“I didn’t… I never thought…” Words eluded Ritter as the horror of discovery washed over him. That it was clear his wife had known for some time of his treasonous acts was a particularly intense shame that brought him close to tears also. “I never meant to…”
“You were different when you came back from Britain,” Maria said softly, her initial burst of anger subsiding into sadness. “You may have fooled all of them, but a wife knows…! So many times you’ve come back from active service, but never like that…” she went on, recalling some of the dark details Ritter had told her of his experiences in France and Britain during the second half of 1940. “What you saw at that farmhouse… what those English swine did to you…”
“All they did was open my eyes…!” Ritter snapped, causing her to flinch at the sudden intensity of his words. “What I’ve done… what I’m doing… this isn’t because of anything the British did to me! All they did was show me what we will do to the world… what Germans are doing right now to millions of innocent men, women and children, right across Europe! The camps…” he continued, suddenly desperate to unload the burden of secrecy he’d carried for so long. “Dachau, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen… I’m sure you’ve heard the names mentioned enough times, whispered in hushed voices perhaps, when no one else is listening… just like the rest of us as they all keep disappearing… and we all try so desperately to convince ourselves that nothing’s wrong.”
“Anna and Moshe and all the rest…” Maria breathed, a creeping horror in her voice as she considered Jewish friends now gone from the neighbourhood… gone without so much as a goodbye or a parting word. “They said they were being relocated… resettled in the East, where they could start new lives…”
“The only resettlements the Einsatzgruppen have given them are gas chambers and mass graves!” Her husband snarled softly, his disgust for what his country had done clearly evident in his eyes and tone. “They’re killing them, Maria: millions of Jews, Bolsheviks and Gypsies and anyone else they don’t like, or who dares to speak out against them! The things I saw…” he moaned, placing the wine glass on the desk one more, instantly forgotten. “The things they showed me of the despicable atrocities the Nazis are committing in the name of Deutschland and their ideas of racial purity. The British asked me to help them… help them to put an end to all of this… and I gladly agreed, willing to do anything I could to stop these monsters from defiling our nation and our people…!”
“It can’t be…” Maria moaned, crying now with her face in her hands as she mourned both the loss of those friends she’d known and the multitudes of other, unknown innocents in numbers too great to comprehend. “How could they… how could anyone…?”
Ritter rose and moved around to kneel beside his wife, cradling her in his arms as she began to sob softly.
“The evidence I saw was incontrovertible,” he explained gently, resting his head against hers as he held her close. “Millions will die horribly… needlessly… unless someone can stop them… unless decent men stand up against this.”
“Oh, my love…” Maria whispered sadly, throwing her arms about him in return and drawing him even closer. “Always the one saving people in need: your commander’s life in Poland; the boys’ in France; and now the whole world…! Always the man of honour… always the Ritter standing in defence of the weak and defenceless…” She hadn’t missed the irony that the original, medieval meaning of their family name: that Ritter was the German equivalent of ‘Knight’.
“I’m so sorry…” was all he could mutter, tears streaming down both their faces as they held each other tight. “So sorry I’ve dragged you all into this…”
“Sorry for what… for being you…? She asked simply, pulling back far enough to stare into his eyes with tearful pride. “Sorry for doing what we both know is right?” She took another deep breath that was part sigh. “You are my husband – the man I married – and you cannot be anything other than that which you are.” She almost smiled at another sad irony. “This is the curse of marrying an honourable man. At least, if it were an affair, perhaps I could fight for you… but what am I against the whole world?”
“You are my world,” Ritter vowed finally, struggling to control his own emotions, “and I swear I’ll come home again… that I’ll always come home to you.”
Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran
Gazelle Bay, Kerguelen Islands
November 3, 1942
Tuesday
Auxiliary cruiser Kormoran was a large vessel by any standard. At twenty thousand tons’ displacement and 500 feet in length, she could dwarf most warships smaller than a battleship, and although she wasn’t well armoured or particularly fast, her main armament of six 150mm guns and two twin torpedo tube mounts was equal to that of most light cruisers. She’d started life as the freighter Steiermark in 1938, and had plied her trade around the Baltic and North Sea for almost two years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The necessities of war being what they were however, she’d eventually been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine for conversion to an Hilfskreuzer: an auxiliary cruiser, or surface raider, intended to cruise enemy waters under cover of an assumed identity and sink Allied shipping in places that were too dangerous for conventional warships.
Kormoran had left Kiel almost two months earlier under conditions of strict radio silence, loaded with a top secret cargo bound for Tokyo. At the last minute, that cargo had been supplemented by two huge, lead-lined steel boxes – containers housing two of only three German-made nuclear weapons in existence. The devices had been delivered by William Hegel, one of the Nazi Party’s infamous ‘Board of Directors’, whose compatriot, Gerhard Fuchs, had come aboard to accompany the cargo to its destination. That had been eleven weeks before however, and the ship’s captain, Korvettenkapitän Theodor Detmers, had since developed an increasing concern that the mission they’d been assigned by Hegel was not only unauthorised but possibly in direct contravention of orders.
