North Strike

Part One

Northwards

One

‘Lieutenant Magnusson, sir.’

As Murdoch Murray Magnusson stepped into the room, Admiral Sir James Cockayne lifted his head and stared at him with piercing blue eyes. He had a thin nose, bushy black eyebrows and a lean face that ended in a strong jaw which showed no signs of softness despite his age.

‘Better sit down, my boy,’ he said. ‘Shan’t be a minute. Smoke if you wish.’

As the admiral bent over the desk again, Magnusson sat, quietly and without fuss. Though he was dying for a cigarette, he didn’t light one, feeling it wiser for a mere reserve lieutenant not to risk making the wrong impression on an admiral.

He could see his own face in the glass front of the bookcase behind the other officer, a strong face, he liked to think, that had served him well and won over more than a few girls in foreign ports. It was topped by blond hair that was as unexpected as his opal blue eyes, the sort of face you got from the Orkneys, the Shetlands and from Stornoway in the Hebrides, from where so many merchant sailors came – British yet not quite British.

As he waited for the admiral to finish what he was doing, he stared through the windows. London was grey with the fag-end of the year and the barrage balloons hung in a grey sky like grey fishes in a grey fish bowl. The building’s entrance had been sandbagged against bomb splinters but after two months of war, when little had happened beyond the sinking of a few merchantmen and the shooting down of a few enemy planes, the general attitude was clear. No one expected any damage to be done.

The only mayhem being wrought, in fact, seemed to be at the hands of the Russians and the Finns who were suddenly at each other’s throats in Finland and, since nobody was sure how to get at the unwilling Germans and most people objected to Russia’s unexpected attack, British volunteers were already heading for Helsinki in the hope of working off on the Russians some of the bad temper they couldn’t work off on the Germans. It was a curious sort of war.

When it had broken out, Magnusson had left the tanker he’d been in the minute she had docked in an English port and had reported immediately to the Navy. Since then he had been employed in a boom defence vessel based at Ryde in the Isle of Wight, and over the weeks, had become aware that he was growing bored and wishing to God something would happen.

Nothing had, however. The war ticked along slowly and it was clear that most people were beginning to hope – even to expect – that it would not flare up into action at all.

The admiral coughed and Magnusson started to life, aware that he was being studied.

‘I expect you’re wondering what you’re here for,’ the admiral said.

‘Yes, sir, I am a bit,’ Magnusson admitted cheerfully.

‘Well, we’ll come to that all in good time. Pull your chair nearer where you can see the charts.’ The admiral opened a file on his desk and pushed forward a chart that Magnusson recognised at once as the Norwegian coastline. With its hundreds of islands, inlets and narrow waterways it looked like a complicated jigsaw puzzle which had been dropped and the parts jolted out of their places.

‘Murdoch Murray Magnusson,’ the admiral said, peering over his spectacles. ‘Born in Lerwick in the Shetlands.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The admiral stared at him for a moment, scribbled a few words on a paper in the file, then nodded.

‘Lieutenant, Royal Naval Reserve. Before finding yourself in the Royal Navy you were with Lamport and Holt.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You have a good record.’

Magnusson acknowledged the admiral’s comment with what he hoped was a modest smile. If being drunk in every port of the seven seas was a good record, he thought, then yes, he had a splendid record.

‘And you have your master’s certificate in steam.’

‘It wasn’t much good, sir. The depression stepped in about then. Masters were going to sea as mates and mates as bosuns. I was never more than third. I was just beginning to hope things would be better when the war started.’

The admiral frowned. ‘I’m well aware of the depths to which our political masters allowed us to slip,’ he said stiffly. ‘It applied to the Navy as well.’ He was watching Magnusson closely – a bit like a terrier at a rathole, Magnusson thought uneasily. His next words made him jump.

‘You did your apprenticeship in sail, I believe?’ he barked.

Magnusson’s eyebrows rose. This was a ghost from the past and no mistake. Deciding while at school to go to sea to avoid study, he had taken a day ticket on the ferry from Glasgow to Belfast and signed on the four-masted barque, Priwall.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s right. I did.’

‘Enjoy it?’

