“Is it Prince of Wales?” Wurst asked.
“They’ll let us know in good time,” Steiner said, stifling a belch. “Just tend to your business.”
“We’ll hear soon enough,” Statz said gently, hating to agree with anything that Steiner had to say, but it was true. Someone, probably the Kapitan, would come over the loudspeaker and tell them who they faced.
Wurst merely nodded and joined the others in waiting.
In the cluttered room behind the three gun rooms the gun layers, each man responsible for the elevation of a gun, and the turret trainer, who rotated the huge gun housing on the thick rollers secreted in the rings embedded in the barbette, waited. The gun sighters, who peered through the eyepieces, and the gun plotter, who stood by the tur-rine that bore the crude computer, waited. They were a redundancy because all of those actions were firmly and expertly in the hands of the gunnery officers in the forward, amidships, and aft fire-control centers. These three stations together, or any one if only one remained undamaged, could provide the information, sent through the transmitting rooms to the four turrets, that would give a coordinated fire at enemy vessels. Situated far above Sea Lion’s deck, the gunnery officers peering through their sensitive range finders could see great distances. No enemy ship could hide below the horizon. But if the fire-control centers were knocked out or their links to the transmitting rooms were severed, it was up to the men behind the gun rooms in Bruno to find the targets, calculate the speed and distance, make the necessary adjustments, and shoot the guns.
“I wonder who it is,” Statz whispered.
John Leach, captain of the Prince of Wales, handed the message to Prime Minister Winston Churchill but didn’t wait for him to read it.
“It’s from Prometheus,” Leach said. “She’s run right into Sea Lion.”
Louis Hoffman watched Churchill roll the stout cigar to one side of his mouth, considering the news.
“How far is Prometheus behind us?” Churchill said.
“Just about two hours’ hard running,” Leach said, dismissing the yeoman who brought the message.
“Then I suggest that you waste no time in turning this vessel about.”
“No, sir,” Captain Leach said. “My mission is to carry you and the others safely to meet with President Roosevelt. I will not deter from that course until you are safely in Placentia Bay.”
“Captain Leach, you seem to forget that I was once First Sea Lord and as such quite capable of making a sound tactical decision, and inasmuch as I am the prime minister and your superior, I order you to turn this vessel about and engage the enemy.”
“With all due respect, Prime Minister,” Leach said, “I will not endanger your life and I will not forfeit my mission. There are seventeen hundred seamen aboard this vessel who would gladly join me in taking on Sea Lion, but I am not at liberty to do so. Those poor bastards out there won’t have a chance against that behemoth. It will be a slaughter. You will get to Placentia Bay, sir, to meet with Mr. Roosevelt and I will be haunted for the rest of my life by the souls of those seaman.”
Churchill jerked the half-consumed cigar from his mouth and threw it to the deck. “Sir Dudley?”
Admiral Sir Dudley Pound shook his head. “Not this time, Prime Minister. This time discretion is the better part of valor. Those ships might delay Sea Lion long enough for us to get away. They might, if one is to believe in miracles, so damage Sea Lion that she is forced to turn back. Regardless of the outcome of that contest, John is right. You will meet with President Roosevelt and Sea Lion will be dealt with another time.”
Churchill patted his coat, searching for a cigar. “How I hate to turn my backside on the enemy,” he said, giving up the quest. He walked to the port wing, letting the stiff North Atlantic wind wrap around him. Hoffman joined him.
“Do you believe in the Almighty, Louis?” Churchill asked him. “Pray to him in desperate times?”
“Once every four years,” Hoffman said. “In November.”
“I am thinking of your President Lincoln. During the Civil War.”
“The one good thing that ever came out of the Republican Party.”
“After the Battle of Fredericksburg, December 1862. After the terrible losses suffered by the Union Army of the Potomac at the hands of the more skillfully led Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Lincoln, in deep despair over another Union defeat in a seemingly endless series of Union defeats, uttered, ‘What will the people say? What will the people say?’”
Hoffman listened.
“Sometimes, Louis, despite the public image of my iron resolve in the face of great odds, I despair, at times, as well.”
“Prime Minister, I’m a cockeyed optimist. I don’t believe in that bullshit about going down fighting. I believe in winning. Like you. Like Franklin. You can’t win if you’re not in the game, that’s what your captain’s telling you. Let those boys behind us throw a few blocks and keep you in the game. Then we’ll lick those Nazi sons of bitches. That’s what I think.”
“Well, Louis,” Churchill whispered, “I do pray that our chaps behind us live to see the game completed.”
Captain Eberhardt Godt stood uncomfortably in the library of the home of the Abwehr chief. He could hear the sound of a piano and the mingled voices of the guests invited to the Canaris dinner party. He was not a guest. He had come to deliver some rather bad news to his superior.
The library doors were pulled open by a butler and Admiral Doenitz entered, obviously surprised to see his chief of staff. He waited until the doors were closed.
“What is it?” Doenitz said.
“Sea Lion is about to engage the Prince of Wales escort. We received Mahlberg’s message not an hour ago.”
Doenitz looked away in thought. “This message cannot mean that our valiant Mahlberg is about to engage Prince of Wales? She has released her escort, has she not? Prince of Wales?”
“Yes, some time ago. It appears as if they simply stumbled into one another.”
“Mahlberg plans to engage those vessels before he reaches Prince of Wales?”
Godt knew that it was a rhetorical question. He had been with Doenitz long enough to know that the slight admiral simply tossed questions into the air and then studied them as they floated to the ground.
“Does Raeder know?” Doenitz asked.
Godt nodded. “He is livid. He threatened to court-martial Mahlberg when he returns.”
Doenitz shook his head in wonderment. “The gold ring within his grasp and Mahlberg’s vision is filled with the gleam of brass. Raeder has every reason to be concerned. The grand admiral knows that sometimes a warrior sees only as far as the point of his sword.”
“Grand Admiral Raeder will surely instruct…” Godt offered.
“Oh yes. Yes, he will. But will our headstrong Kapitan respond? Mahlberg would not be the first man whose ambitions led him astray. Still,” Doenitz said, “we want to be selective about the concerns that we address. Our world lies beneath the sea, does it not?”