every warning of his was at a premium now.

'I'm going to mug her right down.'

I had to shout for Jutta to hear.

'Hang on to the wheel for a moment while I fix the sail. Just hold her steady. I won't take a minute.'

I was a fool, of course, to have entrusted the steering under such conditions to a novice, but it seemed simple enough and I didn't intend to be long. I felt the gale cool the sweat inside my oilskins when I got outside the wheelhouse. That should have been a red light, telling me how hard it had been to work the wheeL

But I went on to the saiL

At that moment Ichabo must have hopscotched over a shallower bit of bottom. From being merely storm-triggered rollers, the sea became a battering-rain. Ichabo caught it on the port quarter. She yawed wildly; the boom thwacked me in the rib-cage. I felt as though I'd been kicked by a mule. 89

I was hurled off the wheelhouse roof on to the foredeck I caught a glimpse, plunging past the windows, of the wheel spinning out of control. Jutta's hands were in the air sema- phoring her helplessness.

Where I finished up I was swamped and soused immediately by torrents of water. The cutter's head fell off. She started to swing beam-on to the sea-the most dangerous position for a boat under such circumstances. The peril made me try to rise but I fell back, heJpless.

Then Jutta was there, holding me to her. Another ice-sharp, hissing deluge poured over the deck. Ichabo bucked like a demented rocking-horse

`Get back! Get back to the wheel, for Chrissake! Leave me!'

But she wouldn't, and hugged me to her. I fought her and I fought for breath.

'Struan! Struan I '

Ichabo lay beam-on to the swell. I managed to get to my knees. I longed to take advantage of the full count to recover my wind but the awful motion of the boat made me throw aside all thought of it.

`Get me up I Get me on my feet! To the wheel!'

I hauled myself upright by throwing all my weight on to her shoulders. And I went on doing so unmercifully, using her as a kind of human crutch to jack me up the ladder to the helm. I battled to get air and give her orders at the same time but I only achieved a whisper because the salt water I' d swallowed had dehydrated my throat.

Finally we made it to the spinning wheel but because of my nausea I couldn't stand upright on the canting deckboards. So I got behind her and clamped my hands over hers on the spokes and tried to steady them. I stayed on my feet by hanging on to her like that and jamming my chest against her back I whooped; the boom banged; the sail tried to blow itself away with reports like rifle-shots. Every time we fought a wave the pain ripped up my side. Every one of them seemed to pack maximum punch. But we won out. Finally the out of-control twisting of the boat eased and the seas stopped scouring the decks.

We'd only bought a temporary reprieve, however. We'd lost our critical moment; there wasn't a hope now of hitting the mouth of the channeL The safe bearing on which Kaptein 90

Denny had red-lined the passage was past. We were careering straight towards the chain of hazards on the seaward side. It was impossible even to try and claw away from them. Ichabo was carrying far too much sail, anyway. She crashed through the troughs like a cart through potholes: she was being blown along like a paper boat on a pond.

'Dial a prayer, Jutta.'

'Is it so bad?'

'Odds are ninety to one against'

Jutta had lost her sou'wester in our scramble for the bridge and her hair was tangling in my face. It smelt of sea, sand and ships. Then I became aware that she wasn't only using her body as a makeweight to steer: it was clinging to mine, saying its own message-in the few desperate moments we had left before lchabo struck.

'Do we swim when she strikes, Struan?'

'Not a chance. It'll be over quickly.'

'Then don't let me go.'

'I won't. Jutta.

'Struan?'

'Sorry I made you come.'

'I'm not. Only that I found out too late.'

'Me too.'

Ichabo bored in at the terrifying barrier of driving-rearing water which walled off Alabama Cove seawards. It was leaping so that great chunks of it were breaking off the crests and shooting into the air, like shapes.

'Birds!' I yelled. 'Birds! Millions of 'em! Back from the great migration!'

They were beating the sky apart with their wings. I saw an outside hope.

'Look, Jutta, they're at the fish!'

Maybe she thought I'd gone crazy because she just stood dazed. I threw my weight and hers on the wheel spokes, trying to bring Ichabo round a point or two. That would be enough, if I could get her among the birds.

'Help me I Everything you've got!'

She did so, and it helped.

'There's a shoal of fish going through a gap there between the sandbars! The birds are after it! If it's deep enough for them it's deep enough for us!'

Ichabo came round a trifle more, but the deck went clean 91 under beneath the press of sail.

