The Passenger (4 page)

L
ORENZ
, F
ALK, AND
G
RAF WERE
sitting in the officers' mess waiting for breakfast to be served.

‘Iceland,' said Lorenz. ‘The SS sent a group of German scholars there, didn't they? Before the British invaded?'

‘Yes,' said Graf. ‘They went there to study the people. I can remember reading about it in a magazine. And they were interested in the museums—they took photographs of some of the exhibits.'

‘What exhibits?' Falk asked.

‘I don't know,' Graf responded. ‘Old things—archaeological remains—I've forgotten now.'

‘Why?'

‘They wanted to
acquire
them. They wanted to put them in our museums—I suppose.' Graf tightened the knot of his neck scarf. ‘Where's breakfast? I'm extremely hungry.'

‘A few years ago I had to attend a Party function,' said Lorenz. ‘There was this SS man there. His name was Schweizer—'
Raised voices could be heard coming from the crew quarters. Lorenz looked toward the forward compartment hatchway, and a moment later men came stumbling through the opening. Kruger was among them. ‘Herr Kaleun, the British officer is armed: he drew a gun and I . . .' Kruger almost fell as the bosun and one of his mates pushed past him.

‘Shit,' said Lorenz. The officers stood abruptly—Graf and Falk struggling to get out from behind the table.

‘Do you still have your pistol?' Lorenz asked Falk.

‘No,' he replied.

‘Well, get it.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘Where do you think?'

Lorenz reached into his jacket and pulled out his Mauser. He had been so preoccupied since collecting the two prisoners that he had neglected to put it back in the gun locker. Gesturing for the crewmen to hurry, he waited until they were all behind him before advancing up the narrow gangway between the bunks. The hanging meats and cheeses obscured his view, but he was still able to see the British commander standing in front of the tube doors. Lorenz wondered why Sutherland was standing in such an exposed position: he didn't appear to be aiming straight ahead, he had his gun pressed against his chest with the barrel pointing off to the side.

‘Commander Sutherland,' Lorenz spoke calmly in English, ‘put down your weapon. We are many in number and you will be overpowered. Put down your weapon, now. My orders are to transport you and Herr Professor Grimstad to France—safely—and that is what I intend to do.'

Two shots fired. Lorenz dove onto one of the lower bunks and aimed his Mauser into the torpedo room. He saw Sutherland sway for a moment and then fall. When Lorenz glanced down he discovered that Falk had crawled up the gangway on his stomach. He was also clutching a pistol.

‘Kaleun? Are you all right?'

‘Yes, I'm all right.'

‘What's he doing?'

‘I think he just shot himself.'

‘And the other one? Is he armed, too?'

‘I haven't seen him yet.' Lorenz called out, ‘Professor Grimstad? Professor Grimstad?'

Smoke drifted through the air, and the smell of gunpowder mixed with the aroma of the foodstuffs.

‘Shall I put a bullet in him, just to make sure?' asked Falk.

‘We were supposed to be ensuring their safe passage to Brest. I can't help feeling that your suggestion is contrary to the spirit of our orders.'

‘What if he's trying to lure us closer?'

‘I don't think so, Falk. If I'm not mistaken he's losing a large amount of blood from a hole in his head.'

‘I can't see it from here.'

‘I can.'

Lorenz climbed out of the bunk and proceeded toward the bow. ‘Herr Professor Grimstad?' When he entered the torpedo room he saw the old man sitting on his blanket and leaning over to one side. Lorenz crouched beside him and examined the upper part of his body. The entry point of the bullet was clearly visible and the old man's coat had started to stain. He had been shot through the heart.

‘What a mess,' said Falk. The torpedo tube doors and the surrounding pipes had been sprayed with blood. ‘It's a miracle he didn't cause any damage.' Men were gathering around the entrance: Juhl, Graf, Richter, and the two torpedo mechanics—Kruger and Dressel. ‘Keep back,' said Lorenz. He crawled over to Sutherland, who was lying with his face pressed against the linoleum. The back of his skull had been blown away, revealing a glistening, wet, grey-pink interior. Around the rim of the hole were shards of jagged, broken bone. When Lorenz rolled the dead officer over
he discovered that the man's eyes were still open and curiously bright. Lumps of matter that had stuck to the overhead began to drop. Something landed on Lorenz's hand, and when he brushed it off it left a brown trail. He wiped the slimy residue on his trousers and suppressed the urge to retch.

The dead man was still gripping his weapon. Lorenz pointed it out to Falk and said, ‘A Walther PPK: favored by the SS and party officials.'

‘How on earth did he get hold of that?'

Lorenz stood up. ‘There was either a double agent on board the cargo ship or Obersturmbannführer Friedrich made a gross error of judgment concerning his estimation of Commander Sutherland's dexterity.' More pieces of brain tissue fell from the overhead and splattered at their feet. Falk looked up and his face shriveled with disgust. ‘They won't be persuaded to part with their secrets now, will they?' Lorenz added as he looked from one corpse to the other.

‘The SS isn't going to be very happy, Kaleun.'

‘You have a real gift for understatement, Falk.'

‘Well, as long as they don't try to blame us for their own incompetence.'

‘Yes, God forbid. Lucky there's no chance of that happening.'

‘They can't—
can they
? What about the evidence, the PPK?'

‘Are you pretending to be naïve for my amusement, Falk?'

The first watch officer stiffened. ‘No, Herr Kaleun.'

