by Dudley Pope
Realizing that he needed to keep the initiative, Ned smiled back. ‘Yes we know how many boats, and their reported positions.’
Wellmann nodded, accepting the significance of Ned’s words. ‘For how long have you been able to read Triton?’
Ned raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. ‘When did you start using it? A month ago, five weeks?’
‘And before that, Hydra?’
Ned nodded. There was no harm in the fellow knowing the British had read a cipher which had now been replaced.
‘What will be happening now because your transmitter is not working?’
‘I suppose B der U will continue calling us, assuming we will repair our transmitter. He would not consider us lost for another three or four days because he knows we might be shadowing an enemy and keeping radio silence.’
‘Thank you,’ Ned said, adding: ‘No one will ever know what you have told me.’
Wellmann looked first startled and then puzzled. What had he told this hard-eyed man who seemed to be telling him things? That the Tommies knew about the Mark III Enigma, and the introduction of Triton, for instance. Then Wellmann began to feel fear; had he betrayed the Führer and the Lion? His comrades? He could not see how, but this Englishman was thanking him for something, and that could only be secret information. He vowed to keep his mouth shut when the others questioned him about what the Tommy had asked. At that moment he realized that he was effectively the senior surviving officer. The Engineer was technically second-in-command to the Captain, but he took no interest in anything but diesel engines and dynamometers. So the men must now be looking to him as their leader – the man the Tommy’s senior officer had just thanked for being so helpful.
As Ned pulled back the curtain to let Wellmann out, he was startled to see that the once crowded control room was now almost empty. Four of his own seamen were seated at various controls. The Croupier must have taken the rest of the prisoners aft.
Then he called to the rating sitting at the nearest of the two wheels, controlling the forward hydroplanes. The man pointed up the ladder, to where it disappeared up into the conning tower.
Ned hurried up the ladder to the conning tower, hauling himself into the small circular cabin which could only be described as a small apartment one deck above the control room. He looked up and saw that the ladder continued right up to the hatch to the bridge. He was looking up in just the same way as the Germans were when he dropped a black banger on top of them. The shock must have been enormous: it was unlikely that any of them had ever seen or heard of such grenades. Having one dropped down the ladder when as far as they knew the Captain and his men on the bridge had, while taking the Tommy captain out of a lifeboat, accidentally caused an explosion on the bridge and fired a Schmeisser burst, must have been quite a shock.
The inside of the conning tower was circular, the size of the straphanging section of a London Underground train opposite the sliding doors. Jemmy was sitting on what looked like a bicycle saddle, peering into the eyepieces of a periscope, which he seemed to be turning by manipulating two wooden handles which stuck out like bicycle handlebars. As the periscope turned, so did the seat. Then Ned saw that Jemmy was turning it by a foot-pedal fitted to the seat, and the handles were presumably for focusing.
A rating stood nearby and there was another periscope to one side, presumably for spotting aircraft.
Jemmy stopped the periscope turning, slapped up both handles, and said briskly: ‘Down periscope!’
The rating did something that Ned could not see and there was a humming noise but Jemmy, startled to find Ned standing behind him as he turned, said with mock sternness: ‘Only the captain and watchkeepers allowed up here!’
‘A miserable little crow’s nest you have,’ Ned commented.
‘Certainly a different way of doing it,’ Jemmy admitted, ‘and I still prefer our system, where the skipper is down there in the middle of the control room and everyone else within earshot. But this system isn’t so bad. Look.’
He pointed to the thick stubby periscope with its two handles, and beneath it a bicycle seat mounted on a small platform, like a miniature merry-go-round.
‘And this –’ he turned and pointed to something that looked like a three-foot-square grey fuse box, with a dozen or so dials on its front, and various large circular switches – ‘is the torpedo fire-control gadget: like the Fire Control Table in a surface ship; you feed in ranges, bearing, own and target speed and courses, and it hums and hahs and comes out with angles and settings.
‘Next to it are the firing controls. “Fire one, fire two…” and so on. “Los” in German. Over there is the aircraft periscope, for searching the sky for magic portents, flying dragons, airborne cherubs, and – if you’re a Ted – Sunderlands and Liberators.’
Ned coughed and assumed a mock serious voice. ‘I suppose you have this noisy toy pointed in the right direction?’ he asked, nodding at the helmsman who was at the wheel on the forward side of the conning tower.
‘More or less. If you steer east until you see land, and then turn left, you find England.’
Jemmy’s bantering voice belied the care with which he had drawn in the course for the first few hours of the long voyage to the United Kingdom.
Ned gestured to the second seaman to go below and then took the opportunity to tell Jemmy: ‘The U-boat’s wireless transmitter is busted. We can’t warn the Admiralty that we’ve captured this boat.’
‘Je-sus!’ Jemmy said, exasperated rather than angry. ‘All that careful planning with Captain Watts and the wireless intercept boys. What was it they’re listening for – “Spree” repeated three times on the U-boat frequency, wasn’t it? Now what? Haven’t even got a bloody tom-tom, have we, except the lifeboat wireless. Wrong frequency anyway, and nowhere near the range. And there’s no chance of staying on the surface and calling up a British frigate with an Aldis and saying we’re really on their side!’