Water, spume and spray exploded as the sand-spit took the sea's force, and we hurtled into the breakers. About a bucketful of fish was thrown bodily out of the sea on to the deck. There was a crash and a gannet the size of a turkey dive-bombed after them into the planks and broke its neck Its mates pulled out of their dives in time and the boat was surrounded by white blobs until I couldn't distinguish which were birds and which were bits of spume.

That blind rush through the sandbars and reefs can't have lasted more than a couple of minutes, but it was the longest voyage I've ever made. I expected at any moment to hear the crash of her keel on to the iron-hard sand. A bird went slap through the sail. It rent it across but this had the good effect of making Ichabo ride easier. Then we were through, safe; through the breakers and into the channel beyond. It didn't look safe, though. The shoreline was a wall of black rocks. The surf leaped spectacularly against them and threw spray high over the beachfront dunes. The rocks looked like teeth sticking out of frothy gums. I got control of Ichabo with Jutta's assistance-my side hurt like hell-and we coasted up-channel under short sail towards the anchorage at Tuscaloosa. The birds were everywhere, following the same up-channel course as ourselves towards the islet: they were there by the tens of thousands. There was another tricky moment when finally we got into the lee of the islet and felt its blanketing effect on the wind. I couldn't do much because of my side, so decided to bring her up by the simple method of cutting sail and anchor loose at the same moment Jutta took the sail and I the anchor cable.

The plan worked. The sail came down and the anchor roared out, simultaneously, as if they'd been linked to some synchronizing mechanism; Ichabo came to rest at a spot which I reckoned would have been a natural also for the Alabama. Behind Tuscaloosa the wind's roar diminuendoed: the islet formed a splendid natural bulwark against the gale, which was now nudging peak velocity.

The place appeared to have been thrown up by some mighty volcanic convulsion. It was simply a confusion of great loose blocks of stone, basalt and lava. It was so low 92 on its exposed side that the rollers came smashing half-way over it. Nevertheless it was high enough to constitute a galebreak. Ichabo plucked and strained at her cables and a lot of loose gear sloshed about on deck. I made it fast in a haphazard sort of way because my side began to hurt as if one of Tuscaloosa's blocks of stone had fallen on it. Jutta made. me leave off before I was properly finished, so she could have a look at it. The day was gone and the storm made it too dark topside to do much good, anyway; so I went down with her to the shabby oil-lit cabin where she had coffee and food ready.

My suspicions towards Kaptein Denny had abated. He'd provided us with the perfect funk-hole. Jf he'd wanted to get rid of me he could simply have kept his mouth shut about Alabama Cove.

'Let's have a look at your side.'

I stripped off my oilskins and shirt.

'You were terrific, Struan.'

Her fingers, massaging and exploring the injury, continued the tell-tale messages of her body at the wheeL

'You weren't so bad yourself.'

'It's an awful bruise. I don't think the ribs themselves are damaged, though.'

It feels as if a squadron of seals had made a racetrack of me.'

'It was my fault. I let you down.'

Her fingers were soothing-and charged. They were betraying something exciting going on inside her.

'No post-mortems. We're safe in one piece and that's what matters.'

She was very close to me, concentrating on the damage. Concentrating more than was really necessary. She'd got rid of her suede jacket. Her breasts swelled under her sweater, firm and tight.

I'll rub you with some warm oil.'

'Aboard this outfit you'll find nothing better than engine oil.'

I'll dig up something. There's a first-aid kit in the engineroom.'

I didn't want to spoil the relaxed moment. I'd never seen her like this, and I didn't want it changed. My rib-cage felt ringed with a steel band when I filled my lungs; but 93 the injury didn't really merit the fuss she was making of it. She returned with some smelly ointment.

`Horse-doctor! '

`Horse!'

We just couldn't help turning one another on. We grinned at each other.

But I overbid my hand by bringing up Ichabo's narrow escape.

'Old Captain Semmes was a crafty one, to have holed up here in the Alabama. It would have been impossible to flush him out. I wonder how he discovered it? One thing's certain – he didn't get the help of any Yankee whalerman, being a Southerner himself.'

'Lost causes like his always bring out one's inventiveness.'

I should have stopped short and kept to the soft-core talk when J heard the note in her voice but I didn't expect a sudden deadfall after what her fingers had revealed.

'At least Semmes couldn't even have missed finding his way back here-he had seventy chronometers.'

She stopped massaging. 'Seventy? How'd you know that?'

`Prizes. He always took his victims' chronometers as personal loot. He gave my great-grandfather one for his services.'

She sank to a squatting position on the floor. I was on a locker. Her hair burned brighter than any light.

`How'd your great-grandfather come into it?'

