Bruckner scratched his head. “Well, like it or not, the man’s here now, isn’t he, Stolz?” He took another long, hard look at the American, at the ragged clothing he was wearing, at that weathered face, and Bruckner began to understand. He could understand the pain, the anguish, and the sheer hell the poor fellow had been through.
“Well, Sergeant Randall, I can think of better places for a man to stow away than inside my U-boat,” Bruckner mused. “Surely you knew you would be caught?”
Randall’s eyes looked around the torpedo room. “Oh, I’ve stayed in worse,” he answered with a tired, indifferent shrug. “And I didn’t have many other choices.”
Bruckner couldn’t deny the logic in it. Crush a man’s spirit day after brutal day, deny him any hope, and the poor bastard might take a flying leap into the unknown. But it must have been hell for the fellow, locked inside this black hole these last half-dozen hours, cold, hungry, and lonely, with nothing but the terrifying creaks and groans of a submarine to keep him company.
“All right, Sergeant," Bruckner offered a thin smile. “I’m not quite sure what to do with you, but there’s been enough bloodshed today, and I won’t have yours on my conscience. You’ll just have to believe me on that. You may stay here in the torpedo room. I’ll have some food and blankets sent in. If you behave yourself and do what you’re told, I’ll see that you are not harmed; however, if you cause me or my men any trouble, I will have you shot without a second’s hesitation. Is that absolutely clear?”
Randall looked deep into the U-boat Kapitan’s eyes, wanting desperately to believe the man. “Yes, I understand,” he finally answered.
“Very good.” Bruckner looked him straight in the eyes and gave a curt nod sealing the deal before he turned away to head aft. What a mess, he thought. There had to be a way out of Bormann’s carefully constructed trap, Bruckner swore, there must be. Then, from the murky depths of his depression, the hazy outline of a plan crept into his mind. Slowly, it slipped out of the shadows, spread its wings wide, and he could see it in all its wondrous glory. Bruckner tipped his head back and began to laugh. The others watched him, probably thinking the Kapitan had gone mad; yet it was all too obvious, he thought, all too deliciously obvious and perfect. He turned toward his young ensign and said, “Karl, plot a course for the Kattegat Strait. I’ll be in my cabin; I have some thinking to do.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Kattegat Strait runs between the coasts of Denmark and Sweden. Approximately two hundred miles long, it connects the Baltic to the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. There may not be a lovelier spot in the world under a warm summer sun, but when the gales of winter blow, the fast currents and sharp rocks turn the narrow channels into meat grinders with sharp granite teeth. Any sensible U-boat commander would run the Strait at night on the surface, making it a favorite haunt of RAF hunter-killer bombers. Bruckner knew they’d be up there circling like vultures, waiting to pounce on any German ship foolish enough to try to slip through into the Atlantic. So he put the U-582 on the bottom in a hundred and fifty feet of water near the south coast of Sweden and waited for dark.
The quickest way through was a straightforward run up the main channel near Copenhagen. The winter night was long. With luck, they’d reach the North Sea by dawn. The other choice was to swing south and run up one of the many smaller channels closer to the German coast, but that would take two nights to make it through, hiding on the bottom during the day, and burn a lot of his precious diesel fuel. A year ago or even six months ago, they could depend on air cover from the Luftwaffe to chase the Brits away. Not now. The few remaining German patrol planes had been pulled away to more critical sectors, and none of the passages were safe.
Left or right, those were the choices. But after hours of thought and debate, Bruckner conceived a far more simple and daring plan. He was captain and had absolute authority over both men and boat, but for this to work he had to have his First Officer with him. Karl was too smart and Bruckner could never proceed without him. He also needed Stolz. The slovenly truck driver knew the boat’s mechanics every bit as well as his Chief Engineer did but the Chief was a loyal Party man from Bavaria and he’d never go along with treason. Stolz, on the other hand, had appeared to have no such qualms. He had no friends on board and he owed the Kapitan his life. That would be crucial. It was the reason he asked the other two men to join him in the relative privacy of the conning tower, where they could close the hatch and be alone.
