by Jack Finney
Moreno put his heavy forearms on the table, his hairy shoulders hunched over them, and looked up at me. "It's what I've done since I left the Navy — commercial fishing with Aldo's boat, and a lousy way to make a living. But I been in the Navy since I was eighteen and don't know much else. Aldo was my cousin; Rosa's husband. Aldo got drowned four months ago, right after I got out of the Navy" — Moreno glanced toward the kitchen — "and I been fishing the boat with Rosa ever since. The boat belongs to her now, and she owns the dock where we keep it. The dock's roofed and enclosed — you know the kind. It's typical — plank flooring on each side, and you run the boat in between. The boat's a good four or five feet longer than the sub and a lot wider; the dock'll take the sub easy, if we raise her. It's roofed, enclosed and the door padlocks; a big fishing boat's valuable, and so is its cargo sometimes. And the dock's isolated; nobody around there for a couple of miles. So now you know why Rosa is in this. Lauffnauer recruited me and Linc, and I looked up DeRossier, and he found you."
After a moment I nodded. "O.K.," I said. "We've got a sub, maybe, a place to work on her and a crew of sorts. Now say we get the sub operating — which I certainly doubt — then what? Let's have it now."
Then, for twenty minutes, maybe longer, Lauffnauer talked.
"A small trunk," he began quietly, "was made last month in a little custom luggage shop in Buenos Aires; some friends wrote to me and told me about this. You know, of course" — he smiled; that warm magic smile you found your own lips trying to repeat — "that Argentina is a name bound up for more than a decade now with the lives and fortunes of a good many Germans. I have friends among them; the Graf Spee was scuttled at the mouth of the River Plate in the first year of the war and the crew interned. Some are there still. And a submarine escaped to Argentina at the end of the war — the U-977. Two of her crew once served under me. And, of course, Argentina has also been a refuge for more than one notorious Nazi.
"The four or five friends I have there, however, are not notorious Nazis, they are simply former German seamen and one officer; ordinary men. I have kept up a correspondence with them. I have sometimes thought of joining them down there, but" — he shook his head — "they do not have an easy time of it.
"Some of my friends have lived a hand-to-mouth existence there; a shady existence, as you say, never far from the edge of the law. All is grist to their mill. What about this trunk? It is small, of a kind which holds half a dozen suits, with drawers below them for linen and shoes. It differs from countless others just like it in only one way; between its inside lining and the outer metal covering there has been left a hidden space of one-half inch — all around the trunk. That is all the man who made it knew. And that is all he could tell my friends, as he did when he was commissioned to make this trunk — information for which he expects to be well paid. Nor did he know the man who ordered and paid for it in advance — many times what an ordinary such trunk would sell for.
"But there is an inescapable link," Lauffnauer went on. "This interesting trunk, obviously designed for some interesting use, had to be called for or delivered. And you may be sure it was expertly and secretly followed. They have learned who it was for — and why. I was told of this, first by letter, and then, two weeks ago, with far more details, by a telephone call." He shook his head in rueful amusement. "Such a call is expensive. We talked for ten minutes, and I paid for it; they could not. But it was worth it, my young friend; we want that trunk." He grinned exuberantly. "It was made for Reinhold Kroll, a former Wehrmacht colonel who would have been tried and hanged for a thousand reasons if he had not escaped to Argentina after the war. He is there thirteen years now, a citizen, waiting until the time is ripe" — Frank grinned — "for Germany to begin her climb back to glory. The time, he thinks, is here, and the trunk will be packed soon, in the half inch of hidden space all around it, with one and a half million dollars in large-denomination American bills and seventy-five thousand in Swiss currency."
Frank leaned toward me. "You may be sure that trunk will be completely protected. There will be no possibility of getting at it, absolutely none, until it has arrived — so Kroll thinks — in one entirely safe and unreachable place." Frank grinned with contained excitement. "I think we can reach it, though. The day after the telephone call from Argentina, I went down under the water off Fire Island to begin the search for the U-19 again after forty years. When I found her, I wrote to my friends that we might reach that trunk, telling them what else they must do and learn for us meanwhile."
