May 1945.
The U-boat glided swiftly, silently, under the power of its electric motors, maintaining periscope depth beneath the offshore waters twenty-five kilometers south of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Its skipper, Kapitänleutnant Ernst Raabe, searched for the pre-arranged beacon that would signal their safe passage to freedom, to escape from the Allies—from the savage Russians.
The pungent stench of spoiled vegetables mixing with the body odor oozing from the crew manning the control room, Raabe narrowed his gaze while staring into the periscope, studying the dark coast beyond the silvery surf under a quarter moon. At twenty-eight years old, he was the oldest and most experienced man aboard the Type VIIC U-boat cruising at three knots.
“Planes on zero at five meters, Herr Komandant,” reported his Leitender Ingenieur, Chief Engineer Manfred Holtz, a man nearly a foot shorter than Raabe’s six feet, and stockier than the skipper with his slim build. “Holding three knots.”
“Good, Chief,” replied Raab without taking his eyes off the murky horizon, wondering what in the hell was keeping his contacts in the AFM—Argentinean Fascist Movement—from identifying the landing spot.
Then he saw it, a dim red light flashing five times where the water met the sandy beach, backdropped by tall vegetation and hills.
“Surface,” Raabe commanded, dropping the periscope while Holtz barked commands to the crew.
U-246 rose, surging through the surface, exposing its sixty-seven-meter-long structure to the moonlit night.
“Tower has been cleared, Captain,” declared the chief engineer a moment later, his beard as unkempt and long as the rest of the men’s.
“Stop motors,” Raabe added, wearing a life jacket, a flashlight in his pocket, and a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck. He tapped his hip, feeling his sidearm, a Luger P08 pistol, still secured inside his belt holster.
As Holtz conveyed his order, Raabe climbed up the ladder, opening the hatch while cringing in anticipation of the typical splash of residual seawater on the floor of the conning tower.
The blast of water, as cold as ever, bathed him the moment he dropped the hatch, cascading down to the control room.
A welcome breath of fresh air filled his lungs as he stepped away from the hatch, pressing the rubber ends of his binoculars against his eyes while fingering the adjusting wheel, bringing the coast into focus.
The red flashes repeated again every minute, just as his superiors had arranged it the prior month, when he was given the order to break all contact while operating in the Irish Sea to pretend his U-boat had been sunk. U-246 had then returned to its base in Kiel under the cover of darkness to pick up a very special cargo—along with very specific instructions.
Raabe produced his flashlight and replied just as his instructions directed him, flicking the light off and on three times, the signal that conveyed to the shore party that this was U-246 and that the cargo was ready to be transferred.
Moments later he spotted a small-powered vessel bouncing over the surf while venturing in his direction, its white hull reflecting the moonlight.
Leaning down over the open hatch, Raabe said, “Chief, join me with your sidearm, please.”
A moment later Holtz stood shoulder to shoulder with his commanding officer, also his childhood friend, the only man he trusted enough to share the orders from the SS officers who had delivered the crates—each a half meter long and just as wide and tall—to the pier in Kiel. Raabe was to deliver the cargo to this location without breaking the SS seals draping each crate—or risk death by firing squad as well as the immediate execution of his parents back in Munich.
At least that was the plan when he had departed Kiel.
But something had changed.
During their long transatlantic journey, Raabe had monitored the airwaves, had listened to the news broadcast proclaiming Germany’s defeat, the fall of the Third Reich. And he had pondered the importance of his mission now that those SS officers who had threatened him and his family were no longer in control. Raabe had first disabled the radio to keep anyone else from learning the devastating news. Then he had gone into the aft torpedo room, which he had personally locked after storing the crates. Assisted by his chief engineer, Raabe had opened one of the crates, and its unexpected contents had defined for Raabe and Holtz the only logical course of action.
The cold wind swirling his long hair, Kapitänleutnant Raabe watched the open vessel maneuver through the light chop right up to the dark submarine. He counted four men aboard. One remained in the rear controlling the outboard while the other three secured lines to the side of the stationary U-boat.
