The Passenger (15 page)

‘A Sunderland.' Juhl steadied himself by grabbing the halyard of the observation periscope.

Graf was hollering ‘Flood!'

‘Good,' Lorenz grunted.

‘Good, Kaleun?' Juhl queried.

‘Yes. Nothing to worry about—they're very slow . . .' But before he could continue his sentence there were several explosions and the hull was jolted by the shock waves. The pens and instruments on the chart table fell to the matting and a light bulb shattered. Lorenz stepped over Danzer, who had lost his balance, and positioned himself next to Graf. ‘Take her down to seventy meters.' The manometer pointer revolved at a steady rate—
forty, fifty, sixty, seventy
—and when the boat leveled out Lorenz ordered two course changes. Two more explosions followed but they were distant and caused no damage. Müller picked up the items that had fallen from the chart table, and the control-room mate, now back on his feet, started clearing the broken glass.

They waited for the Sunderland to return, and more bombs to explode, but the silence continued.

‘Is that it?' said Graf, puzzled, almost disappointed.

‘I believe so,' said Lorenz. ‘They just wanted to annoy us. Even so, we'd better stay submerged for a short time at least.' Perspiration prickled on his forehead. He still wasn't feeling very well.

Thirty minutes passed, and Lorenz ordered Graf to take the boat up to periscope depth. He unfolded the handgrips, looked through the eyepiece, and saw only green water. The tube was vibrating too much. ‘Dead slow. Up scope . . .' A moment later he could see an expanse of sea and sky. He changed the viewing angle and increased the magnification but the boat dropped again. ‘Watch your trim! Right so. Down—no, too much! Up-up-up . . . down, right so.'

His view consisted entirely of cloud, a pale grey canopy crossed by streaks of darker grey. When he had studied each quadrant and was satisfied that there were no aircraft he said, ‘All clear. Prepare to surface.' He could hear the watch assembling, Juhl chivvying one of the ratings. Just as he was about to raise the handgrips, Lorenz noticed a tiny black speck flying low over the sea. It only took him a few seconds to determine that he was looking at a bird, most probably a seagull, and not a Sunderland in the distance.

‘Kaleun?' Graf had noticed Lorenz's hesitation.

‘It's all right. Go ahead—surface.'

The buoyancy tanks hissed and the boat began to rise.

‘Bow planes up ten, stern planes up five.' There was a great splashing sound and Graf added, ‘Conning tower free.'

Lorenz was about to raise the handgrips for the second time, when he experienced a troubling qualm. Was the black speck really a seagull? Had he been too hasty? He undertook a final, cursory sweep of the horizon, and it was only after the bow had flashed past that he paused and tried to make sense of what he had seen. His heart was expanding uncomfortably in his chest and his blood quickened. Even though he had received little more than a fleeting, blurred impression, there had been sufficient detail to permit interpretation; however, Lorenz concluded that he must be mistaken, because what he thought he had seen was clearly an impossibility. His intellect proffered a rational alternative: an illusion created by spray and perfidious light? But logical platitudes could not persuade his gut that there was nothing to fear. The periscope motor hummed as the objective rotated back so that he could view the bow once again. Waves slapped against both sides of the hull creating spires of foam. Lorenz could see the forward deck, receding, slightly raised above the horizon by the swell, and situated about halfway between the 8.8 cm gun and the prow was a man, dressed in a long coat, standing with his legs apart, facing away. He was wearing a cap and his hands were deep in his pockets. Lorenz closed his eyes, but when he opened them again the man was still there—a lone figure, inexplicably undisturbed by the boat's motion, the swash and backwash of the dismal sea. A panicky sensation spread through Lorenz's body, weakening his limbs and threatening to find expression in an involuntary cry. Words formed in his head,
I must be losing my mind
. He was suddenly seized by a desire to confront the phantom, regardless of its provenance.

