· 8 June 1939 ·
U-BOAT 33, AT SEA
Hobbes was on an operating table. Wide awake. Couldn’t move a muscle. And something was wrong with his nose. He couldn’t seem to get air through it properly. A doctor leaned directly over him, his crazed eyes gleaming above the sweat-soaked surgical mask. He could hear the surgeon’s muffled voice. The tongue, the surgeon said, the tongue is next! Then Hobbes had seen the gleaming scalpel flash, dripping with his own bright red blood. And, above the surgeon’s mask, the mad, glittering eyes of Dr. Moeller! A scream was building in his throat, and then he woke up.
Fully awake now, drenched in sweat, Hobbes couldn’t even dream of going back to sleep. He’d remained fully clothed in case of an emergency.
He lay rigid on the hard metal upper bunk of the U-boat’s tiny cabin, the thin mattress providing scant comfort, staring at the cold steel bulkhead above. In truth, he’d missed a horrible appointment with the mad doctor by a mere whisker. If little Kate hadn’t remembered the letter in his pocket proving his story, well, he shuddered to think about it. The quick-witted child had saved him from Dr. Moeller’s wicked scalpel, and no doubt about it.
In the bunk below, Kate’s soft breathing reassured him that, after her splendid performance in the wardroom, she was finally getting a good night’s sleep. If only he could sleep himself, he thought, putting his hands behind his head, staring at a small panel in the bulkhead above his head. It was coated with moisture and seemed to be vibrating.
Odd, he thought, and placed the palm of his hand on the steel plate. It was ice cold. He pulled out his slim pocketknife and removed the screws that held it in place. The plate came away easily.
He lit his Zippo, held it up into the opened space, and peered at the submarine’s normal tangled mass of wiring and conduits inside. But there was something else, something that caught his expert eye.
Two gleaming stainless steel tubes, one on top of the other, each about four inches in diameter. The top tube had started to smoke when he removed the plate and now he touched it. It burned his hand, not hot but cold. Supercold. He touched the bottom one more carefully. Room temperature. And it was thrumming with vibration. Fluid, perhaps seawater, was being pumped through it at extreme pressure. And they were superchilling it for some reason.
Then he saw the small metal sign above the valve atop the pipe coated with frost. He quickly scanned the German words printed above it in red. When he saw the word Hydroschiffsschraube he knew he’d hit the jackpot.
Hydroschiffsschraube.
The much rumored hydropropulsion system! So that’s what they called it, “waterpropeller!” Somehow, they were probably pumping seawater aboard at the bow, superchilling it, velocitizing it, and expelling it aft. No wonder U-33 had been able to keep pace with Thor all the way across the Channel! He was aboard the fastest submarine in the world! And he was about to find out what made it tick! He saw another valve just beyond the—
There was a muffled rap at his cabin door.
Quickly, he replaced the small plate, screwing the four screws back into place. “Yes?” he said with sleep in his voice. “Yes?” He feigned a loud yawn, and heard a voice say,“Guten morgen, Herr McIver.”
A key turned in the lock and the door swung inward. It was a young seaman he hadn’t seen before. The guard smiled down at the sleeping child and then up at Hobbes who turned and looked down from his bunk, rubbing imaginary sleep from his eyes. He hadn’t slept a wink all night, but then he’d never needed much sleep.
“Kapitän von Krieg would like to see you, urgently,” the guard whispered in English. Hobbes jumped down, pulled Kate’s blanket up around her shoulders, and then followed the crewman the length of the sub. A lot of activity this morning, Hobbes noticed. Something was clearly afoot. The guard opened the door to the same wardroom where he’d been interrogated the night before. The British commander stepped inside and saw Kapitän von Krieg drinking hot coffee at the big green table and Little Willy strutting around puffing on one of his yellow cigarettes.
Von Krieg had the pale blue envelope from the Ministry in his hands. He was staring at Hobbes the way he’d done in the wardroom when they’d first met. He could again feel the man trying to place him. Had they met? Was it possible? Where?
