Bergen and the other
Kriegsmarine
officer, a stocky engineer by the name of Jörg Kolb, weren’t too nervous to laugh at his joke. That was a good sign. Yes, indeed, well-trained, good men, the best of Germany.
“
Ach so
,” Ritter continued. “And like the good, thoughtful and brave Dutch engineers we are supposed to be, let us go see if we can’t help get our submarine underway without shitting our pants in the process, shall we?”
Kate McLendon lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, puzzled by why she was awake.
She heard the door handle jiggle, and then someone pounding on the outside. “Kate, for chrissakes. You in there? You all right?”
Kate grabbed her head and groaned. She needed to cut down on the vodka tomorrow night. And then corrected herself. Tonight. It was already a new day.
“Hold on,” she croaked, flipping on the light. She pulled on her robe, crossed the room and opened the door.
Reggie pushed in, waving his hands in the air. “My God,” he said, lighting on her bed for a moment, and then scuttling over to the window, pulling aside the curtain and glancing outside. “I can’t believe it.”
“What the hell is going on,” Kate said, scratching her head and yawning.
“You didn’t hear? I mean, you didn’t hear the racket and the—” Reggie made the sound of an explosion, his hands waving above his head like a small child.
“I sleep like a train wreck,” Kate said, aware now of the noise in the hallway outside her room, the distant wail of sirens. She pushed Reggie into a chair. “Sit,” she ordered, suddenly wide-awake and serious. “What’s going on?”
Reggie took a deep breath, adjusted his rimless glasses. “I woke somebody up at the American embassy in Warsaw. He encouraged me to do something to myself that is anatomically impossible and then hung up. Tried the provincial governor, the mayor’s office here in town, too, and nothing.”
Kate took a deep breath. “Well then, Reggie,” she said evenly. “What do you know?”
There was a muffled sound of explosions in the distance. Reggie began twisting his hands. “I heard planes and then explosions. The sound of gunfire. A woman in the lobby said it was the Russians attacking. She’s the wife of someone in the Polish military, I believe,” Reggie added.
Kate chewed on a fingernail. “Russians?” she said. “I can’t believe Stalin would attack? Hitler would see it as a provocation. He wouldn’t sit idly by and let the Red Army run wild.”
“I don’t want to be in the middle of a war,” Reggie moaned. “My wife will kill me.”
“Of course we do,” Kate corrected with growing excitement. “Don’t you see? This is the break we’ve been waiting for. War reports from the front lines. If we can produce some good pieces, you know, eyewitness reports of the motherland under attack and all that goes with it, and then get them back to London, that asshole who calls himself a bureau chief won’t care that it’s coming from a fluff female reporter and a Jew. He’s going to get it out on the wire. Every news service in the world will pick it up. That’s money in the bank.”
Reggie cocked his head in interest. “I see what you mean,” he said. “And maybe I can lay hands on a movie camera? Forget Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. They’d crowd into the theaters to see my footage.”
As Kate slipped out of her silk robe and begin to dress, Reggie couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Take advantage of the opportunities when they come your way, old boy, Reggie thought. And his partner was a beautiful woman, despite the broken nose. Not full-bodied like his wife, but with firm legs that seemed to go on forever. Narrow waist. Well-muscled arms. He half closed his eyes, imagining her grabbing him by the neck, pushing him over to her bed and ordering him to take off his clothes.
“I can make you be a gentleman,” came the words with soft menace, interrupting his daydream. She was standing there in front of him wearing nothing but white panties and a bra. Reggie didn’t notice. Now he couldn’t take his eyes off the clenched fist waving ominously under his nose.
“Oh, have it your way,” he frumped. “No harm in looking, is there?”
“That isn’t the point. Turn around.”
“All set?” Kate asked forty minutes later.
Reggie had just finished setting up his camera on the street corner. He was about to begin taking photographs of the burning warehouses across the harbor when he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, Christ,” he moaned.
