The Prize Rules Ch. 01

He'd had to journey all the way to Berlin and then back as quickly as transport for him could be arranged. Then he was on a train again and he'd travelled to Hamburg, and from there, this slightly surly though very professional driver had picked him up as ordered.

Evidently, his record seemed to tell somebody something which they wished to see in a young officer. He didn't have a clue what it might have been. He just did his job to the best of his ability.

He'd joined the Reichsmarine as a cadet in 1934 at the age of eighteen because he came from a seafaring family and it was what was done, that was all. The name had changed to the Kriegsmarine as Germany prepared itself for more of a militaristic footing the following year.

By that time, he'd risen quickly, going from the rank of Kadett, to Seekadett, to Obermatrose through Oberstabsmatrose by the time that the naval service had adopted its new name, and only a month after that, he was a Fähnrich zur See and had gone on to Oberfähnrich zur See on New Year's Day of this year.

Now, he thought, as the car was waved through the security checkpoint to the docks, it was the middle of April, 1937 and he had arrived at the lowest real officer's rank and could expect to hear himself addressed as 'Herr Leutnant', not that it mattered much to him.

"Whether we like it or not, Herr Ullmann," he'd been told during his interview after the selection process, "we can foresee that there will likely be war one day, though as yet it is still far over the horizon. We as a naval arm wish to think a little ahead toward that day rather than be caught off-guard when it happens.

It might come to pass that many powers will be drawn into the conflict- including even the United States of America and whatever other allies that the Britishers can find to help them once we begin to heat them up a little. They tend to think of things a little slower we think, and we now wish to place a few junior officers in places where there is something to be learned by operating in waters where we now wish not to be seen as having a presence at this time.

To sail in those waters with our ensign showing would only cause a few of them to have ideas which we would prefer that they did not have as yet.

War, Hans-Joachim, is a hungry thing which requires resources to be able to wage on any scale. Things such as petroleum and aluminum will become very important to them – as they are to us as well, naturally.

The British need these things even more, their land being an island itself and having almost nothing like that on its own soil.

But they have their colonies, or what is left of them today, and that is a lot to them. One day, we might wish to remove their access to these things, no? That is the reason for your new assignment and rank.

You will be employed by a German shipping line as a navigator, and your duties with them will be quite legitimate, I assure you. Nevertheless, those duties will take you into the area of the world where we believe that there has been – at least until now and for the foreseeable future – a lapse in planning for the worst on the parts of both the British Empire and the Americans."

Hans-Joachim had begun to ask if this assignment had anything to do with espionage, feeling rather nervous about it, but they'd told him no.

"We have plenty of agents everywhere as it is, I believe," the man had smiled, "and they do not work for the Kriegsmarine anyway. We are not in that business, Hans-Joachim.

We have noted your request to transfer to the U-boat Service. You have demonstrated superior judgemental capability and the ability to think on your feet. We now wish only that you become acquainted with what might one day become an area of operation for us in that regard. That is the purpose of this assignment.

We understand that there are likely worse places to be sent for this, and others are being sent there for the same reasons. Aside from some of their notorious hurricanes, we think that it ought to be a fairly pleasant assignment for you, and by the way, congratulations on your new rank."

The car pulled up at a wharf and Hans-Joachim looked out of the window at the ship that he would work on for the next year at least. To a young man like him, it looked far less than unexciting.

The driver wasted no time in retrieving his civilian suitcases for him and then the car was gone in the blink of an eye, accelerating away as though the driver wished to forget about the whole unpleasant episode as quickly as possible.

Ten minutes later, and the young officer was being welcomed aboard and shown to his small cabin. As he got his things squared away neatly and gave some thought to their departure the next morning, some of the irony of it all hit him and he stopped for a moment to think about it.

He was on a passenger liner belonging to a rather prestigious line which made its money by transporting people in their millions to where they wished to go on other parts of the globe.

