Sea of Shadows

The young officer raised his binoculars and peered out the window into the night. The seas were calm, and the moonlight coated the gently rolling wave tops with liquid silver. “Good moon tonight,” he said, in what he hoped was an authoritative voice. “Shouldn’t be very hard to spot a periscope.”

Somewhere behind him, Ian Bryce, a seasoned lieutenant and First Officer of the Watch, exhaled sharply through his nose. “I keep telling you, there aren’t going to be any periscopes. Fact of the matter is there aren’t going to be any submarines. No submarines — no periscopes. Can’t very well have one without the other, now, can we?”

Sub Lieutenant Kensington continued his binocular sweep of the waves. “I’d say Her Majesty’s Navy thinks otherwise, or else we wouldn’t be here.”

The other two crew members on the darkened bridge, the Helmsman and the Bo’sun of the Watch, performed their respective jobs in near silence. They were both enlisted men, and — in much the same fashion that butlers and chauffeurs are paid to ignore the dealings of their employers — enlisted men were trained to stay out of the private conversations of commissioned officers.

Lieutenant Bryce sighed, his breath a disembodied sound on the darkened bridge. “The Germans are many things, but they are not stupid.

They may posture and rattle their sabers, but when it comes down to it, they aren’t going to challenge the combined might of NATO. They’d have to be pretty well deranged to pull a fool stunt like that, now wouldn’t they?

Use your head. If the Admiralty really intended for us to blockade the strait against those German subs, they’d have sent more than two ships.”

His words were punctuated by the sound of him patting something in the darkness. “This old girl has got more than twenty-five years on her, and the Chatham’s getting a bit long in the tooth as well. One old destroyer and one old frigate do not a blockade make.”

Sub Lieutenant Kensington lowered his binoculars. “Then why send us out here at all?”

“We … are a symbol,” said his unseen superior. “We are a visual reminder to the Germans, and to the world, that Her Majesty’s government and her NATO allies are firmly opposed to the illegal sale of arms to Siraj.

The Germans have rattled their sabers, and now it’s time to rattle ours.

Trust me on this, lad; it’s all posturing.”

Kensington shook his head, a pointless gesture in the darkness. “The captain doesn’t seem to think so. You were at the briefing; he made it sound as if we’re going to see some action.”

Lieutenant Bryce laughed softly, that condescending chuckle that adults use when trying to explain difficult concepts to children. “Our fair captain is a wise man. Far too wise to cast doubt, however slight, upon the stated policies of his superiors. If you watch closely, you’ll notice that his orders and opinions are always a close reflection of the current official rhetoric.

He’d have to be a fool to do otherwise, and that man is no fool.”

Kensington said, “You make him sound like a mindless puppet.”

“Not at all. He’s a smart naval officer who knows that his career floats as much on politics as it does on the ocean.”

“Ah,” Kensington said. “So a smart naval officer keeps his mouth shut and does his job. How is it, then, that you are able to speak your mind so freely?”

Lieutenant Bryce laughed. “Someone has got to teach the junior officers how the world really works.” He laughed again. “We haven’t fired a shot at one of Jerry’s ships since Churchill was PM. Do you really think we’re going to start another war over a handful of submarines? This is the voice of experience talking; if there’s any fighting to be done, it will all be political.”

“That’s very well,” Kensington said, “but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll be keeping an eye out for German periscopes.”

“And so you should be,” said Bryce. “The Royal Navy needs earnest young men like you, if only to offset the cynicism of broken-down old wretches like me.”

Sub Lieutenant Kensington snorted. “Listen to you, playing the Ancient Mariner. You may be more experienced than I am, but you’re not more than five or six years older.”

“Too true,” said Bryce. “But they’ve been hard years, Young Kensington. Very hard years. You should have a go at my life — never knowing when the Exocet is going to drop in. She did it again last month, the old bitch. Showed up for tea unannounced and didn’t leave for a week.”

Kensington laughed. “Why do you call your mum-in-law the Exocet?”

“That woman is not my mum-in-law,” Bryce said. “She’s my wife’s mum. She’s not anything to me. Not as far as I’m concerned.”

“But the Exocet?”

“Because,” said Bryce with a theatrical sigh, “she’s like a ruddy cruise missile: you can see her coming, but there’s not really much you can do about it.”

Sub Lieutenant Kensington laughed again. “Right.” He raised the binoculars and resumed his search of the waves.

* * *

For all his enthusiasm, two hours later, Kensington was beginning to admit to himself that the First Watch Officer might be right. German submarines weren’t exactly leaping out of the water like trained dolphins.

And Bryce’s words, as cocky as they’d seemed at the time, did have a certain logic to them. Surely the Germans wouldn’t let things escalate to the point of military conflict. He yawned and raised the binoculars for what seemed like the hundredth time.

He was still searching for periscopes, diligently (if tiredly) when he felt a tap on his shoulder. A voice said softly, “Second Officer of the Watch, I stand ready to relieve you, sir.”

Kensington smiled in the darkness; the arrival of one’s watch relief was always an agreeable thing, but especially so after a long mid-watch. He lowered his binoculars and turned toward the sound of the voice. In the gloom, he could just make out the shape of the man waiting to assume his watch responsibilities. “Sub Lieutenant Lavelle, punctual as always. I am ready to be relieved, sir.”

Kensington turned up the brightness on the radar repeater to show Lavelle that the surface picture was empty of contacts with the exception of their escorting frigate, the HMS Chatham. He was about to crank the knob back down when he caught a tiny flash on the yellow phosphorous screen. “Hello,” he said. “What have we here?”

He spent a few seconds adjusting the controls on the faceplate of the repeater, trying to refine the tiny radar contact.

Sub Lieutenant Lavelle yawned loudly. “Probably a bit of sea return. Just finish your turnover. I’ll have a look at it later.”

“It’s not sea return,” Kensington said softly. “It’s small but consistent, and it’s tracking west-to-east. Right toward us.” He cleared his throat and spoke louder. “Lieutenant Bryce, could you come look at this? I think I’m getting a radar return from a periscope.”

“Get on with your periscopes,” Bryce said. “Turn over the watch and go to bed. Then you can dream of Jerry subs all you want.”

Kensington stared at the radar screen. He made his voice as serious as possible. “First Officer of the Watch, I am officially requesting that you evaluate this radar contact.”

“Listen to you,” said Bryce with a laugh. “Go to bed, you silly bastard! There are no submarines out there. I give you my word as a British officer.”

In a fluke of timing more suited to a situation comedy than to the bridge of a warship at sea, a short burst of static punctuated his last sentence. It was followed immediately by the voice of the ship’s Operations Room Officer, coming from an overhead speaker. “Bridge — Operations Room. The sonar boys are tracking an active contact at bearing two-nine-zero, range of about six thousand meters. They’re requesting a bearing check. My radar shows a flicker of something at that bearing and range. Request you do a visual sweep for surface contacts at that position.”

Kensington swung his binoculars to the appropriate area. “I’ve got nothing,” he said.