A Dawn Like Thunder by Douglas Reeman

chap.’ He chuckled. ‘For a Royal Marine, that is.’ He nudged the driver. ‘No offence intended, Brooker.’
    The marine glared into the driving-mirror. ‘None taken, sir.’
    â€˜Sinclair’s worked in Burma, with Combined Operations and with our people. He was wounded, but I’m told he’s raring to get back with us.’
    Villiers thought of the hotel in St James’s. She had left a message for him with the manager, as she had promised, telling him she had got home safely. She had asked the manager over the telephone to thank Lieutenant Villiers for his help. Very correctly, the manager had asked for her name.
Carol.
That was all. And what more was there, or could have been? From a hotel window, he had watched her come to the decision to leave her would-be employer. He did not know her or anything about her, and yet he had been pleased that she had gone away in the taxi alone. But suppose . . . He watched the hedges and trees giving way to houses, barbed-wire checkpoints and the usual drifting throng of sailors.
    Could he have told her? Made it somehow different?
    He shook his head, unaware that Ross had turned to look at him. No. He would never share it. It would always be there, as if he had actually been at the house where he had grown up when the Japs had burst in. His mind could explore no further than that moment, even though he knew what had happened afterwards.
    During his first interview, Pryce had barely touched on that part of his past. Only at the end had he asked, almost casually, ‘And would you go back to Singapore again, if it was suggested to you?’
    It had been like listening to somebody else to hear thevoice. So clipped and confident. ‘If I could do something – anything – yes, I would.’
    The Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar might have seemed a strange location for a place of healing and peaceful recovery; one side faced the water where, daily and nightly, M.T.B.s and motor gunboats thundered noisily past from their nearby base at H.M.S.
Hornet
, on their way to the Channel and beyond to seek out the enemy in his own coastal waters. It was also only a short walk from
Dolphin
, the submarine base and instruction school where many of the Special Operations people had originally been trained. By comparison with
Hornet
,
Dolphin
was almost a silent, even sinister part of the harbour complex. Where Pryce had got his first command.
    Pryce climbed down from the car and smoothed his jacket into place, not that it ever seemed to need it.
    â€˜I have to see the P.M.O. More red tape, I expect.’ He looked at Ross. ‘An orderly can take you. Go and see if Captain Sinclair is all packed and ready. I want a word with him, then he can be driven back to his quarters.’ He shot the driver a searching glance. ‘Is that all fixed, Brooker?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ It sounded like
of course.
    As Pryce strode away, Ross said to Villiers, ‘You keep with me. O.K. if I call you Charles?’ He smiled, and looked about five years younger. ‘I’m James.’ He paused, and again Villiers sensed the shyness. ‘Jamie to my friends.’ They solemnly shook hands, watched patiently by a white-coated orderly who eventually said, ‘This way, gentlemen.’
    Villiers remarked, ‘Odd place for a hospital.’ Then he glanced out of a window and saw the water, so near that it appeared to be lapping the terrace.
    Ross was watching him at that moment and realized that Villiers was not seeing Portsmouth as it was now, but another harbour which, like the hospital, had flourished inthe days of tall masts and pyramids of sails. It moved him, when he had almost believed he was beyond that kind of emotion.
    The orderly turned, instantly alert as somebody called urgently, ‘Nurse, nurse!
Quickly
!’
    He said, ‘Number Ten, sir.’ Then he was gone.
    Ross said harshly, ‘God, I hate these places.’
    They