The Baltic Run Read online

  A thick red fog threatened to overcome him, as aft the engines started to cough and black smoke filled the air. The craft’s speed began to diminish at once. Grimly Smith held onto the throttle with his one good hand. Next to him CPO Clarke lay on the shattered deck coughing blood and dying. Somewhere else a rating, lying entangled in the fallen wireless mast moaned piteously, ‘Please God help me… I can’t see a thing! Please God, help me…’ But no one came to aid him, for they were all either dead or grievously wounded…

  Thus it was that anxious lookouts on the HMS Vindictive first spotted him, a seriously wounded man hunched over the wheel of a sinking Thorneycroft, surrounded by dead and dying ratings. As one of them breathed, ‘Gawd Almighty, that young snotty’s dying on his frigging plates o’ meat!’…

  * * *

  Two months later Lt de Vere Smith was ‘The Secret VC’, as the London Daily Mail had christened him, and half the news hounds in Fleet Street were looking for him and his story. But their Lordships were keeping Smith well hidden. They knew quite well that London was full of Red agents and sympathisers, who would dearly love to take their revenge on the man who had won the Victoria Cross helping to sink the Red Fleet.

  So it was that the still convalescent Smith was concealed in Hasler Hospital, Portsmouth, surrounded by men still recovering from their war wounds, just another sick man in blue military pyjamas. That was until that enterprising young lady reporter, all prim and proper in her borrowed or hired VAD uniform, had turned up in his hospital room and, after making a poor attempt to take his temperature, begun to ask very leading questions about how he had won ‘your beautiful medal’.

  She had been too pretty for him to have been suspicious: a nice bust, delightful green eyes and a fetching cupid-bow smile. He had answered that he was bound by the Official Secrets Act not to say anything about his ‘beautiful medal’, whereupon she had remarked, with seeming innocence: ‘I believe you are the fourth son of the Earl of Beverley, Lieutenant?’

  He nodded and she had continued, ‘Well, how do you call yourself? An Honourable? Or a hyphenated de Vere-Smyth?’ She had spelled it out for him.

  He had laughed and replied with a smile. ‘Pater hasn’t got a bean. Reggie, my eldest brother, will inherit the title and I must live off my naval pay. No, miss, I am just common Smith, as in Smith’s Ales.’

  Again there had been a minor sensation in Fleet Street when the Daily Sketch, from which the bogus VAD nurse worked, broke the story. Suddenly, Smith had been transformed from the ‘Secret VC’ into ‘Common Smith, VC’. The name caught on at once. Ivor Novello swiftly inserted a little song about ‘I’m only Common Smith’ in one of his shows running at the Gaiety Theatre, vaudeville comedians used it in jokes and naval sketches, and some fool in Parliament immediately petitioned the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, for an immediate knighthood for this ‘jolly fine decent chap with no airs and graces’.

  But the ‘Welsh Wizard’, who was very busy at the time selling off knighthoods at fifteen hundred pounds a time wholesale, declined. Wisely. For their Lordships at the Admiralty were furious with the leak. Hastily Smith was dispatched by the night flier from King’s Cross to remotest Yorkshire and disappeared from public view…

  ‘Probably for ever,’ Smith said to himself in the manner of lonely men, as he slogged on through the driving rain. ‘Devil’s Island in Yorkshire,’ he murmured. ‘What a damned shame—’ He stopped suddenly.

  Someone was coming towards him through the fog. He cocked his head to one side, the past suddenly forgotten. He could hear the swish of cycle tyres over the wet tarmacadam. It was accompanied by an odd rhythmic regular creaking.

  Smith’s heart leapt. It was ‘Postie’, Withernsea’s only postman, who had lost his foot with the West Yorkshires in France and who had been given a badly fitting wooden one to replace it. Instinctively he knew Postie was looking for him. Why else would he be cycling around the village at this time of the afternoon?

  Suddenly the ancient red bike and Postie loomed out of the gloom, flushing up white spray. ‘Sir… sir!’ Postie gasped in that broad honest East Yorkshire accent of his. ‘I’m reet glad I found yer.’

  ‘What is it, Postie?’

  He braked to a stop, took off his leather cap and reached in the pouch slung about his chest. ‘Telly, sir,’ he announced proudly. ‘From Lundon.’ He proffered his pad and Smith signed it before he was handed the buff-coloured telegram.

