der

U-boote

The Enigma was used solely to encipher and decipher messages. In its standard form it could not type a message out, let alone transmit or receive it. From the cipher operator's point of view, it consisted of first a keyboard of 26 letters in the pattern of the normal German typewriter:

     Q  W  E  R  T  Z  U  I  O

       A  S  D  F  G  H  J  K

     P  Y  X  C  V  B  N  M  L        

with no keys for numerals or punctuation. Behind this keyboard was a "lampboard" of 26 small circular windows, each bearing a letter in the same QWERTZU pattern, which could light up, one at a time, from bulbs underneath. (The model with an A-Z keyboard, shown in several books on the Enigma, is a Polish-French replica, not an actual Enigma machine.) It measured about 13.5" x 11" x 6", and weighed about 26 lbs.

Behind the lampboard is the scrambler unit, consisting of a fixed wheel at each end, and a central space for three rotating wheels. The wheel to the right of this space is the fixed entry or plate (Eintrittwalze) carrying 26 contacts round its left side, ultimately connected to the keys of the keyboard in ordinary alphabetical order. To the left of the space is the reversing wheel (Umkehrwalze), which scrambles the current it receives and sends it back by a different route from that by which it came. This wheel too has a circle of 26 contacts.

The three central wheels were selected from a box of five. Monthly orders specified a new choice every day, as well as their relative order in the machine, e.g., V-I-III or II-IV-I, etc. Each of these rotating wheels has a circle of 26 spring-loaded terminals on its right side and 26 flat circular terminals on its left, so as to provide an ever-changing series of connections as it revolves. Each contains a different internal wiring and carries the letters A-Z or the numbers 01-26 round its inner ring, which can be turned and locked in any setting before the wheels specified for a given day are inserted into the machine in the prescribed order, though they can still be turned bodily through slits in the inner lid, and the letters A-Z can be read one at a time in the window beside each slit. The specified setting of ring against wheel was called the Ringstellung.

Each time a letter key is pressed, the right wheel moves on one of its 26 places. Once during every 26 moves, at the "turnover position" on the right wheel, the middle wheel will also move on one place; and when the middle wheel reaches its own turnover position it moves on again when the next letter is keyed, together with the left wheel.

Finally, the vertical front of the Enigmas used by the Armed Services contained a "plugboard" with 26 pairs of sockets, again in the QWERTZU pattern. These could be connected by twin-cable leads -- for example, coupling C to P, M to Z, J to S, and so on; but some sockets, usually six, were left unconnected. They were said to be "self-steckered." Stecker is a plug; Steckerbrett (usually called "steckerboard" at Bletchley) is a plugboard.

Each time the cipher clerk keyed a letter, the right wheel moved on mechanically one place and, as explained above, from time to time the center and left wheels also moved. As each new letter (e.g., P) was keyed, the current, normally provided by an internal 4.5 volt battery -- although an outside power source could be used -- flowed from a terminal under that key to a socket (e.g., P) on the plugboard. From there it travelled via a lead to another socket (e.g., L), or, if the first socket was self-steckered, it stayed as P. Either way, it ran to the entry wheel, which did not alter it, through the pairs of terminals on all central wheels -- each of which normally altered it again -- to the Umkehrwalze or reversing wheel (with another alteration) and back through different circuits in all three wheels (hence still further alterations), out unaltered through the entry wheel, and back to the plugboard. Here its course again depended on whether that socket was self-steckered or cross-steckered; either way, it finally reached the lampboard and lit a bulb (e.g., W). Although the process, involving up to nine changes on the standard three-wheel machine, has taken some time to describe, it naturally took place virtually instantaneously. And it must be remembered that the moving on of at least one wheel, for every new letter keyed, introduced a new set of circuits for each new letter.

It is important to note that, if you press any key (e.g., B), any other letter may light up (e.g., T); but if you continue to key letter B, the lampboard may give, say, P, F, O, J, C..., but never B. The sequence will repeat only after 16,900 (26 x 25 x 26) keyings, when the inner mechanism returns to the same position. Messages were limited to a maximum of 250 letters to avoid this recurrence, which might otherwise have helped the codebreakers

A random pot-pourri from The Enigma Variation

The First Day of Spring, 1945

"You dehumanise each person by robbing them of their individuality," he explained , his face impassive, completely devoid of any human emotion. "By rendering each to the status of one in an undifferentiated mass of many, we fashion our workers from the stinking clay of international Jewry." He rubbed the toecap of his dress boot with a bright yellow duster until it shone brightly. "You must remember the poetry we have been teaching our children since we came to power: The Devil is the father of the Jew. When God created the world, He invented the races: The Indians, the Negroes, the Chinese And also the wicked creature called the Jew He recited the verse with his eyes tightly shut, snapping them open again as the last word died on his lips. Overcome with emotion, he cleared his throat noisily, dabbing at his mouth with a white silk handkerchief. "We start by plunging the camp's new arrivals into deprived and desperate physical, mental and emotional conditions. Then, by denying them adequate nutrition, subjecting many of them to starvation by forcing them to perform backbreaking labour for unmanageably long hours, by providing them with grossly inadequate shelter, not to mention medical care, and by perpetrating steady violence on their bodies and minds, they quickly develop all the behavioural attributes of Untermensch, subhumans." Satisfied that his boots were clean, he neatly folded the yellow duster and tucked it away inside his locker. "Add acute anaemia, a few festering open wounds, the marks of chronic disease and illness, and you relegate them to the lowly status of easily controlled worker ants. Then, by routinely beating them, injuring them, we inflict marks that become constant reminders of their abject state, while camp routine is specifically designed to weaken them emotionally, producing more of the subhumanising effects engendered by malnutrition, exposure and overwork." He rose to his feet and pulled on his boots, buckling on his black Sam Browne belt with its holstered semi-automatic pistol. "A bevy of psychological consequences ensue from the violence. Harsh treatment creates terror among the prisoners, leading them to cower in the presence of their overlords. Before long, they submit to beatings without raising a hand to defend themselves. Devoid of dignity, they are not worthy of respect or moral consideration." He sighed heavily as he loaded ten nine-millimetre straight-sided Parabellum cartridges into the well oiled gunmetal blue self-loading pistol. "I'm proud of what I have achieved here; if I were honest with myself, God forbid, I suppose I would have to admit that I will miss the place." He pulled on his leather overcoat and pocketed the pistol. "I won't miss the smell though, the sickly sweet stench of death that seems to follow me everywhere I go." He shook hands with his visitor and clicked his heels together loudly. "I am glad to see how much you have advanced, both as a man and as a naval officer. I have to admit to surprise when I learned that you were in command for this mission. But then, all that unpleasantness now seems to be such a long time ago. " He bowed and raised his right arm in a stiff salute. "I wish you a safe voyage back to the Fatherland, Kapitän."

~§~

M.V. XENON EXPLORER, Norwegian Sea, March 1990

The sleek, dart-shaped, sidescan sonar ‘tow-fish’ automatically followed the underwater contours of the sea floor five hundred feet below the surface of the Norwegian Sea. In the black, impenetrable void of the deep ocean , tiny transducers set into its shiny, stainless steel body, fed multiplexed bit streams of data to powerful computers in the belly of its mother ship above. Processed in real time by powerful hydrographic software, the raw data from the sonar ‘fish’ produced reams of accurately detailed charts of the sea floor, a coloured mosaic of ‘swathes’, each over half a kilometre wide. The Geophysical survey Ship, Xenon Explorer, had ploughed her lonely furrows across the surface of the sea, guided by satellites in geosynchronous earth orbit, twenty-two thousand miles above her blue and white painted hull, in every ocean of the world. Registered in the port of Hamilton, she flew the Bermudan flag and carried a crew of eleven, augmented by six survey technicians. On time charter to the mighty Xenon International Corporation of Atlanta Georgia, at ten-thousand dollars US per day, her task was to map the latest offshore oil blocks that the corporation had acquired in the latest round of sales. In a Portacabin, lashed to her after deck with steel wire ropes and eight galvanised iron bottle screws, the duty sonar technician sat slumped in a swivel chair, idly listening to the hum of the trace and counting off the hours until his relief arrived. His feet rested on the battered aluminium desk that housed the towfish controls. The fish was on autopilot, as was the ship herself, each controlled by separate, dedicated computers. On the console above the desk, the black painted hands of an old brass clock told him it was a little after three thirty in the morning. Only two men aboard Xenon Explorer were awake: the Mate on watch on the bridge, and the sidescan sonar operator, whose nose was buried in a well thumbed copy of Penthouse magazine. The young man’s imagination was working on overdrive as his bloodshot eyes scanned the pages of nude, girlie-photographs. Inwardly he was congratulating himself at having obtained the ship’s only copy of the American version of his favourite magazine. At sea for thirty days at a time, there wasn’t much else to do but drink canned beer, watch videos, eat, sleep, dream and read. The centre pages of the magazine unfolded to reveal a smiling blonde haired girl, with generous pink tipped breasts and parted thighs. On closer inspection he could see that the girl, whoever she was, had bleached her hair. He turned page after page of pink naked flesh, slowly, enjoying each new erotic revelation as the bulge in his faded blue jeans grew harder. As was normal in men of his age, he was permanently randy. His thoughts were of his girl, Brigit, waiting for him in Stavanger. She had good breasts too, and blonde hair, everywhere. The magazine fell open at the next set of photographs. Two girls, one blond the other brunette, locked in a carefully posed embrace, showing their pussy fur and parted lips. They were his favourite fantasy. Girls with girls. Lovely! His hand reached down to his crotch and gently squeezed. He was rock hard again and loaded for beaver. From behind his chair, music blasted from a pair of Sony speakers. Heavy rock, Eric Clapton belting out an old Cream number, 'I Feel Free'. As the heavy base boomed louder, the man’s right foot jerked to the beat, while to one side of the aluminium desk, sidescan sonar towfish data was coming off the printer, metre by metre, automatically folding itself before dropping into a plastic tub below, ready for the morning helicopter that would transport it to Xenon International’s Stavanger headquarters. The salt streaked old ship creaked as she rolled gently to a long low north-easterly swell. Most of here twenty-six year life had been spent as a freezer stern-trawler, fishing for cod off bleak Icelandic shores. Exclusion zones and the extension of territorial limits had changed all that, and for three years she had operated as survey ship in the more profitable, offshore oil industry. The sidescan sonar operator glanced up at the clock. Only another two and a half hours before he could climb back into his bunk again; the magazine would have to be his sea-wife until the crew-change in two weeks time. At shortly after four o’clock in the morning, the coloured images coming off the flatbed printer, changed suddenly. In place of the natural contours of subsea ridges and gullies, a man made object caught the fish’s electronic eye. The well defined outline of a vessel appearing prominently among the usual hard images of glacier boulders, rocks and sand ridges. As the plotter head strummed across the paper the image hardened, growing in length and firming in it’s detail. The lines were smooth and rounded and cast a long shadow where the sonar target masked the sea-floor beyond. The young sonar operator was too occupied with his magazine to notice the printout. But then, that wasn’t really his job anyway. He was just there to make sure that everything worked properly.

