“But it never went into your report.”
“No. I — At first, I didn’t want to be thought wrong. It was almost night when we broke through. I sent out a plane. He saw how much open water there was. And he saw the Homburg. That was the big thing. You see, my officers … Many of us believed we’d come out of the drift ice entirely. Got our bearings wrong and come out into open water. See? I was very excited. I knew my career was in balance. So I put on speed to get in range. Got Homburg dead to rights on radar, not much floating ice there — ice behind her, no place to hide. Like a shooting gallery. We pounded her for two hours.” He licked his lips. “Sank her.”
“And lied about her position.”
“I —” He licked his lips again and appealed to Repin. “I didn’t lie. There was confusion. About the location. My navigation officer was sure we were north of the ice, thought he’d made some terrible boner. He said to me, ‘I’ve botched the dead reckoning.’ His very words. Really! ‘You’ll have my bars for it, Admiral, but I’ve made some terrible error.’ His words. Not mine. Didn’t make them up.”
“When did you decide to lie about the position?”
“I didn’t lie. I — exaggerated some errors.”
“How far?”
“About three hundred miles.”
“Because of the gold?”
Pope-Ginna looked at him in anguish. “When the Homburg was going down, I happened to see a sonar report. The depth was not what I expected. It was very uneven there. Volcanic, I think now. And it flashed through my head, ‘That’s submarine depth. Divers could get down there all right.’ And I thought about the gold.”
“How did you plan to get it?”
“I didn’t, I didn’t! I just saw the — possibility. I mean, I had done what I had been ordered. ‘Seek out and sink.’ I’d prevented the Nazis from using that gold to set up a refuge. It was a triumph! Don’t you understand? Nobody cared about the gold then. It was — it was mine! Don’t you see? By any law-salvage, the laws of war — the laws of privateering, the captain’s share … “He sounded addled. “It was mine.” He turned to Repin. “You see that, don’t you?”
“Of course. Of course.”
“I deserved something. The war was as good as over, I knew that. I wouldn’t get another command; there wasn’t time. The big boys would remember I’d made a mistake — meaning that in peacetime I wouldn’t get to the top, not really to the top. You know. I wasn’t one of them — you know? Wrong family, wrong schools. So, I wasn’t going to the top. It’d be a medal and a ‘Thanks, my boy,’ and that would be it. So I deserved the gold.”
“Were there survivors from the Homburg?”
“Yes.” Pope-Ginna sagged again. “Not enough.” His white chest rose and fell quickly with his breathing. “Poor devils. It was awful.”
“Did you examine the survivors?”
“When we got back to port, yes. The usual.”
“Did they know about the gold?”
“No. None of them. We only picked up two officers above the rank of ensign. Both in gunnery. No, the gold was mine.”
He seemed to be wandering off a little. Tarp waited and then said, “Any civilians?”
“Hmm?” It was as if Pope-Ginna had been dreaming in front of a fire.
“Any civilians?”
“One.”
“German?”
“A little Jewish girl.” He blinked rapidly and seemed to come awake. “Is that important?”
“Wasn’t it important to you?”
“She married Jock Schneider. I was very surprised when they told me. It was she made the connection. I was sitting in the bar of the Hurlingham Club, looking out over the golf course — you know — and she was there. She and Jock had been married a while. You know. And she said, ‘You saved my life,’ or something like that. I thought she meant because I’d bought her a drink. And she said, ‘You saved my life. I was on the Homburg.’ It made no sense to me.”
“You mean that you never saw her between the sinking of the Homburg and her marriage to Juaquin Schneider?”
“No. Oh, maybe I saw her. In Stanley. Who knows? Young girl, you know.”
“What was a Jewish girl doing on a Nazi cruiser?”
“God knows.”
“You never asked?”
“Asked? Why would I ask?”
“After you knew she was Schneider’s wife?”
