Dance on a Sinking Ship

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Are they really as bad as all that?”

  “They are worse. Surely you know that.”

  “Yes. I do. I suppose I was posing a rhetorical question. You’re the first German I’ve met in three years who’s spoken against them.”

  “You will meet more, Mr. Spencer. Those who aren’t dragged away in the middle of the night.”

  Spencer glanced back along the deck. They were alone. He could hear dance music coming from the ballroom.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to put in the story until I sit down to write it. All I know for sure is that Prince Edward and his girlfriend will figure prominently.”

  They watched the small dark waves parading by. Finally von Kresse stood erect.

  “I believe I said brandy, Mr. Spencer. There is a small, pleasant bar a deck above, adjacent to the gallery overlooking the ballroom. Let’s go to it, if you don’t mind walking slowly.”

  They appeared to be the only customers the Oriental barman had had that evening. He was very generous with his pouring. The count was also very generous with the tip he added to the total when he signed the bill. At his suggestion, they declined stools at the bar or a table and instead went out onto the gallery above the ballroom, leaning over the railing as they had out on the deck.

  There were only a few couples on the dance floor, moving in a slow fox trot to the band’s halfhearted “The Very Thought of You.” An earnest attempt was being made by everyone aboard to return to normal, but it wasn’t quite succeeding. Passengers had been going back to the second-class promenade all day to examine the grotesque damage, until van Groot had finally had the area roped off.

  “Hell, there’s Mrs. Parker,” said Spencer.

  She was dancing with one of the younger ship’s officers. Not gaily; there was no merriment about her. She was somber and dignified, and danced with much formality. But she was fully participating in the evening. She wore a long crimson gown that set off her fair complexion and dark hair. Red and black. Colors of death. Also, as Spencer recalled, the colors of Prussia.

  “No one believes in mourning anymore,” he said.

  “She is in mourning,” said the count. “You may be certain of that. Her sadness is serene, but it is genuine. I think she also feels guilt.”

  “He wasn’t much of a man, though, was he? What would we have done with such a boy in the air war in France?”

  “He would have died as quickly as he did out in the boat,” said von Kresse. “He wouldn’t have lasted a single patrol.”

  “I don’t think she loved him.”

  “She was fond of him. She is also very loyal. One of her many qualities. I think she is quite beautiful, though not so beautiful as Miss Gwynne.”

  “Yes.” Fact was fact.

  “The most beautiful women on this ship are American,” said the count, shifting his weight off his bad leg. “It makes the British ladies very envious.”

  “Mrs. Simpson isn’t very beautiful.”

  “She makes the British ladies envious for another reason, yes? But I think Mrs. Simpson must be a little envious of Mrs. Parker. She is young, and so beautiful, and of such high social standing. And now she will be quite rich.”

  “She won’t be Queen of England.”

  “Neither will Mrs. Simpson. But even if she were to be, I think that would be another reason for her to envy Mrs. Parker.”

  The music faded away and, apparently at her request, the young officer escorted her off the dance floor. The table he took her to was presided over by Mr. van Hoorn of the shipping line. His attentions were very fatherly. The company was extending Mrs. Parker every kindness and courtesy.

  “She is fluent in Greek and Italian, in addition to French,” the count said. “She fences, writes poetry, knows calculus, and has read Aristotle and Nietzsche. She said she wants to learn how to fly an airplane.”

  “Mrs. Simpson?”

  “No. Of course not. I mean Mrs. Parker.”

  “How do you know so much about her?”

  “She came to visit me today. To console me, about my sister Dagne. She was very—what is the American word? Ah yes, sweet. She was very sweet. I felt very sad for her.”

  “And how did Edwina feel?”

  “Mr. Spencer, you are not being a gentleman.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  The band had struck up “A Room With A View,” a Noel Coward song. The young officer leaned toward her, but Mrs. Parker shook her head and remained seated, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She stared down at them.

  “I’m sorry,” Spencer said to the count. “I’ve been stupid with you about Edwina. Edwina is … Edwina.”

