“Oh yes. You can be sure of that.” Igrat tossed the remark over her shoulder as she left. The three of them piled into the back of the new car. One that appeared identical with the old one.
“Any danger of them tracing us through to Loki?” McCarty never took things for granted.
The drover turned around. It was Branwen and she smiled at them. “The hotel and restaurant think they are working for the Abwehr and, probably that you were ducking either the NKVD or the Gestapo. Loki had me wait here just in case. He does for all your visits but it’s never been needed before. Anyway, welcome back to Geneva. Did you remember to bring stockings for the girls?”
McCarty laughed. A mass of American nylon stockings completed the inventory of contents in the suitcase he was holding.
Not only was it a kindness to the Swiss girls who worked in the bank, it also fitted his cover as a black-marketeering industrialist.
Captain Becker looked around, trying to spot the men who were watching him. No sign of them, but he was being watched. He was sure of it. He had felt their eyes burning into his back for hours now but he couldn’t see who they were.
There were enough men to choose from. What had once been the mine deck on the British fast minelayer had been converted to cargo space for the runs to the Faroe Islands. Now it was serving as a floating prisoner of war camp. The British had decided to rush the removal of the surviving German seamen from the Islands and the deck was packed almost solid. Still, it was only for a few hours. Then the men would be disembarked in Iceland and transferred to prisoner of war camps in Canada. What would happen to them then was unknown. There were few enough German prisoners of war in Canada. Prisoners taken in Russia stayed there, in Russian-run camps. There were only a tiny handful of German Navy prisoners. U-boats rarely sank in ways that gave their crews a chance of survival and “Taney Justice” reduced that chance to near-zero.
Quietly Becker cursed the unknown German U-boat captain who had machine-gunned the survivors of the Coast Guard Cutter Roger B Taney in the water after he had torpedoed their ship. Despite an investigation that had run deep, nobody had ever identified who he was or why he had committed the atrocity. Most of the German Navy had been as appalled as the Americans. There had been talk of a court martial and firing squad for the guilty officer. It had made matters worse that the Americans had looked on their Coast Guard sailors as life-savers and protectors, not warship crews. The bullet-riddled bodies that washed ashore had brought American demands for vengeance to an irresistible pitch.
The next time a U-boat had been sunk and there were German survivors in the water, the American destroyer had machine-gunned them. And so it had started, a descending spiral of brutality and atrocity that did nobody any credit. Becker had heard that the Americans had sent destroyers to pick up the survivors of the German fleet, that they had declared “Taney Justice” applied only to submariners. If so, it was a sign of hope, albeit a small one. Perhaps the world hadn’t gone completely mad. Not yet anyway.
Becker sighed and turned away from the mine deck to the small group of ‘cabins’ set aside for German officers. They were partitioned off from the mine deck by hastily-thrown up wooden bulkheads but offered little that the enlisted men didn’t have. A little privacy, that was all. Becker pulled the curtain that served as a door aside and went though, closing it behind him. Then he stopped. The curtain that normally shielded his ‘cabin’ had gone. He half-turned to see what was going on when something struck him.
The half turn saved his skull from being crushed. Becker knew that, but he was still stunned from the impact, barely conscious, when the curtain was thrown over him. He felt boots thudding into his ribs. The wooden thing that had been used to bring him down hit him again, this time across the back. He had tried to rise, but the extra blow felled him and he couldn’t.
“Get the traitor up on deck.” The words were hoarse. Becker felt their meaning wrap around him, even as he was smothered by the curtain over his head. He was picked up, half-dragged, half-carried, half-pushed, upwards through a hatch out of the mine deck towards the main deck of the minelayer. He could feel the chill on the air as they emerged into the night and the exposed deck. Becker could hear the throb of the engines, the sound of the water, the gentle breath of the wind in the superstructure. He was painfully aware of the fact those could be the last sound he would hear. At least they beat the snarling radials of Corsairs and the crash of their bombs.
“You have been found guilty by court martial of fleeing from the enemy, of abandoning your command, of disobedience of orders and of handing your ship over to the enemy. You have also been found guilty of dereliction of duty by not demolishing your ship to prevent her capture.” That struck Becker as a little odd. Not the way a Navy man would phrase it. “You are sentenced to death. Throw him over the side.”
The unseen men rushed Becker to the rail, ready to tip him into the freezing water beneath. Then something happened. A series of sounds, violent motion, and the ripping noise of a sub-machine gun. The curtain was pulled from Becker’s head. He saw two of his attackers on the deck, the dark pool of blood around them had already begun to freeze. Four more knelt on the deck, their hands on their heads.
“You all right Captain, Sir?” A Royal Marine carrying a Capsten sub-machine gun was grinning at him. “You’re in good hands, Sir. Colonel Stewart of the Argylls asked us to keep an eye on you. When we saw these six beauties hustling you up here, we kind of thought this might be what he had in mind. Do you recognize any of them?”
Becker looked at the two dead men on the deck and then at the four kneeling prisoners. “This one, he was my first officer.” He switched to German. “Why, why this?”
“You betrayed us. Our orders were to head north but you ran when the Amis came after us. You left the rest of the fleet to die and ran to save your own skin.”
“That made no sense at all.” One of the Royal Marines, a sergeant, spoke quietly. “Oh yes, I speak fluent German, Captain. You did the right thing, trying to save your men when the rest of the fleet was being slaughtered. I am sorry you could not also save these.”
He turned to the four prisoners. “Get those two bodies over the side.”
“They are entitled to military burial.” The Lutzow’s first officer was blustering.
“They are murderers. By intent at least. Get them over the side.” The sergeant’s voice was uncompromising. The four men rose, picked up the bodies and dumped them over the side of the ship. As they dropped, the Sergeant’s Capsten hammered out another burst and the four prisoners followed them down. Six splashes in the water were hardly noticeable.
“Captain, you’re going to the sickbay for the rest of the trip. Under guard, of course. You’ll be safe there. We’ll spread the word that those little rays of sunshine succeeded in dropping you over the side before we killed them. After that, we’ll get you to a safe PoW camp.”
Becker looked aft to where the bodies in the sea had already vanished. Perhaps the world didn’t have any sanity left after all. The thought left him profoundly depressed.
“Welcome back, Lang. How is the ear?”
“Sorry Asbach?” Lang made a great play of being deaf, leaning forward with his ruined ear cupped in one hand.
“Good man!” Asbach smacked the junior officer on the back. “You are privileged. Not many survive the attentions of a Russian sniper. To survive two shots, not one, is a very rare distinction. We got the sniper by the way. A woman, of course. Most of the best Russian snipers are. We dumped her body in a ditch with the rest of their dead. Counting her, we got eight of the Siberians and six more Russians. They probably fell from the trains as they went through. And two American sailors; they probably fell off too. No matter. We threw them all in the ditch and the wolves can have them when we leave.”