Riley climbed a ladder to the top of one tank. The pressurized hatch was open, 2,500 liters of diesel inside. Two black rubber hoses led from the opening to a noisy compressor.
Anyone looking at the hoses would have taken them for part of the motors’ supply system. They would have been in for quite a surprise if they had seen Riley reach his arm into the hatch up to his shoulder and pull out a large bronze diving helmet with three round windows—and behind the dirty glass, scared green eyes open wide.
8
After being helped out of the fuel tank and bulky diving suits, Helmut and Elsa Rubinstein went to their cabin to shower. They were to report to the captain’s cabin in one hour.
They arrived on time and knocked on the wooden door at the end of the corridor. Riley invited them in. His cabin was almost twice as large as the others. It had a single bunk attached to the bulkhead, its own sink, and a desk piled with papers, some handwritten, some on navigation drawn with compass, square, and bevel. A gleaming Weems & Plath sextant rested on top of the papers. The furnishings were completed by several shelves containing technical books, almanacs, and novels by Stevenson, Conrad, and Melville, in addition to a small record collection leaning on a beat-up Webster turntable.
Two framed posters—one of the international code of signal flags, the other of position lights—accompanied a few sepia photographs that seemed to have been placed randomly on the bulkheads. In one photo, the now-captain was pictured with a group of twenty members of the Lincoln Battalion, recently arrived in Spain. They were mostly young men who had never fired a gun, but they were smiling at the chance to fight to defend liberty against fascism, unaware that just two years later seventeen of them would be dead.
There was another of the Pingarrón under its old name, trailing white smoke down the Thames Estuary. Another, framed on the desktop, showed a boy of about ten flanked by a couple. They stood by a boat in the Port of Boston—she with a full skirt, white blouse, and loose curly hair, he with a serious expression and Merchant Marine uniform.
Elsa studied these details as clues to Riley’s character, while Rubinstein focused his attention on the two men who watched them with mistrust from their seats. Jack gallantly stood to yield his seat to Mrs. Rubinstein, an offer Riley did not make to her husband, who had no choice but to remain standing in the middle of the room, looking down and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Since César had thrown all their belongings overboard, the only clothes they had were the ones they were wearing an hour ago, so after showering, they had to borrow clean ones. The businessman was wearing one of César’s blue jumpsuits covered in grease, and Elsa wore one of Julie’s old dresses. It was far too baggy, and made the slender Austrian look like a war refugee, which in fact she was.
“Captain Riley,” Rubinstein started to say uncomfortably, “I regret what happened, and I thank you on behalf of myself and my—”
“Shut it. It’s not apologies or thanks I want to hear from you,” Riley said.
Rubinstein glanced at Jack, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean, Captain.”
“Stop the charade,” Riley said. “I may not be the smartest sailor on the seas, but I know when I’m being fooled, and you two are not the best actors.”
“But Captain! I assure you—”
Riley stood up and brought his face a few inches from Rubinstein’s. “Stop lying. If the next thing you say isn’t the absolute truth, I’ll put you both back in the fuel tank without a diving suit this time, got it?”
Rubinstein looked back at Jack as if expecting help from that side, but he was leaning back on the bed and staring at Elsa’s thighs, which stuck out from under her short dress. “I don’t . . .”
“Look, I’ll make it easy. It already seemed strange that someone with money like you would prefer to go by boat instead of by plane or land to Portugal, but I let it go. What doesn’t have such an easy explanation is why a Gestapo captain followed you, killed our friend François, came here in a fucking submarine, and threatened to kill us. Jack and I have been going back and forth on this for an hour, and the only explanation we could think of is that you’re much more than a couple of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. So for the last time, who the hell are you?”
Rubinstein took a deep breath, looked at his wife, and said, “We—”
“Before you go on, I’ll warn you that if I catch even one lie, even if it’s about the size of your hat, you’ll both be off the boat before we get to Tangier . . . and I promise you we don’t have plans to touch ground before then.”
To everyone’s surprise, even Helmut’s, it was Elsa who sat forward in her chair and started to speak. “I’ll tell you what you want to know,” she said, clasping her hands. “But first you have to promise you’ll let us both off in Lisbon, safe and sound.”
“I can promise you I’ll hold up my end of the bargain, as long as you don’t give me a reason not to.”
“Okay,” she said after looking briefly at Rubinstein. Curiously, their roles seemed to have changed along with their clothes, and while the cat seemed to have gotten the businessman’s tongue, his young wife had taken control of the conversation with poise beyond her years. “We haven’t been completely honest with you, but we had good reasons.”
“You’d better.”
“The first thing is we aren’t Jewish or Austrian but German. Our names are Helmut and Elsa, but neither of our last names is Rubinstein. He’s Dr. Helmut Kirchner, and my name is Weller, Elsa Weller.”
“Hold on.” Jack lifted his head with sudden interest. “Are you saying you two aren’t . . .” he said, touching his index fingers together.
Elsa gave a guilty smile. “Dr. Kirchner and I aren’t married or anything like that. Helmut is a good friend of my dad’s, and without him I never could have escaped the Nazis.”
