Spook's Gold (48 page)

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Lemele was not a strong or confident swimmer, had only ever swum in the sea on one occasion and had found the waves fatiguing, disorientating. Despite her fear of going into the water, she knew that it was her only possibility of escaping from this monster.

Timing her move for when Graf was leaning forward to take a new stroke, she watched the oar tips break the surface on either side of the boat in her peripheral vision. She waited for one, two counts and then violently snapped her head back into his face that was dipping towards her as he pushed the handles forward. There was a painful and yet satisfying jolt as the back of her head crunched into his nose. Graf roared with pain and reflexively released the oar handles to reach for his face. Lemele tried to stand up, intending to dive over the side but her cramped knees failed her and instead she stumbled. Her hip struck painfully onto the side of the boat as she fell, but at least she was going over into the water, to freedom. Just as she believed that she was free, head down in the water and her legs sliding the last few centimetres over the gunwale, she felt his hand clamp onto her trouser leg.

Graf had lunged for her with one hand and for the gun with the other. She was causing the boat to tilt over alarmingly and the gun slid away, his fingertips only brushing it as it tumbled off the bench and plopped into the slime in the bottom of the boat. His grab for Lemele was more successful. Due to her slow and ungainly exit from the boat, his fingers snagged and secured on the hem of her trousers. He realised at the last moment before the boat capsized that he should have released her and thrown his weight in the opposite direction to try to right the dinghy, but the agony in his face was demanding a brutal revenge and he stubbornly refused to let go of his prize. Her weight dragged him towards the side of the boat that was already dipping too close to the water and their joint momentum and the already teetering boat proved to be too much.

Lemele had been prepared for her leap. Half submerged, she instinctively kicked out to break Graf’s grip. Once released, she kicked hard again and broke the surface, her arms and legs already in motion, already sure of the direction that she should be moving in. She was dismayed at how heavy her saturated boots and clothes were, how much they were going to slow and tire her. For a moment she considered trying to shed them, but was not confident of being able to complete the manoeuvre whilst trying to tread water. Graf’s roar and splutter as he surfaced behind her forced the decision and she continued ploughing towards the shore, away from her tormentor.

Unlike Lemele, who had taken a breath before going in, Graf had not been prepared for the capsizing of the dinghy. He surfaced coughing and retching the water that he had swallowed. Hearing splashing to his left, he turned and saw that she was only ten metres away. The ache in his bruised nose had evolved into rage, a desire to kill. The gun was lost, but in a way that was better; he would savour the pleasure of tightening his hands around her throat, holding her head under the surface and feeling her twitching out her last spasms.

He was about to strike out after her when the sound of water slapping on something behind him made him pause. He rotated around in the water, towards the open sea. As he rode a swell he beheld the glorious silhouette of the U-180, only one hundred metres away. In his concentration on rowing, in putting distance between himself and the shore, he had not realised how close he had approached.

Graf hesitated. He knew that he could easily catch the woman, but that would mean heading back towards the shore. To hell with the bitch, he thought, she had served her purpose. He set off towards the U-180 and as he closed to within fifty metres he could discern the outline of heads and shoulders on the tower. Overjoyed at the conclusion of his escape and above all his dreams for his future, he called out, “Otto!”

Chapter Fifty Four

“Willi?” breathed Otto, his discipline for silence and the presence of his Captain making him hesitant to shout in response.

“Who?” asked Riesen. They had listened with growing unease to the splashes and shouts that had come to them out of the gloom. Riesen had become alarmed and had ordered the other officer on deck to summon up a rifle from below. No sooner had it arrived than Otto had uttered his startling revelation. “You think that that is
Graf
out there?  What the hell is he...?”

Too late they heard the deep drone of the motors. They had become entirely focussed on whatever drama was being played out unseen between them and the shore. Now they strained to locate the source and direction of this new disturbance and in moments it became clear that it was coming directly towards them.

“Oh shit!” cried Otto, his bowels turning to ice water.

