San Andreas Part 10

'I admit it. Mind you, I think she may have misjudged me a bit, too.'

'I told you she was nice, Archie. Remember?' Remember?'

'Indeed I remember. And indeed she is.'

'Very nice. Very.'

McKinnon regarded her with suspicion. 'What's that meant to mean?'

'She smiled at you.'

The Bo'sun gave her a cold look and left.

Lieutenant Ulbricht was awake when McKinnon returned to the Captain's cabin. 'Duty calls, Mr McKinnon? Another fix?' 'Rest easy, Lieutenant. No stars. Overcast. More snow, I'm thinking. How do you feel?'

'Well enough. At least when I'm lying down. That's physically, I mean.' He tapped his head. 'Up here, not so . well. I've been doing a lot of wondering and thinking.'

'Wondering and thinking why you're lying here?'

'Exactly.'

'Haven't we all? At least, I've been doing nothing else but wondering about it. Haven't got very far, though. In fact, I haven't got anywhere.'

'I'm not saying it would help any, just call it curiosity if you like, but would you mind very much telling me what's been happening to the San Andreas since you left Halifax? Not, of course, if it means telling me naval secrets.'

McKinnon smiled. 'I don't have any. Besides, even if I did have and told you, what would you do with them?'

'You have a point. What indeed?'

McKinnon gave a brief resume of what had happened to the s.h.i.+p since leaving Nova Scotia and when he had finished Ulbricht said: 'Well, now let me see if I can count.

'As far as I can make out there were seven different parties involved in the movements of the San Andreas - actually aboard it, that is. To begin with, there was your own crew. Then there were the wounded survivors picked up from this crippled destroyer. After that came the Russian submarine survivors you took from this corvette you had to sink. Then you picked up some wounded servicemen in Murmansk. Since leaving there you've picked up survivors from the Argos, the Andover and Helmut and myself. That makes seven?'

'That makes seven.'

'We can eliminate the survivors from the broken-down destroyer and the sinking frigate. Their presence aboard your s.h.i.+p could only have been due to sheer happenstance, nothing else. We can equally forget Commander Warrington and his two men and Helmut Winterman and myself. That leaves just your crew, the survivors from the Argos and the sick men you picked up in Murmansk.'

'I couldn't imagine a more unlikely trio of suspects.'

'Neither could I, Bo'sun. But it's not-imagination we're concerned with here, it's logic. It has to be one of those three. Take the sick men you picked up in Murmansk. One of them could have been suborned. I know it sounds preposterous but war itself is preposterous, the most unbelievable things happen in preposterous circ.u.mstances, and if there is one thing that is for certain it is that we are not going to find the answer to this enigma in the realms of the obvious. How many sick men are you repatriating from Russia?'

'Seventeen.'

'Do you happen to know the nature of their injuries?'

McKinnon regarded the Lieutenant speculatively. 'I have a fair idea.'

'All seriously wounded?'

There are no seriously wounded, far less critically injured patients aboard. If they were, they wouldn't be here. Poorly, you might call them, I suppose.'

'But bedridden? Immobile?'

'The wounded are.'

'They are not all wounded?'

'Only eight.'

'Good G.o.d! Eight! You mean to tell me that there are nine who are not injured?'

'It all depends upon what you mean by injured. Three are suffering from advanced cases of exposure - frostbite, if you like. Then there are three with tuberculosis and the remaining three have suffered mental breakdowns. Those Russian convoys take a pretty vicious toll, Lieutenant, in more ways than one.'

'You have no cause to love our U-boats, our Luftwaffe, Mr McKinnon.'

The Bo'sun shrugged. 'We do send the occasional thousand bombers over Hamburg.'

Ulbricht sighed. 'I suppose this is no time for philosophizing about how two wrongs can never make a right. So we have nine unwounded. All of them mobile?'

'The three exposure cases are virtually immobile. You've. never seen so many bandages. The other six - well, they can get around as well as you and I. Well, that's not quite accurate - as well as I can and a d.a.m.ned sight better than you can.'

