“I've never . . .” Rebecca searched for the right words. “I've never been unfaithful. In a way . . . please understand what I mean and not how I say it. In a way it seems that you're still a child.”
“Why?” Cole said sharply. “Because I want to be with you? What's wrong with that?”
“We've just met,” she said gently. “How could you . . . ?”
“I don't know,” he said. His own anger surprised him, but he felt that she was finding fault with himâdissecting his emotions so that they could be revealed, one by one, as false.
“Don't be cross with me, Jordan. I was only trying to explain. It's like you're looking for something, that's all I meant,” Rebecca said. “It just seems so apparent to me.”
“Okay,” he said, feeling the anger subside. “Maybe I am looking for something.” He regretted that he had called her, and he realized that no, that wasn't it. She was prying, he thought, like Ruth used to do. “You make it seem like I'm trying to get you into bed or something.” It was a harsh thing to say but he felt the need to shock her as payment for how she made him feel. “It's a picnic and it was a kiss. What's the harm in that?”
“You don't know anything about people's emotions, do you? Do you think that you live in a vacuum and that whatever you do has no impact?” She would not let go. “Perhaps it never did before.”
She looked at him with tenderness but pity as well, and he wanted to say something to hurt her for it, but the words did not come.
“The harm, Jordan, is how I feel about you,” she said. “It's so very odd, isn't it? A chance meeting and then suddenly I find myself thinking constantly about you. Not of my husband, Jordan, but of you. The war does that. It causes everything to race ahead. Everything becomes unnatural, out of balance, forever tumbling. The covenants of life evaporate and leave only the urgency of living. It distresses me, Jordan, but I cannot turn away.” Then she stood and said, “Please take me home.”
Chapter 6
The Kriegsmarine Base at Leka Island, 18 July 1941
Â
Admiral Karl Doenitz stood uncertainly in the stern of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder's barge as it slipped under the huge complex of camouflage netting suspended far about the surface of the Kattegatt, and neared the reason for his visit: the H-class D.K.M. Sea Lion, the most powerful battleship afloat. According to some.
“Think of it, Karl,” Raeder had boasted to him on their miserable journey to this barren island. “We have built and hidden it from the English. Larger even than my
Bismarck
. Everything is bigger and better. And more deadly, Karl. She will charge into the English fleet and deal death with impunity. The Fuehrer cannot wait to see it in action.”
“Yes,” Doenitz had said, wanting to get back to Berlin and his U-boats. When he heard about the project and saw the plans four years before, he had remarked to his chief of staff Ernst Godt: “Such an expensive coffin.” To Doenitz, nothing was as important or as effective as his U-boats. Large surface ships such as
Schranhorst
,
Tirpitz
,
Gneisenau
, and
Bismarck
were wastes of Germany's limited resources. They were obsolete giants, ponderous, clumsy vessels that floundered about the North Atlantic until they blundered into battle. And now, once more, the same mistake, except on a much grander scaleâthe H-class
Sea Lion
.
But as the barge sailed deeper into the vast cavern created by the camouflage, Doenitz began to have doubts about his own first impressions. God, she was huge! Her hull was a vast, gray, solid fortress that dwarfed the barge as it maneuvered to the ship's side. Dazzle camouflage, wild patterns of gray, black, and white, slashed across her hull in jagged bandsâa simple device to confuse enemy gunners and spotters. Perhaps she might one day lose her exotic look and be painted all-over outboard gray, a practical but uninspired acknowledgment of her primary role as a warship.
Sea Lion
's complex superstructure towered over him and could only be compared to a mountain range. He had seen the four main turrets and their twelve guns from a distance and he thought how menacing they looked in repose, sleeping along the centerline of the vessel.
When the barge nestled against the duty platform, Doenitz stepped aside to allow the handful of reporters and a dozen or more party officials, resplendent in their pseudo-military uniforms, to clamber aboard. When that pack of rats had cleared the ladder he mounted the steps with dignity, his fragile hands clad in soft leather gloves falling lightly on the rail with each step. His staff followed him at a discreet distance.
