The Baltic Run

by The Baltic Run (retail) (epub)

  Quietly he turned, dripping blood, the floor already soaked with great gobs of scarlet, softly turned the key from the inside and then allowed himself to sink gently to the floor, his shoulders braced against the outer wall, his feet pressed against the inside of the door. There he lay and prepared to die, a human wedge curled around a stinking toilet. It wouldn’t be long now…

  * * *

  ‘We tried our best, Kalo,’ the albino gasped, wiping the blood from his big paws onto a dirty tea towel. ‘The door was as strong as hell and even when we got through the panel with the fire axe, and could turn the key, he was still shittingly well wedged. We had a devil of a job moving him so we could finally get in.’ He stopped short, as if he were half expecting an angry outburst from the effeminate Intelligence officer. ‘By that time, he’d snuffed it, I’m afraid, sir.’

  Von Horn nodded his understanding and lit another cheroot, his sinister, hooded eyes thoughtful. ‘You did your best, Klaus. It’s my fault really. I should have made him vomit in the cellar.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Klaus said snapping to attention.

  Von Horn didn’t seem to hear. Abruptly he was wrapped in a cocoon of his own thoughts as he stared out of the window at the parade ground. It was already past reveille and they had hauled up the hated flag of the new republic where once had flown the proud black and white banner of the Imperial Empire. A squad of sailors in fatigues were marching across the square under the command of a petty officer, heading for the mess and their breakfast. But there was no smartness about them, no sense of pride. Their movements were slack and without military bearing and one of them even had a cigarette end tucked behind his ear.

  Von Horn frowned. It was typical of the Kriegsmarine ever since the Red swine had mutinied in Kiel in 1918 and tossed their officers overboard. Discipline was slack. Often sailors threatened their petty officers and gave backchat to their officers. What the navy needed was discipline restored. Indeed, the whole damned Weimar Republic – what an absurd name to give to a state! – needed to have discipline restored and that could only be done by reasserting Germany’s former pre-war imperial power.

  With an effort of will, he dismissed that overwhelming problem which had occupied his mind ever since the Kaiser had been forced to flee, and the Navy had mutinied so disgracefully. Indeed at times the sorry state of the Fatherland depressed him so much that he felt no desire for those svelte young boys, with their mincing walk and plucked eyebrows, who would normally arouse him so much down in the Reeperbahn.

  ‘Klaus,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Kalo?’

  ‘This much we know. The Tommies have managed to steal three bargeloads of the most modern arms, belonging to one of our secret depots. Now normally if one of our dumps is found by their damned allied Control Commission, there’s all hell to pay. They accuse us of not abiding by the terms of that damned Versailles Dictate of theirs. This time they have not done so. Why?’

  Klaus, who had once, during the war, when they had been in destroyers together, been his lover, but who was now his confidant, said, ‘Obviously they don’t want any stink, Kalo,’ he answered in that no-nonsense working-class manner of his which had once appealed to von Horn so strongly, together with that muscular, alabaster-white and totally hairless body of his.

  ‘Ja, agreed. We also know from agents in their infernal country that Tommies have sent a fast coastal craft, one which was used on the raid against the Red Fleet at Kronstadt, on an unknown mission into the North Sea. What does that suggest to you, Klaus, eh?’

  Klaus felt like saying that ‘you’re a cunning old fox with some very peculiar habits to boot’. But he didn’t. Life outside the Navy these days meant misery, even starvation. The docks at Hamburg were swarming with ex-naval sailors begging for jobs from the straw bosses, even giving them a twenty-five-per-cent kickback in order to get a day’s work. No, here he was warm and fed and got his oats for free, too. Some of those young matelots knew what would happen to them if they didn’t bend over. Instead he said, ‘The Tommy’s been sent in connection with those barges. If we knew where they were at this moment, we could make a better guess at what the Tommies intend to do with the contents of those barges.’

  ‘Excellent,’ von Horn gave the albino that cunning wintry smile of his. ‘My thinking exactly. Unfortunately we have no seagoing capability to find them. Versailles saw to that. And the local fisherfolk, on this coast at least, would be no help. They’re all Red along the Hamburg waterfront.’

