The German Numbers Woman Page 43

  ‘Well, if he says he didn’t hear anything on the radio, he didn’t. But you know why, don’t you?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘He spends too much time with Judy.’

  The excuse seemed halfway convincing. ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘There aren’t any secrets on a boat like this. But I’d better go. It’s getting to be all hands on the bridge right now.’

  ‘Fuck off, then,’ he said amiably. ‘I’ll see you after I’ve cleaned myself up.’

  Long hours at the radio had shown how to tune the medium wave transmitter. Fingers feeling their way over the equipment, he read each wheel and switch, interpreting buttons and plugs so as not to mistake anything or need to hurry when the moment came. He would plug the morse key into its appropriate slot, and send on the distress frequency, as promised in his tape letter, the longest fortnight ago in his life. It was obvious that the tape had been received, that a listener would pick up his message and take action. He saw little chance of escape after breaking radio silence but, boxed into his blindness, wouldn’t consider consequences – going again through the processed drill.

  The engines droned, but otherwise there was a curious silence on the boat, everyone anxious and expectant. The single dot he sent as a test, the sort Vanya in Moscow used to tap in order to assess the alacrity of a listener’s response, sprang like the ping of a tuning fork into his ears and went unheard by everyone else into space. He unplugged the morse key and returned it to the hold-all, pushed out of sight under the table.

  Course was altered, and he guessed they were steering in darkness towards the Suffolk coast, maybe to nose a way into one of the indentations recalled from low-level training flights, places in which to lay concealed and unload. On deck a light rain drizzled against his face. He would be a normal crew member till as close to the end as he could get. ‘Hello, Jack, how are we doing?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Cannister said. ‘This is just the night we need. We’ve got Long Sand Light to starboard, and we’ll soon have Sunk Light to port. Couldn’t be better. I’ve been in this way before.’

  ‘How far is Long Sand Light from land?’

  ‘Fifteen nautical miles. About an hour and a half, at this rate. Cleaver’s worked it out like a real artist. Never puts a foot wrong. I’d go to bed if I was you. Wake up when it’s over. I’d like to, but the chief wouldn’t approve. Might stop me wages. I saw him just now, all toffed up on the bridge, spick and span in his pea jacket and naval cap. Just like a gent back from a cruise. I’ll want to celebrate when this lot’s over.’

  ‘You don’t sound too cheerful about it.’

  ‘Well, you aren’t usually over the moon at this stage. I suppose it’s not the same for you as the rest of us. You ought to get more joy out of life, Howard, blind or not. I hope to be with my wife and kids this time tomorrow. You don’t have any kids?’

  ‘I’ve never thought it would do for somebody like me to have a family.’

  ‘Why not? It’s best to do it, and not think. Just get on with it.’

  ‘A bit late now.’

  ‘Go on, it never is, not for a man.’ He nudged Howard’s stomach. ‘Not with Judy, you dirty old swine! I’ll bet she’d be game.’

  He didn’t answer. Maybe she was already pregnant. He felt the subterranean contest between him and Cannister, between optimism, come what the hell would come, and a despair stemming out of his weakness, a fight to which there was no resolution, unless he forgot his plan and let chance take him where it would. A possible future came so powerfully to mind that he clutched the rail to steady himself, glad when Jack went to his post.

  The beacon of Sunk Light should be close enough to channel them in, and he wandered along the deck feeling like old Blind Pugh with the black spot stigmatised on the flesh of his palm. The mood of indecision left him, his course as fixed and mapped as if prearranged from before birth, and there was no going back, whatever paradise would be lost, though he thought it would be a kindness if amnesia took him or he was absolutely somewhere else, and felt cowardly for wishing it. At the bridge he stood outside, wanting to be as unseen by them as they were by him, though voices told him who was there.

  ‘Hold her on three-two-five,’ Cleaver said.

  ‘Three-two-five,’ Richard acknowledged.

  ‘Can’t see a fucking thing,’ Waistcoat complained. ‘Are you sure there’s a light?’

