A Bridge of Magpies

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

Four's a crowd in a small boat, and so is an armament of two pistols, a knife and a sub-machine-gun-all trained on one man in the stern. Captain Mild sat there to one side-where I'd pushed him while I cased Sang A with my fire. There was about him still that frightening immobility which he'd displayed on Sang A's deck. He reminded me of a puff-adder which had been trodden on, It rears up and then remains deadly still; when it strikes it is like lightning and at short range. It first hisses like a deflating tyre. Miki had already hissed.

We had to get clear of Sang A – quick.

J moved to help Kaptein Denny with the rowing. '

No,' he said. 'Watch him.'

So I stood behind him at the oars, bracing myself by splaying my feet on either side of the bottom-boards. I held the sub-machine-gun on Miki. Jutta was in the bow behind me. We'd only gone a little farther when she gave a low cry. '

Struan! You're dripping blood!'

I was. It was coming from the gash in my chest. I'd not noticed.

Jn a moment she was alongside me, steadying herself on my arm and dabbing at the wound with a handkerchief. '

Oh God! Struan, Struan!'

'It's not much.'

'Bandages! We must have some bandages for id'

Kantein Denny rested on the oars.

'Here!'

He leant forward as he sat, took Miki's shirt by the collar and ripped it bodily down the front. He might have been tearing it off a statue -except for the shock-wave of hate which his action sparked.

Denny passed the torn material over his shoulder to Jutta, who started work on me.

'Keep moving!' I told Denny.

'We're far enough, for the moment-' he replied. 'We've got 170 some things to sort out first'

'I'll say!'

We couldn't make out Sang A any longer, and the sounds coming from her were muted.

Kaptein Denny snapped a few words at Mild, who still didn't move. He raised his pistol.

'No!' cried Jutta. 'No!' should: it's what he deserves. Instead he can take his chance, and swim.'

Kaptein Denny gestured again. Miki remained where he was.

Then he uttered the only thing he'd said all along. It was a harsh-venomous little explosion of sound.

'Tenchu!

'Punishment of the gods!' echoed Kaptein Denny. 'Here it isTenchu

He struck Mild in the face with his fist. Mild topped over backwards into the water. When he came up, I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry he was still alive.

`Struan! Here! Pull!' Kaptein Denny was back at the oars. I took station alongside him. My last sight of Mild in the fog was of two malicious eyes burning just above water level-like the illustrations you see of vanished prehistoric monsters' heads swimming in search of prey.

The dinghy sped through the water. The slop of sea in the bottom of the boat made the hot barrel of the sub-machinegun I'd discarded sizzle. It threw off a kind of pinky foam-steaming off the blood on Kaptein Denny's knife. My blood wasn't contributing, now that Jutta had bandaged the wound. The navigation was a bitch. If I'd been alone I'd have fouled the spider's-web of cables and chains which enveloped Sang A. But Kaptein Denny seemed to know at every stage what he was doing. He made his changes of course by pulling less or more strongly on his oar, like a rider guiding his horse by his knees. The cables and smaller marker buoys were virtually undetectable until the boat was upon them: we evaded them aJl, however, and eventually broke clear of the network when one of the big buoys with its yellow number hove up on the port hand. At this point Denny made a radical alteration of course: I knew it was to the north-west because up lo them I'd been facing the east wind squarely and now it was to one side,

The heat lay on the water like a fever and our eyes were full of driving, blowing sand; rowing was as cooling as doing press-ups in a sauna. It was a good thing, though, because it flushed out of our pores the throat-tightening fear-stench of men who have been in the presence of death.

What it didn't flush out, however, were a thousand questions I had for Kaptein Denny. And a thousand suspicions which were mutiplying as fast as one-cell cultures in a testtube.

`Tenchu' Jutta uttered the word mechanically, like someone who, on waking, recalls a puzzling fragment of a bad dream.

Kaptain Denny anticipated the questions which I was intending to throw at him any moment. It didn't escape me that during our rowing he'd hooked the sub-machine-gun towards himself with a toe, so that it now lay within easy reach under his thwart. His pistol was in his belt-too -a Taisho, Japanese Imperial Navy model.

He said, 'Punishment of the gods. I was the instrument.'

'Instrument!' Jutta leaned forward so that her face was close to our oars. 'Now I've heard everything! You loved that fight back there! Oh, it was pleasant – as a meat tenderizing demonstration!'

