Agent of Death (12 page)

‘
Obersturmführer
Grauber,’ I said, and he opened his eyes. ‘This is for you. It is my duty, and my pleasure, to return it to you.’ I took the SSA gorget out of my pocket and gave it to Nurse Marina, so she could make a business of leaning over Grauber, with her breasts brushing his nose, and fastening the gorget round his neck on its gold chain. She extemporized again, by kissing his brow when she had done, then she sat down, gazing at him with respectful adoration. Bette Davis couldn’t have done it better.

Grauber sighed with contentment, and who wouldn’t have? He smiled at her and tried to look down at the gorget.

‘
Obersturmführer
,’ I said, ‘I have a message for you. You’ve done extremely well, and the Führer himself is pleased.’ He frowned. I sensed a false step, like Marina touching his wounded hand.

‘What about
Der
Eisener
?’ he said – I assumed he was talking about the head of the Luftwaffe, Herman Goering, whose nickname was
Der
Eisener
: the Iron Man. I started to say that the
Herr
Reischsmarshal
was also delighted, but that was even worse. He didn’t like that at all. He got agitated and tried to raise a hand.

‘Herr Svart,’ he said, ‘Herr Svart! What does he say?’ He looked at me, half doped, trying to focus, and I got the message at last.

‘Herr Svart. Of course,’ I said. ‘He is delighted with the success of your mission, and he sends you his personal congratulations.’

‘Ahhhhh …’ said Grauber, and his eyes closed. ‘I told them nothing,’ he said. ‘The Ivans. I told them nothing.’

‘We are all proud of you,’ I said, and sat down beside his bed for a long chat. Just as long as it might take. And it did take quite a while because these things can’t be rushed. One thing I did notice straight away was Grauber’s speech. He used an odd, old-fashioned sort of German, with a slow delivery, very polite and proper, and pleasing to the ear. Think of a soft Irish voice reading a radio story as if whispering in your ear. I’d never heard such an accent before, and it stuck in my mind.

*

Much later I was back in Zharkov’s office. Ulitzky was there, together with a couple of relatively junior civilians from the entourage of the assistant undersecretary, and two colonels sent by the NKVD general, and Captain Goraya the gas warfare man. The office was full. There were secretaries too, all men, to take notes, but Nurse Marina wasn’t there. Presumably changing back into uniform, and I had my tunic and cap back again.

‘First thing, comrades,’ I said, ‘we’re going to have to go over that Arado jet. Someone’s got to get in to that German flying kit: all three layers, and go out and examine the jet.’ There was a loud murmuring as several private conversations discussed what I’d said. None of them spoke for all the room to hear, but straight into one another’s ears.

‘Why?’ said Ulitzky. ‘What did he tell you? The Fritz pilot?’

‘He told me bits and pieces that I’m trying to put together,’ I said. ‘He thought he was back in Germany, in hospital. First of all, we’re dealing with a splinter group – SSA, led by Abimilech Svart – that’s broken away from Hitler.’ There was an even louder set of conversations. ‘Comrades,’ I said, ‘can I finish?’

‘Tell us what you know about Mem Tav,’ said Ulitzky. ‘Tell us that first.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Mem Tav is so dangerous that they don’t actually make it until they use it. They make three chemicals which, when mixed together and passed over a catalyst, will form Mem Tav, which is instantly sprayed out of the aircraft, but even so, some of it washes back and contaminates the plane, inside and out. That’s why the pilot is inside three suits, inside a sealed cockpit. So we’ve got to get inside that plane because it’s a complete factory in miniature. A factory to make Mem Tav.’

‘What about the flying kit,’ said Ulitzky. ‘You said someone has to wear them?’

‘They’re exactly what we thought,’ I said.

‘What
you
thought!’ said Ulitzky. He grinned and I smiled back.

‘You put them on one after another,’ I said, ‘and after being near Mem Tav, you take them off one after another and discard each suit as you do so, and nobody ever touches the bins you put them in. You need three layers to be safe if you’ve been exposed to Mem Tav.’

‘What about the tubes in the innermost suit?’ said Ulitzky, and I could see the army clerks scribbling furiously to get all these details recorded.

‘They’re for water,’ I said. ‘Before you take off the final suit it has to be sprayed with live steam to deactivate any Mem Tav that’s got on it, even inside the two other suits. So you have to pump water through the tubes to cool down the wearer, or he’d get cooked.’ I looked at Goraya. ‘Can those suits be got ready for use again?’ But he was terrified at the thought of being held responsible and he said nothing.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘surely you can fill the oxygen cylinder in the inner suit? It’s only oxygen. Your army engineers must have that for their welding gear. Oxyacetylene? You use that don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Goraya, ‘we could do that, if you say so.’ And he glanced at his superiors, took hold of his courage, and ventured some information. ‘But it’s a closed circuit.’

‘What is?’ I said.

‘The oxygen system in the inner suit. It has to be or it’d blow up the suit like a balloon. And you have to remove the carbon dioxide that’s breathed out. So the oxygen goes to the face mask, then back to a re-breather unit, where the carbon dioxide is taken out with soda lime. We have respirators that work like that.’

