iron pirate (40 page)

He heard himself answer, 'So it was all wasted?'

Not quite, you
bastard!'
The Luger seemed to appear in his fist like magic and Hechler knew he could not move aside in time.

All around him men were dying, or waiting to be struck down. Because of men like Leitner. He felt suddenly sickened and cheated. No wonder Leitner could never understand his ideals, his love for a ship, her loyalty.

A voice shattered the sudden stillness.
‘Torpedoes to port!'

The explosions were merged into one gigantic eruption, so that it seemed to go on and on forever.

Hechler was vaguely aware of objects crashing past him, the sounds of heavy equipment tearing adrift and thundering through the hull between decks.

His mind was cringing but all his skill and training tried to hold on, just long enough.

The light cruiser must have darted in to launch her torpedoes while her battered consorts had kept up a ragged covering fire.

He knew without hearing a single report that it was a mortal blow. Corpses were moving again, returning to life perhaps as the deck tilted over.

Gudegast hopped and limped towards him, his eyes blazing as he exclaimed, 'Thought you were done for!'

Hechler hung on to his massive shoulder. How long had he been unconscious? He could recall nothing beyond the great gout of fire as the torpedoes had exploded alongside.

The admiral lay on his side, his tongue protruding in a crude grimace. One hand still held the Luger; the other was like a claw as it reached out for the scattered fragments of his fortune.

Gudegast aided the captain to the bridge chair. 'He's dead, sir.'

He watched the anguish on Hechler's profile. There was no point in adding to his pain by telling him that he had seen a bullet hole in the middle of Leitner's back. Someone must have gunned him down deliberately as he had aimed at the captain, when the torpedoes had abruptly ended all their hopes.

'The enemy's ceased fire, sir.' That was Jaeger, a bloody handkerchief pressed to his forehead.

Hechler heard the distant shouts of men on the deck below and Gudegast said, 'When I thought you were -'

Hechler held his arm. 'You ordered them to clear the lower deck?' He nodded painfully. 'Thank you, Josef.
So much.'

Would I have done that, he wondered? Might more of my men have been made to die?

Now he would never know.

The deck gave a terrible lurch and the chart-table shattered into fragments.

Gudegast said, I'll pass the word, sir.'

Hechler shook his head. 'No. Let me. I must do it.'

He clung to the screen and saw the nearest enemy cruiser for the first time. Her fires were out, and her turrets were trained on the
Prinz
as she began to heel over very, very slowly.

Hechler raised his hand to the men nearest him. 'Abandon ship!' The words to wish them well choked in his emotion and he heard Gudegast mutter, 'Come on, sir. We'll still need you.'

Hechler tried to stand, but when he gripped the rail he found that he was staring not at the enemy but straight down at the littered water. Floats, broken boats, corpses, and swimmers, some of whom trod water to watch as the heavy cruiser began to roll over.

Hechler knew he had hit the sea, and that his lungs were on fire when hands seized him and dragged him into a crowded float. Someone cried, 'Here's the Captain!'

Hechler hooked his arm round Gudegast's shoulder and heard him murmur, 'Come
on,
old girl, get it over with, eh?'

It was like a great bellow of pain, an indescribable roar, as with sudden urgency the
Prinz Luitpold
lifted her motionless screws from the sea and dived.

Hechler struggled upright on the float and watched the maelstrom of flotsam, the tell-tale spread of oil.

They were still a long way from home.

But those who survived would speak for many years of the

Prinz.

He stared up at the first, pale stars.

The Iron Pirate. The legend.

The train was moving very slowly as if weighed down by the packed humanity which crammed every seat and compartment. Hechler was glad he had been able to find a place by a window, although it was so gloomy beyond the misty glass he could see very little.

It was hard to believe that the journey was nearly over, that the long train was already clanking through the outskirts of Hamburg.

