Crucified (20 page)

Run silent, run deep.

That was the
Black Devil.

Sneaking Sturmer aboard the sub had not been difficult.

By 1944, the mauling of the wolf packs had bled experienced crews dry. The Kriegsmarine had to take whatever manpower it could get. From the hideaway on the Baltic Sea, Sturmer was sent to the main torpedo-training school for officers at Miirwick.

By then, his German was up to snuff and his papers were real.

He was just an ex-Luftwaffe marksman going to sea. His studies focused on torpedoes and how to launch them. Practical lessons took place aboard a converted minesweeper, which had a pair of torpedo tubes mounted on the forecastle and a simulated U-boat control room below deck. So dire was the need to get subs and men into combat that Sturmer was sent directly to the
Black Devil
for the first
Elektroboot
test run in the North Sea.

When he first spied the sub in its Hamburg pen, he had marveled at its small size. Built in four separate sections, the boat could be shipped by rail and reconstructed for operations in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The conning tower was large in proportion to the hull, as it housed the periscope, snorkel, and torpedo computer. That tower was his battle station in the sub.

He was the
erste wach offizier,
or the first watchkeeper.

The 1WO.

The second-in-command.

His primary responsibility was the sub's weapons system: the torpedoes and the computer used to aim and fire them.

His other task was to assume command if the CO died or fell ill.

The forward compartment of the
Black Devil
had two torpedo tubes. Called an
Aal
—an "eel"—by the crew, a torpedo was twenty-three and a half feet long. Instead of being inserted nose-first into the rear of the tubes like shells in a shotgun, the torpedoes were dropped in externally like the balls of an antique muzzleloader.

No reloading meant the sub had just two shots.

As 1WO, Stiirmer had supervised the arming of the boat.

First, the
Black Devil
was ballasted at the stern to raise the bow clear of the water. Then, using cranes and pulleys on a barge, the torpedo boys had hoisted the heavy, unwieldy, greased eels and slipped them into the tubes.

Tube caps sealed, the sub had gone to sea.

The trip up the coast of Britain had proved a piece of cake.

All the way, the sub had lurked beneath the waves. Even when the diesel engine was used to recharge the batteries, nothing had broken the surface except the head of the snorkel.

Extended high above the tower, it had sucked in fresh air and exhaled exhaust fumes. Sturmer could see why the Judas traitors were using the
Black Devil
to deliver their package.

As disaffected members of the German military, they had selected the
safest
machine in their arsenal, and the route that offered the least suspicion to the Gestapo.

On setting sail, the sub had looked like a butcher shop.

Sausages and smoked hams hung from ceiling pipes. Hammocks overflowed with loaves of hard, dark navy bread. With space at a premium, every nook and corner was crammed with edibles.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Sturmer thought.

The bread turned moldy as the days went by, for humidity in the sub was intolerable. The crew called the mildewed loaves

"white rabbits." Grabbing them by the "ears," they tore out the edible innards. Food produced by the tiny galley tasted like diesel oil.

Clammy clothes never dried, and draping them on machinery had little effect. Fresh water was strictly for cooking and drinking. The men cleaned themselves—if at all—with saltwater sponge baths and a cloying cologne that fouled the already reeking air. If the sub sank below eighty feet, the toilet in the overused head refused to flush. Woe betide the sailor who lost track of depth, for the outside water pressure reversed the flow.

Hygiene was a joke. Underwear was dyed black so it wouldn't look grubby. Whores' undies, they called it. Because denim withstood oil and grease from the machinery, that was their uniform. Bunks were built into both sides of the passage, aft of the torpedo tubes. A man coming off a shift would flop, fully clothed, into the bed just vacated by the man relieving him. Hopefully, neither man had crabs or head lice.

Day and night were the same in the
Black Devil.
With no skylights and no portholes, the sun and the moon were the perpetual glare of electric lights. Privacy didn't exist.

Even the captain's quarters was simply a cubicle shielded from the central passage by a green curtain. Sleep was constantly torn to shreds by light, noise, and motion. The slightest transfer of weight—a single seaman moving forward or aft—could disturb the underwater balance and set the U-boat swaying.

Sometimes, Stiirmer would lie on his back in the hot bunk, staring up at the curve of the pressure hull, and ponder the twist of fate that had put him here.

His father was English. His mother was German. And he was born in London just after the First World War. Through all his boyhood years, he'd kept his background secret, for Germans were hated by the British people. In every town around the isle, there was a common with a cenotaph listing the names of local men slaughtered by the Hun. Still, his mother taught him German and told him about the prewar history of his Teutonic ancestors.

He was descended from knights!

Imagine that.

In school, of course, he was taught about God, king, country, and the white man's burden. By then, the world was gearing up for another war, and to make sure they were primed for the fight, he and his classmates were taught the atrocities of German barbarism.

He remembered most the story of the crucifixion.

According to his teacher, the incident had occurred in 1915, near the Belgian battlefield of Ypres, on the Western Front. A Canadian soldier had been crucified to a barn door with German bayonets. The outrage was depicted in the film
The Prussian Cur,
and a statue called
Canada's
Golgotha
was displayed at a London exhibition of wartime art.

He had told his mother.

"That's a lie," she replied. "We call it propaganda. Do you know what that means?"

His mother's hatred of Hitler had peaked on Kristallnachl, when her stepfather, mistaken for a Jew, was beaten to a pulp by Nazi storm troopers. How thankful she'd been to see her son enlist in the RAF. His hatred of Hitler had climaxed during the Blitz, when a Luftwaffe bomb destroyed his childhood home, killing his father outright and crushing his mother beneath a beam, where she burned to death.

