Knife Edge (2004)
| Knife Edge (2004) | |
| Blackwood Family [5] | |
| Reeman, Douglas | |
| (2004) | |
| Tags: | Navel/Fiction Navel/Fictionttt |
After the murder of his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Blackwood, Ross Blackwood finds himself assigned to the Far East, taking on rebels and illegal-arms dealers in Hong Kong and Malaysia. Along the way he meets another Blackwood, his cousin Steve, who has made a life for himself in the Corp, as an explosives expert. The two Blackwoods uphold the honor of their family and their chosen profession while negotiating the fallout of Britain's post-colonial politics.
"What makes Reeman's books a cut above the rest is his sensitivity to relationships . . . " --
Sunday Mercury
Douglas Edward Reeman,
who also writes under the name Alexander Kent, joined the British Navy at 16, serving on destroyers and small craft during World War II, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant. He has taught navigation to yachtsmen and has served as a script adviser for television and films. As Alexander Kent, Reeman is the author of the best-selling Richard Bolitho Novels. His books have been translated into nearly two dozen languages.
Contents
January 1970, and the final chapter in the Blackwood history appears to have closed with the murder in Cyprus of Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Blackwood, and the subsequent sale of the ancestral home. Disillusioned and grieving for his distinguished father, Lieutenant Ross Blackwood believes there is no future for him in the Corps. The Royal Marines have been reduced in strength, and their role in a modern world, after so splendid a tradition, diminished to policing and paperwork.
But Ross remains a Blackwood and a Royal Marine, and the loyalty and dedication of a Blackwood to the Corps sustain him from vicious guerilla warfare in Malaysia through the moral and political minefields of Northern Ireland, where one man’s terrorist is another’s patriot, to the South Atlantic, and a conflict as bloody as it is unpredictable.
And he learns, as every Blackwood has before him, that jungle or moor, insurrection or invasion, mere courage is not enough. Survival and victory balance on the knife edge of destiny.
Last in the Blackwood Series
Douglas Reeman joined the Navy in 1941. He did convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats.
As he says, ‘I am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring interest for the people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal and sometimes elusive triangle of man, ship and ocean, particularly under the stress of war, produces the best qualities of courage and compassion, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of conflict . . . The sea has no understanding of righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy, respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’
Apart from the many novels he has written under his own name, he has also written more than twenty historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho, under the pseudonym of Alexander Kent.
A Prayer for the Ship
High Water
Send a Gunboat
Dive in the Sun
The Hostile Shore
The Last Raider
With Blood and Iron
H.M.S. Saracen
The Deep Silence
Path of the Storm
The Pride and the Anguish
To Risks Unknown
The Greatest Enemy
Rendezvous – South Atlantic
Go In and Sink!
The Destroyers
Winged Escort
Surface with Daring
Strike from the Sea
A Ship Must Die
Torpedo Run
Badge of Glory
The First to Land
The Volunteers
The Iron Pirate
Against the Sea
(non-fiction)
In Danger’s Hour
The White Guns
Killing Ground
The Horizon
Sunset
A Dawn Like Thunder
Battlecruiser
Dust on the Sea
For Valour
Twelve Seconds to Live
The Glory Boys
Douglas Reeman
For you, Kim, with all my love.
I couldn’t have done it without you.
The author wishes to acknowledge the friendship and support of Sir James Hann, C.B.E., fellow sailor and kindred spirit.
“Guard these Colours well and remember that, whatever the problem, a Royal Marine Commando is always expected to achieve the impossible.”
H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, presenting Colours to the Commandos in Malta, 29th November 1952
LEARNING
CHAPTER ONE
“Are there any further bids, gentlemen?” The auctioneer’s gavel hovered momentarily above the table. “Thank
you
, Mr. Roberts.” It sounded loud after the sudden stillness. The end of a long two days. It was over, until the next time.
John Masterman, senior partner of the company which bore his name, closed the leather folder around his papers and a well-thumbed catalogue. He felt tired. Drained, perhaps more than usual, but would not admit it. The faded lettering on the folder said it all.
Masterman International Valuers and Auctioneers. Established 1802.
He glanced through the nearest window. It was only noon, but it looked like dusk in the dull grey light. The new year of 1970 was just three weeks old, and it felt like it, he thought. He was sixty and then some, and his junior partners, especially, often hinted that he should think about retiring. He half smiled.
And do what?
