Crescent Dawn (4 page)

The minister and driver walked away, leaving the deliveryman to count his blood money. As he attempted to tally up the Bank of England notes, he had trouble reading the numbers and realized his vision was blurring. He felt a wave of fatigue sweep over him and quickly tucked the money away and lay down on the seat to rest. Though it seemed like hours, it was only a few minutes later when a mist of cold water struck his face and he pried open his heavy eyelids. The stern face of the minister looked down upon him amid a shower of rain. His brain told him that his body was moving, but there was no feeling in his legs. He focused his blurry eyes enough to see the driver was carrying his legs, while the minister dragged him by the arms. A mute sense of panic rang within his skull, and he willed himself to retrieve a Webley Bulldog pistol from his pocket. But his limbs refused to respond. The brandy, he thought with momentary clarity. It was the brandy.

A canopy of green leaves filled his vision as he was carried beneath a grove of towering oak trees. The minister’s face still swayed above him, a sullen mask of indifference illuminated by two frigid eyes. Then the face fell away, or rather he did. He heard more than felt his body drop into a trench, splashing down hard into a muddy puddle. Flat on his back, he gazed up at the minister, who stood high over him with a faint aura of guilt.

“Forgive us our sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he heard the minister say solemnly. “These we take to the grave.”

The back side of a shovel appeared, followed by a clump of soggy dirt that fell and bounced off his chest. Another shovelful of dirt tumbled down, and then another.

His body was paralyzed and his voice frozen, but his mind still operated with reason. With crushing horror, he fully grasped that he was being buried alive. He fought again to move his limbs, but there was no response. As the dirt piled high within his grave, his screams of terror blared only within his mind, until his last breath was painfully snuffed out.

T
HE PERISCOPE CUT a lazy arc through the boiling black water, its presence nearly invisible under the night sky. Thirty-five feet beneath the surface, a baby-faced German naval
Oberleutnant
named Voss slowly rotated the viewing piece three hundred and sixty degrees. He lingered over a few speckled lights that rose high in the distance. They were lantern lights from a scattering of farmhouses that dotted Cape Marwick, a frigid, windswept stretch of the Orkney Islands. Voss had nearly completed his circular survey when his eye caught a faint glimmer on the eastern horizon. Dialing the viewing lens to a crisper focus, he patiently tracked a steady movement of the light.

“Possible target at zero-four-eight degrees,” he announced, fighting to contain the excitement in his voice.

Several other sailors stationed in the submarine’s cramped control room perked to attention at his words.

Voss tracked the object for several more minutes, during which time a quarter moon broke briefly through a bank of thick storm clouds. For a fleeting moment, the moonlight cast a sheen on the object, exposing its dimensions against the island hills behind it. Voss felt his heart flutter and noticed his palms suddenly grow sweaty on the periscope handgrips. Blinking hard, he confirmed the visual image, then stood away from the eyepiece. Without saying a word, he sprinted from the control room, scrambling down the tiny aft passageway that ran the length of the sub. Reaching the captain’s cabin, he knocked loudly, then slid open a thin curtain.

Captain Kurt Beitzen was asleep in his bunk but woke instantly and flicked on an overhead lamp.

“
Kapitän
, I’ve spotted a large vessel approaching from the southeast approximately ten kilometers off. I caught a brief glimpse of her profile. A British warship, possibly a battleship,” Voss reported excitedly.

Beitzen nodded as he sat upright, flinging off a blanket. He had slept in his clothes and quickly pulled on a pair of boots, then followed his second officer to the control room. An experienced submariner, Beitzen took a long look through the attack periscope, then barked out range and heading coordinates.

“She’s a warship,” he confirmed nonchalantly. “Is this quadrant clear of mines?”

“Yes,” Voss replied. “Our nearest release was thirty kilometers north of here.”

“Stand by to attack,” Beitzen ordered.

Beitzen and Voss moved to a wooden chart table, where they plotted a precise intercept course and relayed orders to the helm. Though submerged, the submarine rocked and pitched from the turbulent seas overhead, making the urgent task more stressful.

Built in the shipyards of Hamburg, the U-75 was a UE-1 class submarine, designed primarily for laying down mines on the seafloor. In addition to a large stock of mines, she carried four torpedoes and a powerful 105mm deck gun. Her mine-laying duty was nearly complete, and none of the crew was expecting an encounter with an enemy warship.

Under Beitzen’s command, the U-75 was on only its second mission since being launched six months earlier. The current cruise had been deemed a minor success already, as the sub’s mines had sunk a small merchant ship and two trawlers. But this was their first crack at a prize of major stature. Word quickly rippled through the crew that they were targeting a British warship, boosting the focus and tension to high levels. Beitzen himself knew that such a kill would guarantee him the Iron Cross.

The German commander gently guided the submarine to a position perpendicular to Marwick Cape. If the warship held her bearing, she would pass within a quarter mile of the lurking sub. The U-boat’s torpedoes had an accurate range of less than half a mile, necessitating an uncomfortably close firing position. In World War I, most merchant ships were actually sunk by the U-boats’ deck guns. The U-75 didn’t have that option against the heavily armed cruiser, particularly in the present rough seas.

