“You speak German, don’t you, Eckerstorfer?” Sublieutenant Randall stood on the deck beside the depth-charge racks.
“Yes, sir.” Karl glanced at the crew evacuating the U-boat. He hated the Nazis . . . but he’d been shipwrecked often enough to have pity for their plight. He would act as translator if that’s what Randall needed.
“I want you on the launch. Not a moment to lose.”
“Yes, sir.”
Randall called out to two other men, then handed Karl an oilskin bag. “Unless that U-boat sinks before we arrive, we’re to take the codebooks. The ink washes away in water, so keep everything dry. And there’s a good chance they left charges aboard.”
Karl nodded. Climbing into a U-boat so badly damaged that its crew had abandoned her—one that might have scuttling charges set—wasn’t his first choice of assignment. But stealing codebooks sounded like a good way to tip the war at sea in favor of the Allies.
As they boarded the twenty-seven-foot-long motorized launch and prepared to lower her to the sea, a sailor who had been sent for supplies handed them over to Randall: a toolbox and three revolvers. Then they cast off.
Karl was used to being damp while at sea. Corvettes were small, and it was common for waves to crash over them and drip into every cramped cabin and messdeck below. The ride in the launch was worse. It wasn’t much larger than a lifeboat but had a better engine. Seaman Taylor steered the launch around the destroyer Achilles, currently rescuing enemy sailors.
Randall handed out tools and then the old Enfield revolvers. “Pray we don’t have to use them. What I ask is dangerous, but the Admiralty says it’s vital. We don’t know how long that U-boat will stay on the surface. We want as many of her secrets as we can take, but keep your eyes out for charges. We’ll do no one any good if we go down with her.”
Karl strapped on the handgun. As the distance to the U-boat closed, his throat tightened. “Sir, how many U-boats do you suppose have a diving raven painted on the conning tower?”
Randall raised an eyebrow. “I can’t answer for certain, but probably one.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You know the ship?”
Karl nodded. The U-boat rode significantly lower in the water than it had that day off the African coast, but the picture . . . more faded, perhaps, but still that same raven diving into the water with a torpedo clutched in its claws. “I think it’s the one that hit the Hillingdon, my last steamer. A couple of the lifeboats were destroyed when the torpedo hit. Another one tipped. Only three of us survived. Would have been more, but they took out a Sunderland that was trying to hit them, and the craft’s depth charges took out everyone we hadn’t fished from the water yet.”
“Well, it seems you’ve taken your revenge,” Randall said.
Revenge should have felt better. Instead, a nagging fear grew in the pit of Karl’s stomach as the launch pulled parallel to the sub and slowed. Waves washed over the U-boat’s deck, with the swells covering it completely. Randall jumped from the launch onto the U-boat. Karl and Matthis followed him.
They climbed through the conning tower and followed the sea-soaked ladder into a control room. The smell—a mix of diesel, unwashed bodies, and lavatory—assaulted Karl immediately. He coughed at the stench. The next thing he noticed, once he shone his flashlight around the control room, was how cramped it seemed. Nowhere was the inner hull visible except behind a mass of pipes, levers, dials, and rings. Ocean water sloshed across the deck, much of it bubbling in from what looked like a drain.
“Search for the cover.” Randall splashed toward the incoming geyser. “It will look like a pail made of steel, about this big.” He moved his hands in a circle about the size of a plate.
Karl’s light flashed across a broken gauge and then down to the flooded deck. Debris floated in the water—bits of rubbish. More debris crunched beneath the soles of Karl’s shoes. Glass? Several of the scopes had only jagged shards where their faces had once been. He didn’t see anything that looked like an obvious scuttling device, but he could view only a small portion of the U-boat. It extended beyond his sight both forward and aft.
They might be running out of time, but Karl stumbled aft of the control room. The cover Randall had described was nowhere to be seen. If the crewmen who had undone it were smart, they would have taken it up the ladder with them and chucked it into the ocean. He shone his light in a utility room, then onto a row of bunks with curtains, some pulled and some open. The open bunks were empty. He couldn’t hold his handgun and his flashlight while pulling the remaining curtains open, so he prayed no one was waiting to ambush the boarding party and put his pistol away. He yanked one curtain open to reveal an empty bunk, neatly made. Then a second. Laying in the middle was the sea strainer.
He grabbed it and waded back into the control room. “I have it.”
He and Randall forced it over the spouting water and clamped it down to stop the leak.
“Now we ought to have a little more time.” Randall led Karl forward from the control room to a pair of cabins that were more like closets than rooms. The beam of his flashlight paused on a machine that looked a great deal like a typewriter, only the alphabet appeared twice.
“Grab that, Eckerstorfer, and hand me the bag for the books.”
The machine was screwed onto the table. Given all the broken things floating in the water or rolling along the bottom of the deck, Karl could understand why. Diving, getting blasted with depth charges. Anything not bolted in place on a U-boat was likely to end up on the deck or in the bilge.
“It looks like someone tried to smash it, sir,” Karl reported. He could even guess what the man had used: the overturned wooden cover that currently lay on the flooded deck, hitting into the hull with a rhythmic beat that moved in time with the rocking U-boat. Hinges where the lid had connected to the rest of the box were still partially attached to the machine, twisted and clinging to splintered wood. Some of the letters on the keyboard were broken. Black-coated wires hung from the front of the machine, some plugged into two holes, others into one. A few lay unconnected to anything on the table around the machine.
“Bring it anyway.” Randall flipped through a book with red ink and placed it into the waterproof bag. “As soon as you get it unscrewed, take it up to Taylor. Try not to change the dials or anything else. Then come back down. We’ll take what we can to the launch. Maybe tow the entire thing to harbor somewhere if we patched the leak well enough.”
As if in answer to their presumption of capturing the vessel whole, the U-boat groaned and tilted a bit to starboard.
“As much as we can.” If Randall was nervous, none of it made it into his voice.
Karl finished unscrewing the last bolt and hugged the machine to his chest. It wasn’t overly heavy, under thirty pounds, but while holding it, he’d have to climb the ladder with only one hand. He scrambled up the ladder as best as he could and inhaled deeply when he reached the conning tower open to the sky above and fresh with a stiff breeze.
Karl handed the machine across to Taylor. “Randall said not to change any of the settings. Leave it as is.”
Taylor nodded and reached for it. Out in the sunlight, Karl could better see the machine’s details—what looked like a normal keyboard, with a second set of letters above it and four dials showing through a window in the cover. Curious, but Karl could guess its purpose and the value of grabbing it, especially if U-boat command didn’t realize their enemy had taken it.
Once Taylor had the machine, Karl turned back for the conning tower. The U-boat seemed to be sitting a little lower in the water than it had been when they’d first arrived.
“Sir.” Karl found Randall inside, fastening the waterproof bag. “She’s still sinking. I think we’re running out of time.”
Randall nodded. “Take this up. There are a few parts I want to pry off. We think they’re detecting our radar, and we want to know how.”