“Grubb!” Webber shouted down the hatch. “What in hell is taking so long?” He was surprised at his own display of nerves. “Is Funker asleep again?”
One of the lookouts snickered.
“Coming in now, sir. Funker just got our recognition signal.” A moment of silence. “Funker’s decoding the message now.”
That was something—Goliath had sent a message to them. Maybe to the other eleven boats as well. Webber snorted at his own stupidity. If it came to U-376 it had to go to the others; they were a wolf pack. Good or bad, the message went to everyone.
“Grubb, goddamn it. Has he finished it or not?”
Grubb’s torso, his pale face wreathed in a sparse blond beard, appeared out of the hatch. He tore a sheet off the message pad and handed it to Webber with a smile.
Webber snatched it out of his hand. “Are you trying to drive me mad? You and Funker? You come and stand here waiting …” His eyes caught the single word hastily scrawled on the sheet: Umkreis.
He looked at Grubb, who continued to smile. “Was it worth waiting for, Kapitan?”
Webber nodded, making sure that the word was actually there.
“What do we do now, Kapitan?” Grubb asked.
Webber gently folded the sheet and slid it into the pocket of his gray leather coat. “We wait for a bit more, Grubb,” he said calmly. “Then we destroy the British Home Fleet.”
“We’re not going—”
“No,” Webber said. “Only Prien could have gone into Scapa Flow, God rest his soul. No. They will come to us.”
“How accommodating of them.”
“Yes,” Webber said. “It will be the last accommodation that they make.”
D.K.M. Sea Lion
Mahlberg spent most of the morning consulting with his navigation officer and the engineering staff. Sea Lion was running at nearly thirty-five knots, which meant that she could easily cover over eight hundred miles in a day’s steaming. But thirty-five knots of continuous steaming took its toll on the engines and consumed a tremendous amount of fuel—hundreds of tons a day.
He took a cup of tea from the steward and walked around the report-strewn wardroom table, listening as his officers gave their reports. Mahlberg had reduced the ship’s readiness to War Cruising Condition Two; he didn’t want his men worn out by keeping them at Kriegsmarschzustand—battle stations—indefinitely. They had performed well against the British cruiser and he had told them as much. But the next test would be against Prince of Wales, and the Prince would not be so thin-skinned, nor would her guns lack range. She would be a challenge.
Mahlberg leaned against the sideboard as the charts were laid out on the table. He preferred the atmosphere of the wardroom to the closeted chart room. It was congenial and relaxed and reminded him of the collegial atmosphere of the classroom at Flensburg. It was a place to learn—to share information; the difference was this was not the theoretical theater of intellectual exercises—here was reality in its harshest form.
“I beg your pardon, Kapitan,” Leutnant Chyla said. He was B. Dienst-wireless intelligence officer and always immersed in his electronics and codes.
“Yes?”
“Before we transferred the civilians they asked me to convey a message to you. They were quite distraught.”
Mahlberg almost laughed out loud. They couldn’t have picked a worse spokesperson. Chyla was a champion in his dark world of glowing tubes and humming radios, but he was strangely out of place speaking directly with another human being.
“Were they?” Mahlberg said. “What is the message?”
“They informed me that when they reached Berlin, they intended to make formal protest, Kapitan. Fruelein May was very upset. Her language was—”
“I am familiar with her vocabulary,” Mahlberg said.
He saw a seaman hand a message to Kadow, who read it and then glanced quickly at Mahlberg.
“It will take them some time to reach Berlin, and by the time they arrive we shall have accumulated enough victories to satisfy everyone. Don’t concern yourself with them, Chyla. They are faraway and quite impotent. Dismissed.”
Kadow approached and handed him the message, saying only: “Group North.”
Mahlberg read the message. “‘ Umkreis.’” He looked at Kadow with a smile. “It is difficult not to feel at least a little pleasure over this, isn’t it?”
“Of course, Kapitan.”
