Convoy (41 page)

That was why they used to watch from the
Marynal
and see the
Penta
come over the horizon from astern like a dose of salts, then slow down three or four miles away. At that point the U-boat dived, and somehow got into the convoy, passing the two escorts weaving back and forth across the rear of the convoy.

He had guessed all that before leaving the
Marynal
, so there was no point in wasting time lying on his bed of nails and going over it again. The important question was simple enough: how did the U-boat get from the
Penta
to the middle of the convoy?

It was a good question; a waffling counsel in the Law Courts could spend thousands of pounds of a client’s money arguing about it without having a single fact, or, indeed, the slightest knowledge of the subject. A bureaucrat could conduct an official and inconclusive correspondence about it for years, keeping himself busy until he was ready to retire on a comfortable pension, when he would hand it over to another younger man travelling the same road to superannuated obscurity.

Yorke, by his own unaided efforts, had manoeuvred himself into the position where unlike a lawyer or a bureaucrat he had to provide an answer, or else… Civil Servants in high positions were in the happy position of having what one politician had quite wrongly attributed to the Press: ‘Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.’ The press had little or no real power; the upper-level Civil Servant, on the other hand, was all-powerful; he encouraged or thwarted ministers who generally took his advice and resigned if the resulting uproar proved it wrong.

The bureaucrat, however, took neither blame nor responsibility; indeed, he usually denied ever having given ‘advice’. What he did, he claimed, was to outline ‘the alternatives’ open to the minister. No bureaucrat could be sacked unless he committed some criminal offence. If he was incredibly and consistently stupid, the only way of getting him out of a particular job was to promote him. Some of the highest Civil Servants owed their rank to sheer incompetence. Had they been a little brighter they would have reached retiring age in quite a lowly post.

Though true, none of this helped Yorke’s present problem. There was a diplomatic incident lurking at the foot of his mattress, a dereliction of duty charge was on the left side, a negligence on the right, while under the pillow was straight failure, with a job waiting for him as naval officer in charge at Calabar, or some other collection of mud huts up some tropical river in Africa. And none of it mattered a damn if he could stop the sinkings.

He decided to look at it through the eyes of the
Oberleutnant
commanding the U-boat. The
Penta
gave him a way of approaching within three or four miles of the convoy in daylight and on the surface. It was still daylight and he was within three or four miles and now he had to dive to avoid the British Asdics and hydrophones. What did Heinrich do? Bark out the question in the best Erich von Stroheim manner, monocle screwed into the eye. Hurry, hurry, Heinrich, the Tommy frigates are racing towards you! What are you going to do?

Well, sir, I will dive and get right under the
Penta
, so close that the top of my periscope (housed) is nearly scratching the barnacles off her bottom, and I will be running on the almost silent electric motors, and I will rely on the appalling roar of the
Penta
’s two diesel engines, and the heavy thump-thump, or whoomp-whoomp, of her twin propellers to deafen the frigates’ hydrophone operators. The vast bulk of the
Penta’s
hull will send the probing sound fingers of the Asdic bouncing back without the Tommy operators realizing that the
Penta
whale has a lethal remora on her underside.

Leave that idea to soak in for a while and then come back and have another look at it, Yorke told himself. Stay with
Oberleutnant
Heinrich who has just been given his first command. A new boat, 770 tons, strong enough to dive to four hundred feet without damage, twin diesels giving 19 knots on the surface, and a battery capacity of nine knots submerged for an hour or three days at one to two knots. Repeating what Jemmy had said parrot-fashion reassured him that he had remembered it correctly.

