North Reich (16 page)

      
"I have no idea how to respond to that."

      
"Then don't try.
 
Someday I think I'd like to come out here and serenade the dead with my violin."

      
"I'll come with you when you do."

      
She squeezed his arm.
 
"I'll have to practice some more.
 
Right now, even the dead wouldn't like the way I'm playing.
 
They might get up and leave.
 
In the meantime, why don't you take me to lunch?
 
Someplace away from Washington would be nice and not just because nobody would recognize us.
 
To paraphrase Rhett Butler, I frankly don't give a damn."

      
Tom grinned.
 
Neither did he.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull was seventy-four years old and had served in that position for eleven years.
 
Prior to that, he'd been in the House of Representatives and then in the U.S. Senate.
 
At one time he'd had aspirations of becoming president, but those had faded as reality set in.
 

      
Hull was in ill health and had been contemplating retirement when the war began.
 
He felt that he should stay on to ensure that American interests were best served.
 
He had no illusions.
 
He knew he wasn't irreplaceable.
 
No one is.
 
He had a reputation for bluntness and his illness was making him irascible as well.

      
Hans Thomsen, the German
Charge d'Affairs
sat across from him in Hull's office in the Main State Building on C Street NW in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington.
 
There had been no German ambassador in Washington for a few years, just as there was no American ambassador in Berlin.
 
Hull sometimes thought that was a mistake.
 
However, one plays the cards one is dealt.
 
Thomsen was in his early fifties and rumor had it that he was not a fervent disciple of Hitler.
 

It didn't matter to Hull.
 
As Hitler's representative, Thomsen was due for a scolding.

"My dear Mr. Thomsen, please tell me, do you want war with us or not?"

Thomsen smiled at Hull's bluntness.
 
It was expected.
 
"I would hope not and I would never want war.
 
Our two countries should never clash over matters that are so trivial."

Hull glared at him.
 
"Trivial?
 
What is trivial about German warships on the Great Lakes and what is trivial about them shooting at American soldiers who were simply doing their duty?
 
And why was that damned E-boat in American waters in the first place?
 
And what was it doing shooting up small craft that might have been American boats containing American citizens who were simply out fishing or some other legitimate enterprise?
 
It seems damned rash to me."

Thomsen was prepared and responded quickly.
 
"The shooting of your soldiers by our boat was regrettable.
 
The captain thought he had been taken under fire and retaliated.
 
The death of an American soldier is more than offset by the two dead and five wounded on the E-boat.
 
And the E-boat is scarcely more than an armed patrol craft, and not a warship."

"Then get rid of those torpedoes.
 
A patrol craft in the Great Lakes does not need torpedoes.
 
Torpedoes are intended to sink major warships and that makes the E-boat a major warship herself."

"I will take that point under advisement.
 
As to the fact of the E-boat firing on small craft, it was in hot pursuit of what was believed to be a number of smugglers and simply didn't realize they were so close to shore in the night."

Smugglers my ass, Hull thought.
 
"You know as well as I do that they were refugees and not smugglers.
 
And you also know that the E-boat's skipper knew precisely where he was."

"Regardless, the resulting mistake was tragic."

"There have been too many tragic mistakes lately," Hull snarled.
 
"And, yes, that includes the botched attack by the Canadian Legion on an army courier in Washington itself."

Thomsen wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
 
"I think we can safely say that a number of young men in the Canadian Legion were far more enthusiastic in support of the Reich than they should have been.
 
As in so many new situations, the matter is fluid and the men uncertain."

Hull sat back in his swivel chair.
 
He felt so tired.
 
"So, we have another mistake and another apology.
 
Frankly, sir, I am getting damn sick and tired of them."

"As am I, Mr. Secretary.
 
May I remind you that the Reich has repeatedly complained that you have given sanctuary to the major portion of the Royal Navy and the ships’ crews?
 
I would also remind you that the Reich has complained about the existence of so-called governments in exile that fled from England to here. I mean, of course, the shadow and illegal governments of Norway, Holland, Denmark, and Belgium.
 
We would also like Mr. Churchill returned so he can be tried as a war criminal in accordance with the rules established by the League of Nations."

"The League is defunct and Germany quit it in 1933, around the same time that Japan quit, while the United States never joined.
 
Therefore neither of us is bound by the League's unenforceable rules."

Both men recognized the irony that, with the Soviet Union's expulsion from the League in 1939, it meant that none of the world's major powers were members of the organization that was supposed to prevent wars by the time World War II broke out.

Hull smiled coldly.
 
"Good.
 
Now let's set some things straight.
 
There will be no more incidents.
 
You will keep the few E-boats you have, but there will be no additions.
 
Nor will any other Nazi warships enter either the St. Lawrence or the Great Lakes.
 
I hear rumors that a squadron of submarines is going to traverse to Erie and beyond.
 
That, sir, will not be permitted to happen."

"I am not aware of any such plans,” Thomsen said truthfully. Berlin had kept him in the dark about many things, the German thought ruefully.
 
Of course, what he didn't know he couldn't give away.

