Golem 7

Chapter 22

“It’s a real possibility,” said Paul. “I’ve considered it many times before this—every time I run across an oddity in our own history. I know, I could be imposing my own inner fears on external events, but don’t you all agree that this looks like deliberate intervention?”

“It does, but you can’t judge a book by its cover,” said Maeve, unwilling to think that the world and history she knew so well was the creation and result of a conflict that had been raging in Time, unbeknownst to her and the others. She considered what Paul suggested. Once they demonstrated Time travel to the past was viable, that possibility instantly migrated forward on the continuum as well. How hard would it have been for someone to take action to alter events affecting the history they knew? Any moment they spent outside the protective influence of the Nexus Point they were vulnerable.

Kelly’s RAM Bank idea, and the Golems, had been created to try and immediately warn them when tampering was occurring. The Golems would sample available information and it would be continually compared to the RAM Bank, with all variations noted and color coded and charted in a chronological Meridian. Yet she realized that if anything had changed before he built the RAM Bank, they would not know about it. Though their Touchstone database was an enormous accumulation of data, was it comprehensive? Was it all encompassing? No, it was merely a record of what was known to happen, and 95% of all that actually had happened remained unknown, unwritten, lost in Time. Changes could occur and they would not be aware of it. The world would seem to be normal, but it would not be the world they were born to. Was it so even now? It was an uncomfortable feeling to think that their hold on reality depended on the thin stream of battery power that constantly fed the live RAM Bank data.

How did it work? Kelly had explained it to her before. There was a low level Nexus constantly in force, limited in size and scale, yet surrounding and protecting the bank, their touchstone on the history as they believed it should be. But what if it had been contaminated by an earlier intervention? Or worse, what if it failed one day? Look what had just happened to the Golems! With multiple Nexus Points open, and interventions being run by all sides in the conflict, they could no longer reach a sure weight of opinion. So instead of knowing the outcome of their interventions, it was coming down to simple human judgment now, fraught with the endless possibility of error and compounded by too many cooks, spoiling the broth of Time.

“It looks like tampering,” she said, “at least from our perspective, but it may not be that at all. We can sit here and discuss this all day until the power fails again and the generators run dry, but this is something we cannot know to a certainty. We just have to proceed on faith, as it were. We already know that if we shut down the Arch and dissipate the Nexus Point we’re living in an altered Reality. This whole effort is to try and reverse that, but don’t be surprised if I tell you that looks to be nigh on to impossible now. This damnable Time war is causing too many fractures in the continuum. Look at this situation here! We’ve changed things, they’ve done the same—both sides. If the Order is involved in this operation as well, then we have at least three open Nexus Points impacting these events. Who’s going to have the final say here?”

“We are,” said Paul.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because our position on the continuum antedates any Nexus that may be open in the future. Any change they make can never be certain as long as we’re here in their past capable of making an alteration to counter it before any of them were even born! Yes, there’s a damn war on, and it’s clear to us that both sides are trying to manipulate these events. We may see demons in every corner of the history now, but we know this is likely—they are tampering here, and it may involve more than we think or realize at the moment. I mean, why not just blow up the transport this Lt. Thomason is on? Why go through all these hoops involving the fate of the Bismarck? Hasn’t that occurred to any of you?”

“I must say,” said Robert. “We’ve been going round and round about magnetic pistols on the torpedoes, but a good Glock pistol with a silencer would be a much simpler solution than the things we’ve been planning here. The Assassins got that name for a reason. Yes, why couldn’t they just go back and find this man and kill him before he leads his raid at Bardia, and make an end of it that way? For that matter, why don’t we just go and arrange the unfortunate demise of an ancestor to this terrorist, Kenan Tanzir. We know who his father is, and I’ll bet we can find his grandfather as well. See what I mean?”

“The grandfather problem,” said Maeve. “If you kill his grandfather he never existed, and therefore you never had a reason to do so. Time’s solution seems to be to prevent that from happening, by some means.”

“Except in the case of a Zombie,” said Paul.

“A Zombie?” Kelly laughed. “What are you talking about? You’ve been watching too many movies, Paul.”

“Yes, a Zombie,” Paul explained. “The walking dead. Kenan’s father is supposed to have died, but the Assassins did something to prevent his death. He’s alive, a walking dead man now, and we’re trying to put him back in his grave so that the Heisenberg Wave that generates will re-arrange the quantum state of the universe to our liking. You can’t do the grandfather thing because in that instance you deny his existence completely and Paradox prevents your action. But you can kill a Zombie by restoring the moment of his natural death to the continuum. We did it with old St. Lambert and Grimwald just a few days ago. They were both Zombies created by interventions taken by the Assassin cult.”