All very nice, he thought; very proper and even a little luxurious. He was there to navigate and he had no trouble with that. He looked forward to a little time in a warmer climate after this last long winter.

It had been enough to tell him that he could stand being thrown around on a ship tossed by mountainous waves and like it. But it had also taught him a few other things as well. Not knowing just how things would turn out by the time that this war - that he could plainly see the clouds gathering for - was over or just how deep some of the governing party would sink, he felt the need to serve, like millions of other young men.

He also felt the desire to be about as far from the party's ideology as he could get, thinking that he didn't need or want the semi-constant exposure that he'd seen even during his time in the service to date. From asking around a little carefully, he'd learned that the U-Boat Service was subject to about the least of it, since it was all-volunteer.

He smiled a little as he thought of it.

He guessed that because of that, the ideologues must have thought that one had to be feeling the fervour if one volunteered to live that close to sinking all of the time, so he supposed that they just left well enough alone.

Then again, he thought, there was that other thing about it.

Maybe it took a bigger set of stones to want to be there – perhaps bigger than the propaganda pigs had. Otherwise they'd be there too, wouldn't they? Taking up a little more of the already cramped space.

From the brief look around that he'd gotten, a man could leave the starched shirt in one's bag. There were few if any dress codes in a submarine once it was at sea.

And as hard as the weather might seek to bash and pummel a ship on the waves of a storm, a U-boat was always quiet and steady once it had slipped below those waves. There were a lot of hazards to it, certainly. But a little calm and quiet peace after a deck watch wet to the skin and looking at grey slabs of water standing high above by only looking over one's own shoulder at eye-level, ... well it was something to like, that was all.

He pulled the chair out from the small desk and opened the porthole a little as he sat down. He decided that his journey had taken him to a place where he'd never thought that he'd ever go.

He decided that it was a bit of a moment and he lit another cigarette as he watched the dockworkers and the people scurrying around outside.

All rather nice, he thought as he compared this to his time as a watch officer on a corvette being bashed and thrown around by the waves of a storm off the coast of Norway a couple of months before. Compared to that, what he was looking at now was almost like a dream.

Pretty as a postcard picture. All very nice.

So why did he feel a little like a wolf in sheep's clothing?

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1945 Schönberger Strand

"Pardon me please," the young schoolteacher said as she walked up to the woman one day, "Who are you and why do you come here to - "

"It's alright, Krystal," her colleague smiled in greeting to the woman, "This woman has come for the little Ullmann girl; she is her legal guardian. I have seen the papers myself."

Just then, the doors opened and a wave of children poured out into the yard. A little girl came running as fast as she could go and the woman sank to one knee to greet her. After their hug, she stood up and took the girl's hand in hers.

"I am sorry if my appearance causes you trouble," she said smiling to the younger teacher.

"You are not German," the confused-looking one asked, "Yet you speak so well. Have you been here long?"

"I have been here for a few months and I am many things," Mòlì smiled a little enigmatically, "Among them all, I am German enough for this. Guten Tag."

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Katryn was standing in the dark, still trembling a little and feeling very unsure of everything.

She'd had the worst sort of nightmare and still carried the last of the tears in her eyes.

She didn't know what to do now. Waking Anneliese up would likely only get her shouted at - at best - and her bottom warmed for her at worst. Her aunt needed her sleep.

She reached up for the doorknob to Mòlì's room and she was about to try to get her courage up to try to open it.

But the doorknob turned under her fingers and she wanted to jump back and run back to her bed - the one with the monsters under it, she remembered and then she knew that she was stuck as the door opened.

Instead of an annoyed expression, she was looking at a surprised smile which grew concerned after a second. She began to stammer, trying to explain and knowing that she couldn't say it properly to anyone's satisfaction at this time of night.

Mòlì slipped to her knees and held out her arms, "I heard you sniffling. Was it a bad dream?"

Katryn nodded, her eyes brimming again. She didn't want to be sent back to her bed. She was still so frightened.