Prinz Luitpold
had begun her life in this port. It all seemed so long ago. He glanced at his companions, mostly in army field-grey, like the rest of the train, creased, worn-out, huddled together for warmth and comfort.

It was about noon, but it could have been evening, he thought. Winter already had its grip on the countryside. He stirred uneasily as his mind explored the past like a raw wound. A year since that day in the South Atlantic when the
Prinz
had lifted her stern and had dived. So many familiar faces had gone down with her; too many.

The survivors had been gathered into the British ships, and Hechler had found himself aboard the light cruiser
Pallas,
the one which had fired the fatal salvo of torpedoes.

It was strange, but he had sensed no elation amongst the victors. It had been relief as much as anything. He had learned snatches of the final action, of the British commodore being killed by the
Prinz
's first straddle, and the New Zealander's initiative in pressing home the attack despite an overwhelming adversary.

Hechler had been separated from his men, then from most of his officers. Some he knew had died in the cruiser's final moments. Kroll directing his guns, the taciturn Stuck, dying as he had lived with his engines roaring around him when the torpedoes had burst in on him and his men.

Hechler had managed to stay with Gudegast, even after they were transferred to a fast troopship with an armed escort, to be landed eventually in the port of Liverpool.

He had seen young Jaeger for a while, but once in England Jaeger had been sent to an officers' prison camp somewhere in the south.

Gudegast had told him of Theil's last appearance, all that anyone had seen of him. As the ship had taken on her final list, with men pouring up from the smoke and fires between decks, several of the survivors had seen Theil returning below, as if going to his quarters. Hechler had asked if he had seemed to be in a great hurry? Perhaps he was trying to retrieve some small item of value from his cabin before he abandoned ship with all the others.

Gudegast had shaken his head. 'They said he was just walking. As if he had all the time in the world.'

A way out.
Remain with the ship he loved, which was finally being taken from him. Now' they would never know the truth.

Hechler thought of the months as a prisoner-of-war. He gave a faint, wry smile.
In the bag,
as his British captors termed it.

The camp had been in Scotland, a bleak, lonely place, shared mostly with embittered U-boat commanders.

Hechler had been interrogated several times, on arrival, and later by officers in civilian clothes who were described as being from Naval Intelligence.

They questioned him mostly about the incident at St Jorge, and whether he considered that as captain he was solely responsible for the shooting of the civilian mechanic. Bauer was probably the only one who knew the whole truth of that, but he had been blasted to fragments with the rest of his staff early in the engagement.

After that, nobody took much interest in him. Gudegast was good company, and when they were not walking around the wire fences and looking at the varying colours of the heather, Gudegast would be busy with his paints and sketches. He obtained all the materials he needed by offering to do portraits of the guards. It was an amicable arrangement.

Then one day Gudegast was ordered to leave for another camp in the south.

It had been a sad if unemotional farewell. They had survived too much for anything more.

He had asked Gudegast what he would try to do after the war.

The big man had plucked at his beard. 'Back to the sea. It's all I know.'

Before he left he had handed Hechler a small roll of canvas.

'For her,' he had said awkwardly. 'You'll meet her again, don't you fret.'

Then he had marched away with some others, and Hechler had saluted without knowing why.

After that it had been a matter of waiting and enduring. Christmas, with local children gathering outside the wire to sing carols. One of the U-boat officers had killed himself shortly afterwards. Hechler had withdrawn even further from his companions. They seemed alien; their war was not one he had shared, and he wished that Gudegast was still with him.

He often thought of the others, men like Brezinka who had survived, and the doctor Stroheim who had last been seen tying his own life-jacket to a badly wounded seaman. The quiet hero.

Then the time when the guards had fired their weapons in the air, and all the lights had been switched on.

Hechler had accepted the end of Europe's war with mixed feelings. The time seemed to drag, and yet he almost dreaded his release. He had written to Erika Franke several times at the two addresses she had left for him, but had received no reply.

