Golem 7 (Meridian Series) Page 25

  Wohlfarth did not know any of this. He simply took heart when he saw his last two fish explode and then looked to Bismarck, watching her guns light up the night sky, the yellow fire rippling across the ragged bottoms of low clouds overhead. While Paul was struggling down into the lower decks aboard Rodney, he was watching the big ship in the distance, cheering her on. In spite of his effort, however, Rodney was still in the thick of the fight. There was nothing wrong with her enormous 16 inch guns, and they were blasting out in regular salvoes, four barrels, then five barrels firing in alternating rounds so as not to shake the ship too violently with a full broadside of all nine guns.

  The first two salvos from the British ship were over, the next was a straddle. Bismarck returned fire with three salvos of her own, but only one gun from her Anton forward turret was in operation, along with the two guns in the Bruno turret. The three round salvos fell over, short, then straddled Rodney’s forward segment, where one fell so close that the concussion from the explosion jammed her port side torpedo tube door.

  About the time Paul was gaping in amazement at the Elgin Marbles and stacked crates of gold bullion in Rodney’s hold, the British ship scored her first hit, forward on Bismarck’s Anton turret, which put those two guns out of action permanently.

  The most devastating blow, however, came from the hidden sting she harbored in her forward bow. As the range closed she used her starboard torpedo tube to fire one fish after another at Bismarck. The first ran true, right before Paul’s wild eyes as he bobbed in the tortuous sea, and it struck Bismarck very near the patched section of her bow, increasing the damage there and blowing off the temporary repairs made by the engineers. The hit forced Lütjens to lower his speed dramatically at a crucial moment in the battle. And that was just enough to change the balance in the fight yet again.

  Wohlfarth spun his periscope around, cursing when he saw the arrival of two more British ships, identical in shape, a menacing duo that immediately open fire as they came up on Bismarck’s port aft quarter. Their forward turrets mounted a total of six 14 inch guns each, and this time the guns were ‘well sorted out’ as Admiral Tovey might have put it. The twelve rounds fell heavily on target, surrounding Bismarck with a forest of straddling shell plumes, and two of the twelve scored hits. Her Dora aft turret was temporarily disabled, and out of the action for the next crucial fifteen minutes while the deck crews fought the fire there and cleared away torn metal, the gaping steel flesh of the turret’s damaged side armor that was jamming the turning mechanisms.

  Rodney’s ninth salvo struck forward on the German ship yet again, and this time a massive shell hit Bruno turret dead on, exploding furiously and sending a lethal hail of shrapnel, molten metal, and debris careening up and back where it struck the battle bridge like a heavy shotgun blast. Admiral Lütjens instinctively flinched, closing his eyes and raising his arm to shield his face. The forward view ports blew open, shattered, and seconds later he was dead, along with the dour Captain Lindemann and most of the bridge crew. There was only one survivor on the bridge, back in the plotting room where the bulkhead between him and the main bridge was enough to save his life.

  The ship was now leaderless. Its various parts continued to do their jobs, engines still thrumming, propellers turning, active guns still ranging and firing, though the cables connecting the radars had been damaged or severed, and two of the mast mounted rangefinders on the upper superstructure were also out of action. Bismarck was near blind in the thickening dark of the night, decapitated, and beset from two sides.

  Wohlfarth watched in growing frustration as the aft Caesar turret bravely turned its two 15 inch guns on the oncoming threat from King George V and Prince of Wales. When the two ships turned to starboard to bring their own aft torrents into the fight the Germans were outnumbered twenty guns to two, and eight of the nine 16 inch guns of Rodney still fired their alternating salvos, with two more hits scored on the German ship’s main superstructure when the range began to close to only 9000 yards. Those last hits fell with such thunder on the ship that the Bismarck literally rocked to one side as she absorbed the blows, then shifted slowly back to an even keel. The last thing Wohlfarth saw through his scope was a raging fire amidships, the awful silhouettes of men backlit by the flames, some diving from the ship into the turbulent waters, preferring an icy death at sea to the fiery hell Bismarck was becoming. There was nothing more he could do. For the briefest moment he thought he saw a light winking on and off in the smoky shadows of the ship, as if signaling something in Morse code to the enraged enemy that grappled with her. Then he could look no more.