  “She’s fond of you, if it matters. But then, she’s fond of all of us.”

  Mrs. Parker had lifted her head. She saw them up on the balcony and, after a moment, nodded in recognition, though Spencer could not tell whether it was to him or von Kresse.

  The count shifted his weight again, wincing. He sipped his brandy, glancing back through the doorway to the tables and chairs in the little bar, but made no hint of movement in that direction.

  “Mr. Spencer,” von Kresse said, looking back to Mrs. Parker, who was talking with van Hoorn. “When I talked with you about what you are going to put in your newspaper story …”

  “I told you, Herr Rittmeister. I don’t know what I’m going to put in it.”

  “You said you were going to write about Charles Lindbergh.”

  “Yes. I saw him. I haven’t found him again yet, but he’s aboard this ship. If I don’t catch him here, I’ll get him when he gets off the boat.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, I feel sorry about what he and his wife have gone through. About their son. I don’t feel that good about what I’m doing. But whatever Lindbergh does is big news. Edward and Mrs. Simpson are news, or they certainly will be when I get through with them. After Hitler and Roosevelt, I can’t think of anyone who’s bigger news than Charles A. Lindbergh and the prince and his doxy.”

  “Why do you do this? Are you bitter, resentful? Your father lost his fortune, and now you will have your revenge?”

  “I’ll do it for the same reason I crawled from my cot every morning and climbed up into the cold at ten thousand feet to shoot down you Huns. I’ll do it because it’s my job. It’s what I do.”

  The count was looking at him now full in the face, his haunted, hunter’s eyes seeking some truth, some fact about Spencer.

  “I don’t know that we were special,” von Kresse said, “we who flew. I think probably the men in the trenches who endured the gas and the slime and the shelling, I think they were probably much more special. But we are different, aren’t we? There is a bond between us who climbed every morning to ten thousand feet in the cold air, who drank brandy to freeze our intestines so the castor oil fumes from the engine wouldn’t make us shit in our pants. We are brothers, aren’t we, even though we tried to kill each other?”

  “Why don’t you want me to write about Lindbergh?”

  “Are we brothers?”

  “Yes, we are brothers. Les frères de la guerre. Kampfbruderen.”

  “Don’t you feel this same bond with all airmen, with the brave ones? Don’t you feel you owe them some honor for what they are? For what we all are?”

  Spencer gave von Kresse a grim look. He stood up, taking a large sip of brandy. He set down the snifter.

  “Herr Rittmeister, Count von Kresse, your excellency Colonel sir,” he said. “Charles A. Lindbergh never fought in the fucking war.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On board a ship, one always noticed the light. It spoke of the world beyond the interior spaces of the vessel, which so quickly become familiar and confining. Like the weather, the light was always changing. The light presented the only real measure of passing time, otherwise marked just by the schedule of meals and social events. The light represented reality. All else around one on a ship was contrivance.

  Olga lay awake, uncomfortable but very stil
l on Kees’s narrow bed, watching the first light of day make a gray, glowing circle of the porthole above her head. She had been dreaming just before, and remembered the sequence now only as a vague confusion of horses and shooting—an attack on a farm, some battle in the woods, she wasn’t sure. The images had nothing to do with her present life.

  Earlier in the night she’d had her rat dream again, for the thousandth time, and it caused her to thrash about and cry out, awakening Kees. He had lain there, watching her with great seriousness, for a long time thereafter. Now she listened to the quiet sounds of his own contented sleep.

  She had provided that contentment. She had done everything imaginable to please him and, though gratified by the obvious success of her efforts, she was now tired of sex. Like the danger she was facing, she wanted to put that behind her for a long while.

  There was something very odd about the light. It had been growing steadily brighter, but now this increase had strangely stopped. It was as if time itself had stopped.