~§~

MV ENDEAVOUR ONE, Norwegian Sea, March 1990

Brett Ford squeezed the big Norwegian's arm, reassuringly, as he rang the telegraphs to ‘stop both engines’. "You are right of course, Olav. Find out what ships with lifting capacity are in the area, and notify Avenger we’ve had a serious accident. Tell them we need medical assistance.” He charged down the two flights of stairs to the ROV Control Room. Blevvins, the Scorpio Pilot, was seated at the control console. Glancing up as Brett entered the tiny darkened room, he shook his head grimly and calmly reported. "On the way down Boss. Fifty metres. I am holding multiple targets on sonar." There was something soothing in the man's laconic Texan drawl. Clenching his fists, digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands, Brett silently cursed whoever was behind the outrage. The bastards had booby-trapped the U-boat. "Coming up on the largest target now, Boss," reported Blevvins. "Should be right on top of it, any second now." He tweaked the thruster controller and eased his joystick back a fraction. "There it is for Christ-sakes! Jesus, what a holy mess." Brett slumped into the right hand seat and stared fearfully at the monitor. "I think we should switch to black and white, boss." "Leave it," snapped Brett. "Haven't you seen dead people before?" He heard Blevvins retch as the screen slowly filled with hideous images. The entire forward compartment of PC-1202 lay on its side, the large observation window a mass of smashed and jagged plastic glass. Floating inside, impaled through the chest on a jagged spear-shaped shard, was his friend, Charles Seaward. Brett gulped back the bile and the pain. In death, his friend's familiar face was contorted into a dreadful grimace, and Brett could see that the poor man had bitten right through his tongue. The severed organ was lolling downwards onto his chin, while a shoal of small fish were plucking up enough courage to gorge themselves off his shattered flesh. "Oh, Christ" moaned Blevvins, "Sweet Mother of Jesus, I ain't never seen nothin' as awful as this. Not even in Nam’, Boss. I never saw nothin' like this....” The video camera roamed on, its automatic focus pulling it deeper into the wrecked mini-sub's ghoulish interior. Pressed against the Diver Lockout Compartment hatch they could see Hamish MacCloud, the Sat Dive Supervisor. Both his eyeballs had burst and his neck looked as if it was broken, his head hanging forward at a grotesque angle, one golden ear ring glinting in the spotlight's glare. Brett pounded the arms of his chair with his tightly clenched fists. "I swear, as God is my witness, that they will pay for what they have done to my friends." The bridge intercom buzzed. "Helicopter coming in!"

~§~

On board the submarine formerly known as HMS Oberon, 1990

The torpedo compartment was in darkness. Water surged past the hull, a few inches above his head, while all around him the gear creaked, straining against the lashings. Max Lurrsen had no way of estimating how long he had been asleep, or for that matter, unconscious. His parched tongue followed the outline of his torn and bleeding lips, feeling each bruise, gently probing each swollen contusion. He cursed Heinrich Wolff, the Gestapo, and the Nazi party in that order. Then, gathering as much strength as he could muster, he spat out a piece of tooth, listening to it bounce off the steel grating beneath his feet. Then the depth gauge flickered and lit up, and he could see they were at three hundred feet. He wanted Otto Witzleben and his band of brothers beside him, and had to blink back the tears. Being on board a submarine again, after nearly half a century, was bringing the memories flooding back. Every time he regained consciousness, he was back on board U-74. Back in the North Atlantic, attacking a convoy bound for Britain. "Bow caps open, Sir," reported the control room. "Tubes one and three ready." "Firing solution," reported Leutnant Witzleben from the attack computer. "In position, now!" reported Pittinger. He raised his binoculars and swept their target from stem to stern. "Tell Otto to come up and watch the fireworks, Pieter." She was bigger than the first ship, older, with showers of sparks flying from her funnel. He caught a sudden flash of electric light as a door opened and closed on her boat deck. He glimpsed a man’s face; collar turned up against the weather, wearing a bulky lifejacket over a khaki greatcoat that reached right down below his knees. The man was young, no older than Pittinger, or Witzleben. It was the first time he had ever seen the face of his enemy. Behind his back, he could hear the Leutnant climbing through the open hatch. "Slow ahead both engines." The diesels belched oily black smoke. It billowed around the bridge and completely engulfed the four lookouts, before it was whipped away by the freshening breeze. "Fire one, fire three!" Otto Witzleben and Pieter Pittinger had stood shoulder to shoulder with him as the Bosun’s finger pressed the torpedo firing button. The massive explosion, the rush of flame, the air and sea on fire together, the inferno engulfing them all in its savage intensity. Witzleben frantically thrusting something into the pocket of his leather bridge coat, before his head burst open and his brains sprayed out onto all that was left of the U-boat’s shattered bridge. Then, as consciousness returned, the lines of a poem, written by someone whose name he would probably never know, came back to haunt him again.

The sea is full of dead men, and their spittle is the spray, And their cold breath is the vapour that blows silently away, And their laughter is the frenzy of the surf upon the sand, But their sadness is in parting so, without a waving hand...

He knew all there was to know about the sadness of parting, and, blinking back the tears, he cursed Adolf Hitler, Karl Dönitz, Hans Albrekt and Heinrich Wolff, reciting their names to himself in a litany of hate. Squinting at the depth gauge, he tried to focus on the black-faced dial, with its large white pointer. The planesman seemed to know his stuff; they were steady, hardly fluctuating more than a foot above or below the set depth. He admired that in a submariner. It took a good man to work the hydroplanes, a good man with a deft touch and steady nerves. Particularly the after-planesman, he needed to be on his toes the whole time. Any excess angle and she would soon be making an excursion, too deep or too shallow, both could be dangerous. One crushing or grounding, the other exposing the hull to watching eyes above. The buzz of the intercom invaded his thoughts. "Taurus submersible locked on. Stand by for dry transfer." He recognised the clipped English voice. The one that gave all the orders to the crew, and heard the bulkhead watertight door that separated the torpedo compartment from the forward accommodation space, open up. Blinking as the light flooded in, watching as an arm reached inside, clipping the heavy steel door onto its safety latch. He had been alone for hours, perhaps a whole day; he had no way of telling. Men clambered through the doorway. The nasty looking Arab caught his stare, gave him a dispassionate, lop-sided grin, and dropped down into the torpedo trench that ran right down the middle of the compartment. He hard the man grunting and the creak of a handwheel that seemed too stiff to turn. Then Corporal Jourdan ambled across to his sleeping bag, giving it a violent shove, sending him spinning, round and round, dangling from the single lashing that fastened him securely to the beam above. He heard the big Frenchman laugh, a grunting slobbering animal sound. Then Jourdan hit him across the side of the head with the lead weighted, rubber cosh.

