I tell you, Bo’sun, this could be a serious matter. Her being my nurse, I mean. Wartime. International complications, you know.’
‘I don’t know and I don’t see it. You’re both just doing your job. Anyway, she’s coming up to see you shortly.’
‘Coming to see me? That ruthless Nazi killer?’
‘Maybe she’s had a change of heart.’
‘Under duress, of course.’
‘It’s her idea and she insists on it.’
‘It’ll be a hypodermic syringe. Lethal dose of morphine or some such. To get back to our six walking unwounded. Widens the field a bit, doesn’t it? A suborned malingerer or ditto TB patient. How do you like it?’
‘I don’t like it at all. How many suborned men, spies, saboteurs, do you think we’ve picked up among the survivors from the Argos? Another daft thought, I know, but as you’ve more or less said yourself, we’re looking for daft answers to daft questions. And speaking of daft questions, here’s another one. How do we know the Argos really was mined? We know that tankers are extremely tough, heavily compartmented and that this one was returning with empty tanks. Tankers don’t die easily and even laden tankers have been torpedoed and survived. We don’t even know the Argos was mined. How do we know it wasn’t sabotaged so as to provide the opportunity to introduce a saboteur or saboteurs aboard the San Andreas? How do you like that?’
‘Like yourself, I don’t like it at all. But you’re not seriously suggesting that Captain Andropolous would deliberately –’
‘I’m not suggesting anything about Captain Andropolous. For all I know, he may be as double-dyed a villain as is sailing the seas these days. Although I’m willing to consider almost any crazy solution to our questions, I can’t go along with the idea that any captain would sacrifice his ship for any imaginable purpose. But a person or persons to whom the Argos meant nothing might quite happily do just that. It would be interesting to know whether Andropolous had taken on any extra crew members in Murmansk, such as fellow nationals who had survived a previous sinking. Unfortunately, Andropolous and his crew speak nothing but Greek and nobody else aboard speaks Greek.’
‘I speak a little Greek, very little, schoolboy stuff – English public schools are high on Greek – and I’ve forgotten most of that. Not that I can see that it would do much good anyway even if we were to find out that a person or x number of persons joined the Argos at Murmansk. They would only assume expressions of injured innocence, say they don’t know what we are talking about and what could we do then?’ Ulbricht was silent for almost a minute, then suddenly said: ‘The Russian shipwrights.’
‘What Russian shipwrights?’
‘The ones that fixed the damage to the hull of your ship and finished off your sick-bay. But especially the hull repairers.’
‘What about them?’
‘Moment.’ Ulbricht thought some more. ‘I don’t know just how many niggers in the woodpile there may be aboard the San Andreas, but I’m all at once certain that the original one was a member of your own crew.’
‘How on earth do you figure that out? Not, mind you, that anything would surprise me.’
‘You sustained this hull damage to the San Andreas while you were alongside the sinking corvette, before you sunk her by gunfire. That is correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘I told you. We don’t know. No torpedoes, no mines, nothing of that nature. A destroyer was along one side of the corvette, taking off her crew, while we were on the other taking off the survivors of the sunken Russian submarine. There was a series of explosions inside the corvette before we could get clear. One was a boiler going off, the others could have been gun-cotton, two-pounders, anything – there was some sort of fire inside. It was at that time that the damage must have happened.’
‘I suggest it didn’t happen that way at all. I suggest, instead, that it was then that a trusty member of your crew detonated a charge in the port ballast room. I suggest that it was someone who knew precisely how much explosive to use to ensure that it didn’t sink the ship but enough to inflict sufficiently serious damage for it to have to make for the nearest port where repair facilities were available, which, in this case, was Murmansk.’
‘It makes sense. It could have happened that way. But I’m not convinced.’
‘In Murmansk, did anyone see the size or type of hole that had been blown in the hull?’
‘No.’
‘Did anyone try to see?’
‘Yes. Mr Kennet and I.’
‘But surprise, surprise, you didn’t. You didn’t because you weren’t allowed to see it.’
‘That’s how it was. How did you know?’
‘They had tarpaulins rigged all around and above the area under repair?’
‘They had.’ McKinnon was beginning to look rather thoughtful.
‘Did they give any reasons?’
‘To keep out the wind and snow.’
‘Was there much in the way of those?’
‘Very little.’
‘Did you ask to get behind the tarpaulins, see behind them?’
‘We did. They wouldn’t let us. Said it was too dangerous and would only hold up the work of the shipwrights. We didn’t argue because we didn’t think it was all that important. There was no reason why we should have thought so. If you know the Russians at all you must know how mulish they can be about the most ridiculous things. Besides, they were doing us a favour and there was no reason why we should have been suspicious. All right, all right, Lieutenant, there’s no reason to beat me over the head with a two-by-four. You don’t have to be an engineer or a metallurgist to recognize a hole that has been blown from the inside out.’
‘And does it now strike you as strange that the second damage to the hull should have occurred in precisely the same ballast compartment?’
‘Not now it doesn’t. Our gallant – ours, not yours – our gallant allies almost certainly left the charge in the ballast room with a suitable length of fuse conveniently attached. You have the right of it, Lieutenant.’
‘So all we have to do now is to find some member of your crew with a working knowledge of explosives. You know of any such, Mr McKinnon?’
‘Yes.’
‘What!’ Ulbricht propped himself up on an elbow. ‘Who?’
McKinnon raised his eyes to the deckhead. ‘Me.’
‘That’s a help.’ Ulbricht lowered himself to his bunk again. ‘That’s a great help.’
