Blum shrieked as he flipped over the fulcrum of the railing, arms flailing wildly. As he began to fall, he realized with sudden clarity that he had been a greedy fool all along and was now about to die for it.
Tolefson took his time lighting another cigarette. He peered over the edge. Blum was lying chest-down, his right arm bent awkwardly at the elbow. A broken neck had allowed his head to twist around nearly 180 degrees. He gazed up at his killer with the look of a surprised owl, his pale blonde hair glowing faintly in the dark. Tolefson was no longer surprised when he came across a Jew with blonde hair. He finished his cigarette, letting the cold night air and the smoke wash away the distaste of what he had just done.
Someone would notice the body in a few hours. They would find the suicide note inside a plain white envelope in his coat pocket. It would explain everything. Money troubles. Women troubles. A man of weak character. No one had particularly liked Blum anyway. The investigation would take just a day or two, and then it all would be forgotten. No one had seen the pair enter the shipyards together. No one would see Tolefson leave.
Tolefson had nothing against the Jews. And just being a Jew was no reason for Blum to be killed. Greedy, however, that was another matter. And, of course, being greedy was just like a Jew. It was the kind of inane logic that convinced so many that Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, was right after all. He had almost turned down the Gestapo’s orders, despite the risk to his career. He was not afraid of killing in the line of duty, but he was no murderer. He was a soldier. The Gestapo officer must have sensed his conflict. That’s when he had told him about Blum’s contact with the British. “He was already working for us,” he said as if commenting on the indiscretions of a club member. “We just can’t allow that kind of thing.”
“I suppose not,” he said now, his words sounding hollow in the cold night air. He lingered for another moment longer, staring hard at the Polish submarine visible under distant lights, strangely reluctant to leave.
Earlier, he had walked the
Eagle’s
decks with Blum trailing behind like a lost dog, inspecting every pipe, locker and fitting. He was surprised by how familiar and comfortable it all seemed.
Of course, the
Eagle
was nothing like the submarines he had served on in World War I, or even the more updated version he had captained before assuming his current post. She was faster and more lethal than any submarine in the world. There was something right about this ship. He had sensed it as soon as he stepped onto her deck. That’s when he began to envy the man who would soon be her captain. Lucky Polish bastard.
What was it Blum had said? “A shame,” no, “a bloody shame.” Those had been his words.
The fool was right about one thing. It was a shame. When war began, she would be an early target. If the
Luftwaffe
didn’t sink her, the
Kriegsmarine
would hunt her down and blow her out of the water. A vessel as fine as the
Eagle
deserved better, but her fate was all but sealed. Tolefson flicked his cigarette into the night, glanced one last time at the
Eagle
and smiled at a sudden thought.
Or was it?
Karl Dönitz, chief of the German Navy’s U-boat operations—
U-Bootwaffe
—stared out the window of his top-floor office, across the broad boulevard choked with traffic, to the park beyond. In recent years, it had bustled with constant activity. Old men playing chess, young lovers strolling along the sidewalks and paths, children kicking soccer balls, playing hide and seek, or running for the sheer joy of it beneath the hawk-eyed gazes of their keepers. And for the hungry, there was the ever-present bratwurst cart, gleaming red in the sunshine like a circus wagon.
Dönitz smiled to himself at the thought of the cart’s crafty, one-armed owner. Did anyone else ever notice? He was always stationed upwind, making sure the tantalizing perfume of his sizzling brats didn’t miss a nose, working on the subconscious of the unwitting like a gastronomical Pied Piper.
His name was Friedrich Pfundt. He’d introduced himself without apology months earlier, when Dönitz’s rumbling stomach had led him across the street and the admiral decided to stretch his legs and go himself instead of sending one of his aides on the errand for him.
“Will there be war, Admiral, sir?” he had asked, recognizing Dönitz’s face from his frequent photograph in the newspaper. He deftly slapped chunks of sausage on a paper plate, adding dabs of hot mustard and horseradish, and then holding it out for him to take.
