Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) Read Free Page A

then penetrated Alexandria itself to fix mines to
Valiant
and
Queen Elizabeth
. A handful of determined men, and the whole fleet knocked sideways, just like that!’
    There was a tap at the door and a small Wren entered with a tray of cups and saucers.
    Masters saw the admiral’s clear eyes move briefly to her. ‘You were a submariner yourself. You can’t turn your back on it. D’you imagine I don’t understand how you feel about this work you’re doing?’ The hand came up in an unhurried signal. ‘It has been my experience that courage and self-sacrifice are just as necessary, indeed vital, in the work of defence. As much, if not more, than the more heady individual acts.’
    Another tap at the door, a leading signalman this time, with a pot of tea. Masters breathed out slowly.
What is the matter with me? Why today?
    Were a submariner.
That was it. Always lurking, likea wound, like guilt. Perhaps they were right, and he was more suited here, or in some other office. Lucky, some might say.
    Were a submariner.
Only words, and casually spoken. Or were they?
    The memory was as sharp as yesterday.
    There is no other moment like it. Any submarine commander knows it.
    His first command. Putting to sea without the dockyard people and the staff officers watching and making criticisms and suggestions. And later, after the commanding officer’s final course, ‘the perisher’ as it was aptly termed, with the new boat and company.
Tornado
, a T-Class boat, had left harbour on a morning not unlike this, grey sky, the sea like heaving pewter, to most other craft just another submarine leaving port. Going to war.
    But on that day nothing else had mattered. He knew Fawcett was talking to the leading signalman, bridging the gap. He always made a point of it.
    He tried to push the memory away. But the moment remained. The first time . . .
    A glance around the open bridge. Feeling the excitement, sharing it with the two lookouts.
    Then, as if prompted,
‘Clear the bridge!’
He could see the last lookout’s face as he jumped down through the oval hatch. Their eyes had met, just for a second, but Masters remembered it. He had been only a boy.
    Still clear, incisive. Lowering his face to the voicepipe, picturing the features and the minds of the men beneath his feet.
    ‘Dive! Dive! Dive!’
The scream of the klaxon.
    Instant and vital, the craft and the man as one. Just once he had stared over the grey steel screen, had held his breath as the sea had boiled up over the stem and along the casing to surge around the four-inch gun as
Tornado
went into her dive.
    And there it was. Like a flaw in a photograph, a brief gleam as it twisted in the glare before it vanished under the hull, and exploded.
    He had heard nothing, nor had he remembered what had happened. Only the aftermath. The pain. The sympathy. The inquiry. He had never heard the announcement; there were enough of them in those days, anyway.
    The Secretary of the Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of His Majesty’s Submarine
Tornado
. Next of kin have been informed.
    There were no survivors. They lay with the shattered hull, all fifty-eight of them, including the lookout with the excited grin.
    He was coming out of it slowly.
Were a submariner.
    His first command. And his last.
    He stared at the mirror again, imagining for a moment that Fawcett had asked him something and was expecting an answer. The admiral had not got up this early just to pass the time of day.
    But it was not that. The leading signalman had gone, and the Wren Sally was covering the telephone with her fingers as she always did.
    Fawcett was shaking his head. ‘I distinctly
told
them!’ It must have upset what he had been about to say.
    She did not give in. ‘Classified, sir.’
    Fawcett snapped,
‘Bloody hell!’
and almost snatched the receiver from her. ‘I left instructions. Orders . . .’ He broke off and stepped away from the desk.
‘Where? When?’
He reached down, removing the telephone flex