  Klaus didn’t respond. From what he saw and heard in the dives and alehouses on the Hamburg waterfront, the whole north of Germany might well be Red before the year was out. Hell, he might end up a Bolshevik himself!

  For a few moments a heavy brooding silence fell over the little office while von Horn considered the problem, sucking at the end of the inevitable black cheroot. Outside a sailor, with his beribboned cap stuck sloppily at the back of his head, was lazily pushing a broom down a path in a vague attempt to clean it, his vest hanging outside his slacks contrary to regulations. Von Horn sighed faintly. Before the war, a sailor dressing and behaving like that would have landed up in the guardhouse before his feet could have touched the deck. What a devil of a mess Germany was in in this year of 1920!

  ‘Klaus,’ he broke the stillness at last.

  ‘Kalo?’

  ‘Find a driver, while I write you out a trip ticket. I want you to go to Murwik immediately. There I want you to make discreet contact with our old friend. You know whom I mean?’

  Klaus whistled softly through his teeth. ‘You mean the… Black Baron, Kalo?’

  ‘Exactly. He is the only one who can help us now. I think I have a mission for him.’

  Even the albino was impressed. That was not surprising. The Black Baron and his exploits during and since the war impressed everyone – at least those who got to know of them. ‘I’ll go immediately, sir,’ he snapped energetically. ‘Straight over to the Motor Pool.’ He touched his hand to his cap and left.

  Swiftly von Horn scribbled a ‘Priority One’ on the notepad in front of him, sanded and blotted the black ink and then sat back, suddenly quite happy. If anyone was going to nip this business in the bud, it would be the Black Baron. He licked dry lips. Perhaps he might change into mufti after dark and saunter down to the Reeperbahn. There was quite a bit of normal trade down there, but tonight he thought he deserved something rough. He had done a good day’s work. He pursed his thin cruel lips and began to whistle ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ softly to himself…

  TWO

  INTO THE BALTIC

  ‘If it be Life that awaits, I shall live for ever unconquered

  If Death, I shall die at last strong in my pride and free.’

  Scottish National Memorial

  One

  Silently, sinisterly, the U-23 had slid into the estuary of the Humber. The long lean craft was at periscope depth, but by turning the handles, von Kleist could see Spurn Point to his north and vaguely through the glass, using the intensifier, Lincolnshire to his south. But it was not the landmarks that interested Baron von Kleist, as he crouched there over the arms of the periscope, battered white cap turned so that the green, encrusted peak was to the back of his cropped head; he knew them well enough. It was the old freighter that he was trailing, so close now that he could see the rusting, flaking paint beneath her wartime zig-zag camouflage.

  In this March of 1918 every ton of Tommy freight intended for the front in France that he could send to the bottom would help von Luddendorf’s armies surging through France to bring the war to a final victory for Imperial Germany.

  The freighter started to slow down as she entered the channel, marked by unlit sound buoys, watched by the guns of the little concrete fort the Tommies had built at Spurn Point. ‘Down ten,’ he ordered, so that just the head of the periscope would be above the dirty brown water. He thanked God that, as usual, this part of the Humber was shrouded in a slight fog; it would make the task of the lookouts at the fort
harder. But they, he told himself contemptuously, would probably be indulging themselves in buttered crumpets and China tea. It was nearly time for their damned ‘five o’clock tea’.

  For a moment he thought bitterly of the civilians back home. Pot-bellied, hollow-cheeked kids, emaciated women with yellow faces and faded eyes, living off weisskohl, white cabbage, boiled and without fat, day in and day out, all victims of the cruel British blockade. The thought steeled his resolve. He’d get the U-23 into the Humber and then all hell would be let loose. The U-boat had twelve torpedoes. He was going to make every one find a target: nice big fat juicy freighters, fully laden with valuable war supplies due to run out with the next convoy bound for the Continent.

  The freighter was zig-zagging mildly. Obviously she was sailing through the minefield which helped to guard the entry to the harbour docks at Hull. He rapped out an order and his helmsman altered course to follow the Tommy’s movements exactly.

