A Bridge of Magpies

I collected the tape from the grim, cold cottage and returned thankfully to the bunkhouse fire.

But my moment had passed as far as Kaptein Denny was concerned. He sat poker-faced and listened with an impenetrable, impassive air while Jutta re-ran the recording. Even the final drama failed to send him, although it had Koch chain-smoking and made me forget to ask him whether the U-boat's two torpedoes which missed the liner had exploded against Possession's cliffs. Even Breekbout-who didn't understand most of it, was infected to the extent of helping himself, unasked, to a few more drinks.

When it ended we waited for Kaptein Denny's reaction. He said in a strained, tired voice, 'That was like a conversation with a voice from the grave.'

I said, 'You must have seen what happened to U-I60! You were there!'

'My activities really began in a big way where it leaves off. The liner ran ashore: I went to help, as you know.'

'You and the U-boat must have passed smack next to each other, on opposite courses in the channel,'

'Maybe.'

'Surely you spotted her!'

'It was foggy. Very thick. A wild night. The liner was my only concern.'

'The explosion of Gousblom's magazine must have lit up the whole channel.'

'It did-for a moment.'

'Yet, you never spotted U-I60?'

'No. I sighted a lot of oil later.'

The oil was in the north. You took the southern exit. You said so yourself.'

'I went backward and forward all night to the City o/ Baroda. The sea was breaking right across her. The passengers jumped form the stern to reach my boat. She was still among the breakers and not far up on the rocks, like now. When I left next day I could see the oil-and the warships waiting.'

I couldn't fault him and he wouldn't be drawn, so dropped questioning him further. But his attitude served only to keep the finger on him as far as Koch and I were concerned. Jutta didn't mention what I'd told her about the 82 underlying reason for Gousblom's sortie into the channel Nor did I

… at least, not until the early hours of them following morning. She'd stayed by the fire for a long time and I had finally seen her back to the cheerless cottage. I didn't blame her for not wanting to be there, especially alone. The fog was thicker than ever.

I slept fitfully, and so much on a hair-trigger, that I was already awake at some other noise before a violent knocking at the bunkhouse door had me on my feet and racing for it Kaptein Denny leapt up at the same instant. It was Jutta. She was shoeless and had been sleeping In her old shore clothes.

I didn't have to ask what it was when I wrenched open the door. I felt the sound in my belly. It wasn't the sharp retching crack of small-arms, but a flight of deep decibels through the darkness which socked one below the diaphragm. She might have been Possession's lady ghost herself, she was so white.

"The sound of guns",' she whispered,

C H A P T E R S E V E N

It wasn't-guns, of course. But what was it?

Kaptein Denny and I ran outside, but Jutta kept to the doorway. Denny stood listening and swinging his head about like a radar scanner. The fog was warmer and clammier. The past was unwinding and rewinding like Jutta's tape machine. It underscored Gousblom's act of blind courage. I said in a murmur to Jutta, as if a human voice could possibly have erased the mysterious sound, 'In the Royal Navy it is a captain's prerogative to steer for the sound of guns – Nelson started it'

`What… what…?' she began, but Koch yelled from his bunk, `Struan-what the hell gives?'

I shut him up. It was only nerves-because you couldn't miss that deep horizon-thudding sound again.

We waited. We strained our ears. It didn't come again. Then Kaptein Denny asked, as softly as a hoarse whisper could be soft, 'What did you say about guns?'

I gave him a collapsed version of the Convoy WV. 5BX affair… 'Here!' I exclaimed, 'why am I telling you this? You were at Possession that night! If Gousblom heard gunfire, you must have-too.'

Perhaps it was the distorting effect of the fog, but there seemed to be a dead-fish gleam in his eyes which I couldn't get past. He'd got control of his voice since his tension-shot whisper earlier: it was dry and flat now,

'I heard it'

'Go on, man!'

'It was heavy gunfire… somewhere south of the island.

The sound was carried on the wind. It was very loud-louder. than tonight – and frightening.'

'Did you see the gun flashes?' asked Jutta.

`No. It was a dark, stormy night'

I said, 'It might have been guns in wartime but it couldn't be guns tonight'

It couldn't be guns tonight,' he echoed.

'Don't stand there repeating what I say,' I snapped. It 84 could have been some side-kick to the main event-then. What is it now?'

'I don't know.'

'You've been fishing here for thirty years and you don't know.. .?'

He remained silent under my stare. Breekbout and Koch joined us.

Breekbout said-'It's that ghost leaping up out of hell. It happens when she comes.'

'Bly stil- pipe down!' ordered Koch. 'What are you talking about guns for? All that's over-years ago.'

I went closer to Kaptein Denny- as if that way I might get at what he knew… if he knew. There were new dark stains under his eyes, which were as unreadable as fog-clouded lenses.

'Let's have it!'

'I've heard it now and I heard it then. I don't know what it is any more than you do.'

It was impossible to get anything more out of him. I didn't believe him. The man's duplicity underlined my belief that the decision to break up the Jutta-Denny party the next day was a right one.

We all stood around near the door in uncomfortable silence-until it became too cold. There was no repetition of the sound. I told myself there must be some explanation for itbut what? Sonic boom? Not in the pre-jet era of 1943. Thunder? It never rains on the Sperrgebiet. Man-made? If so, how? After all, you don't mock up a 16-inch broadside on an uninhabited coast just in order to entertain the birds and seals. They'd never heard of Nelson.

Finally we all went inside and had coffee. At 1.30 a.m. the human brain is supposed to be at its lowest ebb and I couldn't get anything out of mine to make sense out of my suspicions about Kaptein Denny, though I was broad awake and on edge. We all were Jutta decided to come to the bunkhouse for what remained of the night, and I fetched her blankets and shoes from the cottage. We kept a light going. Even indoors the condensation dripped from the lamp-glass and made a mini-sound which jarred in the silence. None of us slept much.

It wasn't much of a way to start our passage to Luderitz next day. Kaptein Denny remained uncommunicative and 85 dampened any breakfast sparkle Koch or Breekbout might have been capable of. Jutta and I said perfunctory goodbyes to the others. Breekbout ferried us out to my official boat, the cutter Ichabo. The anchorage was blotted with fog and layers of cloud lay low down on the south-western horizon. A slight northerly breeze rippled the channel. The Ichabo was a sharp contrast to Kaptein Denny's boat. She was spartan, neglected and dirty. The diesel hadn't been cared for and it sounded pretty rough after I'd battled to start it. I headed for the gap between the Kreuz shoals and Possession's northern tip: Gousblom's short cut to get at U-160. Making it dangerous was Broke Rock, an evil fang which stuck like a bone in the throat of the passage. Jutta was distant and unco-operative. She stood on deck all the time I was busy with the preliminaries of getting under way; staring at what she could make out of the liner wreck and shore, with the intentness of a lovesick teenager. I was working my way past the reefs before standing off the coast to avoid squalls as Kaptein Denny had advised, when the engine died.

'Jutta!' My temper was shot to hell-by the danger combined with her attitude.