And a girl had died.
Cilla bolted from her chair. “Are we finished? I should return to my watch station.”
Mulling over regrets did no good whatsoever.
20
Scapa Flow
Friday, October 10, 1941
Rain pelted Lachlan’s cap and greatcoat and blurred the sight of the wee island of Lamb Holm across the rain-pocked waters of Kirk Sound.
“How goes the construction?” Lt.-Cdr. Bennett Blake asked the resident superintending civil engineer for the Churchill Barriers.
Mr. Adamson hunched deeper into the raised collar of his overcoat. “Far too slowly. We’re entering a phase of construction requiring more workers, but we have an acute labor shortage. And we can’t work in such weather.”
A gust of wind blew rain into Lachlan’s face, and he blinked it away. Such weather would only worsen in the coming months.
Mr. Adamson nodded across the channel. “We’re quarrying rock from Lamb Holm and dumping it in the sound to build the foundation. It’s slow work, hard work, suited only for able-bodied men.”
Lachlan folded in his wet lips. “Most able-bodied men are inthe Forces or in reserved professions. Those who refuse to join the Forces—can we trust them in a restricted area?”
“One of the many problems we have with our labor force.” Mr. Adamson gestured to tall steel towers on each side of the sound. “These cableways help. We brought in five of them. Our company used them in the construction of a diversion dam in Iraq and a bridge in Scotland.”
“Aye.” Cables strung between the towers. At the base of the tower on Lamb Holm sat a large skip, which could be filled with rock and electrically hoisted up the tower and over the sound, where the rock would be dumped where needed. “Excellent design.”
“It works well,” Mr. Adamson said. “We only need more muscle to fill them and man them.”
The current continued to flow swiftly through Kirk Sound, the same channel the German U-boat had used two years earlier to enter Scapa Flow and sink theRoyal Oak. Had enough rock been dumped to impede another attempt? Defenses were tighter and more blockships had been sunk, but was it enough?
Commander Blake shook Mr. Adamson’s hand. “Thank you. The Admiralty appreciates your efforts.”
Lachlan and Blake headed for the new pier at nearby St. Mary’s, where they boarded a drifter bound for Lyness.
A force 5 easterly wind pushed the vessel west toward the naval base.
Commander Blake leaned his tall, slender form against the cabin. “The Admiralty may have a solution to the labor shortage, but I don’t like it.”
“Aye?” The vibrations of the drifter’s motor massaged Lachlan’s back.
“We have rather a large collection of Italian prisoners of war from the campaigns in Libya and East Africa. The Admiralty wishes to employ them as labor for the Churchill Barriers.”
“Prisoners of war?” Lachlan shook his head hard, anddroplets spun off his cap visor. “British subjects cannae come to the Orkneys without a permit. How could we allow enemy soldiers?”
“As I said, I don’t like it.” Blake wiped his thin nose with his handkerchief. “There are other problems with the proposal. The Geneva Conventions forbid the use of prisoner labor on defenses.”
Lachlan raised a grim smile. “My thanks to Geneva.”
“Don’t be too smug. The Admiralty is determined.”
“We’d allow the enemy right in?” The wind blew Lachlan’s sigh back into his mouth.
Just as they’d placed a confirmed enemy agent in another restricted area.
No one at Dunnet Head knew Cilla was a spy, other than Yardley, the lightkeepers, and the Wrens.
And no one at Scapa, not even Commander Blake, knew Lachlan was passing information to that spy.