Dönitz picked up a piece of bratwurst with his fingers, eyeing the man as he considered his response. One-armed vet, not even bothering to pin up the sleeve of his yellowed shirt, letting it flap at his side like an appendage with a mind of its own. Black, shapeless pants and sturdy work boots finished a costume that was topped off by a sunburned face that looked as if it had once been crumpled in anger like a sheet of paper.
More than likely he was just a sausage vendor. But he had been fooled before. Nowadays, anyone could be Gestapo.
“Goddamn right there’ll be war,” Pfundt answered for him, following his words up with a cackle of glee. “About goddamn time, too. I’d go again if they’d take me—”
“You have already given more than enough to the Fatherland.” The admiral wiped mustard from his lips, slipped another hunk of sausage into his mouth and began to chew.
Pfundt shrugged as if it was nothing. “I left my goddamn arm hanging from a smoking snag in the Ardennes. But at least it wasn’t something more important, if you know what I mean.” He wagged an uncooked brat near his crotch for emphasis, and then cackled again, startling crows in a nearby oak. “I can still fight. Best damn one-armed shot in all of Germany. If you ask me, we should sit tight, act nicely nice, take care of what we’ve got, maybe get the Yanks and the Brits on our side, and then we strike when they least expect it.”
“I’ll pass that along to my superiors,” Dönitz said, dryly. “How many children?”
“Seven. Five boys, two girls.”
“I’m sure you’re proud.”
“Goddamn right,” Pfundt said fiercely.
“As you should be,” the admiral said, smiling for the first time as he finished his last bite, and dropped his plate into a battered trash. “Thank you for the snack, Herr Pfundt, and the advice.” He gave the man a crisp salute before pivoting away.
Dönitz would have liked to talk to Pfundt again. Today in particular. But Pfundt was nowhere to be seen, the park deserted, a chill Siberian wind convincing even the desperate to stay inside. Blowing steadily since the night before, it was driving horizontal sheets of rain through trees stripped naked months earlier. And too soon it would be dark again.
The radiator in the corner of Dönitz’s office creaked and grumbled, struggling to keep the cold at bay. He knew his staff called his office the refrigerator, as much for his icy personality as the chronic inadequacy of the building’s heating system. He didn’t mind. Icy matched his mood, particularly on this late Thursday afternoon the second week of January 1939.
He should have been elated. The previous day he had been promoted to rear admiral —
Konteradmiral
—a fitting exclamation point to a career began when he stepped aboard that cramped, dank German submarine twenty-five years earlier and had a sudden premonition of its potential in the art of war making.
Yes, indeed, the newly christened rear admiral mused. He should have been elated. But numbers did not lie. With enough U-boats, he could starve and freeze England into submission and Germany would surely triumph. Without them? …
Of course, he had argued for delay until the end, risking even Hitler’s wrath in his persistence. He had sixty submarines, he pointed out. He needed three hundred.
At their last meeting, Hitler had slammed his open palm on the table, ending Dönitz’s criticism once and for all. “Enough and enough,” he said, spit flying from his mouth. “You will just have to make do with what you have. If not, I will find someone who is.”
Dönitz locked eyes with the most dangerous man on the planet, his stomach tight as a fist. Logic was on his side. And yet, logic didn’t matter with this man. “You will hear no more of it, mein Führer,” he submitted after a moment. And may God have mercy on us all.
Hitler had appraised Dönitz shrewdly, and then smiled forgiveness. “That’s a good boy, Karl.”
It might have gone differently if not for Göring, Dönitz thought coldly. Hitler had chosen to listen to his self-promoting boasts and wishful thinking.
“My pilots are ready for the sacrifice to come,” the corpulent head of the German
Luftwaffe
reminded everyone earlier in the meeting, glancing briefly at Dönitz as he spoke.
His argument was clear to all. Why wait for more U-boats? Now was the year to strike, not 1941 or ’42. The
Luftwaffe
by itself would be enough to bomb the French, English and anyone else who stood in the way into capitulation.
