The Last Wolf (9 page)

The command ship of the flotilla was tied up at the end of the pier and they presented their papers again to board her. The Commandant's adjutant arrived with the news that the Commandant would not be available for an hour at least and they were free to leave the ship and to wander down the pier to take a closer look at the U-boats.

Outward appearances could be very misleading, Reinhard thought. Lying quietly at their moorings, the U-boats looked innocent enough, but he knew what lay out of sight beneath their sleek grey hulls. He knew all about the steel outer casing, the inner pressure hull, the watertight control room amidships. He knew about the Zeiss attack periscope, the bridge master sight and the fire interval calculator. And he knew about the fourteen torpedoes that could be launched through tubes in the bows and stern and with a deadly accuracy. The sleeping wolves were hiding their fangs from view.

They were given lunch in the officers' mess hall – roasted pork, cabbage and potatoes – and halfway through the meal, the Commandant joined them. At the end, he stood to make a short speech, along similar lines to the Admiral at the Academy, but without the bellowing. He spoke in a normal voice that carried easily in the mess hall. Much would be expected of them from their countrymen and from the German Navy. The U-boat Force that they were joining was an elite company, formed to play a vital role in Germany's future. A force capable not only of defending the nation, but of advancing her cause whenever and wherever it became expedient. Their training had equipped them to become part of the force; now it was time to put that training into practice and embrace their destiny.

‘Kameraden, you must realize that you are serving in the finest and most effective service of our dear Fatherland. The destiny of our fellow countrymen lies in your hands. Prove yourselves worthy of their trust. We know no fear. Our motto is: “Go in and sink”.'

They listened intently to every word.

After lunch, they gathered on deck to wait for orders. The adjutant arrived carrying lists and they gathered round him while he snapped out names in alphabetical order – first the name of the man, then the number of the U-boat and its port.

The lucky ones – Max, Gunther and Rolf among them – were assigned to the boats moored close by at the pier, but others were ordered to different ports. Hans, Werner and Klaus were to go to Bremerhaven; Harald and Paul to Wilhemshaven. Reinhard alone was ordered to report to faraway Koenigsberg on the other side of the Baltic.

He said goodbye to his classmates. They clapped each other on the back, wished each other good fortune, made ribald jokes. They were good fellows and he'd miss them.

The express train to Berlin arrived at Stettin Station soon after eight that same evening. He threaded his way through the crowds and out on to the street, carrying his two suitcases. It was still raining, the cobbles gleaming under the gas lamps. He had never visited the capital city before but he knew its heady reputation for music and arts – and for vice.

There was no train to Koenigsberg until early the next morning so he had to find somewhere to stay the night. But first he needed a drink, or several drinks, and then something to eat. There was a café a short way down the street – nothing special about it but the cases were heavy, so he went in and ordered a beer. The bar stools were all taken and when he looked round, he saw that all the tables were, too. There was a girl sitting alone at one of them – nothing special about her, either, but she had rather good legs. She was drinking coffee and reading a book and there were two empty chairs beside her. He went over.

‘Do you mind if I join you, fräulein? You see, there is nowhere else to sit.'

He smiled as he spoke, but not too much in case he alarmed her. She was considerably older than himself. Perhaps twenty-seven, or twenty-eight. No wedding or engagement ring. He'd noticed that, too, as well as the legs.

She smiled back timidly. ‘Yes, it's quite all right.'

The naval uniform, even a lowly midshipman's, was always a great help, he thought, as he fetched his beer and the suitcases. People trusted you. He could have warned her that, in his case, it might prove to be a mistake.

He raised his beer to her. ‘Prost!'

She nodded and bent her head over her book again. He studied her over the rim of his glass. She was very different from the girls of the Reeperbahn or others he had since come across elsewhere. Natural hair, almost no make-up and the clothes were plain and modest. He had hoped for something more sophisticated in Berlin, but on second thoughts, she could make an interesting change.

He leaned forward. ‘I am rather curious. May I ask what you are reading so intently?'

