by Ted Bell
Hobbes began pushing the buttons. “Emergency manual override!” Hobbes said. “Fairly standard. First you punch in the code, then throw this switch. This switch will stop the alarm sequence and prevent electrification of the dock surfaces! Nothing to fear, Captain, I assure you!”
Hobbes threw the black switch to the emergency override position. The dock lights dimmed for a moment but then nothing happened. The wailing sirens continued, the red lights in the control box stayed red.
“Three minutes. Repeat, three minutes. Electrification of the dock area will commence in three minutes. Leave the area at once.”
“It seems to be out of order, Captain,” Hobbes said, turning ashen-faced toward von Krieg. “We’d best get off this dock immediately.”
Von Krieg raised his pistol. “Try it again! If you’re playing with me, Englishman, so help me, I’ll—”
Suddenly, there was a loud splash in the water nearby and then another. The U-boat captain whirled around and saw both the doctor and his assistant paddling furiously, swimming for the submarine at the center of the lagoon.
Because of the underwater floodlights, their huge round bodies were perfectly illuminated. Von Krieg leveled his Luger at Klaus first and slowly squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flashed and the man reared up in the water and then a black stain slowly spread across the bright green water and Klaus fell quiet, floating facedown in the spreading pool of his own blood.
Hobbes heard a gasp of horror from Katie at his side and put a protective arm around her, pulling her close and enfolding her in his poncho, shielding her eyes. It wasn’t over, he knew. “Is he dead, Hobbes?” her muffled voice asked, and Hobbes’s heart ached for this and all the suffering about to be visited on the children of the world. He held her tightly to him.
Dr. Moeller had stopped swimming and was dog-paddling in place, looking from his dead comrade to the furious captain on the dock, his face a contorted mask of fear. “Please, Kapitän! I beg of you, don’t!” he wailed.
Von Krieg raised the pistol and took dead aim.
“You two miserable swine have laughed behind my back for the last time!” the captain shouted across the water. “So, you think I am a joke? You absurd Tweedle Twins who laugh over your beer at me? This is what happens to anyone who disobeys a direct order from the mightiest officer of the mightiest undersea navy on earth! Die Kriegsmarine! ”
He shot the doctor right between the eyes. The Gestapo agent stopped paddling instantly and hung in the water like an enormous puppet with severed strings. There were now two black pools darkening the bright green surface of the water. Seconds later, three or four small black triangular fins could be seen circling the bodies, coming in closer with each pass. The twin pools of blood had brought them racing up from the bottom.
“My God, not sharks?” von Krieg said to no one in particular.
“I’m afraid so, Captain,” Hobbes said. “Nasty creatures, but a highly effective deterrent, I daresay.”
“Anyone else want to go for a swim?” von Krieg said, turning to Little Willy who stood ashen-faced and trembling five feet away.
“Kapitän, how do we know this is not all a trick?” Willy cried and he too was plainly wide-eyed with fear. The sharks now thrashing about with the two dead Gestapo agents in their jaws clearly hadn’t helped his disposition much.
“Two minutes. Two minutes. Warning. Warning. Leave at once.”
A loud klaxon horn now began wailing, deafening inside the high rocky walls. Warning lights atop each of the lampposts suddenly flashed on, throwing a harsh red glow across their faces and the glittering granite stone behind them.
“The entrance to the castle, Commander! Where is it?” von Krieg shouted at the top of his lungs. “Open it now, or you die! The child, too! Both of you, I swear it! Open it!”
“Von Krieg!” Little Willy shouted in a high whining voice. “Come to your senses! We’ll all die if we remain here! It’s a trap, don’t you see? Hasn’t he made enough of a fool of you? Let’s go back to the U-boat and I’ll make this English swine beg to tell us how to get inside! I have ways to make him talk, believe me!”
“No!” von Krieg shouted over the wail of the klaxons. “We’re here now! He can get us inside now! We’ll be heroes! Open the entrance now or watch the little girl join those two in the water, Commander!” Von Krieg lunged toward Hobbes and grabbed Kate, yanking her out of Hobbes’s arms. He pulled the child to himself, his arm tightly around her and the Luger under her tiny chin. “I’ll feed her to the sharks, I swear it, Commander!”
