Night Sky (31 page)

There were others, some in civilian clothes. David glanced at them. He saw a face he knew.

It was Schmidt.

Schmidt was hanging back in a corner, looking uncomfortable. He took an occasional look at his surroundings, at the bare walls and simple equipment, with slight distaste. David thought: Well might you look uncomfortable, my friend. Schmidt hadn’t spotted him yet. David watched him, waiting for the moment when he would, but Schmidt was keeping his eyes away from the prisoners’ faces. David felt vaguely disappointed.

Himmler was strolling down the room, nodding as pieces of the enemy devices were shown to him. Then he turned and searched for someone. His eyes fell on Schmidt and he smiled slightly. He beckoned the Chief Scientist towards him.

There was total silence.

‘Herr Schmidt …’ Himmler’s voice was surprisingly soft, almost gentle. ‘I trust you are pleased with what we have arranged here.’

Schmidt spoke in a near whisper. ‘Yes, it seems most satisfactory.’

Himmler smiled benignly, like a kind schoolmaster. ‘Well, I’m sure you will want to speak to some of the prisoners about their work. So please go ahead.’

Schmidt stared uncertainly.

Himmler made a small bow. ‘Yes now, by all means. We are quite happy to wait.’

Schmidt looked unhappily around him, hoping for an escape. He focused on Meyer and stared hard. Then recognition sprang into his eyes and he relaxed visibly. David thought: Of course, he knows Meyer well. Schmidt went up to Meyer, and soon they were examining a cathode tube captured from a British bomber. A buzz of conversation sprang up around the room.

David wondered what had gone on there between Himmler and Schmidt. Perhaps Himmler was doing Schmidt a favour, and didn’t want him to forget it. Perhaps Schmidt had been desperate for scientists and had been forced to ask the SS to provide them. You would think that the SS would be embarrassed to use Jews, the inferior race. But no: Himmler was obviously delighted with the laboratory. It was Schmidt who was uncomfortable here.

Schmidt was standing in front of him. ‘Freymann …’

He was looking startled and David suddenly realised it was his physical appearance which Schmidt found so surprising.

Schmidt dragged his eyes down to the bench. ‘And what have you been working on?’

David explained, as simply and briefly as possible. Schmidt seemed satisfied, and began to turn away. But then he paused and said, ‘We looked into that shortwave radar idea again, that one you kept pressing. We established once and for all that it was not possible to develop it, nor indeed
wise
. It would be grossly inefficient.’

He was waiting for David to comment, but David stared past him and did not reply. He did not know what to say. Schmidt added irritably, ‘It was a waste of time and money to research it. But of course,
you
knew best, didn’t you?’

David said, ‘Yes, it was a mistake. I see that now.’

The party began to leave, their boots shuffling across the wooden floor, their voices loud and raucous. Himmler was enjoying a joke with one of his junior officers, his lips pulled back in a pleasant smile. He had obviously enjoyed his day at Dachau.

As the door closed and silence fell, David sat down wearily on his chair. He felt terribly depressed.

To think he had worked willingly for these people. It made him feel ashamed. It had been vanity, really; wanting to show how brilliant he was, wanting to impress. Of course, he’d talked himself into believing he’d done it for the state and was working for a great common good which touched everyone equally. He’d separated the state – the people – from the Nazis. But he’d been quite wrong. The people, the state, the Nazis were all one. You only had to look at Schmidt to see that. How else could a scientist, a
thinking
man, visit this place and be untouched.

Vanity. It was leading him on even now. It was pricking him over the shortwave radar and that remark of Schmidt’s. How he’d love to prove to Schmidt that he was wrong. How he’d love to show him!

Pure vanity.

Shaking his head, he got slowly to his feet and went back to work.

T
HE STAFF CAR
slowed to a crawl as it negotiated the wide streets of a town. The change of pace made Doenitz wake up and look out of the window.