  “Down scope,” he said, a disconsolate, defeated look on his face. He glanced at his executive officer, then at Souvad, the navigator who had urged him not to attack convoy HX-126. “She’s finished,” he said in a low voice, eyes averted now, shoulders slumping, and they knew at once he was not referring to Rodney.

  “We did all we could, sir,” said Souvad.

  “Not enough,” said Wohlfarth. “I should have listened to you, Souvad. I should have listened…”

  The U-boat captain, his boat low on fuel, would return to the sub pens at Lorient, there to be greeted by Admiral Donitz himself and awarded the Knight’s Cross for valor and distinguished service. But he would never forget the sight of Bismarck bravely fighting and dying in her final hours at sea. It was to be his last successful U-boat cruise. On his very next mission, after a brief, well deserved leave in France, his boat would be hunted down by three British destroyers and forced to the surface. Wohlfarth and a number of his crew would be captured and spend the remainder of the war in a British prison.

  As for Bismarck, she was indeed unsinkable. But there was very little of the ship left after another hour of pounding by the three British battleships. They fired all of 3000 rounds at her, until the ship was reduced to a twisted mass of burning metal and belching oily black smoke. It was a savage reprisal to avenge the loss of Hood, but as the battle wore on, the scene became a sickening vendetta, and soon the men aboard Rodney came to feel a strange kinship with the German sailors they saw leaping into the tumult of the seas.

  The chaplain aboard Rodney made a direct appeal to Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton. “For God’s sake,” he cried. Can’t you see the ship is finished?” The big Scot would have nothing of that, sending the man below decks, the angry heat of battle still on him. But in time even he came to feel that each salvo he fired was nothing more than brutal, mindless vengeance. Yet the ship would just not sink! Finally he took a deep breath, peering through his field glasses for one last look at the dying German battleship. “She’s had enough,” he said in a low voice. “And we’ve had enough of this bloody business as well. Cease fire.”

  A dark stillness fell on the scene, as both of Tovey’s ships also fell silent, the smoke still oozing from their guns. The big battleships had won the day. Now the cruisers and destroyers were vectored in to finish the job with their torpedoes, scoring several hits, but the ship would just not go down until the last remnants of her crew set off the scuttling charges deep in her bowels, finally destroying the marvel of her secret new hull and armor design, and seeing her roll over and slip beneath the restless sea.

  On August 11, 1941 Bismarck would not sortie out of Brest to find and sink the Prospector of Convoy OS-85, along with three other ships, and a man named Thomason would arrive safely at his assigned post at Alexandria.

  Months later he would lead a Royal Navy commando raid behind German lines near Bardia, and there he would gun down a Berber scout when the man sought to lead in a group of light German armored cars in an aborted counterattack. Kasim al Khafi would keep his appointment with death that night, and he would not wander into a bar in Benghazi years later, an old army veteran drowning his sorrows in stiff drink and the bosom of a willing barmaid. Kenan Tanzir would not be born, and would not spend a warm May evening in suite 911 at Le Méridien Oran Hotel as Americans thought to begin a busy Memorial Day weekend an ocean away. Nor would he be pa
ssenger fifteen aboard a charter flight into La Palma the next evening, leaping into the night over Cumbre Vieja with praise for Allah on his lips.

  The day would dawn, clear and cool over the Canary Islands, with light breeze from the east and a chance of scattered showers later that evening.

  They were gathered around the Golem Module, watching as the Weight of Opinion solidified, the lines of red and amber fading to light green, then solid deep emerald indicating all was well. Kelly checked the decimal readings, noting very high integrity percentages, particularly on Golem Bank number seven, which had reached an early conclusion concerning this intervention, leading in the other Golem Banks until there was a unanimous return. The continuum had healed, and all the course of the Meridian from 1941 to the present was now clear and safe.

