The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (25 page)

“Don’t tell me I’ve changed
that
much.”

In fact, he had not; it was as though he had not aged a day
.

“You haven’t.”

It was a lie. My knees were shot; I now had a permanent stoop. Little sleep, poor food, bad water, and foul air had taken a toll
.

“You only look more…mature. I know I certainly am. Much has happened to mellow us. I hope you’re willing to let bygones be bygones, I know I am. And I’m here to apologize.”

Out came his hand, which—after a moment or two of reflection—I took. We had both been rash and callow youths whose beliefs were yet to be tempered by experience. War, of course, is the great forge; at that moment in Bergen I think I believed in nothing but survival
.

And there was something wrong with his hand. I looked down
.

“A thousand pardons.” Rehm raised it. All the fingers of his right hand had been cut off down to the second knuckle. The grafted skin on the stumps was a bright pink color
.

“Stalingrad. Or, at least, retreating from Stalingrad. My battalion got overrun and captured. For a time.”

He waited, the clear blue eyes and handsome face assessing if we understood that he was a
fighting
Nazi soldier, an officer of the Waffen SS, and not just another Nazi. Also he wanted to make sure that we had noticed the medals that were visible on his chest, now that the raincoat had opened more completely
.

I glanced at Geis who looked away. Among us submariners it was bad form to speak of our victories, especially when we were losing the war
.

“I see you have Lieutenant Geis with you.”

Rehm was a short, strongly built man; the blond hair showing below his cap was clipped short
.

“I’ve heard a great deal of good about you too, Lieu
tenant. I’m sure both of you are wondering what brought me. Let me put your minds at ease—I’m here to deliver you these.”

From his pocket he pulled out an envelope and handed it to me
.

“Along with the new ‘Lut’ torpedoes. Most are already here in Bergen. The last four are being flown in perhaps sometime today. We’ve had some problem with…logistics, let us say. Things are rather problematical these days.”

Again Geis and I traded glances. As far as either of us knew, nothing had been flown in or out of Bergen for months now, because of the lack of air transport planes and the constant presence of Allied fighters. Also conventional torpedoes weighed three thousand pounds apiece, and the “Lut” was reported to be heavier still. And finally, since when was the SS in charge of arming submarines?

“Everything will be in order by tomorrow, you’ll see. In the meantime, I was hoping to have a word with you, Commodore. And the lieutenant too, of course. Could there be some place close by we might get a good meal and a few drinks? My treat of course. You might open up that envelope, Klimt. I know you’ll like what’s inside.”

In it were the badges of a Commodorezursee, along with a letter promoting me to that rank
.

Bergen during the war was not much more than a large Nordic fishing village of wharves, canneries, and smokehouses grouped round the harbor with ranks of timber-built houses stacked up on the surrounding hills. Even in May of the year there was snow on the mountains and bits of ice in the fjord
.

I remember noting how many SS were about the area that fateful day. As few as six weeks earlier, an SS officer had been a rarity; now Rehm’s maimed hand kept flapping up and down as we passed one after another group of storm troopers who seemed to be gathered at key streets and intersections
.

I took Rehm to one of the grog shops that had sprung up round the harbor in Bergen with the arrival of the Atlantic Command. In Norway, making a profit by serving liquor to the enemy was rather less dishonorable than in other occupied countries. Most Norwegians considered drinking bad for everything, including the health; thus plying us with alcohol was in a small way a subversive act
.

But no sooner were we through the doorway than I was surrounded by other submariners who rose from their tables to welcome me, since it was seldom now that a boat actually came back
.

“Wolf!”

It was my nickname
.

“You’re back! How many did you get?”

“None—but I fired three eels. After that I spent most of the time with my belly in the mud. But, you know”—I looked round at them, loving each and every one and also seeing in my mind’s eye the many who were, no longer present—“I
like
the mud, and, what’s more important, the mud likes me!”

The others laughed volubly, eager to share in my humor, if nothing else. I had told them in the only language that we knew, which was boats, that I—their veteran, in many ways their fighting chief—had failed, that we were beaten, that the end had come
.

