Alma just shook her head.
Over her stubborn silence, Winnie said, “There’s someone here she’s trying to avoid.”
Alma shot her a pained look, reluctant to share her troubles with the daily papers.
“Well, it’s not a customs official, I hope,” Matt said, making a show of carefully setting down the nurses’ boxes and bags. “We’re not carrying war contraband, are we?”
Hazel explained, “It’s someone who’s after Alma.” She looked sheepish, as if she might have said too much.
“Is it, now?” Matt said, moving toward the port rail. “Which one?”
“The tall, gawky one with the beak,” Alma finally said in distaste. “He was talking to that steward and gave him something.”
“That’s Knucks!” Flash informed them, already turning back from the rail.
“Right,” Matt said after a quick look over the side. “Born Elmer Steegle—he’s Hogan’s man.” He zeroed in on Alma with a newsman’s intensity. “What’s he got to do with you? Do you know something about his operation? If you’re on the outs with that bunch, I can see why you booked yourself on a fast ship out of town.”
At her reproachful look, Matt added, “Just kidding…Alma, is it? Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be hard to dodge them until this boat sails. Should I go down and distract him?”
“Mr. Vane,” Nurse Hildegard intervened, “you and your assistant have helped us quite enough.” She reclaimed her bags. “Thank you, we’ll go and find our staterooms, alone!”
“Ladies, it’s been my pleasure. Miss Alma…” He gave her a special, respectful nod. “If you need anything else, just call on us. We’re in Suite 34, forward.” He nodded toward the First Class section.
But then, as the women hurried on with their bags, he turned instead to the port companionway, motioning Flash to follow.
* * *
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Matt edged over toward the rail to draw attention away from the open passage that led across to the starboard side. He knew Knucks was serious trouble, an ex-pug and leg-breaker, probably armed with more than just the brass knuckles that were his trademark. But even so, he should be housebroken enough to respect the power of the press, as Matt had seen in his past efforts to interview Big Jim. Knucks was still chatting with the Second Class steward; then his watchful eye caught the two men moving toward him.
“Hiya, Vane,” the hoodlum said loudly, silencing the crewman. “What’s up? You over here coverin’ Lusi’s last voyage, like all yer reporter pals down on the dock?” He looked a little warily from Matt to the cameraman, as if worried that Flash would take his picture.
“I don’t know about that,” Matt said. “If I thought this ship was going down, I wouldn’t have booked passage on her.”
“Oh yeah, dat’s right, yer headed for bigger stuff, a war reporter. Bigger wars den here.” Knucks turned away from the ship steward, who made his escape. “I better wish you a bone voyage.”
“Thanks, Knucks. Is that why you came, to see someone off and tell them bon voyage? Did you deliver a goodbye wreath?”
“Nah, just takin’ care o’ some business. What about yer little stooge dere?” he asked, changing the subject. “He goin’ wit’ you?”
Flash answered, “Sure thing, Knucks. Don’t you know, war photography is the coming thing?” Beaming proudly at the big thug, he stayed a little way back for camera work.
Matt prodded, “And what business does your boss Jim Hogan have here, aboard a British liner? Has he got a piece of the illegal traffic in war materiel?”
“So what’s this, a third degree? You bein’ the grand inquisitor again, from the Daily Inquisitor?” Snorting a laugh at the stale joke, Knucks moved in on Matt. “There ain’t no traffic here, no business, no nothin’. Specially none o’ yours!” He advanced a step but seemed to be held in check, more by the threat of Flash’s camera than anything else.
“Okay, Knucks, cool off,” Matt said with equanimity, having seen his nurse friends disappear astern via the starboard stairs. “I’m just doing my job on my very last day in port. Tell Big Jim so long for me.” He reached up and patted the big goon on the shoulder.
“Yeah, I’ll tell ’im,” Knucks said, wrenching away. “He’ll send you a goodbye wreath, all right, to yer funeral!”
