Spook's Gold (46 page)

The gendarmes confirmed that they had seen no one else out of the ordinary. “Do you want us to take care of her for you?” asked walrus moustache, leering at Lemele.

“I think that I will hang onto her for a bit longer, thank you Arnaud. I’m still concerned that our mutual friend might be out there somewhere.”  Graf looked up and around, scouring the darkness. “So she might yet come in useful. But thank you for your help with her. I’ll be sure to mention it to Henri and I’ll ask him to put an extra bonus your way.”

The shorter gendarme gabbled his thanks and started back up the shingle slope, pulling his fellow officer by the arm, uncomfortable with this turn of events and eager to be away.

Although her hand was numb and her forearm intensely painful, Lemele was able to move her hand and flex her fingers, so she did not think that a bone was broken. Graf hauled her to her feet and thrust her down the slope towards the dinghy that he had selected to use. His request for help in turning it over was silently refused, Lemele gesturing to her injured wrist. Graf scowled but there was nothing he could do. After some heaving and grunting on his own he managed to flip the boat over and drag it the ten metres to the water’s edge. Lemele considered running, but there was nowhere to go. The gendarmes were still lingering on the edge of the strand and there was only open beach to either side.

Graf grasped her again by the bicep and marched her to the dinghy that was now bobbing on the edge of the surf. He shoved her roughly over the side, clambering in after her and ordering her to sit in the stern, facing outwards, with a warning not to try anything stupid. Then he began to row, taking them out towards the open sea.

----

Squatting in the ditch, all of the men were getting fidgety with nothing to occupy them except slapping at the swarm of insects thirsty for their blood. Marner noted that it was darker than it had been on previous nights, a low ceiling of heavy bulging cloud was obscuring any light that might have been provided by the crescent moon. It would aid them in moving undetected, but heighten the risk of them blundering into conflict with patrols.

Not that there seemed to be much risk of that. They had seen no sign of life other than the two gendarmes who had cycled slowly past a few minutes ago, presumably on their way home. Whilst on the one hand it indicated that nothing was amiss down there, it only served to increase the mystery of why Lemele had not returned. If any harm had come to her, it did not fit with the fact that the two gendarmes had been chatting calmly as they had ridden by; it did not add up.

“We should get moving,” whispered Marner to Delaune. “She has had plenty of time to look around and get back. Something must be wrong.”

Delaune slid the cover off his wristwatch face and held it up close to his eyes. “Forty minutes,” was his terse reply. Marner waited for him to add something further, a comment on whether they would move, but nothing more was forthcoming.

Surprisingly, it was Dubus who agreed with him. “Fritz is right. And time is running out. We need to get down to the rendezvous point and get set up early for the ambush, not be on the receiving end of one.”

Marner noted that Dubus’ support was primarily out of interest for the combat situation, not for Lemele. But no matter; the important issue was to take action, to go and find Lemele. Delaune said nothing; he could even have been asleep except that Marner could just see the whites of his eyes. Eventually Slowikowski added his support to Dubus. After a few moments further reflection Delaune grunted and stood up, signalling that the decision was made and that they were to move off.

To Marner’s dismay, Delaune led them north, directly towards the cliffs. This track would mean that they would entirely bypass the village. As they moved at a rapid pace across a field, Marner tried to argue, “We should go to the village and find Inspector Lemele. She may be in danger,” he insisted, hoping that the reminder of Lemele’s function and rank might raise her status and importance beyond being a mere female nuisance to these military men.

Delaune was not in agreement. “You heard what she said. She will meet us at the rendezvous. If she has been captured, then sooner or later she will turn up where we are going. Besides, we do not have the numbers to search the habitation and we do not know if there are any Germans or sympathisers there.”

“But...”

“Enough, Lieutenant. This is
my
operation and we focus on the objective. The lady knew the risks when she volunteered to go down there.”

