The men were pulling the dingy up on the sand when she neared them. Each had a full beard and was wearing dark clothes and a dark knit cap with a pompom.
It seemed odd that both would be wearing the same strange outfit. There was something familiar about them.
Johanna froze when she realized what these men were.
They were U-boat crewmen.
The two men stared at her, neither saying a word.
Johanna broke the silence, clearing her throat.
"Guten morgen," she said. One the sailors inclined his head in greeting, but said nothing.
She tried again. "Verstehen Sie mich?" she asked. No response. "Ich kenne nicht das Kennwort."
Both men broke into laughter. One gestured to the beach.
"Get your things and come on," he said in German.
Johanna thought for a moment and nodded. She held up a finger, just a minute, and walked back to where the Dalys were waiting.
"They want me to go with them."
Charlie craned his neck to look at the men. "Well, first – are those two what I think they are?" Johanna nodded. "And they want you to go on a U-boat with them?" She nodded again.
"Out of the question."
"I'll be fine."
"No, you won't be fine. You'll be back in the hands of the Germans. You don't know where they're going to take you or what they're going to do to you."
Eve reached over to take Johanna's hand.
"We don't want to lose you again, is what he's trying to say, dear."
"You're not going to lose me," Johanna replied. "Why would they go through all this effort to bring me back to the States if they were going to harm me? They could have done whatever they wanted when I was still in Germany. But they didn't."
Charlie threw his hands up. "I can't believe you're saying this. We're talking about Nazis for Christ's sake. You're going to bet your life on whether they'll act rationally? What makes you think they won't kill you when they're done with you?"
Johanna shrugged her shoulders.
"I just don't think they will."
"Why? Because Hagen seemed half-human? You think that means all the rest of them won't kill you to get what they want? Or that he wouldn't have done the same if he'd lived? Is that it? Are you doing this out of some sense of…of pity or loyalty to Hagen?"
"I don't know, maybe. But don't you want to know what's behind all this? Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing at COI? Well, this is how we're going to find out."
Charlie shook his head.
"No. So help me, Johanna – if you get on that submarine, I'll find the nearest pay phone and call the Navy to intercept it."
Johanna glared at him.
"And what are you going to have them do? Launch torpedoes to get it to stop?" she barked. "Is that it? You're going to kill me to prevent me from doing this?"
Charlie looked down at his feet and kicked a pebble. He sighed and shook his head.
"Johanna, you may not be my flesh and blood, but you are my daughter just the same. I say that because what I'm about to say I want you to hear as if I were your father."
Johanna felt frozen to the spot, and listened.
"I'm not telling you anything you don't already know when I say you are the most obstinate person I have ever met. In your case, as a woman in academia I think it's served you well. But it's more than just stubbornness. You've got a rather large sized chip on your shoulder, and I think it clouds your judgment. Did you know that Lowe didn't want to sign off on your dissertation defense? He made up some rationalization, but it was really because you got angry at him and made him look like the old fool that he is. You were too stubborn to let him have the last word. While you were waiting outside, the rest of us had to assuage his ego and convince him to pass you."
Johanna stared at Charlie.
"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked.
"Because you are letting your stubbornness get the best of you right now. You don't know where they're taking you. You don't know what they are going to do. And you know you don't know. But you're going anyway. There's a fine line between courageous and foolhardy, and you've crossed it." He paused. "I think you're going just because you know you shouldn't."
Johanna tried to conjure an argument, anything to refute what he had said. But she couldn't. He was right. She didn't know what was in store for her. Maybe it was stubbornness that was driving her, but her desire to know what Hagen had died for overrode everything.
She gave Eve a hug and gathered Hagen's suitcases.
She stopped and put them back down. Opening one, she took out Hagen's books and stuffed them into her coat pockets.
"I don't think I'll be needing the suitcases," she said. "Why don't you take them back to Washington with you? I'm sure the codes and radio information should be useful."
Johanna looked back at Charlie who had a wounded look on his face. Softening, she hugged him and pecked him on the cheek.
"I'll be fine, I promise."
She turned and walked back down to the water where the crewmen were waiting with the dingy. She got in and the two men rowed her out towards the sunrise.
Mearah felt the Plymouth's rear end slide in the dirt as he yanked hard on the steering wheel. In the early morning light he could see a black car in the far end of the beach parking lot. It had to be the Dalys and Johanna. He saw the top of a man's gray head down by the water.
"Over there," Alexander said, pointing.
"I see him." Mearah pulled up behind the black Pontiac, parking the car in. He and Alexander got out and ran across the sand.
Charlie and Eve Daly were alone, walking along the beach. They were holding hands, looking like any other couple enjoying the shore at sunrise.
The two BSC men caught up to the Dalys and blocked their path.
