To Kill the Leopard Read online

  To Kill the Leopard

  Theodore Taylor

  For Gloria Loomis Agent. Adviser. Dear Friend. With love, TLT.

  This book is a work of fiction though based, in some instances, on fact. Where names of actual persons, living or dead, are used, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict a factual event or change the fictional nature of this work.

  Book One

  LORIENT

  “U-boote sind die Wölfe zur See:

  Angreifen! Reissen! Vernichten! Versenken!”

  (U-boats are the wolves of the ocean:

  Attack! Rip! Destroy! Sink!)

  —Admiral Karl Dönitz.

  LORIENT, FRANCE—JANUARY 1941

  Horst Kammerer sat on the foredeck of the U-122. He watched an artist paint a large snarling leopard on the front of the new submarine’s conning tower beneath the spray deflector. A worklight illuminated the cat in an attack leap. Two smaller leopards would go on the port and starboard sides of the tower where numbers were always stenciled in peacetime.

  The 122, an IX long-range type, was in the huge, nearly completed concrete pen, a sea-level fortress at Keroman in Lorient harbor, nestled safely away from British bombers with five other boats. Midships she swarmed with activity as workmen prepared her for patrol.

  The bunker’s gray concrete walls and thick steel-reinforced roof were still damp. Machinery noises echoed in the tunnel-like U-boat garage. The stink of the boats mixed with the acrid fumes of welding torches and the odor of new mortar. Foul, oily water lapped around the 122’s hull.

  “Rudmann, do you know about the Felis panthera pardus?” Kammerer asked, his breath silvery at the edge of the light.

  “No, sir,” Rudmann replied. A fine brush detailed the glaring black pupil of the leopard’s eye. His hands were gloved.

  As a civilian, five-foot-one Rudmann, who wore grandma spectacles, had painted posters and murals in Berlin. Recruited in late 1939 to decorate U-boats, he now held the rating of chief petty officer. In civilian life he was well known for his circus renderings, and he was quite bewildered serving in the Nazi navy. The wool great-coat uniform swallowed him up.

  “I researched the leopard before choosing it, Rudmann.” Rudmann changed brushes to begin applying spots around the head.

  “Its small prey are birds, lizards, and monkeys. Larger prey is up to donkey size, like antelopes. But I discovered it is especially fond of domestic dogs.”

  Rudmann was nervous. The U-boat commander watched his every stroke. “I didn’t know that,” he mumbled quietly.

  “I like to think of enemy ships as donkeys. Stubborn but dumb.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Rudmann, making a mistake. A splotch of black spread into the left eye, staining the iris. His hand began to tremble. His grandma glasses fogged.

  Kammerer caught it. “Relax, Rudmann.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought about using the black panther as my symbol, then decided the color wouldn’t stand out against the gray of the hull. The orange coat and black spots of the leopard are more striking.”

  “That was the right decision, Herr Kapitän. I’ve done fifty-six boats so far and keep busy repainting. The sea scrubs them away, as you know.” Rudmann talked with a slight lisp.

  Kammerer laughed. “You should try to mix sea-proof paints.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you know that this will be the maiden combat patrol for the 122?” Her first effort after coming out of the Baltic had been aborted due to engine trouble.

  “I wish you happy hunting.”

  “Thank you, Rudmann. My specialty is killing tankers. Admiral Dönitz tells us, ‘Destroy the tankers! Destroy the tankers!’ England needs four big ones each day just to survive. So I try very hard.”

  Karl Dönitz was Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, BdU, a leader respected, even revered, by almost every U-boat sailor. He was their Löwe, their lion.

  Rudmann shivered. It was not the cold dankness of the bunker. The shiver indicated that he hated death and destruction, something that Kammerer and the admiral obviously enjoyed.

  In Operations at the nearby Kernevel headquarters a blackboard kept score on tanker kills. So far 136 British, Norwegian, Danish, and Panamanian-registered oil carriers, the latter mostly owned by American companies, had been posted in red chalk.

  Kammerer continued, “So that’s what I’ll be aiming for, Rudmann. To date, my personal score is five. Not bad for only two combat patrols, eh?” He’d commanded the smaller VIIC type on those two sorties.

