An Honorable German (38 page)

“Then I shall persuade her to go. I will insist. And I will insist she do so immediately. She will fly, yes?” It was hard
to imagine such a thing.

Von Woller nodded. “Swedish Air to Lisbon. It’s perfectly safe, I assure you. They fly in bright orange planes, in specially
marked air corridors negotiated for neutral airliners before the war. I negotiated them myself. If you’re able to convince
her, she can leave in two days.”

Two days, then he would be left to face the war alone. And Mareth was right: they would never see each other again. Knowing
he could come home to her after a war patrol was all that had kept him going. And now it was over. She would be safe in Mexico.
And she would survive. And if she survived, then a small part of him might survive as well. At least he could try to think
of it that way.

Von Woller rose, crossed the room, and touched Max on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “She’s all I have left, all that
remains of my family. After the war, I hope the two of you will give me many grandchildren.”

“I would like that very much, Herr von Woller. Thank you. But I think it most unlikely.” They fell quiet, staring for a moment
at the bookshelf, the polished leather bindings gleaming in the dim light.

“And what will become of you then, Maximilian?” von Woller said, turning to Max.

Max looked directly back at the old man, whose Nazi friends had worked so hard to bring the war about. “I will be killed,”
he said.

THE BAY OF BISCAY

ABOARD
U-114

TWO MONTHS LATER

DECEMBER 1943

1400 HOURS

T
HE PLANE CAME OUT OF THE SUN, FIRING ON THEM BEFORE THE
forward lookout ever saw it, machine guns already rattling by the time he yelled, “Fliegeralarm! Aircraft bearing green zero
nine zero!”

“Emergency full ahead!” Max shouted. Behind him the U-boat’s anti-aircraft guns returned fire with a loud burping sound. Belts
of ammunition streamed through the open hatch, replacing the brass cartridges that fell in a bright river to the deck. Beneath
him, the U-boat jumped in the water as the engineers cut in the second diesel and the electric motors.

The plane was a four-engine Liberator from RAF Coastal Command coming at them abeam. Its machine guns raked the water ahead
of them, and then bullets tore into the boat itself, walking down the foredeck, splintering the deckboards. Max dropped below
the combing of the armored bridge, jerking one of the openmouthed lookouts with him, and tried to meld his body to the heavy
bridge armor. Bullets whined around him, some ricocheting off the armor plate.

“Medic! Medic!”

One of the gunners had been hit. With a roar like an express train, the Liberator came over them, black canisters falling
from its open belly.

“Emergency right rudder!” Max yelled into the control tower. The depth charges struck the water fifty meters aft and blew
towers of spray into the air, some of the foam washing over the bridge. When the shock wave hit, the force heeled the boat
over. Max had to grab the bridge railing to keep from being swept over the side.

“Where is he?” Max asked, hoping someone would know.

“Coming over again, Herr Kaleu!”

“Fire, dammit, fire!”

Again the staccato beat of the anti-aircraft guns, but only six barrels this time. A brace of dual twenty-millimeters didn’t
fire, the gunner down and bleeding on the deck. Machine-gun bullets from the Liberator churned up the water around them, leaving
white trails in the sea.

“Got him! Got the swine!” one of the remaining gunners yelled. Smoke streamed from one of the aeroplane’s engines, then it
was over the boat again—dropping another pattern. The aircraft banked away as the charges exploded in
U-114
’s wake, the shock wave jolting the boat.

Max felt his whole body shaking. He clung to the periscope housing and gulped for air. Since they sailed from France just
two days ago, his body had been betraying him at odd moments, spasms of fear seizing his muscles. He was skittish as a cat.
Just getting used to it again, he tried to tell himself, like breaking in an overhauled engine. “Aircraft position!” he called
out finally.

“Disappeared over the horizon making southeast, Herr Kaleu.”

“Get Gerhard below,” Max ordered. “Easy now.”