“What about Ra’id Husan al Din?” asked Kelly. “We prevented his birth to reverse Palma the first time. We denied his existence completely with that act.”

“Did we? I’m still not sure exactly what we did on that mission, though we clearly got an outcome that reversed Palma. We certainly went nose to nose with Paradox in that event. You’re right. If we prevented his birth that what reason did we ever have to do so? I think Paradox made a compromise with us. It wanted you as wergild, Kelly. It accepted our intervention, but the price was your life, until Mr. Graves and his associates reneged on the deal when they snatched you away into a safe Nexus Point in the future. I’ve been thinking about that and it comes down to this: Time is not a zero sum game. It has rules, principles, yes, and it tries to enforce them but it doesn’t always succeed, and it never gets an absolutely perfect balance sheet. Like DNA itself, it makes mistakes, glorious and magnificent errors, and sometimes catastrophic ones, from our limited perspective. When they pulled you out, as far as Paradox was concerned, you were gone. It moved on, closed the wound in the continuum, and that was that.”

He tapped Kelly on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to be dead, if you’ll forgive my saying so again, my friend, but you are not just anybody. Orwell was correct, some animals are simply more equal than others. You’re a Prime Mover, Kelly. We all are. While that does not make us invulnerable where intervention is concerned, Time has difficulty getting its change orders filled when a major Prime is involved. Prime Movers and Free Radicals are particularly problematic where Paradox is concerned. They weigh heavily on the scale of possible outcomes. Time tries to balance her books, but sometimes she simply cannot do so. In that instance Paradox does what it can, an annihilating force. But we have clearly seen that certain factors can stand, even in the face of that awesome power.”

“You mean us?”

“Not just us, but any major Prime has power to resist change—even face down Paradox itself. Remember all those near miss assassination attempts against Napoleon in the mission we ran to uncover the Rosetta Stone? Remember how they took shots at him, but each and every one misfired?”

“Remember all the knives that went into Julius Caesar?” Maeve jibed. “He didn’t get a hall pass.”

“True, but we do not know his true status. We may think of him as a Prime Mover, but Time may regard him otherwise. And everybody dies, Maeve. That was his fate. Yet this I do know… A Prime Mover, particularly one protected in a Nexus Point, is like a rock in the stream. This is not always the case for Free Radicals like Ra’id Husan al Din. Given the intervention we made, Time looked at what was left of the situation, and sometimes she just has to take what she gets. She’s not all powerful. The alteration we worked was achieved by Grand Primes in a Protected Nexus. We have power too, and we’ve proved that over and over again. You are here, Kelly. Your life persists, in spite of the fact that Paradox would rather have you dead.”

Kelly shrugged, “I’m a Zombie!”

“Yes, but you’re a fairly good looking one as Zombies go,” said Maeve, relieving the tension. “Alright. It’s clear that we have an altered state now. We’re starting from an altered Meridian, and struggling to make changes that suit us to create yet another altered Meridian. Yet we’re slowly losing integrity on the Time line we came from, what we like to call the Prime Meridian. There have been so many interventions since we let this genie out of the bottle that I doubt if we will ever be able to put things back the way they were on the eve of the first experiment. And may I remind you that by attempting to reverse Palma we are not restoring anything, we’re simply creating something new. We knew that the minute Kelly stole up on us at his own memorial service. We’ve known it all along, so let’s dispense with this notion that we are the defenders of the continuum, trying to preserve its integrity. We’re not. We’re simply trying to push reality into a shape we like, relying on the nostalgic memory of that old world and the data in out RAM Bank to guide us. It’s as if we were dreamers, concocting our own private world.”

“All men dream,“ said Paul quoting T. E. Lawrence, ”but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible… We are the dreamers of the day,” he concluded, “and that,” he pointed at the massive titanium security door that led down to the Arch, “that gives us the power to make our dreams come true. Yes, we cannot imagine every circumstance, or foresee every consequence of what we do, but we act because we can, and then we, like Mother Time, will have to simply look at what we get and live with it.”

They were silent for a moment until Nordhausen cleared his throat. “Alright, then how are we going to proceed? Do we back out of this intervention or do we go forward? And if we proceed where to we act—with the convoy captain, with Darlington Court, with the U-boat and torpedo thing, or something else? Or do we just blow this whole thing off and go back and arrange the death of Kenan Tanzir’s father?”

“Something tells me that last option is off the table,” said Paul. “A man’s life has roots where he is planted, yet sometimes they become entwined with the roots of other events and become so knotted that to change his fate you must confine your gardening to a given plot of holy ground. That’s all we really are in the final scheme of things, gardeners. We water here, prune there, pull up weeds when we find them. These events all seem knotted together with the history of this battle and the fate of the Bismarck. The vengeance that was born in the heart of Kenan’s father resulted from a bombardment by British battleships—some of the very same ships, commanded by the very same officers in this campaign against Bismarck. I don’t see all the connections yet, but there is obvious entanglement here, even on a quantum level, and there may be something else involved that we have yet to see, some worm in the loam of the soil we are all tilling at that has some profound effect in the future.”

