Night Sky

by Clare Francis

  Then the train was on the main line, going straighter and faster. With excitement David saw that they were approaching a station. There were platforms, station buildings, and a name …

  Mannheim.

  Something stirred in his memory.

  Of course, David remembered and smiled to himself. This was the place he had planned to make for in his great escape from Berlin. This was the place he was going to reach without any trouble, by getting on a train and sitting quietly in a corner.

  David shook his head slowly. What a child.

  The train passed through several small stations, but the names flashed by too fast to read them.

  After a while David dozed again, rocked by the motion of the train, and it was not until much later when the brakes squealed that he woke again.

  It was Saarbrucken.

  They were at the French border.

  He sat for a long time, quite immobile, waiting. At last the train started moving again.

  A small village. Name: Wendel. German name, German architecture.

  Then a small town with a long name. He missed seeing it on his side of the train because they were going so fast. He had to stand up quickly to catch it from the corridor window.

  Faulquemont.

  French name. French architecture. French vehicles …!

  Then he laughed. What a joke!

  The Germans were taking him to France! They were taking him where he had wanted to go all those months ago.

  He smiled for a long time. France …! What a joke! What a joke!

  Suddenly he wasn’t smiling any more. Pain came suddenly, without warning. It came in a great stab that took the breath out of him. He bent over and, clutching his stomach, reached for the precious bottle of medicine. He swigged a mouthful and waited for the soothing liquid to quench the burning in his belly.

  Trembling, he lay down and, all euphoria gone, thought disconsolately: When all is said and done, France, Germany, it makes no difference, not if I’m dying.

  And I started dying a long time ago.

  After that David lost track of the hours. The pain dulled his brain and the darkness confused him, and he slept most of the time. Life became a dream, a nightmare of dim awareness.

  Only when the guard slid the door open with a bang did David wake up, blinking at the sudden light. Usually the guard placed the food hastily on the floor and left, or waited impassively while David went to the lavatory. But one day he shouted, ‘Out! Out! Come on!’

  David tried to gather his wits. How long had he been in the train? Three days? Longer? He stumbled towards the door. It was a moment before he remembered his bundle; he’d left it on the seat. He reached down, picked it up and followed the guard out of the door, bumping into the wall as he tried to find his balance.

  He stepped down off the train. Sidings again. Warehouses and sheds. A large city. But very French, still very French.

  The labourers were pouring out of the train too. David saw that many of them were staggering and falling. Those who didn’t get up were kicked or beaten with rifle butts, then thrown against the side of the track to where the dead and dying already lay in a pathetic pile of ragged limbs.

  He tore his eyes away and followed the guard across the tracks. Suddenly there was a crack! Then another: the sharp whine of bullets. David winced but made himself keep walking. Why look back? He knew what he would see. They were killing the weak, finishing off the dying. Why look back? It only broke your heart.

  They came to a lorry. The guard indicated that David should get in the back. It was a high lorry and David had difficulty climbing up. The guard, a boy of about twenty, helped him up.

  David scrambled in and the guard came in behind him. For a while David sat quietly, then asked, ‘Where are we?’

  The guard looked surprised at David’s German. Then he snapped, ‘No questions!’

  David nodded. ‘Just asking.’

  There was short silence, then the guard murmured, ‘Brest.’

  ‘Ah!’ David exclaimed. He nodded as if he’d known all the time.

  Brest: where was it? David had never been very good at geography. Brest … A port, surely, right on the west coast. So he’d reached the sea after all! The idea gave him pleasure.

  The truck moved off. The sidings and marshalling yards gave way to warehouses and sheds, and then they were climbing a hill. David’s eye was caught by the sparkle of light on water. He watched fascinated as a great natural harbour opened out before him, a wide expanse of water that seemed to be bounded by gently sloping woodland on every side.

  Then the water was obscured by houses and they were skirting round the edge of the city, which appeared to be built on a small plateau overlooking the harbour. The houses disappeared again and, as the truck turned inland, David saw that there was a man-made harbour immediately below, with several warships at its quays. There were dry docks too. And a submarine, which was moving across the harbour, its wake a line of darker grey against the brilliant whites of the sparkling water.

  The road dropped away and turned, and then they were down almost at water level. They crossed over a small canal and rumbled through another commercial area before coming to a sudden halt.

  Almost immediately the truck started off again and David realised they had passed through the gates of a defence establishment: there were several guards on the gate, as well as barracks and military vehicles. Most of the personnel were wearing naval uniform.

  David relaxed a little: he liked the Navy. Though formal and correct, they always seemed straightforward and trustworthy. The officers were of the old school: proper gentlemen, many from the old families, and few real Nazis among them. It would be good to work here …

  The truck stopped outside a squat brick building. The guard jumped out and indicated that David should follow.

  Inside the building a girl showed him up to an office and ushered him in. When David looked back he saw that the guard had gone.