There you are,
Oberleutnant
Heinrich, this is your new boat: no dents, newly painted, no kinks in the guardrails, no rust, no slime… You board at the Tirpitz Pier in Kiel and way up above you on the side of the hill is the Navy war memorial, commemorating the dead of the First World War, those who perished for the Kaiser in those early and crude U-boats, or who died at the battle of the Heligoland Bight, which the Tommies called Jutland…

You probably know your first lieutenant, who will be your right hand, and perhaps your second officer. The ensign, equivalent to the Tommies’ sub-lieutenant, will probably be a stranger. If you have any sense or enough influence you will know your chief engineer. Fourteen electric torpedoes will be stowed below, fuel tanks will be full, batteries topped up with electrolyte, the latest signal books and the settings for the cipher machine will be on board…

Your orders would come from the Senior Officer, West, a procedure which (although you do not know it) has the Tommies baffled, because Admiral Doenitz’s U-boat headquarters at far away Kernevel, near Brest, will give you your tactical orders.

So now the time has come to leave the Tirpitz Pier: best uniform for you, with medal ribbons worn. You might have an Iron Cross, too, and perhaps other decorations slung round your neck. A Navy band standing on the jetty is thumping and blowing as you ease 75 metres of boat (most of which cannot be seen because, like an iceberg, the bulk of a U-boat is under the water, even when technically surfaced), and you take a spin round Kiel Bay. Before the war you sailed some of the Navy’s yachts across these waters, beautifully-kept 50-square metres that slept six or eight men and were fast. The Olympic Games yachting was held here just before the war. The big Navy ocean racers were here that took part in the race across the Atlantic before the war began and had romantic names like the
Roland
von
Bremen
and
Wappen von Hamburg
…

Back to Kiel and then up to the locks opening into the North-East Sea Canal linking the Baltic and the North Sea in an almost straight line. The Tommies do not seem to understand the importance of the canal because they have not destroyed the locks either at the Kiel end or at Brunsbüttelkoog, where they opened into the River Elbe below Hamburg, nor bombed the sections where the high sides would tumble down into the water and block the channel.

The trip through the canal is like a cruise through Dutch canals or a cycle ride through sunken lanes with hedges on either side. Here a village, with old men fishing in the canal waters; there passing under a bridge where, high above, cars and lorries stop so their drivers can look down admiringly at the U-boat on its way to the Atlantic.

Out of the locks at Brunsbüttel and down the Elbe, fast flowing with long sandbanks which constantly shift position, something of a nightmare for poor
Oberleutnant
Heinrich, who can imagine his fate if he puts his new command on to a shoal before reaching the open sea. ‘Open sea’ means the North Sea, with the North Frisian Islands to starboard, scattered along the Danish coast as though protecting it from the winter storms, and the East Frisian Islands on the port quarter, scattered along the north German coast; islands with names that are fast becoming part of German naval history: Borkum, Juist, Norderney, along to Wangerooge, protecting such ports as Emden, Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven. No Zeppelins now at Wilhelmshaven, of course, but everyone honours Graf von Zeppelin, a man who turned dreams into the reality of enormous silver flying cigars filled with highly explosive hydrogen because the Americans would not sell the inert helium to foreigners.

All of which is most interesting, but Yorke and his alter ego,
Oberleutnant
Heinrich, are still lying on the mattress of nails.

The
Penta
is now back in the convoy making six knots. Less in fact because the convoy rarely actually made six knots ‘over the ground’.
Oberleutnant
Heinrich stays beneath her while she passes through the area being covered by the frigates, and perhaps remains there until she is back in position as the second ship in what was the fifth but is now the fourth column.

Once there, Heinrich was safe because he knows the escorts do not come inside the convoy. However, there was no reason why he should not stay beneath the
Penta
. He could go deeper, of course, so there was less risk of him bumping his periscope against her bottom, but he would always be able to recognize her because of her two diesel engines, which had been made in Germany anyway.

Now what does Heinrich do? His batteries are well charged. He only used them for that run at a little over six knots for less than half an hour which was necessary for the
Penta
to get back into position. It is now 6 p.m. and he likes to wait until 8 p.m. before attacking, which means another two hours at six knots submerged. An hour’s slow manoeuvring while he sinks his quota of merchantmen. Sometimes it only takes half an hour and by 9 p.m. at the latest he is diving deep and stopping while the convoy passes overhead. Later he can surface and begin charging the batteries again, slowly following the convoy until he sees the
Penta
on the horizon.

