His executive officer, Gormann, had been one of the first. Days before, Captain Werner had knelt beside Gormann’s bunk, whispering to him. Gray and clammy, the exec was surrounded by an awful smell. He looked as if he had been boiled alive in some caustic substance.
Gormann spoke, saying what Captain Werner himself feared. “It’s the Americans—one of their secret weapons. It is some kind of plague. They must have immunized all their own people, and now we have been infected. All of us breathed the air. How many have been struck down already? How many of the crew are as bad as me?”
Werner pressed his lips together. “Don’t worry. Rest now.”
“How many!”
“Eleven, so far. Many of the others are feeling sick. I myself seem to be feverish and ill.”
“As I thought.” Gormann let the silence hang for a long moment. Werner heard only the incessant banging of the engines, groans from sick men, and subdued conversation from the other crew members. The exec reached out a hand that clenched with spasms. “You cannot bring the boat back to Germany, Captain. You cannot bring the plague with you.”
Werner straightened. “What are you saying?”
“Do you want to do this to all of Europe? This way the Allies can wipe us out without spilling any of their own blood. It will make the Black Death look like a minor unpleasantness.”
Werner brushed Gormann’s remaining hair away from his sweat-glistening forehead. “Don’t think about that now. Just close your eyes.” The exec complied.
Werner tried to speak of something more pleasant to occupy Gormann’s thoughts. “Think about your Academy days—do you remember them? I went to the Naval Academy in Flensburg, had about six hundred in my class. After basic schooling, I went off for half a year on a small minesweeper, then rejoined my classmates by Christmas.” Werner sighed. “Already by that time four of my classmates had been killed in action. We were all nineteen. The rest of us were promoted to ensigns. Double-breasted blue uniforms—can you remember how it felt to wear one for the first time?”
Looking down, the captain saw a smile on Gormann’s face.
“When we finally got sent out on our first assignment, they packed us off in crowded train cars and made us ride through the night up to Kiel. Crammed in such a small space… I guess it was training for life aboard a U-boat, eh? We thought it would be just as Jules Verne described in his book, not like this.
“Remember all the silly things you were afraid of on your first voyage: Would your life preserver save you? How long would it take the boat to fill up with water if a depth charge cracked the hull? If you escaped from the boat at a depth of three hundred meters, could you make it to the surface before you drowned? The admiral spoke to us before we went to our boats. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this day Germany expects every man to do his duty.’ We’ve done that, haven’t we?”
Gormann had fallen asleep, but his peaceful expression had lapsed into a half grimace.
Werner stood up, blinking fuzziness from his eyes. He held his stomach. He wished they could receive some word about what had happened to New York, if they had been successful with the rockets, or if they had sacrificed themselves for nothing.
The exec never woke again. By the next morning five other crewmembers had been incapacitated by the plague, including the radioman.
Werner himself tried to contact any nearby U-boat in the western Atlantic, but could get no response. As another day passed, he sensed the rest of the crew verging on panic. And he could do nothing to console them.
As U-415 worked its way back toward the home port, day and night, the crewmembers grew more lax in their observation. Much of the German submarine fleet had already been destroyed by Allied defenses, but the sea was still filled with enemy destroyers. Werner felt it was only a matter of time before someone spotted U-415.
He didn’t know anymore if that would be such a bad thing.
In his bunk, Werner woke from a feverish dream of his second season of vigorous training. Ice covered Pillau harbor with a layer a third of a meter thick; ice-breakers chugged back and forth to keep the channel clear for small boat traffic, for U-boats to come and go, for the exercise to take place. The training submarines went to sea and back, day and night, letting the cadets assume roles as captain or engineer. The seasoned instructors ordered crash dives, signaled emergency drills, caused accidents that the cadets would have to fix. Werner had performed well, doing everything right, but no matter how perfect his actions, in his dream the U-boat kept sinking, and he couldn’t save his crew….
Dark hair clung to his comb when he tried to make himself presentable before pushing aside the green curtain that gave the captain’s space a little privacy.
He learned that two more men had died in the night.
The boat swayed in the uneasy sea, making the men groan. Some vomited into the bilges. Werner stood under the periscope, holding on, trying to determine his best course of action. He could barely take three steps without stumbling.
It made him smile for a moment. When submariners got into port, they always had a great deal of trouble walking—not just because of the drinking binges, but because they were not accustomed to walking on solid ground that didn’t sway beneath their feet. Now the whole world seemed to be swaying.
At the navigator’s table the captain tried to write a full entry in his log, but he could no longer remember how many of his men had succumbed to the plague. He wanted to document everything, tell each symptom, tell how long it had taken them to feel the effects.
Condensing moisture dripped from the overhead pipes, splashing on the table, making everything damp. His pencil would not write well in the logbook.
Werner couldn’t understand how the Americans had developed such a terrible weapon, and how they knew that the plague would not backfire on them.
It had to be the Americans, didn’t it? U-415 had brought nothing with it, only their three experimental rocket weapons from Peenemunde. He remembered touching the warhead end of the rockets, how warm and feverish it had felt. Surely the developers would have provided protection for the U-boat crew.
It had to be the Americans.
His unsteady hand made his handwriting illegible in the log, and he soon gave up, letting himself drift off into bleary reminiscing. How long had it been since he had fun, since he had been a carefree man who enjoyed life?
He recalled coming back to Brest, or Kiel, thinking fondly of the women ready to greet them—Suzette? Maryanne? No, Suzanne! That was her name. Making love with a desperation and a sense of abandon, focusing on ignoring everything but the next second. He tried not to let any feelings of romance intrude, because all the while he was on top of her, feeling her skin against his, listening to her whispers of passion—he knew that a different man had been inside her the night before, and she would not remember his name as she whispered the same noises in the ear of someone else tomorrow.
He would be death to Suzanne now. He could never go back. Only the ocean remained for him, and its cleansing depths.
Werner wanted to die in peace and silence. Another few days had passed, and he could take it no longer. He shut off the diesel engines himself. Together with the four still-functional men, he secured the hatches of U-415 and prepared to dive, tilting the submarine at an angle that would take her all the way to the bottom. He nudged the electric motors to their full speed of nineteen knots.
The boat held only an eerie silence of impending death. Werner turned to the men who had joined him. “Gentlemen, you are relieved of duty. Your service has been exemplary. “