The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller Page 2

  It was shortly after dusk when Rasp took his place on the conning tower, just after Helm, the anti-aircraft gunner, took his position aft of the tower. If the ship were to be attacked, its captain was protected.

  His crusher-style cap was pulled low and tight against the damp wind that swept from the sea, its brim tugged low to shield his eyes from the glare of the lights. The brutes were affixed to the underside of the ceiling, which was concrete 6.2 meters thick. The lights shone directly down on the U-boat, stern to stern, with virtually no bleed into the water. The illumination was efficient and it was safe: to strike the target, an aircraft would have to fly directly into the boat’s guns for half a kilometer. No Allied plane could survive that assault, especially if the other U-boats joined in the defense.

  Rasp was dressed in a leather jacket for warmth, zippered over his two-piece navy blue uniform. He was squinting through the glare, watching for the arrival of the convoy from Haigerloch. They had taken a route that carried them in a long, looping journey to the south; Berlin did not want them running into advance units from the US VIII and XV Corps, among the few that were pushing south instead of east to Paris. High Command had run the risk of fielding the three trucks without air cover; presumably, Allied spotters and even the occasional aircraft were scouting for trouble spots, and a squadron of Messerschmitts would have attracted their attention.

  Rasp hooked back the jacket sleeve and glanced at the illuminated face of his watch. The trucks were due in less than two minutes. The last radio check, from Lorient, had it precisely on time.

  That validated the U-boat philosophy, Rasp reflected. Travel under the surface and they will learn of you when it is too late.

  His gloved hands gripped the iron rail that had been freshly scraped of rust and repainted. He sucked down the clean air, if breaths tinged with sea salt mingled with the heavy odor of diesel fuel could be called fresh. For someone who lived on recycled air, it was close enough. He stood there and thought about the cargo they were to carry. It scared him, too. He and his crew understood ordnance. They knew how to stalk and sink ships. They were experts at transporting fifth columnists and putting them ashore. They were masters at decoy, using themselves as bait to draw destroyers or aircraft into position for counterattack.

  But this—

  The officer didn’t see the headlights of the lead truck because they were swallowed in the glare of the overheard arcs. But he heard the rumble of the diesel engines. They stood out among the squeaking of gears and pulleys, the hum of transformers, the whine of drills, the sputtering of screws under the surface, the slap of the water on the hull, noises to which he’d grown accustomed during the three days they had been here. In a U-boat, one’s survival often depended on noticing sounds that were out of the ordinary, from the hiss of a leaking pipe to the hum of an approaching vessel. Though it was the lack of sound that was most unforgettable: the awful silence of every hand, of the shutdown of every unnecessary system, that anticipated the explosion of a depth charge.

  The vehicles were all three-ton Opel “Blitz” trucks, painted in camouflage green with matching canvas backs. These were the later versions with tires, not the original, treaded Maultiers meant for rapid movement through field and wood. On this mission, speed was essential, and aerial scouts had determined that the road conditions were satisfactory.

  Rasp swung over the ladder and climbed to the deck. He jumped from there to the concrete pier. If the cargo worried him, the importance of the mission was an effective counterbalance. Succeed and the Reich could be saved. Fail—

  No. The reaction was instant, emphatic. But Rasp had never failed. Not in his resolve to join the German navy, not in his determination to be assigned to a U-boat crew, not in his rapid rise from a Maschinist, a motorman responsible for maintaining the engines, to an Electro Obermaschinist, a chief petty officer who looked after the electric motors and batteries, and then through the officer ranks, nor in sinking more enemy vessels than any other U-boat commander. It had been a rewarding seventeen years. Rasp had his differences with the Reich, though he never articulated them. Hitler had raised Germany from the ruins of the First World War, a war that had cost him his father. Though he was in his thirties, telegraph operators were needed at the front and they had sent that loving man to France shortly after his son’s tenth birthday. He was killed when an artillery shell made a direct hit on his trench. His mother went to work as a typist for the local newspaper, then as a secretary for one of the first offices of the German Workers Party in 1919—the group that evolved into the National Socialist movement. She encouraged her son’s military career, not that he needed the push. She wanted him to avenge his father’s death, to punish the oppressors, to destroy those who sought to twist the German character into something weak and decadent.

