Read Atlantic Fury for Free Online

small and a lot of ships were being sunk. They’d plenty of other news …’
    â€˜Then you didn’t see this?’ He handed me another clipping. ‘It’s from a Stornoway paper of March 14.’
    â€˜Stornoway’s in the Outer Hebrides,’ I pointed out. ‘I’d hardly be likely to see a copy of that.’
    â€˜Sure, it’s way up north and this is a local story. No other paper seems to have printed it. You read it. Then I’ll tell you why I’m interested in your brother.’
    The cutting was headed: ‘ ORDEAL BY RAFT – Terrible Story of Lone Survivor: On Tuesday evening Colin McTavish, seventy-two-year-old lobster fisherman of Tobson on Great Bernera, whilst rowing out in his boat to visit his pots, came upon a Carley float lodged amongst the rocks of Geodha Cool. The figures of two men lay on the raft, both apparently lifeless. The raft belonged to the Duart Castle , sunk by torpedoes some five hundred miles out in the North Atlantic on February 18th. They had, therefore, been adrift on the raft for twenty-two days. Colin McTavish took the bodies into his boat and rowed back to Tobson. There it was discovered that despite the long time at sea, one of the men was still alive. His name is George Henry Braddock, 2nd-Lieutenant Royal Artillery, aged twenty. The terrible story of his ordeal cannot be told yet for a Merciful God has wiped it from his mind. He has been transferred to the hospital at Stornoway suffering from exposure and loss of memory. But we all know what he must have suffered out there in the open sea exposed to bitter cold and severe storms with no protection but the tattered remnants of a sail and his only companion dying before his eyes. The dead man is Pte. André Leroux, a French-Canadian from Montreal. He has been buried at the old cemetery above the bay at Bosta. Colin McTavish’s rescue of 2nd-Lieutenant Braddock brings the total of survivors of the Duart Castle to thirty-six and this doubtless writes finis to the tragic story of a ship that was transporting Canadian reinforcements to aid the fight for freedom.’
    â€˜I didn’t know about it,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see what that’s got to do with my brother – or with me.’
    â€˜Your brother was on that raft when the ship sank.’
    â€˜Well, he’s dead,’ I said. ‘What difference does it make?’
    He didn’t say anything; simply handed me one of the photographs from the envelope. It showed a man in a light suit walking along a street – tall, black-haired, with a dark moustache and what looked like a scar running down the centre of his forehead. It wasn’t a very clear picture, just a snapshot taken in very bright sunlight. He passed me another. The same man getting out of a car. ‘And here’s one taken with a telephoto lens.’ Head and shoulders this time, the face heavily shadowed by sunlight. ‘You don’t recognise him?’ He was watching me closely.
    â€˜Where were they taken?’
    â€˜Famagusta in Cyprus.’
    â€˜I’ve never been to Famagusta,’ I said.
    â€˜I asked you whether you recognised him.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t. Who is he?’
    He sighed and took the photographs back, sitting there, staring down at them. ‘I guess they’re not very clear. Not as clear as I would have liked. But …’ He shook his head and tucked them away in the envelope together with the cuttings. ‘They’re pictures I took of Braddock. Major Braddock.’ He looked up at me. ‘You’re sure they didn’t strike some chord in your memory?’ And when I shook my head, he said, ‘They didn’t remind you of your brother, for instance?’
    â€˜My brother?’ I stared at him, trying to think back, remembering Iain’s dark, handsome face. ‘How the hell could it be my brother?’ The face in those photos, lined and