The Last Eagle (2011) (29 page)

“What about the deck crews?” Eryk asked.

“Man the deck guns, of course,” Stefan said. “But remember, our quarrel is not with the Estonians. If we’re lucky, they might just let us go.”

“Too damn much trouble to keep around,” Squeaky added.

That brought chuckles from the men in their seats.

“Exactly!” Stefan added, grinning wryly.

Chief K pushed to the front. “I must do something,” he said apologetically.

Stefan knew instantly what the chief had in mind. “We don’t know where he is.”

“That officer—I heard him say he was going to find a cold place nearby,” the chief replied. “Shouldn’t be hard to find the nearest meat market. Jerzy. I won’t leave him behind, no sir.” He wagged his chin stubbornly. “If he can’t come along, well, I’ll just stay behind to keep him company.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Stefan said gently.

“But I do,” was the blunt reply.

Stefan knew it was useless to argue, even if he did have the time. And he didn’t. The chief’s mind was set, and Stefan couldn’t blame him for it. He patted the chief on the cheek, smiled sadly. “All right,” he said. “We’ll wait as long as we can.”

As Chief K blinked back tears and nodded gratefully, Stefan leaned forward and whispered into McBride’s ear. McBride glanced at the chief, hesitated for a moment, and then nodded.

Stefan smiled faintly, and then raised his voice. “Now let’s do our jobs,” he said. He tucked the pistol into his belt and stepped off the bus.

Ritter kicked open the crumpled door. Felt blood dripping from his chin. He reached up and explored the tattered edges of skin on his cheek. Another scar to tattoo his face, he thought. It could be worse. He eyed the windshield. An instant longer, and a similar hole would be decorating the center of his forehead.

He glanced inside the wreck. Sieinski was sprawled across the back seat, moaning softly. No telling how badly he was injured, and Ritter didn’t have the time or inclination to check. A few lights had flicked on in the upper-story apartments of the buildings that lined either side of the street, but the street remained deserted, the Estonians beginning to learn what many good Germans had already discovered: In the middle of the night, it was safer to ignore crashes and sounds of broken glass, screams and shouts and cries for help. Ritter knew that if he waited for someone to call the police, there was no chance to stop them. He clenched his hand into a fist. He was not ready to give up, not yet.

As he began to run, he slipped out of his ankle-length leather coat, letting it drop in the gutter. A present for someone in the morning. He did the same with his officer’s cap, flinging it down an alley. If he hurried, he just might make it in time. There were telephones at the guard station. He could alert the harbor batteries, officials at the German embassy. And then he thought of the German freighter anchored in the harbor just beyond the
Eagle
. If he could somehow contact her captain, she might just be able to block escape from the harbor. There was a flower shop on the corner, lights out because of the hour. Ritter ran up to the door, kicked out the front glass, and then reached through the jagged opening to the inside latch. Once released, he depressed the outside lock and stepped inside. The warm air was fragrant with blossoms. Ritter strode to the front counter, found the telephone hanging on the wall. “Get me the German embassy,” he said to the operator. “This is
Fregattenkapitän
Peter von Ritter of the German
U-Bootwaffe
. Get me the ambassador,
schnell
… I don’t care,” he said, “wake him now. A moment might make all the difference …” A minute later, Ritter was back out onto the street, running hard, urged on by the rhythmic beat of his boots echoing into the night.

Sieinski didn’t know how long he lay there, dazed, but not completely unconscious. He was aware of Ritter leaving, like a child on the edge of sleep hearing the slam of a door as his father heads for work in the darkness.

Sieinski moaned and sat up. He felt his forehead, once again tender from striking the back of the seat. His knee hurt, as well. But that seemed the worst of it. He worked his joints just in case, testing his shoulder, arms, neck. He would ache elsewhere later on, but nothing serious.

