Night was falling fast as Jago and Petty Officer Jansen went up the hill to St Mungo’s. They found the burial party in the cemetery at the back of the church. There were twenty or so islanders there, men and women, Jean Sinclair and Reeve standing together, the admiral in full uniform. Murdoch Macleod in his best blue serge suit, stood at the head of the open grave, a prayer book in his hands.
The two Americans paused some little distance away and removed their caps. It was very quiet except for the incessant calling of the birds, and Jago looked down across Mary’s Town to the horseshoe of the harbour where the MGB was tied up at the jetty.
The sun was setting in a sky the colour of brass, splashed with scarlet, thin mackerel clouds high above. Beyond Barra Head, the islands marched north to Barra, Mingulay, Pabbay, Sandray, rearing out of a perfectly calm sea, black against flame.
Reeve glanced over his shoulder, murmured something to Jean Sinclair, then moved towards them through the gravestones. ‘Thanks for coming so promptly, Lieutenant.’
‘No trouble, sir. We were on our way to Mallaig from Stornoway when they relayed your message.’ Jago nodded towards the grave into which half-a-dozen fishermen were lowering the coffin. ‘Another one from U-743?’
Reeve nodded. ‘That makes eight in the past three days.’ He hesitated. ‘When you were last here you said you were going to London on leave this week.’
‘That’s right, Admiral. If I can get to Mallaig on time I intend to catch the night train for Glasgow. Is there something I can do for you, sir?’
‘There certainly is.’ Reeve took a couple of envelopes from his pocket. ‘This first one is for my niece. Her apartment’s in Westminster, not far from the Houses of Parliament.’
‘And the other, sir?’
Reeve handed it over. ‘If you would see that gets to SHAEF Headquarters personally. It would save time.’
Jago looked at the address on the envelope and swallowed hard. ‘My God!’
Reeve smiled. ‘See that it’s handed to one of his aides personally. No one else.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’d better move out, then. I’ll expect to hear from you as soon as you get back. As I told you, I have a radio at the cottage, one of the few courtesies the Navy still extends me. They’ll brief you at Mallaig on the times during the day I sit at the damned thing hoping someone will take notice.’
Jago saluted, nodded to Jansen and then moved away. As the admiral rejoined the funeral party, Murdoch Macleod started to read aloud in a firm, clear voice: ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower …’
Suddenly it was very dark, with only the burned-out fire of day on the horizon as they went out through the lych-gate.
Jansen said, ‘Who’s the letter for, Lieutenant?’
‘General Eisenhower,’ Jago said simply.
In Brest, they were shooting again across the river as Paul Gericke turned the corner, the rattle of small-arms fire drifting across the water. Somewhere on the far horizon rockets arched through the night and in spite of the heavy rain, considerable portions of the city appeared to be on fire. Most of the warehouses which had once lined the street had been demolished by bombing, the pavement was littered with rubble and broken glass, but the small hotel on the corner, which served as naval headquarters, still seemed to be intact. Gericke ran up the steps quickly, showed his pass to the sentry on the door and went inside.
He was a small man, no more than five feet five or six, with fair hair and a pale face that seemed untouched by wind and weather. His eyes were very dark, with no light in them at all, contrasting strangely with the good-humoured, rather lazy smile that seemed permanently to touch his mouth.
His white-topped naval cap had seen much service and he was hardly a prepossessing figure in his old leather jerkin, leather trousers and sea boots. But the young lieutenant sitting at his desk in the foyer saw only the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves at the throat and was on his feet in an instant.
‘I was asked to report to the commodore of submarines as soon as I arrived,’ Gericke told him. ‘Korvettenkapitän Gericke. U-235.’
‘He’s expecting you, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If you’d follow me.’
They went up the curving staircase. A petty officer, a pistol at his belt, stood guard outside one of the hotel bedrooms. The handwritten notice on the door said Kapitän zur See Otto Friemel, Führer der Unterseeboote West.
The lieutenant knocked and went in. ‘Lieutenant-Commander Gericke, sir.’
The room was in half darkness, the only light the reading lamp on Friemel’s desk. He was in shirt-sleeves, working his way through a pile of correspondence, steel-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and an ivory cigarette-holder jutting from the left corner of his mouth.
He came round the desk smiling, hand outstretched. ‘My dear Paul. Good to see you. How was the West Indies?’
‘A long haul,’ Gericke said. ‘Especially when it was time to come home.’
Friemel produced a bottle of Schnapps and two glasses. ‘We’re out of champagne. Not like the old days.’
‘What, no flowers on the dock?’ Gericke said. ‘Don’t tell me we’re losing the war?’
‘My dear Paul, in Brest we don’t even have a dock any longer. If you’d arrived in daylight you’d have noticed the rather unhappy state of those impregnable U-boat pens of ours. Five metres of reinforced concrete pulverised by a little item the RAF call the Earthquake bomb.’ He raised his glass. ‘To you, Paul. A successful trip, I hear?’
‘Not bad,’
‘Come now. A Canadian corvette, a tanker and three merchant ships? Thirty-one thousand tons, and you call that not bad? I’d term it a rather large miracle. These days two out of three U-boats that go out never return.’ He shook his head. ‘It isn’t nineteen-forty any longer. No more Happy Time. These days they send out half-trained boys. You’re one of the few oldtimers left.’
Gericke helped himself to a cigarette from a box on the table. It was French and of the cheapest variety, for when he lit it and inhaled, the smoke bit at the back of his throat, sending him into a paroxysm of coughing.
‘My God! Now I know things are bad.’
‘You’ve no idea how bad,’ Friemel told him. ‘Brest has been besieged by the American Eighth Army Corps since the ninth of August. The only reason we’re still here is because of the quite incredible defence put up by General Ramcke and the Second Airborne Division. Those paratroopers of his are without a doubt the finest fighting men I’ve ever seen in action, and that includes the Waffen SS.’ He reached for the Schnapps bottle again. ‘Of course they were pulled out of the Ukraine to come here. It could be they are still euphoric at such good fortune. An American prison camp, after all, is infinitely to be preferred to the Russian variety.’
‘And what’s the U-boat position?’
‘There isn’t one. The Ninth Flotilla is no more. U-256 was the last to leave. That was eleven days ago. Orders are to regroup in Bergen.’
‘Then what about me?’ Gericke asked. ‘I could have made for Norway by way of the Irish Sea and the North Channel.’
‘Your