“But Mr. Kroger, you can’t,” Alma pleaded. “That would be utterly crazy, starting a fire with all the people on board, and all these munitions—”
“Don’t worry,” the spy said, tearing away the last plank. “This ship has fire alarms that alert the bridge directly. We can touch off one as we leave…it will be a useful distraction to help us escape. In minutes they will be down here trying to put it out.”
Alma turned to Matt by her side, who was fumbling with his camera bag. “Matt, he’s insane,” she whispered. “Can’t we do anything to stop him?”
“He sounds sane to me, and deadly earnest,” Matt murmured back. “He has the gun, remember, in his coat pocket.”
“Yes, and how do we know he won’t use it on us, just to keep us quiet?”
“You’re right,” Matt said, slipping the pry bar into his belt. “He saved our lives, but he could just as easily shoot us both down for Kaiser and country. We’ll try this: when he comes back, you blind him with the flash and I’ll disarm him. Maybe at gunpoint he’ll listen to reason.”
“All right, but be careful, please!”
As Matt reloaded the flash tray, Alma turned to watch Kroger’s progress over the crates lit by his wavering lamp beam.
At that moment, the ship and its cargo jolted beneath them. A clang, vast and deep like the slamming of a great metal door, became a shattering explosion.
Chapter 40
Attack
Kapitan-Leutnant Schwieger stood watch atop his conning tower after U-20 surfaced. The gradually lifting fog allowed him glimpses of Irish coastline that the periscope might miss, but that were useful for navigation as they headed westward. Schwieger kept his binoculars constantly in use, though they grew heavy in his grip and slippery with spray.
Two other reliable watchers were on duty, Lanz the pilot, and Rikowski. The radioman had come up craving fresh air, with one of the dachshunds peering eagerly out of his half-buttoned coat. There was scarcely room for three officers inside the railings so hastily rigged atop the tower for surface cruising. Even so Schwieger stayed up top, not wanting to entrust this critical part of the chase to anyone else. The Lusitania was due in Liverpool tomorrow at the latest. He did not think the great ship had slipped past him in the Irish Channel. When and if she was spotted, he would be there to see it. He craved that joy for himself.
Catching her now might be unlikely. His boat had been so active along this coast—sinking one ship off Kinsale and two off Coningbeg, all in the last two days—that the alarm must still be out. The flight into port of the lone British cruiser this morning had been a clear sign. The Englanders knew of his presence. They would be fools to let their greatest prize, the notorious passenger liner and contraband-carrier, sail heedlessly through these waters…not even with guns mounted on the foredeck, as was rumored, and never again under a false American flag. No use trying that old trick. It wouldn’t stop him for a moment.
True, so far it had been a disappointing hunt. Few enemies had been hit, and no real warships or troopships engaged. But it left him with three torpedoes for his homeward voyage. One or two of them might be enough to score him the biggest target of all. That would show up Herr Kapitans Hersing, Wegener, and even the other Otto, Weddigen with three British cruisers to his credit. It could put him at the top of Fregattenkapitan Hermann Bauer’s list and bring him personal recognition from Tirpitz, or more likely Der Kaiser himself.
Perhaps, Schwieger fretted, he should have lain in wait for the luxury liner and attacked nothing else, as Wegener had tried when he hunted Lusi in March. But that would have wasted time and fuel, only to risk everything on one toss of the dice. Instead he’d done his honest duty by seeking out targets of opportunity. Now the big ship was due back along this coast, and it might not yet have passed him in the fog or diverted northward around Ireland.
More likely Lusi was laid up safe in Queenstown harbor, guarded by Juno, waiting him out just a few miles away. But if she had not made it there yet, he had a chance. One never knew about the fortunes of war.
The cry came suddenly from Rikowski, with an echoing yap from the dachsie. “There, Kapitan, something off the starboard bow! I cannot tell…it looks like several ships in a line.”
