The Heirs of Babylon

by Glen Cook

  He flipped that chart up, studied the pilot chart beneath it. The entire track was there, beginning in Iceland. Iceland! Incredible. He popped the remaining two tacks, folded the charts, collected the quartermaster’s notebook

  from nearby, tucked everything inside his jumper, and caught the next boat returning to Jager.

  As he was leaving he watched Hans and his men lower a torpedo onto a float of rubber liferafts. He found their excitement difficult to believe.

  “I found their charts and notebook,” he told Gregor on arriving. “They’ll tell Beck what he wants to know.” He handed the material over, disappeared before he could be told to do something else.

  Three days passed. Relentlessly, around the clock, the cannibalization continued. Jager became as piled and ragged-looking as when she departed Norway. In a heroic battle with the sea, Czyzewski’s engineers liberated a screw and floated it over on Hans’s rafts. Commander Haber kept busy patching battered divers.

  All the ammunition, all the fuel, all the stores were scavenged from the iron corpse. Everything portable was taken, whether Jager had use for it or not. Work shifted to heavy machinery. Gun barrels were dismounted and floated over. Air-conditioning and refrigeration systems were stripped. An automatic dishwasher and electric potato peeler were rescued by happy cooks. Fire hoses, pipes and fittings, even a few watertight doors and hatches were taken....

  Then a black little storm blew up. Not a nasty storm, but one that looked threatening enough as it came whooping in out of the middle Atlantic. Von Lappus ordered Jager out, away from the rocks.

  And, when she returned, the wreck had broken up, so she turned south, resumed steaming for Gibraltar.

  VII

  THE harsh clangor of the general alarm woke Kurt earlier than customary. He froze for an instant, not believing. Not a drill! It couldn’t be a drill. They were always announced beforehand. He heard the confused voices of others. The lights came on. He piled out of his rack, narrowly missed the man below. Trousers he jerked on hurriedly, feet he thrust into shoes, then he grabbed jumper and cap and ran for the bridge. Training paid. Although this was Jager’s first true general quarters, her men were on station in minutes. Kurt felt relief as he ran, thankful others knew what they were doing. How many times had he cursed the endless drills? Bless von Lappus, the ship might be able to defend herself.

  He hurtled through the pilothouse door, grabbed its frame to avoid a collision with the Captain. After donning his jumper, he asked, “What’s happening?”

  Paul Milch said, “Lifejacket and helmet on the chart table.” Pale, he then pointed out the starboard door. “Look!”

  As he tucked the bottoms of his trousers into the tops of his socks, Kurt looked, gasped, “What the hell?”

  Ships, on the horizon, seven or eight kilometers distant and closing. Black ribbons of smoke trailed from their stacks. Kurt seized a pair of binoculars.

  “Christ! A carrier! And five... no, four destroyers. The other one might be a tanker.”

  “They show their colors yet?” someone asked. “Don’t see any,” Kurt replied. A telephone talker, repeating a request from Gun Control, asked, “Permission to free guns, sir?”

  “Permission denied,” von Lappus replied. “Those fellows are nervous too. Let’s not start something.”_“Ranke,” Gregor shouted across the bridge, “get the signal books from the charthouse. Then get up to the signal bridge.”

  Kurt collected the books, donned his helmet and lifejacket, and went up. He found Brecht, the signalman, studying the approaching ships through the telescope.

  “They sending?”

  “Yeah. Light. But it’s nonsense.” He handed Kurt a copy of the incoming message.

  “Certainly not German, but it looks like language.” He glanced aft and up. “Break a new ensign. That one’s too ragged. I’ll run up the interrogative pennant. Maybe they’ll get the idea.” As the new ensign rose to the gaff, he bent on the interrogative pennant and hoisted it, then hurried to the telescope. The six vessels had closed to four kilometers. Kurt had no trouble distinguishing their ensigns as they went up.

  “What flag?” Hans shouted from the bridge.

  Kurt found it in one of his books. “Argentina.”

  “What?”

  “Argentina. Argentina. In South America.”

  Hans’s head appeared over the edge of the signal bridge. “I know that. But I thought America got blasted.”

  “South America. The continent. Not the United States.”