His head lolled to the monotonous clank-clank-clank of the wheels and he stared through the window at some great white humps of land. He saw the khaki uniforms of British NCO's who were directing some tractors and a great army of German workers. He realised with a chill that the humps were all that was left of buildings, whole streets, now mercifully covered with the first snow of this bitter winter.

Someone said, 'Nearly there! Home sweet home!' Nobody else spoke. One man, an infantry captain, was dabbing his eyes with a soiled handkerchief, another was trying to pull his threadbare coat into position. Home? There was not much of it left.

Hechler thrust his fingers into his pocket as if to reassure himself that his pipe was still there. In his other hand he held the parcel which contained Gudegast's gift. It was a small portrait of himself, not aboard ship, but with some Scottish heather as a background. So typical of Gudegast, he thought.

He felt his stomach contract as he realised that the train was suddenly running into the station. Again there seemed to be wreckage everywhere, the platform roof blasted open like bare ribs against the dull sky.

He sensed a new tension all around him. Most of the soldiers had only just been released; many had come from the Russian Front, gaunt, despairing figures who rarely even spoke to each other. The train stopped with a final jerk and slowly at first, then with something like panic, the passengers spilled out on to the platform.

Here and there were signs of occupation. Station direction boards in English with regimental crests on them. The bright red caps of the military police, khaki and air force blue, voices and accents Hechler had taught himself to know while he had been
in the bag.

He stared at the barrier beyond the mass of returning German troops. Police, service and military, a British provost marshal smoking a pipe and chatting with a friend. Further still, an unbroken wall of faces.

He came to a halt, his heart pounding. Was this freedom? Where was his courage now?

A solitary German sailor, the two ribbons whipping out from his cap in the chill breeze, dropped a package and Hechler picked it up.

'Here!'

The sailor spun round and snapped to attention.

Hechler handed him the parcel, and they both stared at one another like strangers. Then the man gave a slow grin, and reached out to shake his hand.

The saluting, like the war, was finally over for both of them.

The girl, Erika Franke, stood by one of the massive girders which supported the remains of the station roof and watched the train sigh to a halt.

It was the third one she had met this day, and her hands and feet were icy cold. Or was it the awful uncertainty? Not knowing? As each train had trundled into the station to offload its cargo of desperate, anxious servicemen she had seen the reactions of the crowd, mostly women, who waited there with her. Like her. She looked at the noticeboards which had once recorded the most punctual trains in the Reich. Now they were covered from top to bottom with photographs, some large, others no bigger than passport pictures. Addresses and names scrawled under each one. It was like a graveyard.

Now as the first hurrying figures approached the platform gates and the line of military policemen, she saw many of the same women surge forward, their pitiful pictures held out to each man in uniform.

'My son, have you seen him?' To another. 'He was in your regiment! You
must
have known my man!'

She wiped her eyes, afraid she might miss something.

A young British naval lieutenant with wavy stripes on his sleeve asked, 'You all right, Frauiein? I've got a car outside if

She shook her head and replied politely, 'No, thank you.'

A woman in a shabby coat with two photographs held up in front of her pushed past a red-capped policeman and asked that same question. The soldier brushed her away; he did not even look at her. He seemed embarrassed, afraid that he might recognise someone he had left in the mud with a million others.

The girl watched the other wave of figures coming through the gates. Not many sailors, this time. She would come back tomorrow.

She remembered his letters, bundled together, when she had finally returned home. It was all like a dream now, and the last flight to Argentina, an impossibility.

She recalled the moment when she had climbed down from the Arado and into a waiting launch. She had felt nothing but a sense of loss. Even when German consulate officials had opened the boxes to find them full of broken fragments of coloured glass, she had thought only of Hechler, with every minute taking him further away, perhaps to his death.

Leitner's aide had had hysterics when he had seen the broken glass. She had heard him shout the name of a petty officer called Hammer. Whoever he was, he must be a very rich man if he was still alive.