But nothing like that happened. Instead, she was pulled into a warm embrace and lifted up to be carried inside.

As she heard the door close behind her, she looked around and saw that the bedside light was on and glowing warmly.

Soft words came to her in the dimly lit room from close to her ear, "Do you want to sleep with me tonight?"

Katryn couldn't believe her ears. She - she wasn't going to be sent back to her own bed. She nodded and she felt the arms hold her just a little tighter.

The next thing she knew, she was in a warm soft bed and under the covers against the woman and she could smell the mysterious and friendly scent of her which she always smelled when she was close enough for it.

She was too young to know, but every human has a scent based on types of food consumed most often and all sorts of other factors. People from other places smell differently and we pick it up more readily. But to the little girl, what she smelled was gentle mystery and friendliness. It was beginning to smell to her like home.

She felt herself being pulled close and then she felt the woman's arm around her. It felt like Heaven.

"Don't you want to know what made me scared?" she asked as she rolled over a little and saw those dark eyes looking down at her.

The woman shook her head, still smiling, "No. You're here, so that's what's important. Tomorrow, we can take a couple of broomsticks for weapons and search your closet and under your bed together. We'll beat the monsters to death between us for scaring you."

"How did you know that I saw monsters?" the girl asked and the woman just smiled wider in her enigmatic way.

"Because I was afraid of the monsters under my bed when I was a little girl."

Her face lost its smile and grew suddenly grim and determined, "And if I find out that those same monsters are now trying to scare you, well I'll make them pay for it, you'll see."

The little girl laughed quietly then as she thanked her surprising and mysterious friend and her reward was a smiling kiss on the cheek.

"Why aren't you wearing anything?" the girl asked in a whisper, "When I went to bed, you had your nightgown on from after the bath."

Mòlì shrugged, "Tomorrow is Sunday, and there is no school to get you up for and my friend Anneliese can sleep a little longer because she doesn't have to go to work. When I can - if I'm not going to be disturbed, I like to sleep this way, it's just how I like to sleep the best. Does it bother you?"

The girl shook her head, "No. I was only asking."

The woman nodded and reached to turn off the light, "Good. Now let me hug you and we'll go to sleep. I think that we'll only have a little time before the real monster shows up in here, so you'd better get comfortable and try to drop off before that happens. If you find that the monster comes before you're asleep, I guess that all you can do is hug me and it might make the monster go away."

The girl looked up, a little nervous now and her voice fell to a thin whisper, "What ... what monster?"

The woman put her head down and snuggled a little closer as she whispered even more quietly, "I ... think that ... I ...um ... I may snore a little bit."

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"What are you doing and why have we stopped?" the girl asked as they sat in a railway coach a month later.

"We are waiting for another train to pass us by," the woman said. "We have to talk about what a war is at some time. It is a terrible thing and even though the one here is over now, the effects last a long time. There are more trains these days than working tracks to carry them. We must wait our turn and so we are stopped here.

And what I am doing," she mumbled a little around the bobby pins which she held between her lips, "is untying these braids. When I get to the top of each one, then out come a few more bobby pins before I undo the braid. I want to brush your hair out so that I can see what I have to work with."

"But Tante Anneliese - "the young one began.

"Tante Anneliese is not here," the woman smiled past the bobby pins, "and I am a little happy over it - as much as I like her."

She leaned her head and twisted so that her face partially came into the girl's view, "Your Tante is a very practical woman who lives her life making miracles happen - such as keeping a household and a family together in very hard times, keeping everyone fed and clothed and working at her job.

She learned to do this from her mother, your Oma - who is also a practical woman. To both of them, a woman's hair must be kept up high in a severe-looking bun - for practical reasons, of course.

To women like them, a young girl's hair ought to be tied tightly into coiled braids as they have tied yours for all sorts of practical reasons as well. But you are no longer there, pretty Katryn, under their watchful and practical eyes. Now, you are my daughter and we are travellers together on a long and magical trip. Magical trips have nothing very practical about them, just like it goes when we sail your favourite little boat in the bathtub."

