The Heirs of Babylon - Glen Cook

by harry

  The how he recognized quickly enough. The padlock on the door was a standard Navy lock. There were a dozen others aboard which took the same key. Anyone who wanted to examine the pattern numbers on enough keys could find one to fit.

  He knelt before the safe and ran through the combination quickly. Despite the fact that the charthouse was now air-conditioned, sweat dribbled down his temples. He swung the door open. Yes, someone had been inside. The navigator’s copy of the signal book was on the wrong shelf.

  He chuckled nervously. Luck had saved him some tall explanation. He had given Gregor the damning Ritual War material just in time, and he had long ago hidden Beck’s notebook.

  But a threat existed. Someone was snooping. Sooner or later they were bound to find something. He was being pushed, perhaps unconsciously, into the underground camp. If Gregor wasn’t his cousin — damn him! This had to be countered.

  He locked the door, went to the communications box, called the wardroom. “Wardroom, charthouse. Mr. Lindemann, please.”

  A momentary pause, then, “Mr. Lindemann. What is it?”

  “Someone went through the safe this morning.”

  “Was it locked?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Anything missing?”

  “No sir.”

  “Good.” Muttered talk, incomprehensible, Lindemann presumably asking advice. “Still there, Ranke?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’ll be right up. Get the classified material out so we can check it.”

  “Yes sir.” He switched off, then rechecked the classified charts and publications. He did not need the custody log to tell him they were all present.

  Gregor knocked shortly. Kurt let him in. “Anything missing?”

  “No. There wasn’t anything worth taking. They were after the notebook.”

  “Notebook?”

  “The one that belonged to Beck.”

  “Oh, damn! Forgot about it. Meant you should find out what was in it. What’d you do with it?”

  Kurt started to tell him, then had an unpleasant thought. He glanced toward the door, opened a drawer, and took out memo pad and pen. He wrote: “Combat. Air search repeater. Inside access panel.” Meaning he had hidden it inside a radar repeater in the Combat Information Center, as safe a place as he could imagine. The repeaters, because they were dead, were furniture everyone ignored. No one had bothered them since a vain effort at repairs made following the salvaging at Finisterre.

  “Good,” said Gregor. He took the pad and pen and wrote: “Get it. Translate it.” Aloud, he added, “And be careful.”

  Kurt nodded. Gregor slipped out. After shredding the note and making certain everything was locked up, Kurt followed. Once he was sure no one watched, he slipped through the door to Combat.

  No one was there. No one would be on such a day. The sun made it an oven. Moreover, there was no point in anyone’s presence. Half the gear did not work, and the other half need not be operated while the ship was anchored.

  Kurt locked the door, then hurried to the repeater containing the notebook. He loosened wing nuts and slipped the access panel off the back of the blockish gadget. “Ah,” he murmured. Right where he had left it, hanging in a tangle of dusty wiring. He slapped the dust off and tucked it inside his waistband.

  He was replacing the last nut when someone tried the door. Finding it locked, the person knocked. Kurt rose and quietly passed through the heavy curtains screening the sonar room from the remainder of Combat. A key turned in the lock behind him. Taking care to make no sound, he undogged a watertight door opening on the torpedo deck.

  Someone crossed the room beyond the curtain. Kurt peeped through, saw one of the young Political Officers. While he watched, the youth went through books lying atop the dead-reckoning tracer. Grinning, Kurt slipped into the bright sun beating down on the torpedo deck. He took the long way back to. the charthouse, and immediately set to work translating.

  XV

  THE fleet departed Bab el Mandeb on the fifteenth day of June.

  “Where are we now?” Hans asked days later, as he and Kurt leaned on the rail of the port wing, staring landward.

  “Ras al Hadd. We’ll begin crossing the Gulf of Oman soon.”

  “It’s like living a fairy tale. Ever since we left Perim, I’ve been expecting magic carpets, or something. Aden, Oman, Hadhramaut... it’s a downright black-sad world that’s too serious for magic.”

