Between The Hunters And The Hunted

by Steven Wilson

  Bootsmann Max Kuhn, covered in grease and sweat, looked up at Statz from his cramped quarters in the elevating cylinder hold. The yellow trouble light cast a weird glow and cut sharp shadows from the thousand hoses, extrusions, rivets, and pipes that pinned Kuhn in the tiny space.

  “I can’t find the goddamned leak,” Kuhn said in disgust. He dug into his dungaree pocket with a grimy hand and pulled out a cigarette. He barely had enough room to do that, and if he had been claustrophobic he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in that tiny space.

  Statz provided a light for Kuhn. “You bled the lines?”

  Kuhn nodded in thought, going over a list of the actions he had taken. “Twice. Nothing. No air.”

  “Cleaned and replaced the lines?”

  “Yes,” he said, blinking heavily. “Give me that rag, will you?”

  Statz found a clean work rag behind him and gave it to Kuhn, who wiped his face. The rank smell of oil and grease hung everywhere. It was the heady stench of machinery: steel and lubricants.

  “Checked the fittings and gaskets. I checked the pumps last week so I know they are fine,” Kuhn said. As he drew heavily on the cigarette, Statz nodded, considering the alternative. He could feel Kuhn watching him. “Don’t you dare bring that shit Weintz down here,” Kuhn said. “This is my gun.” He was not a gunner from Division 2 like Statz; he was a mechanic from Division 8, but his job was to make sure that the guns operated properly; his guns, he often said, because he was just as possessive of them as the gunners.

  “He might have some ideas.”

  “He can keep his ideas to himself,” Kuhn snapped. He calmed and sat back against the bulkhead in thought. “There’s no wear on the lines. No drag on the trunnion.” He looked up at Statz from the dark recesses of the elevating cylinder well, white eyes smiling out of a grimy face. “Statzy,” Kuhn said, “why don’t you be a kind boy and ask the O.O.D. if you can take the gun up about twenty degrees?” They had known each other for over a decade and although Statz was his superior, Kuhn never seemed to let that get in the way of their friendship.

  Statz knew what Kuhn had in mind. “You crazy bastard. Do you want to die down here?”

  “It’s a hydraulic leak, Statzy. Suppose I get squirted in the eye? You’ll rescue me, won’t you? Look, it’s the only way that I can find the leak. I’ve got my light and tools. Take the gun up slowly and I’ll check out the cylinder and lines. When she’s at twenty, come down and check on me. If I’m dead, you can have everything I own.”

  “The only thing you’ve ever owned was the clap,” Statz said. He thought it over. Kuhn was well clear of any moving parts, but Statz still did not like leaving his friend in the dark, cold confines of the cylinder well. It was too much like a grave.

  “All right,” he said, mostly to stop the morbid thoughts. Statz climbed out of the well, passed the huge breech of the sixteen-inch gun, up the access ladder, and climbed onto the cramped gun controller’s platform. He turned aft and squeezed through the hatch leading to the range finder’s room in the after section of the turret—still bending low to keep from splitting open his skull on a dozen protruding wheels, dials, handles, and jutting, unidentifiable hunks of steel. He slid under the large range-finder tube between the port and amidships positions, around the squat analog gear computer, and found the telephone on the after bulkhead. He switched the black Bakelite knob to Bridge, and picked up the receiver. He heard a tinny voice say: “Bridge.”

  “Bruno. Statz here. We’re trying to find a hydraulic leak on the starboard cylinder of Number One Gun. Request permission to elevate to twenty degrees.”

  The Matrosentabobergefreiter at the other end replied: “One moment.” He would have to activate the electric motors to provide power to the pumps. After a moment he said: “Permission granted,” and then Statz heard the click of the receiver.

  Cussing the superior attitude of the bridge watch, Statz made his way back to the gun controller’s station for number-one gun. He slid onto the small saddle chair and began opening the electrical circuits for the hydraulic fluid pumps.

  “Kuhn!” Statz shouted over the edge of the platform. “Ready?”

  “Hell yes,” Kuhn called back. “Let’s get this done. My ass is freezing.”

  “Pumps on,” Statz said. He watched the needles climbing as the ready fluid exited the reservoirs. He switched on the reservoir release and saw the elevation indicator dial begin to rise. When the reservoirs were empty, the hydraulic fluid in the cylinders, when released, could be transferred to the reservoirs. The cylinder plunger fell, sliding into the cylinder with the weight of the breech, and the muzzle of the gun would rise. It topped out at forty-five degrees, but twenty degrees would give them an idea where the problem was.

  “Five degrees,” he called out over the loud hum of the gun’s breech nestling deeper into its hold.

  “Nothing,” Kuhn replied.

  “Ten degrees,” Statz said and adjusted the fluid flow so that the gun would fall smoothly.

  “Right.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Statzy—”

  There was a soft boom, like the noise of a distant firework. Nothing dangerous, nothing frightening about it. Just a sound that came to Statz from the starboard cylinder well.

