The Last Eagle (2011) (32 page)

The head of the Estonian navy bowed his head in acknowledgement, held open the door for Ritter, and then climbed in after him.

The drive back to the headquarters was short. Ritter didn’t mind. He had already dismissed that pig of an admiral. He would pay. Not now, of course, but later. The Reich had a long memory.

As for Ritter, he would pay as well. It was as he expected. But before that time came, he still had a few options. Of course, it would require the services of a German destroyer, but under the circumstances, that might not be hard to come by.

Moments after he had learned the news of the
Eagle’s
escape from Tallinn, Dönitz was summoned by Hitler.

He trotted down the granite steps at German Naval Headquarters two at a time and slipped into the back seat of the waiting Mercedes without bothering to acknowledge the driver who was holding open the door for him. Across the street, a gaggle of children were crowded around the sausage vendor, clamoring for food like young birds in a nest. One boy’s face was already smeared with mustard. He caught Dönitz eyeing him, and smiled without restraint, holding out the bratwurst in his fist as if to say, “Can you imagine anything as wonderful as this?” And then Mercedes pulled away from the curb.

Dönitz wasn’t surprised that Hitler already knew about
Eagle
. He had expected to be called in for an explanation. He just hadn’t expected the call so soon. Even so, he wasn’t worried. There was little to the operation that Hitler could find objectionable, except the outcome, of course. It had been a risky operation from the start, but it had cost little terms of men and material, so the benefits had been worth the risk.

As the driver negotiated the mid-afternoon traffic in Berlin, Dönitz chuckled silently under his breath. Those damn Poles. The sailor in him couldn’t help but admire the resiliency of the
Eagle’s
crew. Hutter and the rest of them had underestimated their tenacity as much as they had overestimated the capabilities of the Estonians to keep them under control.

After a five-minute drive, Dönitz was quickly ushered into Hitler’s office. He was surprised to find Göring there, filling a chair in front of Hitler’s massive desk like a huge, bloated toad.

It was a strange sight, the admiral thought: not one, but two Hitlers watched his approach across the shiny marble floor. There was the slick-haired Hitler sitting motionless at his desk, flanked on either side by flags of the Third Reich. And then there was his twin: a huge, full-length portrait hung on the wall behind him.

Both Hitlers stared ominously at Dönitz.

As Dönitz took a seat , Göring acknowledged his presence with a condescending smile. Hitler waited a moment and that got right to the point, his blue eyes flashing. “What now, admiral?” he asked sharply. “You have made the Reich a laughingstock, not to mention the
U-Bootwaffe
.”

“
Mein, Führer
,” Dönitz began. “My apologies at this terrible misfortune. We assumed our Estonian friends were more competent then they turned out to be. This sudden turn of events is completely unexpected.”

“And so, now we have a Polish submarine on the loose in the Baltic?” Göring interrupted. “That is no small problem, not with our attentions turned elsewhere. Think of the devastation it can wreak on our shipping.”

Hitler gazed at Dönitz, waiting for an explanation. At times, there was something unnatural about him, the German admiral had always thought. It was apparent now. Hitler could perform with the best of them, crackling with energy, voice resounding through a room, or a building, or a stadium, with terrible authority. But now, he seemed shrunken, smaller. He held himself still as a reptile on a rock, eyes barely blinking, just watching. Will you eat me, too, Dönitz wondered, remembering a few of the officers who had dared challenge Hitler, or had failed at a given plan . He was too visible to disappear. No, the worst he could expect was retirement. The Alps in the fall. Dönitz could imagine worse places.

Dönitz had never been very good at subterfuge. He wasn’t about to begin now. “Threat?” he replied evenly, glancing at Göring . “I think that overstates it. The
Eagle
has but two torpedoes, and, more importantly, she has no charts and little food and water. If she doesn’t run aground, or blunder into a mine field, her crew will be forced to give up.”

“And if not?” Hitler said, eyes sharp as flint.

“Then we will destroy her. No one can escape from the German Navy’s relentless pursuit. To resist is to die. That is the message that we will leave with our enemies.”

Göring couldn’t surpress a cackle of laughter. “Bravo,” he mocked, clapping his hands. “Your speech writers should be commended.

Hitler, however, did nothing. He stared another moment at Dönitz, and then stood “It was a wonderful plan,” he said. “I like it when my officers take risks for the glory of the Fatherland.” As he ended his words, his eyes fell on Göring , who immediately grew silent.

“Thank you, sir,” Dönitz said, cautiously.

“I’ve ordered the
Generalfeldmarschall
to help out as much as possible, just in case, of course, your navy is unable to capture or destroy that submarine crewed by those Polish mongrels. Amazing how resourceful animals can be when cornered, don’t you think? I can’t imagine it will be a problem, but they’ve already surprised you once. I hope they don’t do it again. I expect you to keep me informed.”

Dönitz stood, bowed and clicked his heels subserviently in response. “Yes,
mein Führer
.”

As Dönitz left, he paused at the door, glanced back at Göring . The fat air marshal was now leaning over the German leader’s right shoulder, eyeing maps spread out across the Führer ’s desk. Göring looked up and winked. Dönitz marched out.

A half an hour later, Dönitz was reading a message from Ritter. He was suggesting something that Dönitz was already considering. Eventually, the
Eagle
had only way to go and still remain part of the war: out the Baltic and west to England. Ritter was asking for a picket of ships to guard the escape from the Baltic along with a personal request to be assigned to one of them. Dönitz knew the
Kriegsmarine
didn’t have that many to spare, but he could probably get enough cruisers, destroyers and minelayers and then fill in any gaps by temporarily swallowing his pride and asking for Göring’s help with reconnaissance flights. Between the two of them, they should be able to spot the
Eagle
and sink her, if it came to that.

