The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf Read online

  “None—but I fired three eels. After that I spent most of the time with my belly in the mud. But, you know”—I looked round at them, loving each and every one and also seeing in my mind’s eye the many who were, no longer present—“I like the mud, and, what’s more important, the mud likes me!”

  The others laughed volubly, eager to share in my humor, if nothing else. I had told them in the only language that we knew, which was boats, that I—their veteran, in many ways their fighting chief—had failed, that we were beaten, that the end had come.

  Yet they laughed with me, they smiled, they gathered round to feel what nine years and nearly a half-million gross registered tons sunk felt like. But they too, like me, were glad it was over, even if we now had to acknowledge defeat. Too many of us had died. And now it was time to make an end.

  “How about the new boat, the Walter? It’s just arrived, and we hear it’s yours.”

  I shrugged; everybody wanted the boat, but far be it from me to list its advantages.

  “How does it look, Connie?” an engineering officer asked Geis.

  “Like something that should have been delivered years ago. Fast, quiet, well-armed from all I hear.” Geis’s eyes met mine; it wasn’t well armed yet.

  “What about us? When do we get to see it?”

  “After I’ve had my beer,” I said. “And incidentally—from now on it’s Commodorezursee Sea Wolf to you snorkel rats. I expect a lot of bowing and scraping, to say nothing of a lifetime of free drinks.”

  Opening the envelope Rehm had brought me, I propped the silver-and-gold rank boards on each shoulder; snapping a finger, I flicked them off into the crowd, who roared their delight.

  It was only then that some of the others noticed Rehm. I watched their smiles fade, as their eyes moved over the death’s head emblem on his cap. It did not seem to matter that he was also wearing a gold wound badge and an Iron Cross first-class on his chest, or that the ultimate medal—the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves and swords—swung from a chain around his neck. Perhaps he had fought often and well, but he was police. Worse, he was Himmler’s secret police from the political party responsible for our defeat.

  We took a table, and a tray of drinks was delivered. I picked up a glass. “What shall we drink to, Colonel? To ‘Final Victory’?”

  “No, Commodore. There’s not a chance for Final Victory anymore, or even a negotiated truce, I’m afraid. It would be better for us to forget this shit.” Rehm touched his SS collar insignia. “It’s over. Germany is broken. Final defeat is only days away.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said. “To Final Defeat!”

  “And to your health and well-being after the war.” Carefully lifting his glass with the stubs of his maimed hand, Rehm clinked it against ours but only touched the liquor to his lips.

  Geis and I, who had not tasted anything but tepid water in weeks, drank ours off. “And this is why you’re bringing me torpedoes—to discuss after the war?”

  “To tell you the truth, Klimt—that’s exactly what I wish to discuss. After the war. What are your plans? Will you be going back to Kiel or Borkum?”

  I only regarded the man.

  “Kiel has been bombed into nothingness, but you know that.”

  Since my wife had been killed there.

  “But your mother and sister are still alive on Borkum. Isn’t it the third house on the right, just past the bank?”

  Still I waited. It was a small table, and the liquor had made me regret having accepted the man’s apology. In Cambridge they had come at me with lead-weighted bats. I had never killed a man with my bare hands, but there was a first time for everything.

  “I understand your people were lucky and got through the war quite well. Not like some.”

  Now my gall was high. We had lost our father, my wife, and on more occasions than I kept track of I had been lucky to have escaped with my life. But Geis nudged me under the table, then narrowed his eyes and looked away, as much as to say, Hear the bastard out. He wants something from us. Let’s find out what it is. After that, we can deal with him.

  Rehm got right to it. “So, what is it for you after the war—‘importing,’ like your father, for want of a more accurate term?”

  Which was smuggling, although my father had done little of that in later years and had a small fleet of ships at the beginning of the Second World War.

  “Have you ever sailed to South America?”

  He knew that too. I can remember glancing at the clock behind the bar and figuring Herr Knight’s Cross had two minutes left.

