Brigands Key

by Ken Pelham

  Becker chuckled. Shreck shot him an angry glance. Becker shut up. Shreck looked over my men with that look we usually receive from our dry-land compatriots. They see a smelly, dirty, bearded lot of submariners. Undisciplined. Unpatriotic. It gives them a smug feeling of superiority. They do not want to know that a U-boat crew dispenses with shaving and bathing out of the critical need to save scarce water.

  “Captain Remarque,” Shreck said, “Let us make way.”

  “With eagerness, sir. Our destination?”

  “The Fatherland. Posthaste.”

  U-498’s diesel engine hummed and the boat withdrew, backing out from the shallows. I watched nervously from the conning tower, scanning the dark shore with binoculars. Several sets of headlights, each set a twin pair of glowing pinpoints, appeared near where we had been. The headlights froze. I imagined men scurrying about, searching the shore, scanning the sea. And radioing an urgent call for help.

  I prayed for reliable engines and deep water.

  Four kilometers from shore, as the sun peeked above the horizon and painted the eastern sky a dazzling red, my prayer was answered; the water deepened to twelve fathoms. I gave the order and the crew happily sealed the boat. U-498 slipped under the water, to periscope depth. The old rhyme played in my thoughts: Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

  By the dim light inside our old warhorse, our guest was not much more to look upon than he had been in the dark. He was a young man, rather slight of build. Unremarkable in every aspect, certainly not one of the Aryan supermen Americans imagined us to be. Shreck’s hair was brown, his eyes brown, his face plain. Average all around. Which is good for someone undercover.

  Average, yet sick. His pallor was ghastly and his hands trembled. He avoided talk. He kept his heavy bag with him at all times, an arm clamped around it.

  We gave him dry clothing and fed him. Like all our remaining food, the food we gave him was moldy. He ate ravenously nonetheless. His eyelids drooped with exhaustion; I offered him my bunk. He declined at first, then relented and was asleep within seconds, his prize still tight in his grip.

  He roused after seven hours and returned to the control room. I nodded to him.

  American jazz music, quite popular among submariners, played softly. Shreck seemed annoyed by it.

  He looked at me coolly. “What is our position, Captain?”

  “Eighty kilometers south of our rendezvous point.”

  Shreck stared at me. “That’s all? What is our speed?”

  “You have an urgency?”

  “Our speed, Captain, if you please.”

  “Seven knots.”

  “And that is as fast as we can go?”

  “Underwater. On the surface, we are considerably faster, a top speed over eighteen knots. We are just below the surface, running under diesel power with our snorkel raised. The diesel cannot run at a greater depth as the engine requires air intake. Deeper, we switch to electric batteries, but we cannot stay down forever on battery power.”

  “Then return to the surface at once. Speed is of the essence.”

  “My orders, sir, are to fetch you back to Germany. I shall do so. But I am also sworn to protect my ship and crew to the best of my ability. That prescribes a degree of caution.”

  “To the surface, Captain. Now.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Shreck.”

  Shreck leaned back, rubbing the stubble on his chin, studying me. “Is there a private place we can talk?”

  “On a submarine? Not many. But follow me. The officers’ wardroom will do.”

  I showed him to the tiny, wood-paneled wardroom. We took seats and stared at each other for a moment.

  “Captain, you haven’t much use for spies, have you?”

  “They have a place, I suppose.”

  “I am a judge of men. I doubt I can bully you, so I’ll reason with you. Listen to me: the war is not over.”

  “For all practical purposes, it is. Germany is doomed. But you know that. Moving among the Americans, you have better news than a submariner weeks at sea. Germany’s fortunes cannot be reversed. The Reich is collapsing. Nothing you say will persuade me to further jeopardize my men for a lost cause.”

  “That borders upon treason, Captain.”

  “It is the truth.”

  Shreck regarded me for a long moment, nervously tapping his fingertips together. “I’m going to tell you why we must be swift.”

  “It’s a long trip home. I have time.”

