Agent of Death (36 page)

‘Just under ten hours, sir.’

Fenner turned to his senior engineer officer. ‘Chief,’ he said, ‘what can be done to beat that?’

‘Every darn thing I know, sir, and then some.’

Fenner smiled. ‘So what can we do?’

As they spoke, a deep unease grew inside me. I had a friend at Wellington school: his name was Waters; he had a fine voice but was dreadfully shy. Each morning at assembly, one boy would be chosen to read a piece from the bible in front of the whole school. Waters was often chosen and dreaded it, and he said that when he woke up in the morning he knew if it would be him, even before the House Master told him; some sort of foresight. Well, it was like that with me, even before the Avengers went down. I knew it would be me.

Meanwhile the chief was explaining. ‘My people will do what we can with the engines, and we must lighten ship by dumping boats, stores, food, guns, ammo, everything. The higher she rides, the faster she’ll run.’

‘Do it,’ said Fenner.

‘Sir?’ I said. ‘Can I speak?’

‘Go ahead, Wing Commander.’

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘we can’t rely on chasing that sub. We haven’t got ten hours – not if the sub’s already put up the launch ramp. And we can’t rely on the shore people, because maybe they won’t believe us, or they’ll be too slow.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But there’s something else. Let’s use that German jet. It’s got four thirty millimetre guns and, at worst, I could do what one of your chaps said. If I ram the launch ramp they can’t fire the missile, and I might even sink the whole bloody lot.’

The room went quiet as these expert, career naval aviation specialists thought over what I’d said. They weren’t impressed; they were deeply unsure, and I felt like an idiot for even suggesting it.

‘Are you saying you can fly that thing?’ said Fenner.

‘I’m saying I want to try. And what have we got to lose?’

‘Can you even take off from a carrier? Can the airplane itself do that?’

‘Same thing, sir. Let’s at least try. What have we got to lose? Just me and an aeroplane: that’s not much.’

Some of them smiled, but Fenner wasn’t sure. ‘But you’re a bomber boy,’ he said, ‘not a fighter pilot. Why should it be you in that plane?’

‘Sir, I’ve spent two days learning about that aircraft. Nobody knows it as well as me. Nobody else knows it at all.’

Fenner frowned. He thought hard. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s try it.’

CHAPTER 41

The
Führerboat
,

The
North
Atlantic.

Friday
9
June
,
12
.
15
hours
Eastern
Standard
Time.

Gavriel Landau sat on the deck and trembled. The sick bay smelt of ether and carbolic. It was crowded with men. He was seated, Captain Sohler was leaning against one of the middle bunks, and von Bloch was in the bunk, trying to think and to speak. Landau thought Sohler and von Bloch looked ill: von Bloch far worse than Sohler, and everywhere there were men listening. They were mostly Kriegsmarine U-boatsmen.

Landau’s hands shook. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He stared at the spanner in Sohler’s hand. It was big, old, and weathered to a brown patina. It was an ordinary engineer’s tool, perfectly innocent in its intended purpose. But now it had loop of cord tied to one end, for a different purpose entirely.

‘Take it,’ said Sohler, ‘it’s the best we can do for weapons. We tried to get the kitchen knives, but the blackshirts were watching.’ Sohler held out the spanner. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘hang it round your neck. They won’t be expecting it. Take it to Lieutenant Huth, give it to him, and tell him what I just told you.’ Landau didn’t move, so Sohler put the loop round his neck and carefully slid the spanner inside the medical orderly whites that Landau had been given. ‘There,’ he said, ‘nobody’ll see it.’

Landau felt the steel against his chest. He touched it through the material of his garment. The material felt clean and soft. That was strange. He wasn’t used to clean clothes.

‘Why do you want to stop the Fieseler?’ said Landau in a whisper. ‘Why do you say you trust me?’

Von Bloch stirred. ‘We have to trust you,’ he said. The voice was weak and harsh. The perfect tone and grammar was gone. It was a huge effort to talk at all. Von Bloch was sick, and dizzy, and tired. ‘Only slavies can move,’ he said. ‘They know slavies work … sick bay … they know medical stores in … in … everywhere …’ The voice failed.

Von Bloch sank back, and Sohler took over. ‘Weber’s men are in charge,’ he said. ‘They have guns and we don’t. They won’t let us move round the boat. Not alone anyway, but they don’t bother about you slavies.’

Landau nodded. That was true. So he tried to grasp the rest of it. ‘So Svart is not aboard?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Sohler.

‘But this Triad? They could kill us all?’

‘Yes,’ said Sohler, ‘so we must deal with them, and stop the Fieseler launch.’