The big room was emptying. A lot of the faces he knew; some were strangers, hoping for a rare bargain, or here out of curiosity. His assistants were removing the last item, an old campaign chest from the Crimean period, while outside, lining the drive, the vans awaited instructions. Like undertakers . . . A few dealers were already collecting in little groups, taking their own bids now that the main event was over.
He touched the date on the leather folder.
1802.
Just a few weeks ago he had been at another auction in another fine old house. There had been some plates from the Horatia Service made by Chamberlains of Worcester and commissioned by Lord Nelson at that same time, three years before the little admiral had fallen at Trafalgar. They had gone under the hammer for far more than he would have dreamed possible.
He looked at the lines of tall trees, stark and leafless against the surrounding fields. Would they, like this old house, be destroyed when the new road came through?
Hawks Hill was heavy with memories, overlaid with them, like some of the paintings and furniture which had changed hands here today. Originally a fortified Tudor farmhouse, it had been bought and enlarged by old Major-General Samuel Blackwood, described as ‘the last soldier’. After him, all the other Blackwoods had entered the Corps of Royal Marines.
But like so many country houses, it had outlived its time in a modern world of austerity and recovery. During the Great War it had been used as a hospital for officers blinded in the hell of Flanders and the Somme. During the last war it had served in a similar capacity, while the estate had been worked by the Women’s Land Army and Italian prisoners of war, the only men of military age available. Twenty miles north of Portsmouth, and some seven miles from Winchester, it had remained almost isolated but for the nearby village of Alresford.
Masterman thought suddenly of Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Blackwood. He had been due to retire from the Corps; perhaps in some ways he had been coming to terms with it, if not accepting it completely. He had intended to convert the old stable block into a smaller but more practical home for the Blackwood family. Masterman
looked at the walls, the pale rectangles where so many pictures had marked the years, the triumphs and the tragedies.
Some of the vans were moving off now; cars too, probably down to the local pub.
He wondered where Joanna, the colonel’s wife, was at this moment. One last appointment, they had told Michael Blackwood. To visit two separate bases where the Royal Marines, his commandos, were carrying out peacekeeping duties, in Cyprus and in Northern Ireland. Blackwood had been in a lot of tight corners since the war, Korea, Suez, Aden, but as one marine had said, he had the touch. The lads looked to him when the going got rough.
It had happened the day he had been due to leave Cyprus and return to England. A booby-trapped car, they said later. Both he and his driver had been killed instantly.
It was a new kind of warfare. He frowned, angry with himself. It was plain murder. What must Joanna Blackwood be thinking today? They had a son, Ross, and a daughter. Ross was in the Corps, carrying on the tradition.
“I can clear up, Mr. Masterman.” It was his assistant. New and eager, waiting for him to leave.
“I’ll just hang on until . . .” He stared past the remaining handful of dealers, and his clerk, checking the invoices.
A young man was standing by one of the makeshift benches where a pile of silver frames were awaiting collection. They had been marked down to a jeweller and silversmith in Winchester, a man who often appeared at estate auctions.
Masterman said, “Sorry, but that lot’s all taken.” The young man had picked up one of the frames and was holding it. A stranger, yet somehow familiar.
I must be getting past it.
“The buyer is over there by the fireplace.
You could make him an offer.” He reached out. “You have good taste, anyway. That’s an Asprey frame, as I recall.”
But the young man held on to the frame and shook his head. “I don’t give a damn about that. It’s the photo. I wanted to . . .” He broke off, but did not resist as Masterman took the frame from his grip. Despair, anger, defiance, it was all of those.
He thought the photograph had probably been taken in this very room, by the window. The same trees were in the background, recognizable, but in leaf. The subject was in WRNS uniform, her cap with its Royal Marine Globe and Laurel badge perched on her knee.
It was like opening a door, or hearing something shouted on the wind.
“Diane Blackwood, the colonel’s sister. Lovely girl, I understand. Never married . . . died in a car accident just after the war. I believe it nearly finished her brother.”
“I know.” The eyes were watching him steadily as Masterman unfastened the frame, and removed the photograph.
“I told them to make sure these were all empty.” He hesitated. “Did you know her?” Ridiculous; he was too young. How could he have known her?
The other man said nothing. Instead, he pulled a wallet from inside his raincoat and opened it with care, taking out a photograph, which he held up, still without comment. It was worn and carefully repaired, as if some one had tried to rip it in half, but the same photo. The girl named Diane, who had never married.