‘Odd?’
‘Yes. And I’ve been wondering whether it’s some kind of long-distance detection system. There’s whistling and a sort of squeaking noise.’ Thomas raised a hand and brought his fingers together. ‘Like when you squeeze a rubber toy. It’s been intermittent. There’s nothing there right now.’ Thomas offered Lorenz a pair of auxiliary headphones. The captain took off his white cap, wrapped the metal arch around the crown of his head, and pressed the circular pads against his ears. Thomas began searching for the sounds again. His hearing must have been very acute because Lorenz saw the hydrophone operator’s expression change from neutrality to excitement a few moments before he, Lorenz, detected the first faint whistle. ‘There!’ said Thomas. He continued to turn the hand wheel backward and forward, and as the range of these movements narrowed, the volume of the whistling increased.
Lorenz grinned. ‘No, Thomas. That’s not some fiendishly clever Tommy invention. We’re listening to dolphins.’ The commander was captivated by the eerie charm of the sounds: clicks, whickering, peeps, and a low churr that accelerated and rose beyond the upper limit of human audition. Occasionally there were loud thuds as the dolphins bumped against the hull. Lorenz imagined the pod weaving through the water, tracing elegant, interlocking ellipses; playful, carefree, curious, circling their discovery. A stark contrast: the natural world, innocent and joyful, and the boat, malevolent and deadly. ‘Yes,’ Lorenz added while removing the headphones, ‘Definitely dolphins.’ He was about to leave when he noticed Thomas was frowning. ‘What?’
‘It’s just…’ The youth seemed about to raise some objection but changed his mind. ‘Thank you, Kaleun.’
The hydrophone operator lacked experience, and Lorenz supposed that Thomas’s natural diffidence might make him overly reticent: he might feel foolish for having mistaken dolphins for a detection system and consequently fail to report something significant. Lorenz rested his palms on both sides of the doorway and leaned forward into the sound room. ‘What’s bothering you, Thomas?’
An inner struggle was taking place, and it was only after a lengthy pause that the youth finally mumbled, ‘I thought I heard words.’
‘Words?’
‘Yes, English words.’
‘Well, that’s not possible, is it? The microphones wouldn’t have picked up a radio signal.’
‘Exactly.’ Thomas looked relieved, as though he was pleased that Lorenz had been so blunt. ‘Sometimes, when you’re concentrating hard, you start to hear things.’
‘Maybe you need a rest. Perhaps we should get Lehmann to take over?’
‘No,’ said Thomas defensively, ‘I’ll finish my watch, sir.’ His response was curt, clipped. Realizing that he had been too abrupt, he offered Lorenz a placatory smile. ‘Sorry.’
Lorenz dismissed the apology with a benign hand wave. ‘Thomas?’
‘Kaleun?’
‘Do you speak English?’
‘A little.’
‘So, what did you hear?’
‘I really can’t say, sir.’
Lorenz wasn’t sure whether Thomas was being coy because he had been unable to translate the English or because he felt foolish saying aloud words that he must have imagined. The youth’s expression had become pained. Lorenz felt a strong urge to clarify Thomas’s meaning, to resolve the ambiguity, but he was forced to query his own doubtful motivation. ‘All right,’ said Lorenz, withdrawing. ‘Carry on.’ He ducked, stepped back through the bulkhead hatchway, and surveyed the control room: ladder, periscope, torpedo-tube indicators, engine telegraph, the large white cylindrical air compressor. All was calm, the crew focused, yet he felt mildly unsettled, as if he had just walked through a spider’s web in the dark.
The moon hovered above a pyramid of clouds and shone with exceptional brilliance. A broad avenue of silver ridges fanned out from the horizon, and at its edges, glittering threads broke away and floated across the water. On either side, the sea darkened through shades of slate grey and charcoal to deepest black. The tanker was conspicuous, a silhouette enlarged by a smudge of smoke. Even without binoculars it was possible to discern a shadowy shape interrupting the continuity of the horizontal crests. U-330 was ideally positioned, approaching the tanker from behind, facing the moon and upwind of its target. Lorenz knew that under such conditions the low, narrow outline of a U-boat was virtually invisible. Falk had been down to the forward torpedo room, and when he emerged from the conning tower he could barely contain his excitement. ‘How big do you think she is?’
‘Ten thousand tons or thereabouts,’ Lorenz guessed. One of the seamen turned to take a look. ‘You’re supposed to be keeping watch, don’t forget,’ Lorenz admonished.
‘Apologies, Herr Kaleun.’ The man sounded meek and ashamed.
‘We don’t want any nasty surprises at this stage,’ Lorenz remarked to Falk.
U-330 circled into position sixty degrees forward of the tanker’s starboard beam. Juhl and Müller came up onto the bridge and stood next to the attack periscope housing like ceremonial guards. Sauer, the bosun, disappeared into the conning tower.
‘They still haven’t seen us,’ Falk observed with glee and disbelief.
‘All right,’ said Lorenz. ‘Let’s see if we can get as close as possible.’
Falk expanded his chest and, affecting a somewhat studied, martial pose, readied the crew. ‘Stand by for surface firing.’
A voice in the bow compartment reported through the communications pipe: ‘Tubes one to four ready.’
Falk looked through the aiming device which was mounted on a pedestal and connected to the firing system. He started reciting figures that were acknowledged by Sauer. The bosun was at his station in the tower, entering relevant data into the computer which would, with superhuman efficiency, calculate the gyro angles for each individual torpedo.
‘Their helmsman must be blind,’ Müller laughed. It was a dry, humorless laugh that suggested astonishment rather than satisfaction.
Falk recited a list of figures that described the position, speed, and distance of the tanker. He then specified the operational parameters of the torpedoes. ‘Thirty knots: depth ten meters.’ The target was perfectly quartered in the crosshairs of the viewfinder. Falk licked his lips and called out, ‘Tubes one and two, fire!’
There was no recoil, tremor, or loss of momentum, U-330 simply continued slicing through the waves. ‘Hard a-port,’ Lorenz hollered. He gave a new heading and added: ‘Ahead full.’ The deck inclined steeply as the boat changed course. It was essential to get out of the tanker’s way. The U-boat was no longer invisible. If the torpedoes missed and the U-boat was discovered then the tanker would soon try to ram them.
Stopwatches were ticking.
‘Fifteen seconds,’ said Falk.
Lorenz imagined the torpedoes running silently toward their destination. As they passed beneath the tanker’s keel a pistol fuse set off by the hull’s magnetic field would detonate over a thousand pounds of explosives. Most of the men on board were probably asleep. A few might be reading or playing cards. Some, perhaps, were lying on bunks and making plans.
‘Come on…’ Falk crossed his fingers and growled. ‘Come on.’ Two roaring explosions followed, the first separated from the second by a heartbeat. The tanker was raised by the double blast and when it sank back down again there was a mighty splash and an ear-rending metallic crack. The spectacle resembled a toy being subjected to playful violence in a child’s bath. It was as though the brain, unaccustomed to witnessing the release of such colossal energies, demanded a reduction of scale to facilitate comprehension. ‘Got you,’ Falk punched his fist in the air. ‘Did you see that? Fantastic! We actually blew it out of the water!’ Orange flames leaped out of the buckled superstructure, and columns of smoke climbed high enough to discolor the moon.