“And so I know do you,” he said, gingerly applying pressure to the stick, feeling the response through his fingers that told him that there was still the right amount of tension on the cables. The explosions were constant flashes destroying his night vision, angry stars of fire and smoke that lived only an instant before disappearing; the never-ending thud of shrapnel striking wood ribs and canvas skin. Balsa-plywood sandwich, a beaming mechanic had told him proudly, running his hand along the smooth underbelly of the aircraft.
Wooden aircraft. Like the first war.
A blast shook the aircraft and Gierek kicked left rudder to bring it back on course. He shouldn’t have been mean to the dog. The filthy thing is always in the way, he argued. Bad luck, bad luck, he countered. Every mission I must have him moved, why my plane? Why me? He began humming Goralski Taniec. The flak was subsiding but occasional clusters filled the night. He dropped a few lyrics into the humming; “Oh, why did you leave me?” as he studied the instruments.
“Gierek?” Jagello said, the first word that he had spoken in over an hour.
“Yes?” Gierek said.
“Is that the only song that you know?”
Reubold sat on the case of 2cm ammunition in the pen, waiting for the last of the men to gather around him. He longed for a cigarette. His hands were trembling and the last shot of morphine had long since drifted away, leaving the dull ache that gripped his body at a dozen points. It was his legs especially; they cramped when he remained motionless, and the pain was so unrelenting that he wanted to cry out. They actually felt as if they were twisted and misshapen, and he knew that if he looked down he would see gnarled limbs, withered and distorted. When he did look down, of course, his legs were perfectly normal, long and elegant. He wanted to scream liars, liars, and beat them senseless with his fists.
A man beating his own legs, Reubold decided; now that would be a sight.
Waldvogel joined him, the little man’s overalls covered in grease. He and a couple of armament artificers had been trying to decrease the drag on the guns so that they trained smoothly. He was surprised when the work to remove the guns and foils had stopped. Reubold had told the men nothing except to stand down; an explanation would come later. At least he hoped an explanation would come later. Silver Stripes like Walters had a way of changing their minds so that orders were as fleeting as the morning dew. Let the first mild light of reconsideration strike a perfectly sensible order and it disappeared. This was different, however, and Reubold was surprised to receive a telephone call from Walters confirming what he didn’t say on his visit to the pens. The boats will remain as they are. For the moment. That was another thing; Silver Stripes, naval officers who hovered around bases, were reluctant to be specific about anything so that should it return to them they could very easily turn it away at the door like a long-lost relative with doubtful antecedents.
“I’m glad that you could take time away from your whoring and drinking,” Reubold said, the words echoing against the concrete walls of the pen. There was hearty laughter in return. Most of the men had been with Reubold for a while and they respected him. “We’ve been given a true reprieve,” he continued. “That’s like a fallen woman calling herself virtuous again, but I am satisfied with that.” The laughter was louder this time. Reubold thought of the vials in his room as his legs slowly twisted into knots. “The high command apparently has need of us. For what and when, I am not certain. They did not bother to inform me of that. They did inquire about Waldvogel’s wonderful guns and what they did. I said my gunners are blind and the guns are shit.” There was sustained laughter and Reubold rubbed his leg roughly. He grew serious, his eyes sweeping his crews. “We have a chance, comrades. I don’t know what high command wants of us, but we have a chance to show them what we can do. These are fast boats.” He glanced at the S-boats comfortably nestled alongside the quay. “We have got to practice firing, running at full speed, and hitting our targets. Those big gas bags of Waldvogel’s”—more laughter, but subdued because the men knew that this was serious business—“can do some damage when they hit. We’ve all seen the results. But they’re the devil to aim at high speed, as steady as the boats are. And we want to be fast to confuse the enemy and because we stick out like a floating island on Waldvogel’s foils. Fast and accurate, those are the watchwords. Fast and accurate. I want to report to the Silver Stripes that we can thread the eye of a needle at three thousand meters. That means that we have to improve. That means more practice.”
