Ice Reich (35 page)

"Two weeks, perhaps less."

"And when do we get back?"

"That depends on you, doesn't it?"

She summoned her courage. "Are you going to— " She couldn't bring herself to utter the word
kill.
"Are you going to
leave
us down there, Jürgen?"

Drexler was taken aback. He swallowed. "No." He shook his head. "At first I wanted to leave
him.
But what would be the point? You're about to help me achieve what I want. And eliminating him won't win you back. So if you cooperate I'll set him free. Possibly I'll put him in a life raft off some port of refuge. Port Stanley in the Falklands, perhaps, or Ushuaia in Argentina. Even Cape Town."

"And what about me?"

"That'll be your choice. I can't stop you from joining him."

She looked incredulous.

"I
won't
stop you from joining him— if that's still what you want."

He saw the look of new hope on her face and realized he may have been
too
soothing. "Of course, this promise is contingent on both of you doing your jobs properly."

"So you can play with disease."

"No! To combat it!" He grimaced, frustrated. "Listen, I know you hate me right now, but this trip isn't as awful as you think. When the time is right I'll explain my plan in full and you may see our mission— and me— in a different light. And then you can choose between us."

"Jürgen, I've chosen. Why can't you accept that?"

"I think I have, as much as could be expected. He
is
on this boat, after all."

"Then let me talk to him."

"No!"

"Look at this clutter. Let him help me down here."

"No. I trust you, but not him. If you wish to talk, talk to me. If you need some help, come to
me."
 

* * *

"Sailors and soldiers of the Third Reich!" Drexler's voice crackled over the intercom. As many men as possible had crammed into the control room where he was speaking because it was easier to hear him in person than over the crude intercom system. Others cocked their heads toward the loudspeakers. All were curious about their fate.

"I bring you greetings from our Führer, Adolf Hitler. And from his designated successor,
Reichsmarschall
Göring. We have set out on a long voyage to a distant destination. All of you, of course, are wondering about our mission. And you men of the navy must wonder about so many new faces here on board. I apologize about the added crowding. These soldiers, I assure you, are vital to our success."

Hart was lying on his bunk, frowning at the Nazi squawking. Next to his bunk an engineer had his head tilted up, listening.

"Our destination is... Antarctica." Drexler paused for dramatic emphasis. There was a murmur of excited comment throughout the boat. The engineer frowned. "A cold place, but not as dreadful as you might think. Our northern winter is Antarctica's summer and we hope to find tolerable weather as we go south. With strength, endurance, and will, we should be able to accomplish our task rapidly and go home." Greta stood in the passageway by her cubicle, looking somberly at her husband.

"And what is that task? The chance to change history is given to few men. To us of the
U-4501
, that opportunity has been granted! We are setting out for the distant continent to retrieve a new drug, an underground organism significant enough to affect the tide of the war. Security prevents me from explaining fully the purpose of this compound, but clearly, Berlin and U-boat Command wouldn't risk one of Germany's best submarines on such a distant mission unless it was vitally important."

Heads nodded.

"This isn't a combat mission. With luck, we'll never encounter the enemy. We're like a silent cat, stealing stealthily across and under the sea. Yet if we do meet opposition we must battle to the last ounce of human will. Because what we're attempting to accomplish on this mission could truly save the lives of our loved ones in the Reich."

Drexler looked at Freiwald. "There are rumors of Allied superweapons. Clearly, Germany requires superweapons of its own to defend the Fatherland. This is our mission, to obtain the key to a superweapon, and you men are the agents of deliverance. We're journeying to an Antarctic island and should be back home early in the year, as heroes and saviors. For a while our purpose will remain a military secret. But when it's finally revealed the world will gasp at your achievement."

He nodded, confident. "I believe divine providence has made this voyage possible. I put my faith in his will, and the will of our Führer."

Drexler let his gaze sweep the control room, then lifted his arm. "Heil Hitler." And, rising like a phalanx of spears, the other arms in the room came up. "Heil Hitler!" came the roar through the boat. Hart pressed his hands over his ears.

