Authors: Daniel Silva

The Unlikely Spy (71 page)

BOOK: The Unlikely Spy

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Vicary thought, Thank God. He said, "Thank you for your help."

Vicary rang off. Lockwood was standing before the map. "Well, the good news is we know exactly where they are now. They have to slip through the mouth of the Humber before they can reach open water. That's only about a mile from the quay. There's no way we can stop them from doing that. But get those Royal Navy corvettes into position off Spurn Head, and they'll never make it through. That fishing boat they're in will be no match for them."

"I'd feel better if we had our own boat in the water."

"Actually, that can be arranged."

"Really?"

"The Lincolnshire County Constabulary keeps a small police boat on the river--the
Rebecca.
She's in Grimsby now. She's not built for the open sea, but she'll do in a pinch. She's also quite a bit faster than that old fishing boat. If we get under way immediately, we should be able to overtake them before too long."

"Does the
Rebecca
have a radio?"

"Aye. We'll be able to talk to you right here."

"How about weapons?"

"I can pick up a couple of old rifles from the lockup in the Grimsby police station. They'll do the trick."

"Now all you need is a crew. Take my men with you. I'll stay here so I can remain in contact with London. The last thing you need is
me
on board a boat in weather like this."

Lockwood managed a smile, clapped Vicary on the back, and went out. Clive Roach, Harry Dalton, and Peter Jordan followed him. Vicary picked up the telephone to break the news to Boothby in London.

Neumann stayed between the channel markers as the
Camilla
sliced through the choppy waters of the mouth of the Humber. She was about forty feet, broad in the beam and desperately in need of paint. There was a small cabin aft, where Neumann had left Jenny. Catherine stood next to him in the wheelhouse. The sky was beginning to lighten slightly in the east. Rain drummed against the window. Off the port side he could see waves breaking over Spurn Head. Spurn Light was blacked out. A compass was set in the dash next to the wheel. Neumann put the boat on a heading due east, opened the throttle full, and headed out to sea.

THE NORTH SEA, OFF SPURN HEAD

U-509
hovered just below the surface. It was five thirty a.m. Kapitanleutnant Max Hoffman stood in the control room, peering though the periscope, drinking coffee. His eyes hurt from spending the entire night staring at the black seas. His head ached. He badly needed a few hours of sleep.

His first officer came to the bridge. "The window closes in thirty minutes, Herr Kaleu."

"I am aware of the time, Number One."

"We have had no further communication from the Abwehr agents, Herr Kaleu. I think we must consider the possibility that they have been captured or killed."

"I have considered that possibility, Number One."

"It will be light soon, Herr Kaleu."

"Yes. It is a phenomenon that takes place at this time every day. Even in Britain, Number One."

"My point is that it will not be safe for us to remain so close to the English coast for much longer. The depth here is not great enough for us to escape the British
wabos,
" the first officer said, using the slang common among German submariners for depth charges.

"I am perfectly aware of the dangers involved in the situation, Number One. But we are going to remain here at the rendezvous point until the window is closed. And then, if I believe it is still safe, we will stay a little longer."

"But, Herr Kaleu--"

"They have sent us a proper radio signal alerting us that they are coming. We must assume they are traveling in a stolen vessel, probably barely seaworthy, and we must also assume they are exhausted or even hurt. We will stay here until they arrive or I am convinced beyond doubt that they are not coming. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Herr Kaleu."

The first officer walked away. Hoffman thought, What a pain in the ass.

The
Rebecca
was about thirty feet in length with a shallow draft, an inboard motor, and a small open wheelhouse amidships barely big enough for two men to stand shoulder to shoulder. Lockwood had telephoned ahead, and the
Rebecca
's engine was idling by the time they arrived.

The four men clambered on board: Lockwood, Harry, Jordan, and Roach. A dock boy untied the last line, and Lockwood guided the craft into the Channel.

He opened the throttle full. The engine note rose; the slender prow lifted out of the water and sliced through the wind-driven chop. Night was draining from the eastern sky. The silhouette of Spurn Light was visible off the port side. The sea was empty before them.

Harry leaned down, snatched the handset of the radio, and raised Vicary in Grimsby to bring him up-to-date.

Five miles due east of the
Rebecca,
corvette Number 745 was maneuvering on a tedious crisscross pattern through rough seas. The captain and the first officer stood on the bridge, glasses raised to their eyes, peering into the curtain of rain. It was useless. Along with the dark and the rain, a fog had rolled in and reduced visibility even further. In conditions like these they could pass within a hundred yards of a U-boat and never see it. The captain moved to the chart table, where the navigator was plotting the next course change. On the captain's order, the corvette made a ninety-degree starboard turn and pushed farther out to sea. Then he instructed the radio operator to inform the Submarine Tracking Room of their new heading.

In London, Arthur Braithwaite stood over the map table, leaning heavily on his cane. He had made certain that all Royal Navy and RAF updates crossed his desk as soon as they came in. He knew the odds of finding a U-boat in weather and light conditions like these were remote, even if the craft was on the surface. If the submarine was lurking just below the surface, it would be almost impossible.

His aide handed him a signal flimsy. Corvette Number 745 had just changed course and was on an easterly heading. A second corvette, Number 128, was two miles away and moving south. Braithwaite leaned down over the table, closed his eyes, and tried to picture the search in his mind. He thought, Damn you, Max Hoffman! Where the hell are you?