She raised her head, blushing a little. ‘It's a book on English. I'm studying the language at a class in the evenings.'

‘Do you enjoy it?'

‘Not much. English is not at all logical and the spelling is confusing. But it's a good thing to know it for my work.'

‘What is your work?'

‘I am secretary to the managing director of an export company. So, you see, foreign languages are important. I already speak and understand French and Italian and some English, but I need to know it better. Just now, I find I can hardly understand a word of this passage.'

‘Perhaps I can help. Let me see.'

She handed him the book:
Further Steps In English
. The passage in question was taken from
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens. He translated it for her, pointing out the words as he did so.

‘You make it seem very easy,' she said as he gave her back the book.

‘It's not so difficult. But you are right; it is not at all logical and the spelling is very confusing. I have a friend in England and when I write letters to her she always corrects my spelling mistakes so that I learn.'

He ordered another beer and a coffee for her, offered a cigarette which she refused. He lit his own and found out some more about her. Her name was Katrin Paulssen. She came from Wegendorf, a small town some way from Berlin, and she lived in an apartment a few streets away.

‘Only one room with a small bathroom and a cupboard for a kitchen. It's not very nice but it's the best I can afford.'

The beers had revived him but now he was very hungry and the café only provided snacks. The girl told him that there was good restaurant in the next street.

‘I hope you will join me, please,' he said. ‘As my guest, of course. I hate to eat alone and I don't know anyone in Berlin. This is my first visit here.'

‘I couldn't do that.'

‘Perhaps you have already eaten?'

‘No . . . but I will have something at my apartment.'

He could imagine it. She would assemble some scraps in the cupboard kitchen. Cold sausage, bread, something out of a tin. Very poor fare.

‘If you have not already eaten, then there are no excuses. Show me where this good restaurant is.'

She had been right to recommend it: the food and the beer were excellent. During the meal he learned more about her. She was an only child and her parents, safely at home in Wegendorf, were very strict.

They had not approved of her going to Berlin and insisted that she went home every weekend. Apparently there was no steady boyfriend, which was surprising, he thought. She was attractive, in her quiet way, and the shyness was rather appealing too.

‘Do you like living in Berlin?' he asked.

‘At first, I did. But now I am afraid to be here.'

‘Oh? Why is that?'

‘Because of what has happened . . . since the Kristallnacht.'

‘Kistallnacht?'

‘When the Nazi soldiers attacked the synagogues, and the Jewish shops and homes. They burned buildings and smashed windows so that in the morning the streets were full of broken glass. It happened all over Germany and Austria. Many Jews were murdered and thousands were arrested and taken away to prison camps. Surely, you must know about it?'

He had heard some stories. People talking at the Academy, accounts in the newspapers. But he had been too preoccupied with his training and study to give it much attention. If he remembered rightly, it had all happened because some Polish-Jew had assassinated a German official. Well, that had been a crazy thing to do. The fellow must have been raving mad. The Führer had never made any secret of his hatred of Jews and blamed them for everything, which was totally unfair, of course.

‘But there is no need for you to worry.'

‘Yes, there is. You see, I am Jewish. My father is German, but my mother is a Jew, which makes me one, too. And no Jew is safe now.'

Now that he looked at her more closely, he could see the Jewish features – the skin tone, the dark hair, the nose and the unusual coloured eyes. He had known very few Jews – the family doctor in Hamburg, a professor acquaintance of his father's, one of the teachers at school, the elderly tailor who had made his naval uniform, a shopkeeper or two, but never any Jewish girls. It was not a question of prejudice; he had simply never come across them.

He said again, ‘I'm sure you don't need to worry.'

‘I am not so sure.'

‘Then perhaps you should go home to Wegendorf.'

‘That's what my parents have wanted me to do ever since the Kristallnacht. But even though I am very afraid, I still don't want to leave Berlin.'

