‘We search this lot?’ Jamieson said. ‘Tie them up?’
‘Good lord, no. Look at their hands – they’re blue and frozen stiff. If they couldn’t even hang on to the gunwale, and they couldn’t, how could they press the trigger of a gun even if they could unbutton their oilskins, which they can’t?’
McKinnon opened the throttle and headed for the two men who had surfaced from the submarine. As he did, a third figure bobbed to the surface some two hundred yards beyond.
The two men they hauled aboard seemed well enough. One of them was a dark-haired, dark-eyed man in his late twenties: his face was lean, intelligent and watchful. The other was very young, very blond and very apprehensive. McKinnon addressed the older man in German.
‘What is your name and rank?’
‘Obersteuermann Doenitz.’
‘Doenitz? Very appropriate.’ Admiral Doenitz was the brilliant C-in-C of the German submarine fleet. ‘Do you have a gun, Doenitz? If you say you haven’t and I find one I shall have to shoot you because you are not to be trusted. Do you have a gun?’
Doenitz shrugged, reached under his blouse and produced a rubber-wrapped pistol.
‘Your friend here?’
‘Young Hans is an assistant cook.’ Doenitz spoke in fluent English. He sighed. ‘Hans is not to be trusted with a frying-pan, far less a gun.’
McKinnon believed him and headed for the third survivor. As they approached McKinnon could see that the man was at least unconscious for his neck was bent forward and he was face down in the water. The reason for this was not far to seek. His Drager apparatus was only partially inflated and the excess oxygen had gone to the highest point of the bag at the back of the neck, forcing his head down. McKinnon drew alongside, caught the man by his life jacket, put his hand under his chin and lifted the head from the water.
He studied the face for only a second or two, then said to Doenitz: ‘You know him, of course.’
‘Heissmann, our First Lieutenant.’
McKinnon let the face fall back into the water. Doenitz looked at him with a mixture of astonishment and anger.
‘Aren’t you going to bring him aboard? He may just be unconscious, just half-drowned perhaps.’
‘Your First Lieutenant is dead.’ McKinnon’s voice carried total conviction. ‘His mouth is full of blood. Ruptured lungs. He forgot to breathe out oxygen on the way up.”
Doenitz nodded. ‘Perhaps he didn’t know that he had to do that. I didn’t know. I’m afraid we don’t have much time for escape training these days.’ He looked curiously at McKinnon. ‘How did you know? You’re not a submariner.’
‘I was. Twelve years.’
Curran called from the bows: There’s one more, Bo’sun. Just surfaced. Dead ahead.’
McKinnon had the motorboat alongside the struggling man in less than a minute and had him brought aboard and laid on the thwarts. He lay there in a peculiar position, knees against his chest, his hands hugging both knees and trying to roll from side to side. He was obviously in considerable pain. McKinnon forced open the mouth, glanced briefly inside, then gently closed it again.
‘Well, this man knew enough to exhale oxygen on the way up.’ He looked at Doenitz. ‘You know this man, of course.’
‘Of course. Oberleutnant Klaussen.”
‘Your captain?’ Doenitz nodded. ‘Well, he’s obviously in considerable pain but I wouldn’t think he’s in any danger. You can see he’s been cut on the forehead – possibly banged his head on the escape hatch on the way out. But that’s not enough to account for his condition, for he must have been conscious all the way up or he wouldn’t have got rid of the oxygen in his lungs. Were you travelling underwater or on the surface during the night?’
‘On the surface. All the time.’
‘That rules out carbon dioxide, which can be poisonous; but you can’t build up carbon dioxide when the conning-tower is open. From the way he’s holding his chest and legs it would seem to be caisson disease; for that’s where the effects hurt most, but it can’t be that either.’
‘Caisson disease?’