'You've got. a lot to account for,' I added.

He replied, not at all breathlessly, because he was breathing easily and economically as he rowed.

'You listen to me, both of you. The Sang A crowd aren't paper tigers. They're a kamikaze suicide squad attached to the United Red Army-the Rengo Sekigun. Hijacking and terrorism. The same bunch who were responsible for the Lod airport massacre and a dozen other atrocities – remember?'

'There's nothing to terrorize at Possession..

I began, but he cut me short.

'There is. There was. Let's begin with what was. Emmermann is in fact Swakop, the Nazi spy who was landed from U-160- then disappeared. I heard nothing about him and thought he must have died-or gone back to Germany after the war.'

'Tsushima the spy!' exclaimed Jutta incredulously. 'A Japanese!'

'Fortunately for me the Oriental and Malay faces are very similar: I've pretended to be a gamat all these years.

Kenryo and the others are not Koreans. They're Japanese, like me. So are the others in Sang A. They didn't know I understood them that first day we went aboard.'

'A brace of ageing spies, you and Emmermann alias Swakop!' went on Jutta. 'I don't know where Miki fits in but I'd guess he is part of the same set-up. Revenge for some dead-and-gone hatreds whlch you've kept festering all these years since the war-thirty years! And you try to pass it off as punishment of the gods..

'This isn't an affair of the past but of the present…' he began. I knew that must be so since the C-in-C had got wind of it.

'You've turned the whole situation arse over tip,' J interrupted. 'Start at the beginning, for Pete's sake!'

'I repeat: I am Japanese, the man who got left behind on the mainland by U-160. Tsushima was only a code-name, like Swakop. My real name's Denzo. It's close enough to resemble Denny-the gamat who never was. Nor was I a spy. I'll come to that part of it in a moment. Let's stick to U-160. After she'd attacked the liner and been herself attacked by Gousblom, my cover was in serious danger of being blown. So I acted the part of the fisherman hero and rescued the liner's passengers. In the resulting confusion and admiration no one questioned my bona fides. But I had to silence the one man who knew who I really was. He was the head of the pro-Nazi cell in South West Africa. I returned to Luderitz and did so.'

Jutta said in a whisper, 'Hasler. The husband of the woman who adopted me.'

'I cut his throat,'

'Oh, God!'

'J had to.'

'Had to I Vengeance of the gods again, I suppose! How many others have you killed?' she asked.

I had to risk his closing up completely when I fired my question: 'For what? Why?

He replied deliberately-weighing his words. 'Because U-160 carried something more valuable than any treasure. It's what the kamikazes are after- of count.'

'I thought, almost from that first day we met, that there was more to you than fishing,' I accused.

'You nearly caught me out at Jutta's mother's grave. Those 173 were Japanese Shinto-rites for the departed.'

'What did U-160 carry?' My voice was harsh with tension. He gulped a great breath of the sandy wind as if he were trying to free a vice round his chest. His steady measured rowing said it wasn't for his muscles.

I'll tell you. I'll have to explain it. Japan established herself as one of the great naval powers of the 20th century by annihilating the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. You could call Tsushima Japan's Trafalgar. We also have our Nelson-Admiral Togo. My code name was associated with the victory: Tsushima.

'I thought AdmiraJ Yamamoto was your naval hero.'

'Yes. Admiral Yamomoto. Japan's sea darling will always be Yamamoto although the glory rests with Togo. In its way Yamamoto's contribution during the Second World War was no less than Togo's nearly forty years earlier. He masterminded our other great naval victory of the century, Pearl Harbour.

There was no sound but the baying of the wind.

'Tsushima and Pearl Harbour; Togo and Yamamoto. Yet what if I were to tell you that those victories were not theirs but the brain-child of someone else?'

The way he spoke made me wonder whether we had to do with a homicidal maniac. His talk about glory would fit into the pattern of megalomania, of illusions of grandeur. I calculated how far it was to the sub-machine-gun. It would be an even-steven bet who'd reach it first if a shoot-out blew up. He went on, 'The basic winning strategy at Pearl Harbour and Tsushima didn't originate with either of the two victors, although of course they were responsible for carrying out the detail. No. It originated in a secret Japanese book of naval strategy-not a super-manual-as you'd be inclined to think, of battle moves and countermoves; but a kind of semimystical collection of symbols. An oracle, if you like to call it that. This book has been consulted and acted upon by all our great naval heroes for centuries

…'

Now I knew he was crazy. 'Come off it!' I interrupted: '

Who won the bloody Pacific war anyway? Where was your mystic book after the Yanks thrashed Yamamoto at Midway? Where?. in the Possession channel, in U-160?

