Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “But not of her own free will. If it’d been up to her, she’d have stayed on dry land. She’s on board because she has no other option.”

  Julie squinted. “No other option? We’re talking about Carmen Debagh, Capitaine. She always has options.” She added with confidence, “She’s in love with you. That’s why she’s here.”

  For a moment Riley tried to wrap his head around the idea. All things considered, the conversation he’d had with Carmen a few hours before seemed to suggest Julie was right. But it was still hard to use “Carmen” and “in love” in the same sentence. He knew she enjoyed his company, but aside from occasional sex without question or commitment, he really didn’t believe she felt much more.

  Before he could argue, however, Julie said in her most nonchalant tone, “And if you can’t see it, you’re the stupidest man alive, mon capitaine.”

  Without the energy to reprimand her for her flagrant lack of respect, Riley left the helm, asking her to wake him up in four hours.

  All he could think of as he shuffled to his cabin was his mattress and whether or not he could stay awake long enough to reach it. His eyelids drooping, he opened the door to his cabin and closed it behind him. Giving up on the idea of undressing or taking off his shoes, he headed for the cot.

  It wasn’t until he was two feet away that he realized it was already occupied. Taking up half the bed, Carmen had her back to him, apparently asleep and, despite the cold, completely naked.

  Riley, far from clearheaded, blinked in confusion at the sight of her. When he finally reacted, he realized she hadn’t been assigned a cabin and had probably decided to use his, though the whole thing stunk of Julie’s meddling. In spite of everything, he couldn’t think of anything but stretching out and closing his eyes, so he settled for taking off his shoes and lying down without even removing his coat.

  Getting comfortable, he turned on his side toward Carmen and realized she was looking at him over her shoulder.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  Riley felt tongue-tied but managed to ask hoarsely, “Then why are you naked?”

  “There aren’t any blankets, and you know I can’t sleep with clothes on.”

  “And why not—”

  “Why not stop asking silly questions and hug me,” she said, curling up.

  Incapable of doing anything else, Riley wrapped his arm around her waist and held her. He clumsily pressed his bruised body against hers, clutching her like he was the last castaway of the Pequod in Moby-Dick, and she Queequeg’s coffin. Pressing his face in that tangle of black hair, he closed his eyes and immediately fell deeply asleep.

  Strangely, it wasn’t the crash of things falling to the floor, a violent dip, or any of the noises a ship makes in the middle of a storm that woke Riley up. It was the complete absence of all that. Only the rhythmic drumming of the motor disturbed the stillness. For a moment, he had the absurd idea the crew had abandoned ship and left him and his stupid plan to face a German corsair ship with a little freighter alone.

  Then he heard footsteps above his head. There was someone in the lounge, but everything was silent and dark. He thought maybe all the hours awake had taken their toll on his vision, but lifting his head a little he saw some light coming in from under the door. Night had fallen. He instinctively brought his watch to his face, but it was too dark to read it. He stretched his arm out and realized Carmen wasn’t there.

  Alarmed and confused, he sat up and put his feet on the cold floor. Wait, why are my feet bare? Where are my socks? He felt around like a blind man who’d lost his wallet and discovered socks weren’t all he was missing. Someone had stripped him naked from head to toe.

  He stood up and felt for the light switch. Then he opened the small closet, put on the first things he found, and rushed to the deck.

  It was pitch dark. The storm had ended, and millions of stars were shining. The spinnaker was gone, as if it had never been there. How long was I asleep?

  He headed up the stairs to the lounge, his head spinning. Inside he could hear voices and laughter. He opened the door and quickly stepped inside, ready to ask why they hadn’t woken him up. What he saw almost gave him a heart attack.

  There, standing in the middle of his ship with his mousy face and round glasses, was Helmut Kirchner, in the unmistakable black SS uniform designed by Hugo Boss.

  The rest of the crew and passengers—with the exception of Elsa—were there too, startled by his brusque interruption, as if they’d been caught in the middle of a conspiracy.

