Storm Force from Navarone

Jensen said, ‘Excuse me, Major Dyas.’ His face wore an expression of strained patience. ‘For your information, U-boats have to spend most of their time on the surface, running their diesels to make passage and charge their batteries. Submerged, their best speed has so far been under ten knots, and they can’t keep it up for long because of the limitations of their batteries.’ His face was cold and grim, its deep creases as if carved from stone. ‘So what we’re faced with is this: the English Channel full of the biggest fleet of ships ever assembled, and these U-boats - big U-boats - carrying a hundred torpedoes each, God knows they’re big enough - travelling at forty knots, under water. We know Jerry’s got at least three of them. That could mean three hundred ships sunk, and Lord knows how many men lost.’

Miller said, ‘So you get one quick echo. Not much of a basis for total panic stations. How fast do whales swim?’

Jensen snapped, ‘Try keeping your ears open and your mouth shut.’

It was only then that Mallory saw the strain the man was under. The Jensen he knew was relaxed, with that naval quarterdeck sang-froid. Piratical, yes; aggressive, yes. Those were his stock in trade. But always calm. As long as Mallory had known Jensen, he had never known him lose his temper - not even with Dusty Miller, who did not hold with officers. But this was a Jensen balanced on a razor-honed knife’s edge.

Mallory caught Miller’s eye, and frowned. Then he said, ‘Corporal Miller’s got a point, sir.’

‘Whales,’ said Dyas. ‘Actually, we thought of that. But one has been … adding up two and two.’ His mild voice was balm to the frazzled nerves under the frescoed ceiling. ‘Another escort reported ramming a large submarine. Then a Liberator got shot up bombing two U-boats escorting a third that bore signs of having been rammed. They were huge, these boats, steaming at thirty-odd knots on the surface. The Liberator reported them as damaged. But when we sent more aircraft out to search for them, they had vanished.

‘They were reckoned to be in no state to dive, so they were presumed sunk. Then there was a message picked up - doesn’t matter what sort of message, doesn’t matter where, but take it from me, it was a reliable message - to say that the Werwolf pack was refitting after damage caused by enemy action. Said refit to be complete by noon Wednesday of the second week in May.’

It was now Sunday of the second week in May.

The painted vaults of the ceiling filled with silence. Mallory said, ‘So these submarines. What are they?’

‘Hard to say,’ said Dyas, with an academic scrupulousness that would have irritated Mallory, if he had been the sort of man who got irritated about things. ‘The Kriegsmarine have maintained pretty good security, but we’ve been able to patch a couple of ideas together. We know they’ve got a new battery system for underwater running, which stores a lot of power. A lot of power. But there’ve been rumours about something else. We think it’s more likely to be something new. Development of an idea by a chap called Walter. They’ve been working on it since the thirties. An internal combustion engine that runs under water. Burns fuel oil.’

Miller’s eyes had opened now, and he was sitting in a position that for him was almost upright. He said, ‘What in?’

‘In?’ Dyas frowned.

‘You can’t burn fuel oil under water. You need oxygen.’

‘Ah. Yes. Quite. Good question.’ Miller did not look flattered. Engines were his business. He knew how to make them run. He knew even more about destroying them. ‘Nothing definite. But they think it’s probably something like hydrogen peroxide. On the surface, you’d aspirate your engine with air, of course. As you submerged, you’d have an automatic changeover, a float switch perhaps, that would close the air intake and start up a disintegrator that would get you oxygen out of something like hydrogen peroxide. So you’d get a carbon dioxide exhaust, which would dissolve in sea water. Or so the theory goes.’

Jensen stood up. ‘Theory or no theory,’ he said, ‘they’re refitting. They must be destroyed before they can go to sea again. And you’re going to do the destroying.’

Mallory said, ‘Where are they?’

Dyas unrolled a map that hung on the wall behind him. It showed France and Northern Spain, the brown corrugations of the Pyrenees marching from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and snaking down the spine of the mountains the scarlet track of the border. He said, They were bombed off Cabo Ortegal. They couldn’t dive, so they wouldn’t have gone north. We believe that they are here.’ He picked up a billiard cue and tapped the long, straight stretch of coast that ran from Bordeaux south through Biarritz and St-Jean-de-Luz to the Spanish border.

Mallory looked at the pointer. There were three ports: Hendaye, St-Jean-de-Luz, and Bayonne. Otherwise, the coast was a straight line that looked as if it probably meant a beach. He said, ‘Where?’

Dyas avoided his eye and fumbled at his moustache. Since he had been in the room, he had found himself increasingly unnerved by the stillness of these men, the wary relaxation of their deep-eyed faces. The big one with the black moustache was silent and dangerous, with a horrible sort of power about him. Of the other two, one seemed slovenly and the other insubordinate. They looked like, well, gangsters. Dashed unmilitary, thought Dyas. But Jensen knew what he was doing. Famous for it. Still, Mallory’s question was not a question he much liked.

