The Passenger (10 page)

Although the boat was equipped with pumps, these could only be employed when the depth charges were exploding. As soon as the roaring stopped, the pumps would have to be switched off again or their noise would give away the boat's location. If the boat admitted too much water it might grow too heavy. It would become impossible to surface, an increasingly likely possibility given that evading destruction would almost certainly require diving deeper. Lorenz consulted his mental model of the engagement and struggled to make a decision. He didn't have much time—a few seconds, perhaps. The air smelled badly of oil, sweat, urine, and vomit. Wafts of chlorine, which meant that the batteries had been damaged, were much stronger by the aft hatchway. His order owed more to instinct than the exercise of judgement. ‘Down another fifteen meters, hard a'starboard.'

Graf aimed a beam of light at the manometer and issued commands that should have resulted in the boat leveling out after its descent, but the deck remained stubbornly angled. The hydroplane operators turned to look back at Graf, their eyes almost comically super-enlarged. Peering at the manometer needle, the engineer registered each fateful increase:
One hundred and five, one hundred and ten, one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and twenty
. . .

‘Are the dive planes jammed?' Graf asked.

‘Not responding,' one of the operators replied.

One hundred and twenty-five
. . .

Graf placed a clenched fist against his mouth and withdrew it an instant later. ‘Switch to manual.'

The power-assisted system was switched off, and the hydroplane operators gripped their big, heavy wheels. Each movement was effortful.

One hundred and thirty, one hundred and thirty-five
. . .

‘Please, please . . .' Graf addressed the submarine as if it were sentient.

One hundred and forty, one hundred and forty-five
. . .

Finally, the angle of the deck changed and the boat leveled off twenty-five meters lower than intended. The emergency lights began to glow and produced dull yellow halos. Some of the crew were on all fours while others had squeezed themselves into tight corners. A few of them, suddenly self-aware, began to stand, but before they were upright, they were all knocked off their feet again when the raging Titans returned. More dial covers shattered and an overhead lamp burst. Fragments of glass rained down on the matting. When the detonations stopped, the humming of the electric engines was lost beneath the hiss of continuous spraying.

‘Very tenacious,' said Lorenz. The gaskets and seats of numerous valves had loosened and were letting in water. Countless rivulets were trickling into the bilges.

The control room mate had started to whisper a prayer.

Lorenz laid an avuncular hand on Danzer's shoulder. ‘Think of it this way: back home, your coffin would have been cheap, a horrible little wooden box. This coffin costs four million marks. Kings settle for less.'

In spite of the gravity of the situation a few of the men managed to smile. Lorenz
had
to keep the confidence of his crew to retain his authority; he had to make them believe that he could think clearly even when the merciless, rolling thunder was at its loudest. He was obliged, like all commanders, to service the myth of his own infallibility. The beneficial effect of his bravado was brief. He watched the smiles fade as a strange, eerie sound penetrated the hull, a high-pitched, short pulse, the timbre of which suggested extreme, shivering cold. Its repetition felt like a form of psychic water-torture, every frigid note dropping like a shard of ice directly into the soul.

‘Asdic' said Falk.

Although the British underwater detection system couldn't determine depth, it could certainly determine bearing and distance.

‘Hard a'starboard,' said Lorenz. ‘Both motors, full ahead.'

The barrage that followed was protracted and unimaginably violent. It left the crew stupefied, their faces devoid of expression. They had retreated so far into themselves that the connections between mind and body had become attenuated. There was only vacancy, blank staring—transcendent terror.

Lehmann craned out of his room. When he spoke, his voice quivered: ‘Sounds bearing two hundred and fifty degrees. Getting louder.'

The attack continued. It was no longer possible to distinguish one detonation from the next. Everyone was cowing now, expecting the boat to break in two, and the North Atlantic to rush in. The steel ribs were under so much pressure that they howled, hydraulic oil spouted across the control room, and all the motor relays tripped. A faint reverberation seemed to persist after the bombardment. Someone had the presence of mind to throw the relays back, and Lorenz reduced speed to dead slow.

