PROLOGUE
Friday, March 16, 1945
Ten twenty-eight p.m., Eastern Daylight Time: Fritz Hagen nearly
jumped out of his skin when the first two Wabos--Americans
on the surface called them "depth charges"--went off
with ringing, mind-numbing shocks that sent the ersatz coffee
in his mug flying all over the table and himself. Bad enough merely
to be trapped in this steel coffin a hundred feet beneath the
sea, now somebody was trying to hammer it open as well! Hagen,
a Major, or Sturmbannführer, in Heinrich Himmler's
Schutzstaffe, or SS, was by no means new to bombardment.
As a special-forces operative in the SS's Sicherheitsdienst,
he'd served two long tours in the crumbling hell of the Eastern
Front with more close calls than he cared to remember. But this
was different. Huddled here at a small bulkhead table in the dank,
clammy bowels of Nazi U boat U 2532, there was no place to run,
no foxhole to shield him. He felt naked, exposed: utterly helpless,
like the cowering, tethered animals he'd shot for prizes at Hitler
Youth sporting events before the war.
Of ordinary height, but athletically built with thick neck and
broad shoulders, Hagen had a square-jawed face with flattened
nose and a stern mouth softened by thoughtful, intelligent eyes
that radiated a frank, open sense of honesty and responsibility.
It was the best possible face a sabotage agent could have. Blond
and blue-eyed-he was called a "perfect Aryan" each time
he had a physical exam--Hagen approached everything in life with
genuine dedication and a zeal for doing the best job possible,
which, to his knowledge, he had just accomplished in New York
City.
In moments, a third Wabo, followed immediately by a fourth,
threw him painfully against a bulkhead amid flying shards of glass
from shattering light bulbs. He set his teeth, remembered to breathe,
then probed a deep, wet gash in his throbbing forehead. These
explosions were clearly nearer than the first two, as were the
ceaseless pings of the Ami's Asdic detection gear that clanged
against the sweating steel hull. Hagen shivered, wondering about
the U boat's inordinately youthful skipper, Fregattenkapitän,
"Vati" Lindermann, a few meters aft in the control room.
Was he good enough to evade the armada they'd arrayed against
him up there? Nothing like this had happened on the way over,
not even when they'd surfaced to launch the Wotan. But the Ami's
excellent radar had apparently picked them up when the U boat
surfaced again to board him and his crew for the trip back to
Germany. Probably, he thought with resignation, it was those few
minutes they'd delayed on the surface to send the radio message
that had made the difference.
Now, apparently, they were in for the Devil's own time, in spite
of the impressive capabilities of this new Blohm und Voss Type
21 U boat, with its radically streamlined outer casing and increased
battery power. On the way over from Germany, the youthfully exuberant
Lindermann had bragged that she could outrun most Allied anti-submarine
trawlers and corvettes, even under water. But he'd had no occasion
to prove it then. Now, it was alarmingly clear her designers had
not considered the swift patrol craft the Amis operated outside
their largest city's harbor. And the U 2532 was still in shoal
water only scant miles off Lower New York Bay. The meager depth
severely limited her ability to maneuver.
Before long, individual Asdic pings had merged to a nearly continuous
pealing, and were coming from every direction: only God knew how
many sub chasers they'd mustered up there. Hagen stumbled aft
from the Kommandant's cabin he'd shared with Lindermann
during the mission; by this time, he was more than a little concerned
for his men who were doubled with the ship's crew in the forward
bunks behind the torpedo compartment. Making his way from hand-hold
to hand-hold along the swerving, canting deck, he emerged into
the harried turmoil of U 2532's 'midships control room, where
thin-faced, bearded Lindermann-still in his peaked cap with its
obligatory white cover-had just ordered a sharp left turn; the
deck tilted dizzily. Then, without warning, the loudest Asdic
pinging shifted directly overhead, now mixed with sounds of high-speed
screws.
Lindermann had just begun to gesticulate another order when the
whole universe abruptly tore apart in a paroxysm of thunder, concussion,
and violence that threw Hagen from his feet again, but this time
in utter darkness. The lights had gone out completely. Christ!