Riesen screamed down the open hatch in the floor to the deck below, “Crash Dive!”

Otto gasped, trying to make his vocal chords function. “No, wait! That’s Willi in the water, we have to...”

“Get below now!” hurled Riesen, pushing Otto hard towards the hatch, spittle spraying into his face. “Or stay up here and swim with him!”

Otto heard the explosion of air as the ballast tanks were vented. He knew that this submarine was now irreversibly committed to diving, would be fully submerged in maybe thirty seconds, with or without him. He had no doubt that Riesen would close the hatch and leave him up. In fact, Riesen would have no choice.

Suddenly the night was obliterated by the blinding white illumination of the 22 million candlepower Leigh light fitted to the belly of the MKV-GR Liberator aeroplane that was swooping down on them. Otto screwed up his eyes against the glare, now able to see Willi bobbing in the silver water just fifty metres away. His hesitation to leave his friend was dented by a hard kick from the Captain and his resistance crumbled as he heard the cannon rounds from the Liberator rake the water around them. He knew that the bombs or rockets were only seconds away. Still Otto hesitated, pointing towards Willi.

“To hell with him,” roared Riesen. “We have to go NOW!”

----

On the shore, the soldiers had heard the plane approach and had flattened themselves to the ground, unsure whether this new intruder might be friend or foe. When the night had exploded into searing white day, Graf and the submarine were perfectly illuminated in the water. “Look!” exclaimed Slowikowski. “It really is there. A fucking submarine!”

Delaune did not hesitate. He ran forward as far as he could, dropped to a prone position and began firing with his carbine, pausing only to shout, “Shut up and get that damned PIAT into action!”

Whilst Slowikowski worked frantically to get the PIAT rocket installed into the launcher tube, Dubus let his Sten drop to dangle at his side on the harness. It was useless at this range and he reached to un-shoulder his scoped rifle.

As the noise of the explosions from the rockets launched by the Liberator reached them, Marner sprang from immobility, slithering and leaping back down the rocks to the narrow strip of shingle below. Dubus yanked back up the Sten. He sighted it to bear in the centre of Marner’s back and applied pressure to the trigger, waiting patiently for his target to pause for the next leap before shooting. He backed off as he registered a flash of silver in his peripheral vision; it evolved into Lemele, thrashing her final strokes through the surf.

Satisfied that this was not an attempt by Marner to bolt and flee, that he was only going to her aid, Dubus brought the rifle back to bear. Raising the scope up to meet the direction of his aiming eye, it settled onto the head of the man swimming out there, who for some reason had poised motionless in the water. Perfect. His training and experience made him take a split second to adjust for the distance and drop of the shell, the upward movement of his target in the sea swell, then he squeezed gently and felt the satisfying recoil and crack as he sent the bullet on its way.

A moment later the night plunged around them again; the Liberator had passed overhead and extinguished the search light.

----

Graf trod water. He caught Otto’s eye for just a moment and then was dismayed to see both Otto’s head and that of the captain disappear. He too had heard the whoosh of air as the ballast tanks were blown to dive. He knew that they were not waiting for him.

The sea erupted in a trail of phosphorescent miniature fountains as the cannon shells fired by the plane raked the water between him and the submarine. He heard at least one ‘clang’ as a shell struck the hull of the U-180, thinking that she would probably be taking water from the hit when submerged. His mind reflexively ran through the standard procedure that the crew should follow in such an event. A fraction of a second after the cannon fire stopped he watched the rockets scream across the sky from right to left, one of them missing the rapidly dipping conning tower by barely a metre to explode harmlessly in the sea beyond.

Graf became aware of the sound of the sea around him plopping and fizzing and he wondered what it could be. Just as the realisation coalesced in his brain that it was gun fire and that he was the target, he received a devastating blow to his back that knocked him flat forward and face down in the water. He tried to kick with his legs, to paddle his hands to right his body, but his limbs did not seem to be working, they would not obey his commands. He strained with his neck muscles to lift his face barely clear of the surface to suck in a breath, but then even that failed him and his head flopped back into the rolling water. In his fading mind, he wondered why the water no longer felt cold. As he sank down into the inky blackness, Willi knew that the sea was finally claiming him, just as he had known she always would.