  “Did you see this?” Rehm pulled some folded sheets of paper from under his tunic. “It’s the telex of surrender that came in only an hour or so ago, while you were docking. Would you care to see it?”

  Geis and I were dumbfounded; more, when he added, “Or, rather, I should say it’s the extract from your Admiral Doenitz. Did I tell you that in addition to being chief of staff of the navy, he has now been named der Führer?”

  “What happened to Hitler?”

  Rehm shrugged. “He wasn’t the leader we thought he was.”

  Which was an understatement I would have found macabrely humorous, had I not begun to read the message with its lugubrious hyperbole that had proved so deadly to so many of my cohorts. My eyes caught on the passage:

  The dead command us to give our unconditional constancy, obedience, and discipline to our Fatherland, which is bleeding from countless wounds.

  The word “surrender” was nowhere mentioned, and it was signed, as Rehm had said, by Karl Doenitz, Führer.

  I showed it to Geis, who was never one to mince words. “Does that son of a bitch think we should go on dying for the dead? Is that what he wants? Sitting there in Berlin and surrendering his desk.”

  “Well, he won’t get it from me,” Rehm was quick to say. “I’ve done my bit for the Fatherland, like you two have done yours. How many years did they send you out in that iron coffin I saw you in this morning? To do what? To die. That’s what they intended. Now it’s time for us to live and think of ourselves.”

  That was fast, I thought. Now we were together. “What do you think will happen to your Walter boat, now that we’ve packed in the war?”

  Given how advanced it was, the Walter would be taken to a British or American shipyard, dismantled and copied.

  “Wouldn’t it be a shame not to take it for one final cruise?”

  I waited. It was why the man had worked something of a miracle to get himself to Norway at the bitter end of the war to seek me out with all the rest that he had brought, in spite of our sorry history together.

  “Say, to South America. You, me, Conrad here, your pick of crew from anybody you like.” He nodded to the bar. “It’s a big boat. I myself will have a dozen companions. Maybe fourteen. With me that’s fifteen. The rest will be yours. How many can a boat, like that, carry?”

  Thirty-five in a pinch, I thought, counting half as crew.

  “I need only give them word that you have agreed, since they want you as captain. Even better is what we’ll share when we get there.” Rehm smiled and reached for his glass; this time he actually drank.

  “Gold and diamonds. Your share will be equivalent to five hundred thousand U.S. dollars, half when we sail, half when we dispose of the boat. To show our good faith, I have this for you.” From a uniform pocket Rehm pulled out a small sack and tossed it on the table. “Go ahead, open it.”

  I did not move.

  “Its value is equivalent to at least fifty thousand dollars. Yours to keep, whether you choose to be our captain or not. I figure I owe you at least that much. You lost a year, as I understand it.” And did not complete my degree, went unsaid; and surely would not now, at least not at Cambridge.

  “Certainly somebody else here will jump at the offer,” Rehm scanned the crowd. But we wanted you because of your knowledge of South American waters, to say nothing of your reputation as a captain. And then I know for fact that you’re a man who can kee
p his mouth shut.” Rehm attempted a smile.

  The sack that he had handed me had a Polish phrase, I thought, stitched through its supple leather with gold thread. The draw strings were also of woven gold.

  I can remember thinking how five hundred thousand dollars was quite a sum and would go far toward setting me up with a vessel. After all, I had my mother and sister to consider. All of my father’s vessels were sunk, his wharves and warehouses bombed into oblivion, including himself. And yet I was hesitant, suspecting that Rehm, in spite of our rapproachment, could not be trusted.

  In the shadows of the table where only Geis and I could see, I opened the sack and poured the contents into my palm. It was a handful of cut and polished gems of differing shapes, but all of obvious clarity and size. With the edge of one, I cut a line down the side of my beer glass.

  “You’ll find they’re virtually flawless and expertly cut. If anything they’re worth far more than I said, say, in Buenos Aires. That one you’re holding, Lieutenant? It’s an estancia in Paraguay. Add another—all the peo-nes you would need to create your own new world. Europe is destroyed. Dead. There’s no hope of building anything of real value here.”