This was it for certain. They'd been hit, no mistaking that! The
U boat's hull was still groaning and shuddering like a small bird
caught in the jaws of a cat. Just as dim, emergency lighting began
to glow, a great torrent of black, icy water and debris, parts
of it once human, roared forward through the submarine as though
someone had opened a gigantic fire main. Hagen desperately managed
to grab a stalk of pipes and hold on before it swept him forward
from the control room. Then, taking quick, accurate stock of the
situation-he'd developed a real talent for that on the Eastern
Front-he spied Lindermann and the two steersmen struggling up
a ladder near the periscope. It didn't take a university professor
to guess where they were going; he decided to follow.
Dragging himself hand over hand by any solid object he could grab,
Hagen fought through the reeking, rapidly climbing water
until his fingers closed on the ladder. They slipped; everything
was suddenly greasy with diesel fuel: that's what smelled so!
He only just caught himself on one of steersman's seats before
he was again nearly swept from the control room, then began to
fight his way back to the ladder. Now, however, he was almost
completely submerged; mere inches of air separated his face from
the maze of pipes and wires overhead.
When he reached the ladder again, he was gasping for what little
air remained between the pipes, but by now, the flooding
had slowed, at least. With the last traces of oxygen in his bursting
lungs, he thrust himself through a hatch onto slippery rungs leading
through a narrow, vertical tube into the rear of a small, wind-blown
cockpit at the top of the U boat's streamlined conning tower.
The whole area was presently flooded with light from several painfully
bright searchlights that pierced the darkness with relentless
glare. They revealed Lindermann and the two steersmen poised with
their hands raised in the universal gesture of surrender. Hagen
also raised his hands while he struggled to keep his footing on
a wet surface that was slanting aft alarmingly. The U boat's main
decks were already awash; she was going down in a hurry.
With an immense feeling of relief, he realized he was probably
going to survive after all, and glanced around to see if anyone
might have jumped into the water from the bow section. It was
soon clear that he and his three colleagues in the cockpit were
the boat's only survivors. Ruefully, he muttered a short prayer
for the four brave commandos he'd just led to their deaths; they'd
clearly been drowned in the bow compartment with most of the crew.
So close to safety he mused with a grimace, then merely shrugged.
He'd already seen so many men die that another foursome hardly
mattered.
With sudden shock, he remembered the sealed, stainless-steel capsule
he'd ordered Lindermann to lock in the sub's strong box. During
his rush to safety, he'd never even given it a thought! His heart
caught for a moment; without that activating sequence of thirty-two
letters and numerals he'd "programmed" into the Wotan,
his whole difficult mission might just have come to naught! Thank
God he'd managed to broadcast everything back to Germany before
the U boat submerged-and during the prescribed ten-minute time
window, at that!-even though it might have contributed
to the Amis locating his U boat. Without that, he might as well
not have come at all.
Thank God also that Admiral Carnaris had changed his mind
about that broadcast, he growled to himself. At first, the secretive
little Admiral forbade any use of radios on the mission at all,
ordering that everything be carried back to Germany aboard the
U boat instead! Rumor had it that he suspected the Allies could
decipher Enigma code.
Luckily, someone with enough influence-he couldn't even guess
who-objected strenuously, and in time the Admiral had come to
his senses with a compromise. Once-and only once-during
a tightly designated time window, Hagen would be permitted to
broadcast home both the codes and the all-important telephone
number by which the Wotan could be accessed. His data would be
encrypted by a new and hitherto unused code wheel for the Enigma
machine that would both be carried in the U boat and furnished
to a single radio station authorized to receive and translate
the message. After his broadcast, however, he was still
required to write everything on a sheet of paper to be sealed
inside a capsule for its return in the U boat. Had the Admiral's
original directive been followed, everything would soon be gone,
lost forever. And he, Fritz Hagen, would have been blamed, not
that it mattered to a great extent now. He shook his head. So
much for Admirals.
He frowned as he glanced along the aft deck; stubs of the cradle
that had borne the Wotan and its delivery vehicle on the way from
Germany still projected slightly above the tossing waves. Somehow,
they looked like a row of vertebrae leading aft from the conning
tower. He hoped the Amis wouldn't notice. The vehicle itself was
gone, scuttled a few minutes after they'd ridden it back to the
submarine, but those cradle stubs, they could lead to a
dangerous line of questioning. Suddenly, a sharply amplified voice
boomed out of the darkness from behind one of the spotlights,
"One false move, Krauts, and you're dead," it growled.