  Riley’s mouth dropped.

  Kirchner smirked and stretched out his arm. “Heil Hitler!”

  48

  Riley patiently listened to the intricate plot, planned to the last detail during the fourteen hours he’d slept.

  Jack gave Kirchner credit for coming up with the idea. Riley kept eyeing the physicist, still in the SS uniform, the peaked cap on the table next to him.

  “Suddenly, it all became clear,” Jack said. “Thanks to Marco’s hobby of collecting military uniforms, we have the SS officer uniform from the Phobos. So we have the perfect disguise, and as you can see, we also have the perfect person to wear it.”

  Riley took another bite of his cheese sandwich. “No way. It’s absurd, complicated, and overly risky. Forget about it. This is my thing.”

  “Your thing?” Jack threw his hands up. “Shit! You don’t see how crazy it is to try to ram the Deimos with this ship? When you get within a mile, they’ll have sunk you four times over. Your plan’s bad, Alex. If you want to stop that ship, you’ll need our help, ’cause without it you won’t do anything but kill yourself.”

  Riley shook his head again. “That’s my problem. I’m not going to let you risk more than you already are. When we reach Santa Maria everyone’s getting off. You’ve already done much more than you should’ve at this point.”

  “Captain Riley,” Kirchner said, “don’t you think we should decide for ourselves?”

  Riley couldn’t help but shudder every time he saw him in that uniform. “You could if this were a democracy, but it isn’t. It’s my ship, and I’m the captain, so even if you don’t like my decision, it’s the only one that counts.”

  “But your decision could kill a lot of people,” Jack said, irritated. “Don’t you see? You’re taking it personally when in reality the only thing that matters is avoiding a catastrophe. You know perfectly well Dr. Kirchner’s plan is more likely to succeed than yours.” He leaned on the table and fixed his eyes on Riley. “Captain or not, you don’t have the right to decide to kill people by making a bad decision.”

  Jack was starting to get through, but Riley was still searching for holes in the logic. “I think you’re overlooking something. What’s going to happen when you board the Deimos and its commander contacts Berlin to confirm your identity?” he asked Kirchner. “Let me tell you. A minute later you’ll be fish food.”

  Kirchner smiled cleverly. “That won’t happen.”

  “Explain.”

  “Simple, they can’t. Their mission is so secret they’re prohibited from communicating via radio, to prevent the transmission from being intercepted.”

  Riley was unconvinced.

  “Think about it,” Kirchner insisted. “They can only receive messages, not send them, and they’ll arrive on time at the coordinates given by Berlin.”

  “And there we’ll be!” Jack shouted, slapping the table. “Helmut will board the Deimos, impersonating the late Colonel Klaus Heydrich of the SS, saying he’s Himmler’s personal envoy to oversee the operation. He’ll sabotage the bomb on the way and disembark in America dressed like a civilian along with the other Nazi agents.”

  “Without knowing it, the SS will be paying for my ticket to the US,” Kirchner said, smiling.

  Riley was out of arguments. Looking at the seven faces in front of him, he realized he couldn’t change their minds.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do it your way, but on one condition.”

  “W
hat condition?”

  “I go with Helmut.”

  Kirchner looked over his glasses at Riley, appearing not to understand. “Excuse me? Did you say . . . go with me?”

  “That’s what I said. I’m going with you.”

  Kirchner looked from one person to the other as if expecting someone to explain such nonsense. “But why? Once on the boat, I’ll be able to use my knowledge to deactivate the explosive device, or at least sabotage the boat’s systems to force them to go back.”

  “You already explained that. But if you can’t?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if you can’t deactivate the bomb for some reason, how are you going to sabotage an eight-thousand-ton ship?”

  “Well, I haven’t thought about that. I suppose something would occur to me.”

  Riley looked at Kirchner like a father would at a too-naïve child. “If we don’t sink the Deimos, the only thing we’ll achieve is setting their mission back one or two weeks. Then we might have no way of stopping them. We can’t risk that. If you can’t deactivate the bomb, we’ll have to sink the ship.”

