The U-19's Last Kill

by Jack Finney

  “Sit down, Hugh,” Linc said then. “I’ll be going right back to the house.” He grinned. “It won’t quite do for me to hobnob with the rest of you out here in broad daylight.”

  “Yeah”—Vic grinned back at him—“we’re strictly an ordinary little group no different from anyone else on the island today, out sunning ourselves on the beach. I guess Linc must be the cook or chauffeur or something . . . What do you want to be, Linc?”

  “Butler,” he answered, smiling.

  Then Rosa sat up and leaned toward me, smiling mockingly. “You do not like Nazis, Mr. Brittain?” she said softly. “Good! Neither do I; and with more reason than you, I think. I saw the Americans drive them from Italy when I was a girl; yet now, today, Linc cannot sit here with the rest of us.” She sat waiting, inquiringly, and I had nothing to say.

  Then she lounged back on the sand as Lauffnauer spoke gently. “So do not be too hard on me, Hugh; it is not I who am opposed to Lincoln Langley on this beach.”

  “Nor I,” I said. “Langley or anyone else.”

  “Good,” Lauffnauer said, “and I believe you.”

  Then Moreno spoke. “Let’s get on with it.” he said shortly. “Linc’s an Englishman, and he served on a limey sub.”

  I was astonished somehow, and I’m sure my face showed it, because Linc smiled. “Quite right,” he said. “I’m of Jamaican descent; my father was a merchant seaman, he was often in England, and he and my mother emigrated there just before I was born; they bought a small farm. So I was born in England, an English citizen, and I served four years in British submarines; wireless operator first class, later a chief.”

  “Well”—I grinned up at Linc, then glanced around at the others, my eyes smiling and friendly—“we’re a motley crew, all right.”

  “We sure are,” Vic said, “and a good one. Then he glanced up at Langley. “Any questions about Hugh here, Linc? Want us to move on up to the house so you can sit in on this?”

  “No,” Langley shook his head. “He’s qualified; you told us that last week. And he looks fine to me. Whatever the rest of you decide is O.K. . . . See you later, Hugh,” he said pleasantly, and I nodded, and he walked on back to the house.

  “All right, lieutenant,” Moreno said then, “you ready to listen? Or you got more questions?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “one more, anyway,” and I nodded at Rosa Lucchesi. She was sitting now, arms around her legs, one cheek resting on her knees, and she just smiled, and Moreno grinned too.

  “Why, sure,” he said, “I can tell you why Rosa is here.” He paused momentarily, enjoying this. “She’s part of the crew. Any objections?”

  “Objections? No. But before you recruit me, I have to know why.”

  “We’ve got to have Rosa, Hugh,” Vic said quickly. “There’s a reason, a good one, and you’ll hear all about it.”

  “In any case,” Lauffnauer said gently, “we are not sailing around the world; we may not even need to dive. A few simple duties, that is all, which she can perform quite as well as a man.”

  “I will make as good a man as you, Mr. Brittain,” Rosa said, and I nodded.

  “Sure,” I said, “and a lot better girl.”

  “That’s right.” Vic grinned. “The Navy was never like this, was it, Hugh?”

  “Well, if we’re sure the lieutenant hasn’t any more questions about us,” Moreno said, “maybe it’s all right if we ask a few about him?”

  Again Vic spoke quickly, intervening. “Sure. I haven’t any. I served in the Navy with Hugh, and I’m the reason he’s here now. I think he’s all right with you, too, isn’t he, Frank?”

  Lauffnauer nodded. “So far as I can tell; I am sure he is. If he walked onto a ship of mine to join the crew, I’d expect him to do well. If he didn’t”—he smiled at me—“I would shoot him.”

  I nodded at Lauffnauer, then turned to Moreno. “What’s on your mind?” I said.

  He didn’t answer or glance at me. Speaking to Vic and Lauffnauer, he began talking—slowly, choosing his words and thoughts carefully. “He’s qualified to serve on a submarine just as well as anyone here. No question about that. And I’m sure he has guts. Of a certain kind. In a war I’m sure he’d be noble and heroic, an inspiration to his men.” He grinned slightly with one corner of his mouth. “But this takes nerve of a different kind. Every one of us has to be ready to do anything necessary; anything that’s necessary.”