Pope-Ginna’s face, which had been drawn and sickly, took on a frightened look. “You never asked questions about something that belonged to Jock. Things happened to people who — It wasn’t a good idea. Although God knows, my life would have been easier if I had asked some questions.” To Tarp’s astonishment he began to sob. Tarp looked at Repin and with a frown tried to ask if they should stop; Repin gave a slight shake to his head and made a pushing motion with one hand where Pope-Ginna could not see it.
“All right, cut that,” Tarp said cruelly. “Get back to your tale.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying.” He put his face in his hands. “Oh, this is awful.” He seemed unable to stop weeping. Tarp knew the state he was in and wanted to stop, but again Repin made the pushing motion.
“I said that’s enough! Go back to your story, damn you! After the war. What about after the war?”
Pope-Ginna wiped his eyes, wiped his hands on the sleeves of the alpaca overcoat. “I went into submarines,” he mumbled. “I thought it would help with the gold if I —”
“Skip that! I know all that.”
“I’m only trying to do it right,” the old man said, his eyes filling again.
“Go to the Argentine business.”
“Why are you asking me this if you already know?”
“Go to the Argentine business.”
Pope-Ginna was unable to look straight at Tarp’s eyes; his glance moved quickly past Tarp’s face, back to his shoulders, to his chin, down to the floor. It settled in the end on some featureless place near the ceiling, and the old man stared at it — his forehead wrinkled, his eyes screwed up — as if getting from the memory of Schneider’s wife to that slightly earlier time took great effort. “I retired from the navy in 1952,” he said slowly. He went on looking at the far wall. “It had been quite as I expected — no real chance at the top. They kept it all for themselves. All the ‘right’ people. Their clubs and all that. By then I knew how to get at the gold, though. I’d got that from the Royal Navy, in the end. If Homburg had stayed where I’d sunk her, I knew how to get the gold. Then I could bloody well buy a title if I wanted one. That’s how things are done, anyway.” His eyes snapped abruptly toward Repin. “That’s how things are done!”
Repin nodded as if something wise had been said.
“I had some money, of course. I wasn’t a fool about money, after all. A few investments. A couple of pals, you might as well know, who let me in on things in exchange for, you know, introductions and a good word here and there. And I’d turned that money ’round and invested it in the Argentine, see? Because I knew I’d have to go after the Homburg from the Argentine. It had to be done in secret and far from British eyes, so that ruled out the Falklands or South Georgia. Anyway, the Argentines love secrecy. They understand it. I’d invested money there — lots of British interests in the Argentine back then, lots. Visited three times before I retired. Looked about. Met some fellows. Saw how it could be done.
“Funny thing happened then. When I retired, chap from MI-six called on me, Captain Somebody-or-other, didn’t use his right name, I suppose, asked me what I was going to do. Go to the Argentine, I said, try to make a bundle. Oh, good, this fellow said, would you mind having a look ’round for us while you’re there? Just keep an eye on the navy down there. Right-o, I said. They provided some introductions to Argentine naval people, said it would get me started, and I said fine, right, absolutely. Loyal Briton glad to help the mother country.
“I was having a laugh, of course. There they were, helping me out. And there I was, keeping my secrets. Oh, well. These th
ings happen. I mean, I did what they wanted. Actually, I did it as well as anybody could have. My little bit of spying.
“So I went to the Argentine. The navy contacts led to me being taken on as a consultant in submarines. All on the up-and-up, quite public, and so on. At the same time I got in with a few fellows in their navy who were looking for a good thing. And they introduced me to Jock.”
“Schneider?” Tarp said.
“Yes, of course, Jock Schneider.” Pope-Ginna sounded exasperated. “He’d just made his first bundle. Rapacious bloody kite, he was. Not rich the way he is now, but rich. The long and the short of it was we formed a company, about six of us. For marine research, we said. I’d told them enough so they knew what the stakes were. Jock put up the capital — there were some fairly high bribes to be paid. The navy supplied the manpower and the equipment, through my friends.” He merely glanced past Tarp and still would not look directly at him. “It was 1959 by now. Everything took so much longer than I thought.” He turned to Repin. “If you want to do things fast, you have to work alone. I couldn’t work alone. Not enough money. That’s the bad luck that’s haunted me all my life — not enough money.”
