Alternate Generals (6 page)

"But . . . even if you're right, sir . . . the
Goeben
is far too powerful for us to engage without at least one of the battle cruisers to assist."

Cradock smiled at Wray, trying to hearten him. "She has bigger guns, certainly. And more armor. And more speed. But she is only one—no—" He put up his hand to forestall the younger man's correction. "I know, she has
Breslau
. But we easily overmatch
Breslau
. At night, along the coast of Greece . . . the
Goeben
's advantages lessen markedly."

"Ah." Wray's face lightened. "You intend a night engagement in navigation waters? With the destroyers . . ."

"Yes. Pity it's so clear. But if we position ourselves where I am convinced she is likely to go, we can pick our best location, where the
Goeben
's speed and range cannot help her. Then our numbers must count. I expect she will pick up her pace after her turn—she is only luring
Gloucester
on, loafing along at eighteen knots or so, hoping her lookouts will slack off."

"Not Captain Kelly's lookouts," Wray said, grinning.

"Quite so. So when she turns, I expect her to pick up speed, to twenty-four knots or more, and be off the southern capes of Greece before dawn. Now—this is what I propose—" He spread the chart back out and explained in more detail.

Cradock was dozing in his cabin, taking what rest he could, when Captain Wray called him. "Signal's just in from
Gloucester
, Admiral," he said. "The Germans have turned, just as you thought. They were trying to jam the signal, but
Gloucester
kept sending. I took the liberty of informing Admiral Milne, but have received no reply yet."

Milne, Cradock thought, would be sure it was a trick. Luckily Milne would still be at dinner, and unlikely to give a return signal until he had finished. Cradock didn't want to talk to Milne about what he planned, and be told not to do it. "What's her speed?" he asked.

"Nineteen knots," Wray said.

"Odd," Cradock said. "I expected a spurt. Souchon must want to evade
Gloucester
; that would have been the ideal time to do so."

"She just turned."

"Mm. Ask
Gloucester
to inform us instantly of any change in her course or speed. And set the squadron's course to take us south to Sapienza behind Cephalonia and Zante." If the German ships kept that speed, his ships could easily arrive at Sapienza well before them, and choose their best place to engage.

Within minutes, he felt the cruiser thrust into the gentle swell with more urgency. Far below, sweating stokers would be shoveling coal into the furnaces . . . coal he would have to replenish. His mind ranged ahead, to the location of colliers.

It was near midnight when Captain Wray tapped at his door. Cradock woke instantly, the quick response of the seaman.

"Another report from
Gloucester
, sir. The German ships have separated; Captain Kelly's following the
Goeben
, and she is on the same course, at 17 knots.
Dublin
's trying to find them; she has two destroyers with her,
Bulldog
and
Beagle
."

"Seventeen knots." Cradock ran a hand through his hair. Why was such an admiral, with such a ship, crawling across the Mediterranean at a mere 17 knots when he could have outpaced the
Gloucester
and been free of her surveillance? "He has some problem," Cradock said. "He didn't get coal—no, we know he got some coal. He didn't get enough to go where he wants to go—he's moving at his most economical speed to conserve it until he meets a collier somewhere. Or . . . he has boiler trouble."

"You can't know that, sir."

He didn't know it. He knew only that no man with a ship fast enough to shake a shadower would fail to do so unless something had gone wrong. And
Goeben
had been snugged away at the Austrian naval base of Pola for weeks before the war started. She could have been undergoing repairs . . . and those repairs could have been interrupted by the outbreak of war, just as his own ships' repairs had been.

"And our position?"

"About eight miles off Santa Maura, sir, here . . ." Wray pointed out their position on the chart. "We'll be entering the channel between Santa Maura and Cephalonia in the next hour. Oh—and Admiral Milne wants to know your dispositions."

"I'm sure he does," Cradock said, stretching. "So do the Germans. Signal Admiral Milne that we are patrolling. I'm going up on deck for a while." Wray looked as he himself might have looked, had his admiral ever told him to send a false signal. But they were, he thought, following the orders Milne would have given—that the Admiralty wanted him to give—if Milne had but the wits to give them.
They don't pay me to think
, Milne had said once . . . but they might pay a high price because Milne didn't.

