CHAIN REACTION
Copyright © 1983 by Nicholas Guild
It was after ten o’clock when the submarine finally broke through to the surface. The gray water washed back and forth across its deck, hissing down the conning tower as the massive shape rocked from side to side and then was still. The darkness closed around it, as if it had been there forever. A light snow was drifting down. There was no sound.
Meyersdorff had ordered the running lamps extinguished, so nothing was visible from the coastline when the hatch opened. First one man and then another came out, looked around for the landfall they had expected to see but which gave the impression of having been swallowed up into a seamless, distanceless void, and shoved their hands further down into the pockets of their greatcoats, as if they couldn’t imagine what they should do next. The cold was appalling, and not even the stars were out.
“Kapitän,” one of them said in a low voice, turning back to address the blank space occupied by a third man who had only just joined them on deck, “do we risk a searchlight? How will we even know in which direction to paddle?”
Meyersdorff shook his head, perfectly aware that that too would be lost in the darkness. “You are a sailor, are you not? Use a compass, and you will find the shore quickly enough. It is no more than a hundred meters.”
“Yes, Kapitän.”
And then, quite suddenly, like the next sentence in their conversation, the cloud cover parted, allowing the moon to flood them with a pale, silvery light. Meyersdorff grinned.
“Is that better, Hopf? Now you will have no difficulty seeing the shore, and if there is anyone on the shore he will have no difficulty seeing you.”
“Yes, Kapitän.”
Another two men climbed out through the hatch, and then two more, making the narrow wooden deck almost crowded. The last man reached back inside and pulled up an awkward bundle that someone must have been pushing from the other end.
“Be quick, Sauter,” Meyersdorff whispered hoarsely. “There is no need to be all night about this business—the Americans doubtless patrol these waters.”
Sauter dragged his bundle to the prow of the ship, opened a valve, and stood back as the raft unfolded like some obscene, flabby jungle flower. Somehow, in the dim moonlight, it was a profoundly disgusting thing to witness.
Two of the men standing on the deck were not dressed in naval uniforms. They wore topcoats and civilian hats, and they carried suitcases. One of them was making his way through the little crowd that had assembled in front of the conning tower, shaking hands with each in turn and murmuring “Auf Wiedersehen” with almost machinelike efficiency. He was in his early twenties—about the same age as most of the crew—and a shock of dishwater-blond hair stuck out from beneath the brim of his hat. He had large hands, with thick, short fingers, and nothing about his figure suggested much agility.
The other man stood a little apart, as if waiting for these ceremonies to be finished. He was perhaps as much as ten years older, slender and dark. His face, under the shadow of his hat brim, was rendered somehow even more handsome by the thin, careworn lines that looked as if they had been scratched in around his eyes and mouth with an awl. Except for the eyes, which moved restlessly from one object to another, he stood so still that he hardly even seemed to be breathing.
Meyersdorff came up to him and touched him on the elbow.
“Well, Niehauser,” he said gently, the way one might have spoken to someone recovering from a long illness, “we are here, my friend. Seven weeks across from Kiel, and there it is. You have everything you need?”
It was one of those questions one asked simply to be asking something, because a certain kind of relationship demanded it, because, aside from Wentzel, who was still only a boy, they were the only two officers aboard. Because of the kind of intimacy that grows up at sea between two men who know they will probably never meet again, and who for that reason alone find it possible to speak frankly. It was, on the face of it, a stupid question—they both knew that in an undertaking of this sort there were no charms against the unforeseen—but von Niehauser nevertheless understood, and smiled and nodded his head.
“Yes—well. . . At least you will have enough money.”
“Did he show it to you?” The smile on von Niehauser’s lips had died, and he seemed almost angry. “But he would, of course. Fifteen thousand American dollars—he managed to convince the SS we would need as much as that for living expenses if we were kept longer than six months. He is not without guile.”
Meyersdorff found it possible to laugh.
“Perhaps he feels it might be too much trouble to conquer America. Perhaps he plans simply to buy it.”
“I think there is little enough chance of our managing either.”
It was a long moment before either of them spoke again—it was as if they both were trying to ignore the fact that anything of the kind had been said.
“You should learn to be more discreet, Niehauser.”
“You forget my privileged position,” he answered, smiling again, a smile that had taken on the character of a disguise. “If I fail, the Gestapo will be saved the trouble of hanging me. And if I succeed. . .” His right shoulder moved in an almost imperceptible shrug, indicating how little in that case he would have to fear from the Gestapo.
“Do they put such importance on it, then?”
“It would seem so.”
Meyersdorff asked no more questions. He was very far from being a fool—he understood as well as anyone how the fuel shortages had curtailed operations, especially in the Navy. And von Niehauser had had a submarine placed at his disposal. Such an extravagance would have had to be cleared through Dönitz himself. Yes, it would seem they put a very great importance on it.
As if the same idea had occurred to both of them, they watched the blond young man’s back as he stood in conversation with a couple of the crew—it couldn’t have been much of a conversation, since Stafford understood hardly any German.
