Colquhoun stared blindly at the watch. When he spoke his voice was unsteady, like a stranger’s.,‘You’re lying, Lightfoot.’ He saw the boy looking at the watch, his eyes wretched. ‘He gave it to you for looking after him when he was brought aboard. The doctor told me about it.’ His arm moved again to wipe his face. ‘Here, take it.’

  Lightfoot stared at him with sudden defiance. ‘Well, I want you to have it!’ He looked around him with something like hatred. ‘Christ, you deserve something after what you’ve been through!’ He snatched up the jug and reached for the door. ‘I want you to have it, see?’

  Colquhoun walked slowly away, the watch grasped in his hand like a talisman.

  Behind him in the open doorway, Lightfoot watched him go, his lip trembling with anger and emotion. You poor bastard. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. You tried to help me, and I’m letting you suffer like this!

  The petty officer called, ‘Come on, lad. Chop, chop! Let’s have the bloody tea then!’

  From his Seat at the rear of the compartment Oxley watched the boy’s face, and wondered.

  *  *  *

  ‘I believe you wanted to see me, sir?’ Jermain closed the wardroom door behind him and watched the admiral warily. Sir John Colquhoun was seated at the table, his jacket un-buttoned, as he pored over a collection of charts and written reports. He was wearing glasses, which gave him a deceptively human appearance.

  ‘Ah yes, Jermain. Come and sit down.’

  Jermain eased himself into a chair, the sudden immobility reminding him of his tiredness, of his complete disappointment. Another full day had dragged past since he had addressed his officers in this wardroom, a day of sudden hope and equally sudden despair. The sonar crew had obtained a solid contact during the night, and all the strain and concentration of the slow search had given way to something like excitement. But the contact had proved to be false. An old forgotten wreck, unmarked on the chart, probably a victim of the Second World War.

  So the search had continued as before. A crawling examination of the Wantsai Valley, back and forth, with the mean course taking them slowly towards the end of the deep water. Towards the coast.

  Sir John removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘It seems to me that our search will be in vain. Sooner or later we will have to turn and retrace our way back to base.’ He sighed deeply. ‘But I suppose that a negative search is just as final as reporting a few scraps of wreckage. In the end it might be better for all concerned.’

  He leafed through a pile of aerial photographs. ‘Now these were taken by the American reconnaissance at regular intervals after the Pyramus was reported out of contact.’ He grimaced. ‘Of course they’re not much use, the planes fly umpteen miles up to avoid interference. But they do show that the whole area was free of shipping. Apart from fishing boats and so forth.’ He eyed Jermain with a slight smile. ‘I suppose you still think that the fishing boats had something to do with all this?’

  Jermain replied, ‘I think it’s very possible, sir. There’s too much coincidence for comfort. When we were on the exercise off Hainan Island there were fishing boats present. Again when the Malange was sunk.’ His jaw tightened defiantly. ‘It’s all we have to go on anyway.’

  The admiral leaned back and regarded him calmly. ‘I know how you feel, Jermain. You want to prove the boat, to make a place for her in the present situation.’ He tapped the table. ‘Well, so do I. I’ve been working for nothing else, in spite of government interference and the American efforts to squeeze us out of the Far East. But the facts of this missing submarine are more obvious. It seems hardly likely that a Polaris boat would be in danger from a lot of Chinese fishermen!’

  ‘We still have to find the Pyramus, sir.’ It was a stupid comment, but Jermain felt he had to say something if only to check himself. The admiral was goading him. Enjoying every aspect of this hopeless search.

  Jermain wanted to ask him openly whether he had done anything to prevent Conway from sailing into an area which he must have known to be potentially dangerous, or if he ever thought beyond the bounds of his own personal advancement.

  The admiral wagged one finger. ‘It’s been over five days now. Even if the Pyramus survived one disaster, it is unlikely that the crew is in any shape to save itself.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I know how you feel about it, Jermain. Just as we all feel.’

  Jermain stood up, sick of the admiral’s smooth words and thinly veiled hypocrisy. ‘I must get back to the chart-room, sir.’

