Read The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf Online
Authors: Bartholomew Gill
The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (24 page)
Strapping his light onto his backpack so he would have some illumination climbing the dark aven, Dugald started up the chute slowly, carefully, methodically. Now was not the time for derring-do; now was the time for careful steps that would remove the treasure from the cave and provide him the life that his father had wanted for himself. And for which Malcolm had paid the ultimate price. Now Dugald would have to live it for both of them.
The chimney narrowed but then opened into another gallery where—Dugald suspected—the ancient stream that had worn away the limestone fissure in the mountain and had created the cave had once collected and pooled. There he rested where, it was obvious, Ford had taken a breather in the past. In a corner was a large bottle of what looked like water; also there were burned matches and small piles of tobacco ashes, where the man had knocked out his pipe.
But Dugald could now smell fresh air laced with the tang of brine from the sea, and he began climbing again, Five minutes later he could hear wind wailing past whatever opening the aven led to, which had to be near the very top of Croaghmore, given the length of the climb. Dugald rejoiced; he’d been right. The entire setup was perfect, which was why it had taken his father so long to discover Ford.
Now seeing light, he switched off the torch on his backpack and pulled himself up toward the dim glow.
From perhaps a quarter of a mile away, McGarr saw the figure near the apex of Croaghmore, hunkered down with his
brat
wrapped around him and his white mane flying, looking himself like another rock or a white-capped dolmen. The slane was on his shoulder, and he was so still that McGarr wondered if something might be wrong with him.
But then suddenly Fergal O’Grady got to his feet, and with his head still lowered toward the rocks in front of him, he took a cautious step backward. Slowly the slane rose off his shoulder, gripped tightly in both hands.
McGarr himself stopped, wanting to see what the man would do if uninterrupted. But O’Grady just stood there for another long time, until McGarr decided he should use his binoculars to see what he was looking at.
As McGarr glanced down to find the tab of his jacket zipper, however, he saw something flash. Like a thunderbolt, the bright silver head of the slane had swung around, and an object shaped like a rock—no,
two
rocks—rolled away from O’Grady’s feet.
Looking round, he now saw McGarr, and, quick for his age, he scuttled over and picked up one of the rocks. Then, with his back to McGarr, he moved to the edge of the cliff and tossed it over, down into the waves below.
The breeze caught the second object, which appeared to be blue and purple, and it skidded away from the cliff, only to bounce and tumble and sail down the flank of the mountain where it found its own place in the sea.
Picking up the hem of his
brat
, O’Grady appeared to wipe the blade of his slane on an interior fold, before turning and walking triumphantly, defiantly even, directly at McGarr. The tool was back on his shoulder.
“What did you just toss off the cliff?”
“Garbage. It’s how we disposed of it, before the likes of you.”
WHEN THE THREE people walked into the office of Monck & Neary on Merrion Square in Dublin the next morning, they found a man dressed in a swallowtail coat, morning trousers and spats. He scarcely looked up from the newspaper he was reading.
Beside him on the desk, a television was monitoring price quotations from the Dublin and several international financial exchanges. To his other side, a computer was also scrolling through lists of figures. It was torrid there with an array of caged birds raising a din. Otherwise the Georgian room was light and airy.
“May I help you?” the man asked. He was young and handsome with black hair, a good tan, and dark eyes.
“We’re here to see Monck or Neary.”
“In what regard?”
“In regard to a trust.”
The man smiled and turned from the paper. “Trusts is us. But you want to speak to Neary, who’s in charge of such matters. Top of the stairs, second door on the right. Knock first, please. I’m Monck. I handle the markets”—he swung a hand at the monitors—“and the birds.” His smile became more complete, as he unabashedly surveyed the feminine par
ticulars of the two women, each in her turn. “Perhaps you require a guide.”
“No, I think we’ll find the way,” said the larger of the women. She was tall, broad, and fetching. A blonde, she was dressed in a smart but conservative summer suit of brushed linen with a broad-brimmed sun hat to match. Like her shoes, her large purse was brown patent leather and gleamed.
The other woman, however, was smaller, older, and dark with white braided hair; she was wearing some out-of-doors costume. Her shoes were wrapped with wide bands of rubber for climbing rocks.
The man, who left the room last, was a match for the younger woman. Although elderly, he looked fit. His pale blue eyes were clear, his skin deeply tanned, and he possessed a full shock of silver hair that he wore swept back. Looking jaunty in a blue seersucker suit, he kept his right hand in his trouser pocket.
“Yes?” Neary asked, when they knocked.
“May we come in? We were told we could speak to you about a trust.”