  Not after you and your kind, was my immediate thought.

  Rehm stood. “You think about it. But I’ll need your answer by morning.” He left.

  Geis and I sat there in silence for the few minutes it took our cohorts to realize that Colonel Death’s Head had departed and to join us.

  We tarried another hour or so before heading back to the pens.

  CHAPTER 29

  MCGARR GLANCED UP at Maddie. She and some new-found friends were building sand castles—their own little world—at the edge of the beach. He turned the page.

  When we got back to the harbor an hour or so later, we discovered that Rehm had taken control of the area around the new Walter boat. Fire teams of SS storm troopers armed with Schmeisser machine guns were positioned at both sides of the pier, with another clutch at the gate to keep out the crowd of submariners who had gathered to tour the boat.

  Seeing that, my anger surged. I had just enough alcohol in me and just enough sorrow over our defeat and all those who had died needlessly to make me fearless. Without thinking, my hand leapt over the shoulders of the submariners in front of me and seized the throat of the SS officer who had been facing them down. I slapped my Walther against his temple and forced him to his knees.

  “Shoot me!” I roared at the SS guards. “And I shoot him! They shoot you!” My cohorts had now also drawn their sidearms. “You want to die?” I asked the officer, who was gagging and trying desperately to pry my hand from his throat. But he was soft, a desk warrior who had no strength, and I began dragging him toward the Walter boat, where Rehm now appeared on the conning tower.

  “What’s this all about, Klimt?” he asked in a mild voice.

  “It’s about your Gestapo! These men only want to inspect the new boat, which is their right. Since when has the SS declared a German Navy vessel off limits to German sailors? And what’s this here?” Sweeping my hand that held the gagging officer, I sent him tumbling down a gangplank toward another group of SS who were trying to hoist a torpedo in the yoke of a crane.

  “This boat is my command,” I went on. “Up until the moment that I’m issued a direct order by a superior naval officer to stand down. Nothing occurs aboard her, nobody comes on board without my expressed permission.” Now I had the gun pointing directly at Rehm and the four men who had appeared behind him. “Is that understood?”

  Rehm smiled. “Then you’ve decided to accept my offer? Something else has just come in. I think you should see it.” He raised a sheet of paper.

  I stepped up onto the boat, then helped the smaller Geis aboard. He said to me, “Maybe it’s time we covered our own asses. It’s a long way to Germany.” He meant either in a U-boat running on the surface with a white flag flying from the mast, if there was fuel enough even for that. Or by road and ferry, with more than a few angry partisans along the way.

  Up in the conning tower, Rehm handed me another transmission from Berlin to the flotilla commander, ordering him to keep all boats in port and all personnel in place until “an Allied naval presence” arrived to take charge of “all men and materiel.” Since they were just offshore—I knew from my own recent experience there—they would be here within a day.

  “Do you want to be around for that, Klimt? I most certainly don’t.”

  I straightened up and surveyed the men standing behind Rehm; one of them looked vaguely familiar. While dressed similarly and nautically—blue caps, pea jackets, dark trousers—they were not in uniform, and looked more like merchant seamen (and British at that) than military officers.

  I certainly did not wish to witness our defeat, much less give myself up if I did not have to. As a dual citizen who had voluntarily fought for the other side, I would without a doubt be singled out for some special attention. My concern was not so much for me, since I had made the choice and now would have to live with the outcome, but for my mother’s relatives in Harwich, a city that had been bombed during the Blitz.

  “What about Geis?”

  “What about him?”

  “He gets the same as you offered me.”

  Rehm shook his head. “Half.”

  “The same, or you get somebody else. There’s not a man out there who’s so much as made landfall in South America.” I waved a hand at the other submariners, who had still not dispersed.

  “Three hundred thousand U.S. dollars or its equivalent.”

  “No, the same.”

  “Then, we’ll find somebody else.”

