Polar Shift (2 page)

The car
headed west, entering the no-man's-land between the advancing Russian juggernaut and the retreating Germans. The Mercedes flew along the roads, skirting deserted villages and farms. The frozen countryside was surreal, as if it had been tilted on its side and emptied of all human life. The travelers stopped only to refuel from the spare gas tanks the car carried in its trunk and to relieve themselves.

Tracks began to appear in the snow. A short while later, the car caught up with the tail end of the retreat. The strategic withdrawal had become a full-fledged rout of army trucks and tanks that lumbered along through the falling snow in a slow-moving river of soldiers and refugees.

The luckier refugees rode on tractors or horse-drawn carts. Others walked, pushing wheelbarrows piled with personal possessions through the snow. Many had escaped with only the clothes on their backs.

The Mercedes rode up on the edge of the road, and its deep tire treads dug into the snow. The car kept moving until it passed the head of the retreat. Around dawn, the mud-splattered car limped into Gdynia like a wounded rhino seeking shelter in a thicket.

The Germans had occupied Gdynia in 1939, expelled fifty thousand Poles and renamed the bustling seaport Gotenhafen, after the Goths. The harbor was transformed into a navy base, primarily for submarines. A branch of the Kiel shipyard was established to turn out new U-boats that were matched with crews trained in nearby waters and sent to sink Allied ships in the Atlantic.

Under orders from Gross Admiral Karl Doenitz, an eclectic flotilla had been assembled at Gdynia in preparation for the evacuation. The fleet included some of the finest passenger liners in Germany, cargo ships, fishing boats and private vessels. Doenitz wanted his submarine and other naval personnel rescued so they could continue to fight. Eventually, more than two million civilians and military personnel would be transported west.

The Mercedes made its way through the city. A bitterly cold wind was blowing in from the Baltic Sea, whipping snowflakes into clouds of icy, stinging nettles. Despite the frostbite conditions, the city's streets were as crowded as on a summer's day. Refugees and prisoners of war slogged through deep drifts in futile search of shelter. Relief stations were overwhelmed with long lines of hungry refugees waiting for a crust of bread or a cup of hot soup.

Wagons piled high with passengers and goods clogged the narrow streets. Refugees streamed from the train station to join the throngs who had arrived on foot. Muffled under layers of clothing, they resembled strange snow creatures. Children were pulled along on makeshift sleds.

The car was capable of speeds reaching 170 kilometers per hour, but it soon became bogged down in traffic. The driver cursed and leaned on the horn. The heavy steel bumper failed to nudge the refugees out of the way. Frustrated at the glacial pace, the driver brought the car to a complete halt. He got out and opened the rear door.

"Come, Professor," he said, rousting his passenger.
"Time for a stroll."

Abandoning the Mercedes in the middle of the street, the driver bulled his way through the crowd. He kept a firm hand on the professor's arm, yelled at people to make way and shouldered them aside when they didn't move fast enough.

Eventually, they made their way to the waterfront where more than sixty thousand refugees had gathered, hoping to get aboard one of the vessels lined up at the piers or anchored in the harbor.

"Take a good look," the driver said, surveying the sight with a grim smile. "The religious scholars have been all wrong. You can plainly see that it is
cold,
not hot, in Hell."

The professor was convinced he was in the hands of a madman. Before Kovacs could reply, the driver had him in tow once more. They wove their way through a snow-covered settlement of tents fashioned from blankets and dodged scores
of
starving horses and dogs abandoned by their owners. Wagons cluttered the docks. Lines of stretchers carried wounded soldiers brought in from the east aboard ambulance trains. Armed guards stood at each gangway and turned away unauthorized passengers.

The driver cut in front of a passenger line. The steel-helmeted sentry manning the checkpoint raised his rifle to bar the way. The driver waved a sheet of paper printed in heavy Gothic type under the sentry's nose. The guard read the document, snapped to attention and pointed along the dock.

The professor didn't move. He had been watching someone on board the ship anchored at the dock throw a bundle down to the crowd on the pier. The throw was short and the bundle fell into the water. A wailing went up from the crowd.

"What's happening?" the professor said.

The guard barely glanced in the direction of the commotion. "Refugees with a baby can get on board. They toss the baby back down and use it as a boarding pass over and over. Sometimes they miss and the baby goes in the water."

"How gruesome," the professor said with a shudder.

The guard shrugged. "You'd better get moving. Once the snow stops, the Reds will send their planes to bomb and strafe. Good luck." He raised his rifle to bar the next person in line.

The magic document got Kovacs and the driver past a pair of tough-looking SS officers who were looking for able-bodied men to press into duty on the front. They eventually reached a ramp leading onto a ferry crammed with wounded soldiers. The driver again showed his documents to a guard, who told them to hurry aboard.

As the
overloaded ferry left the dock, it was watched by a man wearing the uniform of the naval medical corps. He had been helping to load the wounded on board, but he slipped through the mob and away from the waterfront to a maritime junkyard.

He
climbed
onto a rotting derelict of a fishing boat and went
below.
He pulled a crank-operated radio from a galley cupboard,
fired
it up and muttered a few sentences in Russian. He heard the reply against the crackle of static, replaced the radio and headed back to the ferry dock.

The ferry
carrying Kovacs and his tall companion had come around to the seaward side of a vessel. The ship had been drawn several yards from the dock to keep desperate refugees from sneaking aboard. As the ferry passed under the ship's bow, the professor looked up. Printed in Gothic letters on the navy gray hull was the name
Wilhelm Gustloff.

