Island of Saints (5 page)

“Life is seldom that way.”

“Well, don't think I'm just finding that out.” She smiled. “I was just hoping, at least, to find out where the things I found buried in our yard came from. But, I suppose, that's too much to expect. After all, it's been more than half a century.” Chuckling dryly, I added, “And my wife is still concerned about the family in the picture.”

Mrs. Newman reached over and patted my hand. “Things have a way of working out, son. You tell your sweet Polly that that family is fine.”

“All right, I will,” I said, not really convinced that it mattered. Preparing to leave, I hugged her and asked her to thank Mr. Newman for me. As it turned out, she didn't have to. He woke up as we were saying good-bye and insisted on walking me to my car.

I drove home with an uneasy feeling. Things in my life generally “came together,” but this had not. Instead, I struggled with a perplexing riddle that had consumed my time, derailed my writing schedule, and was apparently unsolvable to boot. What a mess!

That night after dinner, Polly herded the boys to the bathtub while I cleaned the kitchen. When the phone rang, I answered and was surprised to hear Mrs. Newman's voice on the other end. She wanted to let me know, she said, that Newman was better.

“Thanks,” I replied, somewhat curious that she would call just to relay that information, but I played along. “I'm glad to hear it. He is a great guy.”

“Yes, he is.” She stopped briefly as if to make up her mind about something, then continued, “Andy?”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Have you ever been to the old Civil War fort?”

I knew she was talking about Fort Morgan. The massive old stone-and-earthworks stands on the tip of a peninsula that runs almost twenty miles due west of town. The peninsula is squeezed by the Gulf on its southern shore and the waters of Mobile Bay to the north. I answered her question. “Yes, ma'am. I've been there.”

“I never mentioned this because it was only a rumor . . . Newman says I shouldn't say anything . . .” She spoke haltingly, and her voice grew faint as if she were pulling the phone away from her mouth.

“Mrs. Newman . . . ,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Tell me.”

“Well, people used to say a Nazi spy was shot out there . . . on the peninsula . . . that's what people used to say . . . that one was killed and buried, and no one ever found out. I just thought you might want to know.”

I hung up the phone and sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “She just thought I might want to know,” I said to myself out loud. My mind was spinning.
I have Nazi
medals and a picture of Adolf Hitler in my backyard.
German U-boats torpedoed tankers right off the coast here,
and nobody remembers. “And, oh, by the way, I think a spy
was shot down the street . . . just thought you'd want to
know!”

Shaking my head, I stood up and, before I got back to the dishes in the sink, turned to the telephone in its cradle and said, “Thanks a lot.”

PART
TWO

CHAPTER 4

July 16, 1942

CAPTAIN WALTER CROSLAND GLANCED OVER HIS LEFT shoulder. The lights of Havana were still visible off the port stern. He yawned and slid his pocket watch from his pants, angling it into the glow cast by the ship's dials and gauges. It was almost three o'clock in the morning, and the freighter
Gertrude
was not yet thirty miles off the northeast coast of Cuba. Crosland reached for his cigarettes and tried to ignore the uneasiness that had tugged at him since leaving the harbor more than three hours earlier.

There were U-boats in the area. He knew it, and so did everyone else. That's why he was running at night with his lights out, something he had never done. Only three days earlier, the steamship
Oneida,
a massive 2,309-ton vessel sailing around the eastern tip of Cuba, was sent to the bottom by a pair of torpedoes that struck her in the main engine compartments. After news of that disaster filtered in, Captain Crosland had delayed his departure in hopes that the U-boat—surely there was only one—might sail away in search of more productive hunting grounds.

There was a limit, however, to the delay the
Gertrude
's cargo could withstand. A small freighter, she was loaded with sixteen tons of onions, among other assorted fruits and vegetables. It was food for the fighting men, Crosland knew, and as such, was fair game for the “wolves of the sea.” Leery of spoilage, the captain had steered out of port at midnight, but was bound up by strong winds and heavy swells. The freighter was barely making ten knots.