  She had decided on her plan. Like all her best plans, it was utterly simple. She would slip into the man’s room and shoot him. Just like that. Bang. Dead. Then she would wipe the pistol clean of fingerprints and drop it in the Count von Kresse’s stateroom, quickly opening his door with the master key she’d stolen when she took the maid’s uniform from the storage room on the lower decks below, days before. The Prussian had already killed on this voyage, before some of the most prominent witnesses in the world. He’d murdered his own sister—a bitter, crippled war veteran obviously capable of any desperate act. Olga’s weapon, conveniently enough, was of German manufacture, a cavalry officer’s sidearm from the war that Olga had specifically requested because of its excellent quality. The count had a logical motive for murdering this victim. And an added benefit of her plan was that she would not only be taking the life of her assigned target—as she had never failed to do before—but she would also assure the doom of a Prussian aristocrat who had killed many of her countrymen in the war and who stood for everything the Soviet revolution had been created to destroy.

  Best of all, by fixing blame on the count, she would infuriate the British people against the German Reich. It would be a masterstroke, though the result of only a few minutes’ peaceful thought upon waking at dawn.

  The light still did not increase. She was mystified. It remained half night, half day.

  If there was a flaw in her plan it was that it must be executed very, very swiftly. She could be gone from Kees’s cabin only a few minutes. If he was not on duty when she carried out her mission, if he was still in this bed that he so stubbornly refused to leave, her intention was to hurry into his tiny bathroom the moment she returned, awakening him with the shower and toilet flushes and thus providing herself with an unbreakable alibi. She couldn’t have done it, Captain, sir. She was in my cabin, in the shower.

  She could afford only a minute or so in her victim’s quarters—just a few seconds, really. It would be easy to gain entrance. She’d done that before, twice, so carefully and expertly she’d made not the slightest sound except for the gentle click of her pass key turning in the lock. The first time she’d been scared off by the woman’s most unexpected presence. In the second instance, despite the extremely late hour she’d chosen, she’d found him up, doing exercises, in the nude, fortunately facing away from her. She could have killed him right then, actually, but she’d been too startled by his being awake, too distracted by his nakedness.

  Olga had tried a third time, out on the deck, but she’d made a mistake and the opportunity had failed her.

  This time she’d be deliberate and resolute. She would cross the quiet carpeting from sitting room to bedchamber, put the pistol to his royal head, and fire, once. If the woman were there, she’d take the time to fire one more bullet. The woman’s death would fit into the damning story she was preparing for Count von Kresse.

  Now the light at the porthole appeared to be fading—time moving backward. She ignored the phenomenon, concentrating her thoughts.

  The risk would come making her escape, complicated by her need to pause at the Prussian’s door. But she could minimize that risk now. She knew exactly when watches were changed, when stewards could be expected in the corridors, when seamen might be out on the deck. In and out, one gunshot, possibly two, muffled with a cushion. The staterooms and suites on the top first-class deck were spacious, the sleeping quarters far apart. She could do it. She’d learned from her mistakes. She’d undertaken more difficult missions at greater risk. She had always thrived on risk. It was the reason for her celebrity in Dzerzhinski Square.

  But she’d have only a few seconds. She hungered for more. She wanted to talk to him, to make him understand his death, to understand her mission, her function. Perhaps she could carve out a few seconds more, enough to awaken him, to speak into his ear three simple words—a royal title and a person’s name. That’s all that was needed. That would bring understanding enough. Then she’d fire. It was a heavy-caliber revolver. She was excited at the thought of the big bullet’s savage impact.

  There was one other flaw in the plan. She’d have to wait through this day. She could not strike until night, and it might well be the ship’s last night at sea. They could make port by the afternoon or evening of the day after that. Then she’d be confronted with the enormous problem that was New York. The city had something that did not exist aboard ship—a police force with a long history of expertise at hunting down radicals and fugitive foreigners.

  She sat up suddenly, staring fiercely at the porthole. Kees murmured and moved slightly but did not awaken. She waited a minute, then, remembering the disciplines of her profession, several minutes more. When she was certain Kees had fallen back into deep slumber, Olga eased herself off the bed.