Positioned for the kill, the captain hung to the periscope, waiting for his quarry. Another flash of moonlight revealed that the
Oberleutnant
was close to the mark. The vessel appeared to be an armored cruiser, somewhat smaller than the fearsome dreadnoughts.

“Tubes one and two, stand by for firing,” Beitzen commanded.

The cruiser was now less than a mile away, its imposing size nearly masking the horizon. Beitzen quickly double-checked the torpedoes’ firing profile, then eyed the target once more. The vessel was quickly approaching their strike range.

“Open bow caps,” he ordered.

A few seconds later, a reply rang through the control room, “Bow caps open.”

“Tubes one and two ready.”

“Ready,” came the reply.

Beitzen tracked the cruiser through the periscope, waiting patiently while the crew around him held their breaths. He watched until the big surface ship appeared directly in front of them. Beitzen parted his lips to give the fire command when a bright flash suddenly filled his eyepiece. A second later, a muffled explosion rocked through the sub’s steel bulkheads.

Beitzen stared dumbfounded through the periscope as flames and smoke burst from the cruiser, lighting the night sky with a blaze of persimmon red. The big warship shuddered and shook, and then her bow burrowed under the waves. The stern quickly rose up, hung suspended in midair for a few moments, then chased the bow down toward the seafloor. In less than ten minutes, the mammoth cruiser disappeared completely from sight.

“Voss . . . you are certain there are no mines in this quadrant?” he asked hoarsely.

“Yes, sir,” the officer replied, double-checking a chart of mine-field locations.

“She’s gone,” he finally muttered to the anxious crew awaiting his orders. “Close bow caps and stand down.”

As the disappointed crew resumed their duties, the captain clung to the periscope, staring blankly through the eyepiece. A handful of survivors had escaped in lifeboats, but there was nothing he could do to help them in the turbulent waters. Watching the empty black sea before him, he struggled to find an answer. Yet none of it made sense. Warships just didn’t blow up by themselves.

It was a long while before Beitzen pried himself away from the periscope and staggered quietly to his cabin. Fated to die later in the war, he would never learn the truth of why the
Hampshire
had blown up. But in his remaining days, the young
Kapitän
never shook the image from his mind of the cruiser’s last minutes, when the massive warship seemingly died without cause.

T
HE NOONDAY SUN BURNED THROUGH THE DENSE LAYER of dust and pollutants that hung over the ancient city like a soiled blanket. With the temperature well over the century mark, few people lingered about the hot stones that paved the central court of al-Azhar Mosque.

Situated in eastern Cairo some two miles from the Nile, al-Azhar stood as one of the city’s most historic structures. Originally constructed in the year 970 A.D. by Fatimid conquerors, the mosque was rebuilt and expanded through the centuries, ultimately attaining status as Islam’s fifth most important mosque. Elaborate stone carvings, towering minarets, and onion-domed spires vied for the eye’s attention, reflecting a thousand years of artistry. Amid its fortress-like stone walls, the centerpiece of the complex was a wide rectangular court surrounded by rising arcades on every side.

In the shade of an arcade portico, a slight man in baggy trousers and a loose-fitting shirt wiped clean a pair of tinted glasses, then surveyed the courtyard. In the heat of the day, only a small number of youths were about, studying the architecture or walking in silent meditation. They were students from the adjacent al-Azhar University, a preeminent institution for Islamic learning in the Middle East. The man touched a thick beard that covered his own youthful face, then lifted a worn backpack to his shoulder. With a white cotton
keffiyeh
wrapped about his head, he easily passed as just another theology student.

Stepping into the sunlight, he trekked across the court toward the southeast arcade. The façade above the keel-shaped arches featured a series of ornate roundels and niches cut into the stucco, which he noticed had become favored roosting spots for some local pigeons. He walked toward a protruding central arch topped by a high rectangular panel, which signified the entrance to the prayer hall.

The call to midday
salat
, or prayer, had occurred nearly an hour earlier, leaving the expansive prayer hall nearly empty. Outside the foyer, a small group of students sat cross-legged on the ground, listening to a university instructor lecture on the Qur’an. Skirting around the group, the man approached the hall entry. There he met a bearded man in a white robe, who eyed him sternly. The visitor removed his shoes and quietly offered a blessing to Muhammad, then proceeded in with a nod from the doorman.

The prayer hall was an open expanse of red carpet punctuated by dozens of alabaster pillars that rose to a beamed ceiling. As in most mosques, there were no pews or ornate altars to provide orientation. Cupola-shaped patterns in the carpet, outlying individual positions of prayer, pointed toward the head of the hall. Noting that the bearded doorman no longer paid him any attention, the man made his way quickly along the pillars.

Approaching several men kneeling in prayer, he spotted the
mihrab
across the hall. An often unassuming niche carved into a mosque’s wall, it indicated the direction of Mecca. Al-Azhar’s
mihrab
was cut of smooth stone and arched with a wavy black-and-ivory stone inlay that had a nearly modern design.

Moving to a pillar closest to the
mihrab
, the man slipped off his backpack, then lay prone on the carpet in prayer. After several minutes, he gently pushed his pack to the side until it wedged against the base of the pillar. Spotting a pair of students walking in the direction of the entrance, he rose and followed them to the foyer, where he retrieved his shoes. Passing the bearded elder, he muttered,
“Allahu Akbar,”
then quickly stepped into the courtyard.