Yet they laughed with me, they smiled, they gathered round to feel what nine years and nearly a half-million gross registered tons sunk felt like. But they too, like me, were glad it was over, even if we now had to acknowledge defeat. Too many of us had died. And now it was time to make an end
.

“How about the new boat, the Walter? It’s just arrived, and we hear it’s yours.”

I shrugged; everybody wanted the boat, but far be it from me to list its advantages
.

“How does it look, Connie?” an engineering officer asked Geis
.

“Like something that should have been delivered years ago. Fast, quiet, well-armed from all I hear.” Geis’s eyes met mine; it wasn’t well armed yet
.

“What about us? When do we get to see it?”

“After I’ve had my beer,” I said. “And incidentally—from now on it’s Commodorezursee Sea Wolf to you snorkel rats. I expect a lot of bowing and scraping, to say nothing of a lifetime of free drinks.”

Opening the envelope Rehm had brought me, I propped the silver-and-gold rank boards on each shoulder; snapping a finger, I flicked them off into the crowd, who roared their delight
.

It was only then that some of the others noticed Rehm. I watched their smiles fade, as their eyes moved over the death’s head emblem on his cap. It did not seem to matter that he was also wearing a gold wound badge and an Iron Cross first-class on his chest, or that the ultimate medal—the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves and swords—swung from a chain around his neck. Perhaps he had fought often and well, but he was police. Worse, he was Himmler’s secret police from the political party responsible for our defeat
.

We took a table, and a tray of drinks was delivered.
I picked up a glass. “What shall we drink to, Colonel? To ‘Final Victory’?”

“No, Commodore. There’s not a chance for Final Victory anymore, or even a negotiated truce, I’m afraid. It would be better for us to forget this shit.” Rehm touched his SS collar insignia. “It’s over. Germany is broken. Final
defeat
is only days away.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said. “To Final Defeat!”

“And to your health and well-being
after
the war.” Carefully lifting his glass with the stubs of his maimed hand, Rehm clinked it against ours but only touched the liquor to his lips
.

Geis and I, who had not tasted anything but tepid water in weeks, drank ours off. “And this is why you’re bringing me torpedoes—to discuss
after
the war?”

“To tell you the truth, Klimt—that’s exactly what I wish to discuss
. After
the war. What are your plans? Will you be going back to Kiel or Borkum?”

I only regarded the man
.

“Kiel has been bombed into nothingness, but you know that.”

Since my wife had been killed there
.

“But your mother and sister are still alive on Borkum. Isn’t it the third house on the right, just past the bank?”

Still I waited. It was a small table, and the liquor had made me regret having accepted the man’s apology. In Cambridge they had come at me with lead-weighted bats. I had never killed a man with my bare hands, but there was a first time for everything
.

“I understand your people were lucky and got through the war quite well. Not like some.”

Now my gall was high. We had lost our father, my wife, and on more occasions than I kept track of I had been lucky to have escaped with my life. But Geis nudged me under the table, then narrowed his eyes and looked away, as much as to say, Hear the bastard out. He wants something from us. Let’s find out what it is. After that, we can deal with him
.

Rehm got right to it. “So, what is it for you after the
war—‘importing,’ like your father, for want of a more accurate term?”

Which was smuggling, although my father had done little of that in later years and had a small fleet of ships at the beginning of the Second World War
.

“Have you ever sailed to South America?”

He knew that too. I can remember glancing at the clock behind the bar and figuring Herr Knight’s Cross had two minutes left
.

“Did you see this?” Rehm pulled some folded sheets of paper from under his tunic. “It’s the telex of surrender that came in only an hour or so ago, while you were docking. Would you care to see it?”

Geis and I were dumbfounded; more, when he added, “Or, rather, I should say it’s the extract from your Admiral Doenitz. Did I tell you that in addition to being chief of staff of the navy, he has now been named der Führer?”

“What happened to Hitler?”

