Golem 7 (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  “If you insist,” said Kelly.

  At that moment Robert came barreling in from the other room where he had been working on the history. “What’s been going on?” he asked. “I heard the Arch spin up. Are we operating now?”

  “We’ve stuck our thumb in the pie,” said Maeve. “It wasn’t done so we’re putting it back in the oven.”

  “What?”

  She told him what they had done, and he raised his eyebrows, as if finally coming to a conclusion about something. “I thought I was seeing double,” he said. “I was reading history on the screen, jotting down notes, then I would forget something and go back to the history and I had a heck of a time finding it again. At one point I found information that was completely wrong.”

  “You were probably getting variation data from the Golems,” said Maeve.

  “I guess so, because I had hard notes in front of me that were completely contradicted by what I was seeing on the screen.”

  “Well, maestro here worked up a pretty significant variation all on his own.” She gestured to Paul with a thumb, and the professor smiled, glad someone else was the focal point of Maeve’s ire for a change.

  “Then I must have been seeing alterations caused by this message you sent, Paul.”

  “Right, we know all about it. We’ve been reading it here on the Golem Module. Golem Bank 7 has been giving Kelly fits. But we’re going to try and reverse this intervention.” He told Robert what he had in mind.

  Maeve was not happy, but she could think of no other solution so she conceded the fight and allowed Paul to go forward. “So how are you going to sign off on this one?” She asked.

  “We’re going to make it seem that the transmission was cut off by enemy action,” said Paul. “There was a scene like that in the movie. The Germans catch a coast watcher trying to transmit from his shack, and they burst in and gun him down.”

  “What movie?”

  “Sink the Bismarck, the 1960 classic.”

  “You’re working up scenarios based on this movie?”

  “Of course not, but you make a good point, and it’s the only thing that I can think of that will make sense. We can’t very well tell them the independent call signs have been compromised and then sign off with one. Nor can we used an established agent’s sign. So we’ll just have to make it seem that the message was cut off. But before we do anything we had better consider all our variables here. Tell us what you were on to, Robert, I don’t want to miss anything else important enough to sink ships.”

  Chapter 20

  Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Arch Complex, 11:55 A.M

  “Well… It’s this German U-boat. Number 556, the boat with the odd connection to Bismarck. I was trying to run down its service history and learned it came upon convoy HX-126 on May 20th. Our RAM Bank data has a fairly detailed report, with interviews from the convoy commodore, and from witnesses on ships that were torpedoed. Then the German U-Boat data bank also has a clear record of every ship sunk by this boat. It was captained by Herbert Wohlfarth.”

  “Yes, I remember reading about this,” said Paul. “He vowed to always defend Bismarck from harm as a way of thanking Lindemann for sending his band over at the boat’s commissioning ceremony.”

  “Exactly,” said Robert. “Well, in our RAM Bank data he was unable to answer the call because he had expended the last of his torpedoes in this attack on convoy HX-126.”

  “Not in all these Golem data sets,” said Kelly.

  “That’s what I was talking about!” Robert said excitedly. “The information kept changing on me. I took a look at that British cruiser we thought the Assassins were operating against. First it was Sheffield having mechanical problems with her engines, then that vanished and Sheffield was involved in a battle and put out of action—it wasn’t even there! Another cruiser had come up in her place. And look at this,” he pointed. “It’s not what I have in my notes at all. I can fetch the notebooks for you, and you’ll see.“

  “We’ll take your word for it,” Maeve assured him.

  “Then I took a look at this U-boat, but every time I checked the data seemed to change. First off I learned Wohlfarth retained one torpedo, forsaking a shot at the last of three ships he was to have sunk on that convoy in the hopes of finding something better.”

  “That is the very same torpedo he hits Repulse with,” said Kelly.

  “Then that was obviously caused by Paul’s intervention,” said Maeve.

  “Alright,” Robert went on, “so then I get a new variation. I checked the convoy records and that third ship is still not sunk. U-556 has a torpedo when it steams south to the vicinity of Bismarck’s last stand. In fact it has two torpedoes. He encounters Force H this time, not Tovey’s fleet as in Paul’s intervention, and this time he is able to successfully target Ark Royal.”

