by Bodie Thoene
“That’s it, then,” Dooley said at last, voicing the despair the others all felt. “They’ve left us here to rot.”
“Don’t give up hope,” Chaplain Gabriel urged. “Maybe all this means is that rescue is near.”
“Sure, Padre,” Dooley said. “I just don’t want to get rescued after I’m already dead.”
A tremor ran along the spine of the Altmark.
“What was that?” Trevor remarked.
“What was what? I didn’t hear nothin’.”
“Not hear, felt.”
“I didn’t feel nothin’ either. ’Course, I haven’t felt my toes in about three hours.”
“There it is again,” Trevor said as a shudder coursed through the freighter.
“I felt it, too,” Nob agreed.
“You’re both dreamin’,” someone challenged. “It’s just more ice buildin’ up outside. Like as not, they’ll find us froze inside a iceberg in a hundred years or so.”
The bilgewater in the hold started sloshing from side to side. “They started up the engines!” Nob exulted. “We aren’t abandoned after all.”
The freighter rumbled with the returning life of her power plant, but she did not get under way immediately. “What are they playin’ at?” Dooley wondered aloud.
The senses of the prisoners in the hellhole were so tuned in to feeling the rumble of the ship that they did not notice the hatch being opened until it was thrown back.
“Achtung, Tommies,” Thun’s guttural voice ordered. “We are about to be attacked by a British warship.”
Loud cheering greeted these words, but Trevor was instantly suspicious. Why was the German captain telling them this?
The answer was not long in coming.
“Shout while you still have voices,” the Nazi officer said. “Here is a little something to keep you company.” He dropped into the hold an oilcloth-wrapped parcel, which was caught by the chaplain. “If we get away, I’ll take that back from you. Otherwise it is yours to keep.”
“What is it?” Chaplain Gabriel asked.
“I will scuttle the Altmark here in the fiord rather than let her be captured,” Thun said. “That is the time bomb to do the job. It will go off if you unwrap it, or in thirty minutes if we do not escape.” The hatch clanged down, shutting off the horrified protests of the men in the hellhole.
“Shouting will do no good, lads,” Gabriel counseled, “but God can hear our prayers.”
30
A Blossom of Radiance in the Darkness
Even after all the time he had spent aboard the Cossack in the high latitudes of the North Sea, Mac was still surprised at how abruptly and how early the sun went down. It was barely late afternoon, and already a curtain of blackness replaced the gray veil of the daytime sky.
The destroyer prepared for her entry into Jossing Fiord. Her gun crews stood by their weapons. The orders they had received were understood, but no less difficult to accept. They were not to fire unless fired upon.
“Blimey!” the loader on a heavy machine-gun team burst out. “Let them blokes what thought of that one come here and go eye-to-eye with them torpedoes!”
Cossack’s sister ship Intrepid was to stand by and assist in defeating the gunboats when the shooting started. It was also understood that she would inherit Cossack’s mission if the lead destroyer was blown out of the water.
Captain Vian ordered the huge, incandescent searchlights lit. Beams that were millions of candlepower blazed across the dark water. “Like givin’ them torpedos a track to run on,” muttered the loader, earning himself a cuff on the ear from his crew chief. Vian wanted to leave the Norwegians no doubt as to his intentions. Cossack would proceed directly into the mouth of the fiord, daring the gunboats to fire. It was Churchill’s precise instruction.
The blazing lights pinned the gunboats against the snow-crusted walls of the narrow entrance. Their lethal black forms were perfectly outlined in front of the icebound shore. They squatted like the lifeless stone guardians of an ancient temple, but Mac knew they could spring to life at any moment with the deadly animation of a coiled snake.
Cossack swept closer and closer to the entrance of the bay. At this distance, there would be no escape when the torpedos were launched, no room to turn with only unyielding cliffs on either hand. Mac saw that the helmsman’s grip on the wheel was white-knuckled. So was his own on the iron ring of the bulkhead by which he steadied himself. Only Vian seemed undisturbed by the peril. He murmured instructions to the helmsman in a calm, quiet voice.
It was a staring contest at point-blank range. The stillness of the gunboats was so threatening, so full of menace, that Mac almost wished for gunfire to break the spell.
Then suddenly they were past the mouth of the fiord and into the widening reach of the bay behind. The Norwegian warships lay astern of Cossack; they still had not moved. A chorus of excited exclamations echoed off the towering walls of the ice canyon.
But if Captain Vian had been unmoved by danger he was no less implacable when it had passed. “Belay that noise,” he ordered sternly. “This mission is far from over.”
The gleaming cakes of drifting ice closed in around Cossack as her searchlights probed the recesses of the gulf. At slow speed she glided almost silently around the bends of the fiord, alert for her target.
“There she is,” Vian observed at last.
Mac could not immediately make out the Altmark against the shore. He saw a pale, two-story building that stood on top of a cliff of black stone, then realized that he was looking at the superstructure of the freighter above the dark mass of its hull. The stabbing light beams swept from the deck of the German steamer, but no movement was seen from the cargo masts amidships to the heap of netting on her bow.