“He waxes poetic,” said Kelly. “But I suppose Paul has a good point. Our research led us here, to this campaign. If the Assassins and the Order are also running interventions in this history, then their research led them both here too. We can make all kinds of assumptions, but this appears to be where the action is at the moment, and so I say we march to the sound of the guns. Let’s kick some ass! Bismarck is supposed to be sunk, whether our take on reality is valid or not. It’s a ship full of Zombies, Maeve. We’re Prime Movers, and we think she belongs at the bottom of the sea, so let’s put her there!”

“Bravo,” said Paul. “We’re in an altered state to begin with, an altered Meridian, but as long as we’re here, we may as well be comfortable. I simply will not accept the world out there if we let Palma stand. So let’s change the history as best we can here and see what we end up with. We may not ever again get all the pieces of this puzzle put back together again, Maeve, but we can try. I vote we let the intervention we’ve made thus far stand and continue to try and sink the Bismarck. I don’t know what we can do about Hood if she survives—all those lives moving into the continuum—another ship full of Zombies. I don’t know what we can do about Arethusa and the lives lost there, may they rest in peace. That’s up to the Heisenberg Wave and Paradox to decide when we finish.”

“Yes,” said Maeve sourly. “Let’s hope nobody aboard Arethusa goes on to have any significant ancestors—is that what you’re saying? And let’s hope everybody off HMS Hood goes on to lead saintly lives. It would be a shame if we inadvertently set loose a future axe murderer, right?” The sarcasm in her voice was obvious. “I vote we swat down Lonesome Dove and see if we can start over.” She folded her arms, frowning.

Everyone looked at Robert.

“I take it Kelly and I want to operate further,” said Paul. “That’s two votes. So it’s all on you for the moment, Robert. This is your research. Do we proceed now or turn this off and try for something better? If you vote no, then we have a stalemate here, a 2-2 deadlock, and we’ll just have to talk it through until we reach a consensus on some other way to operate.”

“Well… I hate to incur the wrath of Maeve,” said the professor. “But I’ve invested a lot of time digging in this little garden already, to use your own metaphor, Paul. I say we pull the weeds, dig up this worm Kenan Tanzir, and then see what we get. I vote we proceed now, one way or another.”

“Then it’s decided,” said Paul looking at Maeve. “We’ll act from where we are, as discretely as possible, Maeve. I understand how you feel, but we’re in this far and we need to follow through. Here’s how I see it. I don’t see how shuffling the shipping order on these steamers in Convoy HX-126 is going to help us, or anyone else, for that matter. Wohlfarth has demonstrated himself to be an unstable variable here, a Free Radical. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. We could line all the ships up for him and he might just decide to take a pass. Nor do I think we’ll have much luck if we try to sink or eliminate U-556 from the scenario. It’s Bismarck we’re after. If she survives she’ll cause havoc to the history. This we’ve already seen. We have to sink her, so it’s time for another intervention. We may not have the Golems to guide us, but we can send practical and sound information as to her movements as we know them now.”

“But we don’t know them,” Maeve protested.

“Wait a second…” said Kelly, sitting up in his chair, his attention suddenly drawn to the Golem module. My, my. Yes we do!” He pointed to the Golem screen, active again, lights winking on and off, colors migrating on the chronology line indicating fresh new data was resolved from the stream and coalesced into a valid potential outcome. “It looks like Golem 7 is leading the charge again, and the others have finally reached a weight of opinion,” he said excitedly.

“No,” said Paul. “But three Prime Movers in this very room just did, and I think our resolution here has just broken the log jam. As long as we were in doubt, unresolved, with no clear path ahead, the Golems were lost in confusion as well. But we just set our minds on a course of action, and it’s already had an effect.”

“God help us,” said Maeve.

“Alright then,” said Paul. “You say you have an old US officer’s steamer trunk, Maeve? Drag it out. Here’s what I propose we do…”

Chapter 23

“We are fifty miles ahead of them by now,” said Lindemann. “It’s not a safe margin yet, but the initiative is ours, sir. We can turn southwest into the Atlantic at any time and meet up with a tanker.”

It had been a long 24 hours since that first brief engagement with the British fleet. Bismarck and Prince Eugen had steamed south at good speed, slowly pulling away from the British main body, though a pesky light cruiser had dogged their heels for some time. At dawn and dusk she seemed to disappear, and Lütjens took heart, thinking they had thrown off the pursuit at last. But by mid day she was there again, re-directed by Swordfish off of HMS Victorious equipped with Type 279 air to surface search radar.