A gangway was lowered and the wounded were carried aboard the ship. Then the other passengers scrambled up the gangway. They wore smiles of relief on their faces and prayers of thanks on their lips. The German fatherland was only a few days' cruise away.

None of the happy passengers could have known that they had just boarded a floating tomb.

Captain Third
Class Sasha Marinesko peered through the periscope of the Submarine S-13, his dark brow furrowed in a deep scowl.

Nothing.

Not a German transport in sight. The gray sea was as empty as the pockets of a sailor returning from shore leave. Not even a stinking rowboat to shoot at. The captain thought of the twelve unused torpedoes aboard the Soviet sub and his anger festered like an open sore. Soviet naval headquarters had said that the Red Army offensive against Danzig would force a major sea evacuation. The S-13 was one of three Soviet subs ordered to wait for the expected exodus off Memel, a port still held by the Germans.

When Marinesko learned that Memel had been captured, he called his officers together. He told them he had decided to head toward the Bay of Danzig, where the evacuation convoys were more likely to be found.

Not one man objected. Officers and crew were well aware that the success of their mission could mean the difference between a hero's welcome and a one-way ticket to Siberia.

Days earlier, the captain had run afoul of the secret police, the NKGB. He had left the base without permission. He was out whoring on January 2 when orders had come down from Stalin for the subs to sail into the Baltic and wreak havoc among the convoys. But the captain was on a three-day bender in the brothels and bars of the Finnish port of Turku. He returned to the S-13 a day after it was supposed to sail.

The NKGB was waiting. They became even more suspicious when he said he could not remember the details of his drunken binge. Marinesko was a cocky and tough submarine skipper who had been awarded the orders of Lenin and the Red Banner. The swashbuckling submariner exploded in anger when the secret police accused him of spying and defection.

His sympathetic commanding officer put off the decision on conducting a court-martial. That ploy fell apart when the Ukrainians who served aboard the sub signed a petition asking that their captain be allowed to rejoin his boat. The commander knew that this display of simple loyalty would be seen as potential mutiny. Hoping to defuse a dangerous situation, he ordered the sub to sea while a decision was made about a court-martial.

Marinesko reasoned that if he sunk enough German ships, he and his men might avoid being severely punished.

Without telling naval headquarters of their plan, he and his men quietly put the S-13 on a course that would take it away from the patrol lanes and toward its fateful rendezvous with the German liner.

Friedrich Petersen,
the
Gustlojf
's white-haired master captain, paced back and forth in the wardroom, sputtering like a walking pyrotechnics display.
He stopped suddenly and shot a red-hot glare at a younger man dressed in the spit-and-polish uniform of the submarine division.

"May I remind you, Commander Zahn, that I am the captain of this ship and responsible for guiding this vessel and all aboard to safety."

Bringing his iron discipline to bear, Submarine Commander Wilhelm Zahn reached down and scratched behind the ear of Hassan, the big Alsatian dog at his side. "And may I remind
you,
captain, that
the
Gustloff has
been under my command as a submarine base ship since 1942.
I
am the senior naval officer aboard. Besides, you forget your oath not to command a ship at sea."

Petersen had signed the agreement as a condition of his repatriation after being captured by the British. The oath was a formality because the British thought he was too old to be fit for service. At the age of sixty-seven, he knew his career was washed up no matter the outcome of the war. He was a
Leigerkapit
ä
n,
the "sleeping captain," of the
Gustloff.
But he took some comfort in the knowledge that the younger man had been withdrawn from active operations after he botched the sinking of the British ship
Nelson.

"Nonetheless, Captain, under your supervision the
Gustloff
has
never
left the dock," he said. "A floating classroom and barracks anchored in one place is a far cry from a ship at sea. I have the highest regard for the submarine service, but you cannot argue that I am the only one qualified to take the vessel to sea."

Petersen had commanded the liner once, on a peacetime voyage, and would never have been allowed to take the helm of the
Gustloff
under ordinary circumstances. Zahn bristled at the thought of being under the command of a civilian. German submariners considered themselves an elite group.

"Still, I am the ranking military officer aboard. Perhaps you have noticed that we have antiaircraft guns mounted on the deck," Zahn retorted. "This vessel is technically a warship."

The captain replied with an indulgent smile.
"An odd sort of warship.
Perhaps
you
have noticed that we are carrying thousands of refugees, a mission more fitting of the merchant marine transport."

"You neglected to mention the fifteen hundred submariners who must be evacuated so they can defend the Reich."

"I would be glad to acquiesce to your wishes if you show me written orders to do so." Petersen knew perfectly well that in the confusion surrounding the evacuation, no orders existed.

Zahn's complexion turned the color of a cooked beet. His opposition went beyond personal animosity. Zahn had serious doubts about Petersen's ability to run the ship with the inexperienced polyglot crew at his command. He wanted to call the captain a burned-out fool, but his stern discipline again took hold. He turned to the other officers, who had been witnessing the uncomfortable confrontation.

"This will be no 'Strength Through Joy' cruise," Zahn said.
"All
of us, navy and merchant marine officers, have a difficult task and bear
heavy
responsibility. Our duty is to do everything possible to make things easier for the refugees, and I expect the crew to go out of their way to be helpful."

He clicked his heels and saluted Petersen, then strode from the wardroom followed by his faithful Alsatian.

The guard
at the top of the gangway had glanced at the tall man's document and handed it to an officer supervising the boarding of the wounded.

The officer took his time reading the letter. Finally, he said, "Herr Koch thinks highly of you."

Erich Koch was the murderous
Gauleiter
who had refused to evacuate East Prussia while preparing his own escape on a ship carrying looted treasure.