by Matt Killeen
“Let’s just wait for the next ping, then . . . or until they get good at it.”
She looked at him, into his eyes, and saw a moment of serious consideration. A mind going through a set of practical steps, thinking something through.
He believes it.
She approached Jansen.
The captain was angry, then resentful of the suggestion, but unable to ignore her, he listened. He tried to look skeptical throughout, but as Sarah continued he couldn’t conceal his growing interest.
“This isn’t all your plan, is it?” Jansen looked around and saw Esser nodding slowly to him. He straightened up, his fingers beginning to tap on the periscope.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said finally.
“We’re dead if we don’t try.” Sarah sighed. “How much battery power is left?”
“But why would we sit there waiting for them?”
“What if they thought we were damaged?”
He had stopped pouting.
“We’ll put oil in the water . . . and we’d need distance,” Jansen said, almost to himself. “Could run ahead full speed, because it wouldn’t need to be quiet, we’d want them to know where we are . . . open up a gap . . . then full reverse . . .”
There was a light in his eyes now.
Esser came over and leaned on the periscope.
“A V and W-class destroyer, twelve hundred tons . . . be a good story to tell, wouldn’t it?” he murmured.
“Flank speed,” the Schiffer called.
FORTY-FIVE
November 14, 1940
IT TOOK AN hour or more to build up any kind of space between them. The crew felt better now that they were doing something other than hiding. Esser said that just showed how inexperienced they were.
They needed to loop away from an attack in the opposite direction to that of the destroyer. This was guesswork, as the enemy could not be seen while they were underwater, but eventually the destroyer passed over them from bow to stern, and they made the correct move. They ran at flank speed in the opposite direction to the ship, under cover of water still boiling from the depth charges. Then they had to guess the course of the ship’s next loop back toward the sub and, going the other way, put more distance between them.
Sarah had to close her eyes to imagine how the game was playing out, the two vessels turning in big curves, the submarine using the destroyer’s speed and overenthusiasm—its overconfidence—against itself.
At some point the U-boat would have to turn to face its enemy in one of those long, looping curves, with Virulent closing on it. There was an aft torpedo tube, but the odds were better face on. Should they wait and hope they could increase the distance, or risk losing the hard-won meters between them?
A moment came, and the Schiffer made the call. Now.
Sarah knew she had nothing to offer at this point, but she couldn’t sit by idly and blind, while others decided, acted, and witnessed.
Jansen was about to climb into the conning tower to use the attack periscope with something approaching a skip in his step.
“Oberleutnant, can I watch?” Sarah asked cautiously. She tried being the needy child, rather than the bullish tyrant. “There are two periscopes . . .”
The Schiffskapitän was about to refuse but clearly felt magnanimous, or exhausted.
“Oberbootsmann,” he called to Esser. “She can watch down here, but no higher than twelve so she doesn’t get in my way.” He jabbed a finger at Sarah. “If all you see is water, so be it.”
“You have a way with him,” Esser said, calling her over.
Looking into the periscope was harder than it seemed. If you didn’t hold your head at just the right angle and distance from the lens you could see nothing. Then the bright image fluttered into being, eerily close in a way that made you want to step back from it. Sarah seized the handgrips on either side to hold her eye in place.
It was early dawn. All Sarah could see was water, the rolling surf, and the silver gray of the lightening sky. The waves sloshed over the scope, blurring everything to a dark green shadow, before dropping again to leave a view obscured by running droplets.
“I can’t see anything,” Sarah moaned.
“Look to port, two hundred fifty degrees and rising,” Esser suggested, pushing her shoulders to help her move.
The seascape swept by as she sidestepped to the right and moved the viewfinder around, which drifted with oiled effortlessness.
Virulent hove into view, a dark and alien blight on the organic grays, and disappeared again. It made Sarah jump, and it took her a while to find it again.
The destroyer was in three-quarter view by this point, slicing through the water from left to right as Sarah watched, and creating a giant bow wave.
It was turning toward them. The change in orientation appeared slow, but it was inevitably and inescapably steady.
“It seems far enough away,” Sarah said.
Esser turned something on the viewfinder. The destroyer filled the image, snapping into something much more menacing. Again Sarah wanted to flinch away but squeezed the handgrips instead. She could see the men aboard, the flapping jack, the rust streaks from the anchor chains. The searchlights blinded her as they swept between the shortening gap.
The men aboard. The men.
Soldiers, dumme Schlampe. In a war.
Passengers. Innocents.
Vichy supporters. Enemy.
People—
Sei still! Lisbeth is there. Lisbeth must be stopped.
The real activity in the U-boat was now in the tower compartment. Sarah had read that the torpedoes were programmed and fired from there, the calculations were made based on the instructions from Jansen at the attack scope. All the voices—the story—was now filtering down the ladder, and the crew without a job to do then and there were gathering near the control room to listen.
“We’re both turning to meet each other. To turn quickly, we need to be at full speed, but then we’re closing the gap quicker. It’s a gamble,” Esser whispered.