“A ship’s captain doesn’t usually take votes, at least not in the German Navy, but I have a proposal I need to put to you two.”
“Kapitan," Karl protested, “you know we’ll do whatever you wish.”
“No, not like that, there’s too much at stake for all of us now. You know what’s in those crates. It’s loot, plain and simple, stolen from a dozen countries across Eastern Europe.” He held up his sheaf of orders. “These people are no better than a street gang that smashes the window of a jewelry store on Friedrichstrasse, grabs some necklaces, and runs off down the street. They are criminals, and now they’ve dragged us into their little conspiracy. You know that, but what you don’t know is that our destination is Argentina. And I suspect it’s going to be a one-way trip.”
“Argentina? God help us,” Karl groaned.
“Well, I can’t say much for the company, but at least we will be alive.” Stolz forced a laugh. "Even the back side of hell would be an improvement over Königsberg."
“If we get there. And if we do, they’ll never let us leave,” Bruckner said as he leaned back against the periscope housing. “But this is immoral. It’s evil, and it’s not worth risking the lives of forty-two good men."
“More of that Sturmbannführer Kruger’s handiwork?” Stolz asked.
“Him, Koch, Martin Bormann, and the rest of them — they think they have us in a tight corner and we can’t get out. Well, I have a plan too, and in order for it to work, you two must do some things that some might call treason if word ever got out. I suppose we could take the boat back to Kiel, but they’d call us cowards and have us shot for disobeying orders, and they’d be right. But I have another idea. We’re lying on the bottom in Swedish waters. Sweden is neutral, isn’t it, Karl? So if the boat were to develop a serious mechanical problem that would prevent us from going on through the Strait or turning around and going back to port, we’d have to scuttle the boat, right?”
“Maybe something with one of those new parts they put in back in the shipyard,” Stolz suggested. “Something we couldn’t possibly fix out here?”
“The General Orders are quite clear on that point." The young ensign frowned. “We cannot allow her to be captured.”
“Precisely. We’d have no choice but to put the crew ashore, open the valves, and put her on the bottom.”
“You mean here? Off Sweden?” Karl asked.
Stolz grunted. “Well, the Swedes are a proper-enough lot, much more civilized than them greaser tango dancers down in South America, and we’ll be a whole lot closer to home.”
“We’d be interned until the war is over, but that won’t be long now,” Bruckner said. “Then the men can return to their families in Germany, where they will be sorely needed.”
“You always told them you would bring them home,” Karl said.
“Yes, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“After things quiet down, I’ll tell the Swedes what’s really inside this old tub,” Bruckner said. “They can salvage her and send all that loot back where it belongs. The war will be over, there will be a new government in Germany, and no one will ever be the wiser.”
“Except us," Karl added glumly.
“And that bastard Kruger." Stolz shivered.
“Let me worry about Kruger,” Bruckner answered. “He has a lot to answer for and I intend to see that he does, legally, in an open court.”
“Still, we would be scuttling a fleet boat in time of war.” Karl shook his head sadly.
“It�
�s the only choice they left us, the only moral one, so which law do you want to break? Which order do you chose to disobey?” The Kapitan watched as the other two men nodded in agreement. “Good. And whatever we do, it must be tonight.”
Bruckner turned toward Stolz and said, “I will be blunt with you, Stolz. I don’t know you very well, but I invited you to our little party because the Chief Engineer will never go along and I need a good mechanic to pull it off. You are handy with a wrench. Make it a good one.”
“Jawohl, Herr Kapitan.” Stolz nodded. “But you’re forgetting something. The three of us know what is in those crates, and so does the American.” Bruckner looked down at the deck, thinking. “You can’t expect him to keep his mouth shut about all that gold, can you?"
The question had sinister overtones, and they all knew it. “Never mind the American,” Bruckner finally answered. “You figure out what to do with the boat; I’ll figure out what to do with him.”
The other two men exchanged wary glances, but they didn’t dare ask.
