“Do not leave,” said the captain, apologetically gesturing for the doctor to return as he himself stood up and gently pressed the communique into the interior pocket of his wool uniform jacket. “Accompany me to the command compartment. My learned friend, I will need you at my side, today above all days.”
Confused and troubled, Doctor Oskar Goering nodded and followed his captain into the main corridor. For the first time, he noticed that the grey-eyed commander had donned a clean uniform typically reserved for return to port, wore his dress pistol sidearm, and had even made an attempt to slick his hair and trim away the more unkempt patches of his scraggly beard.
Today above all days, thought the doctor to himself. What could this possibly mean?
The captain forced a smile and nodded to Diesel Obermashinist Baek as he and the doctor squeezed past in the narrow walkway. Short—and quite fat, despite meager rations—the chief engineer had the ruddy-faced complexion of a gift-laden, bearded der Weihnachtsmann. Easily the most popular crewman on the ship, he consistently found no situation above merriment, no comrade undeserving of friendly affection.
“Which sailors are sick?” asked the captain as the doctor followed him towards the command compartment.
“Seaman Lichtenberg,” said Doctor Goering. “And his bunkmate, the one whose name I can never remember. The one from Czechoslovakia.”
“Damnable wunderwaffen,” muttered the captain. “Secret weapons, secret plans. Secrets upon secrets. So secret that even a captain knows not what he carries upon his own vessel. They tell me we carry the weapons that will save the war—but why simply trade them to the Nipponese?”
“We have what they need, I suppose,” said the doctor. “I doubt their science or manufacturing is within a decade of ours. Their medicine certainly isn’t.”
“We are selling our future,” declared the captain. “God has seen fit to bless their Asiatic empire with natural riches. But on my last porting in Ushant, I saw our planes without tires, our trucks without diesel. Soon our soldiers will be without shoes.”
To say nothing of women and children without bread, thought the doctor, thinking back to the last letter he’d received from his grown daughter before departing port. Even through her brave, stalwart insistence that all was well, he could see past the thin veneer of state-enforced optimism.
“We need raw materials from the East,” said the captain. “And for this, we must give our technology. I have the U-3531 with a submerged fast-attack speed of more than 17 knots; I can carry 23 torpedoes and sixty men across oceans. And yet we are little more than a glorified oxcart. My friend, there was a time when we were wolves.”
The captain wasn’t wrong. For a moment, the doctor felt himself wondering if the Japanese had designs on the U-boat once it arrived. It’d be easy enough, wouldn’t it? Greet their German guests at the docks, lure them in, butcher the crew, and take their mighty submarine.
Striding past the radio compartment, the conversation came to an abrupt end as the captain spotted the glance of Oberleutnant Boer, the submarine’s twenty-three-year-old political officer, an inevitable consequence of the Valkyrie assassination bombing attempt on Hitler’s life. The ferret-faced sailor was committedly friendless, content in his divine mission. Every casual attempt to engage him in conversation would result in some lecture about sovereign living space, superiority of the German man, the right of Fatherland to assert its will over Europe, or the dazzling brilliance of the Führer. The few who tried rarely bothered a second time.
Boer behaved like a man who’d never invited nor experienced a moment of doubt in his life, a trait that passed the point of admirable conviction and situated itself contentedly in the realm of outright parody. With his immaculate uniforms unspoiled by labor, and his tendency to breathlessly repeat schoolboy slogans and propaganda, even the sympathetic found his devotion to the Reich laughable. But the only truly unforgivable sin committed by Boer was his confiscation of a full third of the ship’s razors, allowing the political officer to remain the only consistently shaved man aboard.
The captain briefly paused at the last door before the command compartment. Originally designated as the captain’s cabin, the quarters now held two Japanese military attachés. Doctor Goering had seen little of the two diminutive men. They rarely left the small room, and preferred to eat their strange rice meals in solitude. He’d only seen them in the moments before embarkation, two gymnast-like, muscled Japanese officers with short beards, in crisply-pressed khaki uniforms, and sheathed samurai-styled blades at their hips. The doctor had watched as the two men eyed the German sailors with a mix of disinterest and contempt, not even bothering with the implied respect of one supposed master race to another.
