Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  Now stuck in a windowless office, with flaking green paint so old it was starting to look gray, he pushed papers all day. It was bad enough to go from an active, challenging post to a desk job, but what a job!

  Oh, his title sounded impressive enough. He was the Ministry of the Interior’s “academy training supervisor.” Hradetsky smiled wryly. Less impressive was the fact that his only task involved monitoring the number of students enrolled in each of the nation’s police training academies. Each day he filled out the proper form and gave it to his immediate superior’s secretary. And each day, he was sure, Brigadier General Dozsa signed the report without reading it — promptly filing it into oblivion.

  Whenever he’d tried to make his post anything more than a waste of time and space, he’d been slapped down. Dozsa, the National Police commander, hadn’t even bothered to hide his disdain. During his first and only meeting with the precise, perfectly uniformed officer, he’d been told, “Be grateful for what you still have, Colonel. Especially after all the trouble you’ve caused me. Rock the boat just once more, and I’ll see that you’re drummed out of the service in disgrace.”

  Hradetsky’s hands curled into fists, crumpling the newspaper he still held. Remembering Dozsa’s insults brought all his repressed rage roaring to the surface. In the old days, he could have erased the stain on his honor with a well-timed saber cut. But dueling was out of place in this modern world. In any case, honor meant nothing to the government he still served — however unwillingly.

  The simple truth was that he had nowhere else to go. He was a policeman, first and last. With the whole world mired in what seemed a perpetual recession, work of any kind was hard to get. And with work came ration cards for heat and food. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to survive a winter that had been the worst in decades. Subzero temperatures and the food shortages produced by autumn crop failures made life almost unbearable for all Hungarians. Those who were unemployed were even worse off. Priority for scarce foodstuffs went to those who still had jobs.

  Of course, Zoltan Hradetsky had another important reason for staying at his post. An old-fashioned reason. Duty. He’d sworn an oath to uphold the law and to protect his fellow countrymen. And even though his superiors seemed determined to chain him down inside the Interior Ministry’s idle bureaucracy, the oath remained.

  So, torn between his anger, his duty, and the need to eat, he’d rotted uselessly at his desk, watching his poor country endure the winter’s bitter cold like a man in a threadbare coat. Draconian security measures and international relief efforts had kept mass starvation at bay, but the past few months had been one long, dark nightmare. Curfews, rationing, and peremptory curbside executions for thieves and looters made it feel like wartime, even if the only obvious enemies were hunger and cold.

  Those were bad enough. The very old, the very young, and the sick all suffered as rations were cut and cut again. Despair was spreading as parents saw their children’s faces pinched by the cold and malnutrition. Deaths from bronchitis, pneumonia, and influenza stood at all-time highs. So did public unrest.

  Hradetsky frowned. You wouldn’t know that from reading the tightly controlled government press. But he’d seen enough unvarnished crime statistics to know that only very careful juggling could make them sound good. Murder, muggings, and child abuse were all up. And, for the first time since the fall of the nation’s post-communist democracy, there were signs of organized political resistance to military rule. “Subversive” newspapers were beginning to appear on Budapest’s streets — taped to lampposts or slipped under doors. Some of the civilians who had led the old government were said to be forming clandestine opposition groups.

  Hungarians were angry, and they were looking for a focus for their anger.

  Hradetsky knew where his countrymen should look.

  French and German emergency aid shipments were keeping Hungary afloat, but only by a narrow margin. And every shipment carried a price tag in lost national sovereignty. With every passing week, Hradetsky saw his country sliding closer to being a wholly owned French and German client state.

  He had several old friends in the building, some of whom would still talk to him, despite his pariah status. Certainly his job left him with plenty of time to read and think, and to listen and learn. Even from his lowly post the Interior Ministry was still a good place to pick up information that contradicted the “official” line.

  Or to see interesting things. Like the nameless, arrogant visitors who dropped by the minister’s private office. They came, stayed for a few hours, and then flew back to Paris or Berlin. Rumor had it that they were checking up on police activities, reporting to their governments on the “behavior” of Hungary’s law enforcement apparatus.