Rehm shrugged. “He wasn’t the leader we thought he was.”

Which was an understatement I would have found macabrely humorous, had I not begun to read the message with its lugubrious hyperbole that had proved so deadly to so many of my cohorts. My eyes caught on the passage:

The dead command us to give our unconditional constancy, obedience, and discipline to our Fatherland, which is bleeding from countless wounds.

The word “surrender” was nowhere mentioned, and it was signed, as Rehm had said, by Karl Doenitz, Führer
.

I showed it to Geis, who was never one to mince words. “Does that son of a bitch think we should go on dying for the dead? Is that what he wants? Sitting there in Berlin and surrendering his desk.”

“Well, he won’t get it from me,” Rehm was quick to
say. “I’ve done my bit for the Fatherland, like you two have done yours. How many years did they send you out in that iron coffin I saw you in this morning? To do what? To die. That’s what they intended. Now it’s time for us to live and think of ourselves.”

That was fast, I thought. Now we were together. “What do you think will happen to your Walter boat, now that we’ve packed in the war?”

Given how advanced it was, the Walter would be taken to a British or American shipyard, dismantled and copied
.

“Wouldn’t it be a shame not to take it for one final cruise?”

I waited. It was why the man had worked something of a miracle to get himself to Norway at the bitter end of the war to seek me out
with
all the rest that he had brought, in spite of our sorry history together
.

“Say, to South America. You, me, Conrad here, your pick of crew from anybody you like.” He nodded to the bar. “It’s a big boat. I myself will have a dozen companions. Maybe fourteen. With me that’s fifteen. The rest will be yours. How many can a boat, like that, carry?”

Thirty-five in a pinch, I thought, counting half as crew
.

“I need only give them word that you have agreed, since they want you as captain. Even better is what we’ll share when we get there.” Rehm smiled and reached for his glass; this time he actually drank
.

“Gold and diamonds. Your share will be equivalent to five hundred thousand U.S. dollars, half when we sail, half when we dispose of the boat. To show our good faith, I have this for you.” From a uniform pocket Rehm pulled out a small sack and tossed it on the table. “Go ahead, open it.”

I did not move
.

“Its value is equivalent to at least fifty thousand dollars. Yours to keep, whether you choose to be our captain or not. I figure I owe you at least that much. You lost a year, as I understand it.” And did not com
plete my degree, went unsaid; and surely would not now, at least not at Cambridge
.

“Certainly somebody else here will jump at the offer,” Rehm scanned the crowd. But we wanted you because of your knowledge of South American waters, to say nothing of your reputation as a captain. And then I know for fact that you’re a man who can keep his mouth shut.” Rehm attempted a smile
.

The sack that he had handed me had a Polish phrase, I thought, stitched through its supple leather with gold thread. The draw strings were also of woven gold
.

I can remember thinking how five hundred thousand dollars was quite a sum and would go far toward setting me up with a vessel. After all, I had my mother and sister to consider. All of my father’s vessels were sunk, his wharves and warehouses bombed into oblivion, including himself. And yet I was hesitant, suspecting that Rehm, in spite of our rapproachment, could not be trusted
.

In the shadows of the table where only Geis and I could see, I opened the sack and poured the contents into my palm. It was a handful of cut and polished gems of differing shapes, but all of obvious clarity and size. With the edge of one, I cut a line down the side of my beer glass
.

“You’ll find they’re virtually flawless and expertly cut. If anything they’re worth far more than I said, say, in Buenos Aires. That one you’re holding, Lieutenant? It’s an
estancia
in Paraguay. Add another—all the
peo-nes
you would need to create your own new world. Europe is destroyed. Dead. There’s no hope of building anything of real value here.”

Not after you and your kind, was my immediate thought
.

Rehm stood. “You think about it. But I’ll need your answer by morning.” He left
.

Geis and I sat there in silence for the few minutes it took our cohorts to realize that Colonel Death’s Head had departed and to join us
.

We tarried another hour or so before heading back to the pens
.