  “Yes!” said Paul. “Kennedy’s book on this subject makes mention of this. He states that Wohlfarth found himself in a perfect position to attack, though he notes that U-556 could do nothing but watch at that point.”

  “The U-boat site even goes so far as to state that he watched the fateful air strike take off,” said Robert, “the last strike on Bismarck that damaged her rudders and doomed her. But not now. Not this time. Wohlfarth fires his last torpedo, and hits Ark Royal. It’s not a fatal hit, but it does cause flooding and the resulting list prevents further air operations, particularly in the very high seas they were navigating.”

  Paul had a troubled look on his face. “Could Wohlfarth be a Free Radical, just like Lütjens? Could his decision on retaining that last torpedo and how he chooses to use it be our principle lever on these events?”

  “A willful decision is seldom a true Pushpoint,” said Maeve. “If Wohlfarth is a Free Radical then there isn’t much we can do about him or his choices. And there’s one more thing to consider,” she warned. “This could all have resulted from a counter operation. We’ve opened the continuum now, and the Assassins may have picked up on that, seeing what we are trying to do. They could have launched a defensive operation already, or yet another attack aimed at assuring Bismarck gets to a safe port.”

  “Good point,” said Paul. “That could account for all the dissonance we have in the Golem data stream as well—and for your confusion on how U-556 operates, Robert. If they have a Nexus Point open on this as well, then we would certainly see a lot of confusion in potential results. It’s clear that the air strike by Ark Royal was a vital stroke against Bismarck in the real history. All the interventions thus far seem to have been aimed at preventing it. First they operate against Sheffield, because the mistaken attack causes the British to correct their faulty magnetic pistols on the torpedoes.”

  “I don’t think they could have known that by preventing a torpedo attack on Gneisenau they would also be preventing one on Bismarck, said Maeve. But that’s what happened in the altered history. They could have just been trying to buck up the odds for Bismarck’s safe return by making sure that there was another German ship available at Brest that could sortie out to aid her.”

  “Right,” said Paul.

  “Then, in the intervention Paul just ran, it’s U-556 that takes a prominent role” said Robert. “The reports we’ve had so far show Wohlfarth disabling Repulse with his extra torpedo, yet my notes say it was Ark Royal—at least before everything started getting fuzzy on me. The bottom line is the same, however. Wohlfarth retains a torpedo and uses it to strike a British capital ship that would have been instrumental in sinking the German battleship. We don’t know about Repulse. Perhaps her viability in Paul’s intervention might not have mattered, but we do know that without her King George V cannot stand alone.”

  “And in that other variation you uncovered before the Golems went haywire, Wohlfarth strikes Ark Royal instead. Force H cannot slow Bismarck down in that event,” said Paul. “So how do we operate now? How do we try to persuade Wohlfarth to fire that last torpedo at a lowly steamer?”

  “Well we can’t very well do anything from
his end of things,” said Maeve.

  “Could we do something with the convoy?” asked Robert.

  Maeve considered. “It would be easy enough to alter its course I suppose, but I don’t see how that will help us. We want the U-boat to find it and expend every last torpedo, but that seems to be coming down to a matter of choice on Wohlfarth’s part.”

  “Last time it was the horses,” said Kelly. “This time it’s the damn torpedoes!”

  The remark seemed to strike a chord in Paul, and he brightened. “That’s right! Everything seems to involve a torpedo! Whether they are used or spared, whether they explode correctly or not, they have an effect. Remember how they would often give names to bombs and torpedoes, even write on them for good luck in this war? That’s because when they fired there wasn’t any real guarantee they would ever hit the target. There was no GPS and all…” He suddenly remembered something.

  “Hey, see if you can call up a copy of S.C. Forester’s book on this campaign. The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck. And get from our RAM Bank, not the Golem cloud.”

  Kelly nodded and he found it soon enough. Paul asked him to search out a particular scene where the men below decks were hard at work in the magazines and loading bays.

