Agent of Death (35 page)

Huth stood in the port watch station of the conning tower. It was clean and fresh and cold and Weber was beside him. Weber followed him everywhere now, just as all the boat’s officers and petty officers were followed by a blackshirt, even when they went to the heads. That’s how it was because the SSA was firmly in control, because they had the guns. And now Weber wanted to talk. Huth hated Weber. Hated talking to him.

‘What about this landing in Normandy?’ said Weber. ‘My men are worried. D’you think it’s real? Not just a trick by the Tommies and the Amis?’

‘It’s real,’ said Huth. ‘Our radio watch keeps picking up signals from our boys in France. There’s been a landing and they’ve got ashore in numbers.’

Weber frowned. ‘What sort of numbers? It could be like the Dieppe raid in ’42. We kicked their arses that time!’

‘No,’ said Huth, ‘it’s the real thing. They’ve got an enormous fleet off Normandy. Battleships, cruisers, landing craft: everything. There’s hundreds of thousands of them ashore. The war’s on two fronts now.’

‘Fuck!’ said Weber, then, ‘Whoah!’ as a wave surged right over the ruined bow of the giant and every damaged, half-holding, half-breaking joint groaned, and the SSA Mem Tav team on the fore-casing staggered and gave up trying to connect the launch ramp sections and raise them, and they just hung on to the stanchions to stay alive and aboard. ‘Bugger me!’ said Weber, as tons of water flooded down the open hatchways from which the ramp sections were being pulled. ‘Can we stand that? Will we sink?’

‘No,’ said Huth, ‘she’s designed for it. The pumps will heave that back out again. We’ve got plenty of electric power,’ he pointed, ‘see there!’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Weber, as strong white jets of water spouted out of the boat, just above the waterline. Then the boat steadied, and the Mem Tav team took up their wrenches and spanners and worked on. Weber frowned and thought of the Fiesler down below and Svart’s final decision.

‘So when can we fire the bloody thing?’ he said. ‘Are we in range of New York?’ and he looked round the horizon and frowned. He was no navigator. He had no idea where the boat was heading. It was all sky and sea to him. ‘That
is
where we’re going, isn’t it?’ he said, ‘New York?’ But Huth was tired of Weber: sick of him, and he was worried that the war was really going bad, and was full of doubts about the Mem Tav Fieseler anyway. So he ignored the question.

‘We’ll get north winds today,’ he said, and scanned the horizon with binoculars. The two ratings in the starboard station did the same, as did the radars.

‘How can you know what the weather will do?’ said Weber. He looked at the sky, which was clear and grey. ‘How can you tell the bloody weather?’ he said, and Huth smiled.

‘Because we’ve got a secret, unmanned weather station up in Canada, on the tip of the Labrador Peninsula. One of our boats put it there two years ago. It’s something nobody knows about but us U-boatsmen,’ he looked at Weber, ‘and you now, I suppose.’

‘And you pick up the signals?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’re gonna get north winds in a couple of hours?’

‘Yes. Strong and steady, and as long as it’s steady we should be all right.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Huh!’ said Huth. ‘That’s the least of our worries. What you want to worry about is closing to within three hundred and fifty kilometres of New York, where the Amis might find us. We had a distant radar contact an hour ago, and that was just a single aircraft, but next time it might be a destroyer!’ Weber went quiet and looked round nervously, while Huth frowned at what he’d just said. The sea makes men superstitious, even technical men like submariners. So Huth knew you shouldn’t talk about what might happen, in case it did. And he was right, except that it wasn’t a destroyer that came up over the horizon.

A klaxon sounded from the control room below. A petty officer shouted up the voice pipe to the watch station. Huth jumped in alarm.

‘Alert! Alert! Aircraft approaching, starboard ninety, estimated speed four hundred kilometres per hour!’

‘Track! Track! Track!’ yelled Huth to the boat’s gunners. ‘Clear the casing!’ he shouted to the Mem Tav crew, then, down the voice pipe, ‘Secure all compartments! Action stations!’