  “And you think he won’t?” Vic said.

  Moreno shrugged. “I don’t say that; I just don’t know. Do you? How good is he? How tough? Really tough?”

  “As tough as you are, Moreno,” I said, lounging back on the sand on one elbow. “Any day at all.”

  He nodded slowly. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you are. I hope so anyway, lieutenant.” He smiled.

  “And now’s as good a time as any.” I said softly, “to knock off that ‘lieutenant’ stuff. I’m not in the Navy now, and neither are you.”

  He smiled again. “That’s right,” he said softly. “Now you’re in my crew.”

  “Your crew?” I stared at him, then sat upright, swinging to Vic.

  “That’s right, Hugh,” he said, nodding. “Moreno is captain.”

  “Moreno?” I said angrily. “Why?”

  Vic shrugged, and Moreno lounged back on the sand, grinning. “Hugh, any of us could captain the sub,” Vic said. “Somebody has to, and any of us could do it—Frank’s commanded a sub! In wartime. Moreno’s like a lot of chiefs and enlisted men in the United States or any other Navy—as good as many a man I’ve known with stripes on his sleeve and, in some ways, for what we’re planning, even better. Not snobbish about taking orders from an ex-seaman, are you, Hugh? We’ve got a full commander who isn’t.”

  “No, of course not,” I said instantly, though I wasn’t sure. I shrugged, “Anyway, it’s up to you people; it’s your plan. Which brings us to the big question; just what the devil are you planning?”

  Vic’s eyes came to life, glowing with sudden excitement, and he opened his mouth but, before he could speak, Moreno interrupted. “Hold it!” he ordered, and I swung my head to glare at him.

  Then he smiled at me, and this time it was with complete friendliness, A man who could assume complete control over his own emotions us Moreno just had—

  I knew he didn’t feel friendly at all—was at least something more than just a thug. It was perfectly possible, I realized in that moment, that Moreno was qualified for command. And, knowing it, I was ready to admit it, and Moreno understood that too. “I think everything we want to tell Hugh,” he said quietly to Vic, “will make more sense if he sees what we’re talking about first.”

  Vic nodded. “I guess it would. Ever do any skin diving, Hugh?”

  I nodded, and Lauffnauer said, “Well, we have equipment to lend you, and one of us will take you down—to see something I am sure will surprise you.”

  “I’ll do it,” Moreno said, getting to his feet. “Right now, I need to attach a buoy anyway.”

  And so, for the first time, I saw the U-19. In the house I changed into a pair of trunks Vic loaned me, and we carried our diving equipment to the beach. Moreno brought along a short pine board wrapped with line. We dragged a battered boat out from under the porch down to the water, then rowed a mile out into the ocean, Moreno watching landmarks on the shore to position us.

  We anchored, fitted on our equipment, and I followed Moreno down the anchor rope to the ocean floor; he carried his rope-wrapped board shoved in his weight belt. At the bottom, actually standing on the clean sand for a moment, the light a hazed yellow-green, visibility maybe eighty feet, I watched Moreno begin to swim slowly into deeper water, and I followed. Within minutes—it was hard to judge time here—we reached the ancient sunken submarine; I learned later that he’d been out to her twice before.

  Of course, Lauffnauer was right; when I saw that black bulk looming just ahead in the yellow-greenlit depths of the water, and then, swimming closer, understood what I was
seeing, I was astounded. I was utterly absorbed, fascinated, and, reaching the little conning tower, I clung to it, staring around me. Beside me, Moreno had released his pine-board buoy, paying out the line attached to it as it floated to the surface; then he tied the end of the line to the conning tower.

  Frank must have some reason, I knew, for thinking or at least hoping that we might raise and operate this tiny sub. She must have been put down here undamaged, her ballast tanks filled; whoever had done it leaving through the escape hatch. But what chance there was that she was anything but a ruin I simply didn’t know; no one could say with certainty until we’d raised her, if we could, and found out for ourselves. She was probably full of sea water long since—and yet, I thought, her valves might have held; they just possibly might have. Moreno touched my shoulder then, pointing upward, and I nodded, and we started up.