  Cigarette smoke and raw breath thickened the air. ‘Howard’s nav warnings didn’t say otherwise. She’ll come up in a bit.’

  ‘She’s there now’ – from Richard.

  ‘I’ll get a running fix, and check our speed.’ Cleaver was always busy. ‘There was no difference at Long Sand, but I like to be certain.’

  Richard saw him at the door, a lost soul, at this stage of the trip. ‘I’ll ask Howard if there’s any squeak out of the coastguards.’

  ‘I think he’ll be deaf to that one’ – from Waistcoat, who hadn’t seen him. ‘But we might as well give him something to do.’

  ‘When you thought he wasn’t listening on VHF,’ Richard said, ‘he was searching the Interpol channels. He can’t clock onto every wavelength at once, and the trouble is he doesn’t like to make excuses. An old Air-Force habit.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘That’s what he told me. He wasn’t with Judy.’

  ‘I wish I could believe it. But he’d been told especially to listen to VHF, hadn’t he? And he didn’t, did he? Nobody told him to fanny around for Interpol at that particular time, did they? He’s got to learn to obey orders, so tell him here and now from me to check the coastguards or their boats, and to come straight here if he gets anything.’

  Howard imagined Richard’s hand signalling him out of sight, so went unheard to the radio, sat bemused and unable to act, until he detected voices, adjusted the set to bring them in more clearly, and typed a short text which he took to Cleaver, who passed the signal to Waistcoat: ‘They’re watching something in the Thames Estuary. Nothing to do with us.’

  Nor would it be for a while.

  ‘Listen out some more,’ Cleaver told him.

  ‘That’s good,’ Waistcoat called. ‘Let’s hope they’re busy rounding up some other bastards. Keep listening, Sparks, like Mr Cleaver said.’

  The German Numbers Woman, on her interminable countdown to the Flying Dutchman, was talking to him alone, having nailed him at last, putting him to the test as he had known she would from the first moment of her discovery on the airwaves.

  Reaching for his bag, he plugged the morse key into its socket, switched on the transmitter, imagining the energised parts but without seeing the fascia’s glow. Everyone was hard at it on the bridge or keeping a lookout on deck, so there could be no better moment as they closed with the shore.

  Earphones firmly on, he ordered the long prepared message from his brain and, after a few dots for tone, and the easing finger exercise of ‘best-bent wire’ with its ending flourish, he tapped his first message since the war, in the most correct morse, machine morse, precise morse, the finest morse sent since ‘what God hath wrought’ was clicked by the great man himself, played like an artist at the game, a pianiste indeed, cool and exact in manner, perfect in rhythm, with no trace of nervousness:

  ‘DRUG SMUGGLERS BOAT APPROACHING DEBEN ON COURSE THREE-TWO-FIVE/TEN MILES APPROX.’

  He was a resistance wireless operator in France winging out his final report before the Gestapo descended. He was a Marconi telegraphist on a sinking ship tapping a methodical and heroic SOS while lifeboats were being lowered. For better or worse, he couldn’t say, nor needed to, fixed in his inviolable sphere of living darkness, determination and rectitude of spirit being the order of the day and night.

  He repeated the message, neither fast nor slow, a speed at which no mistake could be made by a listener writing onto his pad, words sent as if flying through the worst of flak, as if the rest of the crew’s lives depended on his getting the text away.

  The code came
through that his message was received and understood, his work done. He saw light instead of darkness for such effort as he pulled the key out, wrapped its flex around the earphones, and put them on top of the set, no more work left to do.

  ‘What were you up to?’ Waistcoat asked in an appalled tone. The click of his key had been unmistakable, the lit-up transmitter plain to see. ‘You were sending morse.’

  An idiot smile would be no defence, too late, anyway, yet he put one on – much to his shame. ‘It was an exercise. I practise to keep my hand in.’

  A light burst from his head, as vivid and wide as from the cannon shell which had blinded him. The blow at his temple and eyes pushed him up and back, all of Waistcoat’s body behind it. A homely and welcoming noise of four Merlin engines roared in from the olden days, keeping the kite aloft on a heading for home.