  “It was the damn torpedoes,” said Paul, “just like you said, Kelly. I was headed up to the bridge when Wohlfarth hit Rodney with those last two fish. That’s what pulled me below decks. Wohlfarth! If he hadn’t fired I would have been up on the bridge if I could get there. I can’t tell you how bad I wanted to see this battle.”

  “So you closed a vital hatch below decks and saved Rodney’s own torpedo room,” said Kelly. “And that’s what slowed Bismarck down. Another damn torpedo. Thank God it’s over now. Just a few data variations, but the percentages look good. Minor stuff, really.”

  “We were bound to get something off,” said Maeve. “There were deaths on the Arethusa, and so we may be missing a few ancestors.”

  “Well, we won’t notice anything in this segment of the Meridian. Not on our watch. But there is a possibility that a few of these variation fissures may widen over time. They could get more serious in years hence, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “I’m just glad the data is settling down,” said Robert. “I can at least expect to find the history in one piece, just where I left it, the next time I do research.”

  “Any more lose twine in this report, Kelly?” asked Maeve. “I want no unfinished business this time.”

  “Well now that you mention it,” said Kelly. “I was trying to run down more information on that Cargo ship, the Darlington Court.”

  “The one that was supposed to have been sunk by U-556?”

  “Right, but it survived in this intervention and reached its destination safely—then blew up in a rather spectacular way.”

  “It blew up?”

  “Big time. It was supposed to have been carrying wheat, but Paul’s suspicion was correct. There was something else secreted aboard that ship. It took out two other vessels, one over a mile away as it was approaching the anchorage. I didn’t think much about that at first, until Golem 7 produced another variant flag. Industrious group that bunch. Come to find out…the steaming order had been altered just before the ships came into port.”

  “Someone was shuffling the deck again.”

  “Right, and a few new ships were added to this berthing to make up for losses sustained during the U-boat attacks. One of them was named the Prospector, and it was supposed to be berthed right next to Darlington Court, but it was moved to another harbor at the last minute. The paper trail is thin, but I found a record of the transfer order, or rather Golem 7 did. It was signed by a Lieutenant Commander James Conners, Royal Navy, so I sleuthed him out as well, and get this—he was listed as a casualty during a German bombing raid during the blitz in late 1940…

  “Curious,” said Maeve, “and very suspicious. Sounds like someone assumed Conners’ identity and shuffled some paper to get that ship moved somewhere else, and well away from Darlington Court.”

  “Right, and Prospector was the ship that was later assigned to Convoy OS-85, the one carrying Thomason to Alexandria.”

  It was clear that someone else had been operating here, with intention to spare the life of the Prospector, for one reason or another.

  Paul had drifted off to the next room, changing out of his still drenched Navy Whites. He returned a moment later, his brown hair wild after being tousled by a fresh towel. “Anyone want to get a taste of Atlantic seawater from 1941?” he said. “I’m amazed the water came through at all. It wasn’t part of the pattern signature, but I guess it was diffused enough, and in such close proximity to my body that the Arch brought it forward. Very odd. I didn’t think anything from the past could shift in without a pattern signature.”

  Then he remembered something, rushing back to the other room and emerging a moment later with a look of wide eyed amazement. “Damn!” he said. “Look what else came through!”

  He walked over and extended his palm, and the others saw that he held what looked like a small black iron skeleton key. “Apparently HMS Rodney held another secret in its gut,” he said. “When I was down in the hold rendering assistance and trying to seal off hatches, I found a room stacked with crates of gold bullion and what looked to be elegantly carved slabs of marble. I wondered what they were.”