  “Kuhn!” Statz shouted. “Kuhn?” He quickly shut off the circuits and swung over the platform railing. He locked the insteps of his shoes to the outside ladder railings, gripped the railings with his hands, and dropped like a rock. He landed hard on the narrow deck that surrounded the cylinder.

  “Kuhn?” He found the trouble light but it was out. He pulled a flashlight from the back pocket of his overalls and played it rapidly over the dark interior of the well. He saw the ruptured cylinder first. There was a two-foot slash near the bottom of the cylinder—hydraulic fluid dripped from it like blood from a wound. “Kuhn!”

  Statz found Kuhn, jammed between two support flanges, cut nearly in half. Statz slumped to the deck of the cylinder well and sat in three inches of hydraulic fluid mixed with the blood of his friend, who stared back at him with sightless eyes. He must have been right next to the cylinder when it erupted—close enough for the pressurized hydraulic fluid to rip him apart.

  When Kuhn was finally pulled from the turret and his body lay on a stretcher, there was more to be concerned about for the crew of D.K.M. Sea Lion than the fact that they had lost a friend.

  Sailors are superstitious and they know that vessels are sometimes marked as lucky or unlucky. To those who never put to sea, it may seem childish and nonsensical, but life aboard frail vessels that dare the North Atlantic are governed by laws unnatural in any case, and unrelated in all cases to the land. There are complex regulations and statutes, known and unknown, put forward by the sea and enforced with absolute dispassion. Earth gives firmness and stability and seldom rises up to attack those who travel upon it. The sea is not so considerate and demands that all sailors be wary and all ships be prepared to submit to its edicts.

  Now, in all of the sections and divisions aboard this remarkable vessel, old sailors shared similar stories while serious young sailors listened, about unlucky ships and unlucky crews, and they always came back to sailors dying.

  Chapter 7

  The garden of Number 10, Downing Street, London, 21 July 1941

  Louis Hoffman followed a butler into the bright sunshine and saw the short, stocky figure of Winston Churchill, cigar in one hand, brandy snifter in the other, comfortably enthroned on a cast-iron settee.

  “Mr. Hoffman. How are you?” Churchill said, making no move to rise.

  “I’m fine, Prime Minister,” Hoffman said, but he wasn’t. He’d been too long in England and he wanted to go home. He couldn’t get a decent meal unless he went to the embassy. Thank God Joe Kennedy wasn’t there to bore him to death. Franklin had recalled the former ambassador some time before because Kennedy had a way of making it sound as if he admired Hitler and the Nazis. That admiration didn’t mix well at dinner parties t
hrown by the English.

  “Care for something to drink, Mr. Hoffman?” Churchill said, as if reading his mind.

  “Scotch and water,” Hoffman said.

  “Immediately,” Churchill ordered the butler with a chuckle. “Mr. Hoffman looks as if he is in need of refreshment.” He took a sip of brandy and said: “All in all, how do you think we English are faring, Mr. Hoffman?”

  “All in all, Prime Minister,” Hoffman said, lighting a cigarette, “I’d say that the Germans gave you the old one-two combination and you’re on the ropes.”

  “That’s a lovely boxing analogy.”

  “Thank you. Feel free to pass that on.”

  “Indeed, I shall. Louis, we English can be obstinate. We are like a bulldog; you can beat us time and again and we will come back after you. Feel free to pass that on as well, Louis.”

  “Thanks, Winston, I will.”

  The butler arrived with the drink and Hoffman took a healthy taste. “Ahhh, the breakfast of champions.” He eyed Churchill. “We’ve got the go-ahead?”

  “By all means, Louis, Parliament has approved it, my lords of the Admiralty assure me that it will be a calm and relaxing voyage.” He paused and swirled the remaining brandy inside the snifter. “This may be the most important meeting undertaken in the history of these two great countries. We are the same blood, you Americans and we British. We have a common ancestry and common values, not to mention a common language. We are the last bastions of democracy and we must band together to fight this terrible evil.”

  Hoffman nodded, ground the cigarette out on the heel of his shoe, and stuck it in a potted plant. “You’re taking a chance, you know. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s a big ocean and those Kraut bastards would like to send you to the bottom. But the fact is that cables and telephone conversations don’t do the trick. Franklin told me that he wanted an eyeball-to-eyeball meeting with you because that’s how he does things.”

  “To take the measure of the man, is that how it is?”

  “Yeah, except we call it sizing a man up.”

  “The same concept, Louis,” Churchill said. “I agree. The issues are far too complex and far-reaching to be relegated to cables and telephone conversations. It would hardly do them justice and may lead to confusion at a time when confusion may lead to catastrophe. We must sit and talk like civilized men.”

  “Franklin knows that. You know it. So we’re halfway home. He wants to make this meeting count, Winston. There are a lot of people in the United States who’d just as soon stay out of this mess. They don’t see this thing in Europe as our fight.”

  “This ‘thing in Europe’ is every man’s fight, Louis. It is ultimately a struggle of good versus evil.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’ve heard.” Hoffman took a sip of his drink. “Winston, some people in America think that Hitler is the good and you’re the evil. I just hope that we can convince them otherwise before it’s too late.”