When Doenitz reached the deck he saw what must have been the entire ship's compliment drawn up at attention, vast ranks of deep blue, double-breasted peacoats and caps, impervious to the stiff winds of the Kattegatt. It thrilled him to see Kriegsmarine sailors, rigid as steel, their ranks formed directly along the joints of the deck beams, and their silent lines shadowing those of the
Sea Lion
. Here was the pomp and ceremony of the Kriegsmarine that he so often eschewed publicly, preferring quiet meetings with his U-boatmen. But, deep within, as the band played “
Deutchland Uber Alles
,” and he saluted the ensign astern, the officer of the deck, and then Grand Admiral Raederâhe felt like a cadet fresh from Flensburg. He stepped aside to allow his staff to pay their respects. As they did he admired the long graceful lines of the freshly scrubbed oak main deck. Well, she was beautiful in design and execution, but was she a warship?
He remembered the sixteen-inch guns of the main armament and decided wryly that they were certainly in her favor. From where he stood he took an inventory of the weapons dotting the superstructure. He counted five heavy antiaircraft batteries, each with a pair of 10.5cm/L65 C33 guns. He knew that there were five on the port side as well. He calculated the medium antiaircraft batteries as well and came up with thirty-two 3.7cm guns. Doenitz gave up trying to count the light antiaircraft guns; there were far too many, and they were too widely dispersed.
Despite his own reluctance to admit it, Raeder's
Sea Lion
was a formidable vessel and he had taken
Bismarck
's inadequacies into consideration in arming
Sea Lion
with a forest of antiaircraft guns.
Bismarck
had been destroyed, regardless of who claimed credit, by British Swordfish torpedo bombersâobsolete wood-framed, and fabric-covered biplanes that flew no more than a hundred miles an hour. An elephant brought to its knees by a gnat.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Kapitan zur See Wilhelm Mahlberg,
Kommandant
K. of
Sea Lion
, said. “If you will please follow these officers, they will lead you to the wardroom. There you will be briefed and plied with mugs of hot chocolate. Nothing stronger, I'm afraid.” The half dozen civilians laughed and trailed after the officers, talking excitedly.
Raeder made his way to Doenitz.
“Well?” he said excitedly.
“When I saw her in the ways,” Doenitz said, choosing his words carefully, “I had no idea that she would grow this large.”
“She was fed on good German steel, Admiral.” Raeder laughed. “Isn't she something? And her
Kommandant
and officers are handpicked. You know Frey?”
“Otto?”
“Yes. He is
Erster Artillerie Offizier
, I.A.O.”
Doenitz looked over the vessel again. She seemed to grow even larger.
“Yes,” Raeder said. “She does take your breath away, doesn't she? Twenty-eight watertight compartments, a top speed of thirty-seven knotsâ”
“Good Lord!
Bismarck
could do onlyâ”
“Yes. Thirty-one knots,” Raeder said, but then he hesitated, as if there were much more to what he had to say. He guided Doenitz in a friendly manner and walked the admiral along the deck, toward the bow. Raeder looked overhead at the vast field of camouflage netting that stretched from pylons driven deeply into the shallow ocean floor, suspended at a dozen points on the superstructure of the
Sea Lion
.
“We shall go to the briefing in a moment,” Raeder said. “I want to spend as little time with those hyenas as I have to. Tell me, Admiral Doenitz, haven't you wondered what
Sea Lion
's first mission is to be?”
Doenitz had not. All of his time was taken up with U-boat operations or the War Production Board trying to get U-boats built, or investigating the newest British antisubmarine measures, or trying to avoid the endless round of meetings that somehow required his presence. But he knew how to answer the question.
“I did not feel it appropriate to ask, Grand Admiral. I must confess it was constantly on my mind.”
Doenitz was relieved to see that Raeder was pleased with the response. The old man could be brittle and mercurial. The grand admiral patted Doenitz on the hand, as if Doenitz were the naughty student and Raeder the wise old schoolmaster. Raeder's attitude irritated Doenitz, but it was one that he had to suffer. The most difficult of all of Raeder's condescending manners to accept was that U-boats would always be greatly inferior to surface vessels. Raeder was of the old schoolâthe unfinished business of Jutland when British and German coal-burning behemoths had tried to destroy one another and the old kaiser had dreamed of
Mare Germanica
. If Raeder had the same dreams, twenty years removed, he was a fool, Doenitz decided. But Doenitz knew that Raeder was a superb tactician and brilliant seaman and could not be easily cast as a fool.
Perhaps a man who does foolish things
, Doenitz said to himself,
but we are all guilty of that
.
“We are going to kill Winston Churchill,” Raeder said, and then he smiled at Doenitz's shocked expression.
