Secret sea; (8 page)

"One will show up." Mr. Williams looked out the window at the young people moving around on the docks of the yacht club. "I can't understand it," he said quietly. "Look at all those young men down there. All healthy, all able-bodied. Some of 'em are even sailormen. I think that if I was one of them now I'd pay to go along with you."

"I hate to wait," Pete said. "But maybe in a

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week or so Fll find somebody with guts enough to sail outside the breakwater."

"What about Weber?" Mr. WiUiams asked.

Pete shook his head. "Haven't seen hair nor hide of him. I think he's either lost the trail or given up."

Mr. Williams glanced at him and then turned back to look out the window. "I hope you're right. But I don't think so, Pete. So far Weber has made only one mistake."

"What's that, sir?"

"He's been watching you get ready. I'm sure of that. He can see that the Indra is no single-hander. He should have sent one of his men to go along with you. The fact that he hasn't is his mistake. I'm surprised that he's overlooked the opportunity to plant someone right on the hi-drar

"I never thought of that," Pete admitted. "But perhaps one of the people I turned down was his man."

"Perhaps. . . . Well, I hate to see her lying there when she could be sailing for the two islands, but it can't be helped."

Pete stood up. "I'll discover a sailor somewhere. I'll "

Before he could finish Wild Bill came in. "Looky, cooky," he said, waving some papers around.

Pete read over Mr. Williams's shoulder Bill's

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orders to go as commanding officer of a destroyer escort. Bill was a lieutenant commander now.

"Yak, yak," Pete said. *'At last you're going to earn part of your pay."

"Quiet in the civilians," Bill said. "And my beautiful new ship is stationed right here in Miami, Florida, U.S.A. I've ordered me a red-and-green deck chair for watches on the bridge."

Pete snorted.

They congratulated Bill on getting a command and Pete left for the yacht club.

As he walked along the dock Pete felt trapped. In his pocket he had two hundred and fifteen dollars and that was the last of Mr. Williams's money. Everything had cost more than they had thought it would and now he hated to tell Mr. Williams that all the money was gone. What was worse, he had been holding back from the sick man some of Johnny's hospital bills and they were piling up.

If I could just get out of here, he said to himself helplessly. If I could just get down to the islands. Just get under the water.

If I could just get a man with guts enough to go.

Pete thoroughly resented the gaily dressed men on the fancy yachts tied up in the berths. Not a real man in the crowd, he decided. Then as he walked along, scowling, a particularly beautiful yacht caught his eye. She was a tall-masted, black

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sloop more than fifty feet on deck. Painted on a life ring was her name: Auf Wiedersehen. She was a pretty thing and as trim as a needle. Pete walked slowly toward her, admiring her lines and feeling in his bones the way she would go in blue water. She wasn't a heavy-weather boat but, Pete thought, she'd be fast as greased lightning in half a gale.

A man came topside on the sloop and stood looking out over the stern. He was dressed in white trousers and a blue blazer and had on one of those silly caps yachtsmen sometimes wear. Pete mentally gave him a low grade as he walked past the bow of the sloop.

Then the man turned around, looking up at the bare masts of his ship.

When Pete saw his face, he lowered his own head, turned his face half away, and slouched on down the dock.

The man on the black sloop was Weber.

Pete walked on past the Indra without even glancing at her and went up the hill to the club-house. Going over to the clerk's desk, he leaned on the rail nonchalantly and remarked, **That black sloop that just came in is a beauty."

*'Sure is. The Auf Wiedersehen. What is that, German?"

Pete nodded. '*Means 'I'll be seein' you.' "

*Tunny name for a boat."

Auf Wiedersehen. That isn't so funny, Pete

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thought. Fm beginning to understand that now.

**Who's the owner?" Pete asked.

The clerk shuffled through some file cards. "Name of Weber. Herman Weber. Jax."

"Don't know him. Well, aiif Wiedersehen."

The clerk laughed a little.

Pete went into the glass-fronted "deck" and sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs. He could see the masts of the black sloop, see Weber sitting in a deck chair with a chart unrolled in his lap. Two other men, all dressed up, came topside and joined him.

After a while Pete got up and went over to the phone booth. He asked for long distance and put in a call for Lieutenant George Gray, Room 3452 Annex, Navy Department, Washington.

When the phone rang, Pete was waiting.

"Lieutenant Gray? . . . This is Pete Martin, George. In Miami. How are you? Still r-unning the Navy? . . . George, can you help me out? I want to know all you can tell me about a man named Herman Weber . . . yeah, w. I think he is, or was, a German. . .. Okay, Fll hang on."

"Pete," George said, and Pete could hear the rustle of papers. "We've got some official stuff on him but here's the public info. At least, this is on a ^Herman Weber.'. . ."

"Okay, shoot."

"His name used to be Hermann Webreschacht. Born: Hamburg, Germany, 19IL Joined the

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Nazi party in 1932. Attended one of Hitler's schools for junior Fuehrers. Got into some trouble and was thrown out of the party in 1936. Came to the U.S. Apparently had plenty of money and set himself up as a shipbroker and in the export-import business mainly in Cuba and the' West Indies. Became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1941. Then he got into trouble in Cuba. Was accused of assault and battery against a Cuban named Roberto Narvez. He beat the rap, but it made quite a stink at the time."

"Is that all, George?"

"That's all I can tell you, Pete. But if you run into him, it wouldn't do any harm to keep an eye on him. If you know what I mean."

"Thanks, George."

Pete paid for the phone call and left the clubhouse. He went up through the little park so that he wouldn't be seen by Weber and, when he got to the Indra, he cast off his mooring lines. Then he sat on deck, looking down the row of boats, until he saw Weber go below on the black sloop.