~§~

La Rochelle, France, December 1942

There was just one lamp in the Admiral’s well-appointed dressing room, on a low table alongside a leather armchair. An armchair in which a man lay slumped, his legs and arms splayed at unnatural angles. Lurrsen checked his neck for a pulse and felt his fingers come away sticky with blood. The man had been garrotted with a thin wire,efficiently and silently. The sailor, a hefty young able seaman, still had a torch and machine pistol clutched in his hands. Lurrsen reached forward and removed the torch. “Jesus Christ,” he breathed, motioning for Witzleben to stay behind him, checking the torch, flicking it on and off again, his hand reaching for the door catch of the Admiral’s stateroom. Above the door, a heavy brass plate announced ‘Führer der U-boote.’ He was breathing hard, his head pounding and his stomach churning. He heard Witzleben cocking his weapon and gently turned the brass handle. The door was armour plated, and locked from the inside. The Admiral’s stateroom took up the complete width of the carriage, and was partitioned off with heavy mahogany panels, laid over one and a half centimetres of steel plate. ‘There must be a way round it,” he whispered, hoarsely. Witzleben tried to wrench the dressing room window catch open with his fingers, but it would not shift. “Here, use this,” said Lurrsen, passing him a white silk scarf he had found hanging inside a wardrobe door. “Wrap it round the butt of your gun, then give it a good hard whack.” He shone the torch while Witzleben used his Luger as a hammer. It did the trick. The catch sprang and he was able to slide the narrow window open. “Damn and blast,” groaned Lurrsen, realising the window was too narrow for him to squeeze through. Witzleben slipped out of his reefer jacket and passed him his Luger. Kicking of his shoes, he eased his wiry frame through the window, and disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel with the agility of a cat burglar. “For God’s sake, Otto” whispered Lurrsen, “don’t try anything foolish.” He was not sure if the young man heard him. Grim-faced, head thumping relentlessly, he could only stand and wait. Witzleben swung himself down the side of the carriage and found a foothold. Then he inched his way to the next window, gripping the guttering as he slowly worked his way along the coach. A jet of escaping steam from a hot water pipe beneath his feet, made him jump, causing him to almost lose his precarious hand-hold. His ice-cold fingers reached for the carriage window. It was open, just a crack, but enough for him to get a purchase. He slid the brass framed glass aside and heaved himself up, teeth chattering from the cold, sweat streaming down his face. The Admiral’s sleeping compartment was vast, as big as the guest bedroom of a small country house. The window was curtained with heavy velvet drapes, and between these and the window, a curtain of fine steel mesh hung down to the floor, anti-shrapnel netting, fine enough to stop steel splinters, or small arms’ fire. He thought he could hear a Mozart piano concerto playing on a radio or gramophone as he silently slid down onto the deeply carpeted floor. The stateroom was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from a dim bulb, recessed into the ceiling. It was Mozart, the piano concerto in D minor. He could hear the Admiral’s voice, as the gramophone automatically changed records at the end of the first movement. “What in God’s name do you think you are doing?” he heard Dönitz demand, in perfect English. Then another voice, British, very upper class, but with traces of a Scottish accent. “Place both your hands on top of your head, Admiral. If you try to summon help I will kill you.” The second movement was just beginning as Dönitz’s fingers reached for the light switch above his bed, but his interrogator’s hand shot out, seizing his wrist in a vice like grip. “I am running out of patience, Admiral” The fingers of Dönitz’s free hand reached under the bedclothes, searching for the bell push that was set into the frame of his ornate iron bed. He pressed it, again and again, straining his ears for any sound of the alarm bells ringing in the adjoining car, haring nothing. He knew the wires must have been cut. The operation had been well planned. Dönitz had been interrogated by the British before, in 1918. Despite their excessive politeness, he knew they could be quite ruthless. As if to reinforce that opinion, the man cocked his silenced revolver, and pressed the muzzle firmly against Dönitz’s right temple. “Your life means less than nothing to me, Admiral. My orders are to kill you.” ~§~

“That’s old Madame Joubert,” explained the plumber. “She was quite a looker once upon a time.” Colette knew the woman in question quite well. Her son sometimes worked for the Resistance, as a courier. In return, her father always made sure the old woman never went without the bare essentials. Bagnolle started whistling the Chant des Partisans, the song they called the Marseillaise of the Resistance. Colette joined in, singing the stirring opening quatrain, Ami, entends-tu le vol noir, in a sweet, clear girlish voice. “What did you think of the British officer, then?” enquired Bagnolle, when they had finished the last rousing chorus. “Did he make a pass at you?” Colette coloured prettily and tickled the old plumber in the ribs, causing him to swerve half way across the road, almost colliding with a horse and cart loaded with firewood. “For your information he was a Scotsman, and I can assure you, Monsieur Bagnolle the plumber, he behaved like a perfect gentleman the whole time he was with us.” The Frenchman lit up a cigarette with an ancient petrol lighter and puffed away thoughtfully for a moment. “Your Scottish man certainly made a mess of our friend SS-Major Lundt,” he observed. “From what I heard, he almost sliced the unfortunate Boche’s head clean off.” He drew one finger across his throat and made a gurgling sound to emphasise the point. Colette shivered; she could imagine Major Macleod doing something like that. The man was as cold as a fish, and only interested in one thing, escaping back to London and ‘getting on with the bloody war’. He would probably be safely back in England. God help the Boche if all British agents are as ruthless as he is. Outside the police station on the Place de Verdun, the Nazi swastika and French tricoleur flew side by side, whipping frantically from their halyards in the freshening northerly wind. A black Citroen saloon and a dark blue Renault police van were parked alongside the white-painted kerb. The car’s engine was ticking over and a man in civilian clothes was sitting behind the wheel, reading a French newspaper. “Bloody Gestapo!” spat Bagnolle in disgust. “They give me the creeps.” Colette shivered again and drew her coat about her. “Everybody in La Rochelle hates the Gestapo, “ she sighed. “Even the German navy.” The plumber laughed and tossed the remains of his cigarette into the road, negotiating the descent into the harbour area of La Pallice, carefully using his hand brake and throttle to avoid skidding on the glistening wet cobble stones. “And what, my pretty little Colette, do the navy have to fear from the Gestapo, eh? Surely, they are all tarred with the same brush? They’re all Boche, all fighting for the same beloved Führer, or have I missed something?” “Not all the navy people are bad,” replied Colette, her pale cheeks colouring again. “In fact some of them are quite nice, well mannered and polite. They don’t talk too much about the Gestapo or the SS but take my word for it, there’s not much love lost between them.” Old Monsieur Bagnolle remained unconvinced. “Sounds to me as if you have first hand knowledge of the navy, what with your work at the hotel and all. You haven’t taken a shine to one of those handsome young sailor boys, have you now?” Colette stifled a sudden sigh. “Well, there is just one who has been very kind to me,” she explained, quickly. “He’s not a sailor, he’s an officer.” “Jesus Colette,” growled Bagnolle. “What would your father say if he knew you’d been playing flirting games with the enemy? You know how he hates everything about the Germans - and for good reason too. Look what the bastards did to his leg on the first day of Verdun.” Colette, defiant beyond her nineteen years, sprang to the defence of her lover. “Papa knows all about Max, he knows I tell you,” she sobbed. “I’ll probably never see the sweet man again, and all because of this bloody war. It’s so unfair.” Bagnolle pulled in at the side of the road and passed her his handkerchief. She blew her nose, loudly and tucked it back inside his jacket pocket. “You’re a sweet man, Monsieur Bagnolle,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “But you don’t have any daughters of your own. We’re quite complex creatures you know, more so than your handsome boys. We don’t fuss and worry about silly things like nationality when we’re in love.” She kissed him again, on both cheeks and slid the van door open, feeling the icy wind lash her cheeks as she stepped out onto the wet pavement. The green painted wooden hut that served as a toilet for the wives and daughters of the town’s fishermen while they were working, gutting and packing the day’s catch was just a short walk from where the old plumber had parked the three wheeler. Colette turned the collar of her coat up against the wind and watched as a U-boat carefully negotiated the narrow harbour entrance, its crew standing in line on the casing deck, looking like drowned rats in the cold morning air. She noticed that there was no welcoming committee on the quayside, in front of the entrance to the concrete U-boat bunker, and no battle flag flying proudly from her periscope. It was a new boat, she decided, fresh out of Kiel or Wilhelmshaven , with an untried crew of young volunteers. She made a note to enquire about the new arrival when she reported for duty at the Hotel De L’Etranger the following morning. It was something she always did. It had become second nature to her; details of all arriving U-boats were sent to Paris, anonymously by letter, to a three-digit post-box number. The toilet hut was empty, the door banging noisily against its hinges. The key old Bagnolle had given her, easily opened the well-oiled lock. The package was tucked out of sight behind the ancient cast iron cistern, tied with string and wrapped in oilcloth. It was about the same size as a small book. She squeezed it and felt something hard inside, something square and about ten centimetres wide. She stuffed the package in her pocket and carefully locked the toilet door again, glancing up and down the road before walking across to the low stone wall that overlooked the fishing harbour. A drab, grey-painted tug was coming alongside the U-boat, using its power to help the submarine turn short round inside the basin. Its skipper, an old seadog in a greasy forage cap, had a snow-white beard. He waved to her and blew his steam whistle, the shrill blast echoing around the harbour. Two sailors on the U-boat’s foredeck waved too, as did a young officer high on the bridge. Colette smiled and waved back, imagining the officer was Max Lurrsen, coming home to her again. Not all Germans were bad she told herself. Max was lovely, so kind and gentle. She slid her hand inside the front of her jacket and pressed her mittened fingers against her stomach. It was firm to the touch, flat and strong. Soon it would show, the baby she was carrying for her U-boat captain. Her hand moved across her stomach, the gentle hand of a lover, the warm, tender, bear-like paw of Max Lurrsen. A soft, man’s voice interrupted her brief reverie. “Excuse me mam’selle, may I see your identity papers please?” She hadn’t heard the black Citroen saloon approach, she had been too occupied with watching the tugboat and dreaming of her lover. She could see the kindly old Gendarme felt uncomfortable. He had recognised her immediately the Gestapo officer had pointed her out to him, standing alone by the harbour wall. The German wore a grey trilby hat and a long black leather overcoat, which was belted tightly at the waist. He clicked his heels and bowed politely. “If you would be so kind as to accompany us to the police station. We need to check your identity papers and ask you a few questions. It should not take too long.” As the black Citroen executed a three-point turn and drove off up the hill, Monsieur Bagnolle the plumber crossed himself twice and offered up a silent prayer to the Virgin Mary.