Chapter 2
Good Hunting
Herr Kapitan-Leutnant Walther Schwieger surveyed his boat, the U-20, in the submarine dock at Emden. The first dawn light shining from Wilhelmshaven in the east etched the slender vessel’s conning tower and deck gun against the glassy harbor. Briskly in the morning chill, Schwieger’s men were busy loading the Unterseeboot with arms and provisions for a two-week cruise.
Schwieger watched as a bronze torpedo, twice as long as a man and heavy as ten, was hoisted down through the sub’s forward hatch. His crew of thirty men and several dachshunds—whose matriarch Maria they’d captured from a Portuguese merchant—would be crammed in with crew, supplies, and eight of those explosive projectiles primed to destroy shipping in the Atlantic sea lanes.
Arming, refueling and provisioning was always a struggle. It was more physically taxing than the hunt itself, which mainly required patience. Like their captain, the crew would be looking forward to setting out to sea so that they could finally get some rest.
Schwieger turned from the dock into the officers’ shack. He’d better refuel himself with coffee—or what passed for it in these war-rationed times, with Germany smothered by the verdammt British blockade.
Inside the tiny hut he bumped into Otto, another submariner accustomed to jostling in close quarters. “Guten Morgen, Kapitan Hersing,” Schwieger said, reaching for the warm pot. “How is your U-21?”
“Excellent, Walther. You’re away soon for England in U-20?”
“Within the hour, I hope. Bauer has ordered me off to Liverpool, to sink troopships, so he says. Big things are afoot. Wegener will be going too, in U-27, and more boats to follow.”
“Ha, Bernie Wegener, that schemer!” Otto Hersing snorted. “You heard what happened on his latest run to Liverpool, just last month?” He obviously didn’t care if it was an old story, and told it anyway. “Bernd lay in wait there for three days, hoping to bag the RMS Lusitania! He let two other steamers go by, he was so greedy to get the big score! But he came back empty-handed, with no kills except for a few fishing trawlers. Ach, poor Wegener!”
“Well, Kapitan,” Schwieger said, “he was only trying to beat your record.” Walther addressed Otto with respect, knowing that he was more than just a big-mouth. He was the first U-boat captain to sink a British warship and escape alive with his boat, only last September at the start of the war. “You just downed those ships in Liverpool Bay, right under the Englanders’ noses…how long ago was it?”
“Back in January, in the Happy Times!” Hersing laughed heartily. “In those days, we didn’t even waste torpedoes on cargo ships. I just surfaced, fired a shot across their bows, and forced the crews to abandon ship. Then I sank the merchant tubs with scuttling charges, or hurried them along with my deck gun.”
“Ah but, Kapitan,” Schwieger ventured, “what if you caught the Lusitania? Would you still expect to board her under those old-fashioned cruiser rules?”
Hersing squinted at him, then laughed. “Ha-ha, Walther, you jest! The Lusi and Maury, all these big steamers, are too fast. They’ll breeze right past you and risk a torpedo–not that just one fish, or even two, is certain to stop a ship of that size.” He shook his head sadly. “And now, with this devil Churchill ordering his merchant ships to speed up and ram our boats on the surface, it’s hard to take a decent lead position so as to threaten them properly.” Then he paused, regarding Schwieger. “Why do you ask? Did Bauer give you some special instruction on this?”
Schwieger shrugged. “Herr Kapitan, you know that if Fregattenkapitan Bauer had given me any special
orders, I could not reveal them. But we’ve both heard his line–no restrictions at all on submarine attacks.”
“Ah, yes,” Otto declared. “And I agree. Conditions for us commerce raiders are hard enough, and always changing. We captains must have total freedom to protect our boats and crews. There are the new British Q-ships, armed decoy merchant liners. And the mines, the nets, and sub-hunting trawlers. Ach, if only those landsmen in Berlin knew what we face!” He shook his shaven head under his officer’s cap, his mustached upper lip in a pout. “But the glory is still there for the taking, and the chance to win this war for our homeland. I would not trade this U-boat command for anything!”
“Nor I, Herr Kapitan,” Schwieger agreed out of patriotic duty. He then returned to his former question. “And so, given full discretion, you would sink the Lusitania? From below, with a spread of torpedoes? No mercy?”