“We are still some distance from complete victory, but this”—he held the message up—“places us a bit closer.”
“We’ve been monitoring Operation Funker since the beginning, Kapitan. It appears to be going as planned. Prince of Wales had turned south. The British are not certain of our location… .”
“No,” Mahlberg said. “But it is only a matter of time before they locate us. Don’t discount the British or their abilities. We’ve been able to utilize this appalling weather for sanctuary, but soon we’ll be out of it. We are bound to be spotted by one of their patrol aircraft.” He lapsed into deep thought. “The chart,” he ordered. “Let me see the chart.”
He pulled a chair back from the table and moved in close, tracing the route of Sea Lion with his finger. He stopped and tapped the chart. “Prince of Wales has changed course,” he said as his officers surrounded him. “B. Dienst places her here. She has no notion of our true speed and location, so she reckons if she maintains her current course and speed, she has more than an adequate margin of safety. But our calculation places us making contact with Prince of Wales”—he studied the chart—“here.”
“What if she increases her speed,” Kadow said, “or releases her escort?”
Mahlberg looked at Chyla for the answer to an unspoken question.
“If she transmits any such information,” the Leutnant said, “we can decode it almost instantaneously. With the Funker boats we can triangulate her position, again if she transmits, and determine her speed and course.”
“It’s like fighting in the dark, gentlemen,” Mahlberg said to his officers. “The first one who makes a noise, loses.” He studied the chart in silence. “Ten hours?” he said to Kadow.
“Ten hours,” his executive officer said. “There is nothing between us and Prince of Wales. The only threat lies behind us and they will have their hands full soon enough.”
“Imagine our reception when we return home, sir,” an excited Fahnrich zur See said. “There will be a parade in your honor.”
Mahlberg smiled at the innocent. “‘Policy is not made with speeches, shooting festivals, or song, it is made only by blood and iron.’ You’d do well to read your Otto von Bismarck and concentrate on the duties at hand. Let the future take care of itself.”
The Fahnrich zur See’s face reddened in embarrassment. “Of course, sir.”
“Don’t take it so hard,” Mahlberg said with a smile. “It is my job to keep excitement sufficiently restrained. Never plan for the fortunate unless you plan for the unfortunate as well. Would you agree, Kadow?”
“Yes, sir,” the executive officer said. “This is an uncertain business,” he advised the Fahnrich zur See in a fatherly tone. “We can limit some. Some are beyond our control. Some are beyond our ability to comprehend.”
“Now,” Mahlberg said to the young officer, “you will return to your duty as I will return to mine. Make certain that everything is in order, as I, through my officers, will see done. Tonight, when you lie in your bunk after having checked off every duty in your mind, twice over, you can dream of parades and willing young girls. Understand?”
The Fahnrich zur See snapped to attention and saluted Mahlberg. “Yes, sir.”
Mahlberg returned the salute and sent him on his way. He turned to Kadow, a troubled look on his face.
“Kapitan?” Kadow said.
“If we catch her here,” Mahlberg said, “we can have no more than three hours with her. Our fuel reserves dictate three hours and no more.”
“Bismarck sank Hood—”
“Yes, I know,”
Mahlberg said. “In less than six minutes. But she is a battleship and not a battle cruiser. Weren’t you listening, Kadow? Plan for the unfortunate as well. We have speed, firepower, and the accuracy of our fire control. Their crew is more experienced, but we are both equally well trained. We must close quickly and overwhelm her with our guns.”
“We have the advantage of range, Kapitan,” Erster Artillerie Offizier I.A.O. Frey said. “We can commence firing well before we come within the range of her guns.”
“Of course.”
Frey continued: “If visibility permits I can gauge range, course, and bearing in a matter of minutes. I will use the guns in bracketing groups, three salvos separated by four hundred meters. Our high-resolution optical range finders can locate the fall of the shot and adjust until we straddle the vessel. With luck, I can do that in a matter of thirty to forty-five minutes.”