His staff officer, a young man called Schneider, said from the front of the car, ‘This is Morlaix, sir. We are approximately forty minutes from Brest.’

Doenitz nodded and stared at the monotonous procession of houses and shops. All French towns looked alike to him. He closed his eyes again. He often catnapped, particularly on long journeys. It helped to clarify his mind when he was working out difficult problems.

But, though he’d been over it time and time again, he could find no solution to his greatest problem: this early war with Britain.

When war was declared he’d had a meagre fifty-six U-boats of which only twenty or so were suitable for the Atlantic. Six months later he was down to a dangerously low total of thirty-two …

Only this miracle, the occupation of France, had saved the German war effort.

Doenitz stared out of the window at the Breton countryside and blessed the marvellous turn of fortune which had given him the long west coast of France and unlimited access to the Atlantic. It was everything he could have asked for. His boats no longer had to return to Germany round the north coast of Scotland and run the gauntlet of the shallow North Sea. Now they could reach their hunting grounds more safely and much, much quicker. Just three months after the Occupation, Doenitz had transferred two flotillas to Lorient and a third here to Brest.

The car turned a corner and Doenitz glimpsed the sparkle of water in the distance. He looked at his watch. They must be nearing Brest.

Doenitz said to Schneider, ‘Please give me the details of the programme.’

There was a rustling of papers and Schneider said, ‘Sir. At 1230 there will be lunch in a restaurant adjacent to the dockyard. At 1430 we meet Herr Dorsch, the architect from the Todt Organisation, and tour the dockyard. At 1600 we have a general review meeting with the Naval Commander, Brest. Also you will wish to meet U-319 when it returns. The last ETA we received was 1530.’

Doenitz nodded. ‘Very well.’

U-319 was commanded by Kapitanleutnant Fischer. Fischer was a good man. He had done especially well on this patrol. Doenitz remembered the brief radio signal received at HQ in Paris yesterday. It had reported six ships sunk. Six! And by one boat during a five-day patrol. It was remarkable. Yet many of the other boats were achieving great successes too. The average sinkings per U-boat per day were way up. September should be a record month, with at least fifty ships sunk.

Fischer already wore the decoration of the Iron Cross of the Knight’s Cross, First Class. Doenitz would present him with the Oak Leaves this afternoon. In the U-boat Arm they did not wait for boards of senior officers to approve awards; decorations were given immediately, on the dockside, when emotions were running at their highest and the men could share the recipient’s moment of glory.

The car was travelling along the edge of a wide estuary. The occasional farmhouse had given way to a string of small villas: they were coming into Brest.

Doenitz considered the rest of the day’s programme: the planning session with the Todt Organisation man should be straightforward. It was a matter of discussing the construction of the necessary dockyard modifications. Work was already in progress. They were using Polish labour apparently, and Poles always worked hard.

The staff meeting would be the usual mixture of optimism and resignation. The staff did not bother – or maybe, Doenitz wondered, they did not dare – to ask for the one thing they knew he could not provide: more boats.

Only six new U-boats were being launched this month; in August it was a disastrous two. It had been the same in May, June, and July … Not enough even to replace losses!

The High Command always told him it was a matter of resources – what they really meant was that everything was going into Goering’s precious Luftwaffe.

They were descending into the dockyard area. The car swept in through some large stone gates and approached an ugly grey stone building over which flew the flag of the Third Reich and the ensign of the Kriegsmarine. Waiting on the steps of the building were the commander of the 1st U-boat Flotilla and his staff. An ordinary seaman was keeping a tight rein on the flotilla’s mascot, a goat draped with the flotilla’s insignia. Doenitz was pleased. Back in 1935 this flotilla had been the one and only U-boat flotilla, and Doenitz himself had been its commander. Doenitz remembered with pride that the men themselves had thought them up, the insignia and the mascot.

Immediately the greetings were over they went to the restaurant. The lunch was indifferent. Doenitz considered French food to be very overrated. The wine, however, was excellent, though he drank very little.

