by Joe Buff
Beck rubbed eyes that still burned from the effects of smoke and seawater. He sighed to himself.
My first deployment as captain, the von Scheer ’s first combat sortie, could end quickly, stillborn. And right now, as per my basic orders, I’m sneaking the ship in the wrong direction — east into the Barents Sea, not west toward the gap — and I don’t even know why.
Beck looked around the cabin. He’d had so little time to adjust to being the man in charge, and even less time to grasp the immensity of the tasks before him. A photo of his wife and sons was attached to the wall, in the same place where so recently another man’s wife and children seemed to stare at Beck accusingly.
The deceased captain’s personal effects had all been left behind at the U-boat base under the mountain up a fjord in occupied Norway. The base admiral’s staff would sort through everything and return the dead man’s possessions to his family with a letter of condolence. Beck was sure the letter would say only that he’d been killed in action defending the Fatherland. Given the victim’s rank, the condolences would probably be signed by someone senior in Berlin — and routed from Berlin too, to reveal nothing about the location, let alone the cause, of this latest tragic loss. This latest of many, many a tragic loss.
Beck listened as von Scheer’s air circulation fans issued their reassuring hushing noise from the ventilator grilles in the overhead. The air had that familiar smell of a nuclear submarine submerged: pungent ozone, oil-based lubricants, enamel paint on hot metal, nontoxic cleansers, warm electronics, and stale human sweat. The ship was running as deep as the local bottom terrain would permit: three hundred meters, about one thousand feet. A strong blizzard raged on the ocean’s surface. Beneath thick overcast, the waves topside were high. But the von Scheer’s deck was rock steady as she moved at an ultra-quiet fifteen knots.
Weather here in the Barents Sea is almost always dreadful this time of year — off the Kola Peninsula, Russian turf, their chunk of the Scandinavian landmass, near Polyarny and Murmansk… and the major installations of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
Beck looked up from reading his orders when a messenger knocked. He stood and cracked the door so the messenger couldn’t see the classified documents stacked on his cabin’s little fold-down desk.
The messenger was very young, perhaps eighteen. He snapped to attention and handed Beck some standard reports from the ship’s engineer. Beck eyed the forms on the old-fashioned clipboard. All was in order with the von Scheer’s twin nuclear reactors. The big pump-jet propulsor at her stern was working perfectly. So was everything between, from the steam generators to the main turbines and condensers, to the massive dynamos the turbines spun, to the solid-state power-control circuits, to the permanent-magnet DC motors that made the propulsor shaft turn. Beck initialed the forms in all the proper places — a captain’s paperwork burden never ceased.
Beck gazed at the messenger’s face. He saw someone youthful but hard, obedient and proud — yet somehow shallow in spirit, not given to introspection or philosophy or moral doubt.
A well-honed fighting machine, like the von Scheer herself, except made of human flesh. A component of a weapon system, really, more than a person. Trained, to the finest standards of classic German craftsmanship and discipline, but with little development of underlying self … A member of my crew.
Outside, in the passageway, personnel traffic quickly became more hectic. The watch was changing, as it did every six hours. The midnight watch was coming off duty; the morning watch was coming on. One of Beck’s more experienced officers would be passing the deck and the conn to one of the others, according to a preestablished schedule. That officer would decide on all aspects of internal ship’s machinery status, and direct the von Scheer’s movements as well — but formal accountability, and ultimate blame, always lay on Beck’s head as commanding officer.
The cooks would be in the middle of serving breakfast now. Beck took a deep breath and savored delicious odors wafting from the galley: fresh-baked bread, ham, scrambled eggs. It made his stomach rumble, but he had work to do. He’d grab a light snack later, or maybe just wait until lunch.
Beck opened his cabin door another few centimeters while the messenger stood there stiffly. He wanted to see his men as they went by, toward the control room and the torpedo room forward, or aft to the wardroom or enlisted mess and the berthing spaces. Farther aft was the big missile compartment with its vertical cruise-missile launch tubes, and then came the shielded reactors, with the engineering spaces toward the stern.