“My friend,” Otto assured him, “I would not hesitate an eyeblink. You and I know what those big ships carry, the war supplies and troops! It would be a mighty blow against England, and a proud distinction for any captain in this service.”
“And what about the women and children?” Schwieger asked. “And with Americans almost certainly on board, too?”
“Why, if any of them didn’t escape, that would make a big noise in the press and teach them all a lesson–England and her reckless allies, and the so-called neutral America! Another great victory for Germany.” He laughed and clapped Schwieger on the shoulder. “You’d better hurry along on your cruise, Walther, or I might catch her first!”
Schwieger checked his pocket watch. “You’re right, I must go. Good hunting, Otto.”
“Good hunting,” his friend replied. As Walther passed through the door, Hersing further saluted him, clicking his heels together in the Prussian style and barking out the current fashionable motto: “God punish England!”
“Gott strafe England,” Schwieger answered in kind, returning to the dock.
Aboard U-20 he found the loading practically complete. But the stowage still had to be checked. Schwieger was ultimately responsible for cramming every loose item into the tightly packed sub. He ordered the diesel engines started up for surface cruising, and to keep the batteries charged for a dive.
The crew was all present, and all seemed sober…torpedo officer Weisbach, Rikowski the radioman, Lanz the pilot, little Dachsie and her pups, and all the engineers and deck gunners. The only new one to keep an eye on was young Voegele, a draftee and an Alsatian by birth. He was a native of one of the long-contested German districts along the French border, the Alsace-Lorraine, that this war was partly being fought over. As such, his loyalty to Der Kaiser was subject to question. But the lad seemed to be a decent electrician. Once he was out under the sea, his life would depend on diligent service and cooperation, just as much as everyone else’s did.
In the late morning sunlight, standing up top and waving auf Wiedersehen from the conning tower and the gun deck, the crew cast off and cruised into the already-rising western breeze. Once clear of the harbor bar, Schwieger went to his bunk and immediately slept, wanting to rest while he could with U-20 still in friendly waters.
After all the exertion of getting to sea, his sleep was deep. By the time he rose, the pilot Lanz told him they were entering the war zone. Well east of England, still surface cruising. It was already Saturday the First…May Day, 1915.
Chapter 3
Setting Sail
In their cabin on E-deck, Alma and the other nurses stowed their belongings in the Lusitania’s ample drawers and closets. Having gotten past the hoodlum on the promenade, they felt they could relax. Their four-berth cabin was tastefully appointed, each mahogany bunk hung with flower-patterned drapes for privacy. The room had a sink, and the lavatory was only a short distance away down the passage. Their space was cramped by the addition of a foldaway cot; but with no larger cabin available in the overbooked Second Class, Alma found this preferable to sharing a two-bed cabin in steerage with some stranger.
Alma Brady—that was the name she must think of herself by, now and perhaps forever. She felt relief mixed with sadness as she put away her luggage. She had only these few belongings left, and most of them came with memories that were far from pleasant. Apart from this and her new friends in the stateroom, every shred of her old life had fallen away–the boarding school, the music, all of the art and refinements. Those months spent with Jim Hogan had been a mistake, a dream that turned into a nightmare. In escaping from it, all of her past hopes were gone, poisoned by Jim’s unguessable hostility over what she had done.
Now she was forced into the timeworn role of the wronged woman, cruelly deceived, her virtue tarnished–but she had to play out the melodrama in secret, hiding from Hogan’s mob. There was no one to forgive her sins, and it didn’t help that she’d been orphaned three years ago, at seventeen. Thank goodness for the United Nursing Service League and the busy weeks of training at the charity hospital, where Hildegard kindly hid her out. And thank God for this war, too–dreadful as it was, it could be a new start.
As evident from Knucks’s vigilance on the docks, the heat wasn’t off. And so, for the future, this was it. Family name, friends, social expectations and cherished truths all were gone, along with the whole world she’d been bred to. Instead she must discover what beliefs and values held constant from one side of the Atlantic to the other, from peace to war, from the penthouse all the way down to the gutter, or the trenches.