I looked up at Lauffnauer then. "Are you serious?" I said, though I knew he was, and he simply nodded. "Vic," I said, "you told me nothing like this had ever been done before; you were sure right."
"Wasn't fooling, was I, Hugh?" he said, smiling, and I nodded shortly.
"Look," I said then, glancing around at the others; in the kitchen doorway Rosa stood watching me. "One thing is sure. You've got to show me, you've got to convince me about this or I'm out — and you can do what you like about that. And I don't think you can convince me; this is fantastic."
"Figure it out for yourself," Moreno said, shrugging. "We can either raise the sub and get it operating again or we can't. If we can't, that's that; we've had a little fun, we all shake hands and forget it. O.K.?" I nodded, and he said, "All right, say we get it up and operating. Once we do, you know we'll test it — from bow to stern, over and again and darn carefully, believe me. Then we'll trial-dive it, probably right in the dock at high tide. A stationary dive at less than conning-tower depth before we ever think of taking her under. We'll have the motors apart; they'll be simple enough, you know that. And we'll see whether there's any prayer of charging the batteries, and there better be, or darned if I know what we'll do. We'll surface-cruise at night a dozen times; and we'll— But I don't have to tell you what we'll do before we ever go down in her. And when and if we ever do go down for the first time, it'll be at easy periscope depth, with the ballasts ready to blow, you can bet on that. Next, we'll each take an ordinary skin-diving outfit along, a diving lung like the one you wore today. We'll trial-dive at a hundred feet, on a clean bottom, and if the main ballasts won't blow under pressure, we'll go out the escape hatch. We'll really test the boat out."
"All right." I nodded impatiently. "That part's all right."
"O.K., then." Moreno got up, walked into a bedroom that opened off the dining room and came out a moment later with a thick, folded paper. He spread it open on the dining-room table — I saw that it was a marine chart — and beckoned me over. Vic, Linc and Lauffnauer came over and sat down around the table across from Moreno.
"Our submarine operating, do you doubt that we can reach exactly this point?" Moreno said; his thick forefinger touched the chart just under a tiny, neatly penciled cross on the blue-printed area representing a portion of the Atlantic Ocean. "There's nothing to the navigating," he said. "We'll use a gyrocompass if we can install one. Or we can do it by stars and by sun; if the chronometer's rusted out, we'll buy our own. We'll leave the dock at first dark and travel surfaced at just above negative buoyancy, only the tower out. And at eleven o'clock on the morning of May seventeenth" — his finger tapped the little cross several times — "there's where I guarantee we'll be. That O.K. with you?" he added softly, glancing at me.
"Sure," I said just as quietly. "If we get the sub operating, a Naval Reserve crew could do it on a weekend training cruise. Everything's fine up to there" — I nodded toward the little penciled cross, glancing around at the others. "Because up to there" — I tapped the little cross — "we're depending on ourselves only. The worst that can happen is a Coast Guard cutter spots us and runs us in. Then we hang our heads, scrape our feet and explain that we've been bad boys, and we're sorry; they can't hang us for that.
"But after this point" — again I reached down to tap the penciled cross — "they can. And will. Success or failure — and maybe our lives — depends on guessing precisely how some stranger is going to behave! Now, what kind of darn-fool scheme is
that?" I glanced angrily around at the others.
Moreno said quietly, "It's not a guess," and Lauffnauer nodded in agreement.
"What is a submarine?" Moreno said, glancing from one to another of us. No one said anything. "It's a gun," he said softly. "A submarine is nothing but a real big pistol — big enough to hold men, food, fuel and tons of machinery. And it'll move and shoot on the surface or below it. But still — all it is is a big pistol. Loaded with blanks in this case, but still loaded. And in this case it's pointed, actually, at only one man — and that man a stranger, as you said, with everything depending on how he will act. You make good sense."
