Mahlberg smiled at the innocent. “‘Policy is not made with speeches, shooting festivals, or song, it is made only by blood and iron.’ You’d do well to read your Otto von Bismarck and concentrate on the duties at hand. Let the future take care of itself.”
The Fahnrich zur See’s face reddened in embarrassment. “Of course, sir.”
“Don’t take it so hard,” Mahlberg said with a smile. “It is my job to keep excitement sufficiently restrained. Never plan for the fortunate unless you plan for the unfortunate as well. Would you agree, Kadow?”
“Yes, sir,” the executive officer said. “This is an uncertain business,” he advised the Fahnrich zur See in a fatherly tone. “We can limit some. Some are beyond our control. Some are beyond our ability to comprehend.”
“Now,” Mahlberg said to the young officer, “you will return to your duty as I will return to mine. Make certain that everything is in order, as I, through my officers, will see done. Tonight, when you lie in your bunk after having checked off every duty in your mind, twice over, you can dream of parades and willing young girls. Understand?”
The Fahnrich zur See snapped to attention and saluted Mahlberg. “Yes, sir.”
Mahlberg returned the salute and sent him on his way. He turned to Kadow, a troubled look on his face.
“Kapitan?” Kadow said.
“If we catch her here,” Mahlberg said, “we can have no more than three hours with her. Our fuel reserves dictate three hours and no more.”
“Bismarck sank Hood—”
“Yes, I know,” Mahlberg said. “In less than six minutes. But she is a battleship and not a battle cruiser. Weren’t you listening, Kadow? Plan for the unfortunate as well. We have speed, firepower, and the accuracy of our fire control. Their crew is more experienced, but we are both equally well trained. We must close quickly and overwhelm her with our guns.”
“We have the advantage of range, Kapitan,” Erster Artillerie Offizier I.A.O. Frey said. “We can commence firing well before we come within the range of her guns.”
“Of course.”
Frey continued: “If visibility permits I can gauge range, course, and bearing in a matter of minutes. I will use the guns in bracketing groups, three salvos separated by four hundred meters. Our high-resolution optical range finders can locate the fall of the shot and adjust until we straddle the vessel. With luck, I can do that in a matter of thirty to forty-five minutes.”
“That is very finely played, Frey,” Kadow said. “You’re certain that ‘good rapid’ will come immediately?”
“Yes,” Frey said without emotion.
“Good. Because I will give you no more than three hours,” Mahlberg said. “She will be slippery, Frey, and it will take everything that we have to keep her in range.”
“Three hours, Kapitan. I need no more than that.”
“So be it,” Mahlberg said. “Now. The journey home. The Denmark Strait.” It was a question posed as a statement. He waited for his officers to reply.
Kadow posed his own question. “Will the British have closed it off to us?”
“Possibly,” Mahlberg said, “but with nothing more than cruisers and destroyers. North of the Faeroes?” He could tell by the look on his officers’ faces that they considered this unlikely. He smiled. “Yes, gentlemen. I feel the same way about mines. I won’t consider the Faeroe-to-Shetland passage, so you needn’t offer an opinion about that. There is France.”
“The Bay of Biscay?” Kadow said. “St. Nazaire or Brest?”
“A greater distance to travel but we’ll have air cover. I’ll give it some thought. Trenkmann?” Leutnant Trenkmann was the Rollenoffizier, the detailing officer who assisted Kadow with administrative duties.
“Yes, sir?” Trenkmann said.
“Contact Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine. Find out if they will detail a U-boat escort for us in the Bay of Biscay.”
“Sir, if the enemy has broken our code…” Trenkmann said.
“Then they will be faced with a dilemma. Is the message a ruse? Would I dare radio my intentions knowing that they will most certainly intercept and decode my message? Would I be foolish enough to put this fine ship right under the guns of the English navy or within sight of their air force? Or, if Sea Lion is at England’s doorstep can she dash out at any time and destroy her convoys? So many questions, gentlemen, and he who answers the most, wins. Send the message, Trenkmann, and let the British sort out its veracity.”
Chief Petty Officer Wireless Telegrapher Watkins was a strange sort, a little man with a shock of gray hair and large, helpless eyes hidden behind thick glasses. When he spoke, which was not often, his Cockney accent distorted anything he said, so he chose to say very little. He had come into the Royal Navy during the last war when even men with eyesight such as his were welcome. He was not educated; no one in his family was educated, but the Royal Navy by sheer chance or the intuition of some enlistment officer decided that Watkins was just the sort of chap that they needed in W.T. It was in this small and little-understood division of the Royal Navy that Watkins came to know, in his very undemonstrative way, that he was quite brilliant. He heard, through the bulky earphones clamped over his ear, and he felt, through his fingertips from the clumsy black knobs on the monstrous wireless cabinets, the unseen world of radio signals. From the first year of the last war on, Watkins was content to sit in the shadow of the W.T. cabinet with its glowing dials, warm face, and gentle hum from the large glass tubes that throbbed like a hundred hearts within its body, and listen. Over the years he came to know, to understand, to appreciate, the complexity of the electronic language, and the only time that anyone saw Watkins excited was when he spoke with other supplicates of the wondrous machines and their ability.
Now it was his second war and as was the case with all wars, all things became much more complicated and required even more devotion of the warriors; those who fought with guns, and those who listened. And Watkins had been listening. For U-boats. And the U-boats had been talking; a great many U-boats chattering away as if their only purpose at sea was to gossip. This was a mystery to Watkins, who prided himself on understanding things. He had been told by his superiors, and had confirmed by listening, that Mr. Doenitz’s boats were expected to communicate regularly through Goliath — the giant U-boat radio network. Watkins expected, as one in his line of work would expect, that the U-boats would do exactly that: send regular W.T. transmissions to inform Mr. Doenitz where they were and what they were doing.
But one night Watkins, his uniform disheveled, his half-empty stained mug of tea perched dangerously close to his elbow, a company of dead cigarette butts lying in and around a cheap tin ashtray, leaned slowly into his W.T. cabinet and pressed the Bakelite earphones tightly against his ears. He had found something — something strange, something that at first did not make any sense and was so unusual that he thought, perhaps, he was mistaken. So he listened. For seven hours, his hunched shoulders burning, his tobacco-stained fingers curled around the earphones, he listened. After seven hours he reached without looking and found the pad and pencil that he always kept on the narrow shelf next to his desk, and he began to write.
The U-boat W.T. transmissions were certainly in code, but Watkins was not concerned with that because he simply copied down the message as it was transmitted and he sent the whole thing up to the chaps in Crypto. He knew what was padding, that segment of the message before and after the true transmission that was supposed to throw off anyone listening. He knew that. And he knew the call signs of the various U-boats; he judged fifteen in all, because he had heard thousands of call signs over the years and that was the first thing that he had picked up.