The museum administrator laughed. “Yes, I’ve listened to my friend. His name is Gavino Ebejer. I’ve heard him give his talks about Wanklyn many times. His eyes fill with tears every time, and mine do, too. I believe it is what made me want to become a historian—my ability to empathize with people who are long dead.”
“What kind of man was Commander Wanklyn?” Cole asked.
“His men loved him. He was well over six feet tall, and it must have been very difficult for him to live in the cramped quarters of a U-class submarine. The U’s had originally been designed as targets for antisubmarine training exercises. They were cheap to build and simple, at one hundred and ninety feet long and only sixteen feet wide. But Commander Wanklyn never complained. His men said he almost never slept.”
“I can’t imagine the conditions in those boats,” Cole said. “I’ve been in submarines. There sure isn’t much room in there.”
The phone in Dr. Günay’s pocket sang a little tune. “That would be Gavino.” She reached into the folds of her skirt, found the pocket, and took out the phone. “Hello? Yes, we’ll be right out.”
When Riley got her first look at Gavino Ebejer, she was reminded of the other two men of his generation she had met in the past several years: Henri Michaut and the man she’d known as PeeWee, Ozzie Riley. Neither man had been very tall, and here again stood a man no more than five foot six, with a wiry build and a head covered with a flat black cap. He wore blue jeans belted in tight at the waist, a pressed long-sleeved shirt, and brown leather sandals. He carried a jacket folded over his arm. All three of these World War II veterans had worked on submarines in various capacities, and their size had undoubtedly been an asset.
The years had been less kind to Mr. Ebejer than to the other two vets. This man’s skin was mottled with dark-brown spots on his face and hands, and his enormous ears sprouted tufts of gray hair. The hand that held his cane was curled into a claw from arthritis. Then again, it was several years since she had last seen Henri Michaut, the last survivor from the submarine Surcouf. Riley hoped he was still alive on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean.
The old man embraced Najat. She then turned and made introductions.
“I’m very happy to meet you,” he said to Riley, extending his free hand. His English was quite easy to understand, in spite of the fact that his mouth had no more than a handful of teeth.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk to us, Mr. Ebejer,” Riley said.
He nodded, smiling. “Call me Gavino. I’m very happy to talk about my old friends with my new friends.” He pointed down the perimeter road that would take them back to the ferry landing. “We walk this way?”
“Yes,” Cole said. “That would be great. We have to get to the airport later today.”
“Tell me about your father,” the old man said.
As they walked along the top of the old city walls, more of Marsamxett Harbour came into view. Several sailboats glided across the blue water, and Riley tried to imagine what the harbor had looked like when it was full of submarines moored off the Lazaretto.
Cole again told the story about his father’s stay in the Italian POW camp, and the commando officer he had befriended there. He explained that they became good enough friends that they met in Malta after the war. Cole said he believed the commando must have sailed on the Upholder.
“There is only one man this can be. Tug Wilson.”
“Tug?” Cole said.
“Yes, that was what we called him. I believe his real name was Ronald or Robert or something like that. The British have so many nicknames. Every military man with the surname Wilson is called Tug. There is always some story behind it.”
“What can you tell us about this man Tug?” Riley asked.
“He and Wanklyn were good friends.” The old man stopped, put his hands on top of the stone wall, and stared across the water. He pointed with a gnarled finger. “You see the Lazaretto over there?”
“Yes,” Cole said.
“Seeing it now, you can’t imagine what all of this looked like after months of bombings.”
Najat said, “I showed them some of the photos at the museum.”
“Ah, then you have seen how it was. During the war, this island was not the sunny Malta that you see here today.” He pointed at the white sails of a large yacht slowly tacking into the harbor on the light breeze.
Najat started to say something, but Cole cut her off.
“Did you work at the sub base or at the dockyards in Grand Harbour?” Cole asked.
