The Good Left Undone(90)

There was a space between the barbed wire thorns and the deck overhead. It might have been just a foot or so, but it was enough space for Antica to angle the telescope lens through the mesh to observe the dark sky unobstructed. He counted the prongs of Orion and moved the lens across to find Venus and Jupiter, a pair of twinkling agates in a peacock-blue sky. His despair left him in the presence of such majesty.

Antica took the configuration of the stars as a sign that all would be well. There was a certain amount of relief, especially after McVicars promised them he would take care of them. He knew the Scot was trustworthy. Antica yawned and lay down on the deck, cradling the telescope in his arms. The barbed wire fencing was a few inches from his nose, but it didn’t bother him. He had made his peace with being imprisoned. In time, it would be proved that the hundreds of men with roots in Italy were decent, hardworking men with good families to support. The truth was as bright as the moon, and soon everyone would know it. Antica yawned again. The air off the coast of Ireland was clean and sweet. Antica went to sleep.



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The Arandora Star was heavy with men, from the hull to the bridge. She sailed peacefully. The surface of the sea barely rippled as she passed the northwest coast of Ireland at dawn. The rocky cliffs of the Emerald Isle turned golden as morning broke. John McVicars stood at the top of the ship, on the bridge, and lit a cigarette.


DONEGAL

July 2, 1940

At the bottom of the sea, U-47, a German U-boat, kicked up fins of sand as it rose off the ocean floor along the coast of northern England. The U-boat was the pride of the German fleet, with its modern equipment and expertly trained naval crew. The U-boat had the ability to creep low and dive deep in seconds, its movement undetected in the depths.

Kapit?nleutnant Günther Prien pursed his thin lips as he studied the route back to the Black Sea. He checked the numbers on the navigation panel when he spied an ocean liner crossing his path. He took a sip of bitter black coffee and spit it back into the cup before setting it aside. He checked his navigation wheel and discerned that the Arandora Star was unaccompanied, sailing in the open sea like the Queen Mary on Christmas holiday. He couldn’t quite believe his luck, but the English were idiots, by his calculation, so he wasn’t surprised that the ship sailed alone. Over 1,700 men, most of them prisoners of war, were defenseless against any enemy. He knew that there were fellow German nationals, loyal Nazis, on board and he didn’t care. The Jewish intellectuals on board meant nothing to him. There were 719 Scots of Italian descent, British citizens, and Prien was eager to take them down because he could.

Prien had one torpedo left in his arsenal on his return trip to the Black Sea from a practice round of deadly attacks in the North Atlantic. It would be personally gratifying to blow up a pretty ocean liner. He also wanted to make a point to the enemies of Germany: You will not know the day, you will not know the hour. But I will, Prien thought with a sneer.

Prien took his time targeting the Arandora. The Nazi did his calculations several times.

When he ordered the move to fire, he was only half certain he could hit the ship at all.

One torpedo. One unaccompanied 15,500-ton ship in the open sea. One shot.

Prien issued the command to fire. The lone torpedo was packed with powdered aluminum and hexanite set in beeswax, which held the explosives in the chamber. The massive steel cylinder, once fired, propelled through the water toward its mark. The torpedo drilled into the hull of the Arandora Star, splitting it open as it blasted into the boiler and ruptured, shattering the electrics and the mechanical grid.

Prien grinned, his dark smirk smeared like an ink stain across his face. The German crew erupted in applause as the Arandora Star expelled clouds of black oil into the ocean, until the ship was obscured in the pitch.

Prien ordered the U-boat to change course, before his deed was discovered. His U-boat slithered down to the ocean floor like a snake and headed south. He shouted to his men to run U-47 deep, slip around Portugal, and glide through the Italian channels, which were friendly to him.



* * *





McVicars had thrown his cigarette overboard and was on his way to the galley for his morning coffee when he heard a rumble followed by a loud blast. The ship rocked from side to side. He lost his footing and grabbed the railing. McVicars was uncertain why a ship with full ballast tanks would pitch from side to side. He slid to the companionway to make his way down to the electrics to assess the problem.

The attack triggered the emergency sirens, shattering the serenity of the early morning. The Italian prisoners poured out of their tiny cabins and stuffed themselves into the narrow passageways in the belly of the ship. The ship was so overloaded with passengers, there was no room for them to move. Soon the men mobilized, and in a reasonable fashion, one by one, they took their turns climbing the stairs to the third deck. Those who had spent the night on the deck instinctively reached for the life jackets on the wall and began to hand them out to the bewildered men who joined them from below.

Above them, on the second tier, comfortably above the waterline, some of the Nazi prisoners reacted quickly and broke through the hatches to climb up to the top tier, the bridge, where the decks were not encased in barbed wire. They loaded into the lifeboats quickly and efficiently. The Nazis who were trapped on the second tier stomped on the fingers of the Italians who attempted to climb up to the second tier to board the boats. On the top tier, the Nazis made fast work of dropping lifeboats to the surface. They paddled off with the lifeboats half empty.