Geoffrey Jenkins: A bridge of Magpies

Steady, Weddell, steady, I told myself. They're rushing fences. A nasty little voice at the back of my brain whispered: you're being taken for a ride, a very clever shop- window to hide the true nature of the goods on offer. The soft sell, Sperrgebiet-style.

Something of this must have been noticeable in my tone because the C-in-C glanced sharply at me as I asked, 'Communications? How do I contact you?'

'I've got a special transceiver-voice radio-laid on. RCA Navy job. Enough frequencies to chat to the moon. But that doesn't mean you're going to use it like a telephone.

Minimal use means maximum security. In the islands they gossip over the air like housewives in a supermarket. It's their main form of relaxation. Remember, anything you say will be public property within hours. Play any situation by ear. Don't come running to me.'

I leant forward and ground out my cigarette in his ashtray. He frowned. I said deliberately, 'I hope this conversation is being bugged, because if you have any doubts about what I say you can make a playback. You needn't worry about that radio because I won't be using it – ever. I know a rehabilitation package when I see one, even when it's wrapped up in lovely romantic ribbons like these.' I indicated the colour slide. '

Next time, find someone stupider. If that's African then Siberia is Atlantis. I don't intend to be tricked into being landed on some remote bloody guano island five hundred miles up the most God-forsaken coast in the world, with no chance of a drink or a woman, because of your do-gooder inclinations Thanks for the ride. It was nice seeing your superstar headquarters. In short, you can put your lost city up your admiral's jersey!'

He made a sound deep in his throat; half rose; and plucked away a switch and broken length of wire from his desk.

'We aren't bugged any longer: what I've got to say is for your ears alone. That slide is the real McCoy… but the hell with that. What is important is guts, and when I wanted someone with guts for a special job my first thought was of one man-Struan Weddell. Why d'ye think I went to all this trouble if I didn't believe you have what it takes? Seems I was wrong, dead wrong. Possession takes guts: I saw it at work there during the war and I'll never forget it. Convoy WV. 5BX. I was in one of the escorts, a corvette. The escort leader was a frigate called Gousblom. Off Possession we heard the sound of heavy guns: a raider or a pocket battleship, we thought. That didn't stop Gousblom. That pipsqueak of a ship went off at full speed to fight. It was straight suicide, and she knew it. But she'd rather have thrown herself away than let the enemy get at the convoy she'd been entrusted with. Then a U-boat bagged Gousbiom, right in the Possession channel. Her magazine went up. The U-boat had just torpedoed a big liner.

'The City of Baroda,' added Koch. His manner, too, was hostile now. '… the one I was telling you about, lying on top of Doodenstadt's rocks.'

It wasn't the barb or the C-in-C's taunt but the sincerity behind it which altered my decision. It was the job which was his objective, not me. I believed him now, believed Koch too. If I accepted the Possession assignment I'd have a ship of sorts, because they still run the guano islands as ships, and I'd be her captain. Independent command, I grinned to myself. Maybe too bloody independent; with only birds for a crew and bird-shit for a deck. But it might turn out to be fun, and deep-down I knew that a spell away from bottles and women wouldn't do me any harm. Weddell the Happy Hairshirt Hermit… I felt happier than I'd been in years… .. we never found out what those heavy guns were that Gousblom heard,' the C-in-C was rasping with his eyes stabbing me like a laser beam. 'There was no big stuff, either ours or the Germans', about. But that's beside the point. It's a question of guts. If you chicken out. . He made a pansy's wrist-flapping, hand-on-hip gesture which would have won him a music-hall encore and would have been utterly ridiculous if it hadn't been part of his anger. He tugged at the bit of wire and glared at me.

I gave him a moment or two to run down. 'I've changed my mind. I'll go.'

If my turnabout had any effect upon him, he didn't show it. Maybe he claimed all the credit for himself. The frost didn't leave his eyes.

'You're under my orders from now on. No signals, except in emergency. Clear? Koch will fly back to Luderitz the day after tomorrow. All the paperwork is jacked up already. You'll sleep here. Silvermine has plenty of accommodation-part of the nuclear preparedness game. Go and apologize to your mother from me. You will not discuss Doodenstadt with anyone – understood?'

'Understood – sir.'

'Any. ah, attachments at Santorin?'

'Gigi? Give me some credit!'

'Good. That's all.'

Koch took my arm in a friendly gesture as we made for the door.

'Now what In hell do you think a Minoan gemsbok is doing on the Sperrgebiet?'

Panther Head is the gateway to the Sperrgebiet. Crooks and ' cruisers', gun-runners and guano dopes, New Bedford whalers and pirates-Captain Kidd included-have homed in on this dirty grey chunk of eroded desert, sticking out into the sea about sixty miles north of the Orange River; taken sights on the triple peaks of the Buchu Berge; and set course for sinister destinations among the fourteen fog-shrouded, guano-stained islands skirting the coast.

The name itself stirs up the mud of history: Panther was a well-armed thousand-toner of the German Navy that kept order on the coast in the first mad days of the diamond strikes. She sailed into notoriety and history before World War I by trying to seize the Moroccan port of Agadir for the Kaiser. Her action almost put forward the world cataclysm by a couple of years.

My pulses quickened when, from the deck of the coaster Buffel taking me to Possession, I caught sight of those triple peaks, and the mirror-like flash of a late sun reflected by the innumerable salt pans backing the landfall. It is not until about twenty-five miles north of the Orange River that the first break in the monotony of the shoreline occurs, and one begins to sense the mystery and lure of the Diamond Coast. This feeling grows progressively as one approaches Panther Head. The duplicity which seems to have soaked into the Sperrgebiet is also at work on the coastline. Captains don't trust what their eyes see here: if they do, it could cost them their ships and their lives.

The stubby coaster plugged on with a head-down, shambling gait which suited her name, Buffel- Buffalo. The wind was fresh and sharp. The sky was full of small white clouds as if a squadron of gannet, dive-bombing fish, had left their feathers behind after peeling off for the attack. I was Buffers only passenger. She was to bring off the islands' last officials before they stopped work for several months, until the laying and hatching season was over. One of the men she was to ptck up was Possession's headman, 35 whose place I would take.

I drank in the cold air eagerly. It was ten days since my encounter with the C-in-C. I had seen a lot of Koch before he flew to Luderitz some days before my own departure. 1 wondered what the C-in-C's reaction would have been to the sight of the irrepressible Austrian performing the sword dance in a sailors' waterfront dive! I had stayed on at Silvermine to enjoy a crash get-fit course; had visited my mother, a somewhat embarrassed collaborator of the C-in-C; had been made headman of Possession, officially, in Cape Town… and now I was here wearing the regulation corduroy clothes and a peaked cap decorated with the badge of office!

Panther Head came closer and a view of Chamois Bay beyond opened up. Four groups of reefs bunker the place about in a rough circle of about six miles. We had to negotiate the southernmost gap between them to enter the bay. Whitecaps creamed on the jagged fangs and threw up a drifting haze of spray. However, the coaster was safe enough. I was tense for a different reason: I was reliving my Walewska nightmare. It was here that the tanker had torn out her bottom and made a break for the high seas. I had been about fifty miles away when I'd received her distress signal. I reached her to find a big slick already streaming away to the north-west in the direction of the guano islands. Her load of 150,000 tons was enough to wipe out most of the wild life population of the islands-birds, seals, penguins. The Walewska's captain reckoned he could save the ship if he dumped her cargo.