  The minutes passed leadenly. Maddeningly slowly the old pot worked her way through the defences. ‘Great crap on the Christmas Tree!’ Baron von Kleist snorted. ‘That damned tub can’t be doing more than a couple of knots. Won’t she ever get a move on?’

  He stopped short suddenly. Glimpsed in the top half of the periscope, obscured every now and again by the lap-lap of the freighter’s stern wake, a figure had appeared on the lower deck of the ship. The man could not have been more than a hundred metres away. Hastily von Kleist, who had begun to sweat abruptly, turned up the intensifier. It was some kind of cook, smutje they called them in the Imperial Navy, ‘the dirty one’; and this was certainly as dirty as the smoke-blacked big can he was carrying.

  The man in a dirty white apron placed the heavy can on the guard rail. Obviously he was going to lever its contents over the side. Cooks and galley hands usually cleaned up their stinking kitchens before they came into port and were inspected by the local authorities and the ship’s owners.

  As if by magic, the gulls appeared from nowhere. Suddenly they were hurtling down from the foggy grey sky cawing and beating their wings excitedly as they saw the waste and scraps, jostling for position for when the man from the galley threw the stuff overboard.

  Von Kleist held his breath. The Tommy had frozen in position, one hand on the rail, the other holding the can balanced on it. A gull brushed his face impatiently. The man slapped at it angrily, not taking his eyes off the bubbling wake of the old freighter. ‘Throw the shit overboard,’ von Kleist murmured angrily to himself, his nerves beginning to tingle electrically, ‘and go down to the shitting galley again.’

  But still the man continued to stare at the water, as if transfixed, while the gulls cawed and pleaded in a whirling, flapping white cloud all about him. For what seemed an age he remained rooted there. Suddenly, startlingly, he dropped the can onto the deck, scattered trash everywhere, and with his dirty white apron flapping, ran back to the ship.

  ‘Scheisse,’ von Kleist cursed. He had to make a snap decision. Go into the estuary or turn and make a run for it. Next to him, Peters, his second-in-command, could see the sudden pearls of sweat form on his skipper’s high forehead. God, he told himself, the pressures on U-boat captains were beyond belief.

  ‘Beide Motoren vor aus!’ von Kleist yelled abruptly, his decision made.

  ‘Both engines ahead!’ Peters echoed.

  ‘Volle Fahrt!’

  ‘Full engine!’ Peters repeated the order.

  Von Kleist caught a glimpse of a man tugging on a uniform cap, running to the railing, accompanied by a wildly gesticulating cook, then he whipped the periscope down and everything went black as the U-23 surged ahead. ‘Right into the lion’s cage,’ a suddenly frightened Peters couldn’t help telling himself.

  Now von Kleist steered the U-boat into the middle of the channel. He had to get away from the shallows off Spurn Point. Soon the destroyers would be swarming out from Hull, eager for the hunt. In the shallows they had the chance of a visual contact. In the depths in the middle of the Humber Estuary they would be confronted with a problem: had the U-boat turned and done a bunk or was it still there, waiting for unwary British shipping to come its way? He smiled quietly to himself, his handsome young face lighting up at the thought. He guessed the Tommies would plump for the first option. They wouldn’t think any U-boat skipper would have the guts – or to be so damned foolish, a hard, little voice at the back of his head rasped – to sail deeper into the estuary now that the U-boat had been spotted.

  He flung a look at the depth-meter. The big round-dialled instrument, set in its tarnished brass mounting, showed 120 metres. Deep enough, he thought, and ordered, ‘Stop both. Silent running. Let’s listen.’

  ‘Silent running,’ Peters repeated as the craft slowed down and came to a stop altogether. Now there was no sound, save the drip-drip of a leak somewhere in the bulkhead. At their desk, the two hydrophone operators clamped their earphones tighter to their shaven heads, gently, almost delicately adjusting their instruments. All about them the rest of the crew tensed, hardly daring to breathe, their faces glazed with sweat and unnatural in the red light, suddenly aware of their own stink.

  ‘Ships… two sets of screw, Herr Leutnant,’ the bigger of the two operators said suddenly, but quietly, as if not wishing to frighten the others, ‘bearing red seven-five.’