“Those antiquated planes haven’t dared to try and mount another attack,” said Lütjens. “I doubt if they will try again today.”

“They are using them as search planes now,” said Lindemann. “But I think we must turn again, Admiral, and soon. We have two choices. Either we make for Brest and join Scharnhorst and Gneisenau for a major operation in the months ahead, or we go it alone in the Atlantic. Our fuel situation will determine the wisest course. If we shake off the enemy for certain, then a rendezvous with a tanker is a practical choice. We could ask for a U-boat screen in that event.”

“But if they still have our location, the time it would take to refuel both ships would give them a very good chance of catching up.”

“I don’t think they know where we are, sir,” said Lindemann. “That cruiser has disappeared again.”

Lütjens considered his options. “And what if we fail to find a tanker in short order? How much fuel do we have for regular operations?”

“Two days, sir,” said Lindemann. “We must rendezvous with an oiler or reach a friendly port in 48 hours.”

The admiral thought for some time on this. Bismarck had broken out, at little cost, but she had no laurels to take home should they turn for a French port now. Yet the prospect of leading his old battle fleet of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out, this time with Bismarck as the flagship, was a powerful lure.

“This latest signal from Group West,” he said, holding up the translated cable. “It seems the British have put together another heavy convoy with reinforcements bound for Alexandria. We’re beating them about the head and shoulders on Crete and the rush is on to get reinforcements to that theater. Group West is of a mind that this convoy is now lightly defended.”

“Sir?” Lindemann found it hard to believe that the British would take such risks.

“Yes, Convoy WS-8B was spotted and her position fixed. We lost a big Kondor seaplane tracking her. The convoy put to sea and was joined by HMS Britannic, the fast troop ship that has been running to New York. The Georgic is also steaming in that convoy. What trophies they would make, eh Lindemann? And there are other prizes to be had there, numerous troop ships were reported. There were no battleships spotted with the convoy either, most likely reassigned to look for us! But now we will be more than happy to take on that duty for the British. Group West gives her position and heading to the east of us, between our position and Brest. I want to turn 70 degrees to port and head east at your earliest opportunity. We will catch this convoy, get our just laurels, and then refuel at Brest with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. When next we set sail, there will be no force on the sea capable of threatening us.”

Lindemann had some misgivings about this plan, much preferring his tanker rendezvous instead.

“What about Prince Eugen, sir?”

“She will follow your plan, Lindemann.” He threw a bone to the captain, sensing his mood on the matter. “Have her fall astern and we will take the van just before we make our turn. Then we will break west and Prince Eugen will continue on this heading with the aim of leading the British off on a merry chase.”

“I see,” said Lindemann, still concerned. “And what if the British do not follow her, sir? What if they follow us instead?”

“We will not know that for some time, captain. But we are losing our cover of darkness. That cruiser shadowing us is nowhere to be seen. Signal Prince Eugen at once and inform her of these orders. We will execute as soon as she is ready.”

“Aye, sir.”

Aboard HMS King George V Admiral Tovey was beginning to feel very alone. His entire fleet was nearing the point of no return on fuel, and the problem was particularly acute with his cruisers. Kenya had been out in front for some time now, but as dawn approached he was forced to order her to fall off station.

Lindemann had been correct on two counts. The cruiser had vanished, yet the first reason was that HMS Kenya’s perfect Mauve camo scheme had again blended in to the violet grey sky, making her virtually invisible in these hours of early morning light. The second was that Kenya could no longer stand her watch. The cruisers were running very low on fuel and Tovey also had to decide what to do with HMS Victorious. The carrier was going to run out of fuel well before King George V. He could not send Victorious home alone with U-boats about, and so the shorter legged cruisers would set the time of her departure, and serve as escort when she was dismissed from the task force. When Kenya vanished that morning, she would not return, and when the cruisers left with her, Tovey’s Home Fleet would have been reduced to his single ship. Hood and Prince of Wales were still running south on a parallel track, but were some forty miles to the west.

With the cruisers gone it would be up to King George V to keep a hold on Bismarck. Even now he was burning more precious fuel, increasing to 28 knots to try and make up the ground lost over night. He needed to make radar contact again quickly, but a last idea occurred to him, and he discussed it with his Chief of Staff.

“I’m afraid sending in the Swordfish again this morning will be fruitless, Brind,” he said. “But Victorious could do us one last service as she leaves and fly a search operation. What do you suggest?”

“Southwest arc, sir,” said Brind with little hesitation. “If I were Bismarck I’d see about a turn in that direction, if she already hasn’t done as much. There will be U-boats to form a picket line for her in the Atlantic, and she can rendezvous with an oiler there.”

“Make it so,” said Tovey.