Two of the gunners climbed down slowly into the control room, taking their wounded man with them, leaving their petty officer
behind to discharge the ammo belts and drop them below.

“Quickly,” Max said.

The petty officer dropped through, followed by the lookouts.

“Prepare to dive!” Max called down after them.

The boat had held up well so far, but he still didn’t trust the French dockworkers who had repaired her. Too many skippers
sailing from Lorient had found false welds that burst when they submerged and allowed water to flood in—and Max knew only
of the lucky ones who’d managed to make an emergency surface and struggle back to base. Others had just gone to the bottom.

“Reporting all outboard vents closed, Herr Kaleu,” the control room petty officer shouted up through the hatch. “E-motors
engaged, diesels disengaged and secured.”

The crew understood why Max was being so cautious. He scanned the sky once more to make sure a plane wouldn’t pounce on them
as they submerged. “Flood!” he shouted, then dropped through the main hatch into the conning tower. He dogged the hatch shut
against its rubber gasket and then they were under, buried in a silence that seemed deafening after the roar of the plane
and chattering guns topside. Max slid down the ladder to the control room.

“Both slow ahead. Chief, take us to thirty meters and trim the boat.”

The bow angled forward, then the boat leveled off as the chief juggled the amount of water in the trim tanks fore and aft
to put the boat on an even keel—something of an art since even one man could throw the trim off by moving suddenly. For this
reason, the sailors were forbidden to leave their stations without permission when the boat was submerged.

“Thirty meters, Herr Kaleu. All stations reporting watertight integrity.”

So far, so good.

“Forty meters.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kaleu.”

They went slowly to one hundred thirty meters, their operational depth, dropping ten meters at a time, until Max was satisfied
the flotilla engineers had missed nothing in their inspection of the boat. “Chief, take us up to sixty meters.” Max examined
the plotting chart in the control room. “Helmsman, come port ten degrees and steady up on two four zero degrees. Half ahead,
both engines.”

He was so damned slow underwater. In an emergency, he could go to eight knots, but that speed drained the batteries in four
hours, forcing him to surface and recharge whether it was safe or not.

He ran at depth for two hours; when he surfaced again it was dark and they encountered no more planes. By dawn of the next
day, they were in the Atlantic proper, the U-boat taking the long swells in a gentle rise and fall, like a rocking horse moving
in slow motion. Max could feel how sluggish she was, packed to the gills with extra diesel oil for the long voyage to America,
cans of the filthy stuff stacked in the passageway so the entire boat reeked of diesel. The smell brought him back to the
sinking of
Meteor
, his body covered in oil and Dieter burning to death in a pool of blazing fuel. Max realized that he didn’t think about Dieter
much anymore.

He checked his speed again on the dial in the control room. Seven knots—their most economical speed on the surface—running
on one engine at seven bloody knots, slow as a damned tugboat. A clipper under sail could go twice as fast. They switched
engines with each turn of the watch to even out the wear. It was going to be a monotonous crossing, poking over to Florida
at seven knots. They were supposed to arrive in three weeks, maybe four if the weather kicked up, but now Max would have to
pause for a mid-ocean rendezvous with a homebound boat to take Gerhard off so he could be treated back on shore. That would
cost them a day, maybe two or three. Few boats in the force still carried a doctor on board. Too many boats sunk. Too many
doctors killed.

Max looked up through the open hatchway. “Bridge!”

“Bridge, aye-aye.” Ferret came to the hatch and looked down at him.

“Watch for aircraft.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kaleu.”

Max picked his way through the narrow corridor to his small bunk and drew the green curtain behind him. Two months, maybe
three lay ahead, confined in this steel tube. Already the boat was heavy with the stink of men on top of the putrid diesel
oil. And his damned hands were shaking again. He was like an old woman now. All he wanted was to get off the damned boat and
go home, but nothing was the same at home either—Mareth had gone to Mexico, and his father was still locked in the jail at
Kiel for another month.