‘But why me,’ said Landau, ‘why did you send for me?’

‘Landau,’ said Sohler. ‘That is your name, isn’t it?
Professor
Landau?’

Fear struck Landau. Horrible fear. Someone had betrayed him! It happened all the time in the labour camps. He said nothing. He hugged his knees. ‘Landau,’ said Sohler, kindly, ‘one of the other slavies told us. He heard you talking to Feldman:
Doctor
Feldman. He kept this secret from us, until he learned what we’re doing now.’ Sohler put a hand on Landau’s shoulder. ‘You have nothing to fear, Herr Professor. We need you.’ Sohler went further. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we know your tricks with the boat’s wiring. You can do these tricks. We can’t. So maybe you can do more of them if need be? We know about the sabotage. But now we’re all on the same side.’

Landau looked up. He’d never trusted any of the other slavies. But someone had heard his secrets and kept them safe. Tears came to his eyes. ‘So what do you want me to do?’ he said.

‘Good man,’ said Sohler. ‘First, the Herr
Frieherr
will give you some code numbers.’ Von Bloch stirred. He reached weakly for a silver chain round his neck. He couldn’t manage so Sohler helped him. He took the chain from von Bloch and gave it to Landau. There was a silver disc on the chain. The disc bore a series of numbers.

*

USS
Saint
Mihiel
,

The
North
Atlantic.

Friday
9
June
12
.
10
hours.

I climbed into the Me 262 on the hangar deck and rode up on the elevator with the canopy open, the aviation machinists looking up at me and waving. The cockpit was something from the future, but badly made, and you had to be careful what you touched because there were raw edges everywhere, waiting to cut your fingers. So the ground crews waved, but they didn’t whoop and cheer. They were still mourning the loss of their boys.

Up into the light: a big square patch of sky, bright and sharp compared with the dark of the hangar. More men in overalls, canvas helmets, headphones, and others ready with chocks for the wheels, and voices in my own headphones. Everyone was leaning into the wind that shrieked over the deck in a steady north blow, and the ship was leaning too. Leaning as she came round into the wind to give maximum air speed over the deck, even as they cast off the ship’s boats, together with winches, cables, and pulleys; teams of men were heaving things over the side: cutlery, clothes, books, tools, furniture – anything and everything to lighten ship.

‘Wind speed thirty-five knots, Wing Commander,’ said the voice in my headphones, ‘and we’ll try to give you another thirty-five. That’s seventy knots, sir: eighty miles per hour.’

Saint Mihiel
’s people had done what they could. The plane had been in flying condition when the Yanks got it. But their special operations people had drained fuel and oil, hoisted it on to a truck, and shipped it to the coast. Then it had basically been left standing for weeks. So would it fly? We didn’t know. But now it was full of US aviation gasoline and lubricants, and there was nothing more anyone could do other than wipe it with an oily rag. At least they didn’t have to touch the guns. They’d been left fully loaded, which was just as well because there were no ammo belts aboard ship that would fit. In fact, there were no spares of any kind that would fit. There weren’t even metric spanners to fit metric nuts.

The deck crew were on the wings even before the elevator was fully up. They checked my straps, patted me on the head, and shut the canopy: a fine bubble canopy, high over the fuselage, giving an excellent view all round and forward over swept-back wings. They seemed strange wings to me, because they wore black German crosses, which at least were better than the Nazi
hakenkreutzen
– swastikas – on the tail fin that disgusted me with loathing - as they did then, do now and forever shall - as the authentic sign of evil. They are the devil’s own marks: foul, vile, and damned. Or do I fail to make myself clear?

Then they were pushing me back to the stern, teams of men shoving against the wings, to give me the maximum possible take-off run. They pushed me so far back that the tail with its swastikas was stuck out over the sea, and at that ultimate end of the ship you could really feel it pitch. Looking down the long, wood-planked flight deck I saw the bow go up and over the horizon … then pause … and plunge way below. It was sickening, and even sea-hardened sailors didn’t spend long at the bows or stern of the ship if they could help it.

I looked at the controls. I checked my notes. I looked through the gunsight – a REVI 16B reflector – and down the deck. It would be a trick, I thought: my best ever trick. A trick to deceive the aircraft, which weighed fourteen thousand pounds fuelled and armed, and needed to reach one hundred and twenty miles per hour for the wings to lift it. The trick was that with the carrier going full ahead into the wind, there would be eighty miles per hour over the wings, so the two Jumo engines had to push the aircraft to just forty miles per hour relative to the deck. It seemed possible but we didn’t know if it would work because it hadn’t ever been tried before, and hasn’t been tried since. But I was good at tricks. They worked for me. That’s what I told myself as I made ready for take-off in a plane I’d never flown and didn’t really know – whatever I’d told Captain Fenner.