The
Camilla,
though Horst Neumann did not realize it, was precisely seven miles due east of Spurn Head. Conditions seemed to be worsening by the minute. Rain fell in a blinding curtain and hammered against the window of the wheelhouse, obscuring the view. The wind and the current, both beating down from the north, kept nudging the boat off course. Neumann, using the dashboard compass, struggled to keep them on an easterly heading.

The biggest problem was the sea. The past half hour had been a relentless repetition of the same sickening cycle. The boat would climb one roller, teeter for an instant on the top, then plunge down into the next trough. At the bottom it always seemed as if the vessel were about to be swallowed by a gray-green canyon of seawater. The decks were constantly awash. Neumann could no longer feel his feet. He looked down for the first time and noticed he was standing in several inches of icy water.

Still, miraculously, he thought they might actually make it. The boat seemed to be absorbing all the punishment the sea could dish out. It was five thirty a.m.--they still had thirty minutes left before the window closed and the U-boat turned away. He had been able to keep the boat on a constant heading and felt confident they were approaching the right spot. And there was no sign of the opposition.

There was just one problem: they had no radio. They had lost Catherine's in London, and they had lost the second to Martin Colville's shotgun blast in Hampton Sands. Neumann had hoped the boat would have a radio, but it didn't. Which left them no means of signaling the U-boat.

Neumann had only one option: to switch on the boat's running lights.

It was a gamble but a necessary one. The only way the U-boat would know they were at the rendezvous position was if it could see them. And the only way the
Camilla
could be spotted in conditions like these was to be illuminated. But if the U-boat could see them, so could any British warships or coastguard vessels in the vicinity.

Neumann reckoned he was a couple of miles from the rendezvous point. He pressed on for five more minutes, then reached down and threw a switch, and the
Camilla
came alive with light.

Jenny Colville leaned over the bucket and threw up in it for the third time. She wondered how there was anything left to come out of her stomach. She tried to remember the last time she'd had food. She had not eaten dinner last night because she was angry with her father, and she had not eaten any lunch either. Breakfast, maybe, and that was nothing more than a biscuit and tea.

Her stomach convulsed again, but this time nothing came out. She had lived next to the sea her entire life but she had been on a boat just once--a day sail around the Wash with the father of a friend from school--and never had she experienced anything like this.

She was absolutely paralyzed with seasickness. She wanted to die. She was desperate for fresh air. She was helpless against the constant pitching and rocking of the vessel. Her arms and legs were bruised from the battering. And then there was the noise--the constant deafening rumble and clatter of the boat's engine.

It felt as if it were just beneath her.

She wanted nothing more in the world than to get off the boat and be back on land. She told herself over and over again that if she survived this night she would never get on a boat again, ever. And then she thought, What happens when they get where they're going? What are they going to do with me? Surely they weren't going to take this boat all the way to Germany. They would probably meet another boat.
Then what happens?
Would they take her with them again or leave her on the boat alone? If they left her alone she might never be found. She could die out on the North Sea alone in a storm like this.

The boat skidded down the slope of another enormous wave. Jenny was thrown forward in the cabin, striking her head.

There were two portholes on either side of the cabin. With her bound hands, she rubbed away the condensation in the starboard porthole and looked out. The sea was terrifying, rolling green mountains of seawater.

There was something else. The sea boiled and something dark and shiny punctured the surface from below. Then the sea was in turmoil and a giant gray thing like a sea monster in a child's tale floated to the surface, seawater slipping from its skin.

Kapitanleutnant Max Hoffman, tired of holding at the ten-mile mark, had decided to take a chance and creep a mile or two closer to shore. He had waited at the eight-mile mark, peering into the gloom, when he suddenly spotted the running lights of a small fishing vessel. Hoffman shouted an order to surface and two minutes later he was standing on the bridge in the driving rain, breathing the cold clean air, Zeiss glasses pressed to his eyes.

Neumann thought it might be a hallucination at first. The glimpse had been brief--just an instant before the boat plunged downward into yet another trough of seawater and everything was obliterated once again.

The prow dug deeply into the sea, like a shovel into dirt, and for a few seconds the entire foredeck was swamped. But somehow the boat climbed out of the trough and scaled the next peak. At the top of the next roller, a squall of windblown rain obscured all view.

The boat fell, then rose again. Then, as the
Camilla
teetered atop a mountain of seawater, Hurst Neumann spotted the unmistakable silhouette of a German U-boat.

It was Peter Jordan, on the pitching aft deck of the
Rebecca,
who spotted the U-boat first. Lockwood saw it a few seconds later and then spotted the running lights of the
Camilla,
about four hundred yards off the U-boat's starboard side and closing quickly. Lockwood brought the
Rebecca
hard to port, set it on a collision course with the
Camilla,
and picked up the handset to raise Alfred Vicary.

Vicary snatched up the receiver of the open phone line to the Submarine Tracking Room.

"Commander Braithwaite, are you there?"

"Yes. I'm here, and I could hear the entire thing over the line."

"Well?"

"I'm afraid we've got a serious problem. Corvette 745 is a mile due south of the U-boat's position. I've radioed the captain and he's making for the scene now. But if the
Camilla
is really only four hundred yards away from the submarine, they're going to get there first."

"Dammit!"

"You do have one other asset, Mr. Vicary--the
Rebecca.
I suggest you use it. Your men have got to do something to slow that boat down until the corvette can intervene."

Vicary set down the telephone and picked up the handset of the radio.

"Superintendent Lockwood, this is Grimsby, over."

"Lockwood here, over."

BOOK: The Unlikely Spy

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