The Last Wolf (8 page)

‘He's at their Naval Academy at somewhere called Mürwik.'

‘Well, the Huns must be busy getting ready.'

‘Ready for what?'

‘For war, idiot. They've taken over Austria, in case you hadn't noticed. Goose-stepped into Vienna and been welcomed with open arms. And they've been giving General Franco in Spain a hand on the quiet, getting in plenty of target practice with their brand-new fighters and bombers. No more gliders for the Hun! Baggers says they're definitely brewing up to start another war.'

‘Who on earth is Baggers?'

‘Our history teacher at school. He says the Huns resent the way they were treated by everyone after we thrashed them in the last show. They want their own back on us now and Hitler's promised them he'll kindly arrange it. Baggers says they'll be after the Sudetenland next. A lot of Huns live there so they've got a wonderful excuse to grab it, and probably the rest of Czechoslovakia while they're at it. Then they'll probably be after other countries as well, including us.' Hamish plucked the letter out of Stroma's hand, crumpled it in his fist and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. ‘That's the place for that. And you shouldn't be writing to the enemy.'

‘Reinhard's not the enemy.'

‘He bloody soon will be.'

When her brother had gone, Stroma retrieved the letter and smoothed it out on her lap. It was longer than usual. In his last two letters, Reinhard had told her about his officers' initial training course, which had sounded unspeakably grim, and in the next letter he had written about training on a sailing ship at sea, which hadn't sounded much better. This letter was all about the Naval Academy at Mürwik and the lessons on naval history, navigation, naval tactics, marine engineering, weapons and oceanography. And about sailing, playing soccer, boxing, fencing, gymnastics, horse riding, and drilling out on the parade ground.

They make it very hard for us. We have only a few hours sleep each night and are very busy all day. Some cadets leave because it is too difficult for them, but I am still here. You will be happy to know that we are also given lessons to improve our English so perhaps you will not have to make so many corrections to my letters. I hope you will write soon.

He hadn't mentioned Austria at all. Or helping General Franco in Spain.

In late July, Hamish and Stroma travelled up from London to Islay. They took the night sleeper to Glasgow, then a bus to Paisley and another bus to Gourock. From Gourock they hitched a lift in a fishing boat across to Dunoon and picked up another lift in a farmer's cart. The horse, head bowed, clip-clopped slowly up the steep and windy glen between banks of purple heather, craggy rocks, dry-stone walls and tumbling burns. The farmer was going to Kilfinan and, from there, the post bus took them on to Portavadie where a ferry boat carried them across to Tarbert. They stayed the night in a small hotel at West Lock Tarbert and were up early in the morning and on the bus to Kennacraig to catch the twice-weekly paddle steamer for Islay. Sometimes, if the sea was too rough, they had to wait for several days to make the four-hour crossing, but this time they were lucky.

Grandfather was waiting for them on the quayside at Port Askaig and drove them the last part of the journey in the old Humber. Since there was no direct road along the east coast to Craigmore, they had to go west across to Bridgend on the other side, then down to Bowmore and Port Ellen and past the Laphroaig distillery to Ardbeg. After that, the road petered out into a track and the off-shoot that led down to Craigmore was so rough and stony that the Humber dipped and rolled like an ocean liner on a stormy sea. Once past the peat moors, they descended into the woods and, when they emerged, there in front of them, beyond the fields and the grazing sheep and the dry-stone walls, stood the house and the rocky inlet and the sea.

One thing was not quite the same: Grandmother. Instead of being on the doorstep to greet them, she was lying upstairs in bed. She had caught a chill that had gone to her chest and Dr Mackenzie had recommended that she stay in bed for a few days.

‘Nothing to worry about,' Grandfather said. ‘She'll be up and about again soon.'

They went off fishing and sailing and swimming on the loch and they walked down through the woods to Glas Uig. When they were younger, they'd pretended to be smugglers or pirates but they didn't play childish games like that any more. Hamish kept talking about joining the Navy, and he kept on saying that there was going to be a war. Stroma maintained stubbornly that there wasn't going to be anything of the kind. They argued over it quite a lot.

