by Matt Killeen
The water fizzed around her, turning over like water in a saucepan. Sarah felt as if she was rising, being picked up by a giant hand. Something touched her foot, and this sent sparks of sensation up her numbed legs. The sea broke like the waves had reached the shore.
Then the ocean tipped itself over Sarah’s head, a thundering, thudding pummeling that threatened to sweep her away, but her feet now rested on a hard, rippled surface that pushed her up and out of the waterfall. She collapsed on something solid. She touched and gripped its edges with her clawed and wrinkled hands.
The sea parted, and from it emerged a giant, dark gray fish. A sleek shark of metal gratings, cables, and bolted plates. It carried Sarah up and out and above the green surf with hissing growls and clunking groans.
She lay, suddenly unbearably heavy with her head propped up by her life jacket, and began to shiver uncontrollably, even as the men appeared from a hole in the beast’s long snout and swarmed around her.
FORTY-TWO
November 11–13, 1940
SHE DRANK THE water and vomited. She drank more and vomited. Eventually, her quivering, blanket-wrapped body allowed some liquid into her stomach and she immediately began to feel less like a corpse and more like a sick person. Her hands and feet burned as they warmed, and she was running a fever, but this felt more like getting better than dying.
The radio operator, who was also the medic only because he had the key to the medicine cabinet, injected her with something that made the pain in her limbs and head go away. Sarah protested for a few moments, then lost interest in arguing.
All the while, the ba-boom noises continued, and inside this steel tube the explosions sounded terrifyingly close and dangerous. Each concussion caused the hull to vibrate, and everything not welded into place rattled where it hung. Sarah watched the radio operator as each whispered call came—
Wasserbombe im Wasser
—and she saw his concern, his sliver of fear, before the crashing came. But then he just smiled and shrugged.
“Nowhere near us,” he whispered. The inescapable implication being that a closer, more accurate attack would be louder and more destructive.
The captain’s cabin was little more than a wooden closet with a mattress, but it was the best bunk on the boat, so they gave it to her. It also had a curtain, which meant that once she rehydrated, she could pee unseen into her bucket. The toilets were off-limits when they were submerged, she was told. Besides, one still stored fresh food.
The smell of vomit and sewage in such close proximity was lost in a thick, nauseating funk of sweat and diesel oil that permeated the air like smoke, and Sarah was just too tired to care. She slept. A real, deep, dream-free and comfortable rest undisturbed by wakeful anxiety or confusion.
On waking, between warm sheets, she discovered a gift of dry clothes, an emptied waste bucket, and a bowl of cold vegetable soup. She was famished.
* * *
The Schiffskapitän came to see her. He was absurdly young to be in charge, but everyone she’d met onboard so far was little more than a boy.
He was unshaven, like all the crew, but he also looked unwashed . . . and exhausted. Those unlined eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed with dark smudges under them.
Like the radioman who had tended to her, he smelled of stale sweat, yeast, and diesel, but contrarily he also smelled of cologne, a crisp, fresh scent of flowers and lemon. It was absurdly feminine.
He crouched next to the bunk. By this time Sarah was sitting up and dressed in her borrowed clothes. Someone on the crew was very small, because these were a much better fit than anything the Royal Navy had managed.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Better . . . still alive, thanks to you,” she said after a moment.
“No thanks necessary, I couldn’t leave you there. Although you scared me, appearing in the periscope like that,” he said with a chuckle. “You were aboard that Shoreham-class sloop?”
“A British ship? The . . . Godalming, yes . . .”
“But you’re German? With a French passport?”
Sarah had forgotten she’d pushed her papers into the pocket of her borrowed trousers before falling asleep on Godalming’s messdeck.
“It’s . . . complicated. How did you know I was German?”
“You talk in your sleep.”
Sarah shuddered. This was a dangerous habit of hers. She wondered what she might have revealed.
“How long have I been here?”
“Two days, just under.”
“Is that British ship still there?”
“Yes, but we’re losing them, so not long now,” the Schiffskapitän continued.
Losing.
Sarah did not want to lose. She had not truly accepted defeat, not while there seemed hope of living. Even at the end of his nightmare, Ngobila had not surrendered.
“Losing the ship?” A pinprick of panic pierced Sarah’s calm. It tore in two at the weakest point. “Let Virulent go? No . . .”
After the gently belly-tickling joy and the weightless relief of rescue, Sarah felt the responsibilities and anxieties crawling back to claim what had once been theirs.
“No,” she said, sitting forward and putting a hand on his arm. “You have to . . . you have to sink them too.”
How many people on that ship? What are you asking? The passengers alone—
She closed the door on the little girl and her protests, the one who agonized over each loss of life. It was easier this way, but it was colder on the outside.
“Why? I mean, no—” he said in surprise.
“Because they’re the enemy.”
“Yes they are.” He nodded. “A very dangerous enemy. Not one I need to sink.”
“You sank Godalming.”
“Yes, and that was a mistake. I wouldn’t have attacked if I’d spotted the destroyer, too. Worse still, it had passengers, or prisoners, or whatever you are . . .” He leaned forward, too. “What are you?”