Surely enough, they had raised a forest of masts and stacks under a gray smudge of coal smoke, still hull-down beyond the western horizon. A thrilling sight, and frightening too; but indeed, as Schwieger got the binoculars into focus, he could see that it was a single ship. Four stacks in a row, and two tall masts strung with glinting Marconi wires. There could be little doubt.
“Lanz!” he barked.
His intrepid pilot already had his binoculars trained. “Must be the Lusitania, Herr Kapitan. Or Mauretania, but she’s not known to be in these waters. I can tell you for certain once I see the deck ventilators.”
“If it’s Maurie, she’s a troopship coming from Canada,” Schwieger said. “If it’s Lusitania, better yet. Good sighting, Rikowski!”
He continued gazing at the ship, trying to determine her course from the spacing of her funnels.
“The sad thing is,” he added after a moment, “she seems to be heading inshore. We may not be able to catch her. Those skinny sisters are fast! Oh, well, either way we must dive.”
The safety of his vessel came first. He lowered the binoculars to his breast, which had plunged internally now from excitement to despair.
Schwieger helped the others strike the railing and went down last, securing the hatch behind him. “Alarm!” he cried, sending the idle crew racing forward. Immediately after the dive, he ordered a starboard turn to cross the big ship’s course, and then went to his plotting table to figure the exact bearing. Target speed, what, twenty-five knots? Make it twenty-three, cruising. U-20’s underwater speed, fourteen knots on battery power. To launch an attack, they must head off the target with time left to angle for a clean bow shot. He must then plot the torpedo’s course to strike perpendicular at thirty knots fixed speed.
With the steamer heading in near the coast, Schwieger doubted that he could intercept. No sense trying to pursue a ship that could easily outpace him at his best speed. And no use surfacing to use the U-20’s diesel power. If he revealed himself, the target could run at high speed, or zigzag to confuse his aim. A glancing torpedo hit would never detonate. The eel had to go straight in.
While calculating, he kept checking his periscope. The big ship was well up on the horizon now, its formerly white superstructure painted over in wartime gray. He gave his place at the periscope to Lanz, who was holding the ship’s copy of Brassey’s Naval Annual.
“Yes, Herr Kapitan,” the civilian pilot formally said, “it must be Lusitania all right. Both she and Mauretania are listed here as Royal Navy reserve merchant cruisers, also in Jane’s Fighting Ships.”
After a final glance at the black vessel silhouettes laid out on the page, Lanz closed the book. “A pity if we can’t catch her.” He gazed into the viewer a long moment. “She seems to be turning.”
“What’s that?”
When Schwieger took the periscope again, he saw the ship’s angle changed, the funnels now closer in line, her course converging with his. “Ready one gyro torpedo, three meters running depth!” he called. “Maintain course, same speed,” he told the steersman. “We will run up close and wait.”
Although he tried, he couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice, not with his prey steaming straight in toward the killing-ground.
“All hands, combat stations!”
* * *
Charles Voegele, electrician of the U-20, usually preferred keeping to himself. That was all but impossible in the crowded confines of a submarine. His only refuge from the rest of the crew was his tiny corner astern, formed by a rack where electrical supplies and tools were stored. By standing there over his narrow work-shelf, pretending to study a wiring diagram or test a spare part, he c
ould gain a few moments of illusory solitude. During sleep periods, instead of retiring to private quarters or even a bunk, he slung his hammock along the main corridor with the rest of the lowly seamen.
Yet even his stolen moments of isolation could appear, to some of those aboard, as hostile or suspicious. Voegele felt himself under scrutiny by these solid Germans, men of different types but all partaking to some degree in the current nationalist view that German ideas were best, German efficiency the greatest, and German kultur the world’s salvation against decadent foreign ways. And now these, what was the term in English, jingo-ists, all found themselves in a frail sardine tin whose survival depended on everyone aboard thinking and feeling the same, with instant obedience.
