Nemesis (14 page)

“Yes,
and a plane went into the sea this morning as well,” said Volsky. “We cannot
a-identify any of these contacts, Mister Karpov, and that is somewhat
bothersome, is it not? We have signatures on virtually every ship and class we
would be likely to encounter up here, collected over many years. Yet nothing
matches our database.”

“They
are running emissions silent, sir.”

“Yet
our own systems should be returning some recognizable signature. Tasarov there
can count the screws on a trawler off Kola Bay and tell you the hull number,
yet he has nothing on these submarines at all? That is very strange. And they
are noisy diesel boats, and therefore not something new. This whole situation
remains very odd. What were they doing on the surface?”

“KA-40
reports launch ready sir,” said Nikolin.

“Good.
Send that launch order down, and direct them to Brown Bear 1. Let’s see how
they like a sonobuoy right on top of them.”

Doctor
Zolkin passed some time alone after the Admiral left, half
way thinking about really finding that bottle of Vodka. The stress in their
present situation was obvious, and the line at his door had been longer day by
day. If it was getting to men like Fedorov, a man who had always been quiet and
reliable, then the lower ranks must be feeling it as well.

Thinking
of Fedorov, he started sorting through his medicine cabinet to look for a
proper sedative. There, sitting on a lower shelf, was a typical splint and
restraining bandage that he might use on a wounded arm, and he was surprised to
see it bore a small blood stain.

I must
be slipping, he thought. How could I leave an old bandage lying about in a
cabinet like this? It should have been sent down for laundering.

He
reached for it, intending to take it out and toss it into the laundry bin, but
the moment he touched it he felt a twinge in his shoulder. A sudden stab of
pain that prompted him to reach for the spot with his other hand. The thought
that he was getting older crossed his mind, and he knew the aches and odd pains
were all a part of that. But, as he stared at that bandage, he passed a moment
of confused uncertainty. What was it doing there, in the locked medicine
cabinet? That was a place he kept things of importance. For him to so
haphazardly discard an old bloodied bandage there was most unusual.

“Getting
sloppy, Dmitri,” he said aloud to himself. Yet, with the bandage in hand now,
he could not bring himself to cast it into the laundry bin for cleaning and
sterilization, though he could not say why. Instead he found himself trying to
remember how he might have used it. He could not recall any instance of an
injury to a crewman in recent months requiring that kind of sling and bandage.
There had been no broken arms for a long while, and his memory for things like
that was very good. Something about that bandage, and the place where it was
found, was very disturbing. But why? He shook his head, setting the bandage
down on his desk instead of the laundry bin.

I’m
fretting over nothing, he thought. This business with Fedorov has preoccupied
my mind, particularly after that incredible story he came out with here. Volsky
took it very well, but I don’t think he realized just how disturbed his
Navigator might be. He was exhibiting classic signs of both paranoia, and what
looked to be the onset of a mild psychosis. Yet the young man’s intellect is so
strong that he stood there sounding completely reasonable the entire time, in
spite of the absurd things he was saying. I was very remiss in not taking more
care and concern with him. Yes, I’m getting sloppy, and I suppose I’m not
immune to the stress here either.

He stared
at the bandage, and wanted to dismiss the incident as nothing more than that,
an odd lapse where he must have simply set that soiled bandage aside quickly
while attending to something else. But that shelf… That was where he kept
special things, his photo box, the medals he had earned over his years in the
service, old letters from his wife. There was that bandage, sitting there like
a badge of honor with all those other mementos. As much as he wanted to simply
dismiss the find as a careless nothing, something deep within him lodged a
quiet protest, and whispered to him.

It
wanted to remember…

*

Kapitan
Dietrich Borchert was a very confused man that day. They
had been creeping along the ragged coast of the North Cape off Bervelag,
approaching his intended waiting point at the entrance to Tanafjord, when
suddenly they heard the sound of active sonar search pings. It was unlike
anything he had heard before, but clearly something was looking for him.

