Agent of Death (40 page)

‘We know that. It has been explained.’

‘I am still unsure.’

The three young men fell silent. They’d been bred up to be robots like the Fieseler missile. But they weren’t robots, and all Abimilech Svart’s careful training and conditioning, not to mention his large ring-folder, didn’t cover the present situation. The invincible Aryan Triad were not machines after all, and had to use the very last thing that Svart had intended. They had to use their own personal initiative. So they did.

‘We’ll have to vote,’ said one of them. The rest nodded.

‘We shouldn’t send the signal,’ said another, ‘let the missile do its job.’

‘I don’t know,’ said the next.

‘But we’ve got to make up our minds,’ said the first man again.

*

MT 2 powered up the precursor pumps, and switched on the heating coils for the mixing chamber, while switching
off
the catalyst heating coils, because the catalyst rack was at full temperature and excess heating reduced precursor conversion. Meanwhile the autopilot held the rudder steady for the expanding, circular turns that would ensure even spread of Mem Tav over the target.

*

At street level, people were looking up and pointing in their thousands. Thousands and hundreds of thousands. On Fifth Avenue the shoppers came out of Saks to stare. On West 34th they came out of Macy’s. They all looked up and, of all these people, none knew what the noise meant, because the V1 bombardment of England would not begin for many months yet, and even in England nobody had heard an Argus motor, and even if any New Yorker had recognized the sound, neither he nor she would have had the least idea of the Gotterdammerung that was about to be visited upon them from the sky.

*

In Svart’s compartment the Triad completed their lengthy discussion, had their nervous vote, and made a halting and uncertain decision. But it was a decision, because it had to be a decision and it had to be Yes or No. There was no middle way.

*

In the control room, Captain Sohler gave Dr Billroth back his watch.

‘Herr Doctor,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid we’ve failed. And now they will make war criminals of us all.’

*

MT 2 cleared the electrical safety blocks on the precursor-pump circuits. It had arrived fourteen minutes and twelve seconds late, but that had been allowed for. The degree of course correction – specifically rudder correction – related mathematically to perceived wind speed, net flying speed, and time elapsed, enabling precise adjustment of the missile’s clock, to predict arrival over target. Now the clock counted away the few seconds left before activating warhead function and payload delivery:

Five …

Four …

Three …

Two …

*

The people gasped. Thousands saw it. The small black airplane burst open and white-hot flames spurted from its narrow hull. The sound arrived later: a dull, flat thud, not sharp like a real explosion. Then the airplane wobbled, and almost steadied again, with its noisy engine still burning, but then it dived at high speed, and sank out of sight behind the giant buildings and came down on a brownstone block in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where it smashed through the top two floors, unoccupied at the time, and started a small fire which the New York Fire Department efficiently put out within thirty five minutes.

For the FDNY crew it was a quick turn-out, a nice job, and it hadn’t been much of a blaze anyway, and afterwards, they looked at the completely harmless – totally harmless – utterly harmless wreckage. They touched it, poked it, stirred it with their boots, and, like the teenager, they wondered what the helluva sortova plane was this?

Then later the army came and took the wreckage away.

CHAPTER 45

The
Führerboat
,

The
North
Atlantic.

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

‘They’re transmitting!’ said the man on radio watch. ‘The Triad’s transmitting on SSA 2 code.’ We crowded round the radio cubicle: me, my father, Sohler, Huth, and others. Everyone else looked on. The radio technician put a hand to one earphone.

‘Can you read it?’ said Sohler.

‘No, sir.’

‘What is it? Any idea?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’ Then the man looked up from his instruments. ‘It’s finished. That’s it. A very short message. It could be the negate code, sir.’

‘It’s too late anyway,’ said Sohler, ‘the Fieseler was over New York a quarter of an hour ago.’ He’d told us that already. We all knew it and the failure sat on us like six foot of earth on a grave. Even the big, ruined boat seemed to be groaning: groaning and trying to come apart. It was a grim, dark moment. Nobody knew what to do or what to say. There were no orders to follow, nowhere to go, nothing to do. Men stood aimlessly looking at one another. After so much effort, so much blood and destruction, we had failed. We’d all failed, the whole lot of us.

Then an idea prickled. I looked at my father. His eyes opened wide. It was the same idea. He spoke first.

‘Herr Petty Officer,’ he said to the radio man.

‘Yes?’

‘Turn on your receiver. Not the coded machine. Just plain radio. Tune in to the broadcast frequencies. See if New York is transmitting.’

The radio man switched on, turned a dial, fed the result into his loudspeaker and the control room filled with squeaks and blurps and static, then a burst of music, then a loud, happy voice. I remember the words clearly.

‘
Charmaine
?’ it said, ‘
That
you
there
,
honeylamb
?
This
is
your
great
big
love
-
boat
,
Andy
,’ and a roar of laughter came from a studio audience. It meant nothing to the Germans, and even I recognized it only as some sort of comedy programme coming from a studio. In fact it was the
Amos
‘n
Andy
radio show. I’d never heard of it then, but it was hugely famous in the USA. The radio man turned the dial. More music, more voices: varied and sharp.