This captain of his, Schwieger—Walther his first name, same as the automatic pistol—set the best example of all. He was the Blond Beast of Nietzsche’s philosophy, with his elegant refinement and love of classical music; the perfect bachelor gentleman, fair and considerate of his crew. But in his chosen profession of piracy on the high seas, with its wanton destruction of property and life, he was pragmatic and ruthless, even passionate. Whatever inner ambition drove him might remain a secret. But it would continue to take them all to the brink of death, Voegele sensed–until someday it crossed the brink.
And now this caring leader had called him, Voegele, to the fore, singling him out to offer him rank and acceptance. Or was it instead to make a public example of him, challenging his loyalty to Kaiser und Kapitan before his crewmates?
Already Voegele had much to be insecure about, first of all his status as a draftee. He could hardly pretend to be an eager recruit for this war, which was senseless and sure to bring more suffering and devastation to his own small homeland. His origin in the Alsace-Lorraine district, the former French territory seized during German Unification right after their victory in the Franco-Prussian War, made him suspect.
And yet, what were they afraid of? During a mere forty-four years of German occupation, the Alsatians had been no more moved to embrace French nationalism than German beliefs. On the contrary, his birthplace, the Free City of Strasbourg, had over many centuries been stubbornly independent, doing its best to resist both French and German control. So it was not, perhaps, French subversion these Germans feared, but independent thought, the ability to question any order or dictate that was passed mindlessly down from above.
And so they had conscripted him, trained and assigned him to this small, tight-knit naval unit—so that, he suspected, he couldn’t meet others from his homeland or infect large numbers of troops along the front with his treasonous foreign sentiments. They had their eyes on him and his ilk, with Kapitan-Leutnant Schwieger as their agent. Voegele’s very birth had marked him. And his name, compounded of the French Charles and German Vogel for bird, but with a curious foreign spelling, didn’t help much.
But even so, there were those on board who gave him kindly looks. Some took time to converse with him, in those moments when he wasn’t pretending to be busy. Seaman Ulbricht was a fine sensitive fellow, not yet consumed with the self-righteousness of his countrymen. And Rikowski, the radio officer who saw it as his role to walk around the ship spreading the latest news to all and sundry, treated Voegele with a pleasant, fatherly tolerance. The dachshunds, too, did not dislike him.
“Auf Gefechtsstationen!”
To Voegele, the urgent command to man battle stations seemed to carry an extra sense of excitement. He hesitated, even while knowing that hesitation was treason. In his newly assigned role as Obersteuermann and aide to the captain, he was to stand ready in the crew compartment just beneath the conning tower. At such a time he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
Could he pretend not to have heard? But as others jostled past along the corridor, they already eyed him strangely for standing still. On this narrow boat there was no place to hide.
Moving forward into the central chamber, to take his place by the ladder below the open tower hatch, he heard a command given in Schwieger’s tense voice. “Ready torpedo tubes!”
A moment later another voice echoed back, relaying “Torpedo tubes flooded and ready, sir!”
“That is not Voegele!” The captain’s impatient voice came from above. “Where is Herr Voegele, my Obersteuermann?”
But as Voegele moved forward to respond, he froze. From the crew standing ready nearby, he heard excited whispers.
“It is the Lusitania!”
“Oh ja, the big jackpot, eh?”
Now as Voegele went forward to the ladder, the weakness in his belly made him falter and tremble. Taking his place by the speaking tube, he suddenly understood Kapitan Schwieger. He was not, after all, Captain Nemo of the Nautilus, the Frenchman Jules Verne’s romantic undersea-farer. He was Captain Ahab, obsessed with a Great White Whale, a Moby Dick of a ship that just happened to carry innocent passengers.
“Voegele,” Schwieger’s voice came down, “you are there just in time. Launch torpedo one!”
“Nein.”
“Was ist das?” the captain demanded. “What do you say?”
“Sir, I cannot relay the order. I urge you not to fire on a ship carrying women and children. Are you not going to rise to the surface and challenge them?”
