The Dark Chronicles (70 page)

It wasn’t snowing now, but as many of the surrounding buildings were white the car still lived up to its name. Templeton’s chauffeur opened the door and we were soon gliding through the city, cocooned behind the thickened frost of the glass. He wasted no time in getting to the point.

‘When you were here in ’41, I understand that you and Larry flew across to Stockholm by seaplane.’

I nodded, puzzled. My father and I had made the journey several times, in a couple of old single-seater Supermarines. Father had always been a racing fiend, and didn’t much care if it was on land, air, water or a combination. I had relished the expeditions as opportunities to spend more time with him, but after a while had realized that he was using them to look at the possibility of moving Mother to an asylum in Stockholm. He did this a few months later, and there she had remained ever since. It didn’t surprise me that our trips had ended up in my file, but I couldn’t fathom why they were relevant now.

‘Are you sending me to Sweden, sir?’

Templeton ignored the question. ‘A few hours ago, our Russian friends here received a message from their consulate in Mariehamn, which is the capital of a group of demilitarized islands known as Ahvenanmaa in Finnish and Åland in Swedish. The place belongs to Finland, but is Swedish-speaking.’

I knew of it – an archipelago at the entrance of the Gulf of Bothnia. I had never been there, but some members of Mother’s family had a summer residence on the western side. This was my immediate thought. It took me a few moments more to take in the other implication of what Templeton had just said: we had intercepted the Russians’ message. If he was listening in to the Soviets’ telephones in the hotel, I had severely underestimated him.

‘The Russians’ message was as follows,’ Templeton said briskly. ‘Yesterday evening, a body was discovered washed ashore on the Åland islands. The local police have identified it as being that of a German naval officer by the name of Wilhelm von Trotha.’

Corpses of naval officers being washed ashore? As the car jostled along, I examined Templeton’s face to see if it was some sort of elaborate joke. But he was looking at me intently, apparently waiting for my thoughts on the matter.

‘Could it be a provocation, sir?’ I asked. Shortly before heading to France I’d heard talk of an operation in which we had secured a body from a morgue in London, dressed it in the uniform of a Royal Marine and landed it on the coast of Spain with a cache of
false letters to fool the Germans into thinking we were planning to target Sardinia and Greece rather than Sicily. It had worked like a dream, but the Jerries would, of course, have realized that it had been a ruse, so perhaps someone had thought up a revenge plan.

‘That was my first thought, too,’ said Templeton. ‘But it looks like this could be genuine.’ He reached inside his coat and brought out a wodge of paper, which he unfolded and spread out on the upholstery between us. It was a large sea chart of Finland. After scanning it for a few moments, he pointed to a spot on the eastern archipelago labelled ‘Degerby’.

‘This is where they found the body. As you can see, it’s very isolated: if someone deliberately placed a body there, the chances of it being discovered would have been exceptionally slim. More significantly, we know that this chap von Trotha was, in fact, the captain of a U-boat, U-745, which we have been tracking for some time. It left Danzig in December, and on January the eleventh it sank one of the Russians’ minesweepers here.’ He pointed to the map again, to a small island off the coast of Estonia. ‘And it was last observed somewhere around’ – he shifted his finger to a spot just west of the Gulf of Finland – ‘here.’

‘When you say “last observed”, sir, do I understand that we believe the boat is out of action?’

‘Yes. Its last signal was on the fourth of last month, and we suspect it was accidentally sunk by one of the Germans’ own mines, either on that day or soon after. If so, the body may simply have floated ashore on the currents. As a matter of course, we would probably be interested in this chap, but we have also had information, from impeccable sources, that his U-boat was carrying a very special cargo: a new form of mustard gas. Mustard gas is a viscous liquid, of course, but this has apparently been mixed together in such a way as to make it even thicker, so it won’t be affected by the temperatures in this part of the world. They call it “Winterlost”, and if our sources are to be believed it’s very strong stuff indeed – roughly twice as powerful as the usual variety.’

I didn’t ask how he knew any of this, but guessed that the positions and dates were from the submarine tracking room at the Admiralty, and that the information on the mustard gas on von Trotha’s U-boat had come from captured crewmen of other vessels.