  “No, no sir …” Flustered Rudmann added, “I mean, yessir.”

  Oberleutnant Joseph Graeber approached the commander, holding a clipboard. “The transmitter is fixed,” the first officer said. “I’m satisfied; Heinze is satisfied.”

  Kammerer signed off; then he said to Graeber, “How do you like it?” nodding toward the leopard.

  The First studied the artwork. “Looks menacing enough.”

  “That’s exactly what we wanted, isn’t it?” Kammerer answered, sounding quite pleased with himself. Graeber smiled and excused himself, going aft.

  Kammerer fell silent, thinking about the two months ahead in the North Atlantic, brutal this time of year. But the crew was well rested after a thirty-day leave. Many of them had returned to Germany on the BdU Zug, the admiral’s own four-car express train. It ran from Lorient to Le Mans, where a Brest section joined it, then on to Paris, Rotterdam, Bremen, and Hamburg. The train sometimes carried spare parts and technicians. It was mainly used for officers and crew on leave. Nothing was too good for the Unterseeboote men. A few of them were from Kammerer’s last boat; the others, like Graeber, were new. But all seemed enthusiastic, and Kammerer felt good about the hunting prospects.

  Arms folded, brown eyes locked on the main leopard, Kammerer didn’t look German though he was as Teutonic as the Brandenburg Gate. Black haired and olive skinned, he looked Italian or Arabic. If anyone cared to ask, he said, “Blame it on my French mother.” Giselle was from Auch—she was dark haired and olive skinned. His high cheekbones, skier’s body, and curly black hair appealed to many women, who found him boyish. At twenty-nine his looks were deceptive.

  By 6:15 Rudmann’s feet were two nonexistent stumps and his hands were totally numb. He asked the officer-of-the-deck to call Kammerer to view his leopards.

  A moment later Kammerer smiled widely, then said, “Perfect, Rudmann.” He shouted to Graeber to have all crew members report to the foredeck to look at the boat’s new insignia. They came on the double. Smaller leopards now adorned each side of the conning tower.

  Soon Rudmann was basking in applause and almost forgot his chilblains. Admittedly the leopards were among the best insignia he’d painted thus far, and he was proud of them, especially when Kammerer said, “I’ll make sure Kapitän Godt knows.” Godt was U-boat chief of staff, second to Admiral Dönitz.

  Gratified by all the attention, Rudmann left the tomblike bunker at about half past six. He caught a streetcar for the center of blacked-out Lorient, intending to return to his room at the Hötel Bisson. There was another boat insignia to render tomorrow; then he had orders to go to Saint Nazaire for a similar task. He had no desire to stay in shabby Lorient. It sat on the right bank of the Scorff immediately above the confluence of the Blavet, blessed with a fine protected harbor.

  Rudmann alighted from the streetcar on rue des Fontaines and began to walk the three blocks to the Hötel Bisson. The city was dark, though there were peeps of light from shop windows. Even with these slits, the early evening darkness was almost impenetrable. He could see no more than a dozen feet ahead.

  He turned the corner at the se
cond block and took a few steps. Grabbed from behind, he was strangled in less than a minute, and his body vanished in less than two.

  As the Resistance members dumped it into the truck, covering it quickly with a tarred net, Gobelins said to Tramin, “That coat made him look bigger. He’s a minnow.” The painter of the leopard was a victim simply because he wore a German uniform.

  The truck rattled off into the night, headlights blacked out to small slits.

  Until the German occupation, some forty-five thousand Bretons had lived in this coal-smoked town. Some fled when the Nazi motorbikes and armored cars came in from Vannes via Rennes. But most stayed. The people had been peaceful for centuries but were still fiercely independent. Just the sight of the field gray uniforms caused some to boil over.

  The finest hotel, the Beauséjour, was now a residence for officers; the Bisson, Pigeon Blanc, and the Music Academy housed enlisted men. The Prefecture Naval, on Place d’Armes, was occupied, and Admiral Dönitz had seized the imposing three-story brick-and-stone Gothic chateau. of Monsieur Bertrand, the sardine merchant, at Kernevel between Lamorplage and Lorient, to be his residence and command headquarters. Next door was his communications center.