  ‘Just one more thing, Jermain. It’s not really my direct concern, of course, but I think your officers are beginning to doubt the necessity of all this care. You’ve done your best, and we’ve shown the Americans what the best can be.’

  Jermain stared at him with sudden pity. That’s all you care, he thought. Impress the Americans, and prove to the world that everything is as it was, and will always remain so.

  Sir John continued, ‘Now take Conway, for instance. He was not only mistaken about the Far East situation, he was entirely wrong. But then you and I know that you can’t make national leaders overnight, any more than you can expect a lower-deck rating to transform himself into a good officer.’

  Jermain looked away. Don’t answer him. Don’t allow yourself to be drawn by his remarks.

  He answered coldly, ‘That is rather a generalisation, surely?’ He cursed himself as the admiral gave a small smile.

  ‘I think not. And if you had remembered this small fact I feel that things might have been different for you and the Temeraire.’ He shrugged as if it was unimportant now. ‘This commission has certainly done little for my son, or the two members of your crew who have died.’

  Jermain felt the colour stinging his cheeks, but as he opened his mouth to reply the telephone buzzed at his side.

  ‘Captain speaking!’ His voice was unnecessarily sharp, and he heard Mayo say cautiously, ‘Sonar have just reported some faint H.E. on green four five, sir. Sounds like several small fishing boats.’

  Jermain felt suddenly calm. ‘Why fishing boats?’

  Mayo sounded vague. ‘They heard that bleeping sound again, sir. You remember the fish-buoys off Hainan Island?’

  Jermain dropped the handset. ‘I must go to the control room, sir.’

  The admiral stared at his impassive face. ‘Well? What is it now?’

  ‘The fish-buoys again, sir. I’m going up to periscope depth.’

  The admiral looked uneasy. ‘Aren’t you taking a bit of a risk?’

  ‘But you said you thought the fishing boats had nothing to do with all this, sir.’ Jermain kept his features expressionless. ‘I’ll take full responsibility.’

  The admiral watched him go. Aloud he said to the empty wardroom, ‘You certainly will, Jermain. That I promise you!’

  *  *  *

  The atmosphere in the control room was tense. Only the men at the controls seemed normal and absorbed in their duties. The others stood in silence watching Jermain beside the periscope.

  Mayo said quietly, ‘The nearest vessels are about seven miles away, sir. Of course there may be some others just drifting without engines.’

  A petty officer reported, ‘No more fish-buoy transmissions, sir.’

  They think I’m mad, Jermain thought. He could see several off-duty officers standing beyond the bulkhead door and the sick-berth attendant in his white smock like a watchful ghost.

  ‘Sixty feet, sir.’

  Jermain glanced at the clock. Both hands were overlapping and he screwed up his eyes to withstand the glare of the midday sun. ‘Up periscope.’ He gestured as the air hissed sharply. ‘Slowly! Raise it slowly!’

  He saw the lenses shimmering in distorted green light, and then with a quiet flurry the periscope broke surface. The water was like glass, flat and oily. The sun was hidden by haze-like douds, so that the sea and sky were bright, yet without colour.

  He swung the handles very slowly, his eyes becoming accustomed to the glare even as the first of the distant boats swam across the lenses. For a moment he felt another pang of disappointment. It was just a ragged fishing fleet. Like a thousand others which moved like hungry vagrants in search of food and life.

  Jermain said, ‘Seem to be about fifty or more. Moving slowly to the north.’ He watched some black smoke billow down from one of the boats and hang above the sea like a stain.

  He moved the handles to full power and swung the periscope a few more degrees. The boats were well scattered, like flotsam on the flat water. They were moving so slowly that only the occasional splash of foam beneath a stem gave any hint of motion.

  Mayo asked, ‘Shall I lay off an alteration of course to avoid them, sir?’

  Jermain did not answer. The billowing black smoke had moved away slightly, caught in a hot down draught of air. He blinked his eyes rapidly and stared again. He made himself stay quite still, holding his breath, hardly daring to speak as one of the distant boats altered course and moved across his sights. Even at this range there was no mistaking that businesslike hull and the high-raked stem.

