‘I’m sorry I dropped Richter.’
Lorenz turned to see Berger standing close by, evidently expecting a stinging reprimand. ‘Yes, you certainly chose your moment. When did you decide to change sides, Berger? Had you been thinking about it for a while, or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision?’
‘Kaleun?’ The boy looked horrified.
‘Go and make yourself useful, Berger,’ Lorenz didn’t want to berate the young seaman any further. ‘There’s plenty for you to do.’
Berger sketched a salute and made a swift retreat.
Having escaped annihilation the men felt indestructible, and went about their business with fierce enthusiasm. They reminded Lorenz of the ‘heroes’ who appeared in the U-boat propaganda films that the Party showed back home. There was banter, jokes — robust high spirits. Yet, the outcome could so easily have been very different, the boat, broken, resting on the sea bed, and these same men harassed by fish with sharp teeth, perpetual night.
Looking down at the injured man, Lorenz addressed Ziegler. ‘How is he?’
‘Not good.’
‘Kaleun,’ Richter groaned.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Lorenz responded. ‘You banged your head rather badly. Just rest for a while, eh?’
Richter’s eyelids flicked open. They were red with irises like discs of jet. He looked like something that had clambered out of a fissure in hell.
‘Kaleun?’
‘Rest. You’re going to be fine.’
‘I saw him.’
‘What?’
‘I saw him.’
‘You saw who?’
‘The British officer.’
‘Well, we all saw him, Richter. He was our prisoner.’
‘No, Kaleun. He was in the diesel room. I saw him.’
The men who were standing nearby might have laughed, but none of them did. Lorenz wanted to believe that this was because they were feeling sorry for their comrade, but their uneasy expressions suggested otherwise.
‘You’ve had a nasty knock on the head, Richter.’
‘I saw him.’
‘Ziegler,’ Lorenz whispered, ‘can you give him something? He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s in shock. We don’t want him agitated like this.’
‘Yes,’ said Ziegler. ‘I’ll do that.’
As Lorenz moved to walk away Richter’s hand shot out and grabbed his commander’s sleeve with surprising strength. He gripped it so hard Lorenz couldn’t free himself. ‘I saw him,’ the injured man insisted. ‘And he pushed me.’
While repairs were being undertaken the weather became progressively worse. A belligerent wind flayed the waves and raised curtains of foam. Green mountain ranges with frothy peaks appeared on either side of the boat and storm clouds gathered at every compass point. By the following morning conditions were appalling. Men were vomiting into cans and one of the petty officers was thrown from his bunk. Lorenz went up to the bridge and leaned against the periscope housing. The ocean resembled a winter landscape; wherever he looked the surface had been agitated into uniform whiteness. As the saddle tanks rolled out of the turbulence he was hurled against the bulwark. Lorenz tapped Müller on the shoulder. ‘Enough! Clear the bridge.’ He gesticulated at the open hatch and shouted ‘Dive!’ into the communications pipe. The watch clambered into the tower, and, after taking a quick look around, Lorenz followed them down.
In the control room Lorenz sloughed off his oilskins and said, ‘Forty meters.’ The vents were closed and there was the customary burst of activity prior to the boat’s descent. As the manometer pointer revolved, the reeling, yawing, rocking and swaying subsided and a grateful hush spread through the compartments.
Lorenz proceeded to the radio room where he undertook a leisurely perusal of the boat’s record collection. Strauss waltzes, Wagner overtures, and the complete Mozart horn concertos; traditional naval marches (rarely played); tangos and foxtrots arranged for a small dance band; hits performed by Zarah Leander, Marika Rökk, and Lale Andersen; French cabaret songs and illicit American jazz — Cole Porter, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman. Although the Party had banned jazz, this prohibition wasn’t enforced on U-boats. Indeed, the popularity of jazz among U-boat crews was common knowledge in Berlin and considered, with weary disapproval, as another example of their tiresome eccentricity.
‘Put this on,’ said Lorenz, handing Brandt a Benny Goodman record. The public-address system transmitted the thump of the connecting stylus, and the boat filled with lively syncopations. Lorenz retired to his nook, but left the green curtain open. Lying on his bed, he listened to Goodman’s agile clarinet, the irregular leaping intervals, the growling low notes, the sweet high notes. It was such paradoxical music, powerful and driving, yet at the same time fleet and fluidly inventive. How bizarre, thought Lorenz, to be traveling under the sea in an artificial air bubble, while listening to jazz! The vibrations would be transferred through the hull and out into the deep, providing a musical accompaniment for passing squid and porpoises. When the music came to an end, he called out: ‘And another.’
Lorenz got up and walked to the officers’ mess where he found Graf, sitting alone, finishing a coffee. The chief engineer had exchanged his grey leathers for British standard-issue khakis. He had acquired the uniform from captured stocks abandoned by the British Expeditionary Force prior to their departure from the northern French ports. Such spoils were much sought after.
‘Repairs complete?’ Lorenz asked.
‘Almost,’ Graf replied.
Lorenz sat down beneath a portrait of Vice Admiral Dönitz. ‘What about the hydroplanes?’
‘They seem to be working very well.’
‘So what happened? Why did we have to switch to manual operation during the attack?’
‘I checked the system.’ Graf’s sentence was irresolute.
‘And…’
‘Thoroughly, you understand.’ The chief engineer sipped his coffee. ‘I checked the system thoroughly and I couldn’t find a fault.’
‘But there must be an explanation, a cause?’
‘Not all causes are readily identifiable, Kaleun.’
‘Just one of those things, then, eh?’ Lorenz repeated Graf’s favorite maxim.
‘Yes,’ Graf shrugged, his voice flat. ‘Yes, Herr Kaleun.’
A tin of vitamin-fortified chocolates caught Lorenz’s attention. He pried the lid off, selected one, and popped it into his mouth. As he chewed, his expression became contemplative. ‘There was a problem with the attack periscope.’
‘Was there?’ Graf leaned forward, concerned. ‘You didn’t say…’
‘It suddenly rotated and I hadn’t used the pedals.’
‘Do you want me to take a look?’
‘The machinery functioned well enough,’ he paused to scratch his beard, ‘in the end…’
Benny Goodman’s clarinet soared above the chugging brass, and the drummer produced a striking beat that suggested a reversion to the primitive.
‘The boat’s been very temperamental lately.’ Graf’s expression was full of meaning. He began to nod his head slightly, encouraging Lorenz to speculate.
‘Everything was working when we left Brest.’
‘Still…’ Graf continued to nod.
Rumors of sabotage had been circulating for some time. ‘Nothing has been tampered with,’ said Lorenz dismissively. Graf accepted Lorenz’s rebuff with Stoic calm. Only the fractional elevation of his right eyebrow betrayed his mild irritation.
They sat in silence for a while, both listening to a bright, blaring trumpet solo. When the full orchestra returned, Lorenz addressed Graf in a low, confidential register. ‘The crew…’ He hesitated before continuing, ‘Is the crew all right? Do you think?’
‘I had a chat with Sauer. He thinks Richter may have unsettled them,’ Graf replied.