“As I said, it’s complicated” was all Sarah could manage. She knew that word was tainted.
“Complicated as in trying to give me orders?”
“You need to listen to me—” she cried, voice still hoarse.
“I don’t have time for this.” He stood.
The impossibility of what Sarah needed, the cooperation required . . . it wasn’t realistic. Sarah felt defeat. The surrender didn’t bring her ease or comfort. Behind Sarah’s eyes, those fifty million people waited, staring at her. The women had stopped in the streets, shopping bags in hand. The children stood, the football rolling away into the road. The cars were stationary, their drivers peering out through the windshields.
“We have to surface very soon,” he continued. “There’s way too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You never know, maybe your British friends will see us . . . Get some rest, Élodie.”
“Ursula, Ursula Haller,” she corrected.
“Oberleutnant Jansen,” he said, nodding to her.
He was about to pull the curtain back across the door, but stopped. “Who is Sarah?”
Sarah dropped the half-empty cup of water she had picked up. “I’m sorry, what?” she said, wiping away the water onto the deck.
“You kept saying, Sarah is a dead girl, in your sleep.”
“Uh, she’s a friend—was a friend—”
“A Jewish friend . . .”
Lies will tie you up—
“Yes,” Sarah said quietly.
“I had Jewish friends,” he stated, very softly.
“Had?” Sarah couldn’t help herself.
“Not allowed, now . . . is it?” He almost whispered it, a tone that made it impossible for her to infer anything.
* * *
The inside of the U-boat was less a vehicle and more a complex machine between whose components men
squeezed themselves. Even the deck was often little more than a mesh, as if the human parts deserved only the same utilitarian treatment as its other mechanisms.
The silence was eerie. It wasn’t silence at all in the traditional sense, as there were creaks and clunks and bubbling as the hull shifted and even the noise of the sea above them could be made out. It was that the fifty-odd men sat or lay or stood, without talking or walking or even moving if they could avoid it.
The silence was essential. She was told in no uncertain terms that there could be no noise, no shouting, no banging, no movement of metal on metal, nothing percussive, nothing mechanical. Sound was crucial. It carried through the water and told tales, gave away those who wished to hide, as it gave away those who hunted for them. One loud noise could draw a listening destroyer from many miles away.
She learned that there weren’t even bunks for everyone, just those who were off duty, but the waiting—and everyone was waiting—meant there was little for the men to do but sleep, and wait to sleep.
Sarah grew restless and wanted to wander round more, but she repeatedly found herself in the way and was, as politely as possible, shepherded back to the captain’s nook.
It was growing hot as well, stuffy in a way Africa had not been. Sarah found herself panting if she moved. This must be what the Oberleutnant had meant by too much carbon dixoide in the atmosphere. Many of the crew wore respirators or gas masks as they slept or worked, anything to reduce their poisonous exhalations.
A meaty hand appeared through the curtain to the captain’s bunk and waved. Then it made a tilting palm-up gesture of inquiry.
“Come in,” Sarah whispered.
A round man with a big smile pushed his head through the curtain. His hair was graying at the temples, and unlike the Schiffskapitän he had earned a hundred lines on his face from a lifetime of laughter. He was by far the oldest man aboard, but even then he was just hitting middle age. He also had that mix of sweat and perfume about him.
“The skipper thought you might be bored,” he whispered, and shooed her to the back of the captain’s bunk. He smoothed out the blanket and laid a thin card game board onto it, along with some tokens, which were chess pawns.
“Sternhalma.” Sarah smiled. The continued popularity of this game always made her chuckle, as the shape of the playing grid made a Star of David. “You really don’t have to do this. I’m sure you’re busy, Herr . . . ?”
“Esser. I am off-duty, as we’re not quite at Gefechtsstationen, when everyone’s busy,” he said, setting up the board. “A smelly friend has been in my bunk, and I have another so tired that he doesn’t care, so everyone’s happy.”
“Surprised anyone can smell anything, over the . . . you know.”
“Gestank.” He laughed, wrinkling his nose. “Yes, if you’re not used to it, I can imagine it’s very unpleasant. Here,” he said, reaching into his top pocket and pulling out a small bottle of clear liquid with a green-and-gold label. It read, Echt Kölnisch Wasser, No.4711.
Sarah pulled the gold-and-red top off and inhaled. She smiled. “Oh, this is why the Oberleutnant smells like . . .”
“A brothel? Yes, we all smell like that. Except for the ones who choose to send it home and stink the place up instead.”
Sarah sprinkled it liberally on the collar of her borrowed shirt.
The game began, and the sailor immediately started to make mistakes. Sarah assumed that he was letting her win.
“Everyone’s talking about you,” he began.
“Are they? And what are they saying?”
“That you’re lucky to be alive.” He sighed. “Thirty-six hours in the water is one thing, but being found floating in the sea alone . . . that’s a real miracle. Sailors, particularly U-Boot-Fahrer, are very superstitious. They think you’re good luck.” He winked. “And these children are glad they got to rescue someone. Doing your job in wartime is one thing, but leaving people in the water . . . gives no one any pleasure.”
“You’re not supposed to rescue anyone?”