“That is very finely played, Frey,” Kadow said. “You’re certain that ‘good rapid’ will come immediately?”
“Yes,” Frey said without emotion.
“Good. Because I will give you no more than three hours,” Mahlberg said. “She will be slippery, Frey, and it will take everything that we have to keep her in range.”
“Three hours, Kapitan. I need no more than that.”
“So be it,” Mahlberg said. “Now. The journey home. The Denmark Strait.” It was a question posed as a statement. He waited for his officers to reply.
Kadow posed his own question. “Will the British have closed it off to us?”
“Possibly,” Mahlberg said, “but with nothing more than cruisers and destroyers. North of the Faeroes?” He could tell by the look on his officers’ faces that they considered this unlikely. He smiled. “Yes, gentlemen. I feel the same way about mines. I won’t consider the Faeroe-to-Shetland passage, so you needn’t offer an opinion about that. There is France.”
“The Bay of Biscay?” Kadow said. “St. Nazaire or Brest?”
“A greater distance to travel but we’ll have air cover. I’ll give it some thought. Trenkmann?” Leutnant Trenkmann was the Rollenoffizier, the detailing officer who assisted Kadow with administrative duties.
“Yes, sir?” Trenkmann said.
“Contact Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine. Find out if they will detail a U-boat escort for us in the Bay of Biscay.”
“Sir, if the enemy has broken our code …” Trenkmann said.
“Then they will be faced with a dilemma. Is the message a ruse? Would I dare radio my intentions knowing that they will most certainly intercept and decode my message? Would I be foolish enough to put this fine ship right under the guns of the English navy or within sight of their air force? Or, if Sea Lion is at England’s doorstep can she dash out at any time and destroy her convoys? So many questions, gentlemen, and he who answers the most, wins. Send the message, Trenkmann, and let the British sort out its veracity.”
Derby House, Headquarters, Western Approaches,
Wireless/Telegrapher Center
Chief Petty Officer Wireless Telegrapher Watkins was a strange sort, a little man with a shock of gray hair and large, helpless eyes hidden behind thick glasses. When he spoke, which was not often, his Cockney accent distorted anything he said, so he chose to say very little. He had come into the Royal Navy during the last war when even men with eyesight such as his were welcome. He was not educated; no one in his family was educated, but the Royal Navy by sheer chance or the intuition of some enlistment officer decided that Watkins was just the sort of chap that they needed in W.T. It was in this small and little-understood division of the Royal Navy that Watkins came to know, in his very undemonstrative way, that he was quite brilliant. He heard, through the bulky earphones clamped over his ear, and he felt, through his fingertips from the clumsy black knobs on the monstrous wireless cabinets, the unseen world of radio signals. From the first year of the last war on, Watkins was content to sit in the shadow of the W.T. cabinet with its glowing dials, warm face, and gentle hum from the large glass tubes that throbbed like a hundred hearts within its body, and listen. Over the years he came to know, to understand, to appreciate, the complexity of the electronic language, and the only time that anyone saw Watkins excited was when he spoke with other supplicates of the wondrous machines and their ability.
Now it was his second war and as was the case with all wars, all things became much more complicated and required even more devotion of the warriors; those who fought with guns, and those who listened. And Watkins had been listening. For U-boats. And the U-boats had been talking; a great many U-boats chattering away as if their only purpose at sea was to gossip. This was a mystery to Watkins, who prided himself on understanding things. He had been told by his superiors, and had confirmed by listening, that Mr. Doenitz’s boats were expected to communicate regularly through Goliath—the giant U-boat radio network. Watkins expected, as one in his line of work would expect, that the U-boats would do exactly that: send regular W.T. transmissions to inform Mr. Doenitz where they were and what they were doing.