  Frank Lauffnauer told me what they proposed to do with the U-19, if we could possibly raise and operate her again. Sitting on an old kitchen chair tipped back against the dining-room wall, Lauffnauer told me something of how the U-19 came to be where she was and why he thought there was at least a chance that we could get her operating again. “She was an experimental submarine.” Frank said, “one of many testings of various German inventions during those last desperate months of the First World War. We were sent over to harass shipping along your East Coast; no submarine could be spared then for purely experimental purposes. But, also, we were sent out as a test. The inside hull—I remember the strange, rough feel of this—was coated with a resilient, spongelike material. On the day our crew assembled, the Unteroffizier explained to us that this coating was impregnated with a chemical compound devised by German scientists. Its purpose, he concluded, was to absorb and discharge overboard excessive moisture; obviously he was very little interested, and impressed even less. But”—Frank shook his head slowly, a shoulder moving in a little shrug—“it worked, and worked beautifully, on the trip over, at least. That little submarine was drier than even the World War Two U-boats I sailed in, all of which were equipped with huge air-conditioning systems for fighting moisture.”

  Frank grinned at me. “We have all served in navies, so I am sure it will not surprise you to know what happened when I mentioned to superior officers the apparently successful U-19 experiment. There were no longer any records to be found of the U-19 or of how her interior had been treated—at least not in their proper places. Obviously these were lost in the chaos of the years following the surrender; perhaps even deliberately destroyed during the surrender. And, therefore, to the mind of a German captain I talked to, for example, they had never existed, and I could not possibly have known what I was talking about—a boy of fifteen at the time and an enlisted man at that!” Frank smiled. “And so, I never mentioned the U-19 again, and am glad now that I did not.”

  Again Frank shrugged. “Of course, after so many years, it may be that the inside of the U-19 is hopelessly rusted in spite of its coating. The steady moisture seepage inside the pressure hull of a submarine is always a problem, and a big one.” Frank shook his head. “But if she has not flooded, I believe she will not be too badly damaged; I saw with my own eyes how this coating worked, and I know—this was explained—that if it worked at all, there was no reason why it should not continue indefinitely. I am certain there is a chance my old ship can be operated again if we can raise her.” Lauffnauer turned to Moreno who was sitting at the dining-room table and said, “What do you think, Ed? Have you changed your mind about getting her out?”

  “No.” Moreno shook his head calmly. “I don’t see any big problem. Water’s calm, and the weather report’s good for tonight.”

  Turning to me, Lauffnauer said, “I brought Moreno into this for two reasons. He was the first man I asked, in fact——”

  “How’d you two get together, by the way?” I said.

  “We met at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Your Government—mine, too, now—brought me over from Germany in 1946, after the war. The Navy was interested, as you may remember if you weren’t too young, in the snorkel on our submarines. I was hired as an expert on them, which I was, and brought to America as a civilian employee or the Navy, with the opportunity to become a citizen, and I was very glad to come. Once again after a war”—he smiled—“Germany was not a good place to be. Here I met very many submarine men, among them Moreno, and I remembered him. In any case, it was fortunate that I knew Moreno; he is a good submarine man, and he and his cousin were commercial fishers . . . Tell Hugh about that.”

  Moreno put his heavy forearms on the table, his hairy shoulders hunched over them, and looked up at me, “It’s what I’ve done since I left the Navy—commercial fishing with Aldo’s boat, and a lousy way to make a living. But I been in the Navy since I was eighteen and don’t know much else. Aldo was my cousin; Rosa’s husband. Aldo got drowned four months ago, right after I got out of the Navy”—Moreno glanced toward the kitchen—“and I been fishing the boat with Rosa ever since. The boat belongs to her now, and she owns the dock where we keep it. The dock’s roofed and enclosed—you know the kind. It’s typical-plank flooring on each side, and you run the boat in between. The boat’s a good four or five feet longer than the sub and a lot wider; the dock’ll take the sub easy, if we raise her. It’s roofed, enclosed and the door padlocks; a big fishing boat’s valuable, and so is its cargo sometimes. And the dock’s isolated; nobody around there for a couple of miles. So now you know why Rosa is in this. Lauffnauer recruited me and Linc, and I looked up DeRossier, and he found you.”