Reubold surveyed the gathering. They shared a look of intense concentration mixed with defiance. Good. They understood what needed to be done. They knew that they could hold nothing back, that if they failed…. He decided to give the pot one more stir.
“There is something else. Something I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear. The army, you know those fellows that keep marching to and fro?” Laughter and a few catcalls. “The army says that if we can’t make our boats work they’re going to take them away and use them as minelayers.” There was an explosion of profanity and insults. Reubold silenced the group by raising his hand. “Feldmarschall Rommel wants more boats to sprinkle mines in the Channel to scare the Americans and English away.” He paused, letting the men’s anger simmer. “Let him find the boats someplace else,” Reubold said calmly. “These are warships, not trawlers. Let us show them that Flotilla Eleven has the fastest, most dangerous boats on La Manche. Work hard, gentlemen. Work well. Those Silver Stripes will see what these boats are capable of.” He nodded to an oberbootsmannmaat, who shouted: “Dismissed.”
Reubold stepped off the box gingerly, his legs crying out in resistance. The speech had drained him and his hands ached to hold the needle. Waldvogel was suddenly at his side.
“I’ve been working on the gun traversing mechanism. It’s much smoother. Much more fluid,” Waldvogel said hopefully.
“Can you hit anything?” Reubold asked, deciding to sit a moment before returning to his rooms. He was very tired and sick of promises.
“Yes. Certainly.”
Reubold nodded. “Good. That is very good. They don’t give us medals for misses, you know.” He stroked his legs, wanted desperately to hammer them into compliance. “We’ll go out in two hours, then. We’ll take your boat out and check the marvelous new traversing mechanism.”
“Yes,” Waldvogel said. “Yes. That will do nicely.”
“Waldvogel,” Reubold said, easing his legs straight out in front of him. “Walters made it very plain to me. Rommel wants our boats. Dresser doesn’t care about them. For some reason, and he hasn’t told me what, Walters wants us to be successful. In his very words; fast and accurate. If we can’t prove that to him,” he struggled to his feet. “We join the army.”
The slide flashed on the large screen in the darkened confines of the briefing room, and Dickie Moore began to speak.
“PRU Squadron 542 chaps brought these back after the raid on Le Havre. They went right to PIU for mark-up.” The Photo Reconnaissance Units were the eyes of the Royal Air Force, their cameras pinpointing targets or bombing results. Photo Interpretive Units examined photographs to determine if targets were selected or if bomber command had succeeded.
The long wooden dowel centered on a circle drawn on the photograph. “Here is the E-boat pen.” The dowel swept the length of a thick dock. “This is called Mole Centrale.” Dickie tapped an area above it, partially obscured by a tuft of clouds. “This rectangle in the Basin Theophile is a floating dock. Obviously much too large for E-boats and intended, I’m sure, for the larger ships of the Kriegsmarine in those heady days before the bottom fell out.”
“Might we dispense with the editorial comments, Lieutenant?” Admiral Sir Bertram Home Ramsey said from the darkness.
“As you like, sir,” Dickie said, nonplussed.
“What ship is that?” an officer asked. “The one capsized at the top of the photo?”
“The Paris,” Dickie said cheerfully, as if he had had a hand in sinking her. “No dang
er of her coming back to life.”
“Bomb damage?” Ramsey chided, moving the briefing along.
“Right, sir. Here is an impact crater. Here.” Dickie searched the enlarged photograph. “And here.”
“Damage to the pens?” Admiral McNamar asked.
“Minor, I’m afraid, sir,” Dickie said apologetically. “Everything around it has taken quite a beating, but unless there is evidence of some damage within the pens, it looks as if it’ll require another go.”
McNamar sat back in his chair and shot Edland a disappointed look.
“Another go it shall have to be,” Ramsey said. “Regardless of the losses.”
“Four out of ten Lancasters, sir,” Dickie said. “And one of the Pathfinders.”
Ramsey passed Dickie a cross look for reminding him. “Regardless of the losses. Turn that thing off.”
