Authors: Antony Trew
On board the
Hagenfels
Lindemann was sitting at the desk in his day-cabin, writing a letter to his wife. At times he would stop, his thoughts far away with her and the children, then he would write again.
When he’d finished the letter he began to worry about the night ahead. He was a man of peace and he felt uneasy. The sea, not war, was his love. His thoughts went back to the early days when he had trained in sail: once again he was out on the foretop yard, his bare feet gripping the foot rope, one frozen hand clawing at the flapping foretopsail, the other holding on for dear life. The wind screaming and tearing at his body so that he was involved in a personal struggle with the gale—beyond these things he was conscious of nothing but the dark pit of the night. Each time he grasped the wet canvas it was whipped from his hand and he knew that soon he would lack
the strength to go back along the yard and down the rigging …
A deck above Kapitän Lindemann, second officer Günther Moewe was in the chartroom looking at the chart of Lourenço Marques. The signal from the Wilhelmstrasse would come at any moment now and he wished to be in all respects ready: to know by heart the configuration of the bay with its many shoals, the courses they would have to steer, the depths of water they would encounter, the lights they would see, the tides and currents. Nothing must be left to chance. As he rolled the parallel rulers from the compass rose to the chosen points, drawing the pencilled course lines with neat, firm strokes, his thoughts turned to the coming night. He burned with inward fire at the impertinence of these British swine, coming on board a German ship under the pretext of
friendship
. Disguised. Ready to spy.
To
cheat
!
Enemies of the Third Reich! The British were being taught a sharp lesson by Hitler. They had discovered what the armed might of the new Germany meant. They were under no illusion now as to the courage and tenacity of German troops. The British were an effete anachronism; a once great people who had grown soft and lost their way. The mantle of imperial glory had fallen upon the Aryan master race. Moewe dropped the pencil on to the chart and rested his head in his hands, his thoughts soaring until he saw once again the camp-fires of the
Hitler
Jugend
in the Black Forest, the marching songs, the fair-haired
Brunhildes
waiting for their Siegfrieds—a little irreverently he remembered the night he’d seduced his Brunhilde in a
haystack
. It was the first time for her—she was fifteen—and afterwards she had cried and he’d felt embarrassed at first and then annoyed that the prospect of bearing a warrior in arms for the Third Reich could evoke any emotion other than pride. He tried to remember her name …
Siegfried Kuhn, the chief engineer, was in his cabin one deck below, entering the fuel and water registers. His thoughts were uncomplicated, for as always they were about his engines. To be precise, the need to renew the glands of the main
fresh-wate
r
feed pump. It would be a two-day job; with the ship at twenty-four hours’ notice it could not be tackled. In any case it was not urgent. A matter of routine maintenance. The pump would lose a little of its efficiency but that was not serious.
Heinrich Schäffer, the second engineer, was down in the engine-room writing up the log-book, but his thoughts were not on what he was doing; they were as usual confused. One part of his mind considered the strange situation which required him to come back on board at ten o’clock that night with the Freiherr, armed and ready for trouble, but under strict orders not to start anything.
Schäffer liked a fight. He’d been in many. For three Britishers he didn’t need a gun. His fists would be enough. The other part of his mind toyed with its perennial thought—it concerned women, and there is little point in pursuing it….
