Gold From Crete (2 page)

He had only to raise his voice to summon the staff that a thoughtful government had provided. Three brilliant young officers, all graduates of the Naval Staff College, and the main reason for their presence on board was to advise. Crowe thought about his staff and grinned to himself. They would tell him, solemnly, the very things he had just been thinking out for himself, and, after all that, the ultimate decision would still lie with him alone. There could be no shifting of that responsibility - and Crowe suddenly realized that he did not want to shift it. Responsibility was the air he breathed. He sat making up his mind, while the
Apache
rose and fell gently on the Mediterranean swell and the propellers throbbed steadily; he still held the message in idle fingers, and looked at it with unseeing eyes. When at last he rose, he had reached his decision, and it remained only to communicate it to his staff to tell them that he intended to go into Merka Bay to fetch away some gold, and to look over the chart with them and settle the details.

That was what he did, and the flotilla gunnery officer and the signals officer and the navigating officer listened to him attentively. It was only a matter of a few minutes to decide on everything. Rowles, the navigating officer, measured off the distance on his dividers, while the others asked questions that Crowe could not answer. Crowe had not the least idea how much gold there was in Crete. Nor could he say offhand how much a million sterling in gold should weigh. Nickleby, the gunner, came to a conclusion about that, after a brief glance at his tables of specific gravities and a minute with his slide rule. ‘About ten tons, there or thereabouts,’ he announced.

‘This is troy weight, twelve ounces to the pound, you know,’ cautioned Holby, the signals officer.

‘Yes, I allowed for that,’ said Nickleby triumphantly.

‘But what about inflation?’ demanded Rowles, looking up from the map. ‘I heard you say something about an ounce being worth four pounds - you know what I mean, four sovereigns. But that’s a long time ago, when people used to buy gold. Now it’s all locked up and it’s doubled in value, pretty nearly. So a million would weigh twenty tons.’

‘Five tons, you mean, stupid,’ said Holby. That started another argument as to whether inflation would increase or diminish the weight of a million sterling.

Crowe listened to them for a moment and then left them to it. There was still a little while left before dinner, and he had to finish that letter. As the
Apache
turned her bows towards Merka Bay, Crowe took up his pen again:

... but it is most infernally hot and I suppose it will get hotter as the year grows older. I have thought about you a great deal, of course--

That damned monkey was chattering at him through the scuttle. It was bad enough to have to grind out this weekly letter to Miriam, without having monkeys to irritate one. The monkey was far more in Crowe’s thoughts than the Stukas he would be facing at any moment. The Stukas were something to which he had devoted all the consideration the situation demanded; it would do him no good to think about them further. But that monkey would not let Crowe stop thinking about him. Crowe cursed again.

--especially that dinner we had at the Berkeley, when we had to keep back behind the palms so that old Lady Crewkerne shouldn’t see us. I wonder what the poor old thing is doing now.

That was half a page, anyway, in Crowe’s large handwriting. He had only to finish the page and make some appearance of a wholehearted attempt on the second. He scribbled on steadily, half his mind on the letter and the other half divided between the monkey, the approach of dinner-time, Hammett’s attitude and the heat. He was not aware of the way in which somewhere inside him his mental digestion was still at work on the data for the approaching operation. With a sigh of relief he wrote:

Always yours,
George

and added at the foot, for the benefit of the censor:

From Captain George Crowe,
CB, DSO, RN.

The worst business of the day was over and he could dine with a clear conscience, untroubled until morning.

The dark hours that followed midnight found the
Apache
in Merka Bay. She had glided silently in and had dropped anchor unobserved by anyone, apparently, while all around her in the distance were the signs and thunder of war. Overhead in the darkness had passed droning death, not once or twice but many times, passing by on mysterious and unknown errands. Crowe, on the bridge beside Hammett, had heard the queer bumbling of German bombers, the more incisive note of fighter planes. Out on the distant horizon along the coast they had seen the great flashes of the nightmare battle that was being fought out there, sometimes the pyrotechnic sparkle of antiaircraft fire, and they had heard the murmur of the firing. Now Nickleby had slipped ashore in the dinghy to make contact with the Greeks.

‘He’s the devil of a long time, sir,’ grumbled Rowles. ‘We’ll never get away before daylight, at this rate.’