“Please do.”
They entered the room to find a large but shapely auburn-haired woman sitting at a desk surrounded by papers and computer printouts, and what looked like a stack of fax transmissions was in her lap. “Pardon me if I don’t get up? I’m rather…involved. How can I help you?”
Heather Rehm rather liked what she saw—the shape and cut of the black-bordered, chrome yellow suit, to say nothing of the strong face and smoky gray eyes of Neary. She immediately checked her hands—no rings, which was encouraging. Yes, she could do business with this woman. At the same time, there was something disturbingly familiar about her. “What’s your first name?” Heather asked.
“Astrid—and yours?”
“Heather.” There was no point in using an alias, if they were going to take control of the Trust. They would move the money directly to South Africa at the earliest possible opportunity.
“And you are?”
“Louise,” said Mirna, having been instructed not to give her own name.
Bresnahan turned to Rehm.
“Call me Gus. My friends do.” He smiled.
“Good, so, what can I do for you this morning?”
“We’re here about the matter of a trust,” said Rehm. It was without a doubt the most exalting moment of his life, the apotheosis of having persevered and bent every effort to right the wrong of what was now the distant past. He had found Klimt Dorfmann and supervened. And yet, somehow, he felt cheated that it was not Dorfmann who had brought him here to witness the transference. “Dorfmann sent me.”
There was a knock on the door. It opened. The head of Monck appeared. “Excuse me. A thousand pardons, Astrid. Is there a Missus or Miss or Ms. Gottschalk here? I hardly know what to say these days. She has a phone call.”
“Me?” Mirna asked. “How does anybody—”
“I think it’s your son. He said to tell you it’s Karl.”
“Of course,
he
would know,” said Mirna, glancing at both of the Rehms as she stood.
“I’ll go with you. Father, you can handle the—”
“He says it’s personal,” Ward put in. “And urgent.”
“Can’t she take it here?” asked Rehm.
“He rang on the public line. I handle public calls in order to free Ms. Neary for—” Ward pointed to the impedimenta on the desk.
Mirna Gottschalk broke for the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“See that you do,” Heather barked. “Remember me to Dugald.”
Ward swung the door a bit wider, and she squeezed out, only to stop in the shadowed hallway, shocked by what she saw in Ward’s right hand.
It was a gun. He closed the door and pointed to the stairs, whispering. “There’s a Garda car outside. It will take you to him. He’s had a nasty fall, and he’s in hospital. But don’t worry, they say he’s out of danger.”
Inside the room, as Heather sat back down, it occurred to her where she had seen the woman at the desk before.
“Dorfmann sent me,” Rehm said again to Bresnahan.
Snapping open the top of her patent leather purse, Heather plunged her hand in.
“Mr. Monck!” Bresnahan barked at the door, pushing the stack of faxes to the floor and snatching up the Glock in her lap.
The door burst open, and Heather swung some sort of machine pistol at Ward, who fell away as the weapon spat a burst of silenced fire at him that was punctuated by four loud blasts from the Glock. The first punched Heather back in the chair, the second spun her round. As she began to slide to the floor, the third and fourth removed her linen sun hat, bursting as wide plugs from the back of her head.
Ward picked himself up.
With the gloved right hand gripping the arm of the cushioned chair like an old black claw, Rehm stared down at his daughter dead at his feet, then slipped his other hand into the jacket of his seersucker suit.
“Don’t!” Ward warned.
“Take your hand away!” Bresnahan stood up from the desk, the Glock locked in both hands and pointing down at him.
When the hand—tanned and rumpled with veins, like an old claw—came out from under the lapel with something shiny, a stunning fusillade riddled the man, knocking over the armchair so that he lay there, feet raised, the thin bones of his old legs exposed.
Ward straightened up from his firing crouch. “You okay?”
Bresnahan lowered the gun. “I think so.” It was the first time she had ever shot anybody, to say nothing of having killed two people.
The air in the room was filled with the sweet stink of gun smoke that was sifting slowly through the morning sunlight.
They heard footsteps on the stairs, as other guards rushed up to the room.
“It’s all right,” Ward called out. “We’re in here. No problems.”
Bresnahan was not so sure. On quaking legs she lowered herself back down into the seat and tried not to look at the face of Heather Rehm with the two large cratered holes in her forehead. It was a sight that—Ruth knew, even then—
she would never scrub from her memory. Something had changed for her, but she did not know what.
Dressed in flak jackets, helmets, boots, and carrying automatic carbines, the other guards stepped cautiously into the room. Their eyes fell to the bodies. Said Ward, “Yehr woman there pulled that gun and sprayed the place. We had no choice. Then yehr man followed suit. We warned him, but it was like he was committing hara-kiri.”
