A Thousand Suns (21 page)

Chapter 31

Into the Water

1 a.m., 29 April 1945, off the coast of France

Lündstrom stared silently at the pitch-black form of the coastline. It was silhouetted against a faint orange sky. A low cloud base reflected the night-time amber glow of the city of Nantes. Isolated pinpricks of light dotted the dark landmass and suggested the occasional cottage or farmhouse, but he could see no other detail or definition from the shore. This kind of amphibious deployment of troops was dangerous enough in the daytime, let alone doing it at night with no detailed knowledge of the stretch of shore they intended to land on.

He had no idea what the objectives were for the young captain and his platoon, but whatever the mission, he hoped it was going to be worth the risks they were taking. There was a very real possibility that some of these poor boys might not make it to shore. The sea was lively tonight, with four-foot swells slapping against the side of the sub, and they had no notion of what sort of terrain led down to the sea here.

They could be trying to row ashore onto a lethal barricade of razor-sharp rocks.

Koch and his men were intending to paddle towards the French coast in three inflatable dinghies, across half a mile of choppy sea. He had dared not take the U-boat any closer for fear of grounding her. The men were wearing enough clothing and equipment to sink them like rocks if they fell out or, worse, one of the dinghies was punctured.

He hoped to God this foolish exercise had a point.

Once more he scanned the black world around him and strained his ears to detect any noise other than the chop of water against the sub’s hull. There was nothing to be seen or heard; it seemed as if they were safe here in the dark, for now.

Lündstrom called down through the open hatch in the floor of the conning tower. ‘All clear.’

Seconds later he was relieved to hear a deep, bass throbbing as the diesel motors started up. The ‘all clear’ had made its way aft to the engine room in mere seconds, and already the engines had started turning and were recharging the batteries. One of the first things any rating learned in the Kriegsmarine was that a good sub captain never wastes a single solitary second on the surface.

‘Tell Hauptman Koch he and his men can come up now.’

He heard the order echoing down the ranks inside the sub, and moments later the hatch on the foredeck was pulled open, and several of Koch’s men emerged. They pulled up onto the deck three folded rubber bundles, which they opened out and began to fill with air using foot pumps.

He shook his head. This little venture had the feeling of a disastrous balls-up waiting to happen. These dinghies were all that could be produced at short notice for the mission. They would be a poor offering as a life raft; they were certainly less than adequate for an amphibious landing. And although he had no doubt that the men were fine soldiers, Lündstrom wondered whether these Alpine troops, trained for combat in arctic and mountainous conditions, were ready for this kind of action.

He heard boots on the ladder leading up to the conning tower. Koch emerged beside him and gleefully sucked in a lungful of the chilly, salty air.

‘I imagine that tastes pretty good after the last few days below, eh?’ said Lündstrom.

The young man nodded. ‘Very good. I don’t know how you and your men can stand to live in such conditions.’

‘Yes, of course, you must be used to the great outdoors, not the inside of a sardine can.’

Koch stretched his arms in front of him, enjoying the space. ‘It’ll be good to get on with this, least of all so we can stretch our legs.’

Koch had been careful not to reveal a single detail of the mission he and his men were to carry out. Lündstrom guessed that the young man’s orders had specified that the nature of their undertaking ashore remain classified. Nonetheless, knowing the war was entering its final days, he felt the imprudence of asking him was forgivable.

‘Can I ask what it is you and your men are up to?’

Koch tightened his lips and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not permitted to reveal the content -’

‘- of your orders. I know. I thought as much. Well, I hope whoever’s behind this has a damn good reason for throwing you and your lads into the sea. I can’t see anything any of us can do right now is going to change the way things will go.’

‘We’ve not had a lot to do but retreat for the last year. My men wouldn’t mind one last chance to have a go back at them.’

