experience. I’ve brought my equipment in the car ….’
‘I can see you have,’ I said. Sitting in the car was a young blonde.
‘Yes sir.’ He ran his hand through his hair and smiled nervously. ‘Charlotte Lucas-Mountford – Admiral Lucas-Mountford’s daughter.’ I said nothing. ‘London told us that we should send someone with underwater experience and someone to look after the household. Charlotte speaks fluent Portuguese and I have the …’
I closed the door and slowed him to a standstill with my eyes. I took a long time lighting a cigarette and I didn’t offer them.
‘Sit down, sonny,’ I said, ‘sit down and dust off your mind. You think you’re on a ripping little fun-jaunt, don’t you?’
‘I’m a Clearance Diver, sir, R.N. certificate. You’ll need an underwater expert for this job.’
‘I will, will I?’ I said. ‘Well, I don’t know what you call “expert”, but the man we already recruited spent nearly four years as an Italian frogman. Heonce spent a night standing in pitch darkness on the floor of Gibraltar Harbour mending a timing device while the Navy threw every grenade they could find into the harbour. They only stopped in the morning because they calculated no one could be alive down there. Then he swam up under the North Mole, fixed a charge weighing 550 lb. to a tanker and swam back to Algeciras. He did that twenty years ago when you were wearing a Mickey Mouse gas-mask and saving your coupons for a Mars bar. If you are going to work here there’s not going to be any half-way for ladies and it’ll mean being a lot smarter than you’ve been so far. Why do you think London sent that message in code to the embassy? Why do you think Lisbon couldn’t send me a wire? They trusted you with it because they wanted to make sure it didn’t get intercepted, and yet as soon as I bend a little muscle at you you broadcast it.’ I waved down his explanations. ‘Go and get your equipment,’ I said.
Giorgio made some quiet remarks about Clive’s bright-green undersea gear, but it was much more professional than I feared it might be. As for Charlotte, I’d never seen her before, but there were two things about her one could never forget. However, she set to work in the kitchen in a way that surprised me. They were both dying to prove how efficient and tough they were.
After breakfast we had a conference. Joe spread the linen Admiralty charts across the table and showed us the way the U-boat was lying. Theecho-sounder charts were strips of electrolytic paper about seven inches wide. Down each was a thick black uneven band (the ocean floor) and a thin black uneven band, separated by a quarter-inch of white. The thinner of the two bands was fish or objects lying along the ocean floor. On one chart a shape could be interpreted. I was prepared to take an expert’s word that it resembled a U-boat.
According to Singleton, Naval Intelligence were very keen to get the log of the U-boat as it was of a new type about which they had very little information. I asked Giorgio and Joe what the chances were.
Joe said, ‘If the log wasn’t dumped overboard before the sub. sank, it’s easy.’
‘You know where to find the log book? I can ask London about stowage procedures.’
Giorgio said, ‘It will not, I think, prove necessary. I have encountered some experience of the life aboard the German craft.’ We exchanged thin grins.
‘And if they did jettison it?’
‘In that case it depends upon: one,’ Giorgio tapped his index finger, ‘how far the boat traversed between the jettison and sinking, and two, if the Kelvin Hughes apparatus will encounter such a small flat objective which will likely submerge into the mud, and three,’ the gold ring on his finger flashed in the bright sunlight, ‘if the boat has been moved much distance by means of the underwater currents which I suspect are strong.’
After that Giorgio asked Joe about tidal movement at surface, absolute slack-water
‘I can see you have,’ I said. Sitting in the car was a young blonde.
‘Yes sir.’ He ran his hand through his hair and smiled nervously. ‘Charlotte Lucas-Mountford – Admiral Lucas-Mountford’s daughter.’ I said nothing. ‘London told us that we should send someone with underwater experience and someone to look after the household. Charlotte speaks fluent Portuguese and I have the …’
I closed the door and slowed him to a standstill with my eyes. I took a long time lighting a cigarette and I didn’t offer them.
‘Sit down, sonny,’ I said, ‘sit down and dust off your mind. You think you’re on a ripping little fun-jaunt, don’t you?’
‘I’m a Clearance Diver, sir, R.N. certificate. You’ll need an underwater expert for this job.’
‘I will, will I?’ I said. ‘Well, I don’t know what you call “expert”, but the man we already recruited spent nearly four years as an Italian frogman. Heonce spent a night standing in pitch darkness on the floor of Gibraltar Harbour mending a timing device while the Navy threw every grenade they could find into the harbour. They only stopped in the morning because they calculated no one could be alive down there. Then he swam up under the North Mole, fixed a charge weighing 550 lb. to a tanker and swam back to Algeciras. He did that twenty years ago when you were wearing a Mickey Mouse gas-mask and saving your coupons for a Mars bar. If you are going to work here there’s not going to be any half-way for ladies and it’ll mean being a lot smarter than you’ve been so far. Why do you think London sent that message in code to the embassy? Why do you think Lisbon couldn’t send me a wire? They trusted you with it because they wanted to make sure it didn’t get intercepted, and yet as soon as I bend a little muscle at you you broadcast it.’ I waved down his explanations. ‘Go and get your equipment,’ I said.
Giorgio made some quiet remarks about Clive’s bright-green undersea gear, but it was much more professional than I feared it might be. As for Charlotte, I’d never seen her before, but there were two things about her one could never forget. However, she set to work in the kitchen in a way that surprised me. They were both dying to prove how efficient and tough they were.
After breakfast we had a conference. Joe spread the linen Admiralty charts across the table and showed us the way the U-boat was lying. Theecho-sounder charts were strips of electrolytic paper about seven inches wide. Down each was a thick black uneven band (the ocean floor) and a thin black uneven band, separated by a quarter-inch of white. The thinner of the two bands was fish or objects lying along the ocean floor. On one chart a shape could be interpreted. I was prepared to take an expert’s word that it resembled a U-boat.
According to Singleton, Naval Intelligence were very keen to get the log of the U-boat as it was of a new type about which they had very little information. I asked Giorgio and Joe what the chances were.
Joe said, ‘If the log wasn’t dumped overboard before the sub. sank, it’s easy.’
‘You know where to find the log book? I can ask London about stowage procedures.’
Giorgio said, ‘It will not, I think, prove necessary. I have encountered some experience of the life aboard the German craft.’ We exchanged thin grins.
‘And if they did jettison it?’
‘In that case it depends upon: one,’ Giorgio tapped his index finger, ‘how far the boat traversed between the jettison and sinking, and two, if the Kelvin Hughes apparatus will encounter such a small flat objective which will likely submerge into the mud, and three,’ the gold ring on his finger flashed in the bright sunlight, ‘if the boat has been moved much distance by means of the underwater currents which I suspect are strong.’
After that Giorgio asked Joe about tidal movement at surface, absolute slack-water
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