Dark Full of Enemies(26)

“Perhaps they’ve returned to port?” Hopper said.

McKay shook his head. “The plan is for either party to wait for the other at least six hours. If we fail to meet up in that time, we try again at 1300 the next day.”

“Mister Hopper!” Treat said. “Hawkins and Mallory have the next watch. See to it.”

“Aye, sir!”

And Hopper and Treat descended.

McKay remained topside. Just a few minutes there, and his face already felt like putty, his lips grossly oversized and numb. Two seamen layered thick with peacoats and oilskins, scarves and knit caps, arrived and set to looking for the Norwegian fishermen. Despite all their caution and planning, it was not impossible that they would simply bump into each other in the dark. He thanked the watchmen—the Viking’s crew had been manning the watch in ever-shortening shifts as they sailed north—and climbed down.

Below, the team had assembled in the control room. Treat paced like an pampered animal finding its cage suddenly shared. McKay checked the time. 1425.

“What’s it like?” Stallings asked.

“Huh?”

“Up top? Is it night?”

“Black as pitch,” McKay said. He pulled his sleeve back over his timepiece and said, “That’ll take some getting used to.”

“First time in the Arctic, eh?” Treat stood at parade rest by his map table and the team’s bags, in ready stacks in the center of the room.

“Officially, yes,” McKay said. Treat had to mull that. McKay had never been north of the Arctic Circle—Iceland was as close as he had come—but he wanted to forestall whatever mischief Treat had in mind. It did not work.

“Ah, unofficial work. Jolly good. Keeps us official lads on our toes.”

McKay said nothing. They would be off Treat’s boat soon.

At this latitude, in this cold and weather and wind and ice, Treat had assigned his men twenty minute watches. After the first watch returned with grey noses and frost-rimed eyebrows, he shortened them again to fifteen. After five watches, there had still been no signal.

McKay and the team waited. Stallings made several trips to the head, and returned more than once with an apple or bit of cheese. The cook had proven a compassionate man. Graves nattered and even Ollila talked a bit. Hopper dawdled at the map table, making low small talk with the other officers, and occasionally moved through the submarine on errands. And Treat—the Commander paced the control room, slowly, stretching the time required to go the room from end to end out to a full minute. He kept his head down and arms folded, but McKay could feel the focus of the man’s mind upon him. The man wanted to be gone, wanted to buck this rider off and range. McKay was not worried—the sub was in frequent contact with its base and other Royal Navy vessels, so if Treat could have railed to someone and gotten his way, he would have by now—but he did not want there to be a scene. “Scenes” between leaders were never good.

The sixth watch laddered up into the storm at 1545.

The fifth watch had been the second trip topside for the sailors Hawkins and Mallory. McKay watched them peel away their oilskins and sou’westers with numb and glove-dulled fingers. The jackets had enough ice and sleet on them to crackle at the joints, and their frozen clothing dripped and steamed. They handed the raingear to the next pair of men and, relieved, shuffled aft to the bunkroom.

Treat followed and stopped them outside the hatch. McKay heard him muttering to them, could see him take each of them by the shoulder. They said, “Aye, sir. Thank you, sir,” and went away. Treat bowed back through the hatch and paused. He looked at McKay, and McKay caught something like kindness in his eyes.

McKay said, “You got a tough crew, Commander.”

Treat looked away, nodded, and returned to his pacing.

An hour, four more pairs of watchmen, and all the while the sub swayed and dipped as the surface of the sea bore it uncertainly up. At 1700 Treat asked the radio operator whether he had heard anything.

“Not a thing, sir.”

Treat paced.

McKay fought the boredom. Treat’s pacing did not help. He wanted to do something—take out his battered Thucydides and read, or strip and clean his Browning—but he had to be ready the moment the Norwegians signaled. What he had learned from the drill instructors at Quantico had been reinforced ever since, by the Japs at Tulagi and Guadalcanal, and by the Germans on every assignment the OSS had given him—be ready, pay attention. He focused and kept himself ready, but could not have prepared for what came next.

It had been just a few minutes since the new watch had gone up and Treat had talked with the radio man when the tower filled with the roar of the wind like a tornado heard through a bean can and water and ice rained down onto the deck of the control room. Someone topside shouted.

Treat pushed past Hopper and the other officers and stood in the showering water under the ladder.

“What the bloody devil is going on?”

Someone shouted again and Treat leapt aside. One of the watchmen slid down and dropped to his side, still gripping the ladder. Treat pried his hand from the base of the ladder and rolled him over. His face lay open from jawline to brow and one eye looked like fishguts. Blood streamed.

The second man came down, white and sick-looking but in better control, and sagged against the bulkhead, gasping. It was he who had been shouting.

“Don’t know, sir, don’t know. A fuuu—a bloody—a bloody great bird, a petrel or something, sir—”