Three Kings

He still had trouble getting his mind around that. How could the Russians have developed such weapons? This was obviously a very secret project, something that had been missed by the intelligence services, which did not surprise him. The Abwehr was a leaky sieve of late. Canaris could not really be relied on for anything of importance. Adler had the lingering suspicion that the man was a double agent, a dissembling obstructionist at best, a traitor at worst, though he knew he could never prove that. Canaris had whined on and on about Franco’s unreliability.

Adler knew how he would deal with Franco-with a good Panzer Korps! It was just the way he thought he should deal with this British battleship behind them, but now there were three… That thought gave him pause. Was the Russian ship with them, the ship they were all calling Fafnir, the dragon of the Nordic seas where it had first made its appearance? It was said it could fire these new naval rockets at very long range, but they had seen nothing of this. Perhaps this was just an exaggeration, he thought, though the reports were very disturbing.

A rocket had come out of the night, high in the sky, then falling like a shooting star to skim over the sea and lance right in at Graf Zeppelin. The destroyer Heimdall had just been in the way, and took the blow that might have gutted the carrier. And the strangest thing about that attack is that there was no sign of any enemy ship on the horizon-no sign at all. Graf Zeppelin was well back from the action, so the rumors about the extreme long range of these naval rockets must be true.

Then he had heard what happened to the Admiral Scheer, and he could no longer dismiss the talk as the idle fancy of officers too new to battle in this war. Lindemann, Hoffmann, Krancke… these were all good men, well experienced, fighting Kapitans just as he was. They would not shirk from battle like Lutjens, and yet…

Three British battleships now. Perhaps Admiral Lutjens had been correct after all. If we had stayed there and fought with the first, the other two may have come up on the action just as it was getting interesting, and they would fight fire with fire. It was a battle he still thought they may have won, but Hindenburg was out on its maiden voyage. The Fuhrer was undoubtedly jubilant with the news of the wreckage they had already left behind them. If they had fought, there was always the chance that the ship would be hit, and that did not seem to be something Hitler would enjoy hearing about. Tell the Fuhrer that his new fleet flagship has just sunk a hundred thousand tons of British merchant shipping and that was one thing-tell him that Hindenburg was blackened by the fire of the enemy’s guns-that was quite another thing.

In this light he now came to see Lutjens’ decision to turn away and make for the coast of France in better light. It’s our maiden voyage, he thought. He wants to deliver the ship to a safe harbor, take his laurels, and then scheme on fighting his battle some other day. Perhaps that was the wiser course after all, he thought, but it still did not feel all that comfortable as he turned and started for the hatch and the warmth of the inner citadel of the conning tower. They still had a long way to go. The French coast was another 2000 kilometers away, and they certainly would not run at 30 knots the whole way. This odyssey was not yet over. They would have to fall off to two thirds to give the engines and turbines a rest. Then they would see if this shadow behind them fell off as well, or came boldly forward to engage.

I might get my battle in any case, he thought, and in spite of his confidence, in spite of the power he could feel beneath him as the ship hurried on, another voice whispered in the back of his mind, and gave the old warning-be careful what you wish for…

Another man who once stood in the shadow of an Admiral was also thinking that night. Vladimir Karpov was a man who might understand Adler all too well and, if he could have heard his thoughts, he might have reinforced that note of caution in the Captain’s mind. But he was far away from the sea, hovering in the mist above the endless green forests of Siberia, scheming in his own way over what he would now do about Ivan Volkov.

There had always been someone like that in his way, he thought, and Volkov would be no different than any of the others-the school teachers, classmates, coaches, commandants and rival officers had all tasted the poison of his envy and ire. Not even Admirals were spared, and now, after demonstrating his own brand of conniving duplicity and treachery, Volkov would not be spared either. But what to do?