Agent of Death (25 page)

*

Feldman had shut down the fuses in Top Red torpedo in its tube.

Feldman had then launched Top Red torpedo to explode far ahead of the boat.

He had done that to save the boat.

But now Feldman was doing something different.

He wasn’t working on the other two live torpedoes in the tubes.

He was working on one of the reloads waiting behind them.

*

Landau looked round to make sure nobody else had noticed. But they hadn’t. They were all busy listening. Landau looked back at the board. Feldman had turned on the electrics of one of the reloads.
Blink
…
Blink
…
Blink
…
Blink
. Four red lights came on, one after another, indicating that all four fuses were alive, armed, and active. That too was supposedly impossible with a torpedo not yet loaded into a tube. But Feldman had done it. In theory the warhead should already have detonated, but presumably there were other safety devices. The warhead still needed some final shock.

*

Feldman stood by the middle reload, port side. It was the easiest torpedo to reach for a right-handed man of his size. He didn’t know how long he’d been breathing from the Draeger, but his head was beginning to ache and his vision was unclear. In part that was because of bad light. He’d set aside one torch already, as its battery faded, and he’d switched to a reserve. He thought he must have been breathing the recycled gases for nearly half an hour and he had no idea how much oxygen was left. He wasn’t sure of that, but he was sure of something else. He was sure he had done the right thing.

So he aimed his torch at the torpedo above the middle one, then down at the torpedo below. The torch beam was a staff: the staff Moses used to part the Red Sea. The staff he turned into a serpent to amaze Pharaoh. In the light of the shining staff Feldman saw that the three warheads lay within a distance of two metres: one above the other, and that was good.

He put down the torch and took up a heavy spanner. He felt his way to the round, smooth nose of the torpedo. He thought of his beautiful lost family. He thought of the beautiful lost life he had enjoyed with the respect of those he had thought to be his fellow countrymen. Then he thought of
Kristalnacht
, and book-burning, and insults, and beatings, and mass extermination conducted with exemplary efficiency, and above all he thought of the loathsome, despicable ignorance that put mental defectives in charge of a great nation. Then he thought of Captain Sohler who was a good man, and his crew who were good men. But they were not enough; not by a hundred, a thousand, a million.

Feldman could not properly speak, not with a Draeger mouthpiece between his teeth, so he muttered the words to himself.

‘
Shema
Yisrael.
Adonai
eloheinu.
Adonai
ehad
!’ And he swung the spanner with all his strength.

CHAPTER 30

The
Punnoshaus,

SSA
Base
Härönholmen
Bay
,

Punno
Island
,
Sweden.

Wednesday
6 June,
06
.
15
hours
.

I picked the younger of the two
Stabshelferin
girls. She was Margarethe Baumann: small, serious, and about twenty years old. She’d been on duty when the commandos burst in, and was fully dressed in a tailored black uniform with a neat white shirt, a tie with the blitz emblem, and hair curled up on top of her head. I thought she was very pretty, or perhaps it was just the woman-in-uniform effect. So she was young but highly trained, and highly motivated, and I had to be careful, as I sat her down in front of the transmitter, and called her
gnädigste
fraulein
.

The words were a calculated risk because they mean something like ‘gracious and noble young lady’, and are not normal conversational German. They’re florid and old-fashioned. They’re the sort of words that waiters use when grovelling to clients, and were words I’d learned from my parents, who’d learned German in the 1900s. But I’d toured Germany before the war, and found that if you deliver these words straight faced with just a tiny ironic smile and a brief bow, then they work wonders on German girls. They go all gooey-eyed and silly. They work best of all if you kiss the girl’s hand, but that would have overdone it with Margarethe Bauman. After all, I barely knew her.

So I politely pushed her chair forward, and sat her nicely in front of the encoding and transmitting set. And the words worked, because she smiled up at me and her eyelashes fluttered. I can’t say it never failed, but it seldom did. So far so good. At least she liked me.

Earlier I’d cleared out Schulinger,
Führerin
prop-forward Altemann, and the rest, who all went most willingly. They went as good as gold because I’d told them a story with not one dull word in it, and, of all places in the world, Punno Island was where they most wanted not to be. So out they went and got locked into another room in the mansion, awaiting a nice ride on our destroyer.

Then I deliberately wasted ten minutes, and went back to the control room where the three tecchies had been isolated. And there they were, bless them: one man, two women, all in SSA black, peering at me and wondering where I’d been and what I’d been doing, which was excellent. Otherwise the control room was empty except for the banks of futuristic equipment, buzzing softly in the background. There were just the three of them plus myself and Leonard, and two commandos standing at ease, with hands behind backs and Stens on slings so nobody should feel threatened.

I smiled.

