The Passenger

by F. R. Tallis

  ‘Shit,’ said Lorenz. The officers stood abruptly—Graf and Falk struggling to get out from behind the table.

  ‘Do you still have your pistol?’ Lorenz asked Falk.

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, get it.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  Lorenz reached into his jacket and pulled out his Mauser. He had been so preoccupied since collecting the two prisoners that he had neglected to put it back in the gun locker. Gesturing for the crewmen to hurry, he waited until they were all behind him before advancing up the narrow gangway between the bunks. The hanging meats and cheeses obscured his view, but he was still able to see the British commander standing in front of the tube doors. Lorenz wondered why Sutherland was standing in such an exposed position: he didn’t appear to be aiming straight ahead, he had his gun pressed against his chest with the barrel pointing off to the side.

  ‘Commander Sutherland,’ Lorenz spoke calmly in English, ‘put down your weapon. We are many in number and you will be overpowered. Put down your weapon, now. My orders are to transport you and Herr Professor Grimstad to France—safely—and that is what I intend to do.’

  Two shots fired. Lorenz dove onto one of the lower bunks and aimed his Mauser into the torpedo room. He saw Sutherland sway for a moment and then fall. When Lorenz glanced down he discovered that Falk had crawled up the gangway on his stomach. He was also clutching a pistol.

  ‘Kaleun? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘I think he just shot himself.’

  ‘And the other one? Is he armed, too?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him yet.’ Lorenz called out, ‘Professor Grimstad? Professor Grimstad?’

  Smoke drifted through the air, and the smell of gunpowder mixed with the aroma of the foodstuffs.

  ‘Shall I put a bullet in him, just to make sure?’ asked Falk.

  ‘We were supposed to be ensuring their safe passage to Brest. I can’t help feeling that your suggestion is contrary to the spirit of our orders.’

  ‘What if he’s trying to lure us closer?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Falk. If I’m not mistaken he’s losing a large amount of blood from a hole in his head.’

  ‘I can’t see it from here.’

  ‘I can.’

  Lorenz climbed out of the bunk and proceeded toward the bow. ‘Herr Professor Grimstad?’ When he entered the torpedo room he saw the old man sitting on his blanket and leaning over to one side. Lorenz crouched beside him and examined the upper part of his body. The entry point of the bullet was clearly visible and the old man’s coat had started to stain. He had been shot through the heart.

  ‘What a mess,’ said Falk. The torpedo tube doors and the surrounding pipes had been sprayed with blood. ‘It’s a miracle he didn’t cause any damage.’ Men were gathering around the entrance: Juhl, Graf, Richter, and the two torpedo mechanics—Kruger and Dressel. ‘Keep back,’ said Lorenz. He crawled over to Sutherland, who was lying with his face pressed against the linoleum. The back of his skull had been blown away, revealing a glistening, wet, grey-pink interior. Around the rim of the hole were shards of jagged, broken bone. When Lorenz rolled the dead officer over he discovered that the man’s eyes were still open and curiously bright. Lumps of matter that had stuck to the overhead began to drop. Something landed on Lorenz’s hand, and when he brushed it off it left a brown trail. He wiped the slimy residue on his trousers and suppressed the urge to retch.

  The dead man was still gripping his weapon. Lorenz pointed it out to Falk and said, ‘A Walther PPK: favored by the SS and party officials.’

  ‘How on earth did he get hold of that?’

  Lorenz stood up. ‘There was either a double agent on board the cargo ship or Obersturmbannführer Friedrich made a gross error of judgment concerning his estimation of Commander Sutherland’s dexterity.’ More pieces of brain tissue fell from the overhead and splattered at their feet. Falk looked up and his face shriveled with disgust. ‘They won’t be persuaded to part with their secrets now, will they?’ Lorenz added as he looked from one corpse to the other.

  ‘The SS isn’t going to be very happy, Kaleun.’

  ‘You have a real gift for understatement, Falk.’

  ‘Well, as long as they don’t try to blame us for their own incompetence.’

  ‘Yes, God forbid. Lucky there’s no chance of that happening.’

  ‘They can’t—can they? What about the evidence, the PPK?’

