A Bridge of Magpies

C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

It felt as if there'd been some delayed blow-back into my brain from my paralysed hearing earlier. It simply wouldn't function to accept what Kaptein Denny said. The paralysis seemed to have spread to my vocal chords too.

Jutta's incredulity took the common form of demanding a repeat of a statement that you'd heard perfectly well in the first place, anyway.

'What did you say?'

Then her voice wobbled and went temporarily lame. Denny said, 'U-160 didn't sink. Bul she didn't remain afloat either.'

'For Chrissake,' I interjected-'you can't have it both ways!' '

You can-and the U-boat did.'

'I need a shot of dop-en-dum – without the dune

`Gousblom's attack put U-160's ballast pumps out of action and wrecked aJl her valves. It's there on the tape. I came to the same conclusion when I saw her first.'

'Saw? First?'

I felt a tide of excitement rising inside me. If I could get my hands on the Book of Tsu, the C-in-C would gel more than he'd bargained for.

'I've watched her surface every winter for close on thirty years.'

'That accounts for the X-ray-eye weather watch.' '

Aye.

It's the upwell cell, of course?'

'Yes and no, but mainly yes.'

'You must have seen the spot where she went down, and marked it and now with the upsurge of water..

'That isn't the way it works. I myself didn't witness what happened to U-160. All I know is that there was a long oil patch next morning, after the action round Broke Rock, and a couple of mines floating about. Everyone said they'd got U-160. There was no mason to doubt it?

'Until?'

'Until after the war and J was on my way home-sick 184 and disillusioned and feeling not a little guilty about the whole tragedy of losing the Book of Tsu. Jn fact, at one stage J seriously contemplated committing hara-kiri. I was taking myself to Cape Town in Gaok, preliminary to shipping to Japan. It was winter, as now, and the weather was the same. I didn't know about the upwell cell in those days; off Albatross Rock I sighted what I thought was a whale on the surface. When I got closer I saw it wasn't It was a waterlogged submarine. And when I got closer still I made out her recognition number – U-160. I thought I had gone out of my mind. I nearly did, when I went aboard. The conning tower and its escape hatch were smashed fast. Inside that floating steel coffin was a whole crew – and the Book of Tsu. There was nothing I could do to get at it. The last straw came a couple of hours later when the U-boat started to go down under my feet and I had to abandon her. That was near the Bridge of Magpies, where the current had carried her. I followed the sinking hulk up the channel and to the open sea-when it vanished altogether. I think I was a little insane that night,'

'It's not possible – that she should go and come back?' '

That's what I thought For the second time I'd lost everything that was most precious to me.'

'She'd got caught in a dense salinity layer and that brought her to the surface?' I asked.

'Yes, that's it I didn't rationalize it like that at the time, though. You don't, when a ghost shows up and you live with it for a few hours and then it slips back again into its grave. U-160 was damaged at the critical moment when they were flooding her tanks to dive. Because of that, she couldn't blow them and she couldn't fill them. She had to go on, half – submerged. The crew was trapped. It must have been an awful death. Escape was so near and yet so far.'

'That is why she never signalled U-boat headquarters as she promised,' interjected Jutta. There was a lurking dismay behind her eyes, as if she feared she had no option now bul to live out whatever trouble was in store for us. I think she also secretly mistrusted Kaptein Denny.

'If she went down at the northern entrance to the channel-what are we doing here in the south?' I demanded. 'Perhaps Sang A's location wasn't so far out after all'

'They're wrong.' His eyes looked as old and tired as if he'd been watching over the Book of Tsu all its eight hundred years. 'I found it all out the hard way. I became possessed with Possession. I lived, sailed, sounded, searched: everything I knew; everything I remembered about the hulk's course; and about tides, winds and currents to try to find her again. Nothing. Salvage can be frustrating enough when you have modem gear; imagine what I felt like using primitive means like sounding leads and fishing trawls and nets, trying into the bargain, to bluff everyone that I was a simple fisherman?'

'But you knew where she went down!'

'So I thought, so I thought. It was only a year later that I discovered that U-160 didn't go down, but away.' 'What are you saying?'

The waterlogged U-boat was carried away from the coast by the current. The farther she went the less the density of the sea became, and the deeper under the surface she went. God alone knows where in the South Atlantic she drifts, under water, all year -Brazil? Antarctica? The Falklands? The West Wind Drift? I've given up trying to work it out. All I know is that it's a regular cycle, because she comes back and surfaces each year when the Bridge of Magpies wind blows.'

'It's blowing now.' There was a curious tightening in my throat.