That put the skids under me. Jutta's face went all tight, like an instant face-lift. As expressionless, too.

'We lost because we lost the Book of Tsu. That's what it' s called-the name's a shortened form of Tsushima. U-160 has it aboard.'

I missed the slgnificance of his use of the present tense because suddenly I felt cold all through. I wasn't dealing with a madman-something else. Worse-if he wasn't on your side.

He went on. 'Mild is trying to sell the sea-heart of Japan to a shower of thugs.'

'You're talking as if we knew who Mild was!' I exclaimed.

'Captain Mild was Admiral Yamamoto's personal staff officer and confidante. He probably knew our great admiral – and his secrets-better than anyone living. He was also one of a small group of Imperial Navy officers who were sworn to secrecy by the Emperor himself and ordered to arrange for U-160 to collect the Book of Tsu at the Bridge of Magpies.'

'Collect?' I echoed. 'Then she wasn't carrying it when she sailed for the Cape?'

'Collect,' he repeated. 'From me. Ashore. J had it. The Book of Tsu was in my safekeeping. Then U-160 went off without me, as you know from the tape-recording, taking with her the officer who'd come in her to escort me home. A few minutes before, I'd handed over the Book of Tsu to him and he had waded out to the U-boat's dinghy with it. Then the City of Baroda burst in on the scene and in the panic I was left behind. Left!' His voice was edged with bitterness. 'The whole plan wrecked! Mild, as I said, was one of the planning team and afterwards he went back into the front line as the Americans drove closer and closer to Japan. He went on fighting, even after the surrender. He was one of those wartime hold-outs who show up from time to time on remote Pacific islands. Jn his case it was Lubang in the Philippines. He was eventually flushed out of the jungle a couple of years back, after nearly thirty years of no-surrender. He was something of a hero when he returned to Japan. But he found it wasn't the place he'd fought for. In his disenchanted stale he was easy meat for the kamikaze movement. So he teamed up with them.

I said, 'Kamikazes are suicide killers, avengers, nothing to do with naval officers or naval strategy!

'You're right. Revenge. Russian revenge for their navy's humiliation at Tsushima. The Reds have long memories. It's eaten into them for nearly three-quarters of a century. It runs through all Soviet naval thinking in Far Eastern waters – ships, bases, tactics, dispositions. Russia didn't have the opportunity to take her revenge against Japan in World War II, because she came in right at the end when the Americans had done the job. She still longs to take a crack at us. What better target could a kamikaze squad set for itself than to lay its bands on the almost sacred weapon which broke their fleet once, and use it against Japan herself when the chance offered? Mild gave them their opportunity and Soviet money paid for all that expensive salvage gear of Sang A's.'

'And their hardware,' I said, indicating the sub-machine gun. 'There's a lot more of these around on Sang A. Plus other, heavier metal. But how do you know all this background?'

'I was given a lead by something I overheard that first day we went aboard her-they weren't to know I understood Japanese, of course. My suspicions were confirmed when I searched her. We had the pleasure of meeting that night of the party, you and I, Captain Weddell.'

'The guard in the mask!'

'Aye. Miss Jutta knew I was around!

'You signalled him with the torch.' Jt was a rhetorical accusation.

Jutta had sat aside while I'd cross-questioned Denny. I considered that the whole thing had become too big for her. Now her voice was remote and slightly mistrustful.

'Yes, I did. I was afraid for you, being alone. We'd made a plan beforehand. Kaptein Denny never left the vicinity of Possession.'

'That puts paid to expecting help from the frigate, then? '

It's better this way,' said Kaptein Denny.

I went on rowing mechanically, just as a concussed Rugby player goes on playing-my mind in a daze. Then J jerked into the present again. From downwind came the sound of a boat's engine starting up. If half of what Kaptein Denny said was correct, the sooner we made tracks for the high seas the betler. 'Where's Gaok?'

'We're almost there now: only a couple of cables' lengths to go, to starboard… easy as she goes.'

We pulled alongside the cutter and streamed the dinghy astern at the end of a painter.

'They're practically breathing up our exhaust pipe,' I said. '

Start the diesel. Perhaps they won't hear it, the way the wind's blowing. Find your way out to sea?'