Buhl had arranged for Max to see the old man, and Max knew it hadn’t been easy. He’d given Buhl a bottle of schnapps to thank
him. The two of them took an early train from Bad Wilhelm, not bothering to buy tickets. Buhl’s Nazi Party uniform was enough.
People cleared out of his way when they saw it, some smiling obsequiously, others just scowling.

Ordinarily a robust man, barrel-chested with the strength of an artillery horse, Johann appeared pale, his blood seemingly
drained from him. Max tried not to betray his surprise when the old man shuffled into the visiting room, twenty pounds lighter
and moving uncertainly in his shapeless prison uniform. The jailer had the decency to leave them alone. They embraced. Max
said, “Papa, you are well, yes?”

“As well as anyone in this shithole.”

They talked about life back in Bad Wilhelm, about the store, which Albert, the deliveryman, had taken over for the time being—“I’ll
be lucky if there’s any beer left when I get back,” Max’s father said—and finally about the arrest. “Gestapo sent that fool
Cajus to come get me. Can you imagine? Cajus? He would have died twenty different times on the Western Front if I hadn’t been
there to save his fat ass, and now they send him to arrest me. Cajus. I don’t even think he had bullets in his pistol. I should
have let the French shoot him. He couldn’t even put the cuffs on right. I had to show him how.”

Max smiled at his father’s telling. “Cigarette, Papa?”

“Yes, but you smoke too much, Maximilian, I’ve been meaning to tell you. But I guess you earn it, trapped in that damned U-boat
of yours.”

Max shrugged. He slid the pack across the table. “Keep it,” he said. “Maybe you can barter them for better food.”

His father nodded, looking down at the package.

“And the girl, Papa?”

The old man didn’t answer. He went on gazing down at the table and a silence developed.

“Papa?”

A single tear fell from his eye and landed on the paper wrapper of the cigarette pack. Max tried to remember if he’d ever
seen his father cry.

“Papa.” He reached out and touched his father’s shoulder. “Tell me.”

His father brushed Max’s hand away and began to weep openly.

“Papa, what happened to her?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Max stared. “Were you in love with her?”

His father shook his head. “Yes, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t even know what that means anymore—at my age, in the middle of
this war. It doesn’t mean anything.” He sat up ramrod straight, bracing his shoulders back like the Prussian sergeant major
he had once been, and looked up at Max. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Max didn’t know what to say. He took hold of his father’s rough hands and said nothing—Johann’s grip was forceful and he didn’t
let go for a long time. Finally they nodded at each other and Max stood, turned to leave. At the door he turned to salute
but his father had buried his head in his arms, his body trembling with quiet sobs. On the train home, Buhl told Max that
the Polish girl had been shot.

Back in Lorient, Max spent his days supervising the extensive repairs on
U-114
and returned each night to his small room at the Hotel Beau Séjour. Armed naval sentries now stood guard outside the hotel
and patrolled the inside halls as well, so Max didn’t have to worry about French assassins. Every evening, after luxuriating
in the bath, he drank himself off to sleep—not a good idea, he knew, but the only way he could ever sleep. Hopefully he wouldn’t
become like the three town drunks in Bad Wilhelm. All three had served under Johann at Verdun and he often gave them money.
“Why do you do that? They just use it to buy more schnapps,” Max had asked his father. “Because they saw such terrible things
in the war they cannot face life sober.” Locked away in his room at the Beau Séjour with its sparse personal effects for company—his
sextant, his books, his rosary and photo of Mareth—he could relax after a bottle or two of wine. After a bottle or two of
wine, the room felt like the last safe place in the world.

Only that was an illusion. Max had been back in Lorient for just ten days when the whistle of a falling bomb sent him sprawling
to the ground, his body reacting from instinct before his mind had registered the threat. He’d been walking from the hotel
to the giant concrete bunkers, their ceilings seven meters thick, that protected the U-boats from Allied bombers. This bomb
hit no more than five hundred meters away, its shock wave washing over him, knocking his breath out and almost bursting his
eardrums.