  ‘Uhm,” Kurt agreed. The past ten days had been a bit like living an episode of the Arabian Nights — two hundred ships full of Sinbads sailing for an Eastern Doom, bound to fail Serendip’s mystic shore — though there was no real reason for his feeling, other than a wish to believe.

  “Quartermaster!” Magic carpets unbraided. “Got work to do, Hans.” He turned. “Sir?”

  “I need an anticipated course.”

  “Zero three eight.” He tamed back to Hans. “I was wrong. He irritates me sometimes. He could’ve looked at the damned chart.”

  “He wants everybody to feel part of the team. You could’ve had Obermeyer, instead.”

  “Speaking of Obermeyer, have they made up their minds yet?”

  “About my commission? No.” The sudden anger and bitterness in Hans’s voice was-frightening. He wanted that brass terribly. “Never will, I guess. Tomorrow, if the seas are right and you’re ready, I want to refuel.”

  “It’ll have to be soon. We’re low. I was talking to Ziotopolski this morning, and we could be in trouble. There might not be enough wood to get us to where we can cut more.”

  “Ziotopolski worries too much. Anyone can look at the chart and see it’s only sixteen hundred miles from Gwadar.”

  “Kurt?” He turned. Brecht, his relief, had come to the bridge. “That time already?” He went to the log, signed it over. “Seems time’s rushing past, now we’re getting close.”

  Brecht nodded, a little pale. The crew were growing increasingly tense.

  Kurt went down to the charthouse and returned to translating the notebook taken from Beck.

  For days he had plodded through the pages of a dull life, from Beck’s initiation into the Political Office through fifteen gray years to his assignment as agent for bringing a Littoral vessel to the Gathering. Here and there there were comments concerning the growing underground, or an occasional bland word about Office policy (Beck, strangely, would not editorialize), but little to indicate the author was other than a human zero. His first fifteen years were covered in a mere fifty pages of crabbed handwriting.

  Later, as he touched the high points of his Littoral assignment, Kurt found him more interesting. He examined Karl Wiedermann briefly, stating the man could do a better job. Then Beck mentioned meeting High Command’s chief agent in Telemark. He recruited a new agent, designated Marquis, but gave neither name nor description. Here and there Kurt encountered names of shipmates — and his own — always accompanied by cryptic little comments concerning loyalty.

  The pages of Beck’s life turned, Jager sailed, the Norwegian event took place. There were empty weeks between entries. Beck’s handwriting changed, grew shakier, fear seeped oilily up through the earth of his words.

  Kurt turned a page and found his name suddenly prominent. He proceeded with renewed interest. “Ranke is a gullible, apathetic, romantic daydreamer,” Beck noted at one point, “easily maneuvered through manipulation of a stableful of overly human ideals he is too lazy to defend.” Kurt frowned at this, but was little bothered. He had heard it from other sources. However, a bit later, when Beck, with a delight Kurt imagined as fairly reeking from the page, described him as an unwitting, unwilling Office agent, useful because he revealed all he knew through his evasions, he became righteously indignant, and, as he read on, saw that Beck had repeatedly played him for a pawn. He grew increasingly angered and hurt — this was a rapier-thrust to his ego. That Beck often expressed a strong regard for him, and several times mentioned he might be a candidate for Political Office employment, ameliorated
the pain not at all. Each reference to his having been used plunged him deeper into despair until, at last, they birthed hatred — not so much of Beck as of himself, for being what he was, for allowing himself to be so easily played for a fool.

  And hatred’s child was a foolish decision, as when he had joined Jager to spite Karen. He would commit himself to the underground, tear down this wicked system that had used him so. Later, when he had to rationalize an explanation for others, he claimed his decision had been spurred by his readings in Ritual War. Eventually, he believed the lie himself.

  He knocked at Gregor’s door when done, entered, announced, “I’m ready to join. Just tell me what to do.”

  Lindemann’s eyebrows rose, but he asked no questions. Such might have reversed his good fortune. “What’d you learn from the notebook?”

  “Very little.” Kurt gave the highlights.

  “So he did know us, all but Brindled Saxon. That’s it?”