~§~

Zurich, December 1942

They drove along the Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich’s main thoroughfare, and home of the big banks and most exclusive shops. A policeman signalled for the traffic to stop at the Paradeplatz. On the right was Jelmoli, the city’s largest department store. The front of the store was festooned with red and white Swiss flags, while a neatly stencilled sign announced that flags of every size imaginable could be purchased inside, and without textile coupons. After a few hundred metres, the car slowed and turned right, coming smoothly to a halt in front of the Ionic columns of the Hotel Baur-au-Lac. Heinrich Wolff, dressed for the winter weather in a dark green loden overcoat and alpine hat, stepped onto the kerb and waited for his tan leather briefcase. He could hear Hans Albrecht talking to their driver, a pretty, blonde haired young man, who, like the Navy Captain, looked decidedly uncomfortable in civilian clothes. Wolff drummed gloved fingers on the roof of the car, impatient to get to his room and take a bath. The journey from Berlin had taken the best part of two days, leaving him tired and irritable. The Baur-au-Lac’s concierge had confirmed his favourite suite was available, with its spectacular view across the lake. Wolff stamped his feet; it was well below freezing, too cold to snow. The sidewalk was sprinkled with a mixture of sand and sea salt. Wolff approved. The Swiss were efficient in all the things that really mattered, something he admired in a nation. Even a neutral one. Just as his impatience was on the point of turning to anger, Hans Albrecht slid his backside across the expanse of blood red hide and hauled himself out onto the kerb, dragging their matching briefcases with him. “Sorry about that,” he whispered, inclining his head in the direction of the young driver. “I’ve asked the boy to make himself useful while we settle into our rooms. He’ll be at the restaurant tonight as my dinner guest.” Wolff nodded. Albrecht rarely wasted a moment in getting to know good-looking Aryan boys. Not that Wolff minded. Each to his own. A bellboy appeared and explained that a party of Americans had just arrived and were still checking in at the front desk. Albrecht chuckled, watching the young man remove their luggage from the car’s enormous trunk, loading it onto his brass-wheeled trolley. The foyer was thick with cigar smoke and noise. A rowdy delegation of Washington bankers jostling at the reception desk, waving US passports. A scholarly, Jewish gentleman, removed his Homburg hat and apologised profusely on behalf of his fellow bankers. Wolff smiled at the man. “No problem,” he said, watching Albrecht scowl, unable to stomach the close proximity of Jews, particularly affluent ones. The concierge smiled broadly, the duty manager appearing at his side as if by magic, summoned by a discreet buzzer, exuding cordiality. “Doctor Wolff and party from Sweden, how good to see you again,” he warmly exclaimed. “Your rooms are ready and I have taken the liberty of having the maid run your baths. You must be exhausted after your flight from Stockholm. I hear it was delayed by fog again. It really is too bad.” Wolff smiled, he liked ‘grand hotels’ and the Baur-au-Lac was one of his favourites. He wondered what the butcher’s boy from Kreuzberg thought of the place. Viewed from the outside, the hotel was not particularly impressive, with its grey Biedermeier façade and somewhat incongruous Ionic columns. But in Wolff’s opinion, it had few equals. He loved its public rooms, big fireplaces, Tudor panelling and Gobelin wall tapestries. He had been visiting on a regular basis, for over two years, for his meetings with Charles Steinberger, in his private office. Steinberger was an adopted son of the Austro-Hungarian empire, who had trained in a leading Vienna bank. Wolff had been impressed by the man's seriousness and competence, but above all, by his complete, uncompromising, discretion.

~§~

Bletchley Park, December 1942

Close-to, Macleod could see that the scar on the Admiral’s cheek ran right under his chin, before disappearing inside the neck of his shiny starched collar. Rawlings pointed to an armchair. "Take a pew old chap, let's get straight down to business. I will start by filling you in on the latest stuff, plus a bit of the background info. You'll have to forgive me if you've heard some of it before." He unbuttoned his reefer jacket and sank into the chair alongside Macleod's, stretching his feet out and crossing his ankles. “From what we’ve heard from our spies inside La Pallice, we think Jerry's planning something really big. There has been a great deal of activity at the base since your escape: new crews joining boats, that kind of thing. There was also a briefing, by the great man himself, Admiral Karl Dönitz no less. With something like forty U-boats either getting underway or already at sea, my lords and masters think they are after shipping on the eastern seaboard of the United States again. In the first three months of this year they sank something like one and a quarter million tons over there, four times the rate they achieved in the North Atlantic last year. Dönitz called that operation Paukenschlag by the way, Drumbeat. He has given this one a name too; he's calling it Operation EisBär, after Group EisBär, the boats he sent down to foray off Freetown last year." He sniffed loudly and shrugged his shoulders. " The U-boat crews will find it a lot harder this time, believe me. They called the last one their 'Happy Time. This one is going to be different; the Yanks have come to their senses at last and are convoying most of their ships. That way they will lose fewer of them. " He turned and smiled. "Now we come to the business of the latest U-boat Enigma codes. The monthly settings tables you snatched from La Pallice have given us a way in. They were printed in soluble ink by the way, on a form of blotting paper designed to dissolve in seawater. The cardboard cover bore a picture of a polar bear. Now for a bit of background. On 1st February the German Navy introduced their fourth Enigma machine rotor, creating a new cipher we codenamed 'Shark'. Putting it bluntly, we couldn't read it; we were locked out. Caused no end of problems for my people I can tell you, we simply had no idea where the Atlantic U-boats were. We were completely shut out on Shark, still able to read the three rotor Dolphin signals to and from home waters boats of course, but bugger all on the blue water 'fellahs. Jerry was able to pick off our convoys with near impunity. To make matters worse, their B-Dienst broke our RN Number Three Cipher, used for most of our convoy communications. A week after Shark came into force, all we could read was the Dolphin stuff from Norway. We desperately needed a break into Shark if the U-boats were to be prevented from turning the whole of the North Atlantic into their own private lake. Hut 8 here were doing their best of course, came up with two days worth of traffic, but it took them seventeen days to get there, and by then, the information was very old hat indeed. Luckily, the gods smiled on us off the Egyptian coast. The destroyer HMS Petard sank U-559 off Port Said on the 30th October. They managed to get a boarding party inside her before she went down. Sad to say, it cost the lives of two good men. They only just managed to pass the boat's weather codebook up to a young NAAFI lad, just sixteen, who was hanging onto the conning tower like a bloody limpet. The weather codes gave us access to their Medusa settings, which enabled Hut 8's people to crack Shark. Your fourth rotor is now enabling them to read all the Ice Bear traffic, pretty well instantaneously. Without it, Hut 8 would have spent weeks, if not months, breaking the Ice Bear cipher. It's completely different to Shark by the way and would have been a much harder nut to crack." He climbed stiffly to his feet and stared out across the lake, over the rose bushes, towards the maze, deep in thought. There was a knock at the door and a middle-aged man in civilian clothes peered into the room. "Can you spare a chair for one more, Sir George?" The newcomer introduced himself to Macleod as Doctor Neville Tuke, former reader in mathematics at King's College Cambridge. "We've just discovered that Jerry named Shark after the son of Poseidon," he announced enthusiastically. Rawlings looked puzzled. "Triton," volunteered Macleod, "the minor sea god with the tail of a fish and a trident in one fist?" "Who blew through a twisted sea shell to summon the furies of the deep," added Doctor Tuke. "I'm impressed Colonel, a brave soldier and a classical scholar to boot. A rare commodity indeed." He tugged at the leather-trimmed cuff of his shabby tweed jacket and grinned enthusiastically at Macleod. "Which is precisely where you come into the equation, Colonel. Have you raised the furies of the deep? What do you think U-boat command will do about their missing settings sheets? Their priceless Innere Finstellung." Macleod shrugged his shoulders and stubbed out his cigarette in a brass ashtray that had once served as the base of a six-inch shell case. "They were piled on a table, neatly parcelled in waterproof paper and marked Streng Geheim. Each packet bore the pennant number of a U-boat. There must have been twenty or so. Perhaps they believe a clerk made a mistake, and simply forgot to make up a packet for one boat." The Admiral raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the civilian. “What does Hut Ten make of the current level of signal’s traffic emanating from Paris and Berlin?” Doctor Tuke found the old briar pipe he had been looking for, tucked inside his left sock. He struck a red tipped safety match and lit up, filling the room with clouds of whisky flavoured tobacco smoke. “It’s up by fifty percent at the moment, Sir George. We think they’re moving something like twenty boats into position in the northern section of the mid-Atlantic air gap, somewhere to the south of Iceland.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a sheet of buff coloured paper. "This is the latest signal we've decoded, using today’s Ice Bear bombe settings.”

