Titanic 2012: Curse of RMS Titanic

Prologue

Adolf Hitler smiled and rocked on his heels, feeling safe, even smug here where Bismarck was hidden from prying British air patrols. The mightiest German battleship ever built was now anchored amid the Balkans, far to the west of Hamburg where the ship had been assembled. Here amid multiple land masses, and fjords in the straits between Germany and Sweden in the only port in occupied Poland.

Hitler felt comfortable here standing 5′10″ inside his British-made Wellington boots. He smiled and turned his head in all directions from his vantage point on the bridge of the deadliest ship ever to set sail on the high seas. Her 16-inch guns were the largest ever mounted on a seagoing vessel. She represented superior fire power and future control of the entire North Atlantic.

Hitler had come aboard Bismarck under heavy security, as there had recently been another attempt on his life in Berlin. He had a small army of SS men on all sides of him and another four were carrying a crate, a curious wooden box the size of a child’s coffin. Something many of the seamen aboard, all lined in rows for the inspection by the Fuhrer, found interesting. In particular Lt. Commander Erwin Hulsing had noticed the crate and had immediately wondered if it had anything to do with the new encryption machine that Hitler’s top engineers and language experts had developed to keep all communications between ships and U-boats in an unbreakable code. Each device on each ship had its own code key. As a highly interested party regarding such matters, he felt an overwhelming urge to ask if this could be it. From experience, he knew it best to keep to attention and to keep his eyes trained on the horizon, and of course, to remain deaf and dumb.

It would make sense that Hitler would oversee the transportation and installation of such a device, considering this new machine would allow the admiral and captain of the ship it was installed on to intercept and decipher all messages sent across the airways between Britain and her allies. Hitler might also ascertain irrefutable evidence of a truth everyone now took for granted—that both Canada and American were supplying the British with more than just food and medical supplies in their so-called humanitarian efforts for the people of the United Kingdom.

The Bismarck was built to lay waste to such foolishness, to destroy anything that dared to move across the North Atlantic—including so-called Hospital ships marked with the insignia of the Red Cross. She had two sets of magnificent turret batteries at bow and stern, four guns that could level a mountain and strike a row boat twenty-two miles off her stern or bow.

Hitler’s entourage had come aboard intent on going directly to the admiral’s quarters with the crate. Erwin Hulsing began to hear the whispers wafting among the rows of sailors lining the deck, all now curious about the box—a wooden crate marked as oranges, ostensibly a gift for Admiral Lutjens whose love of fresh fruit aboard ship was legendary. Although anyone seeing the strain on the faces of the four men carrying the elongated, coffin-sized crate, quickly realized it carried much more than oranges.

Meanwhile, Captain Lindemann and Admiral Lutjens followed in the supreme leader’s wake like a pair of puppies, Lindemann tripping over himself at one point to get closer to the German Chancellor. Boot lickers, Hulsing thought.

Erwin realized for the first time that Hitler, an oddly shaped, short-statured man appeaed nearly lost in his leather coat—as if it’d been borrowed from a larger man. Hitler had surrounded himself with taller men selected for the best in Aryan features: blue-eyed, blond-haired six-foot high soldiers in spanking new military uniform and Nazi insignia-emblazoned caps. Alongside such men, the Fuhrer appeared a perfect contrast in his high-heeled boots. By comparison to his SS men, Hitler himself was a dark-eyed, dark-haired man of little stature and bearing; in fact, he seemed weak and lost in his uniform by comparison—a man playing at being a soldier. Still, he could scream, shout, and yell poisonous words that the uneducated masses loved to hear and desperately wanted to believe.

Hulsing saw that Hitler was focused on one objective at the moment, intent on getting that crate tucked away in the admiral’s possession, in the admiral’s cabin atop the captain’s quarters. He seemed bound and determined to first deposit the ‘gift’ before bothering to inspect ship or crew.

This took the darkly-clad entourage up several decks to the catwalk embracing the Admiral’s bridge just above the captain’s quarters and captain’s bridge. Hidden somewhat amid his entourage, Hitler’s gait was that of a determined ape chasing a female and daring anyone to get in his path.

Once done with the ‘gifting’, this man who was determined to rule the world, would return to inspect the battleship Bismarck and her crew. Every sailor on board, including Erwin Hulsing must remain at attention while awaiting Hitler’s return to inspect the sailors—all two thousand of them lined along every deck.

Hitler took his time inside the private quarters belonging to Lutjens, and when he and the admiral finally emerged, they both acknowledged the sailors with a raised hand and a “Sieg Heil.” To which all two thousand sailors, mechanics, engineers, cooks, and farmers automatically responded with a collective “Sieg Heil!”

Hitler then finally got around to the inspection, ostensibly his purpose in being aboard, but then he’d done all this earlier at the launching months ago in Hamburg. So why now, why here—why come all the way to Poland, Hulsing silently asked himself. Hitler closely studied each man he passed, fixing a lapel here, a pin there, asking a question of this one and that—primarily about the sailor’s place of origin to which he might chuckle or simply nod in knowing fashion. To one or two, he said, “I have been to your village, a beautiful place in the Fatherland, and the people there! You make all Germany proud—men like you!”

Although a balmy day, standing at attention beneath the sun had some of the men sweating profusely in their dress uniforms, and Erwin Hulsing was among those hoping that their leader, or perhaps the Admiral, would shout the ‘at ease’ order. However, it did not come. Instead, they were expected to stand at attention until after the speech-making.