  He slammed back the handles. ‘Down periscope. Take her down to two hundred feet.’ He walked quickly to the chart-room. ‘Bring me the intelligence pack again!’ Mayo followed him, mystified, but Jermain concentrated on his racing thoughts.

  It had been right there all the time. He had guessed the most unlikely part, but the obvious facts had been staring him in the face.

  He snatched the thick folio from the messenger and pulled the aerial photographs on to the table. ‘Give me a pin!’

  Nobody moved. They were all staring at him.

  With a grunt Jermain snatched the brass dividers and bent over the blurred photographs. As his eyes moved carefully across the scattered shapes he said, ‘Now, in nearly all these photographs we can see a collection of fishing boats, right?’

  Mayo said, ‘Is it the same lot, sir?’

  ‘I think so.’ He dosed his eyes and tried to picture the scene as he had just seen it through the periscope. ‘Roughly the same number anyway.’ He pushed the sharp point of the dividers into one of the tiny shapes on the first photograph. ‘It was here all the time.’ He made another small hole in a second shape, and then a third.

  Then he held up the photograph against the chart light, so that the small lamp cast a glow through his three minute holes. It was a perfect triangle.

  Mayo said awkwardly, ‘I still don’t see …’

  ‘Neither did I, Pilot!’ He took another photograph. ‘Look at this one. The same three boats, larger than all the other ones, and in the same position as before.’ He squinted at the numbers across the margin. ‘Yet this one was taken one hour after the first!’ He stared round, aware for the first time that the place had filled with watching figures. He said, ‘Check each picture, and I think you will find that in every one there appears to be a distinct pattern. Three larger boats of the type I have just seen through the periscope. Of the type which went out to meet the Malange.’ He saw Wolfe standing silently in the doorway. ‘Of the type which fired on us and killed Lieutenant Victor!’

  Drew stood beside the chart, an electric razor still grasped in one hand. ‘You think there’s a connection, sir?’

  Jermain watched Mayo’s fingers prodding the dividers into another photograph. ‘I’ve never been more sure. The fishing-buoys, everything., it all fits.’

  Mayo straightened his back and nodded. ‘The pattern is in all of them, sir. The same three boats are steering in a fixed triangle, and as far as I can make out they’re about eight miles apart.’

  Jermain said, ‘The fish-buoys were a blind. It’s my guess they are really some sort of variable depth sonar of an advanced type. By lowering them down through the isothermal barrier they are far more effective than any sort of detection device carried by surface craft. In a place like the Wantsai Valley they are doubly efficient. By relaying cross-bearings to one another, these ships could find and hold even a deep-running submarine.’ He looked at Mayo. ‘And in the confines of the Valley a damaged submarine would be incapable of avoiding them!’

  ‘So we weren’t so stupid after all, sir. The bastards must have been having a dummy-run off Hainan?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Jermain felt the excitement stirring his insides. ‘The idea is not new, as you know. But out here, in these confined waters, it could be more than effective. It could be fatal!’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘But whatever they did to the Pyramus, they were only half successful. I think they are doing exactly what we are trying to do.’ He looked around their faces. ‘So it’s up to us to find her before they do!’

  Wolfe spoke for the first time. ‘So what do you intend to do?’

  ‘Take a chance, Number One. We have no other choice.’ He leaned over the chart. ‘We’ll dive to maximum depth and then increase speed to by-pass this search party. Then we’ll head direct to the plateau mentioned in the American folio. If the Pyramus is anywhere, she has to be there.’

  Mayo was scribbling rapidly in his logbook. ‘What depth, sir?’

  Jermain looked direcdy at Wolfe’s set face. ‘Nine hundred feet, Pilot.’ He continued looking at Wolfe. ‘Inform the admiral, Number One. He will want to know what is happening.’

  Mayo snapped his book shut. ‘That’s the deepest yet, sir.’ He sounded calm enough, but his eyes were fixed to the chart. He added, ‘At the school they said that at this sort of depth it was the same as having a fully loaded car on every square inch of the hull!’