Captain Duckwitz checked both directions of the corridor, and slid a folding ox-bone penknife from his pocket. As the confused doctor looked on, the captain reached up to the low ceiling and allowed his fingers to find the small wire that went to the intercom speaker inside the Japanese cabin. The young captain slid his penknife through the wire, slicing it in two. With the thick metal cabin door shut, the interior would be as silent as a bank vault. The doctor did not know what the captain intended to say over the intercom—but whatever was to be said, their Japanese guests were not meant to hear it.
Stepping into the command compartment, the captain and his doctor were greeted by a muffled Captain-on-deck and were saluted by the assembled officers. Captain Duckwitz ordered them at ease and turned to his radio operator, leaning low over his station and addressing him with a conspiratorial whisper, the doctor joining the huddle.
“Loss reports?” asked the captain.
“Not good, Captain,” said the young man, dropping a single earphone from his head. “Have just received April 30th through May the 3rd. Eight losses at minimum.”
The captain shook his head. Bad, but not as bad as the air raids of early April. “Read me the designations,” he ordered. “But quietly.”
“U-325, missing with all hands. No cause known. U-879, sunk by warship patrol. U-1107, lost by aircraft in the Bay of Biscay …”
“Bay of Biscay? More like the valley of the shadow of death,” mumbled Doctor Goering to no one in particular.
“U-2359, 2521, and 3032 presumed lost to aircraft,” continued the radio operator. “And the U-3502 has been deemed un-repairable from an earlier attack.”
“The U-2521?” asked the captain. “That was Heinz Franke’s boat, no?”
“I don’t know,” admitted the radio operator.
“Was he a friend?” asked the doctor.
“Not as such,” said the captain. “But I know the family.”
“Were you able to decode the message from this morning?” the radio operator gingerly inquired. “I was unfamiliar with the cypher.”
“Stop probing,” said the captain with a wry smile. “If you were meant to know the message, you would know the message. Doctor—please join me as I address the crew.”
Doctor Oskar Goering could do little but nod and stand beside his captain. He could scarcely imagine the weight of command. His young friend was like the oak core of ever-greater nesting dolls, bearing the expectation of the surrounding men, the pressure of the ocean around their tiny submarine, the hostile airplanes and destroyers that circled like locusts, even the massing Allied armies at the Fatherland’s borders.
With one deep sigh, the captain took the intercom phone from beside the attack periscope and cleared his throat.
“Crew of the U-3531, come to attention,” he began, the intonation of his voice giving no evidence as to his forthcoming message. “This is your Kapitanleutnant speaking. We have received urgent orders from Naval High Command that I will now relay to you.”
The captain took another halting breath before continuing, steadying himself against the periscope.
“All Underseebooten,” he continued. “Attention all. Cease fire at once. Stop all hostile action against Allied shipping.”
Murmurs whispered through
out the command compartment, turning to hissed whispers. The doctor feared they’d soon turn to a roar.
“The orders continue,” said the captain. “It reads as follows: My U-Boat men. Six years of war lie behind you. You have fought like lions. An overwhelming material superiority has driven us into a tight corner from which it is no longer possible to continue the war. Unbeaten and unblemished, you lay down your arms after a heroic fight without parallel. We proudly remember our fallen comrades who gave their lives for Füehrer and Fatherland. Comrades, preserve that spirit in which you have fought so long and so gallantly for the sake of the future of the Fatherland. Long live Germany. It is signed Grand Admiral Doenitz. Orders end.”
Silence rang through the submarine like a gong, a profound, ear-ringing silence only experienced after a falling bomb has ripped through a city block—or when years of total war come to an abrupt end.
