by William Kerr
“Why so?” Ashley asked, hop-scotching away from the rush of an incoming tide.
“People are already dead because I asked for information and a favor.”
“As for what I’ve done to help,” Ashley went on, squiggling her toes through the sand to unearth a suspected sand dollar shooting air bubbles up from beneath the surface, “all I did was call an old friend of mine at the Navy Historical Center in Washington. He used to be stationed on one of the destroyer squadron staffs in Charleston before the base closed.”
“Ah-ha!” Matt responded, a note of gotcha in his voice. “An old flame you never told me about. So much for me thinking I was the first.”
With the upward kick of her foot, accompanied by a quick burst of laughter, Ashley sprayed Matt with a shower of salt water and white foam. “And I suppose I was the first? Yeah, right. Forget it, mister. The past is the past. And that’s all I got out of my friend, the past, as in World War Two.” Her last words were followed by another spray of water in Matt’s face.
Laughing, Matt held up both hands in surrender. “Okay. I give up, so tell me about the past and how it relates to the problem at hand.”
Ashley nodded toward the resort’s outdoor bar at the top of the beach, took Matt by the hand, and pulled him away from the water’s edge. “Let’s go up to the patio and use dear Aunt Freddie’s membership card to get something to drink. Then I’ll tell you.”
Less than ten minutes later, settled low in her chair to shield herself from the onshore breeze and its dampness, Ashley swirled the cherry in her Manhattan before lifting the fruit and plucking it off the stem with her teeth and lips. With a shudder and an involuntary “brrr” from the sudden chill and tartness of cherry, bourbon, and vermouth, Ashley admitted, “I probably should have ordered a good hot cup of coffee instead.”
Matt lifted his Scotch and water. “Anti-freeze,” he said, smiling broadly. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
With a smug little smile, Ashley pulled a small notebook from inside her jacket, opened it, and said, “My friend says on the night of May the fifth, nineteen forty-five, after Germany had announced they were surrendering, a tanker was sunk off Jacksonville Beach. Two destroyers were headed out to sea from the St. Johns River—”
“Two destroyers?”
“That’s what he said. They were coming out of the St. Johns en route to Norfolk when they picked up an SOS from the tanker. She’d been hit by torpedoes. They figured it had to be a U-boat that sank her.”
“Good guys to the rescue.”
“Not really. The tanker broke up so quickly, by the time they got there—apparently several miles from the mouth of the river—she was on the bottom. He said they did, however, pick up the sound of a submarine on their sonar and went after it.”
Matt sat with his hands steepled in front of his face, his breath making a faint whistling sound through the tips of his fingers. “What’d your buddy say all this is based on? Ship’s logs?”
“Right.”
“What were the names of the ships?”
“The uh…” Ashley looked at her notes, “…USS De Haven, DD Seven twenty-seven and the…” she said, pausing for a moment, wetting her index finger, and turning the page, “…the USS Collett, DD Seven thirty.”
“Two of the destroyers on the list Sam Gravely gave me.”
“Anyway,” Ashley went on, “they chased the sub, using…” she read again from her notes, “…half-ton Killer depth charges and hedgehogs.” She stopped and, looking up from the notes, said, “I know what depth charges are. The movie Das Boot, and those big cans falling through the water, but hedgehogs?”
“Little before my Navy days, to be honest. Kind of like an oversized mortar. A weapon system on a ship capable of firing more than twenty contact-triggered projectiles at the same time. Fired them in a circular pattern out in front of the ship. They apparently used it on the sub.”
“According to the Collett’s log, she immediately followed the De Haven on the attack. After she dropped her depth charges, she picked up a loud roaring sound that lasted at least half a minute. The De Haven’s log says they heard the same sound. Then suddenly everything went quiet. Can they hear sounds like that with their sonar?”
“Not sure, unless they quit pinging with active sonar and used a passive hydrophone system.” Matt shrugged his shoulders. “I really don’t know what they had on destroyers in those days or how sophisticated it was. They think they got the sub?”