‘I never expected to,’ said Crowe soothingly. He felt immeasurably older than Rowles as he spoke, immeasurably wiser. Rowles was still young enough to have illusions, to expect everything to go off without delay or friction, something in the manner of a staff exercise on paper. If Rowles was still so incorrigibly optimistic after a year and a half of war, he could not be expected ever to improve in this respect.

‘The bombers’ll find us, though, sir,’ said Rowles. ‘Just listen to that one going over!’

‘Quite likely,’ said Crowe. He had already weighed the possible loss of the
Apache
and her company against the chances of saving the gold, and he had no intention of working through the pros and cons again.

‘Here he comes now,’ said Hammett suddenly; his quick ear had caught the splash of oars before anyone else.

Nickleby swung himself aboard and groped his way through the utter darkness to the bridge to make his report.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘The gold’s there. It’s in lorries hidden in a gully half a mile away and they’ve sent for it. The jetty here’s usable, thank God. Twelve feet of water at the end - took the soundings myself.’

‘Right,’ said Crowe. ‘Stand by to help Commander Hammett con the ship up to the jetty.’

Merka Bay is a tiny crack in the difficult southern shore of Crete. It is an exposed anchorage giving no more than fifteen feet of water, but it serves a small fleet of fishing craft in peacetime, which explains the existence of the jetty, and from the village there runs an obscure mountain track, winding its way through the mountains of the interior, over which, apparently, the lorries with the gold had been brought when the fighting in the island began to take a serious turn. Crowe blessed the forethought of the Greeks while Hammett, with infinite care in the utter blackness, edged the
Apache
up the bay to the little pier, the propellers turning ever so gently and the lead going constantly.

They caught the loom of the pier and brought the
Apache
alongside. Two seamen jumped with warps, and as they dropped clove hitches over the bollards, Crowe suddenly realized that they had not had to fumble for the bollards. The utter pitchy blackness had changed into something substantially less; when he looked up, the stars were not so vividly distinct. It was the first faint beginning of dawn.

There was a chattering group on the pierhead - four women and a couple of soldiers in ragged khaki uniforms. They exchanged voluble conversation with the interpreter on the main deck.

‘The gold’s coming, sir,’ reported that individual to Crowe.

‘How much of it?’

‘Forty-two tons, they say, sir.’

‘Metric tons, that’ll be,’ said Holby to Nickleby. ‘How much d’you make that to be?’

‘Metric tons are as near as dammit to our ton,’ said Nickleby irritably.

‘The difference in terms of gold ought to amount to something, though,’ persisted Holby, drawing Nickleby deftly with the ease of long practice. ‘Let’s have a rough estimate, anyway.’

‘Millions and millions,’ said Nickleby crossly. ‘Ten million pounds - twenty million pounds - thirty million - don’t ask me.’

‘The knight of the slide rule doesn’t bother himself about trifles like an odd ten million pounds,’ said Holby.

‘Shut up!’ broke in Rowles. ‘Here it comes.’

In the grey dawn they could see a long procession of shabby old trucks bumping and lurching over the stony lane down to the jetty. All except one halted at the far end; the first one came creeping towards them along the pier.

An elderly officer scrambled down from the cab and saluted in the direction of the bridge.

‘We got the bar gold in the first eight trucks, sir,’ he called in the accent of Chicago. ‘Coins in the other ones.’

‘He sounds just like an American,’ said Rowles.

‘Returned immigrant, probably,’ said Holby. ‘Lots of ‘em here. Made their little pile and retired to their native island to live like dukes on twopence a week, until this schemozzle started.’

‘Poor devils,’ said Rowles.

Sub-lieutenant Lord Edward Mortimer was supervising a working party engaged in bringing the gold on board the
Apache
.

‘Where do you propose to put the stuff?’ said Crowe to Hammett.

‘It’s heavy enough, God knows,’ was the reply. ‘It’s got to be low and in the centre line. Do you mind if I put it in your day cabin?’

‘Not at all. I think that’s the best place at the moment.’

Certainly it was heavy; gold is about ten times as heavy as the same bulk of coal.

The seamen who were receiving the naked bars from the Greeks in the lorry were deceived by their smallness, and more than once let them drop as the weight came upon them. A couple of the bars, each a mere foot long and three inches wide and high, made a load a man could only just stagger under. It gave the hurrying seamen a ludicrous appearance, as if they were soldiering on the job, to see them labouring with so much difficulty under such absurdly small loads. The men were grinning and excited at carrying these enormous fortunes.

