Eva (49 page)

Willi and Eva had arrived at their final destination on the
B-B Achse.
Within hours they would leave war-torn, enemy-occupied Europe and safely embark on a new era, an era that in time would see the rebirth of all that had been lost.

For now.

The railroad station had been a treasure trove of information. In a dog-eared, grease-spotted telephone directory borrowed from the stationmaster’s office after much dickering and the passing of a few lire, Woody had found the address of the
Cantiere-ripara-zioni-Battelli di Benjamino Montesano
in the old harbor. Part of a torn and soiled city plan tacked up behind the shattered glass of a display case had, as luck would have it, included the area he sought, but the section of town where the railroad station itself was located was ripped away. However, the San Nicola Basilica in the heart of the old town, where the fishermen and their families lived, was on the remaining part, and he’d had no trouble finding that. The Bari citizens had been helpful—and cluckingly solicitous when he showed them his mutilated mouth.

The old town was heavily damaged, but Woody was awed by the way the resourceful inhabitants had made makeshift repairs and somehow managed to make the ruins habitable. The place was teeming with people. Barefooted children played in the rubble-strewn streets, and black-haired women were busy hauling in the colorful wash that had been strung out to dry between the windows in the building walls still standing.

It was beginning to grow dark as Woody walked past the San Nicola Basilica. Though battle-scarred and shrapnel-pitted the famous Apulian Romanesque monument miraculously was still standing, a testament to survival. He looked at the imposing structure.

The North Pole, Woody thought. This war-scorched, battle-marred edifice was a far cry from the pristine, white wilderness where Santa Claus was supposed to reside. Yet, here he was. Really. At least his bones. It had been one of the first childhood illusions, he recalled with bittersweet remembrance, that had been shattered by his insatiable thirst for knowledge. Santa Claus. In reality, he had found out, his favorite was a fourth-century Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, a kindly man who became the patron saint of merchants, mariners, and especially children: Saint Nicholas. Some seven centuries after his death, he had read, a band of sailors from Bari stole the saint’s remains and spirited them to their hometown where in time the San Nicola Basilica was erected to house the relics. And here, in the crypt under the very building he was walking by, the sacred bones of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children, were laid to rest. For a fleeting instant all his present problems and perils vanished, and his childhood disappointment at learning the truth flitted through his mind. He remembered reading how the fame and legend of Saint Nick had swept through Europe, and that in Holland he was known as Sint Niklaas, or as the children would say, Sinter Klaas. It was the early Dutch settlers in New York who brought the name and the gift-giving tradition to the new world, and Sinter Klaas in the cauldron of New World languages was soon corrupted to Santa Claus, the Father Christmas of today. He had felt betrayed. It was the first time he’d realized that sometimes knowledge can inflict hurt.

When he had first heard the story, he remembered, he had been told that good old Saint Nick was often represented with three golden balls. He’d wondered mightily how a man could have three balls, especially golden ones. He’d even tried to picture himself so endowed, but he’d been left only to speculate. And he’d been too embarrassed to ask. Only much later had he learned that the three golden balls were the symbol of the medieval merchants’ guild, and since the merchants of necessity also were moneylenders, the three balls became the sign of the pawnbroker. How quickly tales of romance and mysticism turn mundane, he mused.

He looked around as he hurried through the devastated old town. Santa Claus must have been sound asleep, he thought, the day the Nazis rained their special gifts from the sky down upon the harbor of Bari.

It was a good two hours later when Woody finally made his move from his place of hiding at a derailed flatcar lying on a railroad siding inland from the Benjamino Montesano Boat Works. The yard was dead and apparently deserted, but not entirely dark. There was still a partial moon in the cloudless sky and the boat works were sparsely illuminated by the pitiless glare from occasional naked light bulbs hanging on tall poles throughout the place, creating feeble pools of pale light beneath them. He had long since gotten his night vision and was able to see quite well. In turn he stretched and flexed each muscle in his body to limber them up after his hours of cramped immobility. Absentmindedly he tongued the hole in his jaw. It was beginning to heal again.

Stealthily, silently, keeping to the shadows as much as possible and avoiding any quick motions, he made his way to the tall fence, part wooden, part wire, that surrounded the boat works. A large, wrought iron double gate big enough to accommodate two trucks driving abreast gave access to the yard. A big sign painted in black letters had been affixed to it:
VIETATO L’INGRESSO!—No
Trespassing! And to make doubly sure a sturdy padlock effectively barred unwelcome visitors. But in the wooden fence adjoining the gate was a small door, also locked. It took Woody less than thirty seconds to pick it.

Automatically he checked the Walther 7.65 he’d taken from the SS officer in Merano and eased it into his belt on his left. He stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him.

For a while he stood motionless, listening to the night noises and getting his bearings. Directly in front of him loomed a huge semicircular ship saw, a pile of heavy timbers stacked nearby. The area was in deep shadow from a water tower rising from sturdy iron supports next to the saw housing. Cautiously he slipped from the door in the fence to the pool of blackness beneath the tower.

He peered into the gloom surrounding him. A weather-beaten wooden building stretched before him. He could make out a door, and beside it a window, its panes almost opaque with grime. But a faint, distant light shone behind them. Carefully he tried the door. It was unlocked. It opened at his first push. Quietly he stepped inside.