Hulsing, well aware of the fidgeting among the ranks, did his best to set an example, staring up at the fuehrer with a look of pride affixed to his face, even if he didn’t believe the rhetoric and the flag-waving. Soon Hulsing realized he’d allowed his eyes to wander to the other officers aboard—those who he could see with his limited view. There was the SS Officer, Herrmann Bonekemper, on the dais with the captain and admiral, an SS officer whose adoration for Hitler was unmatched, and the man’s vile, pinched face reflected the fact he was overjoyed at being so near Der Fuhrer.

Not far from Bonekemper stood Lt. Commander & Baron Buckard Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, one of two men who’d be stationed at the gunnery towers when they saw action. Rechberg’s purview was the rear gunnery tower, the rear gunnery control room, Dora, Caesar, and the anti-aircraft guns. Rechberg, a dedicated officer, appeared equally excited to greet the leader of the Third Reich.

“Think of it, Hulsing,” Mullenheim-Rechberg had said to Erwin at breakfast just that morning, “the leader of the Third Reich, Hitler himself, here to inspect our ship, to grace our ship with his presence.”

“Yes… yes,” Hulsing had replied, nodding. “To grace Bismarck yes.” Shrugging, Erwin had added, “To inspect her, but what’s to inspect? The ship itself is perfect, and all of Germany and Great Britain knows this and fears it.”

“You mean England fears it; Germany hails it as the final blow to those cowards and fools. It’s sure to keep the Americans out of the war now, ha!”

Erwin took a deep breath and held his tongue.

“Go ahead, my friend, speak your mind; we can trust one another,” Rechberg had said, reading Erwin’s blue eyes and chiseled features like an expert interrogator.

“I think there are many Germans who are not so sure of the path Adolf Hitler has forged for us, my brother.”

“You’d best not say that too loud or too often; you’ll find yourself being escorted to the onboard SS officer’s guard.”

As with any military venue in the Third Reich, the ship had its own SS officer headquartered within earshot. Everyone was encouraged to inform on anything or anyone seeming suspicious. Such encouragement gave men a sense of power no one should be given—a single word against another, and that man could be made to ‘disappear’. No judge, no jury beyond the SS officer aboard Bismarck, a man named Commandant Herrmann Bonekemper. Of course, he had the last word, and no one questioned it—not even the captain or the admiral, although some playful pretense to their standing might be entertained. An SS officer’s decisions could be revoked by no one. It had slowly become a fact of life in Germany since the Nazi Party had taken over the German government under this dictatorial little man in 1933. This man, Hitler, started WWII by ordering his troops to invade and occupy Poland.

After Poland had fallen to Hitler’s war machine, the other European countries fell like a series of dominoes: East Prussia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Italy, Belgium, then Luxembourg along with Finland and Norway. Only Russia, Turkey, France, Spain, and Portugal remained separate, with a plan of taking over North Africa in order to control the Mediterranean Sea. Now Bismarck was set about the business of taking control of the North Atlantic.

Meanwhile, if Hulsing could believe his contacts in Great Britain, Der Fuhrer had also begun internment camps fore Jews and other undesirables, but worse than merely housing people in stalags across Germany and much of Europe now, there were fearsome rumors first couched in the more melodic term endlosung but now being called endziel—the Final Solution to the problem of the embedded Jewish Peoples of not only Germany but Poland and the rest of Europe as well. In other words genocide planned against the inferior races of the planet.

In the meantime, good men in both civilian and military life, soldiers, mariners, pilots kept their eyes on their individual tasks to work assigned duties, concentrate on deployment and responsibilities. Everyone going along with the status quo, happy to have located their collective hive, set their feet on the mark upon which to stand in rows upon rows. Safety in numbers so long as you’re on the right side, he thought. Solidarity worked for a bad cause as well as a good one.

How Hitler loves seeing all the thousands of pressed naval shirts and buttons in rows here now on board his ship of fools. The men were followers in desperate love with the ideas this leader had cooked up for them.

Hard to fault their blindness; all they hoped for was enough bread and a brighter future in the new order of things. A way out of the morbid, crushing economic crisis.

Just concentrate on your own ass and einstatz, Hulsing had so often heard over the years now from the bullying officers he’d had to work under. The idea had certainly taken hold, duty above all else. The thought privately sickened him as he’d seen Nazi soldiers in occupied Poland set one old man on fire in the street. All it took was a little petro and a cigarette.

Now that’s suffering, he told himself, and begged for release as he stood at attention, pretending to be one with the ranks in perfect lock-step. Like the sheep we are, he privately muttered, his jaw set so hard as to chip a tooth.

Nearly finished with his inspection of the single section of seamen that he had chosen to get friendly with, Adolf Hitler’s eyes fell on each officer in turn. To these men, Erwin Hulsing included, he gave a stern, even fatherly stare as if to say, “I am placing my trust in you officers to return to Germany victorious.” Saying nothing, just casting what seemed to be the quintessence of the proverbial ‘evil eye’, he continued on his way to complete his cursory inspection of the seamen. Then in a flash, he returned to the admiral’s bridge where he stood before the microphone which covered more than half his face. Next his cutting voice, shrill and demanding, broke into Erwin’s thoughts of how the man could not even grow a proper mustache.

Hitler, with the Bismarck sailors still at attention, was now shouting into a microphone like a minister in the pulpit. His words condemned Gypsies first, then Jews, followed by other inferior races that must be exterminated from the globe.

“First it was get them all out of Germany, then it was get them all out of Europe,” Erwin whispered in Heinze Zucknat’s ear. “Now its get them off the planet.”

Zucknat, his next in command in the rear gun control room below decks merely shrugged and said, “We just need to be patient, sir, and when we see the Hood, it will be entschiedender sieg, eh?”

