Read Chapter 23: The Long Way

The order came down from the bridge at half past midnight, passed from the wireless operator to the purser, and from the purser to anyone with ears. Arthur heard it in the corridor outside the cabin Mac had commandeered, in the brisk footsteps and lowered voices of the crew.

*Return to Dunkirk. Embark wounded. Proceed Dover.*

He stepped back inside and shut the door. Mac looked up from the chart table where he had been studying the Channel currents with the single-minded attention of a man who had spent his life reading water.

“They’re sending us back,” Arthur said.

Mac’s jaw tightened. “How long?”

“Now. We’re already turning.”

Mac let out a slow breath and folded his arms across his chest. His sailor’s jersey and weathered face made him look every inch the trawler hand, but Arthur had seen the steel beneath that mask now. He had seen the photograph of Michael in SS uniform, the boy Arthur had raised and loved replaced by a ghost wearing his dead son’s face.

“We need to get off this ship before we reach the French coast,” Mac said. “Once we’re back in the evacuation zone, the whole game changes. There are German aircraft over that beach, and there are men on this ship who might decide the orders they carried are better off at the bottom of the Channel.”

“You mean Michael.”

“Michael is one of them. But he’s not the only one. We don’t know who else came aboard at Dunkirk. We don’t know which of the wounded are real and which are playing a part.”

Arthur had been a fisherman all his life. He understood the sea, the tides, the way a boat moved through water. He did not understand this world of secrets and false faces, where a boy could wear his dead son’s smile and speak with his dead son’s voice.

“What do you propose?” Arthur asked.

Mac rolled up the chart and tucked it beneath his arm. “We find a way off this ship before she docks in France. We take a lifeboat, we row for Dover, and we hope the navy patrols find us before the Germans do.”

“That’s a long way in an open boat.”

“It’s a longer way if we stay aboard and find ourselves in a German prison camp by evening.”

Arthur had no argument for that. He had seen what the Luftwaffe had done to the beach at Dunkirk, had watched the Perseverance vanish beneath the waves with Mac’s crew—his own crew, he reminded himself—leaving nothing but oil and wreckage. He did not intend to die in the cold water of the Channel, not when there was still work to do.

“What about George?” Arthur asked.

Mac’s expression flickered, and Arthur saw something he had not expected—genuine concern. “He’s in the ward. Conscious now, last I checked. But he’s weak. He won’t survive a lifeboat crossing, let alone a fight if it comes to that.”

“Then we take him with us.”

“He’ll slow us down.”

“I’m not leaving him behind.”

For a moment, the two men faced each other across the narrow cabin, and Arthur saw the calculation in Mac’s eyes. The intelligence officer was weighing risks, costs, possibilities. Arthur had seen men do the same thing on the deck of a trawler when a storm blew in and there was a call to be made about which lines to cut.

“Fine,” Mac said at last. “We take him. But we need a distraction. Something that pulls the crew away from the boat deck and gives us time to lower a lifeboat without being seen.”

Arthur thought for a moment. He had spent his life around engines, around coal and oil and fire. He knew exactly what would pull every hand on the ship to one place.

“Smoke,” he said. “We make smoke. A fire in the laundry hold—small enough to manage, loud enough to raise hell. Every man on this ship will run to fight it.”

Mac’s lips curved into a thin smile. “You’re a natural at this, Arthur Briggs.”

“I’m a fisherman. I know what burns.”

They moved through the darkened corridors with the easy confidence of men who belonged there. Mac had learned the ship’s layout in the first hour aboard, mapping escape routes and storage holds with the practiced eye of a man who had spent his life in places he was not supposed to be. Arthur followed, carrying a can of lamp oil he had found in the boatswain’s locker.

The laundry hold was aft and below the waterline, a cramped space filled with linen and towels and the sharp smell of soap. It was perfect.

Mac wedged the door open with a wooden block while Arthur splashed oil across a pile of sheets. He struck a match, held it for a moment, and dropped it.

The fire caught instantly, racing along the oil-soaked fabric with a hungry roar. Thick black smoke rolled across the ceiling, and within thirty seconds the ship’s alarm began to clang.

“Now,” Mac said. “The ward. Quickly.”

They climbed the steel stairs two at a time, passing crewmen running the opposite way with fire extinguishers and hoses. No one spared them a second glance. The smoke was already seeping through the vents, filling the corridor with a stench of burning cloth.

The sick bay was at the end of a narrow passageway on the port side, a white-tiled room lined with bunks and cots. A nurse stood at the door, her face pale as she looked toward the distant commotion.

“Is there a fire?” she asked.

“Laundry hold,” Mac said, his voice breathless. “They need every hand. We can watch the patients.”

The nurse hesitated, then nodded and hurried away, her white apron fluttering behind her as she disappeared around the corner.

Arthur stepped into the ward. The air was thick with the smell of antiseptic and blood. George lay in the corner bunk, his face grey, his bandaged chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. His eyes were open—dull, but open—and they found Arthur’s face with a flicker of recognition.

“Skipper?”

“Easy, George. We’re getting you out of here.”

Behind them, the door clicked shut. Arthur turned to find the sick bay attendant, a wiry man with a thin mustache and eyes that did not quite meet his, holding the handle in a white-knuckled grip.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the attendant asked.

Mac moved first, crossing the room in three quick strides. The attendant was fast, but Mac was faster. His fist caught the man square on the jaw, and the attendant’s head snapped back, his eyes rolling as he crumpled to the floor.

“Lock the door,” Mac said.

Arthur slid the bolt across, then turned back to George. The young soldier was trying to sit up, his face twisted with pain.

“What’s happening?” George asked. His voice was weak, barely more than a whisper.

“We’re leaving this ship,” Arthur said. “Before she takes us back to France.”

George blinked, processing the words. “Am I coming with you?”

“If you can walk.”

George grimaced and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk. He was shirtless beneath the bandages, his ribs stark against his pale skin. Arthur stepped forward and slipped an arm around his shoulders.

“Easy now.”

“I’m fine,” George said, though his voice shook. “Just help me stand.”

They got him upright, one arm over Arthur’s shoulders, Mac steadying him from the other side. George let out a harsh breath but found his feet.

“Boat deck,” Mac said. “Third lifeboat on the starboard side. It’s already provisioned.”

They had taken three steps toward the door when a sound stopped them cold.

Footsteps in the corridor.

Slow, deliberate footsteps that did not have the hurry of men running to fight a fire. They approached the door and stopped.

A voice came through the wood, quiet and familiar.

A voice Arthur had heard a thousand times, calling to him across the deck of the Perseverance.

“Father. I know you’re in there. We need to talk.”