Taylor steered the launch and its crew through the fog. The strangest phrase ran through Karl’s head as the U-boat came into view, bobbing low in the water. Love your enemies. He’d read it a few days ago during his Bible study. It hadn’t stood out to him at the time. He was, after all, at war. A person couldn’t very well love the men he was dropping depth charges on, could he? But now the phrase wouldn’t leave his mind.
He shook his head, as if that might rid him of the thought. He needed to focus on the task ahead. The last time this group had taken a launch to a U-boat, they’d barely made it out. Distraction was dangerous.
“Did you hear any details, sir?” he asked Randall.
The sublieutenant frowned. “Not much. Just that it surfaced. The Fireweed picked up about a dozen survivors. Not sure we can trust what they say, but it sounds as if the engines were damaged. The rest of the boat too. Blew the ballast because they were running out of air. There was plenty of time to set up a scuttling device, but you know what we’re after.”
Karl did indeed. Books, charts, and machines used for coding, and any new equipment modifications aiding the U-boats in their hunt or evasion.
Randall opened the case he’d brought and distributed handguns and flashlights to the crew. “Matthis, bring the toolbox.”
Matthis nodded and gripped the tools. Karl strapped on the Enfield revolver and checked that the flashlight was in working order. Taylor guided the launch until it was parallel with the U-boat and just beneath its conning tower.
Randall glanced at the cluster of dead bodies around the tower. The Fireweed must have thought the men were running to the deck gun rather than abandoning ship. “Eckerstorfer, you stay with the launch. Taylor and Matthis, follow me.”
“Sir?” Karl had assumed they would follow the same pattern as before.
“Your wife is in the family way, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but I speak German, and I’ve almost no training as a helmsman.” Karl appreciated Randall’s attempt to shield him from danger, but he couldn’t do Taylor’s job, and Taylor couldn’t do his job. He wouldn’t shirk his duty just because it was risky.
Randall glanced at Karl, then at Taylor. “Taylor, hold the launch steady. We don’t know how long the U-boat will stay on the surface.” Randall jumped to the U-boat’s deck. Karl followed, then Matthis. Randall drew his flashlight and motioned to Karl’s pistol. “Cover me.”
Karl nodded. Randall entered the conning tower and shone the light down the hatch. The glow revealed no enemy sailors, but the light illuminated only a small portion of the sub. Randall climbed down first, and Karl went right after him, keeping his pistol pointed at the bulkhead. He didn’t want it aimed down at Randall or up at Matthis should he lose his footing on the slippery rungs.
The unpleasant smell of a U-boat grew stronger as Karl descended into its bowels, but this time, he expected it. Randall’s flashlight shone on a deck completely covered with water. When he splashed down, the water covered his shoes but didn’t reach his shins. Karl hurried to join him and drew out his own flashlight. The water seemed level. A few bodies lay in the control room, one facedown in the water, the other hunched over a set of controls, staring down at the flooded deck with unblinking eyes.
“Any idea what that hiss is?” Karl asked.
“Maybe air leaking from a ballast tank?” Randall shone the light beyond the control room in either direction, but didn’t explore aft.
They went forward as far as the radio room, where another body waited, slumped against the bulkhead. The codebooks were held in a rack above the table, just as they’d been in the other U-boat. One set was still in its envelope. Karl grabbed them and slipped them into the waterproof bag, then added the other papers he found. It was easier to take everything and sort through it later with better lighting and more time. Maybe Taylor could have done Karl’s assignment; he wasn’t using his language skills. Or he wasn’t until he saw a message scribbled in German on a torn piece of paper. Abandoning ship. Engines damaged. Running out of oxygen. Karl still hated U-boats and their crews, but the thought of slowly suffocating beneath the waves . . . Maybe it was possible to have both hatred and pity for them.
Randall took the toolbox from Matthis and handed the bag with the papers to him. “Take this out to the launch.” He turned to Karl and motioned to the machine. Someone had taken the rotors out and ripped all the wires from the plugboard in front. “Is it worth taking like that?”
Karl reached for the toolbox. “I’m not sure, but it will only take a few minutes to remove it.”
The water had risen up to Karl’s shins. While he unscrewed the machine, Randall went to the kommandant’s cubicle, probably looking for paperwork. The sound of cabinet doors being wrenched open echoed through the hull.
Karl glanced at the deck. The crew had left their dead behind. Because it was difficult to carry a body up a ladder, or because they’d been in a hurry? If they’d rushed, someone might have slipped the missing rotors into his pocket. Or simply removed them from the machine and thrown them onto the flooded deck. Karl went to his knees and felt around for anything that might have been dropped into the water.