The room plunged into darkness as the slide disappeared. Lights suddenly flooded the interior. The men rose, stretching. They’d been meeting for the better part of two hours and most of them were stiff with fatigue. They would take a break and come back to the briefing room for another round of meetings.
McNamar hunched his shoulders and twisted, trying to drive circulation back into his muscles. “So you didn’t find what you were looking for?”
“No, sir,” Edland said to the sound of chairs being scooted out of the way and the flurry of rustling papers. “Prisoner interrogation gave us very little.”
“I told Ramsey that the immediate threat on D-1 and D-Day was the E-boat. He agreed and that’s why the RAF went in.” McNamar nodded toward the blank screen. “Now it looks as if they have to go back, the poor bastards.” A British air marshal stopped by and led McNamar aside, obviously intent on keeping their conversation private.
“You’re the PT boat chap?”
It was the Royal Navy officer who had done the briefing—Moore.
“I beg your pardon?”
“PT boats? Aren’t you the fellow who went out looking for an E-boat? Didn’t find one, but jolly good show just the same.”
“Oh, we found one,” Edland said, remembering the blazing mass bobbing up and down in the water. “We just didn’t get to keep it.”
“Still, quite an adventure. Quite the problem, Adolf’s little boats. It’ll take some doing to catch them in their lair. It’ll take the lives of a lot of good chaps as well.”
“That’s true,” Edland said, hoping that he could return to McNamar soon. He had an idea, something that had been nagging at him since he questioned the scared German sailor onboard the 155 boat. A wild, unformed thought that hung on a conversation that he had had many years before. A friend of a friend, he thought. Some academic who never saw the light of day because they were trapped in a self-made cage of theories, computations, and models. Then Edland heard Cole’s name. He turned to Moore, startled.
“Jordan Cole,” Dickie said. “He’s in PT boats, too. Tall chap. Thin. Do you know him?”
“Yes,” Edland said, wondering what else he could say about Jordan Cole. He decided to leave it at that.
“Splendid,” Dickie said. “Absolutely splendid. Known Jordan since forty-one. Great friend. Great friend, indeed. I wonder, would you mind telling him that you and I met and we must talk? Would you do that?”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Splendid. Perhaps I’ll run into him first but one never knows these days, does one? We really should talk. Catch up on old times and such. Still, with the war being the war it might be a while. So you’ll tell him that we chatted and I asked after him? Won’t you?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“My. My, my. Fancy meeting a friend of Jordan’s.”
Edland saw McNamar motion toward him. “Excuse me, will you?”
“Certainly,” Dickie said. “You won’t forget, will you? Tell Jordan?”
“I won’t,” Edland said, and made his way to McNamar.
“The Royal Air Force is about to turn up the heat,” McNamar said. “The consensus is that if we can’t smash them up in the pens then we’ll catch what’s left of them at sea. It’ll be a couple of days before anything happens; no Tall Boys.”
“Somebody should get a close look at one of those new E-boats,” Edland mused.
“That’s not our concern, Mike. Why the interest?”
“Just curiosity, that’s all, sir.”
“Well, your curiosity is depriving me of one of my most valuable staff when I need him most, so knock it off. You want to solve a mystery, do it on your own time. Put in for some leave.”
“Would you grant it, sir?” Edland smiled.
“In the middle of a war? Not on your life. Come on, we’re going to start again.”
“Will you excuse me, sir? I’ll read over the minutes and catch up.”
“Yeah, okay, but get with me later on. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Edland said.
When Edland was outside, he decided to take a walk to clear his head. He fought the urge to jam his hands into his pockets, a habit of his, because it wasn’t military. He’d been told this by an elderly captain, rather forcefully, and conditioned himself never to do it again, clasping his hands behind his back instead. But his head drifted down so that he studied the cracked sidewalk in front of him, another civilian mannerism, because, as far as he knew, there was no military code against walking with one’s head down. He was dissecting memories, following bread crumbs, his father had called it when his father could be bothered to speak. “Intelligent men are often preoccupied,” his mother explained, using one of several excuses that she kept nearby to account for his father’s coldness. One day Edland, who had reached the age when such things are said, replied at the dinner table: “Yes, mother. Or perhaps he’s just an arrogant, insensitive bastard who cares for no one but himself.” That certainly gave the meal a unique flavor.