Ashley took a folded piece of paper from a small pocket at the back of the notebook, then closed the notebook. “They never knew. They circled the area until daylight, but could find no sign of the sub or any kind of debris indicating they’d hit it. It just disappeared.”
She took a sip of her Manhattan, waiting for Matt’s reaction as he stared out to sea in the direction of where he knew the submarine lay. Finally he said, “It disappeared all right, and I think I know why and how. I’ll need a chart of the area showing the bottom as it looked back in those days, but ten’ll get you twenty, the U-boat found a trench deep enough to hide in, or so they thought. Depth charges and hedgehogs tore hell out of the sea floor near the tops of the walls surrounding the trench, and—”
“Oh, my God!” Ashley gasped, a hand going immediately to her mouth, the horror of what she was thinking written on her face. “The sides of the trench caved in on the submarine. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
Matt nodded.
“The crew was buried alive and that’s how they died. How terrible.”
“The crew of the tanker they sunk wouldn’t have thought it was so terrible if they’d known, but yeah,” Matt agreed, taking a final swallow of his drink. “Not a good way to die. Just waiting for that last breath.” Matt shook his head. “No thanks.”
Momentarily subdued, Ashley unfolded the sheet of paper and handed it to Matt. “Almost forgot what I was doing. My friend faxed this to me.”
The moment Matt took the paper, his eyes grew wide with surprise, followed immediately by an irritated “For chrissake, Ashley, we may have talked about the possibility of a submarine being down there when I was in Charleston, but that was between us. Certainly not for publication. Now the Navy knows what somebody, namely me, your husband, is looking for off the Florida coast.”
“Don’t get mad with me, Matt Berkeley. I didn’t ask him a damn thing other than whether any submarines were sunk off Jacksonville Beach during the war. Because of the underwater speed, faster than anything the Navy had or had experienced from the Germans at the time, this is what they later decided the submarine must have been. A new…what did he call it? A new class of submarine the Germans were building just before the end of the war. Supposedly only a few made it to sea. Just to be nice, he faxed it to me.”
Settling back in his chair, the sudden annoyance gone from his voice, Matt read aloud the blurb printed beneath the picture.
“U-Twenty-five thirteen. Type Twenty-one. U. S. Navy Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia, August Nineteen forty-five.” He laid the paper on the table and sat for a moment. “This meshes with what Sam Gravely thought it might be.” With a nod toward the ocean, he added, “Out there. And from what he told me, the sub in this photo is one of two that were turned over to the U. S. after the war, but there’s something different about the sail area…the conning tower, from what I saw last night.”
“Oh?”
“The one out there had a gun turret at the after end of the tower like this one in the photograph, but no turret at the forward end. Rather, an open, very small topside conning station in front of these.” Matt pointed to the raised snorkel and periscopes. “There was a hatch leading down to the control room.”
“Where, of course, Mr. Daredevil had to go.”
Matt spread his hands in front of him. “Who else? Anyway, without that gun turret up front, the U-boat we found has a much more streamlined design than the U-Twenty-five thirteen in this picture. Less drag underwater, I guess, but why the change
? Special mission?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Ashley said, reaching across the table and covering one of Matt’s hands with hers. “But more important to me, what are you going to do now?”
“Whatever I do, it’ll have to be done without Henry Shoemaker or his shadow, Eric Bruder, finding out. They’ve apparently got eyes and ears everywhere. And knowing Shoemaker, if he and his AFI people are so interested, there’s gotta be more than a sub sitting on the bottom. There’s something in that baby they know about and want, but what?”
“Nazi gold? You know the old stories.”
“It’s possible, but first, I’ve gotta find out which U-boat it was, and what its mission was to bring it so close to the U. S. coast when Germany was already in the process of surrendering. Then maybe I’ll know what’s on there that’s worth killing Sam Gravely and his friend…and trying to kill Steve and me for.”
“How are you going to do that?”
