Decoy (8 page)

‘
Mein Kampf
,’ Ned said sarcastically.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘It was published in the 1920s. In it, Hitler said exactly what he’d do with Germany. No one in our Foreign Office took it seriously, of course, so we missed a ten or fifteen year warning.’

‘But you’ve read it?’ Watts said, teasingly, then looked startled at Ned’s bitter reply.

‘Yes, sir. I read and understood it when I was fourteen years old.’

‘At Dartmouth, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. Very heavy going, but it’s all there. If you’d read that, then the Rhineland occupation in 1936, the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Poland the next year all fits in.’

‘What’s he going to do next, then?’

‘He’s done it. Now he has to consolidate what he’s started. Defeat Russia and defeat us, then he — Germany, rather — rules the world.’

‘What about America?’

‘He ignores the United States in this context. I think he’ll be content if he rules the Old World. There’s been no great objection from the New so far.’

‘But supposing the New World develops different ideas?’

Ned shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll have to wait and see, sir, but from what I hear the American Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral King, would be quite happy to leave Hitler to it, so that the US Navy can concentrate on the Pacific.’

Watts puffed his cigar, blew out the smoke in a stream towards the low ceiling and sighed. ‘Yes, but technically at least Admiral Ernest J King is on our side, though I gather those of our people who have to work with him have their doubts. Nevertheless, our concern is with the Triton cipher and that dam’ machine.’

‘I’ve no ideas, sir.’

‘Just like that, eh? No ideas?’

‘Ideas yes, but none I’d want to be ordered to carry out.’

‘Ned,’ Watts said suddenly, putting his cigar in the ashtray, ‘we’re more likely to come up with something if a few of us are sitting round batting ideas back and forth.’

Ned almost sighed with relief. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking, sir, but the security clearance business seemed a problem.’

‘It has been, but I’ve asked for clearance for Jemmy and the Croupier. The four of us should be able to come up with something.’

‘We’ll sink ASIU if we don’t.’

‘That,’ Watts said dryly, ‘was the burden of Admiral Pound’s remarks.’

‘When will you get the clearances?’

‘They promised them by noon. So go back to your room and finish
The
Times
crossword puzzle, and bring Jemmy and the Croupier here at three o’clock. A no-alcoholic-beverages lunch for the three of you, eh?’

Watts said: ‘Joan, m’dear, remove the coffee cups. I think these peasants appreciated it but we have work to do and I don’t want them to think there is any chance of a second cup. And shut the door after you: I shall be conducting the rest of the service in total secrecy.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ Joan said with just the right amount of sarcasm. ‘They’ve heard the one about the Bishop of Salisbury’s wife on a bobsleigh. Try the one about the Archbishop of Canterbury planning to assault the whorehouse.’

As soon as she had left the room Watts scratched his head. ‘Anyone know a joke about the Bishop of Salisbury? I believe he’s called Meacham? No? Dam’ funny name. Ought to be engaged to Polly Peachum, the gal in “The Beggar’s Opera”.’

He began humming as the other three men tried to get comfortable in their Ministry of Works chairs.

‘Very well, let’s hear the ideas.’ Watts started to clip off the end of another cigar, then caught Ned’s eye and said: ‘No, not black market. Friend just returned from a United States dockyard.’

The three young naval officers watched him strike a match, make sure it was burning well, and then proceed to light the cigar as though preparing it for a very rich potential father-in-law. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, sighed with satisfaction and then said, with unexpected sharpness: ‘Did I miss hearing something as I struck that match?’

Jemmy’s head jerked back in a prodigious twitch. ‘No, sir. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Ned but the Croupier and I don’t have anything.’

‘Ned?’ Watts looked questioningly. ‘Any blinding light shine on you while you were having lunch and NID were delivering the clearance for these twisted layabouts?’

‘No sir. Q-ships?’ He offered the word so carefully he felt he was pronouncing the hyphen and, seeing Watts’ expression, wished he could hide under it.

‘Q-ships? Disguised fishing vessels and merchant ships with guns hidden that wait for a U-boat to surface and capture it?’ Watts repeated unbelievingly. ‘Have you been reading some old copies of the
Boy’s Own Paper
?’

‘I’d been thinking on those lines, too, sir,’ admitted the Croupier, ‘although I was too shy to say so.’