Ward had been in this position before, and he knew it mattered very much what story was bruited about in police circles. Sooner or later it would become public, indiscretion being gauged by the pint. The truth without any imaginative flourishes was always best.
He jacked the clip from his Beretta. “I’m out, Ruthie. What about you?”
Bresnahan nodded. She did not have to check. At some point in the execution of the old man, her Glock just would not fire anymore. “Has anybody got a cigarette?”
Ward glanced over at her, concerned; she did not smoke.
But one uniformed guard smiled at another and produced a cigarette. “Certainly, Inspector. D’ye’ need a light?”
Smiling up at him, she accepted both cigarette and light, then crossed her long, well-formed legs—clad as they were in black lace. Exhaling the smoke, she looked out the window there by the desk, into Merrion Square.
It would be the better part of the “inside” story, Ward knew. “Didn’t she whack the both of them right where they sat, then took a vacant chair and had a quiet smoke with the stiffs dead at her feet.” Her stock would soar in cop circles, more decidedly with the Rehms having been cop killers.
Dispossession
TWO DAYS LATER, while lying on the beach at the harbor on Clare Island, watching Maddie gambol in the surf with some other children, McGarr opened a photocopy of Clem Ford’s (or Klimt Dorfmann’s) memoir.
It had been found in a pocket of Karl Gottschalk’s belly pack that was still wrapped around his waist when, injured, he had been plucked out of the sea by a fishing boat and taken to Westport Quay. From there he had been flown by medevac helicopter to a hospital in Dublin.
The tall old man with the great snowy beard who had radioed Westport and arranged for the helicopter did not give his name. The moment the chopper was airborne, he shoved off in his boat.
Having taken the boat’s numbers, however, Gardai in Westport determined that it was owned by one Colm Canning, also of Clare Island. Canning did not answer his telephone, nor was he home when McGarr tried to call there.
McGarr now looked down at Ford’s backward-slanting script.
11 November 1947
Clare Island, Mayo
Eire
I write this while the details are still fresh in mind and so you who succeed us will know the source of the cargo that I brought to this island. I write also for posterity and my God, who shall judge me; it was war, but it was also a struggle between forces. I knew that back in the mid-1930s. The pity is, not well enough
.
First, a word about who I am, since beginning in 1945 I had to abandon my true identity, again because of the cargo. I arrived here under circumstances that were, at the very least, covert and perhaps even criminal, when viewed in the light of history
.
I was born in the middle of the First World War in 1916, the son of a German maritime trader and an English woman with whose family he had dealings. With his captain’s license, my father was soon conscripted into the German Navy, serving with distinction during the fateful Battle of Jutland. I grew up in Harwich in Suffolk. English was my first language, although I began speaking German at an early age
.
After the war, my father removed us to his own family’s base on Borkum Island where he operated a legitimate import/export business by day, while he smuggled at night. Petrol, liquor, tobacco—any contraband that was profitable to bring into the Weimar Republic via the shallow water along the Friesland coast and the Ems. The fall of Weimar and the beginning of rearmament brought other opportunities, however, and he began trading with South America for raw materials then in short supply—mostly tin, nickel, bauxite, and manganese
.
Since the tradition on both sides of my family was nautical, I learned to sail as a child. During my summer holidays from mainly English schools, I gradually gained mastery over a variety of vessels of ever greater tonnage, until in my seventeenth year in 1933 I became a fully licensed captain. It was something that my father had wanted me to attain
.
My mother’s traditions were different, however, and a place was found for me at Cambridge, where my maternal grandfather had studied. There I read history,
and one of the regrets of my life is that I did not finish. Because of a misadventure in my third year at the hands of some thugs whose political beliefs I did not share, I was injured in a brawl. I had to return to Borkum to mend, and the fate that befell my father at the beginning of the First World War nearly became my own
.
But rather than be conscripted into the German Navy, I decided to join the Submarine Service where lay Germany’s only hope for naval supremacy, as it was apparent even then. Because of my father’s honorable record and my having captain’s papers, the height restriction for submarines was overlooked. I joined the DVC (Doenitz Volunteer Corps, as it was called informally) in January 1936
.
You, who will read this, might know the story. During the early years of the war up until February 1943, German submarine technology was equal to any defenses that Allied convoys could mount against us. In that month our submarines sank 44 boats and 21 ships, a total of 142,465 gross registered tons of Allied shipping. But only three months later, we lost 35 U-boats, 1,026 submariners, and we sank a mere 96,000 gross registered tons
.
