Read A Ship Must Die (1981) for Free Online

‘Shagbats’ and asked how a designer who could create a creature as beautiful as the Spitfire could invent such an ungainly abortion. But the flying boat had useful eyes, and could endure the toughest landing before being winched aboard. Now,
Andromeda
had only her fragile Seafox, a seaplane which had been obsolete for a year. He had mentioned it to Stagg in one of his reports. Stagg had sent the report back, his comment,
Make do
, scrawled across the page like a shout.
    Moon padded across the cabin with a jug of ice which was already two-thirds water.
    Fairfax asked quietly, ‘D’you still believe in this raider, sir?’
    ‘We’ve heard nothing. Not a single report of a sinking which was not verified. Submarine, collision, bombing, nothing out of the ordinary.’ After four years it was easy to see each casualty as a cross or a tin flag on a chart. Not as agony, as flesh and blood.
    Fairfax took his drink gratefully from Moon’s tray. ‘The commodore’s always been a bit wild.’ When Blake said nothing he added, ‘He had a bad time from the Japs before he escaped. The German captain who sunk his command probably had no choice but to hand him over to his little yellow allies. Quite likely he had enough on his own plate at the time to care about a few prisoners.’
    Blake had thought about it a lot. He had used the time when he should have been resting to sort through every intelligence folio which Captain Quintin’s department could lay hands on.
    The German officer in question was a remarkable man.
Kapitän zur See
Kurt Rietz, holder of the prized
Ritterkreuz
, had already commanded two commerce raiders and had successfully sunk or captured over one hundred thousand tons of Allied ships. His daring and infuriating sorties against solitary ships or small groups of unescorted vessels had given the Admiralty headaches from the Atlantic to the Tasman Sea.
    He was also an enigma, with just the bare details of his background in Quintin’s files on which to build a picture of him. There was always the risk of admiration creeping in to weaken a man’s vigilance. Like an old-time pirate, Rietz’s deeds were too often remembered for their impudence rather than their cost.
    Rietz had once run down on an old cargo liner which had almost turned the tables on him. An impostor, like his own ship, she had shown her true colours as an armed merchant cruiser, and had given the German such a raking that it had taken all of Rietz’s skill to creep back to Germany without foundering on the way.
    But in all the reports, the eye-witness statements from released prisoners and survivors, there had been no mention of a single atrocity beyond the demands of combat.
    Blake turned his mind back to Fairfax’s comment. He obviously disliked Stagg. It would probably come out later on. Right now there was too much to do for idle speculation, raider or not.
    A midshipman, his round face peeling painfully from sunburn, tapped at the lobby door and then stepped carefully over the coaming.
    ‘Yes, Mr Thorne?’
    Blake was once more grateful for his knack of remembering names. The cruiser carried eight midshipmen, ‘snotties’, most of whom had joined the ship after the last battle. To most of them, newly appointed to their first ship,
Andromeda
must have seemed awesome with her scars still plain to see. The gunroom had lost three of its members in the fighting. Thorne had replaced one of them.
    ‘The first lieutenant’s respects, sir, and there is a visitor from the Navy Office.’
    Fairfax stood up violently, buttoning his crumpled shirt.
    ‘Hell, at
this
time of the day!’
    Blake smiled. He had noticed that about Fairfax. Any sort of intrusion, anything which he thought might be seen as a diplomatic breach of some kind, he was quick to intervene. It was as if he were defending his whole country from criticism.
    ‘Send him in.’
    The youth stared round the day cabin, his eyes recording everything for later, or for a letter home. The