'And she's coming. She always does. Her landfall's always the same-Albatross Rock. Captain Schlebusch himself couldn't do better. Then she works her way up-channel, on the surface.'

Jutta said, in a carefully controlled voice, 'You need have no fear that you haven't kept faith with your office. Keeper. Watcher Isn't it enough? Thirty years – it's a whole life? He said, more gently than I'd ever heard him speak, '

Keeper. Watcher. True. But it's not enough, Miss Jutta. I wonder if you or anyone else could know how it feels to have an inch of rusty steel plating of a dead U-boat's hull stand between you and everything that matters in your world

– and your country's?'

The wraps were off him now.

Snap out of it, I told myself, don't buy this Eastern line of a magic staff in one hand and a gun in the other. He's had nearly thirty opportunities, on his own admission, lo take a crack at opening up U-160-alone- or with the help of others.

I couldn't keep the sceptlcism out of my voice. 'From what you say U-160 should have been a piece of cake as far as salvage goes. A tug or a ship to assist and the Book of Tsu would have been in the bag.'

He gestured at the coffee-and-cream whitecaps streaming in from the south; and the desert gale overhead sandblasting their crests to dirty foam.

'Take a look at the risk element. As an ordinary salvage proposition a U-boat is worth peanuts. You've said so yourself. Just after the war you couldn't have sold one for a thousand pounds, even to a film company. With the exception of the Book of Tsu, U-160 carried nothing of value. Add to that the fact that you can only attempt anything with U- 160 just at a time when all the risks are at their maximum. The skipper of a Japanese trawler I prevailed upon to try it nearly lost his ship on Penguin's Turning. He was an exNavy man himself, and I sold him a yarn about U-160 carrying important naval documents. I think he's cursing me still.'

'You're not the only one in all this time who must have seen U-160 surface-' I said.

'No? Think It's never for more than a few hours that she shows up. A non-scary accompaniment is a sandstorm. There's fog. By the nature of things-she submerges shortly after the Bridge of Magpies wind drops. A few hours. Zero visibility. The most dangerous shore probably in the world.'

'The guano workers..

'Forget it. It's the birds' breeding season. Possession's deserted. J don't have to lell you that. The mainland's Sperrgebietverboten. There's not a soul about.'

'Except Sang A.'

'You're wrong. Except us. We're going in to take the Book of Tsu out of U-160 when she shows up.'

J, too, had to get in there with him. Intelligence-wise-the Book of Tsu could be the biggest bonanza since American Combat Intelligence broke the Jap code before Midway, and had the fleet's plan of attack handed to them on a plate. If it was aJl Kaptein Denny claimed, it was bigger than even the C-in-C himself could imagine. The odds against two men and a girl pulling it off were astronomical. Three's a crowd187 ten's a team. And you, d need a damn fine team of ten experts, backed by a shipload of equipment, to swing the U-160 odds in our favour.

When I stood turning aJl this over in my mind and did not reply immediately, the pupils of Kaptein Denny's eyes contracted like a cat's out hunting when confronted by a sudden light. As sinister, too.

Jutta noticed it and said quickly, 'Come down to the cabin a moment, Struan. I've something to say to you-alone.'

The light in the cabin was dim because of the sand cloud, and the dark mahogany panelling didn't help what little sunlight penetrated it. Jutta stopped-turned, and faced me, looking as if there were something very complicated in her mind which had to be brought out into the light of day. She had about her a remoteness which made her seem vulnerable – and dear. I looked in the deep green of her eyes but found no answer. She made a little gesture which was hail-deprecation-halfsomething I couldn't define.

'My search for a father has turned into something else. It's still open-ended and likely to remain so'

' U – 1 6 0..:

'J wasn't meaning U-160. Me. I tried to tell you before I was a woman who hadn't found herself:

'Was?'

Her tone was quite different from that night we'd been alone in the bunkhouse.

'I came to Possession looking for one thing. I found another… bigger… no, biggest.'

`Go on.'

'J'm someone who grew up by fits and starts-painfully. I' ve waited a long time to establish where I stand in the world'

Where is that?

She came close to me and touched my lips with hers. She could control that, but not the tremors that rippled all down the length of her neck and breasts and thighs when I held her tight.

'Here.'

'Darling, darling:

'I'm not firing blanks this time, my love.'

We couldn't hear the swishing of the gale past the port188 holes for the sound of our hearts beating, together. She said, 'All these years I've felt I've been playing a part not being an insider to myself because of it. Now you've come along and transplanted a heart into me and everything is bright and fresh and new. I'm scared of losing it through Kaptein Denny and U-160. Scared for you too, my darling.'