  Smith edged closer to the hissing yellow gas lantern, the rain forgotten now. With fingers that were trembling slightly for reasons he couldn’t understand, he opened it while Postie, standing to attention as if he were back on parade with the 9th West Yorks, waited attentively.

  The message was brutally short and straight to the point. It read ‘Most urgent. Attend me. Queen Anne’s Gate. ASAP.’ It was signed by a single letter ‘C’.

  Smith’s heart leapt wildly. There was going to be a show, he knew with one hundred percent certainty. He was being called back at last.

  Postie broke into his joyous reverie in that blunt East Yorkshire fashion of his. ‘I didn’t understand that last bit, sir, yon “ASAP”,’ he said, pulling out his message form and official lead pencil.

  ‘As soon as possible, Postie, you nosey old bugger,’ Smith said happily. ‘And that’s what you can send back, “ASAP, signed Smith”. Now here’s a tanner for you and a bob for the telegram. And off you go on that metal steed. At the double!’

  ‘At the double it is, sir,’ Postie replied happily. With the change out of the bob and with the tanner, he’d be able to buy himself a couple of pints of ale in the snug that night. Smith watched him mount his bike and speed off into the fog, then he, too, started to run. There were things to be done swiftly. He’d catch the first express for London out of Hull station in the morning. Things were happening at last. He was going back to war…

  Two

  King’s Cross station buzzed with activity, as Smith, wrapped in his old warmth with the traditional naval silk muffler tucked in around the neck, followed the ancient creaking LNER porter towards the taxi rank. There were crowds of young matelots, waiting for trains going north to Scotland, lugging great white kitbags, fags in the sides of their mouths and their caps shoved to the back of their heads in a most irregular fashion. Beggars, war cripples for the most part, lounged against the pillars, wreathed in the steam from the engines, wearing their campaign medals and rattling tin cups to attract attention. Of course, there were whores everywhere – there always were since the war – raddled old tarts for the most part, with smiles on their be-rouged faces but with hard calculating eyes. Police, both military and civilian, were everywhere, patrolling in pairs.

  Smith was not surprised. The capital seemed to be in chaos, with the headlines on the newspaper placards most alarmist.

  ‘Another battalion mutinies in France… agitators paralyse docks… Soviets invade Poland… Commons cancel trade talks… Bitter fighting in Turkey… Another putsch in Germany.’ He grinned that young, handsome, carefree grin of his. He told himself that there seemed enough trouble and fighting around to keep him busy till he was an old man. Or dead! a sombre little voice at the back of his mind rapped.

  But Smith ignored the sombre little voice; like most young men, he knew that human beings had to die in battle. But for him, it was always someone else; he’d live for ever.

  It was sleeting outside and there was a long queue forming for the line of ancient taxi-cabs, mostly of pre-war vintage, with their elderly drivers muffled up to their eyes in their open cabs, and wearing goggles against the driving sleet. The porter put down his bag and took off his cap respectfully. Smith thanked him and gave him a threepenny bit instead of the usual penny. ‘Ta very much, guv,’ the porter said gratefully. Since the war, people hadn’t been over generous with their tips.

  Impatiently Smith, huddled in his coat, edged his way forwards with the rest, idly watching a little troupe of wounded veterans, most of them crippled, shuffling along the
gutter, playing their tin whistles and mouth organs and begging. One of them, wearing dark glasses to indicate that he was blind, bore a crude placard stating, ‘Four campaigns, three medals, two wounds, but not one job’. Smith nodded sympathetically and told himself that a lot of demobbed men were finding it damnably hard to get a job, especially if they were cripples. He dropped a penny into the blind man’s cup, as the man next to him, who affected a monocle and the heavy upswept moustache of a pre-war regular cavalry officer, did the same, saying in clipped military fashion. ‘Damned shame. Government ought to do more for them. Home fit for heroes and all that sort of thing. There’ll be a revolution soon if they don’t. Guards have already mutinied in France y’know.’

  Smith did not respond. He was nearly at the head of the queue and another ancient taxi was coming up out of the sleet, its brass headlights barely visible. ‘Cabbie,’ he called, clicking his fingers. ‘Queen Anne’s Gate, please.’