He said, ‘Well, Spain’s a neutral country.’ He forced himself not to laugh nervously. ‘And we’ve got good intelligence from Bordeaux, so we know they’re not there.’ He coughed, more nervously than he had intended. ‘In fact, we don’t know where they are.’

The three pairs of eyes watched him in silence. Finally, Mallory spoke. ‘So we’ve got until Wednesday noon to find some submarines and destroy them. The only difficulty is that we don’t know where they are. And, come to that, we don’t actually know if they exist.’

Jensen said, ‘Oh yes we do. You’ll be dropped to a reception committee - ‘

‘Dropped?’ said Miller, his lugubrious face a mask of horror.

‘By parachute.’

‘Oh my stars,’ said Miller, in a high, limp-wristed voice.

‘Though if you keep interrupting we might forget the parachute and drop you anyway.’ There was a hardness in Jensen’s corsair face that made even Miller realise that he had said enough. ‘The reception committee, I was saying. They will take you to a man called Jules, who knows a fisherman who knows the whereabouts of these U-boats. This fisherman will sell you the information.’

‘Sell?’

‘You will be supplied with the money.’

‘So where is this fisherman?’

‘We are not as yet aware of his whereabouts.’

‘Ah,’ said Mallory, rolling his eyes at the frescoes. He lit yet another cigarette. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have the advantage of surprise.’

Miller pasted an enthusiastic smile to his doleful features. ‘Gosh and golly gee,’ he said. ‘If they’re as surprised as we are, they’ll be amazed.’

Dyas was looking across at Jensen. Mallory thought he looked like a man in some sort of private agony. Jensen nodded, and smiled his ferocious smile. He seemed to have recovered his composure. ‘One would rather hope so,’ he said, ‘because these submarines have got to be destroyed. No ifs, no buts. I don’t care what you have to do. You’ll have carte blanche.’ He paused. ‘As far as is consistent with operating absolutely on your own.’ He coughed. If a British Naval officer schooled in Nelsonian duplicities could ever be said to look shifty, Jensen looked shifty now. ‘As to the element of surprise … Well. Sorry to disappoint,’ he said, ‘but actually, not quite. Thing is, an SAS team went in last week, and nobody’s heard from them since. So we think they’ve probably been captured.’

Mallory allowed the lids to droop over his gritty eyeballs. He knew what that meant, but he wanted to hear Jensen say it.

‘In fact it seems quite possible,’ said Jensen, ‘that the Germans will, in a manner of speaking, be waiting for you.’

Killigrew seemed to see this as his cue. He was a small man, built like a bull, with a bull’s rolling eye. He rose, marched to the centre of the room, planted his feet a good yard apart on the mosaic floor, and sank his head between his mighty shoulders. ‘Now listen here, you men,’ he barked, in the voice of one used to being the immediate focus of attention.

Jensen looked across at Mallory’s lean crusader face. His eyes were closed. Andrea was gently stroking his moustache, gazing out of the window, where the late morning sun shone yellow-green in the leaves of a vine. Dusty Miller had removed his cigarette from his mouth, and was talking to it. ‘Special Air Squads,’ he said. ‘They land with goddamn howitzers and goddamn Jeeps, with a noise like a train wreck. They do not think it necessary to employ guides or interpreters, let alone speak foreign languages. They have skulls made of concrete and no goddamn brains at all - can I help you?’

Killigrew was standing over him with a face of purple fire. ‘Say that again,’ he said.

Miller yawned. ‘No goddamn brains,’ he said. ‘Bulls in a china shop.’

Mallory’s eyes were open now. The veins in Killigrew’s neck were standing out like ivy on a tree trunk, and his eyes were suffused with blood. The jaw was out like the ram of an icebreaker. And to Mallory’s amazement, he saw that the right fist was pulled back, ready to spread Miller’s teeth all over the back of his head.

‘Dusty,’ he said.

Miller looked at him.

‘Miller apologises, sir,’ said Mallory.

‘Temper,’ said Miller.

Killigrew’s fist remained clenched.

‘You’re on a charge, Miller,’ said Mallory, mildly.

‘Yessir,’ said Miller.

Jensen’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘Captain!’

Killigrew’s heels crashed together. His florid face was suddenly grey. He had come within a whisker of assaulting another rank. The consequence would have been, well, a court-martial.

Mallory ground out his cigarette in a marble ashtray, his eyes flicking round the room, sizing up the situation. God knew what kind of strain the SAS captain must have been under to come that close to walloping a corporal. Jensen, he saw, was hiding a keen curiosity behind a mask of military indignation. Without apparently taking a step, Andrea had left his chair and moved halfway across the room towards Killigrew. He stood loose and relaxed, his bear-like bulk sagging, hands slack at his sides. Mallory knew that Killigrew was half a second away from violent death. He caught Miller’s eye, and shook his head, a millimetre left, a millimetre right.