It was party rhetoric in the brainwashed heads of these men, Erwin knew. He repeated Heinze’s words,”Entschiedender sieg,” although he wanted just the opposite: an indecisive victory, one in which the Bismarck would be overtaken by the hood, boarded, her admiral surrendering his sword, and the ship towed to England where all aboard could wait out the war in a prisoner of war camp in Nova Scotia or perhaps even the United States if the US ever got off its collective ass and jumped into the war with both feet.

The inspection was taking an interminable amount of time, and Erwin felt more suspicious the longer Hitler tarried over his seemingly mock inspection of the ship and crew. Why had Der Fuhrer personally come aboard Bismarck? Were they here to make another propaganda film? The cameras were, after all, rolling, while his photographers chronicled every move, every word, every grimace, but where had they been when the immortal one and his guard had first boarded Bismarck with that unusual, custom-made crate? Sure, he was here to inspect Bismarck from stem to stern, but was this truly his only purpose? What might his ulterior motive be, other than to bless the ship before she set sail in the hunt for the British battleship, The Hood, which untill now had controlled the English Channel and the North Atlantic?

Hitler had begun a long and loud war prayer, ending with, “I pray not for you men of Bismarck!” This remark brought on more hidden sneers than cheers while Hitler paused, even lighting up a cigarette and puffing for effect, allowing time for his caustic words to sink in before adding, “I pray not for you, for you are men of the Aryan race, willingly here, willing to die for right and justice, and so many of you will die to achieve our ends! This is glory. This is magnificence! I pray not for the Bismarck herself either—a mass of steel. She is beautiful, yes, like you—you are all beautiful, but also like you, she is a missile to be used, to fire and be fired upon, and she could be mortally wounded, like any warrior… like all of you.” Hitler’s voice had gone to an uncharacteristic whisper behind the microphone that still hid his blunt features. Erwin wondered how the man could say such things without hearing a single grumble from the men aboard ship, when Hitler ended with, “I pray for der Reich, der Vaterland!”

Cheers drowned out Hitler’s last words, but Erwin, an expert in communications, read lips, so he heard Hitler say: “And so should you, my lovely seamen! Pray not for yourselves or Bismarck—all a means to an end. Pray for der Third Reich!”

This winding down of the speech sent a cheer up among the men so loud that it must have frightened seagulls a mile away.

Bismarck had been named for the dead Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, a man whose memory had been extraordinarily twisted to fit Hitler’s war propaganda ends. Bismarck the man had somehow become a mythological symbol of moral correctness, flag-waving patriotism, religious righteousness, race purity, along with pure power in the Third Reich. Did it make sense? Not as far as Hulsing could see but then again, what did made sense anymore? After all, they’d already gone down the ‘rabbit hole’ so whether this use of Bismarck’s name—originally christened and launched amid a crowd of thousands of patriots—was right or proper, who but the fanatics cared? The fanatics and the Nazi Party had swarmed into the Hamburg shipyards February 14, 1939 and among the crowds stood huge numbers of boys and girls of the Hitler Youth Camps who had been bused in to celebrate the launch of Germany’s grandest battleship—the new power of the seas. Back in ’39 when Bismarck was first launched, cheers had filled the air, and Erwin had been on hand, in his uniform, under orders to be among the onlookers, giving the Nazi salute as the ceremony came to a close, while the giant warship groaned and moaned on her slow slide from her gantry, down the ramp, and into the water for her launching. At the time, Erwin Hulsing, an armaments and communications man, hadn’t a clue that he would be enlisted to be among Bismarck’s crew as a Lieutenant in charge of engineering and munitions—hardly a perfect choice some felt. Erwin had been a police detective in Berlin before the call for all able-bodied men to join the Party and now the military.

Still why now, two years later, with almost the entire continent of Europe save Russia, France, and Spain under Nazi control, was Hitler here, aboard, carting oranges to Admiral Lutjens’ quarters?

Erwin had been born curious and was raised on the cynicism, and he respected the cynical nature of his father, grandfather, and uncles, all of whom held a healthy distrust of any form of government; they were all in agreement and especially distrusted the new government formed by Herr Hitler.

As for Hitler, A-dolt as Erwin’s deceased grandfather had privately called him, Erwin could hardly believe the events that had led a failed soldier, a failed artist, a failed family man to become this—the leader of the Third Reich. It must have been destined, fated, or be the result of a higher power, one that allowed this little man so much influence. It must be a power to which, one day, Adolf Hitler himself might well be bowing his head and providing burnt offerings to. Erwin could only hope this would come to pass, but it wouldn’t be today that Hitler would supplicate himself, not with an ego so inflated as his had become. As for the battleship Bismarck, her guns the most enormous ever devised, had Hitler smiling even wider now, no doubt at the thought of the power beneath his feet; Erwin imagined the man, rumored to have some Jewish blood in his veins, preening at the adoration of the mariners, and at Admiral Gunther Lutjens’ previous introduction. The Fuhrer didn’t need any introduction for his war-prayer rhetoric; after all, every card shop and cigar store in Germany sold postcards depicting the man feeding and petting animals at a petting zoo, meeting with children at their schoolyards, kissing infants, rallying famous athletic heroes to his side, shaking hands with the Chancellor of England and in parades with the British leader.

Proceeds from the Hitler postcards went into the ‘general fund’ to support the Nazi Party government which had taken hold of the land like a choking weed.

With these thoughts going through his mind alongside the thought that he could be executed for his thoughts, Hulsing remained at attention as Hitler watched the kind of distress he kept Lutjens’and Lindemann’s mariners in—no doubt a test.