Except for bringing him some blankets and food every six hours, the Germans did exactly what the captain said they would; they left Michael alone. For the first time in months, no one was beating on him, starving him, or trying to kill him. So he ate, he slept, and he used the long hours to explore the compartment. As the captain and the other two Germans had done, he peeked inside most of the wooden crates and boxes. From their reactions, it was clear they hadn’t known what was inside them until they popped the tops off. Not that it made any difference to him. He was trapped inside the cold, sweating hull of a German U-boat heading God only knew where, and all the gold and jewels in the world weren’t going to buy him out of this one.
Who could figure these damned Germans anyway, he wondered. Take that U-boat Kapitan; he might be the only Kraut in the whole damned war with a conscience, but one good apple doesn’t make a rotten barrel any better. Besides, how many Allied sailors had he sent to the bottom without a twinge of conscience? Men drowning by the hundreds, the thousands? One day, he is blowing unarmed merchant ships out of the water; the next day he gets religion and decides to save a lone American? Did he think that evened the scales? Then there was that bastard Stolz. Michael still owed him for Eddie and that bitter memory wasn’t going to fade for a long, long time. Stolz may not have Eddie’s blood on his own hands, but he didn’t do anything to help him or lessen his suffering either.
Michael had curled up on a crate, wrapped himself in the blanket, and slept as if he were dead. How long had it been since he’d slept like this, not some fitful nap filled with bad dreams but a real night’s sleep? It had to have been before the B-17 began its runs into Germany, long before that final run to Berlin. He couldn’t remember. Everything since then had been one sick, perverted nightmare. Well, Hodge had part of it right. They really had landed on the Planet Mongo.
Mike Randall had fallen into another deep, bottomless sleep when he heard the hatch open and two very anxious German sailors stick their heads inside. “Kommen sie, bitte.” One of them motioned awkwardly for Michael to follow. “Ja, kommen sie.” They seemed polite, almost afraid of him, as they led him aft, one in front and one behind, stooping and bending through a series of round hatches and cramped compartments. But he had seen that trick before. The SS could be polite too. They’d let some poor schlub think the worst was over to keep him quiet until one of them pressed the barrel of a gun to the back of his neck and pulled the trigger. Well, Randall wasn’t nearly that gullible. When his time came, he’d take a few of these shits with him, and maybe the whole boat if they gave him half a chance.
They reached what must be the control room, he realized, and deposited him in a corner behind the chart table. “Warten sie hier. Hier,” the sailor said, pointing to a spot on the floor, as if Randall was supposed to stay put like a well-trained spaniel. Then they walked away and went about their work, seemingly forgetting all about him. He looked around. As impossible as it was to believe at the time, there he was, his back pressed against the cold bulkhead of the control room inside a German submarine, scared silly and hardly daring to move or breathe.
His anxious eyes swept back and forth across the small compartment as he tried to figure out their game. He needed something, an edge. Frantic, his eyes dropped to the chart table. It was littered with maps and papers. As casually as he could, he let his fingers pass over them, then through the sheets, desperate to find something, anything he could use for a weapon. Then he saw it, the glint of steel lying between the layers of paper. It was a drafting compass. He squeezed its pointed legs together and tucked it up his sleeve. Not that a compass was much, but it was sharp and that was a start. Under another stack, he spied a wooden pencil and slipped that up his other sleeve, beginning to feel positively dangerous. A compass or pencil might not be a 50-caliber door gun in a B-17, but in close quarters like this, he could defend himself and that made him feel like a whole man for the first time in months. He had hope now, and a shred of dignity.
Then, at the far corner of the chart table up against the bulkhead, he saw another glint of silver. It was a cigarette case, half-covered by the charts. Silver! Say no more. He palmed it and dropped it into his pocket. A man could eat for a week on what it would have been worth back in Königsberg. Too bad he hadn’t thought to pocket some of those jewels in the torpedo room. When they took him back, he’d pick out a few gemstones and stick them in the lining of his coat or swallow a few, just in case.