“I knew it!” Jack clapped.
“Shut up, Jack,” Riley said. “Let’s see if I understand this so far: you two are German citizens, not Jewish, but fleeing your country, and the Gestapo are chasing you.”
They nodded.
“Great, now convince me how any of this makes sense,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“Dr. Kirchner here,” Elsa explained, “is an eminent scientist in the field of experimental physics, one of the leading experts in the study of atomic fission and its potential practical applications. Do you know what I’m referring to?”
“Not at all.”
“Imagine,” Kirchner said, clearing his throat, “that the interior of a rock the size of a soccer ball could contain enough energy to make a ship sail for a century or power a big city for years.”
“From a rock?”
“Not any rock—one made of a radioactive material called uranium-235, which has the capacity to release 18.7 million kilowatt-hours of heat per kilogram.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You’re mistaken, Captain. It’s not only possible, but studies have already started bringing theory into practice, and in Germany they’re refining uranium-238 into uranium-235. Under very specific conditions, they bombard this refined uranium with neutrons, causing a chain reaction and releasing its nuclear energy, which is immense and virtually inexhaustible—millions of times more powerful than any other known source.”
Riley looked at Jack. Jack shrugged.
“We’re telling you the truth,” Elsa insisted. “If you refuse to believe us, there’s no sense going on.”
“Let’s say I try hard and believe you,” Riley said, rubbing his neck. “Either way this uranium story doesn’t explain anything.”
“It’s simple. Dr. Kirchner is one of only two scientists in Germany with the knowledge to convert uranium into usable energy,” Elsa explained. “Knowing this, he would never work for the Nazis, so he fled Germany, and that’s why the Gestapo is chasing him.”
There was silence for a moment.
“I don’t get it,” Jack
said, raising his hand like a schoolboy. “Why wouldn’t Helmut, as a German, help develop this miraculous source of energy, even though it means working for the Nazis in a way?”
“That has an explanation too,” Kirchner said. “Everything I told you before is still true, but like all great discoveries it has a dark side.” He swallowed before going on. “This new source of energy is capable of not only powering a city for years but also destroying one in seconds.”
“What?” Jack said.
“With only a few kilograms of uranium-235, you could build a bomb that would destroy London, Moscow, or Washington.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Unfortunately, I am. The Uranium Project where I worked seemed at first to focus on building a civilian generator, but a few months ago the leadership passed to Dr. Heisenberg and the SS. Since then, it’s focused on building a fission bomb. That’s why I had to flee Germany,” he said sadly. “It was something I couldn’t be an accomplice to in any way. The Gestapo wants to make me continue the research, convinced that with such a weapon, which they call the Wunderwaffe, Nazi Germany would bring the world to its knees.”
Riley thought over the strange couple’s story, trying to find holes or signs that the fantastic explanation could be an elaborate lie. “All right,” he said slowly. “You’re an eminent physicist the Nazis want back, but . . .” He looked at Elsa and added with a touch of irony, “What about you? What’s your role in all this? Are you gonna tell me you’re a scientist too?”
She lifted her chin. “Actually I’m a veterinarian, first in my class, but that’s not why the Nazis are looking for me. They want to use me as blackmail.”
“On who?”
“Remember when I said there were only two physicists in Germany with the necessary knowledge to build that horrible bomb?”
“Yes, one of them is our friend here, Dr. Kirchner.”
“The other physicist doesn’t want to work for the Nazis either,” she said. “And he is my father.”
9
A heavy silence settled into the captain’s cabin. Kirchner and Elsa waited like defendants for a judge’s verdict as Riley and Jack looked at them skeptically.
“I’d like to believe you,” Riley said. “But your story is so . . .”
“Captain Riley,” Elsa said, “if we wanted to invent a lie, don’t you think we would’ve made up something simpler?”
“Then why lie in the first place? If we’d known from the beginning, none of this would’ve happened.”
“If you’d known, maybe you would have deserted us in Barcelona. You also could have sold us to the Nazis.”
“Never,” Riley said.
“I’m sure now,” Elsa said, “but before we didn’t know. Believe me, we couldn’t risk it. We thought posing as a Jewish refugee couple was the most believable, and the safest.”
Jack got up and took her delicate hand in his big paw. “Don’t worry about anything, Ms. Weller. We believe you, and we’ll take care of you. While you’re on this ship, I give you my word that you’ll be safe, and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Alcántara,” she said, somewhat embarrassed.
Riley rolled his eyes.
“It’s a pleasure,” Jack said, ignoring Riley and giving Elsa a wink. “And please, call me Jack.”
Some hours later, the sun was already setting as Cape Palos disappeared off the starboard side. The engines purred, making the deck vibrate. With an empty hull, they could go up to eighteen knots, which would get them to Tangier by midmorning the next day.
Riley had relieved Julie at the helm, and Jack was there with him, gazing at the silhouette of Peña del Águila sticking out from the coastline. “You’re aware,” Jack said, “that when Snow White finds out we tricked him, he’ll come after us, right?”
“Snow White?”
“You know . . . the albino Nazi.”