'So. Six mobiles. I know little enough of medicine but I do know just how difficult it is to gauge how severe a case of TB is. I also know that a man in a pretty advanced stage can get around well enough. As for mental breakdowns, those are easy enough to simulate. One of those three may be as rational as we are - or think we are. Come to that, all three of them may be. I don't have to tell you, Mr McKinnon, that there are those who are so sick of the mindlessness, the h.e.l.lishness, of war that they will resort to any means to escape from it. Malingerers, as they are commonly and quite often unfairly called. Many of them have quite simply had enough and can take no more. During the First World War quite a number of British soldiers were affected by an incurable disease that was a sure-fire guarantee for a one-way ticket to Blighty. DAH it was called-Disorder Affecting the Heart. The more unfeeling of the British doctors commonly referred to it as Desperate Affection for Home.'

'I've heard of it. .Lieutenant, I'm not by nature an inquisitive person, but may I ask you a personal question?'

'Of course.'

'Your English. So much better than mine. Thing is, you don't sound like a foreigner talking English. You sound like an Englishman talking English, an Englishman who's been at an English public school. Funny.'

'Not really. You don't miss much, Mr McKinnon, and that's a fact. I was educated in an English public school. My mother is English. My father was for many years an attache in the German Emba.s.sy in London.'

'Well, well.' McKinnon shook his head and smiled. 'It's too much. It's really too much. Two shocks like this inside twenty minutes.'

'If you were to tell me what you are talking about - '

'Sister Morrison. You and she should get together. I've just learnt that she's half-German.'

'Good G.o.d! Goodness gracious me.' Ulbricht could hardly be said to be dumbfounded but he was taken aback. 'German mother, of course. How extraordinary! I tell you, Bo'sun, this could be a serious matter. Her being my nurse, I mean. Wartime. International complications, you know.'

'I don't know and I don't see it. You're both just doing your job. Anyway, she's coming up to see you shortly.'

'Coming to see me? That ruthless n.a.z.i killer?'

'Maybe she's had a change of heart.'

'Under duress, of course.'

'It's her idea and she insists on it.'

'It'll be a hypodermic syringe. Lethal dose of morphine or some such. To get back to our six walking unwounded. Widens the field a bit, doesn't it? A suborned malingerer or ditto TB patient. How do you like it?'

'I don't like it at all. How many suborned men, spies, saboteurs, do you think we've picked up among the survivors from the Argos? Another daft thought, I know, but as you've more or less said yourself, we're looking for daft answers to daft questions. And speaking of daft questions, here's another one. How do we know the Argos really was mined? We know that tankers are extremely tough, heavily compartmented and that this one was returning with empty tanks. Tankers don't die easily and even laden tankers have been torpedoed and survived. We don't even know the Argos was mined. How do we know it wasn't sabotaged so as to provide the opportunity to introduce a saboteur or saboteurs aboard the San Andreas? How do you like that?'

'Like yourself, I don't like it at all. But you're not seriously suggesting that Captain Andropolous would deliberately - '

'I'm not suggesting anything about Captain Andropolous. For all I know, he may be as double-dyed a villain as is sailing the seas these days. Although I'm willing to consider almost any crazy solution to our questions, I can't go along . with the idea that any captain would sacrifice his s.h.i.+p for any imaginable purpose. But a person or persons to whom the Argos meant nothing might quite happily do just that. It would be interesting to know whether Andropolous had taken on any extra crew members in Murmansk, such as fellow nationals who had survived a previous sinking. Unfortunately, Andropolous and his crew speak nothing but Greek and n.o.body else aboard speaks Greek.'

'I speak a little Greek, very little, schoolboy stuff-English public schools are high on Greek - and I've forgotten most of that. Not that I can see that it would do much good anyway even if we were to find out that a person or x number of persons joined the Argos at Murmansk. They would only a.s.sume expressions of injured innocence, say they don't know what we are talking about and what could we do then?' Ulbricht was silent for almost a minute, then suddenly said: 'The Russian s.h.i.+pwrights.'

'What Russian s.h.i.+pwrights?'

'The ones that fixed the damage to the hull of your s.h.i.+p and finished off your sick-bay. But especially the hull repairers.'

'What about them?'

'Moment.' Ulbricht thought some more. 'I don't know just how many n.i.g.g.e.rs in the woodpile there may be aboard the San Andreas, but I'm all at once certain that the original one was a member of your own crew.'

'How on earth do you figure that out? Not, mind you, that anything would surprise me.'

'You sustained this hull damage to the San Andreas while you were alongside the sinking corvette, before vou sunk her by gunfire. That is correct?'

'Correct,'

'How did it happen?'