* * *

Otto Kohl was tired, sore, and broke. His escape from Vigo had cost him all he had, buying him miserable truck, donkey, and cart rides across dusty mountains. His suit was filthy and torn, his feet blistered, his assurance and authority gone.

But the American Intelligence officer had come out of the embassy in Lisbon to meet him anyway. Now the German nervously licked his lips, considering for the thousandth time what he was about to do. Maybe he
had
been corrupted, as Drexler had claimed.

Or saved.

"Yes?" the attaché said, a bit impatiently.

"My name is Otto Kohl," he began. "Your records will show I escaped from American army custody in France. I've been to Germany. And I have the most extraordinary story to tell you..."

"Alarm! Alaaarm! Dive! Dive! Dive!"

The klaxon blasted through the boat, setting off a tumult of cursing, frantic, hurtling men. Water roared into the submarine's ballast tanks and the vessel began to nose downward. Hatches slammed and valves were cranked. Anything unsecured began to tip onto the floor.

"My laboratory!" Greta caught her coffee mug as it began sliding off the edge of the tiny mess table and plunged into the torrent of sailors hurrying to their battle stations, shoulders cuffing her side as she struggled to the midships ladder.

"Dive! Hurry, dammit! Dive, dive!" Captain Freiwald came sliding down the conning tower ladder and banged onto the control room deck with his binoculars swinging and his cap knocked sideways.

"What is it?" shouted Lieutenant Erich Kluge, the first officer.

"Airplanes. Carrier patrol, probably." Freiwald looked up toward the tower that the sea was now enveloping as if he could see the sky. "Damn! We're already south of the equator! How did they pick us up?"

Greta noticed Kluge's accusing look as she rushed past. The first officer had pointedly avoided her since she'd displaced him in his cabin and now clearly viewed her as bad luck. Resigned, she descended the ladder in a half fall and, once at the bottom, seized the lab's hatch and banged it down after herself as she'd been instructed, turning the wheel. Locked in. She dropped to the steel flooring. A box was sliding with the tilt of the deck and she put out her foot to stop it. The klaxon switched off.

"Battle stations report!" the intercom squawked. One by one the submarine's compartments complied.

"Laboratory secure!" she shouted at her turn, her voice breaking from the tension.

Then she sat on the box, heart pounding, one hand on the ladder to brace herself against the slope of the diving boat. She could hear the nervous rustling of the rabbits.

"Hi."

She jumped. He was sitting in the shadows at the rear of the compartment, half hidden by boxes.

"Owen! You're not supposed to be down here!" Her tone was delighted.

"By my reckoning I'm not supposed to be on this boat at all, yet I can't seem to get off it. The attack seemed a good opportunity to let people forget about me for a moment. So I decided to drop in."

She shoved off the ladder to grasp him. "Thank God!" They hugged fiercely. "I've been so lonely..." She buried her face in his chest.

"I know," he said, meaning it.

They kissed for the first time since the air raid in Berlin. For a blessed instant they could forget where they were.

The tilt of the boat continued to steepen. There was a thud from the first depth charge, and the hull lurched. "They're going to get closer," he warned. "Hold on!"

She nodded grimly, grasping a pipe, and watched his lips move as he counted the seconds. There was a second detonation, a throbbing boom this time, that jerked the submarine as if it had been rammed. She felt the shock punch her body and was thrown violently sideways, hitting the curved bulkhead hard enough to have the wind knocked out of her.

"Jesus..." Hart groaned. He too had been tossed. "They're right on top of us."

Another explosion rang the plunging submarine like a gong, rolling it sideways. A cabinet popped open and vomited a spray of supplies. The lights blinked and went out.

"Owen?" It was a pained gasp. The tilt of the deck was increasing.

"Greta, are you all right?"

"I think so, just stunned..."

The boat bucked again, shuddering, and then again. They could hear shouts from the sailors on the decks above. Yet these explosions were slightly less violent than before. Less close.