'I'll start the diesel all right but I mean them to hear it. I want them to think we're heading seawards.'

'Think?'

We're on our way inshore. Bridge of Magpies. After that, Albatross Rock.'

'Do you want to hand them Gaok-and us-on a plate?'

'Listen to me. We start the engine-rev it up and hope the sound does reach them. Then we cut it, We sail. After we've picked up Ichabo.'

'Sail! Two boats! You're out of your mind!' say two boats. And we sail.'

That settled it. As far as another reef-grazing ride was concerned, I didn't need faith to trust him after our breakout from Alabama Cove. His next words-though, drove my patience to the limit. '

Wet tow Ichabo.'

'God's truth! What next! Tow! Halve our chances! Halve our speed! HaJve our manoeuvrability!'

We tow.'

The only bright spot was that he appeared to have more to lose than we did. We had only our lives. What the rest of his stake was I intended to find out.

'Okay-' I capitulated.

At that he became more relaxed and easy again. 'Let's go, then.'

We gunned Gaok's engine as hard as we dared and then set off under a scrap of sail towards a spot where, Denny maintained, Ichabo was at anchor. Except for the direction of the wind, I had completely lost my bearings. Most of the fog had gone now but the dust made a more tangible darkness which hid the sun and filled our eyes and noses and crunched between our teeth.

We located Ichabo, lashed her helm, and made Gaok's towing cable secure. Then we set off-in a series of tight tacks, into the teeth of the wind and across the channel towards 177 the mainland. The air was very hot-and dust blew like a rasp. Desert debris was everywhere. The wind was nudging gale force and had a dry rolling rattle to it-like shaking a giant version of one of the Sperrgebiet's own rattle bushes which clatter like castanets.

There was a steely precision about the way Kaptein Denny tacked and tacked again. He himself had the wheel and I tended the sail. But my mind was only half on the tricky operation: at every turn I expected to run into a Sang A search party. Jutta-too, was on constant watch from the bridge.

There was no time to think about the fantastic story Denny had told us. I was continually on the move because at every change of course Ichabo would stream away lumpishly downwind and drag round Gaok's stern. As an example of giving your enemy every chance to cut off your retreat Denny's strategy seemed hard to beat.

But we went on undetected and finally made a ninety degree turn-so close to Doodenstadt's rocks that spray from the breakers was added to the little which carded on to the deck. Now Gaok pointed southwards, hugging the shore, with Ichabo cavorting out to lee at the end of her cable. A thought struck me and I made for the bridge. 'Radar!

Sang A has radar! She'll pick us up for sure!'

'In these conditions? Never!' Denny replied. 'Her radar screen will look like a bead curtain across a bar, with all this stuff flying around. There are enough mica particles in it to thake radar about as effective as a cross-eyed drunk.'

We drove south.

It wasn't more than ten miles to Albatross Rock-but a couple of crabs under sail would have followed a straighter course than Gaok and Ichabo. The Bridge of Magpies showed up. Visibility was so low that its legs appeared to have been amputated. When it disappeared astern I gave up trying to calculate where we were-from the amount of forward movement, sideways drift and wind thrust. It is impossible for me to say, therefore, at what point off the fractured, fissured coast I saw, dead ahead on the sea's surface-the grey thing with rounded sides which looked like an igloo tent, or a hangar-one of those plastic structures which are inflated to give them shape. Only this one was dirty and shiny and wet and there were lighter patches here 178 and there on its bulging sides.

Gaok couldn't miss it the way she was heading. What in he!! was Kaptein Denny doing?

I threw myself off the bridge and roof where I'd been attending the sail and into the wheelhouse below. Jutta was there, staring transfixed at the object in our track. Tut your helm down!' I yelled. 'Down!'

Denny didn't seem to hear and went on gazing forward without turning his head.

I snatched at the wheel-and I looked into the blue barrel of the Taisho.

Tack! Keep away!'

'The rock, man – you'll sink us!'

'Leave it to me. it isn't a rock.

He never got any further because at that moment Gaok's bowsprit pierced the grey bulk. The result was like putting your head inside Big Ben's biggest bell when the hour strikes. The boom stunned the ears and kicked the diaphragm. My resulting nausea wasn't only sound induced. The plasticlooking bubble threw off a flatus which was as sickening as it was unique.