He didn't blame her for not wanting to go back to some small, dull little place to live with her strict parents, and he admired her spirit. What was it about Jews that made them so hated and reviled? Their cleverness? Their talent for moneymaking? Their money-lending? Their weird rituals that set them apart from others? Their belief in being God's Chosen People? At school, in English class, he had studied Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice
. He had found the archaic language difficult, but some of it had stayed in his mind. A remnant of Shylock's speech. ‘For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spet upon my Jewish gaberdine . . . and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold.' He knew people who might do just that and he had probably given Katrin good advice when he had advised her to go home to Wegendorf.

Afterwards, she took him back to the small flat where he spent the night in her narrow and virginal bed. She seemed to have had no experience at all with men and he was careful to avoid doing anything that might shock her.

In the morning, they had breakfast in a café round the corner – strong coffee, ham, rye bread, cheese, eggs. For the poor and unemployed of Germany he knew that it would have been a wonderful feast. It was true that things were getting better under the Nazis. Now, at least, there were jobs to be had in munitions factories, aircraft factories, building tanks and ships and, of course, U-boats.

Katrin hardly ate a thing.

‘Will you come back soon?' she asked. ‘Perhaps on leave?'

‘Impossible to say. I don't know where the Navy will be sending me, or for how long.'

This was perfectly true. Also, he did not want any commitment, nice as she was. With so many girls available, it was stupid to get too involved with one of them. The fact that she was a Jewess had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

She fiddled with her coffee spoon. ‘Your friend in England. The one who corrects the spelling mistakes in your letters. Is she special to you?'

The answer was yes, very special, but not quite in the way that Katrin imagined.

‘She's only fourteen years old,' he said with a smile. ‘Just a kid.'

She went to the station with him and he saw her wiping away tears as the train moved off. He was sorry about that; he hadn't intended to hurt her.

The train took him over the Pomeranian Plains, miles of heather giving way to endless pine forests. It stopped at the two borders, first leaving West Prussia to enter the Danzig corridor and, a few hours later, crossing into East Prussia. Danzig and the valuable corridor to the sea had once belonged to Germany but had been handed over to Poland at the end of his father's war. The Polish guards boarding the train were sullen and rude. It might pay them to be more friendly, he thought, if they didn't want their country to be carved up like Czechoslovakia. At the big international meeting in Munich last September it had been agreed that the German army was to occupy the Sudetenland and that all Czechs would be evacuated from it. There had been official photographs of the occasion with Adolf Hitler, Mussolini and the British and French prime ministers. No Czechs had been present, which was ironic. It had also been reported that the British prime minister had persuaded the Führer to sign some other piece of paper, a declaration that he would keep to his word about not taking over anywhere else. Mr Chamberlain had looked rather comical with his drooping walrus moustache and old-fashioned clothes, and he must be exceedingly naïve.

Reinhard arrived at Koenigsberg at dusk and followed directions to the naval yard. Several U-boats were tethered alongside a granite jetty – black silhouettes in the gathering darkness. One of them would be his boat.

The flotilla headquarters were on board an old liner. He carried his baggage across the gangway, reported to the officer on watch and was directed to a cabin. Later, he found the bar and the dining room for a drink and some dinner. The other officers present were older hands already with experience of sea trials. One of them, by the name of Friedrich Merten, turned out to be the First Officer of his boat and warned him that the commander, Kapitänleutnant Grindorff, would be unhappy to be landed with another beginner.

‘He's very tough on new boys, but he's a good captain; that's the main thing.'

They had a few drinks together while Merten told him more.

‘We've been doing a shakedown cruise in the Baltic so the boat's not looking her best, but she's reliable. No gremlins so far. Crew of forty-two – officers, petty officers, seamen, machinists and technicians. You'll know all that, of course. Our commander's licked us into shape, I can tell you. He's an old sea dog and his bite's worse than his bark. But I'd sooner be with him than with anyone else. In a submarine, we depend on everyone else to stay alive, and, most of all, we depend on our commander, and Grindorff is just about the best around.