Lündstrom had on many an occasion in the last year shared a drink with passionate young officers in the bars of Bergen. There were nearly 40,000 servicemen isolated in Norway - soldiers, airmen, sailors, many of them veterans. A large proportion of these men had fought in elite regiments that had served tours of duty in the east. They were good soldiers, the cream of what was left of Germany’s fighting forces, but they were stuck where they were, separated by the Baltic from Germany and frustrated that they could do little to help their comrades and defend their country.

He had listened to these young men, soured and embittered by losing the eastern campaign and watching from afar as the war ground to a bitter end. The only opportunity many of these officers had had to prove their leadership was how quickly and efficiently they could withdraw their men and move resources back from the advancing enemy. He pitied the young captain.

The end of the war would bring him only a sense of loss, failure. For Lündstrom, however, it meant only relief. He and his men had already tasted the bitter pill of defeat a year ago. Those feelings had passed, the wounds had healed, and now they were just waiting for the rest of their compatriots to catch up and accept the inevitable, acknowledge the game was up.

‘Good night for it, I think,’ said Koch, studying the dark sky. The cloud cover was total; the full moon would not give them away tonight.

‘Yes, but the sea is choppy. Don’t let your men sit on the edge of the dinghies or they’ll go in.’

Koch nodded.

‘And be careful when you start seeing white water. That means you’re close to the shore. I’ve no idea what there is to land on here, sand or rocks. Be careful, eh?’

The men on the foredeck had inflated two out of the three dinghies, and the third was nearly done.

‘I should join my men now. Thank you for your hospitality.’

Lündstrom held out his hand. ‘Well, I wish you success with whatever it is you hope to achieve.’

‘Perhaps our little action will make a minor headline or two in some newspaper somewhere, and then you’ll find out what we’ve been up to.’

‘Maybe a footnote in a history book some day, eh?’

Koch smiled. ‘That would be nice.’ He nodded formally at Lündstrom before descending the ladder to return inside the sub and check one last time that all their field equipment had been bagged up and taken. A few moments later, the rest of his platoon spilled through the hatch on to the foredeck, followed by Koch. They quickly gathered together their firearms and wrapped them up in several waterproof canvas kit bags, then sorted themselves into three groups.

Lündstrom watched them with concern. Unlike seamen, these men were careless in the way they stood on the deck, close to the edge, not holding on to the railings, not keeping an eye on the sea for any approaching swells. They were men unused to the sea, and its ways.

Tonight, however, it seemed the Atlantic wasn’t thrashing as unkindly as it had promised. That and the good cloud cover as well. Perhaps fortune had decided to smile on this little endeavour.

Now that his part of the job was done, he wondered if he would hear any more about this operation after reporting back to Bergen. Maybe Koch was right; it would probably amount to no more than a small news item in the provincial newspaper that served this area of France. All eyes were on Berlin now.

‘
Thirty German bodies washed ashore near Nantes
.’

‘Poor bastards,’ he muttered as he watched the first dinghy slide off the deck into the sea, and begin to bob unhappily as successive swells and troughs raised and dropped it by half a dozen feet.

The other two dinghies followed suit, and awkwardly, their inexperience showing, the men clambered down into them.

The last of Koch’s men scrambled down the side of the hull and the three inflatable rafts began to head away into the night, as paddles on all sides sliced into the foaming water.

He watched their painfully slow progress, as they seemed to move more up and down at the mercy of the swells than away towards land.

Ten minutes later, when Lündstrom could no longer make out the pale wake trailing Koch and his men, he ordered the helmsman to turn her around and head due north-west.

He sighed with relief, hoping
this
time he could take the U-1061 home to Bergen to await the end of the war in peace.

Chapter 32

Zero Hour

2.05 a.m., 29 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart

Max had watched as the work assembling the cradle was done and the bomb, under the supervision of the recently arrived civilian, and under the cold gaze of the SS men who had come with him, had been carefully installed aboard the bomber.

The civilian had ordered his SS guards to continue watching the plane; none of the ground crew, nor the crew who were to fly it, were now permitted to approach it. Then the civilian had left the hangar for the bunker.