“Guten morgen, Angus,” said Little Willy. “Good morning! How did you sleep? Well, I hope. We’ve got a busy morning planned for you. We’re currently about twenty miles north-northwest of Greybeard Island, running at flank speed. Kapitän von Krieg has decided to consider your kind offer of assistance, if, of course, you also convince him you’re telling the truth.” Willy’s eyes bored into Hobbes’s own. And so, he noticed, did the red-rimmed eyes of the tired-looking submarine captain. A rummy, Hobbes thought, part of his problem, an angry drunk.
In that instant Hobbes understood why von Krieg had been looking at him so strangely. Because he himself now remembered who this German captain was! No wonder the man had looked so familiar! The name jumped into the forefront of his brain with dreadful clarity.
Wolfie.
Of course! How could he have been so thick! Wolfie, the tall, arrogant German aristocrat who’d been the short-lived bane of the then-young Oxford fencing master. Hobbes remembered it all now, the angry fights over the prettiest girls, the carousing, the pub brawls at all hours when Hobbes would have to go and drag the boy by his heels from under a pile of shouting, brawling students.
And, of course, the infamous severed ear of the Magdalen Don that finally resulted in Wolfie’s unceremonious dismissal from the college and return to the Fatherland. Hobbes had been the one with the unpleasant task of telling Wolfie he’d been sent packing back to Germany.
“Versuch?” the captain now said to Willy, holding up the blue Ministry letter. “Proof? This one letter is proof of the Englishman’s foolish story?”
Hobbes nodded and turned to Willy for support, but the cagey SS man simply smiled and let him hang there. Wolfie, his arms folded across his broad chest, was still staring at him. Did von Krieg remember Hobbes, too? If he did, the game was up, it was as simple as that. He felt a trickle of perspiration make its way from under his arm and realized that perhaps it was warmer in the wardroom than he’d first imagined. He tried to gaze mildly at the captain, to give away nothing in his eyes. To get Katie and himself out of this alive, he had to remain cool, no matter what. If Wolfie recognized him, he was dead. They both were. He’d lived a full life and had no fear of dying. But the child? It was unthinkable.
“That is the letter I told you about,mein Kapitän, ” Willy said. “I’ll leave it to you to judge its authenticity.”The captain, his eyes never leaving Hobbes, pulled the letter from its envelope, raised it to his bloodshot eyes, and began to read. Hobbes, his pulse racing, waited for his fate to be determined. He felt a shudder go through the hull of the submarine; or perhaps it was just the hull of his heart.
“Notice the gold Ministry seal and the London postmark, mein Kapitän. Is the letter not everything I promised?” Willy asked, a smirk he could not hide in his voice. “‘Activities outside the scope of his duties’! In other words, spying! Amusing, isn’t it? His own government doesn’t want him spying for Churchill anymore than we do! He’s our Greybeard spy all right!”
“Ach! Only if all zoze things in life are as they seem,mein Colonel,” the captain replied. “But, perhaps he is telling the truth. If so, he just may be useful,ja, that’s true.”
The captain folded the letter, stuck it back in its envelope and nodded to Willy, silently admitting that the letter was acceptable proof of Hobbes’s story. He then looked at Hobbes, those narrow-beamed eyes searching his face again.
“But now, Englishman,” the captain said, “you must whet my appetite with more information. I’ll decide if it’s significant enough to bother with keeping you and your daughter alive.”
“Oh, it’s significant all right, Captain,” Hobbes said, mentally breathing a huge sigh of relief. He was still in the game. And it was time to turn up the heat. “Have you fellows by chance ever heard of a man named Richard Hawke?” he asked, a disingenuous smile on his face.
Willy stopped his pacing and almost fell over backward. The captain coughed into his fist and muttered, “I may have heard dis name before. It’s possible.”
“I should think so,” Hobbes replied coolly. “Those two goons you sent over to sink my boat told me you spend every waking moment staring at his castle through your periscope.” He was gratified to see the captain’s jaw drop.