‘With full suits? Airtight suits?’ I asked, hoping for a way round using the cut-up German suits.

‘No,’ said Goraya, ‘only respirators.’

‘Pity. So what’s the problem with the Fritz oxygen supply?’

‘The soda lime might be used up.’

‘So put some more in,’ I said, and Goraya dithered.

‘Do you take responsibility for opening the German kit to do this?’

‘Yes, for Christ’s sake, and you can patch the suits, where they’ve been cut. Have you got any strips of rubber? Wide strips?’ Goraya nodded. ‘Then you could pull the German suits together where they’ve been cut, and glue the strips over the cuts. Any sort of glue that’s watertight and airtight.’ Goraya looked round at his seniors and saw them nodding. Then he looked back at me, concluded I really was taking responsibility, and he actually showed a bit of enthusiasm.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we could do that. We’ve got rubber adhesive that we use to seal respirators or repair them. It’s the same stuff as for repairing bicycle inner tubes. That would do it.’

‘And what about a steam generator?’ I said. ‘To hose down the suits later on?’ Goraya nodded.

‘They’ve got steam units in the motor transport repair sections for cleaning truck engines. We could use one of them. They’re portable. All our equipment is portable.’

‘We’d have to inform Moscow,’ said one of the NKVD colonels. ‘We’d have to tell them exactly what we’re doing and check that it is the correct action.’

‘Yes,’ said the other colonel.

‘Right,’ I said, although even then something was hiding in the back of my mind.  I’d missed something somewhere, and didn’t know what it was.  But for the moment I concentrated on practicalities.  ‘So,” I said,  ‘can we get that done as quickly as possible? And, in the meantime, we can decide who’s the lucky comrade who goes inside the suits.’

CHAPTER 13

The
Führerboat,

At
30
Metres
Depth
in
the
North
Atlantic

151
Miles
South
-
East
of
the
Faroe
Islands
.

Wednesday
17 May
,
22
.
15
hours.

The officer of the watch was
Leutnant
zur
See
– Second Lieutenant – Huth. He was in charge because it was his turn, although he happened to be the second youngest of the ship’s navigating officers, and the only one who had never seen action before. So he did very well when the emergency hooter sounded.

Huth snatched up the phone under the row of lights which showed who was calling. There was a light for each compartment and one was shining.

‘Control! Control!’ cried the phone handset. Huth recognized the speaker by his voice:
Oberleutnant
Lorenz, the chief engineer, calling from the torpedo room right up in the bow. Huth recognized Lorenz even though there was a loud screeching of metal-on-metal coming down the line along with the voice, and a hammering clanging and men shouting.

‘Control here,’ said Huth, ‘Report!’

‘The second salvo’s trying to load into the tubes, sir!’ yelled Lorenz, and turned away from the phone. ‘Not like that you idiots!’ he cried. ‘Wedge it! Wedge it with the T-bar!’

Huth turned to a man at the SSA fire-control station nearby, another brand new device. Huth saw that everyone in the control room was looking at him. Even the slavies who slept where they worked. The control room was so quiet that they could hear Lorenz’s voice over the phone.

‘Who gave the order to load?’ said Huth.

‘Nobody, sir,’ said the fire-controller, ‘and we couldn’t anyway. Not with the first salvo already in the tubes. It can’t happen.’ He looked at the firing board in front of him. ‘It can’t! The circuits won’t allow it.’ He punched a button several times and looked at the board. ‘See? No lights, sir. The torpedoes can’t be loading. They
can’t
sir!’

‘Captain to Control Room!’ yelled Huth at the top of his voice, and the command was repeated down the boat, then, ‘Seal all compartments! And seal Control once the captain’s here!’ Then he yelled down the phone again. ‘Torpedo room,’ he said, ‘what’s happening?’

‘They’re trying to load, sir!’ cried Lorenz from the torpedo room. ‘All six, starting with top green. The tube-hatches opened all by themselves, and then trolley motors came on …’ He turned away again. ‘All of you!’ he yelled. ‘Jam the wheels! Use anything you’ve got!’ There was more incoherent shouting, then an appalling, deafening whining came down the phone, all but drowning out Lorenz’s voice even though he was now shrieking, ‘It’s gone mad! The fish in the tube’s gone mad! It’s motor’s come on, and the one behind’s running into the propellers!’

‘Is it armed?’ said Huth.

‘No, sir,’ said Lorenz. ‘Oh shit!
It
is
! It’s armed and fused its bloody self!’

‘Cut all power!’ cried Huth. ‘Cut all power to the …’

BOOOOOOOOOM
!

*

The heavy explosion rumbled through the boat and the whole huge vessel shuddered and rolled; the outer casing creaked, the separate hull-tubes ground heavily against each other, lines parted, steel tore, sparks flashed, and debris, dust, and cigarette ends showered down from little corners of the deck head and fittings where the shipyard builders had left them, while in the control room the main lights went out, and only the dim glow of emergency bulbs was left, giving more shadow than illumination, but enough to show that the boat was going nose down, with a pencil rolling across the deck towards the bow to prove it.