‘Me too,’ Jemmy said, again twitching. ‘Shyness has almost ruined my career so far. I’m fighting it all the time.’

Watts removed the cigar from his mouth with a Churchillian flourish. ‘Tell Uncle what led you to Q-ships,’ he asked Ned. ‘You can be the spokesman for these other peasants.’

Ned was not fooled by the bantering tone. ‘Starting off with the basic problem, it seems the only answer,’ he said.

‘What pray, is the basic problem?’

Ned decided that Uncle had been listening to too many speeches by Mr Churchill and it had gone to his mouth.

‘First, we’ve got to get on board a U-boat to collect one of these Enigma machines and the manual. Second, we can only do that either by enlisting in the German Navy or capturing a U-boat, sir.’

‘Marvellous,’ Watts said. ‘that’s what comes of universal education, which ensures that all the peasants achieve the same abysmal level of stupidity!’

Jemmy’s twitch was punctuated by a sneeze, which provoked Watts to exclaim: ‘Don’t say you’re going to give us all colds. God, what a way to start the winter.’

‘It’s that dime store cigar smoke,
sir
,’ Jemmy said, fanning with the docket he had been holding in his lap. ‘I hope you didn’t pay customs on those cigars. They sell ’em at ten cents each in the cigar stores in the States.’

‘Damn and blast my cigar: I’m waiting for some sensible ideas from you three. You are supposed to be the bright boys, specially selected for a special unit. The brains of the ASIU.’

‘Fact is,’ Ned said gloomily, I’m more cut out to be a Naafi manager. Mars Bars for the masses: say “Please” if you want fifty Players. No Sherbert Dabs left, sergeant, and the Licorice Allsorts have gone — the colonel’s wife pre-empted the last of them. Or maybe Director of No-Coke-This-Week at the Ministry of Fuel.’

‘I’ll get you transferred to ENSA,’ Watts growled. ‘As a stand-up comic you’ll have ’em rolling off their seats — in somewhere like Aden. Anyway, let’s hear some more
Comic Cuts
stuff, Ned.’

The grin took the sting out of the remark.

‘Well, sir, I’d assumed we can’t get into some German base and steal one. Or, rather, that we might be able to organize the Resistance people into pinching one for us, but that’d defeat the exercise because then the Teds would know we’ve got our hands on one of their toys and would start winding them up differently, or something.

‘So we are back to getting our hands on a German warship and leading the Teds to think it has been sunk. Presumably it has to be a U-boat…’ He paused a moment as something seemed to be waving from the edge of his memory. He looked up at Watts.

‘Somewhere, sir, I’ve heard that the Teds get their long-range weather data not only from planes but, because of the distance involved, they have small weather reporting ships nipping in and out of the ice cap and playing hide-and-seek along the Greenland fjords. Could we…?’

Watts shook his head. ‘Good thinking Ned. Yes and no. Yes, the Teds did have a couple of weather ships hiding in the fog and ice floes, wirelessing millibars and wind directions to their Met people in
Tedeschi
land, but no we can’t go after them because they’ve already been “got”. One was scuttled but we got on board the other. This was some time ago and it yielded a Mark II Enigma without alarming the Germans that we had one. It’s the Mark III we want…’

‘Can we count that in our score?’ Jemmy enquired.

Watts took a puff and agreed.

‘Peasants one, Forces of Evil nil,’ Jemmy said.

The Croupier uncrossed his legs — a movement that, because of his height, made it look as if he was unwinding — and said in a cringing voice: ‘Speaking as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s aunt, sir, I cannot but feel you are taking a very unChristian attitude towards Q-ships.’

‘Forgive the pun, but Croupier, how full of Cantuar. What had you in mind as a Q-ship? The
Queen Elizabeth
, a Thames barge, the Gosport Ferry or a drifter?’

Ned leaned forward. ‘The type of ship depends on where we’d operate, sir. A U-boat’d be suspicious if she came across a Grimsby drifter in mid-Atlantic but might well surface to sink an old coal-burning merchant ship by gunfire to save a torpedo.’

‘A cautious skipper might use a torpedo,’ Watts said.

‘None of the Ted skippers are cautious these days, sir,’ Jemmy said. ‘They’re sinking so many of our ships they don’t have to be, and I’m sure Dönitz has a special sweepstake going at Kernével. The month’s top scorer gets a box of Tunisian dates, a bar of Hamburg rock and two yards of
Leberwurst
.’