But one night Watkins, his uniform disheveled, his half-empty stained mug of tea perched dangerously close to his elbow, a company of dead cigarette butts lying in and around a cheap tin ashtray, leaned slowly into his W.T. cabinet and pressed the Bakelite earphones tightly against his ears. He had found something—something strange, something that at first did not make any sense and was so unusual that he thought, perhaps, he was mistaken. So he listened. For seven hours, his hunched shoulders burning, his tobacco-stained fingers curled around the earphones, he listened. After seven hours he reached without looking and found the pad and pencil that he always kept on the narrow shelf next to his desk, and he began to write.
The U-boat W.T. transmissions were certainly in code, but Watkins was not concerned with that because he simply copied down the message as it was transmitted and he sent the whole thing up to the chaps in Crypto. He knew what was padding, that segment of the message before and after the true transmission that was supposed to throw off anyone listening. He knew that. And he knew the call signs of the various U-boats; he judged fifteen in all, because he had heard thousands of call signs over the years and that was the first thing that he had picked up.
That wasn’t what troubled him and for an instant caused him to doubt his ears, and his experience. So on his pad he wrote down fifteen names; good, strong English names like William, John, Paul, and Robert. And then for the next ten hours, as Mr. Doenitz’s U-boats cluttered the airwaves with W.T. transmissions, he placed a checkmark beside the name of each enemy W.T. he identified. Not beside each call sign, but beside the English name of every U-boat W.T. operator, the flesh-and-blood human being that tapped out the message. After Watkins had heard enough, after he was satisfied that he had solved a mystery, and a very curious one at that, he lit a cigarette and, looking over his shoulder, called to the young duty officer: “Sir? If you don’t mind, sir, I’ve run across something that I think you should have a listen to.”
Chapter 22
Scapa Flow
Captain Harland had tried for the better part of an hour to ring through to Sir Joshua, but for one reason or another, he was unsuccessful. Radio was out of the question; there was a violent storm raging just outside the squat brick administrative building of the Home Fleet and every signal transmitted or received was garbled beyond comprehension. Drops of cold rain peppered the windows accompanied by the low, mournful howl of the wind as Harland agonized over his inability to speak with his superiors. The message that he had for Sir Joshua was critical: the Home Fleet was going out.
Admiral Townes and his staff had gone over the reports from Harrogate when she got to the last reported position of Nottingham. There was nothing, Harrogate had reported, some bodies, Carley rafts, and the few pitiful things that had once made up the life of one of His Majesty’s ships.
“Send Birmingham to join Harrogate,” Townes had said. “In case the bastard turns round and comes back out the Strait.” Then he turned to Harland and sai
d: “You may inform Sir Joshua that the Home Fleet is lighting off boilers in preparation to sail. Rodney, King George V, the cruisers Hermione, Kenya, and Neptune will accompany them.”
“Neptune has had to stand down, Admiral,” one of the officers had reminded him.
“Norfolk can go in her stead,” Townes said.
“When can you sail, sir?” Harland had asked.
Townes glanced at an aide for the answer.
“Four to six hours, sir,” the aide said crisply.
“I can see from the look of disappointment on your face, Captain Harland, that you are not satisfied with the answer. Nor am I, but we simply can’t turn the key on these ships and drive them into the North Atlantic. There is preparation after all. You can help and make no mistake about that. Find the German ship for us. If I know where it is I will go and destroy it. Put everything that flies into the air and find that bastard for me. I shall feel much better once I avenge Nottingham.”
Harland had been trying to reach Sir Joshua to inform him of Admiral Townes’s intentions. He slammed the telephone down in disgust. Millions of pounds invested in the finest naval base in the realm and he could not even make a trunk call to London.
He lit a cigarette to calm himself and walked to the window overlooking the bay. Even in the gloom he could see them, huge black machines, their mute forms punctuated by signal lights, turrets, funnels, superstructures, and guns. The might of the Royal Navy, the great ships that had destroyed Bismarck and would now venture out to destroy another German vessel. He felt pride at what he saw—he was staff and not line and there was an unspoken agreement that one seldom acknowledged the contribution of the other. Still, there was the real Royal Navy and in just a few hours they would go in harm’s way.
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