‘Hardly decent to see that gold all naked,’ said Rowles.

‘Don’t see any sign of receipts or bookkeeping,’ said Nickleby. ‘Old Scroggs’ll break a blood vessel.’

‘No time for that,’ said Holby, glancing up to the sky. The action recalled to them all the danger in which they lay; each of them wondered how long it would be before the Stukas found them out

The first lorry was unloaded by now, and driven away, its place being taken by the second. An unending stream of gold bars was being carried into the
Apache
. The second lorry was replaced by the third, and the third by the fourth. And then they heard the sound of dread - the high incisive note of a fighting plane. It came from the direction of the sea, but it was not a British plane. Swiftly it came, with the monstrous unnatural speed of its kind, not more than five hundred feet above the water. They could see plainly enough the swastika marking on the tail and the crosses on the wings.

‘Open fire,’ said Hammett into the voice tube.

Crowe was glad to see that there was no trace of hurry or excitement in his voice.

All through the night the gun crews had been ready for instant action. The long noses of the 4-7s rose with their usual appearance of uncanny intelligence under the direction of Garland at the central control. Then they bellowed out, and along with their bellowing came the raving clamour of the pom-poms and the heavy machine guns. The plane swerved and circled. The -50-calibre gun under the end of the bridge beside Crowe followed it round, its din deafening Crowe. He looked down and noticed the grim concentration on the face of the red-haired seaman at the handles.

But that plane was moving at three hundred and more miles an hour; it had come and gone in the same breath, apparently unhit. It seemed to skim the steep hills that fringed the bay and vanished beyond them.

‘It’s calling the bombers this very minutes,’ said Holby, savagely glaring after it. ‘How much longer have we got to stay here?’

Crowe heard the remark; naval thought had not changed in this respect at least, that the first idea of a naval officer should be now, as it had been in Nelson’s day, to get his precious ship away from the dangerous and inhospitable shore and out to sea, where he could find freedom of manoeuvre, whether it was battle or storm that threatened him.

‘That’s the last of the bars, sir,’ called the English-speaking Greek officer. ‘Here’s the coin acoming.’

Coins in sacks, coins in leather bags, coins in wooden boxes - sovereigns, louis d’or, double eagles, napoleons, Turkish pounds, twenty-mark pieces, dinars - the gold of every country in the world, drained out of every country in the Balkans, got away by a miracle before the fall of Athens and now being got out of Crete. The bags and sacks were just as deceptively heavy as the bars had been, and the naval ratings grinned and joked as they heaved them into the ship.

The first lorry full of coin had been emptied, and the second was driving onto the jetty when the first bombers arrived. They came from inland, over the hills, and were almost upon the ship, in consequence, before they were sighted. The guns blazed out furiously while each silver shape in turn swept into position, like the figures in some three-dimensional country dance, and then put down their noses and came racing down the air, engines screaming. Crowe had been through this before, and he did not like it. It called for nerve to stand and look death in the eye as it came tearing down at him. He had seen men dive for shelter, instinctively and futilely, behind the compass or even the canvas dodger, and he did not blame them in the least. He would do the same himself if he were not so determined that the mind of George Crowe should be as well exercised as his body. To watch like this called for as much effort as to put in a strong finish after a twenty-mile run, and he leaned back against the rail and kept his eyes on the swooping death.

At the last possible second the hurtling plane levelled off and let go its bomb. Crowe saw the ugly black blob detach itself from the silver fabric at the same second as the note of the plane’s engine changed from a scream to a snarl. The bomb fell and burst in the shallows a few yards from the
Apache
’s bows and an equal distance from the pier. A colossal geyser of black mud followed along with the terrific roar of the explosion. Mud and water rained down on the
Apache
, drenching everyone on deck, while the little ship leaped frantically in the wave. Crowe heard and felt the forward warp that held her to the jetty snap with the jerk. He could never be quite sure afterwards whether he had seen, or merely imagined, the sea bottom revealed in a wide ring where the force of the explosion swept the water momentarily away. But he certainly noted, as a matter of importance, that bombs dropped in shallows of a few feet did not have nearly the damaging effect of a near miss in deeper water.