  If that were true, their visits were having an unsettling effect. From Major General Racz on down, high-level ministry officials were taking an increasing interest in routine personnel assignments — even in the outlying police districts. To limit contact with the “free trade” states, border crossings were being either closed or put under army control. Every report had to be forwarded to Budapest for approval. Racz, Dozsa, and their cronies were also aggressively collecting information on anyone even remotely connected with what passed for the political opposition. It didn’t matter if it was a food riot, a labor demonstration, or just a coffeehouse gathering. The generals wanted to know who “the troublemakers” were.

  As support for the military Government of National Salvation sagged, old tyrannical habits were gaining new strength.

  Hradetsky found this renewed emphasis on political intelligence-gathering especially troubling. During Hungary’s first heady years of freedom, he and other junior officers had worked hard to make the National Police a professional crime-fighting force. One that was free of the corruption, inefficiency, and brutal misconduct so common under communism.

  Now, with foreign backing, his country’s rulers were reversing course, undoing reforms that had made Hradetsky proud to wear his police uniform. Toadyism and unquestioning deference to French and German interests were valued more than competence.

  He grimaced. There wasn’t much chance that would change any time soon. The generals were in too deep to back out now. Like their counterparts in the rest of Eastern Europe, they were signing any agreement the two European superpowers put before them. Treaties to adopt a single currency. Treaties to blend existing national legal systems and economic regulation into a continent-wide monolith. Arms sales and joint military exercises. And on and on and on. The pace was dizzying — deliberately so, he suspected.

  Hradetsky could read the handwriting on the wall. If the generals were allowed free reign, Hungary would be absorbed. She would be swallowed whole by bigger nations that preached the common interest while working for their own selfish ends. He bit his lip. The prospect of working under orders issued in Paris or Berlin made him feel sick.

  FEBRUARY 18 — HOLDING AREA, OFF THE NORTH PORT, GDANSK, POLAND

  Running lights outlined several huge ships moored several miles off the windswept Baltic coast — oil and liquid natural gas tankers waiting their turn to off-load at Gdansk’s overcrowded docks. Snatches of music and canned laughter rose above the steady slap of small waves against steel hulls. Sounds carried far across the sea at night.

  Five miles outside the offshore anchorage, a rusting’, storm-battered fishing trawler drifted silently with the tide and currents. Crewmen in winter coats and gloves clustered on the tiny vessel’s stern, grunting softly as they wrestled a heavy Zodiac inflatable raft back on board.

  Four shivering men stood near the trawler’s darkened wheelhouse, stripping off dry suits and scuba gear. Their features were almost invisible under layers of black camouflage paint, but all of them were young men in perfect physical condition.

  The trawler’s short, fair-haired captain, older but just as fit, stepped down out of the wheelhouse. “Any problems?”

  One of the divers shook his head. “None. Everything went just as
planned.”

  The captain clapped him on the shoulder and leaned back inside to speak to the helmsman. “Right. Let’s get out of here. All ahead one-quarter.”

  “All ahead one-quarter. Aye, sir.”

  The fishing vessel’s diesel engine coughed to life with a stuttering, muffled roar and its single screw started turning, churning the sea to foam. Still sailing without lights, the trawler headed west, hugging the Polish coastline.

  ABOARD THE SEATRANS NORTH STAR

  The North Star rode easily at anchor.

  Captain Frank Calabrese leaned on the bridge railing, his hands cupped around a steaming coffee mug for warmth. His ship, an LNG tanker, stretched forward almost as far as his eyes could see. Nine hundred and fifty feet long and with a 140-foot beam, she was as big as an aircraft carrier and almost as massive. The top halves of four heavily insulated domes rose above North Star’s hull like giant white golf balls — refrigerated tanks holding 786,000 barrels of natural gas kept liquid at 323 degrees below zero.

  “You wanted to see me, Skipper?” Charles MacLeod, his first officer, stepped out onto the open bridge wing.