“Range six fifty-six meters . . . six fifty . . . six thirty-nine . . .”
“Bearing two seventy-five.”
“Range five fifty.”
“We need to be facing them, bearing zero degrees, that’s also three hundred sixty degrees, before they get within a hundred fifty meters,” Esser went on. “Any closer and the impact will damage us, too.”
“Range five hundred twenty meters . . . five ten . . . five hundred . . .”
“Bearing three hundred . . .”
Sarah could smell her own sweat, overpowering the flowery cologne, as the room warmed and she dripped inside her shirt.
Virulent crashed into a breaking wave and rocked, listing hard to port, but even this obstacle seemed incapable of stopping her inexorable turn.
“They’re nearly face on to us . . .” Sarah gasped.
“And then they’ll cross the distance faster, and stop traveling to meet our bow as we turn.”
“Range four fifty . . . four forty . . . four twenty-five . . .”
“Bearing three hundred twenty degrees . . .”
Sarah juggled the figures in her head but couldn’t make them tally against one another.
“Will we make it?” she asked.
“Right now, yes. When she starts romping in a straight line, who knows? This was your idea.”
Sarah smiled without humor.
“Range four hundred . . . three seventy-five . . . three forty-five . . .”
“Bearing three hundred thirty degrees . . .”
Sarah willed the destroyer to move from left to right, willed the numbers above the image to count up faster.
But Virulent was now all bow, all guns, all superstructure, a slim and deadly profile, coming right at them. It blotted out the sky behind.
> “Range three fifteen . . . two eighty-five . . . two fifty-five . . .”
“Bearing three hundred forty degrees . . .”
Sarah could see the lookouts on the destroyer’s flying bridge, watched them drop their glasses and grip the rail.
“Range two twenty . . . one ninety . . . one sixty . . .”
“Bearing three hundred fifty degrees . . .”
“Open tubes one to four!” called Jansen.
“We aren’t going to make it,” Sarah groaned.
“Festhalten!” came the call.
Esser put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, but she shrugged him off. The destroyer’s propeller was now audible through the hull.
“Range one thirty . . . one hundred . . . seventy . . .”
“Fire all tubes!”
The boat shook and the bubbling whooshes drowned out the coming ship.
The periscope whirred and began sliding into the floor out of Sarah’s hands.
“Hey!” she cried.
“Got to protect it,” Esser shouted. “Hold onto something.”
“Alarm!”
The floor sagged downward. And Sarah fell forward.
The torpedoes detonated.
The instant the blast smacked against the hull, the lights shattered, showering everyone with glass and turning the compartment into a black hole.
The screams, the rattle of splintering steel, the jets of water filling the room as multiple seals and valves failed, Sarah’s short journey to the deck, the waves of heat, the sparks and frantic torch beams in the smoke and orders and shouts—all these things painted their own picture. The smell of burning electrics and oil filled the nostrils.
The U-boat rocked again with a new concussion and began listing to port, shaking as the keel of the destroyer scraped over the top of their hull, with an extended shriek of tearing metal. Fingernails down a blackboard.
Sarah, who seemed to be sitting against a bulkhead of dripping pipes with that same excruciating howling in her ears, couldn’t stand and did not know how to pull herself up. She drew her legs up to her and wrapped her arms around them.
She felt the sea rising over her boots and bottom. She promised herself she would stand before the water reached her knees.
You did it, dumme Schlampe. Are you happy now?
Hello, Mutti . . . I don’t know I did anything yet.
That’s going to be your excuse for going on? To be sure?
Isn’t that what you do? Even when the play is going to be canceled and you know there’s no future, you just get up on stage every night and give it everything . . .
Did I say that? I was an old fool, a stupid romantic. You can go through the motions, no one cares.
But people do, Mutti. They’re beginning to see me now, I can’t hide anymore. What do I do?
Stop listening to aging failures, as if they know anything more than you. Stop trusting. Did I not teach you anything? Everything is a lie, everything is artifice, no one is telling the truth, they’re just reciting lines they’ve learned. Sometimes they’re the right ones and they can proceed. Sometimes they’re not and the audience boos and shouts and throws things. People get their lines wrong and that ruins your cue, so know the story and carry on as if they hadn’t messed up. Don’t trust them with your part. Don’t. Trust. Them.
My part is to stop Lisbeth.
Then get the play back on track . . . or lie down in this water now and get it over with.
Sarah reached up out of the water and seized a pipe above her. She pulled.
The screaming became shouts and then talking. The water stopped spraying out of the walls and ceased to rise. The lights came on. The boat slowly, noisily began to surface.
Sarah tasted iron and grasped that it had not been seawater running down her face but blood. She thought of der Werwolf painting themselves in her gore at her initiation in the chapel at Rothenstadt, of her filthy Jewish blood all over their faces. Drink it down and choke on it.
Then she thought about the vow, the two vows she took that night, one written by the Ice Queen, and one created by Sarah to counteract the other.