‘Despite all that,’ Templeton said, ‘it could still be some sort of deception operation mounted by the Germans. But we don’t want to take any chances – and neither, it seems, do the Russians. The consulate in Mariehamn has been instructed to send someone to this island to secure von Trotha’s personal effects before he is buried. We think they may also be sending one of their agents from Stockholm, perhaps under cover, but I’ve yet to receive confirmation of that. We don’t know whether they are aware of the Uboat’s special cargo – we haven’t informed them – but we need to beat them to the corpse regardless.

‘Our chemical warfare bods are of the opinion that this Winterlost would be an extremely dangerous weapon if turned on us – and also a very useful one for us to study. I’ve been in intensive signals with London for the last few hours, and they have instructed me that it should – indeed, must – be investigated. So I want you to get to this chap’s body and see if he has any information on him that gives a more accurate indication of the location of U-745 than its last signal – and then bring back the mustard gas.’

I stared at him for a few moments. Through the whitewashed windows, I could just make out the Finnish countryside rushing by: dark impenetrable forests stretching into the distance.

‘I thought you said the U-boat was believed to have been hit by a mine, sir.’

Templeton knitted his brows. ‘Yes, but you’ve diving experience, haven’t you?’

So that was what it was about. In early 1944, I had responded to a call for ‘volunteers for hazardous service’ sent out by the Royal Marines Office at the Admiralty. I had duly been summoned to report to HMS
Dolphin
in Portsmouth harbour, where I was informed that I would be trained as a diver for midget submarines.
After several weeks of training in a deep tank, I had been cleared for the next stage and sent with fifteen other men to Loch Cairnbawn in the far north of Scotland, where the details of the operation in question had finally been revealed to us: the Navy had managed to put the German battleship
Tirpitz
out of action in September, and were now training to attack the Laksevåg floating dock in Bergen.

As part of the provisional crew, I had been put in and out of the new ‘X-Craft’, wearing a claustrophobic diving suit nicknamed the ‘Clammy Death’ as I learned the art of oxygen-diving. But after just a few weeks in Scotland I was told that I hadn’t been selected to take part in the operation. Bitterly disappointed, I’d been sent back into the arms of SOE, who had a training establishment in Arisaig. After a few weeks of lugging backpacks around the mountainside and being taught unarmed combat and other esoteric skills by a purple-nosed Scot, I had been sent to the Parachute Training School in Ringway, and shortly after that had finally been cleared to take part in an operation and dropped into France.

I gave an abridged version of this to Templeton and he listened intently, his eyes flickering in the shadows.

‘But you have had diving training,’ he said quietly, once I’d finished.

Very briefly, I wanted to say, and I’d hated every minute of it. But instead I mumbled a ‘Yes, sir.’

He smiled softly. ‘Good. I’ve got you all the requisite gear, anyway. And we know the Jerries often bring their boats in very close to the shore, so with any luck it should be relatively easy to get to.’

It was true that the German U-boats often hugged coastlines, and the Russians had captured one of them in shallow waters in these parts last summer. They had raised it and discovered a new type of acoustic torpedo on board, some details of which they had shared with us. But there was no guarantee that this particular U-boat had also sunk in shallow waters.

‘You’ll have a wireless set,’ said Templeton. ‘So once you have
the location, signal back and I’ll judge whether or not a dive is worth risking.’

Risking my neck, he meant.

‘What about the Russians?’ I asked. ‘Presumably they’ll already be on their way from Mariehamn, if they haven’t already reached it.’

‘We don’t think they’ll set out until dawn – they’ve no reason to suspect their message was intercepted. We also think it will take them a while. The archipelago is made up of thousands of tiny islets and is fearfully tricky to navigate by boat if you don’t know it well, especially as quite a bit of the water is frozen over at the moment. All being well, you should be landing on the island’ – he glanced at his wristwatch – ‘in about three hours’ time.’

Despite his confidence, I didn’t like the sound of any of it. I’d wanted action, but I hadn’t envisaged anything as hairy as this. Although Åland was, technically speaking, Allied territory, I was being sent to poach a weapon from right underneath the Russians’ noses, and I didn’t think they’d be overly understanding about it were they to catch me. The Russians weren’t to be trusted. In the summer of ’42, two Service agents armed with wireless sets had landed in Catalina flying boats at one of their bases in Lake Lakhta. The plan was for the Russians to insert them over the border into Norway, where they would monitor German naval movements along the coast. But the Russians had instead imprisoned both Service men for two months and then dropped them into Finland instead, where they had promptly been caught by the Germans, tortured and shot.