  Drew said dryly, ‘Shouldn’t think there are many cars down there, Pilot!’

  Jermain glanced at the curving side to the chart-room and tried to imagine the black water beyond. Then he said sharply, ‘Send the hands to action stations.’

  As the alarm shattered the boat’s silence Jermain walked slowly into the control room. On the strength of his own driving belief, and three pin holes in a blurred photograph, he was committing the Temeraire and ninety lives.

  Throughout the hull these same men were running quietly to their stations, only half aware of what was happening.

  Jermain thought suddenly of the only possible alternative, and dismissed the danger from his mind.

  15

  A Matter of Trust

  Wolfe sat bolt upright in his steel chair behind the helmsman, his eyes unwinking as he watched the depth gauges. How slowly they seemed to creep round, he thought. Down, down. Yet the slender needles appeared to have no connection with reality or the enfolding world outside the hull.

  ‘Six hundred feet, sir.’ The rating’s voice was hushed, like a visitor in a church, but Wolfe hardly noticed him. His mind and brain were completely controlled and devoid of doubt or uncertainty. Everything around him was clear and crisp, like familiar objects on a bright winter’s morning, and his whole body seemed to tingle with excitement.

  He checked the slow smile as it spread across his face, and peered intently at the gyro repeater. The tranquilisers were having their effect. He felt like a different person. He thought momentarily of Griffin’s earlier unwillingness to supply his needs, and the ease and simplicity with which he had obtained a large packet of pills from the American depot ship just prior to sailing. Like everything else about the Americans, he thought. Slapdash and careless. A bored pharmacist’s mate had merely glanced at his uniform and muttered, ‘Sign here,’ and that was that.

  ‘Seven hundred feet, sir.’

  Wolfe took a glance around the control room. The cut-out figures of the men on watch, each wrapped in his own thoughts. The admiral’s stocky shape beside the door, his pale eyes swivelling between Jermain and the gauges.

  Wolfe allowed his gaze to rest on Jermain’s tall figure. He was standing in the centre of the control room, his legs slightly apart, his shoulders hunched as if to test the weight of his command. His face was calm but watchful, and Wolfe could see a nerve jumping very slightly at the corner of his mouth. He’s worried, he thought. Like all the rest of them.

  ‘Eight hundred feet, sir.’

  Twine, the coxswain, mouthed a silent curse as the metal frames above the control panel groaned as if from pain. Every foot of water added to the pressure, each agonising minute brought some new strain to the hull and men alike.

  The intercom said briefly, ‘No further contact with surface craft, sir.’

  Jermain said quietly, ‘Increase to fifteen knots. Steer three zero zero.’

  Twine moved the horseshoe-shaped wheel very slightly in his hands, and at his side the planesman took a moment to dash the sweat from his eyes.

  The air was damp and clammy, so that the atmosphere felt dank, like a tomb. Every unnecessary fan had been switched off to make the boat as silent as possible, yet Wolfe was unmoved and inwardly scornful of the shining faces around him.

  There was a sharp crack, followed by a long-drawn-out humming which echoed along the hull structure like a tin roof shaking in a high wind. Over the open intercom Wolfe heard a man cry out, and behind him the young signalman whispered, ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Nine hundred feet, sir.’ The rating sounded dazed.

  There was another long quiver, and a few flakes of paint floated down from the curved deckhead.

  Jermain said, ‘Check all compartments.’

  The men at the voice-pipes and telephones stirred themselves unwillingly, as if afraid that their ears might miss something.

  Mayo called, ‘Next alteration, sir. Steer three one zero.’

  Wolfe sat back in his chair and watched the controls. Not long now. In his brain he could hear the dull thuds as the torpedoes left the tubes. The distant searing explosions as they found the crippled submarine. He looked quickly at Jermain. He could hardly wait to see his face when the inevitable happened. The good, patient friend, David Jermain, who all this time, over the months of agony and suspense, had aided Sarah in her plans, had secretly sided with her and her bloody American!