  “How?” César asked.

  “There are only two ways to sink a ship from the inside,” Jack said. “Using explosives to create a leak, or opening the ballast valves.”

  “Exactly,” Riley said. “And you, Dr. Kirchner, don’t know how to do either, so I’ll have to go with you.”

  Kirchner gave him a strained smile. “You want to board the Deimos with me? Are you crazy? The only thing you’d do is give me away! You don’t even speak German!”

  “That doesn’t matter. You said the corsair ship has more than thirty agents whose mission it is to infiltrate the US, right? Well, what better spy for the Nazis,” he said, pointing his thumb at himself, “than a real American?”

  The crew watched in disbelief as Kirchner and Riley argued over who was better qualified to sacrifice himself.

  “No, no, and no!” Kirchner kept saying. “I don’t know what you think of us Germans, but we aren’t idiots. They’d never believe you’re a secret agent!”

  “They’ll believe it because you’ll tell them,” Riley insisted. “Precisely because it’s so absurd, they’ll just think their commanders are geniuses for choosing me. Tell them I’m a member of the American Nazi Party.”

  “American Nazi Party? Does that even exist?”

  “You don’t know? None of you know?” Riley said. “There are a lot of Nazi fanatics in the land of liberty who think fascism and racism are the only ways to save the country, and they’re not just a handful of extremists,” he added. “There are so many of them that they’ve held little parades in some cities, dressed like Hitler Youth, waving Nazi flags. Even people like Henry Ford have helped to finance the Nazi Party and the Third Reich.”

  “True,” Jack said, disgusted. “The American Nazis even had a rally in Madison Square Garden. Thousands attended.”

  Kirchner looked at them, trying to figure out if they were pulling his leg or not. “I . . . I had no idea. I never would have imagined.”

  “Well, believe it, because it’s the sad truth.”

  “I believe you, Captain,” Kirchner said, nodding. “But we’ll have to convince the captain of the Deimos, and he may not have as much confidence in you.”

  Riley made a dismissive gesture. “You can explain it to them however you want—I’m a member of the KKK, or Roosevelt’s my father and abandoned me in an orphanage. Whatever you want, Helmut. You’re an SS colonel, and they’ll believe you.”

  “It’s an unnecessary risk,” he objected. “If they find you out, which sooner or later they will, we’ll lose everything.”

  Riley drummed on the table, taking a breath. “Dr. Kirchner, you don’t know how thankful I am you’re willing to risk your life like this to save my countrymen. But you have to understand that I can’t leave you on that ship and calmly turn my back, praying you’ll deactivate an atomic bomb that you didn’t even think existed a few days ago. I have to cover as many bases as possible, and although you’re more likely than anyone to succeed, I should go with you in case we have to sink the fucking ship. Understand?”

  After a few seconds, Kirchner nodded.

  “Think about it,” Riley continued. “Either way you’ll take the lead. I’ll just be another agent on board, and instead of thirty-five there’ll be thirty-six spies.”

  “Thirty-seven,” Jack said. “We’ll be thirty-seven. I’m going too.”

  Kirchner grimaced and rolled his eyes as Riley turned, ready to object.

  “Don’t even bother, Alex,” Jack said, raising a hand. “I’m going no matter what, so you have nothing to say.”

  “No way, Jack. You have to stay in command of the Pingarrón, and it’d be dumb for you to put yourself at risk too,” Riley said. “If in the end we have to sink the Deimos, it’ll be the same whether you’re there or not.”

  “I already said don’t bother,” Jack countered. “You have no idea what’s going to happen once you’re on board, so my help could end up being critical. Even though I was born in Spain, I feel as American as you. So don’t tell me again what I can and cannot do,” he said seriously, crossing his arms. “All right?”

  Riley knew there was no way he could get Jack to change his mind. He did have a point that his presence could mean the difference between success and failure. “Fine. It’s your decision, Jack,” he grumbled, feeling secretly pleased he’d go in with an old comrade. “We still have twenty-six hours to go. What’s our position and speed?”