Dönitz lit a cigarette—an American Camel cigarette, he was sure the Gestapo had noted somewhere in his files—and watched the wind swirl through the park, the stark gray trees shivering as it passed. Snow by nightfall. Weather forecasters said otherwise, but he trusted his nose and his aching right knee more than those pseudo-scientists. It smelled like snow, the air bitter. His knee agreed. And so, it would snow.
It reminded him of his promise to take his granddaughter for a walk that evening. She loved to chase snowflakes across the wide lawns at his estate on the outskirts of Berlin. It was the same every year. It could not be truly winter until they each had caught a snowflake on the tip of their tongue.
“It is a tradition!” she scolded just that morning, standing before him in her pajamas, stuffed bear under one arm. “Today is the day. Baby Bear told me. And you must catch at least one, Grandpapa,” she said, reminding him of the rules, as if nature herself needed the permission of a rear admiral, and, more importantly, a little girl, before it could continue on
Dönitz heard the step outside of his door just before the knock. He pinched the bridge of his nose, dismissing the memories. “Enter.”
A slick-haired aide stuck his head into his office. “Sir. Excuse my interruption.”
“What is it?” There was a practiced edge to his voice.
“The report you were waiting for.”
Dönitz gestured with his hand. The aide scurried across the room, laid the folder on the admiral’s desk, and then retraced his route. Dönitz let the door close, opened the folder and began reading.
It was dark outside when he finished. He closed the folder. Maybe this was a small part of the answer? It was a crazy, audacious plan. And if anyone could pull it off it was Peter von Ritter, the plan’s author. It would require good men in the right places to take advantage of every opportunity. But it might work. If they could seize just one of Poland’s Dutch-built submarines, it would increase Germany’s long-range U-boat fleet by 20 percent.
Of course, it was hard to imagine how one more submarine would make much difference in the upcoming conflict. And yet, Dönitz was enough of a student of history to realize that the fate of wars had turned on much less. And the submarine the Dutch had built for the Poles was the best in the world. It would be another six months before Germany had anything close to its capabilities.
In any case, Hitler’s mind was set and Dönitz would have to play the game as best he could with the cards he had in hand: five German long range submarines, a fistful of others and if they were lucky, a Polish wildcard thrown in to the mix.
He gave one last glance out the window then stood, stretching stiffness from his aching back. He slipped the folder into a well-traveled attaché case, a gift from his father on his eighteenth birthday, shrugged into a leather overcoat, slowly pulled on his gloves, and then put on his cap. He stared at his visage for a moment in the mirror by the door. Hawkish nose. Strong chin. Perfectly composed. Stern but not haughty. A man completely in control. “Never let them hear you fart,” his first captain was fond of quoting. “And if you do, make sure they think it stinks like French perfume or are too afraid to say otherwise.” It was one of the best pieces of advice he ever received from the man.
Dönitz grasped the doorknob and hesitated. Best to keep the plan quiet. For now. But he would make sure Ritter’s team was in place with plenty of time to spare just in case Hitler changed his mind once again and decided to attack even earlier.
In the meantime, he had more important matters to attend: an urgent appointment at home chasing snowflakes with his granddaughter. Truth be told, he regretted disappointing her above all. Perhaps this year, he would catch more than one.
Nearly nine months after his plan had been dropped on the desk of Rear Admiral Karl Dönitz, Peter von Ritter moved steadily up the rain-slick dirt path that snaked its way beneath the thick canopy of trees in the woodland above the Polish port city of Gdynia.
The clouds on the western horizon were ablaze, as if the sun, fleeing in the face of yet another defeat, had chosen to ignite them instead of surrendering. The flare of orange and red that leaked through the shadows above revealed the sharp planes of the man’s face, thin lips and white dueling scar that curled as if drawn by the caress of a beautiful woman from the edge of his eye to the tip of chin. He was dressed in the clothes of an outdoorsman: fine wool pants and Norwegian wool sweater. On his feet were the kind of leather hiking boots you might find a man of leisure and wealth wearing on holiday in the Swiss Alps.