Agent of Death (39 page)

And then it heaved up and down on the waves, and floated! It actually floated. I threw off straps, opened the canopy, and listened to the silence, as the red hot parts of the plane hissed and steamed, and the rest creaked and bubbled and gave up floating and started sinking; I wondered if I could last nine hours in the sea, just me and my life jacket? Nine hours until
Saint
Mihiel
arrived? That was
if
it arrived, and
if
it was looking for me, and
if
it could see me if it
was
looking for me?

Meanwhile, the sub was just a couple of hundred yards off, and they’d definitely seen me because they were launching a rubber dingy and pointing at me. So I took off my flying helmet and waved it at them, and hoped they didn’t know that I’d been trying to sink them.

*

The
Führerboat
,

The
North
Atlantic.

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

There was shouting and clamour in the control room, the sick bay, and everywhere else. Submariners and SSA were yelling at one another, and one team of SSA was pounding uselessly on the control room fore-hatch, which they could never break with a hammer, because the hatch was far too tough, while Captain Sohler was yelling over the tannoy system ordering Weber’s sergeant to come at once to the sick bay, and for hatches to be opened to let him through and everyone else to stand fast.

Finally the captain’s authority worked, because all present were trained to obey authority. More than that, the submariners instantly obeyed Sohler, while the SSA troupers were unnerved at best, terrified at worst, and, with Weber gone, the Fieseler fired, and the job done, they basically wanted to go home and couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed the U-boatsmen for that. So they shut up, lowered their guns, and listened to Captain Sohler. Then, just as hatches were opening, calm returning, and Sergeant Müller going to the sick bay, there was a yelling from the conning tower watch down to the control room.

‘Aircraft approaching! Same one as before and it’s one of ours!’

Huth shouted up the voice pipe. ‘What is it? A sea plane? A Kondor?’

‘No, sir. Too small. We don’t know what it is, but it’s got German crosses and it’s in trouble. It’s on fire.’

‘I’ll come!’ said Huth, and would have leapt up the conning tower ladder, but Landau hung on his arm.

‘Lieutenant!’

‘What?’

‘I have to deal with the Triad. Captain Sohler’s orders.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Huth. He’d forgotten that.

‘Then can I use the intercom?’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ said Huth, and spoke to the navigating petty officer. ‘Let him do it. He’s not just a slavie, he knows what he’s doing.’ Then Huth was gone and, up in the watch position, he was just in time to see a sloped-wing, twin-motor aircraft dive towards the boat, and he ducked as it went over, trailing smoke and wreckage, and came down in the sea, where it splashed and crashed and floated. ‘It’s a jet!’ he said. ‘It’s one of our new Messerschmitts.’ He frowned. ‘But that’s a land plane. How can it be out here?’ The watch didn’t know. They looked to Huth for guidance. ‘Get a boat launched!’ said Huth. ‘Whatever it’s doing here, it’s one of ours and that’s a German pilot, so go and get him!’

‘Yes, sir!’

*

They were very kind. They pulled me out of the water, grinned at me, sat me in the rubber boat, and offered me a flask of schnapps. I took a drink, handed it back, and smiled. There were just three of them: two pulling on short, orange-coloured oars, and a petty officer in charge. They looked scruffy, really scruffy, in pullovers and bits of uniform. But they smiled respectfully and they called me sir, because they assumed that any pilot must be an officer, and they assumed that I was German.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ they said. ‘Not wounded? Not hurt?’

‘No,’ I said, and smiled. I was nervous to say more. I didn’t know how I was going to relate to these people. They were the enemy we’d been chasing in deadly intent to kill. And now I was being rescued by them.

After that they said nothing, respecting my supposed rank, until we reached the big sub, then other men dropped scrambling nets to help us up over the fat, curving hull … at which stage I began to guess that bad things had been happening on the giant sub. There was a cluster of bodies, now lined up in a neat row to one side of the conning tower, bodies in what looked like SS uniforms, and the boat felt unsound. It creaked, and some bits of it moved separately from others, which I don’t think any designer ever intended. And the sailors looked uneasy.

‘Welcome aboard, sir!’ said a voice high up on the tall, plain conning tower. I looked up and saw a young, bearded man in what looked like a British battledress blouse and a German naval officer’s cap: an odd combination. But I suppose he looked at my US Navy-issue overalls, which he wouldn’t recognize, especially soaking wet, and probably thought I looked odd too. ‘May I ask your name and rank, sir?’ he said. ‘And how you come to be here?’

I had a long think. I do tricks but not magic. There are limits to what you can pretend, especially if you don’t know what to pretend, and sometimes the truth is best.

‘May I ask your name and rank first, sir?’ I said, to gain time to think.

‘Huth, Lieutenant Huth, acting first officer.’ Then he saluted and I didn’t: no hat.

