by Jeremy Duns
We were going at about fifteen knots, I thought, and every few seconds we crested a wave and cold spray hit my face and froze my jaw.
‘There should be some clothes under there,’ he shouted over the noise of the motor, pointing to a line of low cupboards under the seating. ‘I’d advise you to put on some more layers, because it will be even colder when we get out there.’
I bent down and slid one of the cupboards open and found an old rollneck sweater, which I pulled over my head, and a pair of canvas trousers, which I placed over the dead husband’s. Lundström looked like a gun dog focused on a bird: with this man’s help, I might be able to make it. I just had to hope that Sarah was still in one piece. I tried to focus on the task ahead. Once I got hold of the diving suit, I would have to try to locate the U-boat and dive for the canisters. But then I would have to get them out of the water, and find Sasha again…
I let my thoughts spin away as the smell of pines and seaweed carried on the air. We crested a large wave and spray covered the windscreen, obscuring the view for a second. Lundström had gone quiet, his face set. He took a large map from the dashboard and consulted it. Then he cut the motor.
‘We’ll be coming in soon,’ he said.
He steered with a more intense concentration until, about five minutes later, we came to a pass between two small islands. Lundström slowed the boat and headed towards the one on the left. He climbed out and swiftly jumped onto the shore, tying the ropes to a metal ring attached to the remains of a small wooden quay, one half of which had fallen apart.
‘Ryssbryggan,’ he said, as I joined him on shore and tied the other rope. ‘We used to be part of the Russian Empire, you know. They built this back in the First World War.’ He finished tying up and looked across at me. ‘I hate the fucking Russians,’ he added. His jaw clenched for a moment, and then slackened again.
The jetty led onto a narrow dirt track through dense bushes and foliage, and we swiftly made our way along it, taking care to keep our heads down. ‘That’s their barracks,’ Lundström whispered after a couple of minutes, pointing to a greyish-white building in a clearing ahead. ‘But they keep the diving equipment in there.’ He pointed to a tiny cabin with white window frames positioned a few dozen feet away from the main building, right on the water.
We ducked down and started crawling through a brush of long grass. Now I saw that there was a jetty here as well, but that it was occupied by several patrol boats – Sea-Hounds or something similar – which was presumably why we’d come via the broken quay instead.
Crack.
I sat, frozen still in the grass. It was just some twigs breaking under my feet, but had anyone inside the barracks heard the noise? The outline of Lundström’s head was just visible against the deep blue of the sky a few feet ahead of me, and he was utterly still. The wind rustled near us, the water lapped softly against the side of the jetty, but there were no other sounds. Finally, Lundström ducked his head; he raised the palm of his hand and gestured for me to come forward.
Less than twenty seconds later we were at the edge of the cabin. Lundström crawled onto a small step leading to the door and I saw him feeling around with his hands until he lifted a key from a ledge beneath the step. Then he pawed his way up until he was in the doorway and stood. He beckoned me to join him again and I did. He looked at me for a moment, then inserted the key. He turned it. The click sounded terribly loud in the silence, and we waited to see if anything responded. When nothing did, he slowly eased the door open, and we stepped inside.
It was even darker than it had been outside, but after a few seconds my eyes began to adjust. We were in a small hallway with two wooden doors, similar to the one we had just come through. Lundström reached for the handle of the door to the right, then leaned his shoulder into it and opened it. I followed him into a room that felt a little larger than the hallway, but which was yet darker.
‘In here,’ Lundström whispered from the far corner, and I walked towards the sound of his voice. I heard him unhook a latch and he told me to go in ahead of him, which I did, but at the last moment something registered – heat – and I tried to pull back, but it was too late because I felt a rough shove at the base of my neck and I stumbled and fell to the floor. I heard the door slam shut and the latch hooking into place. It was lighter here, but incredibly hot, and I looked around the room with growing fear.
This wasn’t a storage room for diving equipment. It was a sauna.
*
‘Jan!’ I shouted out, but there was no response. Understanding swept over me. Lundström had lured me here so he could lock me in. And he had left me here to burn to death.
The heat was unbelievably intense, and my clothes were already soaked in sweat. I tore at them frantically, struggling with the boots and then kicking them off. I grabbed the gun from my pocket, but realized at once that it was too light: he’d emptied it – presumably when I’d been putting on more clothes at his suggestion.
I looked around again and began to make out a few more items in the room. There was a rectangular window low in the wall on the right and through it I glimpsed reeds and rushes and a stretch of water. Most of the room was taken up with two benches in the shape of steps to sit on, and below them was a basket filled with small wooden logs, presumably firewood for the stove. Some metal crowbars rested against the wall – perhaps to open the window? I reached for them, but they burned my hands, so I went for the wood instead. Slightly cooler. I threw one of the logs at the window, but it just bounced back at me comically. I could hardly see straight now, because sweat was pouring into my eyes, making them sting. I wanted to wipe them but my hands were also soaked and I thought I’d probably just make them worse.
