‘Permission to come on the bridge!’
Marina hopped from foot to foot, willing herself not to be sick on the spot.
A man in a rough blue fisherman’s duffel coat stared out to sea. Without turning round, he took his pipe from his mouth. ‘What is it, Brown?’
‘Stowaway, Commander.’
Brown pushed Marina in front of him and on to the bridge. There was a high metal step which Marina tripped over; she only managed to stop herself from falling by grabbing the sleeve of a boy – two, maybe three years older than herself.
The boy snatched his sleeve away as if he’d been stung. She murmured an apology. And then, trying very hard to stand up straight even though the boat bobbed and rolled, she looked up into her father’s face.
9
Her father said nothing. And this was worse than if he had shouted at her. The silence was so unbearable, the sour taste coming up from her stomach was so awful, that Marina thought she would be sick again. She swayed. The boy moved away from her. She reached out and steadied herself on a shelf of rolled-up sea charts. A sandy-haired man stared out to sea as if nothing was happening.
‘I found ’er behind the lifeboat, sir,’ Brown explained. ‘And she couldn’t make no account of why she was there. Although she expected you to be pleased about it, sir.’
Commander Denham did not look pleased. He did not welcome Marina on board. ‘Jones,’ he snapped at the boy, who was staring at Marina as if she had a contagious disease. ‘Contact Room 40 at the Admiralty. Inform them I’ll need a man dispatched to take care of a stowaway.’
‘Room 40?’ Marina blurted out. Why did her father want to contact Room 40? Miss Smith had said that this was where all the clever men in naval intelligence invented codes to bamboozle the enemy, or cracked enemy codes to find out what the enemy was planning. Marina imagined them hunched over their machines, furiously replacing words with numbers, or else cracking messages as easily as dropping eggs on the pavement. What would such men do to her? Marina was just a girl, not an enemy code! Why did her father need to speak to these men? ‘Don’t tell them anything about me!’
‘What would you know about Room 40?’ Her father narrowed his eyes with suspicion.
What could Marina say? She had promised Miss Smith not to tell anyone they had met and so could hardly tell her father about their conversation.
‘Well?’
She crossed her fingers, knowing that she was lying and feeling bad about it. ‘N-nothing,’ she muttered.
Only once the boy had left the bridge did her father pull Marina towards him by the sleeve of her tunic. ‘What is the meaning of this, Marina?’
‘You know her, Commander?’ Brown whistled in surprise.
‘That’s enough, Brown,’ Commander Denham said, curtly. ‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to.’
‘Aye, sir.’ He looked down at his feet.
‘Marina? I want an explanation for why you are not at school and are instead on my boat.’
Marina stared at the toggle on her father’s duffel coat. She must not allow herself to see the horizon moving up and down, up and down. ‘I . . . I . . . I was on the way to school. Mr Mount took me and Edward to the station. I was just about to get on the Winchester train. My trunk had been put on. But then the train to Portsmouth was on the next platform. I just wanted to see you . . . One last time.’ She swallowed. Perhaps if she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t feel so sick. ‘I owe money to a very kind woman who paid for my ticket . . .’ She opened her eyes again. Surely she could say that much without breaking her promise to Miss Smith? ‘I was meant to see you on the Neptune and then meet her afterwards, but when I was put off the Neptune there was such a long time to wait before I could meet the woman again.’ Marina sniffed. ‘Everything felt so hopeless. But then I met some dogs and I heard the names of the sailors – it was Brown and Perkins, do you see? And the day sort of tilted and rocked. And then I just ran up the gangplank. I didn’t intend to be a stowaway. I really did just want to see you one last time before you left. But everything happened so quickly . . .’ She blinked back tears. ‘I’ve only eaten two biscuits and an apple all day. Apart from the crust that Ivy gave me. And that was stale. And now I’ve been sick. Oh, it was over the side of the boat, so I haven’t made a mess.’
‘Finchin?’ her father said, not taking his eyes off her.
The pleasant-looking sandy-haired man now turned to the Commander. ‘Yes, sir.’ His clipped tones marked him out as a naval officer, despite the rough fisherman’s sweater he wore. He spoke as calmly as if he were waiting to find out the time of a cricket match.
‘We’ll put my daughter off the boat at Kirkport.’
‘Kirkport, sir? In Scotland?’
‘We can’t risk a larger port. They’ll ask all sorts of questions.’
Finchin cleared his throat. ‘Permission to speak, sir.’
‘I know what you’re going to say, Finchin. That a stop at Kirkport will hold us up. But what can we do? I can hardly take my twelve-year-old daughter on this mission.’
‘With respect, sir, we are cutting it fine to get to Svengejar as it is. From there it will take another three days to get to the Sea of Murmansk—’
‘You think I don’t know where we’re going?’ Commander Denham interrupted.
‘We need to get to Pechorin Island,’ Finchin said, calmly. ‘And without wasting time stopping at any unnecessary port . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘We can’t dilly-dally if we’re to . . .’ He coughed. ‘Before . . .’
‘But I thought you