Enjoy it? Magnusson hesitated. As far as he had been able to make out at the time, he had signed his life away for three years or the duration of the voyage, which meant, in effect, as long as the captain or the owners chose to keep the ship away from her home port.

Yet he supposed he must have enjoyed it. At the end of the trip out, after living in the narrow-gutted forecastle, with a dozen noisy, quarrelsome Finns, Letts, Estonians, Lithuanians and other assorted nationalities, with rats, cockroaches, bed bugs, bad food and the smell of damp, the fact that he’d seen quite a bit of the world hadn’t seemed just then to make up for the hardships he’d suffered; and he’d fled from the ship as though the hounds of hell were after him, even passing the rest of the crew on their way to the nearest pub. Enjoy it, he thought again. Well, he’d stuck it out, and on the trip home, had even come to the conclusion that it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, that the food was bearable, his companions pleasanter than he’d imagined, and his thwartships bunk, which in bad weather stood him upright on one tack and on his head with the blood pounding in his temples on the other, was better than no bunk at all. He had finally even opted for exams and a mate’s ticket.

He glanced up to see the admiral watching him keenly. The old eyes across the desk looked like the muzzles of a double-barrelled shotgun.

‘Well, boy? Well?’

Magnusson licked his lips. ‘Yes, sir,’ he agreed. ‘I think I did enjoy it. But when I told my father I wanted to make the sea my profession, he didn’t consider the enjoyment part of it. He’d been to sea in sail himself as a young man and I think he considered life a bit more real and a bit more earnest than I did. Shetlanders tend to. It must be the weather up there. He said I should do it properly and, since he’d done business with Captain Erikson, of Mariehamn – who’s one of the most successful operators of sailing ships there is–’

‘I know who Erikson is, boy.’ The admiral sounded impatient. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, sir, he got me aboard one of Erikson’s ships – Lawhill – as an apprentice.’ Magnusson paused, his mind full of masts, rigging and tiers of white sails. ‘She wasn’t a beautiful ship, sir, but she was a splendid sailer and one of Erikson’s best.’

Cockayne stared narrowly at him. ‘You sound like a man who likes sailing ships.’

Magnusson shrugged. ‘They won’t be around much longer, sir.’

‘Learn Finnish?’

‘I didn’t have much option, sir.’

The admiral was leaning forward, his eyes bright and interested. Magnusson had come across this excited interest before. A trip in a windjammer? How splendid! It made people think him a virile, manly character smelling of salt sea breezes. In non-seafaring communities, it got him a lot of free drinks and a lot of girls.

‘Go round the Horn?’ the admiral asked.

‘Six times, sir. I stayed with Erikson long enough to get a third’s ticket in sail.’

‘Forgotten all you ever learned now, I expect.’

‘Not likely, sir.’ There was a hint of boastfulness in Magnusson’s words. ‘You never do. It’s like riding a bike–’

He had been going to say ‘–and going to bed with a girl. It all comes back when you get on.’ But he stopped in time.

The admiral continued to show the same man-to-man interest. ‘Think you could still handle a sailing ship if you had to?’

‘Sure I could, sir.’ Magnusson was still crowing a little. He knew he could but he didn’t fancy it, all the same.

‘Good.’ The admiral nodded. ‘Excellent. Pleased to hear it. Speak Norwegian?’

‘Yes, sir. Quite well. I taught myself during the time we were doing the Scandinavian run.’

‘Good,’ the admiral said again. ‘Then that sorts that out.’

Magnusson could hold his curiosity in check no longer. ‘Sorts what out, sir?’

Cockayne ignored him. ‘What do you know of Norway, boy?’

Magnusson was puzzled. ‘It’s long and narrow, sir, with a lot of inlets. Roads are few, railways fewer. Most of the travelling’s done by coastal waterways. There’s a lot of snow.’

‘Go on.’

‘Polar conditions in the north. West coast surprisingly warm and free of ice, though.’

‘Good. Good. Splendid.’ The admiral settled back in his chair. ‘Now, as you’re doubtless aware, with the army in France staring at the Wehrmacht and waiting for the fun to begin, the RAF and the Navy are the only services who are following their calling and fighting to the death. And so far, we’ve not done so damn badly.’