  “No.” Kurt had saved the best. “Some about Marquis. No name, but a way to find him.” For one of the final pages told of Marquis going into High Command’s underground fortress to be formally indoctrinated, quickly trained, and given an identification code. This latter was the means by which Kurt expected they would catch him, for the code was described as a tattoo on the left arm, death’s head and serial number, invisible except under ultraviolet light.

  “But Jager hasn’t any such light!” Gregor protested, Kurt explained. Beck had gone into detail because fate had provided High Command’s enemies with a means of identifying their man. Marquis’s tattoo had become infected shortly after application, festered, and left a scar in the death’s-head shape, the size of a small coin, on the man’s left arm. Beck felt he should not be assigned anywhere that the mark was known.

  “We’ve got him!” said Lindemann.

  “I’ve seen the mark on somebody.” Who? Kurt felt close, so close, to the killer he had been hunting so long. But, damned! Though he could picture the scar, the face of the man wearing it refused to focus. Did he not want to know?

  By lurking around the showers — strange behavior, duly noted by others — he managed to eliminate four of his eight suspects by the time Jager reached Gwadar. But the other four he could not catch bathing.

  The midwatch, two nights after refueling in the Gulf of Oman, and the night after passing the mins of the Pakistani city, Gwardar: Kurt and Gregor were on the port wing, ostensibly taking star sights.

  “We’ll get Deneb, Kurt.” Gregor sighted on the star. adjusted the sextant, said, “Mark!”

  Kurt noted the time on his stopwatch, quickly wrote it down. Then he jotted down the star’s altitude as Lindemann held the sextant before him.

  While Kurt wrote, Gregor whispered, “We had an officers’ meeting tonight. Von Lappus decided to leave the fleet.” Kurt glanced up, surprised.

  “Trouble is, we can’t do anything while we’ve got Political Officers aboard. And we don’t dare do anything to them. Marquis would radio the battleship and... boom! No more Jager!”

  Someone approached the nearby door to the closed bridge, looked out.

  “Now Capella.”

  They took the sight and dithered over it until no one was near.

  “We could throw both the Political Officers and their radio overboard....” Kurt stopped, aghast. He had been seriously suggesting murder. What had this mad voyage done to him?

  “Wouldn’t do any good,” said Gregor. “Suppose we did? As soon as we left station, the battleship would radio. And they’d open fire when they got no answer. Where does that leave us?”

  “We can run faster.”

  “Paster than a shell? But assume we got away. What then? We’d run out of fuel somewhere off the coast of Arabia. We’re too late, Kurt. We should’ve left a long time ago. We’re past the point of no return. The only fuel source inside our steaming range is India.”

  “That we’ve been told of.” He felt too late also, though in a different way. It had been too late for him since the day he agreed to join the crew.

  “Yes, that High Command let us know about. We might find something on the Persian Gulf coast, but we don’t know. The Captain’s working on it, anyway. You told me to operate inside the system. I tried, and the results have been amazing....”

  “Can you get Dubhe, sir?”

  Lindemann glanced at the sky. “Not now. There’s a cloud. I’ve a good shot at Alphecca, though it’s low.” He lifted the sextant to his eye. The breeze ‘whispered, the seas whispered around Jager while they waited.

  Kurt glanced at the door. Clear again. “What’ll we do?”

  “We’ll try to smoke Marquis out. I’m pretty sure who he is now. Here, let’s get one more shot, then you go figure our posit. Bring the notebook when you come back.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it. Then keep a close watch.” Lindemann rubbed his temples, a sure sign his headache haunted him with redoubled savagery.

  Kurt did not like it. Flashing the notebook was certain to cause trouble. But that seemed what Gregor wanted.

  “Regulus?”

  “Good enough.” Gregor shot it. Kurt noted the time and altitude, then went to the charthouse. He spent a while working the fix, a while dithering, and finally forced himself to take the notebook from hiding inside the inoperative loran receiver. He returned to the bridge, was surprised to find Haber there, observing the watch.

  Kurt flourished the book as he handed it to Gregor, who slipped it into a hip pocket, left a third plainly visible. Haber frowned.

  “Sir, did you notice which sextant you used?”