‘Well, Lieutenant,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but I’m English and my rank is wing commander. That’s equal to first lieutenant in the US Navy, but I don’t know what it is in yours.’ They all looked at me harder and the smiles went.

Huth was surprised. ‘But you speak German. You speak it very well.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Lieutenant Huth thought about that, and I was instantly glad I’d been honest.

‘Then you are a prisoner of war,’ he said, and I nodded, relieved to be perceived as that, and not some sort of spy or traitor. But my neck was aching from looking up at him, and I didn’t feel at secure on the exposed deck, with its row of dead a few paces away.

‘So can I come aboard properly, Lieutenant?’ I said. ‘Can I go below?’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you can do that and then you can explain what you were doing in a German aircraft on the far side of the Atlantic.’ I thought carefully about that as they led me through a series of hatches into a dark, dank place where a ladder led down to a bright-lit compartment, and I went down the ladder.

*

Gavriel Landau listened as the intercom buzzed. It was the direct line to the Triad. The control room team listened. Boat’s gossip had told them exactly what the Triad could do, and they knew that it was the slavie’s duty to stop them. So Landau had a committed audience as he waited, holding the receiver to his ear. Then a voice came from the other end. Landau’s German was excellent, and he recognized the Karoling accent.

‘Give the identity code,’ said the voice.

Landau looked down at the silver disc which von Bloch had explained. Code numbers were stamped in neat rows. The first code gave proper authority to speak on behalf of von Bloch. This was vital because it was highly irregular to speak to the Triad by intercom rather than in person. So Landau read out the numbers and the Karoling voice replied.

‘Accepted,’ said the voice. ‘And what is the status of the missile?’ Landau looked down. He read out the next set of numbers. ‘Good!’ said the voice. ‘We note and record the code confirming that the missile has been properly launched and is proceeding to target.’ Then there was a brief pause, and the voice resumed with just a shade of its automaton confidence shaken, because the desire to live is so strong in mankind that even the most absolute of fanatics will tremble before pushing the final button. ‘And what is the status of the boat? Has order been restored? Is the boat in compliance with the wishes of Herr Svart?’

Landau looked down again. There were more codes. Right at the bottom was the code that told the Triad to set off the boat’s demolition charges and flood it with Mem Tav. That was for use in case of mutiny, capture by the enemy, being held under duress, or such other violation of Svart’s will as von Bloch might judge fit.

Landau looked and looked, and wondered and wondered. What had he become? What was left? His family was gone, his world was destroyed, and the missile would kill countless numbers of people including the two million Jews of New York who were the biggest single Jewish population in the entire world. He felt that he was part of the Nazi evil, standing there in his white surgical blouse stained with the blood of a man he’d brutally killed. He hesitated over the possibility that perhaps, somewhere, his son David might still be alive? Could that be? Could it be even possible? But airmen lived short lives in wartime, and Gavriel Landau knew only despair. So he looked at the code that would bring silence and peace, and drew breath to read it out.

CHAPTER 44

The
Führerboat
,

The
North
Atlantic.

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

I climbed down the ladder. Seawater was still oozing out of my flying boots and my overalls were wet, cold, and heavy. The light was very bright in the control room – I assumed it was the control room – and men turned and looked at me from their stations in front of wheels, dials, levers, and a snaking network of pipes and tubes that ran everywhere. I’d never been in a submarine before. It was like a ship’s engine room only more cramped. The crew were greasy, dirty, scruffily bearded, and, en-masse, they stank. The whole place stank of men, and sweat, and oil: my first sniff of a submarine at sea. But I didn’t notice that much at the time. What I did notice was a voice: a man’s voice reading out a string of numbers while everyone else listened. They gave me barely a glance, then turned back to him as if everything in the world depended on what he said.

But the voice made me shiver. It made me gasp. It sent shock rising up my legs and bowels and chest and I was terrified and awestruck all in the same instant, because the dead were walking in the shape of a man in bloodstained white clothes holding a thing like a telephone receiver and looking at me.

‘
Tata
?’ I said; I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible, unbelievable, and I absolutely totally couldn’t believe it. But the voice stopped. He gazed at me and nearly dropped the phone, then closed his eyes and bared his teeth in the fierceness of his struggle, and forced himself to speak again, calmly and steadily, in German.

‘Correction,’ he said, ‘there has been a mistake. Ignore the previous numbers.’ He looked at something held in his other hand – a silver disc on a chain. ‘The code should be,’ he read it out, ‘one-two-zero-zero-six-zero-five. I repeat one-two-zero-zero-six-zero-five. That code confirms all is proceeding as ordered by Herr Svart.’ He held the phone to his ear. He nodded at the reply. He put the receiver back where it came from, and ran towards me with arms outstretched.

