2

A small rubber boat was waiting when Kruger reached the pebble beach.  One man sat at the oars, another stood on shore.  Both were dressed entirely in black — shoes, trousers, sweaters, woolen caps — and their hands and faces had been blackened with charcoal.  Neither spoke.

The man on shore extended a hand, offering to relieve Kruger of his satchel.  Kruger refused.  Securing the satchel to his chest, he stepped aboard the boat and, steadying himself with a hand on the oarsman's shoulder, made his way forward to the bow.

There was a sound of rubber scraping against pebbles, then only the soft lap of oars pulling against calm water.

Two more men stood on the deck of the U-boat, and when the rubber boat glided up to its side, they helped Kruger aboard, took him to the forward hatch and held it open for him as he climbed down a ladder into the belly of the boat.

*          *          *          *          *

Kruger stood behind a ladder in the control room and listened to a blizzard of curt orders and immediate responses.  The air inside the submarine was a fog.  Every lightbulb had a halo of mist around it, every metal surface was wet to the touch.  And the air was not only humid, it stank.  He parsed the stench, and recognized salt, sweat, diesel oil, potatoes and something sickly sweet, like cologne.

Kruger felt as if her were a prisoner in an infernal swamp.

He heard a muted sound of electric motors, and there was a faint sensation of movement, forward and down.

An officer wearing a white-covered cap stepped away from the periscope, gestured to Kruger and disappeared into a passageway.  Kruger bent his head to pass through an open hatch, and followed.

They squeezed into a tiny cubicle — a bunk, a chair and a folding desk — and the commander introduced himself.  Kapitänleutnant Hoffmann was young, no more than thirty, bearded, with the gaunt pallor of U-boat veterans.  Around his neck he wore a Knight's Cross, and when it snagged in the collar of his shirt, he flicked it aside.

Kruger liked the insouciance of the gesture.  It meant that Hoffmann had had his Ritterkreuz for some time, was probably entitled to wear oak leaves with it but didn't bother.  He was good at his job, but that was already obvious from the simple fact that he had survived.  Nearly 90 percent of all the U-boats launched during the war had been lost; of thirty-nine thousand men who had sailed in them, thirty-three thousand had been killed or captured.  Kruger remembered hearing of the Fuehrer's rage as he had read those figures.

Kruger gave Hoffmann the news:  of chaos in the country, of the retreat to the bunker, of the Fuehrer's death.

"Who is the new leader of the Reich?" Hoffmann asked.

"Donitz," said Kruger.  "But in fact, Bormann."  He paused, debating whether to tell Hoffmann the truth:  there was no more Reich, not in Germany.  If the Reich was to survive, the seeds of its survival were here, in this submarine.  He decided that Hoffmann didn't need to know the truth.  "Your crew?" he said.

"Fifty men, including you and me, all volunteers, all party members, all single."

"How much do they know?"

"Nothing," Hoffmann said, "except that they're not likely to see home again."

"And the trip will take how long?"

"Normally, thirty to forty days, but these days aren't normal.  We can't get out the shortest way.  The Bay of Biscay is a death trap, crawling with Allied ships.  We'll have to go up around Scotland, get into the Atlantic and head south.  I can make eighteen knots on the surface, but I don't know how much we'll be able to travel on the surface.  I'll have to maintain economy speed, about twelve knots, so as to keep our range at about eighty-seven hundred miles.  If we're harassed, we'll spend more time submerged.  We only make seven knots submerged, and our E motors give out after sixty-four miles and need seven hours of surface running to recharge.  So the best I can give you is a guess:  about fifty days."

Kruger felt sweat bead on his forehead and under his arms.  Fifty days!  He'd been in this iron tomb for less than an hour, and already he felt as if a mailed fist were crushing his lungs.

"You'll get used to it," Hoffman said.  "And when we get south, you'll be able to spend time on deck.  If we get south, that is.  We're at a disadvantage.  If we have to fight, we'll be like a one-armed man.  We have no forward torpedoes."

"Why not?"

"We took them out, to make room for your... cargo.  It was too big to go down the hatch, so we removed the deck plates.  Then we found it wouldn't fit between the torpedoes, so they had to go."

Kruger stood up.  "I want to see it," he said.

They moved forward, past space after tiny space — the radio room, officers' quarters, the galley.  When they reached the bow of the ship, Hoffmann swung open the hatch leading to the forward torpedo room, and Kruger stepped through.

It was there, secured in an enormous bronze box, and for a moment Kruger simply stood and looked, remembering the years of work, the countless failures, the derision, the first tiny successes and, at last, his triumph:  a weapon unlike anything ever created.

He saw that the bronze had begun to tarnish, and he stepped forward and checked swiftly for any signs of damage.  He saw none.

He put a hand on the side of the box.  What he felt was beyond pride.  Here was the most revolutionary weapon not only of the Third Reich but of science itself.  Very few men in history could claim what he could:  Ernst Kruger had changed the world.

He thought of Mengele, Josef Mengele, his personal friend and professional rival.  Had Mengele, too, escaped?  Was he still alive?  Would they meet in Paraguay?  Mengele, known as Der Engel des Todes, the Angel of Death, because of his experiments on human beings, had been contemptuous of Kruger's work, proclaiming it fanciful, impossible.  But in fact, Kruger's research had a very practical, and very deadly, purpose.

Kruger dearly hoped Mengele was still alive; he couldn't wait to show Mengele his achievement, the ultimate weapon:  Der Weisse Hai.

He turned away and left the torpedo room.