by Ted Bell
“Pop? Is that really you? Where are you?”
“Just pulled into the station. My plan was to take a taxi to your house and surprise you. But due to the snowstorm, nothing’s moving on the roads out here. Can you come pick me up?”
“Wow, Pop, this is a surprise. Yes. Yes, of course, I can come fetch you. It’s just that—”
“Just that what?” his father said, irritation already coloring his voice. He was not a man who took being dismissed lightly.
“Nothing, Dad. Nothing. I’ll tell you when I see you. Be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, as they say.”
“Good boy. I’ll be standing under that lantern by the station house door. I’m freezing my nuts off out here, for God’s sake!”
Tiger downed the balance of his cocktail and picked up the receiver and dialed Winnie’s number. This was not going to be fun. She picked up on the first ring.
“Hullo?”
“Darling, it’s me. I’m so awfully sorry, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to reschedule. Something’s come up.”
“Something like what?” she asked, her voice already ringing with indignation and suspicion.
“An unexpected guest has shown up. There’s really nothing I can do and—”
“Who is it? Some cheap, tawdry little trick you keep on the side?”
“That’s grossly unfair. And offensive, I might add.”
“Oh, you’re the one who’s offended. I get it. Not me.”
“It’s my father, for Crissakes, baby. Come all the way from China, apparently. Had no earthly idea he was coming. What more can I tell you?”
Silence.
“All right, then. Call me when you get a free moment.”
Click.
“Fuck!” he muttered under his breath. What the hell could the old man want, anyway?
What the old boy wanted was a lot, as it turned out. It was a nightmare, actually.
A bad dream with a tragic ending as it turned out.
CHAPTER 30
The English Channel
January 1942
Commander Hawke and his crew had already been bobbing about in the icy water for a good ten minutes. Hawke’s current favorite worry for his crew was hypothermia. Next to him in the frigid water, Stauffenberg held young Campbell, still unconscious, between them, keeping his chin up out of the water. The crew was huddled around the two officers in order to better stay in communication with one another. Hawke also had a whistle in case of unanticipated foggy conditions at splashdown, or to use as a call to action once aboard their objective.
The chill had already begun to seep inside them, reaching for their bones. The worn flannel German uniforms were no match for these temperatures. Hawke had just begun to fear that, somehow, he’d miscalculated the time between ditching, the onset of hypothermia, and the big Nazi Kriegsmarine minesweeper coming to their rescue.
But then he was much heartened to hear Lieutanant Stauffenberg shout with joy: “Look, sir. There’s a launch from the minesweeper headed this way at very high speed, sir!”
“Where away, Lieutenant?” Hawke said, using an antiquated Royal Navy expression, meaning “What compass point are you referring to?”
“Just there, sir,” Stauffenberg said, pointing in the fast-moving launch’s direction, out of the south.
Hawke raised a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the brilliant play of sunlight dancing on the surface of the water. The big gray launch was up on plane, throwing off a huge bow wave to both sides of the hull. Hawke took joy in the fact that she was headed straight to the position where the Heinkel had gone down.
“By God, you’re right. Here they come, all right. Are you men ready?”
“Aye, sir!” the other three crewmen said in unison.
“I’ve got just time enough for a final recap of key points of our actions once in German hands. Remember this: Your answer to any direct question from a German officer or crew member is strictly limited to the use of the following five German words. Bitte or please. Nicht verstehen or I don’t understand. Also, danke or thank you. Nein or no. Ja or yes. Understood? Also, memorize this one catchphrase. Use it whenever you’re confronted by a crew member with a direct question. You say, Alles gut, alles gut! It’s not a perfect answer, but it beats the hell out of a stupid blank stare.”
“Aye-aye!”
“That’s it, then, men. Once we’re safely aboard that minesweeper, you will take all your behavioral cues from me or Lieutenant Stauffenberg. Do what we do, not what we say. If we head aft, you head aft. If we stand on our heads, you stand on your heads. We two will do all of the verbal interactions with the Germans.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper.”