Lorenz dashed to the ladder and brushed Juhl aside. Graf and the second watch officer exchanged confused glances. The agitated
commander did not wait for the pressure to equalize, and when he opened the hatch he was almost lifted onto the bridge by the escaping air. The watch followed him, perplexed by his urgency. Lorenz launched himself at the bulwark, and leaning over the curved ridge, he stared at the empty forward half of the boat. The watch men gathered nervously behind him.

‘Did you see something, Kaleun?' asked Juhl.

Lorenz took a deep breath. Spray hit his face and he licked the salt from his lips. It was strangely reassuring, the sharpness of the sensation, because it authenticated reality and seemed to impose a stricter limit on what was, and what wasn't, possible. ‘I thought,' Lorenz began, ‘I thought I saw a smudge on the horizon—see—over there—but it's just cloud—just darker cloud.'

‘We haven't got any torpedoes left,' said Juhl. It was not a challenge. He was simply interested in what action his commanding officer would have taken had the ‘smudge' turned out to be a steamer.

‘I intended to use the deck gun,' Lorenz replied.

Juhl, seemingly content, nodded. The wind was freezing and cut straight through Lorenz's sweater: he had forgotten to put on his jacket in his rush to get up on the bridge. The fast beating of his heart coincided with a throbbing pain behind his eyes. ‘Carry on,' he said, before lowering himself down the hatch. ‘Carry on . . .'

WAR DIARY

20.10
Minimal swell, mainly overcast, average visibility, freshening. At a bearing of 90° true several plumes of smoke. 15–20 nm distant. Qu BE 2374.

20.35
Flying boat at bearing 90° true, heading straight toward us. Alarm dive.

20.43
Surfaced.

20.45
Flying boat at bearing 90° true, heading straight toward us. Alarm dive. Two bombs. Minor damage.

21.15
U-boat heard through hydrophones at bearing 260° true.

21.32
Surfaced. To the south a fiery glow.

22.00
Test dive and performed essential repairs to the diesel-reverse mechanism, exhaust pipe, and compressors.

2.35
We surface. Moderate swell, clearing from west, intermittent moonlight, visibility 6–7 nm.

3.10
Several shadows appear ahead. Battleships, range 6 nm. We alter course to 120° so as to avoid being seen by this group in the path of the moon.

3.35
Dive. Course altered to 300°.

4.50
We surface. Resound, then, foaming waves, And coil yourselves around me! Let misfortune rage loud around me, And let the cruel sea roar!

Siegfried Lorenz

T
he horizon was visible but indistinct. The inky perimeter of the sea and the hem of the night sky had fused together and it seemed to Lorenz that the boat had left the world behind, and they were now soaring through the vast immensity of the universe. Tilting his head back, he gazed upward at the constellations and the softly glowing arch of the Milky Way and he wondered if there were other planets orbiting stars similar to the sun, and if, at that precise moment, there might be another commander, standing on the bridge of another boat, crossing an equally benighted ocean, contemplating the existence of a counterpart elsewhere in the cosmos.

The sense of space, extending infinitely from the bridge in all directions, diminished the significance of human affairs. It imposed scale, a measure of such awesome magnitude, that nothing, not even the constant threat of annihilation, seemed to matter very much. Even a Reich that lasted a thousand years would be forgotten with the passage of time.

Lorenz's thoughts were interrupted by Müller. The upper half of the navigator's body had risen through the hatch.

‘Allow me,' said Lorenz, relieving Müller of his sextant.

‘Thank you,' said Müller, scrambling onto the bridge. Lorenz immediately returned the instrument to Müller who surveyed the heavens before aiming the telescope at a conspicuously bright star. The navigator muttered to himself, turned a screw, and held the graduated arc over the hatch so that the red glow emanating
from the dark adaption light below would illuminate the figures. He repeated the process of observation and adjustment and then delivered his results by calling into the tower. After ‘shooting' two more stars, his task was complete. He hissed a sailor's name and presently a hand reached out of the luminous well. ‘Be careful with it,' said Müller, passing down the sextant.

‘Are we in the right place?' asked Lorenz.

‘More or less, within ten minutes of arc—a sun shot would be better.' A quicksilver meteor dropped from the zenith. ‘Permission to have a cigarette, Kaleun?'

