Finally one kommodore glanced at him with a look of pity reserved for an idiot and said: “They have torpedoes, Waldvogel. What do they need with stovepipes?”
Waldvogel closed the door behind him to find Reubold lounging on his cot. All of the S-boat officers and men had quarters in the Cherbourg suburbs, at Urville, and in a museum that had once been a villa, at Tour La Ville. But not Reubold. Generally outgoing and open with his crews, the fregattenkapitan insisted on staying in his single room that served as living quarters and office, in an ancient building on the naval base.
“A self-imposed exile,” he once told Waldvogel.
Fregattenkapitan Richard Reubold, back propped against the wall, rested on one elbow with the other draped across an upraised knee. There was a decadent air about his languid pose.
“In England,” Reubold said in welcome, “you would be called a boffin.”
“Boffin?”
“It is their pet name for scientist. Fellows whose minds work on a higher plane.”
Waldvogel noticed a slight smile etched across the officer’s face.
“ ‘Chaps,’” Reubold continued, “who never quite fit in the real world.”
Waldvogel noticed a half-empty bottle of calvados, a local apple brandy, on the desk. That would explain Reubold’s odd behavior. Perhaps he had drunken himself….
“No,” Reubold said, sliding into a sitting position. Both feet were planted firmly on the floor, but his body had fallen back against the wall. “It’s not the brandy if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Waldvogel shook his head. “No. I…”
“I received a directive from Dresser this morning,” Reubold said. “The army wants to turn us all into minelayers. Yes, that’s right,” he said in response to the stricken look on Waldvogel’s face. “Minelayers. Nothing official yet. No lightning bolt from the high command. Just a note preparing us for the fall of the axe.”
“But they can’t.”
Now it was Reubold’s turn to look shocked. “You are a boffin, aren’t you? Gods can do as they wish, my naive friend. It is a shame,” he said, unfolding his body from the bed to stand, “that we never got to experience the true potential of your remarkable boats and wonderful guns. Although it is quite evident that your hydrofoils make the boats go very fast. A little clumsy up on those long legs. Not agile, if you understand.” He said those things as if they were acceptable traits, but his manner changed as he continued. “Your guns” — he emphasized the words with arched eyebrows — “are erratic. Perhaps dangerous to the enemy one day, but particularly dangerous to our men now. Our gunners especially.”
Waldvogel’s words poured out in explanation. “The guns expel poisonous gases through the breechblock. The funnels are meant to direct the blast away. I told them…” He stopped, trying to arrange his thoughts. “Many times. I told them.…”
“Yes, yes,” Reubold ended the explanation. “I attended the classes and read the manuals. You were careful to explain everything.” He changed the subject. “You know that we will have to remove the boat’s sea legs — the foils. If she couldn’t fire torpedoes from that height, she can’t drop mines with her hull that far out of the water, either. So all six boats will be held in port, returned to their original configuration. The Trinities will be removed and the original twenty millimeters installed in the gun wells.” A humorous thought struck him. “We are moving backward.”
“Fregattenkapitan Reubold, can’t you talk to Admiral Dresser? Perhaps if you explain that we have very nearly resolved the problems.” He began to tick off a list of difficulties they had overcome. “The steering. The rudders and struts. The mounts and traverse mechanism for the guns.” His mind worked rapidly to build a case for the defense while Reubold listened without comment. “The men’s training. The gun well. Oh, yes.” He suddenly remembered. “Overheating. The engines no longer overheat the way that they used to. We’ve corrected that. I’ve worked so hard to perfect these boats. They are very fine weapons. Every day I think; ‘How can I make them better?’ I think: ‘If I do this or do that, we can solve the problems.’ Perhaps if you go and tell them, they will listen to you. You are highly decorated. A hero of the Fatherland. A Knight’s Cross! There, you see. They will listen to you. They must listen to you.”
Reubold looked into the pleading eyes and shook his head slowly. “Not me,” he said, walking to the desk. “They won’t listen to me. Goering has made sure of that. I am not welcome in Berlin. Nor are my opinions. And what would I tell them? That the bow rides too high out of the water because of the foils so that we can’t shoot your lovely guns forward. We must shoot them to port or starboard and sometimes we actually hit what we aim at. Should I tell them that we must constantly inspect the hull around the foil struts because, although they make the boats as fleet as stags, they have a tendency to snap off.”
“That was in the beginning,” Waldvogel reminded him. “The hull and struts have been reinforced. They haven’t been given a chance. I thought that you supported them? That your interest was genuine?”
“Don’t you understand?” Reubold said. “The Reich applauds failure. They embrace it like a long-lost relative. Success breeds suspicion and foments enemies. To fail is to be shunned, to fall off the stage, and exit the absurd play with its cast of remarkable idiots and madmen. Be joyous, Waldvogel. Don’t despair, we have been granted the special privilege of invisibility. We exist, and yet do not exist.”
“But don’t you see…” The korvettenkapitan struggled to find an argument that would reverse this terrible injustice. “You must find a way,” Waldvogel said. “They will not listen to me. You must be the one that carries this message. You’re a brave man. I am nothing of the sort. But you are brave. Honored. Everyone has said this of you.”
“Yes,” Reubold said quickly. After a moment of silence when his shoulders appeared to sag and dullness swept over his eyes, he added: “Yes, it is well known that I am a brave man,” and this time the words were edged in humiliation but carried inevitability. “Were I brave, I would kill myself outright. As it is,” he moved to the desk and opened the top drawer, “I have chosen to kill myself one needle at a time.
Waldvogel looked into the drawer. In one corner, lying on a blue velvet cloth, was a syringe and several small vials.
“Morphine,” Reubold answered Waldvogel’s questioning glance. “At first for the pain of a broken body. Later, because it helped me to escape the world of excess that I created. Now, because life has gone mad and I have a covenant with the devil. My life in exchange for eternal peace. After the life that I’ve lived, I deserve that much.”
When Waldvogel spoke his voice was steady, confident, as if the truth of what he said was undeniable. “Your life is not yours to take, only to give.”
Reubold slid the drawer shut. “I have given so much of me, Waldvogel, that there is nothing left. I am as you see me now, a man who once was. Dresser appears anxious to appease the great General Rommel. Who am I to defy the gods? I follow orders without hesitation because…” He let the sentence hang. “Make preparations for dismantling the hydrofoils and removing the cannon. Your wonderful boats will soon become trawlers.”
“I thought that they meant as much to you, Fregattenkapitan, as they do me,” Waldvogel said.
“But of course they do, Korvettenkapitan Waldvogel,” Reubold said. There was no compassion in his words. “But as with all things in the Reich, only so long as is expedient.”
The two Mosquito PR Mk XVI, painted the standard PR blue, flew side by side, sweeping the area 35,000 feet below. In their bellies, where bombs would have been carried had they been B models, were two F24 Split Vertical cameras peering from two separate ports. Farther along the fuselage, just aft of the wings, were two F52 Split Vertical cameras and an F24 Oblique camera.