  At his side the man with the monocle said, ‘I say, old chap, would you mind awfully if I asked to share the cab with you? I’m going that direction myself. The weather’s getting filthier by the second and I can’t see another cab anywhere. Share the expense, of course.’

  ‘Righto, jump in,’ Smith said, eager to be off. ‘I don’t mind sharing. Did it all the time during the war.’

  ‘Of course we did,’ the other man agreed. ‘Were you in France?’ he asked as the cab started to nose its way into the blizzard past St Pancras Station. He turned his long horsey face to Smith and the latter could now see that the monocle was a shade of black as if it might be concealing an empty eye socket. Now the man looked slightly sinister, he couldn’t help thinking idly.

  ‘No, I was in the Royal… er Royal Navy to you.’

  ‘Jolly good show,’ the man with the monocle enthused. ‘Fine bunch of chappies. The Navy did us proud in the last show.’

  Smith grinned again and said, ‘I suppose we did our bit.’ He relaxed a little in the cracked leather upholstery. The streets were virtually deserted now, as the old cab rolled forwards in second gear, the driver with his nose pressed almost up to his clogged windscreen. There were a few cars and carts pulled by horses, wrapped in heavy blankets. The pavements seemed empty of pedestrians. It was almost as if the zeppelins were back over the capital in the war, and the populace had fled for cover to their cellars and the underground.

  ‘May I ask what branch of the Royal Navy you were with?’ the man with the monocle asked, as they turned into Southampton Row.

  ‘Light coastal craft.’

  ‘Pardon my ignorance,’ the man said, ‘but what exactly are – were – light coastal craft?’

  ‘Torpedo boats, coastal motorboats, skimmers – things like that,’ Smith answered, becoming a little bored with the stranger. His mind was too full of why C had sent for him to want to waste time answering questions about his role in a war that had been over nearly eighteen months or more now.

  ‘I see. You mean like those light craft our chaps used to sink the Reds at Kronstadt in April this year?’ the man with the monocle asked with a slight smile, though the one eye that Smith could see did not light up but remained hard and piercing.

  Smith returned the hard look. ‘Perhaps, but I can’t tell you because I know nothing of that operation—’ He stopped short. Something short and bright had appeared in the stranger’s right hand, as if by magic. ‘What’s this… what’s your damned game?’ he managed to gasp.

  ‘No game, Lieutenant Smith,’ the other man said through gritted teeth. ‘Especially not for you!’ He lunged forwards with the dagger the next instant.

  Just at that moment, the old cabbie, completely unaware of what was happening in the back of his cab, swung round a corner and skidded on a patch of sleet. The cab shuddered and swung round in the same instant that the offside door swung open. The man with the monocle yelled wildly, as, caught completely off guard, he dropped his knife and fell out of the open door. In vain, Smith grabbed for him. He was gone, sprawling in the wet in the middle of the road, as the cabbie, cursing fluently, fought to keep the vehicle from smashing into the front window of a nearby shop.

  He didn’t manage it. Next moment the old cab slammed into the plate-glass window and tailor’s dummies of heavily busted ladies wearing feathered hats were falling about the smashed vehicle on all sides. Smith, unhurt, but winded, wrenched open the other door. He pushed away an importuning naked dummy savagely and, crunching over shattered glass, clambered into the street. But the man with the monocle had already vanished. The street was deserted. It was almost as if the whole strange business had never happened. But when he returned to the shattered cab to pay off the cursing cabbie, the knife gleaming on the floor told him all too clearly it had!

  * * *

  ‘This way,’ the servant in the black suit, complete with high wing collar, said. ‘Follow me, sir.’ He had a face like a mask.

  They entered the lift and at a high speed soared to the first floor where the two of them got out into a narrow passage, dimly lit by low-wattage bulbs. There was no one there, but behind the doors to left and right Smith sensed there were people. Somewhere he could hear the faint clatter of a typewriter.

  Again the sombre servant said, ‘This way… follow me, sir,’ and began to lead Smith down the corridor and into a rabbit warren of passages and stairs, some of them so narrow that a fat man would never have managed them. The first time that Smith and the rest of the young officers had entered this maze of passages they had all felt a sense of apprehension. It was as if they might never leave the maze again. This time it was different, though Smith did sense a slight feeling of dread.