‘Not a hope. Any aircraft or ship sighting us will immediately bomb, depth-charge or fire salvoes at us and to hell with signals. Anyway, we couldn’t risk it – losing the boat at this stage…’
‘Quite apart from our precious skins,’ Jemmy said fervently. ‘Unless we can do something with the lifeboat wireless, we’re going to be like a magpie perched on a telephone line and the farmer underneath aiming with a 12-bore.’
‘Yes. If one of our hunting groups find us, we’re going to be able to give them a good report on their techniques.’
‘If they fail,’ Jemmy pointed out. ‘If they succeed, they write the report.’
Ned gave a dry laugh. ‘I have a picture of us surfacing beside the tug that opens the boom gate on the Clyde, waving a white flag.’
‘You can wave me,’ Jemmy said, his voice resigned. ‘Taking a sub that far in peacetime with all the proper charts is bad enough. If I had to take this dam’ thing in, my hair would go so white you wouldn’t need a flag.’
‘I notice you’re getting a bit thin on top,’ Ned said as he started down the ladder to the control room.
Back in the wireless room and before he opened the top drawer he told the Marine sentry: ‘Pass the word for the German Second Lieutenant, our wireless operator, and the German operator.’
Then he sat down, unlocked the drawer and opened it. He took out three slim volumes which had blue covers and the double-headed eagle with outstretched wings (‘the ruptured vulture’ someone had called it) which seemed to be stamped, sewn, embossed or painted on anything connected with the German Navy. The Second Officer had the badge on the right side of his jacket.
The books were printed in German script on poor-quality, greyish paper. He opened the second drawer. It contained several printed pads which were obviously signal forms, and another set which were laid out differently. The third drawer was full of paperback books and magazines, all obviously por
nographic and – he flipped through one of the magazines – in poor taste: blowsy and fluffy-haired fräuleins wearing little more than a leer.
The Croupier appeared at the doorway, looked round the tiny cabin, and said: ‘I’ve suddenly realized that to like submarines you have to understand the mentality of a sardine when he settles down in the tin. Do you want us all in here?’
‘Just you for a moment: the others can stay outside. Look through these, will you?’ He passed over the three volumes as the Croupier slumped down on the wireless operator’s chair.
He turned the pages quickly. ‘Not much interest to us. This one on top is a German reprint of our own Admiralty List of Wireless Signals, Part I; the next is the German equivalent of our Part II, and the bottom one is the Germans’ own List.’
Ned nodded and passed over the pads.
‘Standard signal pads – ah, this is a form used with the Enigma. Yes, here are the panels where the decoder types in the random setting, rotors setting, plug settings, addressee, time of origin and all that jazz. Anything else?’
‘Only some dirty books in the bottom drawer.’
‘That’s nonsense: there must be the daily manual for the Enigma somewhere.’
‘Yes. There’s a safe behind a panel in the Captain’s cabin. Here’s the key. Would you get it – and see if there’s anything else to interest us? And call that wireless operator in – the German.’
As the Croupier flicked through the books, the man came into the tiny cabin as warily as a cat entering an alley after being chased by a dog. His beard was sparse, his face even whiter than the rest of the men, and the acne scarring his face emphasized that he was still in his teens. His thick, open-necked jersey was obviously new; Ned had the feeling this was the youth’s first or second cruise.
Ned questioned him, finding his German improving fast. Günter Hauser, aged nineteen, from a village in Bavaria. He and the hydrophone operator kept wireless watches when they were running on the surface, and they both took turns at the hydrophone when submerged.
‘The transmitter – what exactly is wrong?’
The man explained, with Ned making him repeat and explain again the technical terms.
‘There are a pair of final valves,’ the youth said. ‘They’ve gone. When using the transmitter it is necessary to switch it on and let it warm up for about three minutes. You cannot just switch on and transmit.’
‘Why?’ Ned demanded, although he knew the answer.
‘You’d burn out valves. That’s how –’ he flushed with embarrassment, the first colour Ned had seen in his face, ‘that’s how it broke down.’
‘But you have spares, surely?’
‘Yes, sir, one set.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I was nervous sir: we had just been in action. When the valves burned out I took the spare pair and put them in…’
‘And started transmitting again before that pair had warmed up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And there is no third pair on board?’ Ned decided to check up on the Second Officer’s story.
‘No, sir.’
The Croupier, who had not yet left the cabin, said: ‘I think this chap is telling the truth. He made some sort of elementary mistake: he’s very ashamed about it.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Ned said. ‘Ask how he came to do it.’
The Croupier listened carefully as the German became more and more excited, gesticulating at the transmitter, at the doorway and at the seat Ned was occupying.
‘Well,’ the Croupier said, ‘this started some days ago. Apparently they’d sunk a ship or two and then were driven off. I think no one thought the Commander pressed home the attack very strongly. Morale was very low and the signals from B der U were a bit curt and reduced to asking for weather reports, fuel consumed and position.