The bridge door opened as Briley, his first mate and the officer on watch, came inside with a mug of steaming coffee. “Everyone's sacked out, Cap'n, and all's clear except for these seas. Still only moderate, though . . . three to four feet.”

Crosland grunted acknowledgment as he accepted the coffee from the younger man. The deck pitched as he took a sip. He grimaced and said, “Well, whether I pour it all over my arms or get it down my gut, I s'pose it'll keep me awake.”

Briley chuckled dutifully, then spoke. “Cap'n, will we be . . .”

Without a hint of warning, a piercing squeal followed by a loud, roaring voice washed over them. “Achtung!” The captain ducked, hunching his shoulders, while Briley involuntarily dove to the floor. “Achtung!” the voice came again. “Attention!” This time in English. Almost immediately, Crosland recognized the voice as coming from some type of loudspeaker. It rang with electronic feedback, but was clear and so obviously close that it had startled the men to the point of near panic.

Gathering his wits, Crosland grabbed the ship's wheel and desperately began turning the freighter to the starboard, away from the thundering voice. That the voice had addressed them first in German had not escaped his notice. Once more, the disembodied voice from the dark boomed across the water, again in English, this time adding another command: “Shut down your engines, and abandon your ship immediately!”

For a moment, Crosland actually considered running, but was quickly overcome by the reality of the situation. A U-boat—it was obviously a U-boat—had tracked and maneuvered ahead of him. The submarine was faster, it was armed, and it would undoubtedly destroy him if he sought to escape. Without delay, the
Gertrude
's master palmed the button overriding the big diesels and snapped, “Briley, get the crew off.”

Crosland flipped an alarm switch. A siren from within the ship began to scream in short, shrill bursts. The first mate still had not moved from the floor. “Briley, get up! Let's get this crew off!”

“Cap'n, should we . . .”

Crosland kicked the terrified man and screamed, “Get up now! They're gonna sink this ship! Get the men into the lifeboats! Go!”

As Briley ran below, Crosland exited the bridge to the outside, searching vainly for the U-boat he knew was just beyond his vision. The voice assaulted his senses once more. “Abandon your ship immediately! Abandon your ship immediately!”

Crosland slid down the stairs and met the crew emptying onto the main deck. Confusion reigned as the men frantically unbuckled the lifeboats, but within minutes, using the block and tackle, they were lowering themselves down the side of the doomed freighter. The captain was the last man off. “Pull away,” Crosland ordered as the men scrambled into place and fastened oars into oarlocks. “Pull away hard!”

When Crosland's lifeboat was barely fifty yards away, he began to make out a shape and half stood, struggling against the pitching ocean, to see over the heads of the crew. Suddenly he yelled, “Pull starboard! Starboard!” The lifeboat was steering straight into the lee of the surfaced submarine.

Finally away and to the U-boat's side, the
Gertrude
's captain called for his men to cease rowing as they all stared at the sub's long, sinister shape. It was painted completely black, and Crosland could make out the moving shapes of several men on the tower. Then, with fire that lit the night sky from a location on the deck of the sub, but beyond its tower, a huge gun opened up on the
Gertrude.
The first shell set the freighter on fire. Then, shell after shell was blasted into the superstructure of the vessel until, in less than ninety seconds, she slipped under the waves. Crosland sat down heavily, vaguely aware of the smell of burning onions.

The crew in the lifeboats watched as the U-boat, finished with its larger prey, revved its surface diesels and turned to come after them. A few of the men cried out. They had heard the stories of lifeboats and survivors being shredded by the machine guns of a victorious U-boat.

Crosland, however, still had his wits about him and was curious about the order to abandon ship. Most tankers and freighters, he knew, were simply torpedoed, the attack coming as a surprise, leaving the crew who survived to get off and into the water the best way they could. This was war. Everyone knew it, and mercy was rarely part of the equation.

As the U-boat churned closer to him and began to slow her engines, Crosland thought about the war and his part in it. He was an old man, more than fifty, and had been turned down by the navy when he'd tried to enlist. Running a merchant ship that supplied the Allies was his way of serving his country. He had not, however, really expected to see any action. Yet here he was, a moment away from what he hoped would be a quick death.
This really is a
world
war,
he thought.
I am sixty miles from Miami Beach and about to
get killed by Nazis.