The moon swung high overhead. To either side, the other cruisers knifed through the water, pewter ships on a pewter sea, blackening the starry sky with smoke. Behind them, sea-fire flared and coiled from their passage. Ahead, he could see the signal cones of the destroyers, and the white churn of their wakes, the phosphorescence spreading to either side. To port, Santa Maura, Leucas to most Greeks, rose from the sea in a tumble of jet and silver, the moon picking out white stone like a searchlight. Southward, the complicated shapes of Cephalonia and Ithaca, with the narrow straight passage between them.

"Have the squadron fall into line astern," he told Wray. The signal passed from ship to ship; the cruisers dropped smartly into line at four cables . . . his drills had accomplished that much. He hoped the gunnery drills had done as well. He noticed that the cones were all correctly hung. "Reduce speed if necessary, but not below fifteen knots."

He thought of little
Dublin
, with her two destroyers, desperately trying to find the Germans by their smoke. She might be lucky, but she surely could not sneak up on
Goeben
in this clear moonlit night. The Germans could not fail to see her any more than he could fail to see the ships of his squadron. Perhaps he should send her to guard the Adriatic gate which he had left wide open? That made sense, but so did another plan. Let her go to Crete, where the Germans might have another collier standing by. At dawn, when he hoped to spring his trap on the Germans near the Peloponnese, the smoke of
Dublin
and her destroyers might make the Germans swing closer to the Greek capes.

He gave these instructions, and eventually—atmospherics, the radioman explained—
Dublin
acknowledged them.

He had dozed again, his body registering every slight change of course, every variation in speed, while the squadron passed Santa Maura, Ithaca, the rugged heights of southern Cephalonia, the northern part of Zante. The tap at his door roused him instantly. It was Wray.

"Sir . . . I have to say I don't like it."

"What?" Cradock yawned as he checked the time. Two-thirty.

"At the speed
Goeben
is making, sir, she will not be at the Greek coast until late morning. We cannot bring her to battle in daylight; you said so yourself." Wray stood there like someone who expected a vice admiral to have the sun at his command. Cradock yawned again and shook his head to clear it.

"Where is she now?"

Wray moved to the table and pointed out
Gloucester
's most recent position on the chart. Cradock smoothed his beard, thinking. "It's inconvenient," he murmured.

"It's impossible," Wray said.

Cradock looked at him. Surely he could not mean what that sounded like. "Explain, Captain."

"It's what I said before, sir. She's too fast, and her guns outrange ours. She can circle outside our range, picking off the cruisers one by one before they can get a shot." Cradock frowned; was Wray seriously suggesting they abandon the attempt?

"And you propose?"

"To preserve the squadron for action in which it can have an effect," Wray said. "We cannot possibly sink the Germans . . ."

"I think you're missing something," Cradock said, smiling.

"Sir?"

"If the Germans do not appear until late morning—as it now appears—then we have time to entrap them where their greater speed will do them no good."

"But sir—she will see us if we're in the Messinian Gulf. She can stand off Sapienza far enough—in fact it would be prudent to do so. We cannot fight her there."

"That is not the only place, not with the lead we seem to have. But it will require a new plan. Signal the squadron and the destroyers: we will heave to while I decide what to do."

"Yes, sir." Wray left for the bridge; Cradock leaned over the charts.

"Is it cleverness, or some difficulty?" Cradock said, to himself. Souchon had the reputation of a bold man. He had thrust all the way to Bone and Phillipeville, and made it safely back to Messina. Clever of him to leave Messina in daylight, clever to attempt that feint to the north. If he anticipated trouble in navigation waters, it was clever of him to slow, to arrive when he had the best visibility, when he could see a waiting collier, or British warships.

He felt
Defence
shiver successively, like a horse shaking a fly from its skin, as the revolutions slowed and her speed dropped. Deliberately, he did not go on deck to see how the following cruisers obeyed the signals.
Defence
shuddered through her secondary period of vibration and steadied again.