Riley and Najat exchanged a look. Cole and Gavino were deep into their conversation, and Riley knew when Cole got like that, he was oblivious to niceties or manners. She hoped the museum director would understand.
Gavino pointed his walking stick toward the ferry terminal, and they began walking again. “I worked at the sub base under the Tenth Flotilla’s chief engineer, Sam MacGregor. They had dug workshops right into the stone behind the old hospital. All the boats came in needing some kind of repair. That is how I was introduced to so many of the sub captains.”
“Did you know Tug?”
“Not so well back then, but I saw him around the Lazaretto when he wasn’t on a mission. He went on many patrols on different boats.”
“Including the Upholder?”
“Yes, many times.”
“Did you hear if he was ever taken prisoner in Italy?”
“Yes, he was. After the war, he used to come to visit us in Malta. I got to know him better then. We have a Royal British Legion, Malta Branch, and the fellows like to gather there to have a drink or two. Like all of us, Tug loved to tell his war stories. He stayed in the army for many years after the war. He told me once he did not believe the Upholder sank as they say.”
“Really?”
“He said after they completed their mission near Sousse, he was transferred to the submarine Unbeaten out off Lampedusa. He had orders to continue on to Gibraltar. Damn lucky fellow. He was the last man to see the crew of the Upholder alive.”
“So what does the Royal Navy think happened to the Upholder?”
“Wanklyn went off to resume his patrol off Djerba Island. The next day, the Upholder was sent radio orders to join two other subs attacking a convoy off Tripoli. One theory has her sunk by German floatplanes dropping torpedoes one hundred miles north of her patrol area. Another theory has her sunk by an Italian torpedo boat that dropped depth charges, also off Tripoli—although there is also record of a plane identifying their target as a dolphin.”
“So no one is certain what happened to the Upholder?”
Gavino shook his head. “But on one of his postwar visits to Malta, I heard Tug telling some other vets that Upholder had been having problems with her radio antenna. There was never any confirmation that Upholder received that message to join the patrol line off Tripoli. Tug said Wanklyn was planning to get into the lee of Djerba Island and have his men work on the antenna. Tug always said they were looking in the wrong place for the sub. He didn’t think Wanklyn ever got those new orders.”
Gavino stopped at the top of the road that led down to the ferry terminal. He put one of his claw hands on Cole’s forearm. “I am going to leave you here. My house is close to the church ahead.”
“Thanks so much for spending this time with us,” Cole said. “You’ve been a huge help.”
“There are a couple of others at the legion who knew Tug, too. I will ask what they remember. If I find out more, I’ll pass it on to our friend Dr. Günay.”
Riley shook the old man’s hand, too. “Thanks, Gavino. I hope we’ll see you again when we return with our new boat in a month or so.”
Gavino nodded. “Yes, yes,” he mumbled, then he turned back to Cole. “I can hear Tug now, talking to the boys over a glass of beer and saying, ‘Someday, somebody is going to find the wreck of Wanks’s sub off Djerba. Mark my words.’”
“Have you heard if Tug Wilson is still alive?”
He shook his head and looked at his feet. “Tug died
more than ten years ago now.” When he lifted his face again, there were tears in his eyes. “It is both a joy and a curse to outlive almost everyone you know.”
Adakoy Shipyard
Adakoy, Turkey
April 13, 2014
Virgil flipped up the infrared night-vision goggles on his headset when he saw the taxi pull up outside the shipyard’s chain-link fence. He had been waiting in a rental car parked in the dirt lot across from the shipyard for several hours. From the photos, Virgil recognized the man who climbed out of the cab’s rear door. The man’s face was illuminated by the red glow of the brake lights. A woman climbed out of the other door, but her hair obscured her face. He assumed she was the former marine. He’d debriefed his man before departing Rome, and he’d learned a great deal about the backgrounds of these two.
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Finally, some action. He rotated his head, stretching his neck muscles.
Their plane had landed several hours earlier, but the airport was about ninety kilometers away. They probably stopped for dinner in town. There were only a few cars in the lot; one he recognized as the Hyundai belonging to the man he’d just observed.