Ashore, Freiherr Ernst Joachim Sigismund von
Falkenhausen
was in his study resting, his mind much on coming events and what they might bring. Somehow or other he must neutralise Widmark and his men. How, he was not clear. Violence on board with the women present was out of the question. Ashore, discreetly handled, it was always a possibility. But not for all of them. They couldn’t all be dealt with that way. Widmark, yes, and perhaps McFadden, or the man Newton. But Widmark and McFadden were not coming to the party. Still, there might be other opportunities, though not much time was left. The cool rational part of the Freiherr’s mind told him, however, that violence was not really the solution. The answer was to so mislead these people that they would be put off the scent, so that when they woke up to what was happening the
Hagenfels
would already have gone. The Freiherr sighed; he longed to get to sea again, to have done with espionage. While he had been risking his freedom and his life to gather information, brother naval officers had been gathering Iron Crosses, oak leaves and swords; not only that, they had had all the thrills and solid achievements—the
hardships
, too, he had to admit—of the war at sea. Spying was an
anxious uncertain business. There was no recognition, no protection. The grandfather clock struck and he was reminded of the family
schloss
outside Schneidemühl. He thought of his mother and father and of his sisters; of his favourite rides; of his falcons and the hundreds of hours he had spent training them, and the thrill of hunting them. Of them all, Atilla was his favourite. Wicked, fiendish Atilla, straining at his jesses, talons clawing at the gloved fist, upside down, bating, aquiver with rage. Then he saw Gina, his Italian wife, and thinking of her pale beauty he felt alone and sad. Gina was dead. What was the use of thinking about her. It could only hurt. After Gina, life had been empty and aimless and women no more than passing fountains at which he had refreshed himself. Helga was one of these. Attractive? Yes. But how could she really mean anything to him after Gina?
Ridding himself of these desolate thoughts, he went to the small table and poured himself a schnapps….
And what were the others thinking about? Widmark’s men? Mostly of what the night might bring, but interwoven with these were other thoughts: Mike Kent, for example, in between checking the W/T call signs he would have to use—the challenges and replies, the drill when they passed Ponta Vermelha signal station—and wondering what sort of wireless set-up he’d find in the
Hagenfels
‚ and whether he’d know his way about it—in between these, Mike Kent was thinking about his climbs on Table Mountain and the Drakensberg; he was thinking, too, of the days spent birdwatching and some of the exciting finds—the Nerina Trogon he’d seen early one morning while walking down a fire-break in the Knysna forests and once, standing on a high slope of the Drakensberg near
Himeville
, he’d seen a peregrine falcon go into a stoop which ended far below him when it struck a rock pigeon in flight. Once again he saw the moment of the strike, the puff of feathers and what seemed a long time afterwards the sound of it—like a muffled handclap. In the Drakensberg, near Garden Castle, he had heard a shrill sad cry and looking for its source had
seen a Lammergeier sitting on a rock. He was ten then and it had been one of the most exciting moments of his life, for this great eagle was rarely seen …
Johan and Hans le Roux, confident in their strength and in Widmark’s leadership, were probably the least worried but they, too, suffered from that queeziness and loss of appetite which precedes action. These two were not only remarkably alike physically, but their outlook on life, their beliefs, were much the same. Both had been brought up in the Calvinist mould, so that God was often in their thoughts and like their frontiersmen forefathers they put their faith in equal measure in the Almighty and their strong right arms; the one, they were convinced, could not do without the other. As to their other thoughts that day they were largely of the farm at Zwartruggens where they had been born and reared, of their family who lived there and of the girls on adjoining farms whom they planned to marry.
Thinking of the farm they saw not only the old stone
farmhouse
,
Veelsgeluk‚
but the whole six thousand morgen, the ploughed lands, the mealie and teff lands, the kopjes and dry watercourses, the dusty tracks winding through the thorn bush; the stone kraals and wattle and daub huts of the Africans; the herds of beef cattle, sturdy brown Afrikaners with humped shoulders, and the rough coated black Aberdeen Angus; the tractor sheds and the corn grinders; the muddy water-pans and the windmills, and the endless veld grass—and these pictures evoked the smell of wood fires, of dung-filled cattle kraals, and of the veld after rain had fallen on parched land …
Andrew McFadden thought mostly of the diesels he would have to start that night and keep running until the
Hagenfels
had reached the safety of Durban; and of the auxiliary machinery, the generators and circulating pumps and
ventilation
motors that would have to be kept going. But he never doubted his ability to do these things with the assistance of Hans.