Max had also noticed the Major watching the whole process from a corner of the hangar, and as the civilian had departed, he had summoned Rall with a flick of his wrist. It appeared that all of a sudden this man was now calling the shots on the airfield. No longer did it seem to be the Major’s show.

That had been an hour ago. Max and the others now waited impatiently for the last of the fighters to be fuelled and the extra-large ammo canisters installed. Even carrying the extra ammunition drums, Schröder and his men would need to ensure they were careful to conserve what ammo they had. Yet another thing for them all to keep in mind.

Zero hour, Major Rall had promised, would be midnight, but the cradle had taken longer than planned. That was two hours of wasted night cover.

‘Shit!’ he muttered to himself. The waiting was getting to him. He slipped out through the hangar hatch door into the night.

It was playing on his mind, the fact that Rall appeared to have been outranked at this late stage. With the Major’s hand at the helm, he had begun to feel confident that the whole operation had a reasonable chance of success. There was a humourless common sense to the Major, a rigid backbone of efficiency and straight talking that Max had known in some of his previous commanding officers, and he had grown to trust those qualities without question. Now to see the Major sidelined by this civilian, at this final hour . . . it was unsettling.

It was cold enough to blow out a cloud of condensation. Max sighed and watched the small plume of steamy breath quickly disperse in the night air. He remembered being a child and doing that on a winter’s morning, pretending he was grown up and smoking a cigarette, holding a pencil haughtily between two fingers and puffing on it like a little gentleman of leisure.

‘Cold night, eh, Max?’ said Pieter as he slipped through the gap between the hangar’s sliding doors to join Max outside.

Max nodded silently.

‘You all right?’

He smiled at Pieter. ‘I’m all right, you go and check on the other two. We should be ready to go any time now.’

He watched his co-pilot trot back into the hangar. His crew were in good spirits, ready to get this thing going; all three of them, it seemed, certain that the right choice had been made to volunteer. Schröder and his men too looked eager to mount up and fly into whatever destiny awaited them. It seemed as if only he was having any misgivings.

Those overheard words were playing on his mind. Something was wrong, there was disagreement between Rall and this civilian.

What
is
the risk in using this weapon?

There was a risk, then. Something that rendered the bomb hazardous to Max and his crew? Perhaps this new explosive formula was unstable and could blow up inside the plane? It wouldn’t be the first time that an unready weapon prototype had taken lives on its first run. In fact, he’d heard of quite a few test-run disasters recently, unofficially, of course, gossip amongst the officers.

It was yet another thing to worry about, though, as if fighting their way across France wasn’t enough. But, in the end, Rall’s justification was right. If they managed to get all the way to America and drop this bomb on New York, then there would be millions of German lives saved. The Major’s common sense cut through all the shit. A rational transaction.

What
is
the risk . . . ?

Perhaps the Major’s concern was for
his
men, for Max and his crew. That would explain it. The Major would undoubtedly feel strongly that Max and his men should know exactly what they were handling, especially if this formula was volatile, prone to blowing up before its time. Max suspected it might be something along those lines, a concern for his airmen that had triggered the angry exchange he had overheard.

All of a sudden, the lights in the hangar were turned out. Moments later, the large sliding doors were wheeled noisily back. By torchlight Max watched as a tractor towed the B-17 out into the open and returned inside the hangar to pull out the fighters one by one.

Pieter and the others emerged from the hangar and joined Max outside.

Max turned to his crew, his troubled mind for now wiped clean of ill-placed worries. ‘You gentlemen ready to go, then?’

Pieter yawned and nodded, his face momentarily shrouded by a cloud of vapour. Max knew him well enough to know the yawn was a nervous gesture. Despite the affected sleepy demeanour he knew Pieter was alert and anxious to begin.

Stef shook his head vigorously. ‘Ready as ever, sir,’ he answered with the slightest hint of tension in his voice.

Hans nodded silently, smoking what was probably the last cigarette on the airfield.