Chapter Fifty

Captain Riesen was the first up onto the dripping deck of the conning tower of the U-180, moments after it breached the surface. Closely behind him, almost shoving at his heels as he hurried up the ladder was Otto Kurtz and then a third seaman. Even before the water had finished sluicing off the hull, they had rapidly searched the sea and sky around them, eyes and ears straining through the darkness for any hint of danger or ambush, any sign of whomever or whatever they were supposed to pick up.

Riesen, intently scanning the dark outline of the rugged low bluffs that were just three hundred metres away, was jumpy and very unhappy. He had been obliged to eschew the preferred operating procedure for clandestine pick-ups, which involved a periscope check from at least one thousand metres from the defined position and then to dash in and surface at the specified coordinates. Instead, due to the very shallow depth and rocky coastline, they had slowly reversed the U-180 towards the coast at periscope depth to reach the current position. He was extremely uncomfortable at being forced to a rendezvous point in such treacherous waters, one that would leave them precious little depth to dive in an emergency. Therefore, he had specifically maintained the orientation of the vessel directly towards the open sea. If the need arose, they would make full speed straight ahead towards deeper water whilst crash-diving. It would not gain them much depth, but it might make the crucial difference.

They had picked up the mysterious Kriegsmarine signal ten days earlier, during their voyage from Kiel to Bordeaux. It had come with no message, only the coordinates and time for a rendezvous. But for the fact that it originated directly from Kriegsmarine OKM centre, as verified by the codes and transmitted at the correct hour, Riesen would have ignored it. He had in fact considered ignoring it. This whole mission had been bizarre and he wondered what else might be in store, could possibly surpass what had taken place so far.

Riesen had been enraged and dismayed in equal measures when he had been ordered to take command of the U-180 in February. He had wondered what grievous error he could have committed to have been placed in charge of a cargo vessel like this. Having achieved high grades during training and excellent appraisals during his first posting as the second-in-command of the U-326, he had naturally expected that he would qualify for a prestigious attack submarine as his first command. His senior officer had managed to calm and mollify him with the hint that a very special mission was being planned for the U-180 and that Riesen had been specifically selected for it. Therefore the U-180 was not quite the ‘lame duck’ assignment that it appeared to be.

His first task had been to take the submarine to Kiel to pick up an essential part of the cargo and have the U-180 fitted with the new Schnorchel system, then return to Bordeaux for final preparations. The trip had given him the opportunity to become acquainted with the capabilities of the U-180 and her crew. The promise of an extra three weeks shore leave whilst in Kiel during the refit had gone some way to compensating for the time and risk involved in the journey. 

The Schnorchel was essentially a type of exhaust system that permitted the venting of fresh air to, and the exhaust gases from, the diesel motors whilst the submarine was submerged. Submarines were hampered by the limitation of being forced to run on batteries whilst underwater, which restricted their range and speed, as well as being obliged to remain surfaced for long periods of time running the diesels to recharge the batteries. Therefore, the Schnorchel system permitted the U-180 to run on diesels below the surface on an almost permanent basis, only having to come up to refresh the air tanks and jettison rubbish. For Riesen, this was an invaluable modification to the U-180 in that a significant portion of its batteries had been removed in favour of liberating more cargo space.

His misgivings, however, had set in when he had been fully briefed on the technical aspects, and in particular the limitations, of the Schnorchel system at Kiel. The main problem was that they would be unable to go faster than six knots submerged because the drag of the water could cause the Schnorchel funnel to shear off. In addition, the restricted diving depth with the Schnorchel, barely ten metres below the surface, would mean that they could only safely use it at night; during the day the outline of the U-180 would potentially be visible to allied anti-submarine aircraft at such a shallow depth. And last, but not least, the non-return valve fitted to the top of the Schnorchel mast had demonstrated a potential to jam closed. In the event of this mishap, the diesel motors would suck the air from within the submarine instead of air from above the surface. To date, at least two u-boat losses had been confirmed as attributable to Schnorchel malfunction. No wonder that the system had initially been rejected by both the Germans and the Allies when they had discovered it fitted aboard the Dutch submarines that each had impounded or captured at the beginning of the war. In spite of the known drawbacks, the increasing success of the Allies at detecting and sinking submarines whilst exposed on the surface recharging batteries had forced a reversal of Kriegsmarine doctrine on the system.