I haven’t the words to describe it. I’m not modest. I think I’m a good writer: at least I hope so, but I couldn’t describe that moment, except to say how small my father felt. I’d not seen him for over five years and remembered him as he was when I was small. Now he was less than my height, and very dreadfully thin, and he looked many years older and very ill. But he was still my Dad: my
Tata
.

The German sailors stared at us as we gabbled in a weird mixture of languages: German, English, Russian, seeking common ground after being forced so long to speak other than our native Polish, but we ended in Polish, and chattered and chattered and chattered.

‘Hey!’ said another voice; it was Huth, the German first lieutenant. ‘Do you know each other?’ His men laughed.

‘He’s my father!’ I said, in German

‘And he’s my son!’ said my father.

‘I think you’d better see the captain,’ said Huth. ‘He’ll want to know what’s going on.’

*

It is to the credit of Captain Helmut Sohler that he and I, von Bloch, and my father, with some help from Lieutenant Huth, covered so much ground so fast, when I was an enemy in uniform, our people were annihilating each other in Normandy, my father was a despised slave worker, and the discussion took place in the sick bay of a ruined submarine, with ears listening all round. Sohler was propped up in a chair and in pain, my father and I sat on the deck beside a row of bunks, with von Bloch struggling to stay conscious; a couple of medics hung on to Sohler like elderly aunts, trying to put him to bed and stop the discussion.

The first shock was astonishment on all sides: intense astonishment. The Germans were astounded that the British and Americans knew about Svart, Mem Tav, and the Fieseler missile, and I was astounded that they – the Kriegsmariners at least – were determined to stop the missile now closing on New York at four hundred miles per hour, and soon Sohler beckoned one of medics.

‘Herr Doctor! Give me your watch.’

‘My watch?’

‘Give it here.’ The doc took off his watch and handed it over.

‘At what time was the Fieseler launched?’ said Sohler and Huth told him. ‘And how far were we from New York?’

‘Three hundred and fifty kilometres.’

Sohler looked at the watch. ‘Then the Fieseler will be over New York and discharging Mem Tav in about … thirteen minutes.’ He looked at von Bloch. ‘Herr
Frieherr
? Can it be stopped?’

‘No,’ said von Bloch.

*

MT-2 flew towards its target. The Argus motor roared and all mechanisms performed correctly. But the robot was behind schedule. It was facing strong winds from the north that were pushing it off course. The autopilot corrected for this. It steered sufficient degrees north-west so that net direction of travel was due west. That meant a late arrival over target, but if the blind machine had possessed sight it would have been reassured by the black line of the American coast far ahead and the slight irregularity that marked the skyline of a city.

*

‘There
is
a
negate
signal,’ said von Bloch, ‘a radio signal that can trigger self-destruction. The warhead has a thermite device in case it should fly off course or might fall into enemy hands.’

Three of us shouted at once: ‘
What
is
it
?’

‘
How
does
it
work
?’

‘
Then
use
it
!’

Von Bloch winced. He shook his head. He was only just about keeping up with us; leaning on one elbow, sweating, and dizzy. ‘No time,’ he said, ‘an order, must come from Svart, and be received by the Triad who will send out the negate signal. It’s another code. They know it and I don’t.’

*

There was a smash at East 73rd and Madison Avenue. A delivery truck hit a Lincoln Continental Cabriolet, driven by Mrs Betty Weinberg, owner of Betty’s Modes on Fifth Avenue. She was a large and formidable woman in a smart costume, amber beads, and heavy make-up. She climbed out of the wreck and stared at her pride and joy: her birthday present to herself. There were no new automobiles in wartime, but the Lincoln was a 1941 model: low mileage and pristine. Or it had been pristine, and Mrs Weinberg – who looked like she could go ten rounds with Joe Louis – amazed the world by bursting into floods of tears.

The truck driver got out.

‘Aw Jeez, ma’am, I’m real sorry, but I didn’t see you!’ And he produced a handkerchief for the tears, which was clean because his wife always insisted on a clean handkerchief. A cop approached. New Yorkers walked by, busy with their own problems. They walked by in thousands. It was a busy street and a busy time of day.

*

‘So the Triad has got to believe that Svart’s sent the order?’ I said.

‘No,’ said von Bloch, ‘Svart must actually send it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The order must be received on the Triad’s radio antenna. It must arrive in SSA 2 code. Then they will know it’s Svart that’s sending.’

‘Can you send in SSA 2?’ I said, looking round. ‘Have you got SSA 2 encoding machines?’

‘No,’ said Sohler. ‘We have Kriegsmarine encoding, and SSA 1. But not SSA 2.’

Von Bloch nodded. ‘Only Svart and the Triad have SSA 2,’ he said, ‘and the Triad’s machine is in their compartment.’

