Read Chapter 24: The Turn

The lifeboat hit the water with a slap that echoed off the Argyll's white hull, and Arthur felt the night close around them like a wet blanket. George lay across the thwarts, his bandaged head lolling, while Mac pulled at the oars with a steady, mechanical rhythm. Arthur manned the tiller, guiding them away from the hospital ship's shadow until its dimmed lights blurred into the grey expanse of the Channel.

"Row quieter," Arthur hissed.

Mac grunted. "Quieter than this and we'll be going backwards."

The boat was a standard naval cutter, twelve feet of seasoned oak, and it smelled of tar and disinfectant. They had taken it from the Argyll's davits after Mac had slugged the bosun's mate and Arthur had cut the falls. The alarm would be raised soon—if it hadn't been already—but the ship was under blackout, and a small boat on a dark sea was a hard thing to spot.

Arthur's hands ached. He had not slept properly in days, and the weight of everything—Michael, the orders, the Perseverance gone to the bottom—pressed on his chest like a fishtrap. He forced himself to breathe. The tide was with them, pushing toward Dover, and if they could hold their course for another hour, they might raise the eastern approaches before dawn.

"Father," George said, his voice thin. "Where are we going?"

"Home," Arthur said. It was the only word he trusted.

Mac shipped the oars and let the boat drift. "Quiet now. Listen."

Arthur listened. Above the slap of water against the hull, he heard it: the low, throbbing drone of a motor, not the whine of an E-boat but the heavier, steadier chug of a patrol craft. Coming from the north-east, fast.

"Naval, do you think?" Arthur asked.

"Could be," Mac said. "Could be the Argyll's launch, come to fetch us back."

Arthur peered into the darkness. A shape resolved itself—low and grey, with a single mast and a gun mount forward. The white ensign was barely visible at the stern.

"Navy," Arthur said. "Fairey launch, by the look of her."

They sat in silence as the launch closed in, her bow wave curling white in the darkness. A searchlight snapped on, washing over them, blinding Arthur where he sat at the tiller.

"Ahoy, the boat!" a voice called, sharp with authority. "Heave to and state your business."

Mac raised a hand. "Hospital ship Argyll. We're—"

"You're a mile off your course and heading for the English coast," the voice cut in. "Deserters, are you? Every blasted boat that runs for Dover these days is either a coward or a spy."

Arthur's jaw tightened. He stood slowly, keeping his hands visible. "I'm Arthur Briggs, skipper of the Perseverance, out of Ramsgate. This is my son—he's wounded. We've come off the beach at Dunkirk."

"So have ten thousand others," the voice said. "But most of them aren't sneaking off in a stolen cutter at three in the morning with a man who's got no papers and a boy who looks like he's been in a fight with a meat grinder."

Arthur heard the click of a safety catch. The searchlight held them steady.

Mac spoke low, almost too low to hear. "Arthur. The message. You have to tell them."

Arthur felt the words stick in his throat. The sealed orders were gone, handed to the Argyll's captain. What remained was the memory of their contents—the code words, the rendezvous points, the fleet dispositions that would have been slaughtered if the Germans had believed their decoy had worked.

"I've got information," Arthur said, his voice carrying across the water. "Intelligence. For the Admiralty. I was carrying sealed orders out of Dunkirk."

A long silence. The searchlight wavered, then steadied.

"Sealed orders," the voice said slowly. "From a trawler skipper."

Arthur could picture the officer now—young, maybe twenty-five, fresh from Dartmouth, with a chin like a cliff and no reason to believe a word of it. He had seen the type before. They had never been poor, never been hungry, never lain in a ditch while a Stuka screamed overhead.

"From a dying officer on the beach," Arthur said. "You want to check my story, fine. But you'll be checking it in Dover, not out here, while the Germans get wind that their plan's gone sideways."

Another silence. Mac had shipped the oars and sat motionless, his hands resting on his knees. George coughed, a wet, rattling sound that seemed to decide it.

"Come alongside," the voice said. "Slowly. Hands where I can see them."

They bumped against the launch's hull, and Arthur climbed aboard, then helped Mac haul George up. The junior officer was younger than Arthur had guessed—a lieutenant, RN, with a face that still had its boyhood softness. He looked at George, then at Arthur, then at Mac.

"Lieutenant Corrigan," he said. "I'm taking you to Dover. But I'm not promising it'll be a warm welcome."

"I don't need a welcome," Arthur said. "I need to see an intelligence officer. Tonight."

Corrigan's eyes narrowed. "You'll see whoever the port lieutenant decides you'll see. And if you're spinning me a story, Briggs, you'll be in a cell before breakfast."

Arthur said nothing. The launch turned, engines thrumming, and Dover's dark cliffs rose out of the sea ahead of them like a wall. He watched them grow, felt the launch's deck vibration through his boots, and thought of the Perseverance, of Mac's lamp winking in the distance, of the photograph he had burned.

The boy on the beach had not been his son. But the grief was real, and it had teeth.

The launch slowed as they entered the harbour. A searchlight from the shore swept across them, and Arthur heard the challenge from the breakwater guard. Corrigan answered in quick, clipped phrases. They were expected.

Arthur turned to Mac. "What happens now?"

Mac's face was unreadable in the gloom. "Now," he said, "we find out whether your story's enough to keep us alive."

The launch nudged against the stone quay. Arthur looked up at the grey walls of Dover, at the guns, at the netting over the harbour. He had come home. But home, he knew, was only another kind of battle.