The Mem Tav team stumbled and slipped and crammed themselves down hatches, the gun turrets whirred as the gunners tested their training and elevating motors. Then there was horrible silence and waiting as Huth and the two watch keepers focused binoculars, and dread crept over them all. They couldn’t dive. The boat was half wrecked. They had just two turrets –
Anton
and
Berthold
– and the gun crews were SSA, not U-boatsmen, and had no business being aboard a U-boat at all.

‘Four aircraft,’ said one of the watch keepers, ‘coming low.’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Huth, as the four dots turned into aircraft.

‘Grumman Avengers,’ said the watch keeper, ‘torpedo bombers!’ The four Avengers closed at terrifying speed, then separated into two flights, engines audible as they came round in wing-banking curves.

‘Oh Christ!’ said Huth again. ‘The sods are splitting the attack! They’re coming in on either beam!’ Then, ‘
Anton
, train starboard!
Berthold
, train port! Fire at will!’ Huth knew that what he should have done was dive, and if he couldn’t dive, turn bow-on to minimize the target for a torpedo attack. But this boat was heap of crap that couldn’t manoeuvre. It just sat dumb-headed, waiting for the torpedoes.

*

But Huth need not have worried.

The Karolings prized rifle shooting as spiritual discipline.

So Svart loved guns and had recruited the gun crews himself.

He picked the best and trained them carefully.

It was almost as if he were there.

CHAPTER 40

The
North
Atlantic.

Friday
9
June
,
11
.
25
hours
Eastern
Standard
Time

‘Bird to Saint! Bird to Saint! We see it!’ Radio crackled in headsets as Curt Derby told the carrier that the son of a bitch was dead ahead. Derby could see the bastard: enormous in the water. Biggest damn sub in the world. They could all see it: all four pilots, all four gunners, all four bombardiers, and the bombardiers had binoculars.

‘They got a ramp on the deck,’ said Art Cannock, Derby’s bombardier. ‘A launch ramp, just like the Limey said.’

‘There’s guys working on it,’ said Zbig Jarosz, aboard
Bring
’em
Back
.

‘Cut the crap!’ said Derby. ‘We go once round for a good look then we go in on the beam.’

‘Yes, sir, yes!’ they all said, and the four Avengers banked and turned full circle round the huge sub, then lined up on target, closing at two-fifty miles per hour in line abeam. Then:

‘Go! Go! Go!
Now
!’ yelled Derby.

‘Yes, sir, yes!’ said the three other pilots.

As planned,
Bucket
of
Bolts
and
Sheila’s
Shenanigans
banked slow and starboard, turned back, and came round in another full circle, ending with target dead ahead again, deliberately wasting time so
Bring
’em
Back
and
Needs
Must
could curve round the other side of the target, and the two flights could attack head-on to each other, dropping their fish on either side simultaneously, then passing port-to-port.

*

Aboard the Führerboat,
Anton
and
Berthold
waited with their blackshirt crews following the distant targets. Each turret mounted two Reinmetall-Borsig thirty millimetre auto-cannon, each turret could deliver four hundred rounds per minute of alternate high-explosive, armour-piercing, and incendiary, to maximum effective range of two thousand seven hundred yards. The gunners trained on four targets still out of range. Turret motors whined, guns moved smooth and steady, gunners held fingers off triggers. Then two targets passed round the bow with
Anton
tracking, and two curved in a circle with
Berthold
tracking.

*

Derby and Cohen lined up on the sub. Schultzer and Deutsch did the same. None had radar. Bombardiers guessed distance. Gunners waited to strafe. Each plane carried one Mk 13 aerial torpedo with six hundred pounds of Torpex high explosive per warhead.

‘Low and slow!’ said Derby. ‘Under one hundred feet and two hundred mph or we’ll miss and go home deep in shit!’

‘Yes, sir, yes!’ said the rest.

There was no help, no aids. Just line of sight, and no drop before one thousand yards from target because the fish armed themselves in the water, and needed time to do it or would strike dud. Engines roared. Speed spray blasted off windshields.

‘Not yet! Not yet!’ said Derby.

‘Yes, sir,yes!’