  He fell against the bulkhead, pulling the morse key as a lifeline towards him, the last item to leave go of, as a soldier who must never be parted from his rifle for fear of the firing squad. Waistcoat’s metal weapon could have been a handgun and, no time to wonder more, grains of light like powder at last found the right chemical mix to settle Howard’s sight. He catapulted upwards, as if flying, caught the breathless and aghast body, and sent it back at the shock. A screech told that his boot found Waistcoat’s face, as if a beacon had guided him. He drove against the head with a sharp corner of his key, then pushed his way out to the deck.

  Every part of the boat was known to his finger tips, but there were few hiding places. Excrescences of wood and metal were like parts of a body, all familiar, yet unable to help. Pain pushed out the boundaries of darkness, but he yearned to become smaller, gripping the rail for as long as he felt safe, hearing small waves chopping around at the slow speed of their blacked-out boat, which encouraged him and made it easy to find the stern. The choking in his lungs diminished, and he felt the approach of feet under him. A breeze turned his flesh into freezing liquid, which he knew to be blood.

  ‘Come away from there, you blind bat!’

  He crouched, hoping his enemy was equally confused by the dark.

  ‘You’re dead! Where are you?’

  Waistcoat’s hand was shaking, but pressure on the trigger packed a universe into the explosion. Light passed through Howard’s eyes into the beyond of the boat’s wake. The burn of the bullet’s track had been close, but he grimaced, almost a smile because the noise would be heard for miles, its echo attenuating to where help might be found. Beneath the umbrella of its sound he moved to the starboard quarter like a sleek-footed animal avoiding the hunter.

  The explosion seemed to make a hole in Richard’s brain, but he stayed at the wheel, knowing that even without the whys and the wherefores something from the blackest night was on its way, a dread stalking them all. Waistcoat was the only other man on the boat who went armed, and the shot hadn’t been aimed at seagulls: if Howard had been caught doing mischief, and was to pay for it, no one could help or interfere, because there was a point beyond which treachery couldn’t be seen to pay.

  Hearing the noise Cleaver stalked onto the bridge. ‘Who did that?’ The left fist slammed into his right palm. ‘Come on, who was it?’

  ‘It was me,’ Waistcoat said. ‘I’ve topped the blind bastard. Or hope I have. I couldn’t tell, in the dark.’

  ‘Another skipper up the zig-zags,’ Cleaver said, almost to himself.

  ‘No, not me,’ Waistcoat said. ‘Everything’ll be all right if you leave him to me. He might try and send again.’

  Cleaver turned himself into the Master Mariner, back on his authoritarian stance. ‘If we go under it’ll be you that’s dead. I didn’t get us so close to home for you to pull a stunt like this.’

  Waistcoat’s face was bloody, a crimson streak at one side. Nobody believed him, they had the wrong priorities, the stupidest prats you ever saw. ‘I caught him tapping a message out.’

  ‘Pull yourself together.’ Cleaver tried to reason, though with little hope in his tone. ‘We’ll vanish before they get here. Full speed ahead, and we’re out of the limit. Richard!’ he shouted, a slight tremor of panic nevertheless. ‘Let’s get this menagerie back to sea.’

  ‘We’re too close inshore. What do you think those lights are? Scotch mist?’

  ‘If you shoot again,’ Cleaver said, seeing Waistcoat walk from one side of the bridge to the other, the gun pressed against his stomach as if warming it for further action, ‘the bullet will land in somebody’s parlour.’

  Richard refused to change course till his rightful chief said so, the one who paid him and whose boat it was. You obeyed to the end, come what may. His father would endorse such a rule, though maybe not in the present situation. He felt cold steel at his cheek. ‘I’ve a good mind to put one in you. You brought him on board,’ was all he got for his assumption of loyalty. ‘He’s an Interpol stooge, and he’s not even fucking blind. His eyes are as good as mine.’

  ‘You told me to bring him. I didn’t care one way or the other.’

