He could see the numbers on the boats in Guernsey. He did not need to match them. QIC knew that U-99 to U-108 were all large boats like the two of the series he had seen. Any one in the series would be the proof he needed.
Forty yards — come on, come on, they must have seen me. He could not make out the numerals without the aid of the glasses, not through the murk of sleet and wind. Was it a nought, a zero — just 0?
Come on, come on—
He could see 01, he could see the two distinct numerals, 0 and 1. U-101. One of the series of boats that had been used for minesweeping duties in the St George's Channel. He was oblivious to his surroundings for a moment, enjoying a sense of triumph which was rare and selfish and self-congratulatory. They knew, they knew—
At the same instant that he recognized the numerals, he also sensed the deserted nature of the pens. No noise above the wind, no flare of acetylene, no hammer of riveting, no sign of any human being near the seaward ends of the two pens he could see most clearly. Waiting. The U-boats were waiting—
He caught the flash of welding from a distance along the pens. But here, with these nearest two, then others, there was nothing.
He felt newly chilled by the wind against his side.
"You there!" the voice called. Put up your hands! Come here!" The German spoke reasonable French. McBride, as he raised his hands, letting the glasses dangle from their strap against his chest, guessed he might have come from Alsace. "Who are you?" There were two of them, each armed with a machine-pistol, coming towards him from the blockhouse.
"Charles, is indifference to human life a form of madness?" March was seated in his office, and the slim buff folder with the single stencilled word Emerald lay before him on the desk. He had been reading the typed sheets — one copy only — and now he sat back, rubbed his eyes with strain or disbelief, and asked his question of Walsingham, who let no answering emotion appear on his face; a face that was wan, chalky with sleeplessness, dark stains beneath the eyes that met March's gaze levelly.
"This is simply a projection, Admiral." All his anger, even his premonition of guilt, was squeezed into the excessive formality of his reply. He had known how it would be, had understood in advance as he worked on the draft of Emerald through the night and morning, that it would brand him. He would be regarded in the Admiralty corridors as a strange and dangerous species, a disease-carrier. The images whereby he presented himself to himself were melodramatic, but he did not consider them overstated or false. He could already see the glazed, suspicious look in March's eyes.
"Naturally. You couldn't murder this many people without the permission of your seniors, could you, Charles?" The irony sat like an undigested meal on both of them. March wanted to disregard what he had read, even make light of it, thereby restoring a former impression of Walsingham. But this — what was he to make of it? Overwork, black humour, plain lunacy?
"Sir, you've assumed that I'm somehow working towards that final outcome — I'm not. What I have projected is a possible sequence of events which would produce a desirable result at a great cost. I understand the morality of it, Admiral, but I also understand the possible necessity—" He stopped himself, drawing tight the strings on the bag of his temper. Coolness was his only ally, and would be in the days ahead. There was a long way to go.
"Are you suggesting this, or not?" His hand brushed fiercely towards the open file as if it was infested with cobwebs.
"I'm suggesting that it might become our only feasible alternative, Admiral. If it achieves that status, then that is the operational plan we would, or might, follow."
"My God, you know who's on board the cruiser, don't you?"
"I do."
"We'd divert it, of course."
"Not yet."
"Of course not yet."
"We must consider the effect on the Germans, though — surely?"
The dialogue snapped between them now, electrical sparks. Both men were tense, stiff in their chairs. Walsingham found himself defending the appalling logical outcome of Emerald even though he felt a profound loathing for it, and sensed he had begun a process in himself the end of which he could not envisage. What might he begin now to consider as no more than a necessity of war? Emerald was an idea that had been waiting for someone to think it. Why had it lodged in his mind?
"Of your plan?"
"Yes — my plan." The reluctance was simply the slightest hesitation. "It would be a significant, perhaps crucial, propaganda victory."
"Or it might, even if it remained secret, have a profound effect on German military morale?" Walsingham nodded. "And— the convoy to have been sunk by U-boats in the North Channel?" Again, Walsingham nodded. March seemed to wish to reiterate his ideas aloud, as if to make them the objects of a cool, rational analysis, and he had no objection to not voicing them himself. "And if it came out, the Americans would never enter the war, might even sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler. We'd be finished."
"Its secrecy would have to be maintained," Walsingham commented. "But we might only stop this invasion by destroying it. And we could lose the convoy anyway." His face darkened further. He stared at the open file. "We both know what cannot be done. We cannot contact the convoy. The Germans would intercept the message. We don't know their state of knowledge of our codes, but we suspect the worst — and the convoy would be doomed anyway if it was diverted by a signal from the Admiralty."
"There are other ways — signal them by lamp from an Anson," March said quickly.
Walsingham said, "As long as they're not spotted first. I have mentioned that possibility on page five."
"I know you have, Charles. You've been very clever all the way through this — thing." His distaste was evident, undisguised.
"Sir. This is a projection only. Many of the factors that would make it likely, or inevitable, have not yet occurred or appeared. Will you lock it away as a projected course of action, and only as that?"
"Very well. This is the only copy?" Walsingham nodded. March seemed momentarily obsessed with the idea of destroying the file. Then he said, "It mustn't come to this, Charles."
"No, sir. It mustn't. Unfortunately, it might." March was unprepared to reply, dismissing Walsingham with a curt nod of his head.
Patrick Terence Fitzgerald was walking on the quarter deck of the cruiser, the wind clutching at the hat he had jammed on his head, and chilling him. Yet he accepted his coldness as a relief from the days he had spent in his cramped cabin, and the noisy wind as a refreshing agent. He was alone, and most grateful for that. The sun gleamed fitfully through cloud, and the sea was grey and moving like the smooth backs of hundreds of whales, great long swells barely flecked with white, oily and somehow alive and sentient. He had gained what the British captain had called his sea-legs, he supposed, and his body rolled and angled expertly with the movement of the big ship. He had been slightly nauseous during the bad weather of the first couple of days, but not since. He was still, however, alien and a non-aquatic life-form on the ship, isolated and depressed; his state of mind an intellectual limbo in which endless recollection of his last meetings with the President only dimmed and dulled the importance of his mission, the significance it gave a friend of Roosevelt who had been a full-time banker and a part-time special adviser.