Something sharp cut into his skin, and he pulled his hand back to see blood on his finger. No doubt the result of broken glass. He felt for the missing rotors more gingerly after that, finding broken gramophone records and more glass. The waterline continued rising at a steady pace. There were probably leaks in the hull letting the water trickle in faster than the bilge pumps could get rid of it. Or maybe the bilge pumps had been knocked out of service by one of the depth charges. Their time was limited, but crisis seemed a ways off yet.
There. Something that felt right. Karl pulled the rotor from the water and grinned. He didn’t know how useful the thing was, but everything about that machine told him that each part was an important piece of the puzzle.
He found the three others, feeling with one hand and holding his flashlight with the other.
Someone groaned.
Karl froze. The U-boat had issued a steady chorus of creaks and moans since their arrival. Matthis hadn’t retuned yet—Karl would have heard his feet on the ladder. And he could still hear Randall just forward of the radio room searching through the kommandant’s papers. That meant the sound had come from someone else.
Karl turned his flashlight on the body slumped in the corner. He’d given what he assumed was a corpse little thought in his rush to grab the codebooks and coding machine, but now he held the light steady.
He’d seen the man before, off the coast of Africa, when he’d left his U-boat with the raven on its conning tower long enough to bandage Peaky Hammond’s arm.
Karl put his fingers against the man’s warm neck. A pulse still beat beneath his skin.
“Did you get the machine?” Randall asked from the doorway.
“Yes, sir.” Karl took his eyes from the wounded enemy sailor. “They dropped the rotors to the deck. I found those too.”
Randall held out a stack of papers. “What do these say?”
Karl scanned through the first one. “Looks like a speech . . . a bunch of Nazi propaganda.” He flipped to the second sheet. “Paperwork for the First Officer to be promoted.” The next was more interesting. “Analysis of a new piece of equipment. Looks like a Metox, maybe with some new features.” The next page showed a drawing, and Karl held it up. “The Admiralty might want to look at it.”
Randall took the drawing. “I’ll find it. Get that typewriter or whatever it is to the launch.”
Karl obeyed, closing the case on the encoding machine and tucking it against his chest. He paused a moment at the bottom of the ladder to let Matthis pass, then headed up. Partway up the ladder, the image of the injured man in the radio room came to his mind. So did a remembered conversation with his father-in-law about Mr. Stevens’s conviction that God had placed people in his path—Karl included—so that Mr. Stevens might help them.
What an odd thought to have while stealing paperwork and coding machines from a U-boat.
On the surface, the sun had burned away some of the fog. Visibility was better, but mist still shrouded the Fireweed and would ensure that the crew of the U-boat never learned about the boarding party. Pinching German codebooks and enciphering machines was all well and good, but if newly imprisoned POWs wrote home to their families about it, any benefit gained from breaking German codes would be short-lived. The fog ensured that none of the German crewmen would know what had happened, except perhaps for the wounded man Karl was trying to put from his head.
Karl handed the equipment to Taylor and headed back into the U-boat. She held level, perhaps a little lower on the waterline but not by much.
In the control room, Randall and Matthis had finished removing a cross-shaped device of some sort.
“Do you suppose they set it to scuttle?” Matthis asked.
Randall frowned. “I suspect we would have felt it by now if they had. Maybe they thought the leaks in the ballast tanks were worse than they are. Probably were, when this thing was submerged.”
They didn’t seem to be in danger of sinking or being blown to bits by a booby trap, so Karl gave in to his nagging thoughts. “That man in the radio room is still alive.”
Randall grunted. “We can’t take him with us, or he’ll know we were on board.”
Karl hesitated, then spoke again. “He’s not conscious, so he won’t remember us, but if he works in the radio room, he might know a lot about that machine. We can keep him isolated if needed.”
Randall thought for a moment. “Matthis, take this to the launch and bring back a rope.” He handed over the equipment. “All right, Eckerstorfer. We’ll rescue the Nazi. Someone will want to interrogate him.”
The man might very well be a Nazi, but he’d been humane with Ordinary Seaman Hammond. The stitches hadn’t saved Peaky, but that was the sea’s fault, not the unconscious man with the glasses’ fault.
Karl went back to the radio room and, with Randall’s help, pulled the man up and draped his arms around Karl’s shoulders. Karl hadn’t expected the man to smell pleasant, given the stench that hung around the U-boat, and his prediction proved true. The man groaned.
“Is he waking up?” Karl asked. That would make it easier to get him out of the U-boat but might compromise their secrecy.
