Decoy (30 page)

‘That’s interesting, Ned. They don’t try to catch up on the surface.’

‘Not surprising,’ Ned said. ‘We were usually making sixteen knots, which they could calculate, and these things only make sixteen to eighteen knots on the surface, less even if there is much of a sea running, so at best it would overhaul at two nautical miles in an hour. Say she sighted the
Norwich
three miles ahead, and the U-boat needs to get into an attacking position well ahead, and the
Norwich
is zigzagging…’

‘You sound like Jemmy!’ the Croupier commented. ‘Been going to night classes? Well, there are routine signals, Daddy Doughnuts asking about fuel and fish remaining, positions, weather reports and so on. Ah, the famous “acknowledge receipt” signal that got everyone agitated and led to John Willy here blowing the gaskets on the transmitter. Then – don’t forget they’ve now no transmitter – Daddy Doughnuts calls them every twenty-four hours, when his staff calculate the boat will be running surfaced in the dark, charging batteries, telling them to report their position. Looks to me as though he thinks they were surprised on the surface and sunk while preparing to receive the previous “acknowledge” signal. So, Ned me boy, we have our alibi already – ULJ has been sunk. I wonder when they rub her off the blackboard…’

Ned nodded, and for a couple of minutes he tried to picture Dönitz and his staff working in a big operations room at Kernével.
B der U
was supposed to be in a castle there. Considering how much radio traffic it put out there must be more serials poking up than ever there had been lances belonging to quarrelsome knights. Now, he realized, was a perfect – and perhaps the only – chance they had of finding out everything about the way a U-boat operated. Capturing the boat now called
Graph
gave all last year’s technical information – speed, tonnage, fuel consumption, type of electric drive, battery capacity and so on – but how was a boat operated day by (all too often) boring day?

‘Let’s find out from Hauser what the drill is for receiving and passing signals,’ Ned said. ‘Start with surfacing at night.’

The Croupier questioned the man in rapid German, giving the impression that he was not particularly interested in the answers. Finally he turned to Ned.

‘Fairly straightforward. They surface as soon as it’s dark and stoke up the wireless. Hauser listens on the U-boat wavelength, particularly for any signals addressed to ULJ, this boat. But as Kernével never call two boats at the same time, he usually jots down any signals he hears, and passes them on to the officer of the watch.

‘They’re in cipher, of course, so Hauser never knows what a signal says. The signal, written on one of those pads, is given to the Second Officer if he’s not on watch, but whoever gets it comes along and types the enciphered signal as received on to the Enigma, and gets out (on a page from that other pad) the deciphered signal, which he then takes to the Commander, who reads and signs it. The officer then enters the deciphered signal in the log, with date and time.’

‘What happens to the original signal in cipher?’

‘John Willy doesn’t know, but he thinks it’s kept for twenty-four hours, in case there are queries, and then destroyed.’

‘That’s pretty much as we would guess,’ Ned said. ‘What about making signals?’

The Croupier asked Hauser another series of questions and then told Ned: ‘The same thing in reverse. The Commander writes the signal in plain language on a pad. One of the officers then checks the settings of the rotors on the Enigma against what the manual says (even though the machine has already been changed to the day’s setting), types out the signal (thus changing it from plain language to the Triton cipher), copying out the ciphered letters as they light up, and then gives the ciphered version to John Willy to transmit. There’s the usual warning to the bridge for watchkeepers to stay away from the aerials and insulators to avoid shocks and burns, and away it goes towards Kernével.’

Ned nodded as the Croupier added: ‘Oh yes, the officer who enciphered it enters the plain language version in the radio log as soon as it has been sent, so that he can add the time of origin.’

‘Any trouble in calling Kernével? Long traffic lists causing delays, that sort of thing?’

‘No. I’ve got Kernével’s – or rather
B der U
’s – call sign, and Hauser says they answer at once, static permitting. Good operators who rarely ask for a repetition.’