She held me fiercely with her hips and thighs. If all this was. a revelation of the sort of woman she really was, she was my woman.

'I'll make it work- for you!

'Maybe I love you too much or not enough yet. J can't go along with this crazy U-160 business. I can't be sure in my own mind about Kaptein Denny.'

'It's too late to go back on it now.'

'That's what I'm afraid of. We're being squeezed between Kaptein Denny and Sang A."

'Not if we get the Book of Tsu..

What if you do? Kaptein Denny won't let you keep it, you can be certain. Did you see his eyes just now?'

I had. Once we'd salvaged U-160, the chase might only be starting. I hadn't planned that far.

J said, 'I have you. That makes all the difference now.' 'I want it to, my very dear love. Just look after what's most precious to me, will you?'

We held one another so long that I was worried Kaptein Denny would come looking for us. So we went back to the bridge.

'What's the dell for U-160?' I asked him. The contraction started to go from his pupils when he heard my acceptance. He kept his voice on a neutral level for the reply. The effort it took showed how keyed-up he'd been.

We can't be sure when she'll show up. She may be coming our way at this very moment.'

There's no such thing as zero visibility but the Bridge of Magpies gale was doing its best to create it. The sand being carried along doubled the normal effect on the sea's surface, of a gale tearing in one direction while a current drove against it from the opposite quarter. It was milky-coffee, churned-up, short and steep; and the sand had a stinging, maddening quality like wind-fired bird shot. You couldn't get away from it, even inside the cutter.

Ichabo was corkscrewing at the end of the tow, and every time it went slack and took up again she jerked and lurched violently. In spite of the fact we were so close, we couldn't make out the scimitar-like curve of the coast, as there was only a frail wash of light from the sun. Waves of a hundred centuries had fragmented the rock of the coastline into a loose series of offshore reefs, stacks, pinnacles and blinders. The biggest of them is Albatross Rock and the worst-Penguins Turning. They form a half-circle of about three-quarters of a mile from land, extended in a south-westerly direction only, like a comet's tail. Between them – apparently known to Kaptein Denny -ran a deep-water channel, scoured, since the Sperrgebiet was young, by the action of the incoming stream of the upwell cell. Even the Africa Pi! ot- whose language is usually as unemotional as a judge's verdict, becomes charged when describing the dangers of the patch we were heading into.

'We go in the moment we sight her-' Denny said. 'You'll take Ichabo. I91 have Gaok We make the cutters fast-one on either side of the U-boat. We rig a couple of cables under her keep and secure them to the boats. They'll act as pontoons. They, plus the lifting effect of the upwell cell, will combine lo keep her above water while we cut open the hatch.'

'With what?'

'I've brought aJong an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, with special long leads to the gas cylinders. That means we won't have to carry them around.'

'A lot depends on the state of the metal.'

'Her hull's in fine nick still.'

'All the worse for us.'

'No. All the better. Otherwise it might collapse underwater – anywhere, any time'

'Will two cutters be enough for a U-boat's deadweight tonnage of – how much?'

'Eleven hundred and twenty on the surface, twelve thirty submerged.'

'Trust Jutta to know,' Kaptein Denny permitted himself a smile.

I persisted. 'You're well heeled. You could have got the services of all the gamat fishermen and their cutters from Luderitz on the basis of winner-take-all from the hulk.. 190

'Listen-' I'd been misled by that passing smile-'Listen very carefully to me! The Book of Tsu is a secret-one of the wor! d's great secrets. My country's secret. It's not for spreading around a bunch of blab-mouthed wreckers! Or among prying officials who'd follow them once the story of a floating sub spread from the pubs. Only five people in the world, besides myself know about it: you two, Kenryo, Miki and Emmermann.'

We drove on, the silence in the wheelhouse thick and heavy. Later-the tension eased a bit when we had to exchange technicalities about the final run-in to Albatross Rock. At Penguins Turning we swung starboard on to a south-westerly heading. The fang looked like its name, a penguin who had turned its back to the land all black and shining and its chest to the sea, all white with the smash of the upwell cell.

The manoeuvre-a keel-shaking jolt which had the two boats weaving like drunks while they shaved past the outliers of Penguins Turning-brought the wind fine on the port quarter. It also put us heading deed-on into the current. This race created a whirlpool in the lee (or landward side) of Penguins Turning that didn't help our sea-keeping problems. We inched onwards, a dreary yard-by-yard slog.