  “Here it is,” said Kelly after typing in a good search phrase. “The Maintenance Chief, a Man named Ginger, is lecturing a new recruit.” He began reading:

  “Well now, you’ve seen all the works, you young sprogs. Maybe if this war goes on another five years or so you’ll know something about the care and maintenance of torpedoes. But there’s one thing for you to get into your heads now: We—you and me—we win wars. Yes, you and me. These things’ —slapping a torpedo— ‘sink ships. There’s Winston in London. He knows what’s wanted. There’s James Somerville with his admiral’s flag. He commands Force H. There’s Captain Maund of this ship. You all know what he does. There’s the young officers of the Fleet Air Arm, They fly off and drop torpedoes. But it’s us that really count. Us, you and me. For if these torpedoes don’t run straight and maintain proper depth, and if they don’t keep that up without varying a foot either way in three miles—well, then the torpedoes miss. And in this case , Winston and the admiral James Somerville and Captain Maund and the Fleet Air Arm might just as well have stayed at home for all the good they’ve done… It’s hits that win wars, and it’s us that makes the hits.” He finished.

  Paul smiled. “You are correct Maeve,” he said. “Willful decision makers are seldom real Pushpoints. Their presence or absence can have dramatic effects, and the choices they make can alter the course of events. But look what we’ve see here! All our great movers and shakers are changing their minds, yet events remain hopelessly muddled. But, my young sprogs,” He put on his best cockney English accent, “and as Kelly and this Maintenance Chief Ginger might put it, it’s the damn torpedoes! Our thought was to feed information to the Primes and hope it would affect the balance, but we were wrong. The Pushpoint is with the torpedoes! If one hits Gneisenau, then Sheffield is shadowing Bismarck and the first Swordfish strike goes in against her, allowing the British find out the magnetic pistols were bad.”

  “Right,” said Kelly. “And if one hits Repulse, then Tovey’s battle fleet cannot stop Bismarck from breaking out into the Atlantic, and we are left with a situation even the Golems cannot seem to sort out to any definite conclusion. We’re effectively blind.”

  “And in all the other data variations it’s torpedoes as well,” said the professor. “Wohlfarth uses one on Ark Royal in the most prominent one.”

  “So perhaps that’s where the Assassins have been operating all along,” Paul concluded, “not with the Primes, but down on the level of the hardware. Now a lot of the torpedoes were duds early in the war. There were incidents where submarines fired one after another and watched them plunk against targets and fail to go off, as we’ve just seen. And this magnetic exploder was a real culprit. The idea was that they would set the depth of the torpedo to run just beneath a ship, where there was little armor. Then the magnetic pistol would detect the hull and go off—one shot, one kill. Yet they had real problems. Call it fate, good fortune, magic or what have you, the torpedoes are charmed in this battle. It’s as if they are making all the decisions that really matter, just as Ginger said.”

  “So how do we operate, knowing all this?” asked Maeve. “What can we do about these torpedoes?”

  Paul thought for a moment, then spoke aloud: “Magnetic pistols faulty - Repeat - Magnetic pistols faulty - Do Not Use. Arm all strikes with Contact Pistols at once.”

  “You’re suggesting another tweet from Lonesome Dove?”

  “Before the strike from Victorious goes in,” said Paul. “That’s the only strike we know of that scores at least one hit. Perhaps we can improve the odds if we prevent those magnetic pistols from being used.”

  “I thought we were backing out of this intervention,” Maeve was not happy.

  “I’m just suggesting one possible point of intervention concerning the torpedoes. You’d have to admit that a message like that broadcast to Ark Royal, or in my intervention, to Victorious, would certainly increase the chances of a hit on Bismarck.”

  “Victorious did get one hit,” said Kelly. “At least in the information we had before the Golem stream was contaminated. But the damn torpedo didn’t go off.”

  “A contact pistol on that one and we would have a big explosion, I’m sure of it,” said Paul.

  “Yet you have no way to know whether the hit would have caused any significant damage,” said Maeve. “Not with the Golem data stream all wacky. You have no more chance of sorting it out than the professor here. Look at his notes!” She pointed at Nordhausen’s notebooks, long pages of scribbling, things crossed out, others underlined or circled.