"But maybe you'll believe me when I tell you this: I'd have no part of any scheme that depended on guessing what some darn-fool stranger would do with a gun pointed at him. But this ain't no ordinary stranger, mister." For a moment he stared at me, then suddenly barked out, "Think about it! I don't know who he is, what he looks like or even what his name is. But I don't have to. All I have to know is that there aren't any more than twenty-five people in the whole world like him. He's one of a darned special group. And that means there's only one possible way he can act — I don't care what he's like personally! In this setup there's only one thing he can possibly let himself do. I know that. Frank knows it." Very quietly he added, "And you ought to know it too." For a moment, glancing around the table, he stared at us; then he grinned suddenly. "I'm going for a swim," he said pleasantly, got up and walked toward the front door. Over his shoulder he called, "Think about it, Brittain; take your time. We've got all the rest of the afternoon."
For a while Vic and I lay on the beach, facing the ocean, chins on our folded forearms, watching Moreno swim powerfully far out in the water. Presently Rosa came out and walked to the water, pulling a white rubber cap over her hair. She waded right in, then struck out, swimming on a course that took her away from Moreno. Two or three hundred yards out she turned on her back and lay floating on the swell.
I stood up then, walked to the water and swam out to her; I wanted to find out about this girl. I reached her; then floating on the slow swell beside her, our feet and hands moving occasionally to keep afloat, I made a little conversation — about weather, the beach and what a nice day it was. She responded politely enough for a time; her English accented, but good and quite fluent. Then she said abruptly, "All right, now what do you want to know?"
"About you," I said. "Why are you in this?"
She shrugged, lying there floating in the water. Then she gestured with her chin toward Moreno, two hundred yards away; he was swimming toward us, I saw. "He told you," she said.
"Yeah, your boat and the dock. But why? I still want to know."
"What is there to explain?" She was laughing at me, mockingly, with her eyes. "Isn't money enough reason?"
"Maybe; maybe it is. What do you want it for?"
"Oh" — again she shrugged — "fur coats, diamond rings, jewelry. Don't you think I will look nice in them?"
"Sure," I said, nodding, and — I couldn't help it — I glanced at her fine, full figure awash in the swell. "Though you don't need them."
"No!" she said angrily, and her arms and legs thrashed as she lifted her head and shoulders from the water to glare al me. "I do not! Now or ever! Listen, you. You have never lived — and survived — in a poor country! You do not know what it is like; you don't! You send CARE packages, and you are sorry, but you don't know." Her arms moving slowly, keeping afloat, she stared at me for a moment, then said quietly, "But I lived in Italy — as a child in a war and afterward. I saw small children roaming in packs like animals, hunting for food. It is better now, but still worse than anything you ever knew. So what will I do — with money? I will take it, and I will spend it. Where it will do more good than you have ever thought of. You and the greedy rest of them up there" — she nodded toward shore and the little house.
"O.K." I nodded. "So now I know."
"Maybe you do. And maybe not. But it doesn't matter; no one could keep me out of this; Moreno tried. I was to stay home and wait, knitting perhaps." She laughed.
I was staring at her; nothing occurred to me to say in answer. Then I heard a little splash and looked up past Rosa. Moreno was swimming toward us, no more than a dozen yards away, and Rosa smiled and turned to him. "What took you so long?" she called sweetly. "There is no telling what might have happened with Hugh and me — out here in the ocean." And Moreno's face flushed.
He glanced at me, a look of pure hostility and warning, then gestured savagely at Rosa with his chin. "Come on," he said roughly, angrily, and she nodded, her face blandly obedient, and began to swim with him toward the shore.
I gave them a start of a hundred yards or so, then swam slowly to shore.
When I got back, taking my time, Rosa was in the house, and Moreno was on the porch, dressed for the city. It was time for him to go back, and a few moments later Rosa came out too.