“She looks deserted,” Gunnery Officer Longbow observed.
“All the more reason for us to look sharp,” Vian countered. “Helmsman, lay us alongside.” The British ship slipped through the water toward its objective as if being pulled along on the searchlight beams.
Cossack’s bow, which had been pointed directly toward the center of the freighter, swung to port as the destroyer edged up next to the Altmark. When the warship’s flank was opposite the merchantman’s bow, a blasting siren from the German ship ripped the night apart. Altmark jolted awake, and her bow swung toward Cossack’s side.
“Ahead full,” ordered Vian calmly. “She is trying to ram us. Mr. Longbow, give the order to fire.”
The heavy bow of the German freighter swung after the destroyer with ponderous but inexorable motion. It was like being chased by an iceberg. There was no speed to speak of, but any collision with so massive an object would be shattering. Even the lines of tracers that reached out from Cossack’s machine guns seemed a puny attempt to ward off such a crushing blow.
Altmark’s starboard quarter swung across the fiord’s width to swat the Cossack like a bug. At the last second before impact, the freighter’s stern grounded on the shore of the inlet. Her movement suddenly stopped with a rasping noise and a shudder.
“Now, helmsman, hard to starboard,” Vian commanded. “Mr. Longbow, rake her deck. Boarding party!” Vian’s voice elevated to shout a command that had not changed in a thousand years: “Grappling irons away!”
In an instant the two ships were wedded together by barbs and cables of steel.
“Come on, lads.” Second Mate Beard led the charge over the rail, waving his pistol.
In the superstructure of the steamer, shots were fired from ports looking down on the deck of the Cossack. A heavy machine gun pivoted upward to shatter an entire row of the openings, and the shooting fell silent as quickly as it had begun.
Mac saw a group of German sailors break out of a hatch amidships and make a dash for the netting-covered objects on the deck. But Cossack’s earlier experience with camouflaged weapons had taught them well. Not a single figure even reached the gun emplacement before all had been cut down.
Racing from the bridge, Mac found himself acr
oss the rails and onto Altmark’s deck before he was even aware of what he was doing. He was as caught up in the excitement of the rescue as all the others in Cossack’s crew.
Mac sprinted toward the gangway that led below. The clatter of Cossack’s machine guns kept the Germans pinned down as the British tars swarmed over the deck. Halfway to the ladder, Mack tripped over a coil of rope and sprawled. As he fell, a trio of shots splatted against the metal of the Altmark’s superstructure, showering him with chips of rusty paint. The point of impact was just where his chest would have been.
Each gunshot was a blossom of radiance in the darkness. The blazing searchlights swayed across the surface of the steamer, pinpointing knots of armed Germans. The rapidly firing heavy weapons of the British destroyer swiveled to follow the path of the beams, making it seem as if the rays of light were doing the killing. The whole of the deck was a stage performance gone berserk: brilliant illumination, then pitch-darkness, popping sounds and screams, and rapid rushing movements followed by crouching stillness.
More German soldiers emerged from the cable tier at the far bow end of the freighter. Attempting to take the British from behind, they came out of hiding firing MG-34s from the hip and spraying the freighter with bullets. Two Englishmen went down, and the rest knelt to take aim at the new threat.
One of the Germans drew himself up to lob a grenade. At the peak of his motion, a searchlight pierced him and a single shot rang out from the bridge of the Cossack. The German clutched his side, bobbling the toss. The explosive clattered on the metal decking, bouncing amid shrieking men. Mac turned his head aside at the instant of the explosion. The crump of the grenade was followed by a renewed chorus of agonized groans.
Mac saw a handful of remaining Nazis throw themselves over the side of the ship, but whether into the water or onto the shore he could not tell. He had reached the stairway down and was rushed along with a knot of British sailors intent on freeing their countrymen.
The interior of the Altmark was absolute blackness, and though a few of the men carried electric torches, they were afraid to use them for fear of drawing a shot. The charge slowed abruptly as suspicion of an ambush took hold.
A muffled shouting and a riotous clanging noise reached the ears of the rescue party. “That’s more shooting up on deck,” someone called.
“It’s water gurgling in the hold,” yelped another. “The Germans are scuttling the ship.”
“Shut up and listen!” ordered Second Mate Beard.
In the silence that followed his command, the din of metal on metal continued, but over it could be heard voices yelling “Help us! Get us out of here!”
“Come on, men!” Beard shouted. “It’s this way!”
They met no more Germans on the descent into the Altmark. The hatch of the first hold they came to was dogged shut from the outside, but Beard still opened it cautiously, his Bren gun ready. The portal was a dimly seen silhouette that led from blackness to even deeper shadow. No sound came from the interior. “Are there any English in there?” Beard called out.
There was a momentary silenc. Mac held his breath, then heard, “Yes, mates, get us out of here!”
“Well,” Beard offered by way of explanation, “the navy’s here!”