  After a moment I nodded. “O.K.,” I said. “We’ve got a sub, maybe, a place to work on her and a crew of sorts. Now say we get the sub operating—which I certainly doubt—then what? Let’s have it now.”

  Then, for twenty minutes, maybe longer, Lauffnauer talked.

  “A small trunk,” he began quietly, “was made last month in a little custom luggage shop in Buenos Aires; some friends wrote to me and told me about this. You know, of course”—he smiled; that warm magic smile you found your own lips trying to repeat—“that Argentina is a name bound up for more than a decade now with the lives and fortunes of a good many Germans. I have friends among them; the Graf Spee was scuttled at the mouth of the River Plate in the first year of the war and the crew interned. Some are there still. And a submarine escaped to Argentina at the end of the war—the U-977. Two of her crew once served under me. And, of course, Argentina has also been a refuge for more than one notorious Nazi.

  “The four or five friends I have there, however, are not notorious Nazis, they are simply former German seamen and one officer: ordinary men. I have kept up a correspondence with them. I have sometimes thought of joining them down there, but”—he shook his head—“they do not have an easy time of it.

  “Some of my friends have lived a hand-to-mouth existence there; a shady existence, as you say, never far from the edge of the law. All is grist to their mill. What about this trunk? It is small, of a kind which holds half a dozen suits, with drawers below them for linen and shoes. It differs from countless others just like it in only one way; between its inside lining and the outer metal covering there has been left a hidden space of one-half inch—all around the trunk. That is all the man who made it knew. And that is all he could tell my friends, as he did when he was commissioned to make this trunk—information for which he expects to be well paid. Nor did he know the man who ordered and paid for it in advance—many times what an ordinary such trunk would sell for.

  “But there is an inescapable link,” Lauffnauer went on. “This interesting trunk, obviously designed for some interesting use, had to be called for or delivered. And you may be sure it was expertly and secretly followed. They have learned who it was for—and why. I was told of this, first by letter, and then, two weeks ago, with far more details, by a telephone call.” He shook his head in rueful amusement. “Such a call is expensive. We talked for ten minutes, and I paid for it; they could not. But it was worth it, my young friend; we want that trunk
.” He grinned exuberantly. “It was made for Reinhold Kroll, a former Wehrmacht colonel who would have been tried and hanged for a thousand reasons if he had not escaped to Argentina after the war. He is there thirteen years now, a citizen, waiting until the time is ripe”—Frank grinned—“for Germany to begin her climb back to glory. The time, he thinks, is here, and the trunk will be packed soon, in the half inch of hidden space all around it, with one and a half million dollars in large-denomination American bills and seventy-five thousand in Swiss currency.”

  Frank leaned toward me. “You may be sure that trunk will be completely protected. There will be no possibility of getting at it, absolutely none, until it has arrived—so Kroll thinks—in one entirely safe and unreachable place.” Frank grinned with contained excitement. “I think we can reach it, though. The day after the telephone call from Argentina, I went down under the water off Fire Island to begin the search for the U-19 again after forty years. When I found her, I wrote to my friends that we might reach that trunk, telling them what else they must do and learn for us meanwhile.”

  I looked up at Lauffnauer then. “Are you serious?” I said, though I knew he was, and he simply nodded. “Vic,” I said, “you told me nothing like this had ever been done before; you were sure right.”

  “Wasn’t fooling, was I, Hugh?” he said, smiling, and I nodded shortly.

  “Look,” I said then, glancing around at the others; in the kitchen doorway Rosa stood watching me. “One thing is sure. You’ve got to show me, you’ve got to convince me about this or I’m out—and you can do what you like about that. And I don’t think you can convince me; this is fantastic.”