Free Dead Men Don't Bite (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) by Andrew Towning Page B

on board the mysterious
cargo, which has now been placed in the hold, and is strictly
off limits to everyone, including myself. I am placing on
record, that under threat of execution, my First Lieutenant
Dieter Schaffer and I, were ordered to use our twenty
millimetre deck guns to fire on, and murder the captain and
crew of the fishing boat, and then to scuttle his vessel. This
is an extraordinary mission made even stranger by Kessler
handing me two letters from Himmler and Gross Admiral
Donitz. They inform me that the cargo we are transporting
is an important religious artefact called the Spear of Destiny,
and that its power will ensure the future of the Third Reich.
    Nathan got up from the sofa after reading this entry,
and walked around the office to stretch his legs. LJ came in
with a tray of tea and coffee, and a plate full of sandwiches.
    LJ said, “Here’s some more tea and coffee, and I
thought a sandwich or two wouldn’t go amiss. How far
have you got?”
    “Up to where the submarine rendezvoused with the
Sicilian fishing boat. What an appalling business that must
have been?”
    “I agree, but we mustn’t forget, those were very
fraught times Nat. You know as well as I do, that given
the nature of the sub’s mission. Well, they would have had
to maintain absolute secrecy and it would have been that
Gestapo fellow Kessler who would have stopped at nothing
to meet that objective. But, don’t think for one moment that
I’m condoning what happened all those years ago, quite
the contrary.” LJ said, as he simultaneously sat down, and
picked up a ham sandwich, devouring half of it in one bite.
Nathan brought up the next entry and sitting on the
edge of LJ’s desk continued to read.
    29th April 1945. 0420 hrs, we have got underway
immediately, for our return voyage. I envisage using the
Strait of Gibraltar to take us back out into the Atlantic
Ocean with a clear run up the coast of Portugal and France,
and then in to the English Channel. My orders are to proceed
with no radio contact for the duration of the journey.
    29th April 1945. 2100 hrs, Herr Kessler has come to
my quarters to inform me that the island of Jersey will be
our final destination, and has requested to see the chart for
that area of the English Channel. He instructed the most
northern side of the island for us to surface. He gave no
indication or reason why we are doing this.
    The two men sat at either end of the sofa eating their
way through the plate of ham sandwiches while reading the
Korvettenkapitan’s account of the uneventful journey back
up to the island of Jersey. Nathan scrolled through the daily
entries, until he came to the final one.
    8th May 1945. Midnight. I have just been on the
bridge with Kessler, and he has been signalled from the
shore by spotlight. I feel apprehensive as his orders are
very precise, but go against everything that is sane. We are
to move our position to within fifty metres off the hostile
and violent looking shoreline, and to then dive at high tide
to the seabed, that is, only twenty to twenty-five metres in
depth. This gives me concern because, although the ocean
tonight, is relatively calm and the wind light, I can see that
the waters around this island are unpredictable, and can
still be very shallow in places. When in position, we are to
proceed all ahead slow towards the shore for exactly three
minutes. I believe these to be the orders of a mad man.
Below this final entry, were a few hastily scribbled
words slanting across the page.
    Have come to the surface inside a large cave, SS
troops waiting, and have ordered us to open cargo hatch.
Everything starting to shake, rocks are falling, and mist
everywhere. May God take pity on our souls, for I know,
that we are all going to die.
    “And he was right, they did all die. But what puzzles
me, is where are the remains of the U-boat crew and all of
those SS troops, now? Something must have happened so
quickly that they had no time to escape. Leaving them,