U-330 had now completed a full circle, and Lorenz saw members of his crew swimming to get out of the way. Some of the bobbing heads, propped up by the inflated collars of the life preservers, were surrounded by expanding, ruddy diffusions in the water. The boat’s continuously changing orientation exposed Lorenz to gunfire, and bullets ricocheted off the internal curve of the bulwark. He jumped into the hatch, grabbed the ladder rails, and slid down into the control room.
It was the chief engineer’s responsibility to open the seacocks and hatches, and set the scuttling charges. Lorenz could hear water gushing into the compartments, a loud noise, like a cascade pouring over several deep tiers. Torn sheets of paper were floating on a river that seemed to be flowing out of the petty officers’ quarters.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Graf. ‘The boat will go down in ten minutes. You really should leave. I’m finished.’
‘Leave then,’ said Lorenz. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘But Kaleun,’ Graf pleaded.
‘I want to make sure that all my personal documents have been destroyed.’ Graf’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘Go!’ Lorenz barked. ‘Keep your head down and choose your moment carefully. If you can, wait until the conning tower is between you and the destroyer before attempting to get to the deck — and jump as soon as you can.’
‘Thank you, Kaleun.’
‘Now hurry!’
‘Kaleun?’
‘What is it now?’
‘You’re not wearing your escape gear.’
‘Is this really a good time to start impersonating my mother?’
The engineer waded to the bottom of the ladder, placed his foot on the first rung, but hesitated before beginning his climb. He looked at Lorenz, and his expression was curiously transparent. It was obvious that he had, albeit for a fraction of second, considered saying goodbye. In the end he had thought it best to remain silent.
Lorenz watched Graf’s ascent until the engineer’s dripping boots disappeared into the conning tower. A sustained discharge of bullets made Lorenz cringe. He strained to hear Graf’s progress but the gushing water was far too loud. Lorenz looked around the control room, registering the pipes and devices: the array of dials above the big hydroplane wheels, the Christmas tree, the vertical air compressor, the master gyrocompass — all useless now, all destined to rust on the seabed. He imagined how it would all look in a year’s time, and then in fifty years, and then a hundred years. Shoals of fish entering through the fore-bulkhead hatchway, everything transformed, barnacle-encrusted surfaces, gaping holes, fronds of seaweed swaying in the deep-sea currents… Lorenz splashed through the rising water and went to his nook, where he unlocked the metal box in which the Mauser was stored. He made sure that it was loaded and then continued, making his way forward between the empty bunks. The sound of bullets strafing the exterior had stopped, and he hoped Graf had managed to escape from the boat unharmed.
In the torpedo room he leaned against the doors and felt overcome by exhaustion. The light bulbs buzzed and flashed a valedictory SOS before going out. He could see a faint glow in the distance emanating from the control room and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again Sutherland was standing in front of him. The British commander was wearing his cap and his coat was hanging open. Lorenz glanced down nervously to see if Sutherland’s ribcage was visible, but there were no horrors to discover, no scraps of decaying flesh or bloated internal organs. All that he could see was a British naval uniform. Sutherland’s skull was undamaged and the corners of his eyes were creased with compassion. Although Sutherland’s lips did not move, Lorenz could hear the British commander’s voice, as if its point of origin was in his own head. ‘Let’s get out of this prison.’ Sutherland raised his right hand. The index and ring fingers were held straight and rigid, while the middle and little fingers were bent back. When he stretched his thumb it looked like a cocked gun. ‘You know what to do.’ Sutherland touched the tips of his extended fingers against his temple and added, ‘You know what you want to do.’ The figure began to fade until all that remained was an implied outline, a subtle mismatch between what had just been obscured and what had always been in view. Then Lorenz found himself staring into darkness. The bow dipped, and he felt the angle of the deck change. The water had risen up to his chest and was lapping against his chin. He pushed the barrel of the gun into his mouth, and as he did so he did not feel as if he had been defeated. He did not feel beaten, humiliated, or vanquished; quite the contrary, he felt the wild elation that comes with a decisive victory. The metal tasted good, like a fortifying tonic. He applied a little pressure to the trigger and felt a fractional shift. The old doctor, Hebbel, had been right to marvel at the strange workings of the human unconscious, because for no apparent reason, Lorenz found himself remembering Friederich Wilhelm Bessel, the astronomer who had proved that the star 61 Cygni was located 64 trillion miles away from the earth. He found the notion of such vast distances comforting. In such a boundless universe, there would always be distant corners beyond the reach of evil. He applied a little more pressure.
TWO WEEKS LATER
Whenever he was alone, memories flooded into his mind. They were not ordinary memories, but vivid and cinematic: collecting his film rolls together and stuffing them into a waterproof bag, joining the other men beneath the conning tower, pushing, shoving, wondering whether a shell would hit U-330 before he was able to get out, climbing up to the bridge, Lorenz’s exhortation—‘Don’t be a fool! Worry about saving yourself — not your photographs!’—running while bullets whistled through the air and rang against metal. He squeezed the flesh of his forearm until the pain was intense and the mental pictures faded.
It was a bright, clear morning, and Pullman was sitting at a window seat in a coffee house near the ministry. Traffic intermittently obscured the shop fronts on the others side of the road. One of them—Cohen & Sons—had been boarded up. He focused on the gold lettering but it was not enough to keep the past at bay. The memories were more real than the passing cars. Once again he was in the freezing water. Although his eyes were registering Cohen & Sons, he was actually watching U-330 moving away, and when he inhaled, he couldn’t smell coffee anymore, but diesel fumes. He was floating in the middle of a ring of familiar faces: Wessel, Sauer, Juhl, Brandt. They were all dead and their blood had leaked out of their wounds and colored the water. He was nudged from behind, and when he turned he found himself looking into a mess of gelatinous adhesions, one displaced eye, and a gaping lower jaw full of broken teeth. Who was it? He had no idea. The abomination’s arms threatening to embrace Pullman so he kicked against the current and swam wildly until exhaustion forced him to stop.
The destroyer was preparing to ram U-330. He watched it gathering speed and then there was a dreadful explosion and pieces of hot metal rained down all around him. Every impact hissed and created a cloud of steam. The destroyer was on fire. He had no time to observe its demise because U-330 had completed another circuit and was coming straight toward him. His limbs felt heavy and weak, and his extremities were numb with cold. He did not have the energy to start swimming again. The effort required to secure his survival was simply too much.
U-330 was getting closer, and Pullman braced himself. The bow was beginning to plow a deep trench between the waves. It continued nosing downward and eventually the deck was submerged up to the 8.8 cm gun. The conning tower appeared compressed and a frothy crest rose up around it. Then there was nothing to see except a whirlpool of swirling bubbles. Pullman felt his legs being sucked downward, an unpleasant dragging sensation as the submarine passed beneath him. This traction eventually weakened and he turned his attention back to the destroyer, which was being consumed by flames. Some thirty meters away another conning tower broke the surface, and Pullman registered a white emblem. Graf bobbed up beside him and said, ‘Looks like a polar bear, must be U-689. Quick, we can make it — start swimming.’ Figures were looking over the bulwark and one of them pointed in their direction.