  “No, why?” Lindemann asked. “Near as I could narrow it down, we’re in the Arabian Sea. You must’ve used the one with the wiggly mirror.”

  Gregor retrieved the sextant. “So I did. Well, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get a sun shot tomorrow. Why don’t you get this thing off the bridge? Take it down to the charthouse.”

  A bit later, with a hint of false dawn coloring the horizon to the east, the watch reliefs came up. Kurt, exhausted as always after the midwatch, signed the watch over to Brecht and started for his compartment.

  He walked aft along the starboard weatherdeck, watching the phosphorescent waters whisper past. He paused near a door, before going below, to look out at the galaxy of running lights marking the presence of the fleet. Water murmured along the hull, the engines muttered like dwarfs hammering in caves beneath his feet. An aircraft carrier was a shadowy leviathan a half kilometer away. Flying fish darted from Jsger’s side like fluttery green sparks.

  The world was always so peaceful early in the morning. A man could forget he was living on and in a killing machine, moving inexorably toward an appointment in Samarra. On a ship running down the quiet seas of the night, he could forget he was the blood and soul of that machine, an acolyte of destruction. He could feel one with creation, a part of God; and could understand the emotions which made some flee to Telemark. Telemark. Karen...

  A light flashed on the carrier’s signal bridge. Idly, Kurt read the message, sent in English. An escort was being berated for moving too close.

  There was a sharp sound from up forward. Frowning, Kurt turned. He listened. It was repeated — the choking cry of a man in pain.

  He ran, for the moment forgetting he was on a ship. The deck sank away beneath him. He lost his balance, fell, rolled into the lifelines. One hand thrust through and hung over the side, getting splashed as a swell rolled along Jager’s flank. Shaking because of the nearness of personal disaster, Kurt scrambled to his feet. Moving more carefully, he hurried forward.

  A groan came from the darkness just inside the open door of the thwartships passage. Kurt stopped, crouched, felt the cool tingling of hair rising on the back of his neck. His hand stole to the hilt of his knife.

  Nothing stirred in the dark passageway, though he waited a full minute. Just a low moaning. Crouching lower, he felt inside the bottom of the door for the battery-powered emergency light. He flipped the
switch with shaking fingers. A weak fan of light illuminated the passage and the man at the foot of the ladder to the bridge. Gregor, in a fetal position, the back of his shirt glistening wetly, scarletly — just where Otto Kapp had suffered his wound.

  Kurt visualized: a man waiting at the foot of the ladder, hidden by darkness, moving in from behind, clapping one hand over Gregor’s mouth, stabbing with the other.

  The light reached Gregor’s mind. He lifted himself slightly and turned a pain-contorted face toward Kurt, then fell back to the bloodied deck. Kurt glanced around. No one in sight. Shaking, heart constricting as though in the grasp of a strongman, he sheathed his knife and knelt beside his cousin. “Gregor?” softly.

  Lindemann’s eyes opened, fluttering, as if this were a major effort. “Kurt?” Blood-foam from his punctured lung dribbled from the comer of his mouth. He forced a sickly grin. “Looks... like... he moved... too fast... for us.”

  “Who?” Kurt clenched his hands, to control his shaking.

  Gregor’s mouth opened and closed several times before he was able to say, “Don’t know.... Couldn’t see.... Came from... behind.... Got the book... Kurt... you have to... take over.”

  “Take it easy. I’ll get Commander Haber.” Futility. Haber’s skills certainly were not up to repairing a punctured lung — if he had not been the one to puncture it originally.

  Kurt’s shakes grew worse. He had trouble controlling himself as he went down the ladder to officers’ country, slammed through the door closing off the passageway leading between staterooms, and ran to Haber’s door.

  He lost all control, began pounding and shouting, unaware he was doing so. Several doors opened. Von Lappus came from his cabin, antique in a nightshirt — Kurt missed it.

  Haber opened his door. “What the hell’s going on?” He was, still dressed from having been to the bridge. The anger in his voice was icewater to Kurt’s emotions, calmed him till he could speak coherently. He managed, “Gregor’s been stabbed!”

  “Stabbed? How?”

  “With a knife, dammit! He’s dying!”