The stench-patch Gaok had to cross wasn't bigger than a cricket field, and it couldn't have taken more than a couple of minutes but it seemed like hours. I was shouting things which I couldn't hear because my eardrums were paralysed, and I was holding Jutta, gagging and retching against me. I lip-read the explanation of the thing-on Kaptein Denny's mouth-'The sound of guns!'

The sea round about was thlck enough to have matched Walewska's oil spill, but once we had lurched clear of the patch and gone far enough to give our ears time to recover, Denny told us what the 'sound of guns'-really was. He'd heard it a score of times before, of course-but to us it made Gousblom's end sound more poignant.

'Jt wasn't guns Gousblom heard but the explosion of gas pockets which are caused by the upwell cell building up. What you saw back there was a small section of the mud floor of the channel which the gas lifts bodily to the surface. Gas is quickly generated by the action of the upwell cell's warm water on billions of minute, decomposing sea creatures on the ocean bed. Pockets form and push the mud upwards into giant balloons. When they reach the surface, where the pressure of the air is less, they explode.'

'If there'd been no "sound of guns" there'd have been no U-160 action,' observed Jutta thoughtfully.

'True. It was luck, fate, call it what you like. It doesn't last for long, Miss Jutta. Gousblom was unlucky enough to be around at the wrong moment. Once cold water starts flowing it kills the process.'

'No lost Book of Tsu. No Kaptein Denny,' she added.

'Sometimes even I think of myself as a gamat fisherman. Denny-Denzo.' That triggered off something inside him and he spoke and steered and never looked anywhere but ahead while Gaok spooked her way through the sandstorm towards Albatross Rock.

'The first Admiral Denzo lived about 800 years ago,'

Denny began. 'He fought for a Japanese emperor named Minamoto. Denzo won a great sea battle against the Taira clan and his victory gave Minamoto control over the whole of Japan. It is the first occasion on which there is a record of the Book of Tsu. Denzo is known to have based his successful strategy on its precepts. In recognition of his victory Minamoto appointed Demo to be Keeper of the Book of Tsu. He also conferred a hereditary title on him. It's been in our family ever since:

Then he said quietly, and not at all theatrically, and with no pose, 'Master of the Equinoxes, Lord of the Solstice.'

He raised the gun-hand which had gone out at such high stretch at Mild. 'I am the Master. I have my duty. The Book of Tsu must never faJl into the hands of Emmermann and Kenryo and Mild.'

'Pearl Harbour – Tsushima,. The story's full of gaps.' The hoarseness in my own voice surprised me.

'Yes, it is. I'm not telling you that the Book of Tsu which won Demo his victory was the same as the one used at Pearl Harbour and Tsushima. It wasn't. Over the centuries after Minamoto the Book of Tsu became debased until it was regarded as a lot of mumbo-jumbo, simply a collection of incomprehensible medieval magic spells. An elaborate ritual – over which the Master presided – was built up and it became more important than the Book itself. Its meaning was almost totally obscured by the beginning of the twentieth century.

'Then my grandfather, who lived at the time of the Meiji Revolution which made Japan into a modern state, revised and rewrote the Book of Tsu in terms of modern naval concepts. That-was about twenty years before the Battle of Tsushima. Admiral Togo based his victorious strategy on this revamped, dynamic version of the Book of Tsu. So did Yamamoto at Pearl Harbour. He and the Japanese Naval Staff were already planning and playing war gathes five years before the Pacific War broke out. Yamamoto himself tasted victory at Tsushima. He was there; he lost a couple of fingers from a shellburst.'

'J feel like a spacecraft starting to come back to the everyday things on earth-' I said.

'I haven't got past the shock of re-entry yet.' Jutta looked it, too.

Kaptein Denny went on: 'Jt's probably easier for the Oriental than the Western mind to accept that one can receive valid guidance from extra-sensory forces. Maybe it's something to do with the ritual or the symbols of the Book of Tsu, which amuse and project the unconscious. Who knows? It might prove a rewarding modern study in ESP. All I can say is that it worked for Togo and Yamamoto.'

The more you tell us the more unlikely it seems that the Master of the Equinoxes should find himself as tar away from his hereditary shrines and what-have-you as the Sperr gebiet,' I said.

'Not when you reaJize that Luderitz has a direct associat ion with the Battle of Tsushima. It was at Luderitz that Admiral Rozhdesvensky coaled the Russian fleet for the last time before it sailed to destruction by Togo's guns at Tsushima. You'll find his signature in an old visilors' book at the port.'