‘Wait for it!’ Derby pushed the cover off the fire button of his twin-fifty wing guns ready to suppress flack. ‘Wait for it …’

The four Avengers closed on target. An Essex class carrier would have sent thirty torpedo bombers, plus thirty dive bombers and thirty fighters. Even
Saint Mihiel
should have sent ten Avengers and twenty fighters. But four were sent, because four was all she had and the best she had, and they closed low and slow, because that was the best they could do.

*

The four Avengers presented excellent targets to the Führerboat’s gunners, and
Anton
fired first by three seconds: target acquired at eighteen hundred yards, short bursts and speedy corrections. Then
Berthold
fired: short bursts, speedy corrections, streams of cannon shells reaching out like witch’s fingers.

*

Bucket
of
Bolts
burst apart in multiple explosions. A wing tore off. The engine shattered into shrapnel killing pilot and bombardier. Fuel tanks burst, smoke streamed, and the ruined aircraft hit the Atlantic in multiple white-foamed cartwheels, and sank.

Sheila’s
Shenanigans
went up in a fireball as cannon shells detonated her torpedo warhead.

Bring
’em
Back
was spattered inside by the remains of her crew, who were killed instantly, and knew nothing as their aircraft roared over the target, still under engine power, and flew for many miles before falling into the sea.

Needs
Must
got closest. Mel Deutsch tried to fire his guns and drop his torpedo, but the plane was already riddled with holes, undercarriage dangling, wreckage spinning, canopy shattered, fuel flaming, and, even if the plane had been sound, Mel Deutsch was not because he didn’t have a right hand any more, didn’t know it was gone, and was wondering why he couldn’t make anything work. Then
Needs
Must
spun and tumbled and came apart, and Deutsch was thrown out and into the sea, and survived shock and impact and blood loss, but went under and was drowned by the time his life jacket brought him up again.

*

There were no survivors.

There were no torpedo drops.

There was no fire from any American gun.

And the Führerboat suffered no damage.

Not a scratch to its paint.

*

Huth, Weber and the two watch keepers saw everything. They were deafened by the fire of their guns and couldn’t quite believe they were still alive after the lightning-fast, air–sea battle of machines. Then they looked on in silence as a heat haze quivered over the gun barrels, as the turrets trained neatly fore and aft, and the gunners switched off their motors.

*

The
Führerboat
,

The
North
Atlantic
.

Friday
9
June
,
11
.
45
hours
Eastern
Standard
Time
.

Everyone in the sick bay looked up as the boat’s guns fired short rapid bursts. There was nothing to see but the grey-painted deck head, but they still looked up because the boat was at action stations, compartments secured, and everyone wondered what was going on. Then the firing stopped and there was silence.

Shortly after that, von Bloch was stirred out of a dozing sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder. He blinked and focused his eyes. Someone was standing beside his cot, bending over him.

‘Captain Sohler!’ he said, trying to make sense of seeing a man whom he’d thought dead.

‘Herr von Bloch,’ said Sohler, ‘Herr
Freiherr
.’ Sohler looked dreadful. His face was yellow, his lips were thin, his nose was sharp. He looked like a corpse in a patient’s nightgown, heavily strapped and bandaged round the chest; his feet were bare and he was standing only because two slavies in surgical whites were holding him up, one to each arm. But Sohler was awake and determined.

Von Bloch looked round the sick bay and saw that everyone was looking at him: patients and medics together. Even Dr Billroth and his officers were there in the background. Everyone was looking, and everyone standing was a U-boatsman, but even the SSA wounded were looking to him, and he saw that there was common purpose among these men. He guessed that they’d been talking while he slept. No, it wasn’t that: more likely Captain Sohler had been talking to
them
.

‘This must stop,’ said Sohler, ‘it must stop now. I’ve heard everything. I was here and awake when you spoke to Weber and Huth. I know everything.’

Von Bloch was puzzled. ‘What must stop?’ he said.