Matt sat for a moment, turning the empty drink glass in his hands and concentrating on the movement as though it would provide an answer. Finally, he looked up. “An old teacher of mine. Quite a bit older than me, but he was at South Carolina on some kind of student exchange program. Came from Europe to major in physics, then changed his major to European history, of all things. Taught German to freshmen and sophomores to earn extra money.”
“That’s where you learned to speak that awful German?”
Matt laughed. “Jawohl, meine gnädige Frau. Yes, my dear wife. And, hey, I’m not so bad if I do say so myself, especially reading. That’s always the easiest. I took his class when I was a freshman. He was in grad school by then. Eddy, we called him. Now, Herr Dr. Eduard Richter.”
“Where is he now?”
“Went back and taught at the University of Heidelberg. Retired last year and works part time at the Federal Archives in Koblenz. My fraternity used to invite him to all our parties and, for whatever reason, we’ve pretty well kept track of one another over the years. I think he might be able to help.”
“How?”
“Two ways. First, he became an authority on World War Two, from the German side. He grew up during the war, and saw much of it firsthand. His father was an officer on the pocket battleship Graf Spee.”
“And two?”
“He works at the Federal Archives, which has some of the most in-depth records in the world of the Kriegsmarine, the German navy. I’m hoping that includes the World War Two U-boats.”
“And you think he can tell you what’s out there?” Ashley nodded over her shoulder in the direction of the sunken barge and submarine.
“If anybody can, Eddy can. I’m hoping H and S, what I think are initials on the back of the medal I brought up, will identify the CO, and subsequently the sub and its mission. That might also tell us why there was an SS officer with the death’s head insignia onboard.”
CHAPTER 17
Though Park and his son had cleaned up the broken glass and restored much of the larger items to their original shelves and racks by the time Matt and Ashley returned, the counter and cash register were useless and would have to wait until after the weekend before necessary repairs could be made. A pocket calculator, handwritten receipts, and a cash drawer pulled from the register had at least allowed the dive shop to remain open that Saturday. Exhausted, Park sat with Ashley and listened to Matt’s side of the phone conversation with Eduard Richter. Matt roamed the front of the store, the phone against his ear, his voice twice as loud as it needed to be.
Brushing past racks of wetsuits and dive skins on one of his many return routes to the rear of the store, where Ashley and Park sat, he questioned, “Classified secret? C’mon, Eddy, it’s been fifty-six years since the war ended. Surely that kind of stuff oughta be unclassified by now.”
Pulling the phone from his ear, Matt threw out his hands in a display of wonderment. “Yeah, I know, but even if it is a Type Twenty-one class, the U. S. Navy brought one or two back to the States at the end of the war. In fact, I went on the Internet, a Web site called U-boat dot net, and found the picture of…” Matt held the phone out toward Ashley and asked, “What was it?”
“The Wilhelm Bauer,” Ashley answered, her voice almost a shout. “Formerly the U-Twenty-five forty ”
“You hear that, Eddy?” There was a momentary pause before, “Right, I forget the actual name of the museum where it’s at, but it’s the German Ship’s Museum or something like that in Bremerhaven.”
Matt slowly shook his head, took a deep breath, and exhaled a long stream of air as he listened. Finally, he said, “Okay, understood.” Checking his watch, he said, “It’s a little before five in the afternoon here, so should be, what? Almost eleven o’clock there. Hey, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think what time it was there. I’ll get back to you first thing in the morning. And give Hannah my best.”
Matt ended the conversation and returned the handset to its base as the doorbell ding-a-linged, indicating someone had entered the store.
Like a shot, Park was out of his chair and on his way up front. “Afternoon, folks,” he said, followed by a fading “Can I help you?” as he moved away.
Matt flopped down in Park’s vacated chair. A knowing smile crossed Ashley’s face as she asked, “Problem? I ask that accepting the fact that with Matt Berkeley, he’ll be miserable if there’s not a problem to solve.”