  “If you say so.” He went back down.

  Kurt picked up Jane’s Fighting Ships — 1986, salvaged from the wreck at Finisterre. It was two centuries out of date and written in English, but he thumbed through anyway. He found Argentina and, ‘as he had expected, learned nothing. The carrier was not the one listed. The destroyers were of the American Fletcher class, active in many smaller navies.

  He*again studied the ships through the telescope. They were a ragged lot, worse than Jager. All wore unrepaired scars from old battles, scars no one had bothered trying to heal. Perhaps the Argentines did not care about the appearance of their future coffins. Perhaps the vessels need float only long enough to carry them to the dying place.

  Kurt was dismayed by his own pessimism. Probably, as was the case with many of Jager’s ills, the Argentines just had no way to make repairs. Still, the ships could have been kept neat and painted.

  “They’re making signals,” said Brecht.

  Kurt glanced up. “So read. I’ll record.” He took out pencil, paper, and a copy of ATP-l (a), tactical signals current for NATO at the beginning of the War. He wrote, searched the book, broke signals, shouted down to the bridge, encoded signals, and relayed them to Brecht. There were thousands in the book. Communication was slow and difficult.

  Hours later, stories had been exchanged. The Argentine ships, On their ways to the Gathering, had wandered slightly north of their course during the recent storm. Kurt wondered how High Command had sent its summons to the Americas, but remained too busy to speculate long. Jager was invited to join the screen around the carrier, Victoria. He listened as the officers muttered among themselves, discussing it.

  Von Lappus’s voice rose above the others. “We need practice steaming in formation. We’ll do it. What station, Ranke?”

  “Station six, sir, at eighteen hundred meters.”

  “Circular screen?”

  “Yes sir.” Signal traffic having fallen off, Kurt climbed down to the open bridge. General quarters was secured. “Just in time to change the watch,” Hans grumbled. Kurt laughed. “I told you we always get the shaft.” The formation lumbered south at a slow five knots, the best the stores ship could manage. The journey down the Portuguese coast to Spain again was uneventful until, four and a half days later, they reached Trafalgar.

  During that time, with little else to do, Kurt concentrated on scratching names off his list of murder suspects. One way or another, he learned where men had been at the time of Kapp’s death. By Trafalgar he had eliminated a hundred possibilities. But it was slow work. He had to be careful not to attract attention. And the task went slower and slower as evidence grew harder to find.

  Then Trafalgar, site of Nelson’s victory, that grim headland so important to Napoleon’s fall. Kurt was one of two men aboard who knew the battle had been fought. To everyone else, this was just another milestone along the sea road to Gibraltar, and whatever lay beyond.

  Idly, he wondered if Jager and this Gathering would be remembered by even one man four centuries in the future, if anyone would then care. Trafalgar had shaped all subsequent European history — though Jager’s sailing could hardly be as significant — yet no one today remembered or was much interested. Only he and Hans, lonely men out of their times, put any value on that ancient battle.... A wave of sadness swept him. He did not want to go for nothing, to be quickly forgotten.

  Trafalgar, the unremembered headland. Sad, Kurt thought, that so many should have died and had such little
effect beyond their own time. A tear or two in Dover, a French woman weeping in Nice, and forgotten. Just another landmark on the seapath to an ocean of skulls....

  Until the carrier launched her aircraft. Then Trafalgar became memorable as the place where Germans first saw men take to the sky. The launch was almost laughable, certainly pitiful. There were just six planes, all sputtering, prop-driven monsters cobbled together from cannibalized parts, all as old and weary as the ship carrying them, and not a designed warplane in the lot.

  The fourth plane dropped like a stone off the end of the flight deck. It hit water in a fine splash, disintegrated, and was plowed under by the carrier. Wreckage appeared in her boiling wake.

  The other planes circled and climbed, coughing with a sort of half-life, got into a ragged formation, and staggered off toward Gibraltar. Drunkenly, Kurt thought, or like tired old men.

  Jager’s crew watched from launch to departure, dazzled. They had heard stories, had seen wreckage, but flying men remained unreal as kobolds till seen.