As early as 1937, naval planners had known that the superiority of the Type VII subs that became the backbone of the fleet would be short-lived. Even then other larger, faster, quieter boats were on the drawing boards. But instead the High Command, which was dominated by Nazis or Nazi toadies, chose to squander Navy funds on a surface fleet that was doomed from the start and proved to be little more than a fatal grand gesture
.
Suddenly in the midst of fog and darkness, when a submarine commander thought it safe to run on the surface, Allied aircraft began to attack with such accuracy that there was barely enough time to dive. Also, convoys seemed to know of our approach, zigging and zagging away while their escort ships attacked us with steadily increasing success. It was as though the sea were made of glass, and they could see our every wallowing move
.
And yet with its usual Nazi bombast the High Command kept sending us out in the old Type VII iron coffins to die. Over 30,000 of us did, which was a casualty rate of 85 percent. Some 5,000 others were lucky to be captured. By 1944 we had been driven out of Europe proper to Bergen, Norway, with only a handful of active boats, little fuel and spare parts, and a dearth of experienced crew. At twenty-eight I was the oldest living active sub captain, while the flotilla commander was an ancient thirty
.
On 8 May 1945 (the day of Formal Surrender) I returned to Bergen after a run of six weeks, during which I had spent most of the time hiding in the coves and holes of the continental shelf off Ireland and Scotland. I ventured out to attack only twice and was nearly sunk both times. I remember the day of return in every particular, since it is a day that has shaped the rest of my life. It is about this day that I write
.
It began when we passed through the sub nets and surfaced in the fjord to a leaden spring sky. The bridge of my Type VII-C submarine was so beaten that it was a length of twisted, torn steel that was scarcely afloat. From there I saw a strange sight drifting through the icy water of the fjord a few hundred meters off our bow
.
It was a Walter boat, the most advanced of the new submarines that had been promised years earlier but had never been delivered. “Miracles of German technology,” they had been called, that “would win the Battle of the Atlantic.” As I stated earlier, they had known this eight years earlier
.
Maybe at that time boats like the Walter might have mattered, had we been given the ninety we had been promised. Scanning my crew, I doubted how effective any number of new boats could now be
.
The ragtag assembly of children (I can only call them) were swimming in the long gray leather jackets that had been made for submariners, for
men,
not the boys before me. They had thin chests, bony arms, and even after six weeks at sea few had beards. For the first time, a boat under my command had gone out without
sinking a single enemy ship. The truth was, I had been lucky to get them back alive
.
I can remember feeling hot and bitter anger. My mate had only just handed me the morning radio communiqué from Berlin to all forces in the Atlantic Command. “Be strong,” it said. “Do not falter! The foe, too, is weary.” It was more Nazi bombast and smacked of a passage cribbed from the
Edda
and “heroic” death. Not only did they not care if we died, they actually
wanted
us to die to fulfill the necrophilic dimensions of their horrid myth
.
Here was the apparition of a new submarine with its anti-sonar rubber skin and complex radars protruding from its conning tower, arriving among all the shattered hulks of our once proud submarine fleet now at the end of The End, like a macabre joke. See? (Berlin was saying.) We delivered our miracle of German technology, what could have made you invincible. To do what with, now? Well understanding their humor, I had an idea
.
Let me write here for the record, I hated Nazis; in fact, I had fought them since my days at Cambridge. There I had been singled out by the handful of Nazi sympathizers because I was German, I am large, and I did not agree with them on any issue, including (now in 1945) the destruction of Germany
.
“If you hate them so much,” my then wife, Ilsa, once asked, “why do you fight for them?”
“It’s rather simple,” I had replied. “I am a German man, I am also a German sailor, and my country is at war. My father served in the German Navy and his father before him.”
By 1945, however, Ilsa too was dead, killed in a bombing raid on Kiel where she had been living with her parents while I was in the subs
.
At any rate, before my battered boat reached the sub pens that day in Bergen, Conrad Geis, who was my chief engineer and the only other experienced man in my crew, appeared beside me with a second message. It was from the flotilla commander, congratulating me since, as the most senior submarine captain, I would
now be given the Walter boat. Some hours later, Geis and I went to inspect the new boat
.
She was a fair-sized craft of about 200 feet and, I guessed, 1,200 tons. What I liked about her immediately were her fair, whale-soft lines and her two batteries of 30 mm antiaircraft guns that were fitted sleekly, fore and aft, into the top of the conning tower to reduce drag. I loathed some of the other new designs that lacked a deck gun, for once forced to the surface for any reason, you were defenseless
.