"Ver-stayen-zee?"
"We are not armed," Lindermann shouted in clear English
at the glare, "but we need immediate assistance. Our hull
is smashed and the boat is sinking!"
"Say again?" the voice demanded.
"We are sinking!" Lindermann bellowed at the
top of his lungs.
"Yeah, we'd noticed," the amplified voice said presently.
"We're putting over a boat for you."
"The aschlochs had better hurry," muttered one
of the steersmen, a puggish, balding man whose roll of fat at
the back of his neck bespoke more than a trace of Prussian blood.
"Probably saving our skins is not their highest priority,
Otto," Lindermann observed through his teeth. "We of
the Kriegsmarine haven't exactly covered ourselves with
glory for rescuing survivors, have we?"
Notwithstanding his soaked fatigues and jack boots, Hagen found
himself chuckling darkly in spite of the cold. Lindermann did
have a valid point there.
After what seemed to be an eternity, enough time for the U-boat's
aft deck and enigmatic cradle to completely disappear, the bow
reared up like a great, misshapen cigar-filled with drowned men,
Hagen reminded himself. Moments later, a sizable longboat appeared
out of the darkness, silhouetted against the lights. It was rowed
by four Ami sailors clad in life jackets, cold-weather gear, and
sea boots; they looked dry and warm. A fifth sailor, similarly
dressed, crouched warily in the stem, armed with what the shivering
Hagen immediately recognized as one of the Ami's .30 Cal. Browning
automatic rifles, probably a Model 1918-A2 with its bipod removed;
he'd seen plenty of them in Russian hands. Bastards weren't taking
any chances.
"All right, you four," the sailor with the Browning
shouted, at closer range, his face had all the niceness of a clenched
fist, "-into the water one at a time. We'll pick you up from
there.
"I shall go last," Lindermann asserted quietly. "You
first, Kurt, then you Helmut," he said to the steersmen,
who were wearing the only available life jackets in the tiny cockpit.
When the two were safely in the longboat, Hagen turned to Lindermann
and came to attention. "We shall not mention our Wotan to
the Amis, eh, mein Kapitan?" he said with a smart
military salute
"What Wotan?" Lindermann asked, returning the same sort
of salute with raised eyebrows and a casual smile. "We are
only simple U boat sailors, searching out enemy ships at the wartime
orders of our Kriegsmarine High Command, eh?"
"Simple U boat sailors, indeed," Hagen repeated, then
stripped off his boots and followed the others into the shockingly
frigid water, that, toward the aft end of the conning tower, now
lapped at steel plates no more than five feet below the automatic
gun turret.
A burly American seaman who pulled Hagen spluttering from the
frigid water laughed and called him, "a damned lucky sailor."
The man's face seemed to be all fat, with a few haphazard features
carelessly thrown in to meet some sort of vague requirements.
Hagen-who was rather proud of his command of English-shivered
grimly at the American's mistake, as well as his own improving
prospects. He would soon be on his way to an American prison camp
in the guise of a German sailor instead of being shot as a spy
who had just installed a "Wotan," code name for a super-secret
KDVA, Kommunikationen, die Vorrichtung abfangen, or "communications
intercepting device" on Manhattan's East Side, in, of all
places, the crypt of St. Hildagaard's church across the street
from Hunter College, on East 69th Street.
Sandwiched on a wooden seat between two tough-looking Ami sailors,
he steadied himself while Lindermann was dragged aboard at the
last possible moment. The shivering Kapitan had no sooner
settled himself on a seat than the U 2532, her unfortunate occupants,
and Carnaris' now-useless capsule slid for the last time beneath
the waves, forming a series of powerful whirlpools that rocked
the rowboat. Hagen took a deep, contented breath. At least his
part of the mission had been a success. Someone would soon activate
the Wotan by ringing up that Manhattan telephone number from Germany,
and then, presumably, the Amis would have no more communications
from their largest city that were not also received in Germany.
He had no idea how the KDVA worked, only that he had installed
it according to instructions and hoped it wasn't already too late
in the war for the information it sent back to Germany to do any
good. Whatever the outcome, he knew he would remember the telephone
number to his dying day.