  “So do I, Louis.”

  Hoffman leaned forward, resting his elbows on his tiny legs. “You’ve got to be straight about everything. Brutally honest. Don’t hold back and don’t try to gold-plate anything. Franklin’s a cagey son of a bitch and he can smell a load of horseshit a mile away. Be candid. Don’t hold anything back.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was doing any such thing,” Churchill said calmly, unaffected by Hoffman’s language.

  “Maybe not in so many words, but you’ve been careful to add a spoonful of sugar to the answer of every direct question that I’ve asked you.”

  Churchill cocked an eyebrow and rolled the cigar around in his mouth. He pushed his considerable bulk out of the settee and walked to a brick wall covered in ivy. He turned and came back to Hoffman.

  “One gentleman to another, Mr. Hoffman,” he said in a soft voice, “may I ask what transpired in your communications to President Roosevelt since you arrived?”

  “One gentleman to another, Prime Minister, I thought you’d have the damned phone tapped.” Churchill tried to protest but Hoffman continued. “I know Franklin and he may be the president of the United States but he’s also a politician. The same goes for you, so it means that both of you are going to play your cards close to your vest. I told him what I thought, which is what he wanted.”

  “What are your thoughts, Mr. Hoffman?”

  “You folks are in a hell of a fix over here. If things don’t improve and I mean quick, you’ll be throwing shit balls at the Germans when they land on the beaches. You need arms and munitions and just about everything else. Sometime soon you’ll need American boys to lend a hand.”

  “That’s an accurate description of the situation, if a bit caustic.”

  “My advice to you, Winston, when you get behind closed doors with Franklin, is to forget all of that blood, sweat, and tears hogwash and tell him the same thing I’ve been saying in my cables: ‘Franklin, it’s the top of the seventh and they’re behind by six runs.’ Get me?”

  “Baseball, Louis?” the prime minister inquired.

  “Yeah, Winston. If something doesn’t happen and happen soon, England will fall to Germany.”

  Churchill nodded somberly. “I see why Franklin enjoys your company.”

  “Nobody enjoys my company, Winston. Not even me. I’m a son of a bitch.”

  The prime minister expelled a cloud of cigar smoke and then brushed it away with the back of his hand. “Two weeks. We’ll leave Scapa Flow aboard H.M.S. Prince of Wales The meeting with President Roosevelt will be candid, forthright, and untarnished by rhetoric.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You’ll come with me of course, Louis?”

  “Oh, hell yes,” Hoffman said bitterly. “The only thing that I like more than airplanes is boats.”

  Churchill cocked his ear to one side when the butler appeared.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentlemen from Germany have arrived.”

  “Yes, I thought I heard antiaircraft fire. Louis, would you care to join me in the bombproof ?”

  Hoffman heard the faint wail of warning sirens and saw tiny flak bursts in the distant sky. “Got anything to drink down there?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Louis.”

  Cole maneuvered the MG through crowded streets, darting around stopped vehicles. He stomped on his brakes and the tiny car slid to a stop as civilians rushed across the street to air raid shelters. He heard the coarse boom of antiaircraft artillery, as the shells exploded directly overhead. Barrage balloons swung complacently back and forth.

  When the frightened crowd had passed he jammed the gearshift into first and stomped on the gas pedal.

  An air raid warden shouted at him to pull over and find a shelter, but he had to get to the row house at Warren Square, Rebecca’s home.

  He looked overhead to see a Heinkle, the German bomber, trailing smoke in a long graceful arc, glide languidly across the sky, followed by an angry Hurricane. The British fighter was pumping bullets into the carcass of the enemy plane.

  Bombs were hitting around him now; he heard the sharp explosions, and the screams of the people who had not reached the shelters in time. Dirty brown towers of smoke and debris cluttered the horizon as the bombers swept through London. Cole had seen it before and was always fascinated by the macabre slow-motion eruption of the blast and the unidentifiable remnants of houses and people as they fell to earth. He never spoke to anyone about it because he was ashamed to, but he saw magnificence in all of it, a monumental spectacle unfolding in a vast arena. Too much the historian, he had cautioned himself—removed from the reality of war by the crisp white pages and stark black letters of textbooks.

  It was murder of course—civilians dying by the thousands, contrary to all rules of warfare. But Cole saw it with the clinical eye of a professional and did not invest the view with emotion. His ex-fiancée would have had a comment about that. You’re cold and calculating, Ruth had told him more than once. Analytical and careful, he had said, but he thought, iro
nically, that that was a reply delivered with no real emotion; it was simply constructed as a response. Maybe he was a coldhearted bastard after all.

  Cole whipped the MG back and forth, trying to avoid debris scattered in the street, racing frantically to get to Rebecca’s. He’d followed the course of the bombers as he drove to his flat and suddenly realized that they were headed for Rebecca’s portion of the city. She was at home—he knew that she was there because he had called her, wanting to talk about the other day, but she had said that there was nothing to talk about and that she would have to be going soon anyway. She was at home—directly in the path of the attack.