  “Good. You men down there!” I bellowed at the boaters below me on the dock. “Stop what you’re doing and come up here. Take these bastards off this boat.”

  “Wait,” said one of the men behind Rehm. “Commodore Dorfmann should not be expected to sail without his chief engineer. And Lieutenant Geis should be compensated for his extraordinary service and talents.”

  Rehm said nothing. Obviously the man—the same one whom I thought I recognized—was in command.

  “What will my other crewmen be paid?”

  Said Rehm, “One hundred thousand U.S. dollars or the equivalent in the currency of the country of our destination.”

  “Which is?”

  The other man pointed to the ladder. “We’ll decide that when and if we can get out of here, and already we’ve wasted too much time. Now that Commodore Dorfmann is aboard, gentlemen, we should leave him to the loading of the torpedoes. It will go more quickly.”

  “Do you think that’s wise, sir?” Rehm asked.

  “Wisdom is a commodity we can no longer afford, Helmut. It takes too long to acquire.”

  The other men laughed, and they left the conning tower, retiring into a forward area of the boat.

  I waved to the submariners, bidding them to come aboard; one by one I planned to take the crew we would need aside and make them the offer. I would show them the order of surrender, tell them what Berlin had said about their wanting us to die for them.

  But Geis was not at work five minutes before he decided that there was something strange and wrong about the ten Luts that Rehm had flown in. Unlike the old acoustic torpedoes that could be fired at an angle of no more than ninety degrees, the new torpedoes could set their own course, zigging and lagging toward a target. Also as many as six Luts could be fired in one salvo from as deep as 160 feet to swarm up and annihilate an enemy ship.

  But the torpedoes that Rehm had brought seemed too heavy, inordinately so, and balanced wrong with all the weight forward of the midline. Fourteen years of submarine-engineering experience told Geis that once those eels were shot out of the tubes by compressed air, they would promptly sink to the bottom of the ocean.

  “I don’t care what they’ve used for a propulsion system,” he confided to me, as we surveyed where the strap of the winch had to be placed to balance the thing. “Not even a rocket could keep that nose up.”
Even after he added a four-thousand-pound addition to the counterweight, the crane only just managed to raise it.

  A thought occurred to me. I could not imagine Rehm and the four others with him leaving Europe empty-handed, not with the opportunities they must have had for plunder. It was, surely, the difference between a soldier and sailor at war. The sailor had only the company of his mates and his boat with the pitiless sea beneath him and sometimes months of patient hunting before quarry was even sighted. A soldier, on the other hand, had land under him, and women and wine. Preferred soldiers—political soldiers—had the best of that, on principle.

  “Let’s get them aboard,” I told Geis quietly in the cabin of the crane, “then we’ll see what they are.”

  In the early years of the war, a crew of dockworkers called “torpedo boys” was responsible for the loading of eels aboard submarines. By 1945 those crews had either been killed or had become submariners themselves. Therefore, we armed our own boats, and now, as I added men to the crew, they gathered round to help Geis.

  The process was difficult, time-consuming, and dangerous under the best of circumstances. A conventional three-thousand-pound torpedo had to be greased, fitted with a protective harness, and then hoisted by crane over the submarine. Slowly it was then lowered onto a loading trough and slid through the torpedo hatch into the sub.

  There the harness was removed and by means of a system of pulleys, the torpedo was maneuvered into the bow or stern torpedo stowage bays. The torpedo mechanic then armed it with a warhead and recorded its number in his munitions log.

  Looped with other bands of steel and chain, it was again hoisted aloft by six men and dragged into its tube or stowage cradle. Fourteen acoustic torpedoes—a total of some forty-two thousand pounds—was the usual complement aboard a Type VII sub. This boat had ten twenty-one-inch-diameter eels that were fourteen feet long; there were six in the bow and four more broadside forward, two to port, two to starboard. It was 3:00 in the morning by the time we got them all aboard, and I sent all the submariners but Geis to retrieve their belongings from their berths or billets and to report on deck no later than sunup.