J. Janes: Betrayal

‘Would you rather I took the train this time?’ she had asked.

He’d not turned from her. ‘No … No, of course not. The motor’s far more comfortable and convenient. It’s only that … well, you know how people are. There’s bound to be talk.’

‘I can’t help the dentist wanting to do more work.’ She’d been anxious-scared stiff he’d insist she take the train, but had it shown? Hamish could be so perceptive.

‘But Dublin … Surely we could find someone suitable here? MacCool perhaps, in Armagh? They say he’s very good,’ the very pronounced as vaery or vairie , the good like goude , he stubbornly laying it on a little thicker.

‘MacCool’s not like Dr. Daly. He’s not a dental surgeon, Hamish. It’s a wisdom tooth-the upper left. Impacted. I’ve got to have it out.’

So much for lies and now what? No swollen jaw, no stitches. Not even a visit to Dr. Daly should Hamish think to have telephoned Dublin, just the rest of Saturday in that fair city and then … then on Sunday morning early, the long drive and finally out along the coast road to Kinsale and beyond. Erich had said, ‘Make sure you take the car,’ and she had wondered why but had had no chance to ask, had only found out later, yes, later.

It had been so necessary yet so noticeable. There’d been far too few other cars. And Hamish? she asked. Hamish would put his fingers against her cheek and say, ‘It must hurt,’ and she would have to pull away and shake her head, would have to duck her gaze to his tie and whisper shyly, ‘I missed you, darling,’ while she tightened it and leaned in to brush a cheek against his as she always did at such times.

Yes, she’d have to lie.

Awakened in the dead of night at Kernevel, the requisitioned villa of a Breton sardine merchant near Lorient on the Atlantic coast of France, Admiral Karl Donitz, Flag Officer U-boats, allowed a faint smile as he gathered his thoughts. Though the letter he had reached for had been dated last Thursday, it had not come by the usual Red Cross channels but by secret wireless transmission from Dublin early on Sunday morning to the Abwehr’s listening post outside of Hamburg. They, in turn, had immediately sent it on to Berlin, a delay that could not have been avoided. XB Dienst’s code breakers had since been given the code within its code, but neither the bearer of the letter nor the Dublin agent would have known of its contents, nor anyone else for that matter who might have intervened. Only Saucepan ( Tiegel )-“Tieg”-the Vizeadmiral Huber, now a prisoner of war in Northern Ireland, and he had known of that inner code. Huber had also made certain that had the letter been intercepted, it would have initially been seen as totally fitting and innocuous.

4 September 1941

Dearest Heidi,

How kind of you to send us warm socks and shaving soap. We have little news but are fit and in good spirits. Table tennis, soccer, chess and our daily exercises-seven times around the compound, can you believe it? — these pass the time. But oh for the taste of schnapps and a cup of your coffee or stein of Berliner Kindl, and afterwards a dance, my cousin, with the most beautiful of girls.

Your affectionate Tieg, as always.

Just as when he had first decoded it early on Sunday morning, the message took Donitz back to his days as a naval rating, to command of a submarine in the last stages of the Great War, to capture and the status of a prisoner of war himself, and now to Kernevel.

He glanced up at his orderly. ‘Ludi, give me a few moments with this and that other business. Some coffee, yes, and a glass of schnapps.’

In May the Bismark had been sunk, and with it the Grossadmiral Raeder’s hopes for a sea war on the surface. In June the Fuhrer had launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, thus opening the war on two major fronts in spite of serious objections, and now there were the Murmansk convoys to contend with as well as those of the North Atlantic, both from Canada and sailing together. Too few boats to intercept them properly, too few experienced men, too little rest-they were dying like flies out there in spite of the successes: 325,000 tons of shipping sunk in May; 300,000 tons in June, but only 90,000 in July and even less in August.

Alarmingly increasing losses. Matz in U-70, Prien in U-47, Schepke in U-100, all lost; Kretschmer in U-99 taken prisoner. More deaths and more men as prisoners of war.

No matter how hard he had sought normal reasons-bad weather, the increased hours of daylight in summer, better protected and faster convoys-Donitz knew it had to be something else. Spies among the French workers in the repair yards and submarine pens here at Lorient, at Brest, St-Nazaire, Bordeaux and La Pallice, a new or enhanced system of direction finding, a reason. It seemed as if the British knew of his every move, yet each time he had raised the wireless issue with Berlin, that same infuriatingly obstinate answer had come back.

‘The matter is simply not possible. The integrity of our Hydra codes is being constantly monitored. Nothing has come up to suggest that there has been any breech of security.’

Nothing. From Kernevel, so far removed from Berlin, and with but a slim staff of six experienced young officers, he directed the Battle of the Atlantic. Everything-the final bringing together of intelligence, its analysis and planning, the sending out of commands came from here, from two quite modest rooms, simply charts, charts and more of them, U-boat logbooks, messages, graphs of tonnages sunk, and graphs of U-boat losses.

Wireless security had been a problem he and Huber had discussed in Wilhelmshaven, and now here was this “letter” from his old friend. Both of them had known absolutely that Berlin would listen hardest only to firsthand reports and that those who could bring a consensus of opinion were even better than those who could not.

Decoded, the message had read:

Most urgent put bearer of letter in contact with IRA. Imperative arrange escape Kapitanleutnant Erich Kramer Tralane Castle.

More had not been given, though much more had been implied, for Huber had included that one word which, if found in any such Red Cross letter home, would bring the news no commander would want. Kindl : codes may have been compromised.

It was now Tuesday, 9 September. By 0410 hours last Sunday AST-X Bremen, who ran the Dublin agent, had received confirmation from Berlin and had sent Dublin its signal to proceed. And now here was the message that had awakened him:

Contact made. Heidi in motion.

Donitz knew he had another even more pressing matter to attend to and that he would have to use Hydra and could not concern himself with what Berlin would offer the IRA in exchange for Kramer’s escape. U-85, lying in wait some 96.5 kilometres to the south of Greenland’s bleak Cape Farewell, had sighted a large and heavily laden convoy steaming slowly eastward before turning south into what had become known to the enemy as Torpedo Junction. All the convoys now used the northwestern approach to the British Isles, with a final passage to safety through the North Channel between Fair Head in Northern Ireland and the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland.

He’d taken to using a new tactic, stringing his boats in wide arcs across the convoy routes, raking them like a giant comb. He knew the loneliness, the tension, that keyed-up feeling Gregor and all the men aboard U-85 would be experiencing because, unlike so many in Berlin these days, he had done it all himself. He could even put himself into the boots of the merchant seamen from Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia and could sense the fear they must feel.

‘Signal the others of the Markgraf group to concentrate on U-85’s convoy.’