To hide among the weak and overlooked, only to rise when called to devastate, to decimate, to dominate . . . to rise like vengeance . . . to commit whatever acts are necessary . . . to destroy all that is within my power to destroy . . .
She couldn’t remember which vow was which, in whose interests she was really fighting. All she knew was that she was indeed a Werwolf, the fastest and most feared hunter of the forest.
She rubbed her eyes, but left the rest of the blood where it was.
* * *
She found Jansen in the tower room. He was leaning into the attack periscope.
“Oberleutnant,” Sarah said respectfully.
He did not look up.
“Did we get them?” she continued.
“I lost six men in the bow compartment,” he said flatly.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. She felt it, but packaged the grief and guilt for later.
“No, I don’t think you are. Not really. This is your job, isn’t it? For the Reich?”
“Yes. I’m still sorry though. Do you believe me?” she asked.
“Do you honestly care, one way or the other?”
Sarah paused.
“No, no I don’t,” she stated and folded her arms against the spiked emotions. “Did we get them?”
“Yes. It plowed on for a mile or more but couldn’t keep the bow out of the water.”
The relief . . . no, there was no relief. No feeling of triumph or achievement.
Slowly, as if meat had rotted in an adjoining room, a sense of unthinkable wrongness permeated Sarah’s being. The hundred lives she had ordered snuffed out were going nowhere. They were going to stay and taint everything.
But Jansen continued. “One lifeboat made it off. Maybe forty sur—”
“Let me see, gottverdammte,” Sarah snapped and pushed the Schiffer from the viewfinder.
Virulent was sliding into a sea slick with oil and covered in debris. Only its smoking stern was visible now, its red painted keel stained in soot and covered in limpets, visible to the world one last time. One lifeboat filled with men was paddling slowly away.
“I need to see . . . closer,” she ordered. Jansen sighed and increased the magnification.
Among the grubby and miserable sailors, slick with oil, soot-stained, or bleeding, was a burst of bright gold. In the lifeboat sat Lisbeth Fischer.
FORTY-SIX
THE U-BOAT WAS barely more than a wreck. As well as the crushed bow, it had lost the deck gun entirely, as if a giant had dragged its claws across the hull and torn it away, along with the planking and great slivers of the superstructure. The bridge rail had been torn in two, and one side hung over the conning tower as if the steel was canvas. It had surfaced, slowly and with some difficulty, as well as a noticeable list. It was difficult to believe that it had been the victor of the encounter.
The Wachoffizier, who spoke passable English, had hailed the lifeboat, and the survivors had drawn it sluggishly toward the drunken predator.
“Did you manage to get an RT message out in time?” he asked through a megaphone as they closed in.
“Not a chance, you sneaky bastard,” called the chief petty officer at the tiller, in a loud Cockney accent. There was only one commissioned officer aboard that Sarah could see, a damp youngster who looked aghast and stunned by events.
“We’ll put a call out for you after we leave . . .” the German continued genially. “But first we believe you have a citizen of the Reich with you that we want returned to us. Do you have Dr. Lisbeth Fischer aboard?”
There was some looking around and muttering aboard the boat, some elbows and pointing.
“No, we ain’t,” the man at the tiller stated over
the others.
The Wachoffizier looked to Sarah, who pointed unambiguously to the woman now sitting hunched under a blanket near the bow.
“We believe that Dr. Fischer is four rows from the bow, second in from the port side. Dr. Fischer is a Reich citizen whom you were good enough to rescue when her ship was . . . sunk . . . and it is time for her to return to Germany. She is not a refugee or a defector, and she certainly cannot remain as your prisoner. Please help her aboard.”
There was more muttered discussion on the lifeboat. There wasn’t much support for the leader’s defiance.
“I don’t know the legal position here,” the Wachoffizier said, leaning in to the Schiffer. “We should just start threatening them, I guess?”
“Are you taking her by force then, Mine Hurr?” the coxswain in the lifeboat asked the U-boat.
“If you want us to,” the German called, smiling.
Lisbeth stood in the boat as if she was surrendering and looked at the bridge. It took her a second, but then she saw Sarah and looked right into her eyes.
“Liebchen,” she called waving. “You’re safe! I’m so happy.”
Sarah turned to Jansen. “She gets off that boat, nobody else. Then they keep their distance. And no one goes near her, or me, until I know what she has or has not done.”
“Please,” sniffed the Oberleutnant.
“Ach, bitte, bitte, bitte . . .” Sarah spoke deliberately. Pretty please.
* * *
Sarah stood on the torn bow deck, arms behind her back, as the lifeboat struggled to pull alongside the listing submarine. The crew were behind her and out of the way.
One of the British sailors was arguing with the others about letting Lisbeth go. She works fast, Sarah thought. Given a few more days, would they all have done what she wanted?
Sarah felt the need to urinate. It came strongly and out of the blue. It brought a breathlessness and a weakness in her legs.