Visibility was no more than a couple of hundred yards. But that was good for morale, because though we could hear, we couldn't see the crash of the seas on every hand. Albatross Rock finally heaved in sight.

I said, 'I understand now what the pig-boat saying means – " by guess and by God"!

'U-160 can only come this way.' Kaptein Denny was very tense.

'So can Sang A.' Jutta voiced the doubt which had been nagging at the back of my mind all the time.

'Leave it alone!' snapped Denny. 'Leave it alone, Miss Jutta, I say!'

I speculated what his reaction would be if I asked what he intended to do if Sang A surprised us working on U-160, with both cutters immobilized. I only hoped Emmermann was an ardent reader of the Africa Pilot. At best Kaptein Denny couldn't count on more than a few hours in which to slice open a hull specially toughened to withstand four hundred feet of water pressure and the explosion of enough 191 amatol in depth charges to blow the bottom out of the attacker's own hull if you didn't get clear quick enough after dropping them. How deep the U-boat would lie depended on the density of the water in the upwell cell. Only the tip of the conning-tower might emerge if its density was weak. That, only God and U-160 knew. Also, once the radar-blinding screen of sand fell -as as if must do with the decline of the gale-we'd be a sitting duck for Sang A's search scanner. Silence fell again.

We cased the ocean for U-160.

Finally Kaptein Denny brought both cutters to anchor. It was a back-breaking, muscle-fagging business and the spot he chose could have been anywhere except that there was a triangular blur to seaward which he said was Albatross Rock. His hard-line approach was an effective questionstopper. All that lead-footed afternoon the gale roared over us like a dirty snowstorm.

All that afternoon the desert fall-out swamped the ships. All that afternoon Kaptein Denny stood-short and brown and frozen-faced, alone with his thoughts-watching the foamlashed sea. Sunsets on the Sperrgebiet are usually spectacular affairs because of the dust in the air, but ours didn't stand a chance of penetrating the dark clouds rolling out to sea from the desert. The sun went down in a faint bleary blur and the gale thundered on hot and dirtily. The fog, too, was heavier and earlier than usual because of the hot-cold clash of the air and sea. It became a profitless business continuing the look-out for U-160. We couldn't have sighted her unless and until she was right under our noses.

Kaptein Denny's silence and tension were catching and Jutta and I were infected. We went below and I occupied myself with stripping and cleaning the sub-machine-gun. J also greased and checked some running gear that I thought might be useful when-and if – U-160 showed up. I also tested Denny's blow-pipe cutter which he'd brought for the U-boat's hatch.

Rata and I had a snack supper below. I was pouring myself a brandy to anchor it when Jutta said suddenly.

'If he's mad, and the U-boat doesn't come-what's he going to do to us?'

J nodded towards the sub-machine-gun I'd put handy on a locker.

'That gun's living with me from now on. Closer than my shirt.'

She went on speculatively, 'It all sounds so normal when he explains it and then when you're alone and come to think about it.. . it's quite some title: Master of the Equinoxes, Lord of the Solstice.'

'It rings, all right!

'So do delusions of grandeur! Then she came to me. 'I'm afraid, Struan, afraid for us. Deep down I'm ful! of doubts.'

I kissed her but her nerves and muscles were as taut as Gaok's rigging in the gaJe.

The waiting's sending me crazy.'

J hitched up the automatic. 'Let's got up on deck!

I held her and blew out the lamp. The cabin didn't go dark. Jt was lighted silver-faintly, uncannily-from outside and Jutta's face was that spectral colour I'd seen in the channel.

She put her face against mine. `J'd think it was part of the nightmare if I didn't know the real cause.'

We went on deck. The night had a parched and eerie splendour. The sea's shimmering fire threw up a backwash of luminosity against the overhead sand curtain and made little mobile footlights to light the cutters' hulls. Albatross Rock stood out more dearly than before as each wave that broke drenched it in liquid fire. On the bridge above us Kaptein Denny's statue-still figure and stubby head resembled a silver totem pole.

I was fiddling to get the automatic comfortable and hold Jutta at the same time, so my eyes weren't on the sea.

`Look!' Jutta's intake of breath matched the wind speed. Jf it had been moving I would have said it was a torpedo whose buoyant flask was leaking air. A silver stream cascaded to the surface from under the water like a scuba swimmer coasting along blowing bubbles.

An upheaval of disturbed incandescence followed. It resolved itself into the outline of a ship.

'Jesus!'

Like a ghost in the grip of some primordial time machine, U-160 rose up out of the sea.