  Cleaver pulled Waistcoat clear, a grimace of disgust at having his face so close. ‘Any nonsense, and over the side you go. I’ve had it up to here on this trip. We get back to sea and dump the stuff.’ He pulled a pair of thin leather gloves from his pocket and put them on before taking the wheel, his six foot body braced for the turn from scattered shore lights showing left and right along the coast. ‘Steam those engines up, Paul. They won’t get me, but they can have the rest of you for a dog’s breakfast as far as I’m concerned.’

  Lines furrowed Cinnakle’s forehead, but whether due to their peril, or because he might have to flog his beloved engines to nuts and bolts, no one could say. ‘There’s not all that much fuel left.’

  ‘Use what there is. Shake ’em out of their cradles and get the best cracking speed you can. It’s twenty years apiece if you don’t.’ He spoke firmly but quietly to Cannister: ‘You and the others, pull the stuff out of the hidey-holes and let the mermaids have a party.’

  He wished he could imitate in fast forward the Incredible Shrinking Man, as in a movie Laura once told him about, but smaller he could not get. In making his way back to the stern, after hearing them trying to deal with their problems, he knew that the storm was yet to come. Doubts that his message had been received tormented him, as if sending the signal was part of an old dream; or those who had taken it down were so dilatory that help would only come when they had finished their tea.

  Blood wetted his shoulders, but what could not be seen was easy to ignore. The rhythmically pulsing pain was pushed to one side. People walked on fire. Wounds possessed their built-in anodyne. A beleaguered animal weakened from loss of blood. To avoid losing consciousness he listened to a horse clopping down a village street by a public house, saw a Land Army woman riding as if having somewhere to go, the golden brush of the mare’s tail swinging at the trot. A collie dog followed, respecting the hooves. Hard to say why such a scene, but he scrubbed it when the pain went. The mind chucked up queer memories. A rope was loose somewhere.

  Waistcoat was no crack shot, but the blow-by had been closer than he thought. A man was easy to miss in the dark. Coastguards, customs and police had been put on the qui vive. He hadn’t been afraid to do it, that’s all he knew, wanting no regrets. Training was everything, and though the drilling and instilling of moral fibre into the system happened so many years ago, the strength came through from it more than ever as he pressed a hand to the pain, and tried to recall in detail what had happened after the cannon shell hit the Lancaster.

  All he saw were flowers on cigarette cards collected as a boy, celandine and ragwort, thistles and biting stonecrop in every colour of the spectrum, water lilies in harmony with the light he was beginning to see.

  The swing of the boat wiped the soothing pictures clear, rolling him to the far side of the deck, his wound scraping against wood. He crushed back a groan, and aligned with fore and aft as the boat turned, gripped the rail to stay upright and look out to sea: no other boat but
their own, steady on its track, a surge and chop of water before the new course stabilised.

  Pain brought a light into half focus, showing him the darkness and a curling phosphorescence plainer because of the soft hiss. Inside or out, he couldn’t be sure but, wanting to tear at the skin and prove it one way or the other, unclamped his free hand to search the deck carefully, knowing it was better to move than box himself into a fortress anybody could pull him out of. Rubbing the wound to clear away blood made yellowy orange lights to dance, a weird picture which, like others of the mind’s eye, he wanted to live with.

  Cleaver steadied the wheel at the surge of power, and Richard wondered how long before they stalled through lack of fuel. No subterfuge would save them, when the last drop spluttered into the engine. He took the wheel, hiding his fear. The night was too good for them, enough moon coming up to outline the boat like a metal cutout in an amusement arcade. ‘Visibility at least twenty-five miles,’ Cleaver said. ‘But at this rate we’ll lose ’em.’

  Better to be halfway up river and ready to unload. Richard thought they should have gone straight in and taken a chance. Luck had always been theirs, and fortune favours the brave – as his father, a Meccano man of screws and flimsy girders, had too often said, the old bastard sometimes adding that ‘speed was of the essence’. But Cleaver had tested chance once too often, and lost his Master’s ticket. As for Howard, he should have waited till they were on shore, and gone to the nearest box where, for a few coins, he could have phoned whoever he thought would listen to his blind man’s babbling. Someone could have dealt with him even before he finished dialling.