Marriott pictured the silent and deserted ships he had seen at Flensburg. He had thought they had looked sinister then; now that he knew their contents it did not surprise him.

  The commander said, 'It's properly stowed. Nothing for you to worry about. Lieutenant Kidd is up there now, supervising the job. A friend of yours, I gather?'

  Marriott did not get a chance to answer as a signalman sitting at one of the telephones covered the mouthpiece and called, 'For you, sir!'

  The commander frowned. 'I said not to be disturbed until –'

  it's the N.O.I.C, sir.'

  He shot Marriott a quick grin. in that case.' He took the phone, but apart from announcing himself he did not appear to say anything further. He replaced the telephone and said to the signalman, 'Send a messenger around Ops. I want everyone here. Right now.'

  He moved out of earshot and looked at Marriott, his face suddenly very tired.

  'What is it, sir? Bad news?'

  He did not answer directly but walked over to fling open a window. Later, Marriott was to remember it very clearly. Like Meikle when he had drawn those deep breaths outside the wardroom.

  'Apparently they decided that one was not enough. They dropped the second atom bomb on the town of Nagasaki. Exactly the same result. Everything and everyone wiped out by a single blast.' He clenched his fists. it's obscene! Are we no better than the ones who have been guilty before us?' He seemed to recover his self-control and added, 'You can shove off, Marriott.' He tried to smile. 'The job goes on. Like the Windmill, we never close.'

  Marriott walked along one of the freshly painted corridors, so bright it was like a hall of mirrors.

  A few Germans, still wearing their naval uniforms, were working on some wiring, but their hands were barely moving, and they watched him pass as if they were afraid.

  They knew. How could anyone expect to keep something like Hiroshima and a place called Nagasaki a secret for long?

  He could feel it as he passed open office doors. Inside he saw a Petty Officer Yeoman of Signals sitting with his hands folded and staring at a flowering plant which somebody had put on his desk. He might have been praying for all the notice he was taking of those around him. Past another door marked S.D.O. where as if to a silent signal all the typewriters and teleprinters stopped as one. Now they all knew.

  A door at the far end near Meikle's office opened and she stepped outside, frowning as a file slid from the pile she was carrying. Marriott reached down and scooped it up, seeing her sudden surprise and recognition.

  'I – I am sorry, Herr Leutnant.'

  At the end of the corridor was a division like a large letter T. He would take the left passage, she the right one to her new office.

  He tucked the file under his arm and said, 'I'll carry it for you.' They walked together and he realised how clumsy she made him feel. They would part. It was, after all, only a dream.

  But she said quietly, 'I was sorry to hear about your ship. I am beginning to understand such things. Before –' She shrugged. 'It is different, you see?'

  He did not understand what she meant. 'You were there?'

  She met his gaze, her eyes very bright. 'I was. It was sad, I think.'

  'I am going up to Flensburg.'

  She looked away, suddenly embarrassed. 'I know, Herr Leutnant. I had to translate some of the details.'

  They both stopped and she watched him over the pile of cardboard files.

  He asked, 'Did the child enjoy the chocolate?'

  She nodded. 'She did.' Again that shrug which seemed to tug at Marriott's heart. 'She has not known such luxuries.'

  'I'm glad.' He had to say something. 'I wondered if we could talk sometimes. I know I upset you before. I didn't think –'

  She did not reply directly. 'You will be going home soon, to England, yes?'

  'Perhaps. Nothing is tied up yet.'

  She smiled, her teeth very white in her tanned face. 'You use expressions I do not understand!'

  'You speak perfect English.'

  'Thank you. I try. I need the work now.'

  'The family, you mean?'

  She looked past him, her brown eyes in shadow. 'My father is missing, somewhere in Russia they say. Also my brother. There has been no news. He has never seen his little girl. Never.'

  Marriott wanted to touch her arm, to try and help.

  It was not her child after all. Even if it had been ... His mind was in a spin.

  He said, 'When I return, perhaps we could meet?'

  She faced him again. 'I am not sure, Herr Leutnant.'

  Lieutenant Commander Durham, his glasses perched on the top of his bald head, walked past them. He was about to speak, but decided against it. They had not even seen him. Maybe she was the girl Marriott had not told him about on passage to Swinemünde?

  She said softly, 'When you are gone from here they would say things, think things –'

  'It mustn't be like that.' So close he could feel her warmth, taste the scent of her coiled hair. And all the while she was slipping away from him.

  A door opened and Meikle's voice cut across them. 'Some of us have work to do, Marriott, even if you do not! I thought you were supposed to be on your way to Flensburg.' His glance flickered just briefly between them. 'I suppose you heard the news?'