“You had better take care with him,” Meyersdorff said, turning aside slightly so that he was speaking almost directly into von Niehauser’s shoulder. “That one will get you killed if you aren’t careful.”
Von Niehauser nodded slowly, as if he had pondered the matter for hours and come to a similar conclusion.
“The SS is quite satisfied that he is genuine, but what does that mean? Those idiots seem able to convince themselves of anything. For myself, I can’t decide which would constitute more of a threat—if he turned out to be an American agent or if he didn’t.”
Meyersdorff looked at him questioningly, but for several seconds von Niehauser hardly seemed to notice.
“Patriotism is a matter of instinct,” he went on finally. “A man who will turn his back on his own country like that is not to be trusted in anything. You may be sure I will be careful.”
He smiled again, and then happened to glance down and saw that Meyersdorff was holding a small automatic pistol in his hand. It simply rested there on the flat of his palm.
“Take it,” Meyersdorff said. “I have been carrying it around with me ever since the start of the war, and I have never had a reason to fire it. Perhaps you can put it to better use.”
Von Niehauser shook his head. “Thank you, my friend, but I will be better off without it. It isn’t the sort of thing I should care to have found on me, and there are plenty of other ways of gaining the same end. Thank you just the same.”
“You’re quite sure?” Meyersdorff, who was the best soul in the world, actually seemed disappointed.
“Quite sure. Good hunting on your way home.”
A quarter of an hour later the raft scraped ashore, and von Niehauser and Stafford jumped out onto the beach, their shoes making a harsh crunch on the grav
el. And then the sailors who had done the rowing jumped out, and one of them made a joke about how now they would be able to tell people that they had invaded America. Everyone laughed except Stafford, and then von Niehauser translated the joke for him and he laughed too.
“Good luck, Herr Baron.”
Both the sailors were standing at salute, and von Niehauser couldn’t be sure which of them had addressed him, so he put out his hand to the one who looked like he might have been a year or two the elder, who took it rather hesitantly, and then shook hands with the other man. No one spoke again.
And then the two sailors turned their raft around and started back toward the ship, which was only a dull gleam in the shining blackness of the water. In a few minutes they were almost invisible, and the sound of their oars was dying away. Von Niehauser and Stafford picked up their suitcases and disappeared into the woods.
It wasn’t a very pleasant walk. The snow was probably five or six inches deep, and neither of them was wearing anything except ordinary street shoes. And it was cold, probably ten or fifteen degrees below zero. The slightest breath of wind seemed to go straight through their overcoats.
But von Niehauser felt very little inclination to complain—at least they were off that damned submarine. Seven weeks. Seven weeks, with never more than an hour or two each day in the fresh air, and all the rest of their time lived within the narrow iron walls of the ship. There had hardly been room to stand up, and von Niehauser, who was a tall man, had noticed that he was continually scraping himself on bulkheads and the edges of tables.
It had been torture—the constant smell of ozone and other men’s bodies, the eerie yellow light that made everyone look like a corpse—it had been like being shut up in a mass grave. He had found that he slept hardly at all and was subject to disturbing dreams when he did sleep. That had been the worst part of it—there had been too much time with nothing to do except to brood.
It had almost been enough to make him miss the Russian front.
But still, these woods weren’t comfortable either. It was difficult to see precisely where you were going—the moonlight threw peculiar shadows across the ground, making it almost impossible to keep from stumbling and running into things. At one point von Niehauser was startled by a loud crash and turned around to find his partner lying on the ground, cursing in a manner frightful to hear in such solitude. It seemed that he had tripped over a fallen log. It would have been funny except for the saving thought that one’s life might be put at hazard by this clumsy American. He waited impassively for Stafford to regain his feet.
“God—couldn’t they have landed us somewhere a little closer to civilization? We’ll probably freeze to death before we get out of here.”
Von Niehauser couldn’t summon up much compassion. The mortar fragments in his left arm and along that side of his rib cage were giving him trouble, as they always did when he was outside in cold weather. “They are very small,” the surgeon at the field hospital had told him, “and extracting them all would have taken several hours of operating time we need for men whose wounds are critical. Yours is the sort of case that can safely be left until after the war.” It was the great lesson of the Eastern conflict, that one must learn to bear with one’s infirmities. Von Niehauser had learned.
“You would prefer to hang?” His voice was calm, almost scholarly, as if he were offering instructions in tolerance. “In 1942 the Abwehr landed eight men along the south shore of Long Island—they were supposed to act as saboteurs, to dynamite power stations and disrupt communications in the New York area. It was considered a good plan. None of them lasted a week before they were arrested, and none of them managed to blow up so much as a balloon. Be patient, and you may yet live to serve the Reich.”
It seemed to work. Stafford nodded glumly and followed along.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“You mean, immediately? We are going to push ahead until we find a road. Things will be easier after that, and there are a lot of little towns around here. A hot meal, and a few hours of sleep, and we can catch a bus south. You mustn’t worry.”
‘‘I’m not worried—I’m just cold.”
Von Niehauser smiled to himself, wondering how Stafford would have managed in Russia.
“Quite right. There isn’t anything to worry about.”
Would that it were so.