‘What if the Russians do get there first, sir?’ I said, trying to make my tone as unconcerned as possible. ‘Or if I arrive at the same time?’

Templeton gave a small nod. He leaned forward and picked up something from between his feet that I hadn’t noticed earlier: a leather briefcase. He pulled it onto his lap, unfastened the clasps, and brought out a fawn-coloured shoulder holster with a Browning 9mm pistol resting inside.

‘I don’t anticipate any trouble,’ he said, ‘but take this with you just in case.’

I wondered how to broach the next question, but he anticipated it.

‘You must get to the submarine before anyone else,’ he said, snapping the case shut and stowing it between his feet again. ‘If anyone gets in your way, you have my permission to eliminate them.’

*

After about an hour’s drive, we took a narrow road through a pine forest until we finally reached a small, secluded bay. We stepped out of the car and trudged towards a wooden hangar shielded by vegetation. Inside, a small seaplane sat silently under a mass of green and brown camouflage. It was a three-seater, one of the Norwegians’ naval reconnaissance craft and, like the Ghost, had seen better days. Templeton said it had been used by the Norwegians against the Germans, then briefly by us and then by the Finns against the Russian subs along this stretch of the Baltic. According to the conditions of the armistice the Soviets had laid down, it should have been sent up to the north of the country to aid the Finns in their enforced mission to flush the Germans out, but Templeton had managed to keep it back from his Russian colleagues and arranged for it to be secreted here. ‘Good craft are hard to come by,’ he said with a sly smile.

We removed the scrim and he quickly showed me around it, but I’d flown seaplanes and time was of the essence. The plan was for me to land at the small jetty at Degerby, where the body had been reported. The local police there would no doubt be expecting a boatload of Russians from Mariehamn, but Templeton felt confident they would believe the Soviets had shared the information with their Allies, so I should be able to bluff my way through. I hoped to God he was right.

Templeton’s chauffeur removed a suitcase from the car, and Templeton took me through the contents: 24-hour rations, Benzedrine tablets and a Siebe Gorman Sladen Suit – the ‘Clammy Death’ that had given me nightmares in Scotland. It had a breathing
apparatus and twin aluminium cylinders that would provide enough oxygen for six hours, and I would be able to take it down to a depth of around thirty feet. Templeton seemed confident this would be the case – part of me hoped he was wrong and I would have to abort the operation.

But I kept such thoughts to myself, and climbed into the cockpit. Templeton showed me the wireless set, giving me the frequencies I would need to reach him. He didn’t say where he would be, but presumably it wouldn’t be too far away. Then he shook my hand solemnly and trudged back to the Ghost, a stoop-backed man in a topcoat and hat. His chauffeur opened the door for him and they set off down the road again. I watched as the car disappeared from view, then positioned the holster with the pistol under my left armpit. It felt heavy, and the leather of the holster cold even through my battledress.

I took a breath and examined the instruments and gauges around me, then strapped myself in. It was time to get going.

*

I was lost.

The Baltic lay beneath me, patches of ice glowing faintly in the moonlight, but I had no idea which part of Åland I was over, or even if I was over it at all. Templeton had marked Degerby on the chart, but the scale was too small and I had the growing sense that I was going around in circles. The wireless set wouldn’t help: Templeton wouldn’t have made it to his location yet and I didn’t dare land.

A sudden gust of turbulence slammed me against the side of the cockpit and I desperately tried to keep my hands gripped on the control column, fighting down the panic as my mind was filled with the consequences of failure. Templeton would have to send a signal back to London: man down, operation unsuccessful, please send replacement agent, this time make sure it’s someone with an ounce of bloody… And then, just as suddenly as it had hit, the
wind subsided. I slumped back in the seat, my forehead soaked with sweat and my heart still racing, and managed to right the craft. Glancing down again, I realized I had dipped dangerously low. The ice was interrupted here and there by islets, and I glimpsed miniature coiled pine trees and pinkish rocks beneath the patches of ice. But there, over to the west, a lonely dot of orange light glowed like the tip of a cigarette. I consulted the chart, and did some quick calculations in my head.