Riley nodded. “I just hope we’re very far away by then.”
“He’ll look for us, for sure.”
“The sea’s big. There’s a war going on and a lot of ships on the water,” Riley said, shrugging.
“He doesn’t seem to me like someone who gives up easily.”
Riley looked at him. “You don’t agree with the decision I made?”
“It’s not that,” Jack said. “No way. If it were up to me, I’d have done the same.”
“So?”
“It’s just . . . I know why I would’ve done it, which isn’t why you did it.”
“The reason? Well, the same as yours, I guess.”
“You want the girl too?”
“Don’t screw around, Jack. You know what I mean. I hate the Nazis and all they stand for. I never would have handed those two over to them, especially since they wanted them so bad. Whatever hurts them is good for the rest of the world, don’t you think?”
“The enemy of my enemy,” Jack said.
“Not always, but I’ll settle for screwing the Nazis.”
“Shame it’ll cost you a hundred dollars.” Jack smiled.
“We’ll see.”
“By the way, the name and the address you gave the bastard . . . Fake, right?”
“Fake? Not at all. The name and address are real.”
“Why’d you do that? When they find the miserable wretch, they’ll torture him to death.”
Riley smiled bitterly. “Unlikely.”
“Huh?”
“The bastard’s probably ordering his minions in Barcelona to the Falange headquarters on the Vía Laietana to interrogate their leader.”
“Are you crazy? Falange? That’s the biggest fascist organization in Spain! You’re gonna piss a lot of people off!”
“I know,” Riley said with a crooked smile, “but I couldn’t resist.”
Riley left his first officer in command of the ship during the long evening journey south around Cape Gata. Jack had to be on the lookout for fishermen’s nets—unmarked and hundreds of yards long—that could get caught in the propeller. Same for German U-boats sailing a few feet below the surface with their periscopes out, leaving no sign but tiny trails of silver foam. Then there were British torpedo boats, based on the Rock of Gibraltar, patrolling like phantoms with their lights off, in search of those same subs in a game of cat and mouse with their mortal enemies.
Thanks to a low-pressure front on the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Pingarrón sailed all night with wind and swells at their stern. At six in the morning, Riley was completing his last night-watch shift, dawn brightening the sky in the east. Off the bow and through the morning mist, they could already see the flashing light of Ceuta on the extreme tip of the Almina Peninsula—two white flashes every ten seconds, warning of the coast and its dangers. Shame, Riley thought, that those lights don’t have counterparts on land, warning of deals surrounded by reefs, or women with hidden sandbanks where you could run aground for life, going the way of unfortunate ships stranded on beaches with no name, rusty and dismantled, bare ribs pointing to heaven, asking for mercy.
Long before he’d enlisted as a volunteer in the International Brigade, very long before, Riley knew he would never understand the paths others seemed to follow instinctively, which were like marks and symbols on a map that was indecipherable to him. Almost nothing that motivated his peers or thrilled his friends provoked more than mild interest in him. Not starting a family, not filling a bank account with zeros, nor social recognition that everyone else seemed to crave. He couldn’t dedicate his life to those things without feeling it was a waste.
He certainly didn’t know what he wanted either, but as long as he kept sailing, he felt deep in his heart that he was on the right track.
Where it led him, in the end, was unimportant.
The only child of an absent sailor father and an overprotective mother, Riley had an uneventful childhood. Reaching adulthood, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and make a career in the Merchant Marine. Those years of freedom and learning were the
happiest he could remember.
He shivered, thinking of December nights in the Gulf of Maine on the forecastle of the school’s ship, trying to find some damn star with the sextant while the boat bounced in the choppy sea like a runaway horse, and icy spray soaked him to the soul and brought him to the verge of hypothermia. But he missed it anyway. They were simple times, getting drunk and passing out with his friends each time they reached port. Then back to sea, calculating declination, reduction, drift, and initial position, and using a compass and ruler to trace a straight line from point A to point B. It was that easy. I’m here, and I want to go there.
Back on land things were more complicated.
As only a hot-blooded twenty-something could, he fell madly in love with Judith Atkinson, the eldest daughter of a wealthy Boston family. The sweet girl with blond hair and rosy cheeks made him feel like Francis Drake returning from circumnavigating the globe every time she looked at him. They ended up engaged and got married a year later in a simple ceremony at the Old North Church, where they declared eternal love in wealth and poverty and all the other things people swear when they’re in front of a priest and a couple hundred people.
Four years later, returning from a trip to Guatemala where he acted as boatswain on a United Fruit Company ship carrying bananas, Riley found Judith filling his absence with a handsome car salesman from Arlington. He beat the guy to within an inch of his life. With his teeth in a pouch, the car salesman stopped being handsome for a long time.
Riley broke off the marriage and, with it, his flimsy ties to dry land. Disillusioned, dejected, and furious with the world, for several years he enrolled on anything that would float, whether as officer, pilot, navigator, or simple sailor, with the aim to get as far away as possible from society and its traditions. He spent most of his time with bottles of aged bourbon and loose women, ones he could forget when he raised anchor.
Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1) Page 7