This real world seemed a pretty dismal place. For now, the best she could do was listen to her new friends’ light-hearted chatter.
“What a delightful stateroom,” Florence was bubbling over. “Just look at the bedspreads. There’s Cunard’s symbol embroidered on all of them, a British lion gripping the world. How darling! This is going to be such a jolly cruise after all!”
“And what about the men?” Hazel mused aloud. “What did you think of that dashing reporter, Mr. Vane?”
“Handsome!” Florence rolled her eyes dreamily.
“But Flash, the red-haired one, is cuter,” Winnie said. “A little young for my taste.”
“Young but willing,” Florence added in a worldly tone.
“Now girls, you beware,” Miss Hildegard scolded them. “Reporters are men of the street, to be avoided. They claim to be interested in our work, but if I know them, they’ll end up trying to take advantage.”
“Well, I should certainly hope so,” Winnie declared, winking and being intentionally scandalous.
“It seems that U-boats aren’t the only danger on this voyage,” Hazel sagely added.
The elder woman harrumphed while emptying her satchel and clothes-press. As she stepped outside to dispose of some fruit peels, Winnie whispered, “Frankly, I don’t think Miss Hildegard has a thing to worry about.”
“Why not?” Hazel asked.
Florence piped up, “You mean, because no man is going to torpedo her?”
Even Alma had to laugh at that, and she couldn’t quite stop in time. When the head nurse returned, it was to a muffled storm of giggles. She took it in with a stern look but didn’t scold them. Alma thought she must secretly be pleased at her crew’s good morale.
“Well, that’s it,” Winnie announced a few minutes later. “I’m all unpacked. What to do next? Shall we go topside and wave goodbye?”
“Oh yes, we have to!” Hazel cried, putting an arm around her sister. “Our parents said they’d be waiting on the pier to see us off.”
“If they made it in time,” Flo said. “I suppose we must go.”
Alma would have much preferred to keep out of sight below decks, but none of the others seemed inclined to stay behind with her. Hildegard obviously felt it necessary to chaperone the group, probably to keep any of them, and Alma in particular, from falling prey to males or jumping ship. So all together they gaily dressed one another in what finery was available. After d
ecking out their nurses’ garb with the best hats, jackets, shoes and gloves from their luggage, they set forth to conquer the ship.
The corridor was busy, and as they climbed toward the open decks, the bustle of passengers in the stairwells increased. The gong ordering all visitors ashore had sounded some minutes ago, so they could safely assume Knucks was out of the way.
Even so, to avoid being seen close to their room before sailing, Hildegard led them forward again toward the First Class section, which was not closed off as yet or noticeably restricted. The traffic on the way was brisk and somewhat confused at departure, with bosun’s whistles shrilling and tugboats hooting. Deep throbbings in the deck underfoot told them the ship was coming to life.
They emerged onto the Shelter Deck on the port side, facing the pier. Where the crosswise passage opened onto the promenade, a crewman was handing out miniature American flags. They each took one, eager to be part of the brilliant sailing spectacle. Alma, though, used hers as a fan to hide behind while discreetly watching for danger.
The rail of the promenade astern was jammed with passengers, so the nurses began to edge their way forward. Before long, an elegantly accented male voice sounded at their side.
“Good day, lovely ladies. Might I offer you assistance?”
The speaker was a plump, mustached man, his accent sounding Northern European. He addressed himself to Hildegard, gallantly raising his low-cut sable top hat. For once, the chief nurse didn’t lead her flock right past; she paused, with a less disapproving look than usual. They all took in the man’s fur-lined green frock coat over striped trousers, matching green spats, and elegant silver-topped cane. Here, Alma thought, was a man of means.
“Surely you want a place at the rail,” the foreigner said, speaking exclusively to Hildegard. Turning away from her to some cigar-smoking loungers nearby, he tapped the deck sharply with his cane tip. “Gentlemen, make way, please,” he declared. “These ladies need to see, and be seen,” he added to the men, who tipped their hats appreciatively. Falling back, they let the nurses take their place along the waist-high barrier.
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