The speech went on at length, followed by a thank you from the admiral, and a belated welcome aboard from Captain Johan Lindemann, who kept it mercifully short. In fact, Erwin thought he detected a smirk disappearing even as it was appearing on Lindemann’s face. It made Erwin curious, leaving him to wonder if the captain, unlike the admiral, was not so enthralled by this man Hitler after all, or maybe the smirk was a result of something else, perhaps something the admiral had said. By now, exhausted from standing at attention for so long, Erwin, a man of action, could not be sure of anything beyond his own pure hatred of Hitler.

Still with Hitler basking in the long-winded speech-making, filled as it was with praise for his leadership and vision for the Fatherland, finally closed, Adolf, no doubt feeling a twinge of his childhood fantasies bubbling up, raised his hand to the two thousand men aboard Bismarck and again shouted, “Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.” To which the men responded in one voice: “Sieg Heil,”—to Victory—and “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”

And so it went on. Every proud young seaman in der Deutschen Krietgsmarine stood on the decks, arms raised in the now well-known Nazi salute, and when the two thousand plus men raised their voices, shouting Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, the Bismarck shook with the reverberation.

Chapter One

The black undersea cosmos at these depths—three miles down—could not be calculated for its sheer impact on the human psyche. Ryne Mannheim slid into the seat behind Horst Fellhauer as they closed in on the wreck of the sunken Bismarck and the treasures that lay within her. They felt safe, secure in fact, encased as they were in the underwater marvel of a mini-sub, the Blitzmariner, of modern German design.

Both Mannheim and Fellhauer could trace their ancestry back to the men on the shipwreck they were racing toward—the infamous German destroyer, The Bismarck.

The mini-submarine moved through the deep like an underwater wave, hardly noticeable even on the radar screens manned by people who expected to see them, the captain and crew of Victory, the seagoing scientific and salvage vessel above. The expedition meant to take what it could from the bowels of the sunken WWII battleship. They had little interest in anything else such as precisely how or why she sank as history had thoroughly taken note of her demise, although some scholars questioned the odds of a direct hit on her rudder by a single torpedo fired from a Swordfish plane. Such an occurrence had seemed like a gift from the gods handed to the British fleet. Ample vengeance for the sinking of The Hood, the Lusitania, and the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic—each and all having been sent to the bottom by German engineering in the form of U-boats and battleships like the Bismarck.

Ryne and Horst watched out the portals, marveling at the silence, the abyss, and the sheer blackness outside their small circle of light whenever the exterior lights began to flicker off and on. The little sub itself left no wake, no bubbles, nothing to mark its path in the water. They traveled much as a lone shark or dolphin might, with absolute silence in what amounted to a high-tech titanium shark. The sub was a sleek, space-age-design, an undersea craft created specifically for this job, the most ambitious salvage of a ghost ship at such depths in all of history. Their dive was even deeper than the ill-fated dive to the infamous Titanic a year before, an expedition put together by the Americans out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute—one named Titanic 2012. While all the young men and women involved with Titanic 2012 met a terrible end, the expedition Ryne and Horst spearheaded meant to make their reputations, fortunes, and history all in one fell swoop.

The Bismarck sat on the ocean bed hundreds of nautical miles from Ireland near where the Straits of Denmark open onto the North Atlantic. The ship sat on a deep valley floor surrounded by mountains and more than one underwater volcano. It would be 4,570 meters or 15,000 feet to the surface should they encounter any problem. In other words, three miles to the surface once they exited the sub and dared enter Bismarck. Definitely, there was no room for error, and the risks were enormous. All the same, both divers and the man at the controls loved the thrill of adventure and the rush of adrenaline pumping through their veins.

The two divers had seen graphs depicting the depth, putting New York’s Empire State building on the bottom for comparison alongside Paris’ Eiffel Tower and Toronto’s CN Tower—all dwarfed to the size of a needle. It was a miracle that Robert Ballard had ever found Titanic, and even more of a marvel that he’d managed to locate the Bismarck in 1989 at such depths. All thanks to the advanced underwater sonar developed by the US Navy.

The exterior lights flickered, came back on and held, causing the men to gasp as a swarm of krill suddenly engulfed the sub. The swarm had to number in the trillions, the cloud a thick mask blotting out all else.

“Damn, it’s like a white out in the Ukraine!” shouted Ryne, who’d spent some time there.

Horst nodded. “Like a million diamonds blinking down on—” Caught in mid-sentence, the implosion of Blitzmariner instantly killed the three men aboard, the two German divers and George Fleet, the Netherlands-born salvage operator who was at the controls. It happened so fast, they did not have time to see or even feel their own deaths.

Above on radar the men of Victory realized that the submarine had slammed into Bismarck’s hull like an airplane hitting a mountainside. The krill had blinded Fleet long enough for the Bismarck to kill them all.

At the surface, everyone aboard the Victory—an oceangoing scientific and salvage ship monitoring the sub’s progress sat in stunned silence, aghast, knowing the expedition was now over, doomed to failure before it had truly gotten underway. One man had noted the sudden cloud on the radar screen that had engulfed the submarine with the three men inside her. The incident occurred with the suddenness of a storm at sea. At the last possible moment, Fleet, steering the sub, had shouted out a single word into his headset, something heard above: “Whale!”

Where there was krill, there were whales gorging themselves.

Fleet, ironically the same name as the man who’d first spotted the iceberg that Titanic had hit, had most likely—though no one would ever know for certain—cut away from the whale or whales to avoid a catastrophic collision only to crash instead into the Bismarck—the only whale-sized object below made of metal. Hardly the soft landing planned by the team, and a sure end to the entire expedition.