  The Russians and the British, whom he already disliked. Now the Americans. No, a push had not been required.

  The convoy stopped at the inner mouth of Pen 10, just twenty meters from the gently rocking prow of the U-boat. A complement of eight armed guards surrounded the vehicles. Rasp went directly to the second truck. His contact was a civilian, Professor Paul Dammann, who would identify himself with a single word. That word had been radioed to Rasp on the submarine just an hour before from Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the Armed Forces High Command in Berlin. It had been given to Professor Dammann when he left. The OKW had also given Rasp one additional instruction.

  A slender young man in a white overcoat and black fedora stepped from the back of the truck. He was followed by two brawny soldiers. They lowered a wooden crate from under the canvas and carried it between them. It was about the size of a steamer trunk and was supported by two strong leather handles.

  Rasp was the only one standing on the pier, and Dammann went up to him. He examined the chevron of rank on the officer’s cap. Then his pale blue eyes drifted to the brown eyes of the commander.

  “Captain Rasp?”

  Rasp nodded.

  “I have been instructed to say nothing,” Dammann said.

  “Nothing” was correct. Now it was Rasp’s turn.

  “Professor Dammann, I have been instructed to ask for the item Obergruppenführer Holtz gave you when you left his office,” Rasp said.

  The scientist seemed puzzled, but only for an instant. He smiled and reached into the pocket of his overcoat. He handed Rasp a silver Reichsmark.

  “It was for good luck on my journey,” Dammann said. “I agree, though, it is fitting you should have it.”

  It wasn’t for that, though Rasp didn’t bother telling him so. It was for identification. Had Dammann been captured and replaced en route, the package stolen, the impersonator would not have known what to give Rasp.

  The soldiers brought the heavy crate to the deck, where two of Rasp’s crew took charge of it. With a bit of effort and more hands—two men on top, two on the bottom—the object was lifted to the top of the tower. It had to be turned on its side in order to lower it through the hatch, though Dammann assured the captain that was all right.

  “The item is secure,” he said.

  Physically, Rasp thought. On his last leave, right before the Allied Invasion, when he first heard whisperings of this project—without knowing that he would ever be involved in its potential salvation—he read from a book in the library he had purchased from Herr Lang. The object itself was not fragile. The risk, the danger, was what could not be seen.

  Once the crate was inside and safely stowed in the captain’s small aft cabin, Dammann nodded, lit a cigarette, uttered a small but heartfelt “Heil Hitler”—which Rasp returned—then offered the captain his hand.

  “I will await you on the other side,” Dammann said.

  Rasp gave him a little smile, then motioned to the Head of Security that it was all right for the convoy to leave. The trucks would head for the airfield at Lannion, a hundred kilometers to the northeast. From there, the scientist would fly to their destination at Bornholm, Denmark. If something happened to the U-
boat, the OKW did not want to lose their wunderkind physicist along with his creation. If Dammann were lost, there were others in Denmark who could continue his work. Those concerns were the reason the OKW staged the mission outside Germany. The logical port from which to disembark was Kiel, just a short run across the Kiel Bay to Denmark. But military intelligence believed the base had been infiltrated; a similar operation, with an empty chest, was being conducted with the U-70 in case the Allies were watching.

  The guards withdrew from the trucks, the men boarded them, and Rasp returned to the conning tower. When the hands ashore had released the two cables on each side that held the U-boat securely in the pen, Rasp picked up the radio handset and gave the order to leave port. Steuermann von Harbou, on the helm, knew the order was twofold: he was to back the U-boat from its berth and immediately submerge, since they would no longer be protected by the concrete roof. By the time they cleared the pen, they would be underwater.