  There was a German naval officer sitting behind a desk. He stood up, a thin, nervous-looking young man. ‘I am Kapitanleutnant Geissler. Please be seated.’

  David waited for the officer to sit down then lowered himself gingerly on to a chair and waited.

  ‘Herr Freymann, we understand you are highly qualified in radioelectrics and that you have been working for some time on the design of radio ranging devices.’

  David nodded, a little taken back by the ‘Herr’. It was a long time since anyone had called him that.

  The officer went on. ‘There is a company here in Brest which we have appropriated to produce electronic and radio components for us. They are making one particular piece of equipment which has the highest priority. It is essential that this device is produced with all speed and in some quantity …’ The officer looked a little unhappy. ‘However there have been problems … Problems of a technical nature. We wish you, Herr Freymann, to supervise the technical side of the operation.’

  David nodded and waited for the rest.

  ‘The device is needed to protect our U-boats from enemy attack.’ The officer stood up and picked up a thin file from the top of a filing cabinet. ‘I have the technical specifications here. If you could study them immediately – then I will take you over to the manufacturing unit and you can see the organisation for yourself.’

  David frowned. Protecting U-boats, but from what exactly? He still felt woolly-headed from the journey. As he took the file and opened it, he tried desperately to clear his brain.

  There were a few pages of written specifications and a fold-out plan. Both were headed: Project Metox. Most Secret. David started to read the first page of the specifications.

  He blinked.

  It was an anti-radar device.

  His pulse quickened and his mind cleared. This meant that the British had radar, just as Meyer and he had guessed.

  He looked again at the specification. It stated the necessity for the Metox device to pick up signals at maximum possible range, up to thirty n
autical miles. The absolute minimum tolerable range was six miles. That seemed very precise …

  David looked up and asked, ‘Why this six miles? What is so special about six miles?’

  The officer replied, ‘Ah. You see, our U-boats must have plenty of warning. They need at least one minute to dive, and another thirty seconds to get below bombing depth!’

  Bombing …? David stared with incomprehension. Bombing. ‘You mean aircraft attack …?’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ The young man exclaimed. ‘These aircraft approach at over 200 knots, you must realise. We need warning of over five miles to give enough time …’

  But David wasn’t listening. The British had succeeded in putting radar in aircraft. That meant they had made it small enough. But how? How had they done it?

  Rapidly he searched down the first page of the specifications and then flipped impatiently over to the second. Where on earth was it? There! At last!

  The detection device was to cover the wavelengths 1.4 to 1.8 metres.

  David stared, trying to understand.

  The British radar wasn’t shortwave after all. It was within a range of wavelengths Germany had been using for some time.

  Nothing new at all.

  David felt a mixture of relief and anxiety – relief that no-one had got to the shortwave idea before him and anxiety that perhaps he had got it wrong and it wasn’t possible after all.

  He dragged himself back to the rest of the specification and read through it, glancing at the large-scale drawing. It was all quite simple. Whoever had designed this detecting device had got the basic idea right. There was a simple aerial, which led to a radio receiver. When the receiver picked up a radar signal from an approaching plane it emitted a high-pitched warning signal. The main problem, David saw immediately, was to get the emitter to give off a strong signal whatever the range and frequency of the incoming radar waves. The receiver itself was relatively straightforward.

  ‘What problems have you been having, then?’ he asked.

  The Kapitanleutnant breathed in with obvious annoyance. ‘It is difficult to be precise. Most of the devices produced so far have had small but serious defects. We don’t know why. We need you to tell us and to prevent it happening in the future.’

  ‘I see. And the technicians at this factory, are they competent?’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘And the components, where have they been manufactured?’

  ‘Mainly in Germany, a few in France. They all appear to be up to standard, but …! There always seems to be something wrong with the finished sets. We need someone to make sure these faults are stamped out!’

  David closed the file and stood up. ‘I am ready then. At your convenience.’

  It took two days at Goulvent, Pescard et Cie for David to realise that the Metox project was a shambles. Some of the components weren’t up to standard, the assembly line was disorganised and the French personnel were less skilled than he’d been led to expect.

  The problems could be solved, no doubt about that. As always, it was a question of identifying the trouble spots and eliminating them. But it would take time – rather a long time by present standards. From the moment he arrived David had run into an unexpected difficulty: he was virtually unable to communicate.

  He was more than a little surprised when the factory personnel failed to understand more than a few words of his French. He spoke the language badly, admittedly, but not that badly. Of course, it would have helped if some of the French personnel had spoken German, but they didn’t and that was that. To make matters worse, the anxious young Kapitanleutnant kept hanging over David’s shoulder, listening to his hesitant questions and staring angrily at the French technicians when they shrugged or gave the briefest of replies.

  Secretly, David was glad most of the replies were short because then at least he could understand them. When one of the French started a monologue delivered at high speed and great length his heart sank. There was absolutely no hope of following it, and he could almost believe they were doing it on purpose, just to confuse him.