Dönitz glanced down at his hand, the one holding the message. It was shaking slightly. He watched it, willing it to stop, but it was no good. He set the paper down on his desk top. They had come so very close to success. He had a nagging sense that their chance was gone, and her escape would come back to haunt them in some fashion or another. And now he would never know what difference she might have made in the conflict with England.

A few hundred kilometers to the west, Churchill sat in his basement office, listening to rumble of detonating German bombs overhead. Hitler hadn’t wasted any time, he thought.

Churchill was nearly finished with a letter to the American president, Franklin Roosevelt. Of course, direct contact such as this, bypassing the Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister, and other, normal channels of communication, was fraught with its own risks, especially with American interests divided about intervening in the war against the Germans. In fact, the current American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, was decidedly pro-German. Given the choice, Churchill didn’t doubt that Kennedy would prefer to see England lose to Germany. Most people dismissed this as simply the usual Irish antipathy toward anything British. Churchill suspected it was more complicated than that, but he had no intentions of sitting down with Kennedy and attempt to discover his true feelings. Thank God for one thing: the man wasn’t president of the United States. Not yet, anyway.

Churchill finished his last paragraph, and then signed the letter with a signature he would continue using in all future correspondence, even after being elevated to prime minister: “Naval Person.”

That done, he puffed his cigar back to life, and then returned to the note that he had just set aside. It was from the British Naval Attaché in Tallinn, Estonia. Churchill shook his head as he read the note again, grunting with pleasure. “God bless them,” he thought. There was little chance the submarine, the
Eagle
, would survive, but at least they would not rot in prison, and the
Eagle
would fight the way, and for whom she was intended.

Churchill expected Poland to fall within the week. Gdynia and the other Polish coastal cities had already been taken by the Germans. Soon
Eagle
would have nowhere to go. If a miracle happened, and she survived, Churchill hoped she sailed for England and not Sweden or France. The British Fleet could use her services.

He reread the note’s last line, shook his head with wonder. He couldn’t imagine a woman aboard a submarine. But leave it to an American. Curious, he wondered how she had gotten involved . The note didn’t say, but that was a story he would like to hear some day. When McBride, the naval attaché, arrived in England, he was going to make it a point to ask him about it.

Churchill had a sudden thought. He picked up his pen and added a postscript to his note to Roosevelt:

P.S. We believe two American news reporters—a man and woman (I am attempting to discover their names) —are aboard the Polish submarine Eagle now in the Baltic. She will undoubtedly be hunted by the Germans. I have no knowledge of her course or disposition, but I shall keep you informed should we come in contact with her or hear more news.

N. P.

Churchill rubbed his eyes. The bombing had stopped. He wondered where the
Eagle
was now. It wasn’t hard to imagine what they were experiencing. Depth charges must be a lot like what Londoners were facing. An unknown attacker from above. The click of a detonator and instant death. The inexplicable waiting from one moment to the next, wondering how much longer you might have to live.

Churchill folded the letter, set his still burning cigar to one side. He pushed back his chair, crossed to the other side of his room, unloosening his collar and belt as he went, and rolled onto his cot. He reached up and turned off the lamp on a table beside his cot. He would sleep. For a few hours, anyway. He closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind. But tonight sleep was even more difficult to find than usual. He couldn’t help wondering what it must be like to have 50 fathoms of water overhead, and the threat of someone waiting to destroy you if you surfaced. When he finally flicked the lamp back on a half an hour later, his pale forehead was damp with sweat. The bombing had started again. He quickly pulled on his shoes and slippers, his navy cap. He needed some air. The walls and ceilings in his basement office seemed to be pressing in on him from every side. He padded down the corridor followed by one of his personal guards, then started up the stairs, until he found himself on the building’s roof .

“Dangerous, sir,” the guard muttered, reminding Churchill of the obvious. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Churchill blew out a deep breath, looked up at the dark sky. The distant thrum of German bombers was easy to hear. It sounded like an orchard in spring heavy with buzz of ten thousand bees. To the east, the sky was punctuated with flashes from the anti-aircraft guns, and sliced by spotlights, weaving nervously back and forth. “No, this is fine. I can imagine worse places. Indeed I can.”

“Orders?” Talli stood, arms crossed, waiting.

Stefan heard the request, but he remained mute, his thoughts elsewhere. A magician had once visited his village when he was just a boy. He had tried to get close enough to see, but sharp elbows and jabs finally convinced him to give up, so, instead, he had climbed onto the roof of the building across the street. He crept up to the edge, and from there was able to peer down on the spectacle below just as the magician made chicken appear beneath a purple cloth that had moments before covered nothing but an egg. The crowd had gasped and then applauded with delight. Even though Stefan knew it had been a trick—it had to be—he couldn’t help being impressed. How had the magician done it? He had often wondered.

He was thinking about that magician now, wondering if that memory could inspire him to produce his own trick. He knew what his men expected. But he wasn’t sure he could summon enough of his own magic to get them to safety.

The
Eagle
had left the harbor far behind, and she was now following a twisting course dictated by the reassuring blinks of the occasional navigation buoys. Below deck, the radioman was attempting to contact the Polish base at Hel. But no word. Not a good sign, Stefan knew, but he kept that to himself. The radio transmitter could be destroyed, or worse, the Germans might have taken charge of the base.

Despite the lookouts, Stefan couldn’t help an occasional glance aft. He was surprised that no Estonian ships had taken up their pursuit. They had motor launches that were more than a match for
Eagle’s
speed. But the line of white foam, the only indication of their passing, faded into the darkness and they remained alone. But for how long?