As I was trying to think what to do next, a loud hissing sound made me jump. After a couple of seconds I realized what it was, as my chest started to burn up as though someone had lit a blowtorch inside me. Lundström hadn’t left; he had just poured water on the stove. Somewhere behind the pain I registered that this offered me some kind of leverage, but I struggled to grip the thought for long enough to follow it through, because the pain was so searing. I wanted to scream in agony, but if I did that I might bring the coastguards running, and with them ruin any chances I might have of stopping Brezhnev from going ahead with his strike. I grunted and groaned instead, biting my upper lip and tasting the hot sweat pouring off me. I crouched as close to the ground as I could but resisted the urge to lie down because I wasn’t sure if I did that I’d have the strength to get back up.
And then the hissing came again. The thought came into my mind that I was experiencing pure fear. In London during the war, the V2s had panicked everyone because the sound of their falling had been heard only after they had done their damage. But this was how terror really worked: the sound came first, then a delay, and finally the inevitable. And here it came: the heat rising again, so fast I felt my skin was going to burn off and my internal organs catch fire.
I wanted to detach my mind so I wasn’t as aware of the pain, but I knew it was crucial to hold on to my thoughts if I wanted to survive. A lucid thought broke in now: he must be opening the door to add water, and judging by the speed with which he was doing it the stove was probably very near the door. If I could muster the strength to reach it, perhaps I could get out, or at least stop him from pouring on any more water. I crawled in the direction of the heat, but it was agonizing and my skin started to sting as though it were about to bleed or peel off, and I recoiled instinctively. I had to fight my instincts, but it was getting harder to think straight.
‘You murdered my father,’ said a voice, startling me. It was Lundström, and the gentle tone he’d used before was now choked with rage. He hadn’t left me here, but was standing outside the door making sure I couldn’t escape. I turned to find the precise location of his voice – he was talking to me through the crack in the door.
‘Jan!’ I said. ‘Please, for the love of God let me out of here so we can talk about this. I have no idea what you’re ta
lking about, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with your father’s death—’
‘You had everything to do with it!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You have no idea how many times I thought of trying to find you. Once I even planned a trip to England, but I soon realized it was useless. I knew so little about you. But now here you are; you’ve fallen into my lap. It must be fate.’
I tried to move nearer to the door again, but the waves of heat were still too strong.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ I said. ‘Please open this fucking door before we all die!’
He laughed again. ‘You think I believed your crazy story about the world being on the brink of a nuclear war? No. You are on a mission, naturally, but that is surely not what it’s about. You claim to be the great hero who has come to rescue us all but I know who you really are, and what you’re doing. You are using me, just as you used my father. But I will not make the same mistake he did, which was to believe you.’
Had he gone mad? He sounded it. He threw more water onto the stove and the heat came again, spreading through me even more rapidly. My eyes felt like they were bulging from my head, and that they might disconnect. I wondered how much more of this I could take, and whether or not I could find a way to end it. Just slip to the ground. Yes, how easy that would be. The world can hang. We’ll all be dead anyway…
No, think, think. There must be some way out of here. Get to the door – he is pouring water on the stove through a gap in the door.
‘The Russians came to see us the morning after you left,’ he said. ‘Pappa stonewalled them, and said he had never heard of any British agents visiting. But he was not a good liar, or they had other evidence. They went away but returned shortly after, with a very cruel man in charge – I think he had come from Moscow. He didn’t believe Pappa’s story, and so he had come out himself to question him. He brought several other men with him, and some… equipment. They took Pappa to a basement in their headquarters in Mariehamn and tortured him for three days. When that didn’t work, they locked him inside a sauna much like this one and tried to boil him alive. By the end of it, he had told them everything – about you, the U-boat captain and the other agent. Now you are here, and I am going to make you suffer as they made Pappa suffer. I have a sauna nearly every day, and I know very well just how to make it hurt you: how much water to pour on, how long to wait. You’ll see.’
I believed him.
‘The man from Moscow,’ I said, struggling to breathe. ‘What was his name?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Can you describe him?’
There was no answer.
‘Please, Jan, I promise you I had no intention of any of that happening. But this is important. Do you remember what he looked like?’
‘He was evil, that is all I can say. He looked like a… like a little boy, or a troll. He was pure evil.’
I fell back onto the bench.
Yuri.
Yuri had been here in 1945 – before he had recruited me in Germany.
I heard the hiss and knew what I had to do. I had about a second before the heat would hit me again. I leapt towards the door and slammed my shoulder into it, breaking it open. I lunged forward and grabbed Lundström by the collar as he stumbled backwards, his arms flailing. I brought my right hand down hard onto his wrist and gripped it, then swivelled into a half-turn and swung my other hand around to grab the barrel of the Lahti from below, jerking it back until it was parallel with the ground. He let out a scream as his trigger finger snapped, and the pistol dropped into my hand.
It was a heavy pistol. It reminded me of Father’s Luger. I trained it on him.
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ I said. ‘But there are more important things at the moment. Make another sound and I’ll blow your head off. Understand?’