‘Do sit down,’ I said in German, and pointed to a small table with coffee cups, jugs, and plates in nice Germanic rows. ‘I must explain,’ I said. They looked most uneasy, because they’d heard the story I’d told their departed colleagues. But they sat down on one side while I sat on the other.

I turned off the smile, put on my serious face, and began to play upon every Hun’s nightmare of the Eastern Hordes: the hairy, half-animal,
untermenschen
that were about to put the German homelands to fire and the sword. ‘Fraulein Schuster, Fraulein Baumann, Herr Kahler,’ I said, ‘I have just been informed that the Russian aircraft have crossed the Baltic and passed to the north of Stockholm. There are six five-aircraft flights of Lusinov Li2 transports, heavily escorted by Yak 9 fighters. Such a formation could carry at least six hundred parachutists, and the Soviet government is refusing all requests by the British government to turn back these aircraft, while for obvious diplomatic reasons, neither the British nor American air forces can intercept them.’ I let them ponder on that then continued, first looking at my watch. ‘They will be here in less than one hour,’ I said, and gave them all a good hard look for emphasis, and if Herr Kahler didn’t actually piss his britches, he gave a very good impression of so doing. I continued. ‘I further have to tell you that the entire political balance of the war has been changed by Herr Svart’s development of Mem Tav, and that my government considers it vital that Herr Svart be saved at all costs, for service
against
the Russians if necessary.’

They perked up wonderfully at that particular piece of garbage, because it fitted so well into their reverence for Svart and fear of the Red Menace. But there was something nasty still to come.

‘Therefore,’ I said, ‘my orders are to remain here, attempting by all means to transmit our vital message to Herr Svart, and under no circumstances to leave unless that message is sent.’ Another pause to let them think that over, and another change of mood. This time I had to look as if I was doing something my conscience forbade. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but when the Russians arrive, my men can’t protect you. We’ll be too few.’ I shrugged in apology, to emphasize still further who was in the
sheisse
and who was not. ‘My men and I will be treated as allies by the Russians,’ I said, ‘but you – as SSA personnel – are likely to be abused.’ I shrugged again. ‘I’m very sorry.’

I had another good look at them. The man, Kahler, was knocking his knees together. I could actually hear him. ‘So can we get to business?’ I said. ‘I come with the authority to speak for the British government, and General Schulinger has approved the message, which must sent in whatever code is correct and appropriate, or Herr Svart will not accept it as genuine.’ They all nodded at that, because it was true. So I produced a sheet of paper from one of my pockets and showed it to them. It was in German and I had just written it. In English it said:

To: Abimilech Svart Oberstgruppenführer SSA.

From: Brigadier General David Landau, 14 Commando, at Punno Island, acting

for Prime Minister Winston Churchill and His Majesty’s Government and endorsed by Klaus Manfred Schulinger, Oberstgruppenführer SSA.

We offer amnesty and succour to you and your close associates in return for information on the weapon you have devised. We and our American allies are negotiating with the Soviet Government and the Government of the German Reich, to seek an armistice with all parties holding present lines. Your acknowledgement of this message is utmost vital with confirmation that you are alive and well. Following further negotiations ships will be deployed to recover you and your close associates and bring them to safety under terms to be agreed. Please acknowledge with extreme urgency by transmitting in plain on L’Orient Kriegsmarine frequency giving the following numbers as indication that you are ready to negotiate. 2 6 0 7 1 9 1 9. Repeat extreme urgency.

This message timed at …………

I’d done my best. I didn’t ask them to give their position, because that might have frightened them off, and I hoped they’d not guess that every listening station on our side was waiting for their reply, with maps and rulers and protractors, and the code numbers I’d given them – 2 6 0 7 1 9 1 9 – as agreed with Lady Margaret and Bletchley, were my birth date and year of birth.

In the event, whatever might be the reaction aboard Svart’s U-boat, here on Punno Island the three tecchies were completely fooled. They didn’t even argue. Nobody wanted to know how I’d convinced Schulinger. Nobody questioned the fact that he’d been convinced or that I spoke for Churchill. The main thought in their minds was that all this was for the salvation of Abimilech Svart’s unique and wonderful arse, and beyond that was fear of the Russians: deep, dark, horrible fear, and the knowledge that nobody was leaving Punno Island until the message was sent.

So I picked Margarethe Baumann, and sat her down in front of the transmitter, and watched her nice little pink fingers working the keys, which were just like those of a typewriter keyboard. She used an upgraded version of the famous Enigma machine, which was kept so secret that not everyone knows, even today, that Enigma was a commercial brand name, like Kellogg’s or Coca-Cola, and usually the machines had a small metallic plaque on the lid, displaying the word ‘Enigma’. But this one had a bronze plate that said SSA, it had six rotors, and it stored the encoded, typed-in letters ready to transmit in Morse code. The machine plugged straight into a radio transmitter and sent the
dits
and
dahs
itself without any need for a signaller tapping a key.