‘You won't believe it because of that bloody German chap,' Hamish said. ‘Just because he writes nice letters to you, it doesn't mean a thing. He's joined their Navy, hasn't he? He'll probably end up in submarines, like his father, so he'll be busy torpedoing our ships. Maybe you won't think so much of him then.'

‘I don't think much of him now.'

Actually, she thought of him quite a bit but she wasn't going to admit it.

‘Well, I bet you still write to him, don't you?'

‘Only when he writes to me.'

‘So, don't answer his bloody letters. Simple.'

Colonel Crawford came over to dinner. He was an old friend of the grandparents, a widower who lived in Bowmore and had fought in the army in the Great War. Grandmother was feeling well enough to come down but Stroma thought that she looked awfully thin and pale, and she hardly ate a thing. Colonel Crawford didn't seem to notice; he was too busy talking about Adolf Hitler while swallowing a lot of Laphroaig whisky.

‘All that nonsense he's been telling us about having to protect the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia is just a red herring, you know. They're not being ill-treated by the Czechs at all. He just wants to get his hands on the Skoda munitions works so he can attack Russia. And Chamberlain's a fool if he believes a single word the fellow says. If we don't stand up to Herr Hitler now, we'll find ourselves facing another war with Germany. They're re-arming as fast as they can – riding roughshod over the Treaty rules – and as soon as they're ready, they'll make their move. Mark my words.'

Grandfather said mildly, ‘A lot of people might not agree with you, Robert. And they don't want to do anything to upset or provoke Hitler.'

‘I know. I read it in the newspapers and I listen to the talk that goes on. Spineless appeasers! Don't tell me you're on their side, Archie?'

‘No, I'm not, as it happens. And I think you may well be proved right about Hitler. But I don't think we should rush our fences. Negotiations should be given a chance. For one thing, we need time to build up our own forces.'

The colonel grunted. ‘There's some truth in that. A chap who's in the know told me that the German Air Force has already got many more planes than the RAF – good ones, too. Heaven help us if that's the case. Well, at least we've got the Royal Navy to count on. Britannia still rules the waves, thank God.' He took another swig of whisky and looked across the table at Hamish. ‘It'll be your war, this time, young man. You're going to have to do the fighting. What do you think about that as a prospect?'

‘I can't wait, sir.'

‘That's the spirit, my lad. That's the spirit.'

They went back to London in early September. There were rumours everywhere of the war that might have to be fought if Germany were to invade Czechoslovakia and, worse than rumours, there were clear signs. Trenches were being dug in the parks, cellars and basements turned into air-raid shelters, gas masks issued. Mr Chamberlain was said to be going to meet Hitler in Germany to try to come to some agreement. France and Italy would go, too, but apparently the Czechs were not invited.

At school Stroma received another letter from Reinhard. He didn't refer to a war at all, or to any of the rumours, or say anything about Czechoslovakia. His officers' training would soon be completed, he wrote, and after a short leave in Hamburg he would be joining a submarine boat flotilla, though he didn't mention where. He enclosed a photograph of himself – a very formal one in his German naval officer's uniform. She didn't recognize the man that he had become: he was nothing like the boy she remembered on Islay. He looked so smart and so grown-up. Almost frighteningly so. On the back of the photo he had written:
For little Stroma, from Reinhard
. There were no spelling mistakes in his letter. Not even one.

One of the other girls was peering nosily over her shoulder.

‘I say, who's that dishy-looking chap?'

She stuffed the photo away in the envelope. ‘Nobody.'

At the end of the officers' training course at the Naval Academy, an Admiral of the German Navy came to make a speech. The graduates assembled in the square to listen to him. He was a big man and his voice boomed out across the square like a cannon firing.

‘The time has come for you to show what you have learned – to prove yourselves for the sake of your country. Our Navy has ancient and honourable traditions. Germany will expect each and every one of you to do your duty.'

His own father's sentiments exactly, Reinhard thought drily. And, as it happened, also those of the famous Admiral Nelson, except that he had been referring to Englishmen, and to England.

The train to Kiel was packed with brand-new naval officers like himself, squashed into grubby compartments that were probably hopping with fleas. Outside it was raining hard.

