Free Gold From Crete by C.S. Forester

would want to be the admiral’s enemy. Now he shot a direct glance at Crowe, twisted his thin lips and shot a question.
    ‘Supposing,’ he asked, ‘you had the chance to give orders to a U-boat captain, what orders would you give?’
    Crowe kept his face expressionless. ‘That would depend,’ he said cautiously, ‘on who the U-boat captain was.’
    ‘In this case it is Korvettenkapitan Lothar Wolfgang von und zu Loewenstein.’
    Captain Crowe repressed a start. ‘I know him,’ he said.
    ‘That’s why you’re here.’ The admiral grinned. ‘Didn’t they tell you in London? You’re here because few people on our side of the ocean know Loewenstein better than you.’
    Crowe considered. Yes, he decided, the admiral’s statement was right. He knew Loewenstein. In the years before 1939, the German had made quite a reputation for himself by his bold handling of his yacht in English regattas - Loewenstein and his helmsman. Burke? Of course not. Bruch - Burch - something like that. Good man, that helmsman.
    Crowe had met Loewenstein repeatedly on several formal occasions when the British navy had met detachments of the German navy while visiting. And since 1939 their paths had crossed more than once - Crowe on the surface in his destroyer, and Loewenstein two hundred feet below in his submarine.
    ‘Loewenstein,’ the admiral was saying, ‘left Bordeaux on the thirteenth - that’s four days ago - with orders to operate on the Atlantic Coast. We know he has four other U-boats with him. Five in all.’
    The shaggy-browed admiral leaned over the desk. ‘And Loewenstein,’ he added, ‘is out to get the Queen Anne .’
    Captain Crowe blinked again.
    ‘The Queen Anne ,’ pursued the American admiral ruthlessly, ‘that is due to clear very shortly with men for the Middle East and India. Men we can’t afford to lose. Not to mention the ship herself.’
    ‘What’s the source of your information, sir?’ Captain Crowe asked.
    ‘Brand here,’ said the admiral, ‘also left Bordeaux on the thirteenth.’
    That piece of news stiffened Crowe in his chair and he stared more closely at the lieutenant in plain clothes. The news explained a lot - the seedy French suit, the hollow cheeks and the haggard expression. A man who had been acting as a spy in Bordeaux for the last six months would naturally look haggard.
    Brand spoke for the first time and his pleasant Texan drawl carried even more than the hint that he had not only been speaking French but thinking in French for a long time.
    ‘This is what I brought from Bordeaux,’ he said, taking an untidy bundle of papers from the admiral’s desk. ‘It’s the code the German agents in this country use for communications with the U-boats.’
    Crowe took the bundle from his hand and gave it a cursory glance. This was not the time to give it prolonged study, complicated as it was, and half the columns were in German, which he did not understand. The other half were in English, and were composed of a curiously arbitrary sequence of words. Crowe caught sight of ‘galvanized iron buckets’ and ‘canned lobster’ and ‘ripe avocados’. Farther down the column there were figures instead of words - apparently every value in American money from a cent to five dollars had a German equivalent, and the words ‘pounds’ and ‘dozens’ and even the hours of the day could convey certain meanings when put in their proper context.
    ‘With that code,’ explained Brand, ‘you can give time, courses, latitude and longitude - anything you want.’
    Crowe braved a question he half suspected he should not have asked. ‘Where did you get this?’
    ‘It’s not the original,’ interposed the admiral. ‘The Nazis don’t know we’ve got this. There’s no missing original to give them the tip to change their code.’
    ‘A French girl got it for me,’ Brand explained.
    There was a silence and then the admiral said, ‘Well, Captain, there’s the setup. What have you got to