Magnusson waited. He wasn’t arguing.

The admiral continued. ‘However, we do still have problems. Your experience ever take you through the Indreled – or Inner Leads, as you probably call them – off Norway?’

‘Yes, sir. Often.’

‘What do you know about ’em?’

Deciding he’d been called in to give the benefit of experience, Magnusson wondered why in God’s name the Admiralty hadn’t found someone a bit more senior.

‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘You can travel by them almost all the way from north Norway to the Skagerrak without going out of Norwegian territorial waters, and for a lot of that distance with land outside of you. The islands make a good break against the weather from the North Atlantic. The winds funnel between Iceland and the north of Scotland, and they can be diabolical. We had to shelter more than once on the way to Narvik from Mariehamn.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Taking coal up, sir. Bringing Swedish ore back to Germany.’

‘Good.’ The admiral nodded. ‘Well, as you know, the Norwegians are supposed to be neutral at the moment but it seems to us here at the Admiralty that they’re being rather more neutral to the Germans than they are to us.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘Actually, you can hardly blame them with Germany on their doorstep, but they’re allowing them to use Norwegian waters as a back door past our blockade. The Inner Leads provide a route from Narvik right round the southern tip of Norway to the safety of the Baltic, that we’re powerless to interfere with. Repeated protests have been made without avail. Norway is not at war with Germany.’

He let what he had said sink in then he leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, his hands together, his fingers forming a spire on which he rested his chin. He sat like that for a moment, then he flung himself back in his chair and began to speak again.

‘There’s another thing: this iron ore you just mentioned. Swedish ore. It’s among the richest in the world and Germany’s imports of it are reckoned at about nine million tons. Her total imports for 1938 were twenty-two million. We’ve already cut off nine and a half million from various other sources by the blockade. If we could stop the ore from Sweden, we’d have practically, as you can see, cut off their supply and injured their armaments manufacture. Are you still with me?’

Magnusson smiled. ‘I think I’m way ahead of you, sir.’

Cockayne frowned. ‘I doubt if you are, my lad,’ he said briskly. He fished out a pipe and went on slowly. ‘As you doubtless know, this ore normally moves to Germany from the ore fields at Gälivare via Luleå in the Gulf of Bothnia. But Luleå freezes over in winter, so then it’s sent by rail across Sweden to Narvik in Norway, which is touched by the Gulf Stream and doesn’t ice up. But, as we’ve agreed, almost the whole of the journey from Narvik to the Skagerrak can be made in Norwegian territorial waters, which is a great advantage. We also think that blockade-runners and armed raiders are using this northabout route as they leave for or return from the Atlantic, and we’re coming to the view that we should stop them. But first of all we need someone up there to let us know when things are moving.’

The admiral paused and, studied his pipe before continuing. ‘This war along the Russo-Finnish border – it’s pretty clear that the Russians have gone into it because they’re expecting a German invasion of Scandinavia. Since we are, too, it seems to me they’re showing considerable political acumen.’ He paused again. tapped his pipe in a large glass ashtray and began to pack it with tobacco. ‘Now the Norwegian coastline, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, would provide valuable bases for a British blockade against Germany. Or, for that matter, for a German naval offensive against British shipping. Winston wants a foothold there but the cabinet are against it.’ He fished out matches, lit up, then, blowing out clouds of blue smoke, pointed with the stem of the pipe at Magnusson.

‘You’ve been brought here because you speak Norwegian and Finnish and because you’ve worked on the Swedish iron ore run. You’re to watch what’s happening up there.’

Magnusson’s smile was faintly relieved. He’d been expecting something either incredibly boring or incredibly dangerous, neither of which he particularly fancied.

‘You’ll be given the silhouettes of known raiders,’ Cockayne went on. ‘As well as blockade runners and all ships engaged in the Swedish ore trade. It will be your job to keep us informed.’

Magnusson sat up. ‘Where will I be stationed, sir?’

‘In Narvik, where it starts.’

‘I see, sir.’

The admiral smiled, more menacingly this time. ‘I dare bet you don’t, my lad,’ he said. ‘Think you can do the job?’