He cut the lunch short and they started the tour of the dockyard early. Brest was a well-developed port, as one would expect of one of France’s major naval bases, and considerable repair facilities already existed. It was a question of making modifications, Dorsch explained. The larger drydocks needed to be adapted to take two U-boats at a time; also more engineering shops and welding facilities would have to be created.

‘How long will the work take?’ Doenitz asked.

‘Eight weeks at the most.’

‘Good.’ Once the work was done another flotilla could be moved to Brest from Kiel. Doenitz wanted as many boats as possible here, where they would be most effective.

As the party walked slowly back towards the cars the distant drone of a plane sounded high in the sky. Everyone looked up.

‘One of ours.’

Doenitz nodded. So it should be. Goering had promised air supremacy: he’d better deliver it otherwise here in port the U-boats would be totally vulnerable to air attack. Rumour had it that the air battle with Britain was not going so well.

He turned to the architect. ‘Herr Dorsch, how long would it take to create sail-in bunkers for my boats? Ones that would be invulnerable to air attack?’

Dorsch was taken by surprise. ‘Oh? Er, I would think – allowing for the fact that the roof would have to be massively thick – my goodness, yes, very thick indeed … er, I would say, at least six months. All the concrete … all the labour. How many boats would need to be protected at once?’

‘Ten, twelve, more if it was possible.’

‘It would be … a massive project.’

‘But possible?’

‘Oh yes! Most certainly!’

Doenitz was pleased. If the air battle was lost then at least his boats would be safe in port.

That left one really vulnerable point: the run across the Bay of Biscay. It was here, in the approaches to his new French bases – Brest, Lorient, La Palice and St Nazaire – that his boats were most exposed to enemy air patrols. Rather than search the open Atlantic, it was easier for the British to wait for departing or returning boats in the Bay.

He made a mental note to ask at the staff meeting about the current state of enemy air activity. What the U-boats really needed was proper air cover. But they never got it, Goering saw to that.

Back at headquarters the flotilla commander, Korvetten-kapitan Scheer, was waiting and the meeting began promptly.

The routine reports of successes, losses, and mechanical breakdowns were read out. The U-boat quotient – the average tonnage sunk per U-boat per day – was going up monthly. Everyone was pleased.

‘But soon it will go up very much more,’ Doenitz said. He explained that, as soon as another flotilla could be based on the French coast, they would have enough boats to reintroduce properly organised wolf pack tactics. The wolf pack would increase kills dramatically. Doenitz also promised first-class intelligence to help locate convoys.

Then they looked at the problems. Scheer, the flotilla commander, was most concerned about air attacks. The RAF had taken to carrying – and dropping – depth charges. And as Doenitz had foreseen, many of the attacks were being made in the Bay of Biscay.

‘But the boats manage to dive in time?’ Doenitz asked.

‘Yes,’ Scheer agreed, ‘but sometimes it’s closer than we’d like. In bad visibility the enemy never find us, of course. But in thin cloud they often see us first and, attacking from down-wind as they do, well … Our men neither hear them nor see them until it’s almost too late. And with these depth charges …’

‘But a good lookout solves the problem?’

‘Well – yes,’ admitted Scheer.

‘That’s the answer, then, isn’t it?’ Doenitz said a little impatiently. ‘And as many boats as possible should sail at dusk to benefit from the cover of darkness. Any other suggestions?’

There was a short silence, then someone said, ‘Any chance of getting the magic eye?’

A few U-boats had been fitted with a large and cumbersome radar device just before the war, but the results had been so poor the idea of having radar in U-boats had been dropped and the sets removed. Since then all research into small sets had ceased.

Doenitz replied, ‘No. There will be no radar. Tests prove that sets small enough to fit into our boats would be impossible to develop.’ He remembered the Chief Scientist’s report: it had been quite definite.