Ten minutes later Victorious was turning into the wind for the last time on this mission, and seven of her nine Swordfish lumbered down the armored deck to take wing again, forming up and turning on a heading of 225 degrees southwest before they began to fan out on their individual search tracks. Each plane would fly out and back, with all seven plotted in such a way as to search a near 180 degree arc. When they landed on Victorious it would be their final mission in the hunt for Bismarck, and one came home with some very good news.

Lt. Pollard was in plane 5K off the Victorious that morning, his observer, Beattie, intently scanning the sea with his field glasses as they searched. His was the leftmost slice of the arc Victorious was searching, and it mostly covered the edge of the course where they had last sighted the battleship.

The winds were up and the sky was still broken with banks of ragged clouds, tinged pink and grey in the early morning hours. Not having radar in their plane, they searched for some time along the track, seeing nothing. Pollard was watching his fuel gauge closely as well. When he has consumed forty percent he would begin making a gradual turn to begin the homeward leg of his pattern.

When he did so Beattie spoke up, shouting over the engine noise. “Aren’t we turning the wrong way?”

“Too many clouds in that direction,” Pollard shouted back. “We won’t see a damn thing. This track is clear.”

They flew on for some time, and then Beattie noted a dark shape ahead, trailing a long, white wake in the sea. “Ship ahead!”

Pollard looked about, plotting the best way to approach under cover without losing the contact. He slipped into a cloud and when it broke to the clear in places, Beattie had a good look at the target through his field glasses. Amazingly, there was no flak from the ship.

“What’s her heading?” said Pollard.

“Looks to be due south.”

“That’s the Germans then. None of our ships this far out. Get a message off quick now. Sighted one ship bearing course 180 degrees south, our position.”

Beattie tapped out his intelligence report and, low on fuel, they banked into a cloud and turned north for Victorious, some sixty miles away now by Pollard’s calculations.

“I hope to bloody God we can still find Vicky,” said Pollard. “But what in the world is old King George going to do if she finds the Germans all on her own?”

Pollard had little to worry about just then, because the ship they had sighted was the cruiser Prince Eugen, still steaming due south as Lütjens had ordered. Her companion, Bismarck had bid her farewell and good hunting, turning 70 degrees to port ten minutes earlier.

When the signal came in to Victorious it was quickly passed on to Tovey on King George V, where it raised far more questions than it answered.

“One ship sighted?” said Tovey. “What kind of ship? A cruiser? A battleship? This information is not clear.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Brind, “but it’s all we have for the moment.”

“Bloody pilots need training in proper signals protocol,” said Tovey, obviously unhappy. “Anything from the other planes?”

“Not a word, sir. Oh, the rightmost plane in the search arc sighted Hood and Prince of Wales and signaled two ships—but it wasn’t coded, sir.”

“Not coded? Damn it, Brind! We should have kept the bloody planes on Victorious for all the good this does us. What if the Germans pick up that wireless message?”

“A bit of a mess here, sir,” Brind agreed.

“Very well,” Tovey fumed, thinking. “We’ll hold this course based on the one good sighting we do have. And I think we’d better get Hood and Prince of Wales off to the east somewhat, on a line to join up with us. She was in a good position for dawn, but it’s time we brought them our way. It’s going to be a bit lonesome out here today.”

“I understand, sir. I’ll signal Admiral Holland our intentions and ask him to make his turn as soon as practical.”

“Very well,” said Tovey, still upset with the sloppy reporting from the pilots of Victorious. “It’s likely the Germans suspect they are there in any case.” He had misgivings about bringing the carrier along, and now she seemed more of a liability than an asset. Yet her crews, raw as they were, had done their best and pulled off three missions to give them some salt. It was only fortune and good luck that none of them were killed.

He considered his situation. There was still at least one German ship ahead of him on this course, and very likely two. He didn’t relish the prospect of trying to engage them both on his own. All the more reason to join up with Admiral Holland and his ships. And what about this convoy, WS-8B, another ‘Winston Special’ outbound for Alexandria? It was steaming due south now, and Pound at the Admiralty had taken it upon himself to detach its only significant escort, the battleship Rodney. Her position at midnight had been some 160 miles east southeast of King George V, but he had heard nothing since. The big battleship was too slow for a chase like this, and she would have to be maneuvered with some foresight if he was to have any hope of getting her into the battle.

He considered sending a message asking where Rodney was so he could get his ships in hand and plot proper intercept headings. Yet something cautioned him to maintain radio silence on that issue for the time, at least until he determined what he still had in front of him. The situation was hardly satisfactory, but it was all he had for the moment, and he carried on.

Off to the east, the captain of HMS Rodney had called a committee together of all senior officers aboard to consider what he might do. He had been detached from convoy duty on expressed orders from the Admiralty. It seemed Admiral Pound was getting fond of moving ships about on his plotting table, he thought.

