by Brad Latham
Now the beep-beep-beep of the mainland’s signal came in, and he saw “Sparks” or whatever his name would be in German scribble something on a pad.
Sparks tore off the page and brought it to the captain who looked at it in a puzzled way and handed it to Klein as he added something in German.
Klein studied it for a whole minute.
“Show me something that proves you are Richard Fischer,” Klein said.
“I’m working undercover,” Lockwood said.
“Show me what cover.”
Lockwood took out his wallet and flipped it open to show him the badge that Manners had given him that said, U.S. Department of the Treasury. “As I said, I am too well placed to be going back to Germany.”
Klein took the wallet and studied the gold shield. He looked to be spelling out the lettering. He looked up at Lockwood.
“This is real?” he asked Lockwood.
“It’s real, all right. That’s how we managed to steal the bombsight.”
“Don’t talk, please,” Klein said. His eyes flicked at the captain and the sailors. “They don’t know what is in the crate, and it’s better they do not,” he added so that only Lockwood could hear him.
Everything shifted for Lockwood with that statement. He had been struggling to figure out who was who here, and it had felt tangled. But he knew enough about how men operated and that somebody gave the orders to know from the tone in Klein’s voice that he was the kingpin here. Probably he had been sent along to handle the whole business of picking up this crate; it would explain why he had come along on the raft. The captain might be captain of this boat, but he took orders from Klein because this was Klein’s mission. He had to convince little Mr. Klein that it was in his best interest to deposit him back on shore.
“I want a drink to celebrate,” Lockwood said.
“A drink?”
“Schnapps,” Lockwood said. “I have been working on this project for twelve months. It’s a great victory for Germany that’s in that crate.”
“Yes, let’s have a toast,” the captain said. “One won’t hurt.”
“We have to get back to Germany with this crate, Captain. We don’t have time for foolishness,” Klein said.
“We have come very far,” the captain said. “We do not know what for. The men are tired of being under water so much, with the air so bad-smelling.”
“For morale, right, mine Captain?” Lockwood shouted with a laugh in his voice.
The captain raised a pudgy fist and shook it. “To make the men have more brave.”
From the captain’s smirk, Lockwood gathered that he wanted an excuse for a drink as much as any of his men.
“Bring out a bottle!” the captain said in English and then added something in German.
Klein gave a little snort and shrugged just a bit, as if to say, Yes, the lower orders will have to be indulged. A bottle surfaced from somewhere and glasses appeared in the hands of the dozen men Lockwood could see, and then hands and faces popped out from behind pipes and down the long corridor so that he couldn’t tell how many men the sub contained. Every hand had some container—from what looked like a canteen top to a thimble. When the bottle had been passed around—Klein himself had a water tumbler, Lockwood another—Lockwood raised his glass for a toast.
“To the Fatherland!” he shouted.
The answer came back like a rusty rumble. From behind pipes and up the cramped corridor a chorus rang out that sounded like a bad imitation of his toast in thick English.
A second round was poured, the bottle bobbling its way around the cramped space that looked like nothing to Lockwood so much as the inside of a boiler. He saw a second bottle down at the end of the corridor. Herr Klein couldn’t control everything.
Lockwood raised his glass. “To our great Fuehrer!”
Again he heard a raspy imitation of his toast and to his left he heard Klein’s crisp-sounding, “Seig Heil!”
The captain had to toast the successful arrival of the “mystaire box.”
Lockwood toasted the bravery of the crew and the safe return to the Fatherland.
The captain drew himself up and looked serious and toasted the generous allies of the Fatherland in America. “May ve join our hands together and danze in the streets of New York one day.”
Lockwood raised his tumbler and shouted back, “Here’s to our dancing in the streets of New York!”
Everyone shouted. The party could have gotten a lot warmer then had not Klein arranged his pretty but hard face and said, “It is almost morning, Captain. I should not have to remind you that America has a coastal patrol.”
“How about the raft, Mr. Klein?” Lockwood asked.
“The raft?”
“Let me take it back. The Bund here will be very upset when they find out I’ve been captured by you. We have no one as high up in the Secret Service as I.”
“We are short of water and food now,” the captain said. “It was a man and a dog you said we were to pick up. My men wouldn’t have put up with the dog anyway. We would have killed it.” He snickered. “Probably eaten it.”
“The raft will give it all away,” Klein said.
“Of course. I will destroy it,” Lockwood answered.
With a burst of comradely feeling, Lockwood was assisted up the ladder and into the large raft and was set adrift with one small paddle.
“I’ve got a bad right arm,” he complained. “Where’s shore?”
“A compass!” the captain shouted. “Get our Fischer my small compass, Hans!”
Lockwood sat in the raft, which looked as large as a Model T, and waited for the compass. The sea rocked him. Above him, some dozen German sailors stood grinning in the quarter-light of first dawn. He felt a little sick to his stomach. When would the bomb in the crate go off? How far did he have to be away from this boiler-like contraption to escape having his raft sunk? Suppose Hans got a message from the Bund before he came back up the hatch?
He smiled at the sailors and waved at them, and they waved back.
Finally, Hans returned with the compass. Klein said, “We must hurry, Captain.”
Lockwood tried to push himself off from the sub’s metallic surface with the paddle, but it kept slipping off. In seconds the deck of the sub was clear of Germans. The hatch clanged, and Lockwood heard hisses and bubbles and gurglings. The raft spun so hard Lockwood had to hold on with his good and his injured arm to keep from being thrown out.
He would have to wait till dawn to read the compass. He leaned back in the raft against the soft rubber sides and took out a familiar Camel. The smoke felt comforting as he drew it into his lungs. Even if the thing blew up under him, he was ready.
Lockwood felt a rumble, as if someone were bowling with giant boulders at the bottom of the sea. Then through the darkness he heard a rush of water and saw a column of whiteness in the distance off to his right. He held on to the inflated side of the raft with his good arm as a four-foot wave swept his small lily pad up and almost over and down.
The sea quieted again. All those men. That water rushing in. Their shock, their dismay, their having to suddenly accept that life was all over. He took another drag on the Camel. What would it be like when his turn came?
Dawn crept up. Around him floated wood and bits of cloth. Something that looked like a hand passed by slowly.
He figured he would finish the cigarette and start paddling.
Out there, three thousand miles across this expanse of water, millions of Germans like those down there were goose-stepping across the European continent. Others built ships, others airplanes, more built cannons, tanks, armored cars, machine pistols—getting ready. Lockwood shivered. We have to get ready, too, Lockwood told himself. We went through all this back in 1917, and we’re going to have to go through it all over again. He sighed with weariness. Yes, we’d better get ready fast.
He flipped the butt of the cigarette into the sea and reached for the paddle.
THE REDHEADED PhD
&nb
sp; looks pretty smart when she takes off her glasses.
She looks even smarter when she takes off
everything else.
The truth is, she could win the Nobel Prize in bed.
Too bad she has to be punished.
Too bad she knows too much about
the doomsday to come.
THE HOOK
can’t wait to get involved in the case.
He’s Bill Lockwood, insurance investigator.
A product of Long Island’s gold coast
and World War I,
he smokes Camels and packs a revolver.
But what good is his Colt .38 when he’s up against
Adolf H. and his plan
to blow up the western world?