  Standing naked by the porthole, she smiled, quite joyfully. There was no mystery to the aborted light. They were in fog! A dead, impenetrable blanket of fog so thick she could scarcely see the wavetops directly below.

  It would be an hour or more before people even began stirring for breakfast. What crew was on watch would be much preoccupied with the weather since there were few emergencies at sea requiring more concentration than heavy fog. If they started sounding the foghorn, the deep, shuddering sound would obscure the report of even the largest firearm. She couldn’t understand why they were not sounding it.

  She could strike now, immediately. The archenemy would be dead very, very soon, in less time than it would take most of the passengers to prepare for breakfast. With a quick glance at the sleeping Kees, she went to her discarded clothing from the previous day, pulling on a sweater and her heavy skirt. The wool scratched, but that would help keep her alert. She wouldn’t bother with underwear. Once back, she wanted to be naked in the bathroom as quickly as possible. She certainly wouldn’t bother with shoes. She didn’t intend to be seen, and bare feet would help assure that she would not be heard.

  Kees had been respectful of her privacy, enough so that she had felt sufficiently confident to keep her pistol in her large shoulder bag, wrapped in another sweater. Moving quietly, she pulled it free, then shoved it into a pocket of her skirt.

  With equal silence, she slowly turned the knob and opened the door. There was no one in the corridor, no sound behind her. After closing the door as someone might gently ease forward the cocked hammer of a revolver, she took a deep breath, and then began her run, her feet making only a mushy padding sound on the carpeting. She would be done with this in five minutes. Justice was not always so swift.

  Captain van der Heyden found the bridge under the command of Marius Tor, who after himself and the head chef was the oldest member of the crew. He was a tall and very thin man whose uniforms never quite fit and who spoke in nervous squeaks. The injured captain’s sudden appearance on the bridge at dawn startled him. Tor preferred the late night watches and avoided his superiors as much as possible.

  “G-good morning, sir,” he said. “Bit of fog, sir.”

  It
was so thick they could barely make out the bow from the forward bridge windows.

  “What’s the speed?” van der Heyden asked.

  “Eighteen knots, sir,” said a crewman.

  “Much too fast,” the captain said. “Reduce to ahead one-third. I want it down to ten knots.”

  “Yes, sir. Ahead one-third,” said Tor.

  “Ahead one-third,” repeated the crewman.

  Van der Heyden, who’d been walking unsteadily, lowered himself into his chair with a groan. He was unshaven and, though he tried to speak as crisply as possibly, his speech was a little slurred. But it didn’t matter. They were in conditions that required the presence of the vessel’s master, and so present he was. He stuck his bandaged hands under his arms at the armpits and pressed hard against the itching and pain.

  “We’re in sea lanes approaching the coast of North America, Marius,” he said. “Why aren’t you sounding the foghorn?”

  “We tried, Captain. I’m afraid the fire burned out the circuitry.”

  Van der Heyden sighed. He felt so groggy. He wondered if he’d be able to keep from passing out.

  “Marius,” he said. “All that’s required is to depress a lever and open a steam valve. All you need to do is to send a seaman up the forward stack with a rope.”

  “Uh, yes, sir. But-but the blast will deafen him.”

  “Marius. Have him stuff his ears. With Kapok, if necessary, but get him up there. Our lives depend on it. I want no more disasters. I mean to complete this crossing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With his voice now nearly as high-pitched as a woman’s, Tor gave out the orders.

  “Where’s van Groot?” the captain asked.

  “Asleep, sir. He worked six consecutive watches.”

  “I’ll return the favor. Let him sleep.”

  Van der Heyden glanced about the bridge. The bottle of gin he’d had there during the fire was gone.

  “Steer a steady course at ten knots,” he said. “I’m going back to my cabin for a few minutes. I-I need to shave.”

  By the time he’d finished that task, a clumsy and tedious endeavor with his bandaged hands, and consumed a large cup of gin, the foghorn had begun its long, resounding blasts—declarations of the ship’s intent, and his.