  Rasp had entered the hatch immediately after the order was acknowledged. Hooking one arm on the inside ladder, he pulled the iron cover down and secured it with clockwise turns of the wheel. The officer hurried down the seven metal rungs, the thump of his hard-rubber-soled shoes lost in the surrounding rush as the sea closed in around them. He remembered how it had hurt the first time he had heard that sound from in here, the combination of the noise and the immediate change in pressure. That was before he had learned to swallow, hard, right before submerging.

  The sounds of both men and machine were heightened underwater. Rasp had expected that when he was assigned to his first U-boat, the Type IIB U-120, with just twenty-five officers and seamen aboard. Using an electric hearing aid that was inserted directly in the ear, he was trained to be aware of the many background sounds he would hear but to ignore the details. Otherwise, the mind would become overstimulated and tire quickly. Wearing padded leather earmuffs, Rasp was also taught to listen very carefully to what was being said by those sharing his station. During periods of “silent running,” when surface vessels or other underwater boats might be listening, orders would be given at a whisper. During training sessions on a mock-up in Kiel, Germany, when pumps and ventilator fans had been shut down, when all movement ceased, the whispers actually seemed louder than normal speech.

  What did surprise Rasp on his first run in 1936—a weeklong patrol in the Baltic Sea—was how, once undersea, the crew and the boat became a single organism. He was part of the fish he had so long ago imagined. And the fish was part of a school of brothers, the school part of a larger system. It was there, packed inside forty meters of metal and equipment, that he understood what his mother had meant: Man was made great by a unity of purpose.

  Rasp stood by the communications console on the port side of the vessel, Oberleutnant Kuehle to his left. Except for their stature, a broad-shouldered 5’8”, the men were opposites in almost every way. The two even stood differently, the commander standing at ease with his arms at his side, his second poised more rigidly, clasping his hands behind his back. Kuehle was a fun-loving womanizer, raised in Berlin, a competitive boxer and weightlifter. He was blond, square-jawed, clean-shaven. Rasp’s hair was black, and on the days when he shaved he had a stubble by noon. He preferred to read—science and history, mostly—and when he had leave he went to see his mother. He did not drink and found no comfort in 48-hour liaisons. When Rasp was younger, there was a career to prepare for. Now that he was older, there was a war to salvage. Those thoughts had never been far from his mind.

  However, the two shared a passionate love of country. If Kuehle shared Rasp’s concerns about the dangerous cargo they carried, it was not evident in his manner. Neither man had admitted anything other than the fiercest desire to see this mission to a successful conclusion. At present, life held no other purpose.

  Rasp did not go to the periscope. The Brest harbor was closely protected by around-the-clock sea and air patrols. There was no chance they would be approached by sea until they were at least ten kilometers out. With luck, with the Allies focused on Paris and beginning to shift other assets to the assault on Germany, this journey would go unnoticed.

  The voyage to bring the core of an experimental thermonuclear device, an “atom bomb,” to an area where it could be completed, mounted on a V-2 rocket, and used to utterly destroy London today, then Moscow, and then Washington, D.C.

  Captain Kealey had watched as the truck approached the submarine pens, then watched as it had departed. No fanfare, no excessive guard, as befitted a valuable cargo. He watched as the U-boat disembarked. He saw it go under at once, signaling the importance of its mission: it would strain its resources rather than risk being seen with its tower above water. They would surface only when they were certain Brest itself had not been targeted for a twilight raid.

  That was the most important of the circumstantial evidence.

  Kealey waited a few minutes more, then cranked his radio, and sent the one-word message: “Doughboy.”

  There would be no audio response because he didn’t carry earphones. He had to wait for the red light on top to pulse twice.