Chapter Two

On the day after Adolf Hitler had been aboard Bismarck, Erwin Hulsing stood in the area where Hitler had addressed the seamen of Bismarck. He was halfway up a set of stairs leading to Admiral Lutjens’ quarters when he noticed the door hidden in dark shadow. This was the same door where Hitler had re-emerged to inspect the crew after his earlier visit with the admiral now bathed in darkness. Erwin stared at the doorway for a long time as he thought he saw something move there, but no he was alone. He chalked it up to looking through the smoke from his fast-burning, Turkish cigarette. He’d picked up the smokes in Poland at a dingy little shop, bought them while the ship awaited orders. He’d wandered the cramped and narrow streets of the Polish town of Gotenhafen. As he did so, he had sized up the Polish people—bakers, beer-makers, sausage grinders, comparing them to the people of his homeland and to the people of Great Britain, who he’d met while attending Oxford University. What he found most odd in Poland except for the monster battleship in the harbor, was the sheer lack of any sign in Gotenhafen that a war was even going on.

Erwin’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a hatchway opening and the approach of an officer’s boots over the metal catwalk. Heinrich Dobberhagen joined him at the starboard side of the ship near the bridge, begging for a smoke.

“They’re absolutely black,” Erwin warned, shaking a single cigarette from its pack, handing it to Dobberhagen, and lighting it for the seaman.

“Are you off duty?”

“What do you think?”

The sound of laughter between them wafted across the water, but it was quickly drowned out by Bismarck’s cutting through the waves as it moved in and out of the Balkan Islands, creating a frothy wake along with the roar. They’d made good time and were already out of the tricky straits between Germany and Sweden. They’d soon be in the North Sea, followed by the Denmark Straits, and from to the North Atlantic.

“So peaceful aboard at night here; did I catch you looking out over the sea?” asked Dobberhagen.

“I love the being at sea. Can’t stand all the time we spend in port, especially that town we just left.” Erwin took a deep drag on his cigarette and shook his head. “Thought I’d go out of my mind; I was that bored.”

“At least you had the engines to tend to. That bastard Hessman had me on 12-hour shift.”

“Painting the camouflage, I saw. It’s not right that a junior officer should be put on such duty. Why does he have it in for you?”

“He’s an ass, and I guess he knows that I know he’s an ass.”

“Ahhh, yes,that would definitely make you fair game, but at least now you get to play with the Marconi.” Dobberhagen was one of several radiomen who rotated in the nearby radio room.

“We all sent off messages to home. Me, I sent one—just one—to my girlfriend, Greta.”

“And I’m guessing you were the one caught?”

“Yes, afraid so. How ’bout you? Did you get a message off?”

“Yeah, sure,” Erwin lied. He had no one to send a message to, but Dobberhagen, who lived up to his profession as communicator, would have it all over the ship if he told him he had no one back home. His grandfather had died in ’38, and his mother had contracted a horrible disease that took her far too quickly—a brain cancer. She died pleading for her husband to end her life. She attempted several suicides until she was successful. She left a note asking that she be cremated and her ashes spread over the ocean, but his father, in the end, could not grant such a wish, and she was buried at the cemetery beside the church in the meadow near their home. Erwin was only glad that she was now out of pain and together with her parents in eternity, buried alongside them. Meanwhile, his father was in a cell in Berlin, placed there by the damnable SS, suspected of sedition.

Part of the old home’s tree-studded acreage had been sold to pay off a series of bad debts, the last being his mother’s funeral costs. Next Erwin had lost a good portion of the family estate to the Nazi Party, confiscated ‘for the good of the Third Reich’, but more so due to his father’s politics. In recent years, much of the Hulsing family estate had been turned into a Hitler Youth camp where young boys and girls were ‘properly raised’ in the understanding of the Nazi Party. Many such camps were popping up all over Germany—the children being taken from their parents and placed on farms and fed a daily dose of propaganda. Erwin had thought it wrong then, and his beliefs hadn’t changed since. By this time, many of the boys who had been raised in the Hitler Youth movement were now enlisted in Hitler’s land and naval forces.

“Did you see the size of that box of oranges that Herr Hitler brought to the Admiral?” asked Dobberhagen in a near whisper. “Imagine it, getting a present like that from our Fuhrer.”

“Yeah, I saw it. Hell, everyone of consequence saw it. We all saw the damn oranges, but don’t expect any to trickle down to you, Dobberhagen.”

“I think we have oranges in the galley, just not like those; I mean given to you from—”

“I get it, der Fuhrer, der Fuhrer—some special oranges. Maybe he irrigated them personally with his own piss.”

“Watch that sarcastic tongue, sir; it could get you into trouble.”

“Oranges are oranges.”

“I just thought maybe they’re from America… from the place they call Florida.”

Erwin clammed up, not wishing to hear more about the bloody oranges when Dobberhagen moved in closer to him and whispered, “Do you suspect something else might just be in the orange crate?”

“I suspect nothing.”

“Of course you do. You know it, and I know it.”

“Know what, Dobberhagen?”

“Don’t try to say otherwise. I came to suspect something was up while watching you watching that peculiar box!”

“You did, eh?”

“How? How can you possibly know there’s something other than oranges hidden in that box, sir?”

“It required four men to carry it.”

“True, but then Hitler is a careful man if nothing else.”

“And the four of them were straining as they moved it along while sweating profusely.”

“Veins popping in the necks, yes.”

“Whatever it is, I think it’s more than meets the eye… more than just oranges.”

Dobberhagen’s eyes turned to saucers at this. “Ahhh… I knew it!”