Outside these compulsive thoughts were private ones of the small house in Rondebosch where his wife and three small children lived, Jeannie no doubt worrying about where he was and what he was doing, for he had told her nothing more than that he would be gone for a few weeks. Discreet and understanding, accepting this as yet another of the unpleasant things the war required of her husband, she had kissed him good-bye and kept back her tears. Other thoughts, irrelevant but vivid, tumbled in and out of his mind: the launching of a ship on the Clyde when he was an apprentice in a shipyard; a cycling trip with Jeannie from Gourock to Largs on a glorious summer’s day in 1932 when they were engaged. Half-way there he had tussled with a faulty bicycle pedal and she had chided him: “You’re no’ an engineer’s foot, Andy, if ye let a wee thing like that get the better o’ you …”
David Rohrbach, serious, intensely committed to the task ahead, thought much of his family in Germany, of his time at Munich University and, characteristically, of some of the great music he had heard. For some reason his thoughts dwelt on a trip up the Rhine with his mother, father and two sisters. They had boarded the steamer at Frankfurt and left it in Cologne to return by train. It had rained most of the day and now looking back, sadly, he recalled with what pride his father had recounted the history and legends of the great river, of Pfalz and the Lorelei and other famous landmarks they had seen, and how he had spoken of the glory of Germany. The Germany which was now doing God knows what to that father and those sisters—the Germany which had embarked on the most obscene orgy of murder that the world had ever known. These things hardened his heart and made him look forward to the night in a way which none of the others could, except perhaps Widmark. Revenge was something he had to reject intellectually, yet emotionally he was dominated by the Old Testament’s eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth …
James Fellowes Newton was perhaps the member of the party whose sensibilities were least involved. He disliked the
Germans because they had disturbed the peace he’d so much enjoyed, and he resented with an inward and controlled anger the bombing of London and other British cities.
To him as an Englishman it was incomprehensible that the nation which had produced Goethe, Wagner, Bach, Mann and Einstein should have fallen for a rabble-rouser like Hitler—that it could have gone to so much trouble to be beastly to so many different people. His general view of the enemy now was that they were a bunch of misguided bounders who would have to be put in their place whatever the price.
He looked forward to the night’s work in a casual, partly eager, partly fearful fashion. It would be the first action to come his way for a long time and he was grateful for the relief from boredom. He had enjoyed the time in Lourenço Marques: the sleuthing round the docks and the more sophisticated pleasures of Di Brett’s company. While he resolved that he would do all he could to keep her out of harm’s way on board the
Hagenfels
, he felt at the same time that the journey to Durban would be all the better for her company.
Inevitably he thought a good deal about his wife Betty and his family’s home in Oporto, and for an hour he engaged in his favourite piece of escapism: planning with pencil and paper the house he hoped to build for her there after the war. That led his thoughts to the cruising ketch he’d designed while in the
Dorsetshire
and which, come the peace, he intended to have built in Lisbon.
Finally there was Stephen Widmark, alone in his room at the Polana writing up his diary and, when he had finished, addressing it to himself, care of his father in Cape Town, going downstairs and asking the hall porter to dispatch it by registered post. This he did not because he envisaged failure, but because he could not exclude the possibility that something might happen to him and he knew that the diary was the sole evidence of his personal responsibility for “Operation Break Out,” and of the innocence of his companions. He wished, too, to ensure that those concerned would know—should he not be
there—by what process of reasoning he had arrived at the decision to take matters into his own hands.
Later, back in his room, he spent some time reading Francis Thompson, ending with
The
Hound
of
Heaven
which left him, as always, strangely agitated and restless. Cleo came into his thoughts then and he made vague but satisfying plans for their future. Then he embarked upon an imaginary dialogue with her but gave it up because—knowing nothing of her other than those ten minutes in Costa’s—he had no idea what she might say or think in other circumstances. Later he became depressed and his thoughts went back to the Kasos Strait, and to the gale in which his mother had drowned. Once again his mind re-enacted in all their vivid horror these events from which it was never really free, and he ended up on the bed, straining, his body taut, and his nerves jangling.
“Operation Break Out” went into action at five o’clock that afternoon when Widmark and Rohrbach took their cars to garages in different parts of the town, handed them over for storing, luggage locked in the boot, charges paid in advance.