As he glanced around the compartment, he realized something was happening. The German sailors were very busy now, preoccupied with all the myriad of valves and switches on their control panels. Pale and drawn, they had fear written all over their faces. Randall knew the look. His aircrew had it every time their B-17 crossed into enemy air space. Soon, a half-dozen other sailors dressed in heavy coats and hooded oil slickers converged on the control room from the fore and aft compartments. One by one, they climbed the narrow ladder to the conning tower above.
Randall knew absolutely nothing about how a submarine worked or what all the machinery in the control room did, but he knew what men were like under pressure. A staccato of orders were shouted down from the conning tower. Suddenly, the bright overhead lights in the boat were switched off, replaced by a hellish red. There was a terrifying series of clangs and whooshes and the deck tilted up. He pressed his palms against the steel bulkhead behind him, steadying himself and praying that his frayed nerves would find something half as solid to hang onto. Then, as suddenly as the deck had tilted upward, it leveled off. He heard feet moving about in the compartment above, more orders and clanging, then a torrent of water came splashing down through the open hatch into the control room. My God! Had the boat split open? Was it sinking? he wondered. But the crew looked unconcerned as the small compartment filled with the unmistakably pungent salty smell of the open sea.
Someone shouted something through the open hatch and a different sailor stepped over and grabbed his arm. He pulled, but Randall pulled back — afraid. The sharp steel points of the compass were right there in the palm of his hand and he was ready to go for the man’s eyes, but the sailor shoved a heavy oilskin rain slicker into his chest. “Bitte, gehen sie auf… You go up, bitte,” the man said, pointing at the ladder.
Michael was still not sure whether to start climbing or fight but the other sailors were going about their duties as if nothing was amiss. He pulled the stiff oilskin on over his tattered coat and did what the man told him to do. He climbed the wet, slippery rungs to the tiny conning tower, only to be pushed up yet another ladder to the open bridge.
When he stepped out on deck after being locked away in that dank torpedo room, the sharp, bitterly cold tang of the open sea was overwhelming. He grabbed the periscope housing and hung on, trying to take it all in. He looked up and saw a dim quarter moon and the shimmering veil of the aurora borealis dancing along the horizon, which he figured must be north. To his right, a jagged line of cliffs rose from the sea, and str
aight ahead, the shoreline flattened out into a wide, sandy beach. They were in a broad bay and the coastline couldn’t be more than a mile away. It was land, but whose? Poland? Germany? Denmark? He tried to make sense of it, but he couldn’t; it was coming at him too fast, crashing down around him in an avalanche of emotions and questions. Why did they bring him up here, anyway? To put a bullet in his head and toss him overboard like yesterday’s garbage? No muss, no fuss, no bloody deck to clean up below? If so, he’d played right into their hands.
“The life raft is in the water, Kapitan,” he heard an anxious sailor yell to the bridge from the deck below.
Suddenly that captain was standing next to him in his badly worn white hat, holding out a large canvas sack. “Here, Sergeant Randall,” Bruckner said with a friendly smile. “There is some food and dry clothes, for when you get ashore.”
Ashore? Michael stared at him, struck dumb.
The Kapitan raised his arm and pointed toward the coastline. “That is Sweden,” he said in halting English. “You will be safe there. But please remember, you have no dog tags, no papers, and no passport. And the Swedes won’t like that. So go inland, as far away from here as you can and hide there until the war is over. Understand? It shouldn’t take much longer now, then you can go to Stockholm, to the American Embassy. Tell them your bomber crashed and you were washed ashore. Say you’ve been wandering around lost and you can’t remember anything. How do you say it? Amnesia? Tell them anything, but don’t say you got off a German submarine. If you do, the Swedes will think you are a spy and send you back to Germany or have you shot. Understand?” Michael looked up at him, looking deep into the man’s eyes for what seemed an eternity, and then he nodded.
“And don’t tell them about the gold bars and all the other things you saw in the forward torpedo room either,” the Kapitan went on. “No one would believe you, anyway. Would you? No, they would toss you into a lunatic asylum and throw away the key. Your own government would do the same. So it must remain our secret, Sergeant Randall, if you ever hope to make it home alive.”
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