“Ahhh, forget about it! I’m just joking with you, Dobberhagen.” Erwin laughed, and the other man joined him in laughter. Erwin suspected the younger fellow of having been recruited by Bonekemper, the SS Officer, as another pair of eyes and ears. He could not be certain of this, but he could not be too careful. Diverting the other man’s attention to the odd crate seemed a good ploy for the moment. Making the other man laugh was not such a bad ploy either, he reasoned when he heard someone above them, fully expecting it to be Bonekemper.

“What is so humorous?” asked this someone standing on the overhead catwalk that took a man to the bridge.

Erwin and Dobberhagen looked up to see Captain Lindemann standing over them. Dusk was coming on, and the sky over Lindemann’s stark, tall, angular form was a blood-orange swirl of strange light.

The two men came to instant attention, saluting Lindemann whose features always included a slight smirk. Erwin was unsure what the curl to the captain’s lips might mean. It remained inscrutable.

“What is so humorous?” Lindemann repeated without returning either man’s salute. “I could use a good laugh.”

The captain of the Bismarck, who only answered to one man aboard, Admiral Lutjens, wanted to share a joke with Erwin and Dobberhagen. It stunned both the communications operator and the Lt. Commander in charge of Engineering. “So have you two men gone deaf and dumb? Speak!”

Dobberhagen shook beside Erwin who could feel the other man’s nerve coming unglued. Dobberhagen had prided himself in never catching the eye of either the captain or the admiral. Erwin shrugged to indicate it was nothing, and then he spoke the word, “It was nothing. Sir, just ahhh small talk, sir.”

“Ahhh… I recall that, small talk. I’ve nearly forgotten it exists. Funny the things a man gets homesick for, eh, Lt. Commander?”

Lonely at the top, Erwin imagined. “It was nothing of importance, sir.”

“Just those oranges,” blurted out Dobberhagen, a goofy grin on his face. “The ones gifted to the admiral.”

“Der Fuhrer had no prize for you, sir?” asked Erwin, instantly mentally kicking himself for asking such a stupid question.

“No, no, afraid not.”

An awkward silence filled the space between them like an invisible chasm unlikely ever to be breached. A flash of insight filled Hulsing. He simply knew why Lindemann was so sullen. The man had expected to be calling the shots aboard Bismarck, and at the 13^th hour, they placed the admiral of the fleet aboard, so that Captain Lindemann must clear every order, every step through the admiral, to say nothing of who would be on the bridge in the heat of battle giving the orders—calling the shots, as the Americans liked to say. Every bloody order given by Lutjens, Lindemann must repeat like a parrot to his men, his crew. Not to mention the captain had to vacate his quarters for the admiral’s comfort aboard.

The still quiet among the men was broken when Lindemann said, “I understand that you know the English mind?”

Hulsiing swallowed hard and hesitated answering.

“Well, is this true, Hulsing?”

It was the second time Lindemann had pointedly sought out Erwin’s eyes to read each nuance as if expecting some sort of coded message to pass between them. Hulsing gave out a quick laugh. “Who ever really knows the English, sir?”

“Ah, true, but you’ve been living among them. You know something of their history, their culture, their language, yes?”

“Somewhat, yes, sir.”

“We go to fight the enemy, to sink the Hood, and to take control of the North Atlantic. All of the secrets of our mission seem to be known by every sailor aboard my ship, eh?”

“Yes, I think that much is safe to say so, sir.”

“Is it also safe to say everyone on board knows which direction we’ll take to achieve these objectives?”

“Actually, sir… that is one secret the men are taking bets on.”

“And the odds?”

“The odds favor the Denmark Straits, sir!”

“Makes more sense, yes? Listen,” Lindemann continued, changing the subject, “I read your file, Commander, that you were top of your class at Oxford.”

“In engineering and communications, sir.”

Dobberhagen excused himself, saluted his captain, and slipped away. Alone now with one another, Lindemann asked Hulsing, “How did you find life in England?”

“Tolerable, sir… just tolerable.”

“I can’t imagine living anywhere but the Homeland.” Lindemann stretched to ease the pain in his back.

“I was only there to complete my studies, Captain.”

“Of course, of course.” He lit a cigarette and bent low to offer it to Hulsing, who felt he must share a smoke with the man in this instance. After lighting his own cigarette, Lindemann calmly said, “What fools they are, the British, to dare stand against us! They’ll see their entire nation wiped out, and for what, to stand on some principle, eh? It’s pitiful to see an empire crumble, don’t you think?”

“Yes sir… that they are pitiful fools, sir.”

“Churchill? This man is a buffoon and a bloody fool. They were offered friendly overtures, and if they had any sense at the top, they wouldn’t then have to be brought to their knees.”

“Understood, sir.”

“They could have been a powerful ally, but they chose to foolishly stand against us.”

“The Bismarck will teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

“We will celebrate each victory, Hulsing, and when the world sees us victorious, the UK and all her allies will come ’round to our way of thinking. The superior race will rise again as in the Middle Ages, a kind of new Republic, eh? It’s only a matter of time.”

“My god, what a pounding they’ve already taken from us.”

Lindemann nodded. “The bombings by the Luftwaffe, yes… but it seems to only have made them more… more stubborn.”

Hulsing hesitated answering, carefully choosing each word before doing so. “They are a pig-headed people, sir.” He ended with a shrug. “Not like the sheep we’ve taken so far.”

But Lindemann was too quick, already speaking over him. “Your record is impressive, Hulsing. It could prove useful having a man of your abilities on board, not only engineering and communications, but a policeman as well—in the event of any sort of mishap, I mean.”

“Mishap, sir?”