'I told you. We don't know. No torpedoes, no mines, nothing of that nature. A destroyer was along one side of the corvette, taking off her crew, while we were on the other taking off the survivors of the sunken Russian submarine. There was a series of explosions inside the corvette before we could get clear. One was a boiler going off, the others could have been gun-cotton, two-pounders, anything - there was some sort of fire inside. It was at that time that the damage must have happened.'

'I suggest it didn't happen that way at all. I suggest, instead, that it was then that a trusty member of your crew detonated a charge in the port ballast room. I suggest that it was someone who knew precisely how much explosive to use to ensure that it didn't sink the s.h.i.+p but enough to inflict sufficiently serious damage for it to have to make for the nearest port where repair facilities were available, which, in this case, was Murmansk.'

'It makes sense. It could have happened that way. But I'm not convinced.'

'In Murmansk, did anyone see the size or type of hole that had been blown in the hull?'

'No.'

'Did anyone try to see?'

'Yes. Mr Rennet and I.'

'But surprise, surprise, you didn't. You didn't because you weren't allowed to see it.'

'That's how it was. How did you know?'

'They had tarpaulins rigged all around and above the area under repair?'

'They had.' McKinnon was beginning to look rather thoughtful.

'Did they give any reasons?'

'To keep out the wind and snow.'

'Was there much in the way of those?'

'Very little.'

'Did you ask to get behind the tarpaulins, see behind them?'

'We did. They wouldn't let us. Said it was too dangerous and would only hold up the work of the s.h.i.+pwrights. We didn't argue because we didn't think it was all that important. There was no reason why we should have thought so. If you know the Russians at all you must know how mulish they can be about the most ridiculous things. Besides, they were doing us a favour and there was no reason why we, should have been suspicious. All right, all right, Lieutenant, there's no reason to beat me over the head with a two-by-four. You don't have to be an engineer or a metallurgist to recognize a hole that has been blown from the inside out.'

'And does it now strike you as strange that the second damage to the hull should have occurred in precisely the same ballast compartment?'

'Not now it doesn't. Our gallant - ours, not yours - our gallant allies almost certainly left the charge in the ballast room with a suitable length of fuse conveniently attached. You have the right of it, Lieutenant.'

'So all we have to do now is to find some member of your crew with a working knowledge of explosives. You know of any such, Mr McKinnon?'

'Yes.'

'What!' Ulbricht propped himself up on an elbow. 'Who?'

McKinnon raised his eyes to the deckhead. 'Me.'

'That's a help.' Ulbricht lowered himself to his bunk again. 'That's a great help.'

SIX.

It was shortly after ten o'clock in the morning that the snow came again. McKinnon had spent another fifteen minutes in the Captain's cabin, leaving only when he saw the Lieutenant was having difficulty in keeping his eyes open, then had spoken in turn with Naseby, Patterson and Jamieson, who was again supervising the strengthening of the superstructure. All three had agreed that Ulbricht was almost certainly correct in the a.s.sessment he had made: and all three agreed with the Bo'sun that this fresh knowledge, if knowledge it were, served no useful purpose whatsoever. McKinnon had returned to the bridge when the snow came.

He opened a wing door in a duly circ.u.mspect fas.h.i.+on but, for all his caution, had it torn from his grasp to crash against the leading edge of the bridge, such was the power of the wind. The snow, light as yet, was driving along as nearly horizontally as made no difference. It was quite impossible to look into it, but with his back to it and looking out over the bows, he could see that the wave pattern had changed: the dawn was in the sky now and in its light he could see that the last semblance of serried ranks had vanished and that the white-veined, white-spumed seas were now broken walls of water, tending this way and that in unpredictable formless confusion. Even without the evidence of his eyes he would have known that this was so: the deck beneath his feet was beginning to shake and shudder in a rather disconcerting manner. The cold was intense. Even with his very considerable weight and strength, McKinnon found it no easy task to heave the wing door shut behind him as he stepped back into the bridge. He was in desultory conversation with Trent, who had the helm, when the phone rang. It was Sister Morrison. She said she was ready to come up to the Captain's cabin.

'I wouldn't recommend it, Sister. Things are pretty unpleasant up top.'

'I would remind you that you gave me your promise.' She was speaking in her best sister's voice.

'I know. It's just that conditions have worsened quite a bit.'

'Really, Mr McKinnon - '

'I'm coming. On your own head.'

In Ward B, Janet Magnusson looked at him with disapproval. 'A hospital is no place for a snowman.'

'Just pa.s.sing through. On a mission of mercy. At least, your mule-headed friend imagines she is.'