Rodney was a middle aged ship, ungainly at sea, yet powerfully built, with nine big 16 inch guns all forward. It was well enough they were placed there, for she was so slow that, more often than not, the ship would be well behind anything she was to fire at.

Her captain, Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton, was also a big slow man, a tall Scott, powerfully built like his ship. At midnight, just as Tovey and Holland had turned due south to chase Bismarck, his ship was still steaming on a southwesterly course of about 230 degrees. Pound had sent him this heading, but no further instructions, and he realized if he held to this course he would soon find himself well behind the action by the time he got out west closer to Home Fleet.

Orders were orders, yet having misgivings about his lot, he summoned his committee and thought to seek a weight of opinion from his senior officers. He had his navigator, the ship’s commander, and several other officers that had come aboard to gain passage to America. Rodney had been bound for New York, and eventually a berth in Boston where she was to undergo some much needed refitting. Even now her decks were stacked with packing crates filled with equipment and material to be used in patching her up. It was well past time for the old girl to get a facelift, he thought, but the cargo was likely to be a nuisance if he had to go to action stations.

He could avoid all that by just settling in and keeping to this heading. Then he would have a nice uneventful cruise to the States, if he could keep clear of U-boats. The fact that he had to dismiss his destroyer escorts to keep watch on the convoy also worried him.

So he brought in his senior rankings and these two odd interlopers as well, just to see what all the hatbands and stripes would come to in a brief discussion. And one man, the American liaison officer Wellings, was to make a very strong impression on him that night. He was a curious fellow—seemed to want his ear from the moment he set foot on the ship. Well now for it, thought Hamilton. Let him have his say.

Chapter 24

“Well Gentlemen, that’s our present situation,” said Captain Hamilton. “We’ve no further instructions from the Admiralty, but that could change. Your thoughts are, of course, welcome.” He looked at the American, Wellings, as if he knew the man would be the first to speak, and he was not disappointed.

“If I may, sir,” said Wellings. “What’s to be gained by holding this heading? You’ve said yourself that it will put you well behind Admiral Tovey by the time we get out west.” He was a tall, thin man, dark eyed, clean, and dressed out in proper US Navy whites. The stripes on his cuff and shoulder insignia made him to be a Lieutenant Commander.

But Wellings was more than he seemed.

Not long ago insofar as he was concerned, but more than sixty years hence, a man had stepped across a bold thick line painted on a heavy concrete floor, and vanished into a whirl of dizzying light and sound.

He appeared in Bristol, England, near the Clyde anchorage where HMS Rodney had been waiting to escort Convoy WS-8B, the second half of the ‘Winston Special’ series that was bound to reinforce the British position in Egypt. The first half had been designated WS-8A, dubbed the Tiger Convoy by Sir Winston himself, as he deemed its bold move to sail directly across the Med instead of going round the Cape of Good Hope was rather like riding a tiger into the fray by the quickest route possible. There had been a near miss tragedy when the Germans surprised the British and sortied briefly with the battlecruiser Gneisenau.

Luckily Force H was near at hand, sailing north at that very moment to cover the Tiger Convoy, and the cruiser Sheffield, followed soon after by the battlecruiser Renown, engaged the German raider and sent her scurrying back to the safety of her berth at Brest. Sheffield was damaged and laid up in Gibraltar, but Tiger Convoy, part one, passed safely and made her delivery of precious Matilda and Crusader tanks and Hurricane fighters to General Wavell. 57 tanks were lost when the transport Empire Song sang her last after striking a mine, but another 200 tanks were safely delivered, and spurred General Wavell to launch an aptly named operation aimed at relieving the siege at Tobruk.

Operation Brevity lasted little more than a day, first throwing the Italians into confusion, until local counterattacks and German reinforcements from Rommel stopped the British advance. It seemed General Wavell needed another nudge in the right direction, and so Convoy WS-8B was launched, one of the largest convoys ever assembled to that point in the war. HMS Rodney was to be her principle escort for a time, before heading west to Boston for her refit.

That night in Bristol the real Lieutenant Wellings, USN, was having dinner at a hotel when a tall man in crisp navy whites came drifting into the dining room, his eyes searching and immediately falling on his fellow naval officer. He came right over, removing his cap as he spoke.

“Lieutenant Wellings?”

“Yes?”

“May I join you, sir?”

Wellings was accustomed to receiving odd messages at any hour, for he had been an American Assistant Naval Attaché in London for the last year. Now he was heading home, scheduled to board the British battleship Rodney for the trans-Atlantic cruise. The battleship would escort Convoy WS-8B out of the Clyde, and then eventually steam for New York and Boston for a refit.