‘Is that New York?’ said Sohler. ‘Is that coming from New York?’

‘They’re very strong signals, Herr Captain,’ said the radioman, ‘sounds like New York.’ And soon after he tuned in to a news broadcast, and we knew it was New York, because it mentioned events in the city, and the name of the Mayor: Fiorello H. LaGuardia. I translated for those of the Germans who didn’t follow, and for a few minutes there was something like happiness in the boat.

Then Sohler spoke. ‘We may be at risk,’ he said. ‘The Triad sent out the negate signal, yes? Sent it in SSA 2 code?’

‘Yes, sir, probably,’ said the radioman.

‘And last time they sent a signal, they got a reply from Svart, yes?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So Svart is somewhere with a radio set that can receive signals from this boat, and there’s nothing to stop him reading the Triad’s signal, and recognizing the negate code, and knowing what we’ve done, and turning nasty.’

‘And the Triad still have their Mem Tav machine,’ I said, ‘and the triggers for demolition charges to sink the boat.’ I looked at Sohler. ‘Can we shut them down? Shut down their Mem Tav machine and the demolition charges?’

In turn, Sohler looked at my father. ‘Can we?’ he said. ‘You know the boat’s wiring better than anyone.’

My father shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The wiring for Svart’s compartment is secret. It’s blacked out of the general wiring diagrams for the boat. We only found the lead to the Triad’s antenna because we knew it had to run up through the conning tower, and even then we had to rip out most of the control room wiring to find it.’ We all looked at the ruin and shambles that had once been the neat, tight wiring of the control room.

‘So if Svart picks up the negate signal,’ I said, ‘he’ll know it wasn’t done on his orders.’

‘And he’ll tell the Triad to sink the boat,’ said Sohler, ‘and flood it with Mem Tav.’

‘Can’t we cut the lead to the Triad’s antenna?’ I said.

‘No!’ said Sohler. ‘They’ll take it as sabotage.’

‘Then what can we do?’ I said, and nobody answered. Nobody knew. ‘We’ve got to stop them,’ I said, ‘or we’re dead.’

‘We have to do something fast,’ said Sohler. ‘Svart might reply at any time.’

‘Can we speak to them?’ I said. ‘Reason with them? We could tell them the missile failed by itself. They might believe that.’

‘Not if they get a signal from Svart,’ said Sohler, ‘saying he didn’t authorize the negate code.’

More silence.

Then my father spoke. ‘Can von Bloch walk?’ he said. ‘The Triad are used to him. They trust him.’

‘No!’ said Dr Billroth. ‘The
Frieherr
is hardly surviving at all. He certainly cannot walk.’

‘Then I have a suggestion,’ said my father.

‘Yes?’ said Sohler.

‘First, we must – and immediately – send out a series of continuous messages on the SSA 2 frequency to jam any signal sent by Svart, and we must send the same signals on SSA 1 and Kriegsmarine so they don’t think we’re specifically jamming SSA 2.’ We all nodded.

‘What do we say?’ said Sohler. ‘What do we send?’ I almost smiled as my father invented fiction on the spot, and I saw how much he was like me, or rather I was like him: one or the other.

‘Send to an imaginary rescue vessel,’ he said. ‘Send an emergency rescue request to ...’ he considered possibilities, ‘to a German submarine! Yes! A German submarine standing by to give aid and support, and to rendezvous with us. The Triad may be puzzled by this, but will not see it as hostile to Svart’s intentions.’ He pointed to the radioman. ‘You must do this now, at once! Before Svart learns what we are doing. Send it now!’ The radioman frowned and looked at Sohler. He didn’t like orders from a slavie.

‘Send it!’ said Sohler. ‘Make up some details. Make them good!’

‘Yes, Herr Captain!’ He got busy; we left him to it.

‘What do we do now?’ said Sohler. He glanced at the radioman and said, ‘That won’t work for ever. They’ll get suspicious. We have to do more.’

‘We shall,’ said my father. ‘If von Bloch cannot walk, then someone else must go to Svart’s compartment to deal with the Triad. It must be someone that does not alarm them. Someone who will not inspire fear.’

*

Ten minutes later a group of men stood outside the hatch that bore the gold-on-black lettering:
Oberstgruppenführer
A.
Svart
,
SSA
. One man pressed a button and a buzzer sounded inside.

‘Give the code,’ said a voice over the intercom. The code was given, the hatch opened, and Sergeant Müller stepped forward: Müller who was Weber’s choice, Weber’s man, the replacement for Sergeant Major Zapp. The blackshirts inside the antechamber stood to attention but stared at the machine pistol in Müller’s hands. Two other SSA troopers likewise held machine pistols cocked and aimed into the antechamber.