“Final reminder: When we’ve been aboard the minesweeper for exactly one hour, long enough for them to get comfortable with us and not on their guard, we split up, casually, so as not to draw attention to our movement. I’ll take Colin Hood with me to the bow. Lieutenant Stauffenberg will station himself at the stern rail. Wallace and Graebner will join up with him there.
“Good. Now, at precisely ten minutes after the hour, one way or another, I plan to be on the bridge. I will take out Donitz and whoever else is up there with him. I will sound some kind of an alarm or other throughout the ship. Anything to give us the cover of chaos. When you hear it, you immediately remove your weapons and begin approaching the Germans from behind, preferably using your blade to drop them silently. Yes? ‘Stealth’ is the operative word here. Take as many down silently as you possibly can. When they start shooting at us, grab your Sten gun from under your tunic and return fire at any and all remaining enemy. They will scatter. You will follow. We will have earned the advantage of surprise, and very few of them will be armed. You keep up the automatic fire until the last of the crew is dead or neutralized.
“At that point, young Hood and I will start moving aft from the bow, taking out Germans as silently and as quickly as we can, then make our way up to the bridge. Stauffenberg and you two men will likewise move forward from the stern, killing as many as you can, and thus creating a pincer movement amidships.
“When it’s clear that the very last combatant is nullified, we’ll hold a service for the brave sailors. I’ll say a few words and then we will commit them to the deep. I will assume command of the vessel and steer a direct course for Plymouth harbor, full speed ahead. All of our land, sea, and air forces have been alerted to expect us, granting safe passage to a heavy German minesweeper approaching Plymouth harbor from out of the south, flying a Union Jack from her main staff.”
He pulled the folded flag from inside his flight jacket and showed it to the men.
Hawke smiled at that and earned himself a cheer from his crew.
“I want to see lots of those smiles when the launch arrives here. These are your comrades, remember, and they’ve come to save you from a watery grave. Any questions? No. That’s good. You’ve got your orders. All of England will recognize and remember what we do here this day. Let’s not let them down, shall we? My uncle, Winston Churchill, would be terribly annoyed with me.”
“On to victory then, sir!” one of the men said, and the others joined with the victory cry.
“Good on you. Lieutenant, first order of business, as soon as we’re aboard the primary target, is to inform the German officers that your crewman is badly wounded, has lost his foot, and needs a tourniquet and the attention of the ship’s surgeon in sick bay immediately. Understood?”
“Of course, sir.”
“All right, lads,” Hawke said, “here they come. Keep your heads down, and don’t give away a thing. If you’ve got any prayers, right now might be a particularly good time to use them.”
* * *
—
One by one, the British boys, wolves in wolves’ clothing, were pulled up from the freezing sea and up over the gunwales of the German Schnellboot, a fa
st launch of about fifty tons and equipped with a twenty-millimeter gun forward and two torpedoes.
Hawke, who’d identified himself as the pilot of the downed bomber, Kapitän Ludwig von Reuter, was first aboard the launch. He stood at the rail and assisted the German crewmen who were grabbing his near frozen men by the wrists and hauling them aboard.
Next up was Stauffenberg, called Fritz by das Kapitän, who had already charmed his captors and was laughing over something the German sailor helping him had said about the sad state of his uniform. So far, so good, Hawke thought to himself. Just keep doing what you’re doing, Fritzy, old boy.
Ten minutes later, they were aboard the minesweeper, and they had all been taken belowdecks for coffee and bowls of steaming potato and leek soup doled out by the ship’s cook. Hawke ate his rapidly and went back for seconds. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry, but the soup was seasoned with fresh chives and by far the most delicious soup he’d ever tasted. He watched his boys, shivering with frostbite and keeping their heads down, saying nothing, happy to be alive, wrapped in woolen blankets and being treated like heroes.