  Julie, as if suddenly waking up from a dream, took out a little notebook from her pocket. “Latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty-three minutes north.” She looked up. “Without the wind, our actual speed is eighteen knots again.”

  Riley pulled the nautical chart of the Atlantic closer and, after making some quick lines with the square and bevel, clicked his tongue and tapped the pen on the table. “It’s gonna be close.”

  “Thanks to your sail idea, which gave us four or five extra knots during the storm,” Julie said.

  “That’ll be no consolation,” he murmured, still looking at the X south of the Azores, “if we’re not right there by midnight tomorrow.”

  49

  With the compass pointing to two-eight-zero, the ship made its way through the aftermath of the storm. So everyone would be well rested when the time came, and since they no longer had a sail or storm to worry about, the night and the next day were relatively relaxed. But they still had hard work ahead of them before their appointment with the Deimos.

  Luckily, the meeting would happen at night, which would allow them to take advantage of the darkness and the distance to hide the sad state of the ship, which would undoubtedly cause uncomfortable questions. Regardless, they decided to use a blowtorch to cut off part of the smokestack so that—at least from a distance—it didn’t look like it’d been bitten off. They also painted the shabby wheelhouse black, and in case the name Pingarrón had made it onto the Kriegsmarine’s blacklist, they covered it up on both sides and painted over two letters on the stern, giving the ship the inglorious name Ping Rón. In sum, it was a full-fledged makeover intended to deceive the German ship captain in the hopes of carrying out Helmut’s plan without arousing too much suspicion.

  The afternoon was ending when Riley headed to his cabin. The door to the German passengers’ cabin opened and Elsa appeared in the hallway. Apparently just out of the shower, she was barely covered with a tiny towel, dripping water in a puddle at her bare feet. “Hello, Captain,” she said, casually leaning in the doorway.

  He stopped and looked both ways, alarm bells ringing in his head.

  “Don’t worry,” she said with a cunning smile. “This time no one will interrupt us.”

  Riley crossed his arms and took a deep breath, knowing it was a bad idea to stay there. “Why’d you do it?”

  She shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Riley exhaled. “I thought I’d already made myself c
lear.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Fuck . . . Elsa.” Riley rubbed his eyes, incredibly tired. “I really don’t have time for this.”

  “I understand . . . You only have time when you want to.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth. You just don’t want her to know.”

  “Forget about Carmen. This is between you and me.”

  “So there’s still something between you and me?”

  Riley looked up and snorted. “Yes, of course. We had an adventure. Is that what you want to hear me say? It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. And you don’t know how much I regret it.”

  “You’re lying,” she said confidently. “You want me. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “In my eyes . . .” He took a deep breath and looked long and hard at his boots. “Look, Elsa, this has already gone too far. I don’t know what the hell you see in me, but I assure you you’re mistaken. You’re a great woman and any sane man would give his arm for you, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “Don’t waste your time on me, for your own good.”

  “What’s good for me is my choice, and I still believe we—”

  “There is no ‘we,’ damn it!” Riley shouted. “I don’t care whether you believe it or not, but there never has been and never will be anything between us. What happened, happened, and that can’t be changed, but I promise it won’t happen again. Never again. Got it? Never.” He pointed to his temple. “Get it through your thick German head.”

  He didn’t know how to react when she covered her face with her hands and started to sob quietly. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. Tears ran through her fingers like she was a little girl who’d lost her kitten. Riley hated himself for having to talk that way, but he felt he had to put an end to the situation, and unfortunately he lacked the tact to do it any better.

  Still, he didn’t want to hurt anyone unnecessarily, especially not a woman. He corrected himself: a girl. A girl who looked desperate, vulnerable, and helpless. An insistent voice in his head—hauntingly similar to his mom’s—told him to console her and ask her forgiveness for what he’d said and the way he’d said it. He was about to do so when Elsa looked up with bloodshot eyes.