‘Tell them everything’s in order,’ said Müller. ‘Tell them the code has been given and the man is here with the equipment that needs Svart’s judgment.’ The two men hesitated. Müller stepped over the hatch coaming and stuck the barrel of his gun into the belly of the nearest man. ‘Tell them!’ he said.

‘Yes, sergeant’ said the blackshirt, and flipped a switch and spoke.

‘The code has been given. Everything’s in order.’ Müller slid smartly to one side of the antechamber so he would not be seen as the inner hatch opened. The men outside did the same beside the outer hatch.

‘Not a word!’ said Müller to the two guards. But they were nodding furiously. They’d have obeyed even without the guns. Discipline was strong in the SSA.

So the inner hatch opened, and a man stepped in. He was carrying a cardboard box that had originally contained tinned beef. Now the tins were gone and it was full of something else. Timing his move carefully, the man balanced the box on one hand, and reached inside the box. Then he stepped over the inner hatch coaming and entered what had originally been Adolf Hitler’s suite, then Abimilech Svart’s, and was now occupied by the Triad.

*

The reasoning had been logical. None of us knew exactly how the Triad would set off the demolition charges or the Mem Tav generator. These details were secret and even von Bloch didn’t know them. So we had to plan for the worst, and assume that both mechanisms were designed for rapid operation. We also had to assume that the three men in the compartment would be suspicious and would not stand nicely together to form a single target. We had to assume that they would be in different places with fingers on triggers, ready to go.

Given that, it was vital that the Triad shouldn’t be alarmed. They had to be reassured and comforted, believing that they knew what was happening. Von Bloch, summoning what strength he had, was part of that. Despite Dr Billroth’s protests, he was carried out of his bunk and brought to the control room, because only the control room intercom connected to Svart’s compartment. He spoke to them and told them the story we’d cooked up: my story in large part, even if I am boasting.

‘There’s a fault in the navigation board,’ he said. ‘We need to correct this to rendezvous with a support vessel from St Nizair. The boat is on its way but we need precise navigation to meet it, and the fault in our SSA board is too complex for us. We need Herr Svart’s personal comment on the mechanism, and we’re sending you the key parts, with someone to explain the fault to you, for you to pass on.’

They were reassured because they trusted von Bloch. They didn’t even ask questions. Further reassurance was provided by the fact that the person who stepped over their threshold was someone completely harmless, yet credible as a technical expert. It was someone who wouldn’t alarm them. And finally, and last of all, and most important of all, and because we could think of no other way, it was someone who – like the three young men themselves – was prepared to die.

My father stepped over the threshold. The cardboard box and its contents had been well-prepared. The box contained five
Stielhandgranate
stick grenades, provided by the boat’s SSA. The grenades were stuck to the bottom of the box with duct tape so they couldn’t move, and there was a neat hole cut in one side of the box: the side the Triad wouldn’t see. The hole enabled my father to reach into the box and tug swiftly on the porcelain balls fixed to strings that ran up the hollow grenade handles to the friction igniters. Tugging the porcelain balls set off the fuses. He then had less than five seconds to enter the compartment, and, outside the hatches, Müller and the rest cringed behind steel walls, and put hands over ears.

*

My father presumably took a few steps.

The Triad must have seen him come in.

Perhaps they walked towards him?

Perhaps they said something?

Perhaps he said something?

Perhaps he closed his eyes and thought of my mother?

*

The explosion shook the battered, staggering boat and did even more damage, while confined within the limitations of a submarine compartment; the five grenades instantly killed everyone in it.

But perhaps one of the Triad had time for suspicion, and pushed a button? Or perhaps the explosion itself completed a circuit? Because the sickening concussion of five grenades wasn’t the only explosion. It wasn’t even the explosion that finally completed the work of the torpedo warheads detonated by my father and by Doctor
Inginieur Oberleutnant
Abram Feldman, late of the Kaiser’s Navy and Hamburg University. What did that was the demolition charges laid on the orders of Abimilech Svart in every one of the boat’s four tubes. They went off like the crack of doom, one after another, except in the fire-gutted starboard tube, where the electrical connections must have been destroyed. But three sets of charges were enough and the wretched, ruined, hopeless vessel was at last split open and filling up, coming apart and beginning its long, slow plunge to the sea floor.

At least we didn’t have time to worry about the Triad’s Mem Tav generator. There was too much else going on. There was vast noise, uncertain light, metal breaking, decks tilting, and sparks and fires competing with the inrushing water, and smoke and panic and terror.

Sohler did his best, especially while we still had light, insisting the wounded be evacuated first. And Huth did his best, and so did some of the petty officers, especially one who, fixedly and with utmost personal valour, found and handed out Draeger escape sets to as many men as he could. I got one, which undoubtedly saved my life, not as a breathing device, but as a life jacket, which was what it was designed to do. I think Sohler yelled to get the rubber boat launched, and for anyone to get hold of anything that would float, and get it out of the hatches.