Keeping the engine at dead slow so that it would make very little noise^ Pete backed out of the slip, gave the sloop a wide berth, and slipped on down the bay. As the rows of gently swaying yachts were blotted out at the turn, Pete gave her the gas and fought the incoming tide.

Watching the tide coming in, feeling the fair wind blowing, Pete thought bitterly. If I only

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had a man to go with me, I could sail tonight. I could get canvas on her and keep going. I could lose that sloop in the darkness and never see Weber's face again.

The feeling of being trapped in the bay grew until Pete almost couldn't stand it. If he could only get out on blue water, he thought.

It was almost sunset when he dropped anchor and let out scope on the anchor chain so that the Indra would swing easy with wind and tide. The low sun made huge shadows on the white city, but he was far away from the polish and glitter of the yacht clubs and boulevards. He was down where the tourists don't go—down opposite the ramshackle warehouses and weather-beaten tenements.

It was dark when Pete brought his supper up to the cockpit. He put the plate and cup on the helmsman's seat and ate slowly, not tasting anything except the sugar in the black coffee.

His mind was blank as he took the dishes below and washed them in the galley sink and hung them back in the racks. Then, standing in the gloom of the main cabin, he looked slowly around.

The main cabin, which had been a pleasant "yachty" room when he bought the Indra, had been transformed. Pete had taken out the double-deck bunks on one side, the mahogany table in the middle, the fancy lockers and trimmings.

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Now, hanging from special racks, and looking like huge ghosts in the gloom, were the two diving suits—one a heavy, deep-water rig, the other a lighter self-contained outfit with an oxygen bottle and caustic soda regenerator. The corselets and helmets, the faceplates, shining a little, were secured on wide shelves. The thirty-two-pound lead shoes were prevented from galloping around in heavy weather by fiddles, and the lead chest and back weights were also secured. On the other side of the cabin the flexible air hoses were coiled down in big loops, and the life line, the telephone cord imbedded inside it, was flemished down. In a special shockproof box Pete had made himself were the two chronometers which, in the silence of the cabin, Pete could hear faintly ticking. His sextant and an octant were in a box on another shelf.

Aside from the diving equipment, there were coils of new hemp rope, spare fittings for almost everything aboard ship, parts and tools for the air pump and ship's engine. Folded and tagged— the storm suit tagged with red labels—were spare sails.

Pete was bitter as he came up into the deep, self-bailing cockpit. The glow from the city of Miami lit the topside of the hidra as Pete walked past the big air pump, covered now with heavy tarpaulin. He stopped there a minute, just looking at the thing.

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A sound aft interfered with his thinking, and he went back toward the cockpit.

In the pale Hght from the city he saw a hideous head rising above the scupper rail. The hair on it was long and matted and in the half-light looked like a nest of snakes. The eyes peering out from behind the tangle of hair were sharp and glittered like a rat's.

A body came up with the head and, suddenly, with a heave a small figure rose to its feet on deck.

"Ahoy, mate," a voice said.

Pete walked slowly toward it. "Well?" he said.

"Saw you anchored out here and thought I'd pay you a little visit."

Pete stopped a few feet away and peered down. The thing was either a midget or a small boy. Whatever it was, the last Saturday night bath it had taken had been about 1939, Pete estimated.

"Glad to see you," Pete said. "But I'm busy right now. Come back next week."

"Had chow yet, mate?" the thing inquired.

"All through. So long."

Pete started down the companionway. When he saw that his guest was still standing there, he said, "Good-by. Shove off."

The thing turned and walked slowly back to the rail. Pete saw one leg go over the Hfe line as

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he went on into the cabin and switched on the hghts.

When he turned around, the thing was standing in the cabin doorway.

It wasn't a midget; it was a boy. Under the rat's nest of hair there was a face dirtier than Pete thought a human face could get. Only the bright blue eyes looked clean. The boy was wearing a cast-off khaki shirt, both sleeves torn ofiF at the shoulders and no buttons anywhere. His pants had once belonged to a man who weighed two hundred pounds and were wrapped around the boy and secured with a piece of dirty rope. One leg of the pants had been torn off only a few inches from the ground; the other leg was raggedly torn above the knee. Pete was surprised to see heavy Army shoes at the ends of the legs.

The boy looked slowly around the cabin. "What a tub," he said.

"Look, fella," Pete said quietly, "why don't you go crawl back un- MIKE der that rock?"

The boy was looking past Pete into the galley

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where Pete's sea stores were held in racks on the bulkheads. **What's chances of a can of beans, mate?" the boy asked.

"None," Pete said. "Shove off."

The boy irritated him, and the smell from his unwashed body was spreading all over the ship.

"So you wouldn't give a friend one can of beans," the boy said.

Pete gritted his teeth and advanced on the boy. "If you don't shove off, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take you by the seat of those baggy britches and the back of your neck and drop you in the drink."

"You—and how many Marines?" the boy said.

Pete could stand no more. He reached for the kid, grabbing him by the shoulder.

Afterwards Pete couldn't tell exactly what happened. Something hard, heavy, and moving fast struck him on the shin of his left leg. The pain made him turn the boy loose and grab his leg with both hands. This movement brought his chin down low and something else hit that.

There was an explosion of lights in front of Pete's eyes and a wild singing noise, then all was dark and peaceful.

When Pete came to, he was sitting on the floor slumped against the empty legs of the heavy diving suit. His chin hurt, and his head ached with a slow throb. He slowly put his hand up and discovered a growing lump on his chin.

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As the inside of the cabin swung back into focus, he saw something moving. Leaning forward and straining his eyes, he saw the httle boy. Under one arm he had a loaf of bread, and in each hand he had a can of beans. He was walking toward the companion door.