“War Order number one fifty-four . . . Do not rescue any men; do not take them along; and do not take care of any boats of the ship. It’s too dangerous, you see. Most U-Boot-Fahrer in the fleet are too young to have fought in the Weltkrieg, they have no idea that compassion gets you killed out here.”
“But you fished me out?” Sarah asked, completing a series of triumphant hops with one of her pieces.
“We’re only human, and the new Oberleutnant is very human,” he said, smiling. Then the smile faded. He placed a finger on Sarah’s arm. Not an invasion of her space, not an attack of any kind, but an unmissable signal to listen. “It was a real risk surfacing to get you with that destroyer out there. I hope you understand that.”
Sarah nodded, and he withdrew the finger.
“Now everyone thinks you’ve made them untouchable.” He chuckled. “They’re baying to get that destroyer.” He took his turn and, without looking up, he continued. “And so are you, apparently.”
“Jansen said that?”
“No, but there’s no such thing as a private conversation on a U-boat. What’s so special about this Virulent?”
Sarah felt there was nothing to lose.
“There’s a bad person on board. They have to be stopped.”
“And what do little girls know of such things?” he murmured.
Mitgefangen, mitgehangen, thought Sarah. Commit.
“I’m twenty years old and an agent of the Abwehr.”
He snorted and went to laugh, then he met Sarah’s gaze and stopped dead. “And who is on the destroyer?”
“A defecting scientist. A mass murderer. Bad news for the Reich.”
Esser motioned to the board. “Why are you playing this game with me?”
“Because I am bored.” She smiled . . . but realized that with the lie she had irreparably changed the dynamic of this relationship. The man was now uncomfortable, had made himself vulnerable to a woman, not a girl. There was a way of using that distinction, Sarah knew, but how that worked was beyond her.
“You’re winning,” he said, sitting back.
“No, I’m really not,” Sarah said with a sigh.
FORTY-THREE
SARAH WAS FEELING stronger, but she noticed that she was now panting like a dog even when she wasn’t moving. She also developed a twitch in her eye. She was not alone in this. The crew was beginning to twitch too, as well as argue, and lose the thread of conversations, and those were the ones who didn’t look like part of Dornröschen’s court after she had pricked her finger on the spindle.
Sarah entered the control room. She had found plans and manuals in the captain’s closets, and now knew her way around, to a point. A library tells you about the person, she had always thought, and the Oberleutnant’s shelves revealed someone preoccupied, even anxious about the operation of his boat. The cheap novel he had brought was unread, the pages still uncut.
It was a large compartment by the standards of the U-boat, but it was still a claustrophobic tin box of a room, walls made of tubes, wire, and cables, now lit by two rows of red lights. The space was dominated by two large columns, the oiled steel tube of the observation periscope, and beyond the ladder to the conning tower, the casing for the attack periscope. There were dozens of valves and wheels and a score of dials, switches, and levers. There were nine men present, two map tables, six hanging joints of smoked meat, three boxes of fruit, and everywhere she stood, she was shooed away. She finally squeezed between two hams and leaned against the damage control station that was unmanned.
Distracted by the moving food, Esser turned and spotted her. His smile was conciliatory, and he moved over to where she stood.
The Oberleutnant was draped over the periscope.
“Carbon dioxide reading?” he asked.
“Five percent,” one of the sailors replied.
“Now or never,” huffed the skipper. “Surface the boat.”
“Jawohl, mein Kaleun,” called Jansen’s First Wachoffizier quietly. This redheaded officer then turned to the crew. “Auftauchen.” They went to work around him.
Jansen let the periscope slide into the floor, rubbing his forehead.
Esser leaned over to Sarah. “We have to pump out the carbon dioxide and charge up the batteries. We’ve been waiting for the dark and for the destroyer to move far enough away,” he whispered.
“Oberleutnant?” Sarah spoke up over the metallic clang, bubbling, and hissing of blowing tanks. The skipper did not hear her, or chose not to. Sarah walked toward him. “Oberleutnant!”
“Sch, Fräulein,” warned the Oberbootsmann.
Jansen looked up, his anxiety turning to irritation. “Fräulein Haller, I’m very busy—”
“You’re surfacing, so you can send a radio message now?”
Jansen looked at Esser, looking for someone to blame. The other man shrugged and shook his head—nothing to do with me.
“Too risky to use the transmitter, and whatever you want to send isn’t going to be important enough.” He turned to Esser. “Oberbootsmann, would you—”
“I need you to send a message to Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr—”
“Enough now.” Jansen had raised his voice. The crew had stopped, listening to the exchange.
“Macht weiter!” shouted the Wachoffizier at the men, and everyone got back to work.
“Really, Fräulein,” Jansen continued in a more measured tone. “I’ve heard your fairy tale, but I have things to do, the lives of fifty-five men to protect—”
“And what do you think will happen to them when the Abwehr discover you obstructed one of their agents?” Sarah interrupted. “Or maybe it’ll only be you getting sent to the camp at Sachsenhausen?”
“Five meters,” called the planesman.
The hatch opened in the conning tower above them with a clank, and a sheet of seawater splashed down and ran across the deck toward the drains. The sound of the ocean filtered down to them.