He found himself in a large plant, the combination joinery and machine shop of the boat works. In the middle of the spacious area stood a single work light, its caged bulb totally unable to reach the far corners of the cavernous hall. The big shop was cluttered with boxes and benches, crates and casks, and rolls of cordage and canvas. The place was deserted, but only by humans. Spaced throughout the shop stood massive pieces of machinery poised like menacing, misshapen sentries of age-tempered steel; black-silhouetted planers, caulkers, sanders, and shapers seemed to watch his every step malevolently as he slowly made his way through the area; lathes and broachers, milling machines and compressors seemed to lie in wait for his slightest misstep.

His heartbeat was rapid and loud in his head. He knew he was letting the eerie atmosphere of the damned place get to him. He took a deep breath and willed himself to ignore it. Dammit!—it was nothing but a bunch of dirty and decayed machinery.

But sometimes death does hide in dirt and decay.

At the far end of the shop area he came to another door, leading to the outside. For a moment he listened, then—slowly—he pushed it open.

Before him, bathed in the pale light from the moon and the feeble spots hanging high on the naked poles, lay the yard area of Benjamino Montesano’s Boat Works. Dominated by a great, circular turntable pit from which radiated more than a dozen rail spurs like spokes from the hub of a gigantic wheel, the yard was a jungle of shapes and shadows. On the spurs, ringing the turntable pit, wedged in their squat, iron-wheeled cradles, stood a conglomeration of boats in various stages of breakdown and repair, like skeletal behemoths huddled around a dry watering hole, each tethered to an A-shaped scaffolding stand. And keeping them in check, positioned around the periphery of the yard, he could glimpse several stacks of drums and barrels, empty cradles, broken scaffolding, and a few shacks and sheds, lorded over by a tall crane.

Woody stood statue-still, breathing shallowly through his mouth so he would be able to hear the slightest noise. The only sound that reached him was the ripple of the wavelets slapping at the piers and the floating docks at the water edge to his right. With his eyes he made a thorough search of the area lying before him, picking a spot, studying it until he knew it in detail and moving on to the next, until he had surveyed the entire yard. He had seen no movement at all, nothing out of keeping.

The massive landing in the turntable pit was empty, forming a solid bridge between the marine railway and the winch house, but there was a six-foot gap between the landing and the hauling platform which had not been pulled all the way up, to leave room for repair or maintenance work in the pulley shaft. It showed up as a pitch-black hole in the ground, and puzzled Woody until he figured out what it was. Over the door to the ramshackle shed that housed the winch machinery was painted in big, black letters:
PERICOLO!
—Danger! He could not make out the legend written beneath, although a little blue light bulb, fixed over the open doorway, spilled a puddle of pale light on the oil-soaked ground outside which glistened with a septic, iridescent shimmer.

Danger!

The hackles rose on the back of his neck. He felt the familiar tightening sensation in the pit of his stomach. That gut feeling that had become so familiar to him since he had first felt it, how long ago? When for the first time he had stood in the dark outside a barred door, gun in sweaty hand, ready to break in and grab a cornered enemy agent.

It was here, he thought. Here in the gloom and clutter and filth of a two-bit, run-down boatyard; here amid the stench of machine oil and tar and soggy rot. It was here he would finally end his quest.

Win—or lose.

Cautiously, keeping to the deepest shadows, he started into the yard, making his way from boat to boat. He looked back toward the building from which he had come. It was a two-story affair. Above the workshop a row of windows, all dark, indicated the existence of offices or rooms. The building on the side facing the yard had been freshly painted. Light blue with white trim. An outside staircase with a white handrail led to the upper story.

He was coming upon a boat, pinioned in its cradle. Broad-beamed, it was gaily painted in red, blue, and green. It had a single mast and a rust-pitted screw.

He stopped. The cradle was still wet, and so was the ground around the rails on which it stood. The boat had only recently been hauled from the harbor waters.

Warily he climbed up the A-shaped scaffolding standing next to the boat. For a moment he stood still, etching the layout of the boatyard on his mind.

Ahead of him gaped the black circular hole of the turntable with the waterfront and the marine railway with its hauling platform on the right, and the winch house on his left. Beyond the turntable pit he could make out the big crane and a few dark sheds. To his right stood the main building and, surrounding him, on the other rail spurs radiating from the pit, were other cradles, some empty, some with boats.

He took one more step up the ladder. He peered over the railing of the boat—and froze.

Lashed to the mast was a motorcycle.
His
Belgian motorbike. The one he had stolen at the inn,
Zum Grünen Kranze.
The one that had been taken from him by the
Achse
agents in Memmingen.
His,
dammit! There was no doubt. One of the damned baskets he’d been saddled with in Coburg was still tied to the back of the bike as a baggage rack!

He stared at the motorcycle. He craned to look.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door being opened, coming from the building.

At once he went rigid.

Clinging to the rickety scaffolding, he turned toward the sound.

I
N THE DIM LIGHT
he could see three figures walking down the stairs on the side of the building. A portly, elderly man whose left sleeve was pinned to the shoulder of his jacket as was the custom of amputees in Europe. Especially the war-wounded. A young man who, with obvious familiarity, cradled a submachine gun in his arms. Woody thought he recognized it as the distinctive Italian Beretta. And a woman. A woman, blond, and unmistakably pregnant, who made her way down the wooden stairs holding on to the railing, carefully peering over her swollen belly.

Eva!

Woody hardly dared breathe as he clung to the scaffolding. Even though he knew there was no way he could be seen by the people on the stairs as long as he kept still, he felt nakedly exposed, hanging on to the spindly wooden frame. He stared.

Eva. Pregnant as life. About to carry the Fuhrer’s heir to a safe haven, God knows where. And to a future which was planned to hold—what? Unleashing another Adolf Hitler on the world? Possible.

Unless she was stopped.

Now!