  The planes returned after dark. Kurt was off watch, but he had stayed up to see their recovery. Sitting alone on the signal bridge, he stared at the carrier’s brilliantly lighted flight deck. One by one, the ancient aircraft dropped from the night and squealed to a halt.

  The third down missed the arresting cables with her tail hook. Kurt expected another fall into the sea, but the pilot hit full throttle, roared off the angle deck, and came around again, successfully.

  “Really something, isn’t it?” someone asked. Kurt turned, nodding. Behind him was Erich Hippke, who had the watch.

  “Right. Tremendous. Think what it was like in the old days, with the American supercarriers and jets. Instead of five grumbly old prop jobs, a hundred jets. What an uproar they must’ve made.”

  Hippke had an imagination as vivid as Kurt’s. He expanded the picture. “Think what the Battle of the Kattegat must’ve been like. Hundreds of ships and thousands of planes.” He shook his head slowly, impressed by such magnitude.

  “Big. I was nine when my father first told me about the Battle of the Volga. I thought he was a liar when he said it lasted a year and eight million men were killed — there just couldn’t’ve been that many people in the world.”

  “It’s still hard to believe, Kurt. But I guess the bombs could do it. How many people in Germany then? A hundred million?”

  “Uhm. About. And now there’s a hundred thousand.

  Eight million men in one battle. That’s more than there are in all Europe now, I guess. Maybe more’n the whole world.”

  “Efficient killers, eh?” Turning, suddenly intent, Hippke asked, “Kurt, why’s it still going on? What’re we fighting for?”

  Kurt shrugged invisibly in the sudden darkness left when the carrier shut down her lights. “I could give you the Political Office line. It’s the only one I know. Hell, I don’t know why. Maybe nobody ever thought to stop. I don’t think anybody knows any more, unless it’s High Command. Maybe it goes along on its own inertia, and won’t stop-until there’s nobody left.”

  Kurt suddenly shuddered. His talk was approaching treason. He glanced around quickly, but no one was near.

  “Maybe Otto was right. Maybe staying home’s the only way to stop it,” said Hippke, speaking cautiously. “Lot of men been talking about what Otto said, Kurt. Lot of men think he was right. Lot of men beginning to think of doing something about it.”

  Kurt got the impression he was being felt out. He remembered his earlier suspicions about Hippke. He did not want to be maneuvered by any underground, no matter his sympathy for its aim. “Erich, if you hear a man talking, remind him of that wreck. Men got to thinking on that ship. None of them’ll ever go home. And you be careful who you try to enlist. Remember Otto. He went overboard the same night he spoke out.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Otto was stabbed and pushed, maybe by someone who believes in the War. I don’t know that for sure. Maybe someone had a grudge. You might find out which the hard way.”

  “You don’t know who?”

  “No. And don’t spread that around. I don’t want a witch-hunt. I’m telling you so I don’t have to fish you out of the pond some night.”

  “All right, I’ll shut up. About everything.”

  “Good.” But he was sure he detected insincerity in Erich’s voice. If the man was the undergrounder Kurt suspected, he would simply be more cautious. “Think I’ll go crap out.”

  Kurt went down ladders and walked aft slowly, second guessing himself about telling Hippke of Otto’s murder. He might not keep quiet. If the murderer discovered he was being sought...

  That night Jager passed through the straits and turned north. Gibraltar itself became visible at sunrise, rearing above the horizon like some tremendous, crouched prehisoric monster. Slowly, creepingly slow, it drew nearer.

  Gibraltar, Kurt thought, the place of Gathering, headquarters of the High Command. Inside that mass of rock was the War Room, fabled, whence all orders came. Within that stone were the men and women who directed the War Effort — and the operations of the Political Office. Kurt, in his mind’s eye, saw it as the heart of a vast, invisible web. There the black-and-silver spiders dwelt, weaving their complex, mysterious plots, catching “traitors” with their complex, savage snares.

  “Good lord!” Hans muttered a while later. “Look at all the ships! Kurt, will you look at the ships?”

  Kurt looked. Hans had a right to be excited. Even from several kilometers, a forest of masts could be seen to one side of the Rock, Dozens of ships.