‘So?’

‘
Zo
every skipper wants to make sure that each of his fourteen torpedoes gets a coconut, sir. Anything sunk by gunfire is a bonus. Even the best skipper is unlikely to get more than seven ships with fourteen fish, but let’s say he got fourteen. That’s obviously reckoned to be the top possible score of ships, but it could be equalled by some other sharp-eyed Teuton. But fourteen ships with fourteen fish, plus a couple more by gunfire, would be sure to win all the month’s coconuts — and an Iron Cross with swords, diamonds, and lettuce leaves from the Führer’s salad.’

‘Very well,’ Watts said carefully, ‘so what you want is something inconspicuous which is not worth a torpedo but
is
worth a few rounds from the gun, eh?’

‘And is well armed and manned by some properly-trained gunners. These Merchant Navy chaps are all right, but their enthusiasm exceeds their skill, doesn’t it, Ned?’

‘Most of the ships have DEMS gunners,’ Ned said. ‘They’re a mixture of volunteers in the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery, and Naval ratings. The men in Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships tend to have very little training and no practice, but enormous courage.’

‘I can’t see it,’ the Croupier said unexpectedly.

‘Can’t see what, blast you!’ Watts said crossly.

‘I can’t see the sequence. Or, rather, I can’t see it working.’

‘Jemmy, whisper in his ear,’ Watts said. ‘Tell him we’re all sitting close and love him: there’s no need to use a scrambler telephone.’

The Croupier grinned and apologized. ‘I was thinking aloud, sir. Let’s assume we have just the right clapped-out old coal-burner merchant ship, built in 1911. Every hour or so the bell rings and the stokers hurl into the furnace a few more shovels full of Welsh nuts — coal, not Members of Parliament — and the ancient and tall funnel suddenly emits a splendid cloud of black smoke which is visible for miles.

‘Our Teutonic Knight spots the smoke and spurs his steed into position and suddenly surfaces close to the smoker, and orders it to heave-to and not transmit. Our TK may or may not give the smoker’s men enough time to get the lifeboats away — that probably depends whether or not they’re within range of Coastal Command planes.

‘Up come the Teuton gunners, and they open fire with their 88 mm gun, which has a flat trajectory and is the weapon used in the Western Desert as an anti-tank gun against the 8th Army, and goes off with a nasty crack rather than a boom. A few cracks, down goes the ancient coal-burner, and if the TK is a keen chap he goes over to the lifeboats or rafts, if any, and takes the captain prisoner. If he’s feeling liverish his chaps will throw a few hand grenades among the survivors or use the U-boat herself to run down the boats and rafts. All done as part of the code of the Teutonic Knights —
Krieg ist Krieg
, chums.’

Watts put down his cigar and clapped his hands. ‘Oh
very
good, and what will you do as an encore? A sentimental number with Vera Lynn? You were rattling on about
sequences
. In your monologue, where you forgot to quote Masefield’s “salt-caked smokestack” (may real sailors forgive him for using the word), you seemed to get lost.’

‘Oh no, sir,’ the Croupier said, ‘I was allowing my listeners to use their imaginations. The sequence stops with the U-boat surfacing and starts again with it diving and resuming its patrol. The question is, how can any worthy sons of Albion get on board in between times? They’re rowing for their lives, catching the grenades lobbed by the Teutons, or swimming (if they’ve survived the crunch) from smashed-up boats or rafts.’

Watts took a puff from his cigar and put it down again, and said acidly: ‘Recently I had to go to a conference with some American naval officers, and noticed they prefaced several of their remarks with the phrase “Be advised”. So Croupier, be advised that I’m the boss of this Fred Karno outfit and you, Jemmy and Ned are supposed to be brilliant young officers who feed me with equally brilliant plans to which I give my approval and get all the credit. Also be advised that I don’t need three flatulent no-men bleating: “It can’t be done.” We all
know
it can’t be done. Not so long ago we all agreed that there was no way ships could be torpedoed regularly from inside a convoy. Ned went off and found out how it could be done, stopped it, collected a DSC and is now back with us and joining in the “can’t be done” liturgy.’

He inspected the ash on the end of his cigar. ‘Go away, the three of you, and sit under a beech tree in St James’s Park and think up a way. Don’t let anyone hear what you are discussing. You will report here at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Bring your own coffee, unless you want Camp.’