  ‘Are you pretending to be naïve for my amusement, Falk?’

  The first watch officer stiffened. ‘No, Herr Kaleun.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lorenz, ‘because I’m not laughing.’

  Lorenz left the torpedo room shouting orders. ‘Someone get this place cleaned up. And Ziegler . . . where are you, Ziegler?’

  With the radio man’s assistance Lorenz sent a message to U-boat headquarters explaining what had occurred. He then retired to his nook and made an entry in his log. It did not take very long for the command center to respond and their communication was remarkably succinct: BURY PRISONERS AT SEA. RESUME PATROL. PROCEED AT ONCE AND AT FULL SPEED TO GRID AK 21.

  As soon as the order was announced the boat became subdued. Fantasies were reluctantly relinquished, imaginary jazz bands fell silent, and spectral girls retreated into darkness. The Casino Bar, with its promise of sensual delights and sweet champagne, was reconsigned to memory. Lorenz detected a subtle undertow of nervous agitation flowing beneath the palpable disappointment, and after some reflection, he concluded that the cause was very likely the proximity of the dead. Sailors were notoriously superstitious.

  When Lorenz returned to the forward torpedo room he was pleased to find the area clean and smelling of carbolic. The two bodies had been laid out next to each other, arms by their sides.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Juhl.

  ‘Search them,’ Lorenz replied.

  Sutherland’s pockets were empty but Grimstad had been carrying a small notebook. Juhl stood and handed it to his superior. ‘It’ll be full of mathematical equations.’ Lorenz flicked the pages, and a wry smile appeared on his face. ‘What?’ Juhl inquired.

  There were no numbers in the notebook. Instead, it was filled with neatly copied symbols composed of straight lines of varying length. Some of these symbols resembled letters—one was like an ‘F’, another like an ‘R’—and the way they were grouped suggested words and sentences.

  ‘Look,’ said Lorenz, holding the notebook open.

  Juhl squinted. ‘Runes?’

  ‘That’s what I think.’

  ‘It could still be a code.’

  ‘But why choose runes?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps Professor Grimstad wasn’t a scientist after all. Perhaps he was a specialist in old Norse languages—or a historian of some kind.’

  ‘What possible use would such a man be to the SS? What could a historian know that’s so important?’

  ‘The SS have obscure interests.’

  ‘Even so, Kaleun.’

  Lorenz put the notebook in his pocket and ordered Voigt to find some clean blankets. The bodies were wrapped and carried onto the deck. Above the eastern horizon the clouds were aglow with a sickly, putrescent light. Lorenz called for the boat to be stopped and descended the conning tower. He read the burial service and the two bodies were tipped into the ocean. One of the seamen made the sign of the cross, and Lorenz was reminded of the professor’s odd gesture, the triangle the old man had drawn in the air on coming around after his ‘seizure.’ The waves were slow-moving and evenly spaced. Lorenz touched the cover of Grimstad’s notebook with his fingertips. What had the SS been up to?

  LORENZ WAS DREAMING, AND IN his dream he was standing on the deck, observing the slow materialization of an approaching raft in a vertical column of moonlight. The tableau was vaguely familiar: two figures, one standin
g with a raised arm and the other sitting and slumped forward. Ice floes were knocking together and a frozen mist was depositing crystals on his beard. He looked through his binoculars and expected to see empty sockets and an exposed jawbone. Instead, he found himself looking into the neutral eyes of the British commander. Sitting at Sutherland’s feet was Professor Grimstad. Lorenz heard a voice and it was only when the sentence had ended that he recognized it as his own: ‘No, I’m not coming with you.’ He was no longer asleep, and he was breathing shallow and fast. Reaching out, he tugged the curtain aside. Lehmann was turning the hydrophone wheel, his features illuminated by the glowing dial, his ears obscured by headphones. Clearly, he hadn’t been disturbed. Lorenz turned on the lamp, listened to the electric motors, and wondered if the wind was still whipping up twenty-meter crests on the surface. U-330 was sailing silently through a dark green void, high over submerged summits and valleys that had never known light. An image came into Lorenz’s mind. He pictured a monstrous sea creature roused by the sound of the boat’s screws: sucker-bearing tentacles stirring ancient sediment, fish with bulging eyes and whiskers scattering in black water.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY THE CLOUD-COVER was low and oppressive: a sagging canopy of grey beneath which dirty yellow scraps were blown along at high speed. Juhl and his companions gazed out over a sea that looked as if each wave had been cast from iron. An untrustworthy light created a disconcerting illusion of arrested movement, a bleak, metallic uniformity that extended in every direction to the wide horizon and resembled the surface of a dying planet. Rain drops tapped irregular rhythms on the rubberized cloth of Juhl’s foul-weather gear. The second watch officer’s cheeks had become encrusted with salt and his dry lips were striped with black lines where the skin had broken and bled. His balaclava seemed to offer no protection from the malicious wind.