Three hours later the British were still attacking at regular intervals.

‘Seventy-eight charges,' said Graf.

‘Is that all?' Lorenz replied. ‘And I thought they were going to make a
serious
attempt to sink us.' He looked around at the figures inhabiting the boat's preternatural twilight. None of them returned his smile. Perhaps they had lost faith in him? Lorenz climbed through the forward hatchway. Poor Richter was groaning but at least he was still alive. Bending to speak to Lehmann, Lorenz asked: ‘Louder or weaker?'

‘Staying the same.'

‘They're circling?'

‘No, Kaleun.' Lehman paused. ‘No, they're coming back again.'

Lorenz returned to the control room. ‘Take us down another thirty meters.' Alarm animated expressions that had become pale and masklike. Would one of them go mad now? Lorenz tried to make eye contact, albeit momentary, with every man in his
vicinity. Which one of them would succumb, which one of them would run through the boat screaming? He could feel the tension mounting, the swell of communal panic. Thankfully, Graf declared his support with an obedient affirmative—‘Yes, Herr Kaleun'—and the sense of having reached a decisive, critical moment dissipated.

One hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty-five, one hundred and sixty
. . .

The woodwork cracked and the hissing of the leaks became louder. Condensation dripped from the overhead. There were more explosions, more showers of broken glass. Another fountain of spray appeared above the water gauge.

‘One hundred and seventy-five meters,' said Graf.

Men were attending to the breaches, undertaking repairs like automatons, but the mood of the boat had changed. Lorenz could feel it, a profound shift, as fundamental as the ground moving during an earthquake: fatalism, resignation. The shivering Asdic pulses were like the grim reaper flicking the hull with his bony finger to make it ring. They had become Death's plaything.

‘Sound bearing two hundred and ten degrees,' said Lehmann. ‘Growing louder.'

And so it continued, explosions, maneuvers, explosions: lurching, staggering, rolling, and pitching—darkness, light—the reek of bodies and the slow accumulation of poisonous fumes. The passage of time became meaningless.

‘W
HAT NOW?'
L
ORENZ ASKED.
H
E
had been listening to the steady drip of condensation for some time.

Lehmann adjusted his headphones. ‘I think they're going away.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. Their screws are fading.'

Graf poked his head through the hatchway. ‘We've got to surface.'

The hull was still complaining: pained murmurings, shudders, occasional shrieks. Cracks and snaps issued from the woodwork in the petty officers' quarters, a constant reminder of how much weight was bearing down on them.

‘Not yet,' said Lorenz.

‘We've made an awful lot of water, Kaleun.'

‘Not yet.'

‘We can't use the pumps.'

‘I know.'

‘Kaleun: why have they stopped attacking us?' asked Danzer. ‘Do you think they've run out of munitions?'

‘No,' said Lorenz, ‘I doubt it.'

‘Then why?'

‘Why? Because they think we're dead.'

Lorenz spent the next twenty minutes inspecting the compartments, assessing the damage and congratulating his men. Most of them were so shaken by the ordeal that they could barely respond. They looked weary, close to the point of collapse. The breach in the engine room had been cataclysmic and the water level had risen above the matting. Fritz Fischer, the chief mechanic, splashed through the gloom. His shirt was torn and his exposed skin was streaked with oil.

‘Will it hold, Fritz?' Lorenz asked.

‘Not for much longer,' Fischer replied, wiping his face with a rag. A tattoo on the mechanic's right bicep showed a scroll on which the word ‘Hope' was emblazoned in Gothic letters.

On returning to the control room, Lorenz ordered Graf to take the boat up to periscope depth. The tanks were flushed, and the hydroplane operators rotated their wheels but the manometer pointer failed to move. U-330 should have been ascending at a rate of one meter per second.