  Together they came out onto the roof. It was still sleeting. But the silent servant with a face like a mask did not seem to notice. Instead he concentrated on crossing the slippery iron bridge which linked the roof with another one of Queen Anne’s Gate’s Georgian houses.

  Again they entered a network of passages and stairs until finally the guide stopped in front of a door. He knocked and a soft voice said, ‘Come!’

  He opened the door for Smith and vanished, leaving the former to stare into a tiny office, the centre of which was taken up with a large desk piled high with dossiers and files. In between the larger two piles, a keen-eyed major with the red tabs of the staff on his collar, stared at the young naval officer and said, ‘Common Smith, I presume?’ He laughed, and rising, extended his hand. The other, Smith noted, was empty, the uniform sleeve neatly tucked into his belt.

  Smith shook hands and, handing Smith a de Reske cigarette, the major said, ‘Good of you to come. C’s got a job for you.’ He shot Smith one of those keen-eyed looks of his. ‘You game?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Smith said excitedly. ‘I was bored stiff up in Yorkshire. Though I must say, sir, that things have got quite lively since I came to town.’

  The major took his cigarette out of his mouth and asked sharply, ‘What do you mean?’

  Swiftly Smith told the major what had happened in the taxi. The major said nothing, then placing his cigarette down he scribbled furiously on the pad in front of him before saying, ‘It looks as if they are on to us already, eh?’

  ‘Who, sir?’

  The major shrugged eloquently. ‘Huns, Reds, native Bolos—’ he meant Russian communists. ‘It could be anybody, but I suspect strongly that it was one of our native Reds working for Russki gold. There’s lots of the swine about. Or perhaps a hired killer? A lot of our chaps, you know, became terribly hard and ruthless in the trenches over there. They’d murder their own mater for a guinea.’ He sighed like a man often sorely tried, then dismissed the matter. ‘In a minute I’ll take you to see C. But first I must inform you that from now onwards everything you see and hear is very strictly confidential. It is covered by the oath to protect the Official Secrets Act which you swore when you joined the Navy. You understand?’

  ‘Of course, sir, but what is it all about?’ Smith burst out, hardly able to contain his mounting excitement.


  By way of an answer, the one-armed major picked up a photograph that lay on the desk before him and held it out.

  Smith took it and his mouth dropped open foolishly. ‘Why, it’s my old… Swordfish. I thought the fleet had sunk it after we got back from the raid, sir.’ He looked again at the picture. It showed Swordfish in some kind of dry dock with cloth-capped workmen, being directed by a bowler-hatted foreman with a watch-chain draped across his impressive, waistcoated belly, busy hammering and sawing all over the place. ‘But where is she?’ he stammered.

  ‘At a discreet little repair yard just down the river from the Humber estuary where she’s well protected from prying eyes. Selby to be precise.’

  In a daze Smith nodded. He knew the little Yorkshire township, a straggle of houses around the cathedral and the big flour mill. People in that place would be very tight-lipped and suspicious of strangers. Ideal for hiding the Swordfish. But why hide it in the first place?

  But before he could pose the question, the one-armed major, who had still not introduced himself, shoved a single sheet of official notepaper in Smith’s direction.

  ‘You’ll know all these chaps, no doubt,’ he snapped. ‘They’ve all served under or with you at some time or other ever since you went into light coastal craft after Jutland.’

  Swiftly Smith ran his eye down the list, picking up those familiar names of men who had shared the hardships and joys of small craft during the war – the raid on Zeebrugge, the clashes in the Channel, winkling out clandestine sub bases in Southern Ireland, run by the Hun and the IRA. Good men, the lot of them. There was Sub-Lieutenant Bird, good old ‘Dickie’ Bird, barely eighteen; Chief Petty Officer Ferguson, ‘Sandy’ or ‘Chiefie’ as he was known, a Scots wizard with the engines who was reputed to have sailed under Nelson; Leading Hand ‘Ginger’ Kerrigan, a typical product of Liverpool, as smart as they came, an eye always on the main chance, the ‘best scrounger in the whole bleeding Royal’, as he boasted – truly. Leading seaman ‘Billy’ Bennett, a Londoner of ample portions even on Navy food, nicknamed after the fat Vaudeville comedian of that same name. Fat he might be, but he was one of the bravest men Smith knew. He had already won the DSM by the time he was twenty, no mean achievement for a man from the lower deck.