"Where is she?" Mearah panted.
Charlie made a puzzled face. "Sorry?"
"Where is she?" he repeated. "Where is Johanna Falck?"
"I'm sorry, we don't know where she is," Eve replied. "May I ask who you gentlemen are and why you're looking for Johanna?"
"Don't play us for fools," Alexander snapped. "We know you were with her at the motel, we know you're helping her. Why are you here? Did someone meet her here?"
Eve made a motion to walk past the two Brits, pulling Charlie behind her. Mearah moved to block her path again.
"Tell us where she is," he demanded. "You don't expect us to believe that you're here for a sunrise walk on the beach? In November?"
Eve smiled. "I like to collect seashells." She held out her hand to show two mussel shells.
Mearah let out an exasperated gasp while Alexander simply looked dejected.
Charlie patted Mearah on the shoulder.
"Come on, lads. Let me buy you some breakfast."
44
Johanna couldn't help a feeling of déjà vu. She sat on the narrow bunk in the captain's quarters with the green privacy curtain less than a foot away. The same metallic smell of machinery and diesel filled the air; the same sounds of men working and talking echoed against the metal hull. This U-boat trip was markedly different from the last, however.
Now, she was going back to Germany as a known American agent, heading for what, she didn't know. She had nothing to protect her but the hope that she was right: right about Hagen's purpose in kidnapping her, right about the Germans needing her as a witness and right about the Nazis extending peace feelers. She had known intellectually that being wrong could mean death, but sitting here on a German submarine she felt the reality of fear in the pit of her stomach.
Footsteps clicked on the metal floor grating. They drew closer to the captain's cabin, stopping just outside.
A hand reached in and flung the thin curtain aside.
Before her stood a man in a battered blue uniform with silver braid on his epaulettes. He scratched his scruffy beard and looked Johanna over. She felt that his glance was more leering than appraisal and drew her overcoat tighter. The man put
his hands on his hips and cocked his chin.
"I am Korvettenkapitan Wilfried Reichman," he announced. "The U-153 is my boat."
Johanna met his stare without a word.
"I was sent here to pick up what I was told was a valuable spy. Now I think I understand." He reached into the cabin and fingered a lock of her hair. "Tell me, which of the golden pheasants in Berlin has sent me to bring his mistress to France?"
Johanna pushed Reichman's hand away and tucked her hair behind her ear.
"I am no one's mistress," she retorted. A memory of Hagen flashed in her mind and gave her an idea. She folded her arms and gave Reichman a cold smile. "But I'll be sure to remember the name of Korvettenkapitan Wilfried Reichman as the man who dared to touch me. Especially when I talk to my superiors at Prinz Albrecht Strasse."
At the mention of SS and Gestapo headquarters, Reichman pursed his lips and looked at the floor. He muttered under his breath and snapped the curtain closed again.
Once again, Johanna sat by herself in the cramped quarters of a U-boat captain's cabin. This time, she knew where she was headed. What was waiting for her in France?
The days dragged on, each one a monotony of commands and announcements from the control room just outside the captain's cabin. Diving, resurfacing. Diving again. In the dank submarine, days and nights were distinguishable only by shift changes and meals.
One afternoon, Johanna heard Reichman curse his orders that they were not to engage any enemy targets until she was off the boat.
Every day the cook, Smutje he called himself, would bring Johanna a meal and escort her back to the head. Unlike her first U-boat trip, the men were free to be about their business when she was out of the cabin.
Johanna expected more leering and worse, but the men all avoided her or gave her dirty looks. Reichman was nowhere to be found each time she went out. She was surprised until she remembered the superstition about women at sea -- something about a long hair fouling the screw. As cramped as the captain's cabin was, she kept her trips out short in length and few in number.
Instead she occupied herself with Hagen's novels. Hermann Hesse's Narziss und Goldmund, poetic works of Schiller and Goethe and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. With the exception of Schiller and Goethe, the selection of works seemed strange. Johanna was never one for literature, but she remembered from her time in Heidelberg that Hesse was initially supported by Goebbels until one of his works put him on the Nazi blacklist. And the inclusion of For Whom the Bell Tolls was simply baffling.
Over the course of her week at sea, Johanna read this last book twice. The idea that a Nazi officer would be carrying a novel about anti-fascist fighters in the Spanish Civil War made no sense. The Nazis had lent men and materiel to the Spanish fascists. Without that support the fascists might not have won. Why was Hagen reading this? Was it just to practice his English?
She spent many hours thinking about it, but couldn't find the answer. Something didn't seem right about Hagen, but she still couldn't figure out what it was.
When she heard Reichman give the order to surface, she knew it was morning because she had just eaten powdered eggs. She had heard him give that order numerous times over the last week, but something was different. Radio communications at sea were always a burst of Morse code, but now she could hear the regular chatter of voices over speakers in the radio room just outside her cabin.