McCreay? McCary? Edland’s mind traveled down a twisted path from Columbia to Stanford and finally settled on MIT. It had to be MIT, Edland told himself. But MIT? Why was I … Potter! Probably the most undisciplined individual in academia, a short, round, brilliant man whose personal life was always in tatters. “I wear pants with oilcloth pockets,” Potter had once confided to Edland, “so that I may steal soup.” Potter was one of those men who declared intelligence a burden but whose creativity and genius was a joy to watch unfold.
It was Potter, and it was MIT, and the man’s name was McGill.
Edland bumped into a bowler-wearing individual with a trim mustache and umbrella. “I say, old chap,” the man said, lifting an eyebrow. “You walk on your portion of the sidewalk and I shall walk on mine.”
Edland mumbled an apology and hurried on, looking for a cab. He had to get back to headquarters. He had to send a cable to McGill at MIT. Several years ago Potter had taken him to a long, dank building that held a massive water tank, because McGill’s secretary had captured Potter’s interest. While Potter smiled and spoke with great charm to the secretary whose only attribute Edland could see was a massive bosom, Edland watched McGill hoist a strange miniature ship from the water. Outriggers, Edland thought, having seen devices such as that used to stabilize long, narrow craft in the Pacific. But the explanation troubled him the moment he said it; he knew that it wasn’t correct but before he had time to investigate further, the secretary had dismissed Potter and so there was no reason to stay.
Outriggers, he remembered as he flagged a cab down. But not outriggers. Wings on boats. Flying boats. Sea Eagles.
Chapter 14
In the Baie de la Seine
There were six boats in the 11th Flotilla. Schnell boats, fast boats, in other words, or E-boats the British called them—simply enemy boats. Four of the six boats mounted Trinities, one boat remained in the pens in the process of having the guns installed, and one boat, S-317, had its well enlarged but carried nothing forward; no teeth, the crew told one another. It was on S-317 that Reubold stationed himself during the trials with the ne
rvous Waldvogel at his side. They were just off a sandbar, far out into the bay, and the object of their test was a grand old bark that had strayed off course during a storm many years ago and died in the shallows. She was an unnamed wreck, her destination long forgotten. And everything topside had been swept away by winter storms except for the stubby remains of five masts that had once held fields of glistening canvas, bleached white by the sun. Now, embarrassed by her condition, she lay low in the shallow water so that no one could see what had become of her.
Reubold fired a flare and handed the gun to a matrose, receiving a set of binoculars in return.
“Now, let us see if your hard work has meant anything,” he said.
Reubold and Waldvogel watched as an S-boat rapidly increased speed and then began to rise slowly out of the water on its foils. The wake was minimal as the boat moved ahead, becoming more difficult to track in the growing darkness as it roared across the choppy waves of the bay. Deep in the water the boats churned up a wide swath of phosphorescence—once up on their legs nothing marked their passage except three, slim, shimmering trails.
Waldvogel saw the S-boat swing slowly into position, its Trinity training round at the target. The boats could not turn sharply on their hydrofoils but had to make careful course adjustments as they flew through the water. It was the speed that he and the others counted on to elude the enemy gunners; speed and the power of the three 110-millimeter guns mounted in the bow.
“Coming in now, sir,” Leutnant Kunkel reported to Reubold.
The fregattenkapitan said nothing, concentrating on the gray blur in the distance. There was a sharp puff of smoke behind the guns, followed by another and a third, and then the sound of the low boom reached them. Three distant columns of water appeared beyond the wreck and Reubold ordered: “What was their distance to target? Find out. Send Mueller in.”
A sailor shot a green flare into the air, the harsh wind snatching at the smoky trail as it soared overhead.
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