lightbulbs.
When he came above into the air, he found the deck itself was wood, but there was still the steel of gun turrets, and the mass of the bridge and signal house above, the only place from which almost everything could be seen.
He felt the thrum of engines and the surge of power. They were already under way; the safe, familiar outline of Portsmouth harbor was slipping astern. Soon there would be nothing around them but the gray water, and whoever else was on it, or under its concealing surface.
He thrust the thought from his mind and clambered up to the signal house to report for duty, not to Archie, but to the chief signals officer.
Ragland was a quiet man of about thirty-five, with a plain, intelligent face and sandy red hair. But when he spoke there was a sincerity in his voice and an authority of manner that earned almost instant respect. There was no dissembling in him and no bravado. He made it known he required the same of others.
He did not betray by any flicker of expression that he knew Matthew was any different from the ordinary replacement: raw, uncertain of himself, but adequately trained.
“Matthews? Settled in?”
Matthew stood to attention. He had no seniority here, he was a new recruit, given rank only because of his knowledge of signals. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. My name is Ragland. You’ll report to me. I don’t know what you did ashore, but here obedience is exact and immediate, or you’ll end up at best in the brig, at worst at the bottom of the sea. There is no room for hesitation, individual will, or taste, and certainly not for any man who doesn’t fit in. We rely on each other, and a man who can’t be trusted is worse than useless, he’s a danger to the rest of us. Understood, Matthews?”
“Yes, sir.” He thought bitterly of how companionable that sounded, that perfect fellowship, the sort of thing people described in the trenches, and it did not apply to him at all. He could trust no one, except Archie, and Archie was remote from him in the hierarchy. He was more alone than he had ever been in his life. He knew the rudiments of his job, little more. He did not know the sea. To none of the men he would see day by day could he tell anything of the truth, nor dare he trust them. Somewhere on this ship there was a German agent who would think nothing of killing him if he blocked his path to the prototype. It was Matthew’s job to find him, before he found Matthew.
He had to do his job in signals without relying on anyone else. He could confide in no one and at all times must guard his tongue, the way he responded to anything, even the silent betrayal by his ignorance of duties, perhaps most of all the physical fear he had never had to face before.
“Then you had better familiarize yourself with your station, and the ship in general, and get about it,” Ragland told him. “You can start now.”
Matthew spent the rest of the day doing exactly as he was told, and trying to look as if it were natural to him. By the end of the evening he was becoming more used to the smells of salt, oil, and smoke, the sound of ship’s bells, and on deck the constant hiss and whine of wind and water. He was glad that at least the movement of the sea was something he was acquainted with.
Below he had eaten in the officer’s mess, listening a great deal more than talking. The food was good enough, but they were newly provisioned and he expected it to get worse. At least there was enough of it, and they were not under fire. He was a lot better off than Joseph had been most of the time.
He wondered about Joseph, aware that his conscience had driven him to go to Flanders in the first place, and perhaps it was all that made him consider returning now. His physical injuries were healing, but the wound to his mind and his emotions appeared to be deeper. Something in him had changed, and here in this close, crowded room with other men who also faced the enemy every day, and the possibility of mutilation or death, Matthew found that the change grieved him. Joseph was not a soldier in fact, but he was in spirit. He was as much part of the regiment and of its battle to survive and win as any other man.
Matthew ate silently, answering only if he was spoken to, and he watched the others. He had no idea if the man here to steal the prototype was an officer or a seaman. He must learn everything he could of each man, because his life might depend on seeing the tiniest element that did not fit in. He may not be given more than one chance before it was too late.
The crew was complete without him. They had a bond he would never be part of. They were not unkind, but they knew his inexperience and mistrusted it. He would have to earn his place. The jokes passed over his head. He did not understand the teasing, the laughter, the references to one man’s boots, another’s compulsive tidiness, a third’s lapse of memory. They were based on terror and violence shared and endured together, tolerance of moments of weakness easily understood, the loss of friends, and above all, the knowledge of horror yet to come, and that they might not survive it. They knew each other’s values, and that tomorrow or the next day their own survival might hang on that courage and willingness to sacrifice even life for the good of the many.
Matthew slept badly, aware all night of the shifting and turning of the ship, the sound of footsteps along the narrow passage on the other side of the door, and of course every half hour the ship’s bell ringing the time. About three in the morning he heard running, and a brief burst of gunfire, but there was no alarm. He lay rigid in his bed, gulping air.
With jarring reality he became aware of physical war, shells tearing apart the metal of the ship, men injured. He was not afraid of pain; he never had been. But since the murder of his parents, violent death horrified him in a new way. The reality of it reached inside him and touched his innermost being. Now the knowledge that he was on a warship that might become involved in the slaughter and injury of battle made him nauseated and a little cold. But at least it would not be personal, face to face, as it was for Joseph. He might see the injured or the dead, but they would be people he barely knew, and above all, he would not have to inflict injury himself. The enemy would be distant, a ship, not men. Except, of course, for the one man on the ship that he had come here in order to find.
It was more than an hour before he went to sleep again. His rest was uneasy and full of violent dreams.
The next two days were difficult and exhausting. It took all his concentration simply to learn his job and he was embarrassed at the mistakes he made. Ragland was patient with him, but he made no allowances. He could not afford to. At home in St. Giles, Archie was a friend. They had known each other for over fifteen years, but mostly at family occasions, bound by a love for Hannah, taken much for granted. Here on the ship his word was law, his decisions governed the life of every man on board—and very possibly the death also.
On the one occasion Matthew passed him in the narrow passage up toward the signals room, he remembered to salute only just in time, and received a brief acknowledgment in reply, an instant meeting of the eyes. Then Archie was past him and on the steps up to the bridge, and the isolation of command.
It was a strange, artificial situation, and yet unbreakable. Here the sea and the enemy were the only realities. Friendship and duty were the core of survival, but neither must ever trespass upon the other. In his own way, Archie was every bit as alone as Matthew could ever be, and with a burden of trust enough to break the mind, if you allowed yourself to think about it. Better not to. Just act, each moment for itself. Do your best.
At the end of the third day, Matthew lay on his bunk staring up at the ceiling and realized he ached in every muscle and his head throbbed from the tension of concentrating on getting each decision right, and drawing no attention to himself. He hadn’t had any chance at all to try to find the man sent here to steal the prototype.
Presumably they would be ambushed by a U-boat. There would be no point in torpedoing them. The last place the Germans wanted the prototype was on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Time was short. What would he do, in their place? Have a U-boat shadowing them, stalking, and keep in touch with them somehow. Radio signals. A sharp burst, too quick for anyone on the
Whoever was on the
But he did not get the chance. He woke in the dark to the urgent sound of alarms. All hands on deck. He scrambled into his jacket and boots and, heart pounding, he made his way up to the bridge, feet slipping on the
