The Last Wolf (12 page)

Christmas in London was very grim this year. No brightly-lit shop windows, no winking neon advertisements or Christmas tree lights, only the faint glimmer of shelter signs and masked traffic lights, the shielded headlights of cars and the feeble beams of torches dimmed with paper. In the evenings, before darkness fell, every window had to be covered with blackout material so that not a chink of light showed outside. People who went out at night fell down steps, walked into lamp-posts and trees, tripped over kerbs, toppled off railway platforms, were knocked down by cars.

But still the German bombers did not come.

‘It's the Bore War,' Hamish said. ‘That's what everyone's calling it. I wish to heaven something would happen so we could have a crack at the blighters.'

Next March he would be eighteen – old enough to join up and ‘have a crack at them', and Stroma would be sixteen in May. In two years' time, she'd be able to join up and have a crack at them too, although she imagined the war would be over long before then.

It was so cold in January and February that the River Thames froze over for eight miles and snow cut off towns and villages all over England.

At Stroma's school, games had to be abandoned and they were sent out for long walks in crocodiles instead.

No German bombs had fallen anywhere in England. Nothing had happened, except for the Russians suddenly attacking Finland, which was too far away to worry about. It was still the Bore War.

Stroma and Rosanne walked side-by-side in the crocodile. Rosanne's brother, Jeremy, was in the army and had been posted to France in December.

‘I had a letter from him this morning. He says the weather's awful there, too, but they're having a rather nice time. They've been billeted in some beautiful old chateau and the food's wonderful. Much better than over here. He doesn't think the Germans will try anything till the spring because of the bad weather. He says they'll soon send them packing, if they do.'

‘I hope he's right. The Poles didn't manage to do that.'

‘That's different.'

They trudged on. There was a thin layer of ice on top of the snow and their walking shoes made satisfactory crunching noises.

Stroma said, ‘Why should it be different for the Poles?'

‘Well, their army wouldn't be nearly as well-trained as ours, or have the same sort of proper equipment. They still use horses, don't they? Not tanks. I read about it in the newspaper. Mind you, Jerry says he doesn't think much of the French army either. He says they don't seem very well organized.'

‘I bet the Germans are.'

She remembered Reinhard's descriptions of life at the German naval academy – all work, no sleep, tough sports, marching up and down the parade ground.

Rosanne said, ‘Anyway, our Royal Navy's the best in the world, isn't it? So they won't be able to beat us, no matter how hard they try. Has Hamish heard anything yet?'

‘No, he's still waiting.'

‘I'm sure they'll take him, being so good at sailing.'

Hamish had applied for direct entry to the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve officers' training course. The parents had wanted him to wait until he had passed his Higher School Certificate in the summer term and there had been big rows during the Christmas holidays. But he had got his way in the end. And it wouldn't be a nice safe shore post either, but something at sea – probably on a destroyer or the like. Destroyers were built to destroy, as he had pointed out to her, which meant engaging enemy ships. It meant attacking them, and being attacked by them. Maybe even getting sunk.

‘What sort of ship does your German sail in?'

‘He's not my German. I don't write to him any more.'

‘Well, you know what I mean.'

‘He's on a U-boat, as far as I know.'

‘A U-boat! Golly! They're the ones that sunk that passenger liner, aren't they? Hundreds of people drowned. Simply despicable! They hide under the water and fire torpedoes from miles away. What cowards they must be!'

Stroma said nothing. It was a sneaky way to fight, but she didn't believe for one moment that Reinhard was a coward. It must take a lot of courage to go to war in a submarine.

Easter was at the end of March. Hamish had already broken up when Stroma arrived home from school and he had finally received his call-up papers from the Navy. He was to report for basic training in two weeks. Afterwards, he would join HMS King Alfred at Hove on the Sussex coast. Not actually a ship at all, he explained loftily, but a college on shore for training new officers. The navy had requisitioned a marina being built for the public and taken over all the buildings as well as the swimming pool.