  Calabrese sipped his coffee and then nodded. “Sure do, Charlie. I just got the word from the harbormaster. We’re cleared to off-load starting at 0900 hours tomorrow.”

  “About bloody time.”

  “Amen to that.” The American tanker captain chuckled, amused by his first officer’s impatience.

  He could also understand the younger man’s irritation. MacLeod had a pregnant wife waiting for him in Stavanger, North Star’s homeport. Every day they were delayed multiplied the Scot’s already staggering radiotelephone bill.

  So far they’d been anchored off the Polish port for more than forty-eight hours, kept waiting while other tankers pumped their precious cargoes ashore. Despite working around the clock, Gdansk’s refinery teams and pipeline crews were falling further and further behind. Trying to funnel all the oil and gas Poland needed through one medium-sized port facility was like trying to irrigate the Sahara through a single garden hose.

  Calabrese stood up straight, taking his weight off the railing. “The Poles are sending a harbor pilot aboard at first light, so I’d like you to make sure everybody’s awake and ready to go by 0500.”

  “You can count on me.” MacLeod grinned. “Sooner in, sooner out. And it’s certain that none of the boys will be sad to see the back of this place.”

  The tanker’s mixed American, British, and Norwegian crew had been on this run once before. With the city under a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew to save energy, Gdansk’s nightlife could best be described as nonexistent. Not that it really mattered. No one aboard would have a spare moment to go skirt-chasing once North Star docked.

  “Need anything else, Skipper?”

  The captain shook his head. “Nope. Not right now.” He waved the other man back inside. “Get out of the cold, Charlie. And get some rest. You’ll need it.”

  He raised the mug to his lips for another sip of hot coffee.

  Four hundred feet forward, the limpet mine magnetically clipped below North Star’s waterline detonated, rupturing her hull. Salt water, superheated air, and burning shards of steel blew inward, ripping through one of the huge refrigerated LNG storage tanks.

  Whump.

  The tanker shuddered once, rocked from side to side as though she’d struck something below the surface.

  Frank Calabrese’s eyes widened in surprise. “What the hell?” He grabbed the bridge railing. “Charlie, find out what’s happen…”

  His last words were drowned out by blaring collision alarms.

  Deep inside North Star’s wounded hull, liquid natural gas jetted out of the torn storage tank, pouring out under high pressure. As soon as it hit the warm, oxygen-rich air it began changing back to its natural state — boiling into a diffuse, highly flammable gas. Seconds later, the gas cloud touched a live electrical wire left dangling by the limpet mine blast.

  The tanker exploded.

  Calabrese, MacLeod, and the forty-seven other men aboard North Star died instantly — incinerated by an expanding ball of flame that lit the night sky for hundreds of miles around. They didn’t die alone.

  Driven by enormous pressures and temperatures, a blast wave raced outward from the blinding pillar of fire shooting up through the lower atmosphere. It smashed into two oil tankers anchored close by and left them both sinking and ablaze — torn by 190-knot winds and flying debris. Sailors who had been on deck were either blown overboard or pulped against steel bulkheads and heavy machinery. Those trapped below drowned or burned to death.

  Eight miles from North Star, the shock wave slammed into Gdansk with hurricane force, toppling trees all over the city. Windows facing the blast suddenly blew inward, sending shards of glass sleeting through homes and offices with deadly force. Those hit by the hail of flying glass, men, women, and children — anyone caught facing the wrong way at the wrong time — went down screaming, disfigured or dying. Still others burned to death in fires sparked by fallen electric power lines. Exposed to the full force of the shock wave, several old or poorly constructed buildings near the waterfront collapsed, crushing their inhabitants beneath tons of brick and broken concrete.

  When the first deafening echoes faded, thousands of stunned Poles stumbled out of their damaged homes to stare in horror at the eerie, flickering orange glow on the northern horizon.