At six o’clock the Newt, telephoning Widmark from a public booth at the docks, said he had counted nine men getting into the 5.30 p.m. launch when it went alongside the
Hagenfels
to take liberty men ashore.
At about the same time Rohrbach and Johan le Roux took a taxi from the Cardoso to the boat harbour; with them went their bathing bags and fishing gear. Domingos Parao handed over the boat and bait, expressed regret that they had
disregarded
his advice to take ladies with them, and wished them good fishing. As usual, and notwithstanding his protestations, they paid him in advance. They left the harbour and set course down river; to port the Aterro do Machaquene, the native fish dock, and Ponta Vermelha passed in quick
succession
. The evening wind had begun to come in from the east, there was a light lop on the water, the sky was overcast, and there was the feel of rain in the air.
When Ponta Vermelha was abeam they turned to the
southeast
and by six-thirty they were off the reef at Ponta Maone. Johan stopped the engine and they anchored, put the baited lines over the side, and although they had no great desire to catch fish that evening it so happened they caught many. It began to rain and at seven o’clock when it was dark they weighed anchor, started the engine and steered in on the light at Esparcelado; at seven-fifteen it was abeam and they made a wide alteration of course which put number nine buoy ahead.
When they reached it they switched on navigation lights and ran in for the fish dock. It was raining, visibility was poor, and they had some difficulty in finding the entrance. Once inside, Rohrbach ran the boat gently up into the shallow waters of the beach until the bows grounded. There were a few fishing boats in the harbour, but no signs of life in the darkness other than the flicker of two oil lanterns and the murmur of African voices around a fire under the trees. At 7.30 p.m. three flashes of blue light showed up in the darkness to their left. Johan raised his torch and gave three flashes in reply. There was the scuffle of feet ahead of them: Johan called “
Tally-Ho
” and they heard Widmark’s reply “Break out.” Soon afterwards, he, McFadden, Hans le Roux and Mike Kent came out of the darkness, dropped their bathing bags into the boat and climbed aboard.
There were last minute handshakes, whispered “Good lucks!” Johan said: “Sorry you types weren’t invited to the party,” and he and Rohrbach went off to where the taxi was waiting. Complaining that the fishing was poor, they asked the driver to take them to the Cardoso. There they paid him off, made their way through a side entrance to their rooms where they washed and changed, strapped on their
shoulder-holsters
, put their coats on over them, and slipped the spare ammunition into their pockets.
“How do I look?” said Rohrbach, turning round
self-consciously
. “See anything?”
Johan looked at him with a critical eye: much depended on what he saw. “
Eerste
klas
—first-class, can’t see a sausage.”
“I feel such a bloody fool, toting this,” complained
Rohrbach
. “Too dramatic!”
“I don’t,” Johan patted his holster. “Makes me feel good. Only wish I had my cosh.”
Rohrbach looked at Johan’s big hands. “Why the hell you want a cosh when nature gave you clubs like that, beats me.”
For a few minutes they practised drawing the automatics—
sitting down, standing up, and on the move. In the end they finished up on the floor helpless with laughter. “Talk about cowboys and crooks!” croaked Johan. “What a couple of clots we must look.”
They learnt a valuable lesson: to bring the right hand down from the chin so that it fell easily on to the butt of the pistol; they learnt, too, not to draw too fast or hitches occurred.
Taking their raincoats, they went down to the lounge and joined Mariotta and Cleo, took a taxi and arrived at the boat harbour just after 8.30 p.m. The launch was waiting. The lights on the quay shone through a curtain of rain into the cabin where the Newt was sitting with two women. Since Rohrbach and Johan weren’t supposed to know him, and as none of them knew Di Brett, there was a moment of
embarrassment
when they got into the launch.
Then Mariotta and Cleo recognised Hester Smit, greeted her warmly and introduced her to David and Johan: that done Hester introduced them all to “Mr. James Newton and Mrs. Brett.” “We introduced ourselves while we were waiting,” she explained.
“Sorry we’re late,” said Rohrbach.