  “The Elgin Marbles!” said Robert. “Yes, the British Museum had a good segment of the marbles, they were from the Parthenon and Acropolis. Sir Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin obtained permits to move them to England in 1801—why, right about the time the Brits were also carting off the antiquities of Egypt as well, Rosetta stone and all. Lord Byron was very unhappy about it. He went so far as to call Sir Elgin a vandal…Here, Google up some Byron.” He keyed in a brief search and read a passage from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a poem by the famous British poet.

  “Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

  Thy walls defaced, thy moldering shrines removed

  By British hands…

  Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved…”

  “Well it was a fairly wild hour,” said Paul. “There was a beautiful horse’s head that came tumbling out of its packing crate. The look on its face was one of strained energy.”

  “The Selene Horse!” said Robert. “It was one of four horses pulling the chariot of the Moon Goddess Selene through the heavens and was depicted exhausted after its labored journey.”

  “It took a hard fall with the concussion of the guns,” Paul explained, “and a segment of the rough unfinished bottom broke loose to reveal this, embedded in the marble.”

  “May I?” Nordhausen took hold of the key, holding it up to the light, noting a series of numbers carved on its side, and suddenly quite disturbed.

  “You say this was embedded inside the marble?”

  “Had it not fallen and cracked open no one would have known it was there,” said Paul. “I don’t know why I took it, given the chaotic circumstances, but I wedged it loose and just stuck it in my pocket. Then it was fire brigade time and the next thing I know I was washed overboard in the sea. God, my ears are still ringing from it all. I’ll never get warm again.”

  “Extraordinary!” said Robert. “A metal key… Inside one of the Elgin Marbles?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out how it could have shifted back with me,” said Paul.

  “Well, look here,” said Robert. “Modern numbers inscribed on the shaft of the key. That could only have been rendered by precise Computer Numeric Controlled equipment, or perhaps a laser.” He handed the key back to Paul.

  “Could it have been hidden there by the British?” Kelly suggested,

  “In 1941?” Maeve shook her head. “And with a laser carved serial number?”

  “This is freaky,” said Paul. “This had to come from a future time. The Greeks did not make it, that much is certain. Hell, it may have been deliberately hidden there, but it might also have been in the stone they quarried to carve this piece.”

  “Well it is a clear bit of modern day detritus polluting the history,” said Maeve. “You’re correct, Robert. It shouldn’t be there, and I’m one with Byron on this. We clearly had nothing to do with it, so it can only mean our warring friends and enemies in the future must be responsible.”

  “I don’t know what harm it might do,” said Paul.

  “Every little bit hu
rts,” said Maeve. “We’ve altered the Meridian so many times now, in so many locations, I’m just amazed this mission balanced so well, and did so little damage to the continuum.”

  “We still don’t know what it did in the future,” said Kelly. “Like I say, these variations could worsen over time.”

  “Well this has got to stop, Paul,” said Maeve. “How long do you think we can keep this up? OK, we reversed Palma once more and the Shadow has dissipated. All that does is open the door again and allow future Time travelers to go merrily about their business. In some ways Palma was the cork on the bottle. It was preventing them from getting through its penumbra and conducting missions. Otherwise I don’t think we would have been able to operate like this, with such success. The Assassins had up to twenty Arch complexes! We were outgunned worse than the Bismarck in that final battle, but yet we beat them, time and time again.”

  “The arch is still spinning,” said Paul. “We still have quantum fuel. All we have to do is open the continuum again and tell the Admiralty to ignore Lonesome Dove. We can still back out and accept Palma, and live the rest of our lives with it. After all, it did happen, and our intervention changed the Prime Meridian we were born to. If we shut down now we’re living in an altered Time line—albeit a much more comfortable one for us, and future generations here in the US. To say nothing of the dog…our supposed allies in the future, Graves, LeGrand, Rantgar, the Abbot and the lot of them.”

  “I think we made our choice on all this once already,” said Maeve. “What’s done is done, Paul. But how can we shut down this war?”

  “We could call for a conclave,” said Kelly. “A truce.”