‘As soon as I've finished my basic training, there'll be three months of officer training in HMS Alfred, and then I'll join a real ship.'

‘What about Craigmore?'

‘What about it?'

‘Will you be able to come up there this summer?'

‘Of course not. Even if I happened to have a bit of leave, there wouldn't be time. Have you forgotten there's a war on?'

No, she hadn't forgotten. But the Germans seemed to have stopped doing anything, as though they were bored with it too.

But in April, everything happened very suddenly. The German army marched into Denmark and captured Copenhagen while other German forces landed in Norway. British ships and troops were sent to help drive them out. Next, the Germans invaded Belgium and Holland and the papers were full of frightening news from the Continent. Mr Chamberlain resigned and a new Prime Minister was chosen – Mr Winston Churchill.

The Second Officer said scornfully, ‘I've heard he's a drunk and half-crazy.'

The Old Man glowered across the wardroom table. ‘I wouldn't count on it, if I were you. Never underestimate the enemy. The British aren't stupid and neither is Herr Churchill.'

‘Well, they are certainly making fools of themselves in Norway at the moment, sir. We're running rings round them, aren't we? And we already have the Danes safely in our pockets, which only took us a day. Before long we shall have the Dutch, and then, no doubt, the Belgians. All the British have been able to do is to lay a few sea mines while, on land, their army retreats in chaos.'

He was an arrogant little sod, Reinhard thought: the sort that gave Germany a bad name. Nobody liked him, least of all his present commander, but he seemed blissfully unaware of the fact. On the other side of the table, Merten caught his eye. The Chief Engineer muttered something inaudible into his soup and the Old Man drummed his fingers on the edge of the wardroom table – always a warning sign.

‘The Royal Navy are doing rather more than laying a few mines, my friend. They are also very busy hunting our U-boats. You'll change your tune when you're sitting under their depth charges.'

Unwisely, the Second Officer stuck to his guns.

‘If they can find us, sir. From all accounts, they're not much good at it.'

‘I think you'll find they'll improve with practice. The British have been rather good on the sea for a hell of a lot of years.'

The Second Officer persisted. ‘It's also well-known that the French and British army commanders in France are at odds with each other, and that the French will be quite likely to lay down their arms when the time comes to confront us. Which would leave the British forces struggling on alone, their backs to the wall. Our way would be clear to invade England. The whole of Europe will eventually be ours. Nothing can stop us.'

The Old Man banged the table suddenly with the edge of his fist, so hard that cutlery jumped and the pea soup flew about. The table, screwed to the floor, stayed in place.

‘I'll tell you what will stop us. Cocky talk like yours. You can't even do your miserable little job on this boat without fucking up, let alone conquer Europe!'

The Second Officer's pale face flushed scarlet and he was silent for the rest of the meal.

But he was partly right, Reinhard thought. The British
had
been making fools of themselves in Norway. Their attempt to send troops to Narvik to help the Finns fight the Russians had ended in a fiasco. And the Panzer tanks were steamrolling merrily across the Lowlands. Germany had come a long way since the modest reclamation of the Sudetenland and, despite the Old Man's explosion, a conquest of Europe was not, perhaps, all that far-fetched. If they could take France then they would control her ports and U-boats would no longer have to go the long way round to reach the North Atlantic. England, of course, was another question altogether. The British people wouldn't take kindly to any attempt to invade their islands. Not kindly at all.

So far as their own U-boat had been concerned, the last patrol had been totally unproductive. Their orders had been to remain unseen, which had meant diving the second any enemy plane or ship was sighted. They had returned in vile Atlantic weather and rounded the north-east corner of the British Isles with engines at half-speed. On the bridge watch, they had been up to their waists in icy water. He couldn't remember ever being so cold, even on the worst training exercises.

A damaged starboard fuel pump had slowed them still further and then a signal had been received to hunt for survivors from a Luftwaffe Ju88 downed in the sea. Not surprisingly, hours of patient searching had proved fruitless. The aircraft would have sunk almost at once and even if the crew had made it safely into the rubber dinghy, there had been almost no chance of finding them in bad visibility and very rough seas. All in all, the trip had been an unpleasant and frustrating experience. Back in port, the damage to the fuel pump had taken more than a week to repair but no leave was granted.

