Cryptonomicon

Half an hour later, the skipper's there. Pretty punctual by officer standards. He and Bischoff talk for a while in German. Shaftoe hears the word morphium several times. Finally, the skipper summons the medic, who pokes the needle into Shaftoe's arm and injects about half of it.

"You have something to say?" the skipper asks Shaftoe. Seems like a nice enough guy. They all seem like pretty nice guys, now.

First, Shaftoe addresses Bischoff. "Sir! I'm sorry I used harsh language on you, sir!"

"It's okay," Bischoff replied, "she was a whore, like you said."

The skipper clears his throat impatiently.

"Yeah. I was just wondering," Shaftoe says turning to the skipper, "you have any gold on this U-boat?"

"The yellow metal?"

"Yeah. Bars of it."

The captain is still nonplussed. Shaftoe is beginning to feel a certain mischievous satisfaction. Playing with officers' minds isn't as good as having a brain saturated with highly refined opiates, but it will do in a pinch. "I thought all these U-boats carried it," he says.

Beck dismisses the medic. Then he and Bischoff talk about Shaftoe for a while in German. In the middle of this conversation, Beck drops some kind of a bomb on Bischoff. Bischoff is stunned, and refuses to believe it for a while, and Beck keeps telling him it's true. Then Bischoff goes back into that strange ho-ho-ho thing.

"He can't ask you questions," Bischoff says. "Orders from Berlin. Ho, ho! But I can."

"Shoot," Shaftoe says.

"Tell us more about gold."

"Give me more morphine."

Beck summons the medic again, and the medic gives him the rest of the syringe. Shaftoe's never felt better. What a fucking deal! He's getting morphine out of the Germans in exchange for telling them Germanmilitary secrets.

Bischoff starts interrogating Shaftoe in depth, while Beck watches. Shaftoe tells the whole story of U-553 about three times over. Bischoff is fascinated, Beck looks sad and scared.

When Shaftoe mentions that the gold bars had Chinese characters stamped on them, both Beck and Bischoff are floored. Their faces come aglow, as if lit up by the scanning beam of a Leigh light on a moonless night. Beck begins to sniffle, as if he's caught a cold, and Shaftoe's startled to realize that he's actually crying. He is crying tears of shame. But Bischoff is still fascinated and focused.

Then a mate bursts in and hands Beck a message. The mate is clearly shocked and scared out of his wits. He keeps looking, not at Beck, but at Bischoff.

Beck gets a grip on himself and reads the message. Bischoff lunges out of his bunk, hooks his chin over Beck's shoulder, and reads it at the same time. They look like a two-headed circus geek who hasn't bathed since the Hoover Administration. Neither speaks for at least a minute. Bischoff is silent because his mental wheels are spinning like the gyroscope of a torpedo. Beck is silent because he's on the verge of blacking out. Outside the cabin, Shaftoe can hear the news, whatever it is, traveling up and down the length of the U-boat with the speed of sound.

Some of the men are shouting in rage, some sobbing, some laughing hysterically. Shaftoe figures a big battle must have been won, or lost. Maybe Hitler's been assassinated. Maybe Berlin's been sacked.

Beck is now visibly terrified.

The medic enters. He has adopted an erect military posture--the first time Shaftoe's seen such formality on the U-boat. He addresses Beck briefly in German. Beck nods continuously while the medic is talking. Then he helps the doctor get Bischoff out of his straitjacket.

Bischoff's a bit stiff, a bit unsteady, but he limbers up fast. He's shorter than average, with a strong frame and a trim waist, and as he pounces from bunk to deck, he reminds Shaftoe of a jaguar deploying itself from a tree. He shakes hands heartily with the medic, and with the miserable Beck. Then he opens the hatch that leads towards the control room. Half the crew is jammed into the gangway, watching that door, and when they see Bischoff, ecstasy floods over their faces and they erupt into wild cheering. Bischoff accepts handshakes from all of them, making his way towards his duty station like a politician through an adoring crowd. Beck slinks out the other hatch and loses himself among the hammering diesels.

Shaftoe has no idea what the fuck's going on until Root shows up a quarter of an hour later. Root picks the message up off the deck and reads it. His perpetually bemused affect, normally so annoying, serves him well at times like this. "This is a broadcast to all ships at sea from German supreme naval command, Tirpitzufer, Berlin. It says that U-691--which is this boat we're on, Bobby--has been boarded and captured by Allied commandos, and has already attacked and sunk a milchcow in the Atlantic. Now it appears to be on its way towards continental Europe where it will presumably try to infiltrate German naval bases and sink more ships. All German naval and air forces are ordered to be on the lookout for U-691 and to destroy it on sight."