Matt said, “I guess from listening to me, you pretty much know what Eddy had to say. Anything and everything concerning the Type Twenty-one U-boats at the end of the war is still classified. Most, if not all, of the information is stored in the National Archives in Koblenz.”
“But being such an old chum, he should be able to get it for you, right?” After seeing the look on Matt’s face, though, Ashley added, “Wrong?”
“Unfortunately, wrong, but if I want to come over, he thinks he can get me in to see it.”
“To Germany?” Ashley exploded, halfway out of her chair. “That’s asking a little much, Matt. This is not even a NAARPA project.” The loudness of her voice caught the attention of the young couple sizing wetsuits and swim fins with Park’s help.
Matt held an index finger to his lips. “Shhhh!”
Ashley shifted out of her chair and dropped to her knees in front of Matt. Nearly whispering, she went on. “It’s time you got your aunt’s roof fixed, turned the place over to a realtor, and went back to work on real projects. My God, Matt, you and Steve almost got yourselves killed last night.”
Eyeing the customers with Park as well as several others who had entered and were browsing through the store, Matt stood, took Ashley by the arm, and led her through the rear door and out into the delivery alley. As soon as they were outside, he said, “You’re right, Ashley, but let’s review what’s happened. First, Steve and I find something on the bottom of the ocean. My application to the State of Florida to further investigate disappears, but AFI’s application suddenly shows up in Tallahassee, dated an unbelievable five days before mine. We get ordered off the site at gunpoint by Henry Shoemaker and some government bureaucrat. I then get warned off by this good-ol’-boy state senator and, minutes later, beaten up and told to leave it alone—it being what’s out there.” Matt pointed eastward toward the ocean. “And finally, as you say, I was almost killed last night by guess who? AFI, that’s who.”
“But, Matt, this is not a NAARPA project. What you’re telling me is you’re willing to spend our money on airline tickets to Germany, damn it, just to satisfy your curiosity.”
Matt took Ashley by the shoulders and pulled her close. “There is something out there, Ashley. Something more than just a German submarine, and Henry Shoemaker and Antiquity Finders want it. If I don’t do anything about it, they will keep on screwing people blind like they’ve done for years—all in the name of altruism and good archeology. Forget it!”
Ashley pulled loose, her eyes locked on Matt’s. “You’re going, aren’t you? You’ve already made up your mind.”
“I’ve
got to.”
“Like hell you do!” Ashley turned her back and leaned, face forward, against the back wall of the store. “You’ve always been like this, and I should’ve known when we got married. Damn you, Matt Berkeley!”
Matt grabbed her and spun her around. “Listen, Ashley, it’s out there, and somebody’s gotta take responsibility and do the right thing. I’ll only be gone for two, maybe three days. If you’ll stay here, you could help Steve.”
Ashley broke away, started up the alley, then turned back again. “How the hell am I going to help Steve? Sell dive gear?”
“No. You’re a private detective and—”
“Not licensed in Florida, my friend.”
“So you’d be helping Steve. That’s all. He’s already started asking questions through his sources about Henry Shoemaker and Antiquity Finders. You sure as hell know how to ferret out information better than Steve. Especially when every politician in the state of Florida considers Shoemaker God and king, and then some.”
Again, Ashley spun away and walked along the alley. Turning back on one heel, she said, “Where would I stay? I assume you still have a hotel room somewhere.”
Matt chuckled. “Yeah, but after tonight, afraid not.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ashley shot back.
“Not knowing you were coming down, I was gonna move into Aunt Freddie’s house on Sunday. Tomorrow. Me, one suitcase, and a suit bag. Electricity and water’s supposed to be back on yesterday or this morning. As you know, I didn’t make it there last night or today, but they should be on. No phone, but you’ve got your cell.”
“What about the roof? That’s why you came down here. To have the roof fixed and put the house up for sale.”
“There’s a plastic cover over the whole roof, so no problem if it rains. Roofers are supposed to be on the job sometime next week.”