FROM: FLAG OFFICER U-BOATS TO: ALL ICE BEAR U-BOATS PROCEED TO PATROL LINE AXIS NORTHEAST - SOUTHWEST CENTRED ON NAVAL GRID SQUARE AL2354. ANNEXE TO OPERATIONAL ORDERS WILL BE ISSUED SHORTLY. MAINTAIN STRICT RADIO POLICY IN ACCORDANCE WITH SEALED ORDERS. ENDS

“It certainly sounds as if they are proceeding with the operation as if there has been no breach of security, " said Macleod, confidently. “As I understand it, their boats form up in reconnaissance lines, reporting all enemy contacts, course and speed information, that kind of thing, direct to U-boat HQ.” “Pretty well spot on,” agreed the Admiral. "Their U-boats generally use radio for the transmission of tactically important information, when specifically ordered to do so by U-boat command, or when they believe the position of the transmitter is already known to us. They frequently change wavelengths and take great care to prevent any transmission from compromising their intended operational area." He stubbed out his cigarette and emptied the ashtray into a wastepaper bin. “Of course, the Enigma monthly settings tables could have been a plant, designed to dupe us into believing they are all heading for an area in mid-Atlantic. Drawing in our precious escorts while they assemble their wolf pack somewhere else. As a Karl Dönitz gambit, I certainly wouldn’t put it past the bugger.”

~§~

Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, December 1942

The camp occupied about fifty acres of hard, stony ground on which nothing grew apart from the occasional tuft of grass. Until winter arrived, there was always dust blowing about the place; in winter, the ground froze like iron. The camp perimeter was delineated by a deep moat and then by three rows of interlinked barbed-wire fencing. Within this perimeter, the camp was further divided into three sections, each separated from its neighbour by more moats, fencing and barbed wire. Section A was for aliens with criminal records, Section B was for aliens with political records, and Section C was for the Jews. The women were housed in wood and tarpaper barrack huts; long narrow buildings, measuring twenty-eight metres by five. Inside, in place of beds or bunks were upper and lower sleeping platforms that ran the length of the hut on both sides, leaving a narrow, three-quarter metre aisle down the middle. Two hundred women were assigned to each hut. They slept one hundred on each side of the aisle, fifty women on the lower platform, fifty on the upper, feet towards the centre, fifty-four centimetres per woman. About two and a half centimetres of straw had been spread on the boards. There was no other bedding. There was no stove, no lighting, and no glass in the windows. No blankets were issued. In theory, all the women had been told to bring blankets and luggage when routed from their beds in Paris or wherever. But in fact many were picked up in the streets or in cafes or train stations and shipped to Ravensbrück in cattle trucks, with only the clothes they wore. It was the third week of December. In North Rhine Westphalia, winter came early and lasted a very long time. There were barracks in which two hundred women shared fifteen blankets. Each new batch of prisoners was marched on the double from the train to the camp, SS guards with dogs hurrying them along. After being shaved of all their body hair they were disinfected and drawn up in ranks and the camp rules read out to them. The rules were strict, and even minor infractions were punishable by ten days in ‘prison’, the first day without food or water, the next three days on bread and water only. Each woman was assigned her fifty-four centimetres of straw covered wooden sleeping platform. The fortunate ones, the ones the SS Doctors didn’t want for experimentation worked from eight to eleven at their benches in the Siemens factory, and from twelve until six. There were four roll calls per day, each lasting half an hour. During roll calls, they were obliged to stand at attention. Some days it was snowing or raining or windy or icy cold or all four. Moving or talking was punishable by prison. There was water but no soap. They were never able to get clean. There were no eating utensils. They were fed three hundred grams of bread per day. For breakfast, they got black coffee, made from acorns. For lunch and dinner they got a thin soup, which they ate out of cans scavenged from the garbage dump. The soup had chickpeas floating in it, but no meat or fat. The only toilets were holes in the ground. Winter came on. Freezing winds blew across the bleak countryside and the temperature dropped to five degrees below freezing. The women worked in the ragged striped camp uniforms, wearing the shoes that no longer had laces or soles. The barrack huts were still unheated. There were still no stoves, no lighting, and no glass in the windows. There were still no blankets. Women began to die. In Colette Armand’s hut in Section B, a number hanged themselves from the rafters of their huts, with wire smuggled out from the Siemens factory. The SS guards called them the glücklich, the lucky ones.

~§~

U-74, North Atlantic, December 1942

“Propeller H.E. bearing one-three-five degrees, Herr Kaleunt!” reported Stassman, excitedly. “Two high speed shafts, closing!” “Shit,” snarled Kruger, setting the bearing on the attack computer. “Looks like we have an escort on our tail.” Leutnant Otto Witzleben crouched over the rotating hydrophone array controls, straining to hear the noise of propellers over the din of exploding torpedoes and sinking ships. Beads of perspiration had broken out across his forehead, dripping onto his cheeks as he watched Fleisch, the master gunner’s mate, rotate the large knurled handwheel of the Kristalldrehbasis Gerät passive sonar. The high-speed whine of twin screws was distinctive, no merchant ship could run her shafts at that kind of speed. She was navy, a warship, probably a US destroyer escort. He gulped as he heard the first ping of her powerful sonar. Lurrsen heard it too, it rattled off the pressure hull like a handful of pebbles. “Stop engines. Twenty degrees down angle.” U-74 had a sting in her tail, and Lurrsen was prepared to use it. “Estimated target range, two-thousand metres and still closing!” Erwin Foerster listened to the rumbling of far off explosions and trembled with barely concealed rage. “We should head towards them and attack, not turn tail and run like dogs!” Hans Stassman roared with laughter. “I’ve yet to meet a dog with what we’ve got up our arsehole!” “What do you mean, Oberfunkmaat?” The young Nazi’s voice rose to a near scream. “How dare you speak to me like that!” Unable to control his anger and fear, he lunged at the chief telegraphist with the navigator’s steel pointed brass dividers. “That’s enough!” shouted Lurrsen, “for God’s sake control yourself Leutnant.” He turned to Pittinger, “Prepare to fire tube five!” Foerster, red with rage slammed the dividers onto the chart table just as the red lighting flickered on again and the emergency lights went out. “Target range one-thousand metres,” yelled Kruger from the conning tower. “Tube five’s eel should acquire target at four-hundred metres. Firing solution in twenty seconds.” Lurrsen watched the hands of the control room bulkhead clock, counting down the seconds. “Fire five! Helm hard a starboard, full ahead both engine, two hundred metres. Take her down Pieter!” The after torpedo tube discharged its weapon as U-74 passed through three-two-zero degrees, diving well below the area of probable detonation. It was the first time Lurrsen had fired a T4 homing torpedo. Designed for attacking escorts, it was not in general use throughout the U-boat Arm, only six boats having been selected to receive the first batch of advanced prototypes. He was all too aware that firing had to be restricted to the after torpedo tube because of the danger of the weapon arming itself in the tube, the nose-mounted safety and arming propeller having been removed in order to make way for the acoustic seeker head. Effective only at close range, it was best fired from abaft the beam, where it had a better chance of homing onto its target’s propeller noise, instead of attacking the U-boat that had fired it. “Tubes one, two and three reloaded, Herr Kaleunt,” reported Pittinger “Very good,” acknowledged Lurrsen, brushing the sweat from his brow, then shuddering as the blast of the T4’s two-hundred-and-seventy-four kilos of high explosive detonated, almost directly over their heads. The explosion rumbled through the water, ebbing and flowing as wave upon wave slammed against the pressure hull. As the noise subsided the men started cheering, applauding their captain, slapping each other on the back, the relief showing in their tired, red-rimmed eyes. Lurrsen tilted his cap onto the back of his head and beamed delightedly at his crew. “Well done, men of U-74. Our first escort vessel. Well done indeed.” “Tubes one to four reloaded and ready, Sir,” reported Pittinger, grinning from ear to ear. “Happy Christmas, Kapitänleutnant Lurrsen, Sir.”

~§~

London, December 1942

Lieutenant Commander Douglas Makepiece, RNVR, took the call on the red telephone. “Yes, Sir...Yes, Sir...Right away, Sir.” Holding the receiver at arm’s length, he paused before replacing it, staring at the red bakelite as if unsure as to whether he could trust his own ears. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost, Douglas,” said Third Officer Alice Brown, hitching her tight navy skirt a few inches above her knees and settling herself comfortably on his lap. “You can tell me, I’m the secret lady. I’m very good at keeping secrets.” Makepiece ran his hands over her chest, feeling the generous swell of her firm breasts beneath his sensitive artist’s fingers. He had made love to her the night before, after a meal at her flat. Two lonely souls, far from home, billeted in London and desperate for friendship. He had been surprised at the intensity of their lovemaking and the immense satisfaction it had brought him to please her. His only previous attempt at making love to a woman had ended disastrously. “Th...tha...that,” he stammered, "was the Prime Minister...in person.” The tiny cubicle just off the operations room was in darkness as Alice kissed him on the lips and rose slowly to her feet, anxious to prolong the feelings of warmth and closeness. "Wow," she whispered, "it must be a really big secret." When Makepiece stepped out into the submarine tracking room, there were twenty-seven red topped pins to the east of Newfoundland, with another five in transit from the mid-point, and a further nine on passage from the Biscay bases. Commander Roger Winn looked up as Makepiece approached the paper strewn chart table. He looked haggard, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. Prone to collapse from sheer exhaustion, Makepiece could see he was pushing himself too hard again. Winn managed a weak smile and passed the letter he had just received to Makepiece. It was from the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff. No convoy or independent ship is to be routed against the advice of the Tracking Room without my express and personal permission. It was marked, Action Immediate, and bore the spidery signature of Rear-Admiral Edelstein. “Bloody good show, Sir, “ said Makepiece, warmly. “Real fame for the ‘wavy navy’ at last. You deserve a bloody knighthood." Winn laughed as he collapsed into the nearest chair, the tiredness suddenly falling away. “You can paint me a picture Douglas. Something calming. A river estuary at sunset, geese landing on the mirror smooth water, sailing boats dropping anchor for the night." He linked his fingers across his stomach and yawned. "Now what can I do for you, my dear fellow?” “It’s the Queen Mary, Sir, transiting as an independent. She’s down to two engines and unable to make more than twenty-one knots. Something to do with salt-water contamination in six of her boilers. The Prime Minister has personally instructed that she is to join convoy HXF-37 tomorrow morning. She’s carrying fifteen and a half thousand Australian, New Zealand and American troops, and if that wasn't enough, Herr Hitler has personally offered a diamond studded Knights Cross with Swords and Oakleaves and a million in Reichsmarks, to any U-boat commander who can sink her. Mister Churchill heard it on the German propaganda wireless, Lord Haw-Haw was making quite a thing of it apparently.” “I’ll bet he was," sighed Winn. "The treacherous little bastard."