Some chiefs nodded politely to Beck; the enlisted men mostly avoided meeting his eyes; the few officers he saw mouthed a polite guten morgen. Good morning.
Overall, Beck liked what he saw. Although this was the von Scheer’s maiden combat patrol, covert shakedown cruises and training exercises had melded these men into a sharp team. Now, by their facial expressions, their postures, their crisp appearances, they showed they were eager and ready for battle. There was a collective excitement to put more Allied ships where they belonged: at the bottom of the sea, in fragments.
Beck nodded to himself. You could tell a lot from body language, when over one hundred men lived in such close quarters inside a submarine’s pressure hull, with no windows and no mental or physical privacy at all. He’d known most of these men for about eight weeks, the intense time since he joined the von Scheer from recuperation and leave, after his previous mission. There was much yet to be done, to test the men and test himself, but they seemed prepared to begin the ultimate testing. They’d accepted his role as new captain seamlessly. Beck’s reputation as a strong tactician preceded him, spread by those few among the crew who’d been with him before and survived. The Knight’s Cross around his neck — which he wore even with his workaday black at-sea submarine coveralls — empowered him with much credibility. Its sparkling inlaid diamonds were a visible reminder to each man aboard that Beck had gone places, done things, made decisions, scored kills that most of them could only dream about.
This aura and mystique is something that, as their commanding officer now, I fully intend to maintain and exploit.
Satisfied with the engineer’s report and everything else, Beck dismissed the messenger. Then, on second thought, he told the youth to have someone bring him a fresh cup of hot tea.
The empty tea mug sat on the deck off to one side of Ernst Beck’s desk. On his desk now was the large envelope with the secret-mission orders given him by the rear admiral, the orders that Rudiger von Loringhoven had helped to write. The envelope was open.
Beck was not at all pleased. The envelope contained a brief letter of instructions, and another thick envelope within it. The letter stated that von Loringhoven was to serve as a special adviser to the von Scheer’s captain, on matters pertaining to the ship’s broad patrol routing and target priorities. Von Loringhoven, though a civilian diplomat, was seasoned at working with naval attachés of Germany and several foreign powers. He’d been thoroughly briefed on the overall war situation by the Foreign Ministry. He’d conducted background discussions with the grand admiral, commanding, Imperial German U-boat Fleet, to prepare him for this cruise. He was well versed on the latest Axis stratagems and war aims.
Fine. But none of this says why von Loringhoven is here.
The letter told von Scheer’s captain to open the second envelope, the one under the cover letter, only in von Loringhoven’s presence. While exercising final discretion as commanding officer — to assure the ship’s successful completion of her mission and to preserve her safety as much as the rigors of war would allow — von Scheer’s captain was nevertheless to render von Loringhoven every assistance that tactical circumstance permitted.
Wheels began to turn in Ernst Beck’s head.
This letter is addressed to a dead man, who outranked me, and who knew things I don’t know. It would have been irksome enough for a full commander to have a civilian breathing down his neck. My deceased former superior owned the jovial personality, and the p
roven leadership skills, to make such an arrangement work. I’m less senior, and not feeling nearly so jovial.
Beck decided to begin by standing on ceremony. Von Loringhoven, as a diplomat, should appreciate this. He picked up the intercom headset for the Zentrale — the control room.
A response came immediately. “Acting first watch officer speaking, Captain.” This was the weapons officer, Lieutenant Karl Stissinger. Beck had given him the job as acting executive officer and moved the assistant weapons officer, a junior-grade lieutenant, into the weapons officer’s position. Then a senior chief became acting assistant weapons officer, and everyone else in that department moved up a slot. Though the men were saddened to lose their captain, and some still seemed a bit stunned or disturbed by the death and its cause, overall they were pleased. Everyone had in essence been promoted, and if this patrol was successful these promotions were sure to be made permanent.
“Einzvo,” Beck said, “please send a messenger to my cabin.”
“Jawohl.”
“And you don’t need to call yourself ‘acting.’ You’re the einzvo, period. It’s better that way both for you and the crew.”
