Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery)

by Mims, Lee

  In order to accomplish that task, he needed to hand-pick the ROV crew Global hired. Not hard for a guy with as many contacts in the oil and gas business as he had. His twin sons and Hunter would make the perfect three-man team. He sent them to be certified, used his contacts again, and got them hired on at Voyager, the company Global always contracted with. But then his luck ran out when Hunter discovered the cylinder had been removed from the sub.

  Right before reaching the river, I stopped to gas up. The inactivity of waiting for the attendant let a little anxiety seep in around the edges of my hunch. There’d been times in my life when some of my hunches proved to be, well, a bit out there. But in this case, I’d done my research, and you know how it is with a fascinating subject … one article leads to another, and pretty soon you’re loaded up with all kinds of interesting side facts.

  For instance, I read articles about World War II pilots bombing U-boats and claiming kills they were unable to prove later. Also prominent in the literature—urban legends, if you will—were tales of German submariners coming ashore at various places along the East Coast to purchase groceries. One account even had the body of a submariner found with a movie ticket stub from a theater in Southport, North Carolina, in his pocket.

  The most compelling of these stories was the real-life account of the invasion of the United States in 1942 by German spies with the express mission of blowing up infrastructure critical to our war plan. The would-be saboteurs came ashore via two submarines that carried them to within rowing distance of New York and Florida. They used inflatable rubber boats to complete their journeys. In the end, they were caught, and six of the eight men were electrocuted as wartime spies. The other two were deported, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they rowed ashore.

  If they could do it, why not the submariners of U-498?

  So where did these stories fit into my mission today? Well, if Hunter hadn’t found the cylinder in U-498, wasn’t it possible that it came ashore with one or the other of the only two people onboard the sub who knew of its existence? The fact that it lay perched on the edge of the continental slope only forty-five miles from Hatteras, the most westerly reach of North Carolina into the Atlantic, told me two things: one, if there were survivors, they didn’t come back for the cylinder later, as it was in over 2,100 feet of water. Two, rowing to land was possible.

  Okay, so it wouldn’t be exactly a fun outing, rowing that far in an inflatable, but it would be entirely doable by strapping young men such as Wolfgang Reckhoff, the captain of the sub, and Gerhard Coester, the professor. Question was, if my hunch was true, did they do it together or with a crew or did just one of them make it?

  I was still pondering this question as I headed across Pamlico Sound. The stillness of the early morning had given way to a light breeze. Pushing the throttle forward, I trimmed the engine until the little boat planed off over the chop and thought about the realities I needed to consider. If Hunter and Duchamp were trying to find the cylinder with the ROV, wouldn’t the twins have to know? It takes at least three people to deploy the 8,800-pound machine.

  Clearly, since Viktor hadn’t come aboard until after Hunter died, he wasn’t involved during those first weeks when the well was being spudded, when Ricky said there was lots of time was racked up on the ROV that “didn’t jibe” with the log sheets. But was Viktor involved now? And every time I thought of those log sheets, I got a tickle in my brain, like a signal to check something out … but what?

  Windy conditions on the beach, blowing sand on bodies greasy with suntan lotion, sent tourists scurrying to find other activities to occupy the kiddies. On a Sunday past churchtime, the museum was a top attraction. Politely sidestepping family groups with whining children, I looked for Lucy and was just about to give myself a mental kick in the pants for not calling ahead when I saw her, soda in hand, exit through a door marked Staff Only.

  I knocked softly and peeped into the break room, calling her name.

  “Come on in.” I obeyed. “I remember you,” Lucy exclaimed when she saw me. “You’re the lucky lady with the handsome young boyfriend!”

  Cringing, but at the same time unable to suppress a laugh, I said, “Guilty as charged.”

  “Pull up a seat,” Lucy said. “I was just about to have a little lunch, but I’m not real hungry. Would you like to share my tuna salad? It won’t last until dinner. Gets too soggy.” Without waiting for my answer, she plopped half of an enormous sandwich on a napkin and pushed it across the table.

  Realizing I hadn’t even considered lunch and was, in fact, quite hungry, I graciously accepted, pulled up a chair, and dug in. Just like my mom used to make it: no egg, just mayo, diced home-made pickle, and canned tuna. Delicious.

  Lucy, dabbing daintily at the corners of her mouth with a napkin, said, “Why do I get the feeling your return visit today is about something more than an interest in shipwrecks?”

  “You’re very perceptive,” I told her. “I’m impressed. Actually, curiosity about all those people who either washed ashore dead or were swept out to sea during the height of the U-boat attacks around here brought me in. I was wondering if you ever heard of any German submariners who made it to shore alive?”

  She trained a shrewd eye on me. “Like spies, or like survivors hanging onto wreckage?”

  “Either,” I shrugged, then qualified that by adding, “but not urban legends, you know, like the stories about sailors who came to watch a movie or buy groceries. I mean, more like—”

  “Like German sailors who weren’t Nazis, just people wanting to defect?”

  I stared at her. “Well, I hadn’t thought of that, but I guess … do you have a specific incident in mind?”