“It’s nothing. We were early.”
“Pity it’s raining.” The Newt looked at the cabin windows streaming with rain. “But it won’t worry us once we’re on board.”
The African coxswain told the bowman to shove off, the engine started and the launch went up river past the ships at the Gorjao Quay, the light clusters on the cranes looking like blurred moons in the rain. As they made for the anchorage below Ponta Chaluquene, they saw the lights of ships lying in the stream but could not see their hulls.
The women chatted inconsequentially, while the men were silent as men are when they’ve just met. All very convincing, thought Di Brett. But she did not know that the real reason for their silence was their awareness that the operation had started, that they were committed from now on to action.
Presently the engine slowed and the African coxswain answered a hail from the night, disembodied and peremptory. The launch shuddered as the engine went astern, there was a bump and the next moment a sailor in oilskins was helping them on to the foot of the gangway and they were climbing the wet steps which reflected the light from above.
Rohrbach reached the top and stepped out of the rain into the shelter of a covered deck. An officer with two stripes saluted him. “Good evening, sir.” The accent was
unmistakably
German.
“
Guten
abend
!
” replied Rohrbach.
They were on board the
Hagenfels
.
As the launch left the boat harbour, two dark shapes stepped from behind a pile of sleepers.
“Well,” said von Falkenhausen, “that’s that. Three flies in the parlour.”
“I envy you,” said Herr Stauch. “Can’t I go off to the ship with you, Herr Baron?”
In the light of a dock lamp the Freiherr looked at the fat man’s stomach, somehow more prominent under the wet
raincoat
. “No,” he said evenly. “You are too valuable ashore, Stauch.”
As Rohrbach and Johan disappeared into the night, Widmark put the engine astern and backed the boat out from the fish dock until they were clear of the breakwater; then with navigation lights burning they turned and headed across the river to where the Esparcelado Light glowed every second through the rain. The wind was blustering and when they cleared Ponta Vermelha the boat began to feel the sea and speed was eased. Widmark looked at the luminous hands of his watch—it was 1940—7.40 p.m.; they had to be in position off the
Hagenfels
at 2130, so they had nearly two hours in hand. To port he saw the flashing green light of number nine buoy and, altering course to the north-east, he headed the boat up the
dredged channel, the buoy ahead a winking pinpoint of red light.
Under their coats they wore their shoulder-holsters and automatics; the spare ammunition clips, torches and other small items were in their pockets.
The fishing boat was decked-in forward where there was a small store for stowing the anchor, ropes, fenders and other gear. Crouching, a man could just get into it. The sternsheets were open to the weather, but the engine round which they sat was protected by a wooden and canvas cover.
The wind and sea were on the starboard bow and at times spray sluiced back over them, but the night and the water were warm and the discomfort slight.
Fortunately all of them except Mike Kent had served in small ships, or seasickness might have been embarrassing. As it was, he was the only sufferer. He sat weak and retching, miserably ashamed, as the boat butted into short seas, passing first number eight buoy and then number seven. A few minutes later, at 2000, Widmark ordered the dousing of the navigation lights. After consulting the chart in the fo’c’sle, he brought the boat’s head round to the south for the run in to Ponta Maone. This put the wind and sea on the port-quarter and the motion became easier; Hans gave the engine full throttle and the boat worked up to its maximum speed of eight knots. The darkness was black and complete, but in the west a few stars blinked through the overcast and there seemed less rain. When the Esparcelado Light bore due west they altered course, heading back into the Espirito Santo on the Catembe side. At 2027 they were abeam of the light on the new course and they slowed down. The engine note dropped and sounds from the shore came down to them in the wind; the distant clamour of traffic and the ringing of church bells.
They made their way slowly down harbour, the lights of the ships at anchor misty balls of yellow, the black bulk of hulls shutting out the city’s lights. Near the pier at Catembe, they stopped the engine.
Widmark stood up in the sternsheets. “Righto, chaps. Get busy. Blacken your hands and faces, and lay out the gear.” He turned to Mike Kent. “You okay now, Mike.”