Not half, Magnusson thought. Narvik wasn’t exactly Blackpool or Piccadilly Circus, and the workers on the railway and the iron company’s books there constituted practically the whole population of the town. And since summer came only every fourth year, the winters tended to be somewhat dark and burdensome. The mountains, the sea, the ever-changing colours, however, were breathtaking, and he liked Norwegians – especially Norwegian girls. He remembered one who believed in freedom of thought and action and was almost acrobatic in bed. He could visualise a splendid life of ease in a hotel with binoculars and a notebook.

‘Of course, sir,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘What arrangements have been made for accommodation, et cetera?’

‘Accommodation?’ the admiral’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Well, I’ll need a room somewhere overlooking the harbour and a reason for being there, I suppose.’

The admiral leaned forward. His heavy eyebrows came down again and made him look a little like Dracula. ‘You’ll not be living in a room,’ he snapped. ‘Either overlooking the harbour or anywhere else. You’re going to sea.’

It was a shock to Magnusson. He’d been looking forward to a nice cushy job, and sea-going near the Arctic Circle didn’t appeal one bit.

‘As captain, sir?’ His voice came out as a squeak and he had to clear his throat and repeat himself.

The admiral gave a bark of laughter. ‘Not damn likely,’ he said. ‘The Navy looks after its own far too well for that. No, my lad, you’ll be under Commander George Seago. But Commander Seago, while he’s an excellent sailor, doesn’t know those northern waters as you do and will need a little help. In addition, he doesn’t speak Norwegian. Or Finnish!’

Magnusson frowned as a thought occurred to him. ‘Finnish, sir? We’ll be in Norwegian waters. Why Finnish?’

‘Because your ship’s Finnish,’ the admiral rapped. ‘A three-masted barque. You’re going to war, my lad. In a sailing ship.’ He grinned unexpectedly as he ended. ‘I dare bet you didn’t reckon on that.’

Two

There was a long silence as Magnusson stared indignantly at the admiral. No wonder the old bastard had been so keen on finding out about his experience in sail! Forgotten all you know? Think you could still handle one? The old sod had just been setting him a bear trap to fall into, so he couldn’t back out when the big question came.

The admiral was watching him, one eyebrow raised quizzically. He seemed greatly amused.

‘A barque, sir?’ Magnusson croaked.

‘Exactly. Oulu. Know her?’

Magnusson’s mind roved wildly over the Finnish yards he’d visited and the tall masts and slender hulls of wind-borne ships he’d known.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said bitterly. ‘We once lay behind her at Mariehamn and I had a friend who was second mate.’

‘Only,’ the admiral said, ‘this isn’t Oulu.’

Magnusson frowned. ‘Sir?’

‘Actually,’ the admiral admitted, ‘Oulu’s in the West Indies. This one’s Jacob Undset done up to look like Oulu, so you’d better start calling her by that name straightaway and get used to it. She’s an old ship and she’s not exactly shipshape and Bristol fashion but we intend to work at it. When she’s ready, she’ll be seaworthy, but she’ll still look a bit neglected, which is just what we want. She was built in 1866 by Gardners of Sunderland to serve in the China tea trade as Dolly Grey, but she was sold in 1913 to your friend, Gustaf Erikson, of Mariehamn. She’s nine hundred tons and she’s claimed to be an unlucky ship because she’s been dismasted, damaged by fire, the victim of quite a few minor accidents, and more than once posted overdue. But she’s always made port, though sometimes short of one or two members of her crew.’

Magnusson listened with a sour feeling of being cheated. Unlucky ship. Built in 1866. Not exactly shipshape. It got worse and worse the more he thought about it. The admiral went on, as if he were relishing the expression on his face.

‘Even Erikson grew tired of her in the end,’ he said, ‘and after she’d collided with a tanker which swept away her starboard rail, he sold her to some bright-eyed entrepreneur in Falmouth who put gingerbread on her and rigged her as a galleon for some film about the Armada. Since then, she’s been a sort of floating museum there with fish tanks in her holds for holidaymakers to visit at a bob a nob.’

Magnusson’s heart was sinking. Living aboard would be about as comfortable as a leaky pigsty. The admiral was actually smiling at him now, as if he’d guessed at the thoughts of comfort and wild nights in a Norwegian hotel that had been running through his mind.