  FEBRUARY 20 — NEAR GDANSK

  Ross Huntington trudged grimly along the shore. His escort, a short, stocky man, wore the blue uniform jacket of the Polish Navy. Four stripes on his shoulder boards identified him as a komandor, a captain. They were accompanied by four soldiers in full battle gear and armed with AKM assault rifles. Blue shield and white anchor shoulder patches marked them as members of the elite 7th Coastal Defense Brigade. More soldiers from the same unit manned artillery pieces and antiaircraft guns scattered up and down the waterfront.

  Thick black crude oil coated the sea and coastline for miles in all directions. Its sickly sweet smell hung over everything. Several miles offshore, flames and heavy smoke still billowed above one of the tankers set afire when North Star exploded. The other lay on its side closer in, sunk in shallow water and leaking oil from ruptured cargo holds. Smaller craft swarmed around the two wrecks — fighting fires or deploying floating booms in a desperate effort to contain the oil spill.

  Oil and gas tankers that had survived the blast were anchored further out, barely visible through a thin gray haze of smoke and early morning fog. Warships surrounded them, steaming slowly back and forth on patrol around the anchorage. Helicopters prowled out to sea and along the coast.

  Four-man teams moved slowly down the oil-smeared beach, kneeling from time to time to study pieces of unidentified debris scattered among the dead fish and dying seabirds. Surgical masks, gloves, and nylon protective suits gave them an unearthly, almost inhuman appearance.

  Huntington stopped walking for a moment to watch them work. He glanced toward the Polish Navy captain waiting silently by his side. “What are they looking for? Evidence?”

  The shorter man shook his head. “Remains, Mr. Huntington. Some parts of those who were killed are still being washed ashore.”

  Huntington’s stomach knotted. He’d seen the preliminary numbers before flying out of Washington on this emergency fact-finding mission. The explosion had reached far beyond the harbor, flinging debris into the city itself. Forty-two men, women, and children were confirmed dead. Another sixty-one sailors were still missing and also presumed dead. Eyewitness accounts made it clear that no one aboard North Star or near it could possibly have survived the explosion. Somehow, though, those casualty figures had been unreal, comfortingly abstract. Seeing the soldiers and medical personnel combing this blackened beach for corpses made the disaster sickeningly real.

  He looked away, staring out to sea. He’d fought hard to win approval for the oil and gas shipments to Gdansk. At the time, it had seemed the next logical move in
the bloodless tit-for-tat trade war they were waging against the French and Germans. Now more than one hundred people were dead. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop feeling somehow responsible for their deaths.

  He’d miscalculated. The men in Paris and Berlin were far more ruthless than he’d ever imagined.

  Huntington turned back to face the Polish naval officer. “We still don’t have any hard evidence of sabotage?”

  “No, sir.” The Pole shook his head in frustration. “And we’re not likely to find any, either. Not after a blast like that.”

  Huntington nodded. Preliminary estimates were that the natural gas carried aboard North Star had exploded with a force equal to roughly sixteen thousand tons of TNT — nearly the punch packed by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All that was left of the LNG tanker were several million tiny metal fragments scattered far and wide across the Baltic seabed.

  Still, it didn’t take a genius to imagine what must have happened. Or who was responsible.

  Huntington shivered as the wind gusted, swirling loose sand into the air. Just to the east lay the Westerplatte, a headland guarding the harbor entrance. The promontory had already earned a grim place in the world’s history books. A German battleship, Schleswig-Holstein, had fired the first shots of World War II there — trying to bombard Gdansk’s small Polish garrison into submission. The war that followed had submerged the entire globe in blood and fire for six long years.

  He looked out across the wreck-strewn sea, suddenly afraid that history was repeating itself.

  FEBRUARY 21 — PARIS

  Nicolas Desaix almost never watched television. This evening he was making an exception. He sat alone in his private office, transfixed by the images being broadcast from just off the Polish coast.

  “No one knows what went wrong aboard this floating bomb, the SeaTrans North Star. A careless accident? Sabotage by environmental extremists? Who can say? But one thing is very clear according to the experts. This disaster could have been worse. Much worse.”