One voice sounded over and over. Through the static, Johanna was able to make out a few words. It sounded like someone directing traffic. Like a harbor master.
She got up from the narrow bunk and pulled the privacy curtain aside. This time, Reichman was in the control room. Johanna crawled through the hatch and asked what was happening.
"We're coming into port," he replied with a forced smile. "Perhaps you would like to ride above decks in the Winter Garden."
"Thank you, I would."
"I wasn't being nice – it just means you'll be off my boat faster," he sniffed. He ordered a petty officer to take her up.
"Where are we?" Johanna asked.
"Saint-Nazaire," Reichman replied.
Johanna shook her head.
"West coast of France near Brittany. Auf nimmer wiedersehen," he said with a curt wave.
A young petty officer led Johanna up the conning tower ladder and through the outer hatch.
Johanna blinked in the bright sunshine. It was quite a bit warmer than when she had left New Jersey, but still cool enough to feel like fall. She grasped the railing as the U-boat rolled in the light chop of the harbor. She steadied herself and got her first glimpse of Nazi-occupied France.
The harbor was busy with pier after pier of freight being loaded and unloaded from towering ships, most flying the Kriegsmarine ensign. Scores of empty slips lined the harbor – fisherman already out for the day, Johanna guessed.
The petty officer took Johanna by the arm and led her down a short ladder to the Winter Garden – the small deck with anti-aircraft guns. He put a finger to his cap and went back down below. The hatch clanged shut, leaving Johanna alone on the deck.
Her hair whipped her face in the stiff breeze as the sub made its way along the quays. Passing through a series of locks, they entered a basin with more than twenty warships docked all around its border.
Johanna could see what looked like an enormous concrete garage being built on the water to her left. The blocky, squat structure was dotted with cranes and swarmed with workmen. As they came closer, she could count at least twenty bays, one of which had a U-boat in it. It was some kind of sheltered sub base.
U-153 slowed and the outer hatch reopened. Reichman and two of his officers came out on the conning tower deck. None of them looked in Johanna's direction. They were watching three tugboats take their stations alongside the sub, guiding her into one of the bays.
As the sub docked, Johanna looked up to see the concrete ceiling less than twenty feet over her head. The clanging of machinery and the sound of water slapping against the hull echoed off the walls.
Sailors on the dock extended a gangplank to the conning tower deck. Seeing this, Reichman and his officers went back down below.
I guess this is my stop.
Johanna made her way up to the conning tower deck. A sailor with a wind-burned face hurried across the gangplank to meet her. The two ribbon tails of his wool cap fluttered in the breeze.
"Please come with me, Fraulein," he said with a friendly smile. He held out his hand and led Johanna down the swaying gangplank.
He ushered her through the bustling dock, past mountains of wooden crates being readied for loading and over to an empty corner of the bunker-like pier. He tipped his cap and walked away, leaving her there alone.
A group of sailors smoking cigarettes walked by, looking like they were coming off their shift. One smiled at her and stopped, looking her over. She fixed him with an icy stare and affected an arrogant pose with her arms crossed. The smile left the sailor's face and he continued on his way.
Johanna felt like an exposed and obvious target standing there alone. Everywhere she looked had a swastika – burned into the wooden crates, adorning the uniforms of the men, colors flying off ships. At the DAI in Stuttgart, she could hide behind her cover story and her anonymity. Now she was a known American agent in the heart of Nazi territory.
Less than five minutes later, a boy who couldn't have been over eighteen approached her. He was wearing blue overalls with the Luftwaffe eagle insignia on his gray peaked cap.
He made a stiff bow and introduced himself as Lieutenant Franke. Johanna doubted he had ever shaved. She nodded in response.
"Come with me, please," he said, offering his arm. Johanna ignored the gesture and followed him up two flights of metal stairs out of the sub docks.
Franke led Johanna away from the sub base to a gravel parking lot. He pointed toward a small white Opel and opened the passenger door for her.
Johanna wondered if all pilots drove as fast as Lt. Franke. She held onto the door han
dle as he whipped around corners, taking them out of Saint-Nazaire and into the salt marshes of the countryside. She wanted to ask where they were going, but not knowing who to trust she decided to keep silent. Fortunately, Franke obliged. He kept quiet, only taking his eyes off the road to get a glimpse of Johanna's legs sticking out from her overcoat.
The dirt road became rutted with deep mud puddles. Franke slowed the car as the road curved around an old willow tree. Johanna could see a clearing beyond – a thin strip of mowed grass among the trees. At the end of the clearing sat an olive airplane. A black cross was painted on the side with the ubiquitous swastika on the tail.
Fifth Column Page 29