~§~

U-74, North Atlantic December 1942

"I met an old lady who survived the sinking of the Titanic,” said Lurrsen. “She told me about an incredible thing that happened while the ship was sinking, and the water was lapping around the promenade decks. Apparently, the ship’s stewards were going about the deck carrying trays of sandwiches, politely murmuring, ‘May I offer you a sandwich?’ to everyone they met. She said they were unfailingly good-humoured, remaining on duty right to the end.” “It certainly tells you something about the enemy,” said Pittinger. "I've never ceased to be amazed by the hardiness and bravery of the British Merchant Navy." "I blame Nelson," said Lurrsen, rubbing his hands together. "England expects and all that stuff." The hot coffee arrived and the men helped themselves from the flask. The bridge watch was dressed for the weather. Long raincoats and sou'westers for the men and 'big seal' oilskin rain gear for the two officers. Lurrsen and Pittinger wore the combined hats and capes that left just their noses and eyes visible. A sailor's sixth sense, an instinct honed from years of watchkeeping, told Lurrsen to bring the U-boat’s bows head to sea and swell, and as she came round, under full port helm, the wind whipped across her forecasing, making a blood-chilling sound that was like the howling of a wolf. “Half ahead both engines.” "Just in time, Sir," shouted Pittinger above the rising roar of the wind. “Look!”Ahead of the U-boat, sea and sky had merged into an impenetrable curtain of inky blackness. “Shut the upper hatch! Clip on safety harnesses!” Pittinger kicked the heavy hatch shut and checked the lookout’s stout leather belts, giving each of them a tug for good measure. It was a simple, seamanlike precaution. U-74’s bridge standing orders listed the names of seven men who had been swept overboard on previous patrols. “Full ahead both engines! Steer north.” White foam streaks of phosphorescence patterned the grey mountainsides of an advancing line of enormous waves, their glinting, curling crests adding majesty to the inhospitable seascape. The wind's note had changed from a howl to a roar and the entire surface of the sea was foaming, as a thousand white horses raced each other down the U-boat's rusty sides. She shuddered throughout her length and dug her nose deep into the first swell, diesels racing as the thrashing blades of her twin screws came clear, biting deep again as her blunt, shark-like bows, came up to meet the solid mass of onrushing sea. "Ran into weather like this off Acapulco once," shouted Lurrsen above the roar of the wind." He made a grab for the spray dodger and braced himself for the next roller coaster. "Revolutions for ten knots, no point in ripping the guts out of her." It took less than twenty minutes for the squall to pass through, and behind it, the weather worsened steadily until dawn's early light brightened the eastern horizon. It was then that the starboard lookout spotted the Catalina. The aircraft came in low, skimming the wavetops, it's twin piston engines thundering above the roar of the U-boat's twin diesels, belching flame from a heavy calibre machine gun mounted just behind its wing pylon. Lurrsen was catching a nap down below in the attack centre, still dressed in his rain gear when he heard Witzleben shout, "Alarm! Aircraft! Hard a starboard!" at the top of his lungs. Lurrsen heaved himself up through the hatch and onto the bridge, oilskins flapping around his shoulders. Fleisch the master gunner's mate had whipped the canvas cover off the barrel of the 20-mm and was lining up his weapon. "Gun's crew! Engage!" The flak gun juddered into life, flames belching from its muzzle, spent cartridge cases ringing off the steelwork as Fleisch pressed himself into the shoulder pads, scything the air with tracer. Lurrsen ordered reverse helm and turned to the starboard lookouts who were crouching behind the bridge bulwarks. "Get below!" He knew it would save precious seconds. With a deranged Foerster barricaded in the fore-ends, diving would be a slow process. U-74 required at least twenty men forward to get her bows down. Without their extra weight, he knew she would take at least six minutes to submerge. The Catalina thundered overhead, the roar of its propellers reverberating off the twisting, turning U-boat beneath her, and as the flak gun spewed out its rounds of tracer, the grey winter’s sky lit up with a sudden dazzling intensity. Lurrsen shielded his eyes with his hands as a harvest of spluttering parachute flares bobbed violently on the wind, showering the U-boat with burning magnesium, drifting so close he could feel the heat against his frozen skin. He knew the depth charges would follow on the next attacking run and he was forced to watch helplessly as the Catalina banked sharply, well beyond the range of their puny flak gun. Fleisch ceased firing, keeping his weapon trained, tracking the ugly looking aircraft with a look of grim determination on his face. Once it was within range again, he squeezed off more short bursts of tracer. "Well done, Fleish!" shouted Lurrsen. "From now you will answer to the name of Flakmann." He was on the point of ordering a crash dive when the edge of the pack ice loomed wraith-like from the morning mist, less than a thousand metres ahead of the boat. Close enough for him to hear the ice growling in protest, as it rubbed and chafed its way south.

~§~

Iceland, December 1942

Colonel Frecke cursed the hand-bearing compass and cast his eyes about for a visual reference, while above his head, the rapidly shifting patches and dancing columns of multi-coloured light of aurora-borealis cast their eerie shadows across the lava strewn granite mountains flanking the drop zone. Yellow, brown, red, green and grey, flickering tongues of galactic light that sent a chill through the ninety young men under his command. Nothing had prepared them for this. No textbooks, no almanacs, no airforce meteorologist had warned them of the strange phenomenon that greeted their descent from the skies, and the bleak, inhospitable, Icelandic snowfield. It had started as they were gathering their gear, opening up the containers and pulling on their white cotton two piece snow suits. He was shivering from the cold. After the fuggy warmth of the aircraft it had come as a shock to his system. It was not just the temperature. He had been prepared for that. The thermometer was a fraction of a degree below zero Celsius. It was the sudden windstorm that had blown up out of nowhere. The fifty knot wind off the mountain that carried an alarming, mind numbing, wind-chill sting in its tail. Frecke knew he had to get his men into shelter, and quickly, before they all started freezing to death. The intensity of the auroral display, coupled with the close proximity of masses of granite rock, caused the compass needle to deflect alarmingly, well to the west of magnetic north. Frecke cursed Admiral Canaris. Their mission was already futile. To make matters worse, it was probably totally unnecessary. No maritime patrol aircraft that Frecke had ever heard of could fly in the sort of conditions he and his men were encountering. He checked the alignment of the valley against his map, while his men and their NCOs hunkered down in the narrow gully. The compass indicated a magnetic variation in excess of fifty degrees. It was completely useless. Angrily, he stuffed it back inside its pouch-pocket, with clumsy gloved hands and peered down the valley through his field binoculars. He could see the two rivers, dazzling silver ribbons in the auroral glow, with fireworks skipping along the rushing torrent of ice melt. Further on, they merged into one, flowing down to meet the sea between Reykjavik and Hekla. He turned his head back towards the valley and watched as the blue-green lip of the glacier emerged briefly from the swirling snow, its leading edge less than five hundred metres above them. Then he saw something that made his flesh crawl. A mighty auroral arch, a luminous arc lying right across the whole valley, with blazing filaments and streamers at right angles to it, the filaments diverging towards the zenith, where curtains, fans, flames and more still more streamers danced and sparkled on the freezing Arctic wind. It was a scene from the deepest depths of hell itself. He sensed that his men, Hitler Youth, Nazis to a man, young men brought up on tales of Wodin and witchcraft, were terrified. To them it was something of another world, something supernatural, a sign from the Gods, a signal that their arrival had caused the anger of a far greater power than that of any man on earth. Up to that moment, his paratroopers had believed themselves to be conducting a crusade. To Frecke, the consummate professional soldier, they were something more than mere Nazi zealots. The exculpatory myth of collective insanity induced by Hitler and Himmler was something he did not personally subscribe to. But his men did, and without exception. They were all in thrall to a form of messianic cult. A cult that had managed to disguise itself as a political party. The winter solstice ceremonies of the Hitler Youth and SS he had heard them talk about, conducted in secrecy at the Externsteine rocks at Detmold in Westphalia, celebrating the birth of the sun child born from the ashes of Jesus Christ. Their cult-hero, Heinrich Himmler, was a man who believed that the Aryan race could be bred according to the principles of cattle rearing. The genesis of lebensborn. Frecke knew in his heart that the Hitler Youth was the end result of bovine coupling. Neo-peasants in neo-mediaeval dress, obsessed with witchcraft and the supernatural. Willing noviciates to a mystic brotherhood of Nordic men. A mystic brotherhood inspired by tales of Teutonic knights and mediaeval legend. Professional soldier that he was, he had no time for such rabid nonsense. He asked just two things of the men under his command: that they obeyed orders and gave their lives for him if called upon to do so. He rose stiffly to his feet, pulled the hood of the snow shirt over his steel helmet and re-slung the loaded machine pistol across his chest. “Oberfeldwebel, move out. Single file, follow me.” He marched towards the river, his men behind him, nervous and strained, restlessly glancing back over their shoulders at the unfolding paranormal drama that seemed to be following them, all the way down the sloping snow covered lava field to the Icelandic capital and the sea beyond.