“He can help you find your way about,” Schellenberg had said. “It isn’t every day we get a native American volunteering for espionage work, and too much significance is attached to this mission to entrust it to a single, unaided man. You have your orders, Major.”
It was only in the SS that a hoodlum like Schellenberg would have been able to climb his way up to Brigadier and Head of Foreign Intelligence, and all by the advanced age of thirty-three. Schellenberg had never seen a shot fired in anger in his life; everyone knew he was nothing but a desk soldier, a protege of Reinhard Heydrich, for whose memory no one in Europe had a decent word. One found only two sorts of men in the SS, the buccaneers and the madmen. One hardly knew which was worse.
And now, on what seemed little more than a whim, they had encumbered him with this American turncoat who had visions of himself as the stuff of the Wehrmacht officer corps. A mere boy, clearly unsettled in his mind, who steps off a merchant ship in Lisbon and turns himself over to the German consulate with some story about wanting to serve the Fatherland. What could they have been thinking of?
Von Niehauser had been keeping watch for any signs of another human presence, but found nothing. Except for their own, there were no tracks in the snow, which unfortunately was hard and crusted and would probably show a footprint for days. There were no fences or NO TRESPASSING signs, no beer bottles or crumpled, half burned newspapers, nothing to suggest that they ran any risk of being seen. And yet, so one was told, this part of the Maine coast did a modest tourist business in the summer months. Schellenberg had been reasonably clever on that point—no place on earth is more deserted than a summer resort in January.
He shifted his suitcase over to his left hand and instantly felt a stab of pain along the inside of his arm. For a few seconds, until he had made the adjustment, it was difficult even to breathe. It had been necessary, however; his right arm was getting tired, and he didn’t want to stop and rest—one had to think of young Stafford’s flagging morale.
The boy was an inconvenience—perhaps he was something worse, for all that the SS so trusted him—but perhaps there, too, Schellenberg had been right, up to a point. Since 1933, the Americans had probably gotten used to the odd accents of European refugees—in the big cities, he imagined, he would hardly be the object of much attention—but perhaps just at the beginning it would be better to let Stafford speak for him.
“Where did you learn English?”
The question was so unexpected, and so perfectly in accord with his own train of thought, that it was difficult for von Niehauser to fight down the disagreeable suspicion that Stafford must somehow have been able to read his mind.
“In England,” he answered, with tolerable calmness. “I went to school there. My father was attached to the embassy for five years.”
“I just wondered—you sound like a duke or something.”
Was Stafford trying to flatter him? Could he be so obvious as all that? It was a disturbing enough thought about one’s partner in espionage.
Or perhaps there was a touch of hero worship mixed into it—he was rather fixated on martial glory, was this young American, and there had been other evidence that he had not failed to be impressed with the fact that von Niehauser was a decorated veteran of the Russian campaign. Apparently someone had shown him a dossier, because for the week they had trained together back in Holland, until von Niehauser had gotten so sick of it that he had been forced to say something, Stafford had pestered him with personal questions, had even asked to see his medals. On top of everything else, it had been an intolerable liberty.
At any rate, it was one of the
reasons von Niehauser found it impossible to like him. To be chums with a person like Stafford was simply more than he could manage. Still, one was obliged to try.
“I was introduced to the Duke of York once,” he said, forcing himself to smile. “That was in 1925, and today he’s the King. I remember that he stuttered.”
“Well, I didn’t mean anything like that.”
“I know you didn’t. Have you ever been to England?”
“Four months ago. My ship stopped off for forty-eight hours on the way to Portugal, but I figured to hell with the damn English. They’re the enemy, aren’t they?” The question carried all the sullen vehemence with which Stafford usually freighted his political remarks and must have been so endlessly reassuring to the SS. He had a knack for making it seem that, really, it was your own patriotism which was open to doubt. “By then all I wanted was to get to Germany and join up. Anyway, I never got out of Southampton.”
“Ah, then. . .”
But by that time they had come to a road. It wasn’t much of a road, just a couple of lanes of asphalt, but it was a road.
“God, my feet are freezing.”
Von Niehauser hardly even looked at him.
“In Russia,” he said finally, as if speaking to himself, “sometimes when it was really bad the leather of our boots would freeze. Solid, as if they had been cobbled out of brass. You couldn’t even unlace them—you would have had to cut them off with a saw, if you could have found a saw, and you didn’t dare because you would never have seen another pair. Half the Army marched on blood soaked rags. When we could finally find somewhere warm, and put our feet up against a fire to melt the ice, we would find men who were grayish black from the ankle down. You could smell the rot as soon as they had thawed out. At the merest touch the flesh would slough off in a single piece, just fall away, all the way down to the bone.”
Stafford grunted derisively. To him, it was just a story.
“Yeah, well, this isn’t Russia.”
“Then we mustn’t complain.”
They walked on in silence after that. The road seemed to be deserted, and the only sound was the grinding of their shoes on the snow. There was nothing near them, just endless distances of empty road, leading nowhere. It was like the landscape of a dream. Finally, Stafford began to mutter—very quietly at first, as if ashamed he might be overheard, but loud enough in time.
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