'He was the Alabama's Number One gunner. Ex-Royal Navy: he'd been a gun captain aboard HMS Furious a couple of years before the Alabama started raiding. Half Semmes's crew were British recruits. He was in Furious when she annexed Ichabo Jsland for Queen Victoria.'

`So the Weddell roots really go deep into the Sperrgebiet?' If you put it that way.'

That emotive little spot was back hi the corner of her eye. 'I do put it that way! It burns me up! You've got this place in your blood-but you want to deny it to me! Why? You're throwing me out like an empty bottle!' She jumped to her feet and stood over me. 'Why'd you have to bring in your blasted Alabama gunner? Why couldn't you let us be… us?'

I also got up. I pulled on my shirt: that part of things was over.

'You make me sick!' she exploded. 'I wasn't trying to steal 94 your bloody wreck! Or anything else! I've got a claim, like you! I was only looking..!'

`Calm down. It's not my Sperrgebiet. Jf it was I'd let you stay.'

I was seeing her with clearer eyes than I had before. Her face was more fragile than it had appeared out there on Doodenstadt. Her teeth were very fine and regular and there were several tiny skin blotches on the line of her scalp and forehead. Her mouth looked the sort better suited to smiling than accusing. Up to now there hadn't been much of the first for me.

'You've bawled me out over every nit-picking point you could lay your mind to. Even having a bath'

'I've got a job to do. You think I'm a bastard-don't you?'

It was the sort of point-scorer one throws around in a quarrel. Neither her fingers nor her body had said that. 'What' s the use of going on? We're not getting anywhere.' 'It takes two to tango,' I said. 'I'll listen.'

She said carefully, 'I don't know what you want me to tell you.'

'I think you do.'

She sat down. Her eyes met mine briefly, slid away, and then came back. 'It'll sound like a confession. It's all about myself.'

'That makes me want to hear everything.'

She seemed surprised-and pleased.

'My life, really. I was beginning to find some pieces. I don't know where to begin.'

'When we met is good enough for me.'

`The tape? You do believe it, don't you?'

`Yes.'

'Here it Is then, Struan. This isn't a tale I'm pitching you. Neither am J trying to bamboozle you into taking me back to the Bridge of Magpies.'

'I can't, anyway, in this gale. Were here for a couple of days at least.'

She took her time about beginning, her face wearing a withdrawn expression.

'You know about me and the City of Baroda. Maybe I sound slightly "schizo',

'What's really at the back of all this-Jutta? Diamonds? Treasure? The old shakeroo of dead man's gold in a space 95 age wrapping? Captain Kidd was on Possession once.. You're not chasing that sort of moonbeam, I hope?'

No. The story's unfinished, perhaps unfinishable. Let's first get the record straight. It's taken me years of saving and scrimping to get together enough cash to reach South West Africa. I'm not trying to sound heroic-because you don't feel heroic bashing a typewriter all day and selling houseto-house at night and giving up your holidays in order to earn a few extra pounds. Six thousand miles is a long way to come. I had to see the Bridge of Magpies. Everything about me for the past few years has been geared to that one objective.'

'They must have missed you around parties, with your hair.'

'That's the nicest thing you've said to me.'

'You're giving me some unrelated facts plus a motivation which isn't really motivation at all.'

Her look met mine squarely. 'Back there at the wreck I told you about my mother in the single cabin. I never knew who my father was-is.'

'Good God, Jutta! You don't have to be hung up on a thing like that-not in these days!'

Her voice changed in pitch and register. 'You're rather sweet, you know. No-it isn't that aspect of things that worries me. You see, my mother was on her way to South Africa to marry him. They would have been married earlier, in England, but he was suddenly sent out to the naval base at Simonstown..

'A naval officer?'

'It's one of the few things I know about him. I've been searching for clues about him very hard for a long time.' '

Your mother's parents..

She smiled ruefully. They didn't know. About him or about me, until it was too late'

'He never showed up afterwards?'

'Never.'

'And I told you to run home to Daddy!'

'You didn't know then how it could hurt. I felt I might get some clue to his identity at the Bridge of Magpies. Those things of mine you confiscated are a file on my father. Rather, clues that might lead to his identity. It's been a long time. British Admiralty, German Admiralty, Japanese-for what it 96 was worth. Nuremberg Trials photocopies, U-boat records. There are all the false leads I've chased; notes on all the scores of people I've interviewed and corresponded with… The more I gathered the more necessary it became to see the wreck and the Bridge of Magpies for myself. The whole thing snowballed once I became deeply involved. It's been the main purpose in my life for years now.'

She was easing up all the time-as if she'd had it all bottled up inside her and had been waiting for the right listener to come along: it gave me a strange, elated feeling to think I might be the one.