  Marriott placed the extra file on the others and watched as she walked down the opposite corridor.

  'Yes, I heard, sir.'

  'Well I just hope they know what they're doing by unleashing all this on the world!'

  He looked round as a door slammed shut.

  'Very useful girl, that one. English student before she was called up. The best interpreter I've got at the moment.'

  'She was telling me about her family, sir.'

  'I suppose that loosely ranks with in the line of duty, eh?'

  He watched Marriott's eyes and added, 'Her people run some sort of inn, a Gasthaus over in Eutin. Pretty little town from what I've seen of it.'

  He consulted his watch. 'Conference time.' He looked at Marriott and said, 'Cut along to Flensburg. Put everything else on the shelf and forget it.' As he walked away he called, 'I see that you chose Knecht as your driver. Knew you would. Just your style.'

  Marriott walked down the steps and looked at the sky. Perhaps Meikle was right. Just forget it.

  He found Heinz Knecht waiting for him beside their authorised vehicle. It had begun life as a Wehrmacht scout car, neat enough from the outside with its spare wheel on the bonnet, and enjoying a coat of blue pusser's paint with ROYAL NAVY in white letters on either side. But the interior was sparse and unwelcoming, with plain slatted seats. It definitely did not compare with Beri-Beri's Mercedes.

  Knecht beamed at him. 'Maybe we get better one next time, Herr Leutnant!' He looked very fresh and neat, his skin glowing as if he had just had a shower.

  He thought of Meikle. Just your style. He certainly knew how to needle and irritate people.

  Knecht had seen to everything. Marriott's small case was on the back seat and a sealed tin which the wardroom chef had sent over with some sandwiches, plus a bottle of wine in a rubber bag filled with ice. He heard Knecht humming to himself as he prepared to start the car. At least he was happy. Getting the job, or being back in a world he understood, it was hard to tell which.

  Marriott tried to make himself comfortable. Flensburg was about eighty miles from here. On these seats they would feel every one of them.

  As the car bumped towards the main gates Marriott asked, 'How long would it take to drive to Eutin?'

  Knecht tore his eyes from the gates. 'But Herr Leutnant, that is in the other direction!' But he saw Marriott's expression and added, 'Fifteen minutes, no more.'

  They passed through the gates and Marriott returned the sentry's smart salute. Then he said, 'I don't want to visit anybody there, you understand?'

  'Yes, Herr Leutnant.' Knecht's blue eyes gleamed in the driving mirror. 'You give the orders, I obey.'

  He thinks me mad. He is probably right. Marriott watched the green countryside flashing past. I only want to see where she lives, that's all.

  Knecht relaxed slightly. It was a strange experience to be driving one of the old enemy. Stranger still that he was able to enjoy it. What was in Eutin that meant so much? He glanced at the lieutenant's profile. How different from some of the officers he had served in his time. When they returned from Flensburg he would tell his wife all about it, and make her laugh. That would be the best part.

  Marriott winced as the wheels bounced over a loosely filled bomb-crater.

  Dreaming of a girl he could never hope to know, being driven by an ex-U-Boat sailor who had spent his war trying to blow the backsides off British warships and merchantmen alike. And soon to put to sea again with a cargo of deadly poison gas. The schoolfriend who had been playing jazz on the organ in a bombed church, and rescuing von Tripz's son from one of their own allies.

  By comparison his war seemed almost sane and commonplace.

  14

  The Same Men?

  Marriott moved the overhead light very slightly and concentrated on the Baltic chart, all its latest references and bearings marked with surprising neatness. By glancing to starboard he could see the vessel's master, a solid, rugged-faced professional sailor, peering beneath the peak of his battered cap, his hands thrust into his bridge-coat pockets. It was hard to imagine those same hands making such delicate calculations.

  He straightened his back and looked at his friend, who was leaning on the chartroom voicepipes, an unlit pipe clenched between his jaws. Such a different feeling from the motor gunboat, he thought. Strange and alien. Not the thrusting, uneven rolls when throttled right down to minimum revolutions, or planing across the crests when at full throttle; the big German salvage tug Herkules felt as if nothing could resist her. Also, unlike the base or Kiel harbour, everyone around him was speaking German, and only when directly addressed would one of the petty officers translate his wishes into direct action.

  He said, 'About twenty minutes.' He walked to the rear of the wheelhouse and studied the long towing hawser, the obedient merchant ship which had dragged astern at a mere five knots, all the way from Flensburg Fjord. To navigate the narrows and busier parts of the journey they had had the assistance of a second tug, Tail-end-Charlie, which had controlled the towed ship's progress with a long stern-wire. They had passed Bornholm in the night, and had altered course to the north-east when the other tug had left them to it. Marriott was glad they had made contact with that island under cover of darkness. In his mind it would always represent something bad, where men and women had died to no sane purpose.