“Much better, sir,” he whispered. The retching had stopped, but he still felt weak and was unhappy about the prospect of climbing a rope ladder up a steel side in the dark.
They took it in turns to go into the fo’c’sle where, with the aid of torches and a small mirror, they dried their hands and faces and blackened them with stove-polish, put on the
rope-soled
shoes and the belts with the sheath-knives. While this was going on the others laid out the hook rope and scaling ladder, checked that the hammer, punch and hack-saw were in one bathing bag, and that the charts and sailing directions were in another.
Widmark said: “I’ve stuck a small White Ensign into the bag with the charts.”
They found this strangely reassuring, for they were pleased about the White Ensign. That was a nice touch he’d kept to himself.
Within twenty minutes everything was ready.
“We must be looking a fine lot of thugs,” said Andrew McFadden.
Hans laughed. “Glad my girl friend’s not around or I’d have had it.”
“That’ll do,” said Widmark. “Pipe down! Our job’s to listen. All set?”
There were answering “okays.” The engine started and the boat moved slowly upstream, the throttle well back.
It was 2110.
They had about a mile to go and twenty minutes in hand.
It began to rain again as Ponta Chaluquene came abeam to port. Ahead of them lay the
Gerusalemme
, the German ships and the sailing ship. The tide was ebbing and the ships faced up river, their port sides towards the fishing boat as it made its way slowly against the tide. The relative positions of the ships as he’d last seen them were fixed in Widmark’s mind.
Rohrbach
had told him where the
Clan
McPhilly
had anchored the evening before, and it was for her he was now looking. Presently he saw a light-cluster on the fo’c’sle of a ship ahead and to starboard of them. McRobert had been as good as his word.
They came level with the
Clan
McPhilly’s
fo’c’sle, and men could be seen at the windlass where there was the sound of hammering. The fishing boat drew slowly ahead. Widmark knew that the next ship in the line was the
Hagenfels
, and the blur of her lights was already visible through the rain; beyond her those of the
Dortmund
and
Aller
shone weakly. Widmark altered course to port to open the distance from the German ship, and the fishing boat went closer inshore. With the tide against them, they barely made headway and he ordered more throttle. They were about four hundred yards from the
Hagenfels
and downwind from her, so there was no danger of being heard. When they’d drawn well ahead they reduced speed and made a wide turn to starboard until the bows of the fishing boat faced down river and the
Hagenfels
lay ahead. They could now see both sides of the German ship. To
starboard
the foot of the gangway was hoisted clear of the water.
Widmark watched her lights, judging the distance as best he could. Then in a low voice he called: “Stand by to anchor!”
The engine stopped and they drifted down with the tide towards the
Hagenfels
until, when the distance had closed to about a hundred and fifty yards, he ordered: “Let go!”
The small anchor was lowered into the water so that there should be no splash, and the anchor rope was paid out until it held and the boat swung to the tide.
It was 2133.
Seventeen minutes to go.
On board the
Hagenfels
the party in the Captain’s cabin had got off to a difficult start. It would have been bad enough under normal circumstances with so many strangers, but circumstances weren’t normal and everybody in the cabin knew it except Mariotta Pereira and Cleo Melanides.
The Captain’s day-cabin was a large one, well furnished, and off it to port were his sleeping-cabin, bathroom and pantry. There were two separate entrances to the day-cabin, but they both led on to the same alleyway; one directly into the cabin and the other via the pantry. Müller, the steward, was on duty and he came out of the pantry from time to time with plates of snacks, sausages, cakes and fruit, which he put on a table already well equipped with drinks. Immediately inside the main door on the starboard side there was a leather settee and on this Hester Smit sat between Günther Moewe and Johan. On the settee opposite were Mariotta, the Newt and Rohrbach. Against the foremost bulkhead there was a mahogany desk with book-cases on either side, and in the corner a fireplace with an electric fire, a carved mantelpiece above it. Di Brett was in the desk chair, turned to face the centre of the cabin, to her right Kuhn, to her left Lindemann.