You do your important thinking, I've noticed — or at least I do — when you're not consciously thinking at all. But now as Rosa and Moreno came down the porch steps, a tiny excitement rose up in me, physically felt in the pit of my stomach. For now I knew, without any conscious previous thought, that, astonishing as this fantastic scheme was, it could work. It might; it was just possible; and I called to Moreno, and he stopped and stood waiting for me on the sand, his eyes and face expressionless.
I walked up to him and nodded shortly. "All right," I said. "I'm in."
He looked me up and down, face still expressionless, then nodded. "O.K.," he said, "see you later," then gestured to Rosa with his chin, and they walked on, down the beach toward the ferry.
At six-thirty, during the last hour of full daylight, Frank Lauffnauer changed to trunks in the bedroom off the living room, while I got dressed again. He finished changing, then carefully wrapped his clothes in a big striped beach towel. "Mind taking these for me, Hugh?" he said, and I took the bundle.
"Take it easy out there," I said. "The light won't be so good, will it?"
"It'll do," he said and grinned at me.
We left the house, the four of us, Vic locking the door behind us, and walked down to the beached boat carrying Frank's diving equipment, including a fresh tank of air and a good, powerful underwater light. The surf was breaking a littler harder than it had been earlier, but the swell beyond it was still smooth; it was still bright daylight, too, though it wouldn't last long.
We rowed out toward the sub, Vic in the stern watching his particular set of landmarks to get us there. Linc was rowing, and I began sounding with the anchor presently; when it showed ninety feet, I snubbed the anchor rope, and we all began watching for the white-pine buoy Moreno had attached to the sub. Frank spotted it first, and we rowed over, and I anchored beside it. All this time no one had talked very much, and no one said anything now; Frank Lauffnauer was about to do a dangerous and frightening thing. He was going into the sub through her escape hatch if he could.
Helping him on with his equipment — tank, lung, weight belt, flippers — none of us made the meaningless gesture of offering to take Frank's place; Frank was the man to do this. He'd been instructed and trained in using this very hatch — though not to enter, but to leave the sub by; and in 1918, when the sub was new and he was a very young man. Now, years later, to try entering that sub, alone and far under the ocean, not knowing what he'd find even if he succeeded — I didn't envy him, and was willing to admit that to myself.
He stood up in the boat now, fastening the underwater light to his weight belt; then he grinned at us, nodding a good-by, and let himself fall over the side. The rest of us, kneeling at the prow of the boat, watched him sink steadily down in the water, following the anchor line, till he faded from sight.
The escape hatch of the U-19 — Frank had described it — was a simple device; a steel tube set into the topside of the submarine, just big enough to hold a man, crouched. At the top of the tube was a watertight hatch cover. Inside the submarine at the tube's bottom end
was another round watertight door. To escape from the submarine, the idea was, a man crawled into the escape tube from the bottom, inside the sub. Clinging to a riveted hand and foot hold inside it, he pulled the hatch closed underneath his feet, or someone inside did it for him. Then he turned a valve which admitted sea water into the tiny space he was crouched in. The water came in, compressing the air into the top of the escape tube. Presently the inside and outside pressures on the hatch cover just over his head were equalized, and the man in the tube could push open the hatch and leave the submarine. Whether he ever reached the top or, if he did, whether he reached it alive, was another question; it depended on a lot of things, any of which could go wrong.
Frank must be at that hatch right now, I knew; he was about to climb inside it, and, crouching there in the tube in the water, he would pull the lid closed over him. The thought of it made me actually shiver, sitting up on the surface with Linc and Vic in the boat. With the upper hatch cover closed over Frank as he clung to the brackets inside the tube, he would unfasten and shove open the round metal door at his feet, if he could. And then he would see one of two things. Frank would see and feel the water in which he crouched drop away from him, out the bottom of the tube down into the submarine. Or the water would simply stay where it was, unmoving — because the submarine, long since undoubtedly, was filled with sea water already. Frank would open the hatch just over his head then and leave the little sub behind him forever.