“We left Kiel in February—”
“That would have been the nineteenth, yes?” Sybilla interrupted.
Voigt scowled at her. “Am I going to tell the story to you, or are you going to tell the story to me?”
“Sorry!” said Sybilla, shrinking her head into her shoulders and doing her best to look contrite. “I won’t interrupt again.”
“… and headed up to Kristiansand for refuelling, staying there for the rest of February. Early March we sailed up the Skagerrak to the Oslo Fjord and anchored in Horton, leaving the following day, and travelling submerged to our combat area north of Scotland. Our orders were to patrol the area and to sink any Allied merchant vessel we encountered. We remained submerged for most of the time as that area was extremely dangerous for U-boats. The Allies had massive air superiority. Early in May, the captain informed us that the Führer was dead and Germany had surrendered. He told us we were to return to Kiel and surrender our vessel.
“A few days later he again addressed us, telling us that he had received fresh orders and we were to complete one final mission. He immediately submerged the boat and we remained submerged until we reached our destination, which I recognised immediately, on going up on deck to tie the boat off, as Bergen. The captain allowed a few of the married men to leave at this point. Mostly they were the ones with Norwegian wives.
“The following day two civilians boarded the vessel and we were underway almost immediately. The civilians took over the captain’s quarters, so they must have been important, but kept very much to themselves. We steered west to Greenland and hid in one of the fjords for a few days, submerging whenever we heard a plane.
“The next part of the journey from Greenland was spent almost entirely submerged. We could do this because we were fitted with a snorkel system which allowed us to spend long periods underwater. All the crew had been trained for this, but even so, it was very wearing. It must have been hell for the civilians. We did surface for short intervals on some of the darker nights but often spent many days submerged.
“When we reached Cape Verde Islands, we were able to rest for a while and take on some supplies. We stayed there for a couple of weeks, before setting sail once more, steering south-west towards South America. The captain must have felt more secure in the South Atlantic, as we spent most of the time on the surface. After sighting the continent, we steered south running parallel to the coast until we reached the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. At that point, we turned further out to sea away from the coast. The captain ordered us to throw away anything that could identify us: documents, ID cards and so on. A couple of armament technicians dismantled the deck gun and threw it overboard, and finally, I saw the captain throw several documents over the side. I’m fairly sure that one of them was the boat’s log.
“We steered back towards the shoreline and again sailed parallel to it, passing the estuary of the River Plate before anchoring further south. We were just offshore from a town or village—I believe it was called Necochea or something similar—and we waited. A small launch was seen leaving from the private jetty of what appeared to be a sizable detached residence. Once it was alongside, our passengers transferred from the boat to the launch, and that was the last we saw of them.
“We submerged and turned back north along the coast until we were near the Argentine submarine base of Mar del Plata, as close into shore as we safely could be. The captain waited until first light before he surfaced and surrendered the boat to the Argentinian Navy. Now I anticipate a few questions?” He lifted his eyebrows.
“You’ve explained it very clearly, Uwe, thank you, but I wonder if you could describe your passengers?”
“Of course. The man was short, quite stocky with dark hair receding at the temples, mid-forties, and he had a Bavarian accent. Oh, and steel-grey, staring eyes. He never seemed to blink, evil eyes! The woman was a little taller than the man, about average for a woman, very short black hair, glasses, rather plump.
“Did the man have any illness, hands shaking, anything like that?” asked Sybilla.
Voigt laughed. “Are you asking me if it was the Führer? No! It wasn’t the Führer. Wrong body shape, wrong facial features. Believe me, I would have recognised the Führer.”
Sybilla bought Voigt another drink, thanked him profusely and, as she was leaving, slipped a further ten-mark note into his pocket. It had been worth it.
She had two more interviews to conduct before she left Hamburg. The first of these proved to be very difficult. The interviewee had been a junior officer on the U-530 and refused point-blank to even speak to Sybilla. It had taken a little pressure from the British military to persuade the German police to bring him in for questioning. He started by denying any knowledge of the U-530. When Sybilla produced documents that proved he had been a member of the crew, he gave a little and conceded that he had been. He still refused, however, to discuss any details of the voyage and was adamant they had carried absolutely no passengers.
Her final contact in Hamburg proved to be significantly more cooperative in terms of agreeing to an interview and being quite amiable throughout the process, but gave nothing away, also denying that the boat carried any passengers.
Sybilla had managed to locate four more crew members: two in Bremerhaven, one in Münster and one in Dortmund. The two in Bremerhaven added nothing to Sybilla’s knowledge of the U-530’s final voyage, and the interview in Münster proved difficult and unproductive. However, having travelled down to Dortmund feeling anything but optimistic, she was pleasantly surprised by her final interviewee. The man had been the
