by Eric Flint
She gathered herself, asked where he had to go.
They had to catch up with the oil shipment that had left for the Netherlands just a week before. Why? Because intelligence indicated that the Spanish might have learned of it, with the intent of sinking it.
So he would be back soon? He couldn’t say, but it wasn’t just him going. Hugh and Rik were leaving, too. That had brought Sophie and Leonora to their feet.
Anne Cathrine tried not to grow desperate, tried to resist asking the questions that she knew would be deflected by the wall of lies he was having to put up, but she pushed anyway. She did not hate him, but she hated those lies, she hated not being able to know, to be frankly and plainly told, why he was really sailing on such bafflingly short notice. So she pressed him for answers. Would Eddie’s squadron really be able to locate and catch up with the oil convoy someplace out in the middle of the Atlantic, and if so, how? He couldn’t say. Are three out of the four remaining steam warships really required? Is the Spanish threat really so great? Again, Eddie could not say.
But she stopped short of asking the questions that were most urgent, most penetrating, which were spinning like a fiery potter’s wheel, deep in her belly: Do any of you actually think anyone who knows you, who lives with you, will actually believe this ridiculous story? Or that you are allowed to reveal where you are going and why, but nothing else? Can you truly believe that we will not immediately realize that if that was your actual mission, and your actual destination, you would not be allowed to tell us? And that therefore, you are lying and that when you leave, we will have no idea of where you are actually going and why? Do you think that we are all so stupid and unobservant as that?
Because if she had asked those questions, she knew what Eddie’s reply would—had to—be: he couldn’t say.
So instead, she just nodded and the silence grew long and gray between them. He reached out and hugged her; she hugged him back, very tight. And then he was gone. And she had stood there, hating the world of armies and ships and spies that made this her reality, as long as she could foresee. It was a world that tore loved ones apart so often and so quickly that, by the time she learned about Leonora’s engagement to Rik and Sophie’s rather confusing semi-betrothal to Hugh, it was already too late to celebrate them. What should have been two wonderful announcements—and then, her own—had been swept aside by events that were apparently so dire that they could not even be revealed. Because he would not be heading across the Atlantic with almost all of the steamships if the situation there was not terribly dire.
She had still been standing by the door when, no more than two minutes after Eddie left, Sophie strode past her and was out and gone without a word. But she knew where her friend was going: to find Hugh. To learn, as soon as Eddie left, if he knew and could share what Eddie would not. But of course, she, too, already knew the answer to her questions: of course Hugh couldn’t say, either.
Not long after, there was a knock at the door; it was Rik Bjelke, who bowed very low and, before Anne Cathrine could even speak, asked if he might have a word alone with Leonora. She waved him past. He took Leonora’s hands in his, and led her back to the shelter of the pantry.
Anne Cathrine did not remember sitting down, but she evidently had, because she rose when Sophie rushed into the house, again without speaking. She ran up the stairs, and in two minutes, was running back down, in the dress she had worn to the market-fair dance.
On her way to the door, Sophie stopped and quickly relayed something that Hugh had remarked in passing. When she arrived, he had been busy sending two of his adjutants out trying to locate equipment for the Wild Geese that had been put in storage and needed to be added back to each soldier’s kit: cold weather clothing. He was also concerned that many had arrived without any such apparel and if there was any more to be had. Which seemed unlikely given the local climate, a problem exacerbated by the fact that almost half of the mostly German ship’s troops were being replaced by members of the Wild Geese.
She and Anne Catharine exchanged long looks that were visual echoes of the doubts and thoughts they could read in each other’s minds. Yes, the oil would arrive in Europe—probably the Netherlands—just as February was blowing into March, but would they all need cold winter gear? It was not uncommon for watch personnel to wear it on deck, but typically, both for reasons of expense and storage, such clothing tended to be shared, and so, maybe twenty sets of cold weather gear were required, at most. And why had almost half the regular ship’s troops been replaced by members of the elite Wild Geese? And beyond that, why were their two most senior and seasoned commanders, Hugh and O’Rourke, traveling to oversee them during what was typically the least hazardous or challenging of all duties: deck security for a convoy isolated in the middle of the Atlantic?
The cold weather gear was still a mystery, but given recent news, the secret departure of three steam warships provided with the best boarding troops available indicated the expectation of close, sustained naval action. And the only place in the Old World where recent events made that not only possible but likely was in the Mediterranean. And specifically, wherever the Ottomans might be sending a battle fleet or supply convoy.
Anne Cathrine had still been puzzling through that when Rik bowed his way hastily past and ran into the street the way officers do when they are late for—well, whatever they were late for. And so, wondering when all the coming and going would stop, Anne Cathrine had leaned her heavy, whirling head against the door.
She heard movement behind her; Leonora had emerged from the pantry, was sinking into one of the seats at their table in the sitting room. As Anne Cathrine walked slowly toward her sister, she detected that the fourteen-year-old girl’s shoulders were trembling.
“He is very clever,” Leonora seemed to tell the far wall, without bothering to name Rik as her subject. “He is very skilled. He is very competent. He has been in many battles and has never even been wounded.” She looked up furtively at Anne Cathrine; her eyes were red. “Tell me that it is logical for me to expect the same outcome. Please.”
Anne Cathrine sought to find a comforting response that was not a lie, but she could not find any words to suit that purpose.
Leonora became very still, stopped quivering; the color drained out of her face as tears ran out of her eyes. “No. I am glad you did not say anything. Because I know better. This is war. The only rule is that the die is being cast at every horrible minute, so that no prior outcome bears upon the next. The only rule is uncertainty.” She put her head down and wept harder than Anne Cathrine had ever heard, even when she had been a very little girl. Anne rested her hand on the back of her head and wished her sister’s insights weren’t so terribly, terribly accurate.
Like this one.
* * *
Anne Cathrine stood on the walls of Fort Oranje, watching as the three steamships weighed anchor, following two conventional vessels that were going ahead of them to Antigua, where they could be fully provisioned and readied for their voyage. Far off, well down the wharf, two female silhouettes, one tall and one of less than average height, were holding each other as the ships’ sails unfurled into the wind and started moving away at increasing speed. Anne Cathrine wished she was on the wharf with Sophie and Leonora, but it hadn’t been safe. They had gone to say final farewells to Hugh and Rik. And Eddie, too. Which was why Anne Cathrine had said her goodbyes to her husband in private at Danish House. Not because of any intimate exchange she envisioned, either conversational or conjugal, but because she feared that her resolve might fail and she would blurt out what she had been waiting to share with him on this very day. And so, by now keeping that secret, she was resolved to keep him safe.
Because she remembered all too well the misery in Sophie’s voice as she lamented the way she had sent Hugh off to war: with his heart broken and thoughts elsewhere when all his attention had to be focused on surviving, on winning. Because it was axiomatic that those who triumphed were far more likely to return than thos
e who lost; the side which flees usually dies in droves.
So now Eddie must have only that, only victory, on his mind if he was to have the best chance of coming home to her. And to the child he did not know she was carrying.
There was little doubt of her pregnancy, anymore. Brandão had followed the signs that had arisen just four weeks after the fleet had sailed to confront the Spanish at St. Maarten. Indeed, although no one else would notice yet, she was starting to show. She had wanted to shout it out and dance around Danish House with Leonora and Sophie and, in so doing, chase away the fear that had plagued her for half a year: that she was barren. That despite almost infinite opportunities over the course of nearly two years of blissful and amorous marriage, she still had not conceived.
But in wanting to wait for just the right moment to tell Eddie, she had waited half a day too long. And it felt like shattered glass in her gullet that now, for all their sakes, it was best she kept it a secret. She had never kept anything from Eddie and, of all things, he would so very much want to know this.
But a voice within her kept shouting—whether out of fear or prudence, she could not tell: but he must return to me. So he must have all his focus on the coming battles. I will not let him be distracted by worries about me, about this birth, about our child.
And he might not understand my choice to keep that secret, when he learns. Maybe he never will. But it is better that we spend decades contending over a choice I made than it is that I should be made a widow and that Eddie—my good, darling, clever Eddie—should be cold in the ground or at the bottom of the sea.
No, not that, she had decided, and now affirmed once again as his ship sailed beyond the headland of the bay and faded from sight.
Anything but that.
Chapter 72
St. John’s Harbor, Antigua
As soon as the squadron arrived in St. John’s Harbor, Eddie summoned Hugh, Rik, Kees Evertsen, and Karl Klemm. They arrived almost simultaneously, so he was able to usher them into Intrepid’s decidedly compact “great cabin” all at once. He gestured them to seats, asked if they wanted anything other than the water in the pewter pitcher at the center of the table. They demurred, very much focused on him. Which was totally understandable. Called away from their lives with no warning, and an obviously bogus explanation, they had come expecting to finally be clued in to what was actually going on.
Eddie didn’t waste any time doing exactly that. He turned to Klemm. “Karl, you have twenty-four hours to ask me and Lieutenant Evertsen everything that goes on here at Antigua and all the projects currently in process. You can interrupt whatever I’m doing to get the explanations you need.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. But sir . . . may I ask why?”
“Because as of this moment, and until further notice, this is your duty station.”
He frowned. “Very well.”
“I don’t think you understand. Starting sometime tomorrow, you are going to begin doing my job, but without the rank. Mostly, I suspect you’ll be reporting to Mike McCarthy, but that may change. The folks back here are going to be calling those shots for the foreseeable future.”
“What? Why? Where will you be?”
Eddie faced the room. “Heading across the Atlantic with all three ships. And with all three of the officers who are staring at me like owls, right now. Rik, you’re going to be acting XO of Relentless. Kees, you’ll be in the same role on Harrier. Lord O’Donnell—”
“You have a terrible memory, Eddie; my name is ‘Hugh.’” But the Irishman’s smile was rueful. “I’ve a glimmering now of why so many of the German ship’s troops were given liberty this morning and their billets were filled with my lads.”
Eddie smiled. With Rik and Hugh along, there was a decent chance he wouldn’t wig out before this mission was all over. “Yes. Lor—Hugh, you are senior officer in charge of all infantry on board these three ships.”
“And why, might I ask, is it that you felt it needful to bring so many of my Wild Geese along?”
“Because I suspect we will either be boarding enemy ships or being boarded by them.”
“And just where might that be happening, do you suppose?”
Eddie looked at Karl. “Larry Quinn assured me that you can keep a secret better than anyone he knows. Including me. Is that true?”
“I have never revealed one yet, sir.”
“Okay, then you can stay for this. Larry’s going to have to bring you up to speed on the operational changes here, anyway.” He looked at the others. “Although we will rendezvous with the oilers, the convoy protection mission is a cover story. Didn’t fool our families, but it’s legitimate enough that our enemies should buy it for a while. In actuality, we’re heading into the Mediterranean.”
“Ah,” murmured Hugh, “the Turks. Only a matter of time, given the sad business about Vienna.”
“But, sir . . . ” Rik began.
“Rik, I’ll brief you all on the details once we are underway. Part of the reason is OPSEC. We will also be traveling under strict radio silence, barring the need to send distress signals.”
“Admiral Simpson’s orders?” Kees wondered.
“Admiral Simpson doesn’t know we’re coming.”
“What?” the three officers asked. Karl seemed entirely unsurprised.
“There’s a saying John Simpson likes to repeat,” Eddie explained, “that is now going to bite him in the butt. ‘Better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.’ That’s what’s happening here. And for good reasons. Which, as I said, I’ll explain when we are underway. From this point forward, all the information we get from the outside world will be gained by monitoring routine transatlantic traffic from home, not from Europe. We’ll be scanning for embedded codes that will give us a basic picture of what’s going on both ahead of us and behind us.”
Rik frowned. “Why just basic codes? Why not more complete data?”
Karl coughed politely. “If I may, Lieutenant Bjelke, I suspect it is for the same reason we on Courser had blind codes for narrowly defined conditions and operations, such as Contingency: Class Reunion. All those codes told us was that we were needed back home and to which of the one hundred grid blocks we were to plot a course. Although imprecise, it obviates the need for cyphers. Which is crucial, since the use of cyphers increases the likelihood of decryption.”
Kees leaned forward. “How so?”
“Cyphers are strings of different signals. The longer the message, the more individual signals you send. The more you send, the more opportunities there are to decode the message they comprise. Patterns emerge, even if they are buried.
“But with a blind code, particularly if it has a one-to-one correspondence—that is, each signal is, in effect, a whole message that will only be used once—then there is no way for anyone else to know what it means.” He looked at Eddie. “I suspect this is what you have arranged.”
“Yes.”
“And I suspect that you have employed this because Admiral Simpson has either confirmed or strongly suspects that the security of his communications has been compromised.”
“Uh, correct.”
“And that therefore, informing him of this mission could lead to its interception or at least undercut its potential to achieve tactically significant surprise.”
How the heck—? “That is, uh . . . fundamentally accurate.”
“This further indicates why the blind codes must come from The Quill Array rather than Europe. Obviously, USE counterintelligence in Europe has not identified the source or level at which its communications has been compromised. Consequently, its uncompromised New World personnel will be tasked to compile intelligence estimates from routine news and hints contained in personal and proprietary messages.”
Wow! “Okay, Karl: stop. Right now.” My God, how does he do that? Eddie leaned back. “I am neither going to confirm nor deny that string of conjectures. And you are going to forget you ever had any of those thoughts. Got it?”
�
�Perfectly clear, Commodore.”
“Being a very simple man,” Hugh said with a smile, “I have only a very simple question: why are we heading back, Eddie?”
Eddie felt his stomach grow cold. “Because the only reason Admiral Simpson would be moving the main fleet from the Baltic to the Med is because some big—really big—operation will be getting underway soon. That’s pretty much what he sent in the message we received at 0130 this morning. And because his comms are compromised, he has no way of telling us and we have no way of learning exactly what’s happening. But there’s only one thing I can think of that makes sense.”
“The Ottomans,” said Hugh. “In some way, shape or form.”
“Yup,” Eddie sighed, “although I’ve got one hypothesis about the form.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “Without breaching security, I can tell you that there was no lead-up to this. And the tone of Simpson’s message was not of a man about to start a long-anticipated offensive. It sounded like a man who has to put out a fire. With whatever he has on hand.”
“But then why wouldn’t Simpson have summoned you?” asked Kees.
Eddie shrugged. “Well, Kees, until a few days ago, he’d have been in the same situation as Oranjestad: totally in the dark as to whether or not we survived that hurricane. Until eighteen hours ago, he still didn’t have a report on whether we came home with all our hulls. And he doesn’t have the report on ship readiness either, because it’s still forty-eight hours away from being compiled.”
Rik nodded slowly. “So since Admiral Simpson had no way of knowing how many ships were left, in what condition, or how long until they’d be ready, he had to consider the possibility that we were unable to help. Or that we were barely holding on, particularly after having lost Resolve.”
Eddie shrugged. “That’s what I’m thinking, and now, we can’t update him, given the compromised comms.”