  Together Marriott and Kidd walked out on to the open bridge wing on the opposite side, leaving the German master to his privacy. He doubtless knew these waters and this kind of work better than anyone; certainly a lot better than two ex-Coastal Forces officers. But he seemed content to accept their instructions. Maybe only because he had no choice.

  Beri-Beri said, 'We'll board her and then I'll take you below. It's dead simple really, but you'll be doing it on your own next time. Don't want to lose my old mate now that I've only just found him!'

  Marriott raised his binoculars and levelled them on the vessel under tow. She had been in service until the last year of the war, when she had sustained a near-miss from a heavy bomb which had put her engines and shafts out of alignment. Too costly to repair, she had been patched up and used for various other tasks, from accommodation vessel to prison hulk for Russians captured on the Eastern Front. Now, loaded with tons of poison gas, in shells and bombs, cylinders and all the deadly equipment required to release it on the enemy, she was on her final voyage. There was something sad and yet menacing about her spartan outline. Stripped of everything except some emergency rafts, she must offer little comfort to her small passage-crew of German sailors. They would give a sigh of relief when the powerful Herkules went alongside for the last time and took them off.

  Beri-Beri pointed over the rail to the after deck which, with all the weight of the two pulling against her, was almost awash.

  'Look at him. Happy as a sand-boy!'

  Marriott nodded and smiled. The young German Willi Tripz was squatting on a hatch-cover, his legs crossed and arms wrapped around his knees as he stared at the activity around him. His feet were bare, and his fair hair was blowing unchecked in the wind, as if he felt no discomfort from the spray which pattered over the hull like tropical rain.

  He was here at his father's request. It had come through Meikle's office, so he had obviously approved it for unknown reasons of his own.

  Beri-Beri grinned. 'Real bit of hero-worship, that one!'

  Marriott looked at him. 'Don't be so bloody daft! I think you were out in Burma a bit too long!'

  Beri-Beri was unmoved. 'He follows you everywhere. All kids need a hero – you happen to be it. At the moment anyway.'

  Marriott shrugged. 'I'd have thought he'd seen enough of the Baltic after the last run.' He thought of the swastika carved on the boy's shoulder, and wondered if he would always carry it.

  He swung away and shouted across the chartroom, 'Stand by, Kapitän!'

  The tug's master, whose name was Horst Krieger, raised one massive fist, then strode unhurriedly to a voicepipe.

  Beri-Beri murmured, 'I can just see him at Jutland, eh?'

  The tug's small crew turned-to and bustled aft to prepare for casting off. A signal lamp clattered from the upper bridge and a diamond-bright acknowledgement came instantly from the vessel astern.

  Marriott turned his eyes from the bridge. He had almost expected to see Long John Silver there.

  Beri-Beri was watching him. 'More memories, Vere?'

  'A few.' He heard the winches whine into action, felt the tug's tightly packed hull lift its thousand tons of iron and steel, her screws thrashing astern to take off the way.

  Marriott wrapped one arm around a compass-repeater and felt the hull swaying over into a deep trough. A cross on a chart. Who would ever question the sense of what they were doing, or even remember it? Fifty fathoms down, three hundred feet, where all that cargo of poison and mustard gas would lie harmless in the depths.

  Beri-Beri jammed his cap more tightly over his unruly hair and watched as the tow was cast off, and the big winches brought it whining through the water and up to the stern swivel before it could snare a shaft or some hidden, unmarked wreck.

  Marriott saw how well the crew worked together. Few orders, hands and arms moving like machines. One man dropped a spanner and the boy Willi Tripz snatched it up and handed it to him, then turned and looked up to the bridge, as if to seek him out.

  Beri-Beri smiled gently. 'Told you.'

  Even now Herkules was swinging round, butting into the choppy crests with disdain as she altered course towards the drifting hulk. They had lowered fenders and two ladders; were wasting no time, Marriott thought.

  Then he and Beri-Beri hurried down to the raised forecastle and waited while the gap narrowed between the two hulls, and the other ship seemed to tower over them like a flaking cliff.

  'Up we go!' Beri-Beri judged the moment then swung on to the ladder, climbing fast while Marriott waited for the two hulls to fall apart, spray spurting up between them, before he could follow his example and swing himself across. It was a matter of timing. Too soon and you might fall. Too late and you could be crushed between the hulls as they surged together again.