'Only a super-sleuth could have dug up that U-boat tape,' I said. 'I didn't know that anything like it existed.'

'It was luck. I've had it only a few days. Part of the luck I've had ever since I started out for the Bridge of Magpies.'

'Go on.'

'My own story is tied up with the way it came into my hands. You see, after my mother died nobody really knew what to do with the wartime waif A woman called Emma Hasler in Luderitz became my foster mother. I lived with her until after the war, when my grandparents took me away to England. Things didn't really work out with them. They tried their best-I suppose-but my father's name was a dirty word to them. I had a pretty miserable childhood.'

'An odd womanhood, too.'

'You think I'm a bit of an oddball, don't you, Struan?' '

You said it, not I.'

Her eyes were full of broken lights, like a sea with the sun on it.

'My researches have brought me into contact with only one type of man. The old casting-couch principle: information in return for an easy lay.'

'The tape,' I reminded her gently.

She laughed, a little shakily I thought, at something she was remembering. I wanted to know what it was -and I didn't want to know.

'When I landed in Luderitz the other day I went straight to Frau Hasler. We'd kept in touch. She really loves me and it's a shame my grandparents ever took me away. Of course J told her why I'd come back, and that I intended getting to the City of Baroda somehow to look for possible clues about my father. At that she produced the tape. It had been left in her husband's care by the spy Swakop aJl those years ago.'

`Spy?'

`The man who made the recording itself: Swakop. His name's mentioned at the beginning-remember? He was a Nazi spy. He was sent in the U-boat to stir up trouble and lead a pro-Hider movement among the German population of South West Africa.'

'That tape was dynamite if he'd been caught:

'Also an insurance policy.'

'What d'ye mean?'

If he'd been captured he could have used it as a bargaining counter with the authorities. With all its top-secret information it was worth more than solid gold in a currency crisis. I think that really must have been at the back of his mind because he kept the spool though he dumped the recorder after he left the Bridge of Magpies. He had a hazardous desert crossing before reaching Luderitz, Frau Hasler said.'

'I'd also have dumped a bulky war-time tape recorder – pre-transistor model.'

`Swakop was an opportunist. It was pure chance that the I U-boat's ship-to-shore radio was left transmitting and he was able to record all that happened inside the U-boat herself during the final action.'

'It cost U-160 her life.'

'That's part of my puzzle.'

'Why should a Nazi spy go and see Frau Hasler?'

`Her husband was the boss of the pro-Nazi underground movement. Emma Hasler wasn't one of them. Swakop holed up with the Haslers in Luderitz. She warned her husband he was playing with fire and backing the wrong horse. She was right: only a few days after they'd taken me in, someone stabbed Hasler to death.'

`Swakop?'

'No. He was in the clear. He vanished only later-Emma Hasler said he always had an eye to the main chance. She's never seen or heard of him since. Never knew his real name, even.'

'I begin to see why you felt you had to play it back where you did. What happened to the other guy, the Jap they came to pick up?'

'He is one of my ma blind alleys, Every lead on him 9R has run dead. But he must have been important. There's mention of him in German records – a conversation in the early summer of 1943-when Hitler offered his official condolences to the Japanese Ambassador, Oshima, on the death of Japan's great naval hero, Admiral Yamamoto.'

`Yamamoto! Your man must have been a big shot!'

The lead runs dead there-again! The Japanese navy records are hopeless. Who or what Tsushima was I can't find out. The Japs didn't follow the Germans' practice of logging all details of U-boats and their movements. The best I can do is to say that U-160 sailed from the Japanese base at Penang for the Bridge of Magpies on what was called "an exchange of technical information". Technical information!

Here! in the desert!'

I felt as if I'd been coshed by the past.

'Why go into all this, Jutta? Surely the answer lies-or by-with the naval officers stationed at the Cape?'

The enthusiasm she'd shown up to then ran flat and dry,

`There were 687 British officers who served at Simonstown from 1943 until the end of the war. Try asking 687 men, married and unmarried-years afterwards-whether they sired an unwanted brat who is now trying to find out who her father is! Take a look in my letter file if you want to see what the big brush-off really means!'

`Surely the naval records..

'Of course I worked that angle too. But just you watch the Navy clam up when along comes a girl trying to pin parenthood on one of its boys!'

`Right' I said. 'You've done all this sleuthing and delving and what have you got?'

'I don't know. You threw me out before I could find out.' '

Jutta..