Tarp wondered at the man’s enduring resentments, which probably went back to his young manhood. They still seemed to drive him. “And you found the Homburg,” he said.
“Yes. After more years. The ice just wouldn’t open! It had been open in fifty-eight, but we weren’t ready. Then there were all these years when the open water just didn’t appear. It was maddening. Some of my friends thought I was diddling them. There were some bad scenes. Jock was pretty ugly about it. But it all worked out in sixty-three.”
“You found it.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And the gold.”
“Oh, yes.”
“How much?”
Pope-Ginna hesitated. “Enough for every body.”
“How much?”
“In dollars? In the dollars of those days — a quarter of a billion. Something like that. It took me three trips — three years, that means — and I lost five divers. But I got it. We divided it. I didn’t resent dividing it. Even though it was all mine. I mean, for sinking the Homburg.” His face darkened. “Jock took too much, though. The financier always does. Eh? He does nothing but put up the cash, and then he claims the lion’s share.” “What happened then?”
“I was rich. I invested mine, bought an estancia, my place in B.A. — the lot. I was rich.”
“And Maxudov?”
Silence. Pope-Ginna seemed disoriented again, as if these jumps from subject to subject and from period to period were too wide for him. “That’s another matter,” he said to Repin.
“Tell me,” Tarp said.
“I daren’t.”
“Tell me.”
“Please, no.” Pope-Ginna pulled the coat tight about him, his voice a whine.
“I’ll help you. You’ve made six or seven trips to the Soviet Union. You oversaw the refitting of a Soviet submarine for the Argentines. A man who calls himself Maxudov used you as the go-between in a deal that sent plutonium to the South Atlantic. The Soviets just gave you a medal. Now, tell me.”
Pope-Ginna opened his mouth and then closed it, doing this three times before tie finally found the words that he wanted to speak. “They eased me out of the company we’d formed. After I’d brought back all the gold. Jock was behind it, but I think his wife was even farther behind him. I mean, I think she pushed him to it. To get me out. I didn’t much care; it was over, as far as I was concerned. But they kept the company going, built it up on marine research and so on. I didn’t think much about it. You know. I heard some things — experimenting with undersea habitats, all that. I reported them to MI-six; I’d kept that contact. Made trips to England every year; I was spreading a little cash around over there, one eye on the Honors List. I have my vanity. Well, early in the seventies — it was nineteen seventy-one, actually — a man named Carlson came to see me. German. German-Argentine, I mean, family been there a couple of generations. It was a bad time down there, the death squads very active, a lot of political mess. And he said, “You’re going to do something for me and some friends of mine.” He called me Admiral. Very polite. But he threatened me. Really threatened me. I was to be the front for a political group that was pushing some navy officers into power. There was a lot of rigmarole-secret signals, meetings, plans. I always worked through this fellow Carlson. Got my orders from him, and so on. Go to Marseilles. Go to Murmansk. Do this, do that.”
“And you did it.”
“You damned well bet I did. That’s why I’m alive today.”
“Who was behind it?”
Pope-Ginna dared to look at him. “I always thought it was Jock.”
“But you never knew?”
“Never. And I never asked, either.” He glanced at Repin and mumbled, “Better not to ask some things.”
“And so you started making the trips to Russia.”
“Yes. You’re quite right about those. I kept London informed, more or less. Not completely. Carlson seemed to know about my Mi-six connection, and he told me what to say and what to leave out. Yes, I advised on the fitting-up of a submarine. For ‘research,’ it was said, but it was a much better version of the sort of gear I’d used in going after the Homburg’s gold. Divers’ ports, a tunnel attachment to mate with another craft or a sea lab, a deck-mounted submersible. Cargo space. Lots of cargo space, very unusual for a submarine.”