  ‘This is shit,’ said Hoffmann, an electrician with a broad Bavarian accent. It made him stand out because most U-boat men were from the north.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Juhl responded. ‘Things could be worse.’

  ‘Could they, sir?’

  ‘Well, imagine what it would be like if you were in the army. Just think of it, all that square bashing and posturing, getting shot at all the time. We don’t have to go on long marches, we don’t have to eat dog meat on the eastern front, Werner is an excellent cook, and our service uniforms are really very eye-catching.’ Juhl took a deep breath. ‘And smell that fresh sea air! Bracing, medicinal, it’s like being on a cruise.’

  ‘You’ve been spending too much time with the skipper,’ said Hoffmann.

  It was an astute observation. Echoes of the commander’s habitual sarcasm could be heard in Juhl’s speech, a hint of weary resignation, grim humor. The second watch officer raised his binoculars and studied the livid, pitiless expanse. ‘You may be right,’ he muttered.

  ‘The wife’s pregnant,’ said Hoffmann.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Juhl laughed. ‘When is the baby due?’

  ‘About now, sir.’

  ‘What do you want, a boy or a girl?’

  ‘I already have a son,’ said Hoffmann. Suddenly, he seemed embarrassed by his personal disclosures. ‘This is shit. How long have we been at sea now, sir?’

  ‘Too long. Sometimes I feel like the Flying Dutchman . . .’

  The boat continued along its course, the bow carving through the swell and producing two frothy trails. A faint melody drifted up through the hatch. Someone, probably Richter, was playing a ballad on the accordion, and Hoffman croaked along with the chorus, ‘Embrasse-moi, embrasse-moi.’ The music had the effect of detaching Juhl from his surroundings, and he pictured the familiar smoky lounge of a Brest hotel, where a scrawny, aging chanteuse with a taste for revealing dresses frequently enacted the end of love affairs on a makeshift stage. He saw her superimposed on the waves, making violent gestures and shaking her mane of badly dyed hair. The vision absorbed him completely until one of the lookouts screamed—‘Aircraft! Sixty degrees!’—and Juhl was jolted back to reality. Even in the second or two it took to confirm the sighting the plane seemed to become inordinately large.

  ‘Alarm!’ Juhl extended the cry until his lungs had no more air in them. The men scrambled into the tower, hardly making contact with the steps, sliding their hands down the ladder rails to guide their fall. Juhl followed. Boots landed on the matting with a loud thud. The bell was ringing, a bright continuous clamor.

  In the control room Graf’s voice was loud and urgent. ‘Flood! Flood! All hands forward.’ The diesel engines were shut down, and the crew in the stern compartments ran toward the bow in order to increase its weight. Two men near the front stumbled and those running behind simply leaped over the sprawled bodies. The vents were opened, and the air that had been keeping the boat afloat was released, producing a bellicose roar, the dive tanks filled, and U-330 became heavier. As the hydroplane operators pressed their control buttons the deck angled downward and the pointer on the manometer began to move. Lorenz steadied himself by leaning against the silver shaft of the observation periscope. There was a loud booming noise as one final, rolling mass of water crashed against the tower, and then, apart from the gentle humming of the electric motors, silence prevailed.

  In theory, they could achieve 150 meters in thirty seconds, but this assumed optimal levels of performance from the crew, and human beings were not machines.