He was
through the hatch just forward of the periscope, passing through the radio room
to the next compartment, where he saw his sound detection operator sitting
there with an astonished look on his face. He had adjusted the fit of his small
headphones so they would not blare directly into his ears, and his hands were
still on the small metal wheel, which he turned this way and that to rotate the
sound detection gear mounted on the brow of the U-Boat. The
Such-Gerät
system was a simple device based on the hydrophone concept, and shaped like the
letter T, with a sensitive microphone at each end of the top cross stroke,
wired to each earphone of his headset.

“What’s
that, Gerd? Something sneak up on us?”

The
other man’s astonished look told the Kapitan that he had been completely
surprised by the sound. “I don’t know, sir. I heard nothing before this!”

“Well
don’t tell me a Russian destroyer just dropped out of thin air up there! What
do you mean you heard nothing? You should have detected the threat long before
they got this close. That sounds like they are right on top of us!”

The
Kapitan’s supposition was not too far removed from the truth, but on this
occasion it was not a destroyer dropping out of the sky, but a sonobuoy
deployed by the KA-40 hovering nearby. Tasarov had guided the helo to the
general location of the contact, and now the search began.

They
could hear the sharp pings right through the hull, and their eyes instinctively
looked upward to the potential threat, though Gerd Hansen was completely
discombobulated. He still had no sign of any enemy ship, and now he realized
what must have happened.

“They
must have been sitting there, just drifting with their engines off, waiting for
us like a spider!” It was the only explanation he could offer, and the Kapitan
nodded, looking quickly over his shoulder and shouting an order back through
the hatch.

“All
stop! The boat will hover and run silent!” Two could play this game.

He was
back through the hatch to the control room, where only the light from
phosphorescent dials and the compass, and a single lamp above the chart table,
illuminated the scene. The order had been quickly passed back to the greasy
confines of the engine room, and now U-566 drifted like a dark, sleek fish in
the sea, its long sharply pointed prow cutting silently through the water.

Borchert
scratched is beard, customary for any veteran of the
Unterseeboot
fleet,
as razors were never allowed aboard. One never knew what a man might do with
one in the highly stressful, confined quarters of the U-boat.

“Come
right full rudder, fifteen degrees.” He decided to make a slow turn, using only
the remaining forward momentum of the boat to maneuver. They were going to lose
depth, but a quick look at the charts told him he had a little time to spare.
Whatever was up there searching for him had not yet found enough information to
begin an attack, or so he believed. Otherwise, they would turn over their
engines and rush in for a depth charge run. But what could be up there?
According to German intelligence, the Soviets had 15 submarines, 8 destroyers,
7 patrol ships, and a host of trawlers in their Northern Fleet. This was most
likely a destroyer, lying in wait for them. Perhaps they had been spotted on
the surface by a German aircraft before they submerged. This was all he could
determine, though he was very wrong.

*

“What
are they doing, Tasarov?” Admiral Volsky turned to his
sonar man, waiting.

“Engine
noise on one boat has stopped… The other boat is still running slow at about 5
knots… very near the surface.”

“You
are certain this is not a Norwegian submarine?”

“Clearly
not
Ufa
class,” said Tasarov. “I have all six of those boats well
profiled, and I get no match. Not even close, sir, and that is all they have.
It isn’t a German boat either. I thought it might be a German Type 212, but the
reading doesn’t match that profile. That boat is extremely quiet, but these
contacts are noisy as hell. And it certainly isn’t one of ours, sir. I’d have
IFF data if that were the case.”

“What
about the Americans or British?” said Karpov, somewhat anxious now.

“There
are no diesel boats active in either fleet,” said Tasarov.

“But
yet something is clearly there, not ours, not theirs, but obviously not
friendly either,” said Karpov, the tension apparent on his face. “Admiral, they
have to know we are out here, and now they clearly know we are aware of their
presence, and actively hunting them. If they have a fix on our position and put
torpedoes in the water…”

At that
moment, Fedorov came through the hatch, saluting when he saw Admiral Volsky in
the Captain’s chair. He had been in his quarters as ordered, feeling very
dejected, and very foolish. It was clear to him that neither Volsky nor Zolkin
had believed a word he had said, and he realized how stupid he had to sound
coming out with the truth like that—the impossible truth. Yet he was determined
to persist, at every opportunity, knowing that the truth was out there this
very moment, as the ship sailed in the dangerous waters off the North Cape. So
when the call came summoning him to the bridge, he took heart, realizing they
must have run into something that would have them all baffled if they remained
in their mindset of 2021.