Hobbes desperately wanted to kill the man on the spot but knew that their lives depended on his complete and utter self-control at this very moment. He reached up and grabbed a wedge of protruding rock on the face of the wall.
“It’s here. A lever in the wall disguised as rock—” Hobbes said, and pulled down on the short outcropping of rock. Suddenly, a whole section of the granite face of the wall began to move out and sideways. A smoky red light appeared around the edges of the hidden door. Then, it seemed to slow its movement. Von Krieg threw Kate aside and ran to the slowly opening door and clutched at it desperately. He was but inches from getting inside, inches from fame and glory in the highest echelons of the Nazi empire! Nothing would stop the man who was about to bring England’s greatest spy to his knees!
“Look, Colonel! See for yourself!” von Krieg cried. But Willy hung back, edging closer to the dock ladder.” Willy! Come!” the captain shouted. “It’s open! Hawke Castle is ours for the taking!”
The crack in the door was open just wide enough for von Krieg to insert his desperate fingers. He pulled mightily. The granite-clad steel door began moving again. The captain gritted his teeth and threw his weight against the heavy door. Hobbes stood back and kept Kate well behind him.
“What’s wrong, Hobbes?” the captain screamed. “Why isn’t it moving? How do you open the bloody thing?” He braced his leg against the stone wall and heaved mightily on the door.
“Something must be wrong! It’s stuck!” Hobbes said. “The hydraulic mechanism isn’t working! I’m sorry, Captain, but we have to get off the dock immediately! There’s no time to reset the system! We must get back aboard the raft and away from the dock!” Hobbes pulled Kate toward the ladder as von Krieg looked from the cracked door to the raft, enraged and confused.
“One minute. One minute. Final warning. This is your final warning. This structure is electrified to ten thousand volts. Remaining on the dock surface or touching the structure will now be fatal to any living thing, human or animal. Repeat. One minute.”
A siren now began screaming over the wail of the horns. “Can’t you see it’s all a trick, Captain?” Willy shouted above the wail. “You idiot! He wants to kill us all! Stay and die if that’s what you choose, but not me!”
Willy turned and leapt from the dock to the raft below. But he misjudged the jump and landed on the raft’s rounded rubber side. Instantly, the raft flipped over and Willy, arms pinwheeling wildly, went screaming into the lagoon. The captain stepped to the edge of the dock. Roaring, he fired his pistol repeatedly at the shadowy figure clawing desperately through the brilliant green water and under the dock. He saw a black dorsal fin gliding toward the dock, and smiled.
Ah, well. The insufferable little SS colonel would not be returning with him to Berlin to spread his malicious lies about problems aboard Der Wolf’s first cruise.
He turned back to Hobbes who was shielding Kate behind him.
“Very well, fencing master, it’s down to me and you,” he said, keeping the Luger on Hobbes and moving to the ladder. “You think the arrogant Oxford don has again outsmarted the awkward German student? You think you’ve outfenced me once more? Well, we’ll see about that.” Von Krieg stepped backward onto the first rung of the ladder, keeping the gun on Hobbes.
“Don’t do this, Captain!” Hobbes cried. “You can’t leave a child to suffer like this! It’s monstrous!”
“Good-bye, Commander. Tally-ho. A
uf wiedersehen, Katharina.”
The captain descended the ladder with his back to the water, never taking the gun off Hobbes who was moving toward him, pulling Katie behind, shielding her with his body. The captain stepped carefully down into the raft.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Are you insane?” Hobbes cried. “Shoot me if you want, but you can’t leave us here to die like this!” Hobbes lurched toward the ladder and the captain fired the Luger at his feet, the bullet ricocheting off the steel dock with a loud twang. Hobbes jumped back and he and Kate pressed their backs against the stone-covered door. Kate was trembling uncontrollably.
“Stay back! Away from the edge or I will shoot you both!” von Krieg shouted, untying the mooring line to the raft. “It’s over, Commander! I’m taking my submarine back home to Germany now. But I’ll be back, I promise you, with more men and equipment. And then I shall blast my way into this castle over your toasted body! Until then, I look forward to watching you die of your own devices!”