  Lorient was perhaps the finest fishing harbor in Europe; its Grand Bassin and Bassin Long, capable of handling hundreds of boats, had been gobbled up. The Nazis had grabbed the naval shipyard on the left bank of the Scorff that built fine cruisers. They had taken schools and the hospital. The Cinema Rex showed German films nightly.

  Their tentacles reached into nearby Carnac and Quiberon, with rest camps complete with beer-garden decor. The crew ate, drank, and made merry; they walked the beaches, rode horses, played soccer and tennis; most of all, took French girls to bed.

  Back-street cafés and bars like the Casino and Les Trois Soeurs, renamed Die Sechs Titten by its Deutsche patrons, rang with “Über Alles” until late at night. The best cafés and all the brothels were now off-limits to the French. Additional German-supervised whorehouses were being opened. The old roads were filled with Mercedes trucks, cars, and marching soldiers.

  An eclipse had spread over Lorient. The shadow of the swastika had shut out light.

  Squat, burly Georges Gobelins stepped out of his old truck at dawn, two bunches of flowers in his right hand, and made his way into the Cimetière de Kerentrech along a path between the graves. He finally stopped at two headstones nestled together. Crossing himself, he first looked at the ground occupied by his wife. She’d died three years earlier after a short illness. Then he looked at his son’s burial place. Claud had been murdered recently.

  He came each day on his way to the Lorient fish docks to pay respects to the only family he had. He missed them to the point that his life was almost empty. But there was a dark space left for hatred.

  Placing the hothouse flowers down by each headstone, he again felt the urge to kill. He would rid the earth of anyone who wore a German uniform. He stayed a moment longer, rage muscles working in his jaw, then trudged back up the path to the truck. After a few coughs it started. He continued to the docks. The Vaincre was tied up there, and Tramin, his mate, would be waiting.

  Though some of the Lorient fishing fleet, colorful blue-hulled boats with red sails, were still wind powered the transition to gas and diesel engines had started long ago, and the Vaincre depended on gas to take her nets to sea.

  Gobelins and Tramin were gone all day.

  Late that evening, Kammerer and Graeber were dining in the Beauséjour, on the town square, sharing a seafood platter—lobster claws, whole crabs, two dozen oysters, several langoustines, shrimp, clams, and scallops—nothing but the finest, two nights before departure.

  “You’ll learn!” Kammerer said. “If you don’t take chances you won’t sink ships. If you run scared you don’t belong in U-boats.” Graeber nodded but his red-cheeked farm-boy face indicated a certain wariness. He hoped not to end his career on the leopard boat.

  Though he kept quiet about it, twenty-four-year-old Josef Graeber had no Nazi leanings. In fact, he disapproved of what was happening in Berlin and now had regrets about his choice of service.

  On his last patrol, in a five-hundred-tonner as second watch officer, he’d had an acute fraying of nerves. By the time the four hours on the bridge were over, every far-off bird looked like an enemy aircraft. Low clouds on the horizon resembled British destroyers. He’d hidden the problem. Maybe he didn’t belong in 122.

  “I’ve said it to the crew; I’ve said it to you, Fromm, Dörfmann, Bauer—everyone—we’re going to make our mark on the tankers. I swear that I can sniff them out. Big, fat waddling ganders loaded with roasting material. My goal is twenty-five.”

  Graeber blinked.

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised …”

  That was an impossible number, Graeber thought. The man was an obsessed lunatic. “I …”

  “Have you ever seen one blow up?” Kammerer asked.

  Graeber shook his head.

  “It’s spectacular. Lights up the whole sky if it’s loaded with high-test. If you’re near enough the explosion can knock you down. They burn with a roar that’s like a blast furnace. And the smell! Oh, the smell. If you’re on the windward side you get both the heat and the stench. Enough to choke you …”

  Kammerer had been so busy talking that he’d barely touched the fruits de mer. His eyes were lighted with the thoughts of burning tankers.

  An obsessed lunatic, Graeber was convinced.