“I will add a measure of my thoughts,” said the captain into the intercom. “Men, we have fought like comrades and died like brothers. I am eternally honored to have served with every one of you. We must now steel ourselves to push through this veil, whether that veil be wet with tears or red with hatred. I intend to return us to Germany and place our fates at the feet of our conquerors. Men—brothers— we have survived the war; may we now survive the peace to come.”
The dam broke with fifty-seven simultaneous shouts of despair and joy, insistences of disbelief, shattered expectations and uncertainty.
Ferret-faced Political Officer Oberleutnant Boer pushed his way to the foremost of the captain’s congregants, shoving aside ruddy Diesel Obermaschinest Baeck and the aghast radio operator.
“Lies!” Boer shouted, waving a finger in the captain’s impassive face. “American, British lies!”
“I’ve verified the code personally,” said the captain. “The orders are from Admiral Doenitz’s hand to my mouth— and Oberleutnant Boer, be well advised that I do not owe your rank an explanation.”
“Orders?” snarled Boer as he nearly ripped open the lapel of his uniform to reach inside his interior breast pocket. “These orders of which you speak? I have orders as well—secret orders from the Führer’s inner circle! In the event of a collapsing war effort or sabotage from within, we are to sail to Argentina to regroup. Captain, this very vessel has the weapons necessary to turn the tide. We are the key to beating back the mongrel races—but instead, you tell us these lies of surrender?”
The captain’s mouth had just begun to twitch with an infuriated response when out of nowhere a fist flew into Boer’s face, snapping across the young man’s jawline with shattering force, instantly dropping the political officer in a sprawling heap on the floor. Ruddy, affable mechanic Baeck had become a human cudgel, his teeth gritted and his brow knotted as he continued the assault, throwing his body atop the political officer and raining down blow after blow. The doctor recoiled in horror—not for the act, but because of the beloved man committing it.
Shouting officers dragged the two men apart. The political officer was now dazed and bleeding as the bloody-knuckled mechanic struggled against the interventionists. In the confusion, the doctor noted a flashing metallic glint in the captain’s hand as he drew a Luger pistol and drew aim at the beloved mechanic.
“Striking a superior officer is a capital offense,” intoned the captain, cocking the hammer as Baeck’s eyes widened in surprise.
“I want him shot,” shouted Boer, yanking himself free of the two men who’d helped him to his feet. “And anyone who sympathizes with his cowardly—”
The captain’s face twisted in anger as he shifted his aim from the mechanic to the political officer, pulling the trigger in an instant, the pistol blast ringing through the tight command compartment. Blood spurted from a spec-sized hole under Boer’s unseeing left eye as the young, smoothfaced man crumpled to the metal deck.
Silence again took hold as the captain holstered his pistol.
“Release Obermachinest Baeck,” he commanded to his men. “Baeck, return to your duties at once. As for Oberleutnant Boer, perhaps peacetime will elevate fewer such men. Prepare his body for immediate burial at sea.”
No one moved.
“I will have order on my ship,” growled the captain with an icy voice, the coldest the doctor had yet heard. “We few, we lucky few, have survived all manner of wartime and loss; we have survived, unlike so many of our brothers in arms. I would prefer my men to survive the peace, uneasy as it may be. Doctor Goering, I will need you for one final task before you are dismissed.”
“Yes, Captain,” said the doctor, following as the captain turned 180 degrees on one heel and stomped from the command compartment, leaving the political officer’s body behind.
“We have a duty to inform our Japanese guests,” said the captain as he purposefully strode towards their cabin door, the two men once again finding themselves alone.
“And you require me for this notification?” asked the doctor, not wholly understanding.
“You’ll see,” said the captain, knocking three times on the door and standing at attention. “Dealing with these Japs isn’t like dealing with a proper German. Perhaps notification is too strong a word. Müllschuss might be more appropriate.”
The doctor pondered for a moment. Müllschuss, or “garbage-shot” referred to the days’ collected trash as it was blasted from an empty torpedo tube and into the abyss. Normally so deft at hiding his feelings, the young captain had just revealed his true sentiment of the submarine’s foreign passengers—a wish to eject them from the submarine, like so much garbage.