“Men have been known to kill one another in close quarters. You’ve had training in interrogations, haven’t you?”

“It appears, sir, that you really have read my history, sir.”

“I like to know the background of every man serving under me.”

Hulsing nodded and took a long drag on his cigarette, saying nothing.

Lindemann crushed his half-smoked cigarette beneath his boot. “But why, Hulsing, in private life did you choose to be a detective?”

“Do you know how little work there is in Berlin for an engineer—in private life?”

“Yes, but why were you chasing criminals, lowlifes, and Jewish trash in Berlin—in the wretched ghettos and alleyways?” The captain asked snidely. “Especially with you being trained as an engineer! Plus being a fellow just educated in the new science in communications. Come to think of it, wasn’t your father a prominent man in government, before he fell under the scrutiny of the SS?”

Hulsing realized that Lindemann made it his business to know every detail of his officers backgrounds. His neck now sore from his position far below his captain, craning to speak this way, Hulsing began to rub the back of his head in nervous fashion. “Sir, there was no position in Berlin at that time for anything but as a police detective, and my father was falsely accused.”

“Ahhh… yes, of course.”

Hulsing wondered if the of course was in response to jobs or his father’s innocence. But he said no more.

“Jobs were as scarce as fresh eggs before Hitler, eh?” Lindemann thoughtfully asked.

The Third Reich had certainly created jobs—all either as military or to support the military. Hulsing knew of the hordes of German citizens depending on such as boiled cabbage, fried squirrel, or pigeon meat for the evening meal all over the country and in particular in Berlin.

As a police detective in Berlin, Erwin had dealt with more homeless deaths than any other kind. Homeless people had become a large, disparate, and desperate part of the population before Hitler’s rise to power, and the Gypsies and other groups preyed upon the homeless. The murder rate among people living on Berlin’s streets had doubled then quadrupled while Erwin was an active detective. He had continuously reported on this horrible and growing circumstance, but his reports had fallen on deaf ears. His superiors didn’t care for ripples or complexities, and in as such had tied his hands while at once telling him to do his job! The binding they used was enough red tape to bury a man.

“Please, come up to the bridge, Hulsing,” the captain invited. “Let’s talk further.”

“Yes, sir.” Hulsing wondered what his superior wanted, assuming some ulterior motive behind the sudden interest in him.

After spending months on board the new secret weapon of the Third Reich, this was the most the captain had ever spoken to him. As he made his way up the stairs to the bridge, his boots created a quick litany of metallic taps. While making his way to the catwalk, he feared that at last, Captain Lindemann knew his secrets and meant to act on that knowledge, to send him straight to the SS officer on board. Commandant Bonekemper, a man no one wanted to sit across the interview table from. Behind his back and in the mess halls, Bonekemper was known by Bismarck’s crew as ‘the Shredder’. Should there be a murder on board the Bismarck, Hulsing expected that Bonekemper would be called in to investigate, not him, regardless of his former experience as a detective. Earlier, he had been wondering what the captain was driving at, and so far, he hadn’t a clue! What Lindemann did have him pondering was why all the sudden interest in Hulsing’s past career?

“There,” said Lindemann, “better isn’t it? Being eye-to-eye, eh Erwin, man-to-man so to speak. Isn’t this better for small talk?”

“It’s definitely easier on my neck, yes, sir.” Erwin attempted some humor, trying to sound calm while inside he was quaking and wondering if the captain sensed this.

“I will get to the point, Lt. Commander as I see you are wondering what I want from you—not just some small talk.”

“Sir, I am your servant.”

“Yes and I could order you to put an end to all the ‘small talk’ about that damnable crate of oranges our beloved leader brought aboard for our admiral, but I am a firm believer that showing is better than telling.”

“Sir?”

“Follow me, Hulsing.”

When Lindemann turned his back and began toward his quarters, Hulsing sucked in a deep breath of air, trying his best to stay calm, cool, and collected. “Yes, sir,” he said to the other man’s back.

Lindemann walked past what was now his room and took the flight up to what was now Admiral Lutjens’ private quarters. It suddenly crossed Erwin’s mind that Lindemann was bringing him up on charges before Lutjens for some silly shipboard gossip. Such a thing was a minor infraction to be sure, but it would put a blemish on his record, and it seemed that men in power in the Reich appeared to thrive on putting red ink on a man’s record.

All this over a crate of stupid oranges, Hulsing angrily thought. Obviously, Captain Lindemann had heard more than he’d let on, listening in on Hulsing and Dobberhagen’s conversation from his perch above.

Hulsing gritted his teeth as he stepped inside the comparatively large private compartment for the admiral. Hulsing’s hands shook, but Lutjens was nowhere to be seen. It flashed through Erwin’s mind that Lindemann had done away with the old man, possibly in a fit of rage, which would explain all the theatrical nonsense of his being called in to investigate a theoretical murder.

Lindemann closed the door behind them. Acting quite mysteriously, the captain pointed to a dark corner of the cabin where against the wall, the orange crate sat, squat and rectangular like a menacing coffin.

“You want to look inside that crate, don’t you, Hulsing?”

“What, sir?”

“Go ahead, man, open it up; take a good look inside, and then I want you to report back to all the men on board what you’ve seen. Will you do that for me, Lt. Commander?”

Punishment, embarrass the junior officer, Erwin silently realized. He nodded, glad that this was all there was to his dressing down. “If this is your wish, Captain, of course, but we both know it is what it appears—oranges.”

“How startlingly observant you are, Detective Hulsing.” Lindemann’s smirk had turned to a full-fledged snicker. “Do it, Hulsing. Lift the lid and take a long look inside the damn box.”