She hurried on. 'I'm just a woman who hasn't found herself. The search has turned into the main thing in my life: a way of existence programmed by a couple of torpedoes which lammed into a ship's side; a mother who died giving me birth; and a father who didn't show up. There've been men of course. Men-and men. I told you about one type, the quid- pro-quo lot. There've been a couple of the other sort: you don't get to my age without being turned on. Then, when I thought J'd found something that was going to stick, my heart fired blanks. I couldn't.'

`So you want to find your father-in the hope that it'll put your own pieces together again?'

'That sounds a bit crude for something as deep as what I feel. Maybe you're partly right. Maybe after I've found him I' ll get direction and meaning. All I know is that the not knowing acts as a drag on me. Or perhaps I'm one of those people not lucky enough to know love. But I do know this-Struan: out there on Doodenstadt I was within reach of something.

She made a V of her hands and thrust them hard into her groin, too carried away to guess at the extent of the sexual charge the gesture threw at me.

'And I got in your way.'

`You, or your job.'

'I wish you'd told me what you were after, there by the wreck and the grave.'

'To a stranger-a policeman?'

`What's different now?'

'Nothing, really. Everything maybe. I don't know.'

She'd begun to talk as though I were thinking of changing – my mind about taking her on to Luderitz: I wasn't But she'd said enough – and hinted enough – for me not to want to leave an image in her mind of an unfeeling bastard-not any more.

'I've been a drifter for years…' I told her about the Greek islands. 'My bivouac was a boat or a bar, whichever was handier. On the primrose path to the Alternative Society, I was pretty close to becoming a juiced-up drop-out. This job is a challenge.'

`So that's why you're acting tough.'

She was unresponsive, so I went on to the story of the Walewska oil-spill. I explained that it was the C-in-C's faith which had backed me for the Possession headman's job.

`Good old C-in-C I It takes courage, loyalty and devotion to duty to protect a lot of birds!'

I was losing her-fast. I had to choose quickly. So on impulse I broke the secret of the lost city and explained why Koch and I bad banished her and Kaptein Denny. I swore her to secrecy but I wasn't fool enough not to realize, that I'd given her a weapon to use against me if she chose. Her eyes kept going over my face as I spoke. After I'd finished she came and put her hands on mine. I wanted the 100 gale to go on for ever, so that I need never take her to Luderitz.

'Thanks,' she said huskily. 'That makes everything different. You too, thank heavens.'

I was a little sandbagged by the way she'd come over to my side. But it wasn't the sort of takeover I particularly minded.

'Maybe you'll find out – for me. I'll wait at Emma Hasler's.' I couldn't meet her eyes. I knew it would be a lie if I said yes.

'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

My reply made us both miserable and after that she closed up. There wasn't any more to say and we sat silent and uncomfortable for a long time, while the gale roared overhead and plucked and boomed over Tuscaloosa as if trying to ape the sound of guns. Later I lay broad awake for hours in my bunk listening to the tumult-so similar to the one going on inside me-and to the quarrelling and clucking of inyriads of birds descending out of the night and making for their old nesting-grounds on the islet.

The gale lasted two days. You couldn't have called the Lchabo a lovers' hideaway during that time: Jutta and I were shut off from one another; so found small jobs for ourselves round the boat, discussing them in impersonal voices. The mast and boom were badly strained and kept me occupied fiddling them and fixing the rigging; and I think Jutta felt relieved when I asked her to stitch the torn sail. It was wet and unhandy, so we brought it below into the big cabin where she worked on it. I could have tinkered with the engine but didn't. It was an excuse (which I wouldn't have admitted to myself) for delaying as long as possible at Alabama Cove. On the second morning Jutta had gone on deck while, down in the cabin-I put some final touches to the sail. I heard her call above the wind. 'Struan! Struan I A boat!'

The white sail and the breakers combined to look like a split image-far away near the channel entrance, until one saw the flared bow and characteristic black strake of a Nieswandt cutter. The way she was being handled and the press of sail made me certain it was Kaptein Denny. Then she came a little closer, and I spotted Gaok's unmistakable figurehead.

'That boat's in a hurry, Jutta:

'He's alone. I don't see anyone else.'

Goak finally came almost alongside at the same cracking pace before Kaptein Denny spun her round and tossed me a securing line.

He jumped aboard. His eyes were strained and red and his mouth was bracketed with fatigue. Salt had made a white fuzz on his beard stubble and round the neck of his heavy turtleneck sweater; it emphasized the rough planes of his face. However, there was a jauntiness about his stocky figure which I put down to excitement at the storm and his triumph over the sea's challenge.

`Dr Koch sent me. Urgent. You're to come at once. There's a strange ship at the Bridge of Magpies. She's up to no good.'