Angels in the Gloom

steps.

The ship seemed to be alive with movement, men running, shouting orders, manning the gun turrets. The wind was rising, sharp and startlingly cold for the end of May. The ship bucked and slithered on the long Atlantic swell. Over in the southeast there was a gray blur across the horizon. It would be dawn in half an hour.

Matthew scanned the surface of the sea for any sign of the black presence of a U-boat, but he saw nothing except the glimmer of waves as the half-light caught their backs, and the occasional paler tips of spume.

“You won’t see them,” Ragland said from beside him.

“What do we do?” Matthew asked.

“Wait,” Ragland replied. “Listen. Be ready to act.”

Minutes dragged by. There seemed to be noise everywhere, the wind on the metal of the ship, whining in cables, wires, against the housing of the bridge, the rhythmic hiss and crash of the water, and now and then footsteps of men. Matthew found his breathing was ragged; his muscles ached, and he was so cold his legs were numb below the knee.

Suddenly the order came and they changed course dramatically, swinging to the west, and a few moments later back again. The light was broadening in the sky. Then he saw it, a long silver trail in the water to the left. He knew what it was: a torpedo. It had missed them, but somewhere under that dark, heaving sea was the U-boat that had fired it.

A moment later there was another, closer this time. The U-boat commander had anticipated their turn and moved more rapidly.

The Cormorant replied with a torpedo of its own, but no one expected to see wreckage on the paling water.

They zigzagged again, avoiding more torpedoes, and discharged their own sporadically, not to waste shot. The game of hunter and hunted went on for four more hours, tense, eyes aching. The torpedoes shot past in glistening trails, many times far too close. Twice they knew the U-boat passed directly under them. The depth charges exploded with deep rumbling violence, churning up gouts of water, but still no wreckage.

If this was the U-boat sent to take back the device, why only one? Was another going to appear and take them down? Hit them where they would sink slowly enough for one man at least to leave them and board the U- boat with the prototype, presumably the man on the ship who was signaling them? He was here, wasn’t he? One of the seven other new men on this voyage?

Matthew stood in the signal house, cold, hungry, eyes aching, his muscles locked with the tension of waiting. He turned to the east and in the sunlight bright on the water saw for an instant the black conning tower of another submarine. An instant later the Cormorant’s guns blazed in a deafening roar.

Matthew was totally unprepared for the sheer noise of it. Then he was thrown off balance as the ship veered again, and he felt a violent jolt as if they had been slammed in the side of the hull. They had been struck! This was it. They would begin to sink. That ice-cold sea would suffocate them after all. At least he must make sure they did not lose the device. The Germans must never know it did not work.

He swung around to Ragland. “I’ve got to get below, to the torpedo room!” The man would go for the prototype. At least Matthew would get him before they went down. Then he was filled with white-hot rage. The whole crew would be lost, and this man was responsible for it. God knew how many women would be widowed or lose their sons and brothers. Hannah! Even thinking of that choked him so he gagged for breath. She would lose her husband and her brother in one night. How would she bear it? How did anyone?

And Joseph. He would never see Joseph again. Would he go back to the trenches, or would this imprison him in St. Giles . . . ?

Ragland’s hand was on his arm, hard enough to hurt. It was the pain of his fingers digging in that stopped him.

“It didn’t explode,” Ragland shouted at him. “They’ll deal with it. Get on with your job.”

Matthew felt the sweat break out on his body, in spite of the cold. But it was not over. This would happen again and again, until one time it really was the end. How in God’s name did they bear it?

There were shouts, commands, followed by a long raking salvo of gunfire on the starboard side toward the east, and the sea erupted in water, smoke, and flying debris. Then the Cormorant changed course again, and again. Torpedoes streaked past the sides and disappeared.

An hour later Matthew was standing in the captain’s cabin and Archie was leaning back in his chair. He looked pale and haggard from lack of sleep, but calmer than Matthew felt. How many times had he been through this?

“Was that an ambush for the prototype?” Archie asked.

“Yes, sir, I think so,” Matthew replied. The sir had come to him so naturally he only realized it afterward. Archie was no longer his brother-in-law; he was his captain. They had sunk a U-boat, killing the men on it suddenly and violently. They had looked back and seen the other U-boat combing the seas, but there were no survivors visible.

In one morning he had learned with his heart and his gut what war was. Nothing like the imagination, even the knowledge of the figures from all the battle zones of the world. This was as intimate as one’s own churning stomach, the blood and bile in the mouth, the sweat on the skin, the dark water waiting to swallow them all.

“How close are you to finding him?” Archie asked. His voice sounded far away, an intrusion into Matthew’s racing mind and its horrors.

He wanted desperately to give him a positive answer, but he knew the cost of lying, even by implication.

“There are seven new men on this voyage, apart from me,” he said. “Coleman is only seventeen, which excludes him from having the knowledge or the connections. Eversham’s just lost a brother in France and I think his grief and his anger are both real. That leaves Harper, Robertson, Philpott, MacLaverty, and Briggs.”

“It’s not Briggs,” Archie said flatly. “His parents were killed in a zeppelin raid on the east coast. I know that’s true. Knew his elder brother as well. That leaves you four. You haven’t much time.”

“I know. We have to assume that was only the first attempt, and there’ll be more.”

Archie nodded, lips thin. “Apart from that, how are you getting on?”

Matthew smiled. “I think when this is over I’ll go back to intelligence,” he replied ruefully. “And work twice as hard.” He said it lightly, but he meant it. Emotions of all sorts were banked high inside him, like a spring tide; a respect for the men who defended the sea that was gut-deep, a passion, not a thought: and the beginning of a new perception of what Joseph felt, just a shadow, a glimpse of how much there was beyond it that he would never know.

“No risks,” Archie warned. “Whoever it is, he’ll kill at the drop of a hat. Remember that. He’d have sent the whole ship down last night. The only thing stopping him from killing you is that so far he may not know who you are, any more than you know who he is. But he’ll be looking for you!”

A flutter of physical terror twisted in Matthew’s stomach. His lips were dry. “I know.”

“Don’t forget it—ever,” Archie warned.

“No, sir.”

“Right. Go back to your duty.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and left.

They steamed on northward beyond the coast of Ireland, and then east into the North Sea. Matthew moved very carefully, but he knew every hour mattered. Whoever it was would expect the sea trials of the prototype to begin, or they might suspect there was something wrong. How could the Admiralty not wish to deploy such a weapon as soon as possible?

He became so used to the movement of the ship that most of the time he barely noticed it. He still had to count the bells and work out what they meant, and think in watches: five of four hours each, and the two half- length dog watches.

He had studied the plan of the ship, but found no believable excuse to be in the engine room or the magazine. However, he knew the names and service records of every man, but the majority of them he did not recognize by sight.

Gradually he learned enough about both Philpott and MacLaverty to eliminate them, leaving only Robertson, a large gunner with a dark sense of humor and quick, intelligent eyes; and Harper, a skilled engineer in his late forties. He was lean and muscular, moving with a grace that suggested both strength and speed when necessary,