It was just a handful of men. Dockworkers, by their looks, Kate thought. Drinking late. Roused by the nearby explosions. Maybe they were hustling down the street to help fight the fire?
“Fucking spies,” shouted a short, pug-faced man in the front of the group.
“Scratch that thought,” Kate murmured to herself, suddenly feeling very alone and exposed. One man, she could handle. A mob was something else.
Reggie pulled his camera off the tripod and held it protectively in his arms like a child.
“We’re Yankee reporters,” Kate said in passable Polish, stepping forward to meet them though she was terrified, forcing her warmest smile.
That gave them pause. The pug-faced man walked up close and smiled. His breath, reeking of beer and cigarettes and God knows what else, made Kate’s knees weak. “Not a spy,” he said, breathing hard through his fat nose, staring Kate lewdly up and down. “A German whore!”
Kate didn’t hesitate. She kneed him in the crotch. As he crumpled forward, his face a mixture of surprise, pain and anger, she grabbed the back of his head just like her father had taught her long ago and brought up her knee again, feeling a satisfying crunch. No time to admire her work, she wheeled to the right, arm cocked, but that was when two men grabbed her by the shoulders and ran her backward, slamming her against the side of a brick building.
“Not the camera,” she heard Reggie squeal. There was a metallic crash and the sound of breaking glass.
“Hold her,” said one of the men. “Let’s see how she looks underneath all this.”
Kate couldn’t move. No one was even close enough to bite. She felt a hand on her crotch, closed her eyes and peed, surprised that she remembered something her mother had said when she was a teen about stopping boys who might be getting out of hand, thankful for the cup of coffee she had had finished earlier.
“The cunt just pissed on me,” she heard someone yell. She couldn’t restrain a laugh. A slap made her ears ring. Someone grabbed her by the hair, and smacked her head against the bricks, once, twice.
And then she was free. She tried standing, but the ringing in her ears continued. She felt the wall against her back, and slid down it into a sitting position. There was something warm spreading across her forehead. She tried to raise an arm, but for some strange reason it felt as heavy as a sack of concrete. In the shadows, she could see figures grappling in front of her, as if she was watching an out-of-focus movie. She wanted to ask a question, but for the life of her, couldn’t remember what it was. And then, mercifully, there was nothing more.
“What should we do with her?” Helmut Bergen said, licking the cuts on his knuckles and gesturing toward the woman slumped against the brick wall.
Ritter flicked his lighter to life. He held the flame up to her face, lifted her chin so he could get a better look. Unconscious. Lots of blood, but the head wound didn’t look too serious. Probably a concussion. The bruise on her cheek would be nothing. Didn’t seem to be harmed any other way. And then he recognized her. The woman in the pub. The American.
“We take her with us,” Ritter said with sudden inspiration, sensing that voice whispering in his ear once again. “I think she may be just the ticket we need.”
“What do you mean?” Bergen was thinking that a woman was the last thing they needed, right at the moment.
“What man can turn his back on a damsel in distress?” Ritter laughed.
“And him?” Bergen flicked his eyes toward Reggie, who was sitting on the pavement in the midst of his shattered camera, rubbing his chin.
“What the hell. Let’s make it a party.”
Stefan jogged steadily uphill, away from the waterfront. The explosions and the German dive bombers had been more effective than a legion of roosters. The streets were filled with the curious and terrified, some hastily packing suitcases onto overloaded cars, and others on more serious missions. He watched a lorry, soldiers crowded into the back like cordwood, rattle past him in the direction of the airfield, another truck and a pair of motorcycles, race off toward the coastal artillery batteries. At least someone was trying to do something, though the thought gave him little comfort.
Stefan couldn’t imagine his own captain sleeping through this din. But he supposed that all depended. If Stefan had to guess, by this time in the early morning, Józef Sieinski, second son of one of the wealthiest men in all of Poland, had long ago left his dinner party, retiring to the suite his father provided for him, free of charge, of course, while the
Eagle
was in port. If he wasn’t still drinking or pawing one of his companions, he was probably passed out, snoring heavily while the woman who thought it might be advantageous to accompany him to bed, had turned to something more interesting than he. A magazine perhaps, or painting her nails.