  He dropped low behind the bunker to make sure he had not been heard. From inside his black leather jacket he wore his single-shot .45. The so-called “Lighter” was a palm-sized handgun, millions of which were made by a small U.S. weapons firm from sheet metal stampings. Extra shells were stored in the grip. They were dropped by air for use by the Resistance, whose members would approach a soldier and produce papers or ask for directions or a light for a cigarette—hence, the nickname—and fire. If the Germans happened to find the weapons after airdropping, they were of little practical use

  Kealey heard distant sounds from the harbor, barely audible over the thump of his heart. The wind picked up a little and he bowed his head to keep it from rushing into his ears. He couldn’t turn away entirely because he had to keep one ear trained on the dirt road to his left. He wished he could hear something from inside the bunker, anything. But the walls were too damn thick.

  He thought of his wife, May. He gave her soft cheek a mental kiss. He smelled her in his mind, thought about their brief leave-time honeymoon in New Orleans a year before, on Columbus Day—

  A year? He’d forgotten his anniversary. Not that he could have sent her a letter or a cable. He was not permitted contact with the world beyond Brest, except by radio to London—and those were typically one-word messages. May was living with his parents in Key Largo. He hoped they would have remembered and made a fuss. His mother would have. She wrote everything on that little desk calendar of hers. As a boy, that was how Kealey knew when she and his father were going to visit his teacher at the one-room schoolhouse he attended. Young Largo knew to be away from the house on those days.

  He thought one last time of his smiling bride. I’ll make it up to you, he promised. If I survive the next ten minutes.

  The light on top of the radio winked twice. The message had been received—blink one—and understood—blink two.

  Kealey felt his chest deflate as he hurriedly closed the flap over the radio, slipped his arms through the straps and heaved it onto his shoulders, and squatted low to make sure his retreat was clear. He made sure he had his balance, that his breathing was steady so that he wouldn’t feel dizzy when he rose, then got up slowly—

  The bunker door opened. Kealey heard the hinges squeak faintly and he crouched back down. He hunkered as low to the ground as he could go and still remain on the balls of his feet. The “Lighter” grew hot and damp in his sweaty palm. He flexed his fingers to redouble his grip and held tight to keep it from slipping. A moment later he heard the gentle crumbling of boots on dirt, heard paper crinkle, saw the glow from a flaring match. Then he heard a long inhale. Kealey guessed that this was the corporal allowing himself a short break after what had been a tense departure. The noncom wouldn’t have known what was onboard the U-boat, only that its timely departure was imperative. That had been accomplished; protocol now allowed him to open the door and stand do
wn from Höch-stealarmstufe—high alert.

  Kealey was no longer thinking of home. He had been in this kind of situation before, living moment to moment. Each instant was extended, each sense heightened, each stimulus magnified. Every move of the man’s boot was like a beacon: was it an idle motion, a step away, or a step toward him?

  The dirt crunched. It was nearer than the last step. A second step, the glow of the lighted cigarette was nearer, the smoke wafted around the wall—and then the man stopped. Another pair of steps and he would be at the edge of the wall. He would see Kealey.

  The American agent breathed slowly through his nose, his breath softer than the wind. It would not be heard. He didn’t swallow, however, and saliva pooled in his throat. He considered his options if the gun misfired, which was a possibility.

  The footsteps moved—toward Kealey.

  Suddenly, a voice came from inside. “Unteroffizier Lang, hast du eine Zigarette für mich?”

  “Ja,” the corporal replied.

  “Ich habe keine.”

  “Warten sie eine Minute.”

  “Wurden sie mögen Kaffee?”

  “Ja, ja,” the corporal said.

  The kid was out of smokes, Kealey thought, but he didn’t need to tell his superior that. He was probably green. Really green. That was why he asked about the coffee, too. He just needed to talk.

  Kealey knew that if he took one he’d have to take them both, but that wasn’t what concerned him. When the team didn’t check in—probably on the quarter-hour, which they must have just done, hence the break—the infantry would descend on the spot like sharks on an injured porpoise. They would know the U-boat’s departure had been observed. They would radio the sub to wait or divert. The course that the British Admiralty had carefully left them—through battleships and openly mined waters—might not be used.