‘Very well. You’d better get our own signalman in and translate any question he has for Hauser. See if there’s any chance of getting that transmitter working again. Might only be a solder-and-insulating tape job…’

With that Ned picked up the Triton manual and went over to sit in the Captain’s cabin. He shut the safe door, hinged back the panelling (thick plywood faced with
Ersatz
leather, the edges held by round-headed tacks) and sat back on the narrow bunk which acted as chair, settee and bed. The only other furniture was a rectangular hand basin which had a flat lid covered with Bakelite and which, when hinged down, formed a desk – providing one sat on the bunk. At the foot of the bunk was a small hanging locker, in which the Captain could hang up a few clothes. Again Ned was reminded of railway sleeping cars and that no one travelled first class in a submarine. A voice pipe, for the moment plugged with a whistle, probably led to the conning tower, and an adjustable lamp completed the fittings.

He flopped back in the bunk and stared up at the deckhead. The pillow smelled from the last – the late – Commander, who obviously used some pomade on his hair, but of the sort even the gaudiest whore in Brest would sniff warily.

But just lying here for a few minutes was luxurious. Pity there was no door to shut off the cabin from all the noise and movement; just a green curtain, the same type that separated the wardroom and the wireless room. Yon was aft in the engine room which, with the two diesels shut down, was comparatively quiet: only the electric motors were humming. An electric motor – previously Ned always thought of one as being the size of a bucket, but ULJ had two which each developed five hundred horsepower, drawing their strength from great banks of batteries set low in the boat. Each motor was connected directly to its propeller shaft: there was no gearing apparently because the electric motor’s speed was varied by juggling with rheostats and the like, always keeping a sharp eye on the voltmeters and ammeters which showed how much charge was left in the batteries. And of course, when the boat was surfaced with the diesels running, these same motors acted as generators, charging the batteries.

What had Jemmy said about this particular boat after questioning her Engineer? The electric motors could push her along and underwater at a maximum of about nine knots, although they only turned the wick up that high in an emergency because it flattened the batteries in an hour. But at a sedate one or two knots, ULJ could stay submerged for up to three days, though by then the air would be foul.

This was bliss: admirals in their flagships must feel like this. Jemmy was up in the conning tower with the helmsman, or down in the control room keeping an eye on things there – on the two men sitting in front of two large wheels which reminded Ned of the type that turned old-fashioned mangles with wooden rollers, but in fact controlled the hydroplanes at bow and stern, and thus the angle of dive. Dozens of dials and gauges to watch – a large one in front of the big wheels, he remembered, showed the shaft speed. Electric wiring in protective trunking passed wherever there was space between the gauges, like dry ivy. Twenty or so small wheels, operating vital controls, grew from the hull by the conning tower ladder like toadstools from a rotting log. Grey boxes of ammunition for the Oerlikon cannons were dotted about, ready to be handed up through the hatch to the gun platform but in the meantime acting as stools. He disliked the claustrophobic effect of the access up to the conning tower. It was a circular skirt of thin plating, like a big oil drum without top or bottom and fitted to the deckhead with a welded-tube ladder through the centre of it. Up half a dozen rungs and your head was emerging from the drum into the conning tower, with the two periscopes, the helmsman and, if submerged, the officer of the watch or the commander.

This class of submarine was designed for a crew of fifty. Now it had twenty-three extra men from the prize crew, minus three men from her original crew. A forty per cent overload. Ned had not gone to look, but the Croupier had reported that the prisoners fitted well into the two torpedo rooms, allowing ten to spill into the petty officers’ quarters. He had allowed this, he explained casually, because he could only get twenty men in the after torpedo room – more than that crowded the Marine guards. For the same reason twenty had been the safe maximum in the forward torpedo room, so ten petty officers had been allowed into what had been their own quarters.

No, he had assured Ned, there was no chance the prisoners would try to sabotage any of the machinery. The Croupier had emphasized to the prisoners that any such sabotage would first perhaps result in the boat sinking, so any such attempts would be suicide, and second, those guilty of any minor sabotage would be severely punished.

He told a laughing Ned how he had threatened that such malefactors would be dealt with. The boat would surface and the whole group of ten or twenty would be marched out to stand to attention on the casing. The boat would then dive slowly. Those who wished to prolong their agony could wear their lifejackets. The prisoners, the Croupier assured Ned, believed every word.

But Ned was certain that the prisoners would cause no difficulty: their leaders – the Commander and First Officer – were dead, and thanks to the Croupier’s combined role of Satan and Goebbels, they were convinced the Tommy prize crew was really looking for a good excuse to massacre them all, and they were determined not to provide it.