  Later, when they were closer, Kurt saw that the nearest were destroyers. Behind them, better protected, were larger vessels. Cruisers, he realized. And another carrier — no, two — behind the cruisers. And beyond those, auxiliaries: ammunition ships, stores ships, colliers, ancient merchantmen converted for War use. And still farther on, more destroyers.

  “Oh, Kurt, come over here,” Hans shouted across the bridge. “See what’s coming. Look! Coming around the Rock to meet us. Isn’t she beautiful?” A ship was steaming to meet them, a titan of a vessel. “Battlewagon,” Kurt murmured. “I thought they were all gone. What a monster!”

  A monster indeed. A killer. If Jager was an iron wolf, this, then, was Tyrannosaurus rex in case-hardened steel. Surely the Australians could have nothing like her. Surely her huge guns would rule the ocean.

  “Look it up! Look it up!” Hans demanded.

  Kurt got the copy of Jane’s. He turned to United States, where he remembered having seen a similar ship. “Here it is, Hans.” He handed the book over, tapping a picture. “What does it say?”

  “How would I know?”

  Hans carried the book to the chart table and bent over it, as if trying to puzzle out the statistics beneath the photograph. His-eyes grew big with wonder. “The Australians can’t beat this! Wonder where they found her?” He bent over the book again, studying the text below the statistics. “What flag?”

  Kurt took a look through binoculars. “High Command.”

  “Boatswain,” said Lindemann, “Set the Sea Detail. Kurt, get Beck’s anchor chart.”

  As he was fixing the chart to the table, Kurt watched Victoria start into a channel between the anchored ships. Like a hen and chicks, he thought, or like duck and ducklings, with Jager the ugly one coming along last.

  There was thunder from the battleship — and distress on Jager’s bridge, confused questions. Kurt leaned out the door. The huge warship had hoisted an Argentine flag and was busily blasting the sky with a secondary mount. “Gun salute,” he said, ashamed of his moment of fear.

  “I’m glad they’ve got ammunition to waste,” Hans growled. Kurt saw that he too had been frightened, and was irritated about it.

  There was a pause in the firing after the twenty-first boom. The Argentine flag came down.

  Kurt felt a surge of pride as the red, black, and yellow of the Littoral replaced the gold, blue, and white. The thunder resumed.<
br />
  “This one’s for us.” He stepped out on the wing. Glancing down, he saw the Sea Detail waving their caps at the battleship. They were idiots, he thought. The jaws of a trap were closing, and they cheered. Green sea slipped past lager’s flanks. Every meter forward made turning back that much more impossible.

  “Hey, Kurt, come over on this side and look.” Hans tugged at his sleeve. He followed the smaller man through the bridge.

  “Look,” said Hans, pointing to the anchored ships. “Portugal.” Several ships flew a red-and-green ensign. “And Spain.” Three vessels bore the red-and-gold with the black eagle. He pointed to other ships. “Nigeria, I think, and France... “He indicated flag after flag, babbling.

  Kurt marveled too, for here were men of nations as fabulous as those of the Arabian Nights. Jager eased into the channel between ships, her men exchanging shouted greetings with sailors of other lands. Hans grew more excited. “Look! Look, Kurt. Britain!...”

  “Quartermaster!”

  “Sir?”

  “We’ll tie up at buoy thirty-four. Find it on your chart.”

  “Yes sir.” He went inside and did so, the while thinking that Gregor need not be so glum. He returned to the wing, told Hans, “We’ve a good position. Close in.”

  “You going over?”

  Nothing could keep him from exploring this hub of history. “On the first boat.”

  VIII

  “IT’S not really fair,” Kurt told Hans while descending the accommodation ladder to the liberty boat.

  “‘Rank hath its privileges,’” Hans quoted. “One’s liberty every day. Why feel guilty?”

  “I don’t. But it’s not fair, not when the others only get to go every other day....”

  “It could be arranged....”

  “Never mind. Hello, Deckinger.”

  “I’ll trade you, Ranke,” said the coxswain.

  “Forget it. I’m not that fair.” He and Hans took seats and waited for the boat to fill. The sailors who followed them were all neatly trimmed and polished, their uniforms clean and starched. They would return appearing to have wrestled tigers.