Stefan had to admit that there were times when Sieinski wasn’t a bad sort. Life and people were rarely as clear-cut as one hoped. His captain seemed smart enough to know when he needed help, charming enough to get it willingly, most of the time. The young sailors aboard the
Eagle
nearly worshiped him. He certainly looked the part of a captain. And after this stint in the Navy, he would join his father’s company, quickly assuming some senior position.
And that’s where the problem began and ended. The Navy was just a stop along the way for him. He didn’t want any bumps in the road, no risks, and he had been born to expect obedience. Money meant Sieinski had been obeyed all of his life. As he grew older, he assumed that obedience was a result of his own leadership. He couldn’t have been more mistaken. Despite all of his advantages, Sieinski knew nothing about leadership and treating men with dignity and respect unless it was in the pursuit of his own interests.
But a ship needed its captain. That’s how it had always been. And though the mere thought of it made Stefan quiver with barely suppressed rage, Sieinski was the
Eagle’s
captain, and it was his duty, as second in command, to get him back to his ship. In the end, there was always duty.
As Stefan trotted across the street and up to the front of the Royal Hotel, the doorman standing at attention took one look at Stefan’s sweat-streaked face and rough clothes, and said stiffly, “Please wait here.” He put out his white-gloved hand like a police officer stopping traffic.
Stefan didn’t even bother to break stride. He shoved the man aside and shouldered his way through the gleaming doors.
The front desk was crowded ten deep with haphazardly dressed guests all competing for the clerk’s attention to check out, though Stefan wondered where they could flee once they checked out. If what he suspected was true, it was already too late. German troops were surging over the border, and any traffic on the roads would be an easy target from the air. He continued across the marble floor of the foyer, directly for the elevator, his sea boots pounding out a steady rhythm.
The operator, an old man with nose hairs sprouting like daisies out of each nostril, jumped up from his stool and saluted. “Where to, sir?”
“Name your last posting, Chief?” Stefan asked, recognizing in the salute a fellow seaman.
The old man’s smile revealed more gum than teeth. “We called her
Mazur
.”
“Ah, yes. Good, stout ship as I recall.” Of course, Stefan couldn’t place her, but the lie was worth it when he saw the sudden stiffening of the man’s back.
“Yes she was, sir,” the old man replied, his pale gray eyes, watering with appreciation. “Our Navy’s first ship after the war. But that was long ago. How can I serve?”
“Captain Sieinski?”
The elevator operator touched the side of his nose, motioned Stefan inside, pushed the door closed, and then rotated the brass control handle burnished to a warm yellow, engaging the lift’s motors. He ignored half a dozen angry rings on the way up and brought the elevator to an easy stop at the sixteenth floor. “I’ll wait,” he said, grinning as he pulled open the door. “You’ll find your captain in the suite at the end of the hall.”
The thick rugs that covered the floor muffled the sound of Stefan’s approach. He paused at the door, considered for a moment using the heel of his boot to kick the beautiful walnut wood door off its hinges. Of course that would require some explaining on the off chance the captain wasn’t unconscious. More importantly, it would also ruin a perfectly good door. Stefan glowered at his reflection, and then raised his fist and knocked.
He waited a moment, and then pounded the door again, harder this time.
Still no response, he tried the knob. It was unlocked. “When in Budapest,” Stefan murmured to himself as he pushed open the door and stepped into the suite.
Despite the lateness of the hour, every light in the sitting room was ablaze. A half-dozen silver serving plates piled high with fruit, meat, cheeses and pastries crowded a table in the center of the room. A special place of honor in the center of the grouping had been devoted to a sterling silver bowl filled with black, gleaming caviar. Stefan couldn’t even guess what it had cost—more than a month’s wages, to be sure. Nothing had been touched.