'Nothing of this makes it any clearer why you were at the Bridge of Magpies with the Book of Tsu, that night, waiting for U-160 to pick you up. And it wasn't even a Japanese sub, as you'd expect, but a German one?

'Jn 1936 there was an army coup in Japan -a palace revolution. Young Turks grabbed the government. They set aboul eradicating all the traditionaJ things-except the Emperor, of course. He's sacred. The rest went into the fire. That included the hereditary office-bearers. The Master, my father, was a front ranker for liquidation.

'We lived a little way out of Tokyo at the shrine where the Book of Tau was kept. I was an ensign serving in the Navy. My father was tipped off by phone that a killer squad was on its way to eliminate him. He vowed they'd never lay hands on the Book of Tsu. So he swore me in as the new Master, after arranging with friends to smuggle me-and it-out of Japan. He also fixed with someone at the Imperial PaJace for me to see the Emperor in order to ratify the title. He shot me off with the Book of Tsu, and calmly awaited his executioners.

'I remember that day like yesterday-the Jmperial Palace in the snow, the patrols, the shooting, the street barricades. They let me pass because I was in full-dress uniform, and the Navy was supposed to be sympathetic to the revolutionaries. I was young and terrified during the audience with the Emperor, who made me promise that whenever he sent for me I would return to Japan with the Book of Tsu. Then I went back through the patrols with the Book wrapped in a brown paper parcel under my arm and friends smuggled me aboard a ship leaving for Cape Town. My ultimate destination was Luderitz, which my father had designated.'

'A Jap in pre-war Cape Town! You must have stood out like a sore thumb!'

'That's what I thought. Language was no problem-I'd learned English, French and German at the famous Nakano School for Spies. It was my face. But I saw my break when we actuaJly reached the Cape. Malays are Orientals and there are thousands of them there. I'd easily pass as one. So I jumped ship and went to ground in Cape Town's gamat Casbah among the cut-throats. I had plenty of money and in those days, there-you could buy a man's soul for a dollar. A year later I emerged -a fully-fledged gamat myself, complete with patois. After that it was simple to ship to the guano islands. After a season among the zombies I bought a boat and started fishing out of Luderitz. My cover was complete.'

The Master, the Book of Tsu, and no employment for them,' I said.

'It looked like that, after Pearl Harbour and the fantastic run of Japanese victories which followed. They were Yamamoto's, of course. Do you know we conquered the whole of South East Asia-from the Philippines to Singapore, from Burma to the outskirts of Australia, for the loss of one 182 destroyer? The new admirals and captains believed it was due to their own fighting skill-who among them had ever heard-or cared-about the Book of Tau?'

'Except Yamamoto,' said Jutta.

'Even the greal Yamamoto overreached himself. He hadn't the Book of Tsu to rely on any more. The Battle of Midway finished him-and the Japanese Navy. Then Yamamoto was shot down and killed in a plane by the Americans in the Solomon. The writing was on the wall for Japan. Traditionally the Navy-the hard inner core of top brass-turned to consult the Book of Tsu. It wasn't there; it was with me at Luderitz. The Emperor knew; so in greatest secrecy the pickup was arranged.'

'But why a German U-boat?' Jutta demanded.

'Swakop-the man who was to raise a pm-Nazi rebellion in South West Africa-was in Japan. U-160 was refitting at the Japanese naval base at Penang: we let the U-boats use our East Indies bases after they'd been driven out of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. And U-160's skipper was an ace who knew the Cape well. He'd served in two wolf-packs, Seehund and Eisbar, in these waters. The whole set-up provided perfect cover for U-160's real mission:

'No wonder my researches ran dead!' exclaimed Jutta. '

You know the rest,' added Kaptein Denny.

'Except why you were left behind.'

"The Japanese officer in U-160 who was to be my aide was a stickler for rank and protocol, and the Master was more than someone. He was set on doing me all the honours; he wasn't even going to allow me to wet my feet. He'd first taken the Book of Tsu out to the U-boat's dinghy, intending to come back and piggy-back me out. Then the liner alarm went and the dinghy raced away back to the U-160. I was left standing on the beach.'

That's that, then.' Jutta's voice was flat and empty. I added, 'I appreciate now why you don't want Sang A to know where U-160 sank.'

'She didn't sink,' said Kaptein Denny. 'She's due any time now at Albatross Rock: