Moments before the torpedo hit the Harlan
Werner walked through the narrow passageways of the ship, squezzign past hurried soldiers and metal.
He ascended a metal staircase, throwign open a door.
The wind blew harshly through his hair, as he stepped orward, elanign agaisnt the railing, his eyes scannign the Uboat in the distance.
"Just what are you planning...Prien."
Werner was sure of it. The captain of that u-boat had to be him, Günter Prien, the hero of Scapa Flow.
All because of a single memory
Spring, 1939
Loud laughter and music echoed through the grand ballroom, packed with the faces of power. A cheerful woman sang on the stage, her voice cutting cleanly through the noise.
Werner looked at the sparkling champagne in his glass. He let the liquid swirl once, slowly, before drinking it all in a single, unhurried gulp. He placed the empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter without looking back and moved toward the most crowded corner of the room.
The one with all the protagonists. Or more precisely, the one with him.
The crowd parted almost instinctively as Werner approached, people stepping aside as they registered his uniform, his rank, the quiet authority he carried without effort. He stopped beside a young Kriegsmarine officer mid-sentence, tapping him once on the shoulder.
The man turned sharply, bearing a reflexive scowl, until he saw Werner's face.
"Sir." He stood straight immediately.
Werner nodded and moved past him.
Then he finally saw him. Günter Prien stood at the center of a loose circle of admirers, a glass in one hand, gesturing modestly with the other. He was younger than Werner had expected, with sharp eyes that moved constantly.
"Captain Prien," Werner said, extending his hand.
Prien shook it firmly. "An honor, Reichsleiter."
"The honor is mine," Werner replied. "What you accomplished at Scapa Flow will be told for years to come. A British naval base, considered impenetrable. And yet."
Prien's smile was measured. "The credit belongs to the crew. And to the Grey Wolf. She is far more dangerous than I am."
"Such humility," Werner said, his tone carrying the faintest edge of amusement.
There was a brief pause, and in it, Werner studied him. He had read the reports, all of them. Prien had navigated through a minefield in near-total darkness, slipped past patrol boats, torpedoed a battleship at anchor, and brought his entire crew home. Tactically flawless.
But what the reports hadn't captured was what Werner now saw clearly in those restless eyes. Prien wasn't modest. He was calculating.
He reminds me a bit of Heydrich, Werner thought.
Present
The wind cut sharply across the deck, pulling at his coat.
Werner stared at the U-boat in the distance, his eyes narrowing. Something had changed. Subtle, barely visible against the grey of the Atlantic, but unmistakable to someone who knew what to look for.
The silhouette had shifted. A slight tilt through the current, deliberate and slow.
A smile formed on Werner's lips. It carried no amusement whatsoever.
"That is exactly why you wouldn't just surrender, would you," he said quietly, to no one.
He saw it clearly now. Prien wasn't repositioning.
He was aiming.
"I have to get off this coffin," Werner muttered through his teeth.
He grabbed the nearest life ring and pressed it against his chest. His eyes swept left, then right. The deck was empty.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
Three steps between him and the railing.
"Scheiße."
He ran.
The feeling of weightlessness overwhelmed him as he plunged downward.
He hit the water hard, sinking deep into the cold and dark. With desperate heaves he clawed his way back to the surface, gasping.
"Hah... hah..."
He steadied himself against the life ring, chest heaving, and quietly scanned his surroundings. His eyes found the U-boat without effort, its silhouette low and steady against the horizon.
He shook his head. Then began swimming.
He swam and swam, the cold working its way through his clothes, until he heard it.
Singing.
Voices. Many of them, drifting across the water with an almost impossible warmth.
"Erika..."
Werner stopped swimming. He floated there, the life ring beneath his arms, the song reaching him clearly now. Men's voices, tired and easy, the way soldiers sing when they have forgotten, just for a moment, where they are.
He knew what was coming.
A shiver moved through him, and it had nothing to do with the cold.
He had not warned a single man on that ship. They would not have believed him, of course. But he had not even tried.
And so Werner watched. Once again, he did not act. He simply floated in the dark Atlantic water and watched and listened as the white trail of the torpedo cut silently through the surface, straight and inevitable.
The song continued for exactly three more seconds.
Then it hit.
The explosion tore through the Harlan with a sound that was less a noise and more a physical force, a wall of pressure that slammed into Werner's chest even from this distance. A column of fire erupted from the hull. Metal shrieked. Something deep inside the ship gave way with a groan that Werner felt in his teeth.
The heat reached him in a wave.
Debris arced through the air in slow, terrible trajectories, pieces of railing, of hull, of things he refused to identify, before raining down across the sea around him. Each impact sent white columns of water shooting upward. Werner pressed himself low against the life ring, arms covering his head, the explosions walking closer and then past him.
Then silence.
Not true silence. The fire still roared. The sea still moved.
Werner raised his head slowly.
The Harlan was breaking apart, her back already cracked, her bow lifting as her stern pulled her under. Men, the few still alive, had appeared at the railings, small and desperate against the scale of the destruction. Their voices carried across the water now, no longer in song.
Werner watched.
He did not swim toward them.
He had made his choice the moment he grabbed the life ring and said nothing. There was no undoing it now, no gesture that could reach far enough across that water to mean anything. He had spent years telling himself that survival required a certain kind of coldness.
But floating there in the Atlantic, with the fire reflected in the water all around him and the voices of dying men in his ears, Werner understood something he had been avoiding for a long time.
He was not cold.
He was a coward, who had played his part far too well.
The bow of the Harlan slipped beneath the surface without ceremony. The fire hissed where it met the water. And then she was gone, as if she had never been there at all.
Werner turned away.
He began to swim.
Desperate.
The next few minutes dissolved into cold and exhaustion, one stroke bleeding into the next, the burning wreck behind him fading into the grey. The next memory Werner could hold onto clearly was—
Blink.
He stood inside the U-boat, dripping, shivering, barely upright. Dozens of men surrounded him in the narrow corridor, their faces tight with distrust and barely contained anger.
"All of you, dismissed!" Prien's voice cut through the tension.
The men scrambled without another word, filing out through the narrow hatches until only two remained. Prien stood directly before him, arms at his sides, studying Werner with an expression that gave nothing away. Behind Werner, Reicher had positioned himself close, not touching, but present, as though Werner might escape at any moment.
Prien observed him for a long moment in silence.
Then he exhaled slowly and sat down on the helmsman's seat, elbows on his knees, eyes dropping to the floor. When he finally looked up, something in his expression had shifted. The commander's mask had slipped, just slightly.
"Is that truly you, Friedrich?" he asked quietly.
"It is."
"Hah." A single breath.
The silence stretched. Then Prien stood again, and the mask was back, harder than before.
"How?" he said. "When?" His voice climbed. "Why, Werner. Why did you betray Germany?!"
Behind Werner, Reicher tensed. He had heard of the betrayal, everyone had.
Werner said nothing for a moment. He looked at Prien, at the exhaustion carved into his face, at the anger that was almost indistinguishable from hurt, and he weighed his words carefully.
"Things are not as you think, Günter," he said finally, his voice low and steady. "Bring me home. You will understand."
Prien shook his head slowly, almost to himself. His eyes moved around the cramped interior of the boat before settling back on Werner.
"Back home," he repeated. "In this piece of junk."
A bitter pause.
"I cannot even inform High Command. We had to destroy the machine to make the deception believable. We are completely blind out here. How should we return?" He looked at Werner with something approaching disbelief.
"What about Spain?"Werner asked.
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