What had happened? His mind replayed the previous moments. Chase. Shots. And then he remembered The bus had been filled with the
Eagle’s
crew. His men. And then a sharp intake of breath, as he suddenly realized the truth. Not his men, not any longer. Ritter was right. Stripped of everything he had ever valued let him see clearly for the first time the waste and wreckage that was his life. And worst of all. They had left him behind. Sieinski began to weep. He felt once again the sweet despair of being overlooked by his friends. It was felt no different now than it had as a child twenty years earlier. They had left him behind. He caught himself. Not childhood ignorance, this time. What did he expect? He had abandoned them, left them to fend for themselves. They hadn’t left him behind, it had been his choice all along. He had been captain in name only, enamored with the rights and privileges that that rank had bestowed upon him. He had forgotten all about the responsibilities that came with it. He hadn’t taken care of his men, he hadn’t taken care of his boat, and so they had learned to do without him. His anguished sobs rang out in the darkness. What was he to do now? What would the Germans do to him when they found him? Sieinski was assaulted by a flurry of thoughts and emotions. His first inclination, as was his habit, was to find some way to protect himself. But Sieinski didn’t stop there. That was a change. He was no longer the same man he had been moments before. Despair had brought him to the bottom. But unlike many, he was not content to stay there. He couldn’t. The thought of his crew back on the
Eagle
filled him with a wild sense of hope and possibility. Maybe it wasn’t too late to help them? 

Commander Jaak Talli was in the
Eagle’s
bow compartment when he heard the faint shouts drift down the passageway, the footsteps on the deck overhead sounding like a herd of kids bursting out of a classroom. He glanced at his watch. 1:20 a.m. He couldn’t imagine it was the German crew already. They were punctual to a fault. They weren’t scheduled to take over the
Eagle
until she had been towed out of the harbor. And that wasn’t going to happen until mid-morning. Curious, Talli headed for the forward hatch.

Most of the afternoon and evening he had spent aboard the
Eagle
, supervising the disarming and unloading of her torpedoes through the loading hatches near the bow and stern. It was hot, greasy, grueling work, requiring a gang of men, block and tackle and chains to hoist the deadweight of the torpedoes above deck. It was also dangerous. A slip or a false move, and the TNT-packed cylinder could easily swing to one side, crushing a hand, a leg or worse.

Despite the risks, Talli’s order had been very specific. The damn Germans were getting the submarine, but that didn’t mean she needed to be handed over fully armed. There were just two torpedoes left when he’d finally called a halt to the work. It was nearly midnight. “We’ll finish in the morning,” he said with his brevity. “Oh-seven hundred sharp!”

He’d followed the quietly grumbling men out, and then returned, curiosity drawing him back aboard more than the coat he’d left. On an impulse, he’d decided to explore the deserted vessel, looking in every nook and cranny, the haunting presence of the crew his only companions. He spent time thumbing through the captain’s log, inspecting the engines, even rummaging through a few duffel bags like a adolescent voyeur. In the control room, he took hold of the periscope, imagining himself peering across a stormy sea at a distant target.

Talli had always been a surface sailor, serving on small patrol boats mostly, only recently getting command of his own. The Estonian Navy had never been as large as her neighbors. Its duties mostly revolved around patrolling her rugged coast line and infrequent rescues. But that hadn’t stopped Talli from reading about submarines, learning as much as he could about them. Dreaming. When the
Eagle
appeared in the harbor, he could barely contain his excitement. What luck. It wouldn’t be difficult to get a tour of the boat, of that he was certain. And then, incredibly, he had been ordered to intern the crew and learned the submarine was to be handed over to the Nazis, his superior, Admiral Kalm, winning the wrestling match to see who could be first among many at providing favors for the Germans. The fools. Didn’t the realize it was only a matter of time before Estonia and the other Baltic states were eaten by the German or Russian wolves. It was inevitable because, as his grandfather would have said, “it is in their nature.”

By the time Talli climbed up through the forward hatch, the Polish crew was already fanning out over the
Eagle’s
deck, disappearing down the aft hatch, climbing up onto the deck guns.