CHAPTER 2
The cabin door swung open, revealing the two Japanese officers. Standing at attention as though they’d expected the intrusion, the two short men stood primly, hats cocked, their khaki uniforms unnaturally immaculate in the dull light streaming in from the corridor, beards closely trimmed, hair neatly slicked back without a single errant strand. Try as he might, the doctor genuinely could not tell one from the other. The two officers could have been brothers, or even twins. And then there was that smell; too many unfamiliar spices mixed with the slight after-scent of sweet rice wine.
“I have news,” said the captain stiffly, wasting not a word. “Germany has withdrawn from the war effort. Our orders are to return to port for an orderly surrender to Allied forces. Gentlemen, I regret we cannot return you to your homeland.”
“Not acceptable,” said the foremost Japanese officer, speaking with a faint British-accented German, his face betraying no emotion. “You will proceed to Japan and complete your mission.”
“The war is over for Germany,” said the captain, letting a slight measure of formality slip from his intonation. “I know this puts you in a difficult position, but we would be in violation of our orders to continue.”
“You will complete your mission,” repeated the Japanese officer, cold and insistent.
The captain whipped off his wool cap and stepped into the cabin, pushing his face within inches of the closest officer, scowling with intense displeasure. The Japanese soldier didn’t so much as blink.
“I did not choose this,” whispered the captain. “So long as I have breath in my lungs, I would in no way willingly submit myself, this ship, or its crew to humiliation before our enemy. But I will say this—I shot dead the last man to question my orders. I advise that you do not make the same mistake.”
“My . . . apologies . . . for any offense,” the officer said, narrowing his eyes as his twin stood motionless behind him.
“Accepted.” The captain stepped back and returned his own cap to his head. “And please understand, I must confine you to these quarters for the remainder of the voyage.”
The foremost Japanese officer nodded, not in agreement, but in acceptance of a fact he could not change.
“I request my katana,” the stony Japanese officer said.
“Whatever for?” blurted out the doctor before the captain could respond.
The Japanese officer tilted his head a mi
llimeter to address the doctor.
“There is no German translation for the practice,” he said. “We are honor-bound to perform the act of seppuku.”
Doctor Goering shivered, remembering the reference from an old pulp-printed adventure novel from his youth. Seppuku—the act of honor-bound suicide rather than capture, a self-inflicted stomach-cutting, followed by decapitation by an attendant.
“Denied,” the captain said.
“A pistol, perhaps. And two bullets.”
“Also denied. Any reasonable requests will be reasonably accommodated. But I will not aid you in your deaths, honorable as your intentions may be. Gentlemen—if there is nothing further, I bid you goodbye.”
Without waiting for a reply, the captain backed out of the cabin, shut the door, and locked it from the outside. The doctor followed him back to his cabin, where they sat at the small table. The doctor watched as the captain reached into his desk drawer and retrieved a cloudy glass bottle of plum schnapps and then poured the dark amber liquid into two tumblers.
“What now?” Doctor Goering said, accepting his drink with a measure of relief. “You think they’ll cause trouble?”
“Denying swords and guns will hardly stop them,” said the captain. “These Japanese always carry cyanide salts for such events. Perhaps a pill or powder. But it will be less messy, less of a distraction to the crew.”
“We must search the room,” began the doctor, his cynicism falling away for a moment to reveal a zealous young medic from another war long since passed.
The captain shook his head. “We will return in two hours’ time,” he said. “We will find our Japanese passengers unconscious or dead. You will attempt to revive them— unsuccessfully. Their bodies will be interred at sea in accordance with their customs. I’m not of a mood to argue, my learned friend. The matter is closed.”
“I suppose it is their way,” muttered the doctor.
“Good,” said the captain, raising his glass. “Then, let’s drink.”
RED SUN ROGUE Page 2