  Depending on conditions a U-boat might be detectable as a shadow even at a depth of sixty meters. A direct hit wasn’t necessary to destroy a U-boat. Anywhere within the parameters of a mathematically defined ‘lethal radius’ the laws of physics would allow a shock wave, traveling though the dense medium of water, to rip the boat apart. Lorenz remembered visiting the Krupp shipyard in Kiel: so many rivets, so much welding. He was agonizingly aware of the numerous weak seams that made the boat vulnerable. The entire crew were cowed in readiness.

  Two deafening explosions followed. Deck-plates jumped and water splashed in the bilges. Maps and compasses fell from the chart table, and the accordion smashed into the fore bulkhead. The depth charges had detonated over the bow, forcing the boat down and increasing the steepness of its dive.

  ‘Very accurate,’ said Lorenz, almost approvingly. ‘This one’s experienced.’

  Graf glanced at the manometer and shouted orders at the hydroplane operators. Now they were descending too fast. ‘Motors, full speed.’ The additional power failed to pull them out of the dive. ‘Damn it!’ Graf addressed Lorenz. ‘We’re not leveling off.’ Fear blanched complexions like a rapidly spreading contagion.

  There were two more explosions, the lights went out, and the hull rocked from side to side. Lorenz felt a hand on his shoulder. Long fingers tensed and the grip tightened. He couldn’t recall a prior instance of the chief engineer choosing to express his solidarity with such a gesture and hoped that it was not intended as a private farewell. Flashlight beams flashed, and Lorenz was surprised to hear Graf’s voice over the public-address system, ‘We’re bow-heavy. All hands astern.’ Graf wasn’t standing behind Lorenz, he had moved away. The shimmering emergency lights came on as the men from the bow compartment clambered up the gradient and through the control room. Amid the subsequent commotion, Lorenz was not conscious of the exact moment when the hand on his shoulder released its grip; however, he was still curious enough to turn, and when he did so, he was bemused to find that he was staring only at pipes and cables.

  The manometer pointer was slowing down, and the tilt of the boat was becoming less severe. Graf stepped toward Lorenz and said, ‘We’re definitely getting back on an even keel. Thank God.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Ninety meters,’ said Lorenz. ‘He won’t be able to see us now.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope we’re not leaving a nice oil slick for him to follow.’

  A few seconds later the sound of dripping could be heard. Graf produced a flashlight and directed the beam close to the overhead on the port side. He lowered his gaze and studied t
he system of complex, serpentine pipes that descended to the matting next to the chart table. With his head tilted and his neck stretched, he looked like a mime artist. The regular beat of the droplets stopped. Graf shrugged, slid the flashlight back in his pocket, and returned to his former position in order to resume his scrutiny of the instruments.

  ‘We’ll stay down here for a while,’ said Lorenz. ‘He’s bound to get bored and fly off. They always do. Airmen have no patience.’

  Graf nodded. ‘All right, Kaleun, but not for too long.’ He touched his ear to draw the commander’s attention to a trickling sound that could be heard above the hum of the electric motors.

  The deck plates rattled and somewhere in the boat a low creaking began. It recalled an earlier age of maritime adventure, taut ropes and the complaining timbers of a galleon. One of the hydroplane operators looked over his shoulder, his face pinched by a flicker of anxiety. There was a sharp crack, like a gunshot, that seemed to come from the petty officers’ quarters. ‘The woodwork,’ said Lorenz. ‘That’s odd.’

  ‘We’re only at ninety meters,’ said Graf.

  There was a prolonged rumble like the sound of a distant storm: hammerings and a sudden, sonorous clang. Lorenz struggled to reconcile the depth reading on the manometer with the ominous noises. It was difficult not to think of the cold, dark water, pressing against the 2.5 cm metal hull, weighing down from above—squeezing the gunwales—unimaginable tonnage. It was how most U-boat men died in the end—a long, fatal descent—crushed to death, when the circular frames gave way, and the pressure hull collapsed.

  A metallic groan increased in volume until it became a horrible yowl. The sound conjured up images of torment, medieval depictions of writhing bodies and winged devils. Then, a jet of water spurted horizontally from a point above the hydroplane operators. It was so powerful that it crossed most of the control room before curving downward to hit the matting.

  Several voices screamed in unison, ‘Breach!’