Reinhard dozed, leaning his head back against the seat and risking the fleas. The brief leave in Hamburg had left him tired and hungover. Too much drink and too many visits to the Reeperbahn. Served him right that he was in such poor shape for what lay ahead.

He had no doubt that it was going to be tough. Tough and uncomfortable and dangerous, as his father had always warned. U-boats were risky things to go to sea in, even without a war. When the war came – and most of his fellow cadets at the Naval Academy firmly believed that it would – things would get a whole lot tougher, much more uncomfortable and much more dangerous. He had not thought about it during the past months; there had been little time to think of anything but learning and training and pushing himself daily to the limit, but the sobering fact was that the life he was enjoying so much could very soon be over. He might end it entombed in an iron hull at the bottom of the sea, or with his corpse floating around on the waves, the flesh being stripped from his bones by hungry fish. Not a happy thought.

In truth, he was not ready to make such a sacrifice. Not yet. Germany might expect him to do his duty, as the old admiral had bellowed at them, and he would do it, but he was damned well going to do his best to stay alive for as long as possible. Life was too pleasant. Good food, good drink, good comradeship, warm and willing women . . . There was too much to live for.

He wondered if Stroma had received his last letter with the photograph. What would she would think of it? Had she been impressed? Probably not. She was not easy to impress. The photo made him look very serious – which, of course, it was meant to do. It was intended to show what a fine, upstanding young officer of the German Navy he was: a product of the famous Academy. Easy to play the part for the camera, but he had done absolutely nothing yet. One day, maybe, he would have another photo taken with a medal on a ribbon round his neck – the Knight's Cross, like his father. If he earned it.

Kleine Stroma. He smiled, remembering his first sight of the dirty, barefoot child scrambling down the hill towards him – her terrible hair, her torn clothes and her cut knee. Not so little now. He would very much like to know her when she had grown up into a woman but, by that time, unfortunately, he would probably be dead.

He looked round the compartment through half-closed eyes. His closest classmates, Max, Hans, Rolf, Werner, Klaus, Gunther, Harald and Paul, were dozing away like himself, the others in the next-door compartment were probably doing the same. The majority from the Academy had been sent to serve on destroyers, minesweepers and capital ships, but they had been singled out for submarine duty and had undergone weeks of special training which had included practice in simulators and attack runs on model convoys. They had finally been ordered to report to the 5th U-boat Flotilla at Kiel on the Baltic coast where they were to practise their new skills under the tutelage of an experienced commander. A special band of brothers, he thought drily: especially fearless and especially foolhardy.

It was still raining when the train arrived in Kiel. They stumbled on to the platform with their baggage and waited outside the station for a tram to take them out to the naval base at the northern end of the city. The base was surrounded by a high brick wall, its iron gates guarded by a sentry who took his time, inspecting their papers slowly and minutely while they were kept standing in the rain.

Klaus, always short-fused, cursed beneath his breath. ‘Stupid arsehole! What the hell does he take us for? British agents?'

Once through the gates, they marched past barrack blocks to the waterfront where German warships rode at anchor out on the Bay of Kiel. The tide was low and the strong smell of rotting seaweed mingled with the smells of salt, tar, oil and paint. The Tirpitz Pier stretched far out into the bay and as they walked along it, footsteps echoing, they passed a dozen U-boats moored in a double row. Type VIICs – the best. Very fast to dive (in twenty seconds from the given order), very mobile, with a maximum speed of l7.3 knots on the surface, 7.6 submerged, and a range of around 7000 nautical miles. Four torpedo tubes in the bows, one in the stern, and fourteen torpedoes to fire from them. Reinhard paused to admire them. His father had referred to them as grey wolves roaming the ocean. It was a good likeness. They had some weaknesses, of course, such as having to surface to recharge their batteries. They attacked with lethal torpedoes but their defences were limited to three guns mounted on the decks, seldom used when the better alternative was to dive out of sight. On the surface, the range of vision from the bridge was far less than a warship; under water, they were one-eyed, and any deeper than fourteen metres – the length of the periscope – they were completely blind. Only sound-locating hydrophones could tell them where the enemy might be. But, in his opinion, two strengths outweighed the drawbacks. The U-boats could hide and they could surprise the enemy.