‘The Commander was blaming the First Officer who was bullying the Second, and so on. Then three days ago B der U sent a signal which, when the Second Officer put it through the code machine – the Enigma – told this boat to stand by for special orders, and to acknowledge receipt.
‘This chap reckoned it meant acknowledge the special orders when they were received, but the Commander got very excited and said that this warning must be acknowledged. Anyway, there was a screaming match involving the Commander, the Engineer (who of course was second-in-command), and the First and Second Officers. Finally the Second Officer came in here and sat where you are, typed out an acknowledgment – with the Commander standing there cursing him – and gave the encoded signal to this operator, who tuned in the set and was waiting for it to warm up to tap out the signal when another furious row started between the Commander and the Second Officer, with the First shouting from the control room. This made our fellow very nervous, and he started transmitting, but suddenly his set went dead. The Commander began raving again – obviously anxious to get the special signal – and Hauser here tracked down the fault, found burned-out final valves, replaced them, and at the first tap of the key the new parts burned out. The Captain nearly went berserk but didn’t blame Hauser – whose fault it obviously was: he hadn’t waited for the new valves to warm up.’
‘Yes,’ Ned said, ‘that’s roughly what I understood. Not the rows, just the lack of warming up. Anyway, where’s the wireless log? What did that special signal say?’
Hauser’s reply was an excited gabble.
‘He says that B der U never sent the special signal, presumably because the first one wasn’t acknowledged, but Kernével has been calling this boat at intervals ever since. We can pick up Kernével, of course, because the receiver is working.’
Ned shook his head wonderingly. Apart from the Commander going berserk, it could have happened in anyone’s navy. Well, the German operator was still excited from telling his story and being the focus of attention from two officers. ‘Give him the keys,’ Ned told the Croupier. ‘He knows where to find the wireless log and the Triton manual in the Captain’s safe.’
Watched by Ned and the Croupier, the operator walked the few steps to the Captain’s box-like cabin, brushed aside the curtain at the doorway, and went in. Since both Ned and the Croupier were used to surface ships with their comparatively large cabins, the U-boat commander’s quarters reminded Ned of either the bathroom in a very small house or a single berth sleeper in a railway train, second class and probably Spanish. The cabin was simply an indentation on one side of the corridor leading from one end of the boat to the other.
The wardroom was worse. Anyone wanting to pass from the forward torpedo room, POs’ quarters or galley aft to the wireless room, control room and conning tower (which meant watch-keepers in particular), had to pass through the wardroom. However, this was not a case of simply saying ‘S’cuse me, sir.’ There were four bunks in the wardroom: two were one above the other, welded piping with mattress, blankets and pillows, on the outboard side of the corridor and two more on the centre-line side. To eat meals, the officers obviously had to hinge the upper bunks up out of the way, and use the lower ones as seats, with a table astride the corridor between them.
Ned had noticed that in the Captain’s cabin the bunk had a wood lining against the steel hull. Hauser, selecting a key from those given him by the Croupier, went straight to the panel beside the head of the bunk, pulled it out to reveal a grey metal safe door behind it, fitted the key and turned it. The safe contained three shelves crammed with books, most of them of a uniform height.
‘So that’s where they kept the CBs,’ the Croupier commented.
‘An obvious place for Confidential Books, when you think about it,’ Ned said ruefully. ‘Whichever officer was on watch would decipher a signal, which the Captain would want to see at once, so the most convenient place for storing the Confidential Books would be in the Captain’s cabin.’
Hauser took out a slim
, bound book and a cardboard-covered volume which looked like the radio log, brought them back to the wireless room and handed them to Ned.
‘If this lemon only knew what a tense moment this is for us,’ the Croupier said as casually as he could, ‘he’d stop eyeing that bottom drawer and actually ask if he could have one of those dirty books.’
‘Very true, very true,’ Ned said heavily. ‘But don’t overdo it. Just give that bound volume a casual flip.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ the Croupier said sarcastically. ‘I was obeying your orders that the German prisoners must not know why we captured the boat, even though for security they’ll be kept prisoners in a special camp.’
With that he asked Hauser if he was married, at the same time looking at the blue book. Hauser was young enough to blush and say he was engaged, and had hoped to be married at the end of this cruise.
Something in the man’s voice made the Croupier look up and ask a question. Hauser’s face went redder as he stammered an answer.
‘What’s all that about?’ Ned asked impatiently.
‘The girl’s knocked up.’
‘The wedding ceremony’s going to be delayed a year or two,’ Ned said unsympathetically.
‘That’s just dawning on him. Trouble is that the girl hasn’t told her parents, who are very strict.’
Chapter Fifteen
The Croupier said with carefully controlled casualness: ‘This is the Triton manual all right.’ He slurred the word ‘Triton’. ‘With the daily settings for three months, not just one month as we expected.’
‘Toss it to one side carelessly,’ Ned said, ‘and start reading out the last few signals from the Lion at Kernével.’
The Croupier threw the Triton cipher manual on to the wireless operator’s table like a gambler discarding a low card and opened the log. He scanned the half-dozen pages of entries.
‘These chaps lead a dull life! I see they decipher all signals they pick up, whether the signal is intended for them or not. That way I suppose they can get some idea of what’s going on.