Which, unbeknownst to their German hosts, they actually were, with the distinction that they were playing for the opposing team! Or, at any rate, soon would be, in England, anyway.
“Mein Kapitän?” he heard a young German officer with a shock of blond hair and a ready smile say as he approached the table where Hawke and Stauffenberg were quietly gathering their strength for the coming battle. Just in case anyone was listening, they confined their German conversation to a discussion of their great good fortune in going down within sight of the good ship Tannenberg and its Michelin-star cook.
“Bitte schoen, mein Herr,” a young sailor said to Hawke.
“Jawohl? Yes?” Hawke said to the boy in word-perfect German. “Was bekommen Sie? Haben Sie eine Wunsch? What will you have? Do you have a wish?”
“Only that Captain Donitz would like a word with you, sir. I’m to bring you up to the bridge, if you’d be so kind, sir.”
“Of course!” Hawke said, getting to his feet. “Lead on. I’m right behind you.” Thinking this was a great opportunity to suss out the situation up on the bridge, he gave Stauffenberg a concealed look that said, “Nothing to worry about, mate. I’m fine here.”
Hawke could feel the vibrations of the Tannenberg’s massive engines below, coming up through the soles of his boot as he climbed the steep steel steps up to the bridge. He smiled at his sudden good fortune. Besides Donitz, there were only two other duty officers. They would be getting the ship under way again shortly, he realized, all their attention taken by tricky channel navigation. Also, keeping a weather eye out for British Spitfires, a squadron having been notified the big German minesweeper was conducting operations in mid-Channel.
“Willkommen an bord. Welcome aboard, Captain!” the fabled seaman said in German. “I am Donitz, forever after heralded as your savior.”
Hawke snapped to attention, saluted, then smiled, and replied in his best boarding-school German accent.
“Ich bin immer in Enrer Schuld, mein Herr! I am forever in your debt, sir!” he said.
The captain said, “I’ve just heard from my ship’s surgeon. The amputee is stabilized, his wound has been dealt with, and he has been given morphine for the pain and a mild sedative. He is resting comfortably.”
“Deeply appreciated, sir!”
“Do you want for anything, Captain? Or your crew?”
“No, sir. We’ve been watered and fed the most delicious potato soup outside the Reich, sir. Danke, danke.”
“Well,” Donitz said, “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to introduce myself and say hello. I’ve got a ship to run now. Perhaps you’ll dine at my table this evening?”
“Sehr gut!” Very well.
The bridge was just what Hawke had expected of a tightly run ship such as Donitz had a reputation for, and out of the corner of his eye he immediately saw what he was looking for.
In the unfrosted windows of the small comms room, he saw an empty chair that meant the radio operator was not on duty.
He also saw, to his great delight, what he instantly recognized as the much-vaunted cypher machine, the 3-rotor Kriegsmarine encoder. Carefully arranged on a bulkhead shelf above the radio and wireless equipment was a neatly ordered set of codebooks bound in red leather.
The lever he sought, also painted bright red, was on the portside of the bridge, within easy access of any man on the bridge. In order to exit the bridge deck, he had to walk right past it. . . .
“Bis diese abend! See you this evening, then, Captain!” he said cheerily, but the captain did not turn around. He was bent over a chart table, poring over a map of the channel with his navigator. Oblivious to all else.
“Auf Wiedersehen.” Hawke smiled at the handsome young officer as he passed. He kept right on going, praying that Stauffenberg and his crew would recognize his actions for what they were—a perfect way to wreak havoc and cause confusion on board.
He paused at the top of the steps, pulled his sidearm from its holster under his tunic, turned to face the Germans with their backs to him, using binoculars to search for more targets. He raised the snub-nosed revolver and took dead aim. He then dropped them quickly, one by one, to the deck with nice clean head shots.
He reached for the bright red handle and yanked it down hard. Immediately, sirens and horns everywhere started their shrill wail. A prerecorded voiced screamed on the ship’s PA system:
ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! BATTLE STATIONS!
MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!
The battle für das Boot, für das Tannenberg had just begun in earnest.
CHAPTER 31
Sevenoaks Plantation, Virginia
January 1942
The evening meteorologist on the NBC forecast over the wireless had predicted blizzard conditions in the District of Columbia and the northeastern parts of Virginia. For once, they’d gotten it right. American meteorologists, Tiger had noted, only got it right about 30 percent of the time. But apparently that was good enough for Americans, for he’d never heard a single complaint about the latest botched forecast.
The twisty two-lane country road leading down the side of the mountain to the tiny village of Warrenton, Virginia, was something akin to a roller coaster. You didn’t have to steer; you just had to hold on to your hat. In the time that Tiger had been here, two parallel tire tracks had been etched deep into the hard-packed snow. There they were, day after day, waiting to guide you safely down. So all the driver had to do was get his wheels aligned in the proper track, put the vehicle in neutral, take his foot off the brakes, and let ’er roll on down. Rather like bobsledding, he’d thought when first he’d tried it.
It was snowing like hell when the ambassador made the trek from the kitchen door down the hill to the garages. His father was not notorious for his patience, and the son had witnessed his wrath on a personal basis far more times than he cared to admit. He tried to take his father’s surprise visit in stride, but to be honest, he was having a hard go of it.
He’d finally managed to escape the old boy’s orbit when he happily relocated to Washington. But he could remember times at Cambridge, and later at Oxford, hell, even back during his heady Etonian days, when the crusty old son of a bitch had shown up at the most inopportune times. Not that, for Tiger, any particular time was opportune. He had read in some psychiatric journal somewhere that powerful fathers did not relish sons who proceeded to achieve even greater measures of success at earlier ages than their sires had.
They let you know this, through your formative years, by continuing to damn you with faint praise. Or by no praise at all, no matter how much it might have been warranted. And Tiger could not recall a single time when, at some celebration or other, his father had said he was proud of Tiger’s latest achievement. Nor had he ever heard his father utter those three little words
that carry such weight: “I,” “love,” and “you.”
Some of these fathers, suddenly finding themselves eclipsed by the shining glory of their offspring, would resort to malevolence or, in extremis, violence.
Tiger had been sent to Washington by the government of Chiang Kai-shek. But Chiang’s was a weak government, riven by dissension and riddled with corruption. The strongest force in Tiger’s life was, by far, his responsibility to his ancestors and his family, especially his father.
The Tang crime family had been involved with illicit and criminal activities for centuries. Tiger was the celebrated black sheep of the family specifically because he was the only good egg they’d laid in centuries.
It was, to be sure, a love-hate relationship he had with his father. True, his father had never beaten him, per se, but he had done worse. His father’s method, when angered sufficiently, was to slap his son’s face hard enough to whip his head around. Slapping, as any man will tell you, is the greatest insult that one man can bestow upon another—to wit, the object of your disaffection. The grossest of insults in a man’s world, to be sure.
Just recalling that one thought made Tiger curse when he clambered behind the wheel of the big yellow Rolls-Royce, turned the ignition switch, and depressed the starter button down by his left foot. The engine failed to turn over out in this cold. Once, twice, three times. If that bastard tried to replay old behavior, Tiger was prepared to give him a little refresher course in the dark arts of kung fu before he sent him packing.
Tiger sat back, took a deep breath, and tried to get this anger under control. Obviously, he didn’t want to hurt the old boy, but he’d need to watch himself. It was near zero out tonight in the garages, and he reached to turn the key again with little expectation that the old girl would fire.
A pause, then a muffled explosion as the massive sixteen-cylinder engine roared to life. Thank God. He engaged first gear and made his way carefully down the long winding drive to the road. It was minimum visibility now, and he was glad when he pulled out onto the state road and slotted the big Rolls into the tracks.