I watched as she encoded the message, and the machine whirred. As she did so I felt the most profound and emotional sense of fascination. I suppose a heroin addict might feel the same at the sight of a syringe loaded with drug, because puzzles and tricks are the obsession of my life, and here was a machine that could work puzzles beyond imagination, such that the decoding of such signals would be a fabulous thing to do, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake in refusing to work at Bletchley Park. In later years I was shown their decoding machines: the
Bombes
, and the Colossus, and I knew that if I’d seen them at the time I’d have been unable to resist working with them.

And that was it. Fraulein Baumann typed in the message, and when a light on the machine showed that it was encoded and ready to go, she tapped another key …
et
voila
! The big antenna on the Punnohaus dome sent out the signal and there was nothing more to do. Except that there was, because Leonard was standing behind me as the girl sent the message. He’d been listening throughout; he spoke German better than he admitted, and he’d followed most of what I’d said.

‘Where do you get it from?’ he said quietly, in English. ‘Russian paras? Armistice with the Germans? Offers from Churchill?’

‘I make it up,’ I said, ‘it isn’t anything clever.’ Which it isn’t. Not when it comes so easily.

But he laughed. ‘You really are a devious sod,’ he said, which I took to be a compliment. ‘Now what?’ he said. ‘I suppose we should take some of this stuff.’ He looked at the electronics all around us.

‘Just this,’ I said, pointing at the Enigma machine. But I checked with Baumann as she stood up. ‘What are these?’ I said, looking at the television sets.

‘Those show the feeds from the test-cell cameras,’ she said. ‘We test the agent on subjects in the laboratory blocks, and there’s a camera in each cell, because of course nobody can go in after the test.’

I pointed at the screen showing a naked corpse. ‘So who’s that?’

‘The last subject,’ she said. ‘We were following the rate of decay after exposure to the agent. The decaying of flesh is inhibited because the agent is lethal to all life forms including bacteria. The rest of the screens are blank because we stopped testing some months ago.’

‘Oh,’ I said, feeling faintly sick. But that was nothing. The pretty little face looked up at me and chattered on. The face was innocent. It was uncomprehending. Who knew by what steps – what pressures of propaganda – she’d reached her present understanding of what was being done with the
subjects
on Punno Island? But she didn’t even know it was wrong. She wasn’t even revolted. It reminded me of the way that young nurses can treat horrible wounds and sickness without disgust. But I was instantly ashamed of the comparison because nurses are angels, while little Miss Bauman was – at the very least – holding hands with the devil, as she demonstrated with her next remark.

‘We sent the rest of them to Ravensbrück concentration camp,’ she said, ‘for disposal.’ I think I showed my feelings, because she finally got nervous and her lip trembled. I thought I’d sprung some guilt from her, but I was wrong.

‘It was perfectly official,’ she said, ‘all properly documented.’

What could I say? I gave up.

*

Soon after we called up Captain Draper, and
Nantwich
took us off in her boats. They came right into Härönholmen harbour by the SSA base, well before any Swedes appeared. Leonard left twenty-three dead behind, and thirty men came home with wounds, but we steamed past the Punno Island battery, with colours flying and siren whooping merrily, in the knowledge that Lieutenant Laurence’s Red Section hadn’t just disabled the training gear of the big guns, but blown them right out of their carriages. And they’d not needed to shoot any of the gunners because those valiant neutrals dropped rifles and raised hands on sight of the commandos.

In addition, a small group of Leonard’s men had examined the east–west concrete mono-rail that ran for three kilometres across Punno Island, and the unit’s photographer had comprehensively recorded it. In that connection, we brought away the fact that one of Schulinger’s wounded colonels had mentioned ‘the Sänger models’, which was all very intriguing. But nobody then had any idea that these things were connected, nor how dreadful a threat they implied. That came later.

So the final balance was that we hadn’t grabbed Svart, nor any Mem Tav gear or records. But we’d got the SSA’s latest encoding machine, plus Schulinger and his senior staff, all grateful to be on their way to England, rather than being left to Russians. Not that there were any Russians, but they didn’t know that, and their new English allies had their own subtle means of interrogation which would be applied. Those means were not as vigorous as those the NKVD or Gestapo would have used, but they are not shameful or disgusting and, in my opinion, in this wicked world that’s what counts because yes, I am a devious sod, but I wouldn’t do to another human being what I’d seen done to
Obersturmführer
Grauber. Nor would I fight for anyone who did.