Geoffrey Jenkins - A bridge of Magpies

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

'Rough?'

'Pretty rough.'

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

They worked, aJl right.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Us?'

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

'Earlier? What d'ye mean?'

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

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

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

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

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

`What did she say?'

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

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

`How'd you know they were?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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