Standing on the thwart seat, he pushed off against the ladder and the raft skidded away from the dock.
“For God’s sake, take the child!” Hobbes cried as Kate pressed her head into the folds of his poncho, her little arms clasped around his legs.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“I’m afraid our route back to Berlin doesn’t pass by her pretty little lighthouse. Sorry!” The captain had seated himself on the aft thwart seat and was stroking away from the dock with an oar in one hand, the Luger pointed at Hobbes and Kate in the other.
“Ten seconds.”
“Auf wiedersehen, Herr English Fencing Master!” Hobbes heard the captain cry through the mist. “Pity you’re going to miss this glorious war! I might even have enjoyed dueling with you on a slightly larger scale!”
“Five seconds.”
Hobbes squeezed Kate’s hand. The captain was about fifty yards away, his eyes glued to the two figures left standing on the dock in the swirling mist.
“Four seconds, three, two …”
There was a sharp crackling noise, as if lightning had struck the dock, and every light in the lagoon dimmed low and seemed to sputter on and off while the piercing siren wailed a single high note that filled every living ear with pain.
Abruptly, it stopped.
“One.”
Hobbes and the little girl crumpled to the rain-soaked dock.
A hundred yards away, the U-boat captain shipped his oars, stood in the middle of his raft, and regarded the tragic scene on the dock with grim satisfaction. He felt a twinge of pity for the child, but none at all for his three comrades, nor his former Oxford instructor, still full of his old English arrogance and treachery.
He knew that this was just the beginning, the first act in a great drama of war now unfolding. He’d have many more opportunities to avenge the honor of his Fatherland, so cruelly treated by England after the Great War. Now Germany was rising up, and before this war was over, the whole world would cower before the might of the master race. Or be ground to bits beneath the heels of its hobnailed boots.
And he, as the triumphant Admiral Wolfgang von Krieg, would lead the world’s most powerful underwater armada of super U-boats! Yes, on to glorious victory over the enemies of the Fatherland! He raised his stiff right arm in a farewell salute to his old adversary as the raft floated farther out across the lagoon, through the spreading black pools of blood.
He picked up his oars and rowed slowly into the mist and his waiting submarine. There was no longer even a trace of the two cowards, Moeller and his assistant, nor of Little Willy, and this too was satisfying. The voyage home would be much more pleasant without the three bothersome passengers who’d died here in the Hawke Lagoon.
Before the thick wet fog completely obscured the dock, he noticed that all the sirens had ceased and that all the floodlights had been extinguished. The lights on the dock posts, barely visible to him now, had returned to normal; a few pale yellow halos in the mist as the dock at Hawke Lagoon finally receded from view and he was alone on his raft, pulling on his oars for his submarine. The Englishman who’d humiliated him? Fried to a crisp. He felt another brief twinge of remorse for the little girl, perhaps, but then, this was war.
On the darkened dock itself, there was no sign of life.
And then a small whispery voice broke the stillness.
“Are you dead, Father?”
“I don’t appear to be. How about you?”
“I’m completely alive, thank you. A little cold, I guess. Is the scary part quite over now?”
“Quite over, I should think. Be still for another moment and I’ll check.” Hobbes slowly raised his head up an inch so that one eye could see beyond the forearm where he lay with his head on the cold wet steel of the dock.
He saw his old nemesis and his raft disappear into the solid wall of white mist that now blanketed the sub. He heard, too, a muted exchange in German between the sub and the raft and then a horn somewhere inside the sub and the muffled rumble of the U-boat’s two powerful Crossfire engines roaring to life.
“Is that mean old captain gone, Father?”
“Yes, the captain seems to have gone back to his submarine. I don’t think he’ll be coming back,” Hobbes said quietly. “You may call me Hobbes again, by the way, dear. I think our little spy game is over now, thank heavens.”
“Oh. Right. I forgot,” Kate said, lifting her head and staring into the misty lagoon. “The captain thinks we’re dead, so he’s leaving, isn’t he, Hobbes? Going back to Germany?”