  Just before Sullivan Jordan left the house in Cradock, Virginia, near Portsmouth, Maureen was nursing the baby. As she sat on the overstuffed chair in the living room, the floor lamp spotlit her as if she were on a stage. CBS radio was on, and Edward R. Murrow was talking about air raids above the wail of sirens. “Now we take you into the streets of blacked-out London …”

  It was a beautiful picture. Maureen and the baby at her breast in a halo of light, and Sully knew he’d remember it for a long time. She was auburn haired and attractive, with pale, luminous skin.

  She said, “At least you’re still on a coastal run.”

  “That’s right, hon,” he said. “No problems.” He bent down and kissed both of them. She’d just changed the baby, and he breathed in fresh talcum.

  “I love you,” he said, lingering a moment to look at them. Then off he went into the cold dawn, walking east along the Norfolk and Western tracks down to the Elizabeth River tank farm.

  The SS Tuttle sailed on schedule at 1:00 P.M. She was 9,750 deadweight tons, 431 feet in overall length, 56 feet wide, and 33 feet deep. She could carry 78,310 barrels of oil in sixteen tanks. Her steam turbine gave her a maximum speed of 9.5 knots.

  The Royal Navy’s director of intelligence was in the frail old Admiralty Building in London’s Whitehall district. Close by, on the ancient Horse Guards Parade Ground, was a newly constructed rust-colored monstrosity called The Citadel. Buried far beneath this massive, boxy bomb-proof concrete-and-granite blockhouse was the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC), heart of the antisubmarine warfare effort.

  Commander Roger Winn, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, limped into the OIC’s Submarine Tracking Room at about 7:00 A.M. He’d spent the night above ground in his crosstown flat. On other nights he could be found in one of the uncomfortable bunks in the Citadel. Childhood polio had left him with a hunched back and gimpy leg.

  Looking down on the huge ocean chart, the Main Plot, that covered an eight-foot-square table Winn asked, “What do we have this morning?”

  The weary night chief duty officer, his eyes reddened by the harsh lighting, said, “That IXB that came out of Lorient three days ago puzzles me. I don’t think she went south.”

  “Do you mean the 122? Kammerer’s boat?” Winn asked.

  The duty officer nodded. Usually, Dönitz sent the long-range boats west of Gibraltar or farther down into the South Atlantic, off Africa.

  “I have an idea that the good admiral is taking her out for some convoy action. First patrol. More shakedown
for both captain and crew,” Winn speculated.

  “I’m inclined to think so, too,” the duty officer said, turning away to answer a phone buzz.

  Winn continued to stare at the ocean chart. It was a jumble of coded markers, pins, flags, symbols, and erasable pencil markings that changed by the hour if not by the minute. Submarine symbols, the known or suspected positions of the enemy, and elastic cords laid out convoy routes. Colored pinheads and flags denoted sub sightings, signals, and wireless intercepts. Other tiny flags indicated ships and escorts. But the grand game being played on the huge table wasn’t a game.

  Winn ran the Submarine Tracking Room the way he prepared cases for trial as a highly respected barrister in civilian life. He often knew when the boats departed and knew which boats were under way, but there was usually uncertainty as to where they were going. Once they got out on the high seas they disappeared, showing up suddenly off the Outer Hebrides or the Azores or Freetown. It was that damnable fissure between the time they left port and the time they fired their first torpedo that Winn wanted so desperately to close. Most often, he had to rely on his guesses—his “fictions,” as he put it—as to the ultimate operating areas of the boats.

  On the walls of room NID 8 (S) next door were charts of all sorts, covering everything from German U-boat construction to the date boats were sunk. On a smaller table was an exact copy of Dönitz’s Kernevel grid chart of the standard Nord-Atlantischer Ozean. Operating areas were laid out alphabetically in numbered squares so that Dönitz could send his boats to exact attack positions within a half-dozen miles. NID 8 (S) even kept track of U-boat commanders by name.

  Nearby, in another room, teleprinters chattered incessantly, night and day, with decoded German messages, direction-finder fixes, and air reconnaissance and agent reports.

  Meanwhile, round-faced Winn had to answer to the prime minister’s “prayers.” They came in blunt memorandum form from Churchill: “Pray tell me what happened to the convoy that left Halifax on the ninth…?”