“What was it for?”
“I asked no questions.” He looked away at the place beyond Tarp again. “I asked no questions.” He sighed. “Carlson was killed by one of the death squads. After that, my contacts were always by telephone. Get a call, leave the house, find a coinbox, call a number — all that. Spy stuff. The first call, he threatened me. I —”
“He?”
“The voice.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.” Pope-Ginna’s face crumpled up. He was going to cry again. “Really! It wasn’t Jock, I know; I know Jock’s voice. He said he was taking over for poor Carlson — ‘poor Carlson,’ that’s what he said — and everything would be just as before. Then I got the instructions about the telephone calls. Really! I know it sounds … melodramatic. But that’s the way it happened!” He turned to Repin almost frantically. “There are really people who do things that way!”
“I’m sure there are,” Repin said kindly.
“Did you do what he said?” Tarp did not need to threaten.
“Of course!”
“Why?”
“You don’t know what Argentina was like then. He talked about the death squads. About how involved I was with certain acts that had involved bribery and corruption. About how the government could freeze all my assets and jail me. That sort of thing happened every day.”
“And what was it you did for this voice?”
“I, ah, delivered something in the Soviet Union.”
“What?”
“A, a sort of tube thing. Like a cigar tube, really. Small, silvery tube.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know. I was told that if I looked, they’d know, and that would be the end.”
“Just one?”
“No. Five altogether.”
“Only in Russia?”
Pope-Ginna licked his lips. His color was dreadful and his shivering had given way to a clammy slackness of the muscles that Tarp took as a sign of hypothermia. He would have to be made warm very soon. “In London, too,” Pope-Ginna said.
“And where else?”
“That was all. Moscow and London. I swear.”
“How was it done?”
“I flew to London. I’d make a telephone call. Then I’d leave one of the tubes in a place. Then I’d wait for a telephone call and then I’d go to Moscow. Same thing there — telephone, and then drop off the tube. That was all. That was my part.”
“Were there code names?”
“Yes.”<
br />
“What were they?”
“In Moscow, Maxudov. In London, John Bull.”
MAX and JB. The little boxes in the habitat. And there was a third, labeled GAUCHO. “Just those two?”
“Yes, I swear. That’s all. Please, don’t you believe me? Please. Please? Aren’t you satisfied?”
Tarp looked at Repin, who nodded. “Satisfied for now,” Tarp said. He started up the ladder.
Chapter 40
“You are believing him, my friend?”
“I don’t know yet. How is he today?”
“He cries a little, like a bride. He did not want me to leave, he said.”
“Did he tell you anything else?”
“His wife, she died in 1964, he said. Her heart.”
“I’ll have it checked. Anything more about Schneider or his wife?”
“Not today. You are checking on the death of Schneider’s wife?”
“I’m waiting to hear from Juana.”
They lay at anchor in a small bay north of Cape Town. Trees and grassland of a remarkable freshness (or so it seemed after the days near the ice) came almost to the water’s edge; in the middle of the crescent lay a small town, the metal roofs of the pink-and-brown houses like mirrors in the sun. The Global Clipper seemed out of proportion to the neat bay and to the two military landing craft that lay quietly at anchor halfway between it and the town.
“Is peaceful,” Repin said. He was wearing an open shirt and one of the ubiquitous cloth military hats that appear every where in Africa.
“You don’t like peaceful scenes?”
“Not so much when American marines take up the foreground.”
“Only a small part of the foreground.”
Repin laughed. “American marines cannot take up a small part, my friend. To a Russian eye, they fill the space.” Repin was eating a mango by peeling sections and then eating the lush fruit off the palm-sized pit. It was messy, and he seemed to enjoy it that way. “Mr. Smith is coming soon?” he said guilelessly.
“He wants to be here in time to see the marines hit the beach.”
“Ha, ha-ha. Is funny expression, ‘hit the beach.’” Repin hit the rail with a fist as if to demonstrate.
Under the Freeze Page 38