She chuckled softly, "You have told me a hundred times how you love my hair. Well your hair is like mine I think, so now I am setting it free. You and I will spend lots of time brushing our hair, so that mine stays the way that you love so much and so that yours begins to shine just like your mother's."

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1937 Port of Spain, Trinidad

As she did at least twice a week these days it seemed, a young woman who'd taken her mother's maiden name made the long, trudging walk up the hill to the government offices in what is still known as 'The Red House' in Port of Spain. She skipped up the steps, or tried to, in an effort to look as young and enthusiastic as she wanted to portray for these trips, as unfruitful as they'd been to this point. She found her way up the back stairs and into the deathly-quiet office once again and took up her lonely post in the tiny waiting area.

It was a bit of an accident of birth, but she resembled one of her parents a great deal more than she resembled the other and for the most part, she lived in her mother's culture while she learned all that she could, while being armed with her father's culture as well as some of his thought processes.

This time, she'd only been there for an hour before the door opened and a man stepped out, being sent off with a warm handshake by the man who she was actually there to see. Well that is, if he had the time for her pestering and was at least a little inclined to want to waste more of his time in indulging her and her persistence.

As the departing man left, closing the outer office door behind him, that civil servant looked at her for a moment and for perhaps only the second time that it had ever happened, he did not roll his eyes. She was at least a little astounded when she saw his face begin to smile at her.

"You're an amazing young woman, Eden," he grinned, "Come on in and sit for a little while. I have a little news for you. I just wonder how it come to be that you'd know to appear today when it is fresh in my mind."

Eden Chang shrugged with a smile, "It Thursday Mister Robert, that is all."

Eden was just nineteen, and she was, like a lot of people on Trinidad and it's neighbouring island Tobago, a bit of a mixture of the several prevailing groups of people who'd come there to make their home on the island for whatever reason. By the half of her blood which showed in her face, she was mostly ethnic Chinese and it was the culture which she espoused most easily, but there were others in her heritage.

Somewhere far enough back for her to have lost the details, she was at least a little Carib Indian and also, with just as little knowledge about it, somewhere in her, she also carried African blood.

The single largest contributor to her make-up who was NOT Chinese or any of the others had been her father Ludwig, a marine and mechanical engineer who had come from Europe to live on Trinidad a few months into World War One.

What he'd done at the time might later come to be known as 'conscientious objection', but what he never told anyone other than Eden's mother and Eden herself later on was that he'd been the lead designer of the U-9 class of submarines. Up to a point back then, the British admiralty had considered U-boats to be nothing more than toys and certainly nothing which could ever be taken seriously as threats by anyone.

On August 1st, 1914, U-9 herself, the namesake of her class, found and sank three British cruisers in the space of a single hour. The admiralty in England was forced to revise their stiff upper-lipped views, and Ludwig was on a ship and westward-bound the very next week. He'd had instructions to design the next step in U-boat evolution, but found that he had no desire for it anymore after more than 1,400 sailors had perished in a single day.

Ludwig, or 'Loody' as everyone called him had been a major resource in Eden's education because he'd always loved her and taken an interest, so he'd pushed her gently but firmly.

She was fluent in several languages; Mandarin, Spanish, several flavors of English, including both versions of the English-based creole used on the island and she could switch between them all effortlessly as she had the desire or the need. She was also conversant in the local patois, and she knew a little French. But Loody was responsible for her knowledge of German.

Other than a little Spanish, German was the only other language which she could write well besides English. Loody loved her more dearly than he did any of his other children, though he tried not to show it. His wife had passed on far too young when Eden was only twelve and he saw a lot of her in Eden, so he took it upon himself to see that she made something of herself if it was possible.

Another quality which Eden possessed was her internal drive. Some might call it ambition, but that wasn't the thing to Eden. Loody had often told her that she ought to try to be someone and not just anyone. It had been something that she'd taken to heart.