There had been three guards on the quay. He noted in a glance that they had gathered, along with the guard from the mansion, along the edge, overlooking the
Eagle
. They stood together like a cluster of forgotten schoolboys, looking awkward in a game that was just about to begin. Remarkably, not one threat had been made against them, and so their rifles hung limply in their arms, barrels pointed impotently at the ground. Just a few hours earlier they had been trading cigarettes and booze with these men. Now, they simply watched them go about the business of getting the
Eagle
underway. 

As Talli began to take it all in, he had a sudden, fleeting impulse to escape. In three steps he could be off the deck, leaping into the harbor water. A long swim underwater would take him safely away from the floodlights shining down on the
Eagle
. He could be back up on the quay in five minutes and on his way to finding help.

But as he watched the men take back their vessel, these feelings were pushed aside by a sense of calm of the kind he had not experienced since he was a boy, staring in awe at the stained glass windows of the town’s cathedral. Instinctively, he knew there was something deeply right about what was happening. There was nothing he could do—nothing he wanted to do.

When the last Pole stepped off the bus, its doors swung close, there was the sound of grinding gears. The bus backed off the quay, reversed direction, and then disappeared down a street angling away from the harbor. And then Talli noticed Stefan standing next to the conning tower, remembered him from before. The Pole. He had an Estonian officer, Veski, at his side. There was a pistol in Stefan’s belt.

 When Stefan saw Talli, standing on the ladder, halfway out of the forward hatch, he didn’t seem surprised. He motioned him over.

“And so we meet again,” Talli said striding confidently up to Stefan. He nodded toward Veski. “I should ask what is the meaning of this … but it seems clear enough.”

Stefan nodded. “We’re taking back what is ours.”

Though he had never seen an American baseball game, Talli responded to the reality of the words like a big league manager sending signals to a batter at the plate. He exhaled loudly, took off his hat, ran his hand through his thick hair, and then put it back in place, tugging the brim.

Stefan eyed Talli. “You aren’t trying to work yourself up to try something stupid, are you?”

Talli was silent for a moment and then smiled. “I am no friend of Germany. And as you say, this is your vessel. I have no specific orders to prevent you from taking back your sub. I will do nothing to stop you.”

“I figured as much,” Stefan said. “I pegged you for an honorable man first time I saw you. I can see I was right. You had trouble stomaching what happened, didn’t you?”

Talli sighed. He yelled orders in Estonian to the three guards on the pier. A sense of relief crossed their faces. Finally, someone to tell them what to do. They hesitated a moment, and then slapped each others on the shoulder. What luck. Instead of watching this sub well into the night, they now were free to stop by the nearby pub before reporting back to their barracks. “I told my men to leave. I don’t want them hurt. And I won’t stop you. But you can’t get out. Soon everyone will know. We have shore batteries protecting the harbor. They will destroy your vessel if you try to leave.” He sounded sad as he said the words.

It was Stefan’s turn to shrug. “We each do what we must,” he said softly.

Eryk’s head appeared in the forward hatch. “We have just two torpedoes,” he yelled.

Stefan whirled on Talli, grabbing the front of his uniform in his fists.

The Estonian didn’t react. “I’m sorry. We didn’t think the Germans needed them. We offloaded all the rest earlier today. Of course, I didn’t think you’d be needing them”

Stefan released his hold. A smile without humor cut across his face. “Yeah, my mistake. I should have let you know. And what else is gone?”

Talli didn’t get a chance to answer. Squeaky shouted down from the conning tower. “The charts,” he shrieked. “They’re all gone.”

Talli shook his head sadly. “You see, even if you get away, you won’t get far, not without charts. It would be suicide to try …”

Stefan’s face hardened. “We will not stay here,” he said, fiercely. “We will tap-tap our way out of the Baltic like a boatload of blind men if we must.”

Talli had to admire this man’s courage. But he waters off the Estonian coastline were particularly treacherous. And they would be chased—by the Estonians, the Germans and the Russians.