Detmers was a career naval officer, with many years of service and command experience in destroyers prior to his posting to Kormoran. He was an intelligent and capable officer with a broad, serious face that could unexpectedly transform into a wry smile accompanied by a matching, equally dry wit. He was displaying none of that now however as he stood on the bridge that evening, waiting for word from the officer on watch, the man was currently standing outside the bridge on the upper deck and staring into the sky off to port using a pair of high-powered binoculars.
“What do you see, Erich?” He asked loudly, frowning at the lack of reaction from his XO. “What’s he doing?”
“Turning away, Mein Herr… medium altitude, range perhaps fifteen nautical miles or more…” The ensign called back, lowering the field glasses momentarily and looking across in his direction through the open hatchway. “He’s made one circuit from east to west across the southern half of the island and appears to be heading away again. Royal Navy, I think, sir: one of their American helicopters…”
“Any radio traffic, Reinhold…?” Detmers queried, directing that at the communications officer’s station behind him.
“None that I can detect, Mein Herr…” the Radio Officer replied immediately, glancing up from his instruments with a pair of headphones over his ears. “Im westen nichts neues…” he added with a faint smile, parodying the title of the famous Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name (lit. ‘In the west, nothing new’ or, more commonly in English: All Quiet on the Western Front).
“Be careful what you say, there,” Detmers warned with a smile of his own. “Don’t let Herr Fuchs hear you, or I’ll have some awkward questions to answer!” The book, a huge best-seller of its time during the late 1920s and early -30s, had been labelled defeatist and degenerate by the Nazis and had been one of the first banned upon their rise to power in 1933 (and had ironically also been banned in Australia at around the same time due to similar allegations of defeatism).
“Yes, watch out, Reinhold,�
� one of the other junior officers nearby joked softly with a wry smile. “He’ll sneak into your cabin at night and drink your blood.”
“That’s enough, gentlemen,” the captain observed in a firmer tone, making sure a joke didn’t turn into an outright show of insubordination. “Keep in mind you’re referring to a fellow officer of The Reich: accord him an appropriate level of respect if you would.”
As the officer in question snapped to attention and barked an instant apology, Detmers turned to stare out through the forward windows as the cold, featureless hills and tundra surrounding the vessel.
Gazelle Bay flowed out into Hillsborough Bay on the north-eastern coast of Grande Terre, the largest of the Kerguelen Archipelago. A French colonial territory since the 1890s, it was technically classed as part of Madagascan territory, although the nearest landfall to that colony actually lay almost 2,000 miles to the north-west. Although officially uninhabited, the islands had been visited by other German surface raiders with irregular frequency during the first few years of the Second World War.
Just south of an abandoned settlement known as Port Couvreux, the bay was quite isolated and seemed almost perfect as a sheltered anchorage in which Kormoran had been able to resupply water and carry out some much needed maintenance. The skies had been generally clear and sunny, however that was the point at which any acknowledgement of summer ended, with temperatures barely reaching ten degrees centigrade on most days and falling close to zero during the night.
The arrival at Kerguelen had originally been intended only as a quick resupply stop of a few days, making use of a grand detour through the southern Indian Ocean to avoid British and Allied flying boats operating out of Diego Garcia, some 2,500 miles to the north. The route had been the idea of their single passenger and the escort for the special cargo they’d taken on at Kiel the day of their departure, the intent being to take the ship as far away from Allied patrols for as long possible prior to being forced to ‘run the gauntlet’ of passage through the Dutch East Indies, during the final leg of the journey through to the Japanese naval base at Palau in the Pacific.
The theory – one which had served them well so far – was to hide in plain sight; assuming the identity of a legitimate merchantman (usually one they’d recently sunk themselves) and steaming merrily along as if they had not a care in the world. BBC and Australian radio news broadcasts had told of the disastrous Allied defeat in North Africa, and the men and materiel that conflict had consumed, when combined with the ongoing fortification of important South-East Asian bases and build-ups of military forces, meant that there were precious few aerial resources available to the Allies for random patrols so far away from established shipping lanes. Few enough at least that an encounter with an enemy patrols was a relatively rare thing, and in fact they had considered themselves completely out of range of any land-based aircraft of flying boat.
It was always taken seriously however, and the ship had gone onto battle stations alert the moment the helicopter had been first spotted, approaching from the east and then moving on, a few dozen miles astern. Hidden flak guns had followed its course the entire time, only relaxing as it was now disappearing once more into the huge, orange orb of the setting sun off to the west. As his crew had reported, there’d been no deviation in course or speed, and no detected radio transmissions, yet still Detmers was apprehensive. He was an experienced captain, and he knew from experience how tenuous the link between failure and success often was.
“What do you think, Gustav?” Detmers asked thoughtfully, staring out at the icy waters and the forbidding landscape. “That’s too small to be out here on its own… it must have come from either a nearby base or Allied warship.”
