Hitler's peace

“Whoever it was ordered me to report immediately to the radar room. So I did.”

“You left your post,” said Cubitt. “Contrary to orders. But for you we might have got a fix on that sub. Instead of which, it’s still out there.”

Norton grimaced with the pain of his guilt and nodded.

“Radio Seaman Norton,” I said. “I’d like you to take me to the radar room.”

“What- now, sir?”

“Yes, now.”

Norton glanced at Cubitt, who shrugged and then nodded.

“Follow me, please, sir,” Norton said and hurried to comply with my request.

It took us the best part of six minutes to get down to the main deck, walk aft of the second uptake, and then climb several stairs to the rear conning tower, where, underneath the main battery director, the radar room was located.

“And now, if you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d like you to lead me back to the radio transmitter room.”

Norton gave me a look.

“It’s important,” I added.

“Very well, sir.”

Arriving back at the RT room, I glanced at my watch.

“Was the radio room empty upon your return here?”

“Yes, sir. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes, I believe you.” I opened the door and sat down opposite the transmitting key, which wasn’t much more than a piece of black Bakelite about the size of a small doorknob attached to a metal plate screwed to the operator’s desk. “Which transmitter does this use?” I asked Cubitt.

The lieutenant pointed to the largest piece of equipment in the room, a black box measuring almost six feet high and two and a half feet wide, and on which a small sign was attached that said PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.

“This,” said Cubitt, “is the TBL. A low-frequency, high-frequency transmitter. It’s used exclusively to provide ship-to-ship communications.” He frowned. “That’s odd.”

“What is?”

“It’s switched on.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Yes. We’re supposed to be observing radio silence. If we wanted to contact the destroyer escort in an emergency we’d use the TBS. That’s Talk Between Ships.” He touched the TBL. “It’s warm, too. It must have been on all night.” Cubitt looked at the other three men in the room. “Anyone know why this is switched on?”

The three radio seamen, including Norton, shook their heads.

I stared closely at the Westinghouse-made TBL. “Lieutenant, what band is this on?”

Cubitt leaned in close to check the dial, and I caught the smell of something nice on his hair. It made a pleasant change from sweat and body odor.

“Six hundred meters, sir. That’s what it should be on. All our coastal defenses use the six-hundred-meter band.”

“How hard would it be to retune this to another waveband?” I asked no one in particular.

“All of this stuff is a bitch to retune,” said Radio Seaman Norton, who seemed to have woken up to the fact that I was on his side. “That’s why we got the sign.”

“Pity,” I said.

“How’s that?” asked Cubitt.

“Only that it makes my theory a little harder to sustain.”

“And what theory is that, sir?”

I grinned and looked around for an ashtray. Norton grabbed one and held it in front of me. It wasn’t so much of a theory as a strong possibility. Probably I should have kept this to myself, but I wanted to help the boy they’d accused of neglecting his duty.

“That we have a German spy aboard this ship.” I shrugged off their loud guffaws. But Norton wasn’t laughing. “You see, the destroyer escort didn’t intercept a signal being broadcast from a U-boat but from the Iowa itself. A broadcast being made by the same person who lured Seaman Norton off to the radar room. It takes about twelve minutes to go there and come back here.”

“Longer in the dark, sir,” Norton added helpfully. “You kind of have to watch your footing on those stairs at night. Especially in a sea like last night.”

“Then call it fifteen minutes. More than enough time to broadcast a short message, I’d have thought.”

“But to what?” asked Cubitt. “A U-boat?”

“There’s nothing to stop the krauts tuning in to that six-hundred-meter waveband, sir,” offered one of the other radio seamen. “The U-boats used to do that a lot when we first got into the war, before we cottoned on to the fact that they were doing it and started to send our signals in code. They sank an awful lot of shipping that way.”

“So if a German spy did send a signal from here on the six-hundred-meter waveband,” I said, “the signal could have been picked up anywhere between here and the United States. By another ship. By a German U-boat. By our coastal defenses. Possibly even by another German spy tuning in to the six-hundred-meter waveband in Washington, D.C.”

“Yes, sir,” said the seaman. “That’s about the size of it.”

There was a long silence as the men in the radio room faced up to the logic of what I had established.

“A German spy, huh?” sighed Cubitt. “The captain is going to love that.”

XVI

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19-

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1943,

THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

The atmosphere around Roosevelt grew a lot more tense-certainly among the members of his Secret Service detail-when my idea about a German spy aboard the Iowa became more generally known.