“Jawohl.” Stissinger sounded confident, and pleased.
It felt strange for Beck to be calling someone else einzvo. I’ll just have to get used to that, myself.
The messenger arrived. This one also was young, fit and trim, intelligent but obviously not a deep thinker.
Is he old enough, in years and life experience, to understand the true meaning of mortality? Is he wise enough to grasp how absolutely final his own death would be?… Does he think at all of the Hereafter, or is he preoccupied as I am with the constant living purgatory of this godforsaken war?
“Ask our official passenger to join me here.”
In a few moments Beck heard a knock, not at his cabin door but at the door to the small shower and toilet he shared with the executive officer’s cabin.
Von Loringhoven was using the executive officer’s cabin. He’d been quite insistent on this. For mission security, he said. If the acting einzvo was a mere lieutenant, used to sharing a cabin with two junior officers aboard the crowded von Scheer, let him continue doing so.
Now von Loringhoven seemed to want to sneak around, and not even walk the two meters through the corridor and mingle with the crew.
“Come.” Beck projected his voice toward the stainless-steel door to the head and tried to hide his annoyance. He felt the deck nose down a few degrees as the von Scheer — with Stissinger’s new weapons officer at the conn — followed a dip in the seafloor, still hugging the bottom for stealth. With a quick dart of practiced eyes, Beck checked the readouts on his cabin console: latitude 71 degrees 58.37 minutes north, longitude 31 degrees 24.08 minutes east. Course 041 true, depth 324 meters, speed 15.0 knots. Course 041 was roughly northeast, farther into the Barents Sea, into Russian home waters.
Only ship’s course and speed on the console were steady. The little red digital figures showing the von Scheer’s position and depth changed rapidly.
All this ran through Beck’s head with no effort, in a fraction of a second. He realized he was avoiding the main issue: his first private discussion with Rudiger von Loringhoven.
Von Loringhoven came into Beck’s cabin. He showed none of the respect or awe one would anticipate from a nonmilitary guest in a nuclear submarine commander’s inner sanctum. In fact, von Loringhoven was too blasé about the whole experience of being on the von Scheer, as far as Beck was concerned. He thought there was something quietly amoral about the set of the man’s eyes.
“Ach,” von Loringhoven said. “I see you’ve begun to open your orders.”
Beck tried to be pleasant. “Are you ready for me to unseal the inner envelope?”
“Yes.”
“Please sit. Is there anything you need in your cabin, to be more comfortable? Can I have something brought from the wardroom for you?” Beck hoped the diplomat would say yes to the last point so he could get some solid food himself.
Von Loringhoven used the guest chair. “No. The relief convoy from America to Central Africa will be moving very soon. Our land offensive in Africa, to crush the enemy pocket and link with the Boers, should begin any day. Other things must be carefully coordinated. Time is of the essence. Let’s proceed.”
Beck opened the envelope. Inside were several typed pages, a high-density data disk, and another sealed envelope. The typed pages began by instructing Beck not to open this new sealed envelope until he had completed the mission task detailed on the latest pages, as supported by the intelligence and oceanographic information on the disk.
Beck furrowed his eyebrows. He looked at von Loringhoven. “How many more envelopes-within-envelopes are there here?”
“Several.”
“Why is it being done like this?”
“Security.”
This guy is playing it too tight-lipped for my taste. Is he baiting me? Rubbing in from the start the difference in social class between us? The restoration of the Hohenzollern crown had driven a resurgence of acute elitism among Germans of noble blood. The von before someone’s last name marked his family as aristocrats. Some people enjoyed this side effect of having a kaiser on the throne again — whether the kaiser was a figurehead, pressured into taking the job, or not. The glitter of court life had great appeal to those who could now openly call themselves a baroness or count and have it mean something…. It was also a great incentive for outstanding achievement and valor, since hereditary titles could be newly awarded to deserving individuals whatever their prior background.
“You ought to appreciate the reason as much as anyone,” von Loringhoven said.
“What?” Beck caught his mind wandering. Or was I daydreaming?