‘Good.’

Schröder and his men emerged from the darkness inside the hangar. He heard Schröder’s crystal-sharp accent as he finished telling a story that provoked a roar of laughter from his men.

Battlefield laughter.

Max knew the sound well enough, the hysterical laughter, the fluttering of nerves. Before every mission, it seemed almost anything could be funny, and afterwards the same things barely solicited a smile.

‘Where’s Max and his merry men?’ he heard the fighter pilot call out.

‘Pompous idiot,’ Pieter grumbled as Schröder’s voice cut across the general murmuring.

Max nudged Pieter gently. ‘Behave.’

Schröder picked Max out of the dark and wandered over. ‘Well, Oberleutnant Kleinmann, I presume the finest bomber crew in the Luftwaffe is ready for its final sortie?’

‘Perhaps that should be the
last
bomber crew?’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’ Schröder cast his eyes around the group of men. ‘This must be all that’s left of our airforce now. The only operational squadron.’

‘The final flight of the Luftwaffe . . . that has a nice poetic ring about it,’ said Max.

‘Well, it has been a brief but enriching experience this last week. I wish you and your men the best of luck. Perhaps I’ll join you in America after the war and we’ll toast the mission and Major Rall.’

‘You can buy the first round, then,’ replied Max.

Schröder laughed and slapped his shoulder. ‘You can buy the last.’

From the entrance to the underground bunker the civilian emerged, flanked by two of his SS guards. Behind them, emerging a few seconds later, Major Rall came out, walking slowly.

The laughter died down as Max and the others watched them make their way across towards the hangar.

‘Who
is
that man?’ asked Schröder with a hint of distaste in his voice.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Max.

I’d feel a lot happier if I did.

The civilian and his guards approached the men gathered outside the hangar, watching the last of the Me-109s being towed out onto the tarmac. The men quietened down, as the Major finally drew up alongside the civilian.

‘Men, this is Doctor Karl Hauser. He is the weapon’s designer. I believe he has a few words he wants to say,’ Rall announced flatly.

‘Thank you, Major. I’m not sure how much the Major has told you about the weapon you have there in that bomber. But it is a new type of weapon, a brand-new technology that we have beaten the Americans in developing. ’

Hauser turned to Max and his crew.

‘When you gentlemen release that bomb over New York, you will be telling the world that we are still a force to be reckoned with.’ He offered the men a smile. ‘And, of course, you will be making history.’

Several of Schröder’s pilots cheered.

‘I know you men will find a way to get this bomb to New York. The Führer has asked me to personally convey his admiration and his gratitude to you all for volunteering to carry out this dangerous mission. We have this chance, gentlemen, this one chance, to pull a victory out of the ashes . . .’

Major Rall looked around the pilots listening, in good spirits, to the Doctor’s speech. The very same speech Hauser had just been practising down below in the bunker. The man’s pomposity, the gestures, the language, reminded him of another man who had brought disaster upon them all, for the sake of his vanity. Rall was reminded of the Hitler of four years ago, on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.

The conclusion was now crystal-clear in his mind. Doctor Hauser was every bit as dangerous. The man had finally conceded, out of sheer arrogance, perhaps aware that there was little the Major could now do to stop things, that there was much more than a
slight
chance that the weapon’s blast could be infinite, incinerate everything. He had admitted that, and then summoned his SS guards into the room to escort them both out onto the airfield. The significance of that gesture wasn’t wasted on the Major.

One foot out of line now, and he would be a dead man.

‘With this bomb, gentlemen . . . with this one bomb, we will destroy the beating heart of America, New York. With one bomb and in one instant, we will turn that entire city and everyone in it to ashes.’

Rall sought out Max amongst the assembled pilots. If there was one man amongst them whom he could possibly get through to in the few seconds that he might have, it was Oberleutnant Kleinmann. There was little chance that this mission could be stopped here and now, he knew that. But if he could present to Max the potential danger, and let the man come to his own conclusion - after all, he had twenty hours in the air in which to think about it - then perhaps this mission could be aborted before it was too late.