  “Insofar as the battle is concerned,” Paul reasoned, “if we take the magnetic pistols out of the equation we at least improve the odds for the British.”

  “What about the U-boat? Wohlfarth is a free radical, remember? He apparently decides, in more than one variation, to retain at least one torpedo, and then consistently finds himself in just the perfect place to use it. In one variation he hits Repulse, in another Ark Royal—and these are just the ones we know of. I suppose he could just as well have hit Rodney when he spotted her. This guy is really wreaking havoc on the Meridian here.”

  “Pull up whatever we can find on him from the RAM Bank,” Paul suggested.

  “I’ve done that,” said Robert. “He was a very successful U-boat captain, with several boats before U-556. Called ‘Sir Parsifal’ by his navy associates, he was a hard man, somewhat arrogant, and a strict disciplinarian. Though at other times he had an almost impish streak of humor, even daring to joust with Admiral Lütjens at one point when his boat was working up on trials near Bismarck. You’re well aware of the odd connection between the U-boat and Bismarck. The RAM Bank fetched up a photo of the drawing he sent to Captain Lindemann. Look at it! The man was nearly prophetic.”

  They looked and saw that Wohlfarth had drawn the Bismarck, under attack by three WWI style biplanes that were obviously Swordfish off a British carrier, and it showed ‘Sir Parsifal’ riding his U-Boat to the rescue, diverting the enemy torpedoes with a big thumb on one hand and slashing at the planes with a sword in the other hand.

  “He drew this in January of 1941,” said the professor. “Four months before this campaign. Here’s the translation: ‘We, U-556 (500 tons), hereby declare before Neptune, Lord over oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, brooks, ponds, and rivulets, that we will provide any desired assistance to our Big Brother, the battleship Bismarck (42,000 tons), at any place on the water, under water, on land, or in the air. Hamburg, 28 January 1941 - Commander & Crew, U-556.’ And in every variation except our RAM Bank history, he gets a chance to save Bismarck in much the same way.”

  “Not by stopping the enemy torpedoes,” said Maeve, “but by saving and using one of his own.”

  “I always did say the best defense i
s a good offense,” said Paul.

  “I thought Napoleon had the copyright on that line,” Maeve winked at him.

  “And here’s another note,” Robert went on. “It’s from a British Royal Navy interrogation of Wohlfarth after he was captured later that year. In these notes it seems U-556 carried a total of twelve torpedoes, not ten: five in the tubes, five in reserve, and two mounted in a special container on deck. Now… He sunk six ships, and damaged one other according to our RAM Bank. That accounts for at least seven of his first ten torpedoes. I’ve looked up all the reports of those ships, and he put two fish into Darlington Court, and another two into British Security. That makes nine, with one left over. Our RAM Bank data shows he used that last torpedo on the light steamer Cockaponset. That’s the ship he passes over in all the altered Meridians, urged to do so by his executive officer Schaefer and sub-lieutenant Souvard.”

  “In the altered Meridian, however, it’s the Darlington Court that survives. Cockaponset gets torpedoed instead,” said Paul.

  “Six of one, half dozen of the other,” said Maeve. “The main point is that one ship survives. And on my watch survivors who are supposed to be dead become a real problem. Just look at old St. Lambert from our last mission for a good example, and now look at the father of this terrorist as well. Survivors become a real problem.”

  “What about the last two torpedoes he had stored on deck?” asked Paul. He had been unaware of this information all along, just another of these small details that are so easily lost in the history.

  “The British report states they could not load them into the U-boat due to the rough seas.”

  “Thank God for that,” said Maeve. “I can only imagine what he would have done if he had three torpedoes left over instead of only one.”

  “Yes,” said Paul, “but in this scenario we have to imagine a way in which he has none. Zip. Nada. It’s the only way the British get to Bismarck. So it’s down to this, as far as I can see. We either find a way to stop this cheeky U-boat captain, or we back out of this intervention and send that warning to disregard Lonesome Dove—but if we do that, we lose that easy handle for feeding in more information if we ever have to. Trying again with another independent code will likely be viewed with some suspicion. In fact, they may even change the code. Then we’d be stuck.” He looked at them, his face as serious as they had ever seen him before.