The driver executed a U-turn and the taxi drove off in a cloud of dust. The scene out the windshield of Virgil’s car turned pitch-black. He flipped the goggles back down, and then he could see them lit up clearly in black and white. This Gen-3 version of the goggles no longer showed the scene in green and black. The images were much clearer now with the grayscale. He appreciated an employer who provided first-class gear.
He tapped a button on the side of his headgear to increase the magnification. The couple walked along the chain-link fence toward the gate. His car’s window was cracked open several inches, and he was close enough to hear their footsteps on the dirt road. Each carried a backpack slung over a shoulder, making it more likely one of them would block his view. At the gate, the man reached out for the electronic keypad. Virgil increased the magnification once again and held his breath. The man punched two keys from left to right on the middle row, but then the woman stepped over and linked her arm through the man’s.
Virgil exhaled. Looked like this one wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped. At least two digits was better than none.
The gate clicked and the man pushed it open. The couple passed through. He watched them head for the dinghy dock to his right. They disappeared from view. Soon, the noise of an outboard pierced the still night and slowly puttered away into the distance.
He knew from the debrief that they were living aboard a sailboat out in the mooring field off the shipyard.
Virgil pulled off the headset and ran his hand through his short-cropped hair. The straps rubbed his scalp. He took his pouch of tobacco out of his jacket pocket and began to roll himself a cigarette as he examined the fence in front of him. Spiraling razor wire marked the top. He had wire cutters in his kit in the backseat, but he would prefer not to leave such obvious evidence of his presence.
He lit the cigarette and inhaled. It was probably still too early. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out his phone to check the time. When the screen lit up, it showed the Google Maps directions he had used to locate the shipyard. He looked up from the bright screen to the keypad across the street and chuckled. The address for the shipyard was still visible on his screen: 4536 Marmaris Adakoy Yolu. He had seen the man push the first two digits, four and five; he bet the code was the street address. Virgil tossed his cigarette out the window and opened his door.
Two hours later he stood at the corner of a woodworking shop and stared across the wide-open space between him and the stern of the newly constructed steel yacht. He wore his black watch cap pulled down low on his forehead, both to cover his blond hair and to shield his skin from the straps of the heavy headgear. A black turtleneck sweater and black cargo pants completed the uniform. He carried his necessary kit in his backpack.
Virgil could make out the name Shadow Chaser II painted in silver letters on the navy-blue transom. It was the biggest boat in the yard and the only new construction. Most of the other boats looked like older sailboats; the large steel yacht was off in a corner by itself, tucked up tight against another big boat shed.
In spite of the lazy use of the site’s address for the gate code, the on-site security was more extensive than he’d imagined. CCTV cameras panned the open areas, and two armed guards patrolled the yard. Once inside, Virgil had hidden in a machine shop and scouted out the facility. He’d determined that the guards were very regular in their rounds, and they would be easy to avoid. Likewise, the cameras, once he was familiar with their sequence, were no issue. It was all about the timing.
He kept his eyes on the camera on top of the pole to his right. Both guards were at opposite ends of the boatyard at the moment, and as soon as the camera swung away, he would make a run for it. His backpack hung from his shoulders. Everything he needed for this job was inside, in specially made pockets. Even though C-4 was good, stable stuff, he still treated it and all his kit with the utmost respect.
It took him only six seconds to cross the twenty meters of open space. He crouched in the shadows under the yacht, which was propped up on stands; he was pleased that his breathing had not changed. In his business, it was necessary to stay in top form, even if he was no longer a Delta.
While waiting in the car outside the shipyard, Virgil had made the decision to follow through on this plan. The man he had assigned to tail them had sent him a recording of their conversation in Malta. It seemed to indicate there was a chance this Thatcher knew something. Given his past record, and that of the man’s father, they could not afford to take it lightly.