He nodded, his eyes darting wildly. He was still clutching a ladle in one hand and I took it from him and dropped it in a bucket of water on the floor. The steam was still blasting in the sauna behind me, and a thought came to me. ‘How did you know it would be on?’ I said. ‘The sauna.’
‘I know the coastguards. They have saunas every Monday night and it’s someone’s job to prepare it. So I knew it would already be hot.’
‘What time do they have their sauna?’
‘Midnight.’
I checked the watch on his wrist.
‘That’s in fifteen minutes. You meant to kill me before then? What if I hadn’t died that fast and they had interrupted?’
He gave a cruel smile. ‘They would understand. Half the people on this island know who you are, and what you did to my father.’
Enough. There was no time for this. I pressed the pistol against the back of his neck.
‘Where can I find diving equipment?’
I had a couple of questions, but this was the most important one. I had to get to those canisters. But he didn’t answer, and just glared at me.
‘I don’t know.’
I swivelled him round so he was facing me.
‘Give me your best guess. You told me yourself there are few secrets here.’
He didn’t respond, just jutted out his chin and glared. Generals in Moscow were debating launching a nuclear strike, and this man might be my only chance of stopping it.
‘Tell me where I can find diving equipment or I’ll shoot.’
Nothing – only a clench of his jaw, his eyes wild with fury. I couldn’t get to the U-boat without a diving suit. If he knew enough to know the timetables of the coastguards’ saunas, there had to be a good chance he would know where to find a suit. But he was stubborn. Perhaps he wanted me to kill him. Perhaps he was so mad he’d forgotten what fear was. No – he’d known how to scare me well enough. It gave me an idea. I grabbed him by the neck until he was standing, then motioned to the door of the sauna with the pistol.
‘Get in,’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘Get in now!’
He opened the door and I pushed him into the space I’d been in just a few minutes earlier. A blast of heat hit me as I stepped in after him, and my skin prickled at the memory of the pain. Lundström had already started sweating. I grabbed one of his hands and placed the palm above the burning coals of the stove.
‘Where can I find diving equipment?’
I thought I saw fear growing in his eyes then, but he didn’t answer.
I slammed his hand down onto the coals, and he shrieked out. I removed it immediately – it had only been on for a fraction of a second. But it was enough.
‘Next door,’ he gasped, and pointed to the room adjacent.
I locked the sauna door then ran through and turned the light on. It was a dressing room: there was a line of towels and a poster illustrating the health benefits of the sauna. And laid out all along the benches and on the floor was diving equipment: suits, masks and air tanks. I found the suit that looked the newest, then picked up a mask and an attached hose and air tank, the mark Aga Divator.
Carrying my bounty over my arm, I returned to Lundström, who was whimpering and weeping with the pain.
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ I said. ‘I never meant for that to happen. But I never said I was a hero.’
I locked the door behind me, then walked down the steps and headed through the bushes, back towards the jetty.
XVII
11.48 p.m., Monday, 27 October 1969, Storklubb, Åland
Lundström’s map was just under the dashboard. I took it out and located Storklubb and Söderviken on it. It was thirty-six nautical miles away, but from memory the U-boat was easily found once at Söderviken. I started the boat up slowly, then once I’d reached open water took her as fast as she could go. The horizon was barely visible in the darkness, but my mind was cold and clear: now I was the gun dog.
I reached the area around Söderviken about an hour and a half later. In 1945, I’d been sure that the hatch leading to the crew’s quarters had been sealed tightly. Clearly I’d been wrong, but had it just c
racked open a little, allowing the liquid in the canisters to leak out through it, or had it opened entirely, in which case the canisters themselves might have floated out? If the latter had happened, I might get down to the U-boat only to find there were no canisters left, having floated off miles away. So I divided up the map into quadrants around the area to make it easier to search, then cut my speed and began drifting on the waves, looking for any telltale signs.
A wind was picking up, and I urged it to pass by – I could only dive if it remained calm, so a storm now would scupper everything. It was also playing tricks on my ears, and I kept imagining I heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. The thought of that filled me with dread. If Sasha and his men found me floating out here now, it was all over. But if I could get to the canisters first…
I took out the radio transmitter and looked it over. It had gone silent, but that might be because they had found Zelenin’s body and realized I’d taken it, and didn’t want to give me any more information by broadcasting anything I could pick up. But it had survived the heat of the sauna, and if I could transmit with it that might be the way through.
I drifted between islets, trying to locate the spot where I’d gone down in 1945. But it all looked the same. Then, finally, I saw something emerge in an area that was in the far north-eastern quadrant of my map – it looked a shade darker. I accelerated towards it and my heart started pounding. Yes, there was oil on the surface: a long thin coil of it stretching into the distance, growing thicker.
This was it. This was where U-745 had sunk.
I quickly dressed in the wetsuit, which was thick and heavy but a great improvement on the Clammy Death, and attached the mask and breathing tank. In one of the cupboards under the dashboard I found some waterproof sacking and took it out so I would have something to put the canisters in. I cut the engine, gave a last check that all the valves were secured, and recited the magic lines:
Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,