Jack Higgins - Storm Warning

‘Just one thing, sir. Do you know a Mr Murdoch Macleod?’

‘He’s coxswain of the lifeboat here and a good friend of mine. Why do you ask?’

Jago unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out an orange envelope. ‘The Royal Naval officer in command at Mallaig asked me to deliver this telegram to him, sir, there being no telephone or telegraph service to the island at the moment, I understand.’

‘That’s right,’ Reeve said. ‘The cable parted in a storm last month and they haven’t got around to doing anything about it yet. In fact at the moment, the island’s only link with the outside world is my personal radio.’

He held out his hand for the envelope which he saw was open. ‘It’s from the Admiralty, sir.’

‘Bad news?’

‘He has a son, sir. Lieutenant Donald Macleod.’

‘That’s right. Commanding an armed trawler doing escort duty on east-coast convoys in the North Sea. Newcastle to London.’

‘Torpedoed off the Humber yesterday, with all hands.’

Reeve’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘No one was saved at all? You’re certain of that?’

‘I’m afraid not, Admiral.’

Reeve seemed to age before his eyes. ‘One thing they obviously didn’t tell you, Lieutenant, was that, although Donald Macleod was master of that trawler, there were four other men from Fhada in the crew.’ He passed the envelope back to Jago. ‘I think the sooner we get this over with, the better.’

The church of St Mungo was a tiny, weather-beaten building with a squat tower, constructed of blocks of heavy granite on a hillside above the town.

Reeve, Jago and Frank Jansen went in through the lychgate and followed a path through a churchyard scattered with gravestones to the porch at the west end. Reeve opened the massive oaken door and led the way in.

The dead boy lay on a trestle table in a tiny side chapel to one side of the altar. Two middle-aged women were arranging the body while Murdoch and Jean Sinclair stood close by, talking in subdued tones. They turned and looked down the aisle as the door opened. The three men moved towards them, caps in hand. They paused, then Reeve held the orange envelope out to Jean Sinclair.

‘I think you’d better read this.’

She took it from him, extracted the telegram. Her face turned ashen, she was wordless. In a moment of insight, Reeve realized that she was re-living her own tragedy. She turned to Murdoch, but the admiral stepped in quickly, holding her back.

Murdoch said calmly, ‘It is bad news you have for me there, I am thinking, Carey Reeve.’

‘Donald’s ship was torpedoed off the Humber yesterday,’ Reeve said. ‘Went down with all hands.’

A tremor seemed to pass through the old man’s entire frame. He staggered momentarily, then took a deep breath and straightened. ‘The Lord disposes.’

The two women working on the body stopped to stare at him, faces frozen in horror. Between them, as Reeve well knew, they had just lost a husband and brother. Murdoch moved past and stood looking down at the German boy, pale in death, the face somehow very peaceful now.

He reached down and took one of the cold hands in his. ‘Poor lad,’ he said. ‘Poor wee lad!’ His shoulders shook and he started to weep softly.

3

Barquentine Deutschland, 12 September 1944. Lat. 26°.11N., long. 30°.26W. Wind NW 2–3. Overcast. Poor visibility. A bad squall last night during the middle-watch and the flying-jib split .

Some five hundred miles south of the Azores, Erich Berger sat at the desk in his cabin entering his personal journal

… our general progress has, of course, been far better than I could ever have hoped and yet our passengers find the experience tedious in the extreme. For most of the time, bad weather keeps them below; the skylight leaks and the saloon is constantly damp.

The loss of the chickens and two goats kept for milk, all swept overboard in a bad squall three days out of Belém, has had an unfortunate effect on our diet, although here again, it has been most noticeable in the nuns. Frau Prager is still my main worry and her condition, as far as I may judge, continues to deteriorate.

As for the prospect of a meeting with an enemy ship, we are as ready in that respect as can reasonably be expected. The Deutschland is now the Gudrid Andersen to the last detail, including the library of Swedish books in my cabin. The plan of campaign, if boarded at any time, is simple. The additional men carried beyond normal crew requirements will secrete themselves in the bilges. A simple device admittedly, and one easily discovered by any kind of a thorough search, but we have little choice in the matter.

The Deutschland stands up well so far to all the Atlantic can offer, although there is not a day passes that shrouds do not part or sails split and, this morning, Mister Sturm reported twelve inches of water in the bilges. But, as yet, there is no cause for alarm. We all get old and the Deutschland is older than most …

The whole ship lurched drunkenly and Berger was thrown from his chair as the cabin tilted. He scrambled to his feet, got the door open and ran out on deck.

The Deutschland was plunging forward through heavy seas, the deck awash with spray. Leutnant Sturm and Leading Seaman Kluth had the wheel between them and it was taking all their strength to hold it.

High above the deck, the main gaff topsail fluttered free in the wind. The noise was tremendous and could be heard even above the roaring of the wind, and the topmast was whipping backwards and forwards. A matter of moments only before it snapped. But already Richter was at the rail, the sea washing over him as he pulled on the downhaul to collapse the sail.

Berger ran to join him, losing his footing and rolling into the scuppers as another great sea floated in across the deck, but somehow he was on his feet and lending his weight to the downhaul with Richter.

The sail came down, the Deutschland righted herself perceptibly, the continual drumming ceased. Richter shouted, ‘I’d better get up there and see to a new outhaul.’

Berger cried above the wind, ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes out there on that gaff in this weather. It’ll have to wait till the wind eases.’

‘But that sail will tear herself to pieces, sir.’

‘A gasket should hold her for the time being. I’ll see to it.’

Berger sprang into the ratlines and started to climb, aware of the wind tearing at his body like some living thing. When he paused, fifty feet up and glanced down, Richter was right behind him.

There was a foot of water in the saloon, a sea having smashed the skylight and flooded in. Sister Angela went from cabin to cabin, doing her best to calm her alarmed companions.

When she went into the Pragers’, she found the old man on his knees at his wife’s bunk. Frau Prager was deathly pale, eyes closed, little sign of life there at all.

‘What is it?’ Otto Prager demanded in alarm.

She ignored him for the moment and took his wife’s pulse. It was still there, however irregular.

Prager tugged at her sleeve. ‘What happened?’

‘I’ll find out,’ she said calmly. ‘You stay with your wife.’

She went out on deck to find the Deutschland racing north, every fore and aft sail drawing well, yards braced as she plunged into the waves. Sturm and Kluth were still at the wheel. The young lieutenant called to her, but his words were snatched away by the wind.

She made it to the mizzen shrouds on the port side, the wind tearing at her black habit, and looked up at the ballooning sails. The sky was a uniform grey, the whole world alive with the sound of the ship, a thousand creaks and groans. And then, a hundred feet up, she saw Berger and Richter swaying backwards and forwards on the end of the gaff as they secured the sail.