“They told you that?” Wolfie exploded. “They—the ‘Tweedle Twins,’ those idiots! I’ll have them shot! I’ll have them tortured and shot! I’ll—”
“Tweedle Twins?” Hobbes asked, confused and amused at the same time.
“Yes, yes, that’s what das Kapitän calls Dr. Moeller and Klaus, my two little Gestapo agents. The Tweedles, ‘Dee’ and ‘Dum.’ It fits, doesn’t it?” Willy took another deep sip of his steaming coffee. He seemed to be positively enjoying himself.
“Ah, yes,” Hobbes said, with a twinkle in his eye. “But which one of them is ‘Dum’?”
“Why,both of them, Angus!” Willy said, exploding with laughter and a spray of hot coffee across the table.
“So, you have heard of Lord Richard Hawke, Captain?” Hobbes said pleasantly.
“Yes, yes, yes, of course I have heard of him!” Wolfie said. “Now what about him? Besides the fact that der Führer wants him dead?”
“I work for him,” Hobbes said, his eyes shining, for this was his favorite part of the game. Spinning the web. “Hawke controls a vast number of English spy rings operating in this part of the world—in France, for instance and Spain. Greybeard’s is only one of the smallest cells. I am its ringleader, but I am also Hawke’s personal courier. You must have wondered how a simple lighthouse keeper could afford such an elegant craft as Thor?”
“We planned to ask you about that, if you lived long enough,” Willy said.
“She belongs to Hawke, Lieutenant,” Hobbes said with a smile. “Lord Hawke he is, and he has more money than sense, if you ask me. Have you ever known titled people like that? At any rate, I use his boat to ferry information around the Channel. I was on just such a mission tonight, planning to report a couple of Luftwaffe squadrons we’d recently observed patrolling off the coast of Jersey. Messerschmitt 109s escorting Junkers Su 390 heavy bombers.”
Willy nodded and looked at Hobbes thoughtfully. “He’s correct,mein Kapitän. Last week, I heard Air Marshal Göring mention just such a Luftwaffe mission to Hitler in the Reichstag staff meeting.”
Hobbes sat back and waited for all this to sink in. The crisis was passing perhaps, but certainly not the danger.
“This Hawke you speak of, Angus,” Willy said. “Does he trust you?”
“As much as he trusts anyone allowed inside his secret base, Lieutenant.”
“Colonel! I am Colonel Steiner! How many times must I remind you?”
“Sorry, Colonel Steiner.”
“Secret base! What secret base?” said an excited Willy, pushing his perpetually steamy round glasses up on his nose. Willy could hardly believe his luck. The man could be a goldmine of priceless information! Even the captain would now have to admit his instincts had been correct.
“Why, Hawke’s lair, of course,” said Hobbes. “Surely you’ve heard of it! The secret submarine base at Hawke Castle?”
“So Hawke Castle is the base!” von Krieg said, pulling out one of his charts. “Just as I thought! Congratulations, Willy, it seems we’re about to crack Berlin’s most urgent assignment after all! We’ll be famous, I tell you, famous.”
“I’ll want names, naturally, everyone, everyone!” Willy said, actually licking his fleshy lips like a man sitting down to a gourmet feast. “Are you still prepared to do that, Angus? Betray countrymen, betray your many comrades?”
“Pay me enough money, Colonel, and I shall introduce you personally to every spy on Greybeard Island! Including Lord Richard Hawke himself! Because I plan to sail your lovely submarine right up to Lord Hawke’s bloody front door and invite you and the lads inside for a cup of tea with England’s most notorious spy himself.”
“Wunderbar! Wunderbar! ” Willy shouted, dancing around the wardroom table, expelling clouds of purple smoke.
“We go see then, Willy,” the captain said, leaning back in his chair with a smile. “We go and see if the Englischer lighthouse keeper is telling the truth. If he can get Der Wolf inside this Hawke’s lair. If not, well, that will be too bad. For both you…and your lovely daughter!”
“I’ll get you inside, all right, Captain,” Hobbes said quietly. “Don’t you worry about that. Just set your course for Hawke Lagoon!”