“Exceedingly poor luck then,” Kapitänleutnant Gustav Oetzel observed with a grimace and a shrug. Something that size can’t have a flight radius of much more than three or four hundred kilometres. Either the Allies have set up an air station at Heard Island – which I doubt, considering it is also uninhabited and extremely remote – or we indeed appear to have an enemy warship somewhere in the vicinity.” Oetzel had been Steiermark’s civilian captain prior to her recommissioning as Kormoran, and now acted as Detmers’ navigator and executive officer: there were few men who knew the ship as well as he.
“Wouldn’t be easy to spot us from that far away, hidden away here in this narrow bay. The lack of radio traffic suggests they’ve seen nothing.”
“Unless they’re under the same radio silence restrictions we are,” Oetzel muttered darkly, his disapproval of their current mission and situation well known. “Perhaps they’re looking to trap us here.”
“Perhaps,” Detmers conceded with a faint smile, “or perhaps they simply have no idea whatsoever that we’re here at all. The Allies must know or at least suspect that raiders such as ourselves sometimes pass through this area, but with the war going on everywhere else, it would be difficult to justify the logistics involved in setting up a permanent air station at Heard or anywhere else this remote, so far away from support and resupply. Sending a single warship down this way every now and then however, might not be so difficult.
“Not a destroyer – too small to carry an aircraft – but a cruiser would perhaps fit the bill, staging out of Fremantle. Make a few requisite passes over the islands to check if there are any unfriendly visitors, mark the whole thing off on some mission sheet and head for home, looking forward to a pat on the back for a job well done.” Detmers shrugged. “If they’d seen us, we’d know about it by now.”
“I hope you’re right,” Oetzel shrugged, mostly believing his captain but refusing to concede on principle. “We’re not going anywhere until Horst gets those bearings fixed, anyway… two weeks already and he’s already replaced two sets that have failed immediately.”
“No time like the present to check on his progress, then…” Detmers decided, stepping across to his captain’s chair and leaning down into the microphone of the intercom mounted there as he flicked an appropriate switch.
“Bridge to engineering… report please…”
“Engineering here, Kapitän…” a reply came back almost instantly.
“Status report please, Horst? How are we going with those bearings?”
“Well, Mein Herr, I think that I’ve identified the problem at least… the bearings on engines two and four appear to be made of a softer grade metal than the others… They should be of WM80 standard, but appear to be far lower… possibly as poor as WM20 or -10.”
“In plain German if you please, Horst,” Detmers asked drily as Oetzel managed a grin. “Humour us and pretend we don’t know what you’re talking about for a moment.”
“Sorry Mein Herr, of course… The white metal used in these bearings needs to be a specific grade that tempers durability with enough softness to ensure they are not too brittle. Our usual standard is one classified as WM80, which is the standard of the bearings fitted to engines one and three. So far as I can determine, the units fitted to the others are of a far lower grade that have not been strong enough and have failed accordingly…”
“I see,” Detmers growled. “Do we have spares? Is this something that can be fixed?”
“Well, sir; yes and no… I do have spares in storage, however they too appear to be made of the same lower grade metal…” Horst added reluctantly as both Detmers and Oetzel cursed silently under their breath. “This would explain why two replacement sets have already failed almost immediately. I have two sets still here that seem to be of reasonable quality that can be fitted, however I cannot guarantee their longevity… I’m sorry, sir: we’ll do our best, but how long the engines last is anyone’s guess. If we take things easy and put no excess strain on the engines they should be fine… if we’re forced to go to battle stations or run at full power for any length of time, however…” The implication hung in the air for all to hear as his words trailed off.
“Understood, Horst,” Detmers acknowledged with a sigh. “It’s not your fault: do as best you can and we
’ll try to keep out of trouble and save your engines.”
“I could request spares to be shipped out from Madagascar, or perhaps be delivered by air-drop…”
“You know we can’t do that, chief…” Detmers replied with frustration, both men knowing that their orders for strict radio silence precluded any such transmission. “Make do as best you can and we’ll deal with the problem again if and when it happens…”
“Understood, Mein Herr… engineering out…”
“We need to talk to Fuchs about this…” Oetzel observed softly, standing at the captain’s shoulder with a grim expression on his face. “He must understand how much danger this places us in, should we meet with an enemy warship…”
“You know what answer we’ll get…”
“This isn’t right, Theodor! Three bloody months at sea now, and we’re pushed on by this fanatic, forbidden from answering no matter how many urgent requests we receive ordering us to report. Do you think they’re all false transmissions, sent by the Allies?”
“We have no authority…”
“We have four hundred officers and men, and arms enough: all the authority we need…” Oetzel pointed out coldly, a strange gleam in his eyes.
“You’re talking about mutiny…!” Detmers hissed in return, drawing his XO aside so they could not be overheard by the rest of the crew.
“Overthrowing a captain is mutiny,” Oetzel countered easily, “and he’s not captain of this ship… you are…!”
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 31