Stissinger looked at the picture. “I frankly wonder, sir, how happy he was to get the title.”
“No one knows. He puts on a good-enough face in public. Maybe they threatened his family. ‘Take the job, or else.’”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, sir.”
“He’s an ornament, pure and simple,” Beck said. “Willing or unwilling, he has no real power at all…. Sometimes I feel bad for him.”
“It’s a weird contrast, the two paintings. Don’t you agree, Captain? Two men, one a proven combat leader, maybe even a genius, in a major war Germany lost, and the other a ceremonial hostage in a war that it looks like we’ll win.”
“Yes,” Beck said. “A very strange contrast.”
“Anyway, Captain, Haffner reports we’re just beginning to pick up traces of the convoy and escort ships on sonar.”
“Already? They’re still very far.”
“Screw cavitation, propulsion-plant noises, hulls as they pitch through the swells. It’s a really huge contact, sir. Noise leaks into the deep sound channel,” he said, referring to a layer in the open ocean that acts as an acoustic superconductor, in which sounds can travel for hundreds of miles with little signal loss.
“They’re still a day or two away from running right over us, I should expect.”
“That’s the navigator’s estimate also, Captain, based on his best guess of the cargo ships’ speed. Twenty knots sustained, if they’re lucky. A slower actual rate of advance, from course doglegs and zigzagging to try to confuse our forces.”
Beck glanced at a clock. “Our guests are late.” He reached for the intercom near the captain’s place, but the wardroom door opened. In walked the lieutenant in command of the kampfschwimmer group, Johan Shedler. Since the salvage of the American warheads from that sunken destroyer, Beck had begun to look at Shedler with respect, even awe — the man appeared refreshed, returned to normal by now, after his long decompression from his deep dialysis dive.
“Sorry I’m late, Captain. I needed to oversee a few things. My men are almost ready.”
“Good, good,” Beck said. “Sit. Please.” Shedler’s full team was sixteen men — only half of whom had been fitted out with and trained to use the dialysis packs.
Shedler glanced with curiosity at the thick envelope of sealed orders by Beck’s place on the table, then stood up again almost immediately, at attention, as Rudiger von Loringhoven entered the wardroom.
“Ach,” von Loringhoven said with evident self-satisfaction. “I see we’re all here.” He held a sheaf of notes and papers under one arm.
“Let’s begin the briefing,” Beck said. “We’re running out of time.”
Stissinger and Shedler paid careful attention. Portions of what they were about to hear were unfamiliar to them, Beck knew, and they both had important parts to play in the details. The purpose of this briefing was to lay out all the pieces for ample study, minimize the chance of ambiguity or miscommunications, even belabor the obvious in order to assure foolproof implementing of the whole complex attack plan.
Beck started. “The entire arrangement is designed to provide us with supremely accurate, real-time targeting data on the Allied convoy and escorts while von Scheer herself stays stealthy and at a safe distance. Stealthy, that is, at least until we salvo-launch our missiles from near the Rocks, at the limit of their fuel supplies, five hundred sea miles south of their targets.”
“Perfect firing solutions,” von Loringhoven emphasized, “against the most high-value enemy targets, from far beyond the range of von Scheer’s sonars. Perfect firing solutions, from well beyond the outer screens of the carrier battle groups’ submarine and surface escorts and airborne protection. We’ll even be outside the longest over-the-horizon detection range of their AWACS radar planes, with your cruise missiles hugging the wave tops.”
Stissinger nodded.
“Berlin has sea-surveillance satellites in geosynchronous orbit,” Beck said. “The hardware was disguised in German-built vehicles belonging to Third World neutrals lofted by the ArianeSpace consortium before the war. So the Allies have no idea of our actual space-based targeting capabilities.”
Stissinger smiled. Beck addressed his next remarks to Shedler. “Your team’s role is so important because the data we need has to come in via radio, and radio at such frequencies can’t penetrate the sea.”
“Understood,” Shedler replied.
“The land installation you erect amounts to an interface between the open air and the deep ocean. The two mediums admit two different methods of communicating, radio waves versus sound. Your portable satellite dish is one-half of the link. The transducer line you’ll lay underwater forms the other half. The black boxes you brought in your equipment from Norway contain electronics for the interface, and they in turn feed proper signals into the transducers. Digitized acoustic-message bursts will then be picked up by von Scheer’s passive sonar arrays. In short, those bursts will take the information that comes down from space via radio, and send it on to us to use while we remain concealed and tactically mobile. You’ll be stuck in the open, Lieutenant, working on the Rocks, but you buy us important time and a vital safety margin. The only alternative to a land-based interface relay of this type would be for us to raise an antenna mast above the surface ourselves, and revealing von Scheer too soon that way is simply out of the question.”
“I understand, Captain.”
“You and your men will have to work very quickly to get set up. Remember, the Allies have sea-surveillance assets too. Once you’re spotted, the danger for all of us mounts.”
“The Allies may assume,” Stissinger offered, “that the kampfschwimmer presence, their data uplink even if it’s seen, doesn’t relate to us, Captain. There are many other Axis submarines. Besides, it’s natural our side would want control of the Rocks. They’re the only land in the whole Atlantic Narrows. They represent a military high ground of sorts. There are lots of things the Axis might use them for. Signals intelligence, visual surveillance, even occupy them briefly just to deny them to the Allies at a crucial moment in the battle.” He shrugged.
“Timing is everything,” Beck said. “The faster we all move, obtaining the targeting data and then getting rid of our missiles, the better our chance to keep the Allies guessing until it’s too late. Then we all make our escape while they’re still reeling, reacting, confused. That’s where your role comes in, Einzvo. You’ll be supporting me in an engagement like none you’ve ever seen. Discipline and teamwork among the crew must be precise in order to program each missile and then execute each step of every launch in such rapid succession. There is no margin for error. None.”
“I’ll see that all goes well, Captain.”
“And as soon as our first missiles broach the surface,” Beck said, “we give von Scheer’s exact position away. Once our last missile is launched, prompt recovery of the kampfschwimmer and evasive maneuvers by von Scheer against incoming retaliatory fire become a matter of life and death. Sonar, Ship Control, Engineering, every department and every station must put out a maximum effort for me.”
“Understood, sir. The men will perform.”
“The whole point,” von Loringhoven said, “is that setting up this ground station, getting the data from such long range by satellite, maximizes that other crucial factor, the distance from us to the escorts and thus the duration until such return fire via missile or aircraft can even reach us. And besides, jamming and spoofing the Allied surveillance and communication circuits is an essential part of the plan. Information warfare experts elsewhere will trigger prearranged virus attacks, just as you ripple your missile salvos, Captain.”