Submarines… He could understand Jemmy’s twitch: another week and all the prize crew would have twitches. Anyone who volunteered for submarine service must either have a vocation as strong as the one that led a man to be a priest, or be a bit batty. Not just a bit but wholly and completely batty.

Ned pummelled the pillow to raise his head high enough to look through the doorway into the control room. There were Jemmy’s chosen men sitting at the controls for the hydroplanes; Jemmy and the helmsman would be up there in the conning tower, Marines guarded thirty Teds forward and twenty more aft… and there Yon had just walked in with the German Engineer Officer, who was explaining something, gesturing at one gauge and then stepping sideways to point at another, obviously making a comparison. Yon nodded and the German was pleased. Curious how certain activities, like engineering and medicine, had a freemasonry among their devotees. A stranger looking at Yon (greasy grey flannel bags, nondescript brown woollen jersey) and the German (greasy grey cotton trousers, blue jersey with more holes than material) would not be certain which was the Tommy and which the Ted.

But this U-boat had been at sea for weeks. It stank of – he selected and identified the smells: rotting vegetables, diesel fuel, bilge water, hot lubricating oil, stale sweat (so stale it seemed to be lodged in petrified lumps), mildewed bread (he had seen half a loaf, covered in a pale green patina and spotted with yellow eruptions, sitting on the desktop), sour fruit (that must come from spilled fruit juices), unwashed bodies (hardly surprising since presumably fresh water was not allowed for washing), and…well, others too that he could not name but guessed were from
Ersatz
materials. The blue-grey rubber oilskin coats for instance, which had been dumped in the conning tower, had a sharp, sweet, almost surgical odour.

Oh yes, and hams and German sausage. He had first noticed them while standing in the crowded control room in the minutes before the Croupier shot that red-headed First Lieutenant. Hanging down from the deckhead wherever there was space were German (perhaps salami) sausages, like bunches of mummified limbs, and ten and twenty pound hams, their net bags brushing electric conduits, hydraulic piping, voice-pipe tubing, each ham leaving greasy marks which also showed the maximum pitch and roll since the boat had sailed. And the boxes, cartons and cardboard drums: wherever there was space in the boat, containers of provisions were lodged or lashed down with codline, and his German was adequate to read the stencilled contents: butter, oats, flour… Parts of the U-boat looked more like a half-stocked delicatessen than a fighting ship.

Yet, the German U-boat today was perhaps the most sophisticated and effective fighting ship at sea, even if submariners always referred to them as ‘boats’, and spent most of their time under the sea. With ULJ, the German designers had taken two big Blohm and Voss diesels, each as tall as a man and longer than a large car, two electric motors, a vast amount of diesel fuel, air compressors, and fourteen or so torpedoes and their fire control gear, and fitted them into a hydrodynamically highly efficient steel cigar which could withstand the pressures of great depths. But the men, from the captain to the cook, and the food they needed, were in effect left to fit in where they could. The Captain’s cabin was the size of a second class sleeper on a British train, the galley from a quick glance looked a good deal smaller than would be tolerated on a cruising yacht sleeping four, although it had to provide three meals a day for fifty men…

He realized that he was deliberately avoiding facing the problem. Very well, problem, step forward and be recognized. But first, the preliminary to the problem. The Prime Minister had told him to collect a group of men of diabolical cunning and somehow capture the key (the manual, in other words) to the Triton cipher and a Mark III, 4-rotor Enigma machine. Very well, he had done that and, though he said it himself, it had been done with the sort of qualities that the Premier had in mind.

But what perverted mind could place cipher, Enigma and boarding party a thousand miles from England, home and beauty in a German U-boat with a busted wireless transmitter and no way of passing the message to the Admiralty that would tell them of success – the single word ‘Spree’ repeated three times, on three successive nights, on the U-boat wavelength? How Captain Watts would have enjoyed seeing that word in an intercept; the name he had given the operation. Nor was there any way of saying ‘We’re friendly’ before a corvette, frigate, destroyer or aircraft rained shells or depth-charges down on them like sleet across Ilkley Moor.