‘You still have cigarettes, Müller? Extraordinary.'

‘I have one cigarette. I've been saving it.'

‘For the return journey?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Very well, I have no objection.'

Müller crouched so that his flame would be concealed by the bulwark. He then lit his cigarette, sighed with pleasure, and stood up again. Wessel, who was the youngest member of the crew, altered his position to inhale the slipstream of tobacco smoke. ‘Here,' said Müller, offering Wessel the cigarette. ‘One drag—do you understand? And cup it behind your fingers.'

Wessel was so overwhelmed by Müller's generosity that he could only express his gratitude with utterances that barely qualified as language. As soon as Wessel had passed the cigarette back to Müller the navigator held it out again for Lorenz to take.

‘No,' said Lorenz, shaking his head. ‘It's yours.'

‘Only a cigarette, Kaleun.'

‘Tell that to Wessel.' Lorenz raised his arm and pointed at a dense cluster of brilliant pinpoints. ‘Do you think, Müller, that there's intelligent life up there?'

‘No. There isn't any down here,' Müller replied, ‘why should there be any up there?' He released a twisting ribbon of smoke from the corner of his mouth.

‘We don't even know what lies at the bottom of the ocean yet,' Lorenz continued, undeterred. ‘And what's the ocean compared to the enormity of all this!' He rotated his outstretched arm like a drunk. ‘It's just a puddle. No more than a puddle. Who knows what's out there, eh? Who knows what's possible?'

‘How distant are the stars, sir?' Wessel asked.

Lorenz smiled. ‘Tell him, Müller.'

‘Trillions of miles,' said the navigator.

‘But how do we know that?' the inquisitive youth persisted.

‘We know that because of Friederich Wilhelm Bessel,' Müller replied. ‘He measured the parallax of 61 Cygni and proved that the star is some 64 trillion miles away. He was the first astronomer to make such a calculation and he succeeded in beating his British rival, Thomas Henderson, by two months.'

‘Do you think Reich Minister Goebbels knows this?' Lorenz said with straight-faced sobriety. ‘I'm sure he'd be very interested.'

‘Our universe,' Müller continued, ‘proved to be very much larger than anybody had previously imagined.' He drew on his cigarette and added, ‘Unimaginably larger.'

‘What do we know?' mused Lorenz. ‘What do we really know?'

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . .' Müller stubbed his cigarette out on the bulwark.

‘Ah,' said Lorenz, ‘
our
Shakespeare.'

‘I thought Shakespeare was English,' said Wessel.

‘Well,' Lorenz said, his voice acquiring the whine of an equivocator. ‘That's not strictly true. One must never forget that the English are Germans really, and that they are ruled by a German royal family.'

‘Then why are we fighting them, sir?' asked Wessel.

‘A good question,' Lorenz replied.

‘Herr Kaleun—don't confuse the boy,' said Müller.

T
HE STEWARD HAD SET UP
an impromptu barber shop in the forward torpedo room, and his services were much in demand. His scissors seemed to be clicking incessantly. Hair was cut, beards trimmed, and the heady scent of cologne was almost overpowering. Be that as it may, the undertow of rancid sweat and mold could not be entirely mitigated. It was always there, like an indelible stain. Heroic efforts were being made in the petty officers' quarters to clean grubby uniforms as Zarah Leander's contralto warbled over the public-address system. A number of men joined in when she reached the sentimental chorus, and their voices achieved the resonant unity of a monastic order singing plainchant.

At dawn, U-330 surfaced, and Lorenz climbed onto the bridge. Two minesweepers were waiting to escort the returning submarine past the Ouessant islands, around the Pointe de St-Mathieu, and through the Goulet de Brest. The sea was calm, almost flat, and a thin mist made the air luminescent and gauzy. Members of the crew who had no duties to perform were permitted to relax on the deck, to ventilate their clothes, and enjoy the freshness of the air. The boat's churning wake was long and effervescent—as though the rear ballast tanks were leaking champagne.