The funny thing was that nobody, from Fenner down, had thought of asking the obvious person to fly the jet: Helga Karlsson. They didn’t ask her because she was a woman, so eventually I asked her myself while I was waiting for the plane to be fuelled. I asked reluctantly because I didn’t think women should fly combat missions either, and I still don’t. But we were trying to save millions of people, and she was a better pilot than me inside an Me 262. I said so and her reply was very interesting.

‘How kind!’ she said. ‘How kind of all you men. But have you heard of Lydia Litvyak of the 586
th
Fighter Aviation Regiment?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘who’s she?’

‘The top Russian woman fighter ace. Twelve kills against the Luftwaffe.’ She nodded firmly. ‘The Reds see these things differently. They see a person, not a woman. And you: you’re the same as the rest! You think women should stay at home and have lots of fat babies.’ I may have blushed. ‘Huh!’ she said, then, ‘I’m sorry David Landau, but the answer is
no
. We had some fun, you and I, but I won’t commit suicide for you.’ She put her head on one side and became as nearly concerned as I ever I knew her. ‘Listen to me you lovely, nice man.  That aircraft needs a thousand metres of concrete runway for take-off and this ship is only two hundred metres long. And if you drop into the sea at the end of the flight deck, you will go right under the bows of the ship, and it will go over you at full speed, and smash you to pieces. It can’t be done, David. Even I couldn’t do it, and you certainly can’t.’

*

The
Führerboat
,

The
North
Atlantic.

Friday
9
June
,
12
.
20
hours
Eastern
Standard
Time.

Weber was happy. So much had gone wrong and now things were going right. He looked down on the casing where the ramp was complete, and the launch equipment secured and made ready. He noted the starter trolley with its batteries to power up the missile, the launch piston in the ramp tube, with its protruding lug to hook the missile and drag it up the ramp, and the steam generator ready to blast superheated steam into the launch tube and hurl the piston forward like a shell from a naval gun. Weber grinned. He didn’t need to be on the casing but couldn’t help himself. He had to go down there and be part of it.

‘Come on!’ he said to Huth, then thought better. ‘No. You go first.’ Huth scrambled down the conning tower ladder, through two sets of hatches, then out on to the casing-flat beside the tower. Weber followed, pushing Huth forward. The noise of the sea was louder and closer here. Waves surged, the boat groaned, and Weber looked up and down the wallowing, painfully creaking boat. It was barely making way, and from casing level, it was all too obvious that some parts of the boat were moving separately from others. It looked as if it was coming apart. Weber looked at Huth. He wanted to ask if the boat would hold together. Huth guessed his thoughts and simply shrugged his shoulders.

‘Bah!’ said Weber.

‘Sir!’ said the leader of the SSA Mem Tav team. He saluted. Weber saluted. Five of them were standing to attention by the completed ramp, and another five by the steam generator and battery trolley, though they all kept looking at the sea and the waves, and wanted more than anything to hang on rather than stand with hands to side. Weber looked at the ramp, which rose up in lattice steel with the piston tube underneath, ready for the missile, and he filled with pride that such a device could be deployed in such a place.

‘Carry on!’ said Weber and they got back to work.

‘Permission to bring up the missile, sir?’ said the team leader.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ said Weber. ‘Get it done!’ He turned and grinned at Huth, who shrugged shoulders again as the team leader shouted down an open hatchway. A motor came on, and the shiny pointed nose of the Fieseler came up and out on to the casing and rolled forward on an electric trolley on rails laid out for the purpose. The whole, long, shining, streamlined missile; Weber was delighted. He snapped fingers and grinned.

‘Sir?’ a voice called from up on the conning tower, ‘Lieutenant Huth, sir?’ Huth and Weber looked up. It was one of the watch keepers. ‘Captain Sohler’s awake, sir. He sent one of the slavies looking for you, sir. He says the captain’s got urgent information on the boat’s safety. The captain needs to speak to you, sir.’

Huth looked at Weber. There had been no actual order that Huth could go nowhere alone. It had never been discussed. Weber just followed Huth everywhere, or pushed him. Huth saw Weber frown and worry, then look back at the wonderful missile rising into life. Huth saw that and took his moment.

‘I’d better go,’ he said, ‘sounds urgent. Boat’s safety.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Weber, looking back, as the missile’s wings were hauled up on to the casing by the Mem Tav team. It was fascinating. Everything was going perfectly for the missile launch.

*

USS
Saint
Mihiel
,