The man seated himself opposite Wellings and smiled. “Forgive the interruption, sir, but I have new orders for you.”

“New orders?”

“Yes, sir.” The man handed him an envelope. “It seems Washington would like you home just a bit sooner. You’re now scheduled to fly out of Bristol on DC-3 number 171, sir. Your flight will leave at 20:30 hours. One stop at Reykjavik, Iceland for a 24 hour layover.”

“Damn,” said Wellings. ”That’s only just enough time to get to the air field.”

“Oh, don’t worry, sir,” I’ve arranged a cab for you. It should be waiting outside in about twenty minutes. They’ll hold the plane.” The man looked at a wrist watch, too loose on his thin wrist, and smiled again. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. Somewhat of an inconvenience, but at least you’ll get straight home in a couple of days.”

“Better than idling aboard Rodney for a week,” said Wellings, finally warming to the idea. The man saluted, excused himself, and slipped away. He didn’t even recall his name, though he did note the man was of equal rank. Funny he should not have met him sooner, but he assumed he was one of many new officers arriving in theater as the war began to heat up to a low boil.

We’ll be in it soon enough, he thought, but for the moment I’m happy to be out of it. Wellings finished his steak, quaffing down the glass of wine he had hoped to linger over, then opened the envelope and briefly noted his new orders. Everything seemed in order—a bit hastily typed, but in order. He sighed, looking at his watch, then got up and went to look for the cab.

Hours later a man boarded HMS Rodney with a crisp salute as he was piped on, one Lieutenant Commander Wellings, American Liaison to the Admiralty, at least according to the guest manifest. Yet he was not who he seemed.

Sometime later Paul Dorland sat contentedly in his navy whites, and comfortably in his assumed identity, one of seven men around a table in the captain’s quarters on HMS Rodney. Paul was the seventh, Golem 7 in his own right, and he would fight to sway the weight of opinion here with as much pluck and energy as Kelly’s search programs. Nordhausen’s research had been spot on, and that handy navy steamer trunk Maeve had acquired on eBay was perfect. It contained two full uniform sets, personal effects, and even orders, which they had cleverly altered and augmented for Paul’s planned mission.

They had been detached ten hours ago, and Convoy WS-8B was now steaming due south, diverted away from the area where the Royal Navy was trying to find and engage a German raiding task force led by the much feared battleship Bismarck. Captain Hamilton was looking for support for a decision he was already leaning heavily on, and Paul was just the man to give it to him. He might have done as much by transmitting a message, but something told him the situation needed a firmer hand, and so he resolved to go in under cover of this assumed identity and nudge things along.

“I’ve got some information I’ve been ordered to share with you, sir.”

“Information?”

“Yes, sir,” Paul leaned in, lowering his voice slightly as if to convey the notion that he was now speaking confidentially. The others were clearly interested.

“We have a Coast Guard cutter at sea in the vicinity of the operations out west,” he began. “Her regular duty is ice watch patrol, but it seems one of your convoys out of Halifax took it on the chin recently. She was therefore detailed to assist in survivor recovery for convoy HX-126.”

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “Bloody business that. The poor lot ran afoul of a wolf pack. Lost quite a few ships, I’m afraid.”

“Right,” said Paul, “Cockaponset, and British Security went down in the final attack. Darlington Court had a near miss. Well, the Modoc, that’s our cutter, reported in yesterday, sir, and I am now at liberty to disclose this message to you here. She sighted battleship Bismarck at these coordinates and times.” He handed the captain a paper, and Hamilton squinted at it briefly before handing it off to his navigator.

“If you chart that,” Paul continued, “You’ll see that this present heading is all wrong, sir. It’s clear that Bismarck has turned southeast, and we believe she is making for Brest, or possibly even trying to have a go at convoy WS-8B. You’ll have to turn due south at once to have any chance in the world of becoming a useful asset in this campaign.”

“I see,” said Hamilton. “I assume this report was also forwarded to the Admiralty? We’ve heard nothing from them at all on this.”

“As you might imagine, sir, Western Approaches Command is all astir with this Bismarck business. The message was sent, but whether it received prompt attention or not is anybody’s guess. I’ve been there, and I can say the situation gets a bit chaotic at times, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”

“Not at all,” said Hamilton. “Get enough Admirals in any one room and no one ends up knowing what to do.” He considered for a moment. “And what course would you say we adopt, Lieutenant Commander Wellings?”

“180 degrees due south, sir. It’s really your only option, and you will have to make your best speed even then if you’re to get to the party on time.” Paul folded his arms. He had made his pitch, and knew enough not to say anything further until someone else spoke first.

“Gentlemen?” Captain Hamilton regarded the other men present, but no one seemed to have any objection to the idea. The navigator knew his business well, and even without having to look at a chart he confirmed what Paul was saying. “We’ll definitely be out of it if we don’t turn, sir,” he said.