Oberleutnant
Heinrich knows the Tommies will never guess how he gets into position and as soon as he has used up all his torpedoes, he will steer for Brest and a good leave, after sending a brief report to Admiral Doenitz. The man the German submarine service call ‘The Lion’ will be delighted. Eleven ships sunk so far, and with three torpedoes left Heinrich can hope for at least two more. Thirteen ships with fourteen torpedoes; thirteen ships sunk on one patrol. That should mean oak leaves to go on his Iron Cross.

Yorke now knew all about how
Oberleutnant
Heinrich operates. I’ve just looked through the crack of a partly-opened door, and discovered the secret. Now I’ve got to destroy you, Heinrich old boy, and between us you and I could well cause one vast, enormous, gigantic diplomatic incident, even if you have just drowned at a hundred feet and your U-boat is lying like a crushed biscuit tin on the bottom of the Atlantic.

It might not work, but it was the best plan he could contrive after what seemed to be hours of thinking. He refused to look at his watch, but then realized that he had to know what the time was to see how much of it was left before they set to work.

At half past five the
Penta
had slowed down and as Yorke had scribbled the fact in his notebook (
evidence
now, he hoped) he knew he had two and a half hours to go before the U-boat would fire its first torpedo. It would be dark in less than half an hour.

‘Gather round and make yourselves comfortable,’ he told the men. They sat on forms, perched on the edge of the table or stood leaning against the nearest bulkhead. Mills had not shaved and even though plump he would look a desperate fellow clutching a grenade in one hand and a revolver in the other. Cadet Reynolds was still too young for a couple of days’ growth of beard to do much more than show faintly in a bright light. The bearded seamen had the same sort of faces that must have been familiar to Francis Drake or Edward Teach. They all looked ruthless and tough. Within an hour they would look desperate as well, because they would
be
desperate.

‘Listen carefully,’ he told them. ‘When you were boys playing games at school I expect you played pirates. The legal definition of piracy is depriving the rightful owners of the possession of their ship. You, gentlemen, will soon be pirates.’

Watkins looked across at Jenkins and winked, making a gesture with his right hand as though cutting someone’s throat.

‘Yes,’ Yorke said, ‘it might come to that too.’ He looked at his wristwatch with some deliberation, then round at the men. He saw he had all their attention. No gunnery instructor at Whale Island or battery sergeant major at wherever the Royal Artillery trained its gunners had seen men more alert. They reminded Yorke of high divers poised to leap.

He said in a carefully controlled voice: ‘In forty-five minutes’ time we capture this ship.’

No one showed the slightest surprise or excitement. Yorke suddenly felt like a boy who had scored the winning goal only to find that all the other players had gone home. Eventually Mills scratched his left buttock. ‘Aye, that’s a good idea,’ he said conversationally. ‘I thought it’d get down to that in the end. We’re going to be a bit short-handed in the engine room, though.’

Yorke looked at his watch, ‘You’ve forty-one minutes to train four volunteers to be engineers, or electricians, or greasers, or whatever it is you want.’

‘You want me to keep the ship running for an hour or a week?’

‘An hour. Perhaps less.’

‘Good, because I’d need more men if we have to stand watches. Now I can make do with three.’

Yorke looked round at Cadet Reynolds. ‘What are you like at the wheel?’

‘All right, sir. Never steered a twin-screw ship, but I’ll be all right.’

He pointed at Watkins. ‘You two signalmen will take over the wireless cabin. Get the Swedes out, or secure them there, guard the door, and don’t let anyone damage the transmitter. If you can tune the receivers into the
Echo
’s working frequencies, do so and keep the bridge informed of anything concerning us.’

Yorke stood for a minute or two staring into space, collecting his thoughts. Then he noticed that Jenkins and most of the other seamen were sucking teeth, scratching their heads, clicking finger joints or giving signs that any petty officer would recognize as displaying disappointment, impatience or resentment. Tooth-suckers of the world unite! Yorke thought.