  Narrowing her eyes at me, her demeanor suddenly changed. “You know damn well I do. That’s why you’re here. You’ve somehow heard about me as a child telling the authorities about some men I believed were German spies coming ashore on our beach. You’re here to dig it all up again! You’re a reporter or a writer, aren’t you? And you just want to make fun of me or write a spoof or something insulting … go ahead, admit it!”

  Taken aback, I swallowed my last bite of sandwich and protested vehemently. “No! I’m not a reporter, and I’m not here to write a story. I’m just chasing a hunch.”

  “What kind of a hunch?”

  “Trust me, I’ll tell you later. Right now, though, I want to hear about what you saw. It’s news to me, seriously, and I’m completely fascinated again.”

  She cocked her head studying me, then said, “And you’re sure you’re not a journalist or someone like that?”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure.” I could hardly believe my luck.

  “Then why do you want to know?” she demanded, since my eagerness was so obvious. If I wasn’t a reporter or writer, what was I?

  I sought to seem reassuring. “You apparently saw something when you were very young, as you would have been in 1942 when the German wolf packs were hunting off our shores, right?”

  She hesitated. “Right.”

  “And whatever you saw, you reported it to the proper authorities or your parents and they didn’t believe you, right?”

  “It was more than that.” She paused. “I got called emotionally disturbed just because I was … .well, I was a quiet kid. A loner, kind of, and people had always thought I was strange just because I didn’t want to dress up dolls or play house like the other girls my age.”

  “What if I told you I might be able to vindicate you, maybe not publicly, but at least you’d know the truth about what you saw. You’d feel better then wouldn’t you?

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Tell me what you’re talking about, dear.”

  Now it was I who hesitated. “First, you tell me: who did you report this to back then?”

  “The sheriff. Naturally, times being when they were, I assumed the men I saw had come asho
re from a German submarine. I told my folks first, and when they didn’t believe me, I walked down to the sheriff’s office and told him myself. I was only eight years old, so that alone was enough to get me in trouble. But you have to understand how things were … It was war! And it wasn’t 1942, it was 1945, when it was almost over. At the time I saw what I saw, the sub attacks had all but stopped on our coast, which was another reason no one believed me. They said I was ‘disturbed’ and ‘craving attention’.”

  “When in 1945?” I asked.

  “March twenty-seventh. I remember distinctly because it was daddy’s birthday and I was walking on the beach after cake and ice cream. It was right at twilight.”

  I got a chill down my spine. The time period was correct. Erich Koch had personally ordered and directed the dismantling of the Amber Room in early 1945 and fled Germany in April of that same year. It made sense that he would have moved as quickly as he could to get the map he’d had made of its hiding place out of the country before he left.

  “What did you see?”

  With a determined set to her jaw, Lucy recited to me the story that had gotten her in such hot water as a child. “I saw two men in dark clothes in a rubber raft. They were right outside the breakers. They got out of the raft, popped it, and stayed with it until it sank. Then they came ashore. One was holding a knapsack over his head. Once they got on land, they took off running for the dunes.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Behind a dune, not ten feet from where they stopped.”

  “What did they stop for?”

  “They stripped off their wet clothes down to their drawers and dressed in dry clothes from the pack. Nice civilian clothes—lace-up shoes, felt hats, light jackets. At one point, one of them looked right in my direction. It was just about dusk and I was behind a clump of sea oats and grass. I’ll never forget his face, his eyes especially. They looked so sad.”

  I nodded my head. I’d bet my favorite pair of Pura Lopez shoes I’d seen those same sad eyes in a photo. I said, “What happened then?”

  “They took off for the road and that was the last I saw of them … for a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I got tired to trying to convince anyone to believe me! There was nothing to prove what I’d said. No raft, no clothes, they’d carried those with them. No one brought up the subject and I left it that way. Then, years later I saw one of them.”

  “Where and how many years later?”

  “At the college I attended in Raleigh. I was a freshman, so it was about ten years after I’d first seen him. But there was no mistaking him. Those faces were burned in my brain.”

  “Good grief, did you say anything to him?”

  “Not at first, no. He was my French professor.”

  “French? Not art history?”

  “Art history?” Lucy repeated. “Why would you think he taught art history? Wouldn’t German be a better guess?”

  I was taken aback. I’d been so sure they were the two young Germans from U-498, charged with hiding the map to where the Amber Room was hidden. “I don’t know, now,” I answered, shaking my head. “First, tell me the rest of your story. Why’d he speak French if he’d been on a German submarine?”

  She nodded. “Well, that threw me too. He didn’t have the guttural accent you’d expect a German to have. He said he was French. His name was Adrien Dubois. He was a wonderful teacher. And by that time in my life, all the feelings of slight and disapproval that I’d felt so deeply as a child didn’t matter. I’d made new friends and moved on. My story was just a bad memory and I didn’t want to dredge it up again, which is why I never asked him any questions.”

  The muted laughter of tourists outside the door was the only sound in the room for a while as I contemplated the kink in my theory. It was Lucy’s turn to reassure me.