“For the step-by-step security. It’s possible as captain, if something went wrong, that you might not go down with the ship. Last time, as first officer, you didn’t. You could be captured and interrogated. What you don’t know you can’t reveal under sweet talk or torture.”
“But what about you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You have full knowledge of all the orders?”
“I do.”
“What if something goes wrong and you don’t go down with the ship?”
Von Loringhoven withdrew a palm-sized pistol from his pocket. “To avoid capture, I am to shoot myself in the head.”
Von Scheer’s control room was cramped, with more than twenty men sitting at consoles or standing in the aisles. The overhead was low, covered with a maze of pipes and cables and wires. The lighting was dim red, to make the screens easier on watchstanders’ eyes, and also to emphasize that the ship was at battle stations — just in case. Other colors, blues and greens and yellows, danced on different console screens.
Beck sat down at the two-man desk-high command console in the middle of the control room. He studied his screens. The gravimeter display showed the shape of the seafloor in detail, derived from a real-time analysis of gravity fields in different directions, as measured in widely spaced spots on the ship. This instrument was very valuable, because it emitted no signals at all, was not impaired by loud noises and atomic bubble clouds in the sea, and — just like gravity — it could see through solid rock. The gravimeter’s one disadvantage was that it couldn’t detect a moving object, such as an enemy submarine’s dense reactor shielding and core.
Beck took the conn — decisions on ship’s depth and course and speed, from minute to minute, were now his to make. He noticed von Loringhoven standing nearby but outside the main flow of crew traffic through the Zentrale, watching with measured curiosity; Beck put him out of his mind.
Beck studied the other data on his screens, to establish full situational awareness. The seafloor here was a gently rolling plain. Bottom sediments varied almost randomly, with patches of sand, or gravel, or mud in different places. Because the atmosphere above the sea was so near freezing, and the water was mixed by continual storms, the water temperatu
re was nearly constant from the surface to the bottom. It was impossible for convergence zones to occur in the south Barents Sea. The water was much too shallow for a deep sound channel to form. The currents were confusing at all depths, as the last tendrils of the Gulf Stream ran north along the coast of Norway, in conflict with the Arctic’s wind-driven counterclockwise gyre.
Sound propagation here was very poor. The subtle signs of von Scheer’s passage would go undetected except at point-blank range.
Beck was satisfied. This was a good place for his ship to hide while on the move.
He glanced to his right. There sat the einzvo, Karl Stissinger. Beck knew he’d grown up in East Germany, under long and dreary domination by the Soviets. Stissinger’s father had been a sergeant in the East German Army, a member of a motorized rifle regiment, and would surely have been killed quickly if the Warsaw Pact and NATO had gone to war. To Stissinger’s father’s generation, and to Stissinger’s as well, the Soviet collapse must have seemed like some kind of miracle. But freedom in the east at first brought a new type of poverty, and high unemployment, and when Stissinger came of age he joined the navy.
Beck looked at Stissinger in profile. He would be very important to the captain — as any einzvo is. And if something should happen to Beck — serious injury, illness, or death — he would need to assume command, the same way Beck had done.
Could Stissinger handle it, if I’m put out of action, vaulted that far beyond all his training and experience?
Stissinger’s face was lit by the red of the overhead fluorescent lights and by the different displays on his console. He was handsome, tall, blond, with a flat abdomen and narrow hips — everything Ernst Beck was not. Stissinger was unmarried, and quite a ladies’ man ashore, from what Beck heard. Stissinger had served in diesel subs in the Bundesmarine, the peacetime German Navy, after East and West Germany were reunited in 1991. In more recent years, he’d been assigned to help, from the beginning, on the secret construction of the Admiral von Scheer. He received training on nuclear submarine technology and tactics from experienced Russian instructors. Some of those instructors were ex-submariners, veterans of the Cold War against America and Great Britain, who welcomed the chance to pass on their knowledge to an appreciative new audience — they also liked the generous steady paychecks for their services. Their government enjoyed getting German payment in diamonds and gold while having someone else take on America and cut her down to size.