My father spoke. ‘Have the Triad got an SSA 1 machine?’

‘Yes,’ said von Bloch.

‘Then I have an idea,’ said my father, and we all listened.

*

MT 2 was now in plain sight of the city of New York. No other city was so instantly recognizable. Nowhere else had the New York silhouette. But the robot saw nothing. It was only a robot. Nonetheless, in accordance with the wishes of its makers, it sensed that the time was right to begin electrical heating of the lanthanide catalyst rack that would convert the three precursors into active Mem Tav. A relay closed. A slight click. A buzzing as the heating coils came on. MT 2 was making ready. There were just ten minutes to go on its slightly extended journey.

*

The control room was alive with men working to my father’s orders, both slavies and the boat’s remaining engineering and electrical teams. They worked side by side, they ripped out panels, tore open wiring conduits, and burrowed behind and into the depths of the boat’s electrical wiring. Sohler was there too, held up by Dr Billroth and an assistant.

‘Here!’ cried a voice. ‘Found it!’ Men stood aside as my father rushed forward.

‘Main lead from the Triad antenna!’ said one of the slavies.

‘Take care,’ said Captain Sohler, ‘von Bloch says the lead carries an alarm device. If we cut it, an alarm will sound in Svart’s compartment, and they’ll take it as sabotage, and kill us all.’

‘Yes,’ said my father, ‘but we can link in to it with a buffered signal, so it’s weakened and sounds like it comes from far off.’ Another slavie brought an armful of electrical gear, and Sohler looked at the watch. Everyone was doing his best, but Sohler knew that it was already past time. He knew the missile must now be spraying New York with Mem Tav. He knew it but he said nothing. He hadn’t the heart for it.

*

Times Square was full. It was always full: full of traffic noise and what seemed like millions of people. You could tell the tourists because they gaped and pointed, and New Yorkers didn’t to that. They’d seen everything and done everything: everything there was to see or do. But the tourists gaped, and many of them were in uniform: army, navy, coastguard, and marine. They were mostly young men and they were happiest of all because they were on leave, and had girls on their arms. Girls with red lipstick and tight skirts and swishy hair and perfume, and they looked at billboards that shouted what was playing on Broadway, and what the movie theatres were showing … and hardly anybody noticed the faint buzzing noise that was coming in over the city, from the east.

*

I wrote the message. Another trick, a work of fiction like my message from Churchill to Punno Island. I hoped it would work. Huth looked over my shoulder to make sure that it was in proper German, and, when we’d done, we ran down to the sick bay to show it to von Bloch, who knew Svart personally: how he spoke and wrote. So von Bloch made a few changes. We ran with the message, past slavies, U-boatsmen, and black-coated SSA men who were standing around looking dumbfounded and doing nothing. We ran to the radio cubicle. We gave the message to the technician. He typed it into the encoder. He pushed a switch. The message went out in SSA 1 and would be buffered and weakened, then fed direct into the Triad’s antenna as if an incoming signal from far away.

*

Up on the Empire State viewing platform the view was awesome. The USA was in glory time. The Krauts and Japs were unbeaten, but the USA had pounding industries, full employment, big fat wages, shops open, no rationing, no bomb damage, no shortages, no threat to the homeland, and New York was the living, breathing incarnation of a mighty nation in its pride. So the people looked down from the world’s tallest tower, and gazed on the art deco wonders of the Chrysler Building, and the beauty of Central Park, and the wonderful broad, straight avenues of the world’s richest city, which wasn’t actually the capital of the nation, but which led America in each and every way that mattered.

Then everyone looked to the east. There was a roaring, angry buzzing, and people pointed at a small, dark aeroplane, approaching with a noisy engine, and beginning to turn and sweep and circle round central New York in a great arc.

‘What the helluva sortova plane is that?’ said a teenage boy who was mad on flying.

‘Don’t swear, dear,’ said his mother.

*

The Triad looked at the message as it came off the decoder. As always for important matters they stood and faced each other. One of them read out the message. Then they all considered what they had heard. Then they spoke in turn, as they’d been trained to do.

‘It isn’t in the proper code.’

‘That is because his SSA 2 encoder was destroyed in the action.’

‘Which means he may be taken prisoner.’

‘Not a prisoner. He has negotiated with the Americans.’

‘Then why did they fire on his boat?’

‘By mistake. He makes that clear.’

‘Then must we negate the Mem Tav Fieseler?’

‘That is his order.’

‘But will he not send the negate signal himself?’

‘Yes, but we must duplicate the signal to make sure.’

‘Yes! Now that the Americans have given him what he wants.’

‘I am not sure. It may be a deception.’

‘But the message is in SSA code.’

‘Not the correct code.’