Walsh trotted toward him. He’d closed about half the gap before he wondered how smart he was. German pilots commonly carried pistols, while he was unarmed. But he was in his own country, for Christ’s sake. The German would have to be daft to plug him. Of course, the German had to be daft to come here like this in the first place, so what did that prove?
“Hands up!” Walsh yelled. “Hande hoch!” He spoke little German, but most British soldiers learned that one.
The flyer had a knife. He used it to cut himself free of the parachute shrouds. The canopy tumbled off across the field. The man slowly got to his feet. He favored one ankle a little. Walsh shouted at him again. With a smile, he let the knife drop to the ground and raised his hands. He was in his mid-forties-very old for a pilot-with bushy black eyebrows and a chin that stuck out. He looked oddly familiar.
“Do not fear me,” he said in good English. “I come in peace.”
“In a Messerschmitt-110? Sure you do, mate,” Walsh retorted.
“I am Rudolf Hess,” the man said.
And damned if he wasn’t. No wonder he looked familiar. In how many photographs had Walsh seen him at Hitler’s elbow? Half the time, his hand would be upraised in the stupid Nazi salute. To save his hide, Walsh couldn’t remember exactly what Hess’ title was. He was one of the biggest of the Party big shots, though. So what the bleeding hell was he doing in the middle of a Scottish field, still wearing a parachute harness? Walsh asked him, in lieu of standing there with his mouth hanging open like a stupid clot.
“I am come to confer with your government,” Hess answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe he saw that Walsh wondered whether he was out of his skull, because he added, “Unofficially, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Walsh said. “Confer about what?”
He guessed Hess would tell him it was none of his damned business. But Hess didn’t. “Why, about ways to end this unfortunate war between Germany and England and France, naturlich. ”
“Naturlich,” Walsh echoed in a hollow voice. “You could start by telling your soldiers to quit trying to kill me.”
“This I wish to do. We waste our time fighting one another,” Hess said seriously. “Better we should all fight the Russians together. So I feel. So feels the Fuhrer also.”
All of a sudden, Walsh stopped wondering if Hess was a nutter. The staff sergeant had no idea whether Neville Chamberlain’s government would make a deal like that, or whether France would go along if it did. But the government might. It might. The breeze felt chillier-or did the cold come from inside him? He had to force words out one by one: “I’d better take you back into Dundee.”
“ Danke schon. This would be good,” Hess said.
Back they went. It was several miles. They took turns walking and riding slowly on the bicycle. Hess spewed out a million reasons why England and France should turn on the Bolsheviks. At last, Walsh got sick of listening. He said, “Look, pal, I’m only a bloody sergeant. I can’t do anything about it one way or the other.” The German subsided into wounded silence.
When they got into Dundee, Walsh had a devil of a time convincing his superiors that Rudolf Hess was Rudolf Hess. They were even more certain than he had been that Hess wasn’t about to arrive in Scotland by jumping out of a Bf-110. Then they did believe him, and that might have been worse, because they started having kittens right before his eyes. They whisked Hess away in a swarm of military policemen.
“You will forget about this,” a captain barked at Walsh. “It never happened. You have no knowledge of it. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.” Walsh judged that was the only possible answer that would keep him out of a military jail. The bloke who said a little knowledge was a dangerous thing knew what he was talking about. To show he understood what the captain meant, Walsh added, “I won’t tell a soul.”
“You’d better not.” The captain sent Walsh a hard look, as if wondering whether to jug him like a hare on general principles. Walsh tried to exude innocence: not easy for a man of his age and experience. After a long, long pause, the captain jerked a thumb toward the door. “Get out.” Walsh had never been so happy to obey an order in his life.
Julius Lemp was used to getting strange orders from his superiors, and even to attracting them. He was still paying for sinking the Athenia. Chances were he’d go on paying for the rest of his career, unless he did something wonderful enough to cancel out the screwup. Offhand, he couldn’t think what that might be. Finding Jesus walking barefoot across the swells of the North Sea might do it. Anything short of that, no.
When you were in the U-boat business, strange orders were liable to get you killed. (So were ordinary orders; it was that kind of trade. But with strange orders your odds were worse.) If that bothered his superiors in the Kriegsmarine, they went out of their way not to show it.
And so the U-30 cruised slowly through the chop off the east coast of Scotland. Not very far off the Scottish coast, either: land was clearly visible to the west. One of the ratings on the conning tower with Lemp said, “If they’ve got a 105 on the beach, they can hit us with it. We can hit ’em back with the 88 on deck, too.”
“I know,” Lemp replied. “But even if they do have a 105 there, chances are they won’t shoot with it. They’re bound to think we’re one of their own U-boats, not a German machine. No German boat would be mad enough to show itself so close to their coast.”
“Sure, skipper,” the rating said, as if humoring a lunatic. “So what the hell are we doing here?”
“We are carrying out our orders,” Lemp said, which was literally true. “We are searching for any signs of wreckage or survivors from a Messerschmitt-110 that may or may not have gone into the North Sea in these waters.”
“Sure,” the rating said again. “But why?”
“Martin, you never ask that question,” Lemp answered patiently. “Because they told us to, that’s why.”
Martin only sniffed. The hell of it was, Lemp had a hard time blaming him. He wondered why they were looking for bits and pieces of a Bf-110, too. However much he wondered, he didn’t know. The hard-faced captain back in Kiel hadn’t looked the sort who was much inclined to answer questions. In fact, he’d looked the sort who would bite your head off if you had the nerve to ask any. Sometimes the best thing you could do was salute, go “Zu befehl!”, and get the hell out of there. Lemp had judged that to be one of those times.
Had he been wrong? If the Royal Navy or the RAF decided the U-30 wasn’t an English U-boat, the enemy owned all the advantages here. Cruising along in broad daylight was all very well. Audace, audace, toujours l’audace, the French said. Well, yes, but when the fellows on the other team trumped all that audacity with depth charges…
He scanned the gray-green sea. This close to the coast, all sorts of rubbish floated in it. He hadn’t seen anything from a German fighter plane, though. He wondered if some important officer’s son had been flying the 110. That might account for a search like this. He couldn’t think of much else that would.
One of the things floating in the North Sea was a basket of the kind and size that might have held a baby. Martin said, “Sir, with all this shit around, how are we supposed to recognize stuff from a 110 even if we do come across it?”
“We’ve got to do the best we can,” Lemp answered, by which he meant he didn’t have the faintest idea.
Martin, unfortunately, understood him much too well. “Right,” the rating said, and scratched the side of his jaw. Gingery stubble sprouted there. Lemp didn’t shave when he was at sea, either. Like a lot of U-boat men, from the lowliest “lords”-ordinary seamen-to skippers, he trimmed his whiskers when he got back into port.
“What do they do when we send them the message that we can’t find what they’re looking for?” another rating asked.
“We don’t send it.” Now Lemp’s voice grew sharp. “We’re ordered to maintain radio silence throughout this cruise. I will make the report orally when we return to Kiel. Have you got that?”
“Yes, skipper. Sorry,” the rating said. Lemp didn’t usually come down hard on his men, but he had to be sure no one fouled up here. Somebody’s head would roll if the U-30 broke radio silence. He knew whose, too: his.
Like the rest of the men on the U-boat, he wished he knew what was going on. He didn’t like getting sent out on wild-goose chases. He especially didn’t like it when he had to wear a blindfold while hunting his wild geese.
All of which had nothing to do with anything. They’d given him his orders. He was following them. If he found no wreckage-or even if he did-he was to return to Kiel after four days of searching. It made no sense, not to him or