“Are all the charges set?” Raabe whispered to his lifelong friend.
“I set them myself in the aft torpedo room,” replied Holtz. “I’ll light the fuse when I go and get the crates.”
Raabe nodded while watching the strangers climb aboard, his heart pounding, his mind racing.
“Good evening, Captain,” said one of the men in flawless German. “We are relieved to see that you made it across the ocean safely.”
I’m sure you are, thought Raabe, reaching for his pistol. Holtz did the same.
They fired without warning. Raabe went for the one in the boat while Holtz discharged his weapon into the shocked faces of the other three men already on deck, the reports swept away by the whistling wind.
They now moved quickly, throwing the bodies overboard before ordering a half dozen of their sailors to carry the crates to the conning tower, where Raabe himself transported them to the powerboat.
They finished in less than thirty minutes. Holtz, who removed the final crate from the aft torpedo room, lit up the five-minute fuse connected to several pounds of explosives and locked the door behind him.
Addressing his watch officer, Raabe said, “Hold this position until we return, Johann. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” replied the young sailor, five years his junior.
Raabe had difficulty looking directly into the officer’s eyes, a good man who had served courageously under him during the past year, and whom he now had to kill.
But Ernst Raabe had no choice. The U-boat had to be destroyed with the entire crew aboard. These were shallow waters. The Argentinean government—and maybe even the Allies themselves—would likely come and inspect the wreckage. They needed to be convinced that a torpedo had exploded inside the vessel, sinking it. The ruse also had to be good enough to fool the Argentinean Fascist Movement, who might try to recover the contents in those crates.
And just like that Raabe and Holtz left their submarine, gunning the gas-powered outboard of the thirty-foot rig, steering it away from the doomed vessel, heading not for shore but along the coast. According to the navigation map they had taken with them, there were three small towns within fifty kilometers of here, places where they could seek refuge, where they could hide, where they would start planning their new lives.
The sudden explosion rocked the night, shooting fists of flames a hundred meters high, like a giant bonfire. Holtz’s explosives had detonated the torpedoes as well as the diesel tanks, breaking the U-boat’s back, sealing the fate of the boat and crew, which disappeared below the boiling surface in less than sixty seconds, before darkness resumed.
“New names,” said Holtz, turning to his friend as they followed the coast, the taste of the sea on his lips. “We will need new names.”
“Hartmann,” said Raabe. “I was always a fan of Eric Hartmann, the Luftwaffe ace. From tonight onward I shall be Ernst Hartmann.”
“I have no heroes in the Third Reich,” the stocky Holtz said, scratching his beard. “I shall use my mother’s maiden name.”
“What is that?”
“Deppe. I shall become Manfred Deppe.”
“Well, my friend, with the kind of loot aboard this boat we can afford to be called by any names we choose.”
“But, Ernst,” said Deppe, concern staining his voice as it mixed with the sound of the diesel, the wind, and the waves lapping the hull. “The gold and diamonds belong to the German people, so we can rebuild our nation after the war.”
“And that is exactly what we shall do, my dear Manfred.”
“But how? Germany has been conquered. No amount of money is going to bring it back.”
“That’s the thing,” replied Hartmann. “It is not us that would buy our country back.”
“Then who?”
“Time.”
“Time?”
“Yes. Time. Nothing lasts forever, not the Third Reich nor whatever provisional government takes over our nation. It took our leaders less than thirty years to rebuild our country from the ashes of World War I. We will do it again. We will use this money to rebuild Germany, when the time is right.”
“But,” said Deppe, “how long will it be?”
Hartmann peered out to sea, searching for any vessels, seeing none. “I don’t know how long. Maybe ten years. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. Perhaps not in our lifetimes, but in the lifetimes of our children.”
“Our children? But . . . but we’re not even married,” said the puzzled Manfred Deppe.
“Not yet, my friend. Not yet.”