~§~

Convoy HXF-37, North Atlantic, December 1942

“We must get the people away,” stammered Padgett, sensing the ship was lost. "As quickly as we can now." He hauled himself to his feet, using the Yeoman’s broad shoulders as a purchase. “Dear God,” he sighed as he reached the midships bridge front window. Orvicades's forecastle was under water, the anchor windlass and capstans completely submerged, the derricks and pedestal cranes ripped from their mountings, floating away amidst a tangled sea of cordage. Padgett stumbled around the wheelhouse in a state of near desperation. Chief Officer Murphy was dead, his body spread-eagled on the deck, the top of his head crushed, brain and skull fragments showered across the portside engine room telegraph pedestal. The Junior Officer of the Watch , the ship‘s Senior Third Officer, was also dead, his body unmarked, as if he had simply fallen asleep behind the Quartermaster at the wheel. Of the two bridge lookouts, burly ordinary seamen, there was no sign. They had simply vanished, blown over the side and into the sea by the savage force of the explosion. The ship’s master, Captain McEwan , a dour Glaswegian, emerged from the wrecked chartroom. “What an unholy mess you’ve made of my poor wee ship Padgett. I knew I should never have trusted her to you toffee-nosed P.& O. Steam Navigation Company Walla's.” Padgett felt the sudden rush of searing pain in his head. “Are you going to give the order to abandon ship, or shall I?” he snapped. McEwan shrugged his burly shoulders and Padgett could see that there were tears coursing down the Scotsman's craggy cheeks. He reached for the Tannoy microphone and pressed the button with his thumb. “This is the Commodore. Abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship.” McEwan pressed the switch that changed the emergency station alarm to continuous ringing and walked out onto the starboard bridge wing. He could see Orvicades was settling fast, twenty degrees down at the bow, listing to starboard, the sea already up to the level of her wide promenade deck. He watched as his crew, assisted by hundreds of willing young American soldiers, lowered the ship’s boats and liferafts.The Chief Radio Officer, a prematurely bald Marconi Company man appeared at his side. “The wireless room is out of action, Sir. All the radios smashed. The emergency transmitter is still functioning. Do you want me to send out an SOS?” McEwan took in the fire that had started forward in number one hold and was now consuming the children’s nursery on ‘C’ deck and approaching ‘B’deck and the stadium deck in front of the bridge and sought out Padgett who was being helped out onto the bridge wing by the Yeoman of Signals. The Commodore nodded his head in resigned agreement. “Aye, Sparks,” said the Master, “send your distress signal. Tell the whole world and his dog. Every U-boat for miles around will know we’ve been hit. I expect the buggers will be sniffing around, waiting to kill us off once and for all.” His words were drowned by a sound like a rifle shot, followed by a loud cracking sound from forward. Then the ship's one-hundred and fifteen foot tubular steel mast, toppled headlong into the sea, taking all its rigging with it, leaving just the tops of the four derrick posts showing above the water. “It’s the old girl's way of telling us we should be leaving,” said Captain McEwan, sadly. He placed a hand on Padgett’s shoulder. “I’ve listened to what Orvicades had to tell me for nigh on seven years now and she’s never let me down.” He faced Padgett with a wry grin on his face. “Which is a good deal more than I could say about some people.” The ship’s Senior Fourth Officer raced up the companionway from the Captain’s deck, one level below, gasping for air as he made his report. “Damage control situation is desperate I’m afraid, Sir. The First Officer and his fire party are fighting the fire inside the linen rooms and pantries on ‘D’ deck but the number three hold after bulkhead is already glowing red hot. Boundary cooling just won’t help, he wants permission to regroup his team on ‘C’ deck and tackle the fire from there.” Captain McEwan looked aft, along the long expanse of the boat deck. The six starboard lifeboats were already rowing away from the ship, leaving just the number one boat, the small motor launch used for man overboard in peacetime, level with the embarkation deck. He snatched up the loudhailer microphone. “Hurry it along there, men. Get number one boat away as quickly as you can now. All boats stand off the ship and wait to pick up any survivors in the water!” Scalding steam hissed from Orvicades’s funnel as he worked his way across to the port bridge wing and carefully picked a safe path across the splintered deck. Beneath his feet he could see the deck outside what had once been the Staff Captain’s suite, and more recently the Convoy Commodore’s spacious cabin. Designed for entertaining the ship’s VIP passengers, it had seen many an elegant cocktail party in its day. A vision of sun-tanned women in low cut evening dresses and men in well tailored white dinner jackets swam into his shocked brain as he stepped carefully across the gaps between the steel beams that had once supported the port bridge wing's teak deck. From the gyro compass repeater grating he could see that three of the port side lifeboats were already in the water. Of the remainder, one was on its way down the ship’s steeply sloping side, while the other two looked as if they were about to be lowered. He could see that Lennox, the Junior Third Officer, appeared to have everything well under control. The young man caught sight of him and waved, giving him a cheeky thumb’s up signal. “Bloody young pup,” growled McEwan, turning to the Senior Fourth Officer who had followed him across the shattered remains of the bridge. “Tell the First Officer he is to obey the Commodore's instructions. He is to proceed to the boat deck starboard side and take charge of the final disembarkation. Tell him Mr Murphy is dead and that he’s to take command of things there.” He wiped a sudden tear from his cheek with the back of one hand. “Murphy was a fine man. He would have got his own command come the spring. It’s all a terrible bloody waste and no mistake.” He turned and shook hands with the Senior Fourth, then spontaneously hugged the young man to him. “You’ve all done well, lad. I’m proud of every single one of you. Now get to your lifeboat and make sure all the survivors are picked up, d’ya hear me? Every last one of them. I don’t want Orvicades to go down in infamy like the bloody Titanic. Everybody who can be saved, must be saved.” He picked his way back into the wheelhouse just as the hatch covers of number six hold erupted, spewing hatchboards and canvas and luggage into the air with the force of a volcano. The noise was deafening and he felt the ship shudder and settle still further, as one of the ship’s four nursing sisters appeared through the chartroom door. She was wearing her silk lined boat cape and carrying an emergency satchel over one shoulder. Her professional eye swiftly took in the carnage in the wheelhouse. Then she covered the dead Chief Officer’s body with her cloak. McEwan remembered they had been close, planning to marry when Murphy got his command. The bridge ordinary seaman, no more than a boy, was sitting on the deck, propped up against the flag locker, his body festooned with yards of multi-coloured bunting. He had been carefully stowing away the ship’s freshly darned blue ensign when the torpedo hit and both his legs were broken below the knees, white splinters of bone protruding through the pale white skin and torn blue serge. He waited patiently, smiling as she injected the Omnopon. As the morphine brought relief, two boyish American soldiers arrived with a Neil Robertson stretcher . They gently lifted the injured boy onto the canvas and wood, buckling it tight across his chest. "Get him to number one lifeboat as quickly as you can,” said the Nursing Sister, gathering up her things and hurrying out onto the starboard bridge wing, to where Commodore Padgett and Captain McEwan were standing shoulder to shoulder. The Scotsman smiled and pointed to the Commodore’s head, which was tightly bandaged with the Yeoman’s handkerchief and a yard of white bunting. “You’d better see ta’this fellow, he’s taken a wee knock on the head. Strange to say it seems to have knocked a wee bit of sense into the silly bugger. He’s lost his plummy English public school accent and is speaking quite normally.” “How are things below decks?” whispered Padgett, as the Nursing Sister’s nimble fingers applied a fresh wound dressing. “Could be worse, Sir. The sick bay is like a mad house, the casualty clearing stations were a good idea though. Most of the injured have been through them. We have a hundred and nineteen serious casualties for evacuation, seventy-eight dead counting Edward Murphy. Most of them ship’s crew, who were forward in their quarters. On top of that we have about two hundred walking wounded. Fit young soldiers mainly, Sir. They should be all right.” Giles Padgett reached inside his bridge coat and drew out a Havana cigar, neatly wrapped in tissue paper, nestling undamaged inside its dented aluminium tube. “I was going to save this until we reached Liverpool," he explained. "But there seems no point now.” The Yeoman of Signals stepped forward and struck a match on the teak rail. It flared and spluttered, lighting up his weathered face. “Thank you, Yeoman,” said the Commodore, spitting out the end off the cigar and inhaling deeply. “I think the time has come for you to consign all the Confidential Books to the deep. If you would be good enough to place the convoy signal book and all the other CBs in the appropriate weighted bags I would consider you to have more than done your duty by me.” The Nursing Sister finished bandaging his head and he steered her gently by the elbow, towards the stairs that led to the Captain’s deck below. At the top of the stairs he removed his lifejacket and bridge coat, and draped them both across her shoulders. “You must get to your lifeboat, as quickly as you can my dear. She won’t last much longer I’m afraid.”