Â
Â
Mahlberg smiled with indulgence as the civilians and party officials found seats around the unadorned wardroom table. He had ordered that the decorations and other amenities be kept to a minimum so that the visitors would not forget that they were aboard a vessel of war. The only concession that he made was to have the heavy, dark blue blackout curtains over the portholes pulled back and held in place with white cotton rope. Raeder had insisted on an additional flourishâthe Kriegsmarine and Nazi flags hung side by side on the bulkhead behind him. Mahlberg wondered if they stood in silent competition to one another.
As the group settled in, Mahlberg's eyes fell on Ingrid May and he allowed himself a sliver of a smile. He saw that she, in turn, let her eyes casually signal that she knew he noticed her. It was difficult not to notice the only woman in the groupâa woman whose blond hair, almost white against her black sweater and slacks, was pulled back in a ponytail. The look was casually provocative and not lost on the older men sitting around her who struggled to hold in their stomachs and look important. She ignored them as she laid two twin-reflex cameras on the table and took a reading of the room with a light meter.
She was known as the finest photographer in Germany, able to capture images of the Fatherland's leaders that no one else could. It was because she slept with most of them, her competitors said, or the jealous wives of the leaders. And Mahlberg's wife. Mahlberg was not sure of how many men she slept withâhe knew of only one, and he found the experience delicious and decadent.
“I can help you, Wilhelm,” she had said as they lay in bed one evening, spent from lovemaking.
“Can you?” Mahlberg had replied, his hand playing over her flat stomach to her breasts.
She turned on her side and looked at him, allowing his wandering hand free rein. “I have the ear of many well-placed party officials.”
He remembered thinking to himself:
you've had more than their ears
. But instead he had replied, “How can you help me?”
She gasped slightly as his hand found the moist region between her legs. “Raeder has disappointed the Fuehrer many times. It is said that he will be replaced soon.”
“That's common knowledge,” Mahlberg had said as he began to tease her, his fingers seeking her most intimate area.
She moved closer to him, her breath hot with passion, and said, “Is it common knowledge that Wilhelm Mahlberg might be the next grand admiral?” She had closed her eyes, savoring his touch. “You must know,” she had continued, the words escaping her in a rush, “that I was instrumental in that decision.”
Mahlberg returned to the present, scanning the wardroom.
“May I take photographs, Kapitan?” Ingrid asked, her manner entirely professional.
“Of course,” Mahlberg said. He looked over the assembled group. “Welcome to the finest ship, the largest ship in the Kriegsmarine.” Mahlberg began his presentation as he heard the shutter snap and the film advance. He found himself suddenly ill at ease as she moved aboutâit felt too much as if she were stalking him. “You reporters, and of course our lovely photographer, have been honored to accompany
Sea Lion
on her first voyage. A voyage, I assure you, that will live in the annals of the Kriegsmarine as the greatest of its kind. When we return, you will report our triumphs to the German people. From those reports will they draw inspiration to conquer the world.”
“But first, England,” a fat Nazi Party official reminded Mahlberg.
“Yes,” Mahlberg said, wondering how many such idiots filled the party ranks. “England first.” He felt Ingrid on his left, the camera lens centered on his face, and he grew warm. There was something oddly voyeuristic about her proximity. He nodded to a
Leutnant zur See
, who handed each man around the table a neatly bound leather folder embossed with the name of the ship, the date, and the recipient, in gold letters.
“Before you is statistical information about
Sea Lion
. In it you will find her displacement, dimensions, armor protection, armament, propulsion plant, complement . . . Well, I could go on but I have no desire to delay our departure, so I will summarize much of what is contained in the folder. She is faster than the
King George V
,
Prince of Wales
, and
Rodney
. Her guns have a greater range and power than those vessels. She can steam 11,320 nautical miles at a speed of sixteen knots, or 5,750 nautical miles at a speed in excess of thirty-five knots. If
Sea Lion
were called upon to defend the Fatherland against the American Navy, she could just as easily destroy the U.S.S. North Carolina, one of their newest capital ships. So would she treat the French battleship
Richelieu
, and with apologies to our Italian allies, the
Vittorio Veneto
.”
There was a polite round of superior laughter around the table for the inadequacies of anything Italian, except perhaps food and women.
Ingrid returned to her seat and snapped the lens cap on her camera.
“Kapitan?” one of the reporters asked. “Can you tell us when we sail?”