‘This mad, stupid attack on New York,’ said Sohler, ‘when the war is already lost.’ The listeners gasped. It was the public statement of what they all secretly believed. ‘The Tommies, the Amis, and the Canadians have landed in France,’ said Sohler, ‘and the Reds are coming from the east, so we might beat the British and the Reds but not America too. It’s finished. It’s over.’

But von Bloch fought on. He fought to the last gasp of his loyalty. ‘Herr Svart,’ he said, ‘Herr Svart is our … our … he is …’ and there he faltered because von Bloch wanted to say that Svart was their superman, but couldn’t. He wanted to believe that Svart could still save Germany. He wanted to believe that civilians were the right and proper target. So he reached out for Svart’s new morality. He reached to his utmost and found that Svart’s morality was beyond his reach because he did not believe in it and was disgusted by it.

Thus Sohler’s next words were superfluous. ‘Svart is a monster,’ he said, and von Bloch groaned because he knew that already. ‘Svart has betrayed our nation,’ said Sohler, and von Bloch nodded again. Sohler spoke on. ‘Weber has control of the boat. His men are everywhere except here. He has the Mem Tav Feisler nearly ready and Svart has ordered him to fire it. They’ve only got to get it on the ramp and fit the wings, and we’re within in range of New York right now.’ Sohler looked at the men around him. ‘If our guns were firing, that means we were under attack, and the enemy might be back any minute, and Weber will want to launch the Fiesler at once … and we must stop him!’

Sohler leaned close to von Bloch. ‘Herr
Freiherr
,’ he said, ‘Weber won’t listen to me, and his men have weapons and they’ve taken away mine. There are seven million people in that city, and he’ll kill them all, and their deaths will be an eternal disgrace on the Fatherland.’ Von Bloch lay still and Sohler shook him. ‘You’re his superior,’ he said, ‘give the order! Tell him not to fire!’

Von Bloch looked at Sohler. ‘I could give the order,’ he said, ‘but Weber would not listen. We must do better than that. We must remove Weber.’

*

USS
Saint
Mihiel
,

The
North
Atlantic.

Friday
9
June
11
.
30
hours
.

We heard them go down. We heard it all. First Curt Derby’s excited:

‘
Bird
to
Saint
!
Bird
to
Saint
!’ Then his few words of command, then engine noise, explosions, and men shouting and screaming. Then nothing. Just static coming out of the loudspeakers on
Saint Mihiel
’s bridge and everywhere in the ship, and men were standing dismayed, not believing what they’d heard. One thousand men, locked in their steel, flat-topped world, were pierced with grief and disappointment.

Captain Harry P. Fenner took off his cap and put it on his knees as he sat in his command chair; he linked fingers behind the back of his neck, bowed his head, and just said, ‘Damn.’ Then he sat up. ‘Give me the mic,’ he said, and a rating handed him a microphone on a wire, nodding to let the captain know the mic was live.

‘Now hear this! Now hear this!’ said Fenner, throughout the ship. ‘This is the captain,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost our boys. They’re gone and there’s no bringing them back, but we’re still United States Navy and we aren’t done yet, and I want every knot of speed this ship can deliver, because our mission now is to find that submarine and sink it, and grind it under our bows. That is our task and every man aboard will bend himself to it. That is all. Get to your duties.’

Then he handed back the mic, got down from his chair, and called a conference in his formal office: a far grander version of the private room I’d seen earlier. All senior officers were present, representing the ship’s departments, and me too, right next to Fenner, round a long, highly-polished table, with leather-upholstered chairs.

He got straight to the point.

‘First, there’s no point maintaining radio silence. We’ll contact Annapolis, tell them what’s happening, and seek everything the navy and the army air force can do to defend New York.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you agree, Wing Commander? From the British side?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘They’re going to fire that doodlebug now, come what may. But let’s send to the shore in code. Let’s not make it easy for the enemy.’

‘Of course,’ said Fenner, and looked at one of his officers. ‘Draft a message right now for sending to Annapolis, let me see it, then send it immediately.’

‘Sir!’ said the officer, and started writing.

‘Mr Bushey,’ said Fenner, ‘how long will it take us to reach the sub?’ Bushey was ready with the answer.