"Then send word back to Doenitz and Raeder and, hell, von Ribbentrop and Hitler themselves, that any such efforts will result in our sinking those ships the moment they enter the St. Lawrence."

"Sir, that would be an act of war," Thomsen gasped.

Hull smiled a wicked smile.
 
"That, sir, would be for Germany to decide."

Chapter Six

Downing looked through his magnifying glass at the photo on his desk.
 
Making the picture larger didn't change what he saw.
 

"Son of a bitch," he growled.

      
Tom Grant looked over Downing's shoulder.
 
The photos had come courtesy of the OSS.
 
One of their agents had taken them.
 
Tom hoped the man was still safe.
 
He then wondered if it might have been a woman.

The 8x11 black and white photos in question were of a German Type IX U-boat.
 
It was sitting in a cove that the caption said was on Prince Edward Island.
 
A freighter was alongside and men were swarming over the sub.
 
Where there's one, there's likely others, Tom thought.
 

Lieutenant Commander Sid Wolverton, USN and their naval liaison, agreed.
 
"The Type IX is their long range U-boat," Wolverton said.
 
"Its range is in excess of twenty thousand miles, which means it can stay off our coast for a very long time, especially if it can be re-fueled and the crew can get food."

"What are they doing to the sub?" Downing asked.

"It looks like their trying to camouflage it, colonel," Wolverton answered.
 
"If they disguise it well enough, they could slip it up the St. Lawrence."

Tom remembered his trek through Canada.
 
"I'll just bet it can go through the Welland and on to Lake Erie and points north."

Wolverton grinned.
 
He was about Tom's age and a graduate of Annapolis.
 
"That's right.
 
Depending on which variant of the Type IX it is, they go about two hundred and fifty feet in length and have a beam of about twenty-one feet.
 
Beam is width to you landlubbers."

"Screw you," said Tom with a smile.

Unperturbed, Wolverton continued.
 
"She draws less than sixteen feet, so that's not a problem although with a conning tower she's over thirty feet tall.
 
She can do almost twenty knots on the surface and seven submerged.
 
She has six torpedo tubes, four in the bow and two in the stern.
 
That's the rear for you, Tom."

"Up your stern, Sid.
 
Any more good news?"

"Yeah, they carry a four inch deck gun and any number and caliber of anti-aircraft guns.
 
They have a crew of at least fifty.
 
We think the krauts have a couple hundred of them and most of them are now off our coast."

Downing answered.
 
"What do you think they will do with her when they’re done working on her?"

Wolverton rubbed his chin.
 
"Colonel, my guess is that they are prepping her for going up the river and through the lakes.
 
I think there are probably others being disguised as well.
 
They might go up under their own power, or they might be made to look like a barge and towed.
 
Either way, it looks like the Nazis intend to have U-boats in the Great Lakes."

"When?" asked Downing.

Wolverton smiled.
 
"They may have to wait a while.
 
The lakes and rivers are still pretty well frozen and something like a sub cannot work as an icebreaker.
 
They may have strong hulls in order to stand underwater pressure, but they are not built to bull their way through thick ice.
 
Hell, if they're not careful, they could easily get jammed in for the winter."

"That would be an utter shame," Grant said.
 
“But couldn’t they go submerged once the river begins to clear?”

Wolverton conceded the point.
 
"Yes, but I'd say they couldn’t make their dash until mid-March at the earliest.
 
Right now, I'd also say they'd have a hell of a time getting any subs up the St. Lawrence and to Toronto, much less through the Welland and beyond.
 
No, they are going to be there for a while.
 
After they have been disguised, I think they'll be moved to Halifax and then up the river."

Tom shook his head.
 
The delay was at least a bit of good news.
 
Still, they had nothing to stop them within the Great Lakes.
 
If they could make it through to Lake Huron, U-boats could hide in Canadian waters among the multitude of islands in Georgian Bay and attack the ore carrying freighters that brought iron ore to America's factories.
 
If they went beyond the Straits of Mackinaw to Milwaukee, Green Bay and Chicago, they could devastate those areas as well.
 
Even if they were stopped in Lake Erie, they could still hit ships off Cleveland and elsewhere.
 
A handful of enemy subs could seriously hinder America's ability to build the materials of war.

Tom looked at Downing.
 
"What are we going to do, colonel?"

"Perhaps arrange to kill them.
 
I'm thinking you might just be going to Canada again, Tom."

General Heinz Guderian smiled affably at his host, General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim.
 
They were at von Arnim's headquarters north of Toronto.
 
Several inches of snow lay on the ground and both men were thankful that there had been sufficient time to build warm and comfortable quarters for the soldiers.
 
Guderian approved that von Arnim lived in a house that, while pleasant, was not ostentatious.
 
He was not one of those “chateau generals” who lorded over the common troops.

      
"I hope your trip was pleasant," von Arnim said and then laughed.

      
"You know damn well it wasn't.
 
For two weeks I was stuffed in a cruiser, the
Prinz Eugen
, and then it took another week to get from Halifax to here.
 
I still don't know why I couldn't take a plane from Halifax, instead of an armored train through Quebec."