Erwin took in a deep breath as he stepped toward the box. Behind him, he could feel Lindemann’s cold presence, imagining his glee, as the man’s icy stare bored a hole into his back. “Who doesn’t want to look inside a mysterious box? One brought on board Bismarck by der Fuhrer himself, eh, Lietenant-Commander Hulsing, eh?”

“Yes, sir… .yes, sir.” Hulsing listened to the irk-irk-irk sound as he snatched up the lid which had been pried open earlier. but replaced. The nails had been pried loose on all sides, making it obvious that Lutjens and Lindemann had already taken time to partake of the sweet fruit.

Erwin stared down at rows of carefully wrapped oranges, shelved within the crate, a few shaken loose from having been handled. That’s all it was—precisely as it was presented. Stacks of damned oranges. No mystery here.

Lindemann broke into a rare laugh. “Now, you are in the inner circle of the orange affair. Who best to spread the truth of the matter but a former police detective who saw to removing dead victims from Berlin streets? Perhaps we can diffuse a mutiny before it happens!” The captain was laughing as if his words were the funniest joke he’d ever told.

Hulsing stood looking into the crate of oranges, saying nothing as Lindemann added, “Go ahead, dig deep, make sure nothing is hidden beneath the fruit, like perhaps some sort of satanic cross… ha! Or a talisman, or perhaps even the Arc of the Covenant itself?”

Rumors of Hitler’s obsessive fascination with occult matters, biblical relics, magic, and a preoccupation with the afterlife had circulated among the educated classes of Berlin and Germany for several years. It was rumored he had men searching for The Arc of the Covenant as well as the Lost Continent of Atlantis.

Erwin Hulsing gritted his teeth at the inference that he’d merely been a man to clean up the streets of bodies during his stint as a detective in Berlin. He dropped the lid with a loud thud just as Admiral Lutjens stepped into his quarters. “Well… I see you’ve gone ahead with your plans, Lindemann. I hope it has the desired effect, but we both know it will not!” Lutjens acknowledged Hulsing’s salute, returned it, then found a seat at his desk. “Lt. Commander, thank you for acting as our siren to the men. I take it you volunteered.”

“Ahhh, yes sir.”

Lindemann had inched toward the door and held the it open, a sure sign this interview was over. “You may go now, Hulsing.”

Erwin nodded, unsure how many ‘yes sirs’ he’d said to his captain. He found himself outside in a growing sea fog, stumbling to find his way from the bridge back to the lower decks where junior officers belonged. As he went, he muttered, “Lesson learned.”

Lessons actually. He’d just been reminded how exacting the hierarchy on a ship was and how either Lindemann or Lutjens, finding fault with him, could see that he was put away for years into some black hole where no one would ever see or hear from him again.

Erwin was angry with himself for having been so easily eavesdropped upon by his captain, and over what—damned oranges. The rumors about Hitler’s bloody gift to Lutjens had spread like a wildfire aboard Bismarck. Everyone had been speculating just as Lindemann had said, and he wanted Erwin to put the thing to rest, ostensibly for the good of crew and ship. The captain, without being precise, had managed to make it clear; he wanted Lt. Commander of Engineering to spread the word via the seaman’s vine. He was to tell all the junior officers who would in turn inform their various units throughout the ship. As far as the orange crate brought aboard by Hitler: no snakes, no eerie crosses, nothing remotely occult about the Fuhrer’s gift. An orange is an orange is an orange.

Obviously, at some point, Admiral Lutjens had let it slip that he loved oranges and word had gotten back to Berlin and thus back to Hitler. There was obviously nothing unusual about the commander-in-chief coming aboard to inspect the ship and crew. After all, this ship was the pride and joy of all Germany, and nothing wrong with the Fuhrer bringing a gift for Admiral Lutjens.

Still, former Detective Erwin Hulsing and now Seaman Hulsing knew how superstition had a life of its own on any seagoing vessel, and how deeply superstitious many sailors were. Most of them were fresh off the farm, which was another place superstitious belief ran rampant. The real threat here might be less Hitler and more the men aboard Bismarck. Hulsing must hold it together, watch his back, and be far more cautious of Lindemann, who had just proved himself a shrewd and well-read man, not like Lutjens who huddled each night with his Bible and believed wholeheartedly in the party line which stated that God had placed His power in Adolf Hitler’s hands to restore His chosen people, the Aryan Nation, to former dominance over the Earth and to crush all inferior races.

Hulsing imagined a time fast approaching when Lindemann might well have the power to have the Lt. Commander court-martialed, perhaps sending him to a prison camp, for of all things, gossip! If Lindemann suspected him of worse crimes, he hadn’t given himself away, and if Lindeman and Lutjens together had any clue as to Erwin’s real crimes aboard Bismarck, the two were playing it quite cagey at indeed.

Chapter Three

On Board the Windwalker in the North Atlantic, June 11, 2013

The Windwalker was a ship twice the size of the last salvage vessel that had gone after the Bismarck, only a month and a year after the horrible, failed mission of The Victory. All manner of superstitious nonsense had come out of the unfortunate Victory incident: the demise of the three men who’d attempted to land on the Bismarck. The divers had planned to enter the battleship from the forward deck, easily recognized by the gigantic Swastika still clearly visible some seventy-odd years after the British ships had sunk Bismarck. The mighty ship had been destroyed thanks to some serious British coordination between the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.

_{To complete your reading pleasure with BISMARCK 2013 — Hitler’s Curse find it at a kindle store near you! Thanks so much for reading Titanic and these opening pages, Rob Walker (www.robertwalkerbooks.com)}