“I believe that’s his plan, yes,” Hobbes said, and rolled over on his shoulder so he could reach down into his trouser pocket. He pulled out the small metal boxlike object and rolled back onto his stomach. Propping himself up on his elbows, he regarded the strange little box. It had a small toggle switch and two small lights, one of which was flashing green.
“What’s that, Hobbes?”
“Ah, this,” Hobbes said. “Just that little gadget I invented, my dear. I believe I may have shown it to you when you first arrived at Hawke Castle. It’s a radio-wave remote controller. Watch this!” Hobbes flipped the toggle switch to the up position and the light flashed red.
For the first time in days, Kate saw a huge smile spread across Hobbes’s face. “Ah, yes, I do believe the opening round of this coming unpleasantness just went to England, my dear. Our friend the captain is going to be most unhappy!”
“Why? What does that little box do?” asked Kate. “I forgot.”
“Opens and closes things at a great distance, for one thing,” Hobbes said with a smile. “By flipping this little switch here, for instance, I just closed the Hawke Lagoon Seagate. Unbeknownst to our friend Captain von Krieg and his crew, an impenetrable thirty-foot steel mesh curtain is at this very moment rising across the entrance of the lagoon. The captain and his U-boat are now the permanent guests of Hawke Lagoon, whether they like it or not! Can’t get inside the castle, I daresay, and can’t get outside the lagoon, either! Completely trapped!”
And Hobbes rested his head on his arm, allowing himself the first full, happy laugh he’d had for days. He rolled onto his back and let the light rain fall on his face and just let the relief of laughter come. “We’ve just caught the biggest enemy fish of all, my dear Kate! And the war hasn’t even started yet!”
“That’s good, I suppose. Can we go inside the castle now, Hobbes?” Kate asked. “When you’re finished laughing, I mean?”
“Certainly, my dear, by all means!” Hobbes replied, wiping tears of joy from his eyes and sitting up. “It’s most unpleasant out here, isn’t it? Allow me to escort you up to the castle’s main hall where I shall promptly get a roaring fire going and brew you a pot of fresh hot tea. I may even have a nice warm sweater that will fit the brilliant young Kate McIver! Has anyone ever told you that you are a magnificent actress, my child? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone play dead quite so convincingly, you know! The way you crumpled in a heap, ah, it was inspire
d! Simply inspired!”
Hobbes was still laughing when he jumped to his feet and pulled Kate up. He went to the partially opened door and pushed the rock lever all the way up, and then pulled a second jutting rock downward. The massive stone and steel structure slid open silently and Kate saw that it was as thick as a bank vault, three feet of solid stainless steel behind the rock.
Beyond it was another red-lit passage like the one she and Nick had taken, leading into the castle. She hung back, looking a little sadly into the mist hovering over the lagoon. She’d never seen anyone die before, and no matter how horrid the three German men had been, she wasn’t sure they deserved the awful thing that had happened.
“Hobbes? Why weren’t we electrified like the loudspeaker said?” Kate asked, still looking back over her shoulder at the lagoon.
“Oh, that,” Hobbes said with a smile and an arm around her shoulder. “You see, actually there is no electrification, dear. I had it all removed a year or so ago when I discovered that the warnings alone were quite sufficient. No reason to actually physically endanger anyone, you know, if it’s not necessary! That’s my view of it, anyway!” With great good cheer, and in keen anticipation of the telephone calls he was about to make to Naval Operations in London, Hobbes pushed her along ahead of him.
“You know I wasn’t really acting like I was dead on the dock, Hobbes,” Kate said, stopping for a moment to pull the dripping poncho up over her head.
“No?” Hobbes replied. “You weren’t playing dead, still as a poor churchmouse?”
“No, Hobbes, I was thinking!” Kate exclaimed, looking forward to the hot tea and the warm fire. “I was thinking very hard!”
“And what were you thinking about, dear?”
“Crumpets! May I have a crumpet with my tea, Hobbes?”
“My dear, you may have dozens!”
“And go to China in the little room?”
“All the way to China and back, if that’s what you’d like!”
Kate skipped away, Horatio hot on her heels, as the massive door to the lagoon swung shut behind them and Hobbes’s merry laughter followed her all the way down the passage.