While he spoke, the torpedo went. Like everyone else aboard, he heard the hissing of the compressed air, and felt the pressure change in his ears as the fish was blown out of the tube. Whether it had been torpedo officer Weisbach responding directly or the captain’s firing button, it did not matter. Voegele saw now that Schwieger’s act of singling him out had not been a promotion, nor a test of character. It had simply been a way to get rid of the unwanted foreigner.
“Herr Voegele,” the captain called down, “you are on report for disobeying a direct order. When we return to base you will face court martial.”
But no one else in the crew paid much attention. They were waiting for the eel to strike.
Chapter 41
Looking Ahead
Flash took Winnie arm-in-arm along the familiar deck promenade. By now she was more anxious than on any previous walk during their sleepy mid-Atlantic passage.
“Oh, Flash,” she fretted, leaning close to him, “Matt’s off on another secret mission, I just know it! But instead of you, he’s got Alma along with him. What can we possibly do? Do you think they’ll be safe?”
“As safe as any of us, I’d guess,” Flash said, trying to downplay the irony. “If Alma is with Matt, she’s in capable hands.” Seeing her dubious look, he added, “No double-meaning intended this time, my love. For now, I just want to make sure she’s not wandering the decks searching by herself.”
“Well, she should be easy to spot if she’s looking for Matt, or for us. Everyone else on deck is at the rail.”
It was true; the port railing of the Promenade Deck was lined with travelers, most of them taking in the view of lush green Irish coastal hills a few miles off. Others leaned out and shaded their eyes forward or astern, scanning the sea for the submarine menace.
“Well,” Flash said, “Here’s where the deck closes in. We can see perfectly well she’s not ahead of us. Let’s go up to the Boat Deck.”
From that point on, to guard against breasting seas, the promenade was shut in behind steel plating and portholes. Once upon a time Flash would have taken Winnie in there to spoon, but not today. The two turned onto a stairway that took them up one level. There, emerging under open sky, they continued forward. Far ahead where the wide bridge crossed over the deck, blue-coated officers peered out to sea with binoculars. Here too the rail was scattered with sightseers, but none of them looked familiar.
“Everyone’s on watch for something,” Winnie said.
“That’s for sure.” Flash didn’t want to discuss what it might be.
“Matt was supposed to meet his contact right along here,” he added, looking around.
“Who was it?” Winnie asked. “That detective Pierpoint? I wouldn’t trust him to play fair.”
“No,” Flash said, not wanting to reveal anything. But feeling the tug of his sweetheart’s impatient gaze, he at last admitted, “Ah, what the heck, it’s Kroger, the Dutch trader. Be on the lookout for him, too. Apparently he knows something about other kinds of cargo besides furs.” Still feeling a bit guilty, he told her only what she needed to know, not that the man was also a German spy.
“Mr. Kroger, the nice plump Dutchman?” Winnie asked. “Well then, should we check the gentlemen’s smoking room? Or the ship’s tavern…that’s probably where the both of them ended up.”
“Somebody was right here,” Flash said, dipping discreetly down to pick up an object. The flat metal bar drilled with finger-holes was reddish-yellow, still wet with fog, and well-worn from use—a set of brass knuckles.
“Not what I’d call first-class,” he said, slipping it into his pocket. “Not Kroger’s style, either…at least I hope not.”
“But Flash, oh my,” Winnie seemed suddenly in doubt, clinging to his arm. “What does it mean? Do you think the gangsters have taken Alma?”
Keeping Winnie close, Flash moved around the deck and the rail nearby, but saw no blood, broken teeth or other clues. What could it mean, he wondered…nothing, a coincidence? “All we can do is look for her,” he said at last. “No telling what’s up. Let’s go over to starboard. They may have an arrangement like ours, you know, to meet at the opposite side.”
Heading forward under the officers’ bridge, they went around the very front of the ship’s superstructure. The whole foredeck was visible, a slim wedge with the foremast at its center. No one was on it but crewmen standing lookout.
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