“Very well, gentlemen,” Captain Hamilton decided. “I think we have a consensus here, and I must say I agree with everything that’s been said.” To his navigator and senior staff officer he said: “Come round to course 180 degrees south at once and give me all the speed we can manage. The faster the better, should there be any U-boats about. That’s a good bit of timely intelligence, Wellings. I appreciate your candor. Now then, let’s get a signal off to the Admiralty notifying them of our intentions. I daresay Admiral Pound may have other ideas about it, but I believe Admiral Tovey on King George V will be more than gratified to learn of the action we’re taking here.”

“Very good, sir.”

At least for the moment, Golem 7 had prevailed.

Hamilton’s concern about lurking U-boats was well founded. Wohlfarth on U-556 had only just lowered his periscope, amazed to see yet another large British warship steaming on in apparent haste, and without proper escort.

Someone is all in huff over Bismarck, he knew. Damn the Royal Navy. You could sink five battleships and they would still find a way to pull another one out of their hat when needed. He had been listening to signal intercepts and had been mentally putting together a picture of the action forming up to his west. He had already taken one British battlecruiser out of the action, sure to earn the Knight’s Cross for that. But there were at least three big ships, a carrier, and a gaggle of light cruisers still chasing Bismarck. He remembered the pledge he had made to Captain Lindemann, half in jest, and half to cover the brash incident where he had deliberately fired on Bismarck’s towed target ship during gunnery exercises months ago.

He smiled inwardly, remembering the day he had gone over to the great ship himself, awed by her fearsomely sleek lines and menacing stature. He had knocked on Captain Lindemann’s ward room door and introduced himself with a stiff salute. At that meeting he had presented Lindemann with a drawing he had made, depicting himself as brave Sir Persifal, rushing to the rescue of Bismarck as she was harried by three British Swordfish.

He remembered exactly what he had written: ‘We, U-556, hereby declare before Neptune, Lord over oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, brooks, ponds, and rivulets, that we will provide any desired assistance to our Big Brother, the battleship Bismarck, at any place on the water, under water, on land, or in the air.’

A curse on the British! Those were steep enough odds already for Bismarck. Now a fourth battleship, was apparently steaming to get after her as well. He must notify Group West immediately of his sighting, and now he regretted his wanton attack on Convoy HX-126 in such an increasingly target rich environment.

“Damn,” he said aloud. “If only I had another few torpedoes!”

His navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Souvad returned at once. “But Captain, we do have two more torpedoes. They are in the reserve container on the outer deck.”

Wohlfarth spun about and looked at him, thinking. He had forgotten all about those last two fish because it was almost impossible to get them out of their casings and into the lower decks in bad weather. The weather was rough, and likely to get even worse according to the last meteorological report he had read. Yet if he could get at those last two torpedoes…. It was certainly worth a try at least. He waited for a few minutes, giving the big British ship ample time to steam on, then he gave the order ‘up periscope’ again and had a look around for safety’s sake, satisfying himself that there were no destroyers about.

“Bring the boat up at once,” he said sharply. “Make ready to load torpedo reserve.”

“In this weather, sir?” His executive officer had obvious misgivings. “They’ll never manage a winch with the seas like this.”

“Perhaps not,” said Wohlfarth, “but they’ll damn well try, won’t they. Order it at once!”

Minutes later the U-boat had surfaced, tossed in the heavy swells but still stable enough in Wohlfarth’s estimation to mount the winch and see if he could get those last two torpedoes down below and into his forward tubes. He set a double watch and assigned the strongest men he had on the boat to the job. They strained and cursed, and labored for a long hour, opening the deck container and slowly working the torpedoes down into the cargo access hatch, one by one.

On more than one occasion the boat was slapped by a heavy wave and a sleek torpedo swayed dangerously on its hoisting harness, but the men had hold of her from two sides, one nearly slipping and falling off the boat before a burly master chief grabbed his arm to steady the man.

All the while the watchmen nervously scanned every horizon for any sign of British ships or planes. They were in the Western Approaches, a dangerous zone for a U-boat to be spotted, but an hour later, with much sweat and toil, the crews had their weapons secured below and were closing off the upper hatches.

Wohlfarth scratched at his short cropped curly beard, beaming with satisfaction. It was as if he had been given a second life, and he had every intention of using it to best advantage.

“Chief of the Boat, come round to course 180 degrees south,” he said excitedly. “Increase to fifteen knots. All ahead full.”

“Aye, captain.”

Now, he thought. Let us not incur the wrath of Neptune, God, Fate or Captain Lindemann. If the British want a fight, I will give them one. I’m going to follow that big fat British battleship and see where she leads me! We will see if I can change the odds yet again…