Put it all together, and that's why he was here.

"The wingco wants to see you."

That's how this had begun.

For instead of the wing commander, he was met that day by a mystery man from MI 13, a branch of military intelligence so secret it didn't exist. MI 13 knew everything there was to know about him, plus a thing or two he didn't know himself.

"How many men have you killed for your country?" the shadowy officer asked.

"Thousands, I guess."

"How far would you go
personally
to overthrow Hitler?"

"All the way."

"Would that include snuffing one of your own countrymen, if it was deemed necessary?"

"To stop Hitler?"

"To save millions. Millions of us. And millions of
good 
Germans, like your mother."

He thought about it.

He nodded.

"Including that," he said.

So here he was in the
Black Devil
—a secret agent so secret that only a handful of people knew he existed—on the verge of delivering a package that would topple Hitler. If only his mum could see what he was doing
for her.

He wondered if he would survive.

Maybe not.

But the odds were no worse than they were flying in the
Ace.

Now that they were here.

Having churned its way up the "liquid triangle" of the North Sea, the
Black Devil
had entered the inland jut of the Firth of Forth, along the north shore of Edinburgh. Their mission was to test the sub, so this was a dry run of how it would be. Get in, sight the enemy through the periscope, and get out without detection. Combat was authorized only if sub hunters closed in on the U-boat.

Self-defense.

That was their rule of engagement.

The single propeller in the stern was being powered by the creep motor for low-noise, low-speed cruising into the heart of Scotland. The engine room was manned by machinists wearing gloves to protect their hands from the hot parts of the propulsion system. A confusion of pipes and cables wormed everywhere. The sub was constructed of two superimposed pressure hulls, the one up here for the crew, their equipment, and their battle stations, and the one underfoot for storage batteries and the fuel and dive tanks. No smoking was allowed in the sub because explosive gases were emitted when wet batteries were charged. The men wore felt shoes to muffle their footsteps on the floor plates, in case sub hunters were listening for telltale sounds, or it became necessary to play possum to deceive British destroyers.

A bulkhead divided the engine room from the control center.

Here, amid a maze of valves, gauges, and wheels, technicians manipulated controls to stabilize the vessel, monitor its vital signs, and steer this sliver of steel deeper into the Firth of Forth.

This nerve center was also home to the radioman, the only crewman who had contact with the outside world. He used just one headphone over his ears so he could hear both incoming signals and orders within the sub. Since leaving port, he'd kept
stumm
because high-frequency direction finders—HF/DF, called huff-duff—could home in on radio transmissions between a U-boat and its headquarters.

Incommunicado.

That was his test-run order.

From the lower chamber, a ladder ran up to the conning tower that crowned the hull. This was where the captain—a lieutenant-commander called the Old Man—and his 1WO directed operations. At the moment, the snorkel was telescoped down and the periscope was up. The skipper wore casual clothes, except for his hat. To maintain authority, captains had to wear at least part of the uniform signifying their rank. With his eyes glued to the optical tube that used two prisms and a lens to offer him a scan of the surface world, the Old Man wore his cap shoved back from his brow.

Sturmer stood poised by the torpedo computer. The skipper assumed he was waiting to perform his primary task: feeding instructions from his boss into the computer to aim and—if necessary—fire the torpedoes. But actually the Judas agent in a sea wolf's clothing was preparing to take control from the captain.

"Alarm!"

The captain barked the dreaded word.

Sturmer tensed.

"Action stations! We've been spotted!"

Alarm signals blared and flashed.

"How many, Skipper?"

"One destroyer. Dead ahead."

"And with it?"

"Empty sea. Open tube caps. Flood tubes one and two."

    
 GERMANY, NOW

The next day

In the dreamy haze between sleep and wakefulness, Wyatt remembered a
Punch
cartoon from long ago. Two French foreign legionnaires in those caps with the flaps down the back to protect their necks against the sun are chatting in the desert. One says to the other, "I joined the legion two or three weeks ago to try to forget a girl called Elsie or something."

In his case, Wyatt could now adapt that to say, "I flew to Europe days ago to try to forget a girl called Val or something."

For beside him lay the woman who'd spent the night paying off her gambling debt.

His socks were on the floor.

His feet were in the bed.

Hmm, he thought.

For a while, Wyatt lay with his head propped up by his palm and studied this beautiful sleeping creature. The way her messy hair fanned around her peaceful face. The way her breasts expanded with each shallow breath. The way the sheet hugged her hips, as if jealous of him. He decided that coming to Germany ranked at the top of his list of best decisions.

Up and at 'em, he thought.

Wyatt was in the bathroom when the phone rang, twice. This was her room, so Liz took the calls. The first was obviously from her mother. Women, in his experience, took on a special tone when dealing with the matriarchal tut-tutters of their lives.

The next call came from Sweaty, so Wyatt stayed mum. Never compromise a lover's reputation.

"Problem?" he asked, emerging after Liz got off the phone.

"My grandmother's taken a turn for the worse. An ambulance took her to the hospital. If I want her to have the relics from my grandfather's uniform, I'd better catch the next flight home. Sweaty called to say he's leaving too. And there's still no sign of Lenny. I wonder if he went home. And if so, why no goodbye?"

"Hey," protested Wyatt, "what about me?"

"What about you?"

Raising a leg, he pointed to the sock on his foot.

"I thought we had a deal."