Landau looked at Feldman where they sat in their usual place in the navigator’s cubicle in the near-dark control room. They were there all the time. They were supposed to work till they dropped then wake up and work some more. Landau spoke quietly and in Hebrew.

‘
Shema
Yisrael.
Adonai
eloheinu.
Adonai
ehad
!’ Feldman looked at him and repeated these most sacred words in Polish.

‘Hear O Israel. The Lord is our God.  The Lord is One!’

Their usual tools were around them, and among the innards of the miniaturized valves and circuit boards they understood better than anyone else on board, nobody had noticed that some of the circuits had been considerably altered, or that Landau and Feldman had got into the main circuit trunking to access other systems than purely navigational.

Then a hatch slammed as a man came through, bearing a torch, and men banged home the clips and saluted in the gloom. It was Sohler: bare feet, bare arms, Tommy-trousers and braces, the dressings for his burns bulging under his vest. But he wore his white-crowned cap, and Huth rapidly explained what was happening, saluted, and stood back. Sohler took command, and he and his men did the jobs they’d been trained to do.

‘Angle on the bow?’ said Sohler.

‘Eight degrees,’ said someone.

‘Blow five and six,’ said Sohler.

‘Blow five and six!’ cried someone else. Then, ‘Five and six not blowing.’

‘Blow three and four,’ said Sohler.

‘Blow three and four …
Three
and
four
blowing
!’

‘Steer midships,’ said Sohler, ‘group down, all ahead dead slow!’

Landau watched and listened to this arcane discussion as it went on and on, and he understood very little of it. But Feldman understood. To him it brought back proud memories. He nodded towards Sohler.

‘He’s good,’ said Feldman, ‘a good officer.’

‘Can he save the boat?’ said Landau.

‘Don’t know. Sounds like we set off only one warhead.’

‘Is that enough to sink a submarine?’

‘Huh!’ said Feldman. ‘Some of those I served in could be sunk by a hand grenade!’

‘But this one?’

‘Don’t know. It’s as big as a cruiser.’ He looked at Sohler again. ‘And he’s good.’

Landau paused. He closed his eyes. His heart was pounding. As he’d made the final electrical connection, he’d expected to die. It’d been like putting a pistol to his head and pulling the trigger, and even here with no proper life left to him; even knowing that soon he’d be shot anyway; even so it had taken courage to end what wretched little he had left. He’d expected cataclysm! A huge explosion! A rush of icy water, a choking and throttling … and oblivion. He was shocked and weakened. He’d thought he was ready to die, and found that he was not. He trembled beyond control and hung his head, and sat with his arms around his knees. The shock of being still alive was worse than being dead. So Landau thought, and he trembled at how much of him was destroyed by this near meeting with death.

But the boat seemed intact and its crew was fighting to save it. So Landau forced himself to speak.

‘How much damage did we do?’ he asked, though he barely cared any more. He felt as if he were already dead. Feldman considered the question.

‘At the very least we’ve blown open the bow. It’d be like a flower-bud opening. Jagged metal sticking out everywhere. So the boat won’t steer properly or hold its trim.’

‘What’s trim?’ said Landau. The question was an effort.

‘The boat’s balance in the water. Too heavy and she sinks. Too light and she floats up. You want it just right. Just neutral so she hangs in the water and doesn’t go up or down.’

‘How do they control that?’ said Landau, asking for Feldman’s sake, not his own.

‘Tanks full of seawater. Let more water in, and she sinks. Blow them empty with compressed air, and she rises. This boat’s enormous. It’s got six main tanks and eight trimming tanks for fine adjustment. But we’ll have spoilt that. Sounds like we’ve damaged tanks five and six, at least. The ones near the bow.’ He tried to be pleased, but couldn’t be. He thought of past days under attack from the British, in the greasy, foul, sweat-stinking little boats of the first war, and he instinctively took the submariners’ side. He couldn’t help it. He was a seaman and an engineer. A part of Feldman – a big part – wanted to get up and help save the boat. Given any fair and decent chance, he’d have served his country like the good patriot he’d always been. But he kept that to himself.

‘When a boat gets hit, anything that can come apart …
will
come apart,’ he said, ‘that’s what happens. So we’ll have broken all sorts of connections: electrical, mechanical, hydraulic. There’ll be warped bulkheads, jammed hatches, and leaks: lots of leaks. Sometimes the shock runs from end to end of the boat and wrecks things furthest away from the blast. And sometimes it doesn’t. Nobody knows why.’

‘
Ah
!’ said the control room team in a united, delighted gasp as the main lights came on: bright, cheerful, and reassuring.

‘Well done lads,’ said Sohler. ‘What’s the angle on the bow?’

‘Zero, sir!’

‘Trim?’

‘Neutral, sir!’

‘How’s she steering, helmsman?’

‘Heavy to starboard, sir!’

‘Can you control it?’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Then it looks like bacon and beans for breakfast,’ said Sohler.

They cheered him for that, and Feldman couldn’t help smiling.