At the rear of the boat they had constructed a rough staircase for climbing up onto the teak dive platform. Virgil climbed the stairs and entered the aft deck. His crepe-soled shoes made no noise as he ascended the steps up to the bridge deck. He tried the door to the wheelhouse, and it opened.
Virgil was not an expert when it came to boats, but he thought the yacht’s bridge looked like it belonged on a spaceship. Two plush leather chairs faced what Virgil reckoned was fifteen feet of the best navigation electronics available. The work wasn’t quite finished—spools of wire, tools, and debris littered the bridge deck. The electronic screens were set into a wood facing, with a shelf-like desk running along the front. Beneath that were the cabinets that offered access to the back side of the electronics. He reached down, opened one of the doors, and saw some wiring trailing down from the instruments above.
Bingo. That’s what he was looking for.
Taking off the backpack, he got down on his hands and knees. He withdrew the detonator in its black cloth pouch, along with the half block of C-4. A GPS tracking device was built into the detonator, so that once they launched the yacht, Virgil would be able to pinpoint their location at all times. He removed the night-vision goggles and set them next to his pack, and then took a penlight out of a side pocket. Sticking the light in his mouth, he squeezed his upper body through the cabinet door and surveyed the rat’s nest of instruments and wiring. He picked the closest of the large monitors just above his head because the back of the device was beige. If he put the gray-colored C-4 along the side of the casing and moved some of the wires to cover it, it would take a really good pair of eyes to spot it even if someone did crawl in here.
It took him less than a minute to attach the material to the back casing of the instrument, imbed the cellular-activated detonator, and test it all with his phone.
Virgil was sliding out of the cabinet when his foot struck a small spool of wire on the floor. Someone had left a soldering iron balanced on top of the spool, and it rolled to the deck with a clatter.
He froze when he heard the sharp bark of a dog. In the next second, Virgil grabbed his backpack and jumped to his feet. The dog’s barking was getting closer. There were three doors leading out of the wheelhouse. Two doors led to the outside decks on either side and one door led aft into the inte
rior. He listened another couple of seconds. Then he heard a man’s voice coming from the interior.
Virgil opened the door on the side of the boat that was closest to a building. A security spotlight hanging from the building’s rafters lit up that whole half of the vessel. He flattened himself against the outside of the cabin. That was when he realized he’d left his goggles lying on the floor inside.
He heard a man’s voice through the crack in the door, which had not fully closed behind him.
“Listen, Leia, I don’t hear a thing.” The dog whined as though answering him.
Then the man sneezed. “Geez, girl, what a stench.” More scuffling noises. “Hey, slow down. Get out of there.”
The dog was whining louder now. Impossible to tell how big the dog was, but the bark was deep. Virgil wanted to take a look through the window in the door, but he didn’t dare. So far, he hadn’t been seen.
“Okay, okay. If you insist.”
The man grunted, and Virgil heard a noise like something sliding across the floor.
“What the—” The man’s voice indicated concern, but he still had not turned any lights on. Virgil took that as a good sign. So far the man hadn’t seen anything that really bothered him.
Virgil reached inside his jacket and placed his hand on his phone. He had already programmed the number on his speed dial and he could detonate. But he would have to get himself off the boat before that. Better to take the man out quietly and retrieve his headset. Replacing the phone, he instead took out his Gerber combat knife and unfolded the high-carbon stainless-steel blade.
Knife at the ready, he placed his other hand on the door lever. He pulled the door open fast. In the dark interior, he could barely make out a young black man carrying the large electronic display with the C-4 affixed. Wires trailed to the deck. The man looked straight at him, unafraid—not the reaction he usually inspired in his victims, and it made Virgil pause a fraction of a second.
That was when the dog lunged and hit him in the center of his chest, knocking Virgil back against the door and sending the knife clattering to the deck. Before he could get up, the black man disappeared out the opposite door, and the dog tried to sink her teeth into his skin through the fabric of his pants.
Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3) Page 13