‘Good,' said Lorenz, ‘because I'm not laughing.'

Lorenz left the torpedo room shouting orders. ‘Someone get this place cleaned up. And Ziegler . . . where are you, Ziegler?'

With the radio man's assistance Lorenz sent a message to U-boat headquarters explaining what had occurred. He then retired to his nook and made an entry in his log. It did not take very long for the command center to respond and their communication was remarkably succinct:
BURY PRISONERS AT SEA. RESUME PATROL. PROCEED AT ONCE AND AT FULL SPEED TO GRID AK 21.

As soon as the order was announced the boat became subdued. Fantasies were reluctantly relinquished, imaginary jazz bands fell silent, and spectral girls retreated into darkness. The Casino Bar, with its promise of sensual delights and sweet champagne, was reconsigned to memory. Lorenz detected a subtle undertow of nervous agitation flowing beneath the palpable disappointment, and after some reflection, he concluded that the cause was very likely the proximity of the dead. Sailors were notoriously superstitious.

When Lorenz returned to the forward torpedo room he was pleased to find the area clean and smelling of carbolic. The two bodies had been laid out next to each other, arms by their sides.

‘What do we do now?' asked Juhl.

‘Search them,' Lorenz replied.

Sutherland's pockets were empty but Grimstad had been carrying a small notebook. Juhl stood and handed it to his superior. ‘It'll be full of mathematical equations.' Lorenz flicked the pages, and a wry smile appeared on his face. ‘What?' Juhl inquired.

There were no numbers in the notebook. Instead, it was filled with neatly copied symbols composed of straight lines of varying length. Some of these symbols resembled letters—one was like an ‘F', another like an ‘R'—and the way they were grouped suggested words and sentences.

‘Look,' said Lorenz, holding the notebook open.

Juhl squinted. ‘Runes?'

‘That's what I think.'

‘It could still be a code.'

‘But why choose runes?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Perhaps Professor Grimstad wasn't a scientist after all. Perhaps he was a specialist in old Norse languages—or a historian of some kind.'

‘What possible use would such a man be to the SS? What could a historian know that's
so
important?'

‘The SS have obscure interests.'

‘Even so, Kaleun.'

Lorenz put the notebook in his pocket and ordered Voigt to find some clean blankets. The bodies were wrapped and carried onto the deck. Above the eastern horizon the clouds were aglow with a sickly, putrescent light. Lorenz called for the boat to be stopped and descended the conning tower. He read the burial service and the two bodies were tipped into the ocean. One of the seamen made the sign of the cross, and Lorenz was reminded of the professor's odd gesture, the triangle the old man had drawn in the air on coming around after his ‘seizure.' The waves were slow-moving and evenly spaced. Lorenz touched the cover of Grimstad's notebook with his fingertips. What had the SS been up to?

L
ORENZ WAS DREAMING, AND IN
his dream he was standing on the deck, observing the slow materialization of an approaching raft in a vertical column of moonlight. The tableau was vaguely familiar: two figures, one standing with a raised arm and the other sitting and slumped forward. Ice floes were knocking together and a frozen mist was depositing crystals on his beard. He looked through his binoculars and expected to see empty sockets and an exposed jawbone. Instead, he found himself looking into the neutral eyes of the British commander. Sitting at Sutherland's feet was Professor Grimstad. Lorenz heard a voice and it was only when the sentence had ended that he recognized it as his own: ‘No, I'm not coming with you.' He was no longer asleep, and he was breathing shallow and fast. Reaching out, he tugged the curtain aside. Lehmann was turning the hydrophone wheel, his features illuminated by the glowing dial, his ears obscured by headphones. Clearly, he hadn't been disturbed. Lorenz turned on the lamp, listened to the electric motors, and wondered if the wind was still whipping up twenty-meter crests on the surface.
U-330 was sailing silently through a dark green void, high over submerged summits and valleys that had never known light. An image came into Lorenz's mind. He pictured a monstrous sea creature roused by the sound of the boat's screws: sucker-bearing tentacles stirring ancient sediment, fish with bulging eyes and whiskers scattering in black water.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY THE CLOUD-COVER
was low and oppressive: a sagging canopy of grey beneath which dirty yellow scraps were blown along at high speed. Juhl and his companions gazed out over a sea that looked as if each wave had been cast from iron. An untrustworthy light created a disconcerting illusion of arrested movement, a bleak, metallic uniformity that extended in every direction to the wide horizon and resembled the surface of a dying planet. Rain drops tapped irregular rhythms on the rubberized cloth of Juhl's foul-weather gear. The second watch officer's cheeks had become encrusted with salt and his dry lips were striped with black lines where the skin had broken and bled. His balaclava seemed to offer no protection from the malicious wind.

‘This is shit,' said Hoffmann, an electrician with a broad Bavarian accent. It made him stand out because most U-boat men were from the north.

‘I don't know,' Juhl responded. ‘Things could be worse.'

‘Could they, sir?'

‘Well, imagine what it would be like if you were in the army. Just think of it, all that square bashing and posturing, getting shot at all the time. We don't have to go on long marches, we don't have to eat dog meat on the eastern front, Werner is an excellent cook, and our service uniforms are really very eye-catching.' Juhl took a deep breath. ‘And smell that fresh sea air! Bracing, medicinal, it's like being on a cruise.'

‘You've been spending too much time with the skipper,' said Hoffmann.