At Kiel, the anticipated shore-leave had not materialised. The U-180 had been directed to berth at a remote and closely guarded hangar at the eastern quay of the Kiel dockyards. Riesen and his entire crew had been confined to the hangar under intense security during the three weeks. They had been allowed to get off the U-180 and move around the quayside to escape the confinement of the boat and to exercise, but any attempt to venture outside of the hangar had resulted in them being turned back by the guards. Whatever item or goods that they cited as their reason for wanting to leave had been supplied to them, be it mechanical spares or consumables.

Having realised this, the crew had turned the boredom of their restriction into a game, ordering ever more fanciful items. Only the arrival of three live pigs that had then been turned loose in the hangar had brought an end to the forbearance of the security personnel. Due to the overabundance of liquor that had been ordered, Riesen had taken care to round up as much of it as he could at the last minute before they cast off to commence the return journey, leaving it stacked on the quayside.

Loading of the cargo had taken place during the final week of the Schnorchel installation. He had easily been able to identify the component parts of the V2 rocket that had been loaded aboard the U-180 and he presumed that something about this object held the key to the puzzle of the special mission.

----

The route to and from Kiel, which lay on the Baltic coast of Germany, had required them to navigate the treacherous ninety kilometres of the Kiel Canal that stretched east-west across the entire border between Germany and the peninsula that was Denmark. The canal was a shorter route than going around the Danish coast via the heavily mined Jutland peninsula, but it was subjected to almost daily attacks by the Allied air forces, both direct bomb and torpedo attacks, as well as mines. To Riesen it had felt like being bottled up in a narrow and shallow tube with no opportunity to dive or manoeuvre. They had been entirely dependent upon the anti-aircraft defences and mine sweepers along the length of the canal for their protection.

The attacks had been especially intense after their departure from Kiel. And once released back into the North Sea, they had repeatedly been harried by British destroyers, such that the ‘ping’ of the active ASDIC sonar systems used by the enemy became their constant companion. Riesen had had to repeatedly dive the U-180 silent and deep, descending through the layers of different water temperature to confuse the ASDIC.

The most astonishing moment had come in the early hours of one morning when he had been dragged from a brief and fitful sleep by Otto. In the command room he had clamped the sonar operator’s headphones to his ears, trying to decipher the howl of static. “I have never heard so much noise!” whispered the operator, the wide eyes in his pasty face amply conveying the youth’s confusion and alarm. After further minutes of listening and conferring, they had agreed that whatever was making the noise was probably not close. They could not be absolutely sure because their crude, passive sonar was unable to define distance or the direction.

Finally Riesen had made the decision to take them up to periscope depth so that he could determine the source. The crew on the command deck had watched him intently as he peered into the periscope eyepiece. When he suddenly stopped rotating and his jaw fell open, followed a few moments later by an involuntary ‘Mein Gott!’ the sonar operator, exhausted from the hours of intense concentration, crossed himself and began to moan. Otto cuffed the young fool across the back of the head to silence him; any sign of hysteria or panic in the close confines of the submarine could spread like wildfire amongst the stressed crew.

The moment had been broken by a sudden pinging and Riesen had not hesitated. He had snapped shut the periscope handles and punched the button to retract the apparatus, barking an order to dive, full speed ahead, with no shift in their direction. Otto had echoed the command and moved around the cabin, checking with each operator to ensure that the order had been correctly translated into the appropriate actions. Once verified, Otto had turned to look at Riesen with a questioning look on his face; to make no change in direction was atypical. Usually any emergency evasive action included hard turns to confuse and shake off the predators above. Riesen had caught and understood Otto’s glance but simply given a quick shake of his head; he would explain later.