‘Diver’s bends. When there’s too rapid a build-up of nitrogen bubbles in the blood when you’re making a very fast ascent.’ McKinnon, with the motor boat under full throttle, was heading directly for the San Andreas, which was stopped in the water at not much more than half a mile’s distance. ‘But for that you have to be breathing in a high pressure atmosphere for quite some time and your captain certainly wasn’t below long enough for that. Perhaps he escaped from a very great depth, perhaps a greater depth than anyone has ever escaped from a submarine and then I wouldn’t know what the effects might be. We have a doctor aboard. I don’t suppose he’ll know either – the average doctor can spend a lifetime and not come across a case like, this. But at least he can stop the pain.’
The motor boat passed close by the bows of the San Andreas which, remarkably, appeared to be quite undamaged. But that damage had been done was unquestionable – the San Andreas was at least three feet down by the head, which was no more than was to be expected if the for’ard compartments had been flooded, as, inevitably, they must have been.
McKinnon secured alongside and half-helped, half-carried the semi-conscious U-boat captain to the head of the gangway. Patterson was waiting for him there, as was Dr Sinclair and three other members of the engine-room staff.
‘This is the U-boat captain,’ McKinnon said to Dr Sinclair. ‘He may be suffering from the bends – you know, nitrogen poisoning.’
‘Alas, Bo’sun, we have no decompression chamber aboard.’
‘I know, sir. He may just be suffering from the effects of having surfaced from a great depth. I don’t know, all I know is he’s suffering pretty badly. The rest are well enough, all they need is dry clothing.’ He turned to Jamieson who had just joined him on deck. ‘Perhaps, sir, you would be kind enough to supervise their change of clothing?’
‘You mean to make sure that they’re not carrying anything they shouldn’t be carrying?’
McKinnon smiled and turned to Patterson. ‘How are the for’ard watertight bulkheads, sir?’
‘Holding. I’ve had a look myself. Bent and buckled but holding.’
‘With your permission, sir, I’ll get a diving suit and have a look.’
‘Now? Couldn’t that wait a bit?’
‘I’m afraid waiting is the one thing we can’t afford. We can be reasonably certain that the U-boat was in contact with Trondheim right up to the moment that he signalled us to stop – I think it would be very silly of us to assume otherwise. Flannelfoot is still with us. The Germans know exactly where we are. Till now, for reasons best known to themselves, they have been treating us with kid gloves. Maybe now they’ll be feeling like taking those gloves off, I shouldn’t imagine that Admiral Doenitz will take too kindly to the idea of one of his U-boats having been sunk by a hospital ship. I think it behoves us, sir, to get out of here and with all speed. Trouble is, we’ve got to make up our minds whether to go full speed ahead or full speed astern.’
‘Ah. Yes. I see. You have a point.’
‘Yes, sir. If the hole in our bows is big enough, then if we make any speed at all I don’t see the watertight bulkheads standing up to the pressure for very long. In that case we’d have to go astern. I don’t much fancy that. It not only slows us down but it makes steering damn difficult. But it can be done. I knew of a tanker that hit a German U-boat about seven hundred miles from its port of destination. It made it – going astern all the way. But I don’t much care for the idea of going stern first all the way to Aberdeen, especially if the weather breaks up.’
‘You make me feel downright nervous, Bo’sun. With all speed, Bo’sun, as you say, with all speed. How long will this take?’
‘Just as long as it takes me to collect a rubber suit, mask and torch, then get there and back again. At the most, twenty minutes.’
McKinnon was back in fifteen minutes. Mask in one hand, torch in the other, he climbed up the gangway to where Patterson was awaiting him at the top.
‘We can go ahead, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘Full ahead, I should think.’
‘Good, good, good. Damage relatively slight, I take it. How small is the hole?’
‘It’s not a small hole. It’s a bloody great hole, big as a barn door. There’s a ragged piece of that U-boat, about eight foot by six, embedded in our bows. Seems to be forming a pretty secure plug and I should imagine that the faster we go the more securely it will be lodged.’