Hatch after hatch was flung open to reveal scores of British prisoners crammed into unlit, poorly ventilated iron cages. Out of every cargo hold came sailors who had been imprisoned for months. By the improvised lighting of handheld flashlights and torches, Mac shot film of the emotional scene. Total strangers fell on the necks of their rescuers, shaking hands and hugging, offering their gratitude over and over. Painfully squinted eyes blinked against the unaccustomed glare, and trembling hands clutched bearded faces in an agony of fear that the deliverance was not real.
Mac backed up against a bulkhead to frame another shot when a small square hatch under his feet rang with the sound of repeated blows.
“That’s the hellhole!” one of the rescued men shouted hoarsely. “Get ’em out of there!”
The hellhole was an unused fuel tank. It stank of bilge, diesel, and human waste. When the lid was raised, the muffled calls of “Hurry! Hurry!” increased rather than subsiding. Instead of men climbing out to freedom, a small parcel wrapped in oilcloth was passed up first. “Quick!” someone yelled as the object was handed to Mac. “It’s a time bomb! Over the side with it!”
Like a child’s game with disastrous consequences for the loser, the bomb was passed from hand to hand out of the hold of the ship and up to the rail. “It’s a bomb! Get rid of it!” The device was launched over the rail of the Altmark to sink in the depths of the fiord. No one ever knew whether it would have exploded or not.
The fifteen-by-fifteen-foot steel cube disgorged twenty men. Their oil-streaked, pasty complexions and bony frames made Mac think of Jonah, half digested in the belly of the whale. He helped lift them free of the pit.
“When did you get captured?” he asked one young man, no more than age twenty-five, who nevertheless looked about seventy.
“I don’t know what day this is.”
“It’s mid-February. The sixteenth, I think.”
The emaciated form was racked with coughing. When the spasm subsided, he replied, “Almost three months?”
“Does your family even know you are still alive?” Mac asked.
The face narrowed in thought. “I don’t know. . . . I doubt it. How could they?”
“What’s your name?”
“Trevor,” the figure replied. “Trevor Galway.”
Adolf Hitler was in his office in the Chancellery when he got word of the fate of the Altmark. “And how many British destroyers were sunk in this action?” he demanded.
The Kriegsmarine officer swallowed hard. “None, Führer.”
“None?” Hitler shouted, a speck of moisture flicking onto the naval officer’s face. “No resistance? No courage?”
“Five sailors did die, Führer, and five more . . .”
But Hitler was not even listening. “All the way back from the South Atlantic. Two months of concealed movements. Nearly returned with all the prisoners, and then this! To give up without a fight! Shameful! Despicable!”
The officer knew better than to argue the point. “The Norwegians are to blame, Führer. They permitted the British destroyer to enter their waters and attack the ship after having granted Altmark their protection.” He saluted crisply and exited the office.
Hitler barely acknowledged his departure. “Get me von Brauchitsch,” he bellowed into the intercom, demanding the immediate presence of the Wehrmacht’s commander in chief.
Heinrich von Brauchitsch was a quietly intelligent soldier, widely respected for his ability. But his will was no match for Hitler’s, and he had long since given up trying to oppose the Führer’s wishes.
“Have you heard of this outrage in Norway?” Hitler demanded without preamble when the general arrived. Von Brauchitsch barely had time to nod before Hitler launched into his orders. “We will not wait to attack Norway. The assault on the French will take place as planned, but I want the invasion of Norway moved up a month. A whole month, do you hear? Norwegian collusion will allow the British to use the North Sea ports against us. We will not permit it!”
Horst von Bockman was home again. Really home.
He and Katrina lay together beneath the warmth of the down quilt, and it was as it should be. He was drowsy and contented beside her now. He felt somehow healed by her touch, whole again . . . as though they had never argued, never been apart. She kissed his neck and traced the line of his shoulder with her fingertips. Afraid to move, afraid she would stop, he pretended to sleep.
“Touch me,” she murmured impatiently and took his hand, bringing it to her lips.
He wanted her again. Pulling her against him, she yielded with the gentle, urgent desire of familiar love.
“I knew you were awake.” She laughed.
“I never really sleep when I am with you.” He kissed her mouth and felt he
r heartbeat quicken to match his own.
“And when you are not with me?” Her voice was tremulous but still teasing.
“Then I sleep only to dream of you.”
“Horst.” Her breath was sweet. Whispered in his ear, her words made him dizzy. “I want us . . . to make a baby. Part of you to stay with me when you are away.”
There was a kind of magic in her request. It charged him through with tenderness for her like he had never known. He could not speak to answer. He wanted to see her face, but it was too dark. He wanted her to look in his eyes . . . to know how much he loved her.
Her lips moved against his ear, but he could not hear her voice beneath the drumming of his own pulse.
It did not matter what she said. He would agree to anything—everything she asked him. He nodded as she ran her fingers through his hair, then strummed his back in rhythm as though she heard music playing.
EPILOGUE
That word above all earthly pow’rs,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through Him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also—
The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still:
His kingdom is forever.
EPILOGUE
News of the rescue of British sailors from the Altmark lifted the morale of all of England.
Eva Weitzman and John and Elisa Murphy traveled from Wales to London to meet Mac when he returned to England with Trevor Galway.