He scanned the faces turned towards Hauser, and amongst them he saw Max’s eyes locked on to his. The Oberleutnant was studying him intently, curiously.

‘We will turn all of New York into Stalingrad with this new weapon. And the Americans will have no choice but to submit to the Führer’s terms and join us in the crusade against communism. The Russians will be turned away from Berlin, Germany will survive. And we will make many more of these bombs to ensure our supremacy continues -’

Does Kleinmann sense there’s something wrong?

‘- and our empire will once more be reclaimed. This weapon is our future, it is our destiny. It is how we will fight wars from now on. Not with tanks or men, but with this all-consuming power. With it we will turn any nation that stands in our way . . . to ashes.’

Rall watched Max frown and shake his head unhappily, and then the pilot glanced back at the Major. There was no mistaking the expression on his face - betrayal.

This weapon is far more powerful than you said
. Rall read that accusation in the pilot’s eyes.

‘And more dangerous than you can imagine,’ the Major muttered under his breath. He decided he had to try and talk to Max. By the look of him, it seemed he was already troubled by Hauser’s foolish speech. Just a few well-chosen words might be enough to convince the pilot to abort the mission somehow.

Rall began to step through the gathered men towards Max, when Hauser turned sharply towards him. ‘Major Rall, are you ready to issue orders?’

He wondered whether he had a chance to tell them all what he knew. What could he say before Hauser ordered his guards to gun him down? They would do it, of course, without a second’s hesitation.

‘Major Rall? Time is pressing,’ added Hauser, staring threateningly at the Major.

A single command from this madman - that’s all it would take.

‘Major?’

‘To your planes, men,’ Rall ordered flatly.

Schröder’s men cheered and turned on their heels towards the Me-109s lined up nearby. Schröder approached Rall and saluted him. ‘We will ensure they make it safely across, Herr Major.’

Rall nodded and mumbled weakly, ‘Good luck, Schröder. ’

He watched the young pilot join his squadron, climbing up onto the nearest fighter with athletic ease. And then the Major’s attention turned towards the four men left standing before him, Max and his crew.

Max approached the Major and extended a hand towards him. ‘Major?’ he offered uncertainly.

Rall grasped the pilot’s hand and looked up, met his eyes.

Now, man, now! This is your only chance!

‘The bomb is dangerous, Max,’ he muttered quickly under his breath.

‘Sir?’

‘Listen! There is a very real poss -’

The engines fired up on the nearest Me-109 and it swiftly began to roll across the grass and tarmac towards the strip. Other engines followed suit and a convoy of fighters began their nose-to-tail procession towards the top of the runway.

Hauser stepped promptly forward to stand beside Rall and presented a sealed envelope to Max. Rall cursed under his breath, the time for whispering was gone.

‘Oberleutnant Kleinmann, in this envelope is the arming code for the bomb. It is for your eyes only,’ Hauser shouted, competing with the noise of a dozen engines.

Max nodded without a word and took the envelope. He turned back to Rall and saluted him.

‘Good luck, Kleinmann,’ added Hauser.

Max lingered a moment longer studying the Major’s face one final time, but Rall looked down at the ground. He looked beaten, defeated.

Max nodded politely towards Hauser, and then turned on his heels to face his crew.

‘Let’s go, lads.’

Hauser and Rall watched the four men scramble up through the belly hatch into the bomber and moments later he caught sight of Max through the plexiglas cockpit windows strapping himself into the pilot’s seat. The engines on the bomber spluttered and roared to life one after the other, like four sleeping lions roused from their slumber. Moments later, the chocks were removed, and the plane began to roll across the grass towards the strip just as the first of the 109s was taking to the air. In quick succession, the entire squadron took to the air in pairs, making use of the runway’s full width, and as each pair reached halfway down the strip, the next pair thundered down the runway after them.