‘Since most of her fittings were adapted for Finnish usage,’ he said, ‘the two ships could easily be confused. We have to call her Oulu because everybody – and that includes the Germans and the Norwegians – will know that Oulu is still around, while Jacob Undset’s been off the active list for several years. Oulu was built at Nystad, in Finland, in 1870 and her dimensions are roughly the same. Eight hundred and fifty tons and a hundred and eighteen feet long with single topgallant sails and royals. She was damaged in a storm in 1929 and condemned, but she was eventually refitted and sold to Danish owners and later to Erikson, who still uses her on the West Indies run. At the moment she’s in Tobago and we’re making sure that that’s where she stays.’

The admiral paused and puffed at his pipe for a while. ‘We’re having to do the job this way for a variety of reasons,’ he went on. ‘We could put a man up there in a number of capacities, but the Germans are watching Norway like hawks and it’s known that some of the Norwegians are Nazi sympathisers, so they’ll be on the lookout for tricks too. Since you’ll be sailing a Finnish ship or a supposed Finnish ship – and since you’ll all have Finnish papers, you’ll pose as Finnish seamen, caught away from home by the war with the Russians and trying to get back to become part of it. Your cargo is rum from Jamaica and grain in sacks from America and, though it was intended for Britain, as was the genuine Oulu’s, you have decided it will be of more use to beleaguered Finland. To avoid being stopped by the British and forced into Falmouth, where your sailing instructions directed you, you are not going via the North Sea, through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat into the Baltic, but intend to sneak home through the Leads. It will be your job to convey all this to the Norwegians. In Norwegian. Preferably with a few words of Finnish to make certain they believe you’re who you’re meant to be.’

Magnusson interrupted. ‘Won’t they expect the ship’s captain to do that, sir?’

‘The ship’s captain on such occasions will be in bed with a high fever and will be asleep.’

It might have been a better idea, Magnusson thought, to have made him the ship’s captain, but he supposed a naval ship had to have a naval captain.

‘I see, sir,’ he said.

The admiral gestured. ‘A great deal will depend on you, my lad,’ he said briskly. ‘Which is why you’re being done the honour of a personal briefing, something not normally granted to a junior officer. At the right time a sighting will be reported, showing you to be in mid-Atlantic and inevitably the Germans will pick it up. Another sighting will be arranged later to show you off the Faeroes. In fact, you will sail up the Irish Sea, through the Minches, and, keeping well out from land to avoid being spotted, you will make your landfall west of the Lofotens and put into Narvik. There, you will be informed of what’s going on by our contact, a woman called Annie Egge, who runs the Norwegian equivalent of our Missions to Seamen. She will give you – you, Magnusson, because as the linguist, she’ll be dealing with you – she will give you your information. I don’t know what she’s like – like most middle-aged ladies who run Missions to Seamen, I suppose – all God and woollen comforts – but she has been feeding us reliable information for some time about German shipping, gleaned no doubt over the cups of tea and the meat and potato pie or whatever it is they serve up in Norway. Since, in the event of a German move into Norway, we shall need to know a few facts, you will keep your eyes open and take note of all Norwegian naval vessels, fortifications and movements, and all army and air force installations. You will remain there for several days under the guise of Finnish sailors making repairs after the voyage across the North Atlantic to enable you to reach Mariehamn. Commander Seago will know what to arrange. He has a certificate in sail.’

Has he, by God, Magnusson thought. At least, they had something in common.

The admiral seemed to sense his wandering interest and brought him back to the present sharply. ‘Your job,’ he snapped, ‘will be to fend off suspicious people.’

‘In addition to normal ship’s duties, of course, sir?’ Magnusson said with a trace of sarcasm.

It was entirely wasted. The admiral didn’t even notice it. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘In case anyone searches you, you will live as Finns.’

Magnusson had visions of Finnish cooking – salt pork, salt beef, labskaus, kabelgarn, ängelskit and the tinned meat they called Harriet Lane, after a long-forgotten young woman who’d been murdered and cut up to go in a trunk.

‘That means the food will