‘We're too heavy and too deep,' Graf said bluntly. ‘We'll have to use the pumps.'

‘I'm not risking that,' said Lorenz. ‘Let's try going a little faster.'

Apart from a slight tremor, the manometer pointer remained inert.

‘What do we do now?' asked Falk.

‘Patience,' said Lorenz. ‘We're only going at four knots.'

‘I'm not sure we can go any faster in our current state,' said Graf.

‘Nonsense,' said Lorenz. ‘Of course we can.'

Slowly, the manometer pointer started to move.

Graf exhaled forcefully. ‘Thank God.'

‘I suspect,' said Lorenz, ‘that He had very little to do with it.'

Falk grimaced. The first watch officer considered such provocations unwise when the scales were so finely balanced.

One hundred and seventy, one hundred and sixty-five, one hundred and sixty
. . .

The boat was perilously deep; however, the ascent—once it had begun—was sustained, a tentative, gentle engagement with acclivity. Each second dragged, and eager faces were enameled with perspiration. Some dared to entertain the possibility that they might actually survive. At twelve meters Lorenz ordered a reduction in speed. There was an anxious moment when the bow dipped, but it rose again almost instantly. The observation periscope was raised, and Lorenz looked through the viewer. ‘I can see them.'

‘What are they doing?' asked Graf.

‘They appear to be waiting for us.'

‘Maybe we left some oil behind.'

‘Let's creep away while we can. Both motors, ahead slow.'

Half an hour later Lorenz raised the periscope again. There were no escorts. All that he could see was a smudge of discoloration high in the sky: smoke that had risen from the cargo ship they had torpedoed. ‘Gone,' said Lorenz. ‘Prepare to surface.' He gazed around the control room which looked as if it had recently confined an enraged bull. The matting was littered with tools,
broken glass, discarded oilskins, shoes, and a crucifix. He picked up this last item, contemplated the diminutive Christ (whose features were remarkably expressive for such a small object), and laid it on the chart table. ‘Start the bilge pumps,' he said. ‘Chief: ahead one half.' Ordinarily, the grinding of the pumps was irritating, but at that moment they sounded sweeter than a lullaby. The second watch was already assembling. As soon as U-330 broke the surface the diesels started up. Lorenz climbed into the conning tower and opened the hatch. Cool, fresh air rushed into the boat and for a moment he was arrested by its purity. He stepped up onto the bridge, scanned the horizon, and leaned against the bulwark. Juhl and the rest of the watch followed. None of them spoke. They were all enjoying the private ecstasy of being alive. The sea was a heaving mass of molten lead bathed in a jaundiced light. It would be dark soon. Waves smacked against the bow, raising geysers.

Lorenz turned the bridge over to Juhl and went back down to his cabin to get his war diary. Richter was still lying on his bed and being treated by Ziegler, who in addition to being a radio operator was also the boat's medical orderly. The gash across Richter's face had been cleaned but this made it look worse, rather than better. It was now possible to see how wide and deep it was. Spikes of bone were clearly visible. The injured man was silent, his eyes closed.

‘I'm sorry I dropped Richter.'

Lorenz turned to see Berger standing close by, evidently expecting a stinging reprimand. ‘Yes, you certainly chose your moment. When did you decide to change sides, Berger? Had you been thinking about it for a while, or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision?'

‘Kaleun?' The boy looked horrified.

‘Go and make yourself useful, Berger,' Lorenz didn't want to berate the young seaman any further. ‘There's plenty for you to do.'

Berger sketched a salute and made a swift retreat.

Having escaped annihilation the men felt indestructible, and went about their business with fierce enthusiasm. They reminded
Lorenz of the ‘heroes' who appeared in the U-boat propaganda films that the Party showed back home. There was banter, jokes—robust high spirits. Yet, the outcome could so easily have been very different, the boat, broken, resting on the sea bed, and these same men harassed by fish with sharp teeth, perpetual night.