Now they had put to sea once more and the boat was nosing her way gingerly northwards through the waters of the Skagerrak – heavily mined by the Royal Navy so scorned by the Second Officer. They encountered the usual fishing vessels, always suspect in case they informed the enemy of their position. A British destroyer was sighted and they had to crash-dive to avoid being spotted – bells sounding, red lights flashing, the lookouts tumbling down the conning tower ladder, the hatch slammed and sealed above them.

The orders to wait around unseen meant staying submerged for hour after hour, only surfacing to recharge the batteries and ventilate the boat. From time to time they came up to periscope depth so that the Old Man could take a good squint round.

At last, fresh orders came to proceed to Narvik as fast as possible. The U-boat plunged northwards through heavy seas, waves breaking over the bows and crashing down in torrents on the fo'c's'le. On watch on the bridge, Reinhard had to keep wiping his binoculars over and over again in a monotonous ritual – glasses up to sweep the horizon, glasses down to clean them, glasses up again. The one consolation was that if they could not see clearly, then neither could they be seen.

By the following day, the sea had grown calmer and visibility improved. The Old Man's eyes stayed glued to the periscope and, as they approached the Norwegian coast, he spotted three large British transport ships, a cruiser and two freighters at anchor, busy landing men and equipment on to the rocky shore. Sitting ducks! The U-boat crept closer in the full moonlight.

‘Damned moon.' The Old Man ground his teeth. ‘We'll stick out like a tart's tits.' He waited for a dark cloud to come along. ‘Stand by to attack. Bring all tubes to ready. Range two thousand metres.'

‘All tubes clear, Herr Kaleun.'

‘Los!'

The U-boat lurched as the torpedoes left their tubes with a hiss of compressed air and the cox'n counted the seconds out by his stopwatch. Reinhard held his breath, waiting for the explosions. But nothing happened. No explosion, no flames, no terrible shriek of metal being torn apart. Silence.

Either they had miscalculated badly or the torpedoes were duds and had veered off on their own sweet course. It was known to happen quite frequently. The Old Man was swearing and barking questions, but it seemed that there had been no careless mistakes. The torpedoes were at fault, not the crew.

They surfaced to recharge the batteries and load the remaining torpedoes and by the time they returned to attack the same ships the day was dawning. The next torpedo veered wildly off its target and hit the rocks on the shore with an explosion that sent debris flying high into the air – clear and unmistakable evidence of their presence. They might as well have sent a signal to the British ships, Reinhard thought. ‘We're over here. Come and get us.' As the U-boat turned to flee, it ran slap into a sandbank and stuck fast. Now
they
were the sitting duck.

‘Stop both engines! Full astern together! All men not needed below, on deck at the double!'

The Old Man was rattling out orders at machine-gun speed. The ratings sent on to the decks began tramping to and fro, backwards and forwards, trying to rock the boat free while the Engineer let compressed air into the forward trimming tanks, expelling water in a hiss that might have been heard in Narvik. At the stern, the propeller blades churned the mirror-calm Norwegian coastal waters into a frantic white froth.

Well, this is it
, Reinhard decided.
A quick end to my short and so far inglorious career in U-boats. In a moment, the enemy will be firing shells, or dropping bombs on us, and my corpse will be floating food for the fishes – just as I feared. Father and Bruno will be very upset, of course, and the Reeperbahn girls might be rather sorry, and Katrin in Berlin would certainly weep.
Stroma, though, would shed no tears – if she ever heard about his end. He was the enemy now.

The ratings went on tramping to and fro, the propellers thrashed away and, gradually, the boat began to rock until it heaved itself free of the sandbank.

‘Half astern! All men below!'

The U-boat slid away into deep water and dived out of sight.

The homeward trip was uneventful except for the frequent sighting of enemy planes or destroyers forcing them to dive again and again.