She found him in the dark and clutched at his clothing, crawling up his length so they could hold each other again.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," he whispered, more lightly than he felt.

They waited in the dark as time ticked by with agonizing slowness. They could hear a gush of water but didn't know what it meant. The hull creaked.

"We're going deep," she observed.

Two more blows, more distant now. The airplanes were depth-charging blind. The slope of the deck kept increasing and the ruins of Greta's laboratory cabinet slithered along the floor. The laboratory rabbits were scrabbling at their wire mesh. There seemed no end to the dive. "Owen, are we going down?"

He couldn't answer. The sailors above had fallen silent and the steel in the hull was groaning. There was a sharp report somewhere in the submarine, like the bang of a gun, and then another.

"What's that?"

"Something giving way, I think. Bolts, valves. How deep is the ocean here?" he asked worriedly.

She hugged him harder. "I don't know. Three kilometers?"

"Deep enough."

More explosions, but distant enough that they just echoed through the hull, making it quake. The submarine hull squealed.

"It sounds like a whale," she whispered.

Then the tilt began to lessen. It was as if Freiwald was hauling on the reins of a horse, bringing its head up. The leveling was agonizingly slow, but it was happening. The boat creaked like a complaining hinge. They were sweating, waiting for it.

Finally the keel was even.

"I think we've stopped sinking." He whispered as if a noise would point them down again. They sagged in relief.

"Now what?"

"We hide."

Suddenly blue emergency lighting came on. The glow was eerie. The chaos was not as bad as it had sounded while things broke in the dark, but the floor was littered with debris. They examined each other. "Your arm is cut," he said, pointing. She nodded numbly. He tore a scrap of clean rag and bound it and they began boxing what they could.

"It's stuffy. Can we open that hatch?"

He shook his head. "Not until we're safe. The air will get worse before it gets better." He used a folder to shovel up shattered laboratory glassware, then found a storage tarp to lay on the deck and protect them from remnants. The submarine, on battery power, was quiet now, the crew trying not to make a sound. The Germans were trying to creep away.

Having secured what they could, Owen and Greta sat companionably side by side. There was nothing to do but wait.

"Do you think they've given up?"

"No. They'll be orbiting overhead, waiting for us to surface. And calling for destroyers with sonar. They won't give up easily."

"How long?"

"Hours, I suspect. Hours and hours."

She leaned against him. "Good."

They were quiet for a while, slowly recovering their equanimity in the calm, then their conversation started up again, drifting lightly from topic to topic. They'd almost succeeded in blocking out the seriousness of their situation when, suddenly, they heard a ghostly far-off echo:

Ping.

"Uh-oh."

Ping.

"What's that?"

"My navy. We're still being hunted."

They listened, her head on his chest. She could hear the thud of his heart.

Ping... ping... ping.

"They're getting closer." He pushed her upright. "Grab the ladder again. Brace yourself."

She pulled away reluctantly. "If they hit us, will it be quick?"

"Yes." In truth, he didn't know.

Ping, ping, ping, ping
. . . They could hear the screws of the destroyer.

The submarine trembled slightly. Freiwald was trying to accelerate and turn away.

Wham! A wrenching concussion as powerful as the first one, and then another, and then a third. The light went out again and Greta gave a short sob, involuntarily, as the U-boat heeled. Their bodies lurched sideways, feet kicking, hanging on with their arms.

"Owennn..." she moaned.

The deck began tilting again.

"God. He's trying to go deeper."

Ping, ping, ping, ping...

"Hang on!"

Twin thuds, shaking the submarine to its core. The power of the explosions throbbed through their bodies and Hart felt he was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling. There were more bangs and they could hear oaths on the deck above and a roaring hiss of water. The
U-4501
was groaning, the depth squeezing it in on itself.

She crawled to him in the dark. "I'm going to hang on to you," she whispered.

Ping... ping... ping...

"We're pulling away from them, I think..."

Wham! The boat shook, not quite as hard this time.

"Maybe it would be best just to end it like this," she whispered. "In each other's arms. Easier."