  For a man who loved to communicate precisely and economically the frustration was terrible. David felt as if he were foundering in cotton wool.

  The evenings only served to make him more depressed. He was escorted back to a cold bare room in some barracks within the dockyard compound. The food, sent over from a naval canteen, was good, but otherwise David found the accommodation almost unbearable. He was not used to being on his own. The silence and the smallness of the room pressed in on him: for the first time in his life he could guess at the terror of solitary confinement. Before, he had always been with people, whether working, living, or suffering, and he missed them. He even missed Fengal, the most irascible of the team back at the laboratory! Even him, the old shark.

  The situation was ironic, he had to admit. Never had he been safer – never had he felt so discontented. It was, of course, because they had given him back so much … He had got to expect things.

  The answer was work. Work always made him happy.

  He paced his room and decided on some priorities.

  The first was easy: he would make a success of the project even if it killed him.

  The second was not so easy: Kapitanleutnant Geissler had to go.

  And while he was about it he might as well have a third: to ask for another billet, one nearer other prisoners, somewhere with a bit of company. The request would probably be refused, but it never did any harm to ask.

  He took a scrap of paper from the table and rummaged for the pencil stub which he always kept in his small bundle along with his other treasures: an eraser, a small slide rule and a picture postcard of Berlin – all possessions he’d been allowed to acquire while in the camp laboratory.

  Taking up the pencil he wrote a work list for the next day, itemising each action in his neat handwriting made necessarily larger by the bluntness of the pencil.

  When he had finished he regarded the list critically. It was not much, but it did at least make him feel that he had started.

  He went to sleep immediately and woke early, his mind already busy. He jumped out of bed, examined his job list, then waited impatiently to be picked up for work. When the van finally deposited him at the factory door, he went straight to his office. He got out two blueprints of the Metox device, one in German, the other in French and, by comparing them, made a careful crib of all the technical words he would need for his conversations with the French technicians.

  Next came the more difficult part: the Kapitanleutnant.

  Geissler arrived sharp at eight, as he always did. David forced a warm smile, offered him a chair, and then, his heart in his mouth, dived straight in. ‘Herr Kapitanleutnant, may I ask you a great favour?’

  Geissler looked a little suspicious. He murmured uncertainly, ‘Ask.’

  David smiled briefly, then put on a suitably serious expression. ‘I need to get deeply into the operation here. I need to talk to the men – at length. I also … have a need to do everything at my own pace … In short, Herr Kapitanleutnant, I need to work on my own. Of course,’ he added hastily, ‘I will report to you regularly. Every day, if you wish! Every few hours, if you wish! But …’

  Geissler had got to his feet and was holding up his hand, as if stopping some imaginary traffic. David stood up uncertainly. The officer shook his head and David’s heart sank. Then Geissler said, ‘Say no more. I understand perfectly. If you feel you will get better results on your own, then your request is automatically granted!’

  The officer clicked his heels and left. David sat down in surprise. It had been so easy! He rubbed his hands. He felt a surge of excitement similar to those he had felt when starting new projects in the old days.

  Next, to battle with the French language. David picked up his files and left his office. He was careful to avoid the director, an effusive, overbearing man, and went in search of the chief technician, a man called Gallois. He found him in a corner of the main work
shop, staring disconsolately at some components on the bench.

  David mustered his best French and said, ‘Good morning. May I have a word with you?’

  Gallois looked up and then past David’s shoulder. ‘Ah! No lieutenant today!’

  ‘No.’

  The Frenchman raised his eyebrows. ‘You are in charge, then?’

  David wanted to say: Hardly. But he didn’t know the word and settled for, ‘No, they are always in charge.’

  ‘Ah! So what can I do for you?’

  ‘Could we talk, please, about the problems on the Metox?’ David spoke slowly and distinctly.

  ‘Certainly. I am at your service.’

  David was rather pleased: the fellow seemed to have understood him. They began to walk towards the drawing office.

  Suddenly the Frenchman asked, ‘You are German?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was short silence, then, ‘And you work for the German Navy?’

  ‘Work?’ David laughed. ‘I “work” for the people I must!’

  ‘But – you are employed by them?’

  David frowned. He didn’t understand the verb. ‘Employed?’

  ‘Yes. You earn money?’

  David smiled grimly. ‘Ha! No! No, my friend. I am a prisoner.’ A look of confusion came over Gallois’s face. David added, ‘A prisoner, just like …’ He searched for the word for labourers ‘… the workers I saw on the train.’

  Understanding came over the Frenchman’s face. ‘Ahhh,’ he murmured.

  The mention of the labourers reminded David. He stopped and faced Gallois. ‘Why are they brought here? What work do they do, all those people?’

  ‘They are Poles. They are building the U-boat pens. Great shelters of concrete to stop bombs …’ He threw out his hands to demonstrate a massive explosion.

  They walked on.

  The Frenchman asked, ‘Why are you a prisoner?’

  ‘I’m Jewish.’