  Von Kleist strained his ears. As yet he could hear nothing. Then there they were, the regular beat of ship’s propellers being carried over some distance by the peculiar character of water being able to magnify sound. And they were coming in the U-boat’s direction!

  All around the brooding silence grew ever more profound. Even the ‘Benjamin’, the youngest of the crew, a seventeen-year-old from Hamburg’s waterfront, knew the Tommies would have operators in the bowels of their ships straining to pick up any sound from below which would indicate the presence of a submarine.

  Now the screws were almost above them. Had they been spotted? If they had, von Kleist, sweating freely now, the back of his tunic black with sweat, knew what would happen. He had experienced it often enough in these last four years of total war. They’d drop a diamond pattern of depth charges. If they exploded near the U-boat, it would groan and shake, as if the hull were being twisted like one did with a dry cigar. The pressure waves would make the deck plates jump. Glass dials would crack and break, sending glass flying everywhere. Hardly surprising, the detonations made you feel as if your teeth were about ready to pop out. Packing and gaskets would fracture and water would start trickling in and you would pray that not much of it was doing so. For you daren’t start the pumps because of the noise they made.

  Then there you’d sit at the bottom of the sea, lathered in sweat, gasping for breath like ancient asthmatics, the air getting thicker and fouler by the minute. There’d be condensation everywhere, streaming down the bulkheads like opaque tears. Charts would become soggy. Paper would get crinkly and refuse to take a pen or pencil. The men would become snappy and bad-tempered; and all the time – something to do with the pressure – they’d be farting and farting, polluting the vile atmosphere even more. A terrible time. No wonder most U-boat skippers ended up drunks or with a nervous tic sooner or later.

  He prayed. Let them not spot us! Let us get through!

  Now the screws were directly above them. Fast turbines. He recognised their whine. Destroyers all right – the latest kind. And they were moving at speed. He started to count. ‘One… two… three… four… five.’ He flashed a look at an ashen-faced Peters. ‘What do you think, Number One?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  Peters cleared his throat. ‘I think…’ he paused and licked his parched lips, so that they glowed a sudden scarlet against the ink-black beard that covered his lower face. ‘I think they’re passing, skipper.’

  Von Kleist counted again. ‘Seven… eight… nine… ten…’ The sound of the racing screws was becoming fainter by the second. He swallowed hard. ‘Männer,’ he announced hoarsely, ‘we’ve done it. This night there’ll be schnapps a
nd a litre of good fart soup – with a sausage for each man.’ He held his dirty, oil-stained hands so that no one cheered. ‘The Tommies have gone the wrong way. So first let’s get on with the job we came here for. And then,’ he grinned a little wearily, ‘we’ll turn and run like hell for home.’

  Now the men went about their tasks with new energy, confident that they were safe – for the time being – and that the skipper had things well in hand. Torpedoes were armed and thrust into their tubes, the torpedo hands straining and cursing and sweating as they lowered the deadly ‘tin fish’ into their steel cradles. Fitters and caulkers went about the cluttered ship, filling in gaps, stopping leaks, hammering and caulking, readying the U-23 for the renewed pressures she might have to stand during her escape from the estuary.

  In the meantime von Kleist had ordered the sleek deadly craft to surface depth and had carefully had the periscope raised. The mist had lifted a little, but not too much. Now by means of his charts he checked off the landmarks on the Yorkshire side of the estuary as they slid through the muddy grey water, littered with the rubbish of countless ships, as they headed irrevocably towards Hull docks and the convoy. Ottringham… Sunk Island… Patrington – he recognised the tall Gothic steeple of the church instantly… Hedon… They were almost there now.

  The water was running shallow again. He steered the U-23 a little further out into the deeper channel. There were a few small craft about, chugging and puffing about their business – tugs, fishing smacks, small coastal freighters which carried coal down to Hull from Newcastle. But not one of them noticed the furl of white water washing by them, that was made by the periscope. Why should they? Who would expect a German U-boat to penetrate this far into the estuary? It had never been done before in the whole of this long bitter war.