Free The Last Wolf by Margaret Mayhew Page B

except that he had been referring to Englishmen, and to England.
    The train to Kiel was packed with brand-new naval officers like himself, squashed into grubby compartments that were probably hopping with fleas. Outside it was raining hard.
    Reinhard dozed, leaning his head back against the seat and risking the fleas. The brief leave in Hamburg had left him tired and hungover. Too much drink and too many visits to the Reeperbahn. Served him right that he was in such poor shape for what lay ahead.
    He had no doubt that it was going to be tough. Tough and uncomfortable and dangerous, as his father had always warned. U-boats were risky things to go to sea in, even without a war. When the war came – and most of his fellow cadets at the Naval Academy firmly believed that it would – things would get a whole lot tougher, much more uncomfortable and much more dangerous. He had not thought about it during the past months; there had been little time to think of anything but learning and training and pushing himself daily to the limit, but the sobering fact was that the life he was enjoying so much could very soon be over. He might end it entombed in an iron hull at the bottom of the sea, or with his corpse floating around on the waves, the flesh being stripped from his bones by hungry fish. Not a happy thought.
    In truth, he was not ready to make such a sacrifice. Not yet. Germany might expect him to do his duty, as the old admiral had bellowed at them, and he would do it, but he was damned well going to do his best to stay alive for as long as possible. Life was too pleasant. Good food, good drink, good comradeship, warm and willing women . . . There was too much to live for.
    He wondered if Stroma had received his last letter with the photograph. What would she would think of it? Had she been impressed? Probably not. She was not easy to impress. The photo made him look very serious – which, of course, it was meant to do. It was intended to show what a fine, upstanding young officer of the German Navy he was: a product of the famous Academy. Easy to play the part for the camera, but he had done absolutely nothing yet. One day, maybe, he would have another photo taken with a medal on a ribbon round his neck – the Knight’s Cross, like his father. If he earned it.
    Kleine Stroma. He smiled, remembering his first sight of the dirty, barefoot child scrambling down the hill towards him – her terrible hair, her torn clothes and her cut knee. Not so little now. He would very much like to know her when she had grown up into a woman but, by that time, unfortunately, he would probably be dead.
    He looked round the compartment through half-closed eyes. His closest classmates, Max, Hans, Rolf, Werner, Klaus, Gunther, Harald and Paul, were dozing away like himself, the others in the next-door compartment were probably doing the same. The majority from the Academy had been sent to serve on destroyers, minesweepers and capital ships, but they had been singled out for submarine duty and had undergone weeks of special training which had included practice in simulators and attack runs on model convoys. They had finally been ordered to report to the 5th U-boat Flotilla at Kiel on the Baltic coast where they were to practise their new skills under the tutelage of an experienced commander. A special band of brothers, he thought drily: especially fearless and especially foolhardy.
    It was still raining when the train arrived in Kiel. They stumbled on to the platform with their baggage and waited outside the station for a tram to take them out to the naval base at the northern end of the city. The base was surrounded by a high brick wall, its iron gates guarded by a sentry who took his time, inspecting their papers slowly and minutely while they were kept standing in the rain.
    Klaus, always short-fused, cursed beneath his breath. ‘Stupid arsehole! What the hell does he take us for? British agents?’
    Once through the