  She said, “I don’t know how my story fits into your hunch, dear, but if it makes you feel any better, I do know this. The two men I saw in the boat that night were the two men who lived together in Raleigh in a brand-new bungalow in a newly developed section not far from the college.”

  “Both men? You saw both men later?”

  “I sure did. I’d often see Professor Dubois walking to class. One time I followed him on impulse, out of curiosity. I watched him go up the drive to a yellow bungalow. At the time, I remember thinking what a charming little house it was. It had tapered columns, painted white with stone bases.” She paused and blinked as though searching for its image in her memory, then continued. “There was another young man out front planting a crepe myrtle. They spoke for a while and went inside. But first, I got a good long look at him and was confident that he was the other man I’d seen come ashore in the life raft that night. It was all very weird.”

  “And still you never said a word to the professor?”

  “No. For one thing, I just didn’t want to cause a stink. He was very popular with students and faculty alike. But most of all, you have to admit it makes more sense that they weren’t even German sailors after all. They were just two men who, for whatever reason, jumped ship from … oh, I don’t know, a cruise liner or a tanker or maybe a merchant ship. Then they slipped into the country. Maybe they wanted to avoid the normal immigration channels for some reason. Later, after I graduated, I became an English teacher back in Avon, got married, and never thought of them again, until now. My husband passed in 2005, God rest his soul …”

  There was a knock on the door. A woman’s face peeked in, “Lucy, the crowds are getting bigger.”

  “Oh my! And here I am just chattering away with my new friend. I’ll be right out.” As she stood to leave, she said, “I fear my story has left you with more questions than answers. But you’ll still come see me again, won’t you?”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Oh, and dear?”

  I stopped in the doorway. “Yes?”

  “I’d like to ask that anything you find out about those two men … well, you won’t involve me, will you? Not unless you really need to.”

  “I understand,” I told her. “And I’ll do my best.”

  nineteen

  Late that Sunday afternoon, as I bumped Henri’s boat softly against the dock behind my rented house, I admired the way a soft haze had turned the mainland trees a dull pewter and the setting sun, like a giant celestial dipper, had tipped their edges in molten gold.

  I’d had time on the return trip to mull over Lucy’s story. My conclusion was a simple one: Germans can change their names and learn to speak French too. Being educated Europeans, they’d probably have known it already. In fact, English might have presented the greater challenge. I just felt certain that the men she’d seen and the ones in the photo I’d found were the same. So why hadn’t I showed her the photo? For one thing, the story Lucy told came as a complete surprise; I didn’t have it with me. For another, she’d convinced herself that the men she’d seen probably weren’t even German after all and was now content in that notion.

  As soon as I started across the lawn, I saw Henri’s car in the drive. A sound like a well-hit baseball signaled that Tulip had nosed the screen door open and, also like a well-hit grounder, was racing to meet me. I grabbed her before she could knock my feet out from under me, patting her sides and pulling her silky ears. She whimpered with joy. She might like spending time with Henri and Will, but she loved me.

  Both my children sauntered up. “Hey guys,” I said. “What brings you here?”

  “We were worried about you. Besides, Tulip was starting to get depressed,” Henri said. “We thought a visit with you would help.”

  “Probably a good idea except—”

  “We would have called,” Will cut in, “but we knew you’d tell us not to, so we just came on.”

  “Actually, asking really would have been the better plan. I’m going to drive back to Rale
igh as soon as I throw some things in the Jeep. I need to see how the renovations are progressing. Questions have come up about the new refrigerator. The one that was delivered wasn’t exactly the one they ordered, and the contractor’s holding off until I approve it.”

  “Bummer,” Henri said.

  “I’ll say,” Will agreed. “We were hoping for a nice evening together. How much longer do we have to stay away?”

  “Not long. We’ve actually hit our target. It’s just a matter of pulling the string, then running a logging instrument back down to take readings so we’ll know for sure how big our gas deposit is.”

  “But how long will that take?”

  “A few days. Then we’ll make the big announcement. Hopefully, by that time, Dad and Miss Tobac … uh, Ms. Whitfield will have quashed any new attempts by the state to stop the project. Which doesn’t guarantee, of course, that the demonstrators will go away. Unless my deep background’s on the mark.”

  “Your what?” Henri asked.

  “From what I’ve heard from my friend Wanda, Global’s office manager at the port, the supposedly local protesters are all imports—mainly union workers brought in to make it look like people around here don’t want the project. But really, nothing could be further from the truth. People were clamoring for work here before the big recession; now they’re desperate for it,” I said, reaching for one of Tulip’s tennis balls in the grass. I threw it for her and she dashed off.

  “The unions have wanted to get a foothold in North Carolina for a long time,” I continued, “but it’s a right-to-work state. Most of the jobs available in the oil and gas industry are provided by independent contractors. Once the dream of green jobs manned by unionized government employees becomes highly improbable and hiring picks up in the private sector, the demonstrators will go back where they came from.”

  Will shrugged. Henri dug at the thick fescue lawn grass with her toes and said, “Well, we were going to Raleigh tomorrow anyway. I need to check in with a few clients there, and Will’s going to look at apartments. He said he might move back up this way.”