How many hours ahead were they? If they pressed on as quickly as possible and
Goeben
did not speed up, they would be a clear eight hours ahead . . . she could not possibly spot them. What then? His fingers traced the familiar contours of the Morean coast. If
Goeben
held on the shortest course for the east, she would pass between Cythera and Elafonisi. But that provided the obvious place for a trap, and if she chose to go south of Cythera—or worse, south of Cerigotto—his ships could not catch her. He must not head his fox; he trusted that
Gloucester
's pressure would keep Souchon running a straight course.

Behind the rocky coast of the Peloponnese, the rosy fingered dawn broadened in classical design over a wine-dark sea. Westward, day's arch ran to a distant horizon unblemished by German smoke. They had passed Navarino, where almost ninety years before the British had—with grudging help from their French and Russian allies—scotched a Turkish fleet. Under the cliffs to the east, little villages hugged narrow beaches. Spears of sunlight probed between the rough summits, alive with swallows' wings.

As they cleared the point of Sapienza, the squadron came out of the shadows of the heights, and into a sea spangled with early sun. To port, the Gulf of Messenia opened, long golden beaches between rocky headlands; the old Venetian fort at Korona pushed into the water like a beached ship. Ahead, the longer finger of Cape Matapan reached even farther south. Water more green than blue planed aside from the bows; Cradock felt his heart lift to the change in the air, the light, the old magic of the Aegean reaching even this far west.

He glanced aloft at the lookout searching for the smoke of German ships. One of the destroyers had already peeled off to investigate the gulf for a German collier in concealment; another had gone ahead to investigate the Gulf of Kolokythia. Here he could have ambushed
Goeben
in the dark, but in daylight these gulfs were traps for slower ships.

"You must signal Admiral Milne," Wray said.

"And let the
Goeben
hear how close we are? I think not," Cradock said. "Admiral Milne is . . . cruising somewhere around Sicily. He will follow when he thinks it convenient, when he feels certain of events." Cradock smiled, that wry smile which had won other captains' loyalties. "We are the events. We will sink
Goeben
—or, failing that, we will turn her back toward him, and the 12-inch guns of the battle cruisers."

"But if we don't—" Wray was clearly prepared to argue the whole thing again.

"I had a hunter once," Cradock said, meditatively. He gazed at the cliffs rising out of the sea as if he had no interest in anything but his story. "A decent enough horse, plenty of scope. But—he didn't like big fences. Every time out, the same thing . . . you know the feeling, I suppose, the way a reluctant hunter backs off before a jump."

"I don't hunt," Wray said, repressively.

"Ah. I thought perhaps you didn't." Cradock smiled to himself. "Well, there was only one thing to do, you see, if I didn't want to spend all day searching for gaps and gates."

"And what was that, sir?" asked Wray, in the tone of one clearly humoring a superior.

Cradock turned and looked at him full face. "Put the spurs to him," he said. "Convince him he had more to fear from me than any fence." Wray reddened. "I thought you'd understand," Cradock said, and turned away. He hoped that would be enough.

By 0730, they were clearing Cape Matapan; Cythera lay clear on the starboard bow. Cradock peered up at the cliffs of the Mani, at the narrow white stone towers like fangs . . . still full of brigands and fleas, he supposed. Some of the brigands might even be spying for the Germans. They would do anything for gold, except, possibly, spy for the Turks.

The German ships were likely to pass Matapan fairly close, if they wanted to take the passage north of Cythera . . . plenty of places along that coast to hide his cruisers. But none of them were close enough, especially if the Germans went south. He dared not enter those gulfs, to be trapped by the longer reach of the German guns.

No. The simplest plan was the best, and he had time for it. Ahead now was the meeting of the Aegean, the white sea with its wind-whipped waters, and the deeper blue Ionian. This early on a fair summer's day, the passage went smoothly; the treacherous currents hardly affected the warships on their steady progress past Elafonisi's beaches, the fishing village of Neapolis, and the steep coast of Cythera, that the Venetians had called Cerigo.

Around the tip of Cape Malea, he found the first proof that Souchon intended to use that northern passage. Off the port bow, a smallish steamer rocked uneasily in the Aegean chop.