“No. Just wincing.”
When Karl reached the foot of the ladder, Randall helped him lower the man. “I’ll go up top with Matthis to pull him up. I imagine that will be faster than trying to climb the ladder with a man slung across your back. We’ll throw the rope down to you. Let me know when you’ve got him tied, then climb with him to keep him from swinging about or sticking beneath a hatch.”
“Yes, sir.”
Karl waited in the partially flooded control room with the unconscious man and the corpses. The water lapped at his knees now, and the hiss and creaking of the U-boat felt even more ominous when he was standing still rather than searching for equipment and papers. He would rather leave, but he had promised God he would do anything if Millie could be spared. The scripture that had come to mind on the ride from the Fireweed seemed fairly clear now. God wanted Karl to love his enemies instead of hating them. God had delivered Millie from the sea, so Karl would do what he could for the unconscious man from the radio room. It might not be love, exactly, just a rescue, but it was a start.
“Catch.” Randall’s voice echoed down the conning tower, and Karl grabbed the end of the rope.
He let speed and practicality dictate the knots. He didn’t want the man harmed, and he needed the man to be held roughly upright, so he looped the rope around the man’s shoulders and waist before tying it off. “Ready,” he called up.
The slack in the rope disappeared at once, then the body heaved upward.
“Help.” The word was German, spoken in a whisper.
Karl answered in the same language. “We are helping. Don’t flail your arms, and we’ll get you up the ladder. Unless you think you can climb?”
Karl didn’t hear the answer, if there was one. He climbed just below the man, holding the side of the ladder with one hand and using the other to steady the man’s feet so they didn’t swing like a pendulum. He wasn’t sure if the man was still conscious or if he’d fallen back into a stupor. The ropes probably hurt, but any of the alternatives would have hurt just as badly.
Pinching the codebooks and the new Metox were the real victories, but gradually, Karl felt a sort of contentment to be rescuing someone, even someone wearing the wrong uniform, someone who was part of the crew that had sunk the Hillingdon and the Minstrel. Maybe the burden of warfare was heavy enough without adding in the heft of hatred. Maybe Karl could let go of the anger he’d clung to since his father’s murder, a rage that had grown with each torpedo strike. He could still do his duty, still wage war with precision and effectiveness, still fight for peace and justice and victory even after he’d released his hatred.
The rope remained taut. Randall must have been holding it, because Matthis appeared in the hatch to take the man and pull him onto the deck. Karl pushed from below until the man was out.
The steady hiss Karl had been listening to the entire time he’d been in the U-boat suddenly grew louder. Then a ripping, tearing sound echoed from the aft of the U-boat, and the ladder jerked. Karl’s feet were knocked from their rung and the single hand he’d had on the ladder lost its grip. He fell back into the bowels of the boat.
He landed hard in the control room and collapsed. The water had only been to his knees before, but now the flooding had grown high enough to completely immerse him. He grabbed for the ladder and pulled himself out of the dark, rushing water. His ankles throbbed, but he didn’t think anything was broken, other than the U-boat. The deck shifted beneath his feet again. He gripped the rungs and climbed as fast as he could while the U-boat grew more and more unstable.
Even working against the trim, Karl could climb faster than he had when he’d been keeping the injured man in the right position. He scrambled up the ladder toward the murky light of the fog-shrouded sky. The trim grew worse, making it harder and harder to climb. Something must have burst and flooded one of the aft compartments, and the U-boat was going down, stern first.
Karl put a hand on the outer hull and hauled himself free. He rolled into the rail. The bow of the boat rose in a sixty-degree angle, and the stern disappeared below the waterline. He needed to get off the sub because she was sinking fast. He climbed over the railing, lost his grip as the U-boat tilted even more, and dropped to the deck below.
He landed on the pressure hull with a thunk that knocked the air from his lungs in a painful whoosh. He couldn’t even draw in enough air to wince before he began sliding toward the launch. He spread his arms in a vain attempt to slow his descent, but his momentum only increased.
The U-boat’s sudden change in trim had sent the channel of water between the U-boat and the launch into a churning torrent. Karl hit the ocean feet-first, then slammed into the launch. The 700-ton U-boat followed, smashing into Karl and pinning him against the smaller boat’s hull. Agony shot across his chest, and the snap of bone sounded in his ear. Then a wave lifted the launch, and the pressure released him. He knew he needed to grab hold of something, but the pain held him so completely that he couldn’t move.
Someone gripped his arm and held.
“Hold on, we’ll pull you in.” He recognized Randall’s voice. Tried to answer. Couldn’t.