Instead of a submariner to greet us, however, a man in a soft hat and civilian clothes met us on the foredeck, “Commodore Dorfmann,” he called out. “But of course, who else could you be? I was told to find the biggest man in Bergen with a half-pint sidekick.”
Geis only appeared so in contrast; actually he was of average height for submariners—a dark wiry man whom I considered a technical genius worth two men twice his size. There was nothing he could not fix or fabricate
.
“Who the hell is he?” I asked
.
“Probably some stuffed shirt from the Todt Organization.”
It was the contractor that had built most of the subs for the Third Reich since 1933
.
“You take care of him, I’ll look round at what they brought us.”
“And
you
are?” I stepped up on the rounded, rubber-sheathed foredeck. With the other arm I swept Geis past the man
.
“Axel Schmelling, Todt service director. I’d like to give you a tour of your new vessel, Commodore.”
It was the second time that the man had overstated my rank, which was merely Kapitän and a giant step from Commodorezursee. But he quickly launched into his speech, calling the Walter boat a
true
submarine—and not just another submarine-type boat—that could remain submerged for an entire tour of duty, yet maintain speeds of most surface vessels
.
As he spoke I turned my back to him and climbed the
ladder of the conning tower. Apart from brief furloughs, I had lived on submarines and survived the experience for nine years, and I could see at a glance what the boat contained. Also I was in no mood to suffer a fool who had spent the war constructing a weapon, no matter how superior, that had arrived too late. Not when so many of my comrades had gone to the bottom
.
The interior of the tower stank of fresh welding scars, new paint, and all the artificial rubber of gaskets and seals. When my eyes had accustomed themselves to the shadows, I discovered that the Walter had been built in two tiers, the lower given over to a massive battery
.
“On one charging she can produce a submerged speed of five knots for four days or sixteen knots for an hour,” Schmelling said over my shoulder. “With snorkeling she will cruise at twenty-four knots submerged, which is faster than most Allied antisubmarine craft.”
He who had only ever to outrun a sub-chaser on a drawing board
.
“In that mode, the boat need never surface. As well, the engines are whisper-quiet turbines that run on peroxide, which eliminates the problem the Fatherland has of obtaining petrol-based fuels.”
The Fatherland?
I decided Schmelling must be a Nazi, which was how he, and people like him, had kept themselves out of the war. Nazis fought best with their mouths. He proved it. As I climbed to the second tier, he went on about the boat’s radars and its capability of sensing when it was being tracked by enemy radar
.
“And finally there is the new ‘Lut’ torpedo that’s impossible to defeat.”
Or, at least, there
should
have been Luts
.
Geis appeared in an open forward bulkhead and signaled me to follow him. The torpedo storage bay was empty. Cranking the wheel of the air lock of a torpedo tube, he bade me look in. Nothing. And another. Still nothing
.
“No eels.”
When I turned back to Schmelling, there was another man, who was dressed like a soldier, behind him
.
“Where are the Luts?”
“They’ll be here shortly.”
“You mean—you ran from Bremen to Bergen defenseless?”
“Without incident. There’s nothing out there that can track or catch this boat. And we figured we’d better get it out now.”
While we can, was implied
.
Geis and I looked at each other; things must be worse at home even than was reported
.
“That’s fine if you’re in a race,” I said. “But this is war. How do you expect me even to defend myself, much less hunt and defeat the enemy?”
“That’ll be all, Schmelling. I’ll take over now.”
Without another word, Schmelling left, and the other man stood there, as though waiting for us to recognize him and make the first move. His uniform, however, was a distraction; also it had been ten years since I’d last seen him. I felt older than time
.
He was wearing a long gray raincoat that was open, and the flying blouse and baggy jump trousers of a paratrooper. The color, however, was not the dark blue of the Luftwaffe, but rather the gun-metal gray of the army. With a difference—on the officer’s cap was the skull and crossbones of the SS along with his rank badge, which was Standartenführer, the German equivalent of colonel. His jump boots were polished to a mirror sheen
.
“Don’t you recognize me, Klimt?”
Only then, when he said my name, did I; it was Angus Helmut Rehm, a Scottish national but also a Nazi zealot who shared with me a German patrimony and who had been in my college at Cambridge. Enraged that I had rejected everything about National Socialism and Nazism, and had once cruelly branded him “Der Scots’ Rump Führer” during a public debate (a name that was quickly adumbrated to a derisive “Dour Rump” and became Rehm’s unshakable monicker), he and three others equipped with cudgels had attacked me on a
Cambridge street. It was those injuries that kept me from finishing my degree
.