The submarine settled to a stop less than thirty feet away. This time without the loudspeaker, the man from the tower shouted down, again in perfect, unaccented English: “Is your lead officer aboard?”

Crosland took a deep breath as his crew turned toward him. He stood and answered in a clear voice: “I am he.”

The captain noticed the man who spoke huddling with another man wearing a white officer's cap. The speaker turned and said, “Our commander wishes to know if you have fresh water aboard.”

Crosland wanted to curse him. He wanted to swim over and wring his neck, but he said simply, “No.”

Quickly his answer was relayed to the man in the white cap, and two canteens were slung from the sub's tower into the lifeboat. “Do you have a compass?” he was then asked. Crosland almost wished the Germans
would
shoot. He had never felt so helpless in his life. “No,” he replied.

“Look at my hand,” the man commanded as he extended his arm to Crosland's left. Your closest landfall is there. Good-bye.”

“TAUCHEN,” CAME THE ORDER FROM HANS GUNTHER Kuhlmann as the hatch was secured and the crew of the U-166 began to take her down. Kuhlmann was too tall by several inches to comfortably stand on the submarine's bridge, and so as not to slump more than he already did in the confining space, he removed his white cap as soon as he stepped from the ladder. The white cap was a symbol of leadership in the Unterseebootwaffe, worn only by the submarine's commander.

“Excellent work, gentlemen,” Kuhlmann said to the men on the bridge. “Steady her at one hundred feet. Set a northwesterly course for one hour, at which time we will surface and resume patrol until dawn. Carry on.” Orders given, the young commander retreated to his tiny room behind the bridge and pulled shut the only privacy curtain on board.

At twenty-eight years of age, Commander Kuhlmann was the second oldest man aboard. He was from Cologne, a city on Germany's eastern border, and had studied French and English—receiving higher marks in English—as a teenager. After high school, young Hans entered Germany's military service as a naval cadet and soon went to sea as an officer cadet.

Throughout the 1930s as Germany lumbered yet again toward war, Kuhlmann served as a torpedo officer aboard various gunships until being assigned to the new U-boat fleet in 1940. He served as an officer of the U-37 for fourteen months, during which time the submarine completed eight missions and sank an incredible forty-six Allied vessels. He was the Unterseebootwaffe's rising star, and early in 1942, Hans Gunther Kuhlmann was appointed commander of Germany's newest Type IXC submarine, the U-166.

“Sir?” The voice was accompanied by a sharp knock on the bulkhead outside Kuhlmann's tiny stateroom.

“Come.”

The curtain was briefly pulled aside as Under-Lieutenant Josef Bartels Landermann entered and closed it behind him. “Sit, Landermann,” Kuhlmann barked roughly, loud enough to be heard beyond the curtain despite the interior noises of a sub under way.

The under-lieutenant, officially Oberfahnrich zur See, was a man somewhat shorter than his commander. At about five feet ten or eleven inches, he was powerfully built and had a plain but pleasant face framed with closely cropped brown hair. He sat as he had been ordered to do. Since Kuhlmann occupied the only chair in the cramped space, the under-lieutenant parked himself on the commander's bunk.

For several seconds, the men stared at each other, Kuhlmann glowering fiercely. Then, as if a switch had been turned, each broke into a broad grin. Stifling laughter, Kuhlmann propelled himself from the chair to the bunk and slapped the other man on the back. “You were marvelous, Josef,” he whispered gleefully. “Allied supplies destroyed, not a man lost to either ship. A perfect encounter. And your English is incredible.”

Nodding, but neglecting to smile, Landermann asked quietly, “Did you see the faces of their men as we swung the boat? They were certain we intended to shoot them.”

Kuhlmann's joyful expression faded as he ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Yes, it has happened enough times that they expect it now. But it will not happen on this boat. War is one thing. Murder is quite another.”

Each man paused briefly, contemplating that distinct difference, until Landermann broke the silence. Leaning toward the commander, he whispered conspiratorially, “So . . . what now . . . into the Gulf of Mexico?”