~§~

Bletchley Park, January 1943

Admiral Sir George Rawlings walked grim-faced through the rose garden, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his greatcoat. At the entrance to the maze, he stopped and turned to look back at the house, his keen eye taking in the curious copper dome, tarnished green with the passing years, so out of place above the mock-Tudor brickwork and Gothic embellishments of the house. "Blast it!" said a familiar voice from within the maze. "And just when I thought I had this thing beaten." Rawlings watched as the neatly tended hedges stirred, and the Prime Minister emerged, brushing a few stray leaves from the astrakhan collar of his overcoat, with a gloved hand. " Such a maze is most appropriate, Sir George." The eyes of the great man twinkled brightly. "Enigma being just such a maze to us lesser mortals, with only a smattering of the complexities of higher mathematics." "Eloquently put, Sir," said Rawlings, helping Winston Churchill across a forlorn looking flower bed, its spring bulbs dormant beneath a mantle of rain-drenched compost. "It's derived from the Greek word for enigmatic," explained Churchill. "Ainigma matos, ainisommai, to speak allusively, and ainos, a fable. Nowadays of course, we tend to think of it as riddle, a puzzling person or thing." He laughed loudly. "That Dutchman certainly knew what he was doing when he invented his blasted coding machine back in 1919." He stooped to examine a green shoot, brushing the tip of the plant with the gentlest touch of his sensitive, artist's fingers. "When I first came down here, back in late summer 1941, I was amazed at the eccentricity of the codebreakers here. There were classicists, historians, scholars of every colour and hue. I said as much to the First Sea Lord but he disagreed with my assessment. Sir Dudley Pound had been down here to thank the codebreakers personally after the Bismarck show. They had done a brilliant job breaking the Luftwaffe cipher, getting the news first hand that Bismarck was making for Brest. His visit gave the morale of the people here a terrific boost. It proved the Navy was taking Bletchley seriously at last." He smiled and rubbed his hands together. "I now call the codebreakers the geese who laid the golden eggs." He chuckled loudly. "In complete contrast to what I said about them to Colonel Menzies of MI6 on my first visit in forty-one." In a stentorian tone, he said. "I know I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I didn't expect you to take me literally, Colonel!" He resumed his walk again, hands clasped firmly behind his back. "Now remind me again, Sir George, how many variations can this infernal Enigma accommodate?" Rawlings fell in step at his side as they strolled towards the lake. "The original machine had five rotor wheels," he explained. "Of which three could be used at any one time, giving sixty possible orders in which the rotor wheels could be placed in the machine. This resulted in 17,576 different position settings for each wheel, while the plugboard permitted 150 million changes of circuit. The result? 159 million, million, million different settings." Churchill grunted and searched in his pockets for matches. "I dread to think how many setting this four rotor Enigma the U-boats are using would have," he said. "As a very modest chess player, my mind would never be able to cope with the mass of numbers involved in so complex a mathematical equation." "I'm afraid it's quite beyond me too," said Rawlings,modestly. "Spherical trigonometry as applied to navigation was never my strongest subject at the Royal Naval College." Churchill laughed and stopped to relight his cigar. "I could never believe that of a man like you, Sir George. It is my sincere opinion, that if we are to win this great game of chess with Herr Hitler, men like you are the key to our ultimate success." He blew a cloud of smoke into the air and stood with his feet apart, hands behind his back. "Which is precisely why I have the immense pleasure of declining your resignation."

~§~

Lufthansa Flight LT23, 1990

The old man lived in the ground floor flat of a large ugly villa in Aumühle, thirty miles south of Hamburg, its only saving grace being that it was convenient for U-boat Arm reunions and walks in the forest. A polished brass plate beside the door bore the words ‘Eingang Dönitz’, while an arrow pointed the way to the entrance. The visitor rang the bell and heard the sound of musical chimes within. The admiral answered the door himself, a man whose name and face had once been almost as familiar as that of Grand Admiral Raeder or Adolf Hitler. “So!” the admiral said, “Gerricht”, and shook hands with his visitor. He had always been small but now he seemed quite shrunken. Still erect in bearing, unmistakably a seasoned commander. In neatly pressed charcoal-grey suit and shining shoes, he was dapper in his dress, and there was no mistaking the ferret-like face, the money box slit of a mouth and the blue, commanding eyes.He helped his visitor to hang up his coat and said “So!” again, then led the way through to the living-room; a gloomy, modest affair, with a bookcase stacked high with naval books, a desk with photographs of his dead family, a crucifix, and, on a separate table, a highly polished brass model of a German U-boat. "I used to have many more mementoes of my naval career, but the British," - he seemed to speak of them as some distant tribe -"looted them." He produced a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry and two glasses from a cupboard and poured. "I'm sorry about my deafness, it's because I'm too old." His voice quavered. "When I was a young man, people lived to be sixty-five or seventy." He took his guest by the arm, in a fatherly way, and said, "I am eighty-one. You will probably live to be ninety or even a hundred." Karl Gerricht smiled. "I would be happy to live as long as you, my beloved Führer." He raised his glass in salute, and there were tears in his eyes when he spoke. "You have always been my inspiration. My trust in you, and my loyalty, have never wavered." Admiral Dönitz beckoned for his guest to sit down, deeply touched by his former comrade's sincerity. Gerricht had been a regular visitor to Aumühle over the years, just one of the many hundreds of U-boat comrades who had kept in touch with their beloved leader. Karl Gerricht’s post war career had been the most spectacular of all the U-boat veterans. His rise through the ranks of national politics and onto the international stage, where his voice could frequently be heard, had been testament to his discipline and training. The former Führer der U-Boote sipped his sherry slowly. "My only concession to the British," he explained, with a smile. "I still drink their bloody sherry." Gerricht settled back in his chair and raised his glass in a toast. “To old comrades, too many to mention.” He had waited a long time for the meeting; Karl Dönitz had been very ill and his daughter, Ursula, with whom he lived, had kept all visitors at bay for well over a month. At eighty-one, he had outlived all his family, except for his daughter and her children. Gerricht had known both his sons in the U-boat arm. They had been killed in enemy action at sea; Peter in U-954 in May 1943 and Klaus in an E-boat, S-141, the following year. After the loss of Peter, Dönitz had taken advantage of a special dispensation whereby senior naval officers could withdraw a second son from front line service. The idea, pure National Socialist theory, was to ensure that elements of the best blood survived to enrich the race - senior officers and party members were, by definition, of the best blood. Accordingly, Klaus had been withdrawn from the staff of the 5th U-flotilla at Kiel and sent to train as a naval doctor at Tübingen University. While visiting friends in the 5th Schnell Boat flotilla at Cherbourg, he had been invited to take passage in S-141 on a routine reconnaissance patrol. It was to Karl Dönitz’s everlasting sadness that the patrol had run into the Free French destroyer, La Combattante, off the English south coast. With both sons dead, sacrificed to the Nazi cause, the admiral had thrown himself into his crusade with the renewed vigour and passion that wartime tragedy can sometimes bestow on a devastated parent.Gerricht knew that the old warrior’s fervent admiration for Hitler had never diminished, despite having served ten years for war crimes in Spandau prison. He sipped his sherry, as the man whose U-boat crew's still called, 'the father of us all', cleared his throat and began to talk. Dönitz’s voice quavered but his memory of the six years of war was still formidable. "U-1422 had to return to Blohm and Voss and go into dry-dock. On the 5th April bombs fell in the dockyard area. The supports holding the boat upright broke and she tipped over, denting the port ballast and fuel tanks and bending the periscope so that it was no longer usable. The situation was desperate. In the east the Soviets were advancing towards Mecklenburg. The Americans had taken Essen and Hannover and the French had reached Stuttgart. On 20th April I was given territorial command over the North, including North Lower Saxony, Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck and Schleswig-Holstein. Field Marshall Kesselring commanded in the south while Hitler remained in overall command, in Berlin. The Reich was already divided before the Americans and Russians joined hands on 25th April at Torgau on the Elbe. Before the ring could close around Berlin I decided to abandon my Naval headquarters, my Koralle, a hutted camp near Bernau, and evacuate everyone to Plön, in Holstein. Once there I managed to block the Führer's scorched earth policy and preserve Hamburg and the bridges over the Elbe. Volunteers from the U-boat force fought on the outskirts of Hamburg, against British forces advancing through Lüneburg Heath from the south. Though I knew the fighting courage of the U-boat men, I was full of concern as to whether they would measure up to an unaccustomed land battle. A single day's training was all we could spare to make an infantryman out of a U-boat man. My fears were unfounded, the men performed bravely and well with their Panzerfaust bazookas. On the evening of 30th April, shortly after eighteen-hundred hours, a brief communication, signed by Bormann, whereby Adolf Hitler appointed me his successor in place of Reichsmarschall Goring, was promulgated to all function