Chapter Fifty Five

Marner waded into the foaming water up to his waist and plunged his arm below the surface, grasped, missed, and then caught a solid hold of Lemele’s arm. He hauled her limp body up and out of the surf, amazed that she seemed to have given up just as she was within wading distance of the beach. When he finally staggered out of the sucking, shifting water and lowered her onto the pebbles he realised that she was entirely spent, too exhausted to even stand or help herself. She simply lay there inert except for her spasms of coughing and rasping for air.

They were suddenly plunged into darkness and the percussion of gunfire from above and the explosions out to sea ceased, leaving them with just the gentle splashing of the waves on the shingle and rocks. Above them he heard Delaune shout at Slowikowski to get the PIAT reloaded. The sound of the plane was growing in volume again and they were anticipating a second shot at the submarine. However, when the light was switched on once more, all that was left of the submarine’s presence was a glowing trail of air bubbles in the roiling surface. Regardless, the plane opened up with its cannons, churning a long line of water and then seconds later came the retort of two explosions. Even though the aviators could not see their prey, they were continuing to try to hit it.

The three soldiers clattered down to the beach beside Lemele and Marner. Dubus was cussing at Slowikowski, though it was entirely good-natured, a release of the excess of adrenaline after the engagement. “You hauled that damn thing all the way here and then, when you actually had a go with it, you bloody well missed!”

Slowikowski laughed.

“What about Graf?” croaked Lemele, lying on her back and gulping air, “Did he make it aboard the submarine?”

“No. I nailed him full square between the shoulder blades whilst he was in the water,” confirmed Dubus, the tone of satisfaction clear in his voice. “The submarine dived without him and there is no way he is swimming back in after I plugged him.”

Lemele sat up wearily and looked at Marner, seeking acknowledgement that their case was really over but he would not meet her eye. Instead he turned and sat, facing out to sea, silent and alone.

“Come on,” commanded Delaune. “All of this noise will have attracted the attention of every damned German for kilometres around. We need to get moving and get as far away from here as possible before daylight.”  He turned and began clambering back up towards the cliff path.

Dubus moved to stand over Marner and nudged him in the back with the barrel of the Sten. “Come on Fritz. Up. Let’s move.”

Lemele moved between them. “His name is Dieter.”  Interpreting Marner’s stare out into the darkness, she took hold of his arm and tried to pull him to his feet. “Dieter, we’ve done what we set out to do, which was to stop Graf. The submarine is not our problem now; let someone else worry about it.”

Marner stubbornly tugged his arm free of Lemele’s grip, rose wearily to his feet and trudged away in pursuit of Delaune. She looked at his back, sighed and then followed.

### THE END ###

A note from the author and acknowledgements

Thank you for reading Spook’s Gold. I hope that you enjoyed it.

The catalyst for the novel originates from my research into two subjects. The first was the history of the town where I have lived for the last 10 years – Evreux in Normandy – during the Second World War. Evreux had a particularly rich (read: tragic) passage through the conflict, destroyed by the Germans in 1940, then bombed in 1944 by the Allies (Evreux lies on the main rail line of Paris-Caen-Cherboug and was used as major route and garrison for German reinforcements and armour during the battle for Normandy).

The second is on-going research for a non-fiction book: the development of submarine-launched rocket systems by the German military.

Although the key elements were already in my head, the inspiration to actually sit down and put fingers to keyboard came from meeting Corporal Cusack, The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, who served in North Africa, Normandy, Netherlands and Germany through 1943-1945. Despite being badly injured in Normandy, he insisted on returning to his unit to see out the remainder of the conflict. By the feats of such modest heroes, a free Europe was won.