Yet the
prospect of coming into conflict with Karpov again gave him pause. He had
revealed the Captain’s plot to take over the ship, and how it all played out,
and he now realized this might seem like a deliberate attempt on his part to
strike back at Karpov for the accusation he had made. It looked bad.

“Mister
Fedorov,” said Volsky. “I trust you had a little break, but it seems we need
you here after all. Kindly take a look at that video footage freeze frame on
the overhead display. Can you identify those ships?”

Karpov
found it distasteful that Fedorov would be summoned to be the final arbiter on
this question. Why should his word matter, or count for anything more than that
of the other officers here, himself first and foremost? He watched,
disdainfully, as Fedorov took a long look, then folded his arms when he saw the
Navigator go to his station and produce a tablet device. Fedorov spent a moment
poking at it with a finger, his eyes lifting to the screen overhead, and then
settling on something.

“Two
single gun turrets forward…. Nikolin, can you zoom on the aft section of that
lead ship. Good… Three turrets aft. Now scroll up please. Let’s see if we can
pick up the ensign... Right there. Can you enhance that?”

Nikolin
fiddled with the resolution and applied some filters, switching the shade and
hue of the image and adjusting contrast. There it was, strikingly clear at this
resolution, though it could not be seen in the zoomed out frame. The image was
unmistakable, a prominent central swastika over a black and white cross on a
red field, and the cross of iron in the top inner corner.

“The
war ensign of the Kriegsmarine,” said Fedorov. “That lead ship is a Type 1936 destroyer.
There are no visible hull markings, but it is most likely the
Karl Galster
,
Zerstorer 20, the last of the Mohicans for that class. All of the other five
were lost at Narvik in 1940. As to the other three ships, I believe the second
in the line is slightly older, in the 1934 class, but this one has a readable
hull number—the
Richard Beitzen
. My guess is that the others are a
variant on this class, all from the 6th German Destroyer Flotilla, operating
out of Tromso.

The
silence on the bridge was thick and heavy. Karpov wanted to eviscerate the man
for this inevitable foray into the fantasy of his history, but he found himself
staring at the image on the screen, unable to dismiss it so easily.

“Impossible,”
he said at last. “You realize that a ship can fly any ensign it chooses,
Admiral. That flag proves nothing other than the fact that some Captain out
there is a throwback to an earlier time, just like our Navigator.”

Fedorov
walked resolutely up to the Captain and held out his pad device. “I’ve called
up the image of the
Karl Galster
from my database,” he said. “You may
make the identification yourself, sir.”

Karpov
wanted to bat the device half way across the bridge, but he remembered Volsky’s
admonition, and restrained himself. “Give it to the Admiral,” he said coldly.
“Let him humor you further, Fedorov. I’ve lost patience with this obsession of
yours with the last war.”

“Yes,
do give it here,” said Volsky, flashing a glance at Karpov by way of reminding
him to maintain proper decorum. After studying the image for a moment, the
Admiral nodded his head. “That conning section is virtually identical to the
image the KA-226 obtained. Yes, two guns forward, three aft, with one rotated
forward, just as it is in this schematic on your pad. You are saying this ship
was the last surviving member of its class?”

“Well,
it survived the war, sir, at least in the history I know. But it was scrapped
in 1956. You can read the note there at the bottom.”

“Scrapped
in 1956…” Volsky’s eyes darkened on the overhead display. “Are those submarines
doing anything, Mister Tasarov?”

“The
second boat has gone silent, sir. I believe they are both just drifting now,
but we have positive location fix from the active pings on the sonobuoy.”

“Submarines?”
said Fedorov.

“Two
contacts to the southeast,” said Volsky, “And they are somewhat of a mystery.
We have no profile matches, but Mister Tasarov insists they are diesel boats,
and very noisy.”