  “My stay in the United States has been largely pointless. Until now. For three years, I have reported troop and ship movements. I have reported political infighting. I have monitored aircraft plant output. And none of it mattered one iota in the prosecution of this war. Yet recently I received an assignment that, at long last, would matter.

  “In early April, I received new orders from Wolfe. That’s all the name you need. Wolfe is an intelligence-gatherer like no other in the world, but has little or no stomach for the more distasteful assignments. So I left Chicago and took a train south. I disembarked in Atlanta and purchased work clothes and boots. I found a general store that had a few old hunting rifles for sale, and as luck would have it, I purchased a weathered M1917, a .30-caliber American Army-surplus weapon, a fine rifle designed to kill men.

  “‘Going on a little springtime shoot?’ the clerk asked.

  “‘Hogs are tearing up my land,’ I said. ‘I’ll need two boxes of ammo.’ Language fluency is a necessity for a spy, and my English is flawless… but not for that part of the country.

  “The clerk had to pry. “‘Where ye from, Mister?’

  “‘Chicago,’ I said in all honesty.

  “‘Why ain’t ye in the Army?’

  “‘Shot in the foot on Guadalcanal,’ I replied. The clerk glanced at my foot and slid the ammo toward me.

  “I worked my way south through the countryside, through small towns. I hate them. They are bad for spies; it’s easier to blend in a big city. When I drew within twenty kilometers of my destination, I moved at night until I arrived in Warm Springs.

  “I prowled woods and farms in darkness until I found a suitable place of little security, a towering grove of pines. The house was in the distance, patrolled lackadaisically by guards. A shallow ditch transected an open field, within a hundred meters of the house. It would do. I loaded the rifle and crept onward. Stop, watch, wait, proceed. At the edge of the woods, all appeared well. I cradled the rifle across my forearms and belly-crawled across the darkened field and into the stagnant water in the ditch.

  “I found a suitable vantage point. Soldiers patrolled the grounds, disinterested in venturing afield. A fatal laziness.

  “The target appeared.

  “Franklin Delano Roosevelt, slumping, rolled onto the porch, his wheelchair pushed gently by a nurse.

  “I raised my rifle and peered through the scope.

  “Things were worse for Roosevelt than the public had been led to believe. His face was drawn and pallid, his hands trembling. Gone was the confident, reassuring smile. Sickness and pain gripped his frail body. All knew that polio had tortured him and that his trips to Warm Springs revived his spirit and strength. This was no longer the case. This was no longer the same man. Death was creeping upon him.

  “Yet orders were orders. And the mission was to shock, to stun... and to distract America from the details of war. Only assassination could accomplish that.

  “Or so Wolfe had claimed. I snugged closer into the rifle, pulling it firmly against my shoulder. The shot would be a long one, but within my range. I paused, waiting patiently for a lull in the breeze that drifted across the field. It came, and I held my breath, steadying myself for the shot.

  “I slowly squeezed the trigger...”

  Chapter Thirty

  The cords binding Kyoko’s wrists began to yield as she sawed with the shard of glass. Though her hands were numb, the pressure lessened and suddenly the bonds loosened and gave way and she pulled free.

/>   She tucked the piece of glass into her pocket and rubbed her wrists. Feeling and blood crept back into her hands and with them the sharp pain of her lacerated fingertips. The cuts were open and had been dry but now the blood began to drip from them.

  She wiped her fingers on her blouse. No time to worry about minor cuts now. She felt the bandage over the wound where her ear used to be, the ear that was no longer there. The wound throbbed with pain.

  She tried the door. Locked, as she knew it would be. She ran her hands over it, getting a sense of it. The grain of the wood was deeply rutted, and clammy with years of mildew. It hung massive and heavy on great iron hinges. Likely, it was the original oak door, or even ancient cypress, chosen and milled to last. She pressed her ear to it and listened. No sound of movement or life came from beyond. She shook it. Ancient though it was, it wasn’t about to yield.

  She gave up and felt about in the dark and began to search the masonry wall. She felt as high up the wall as she could but could find no openings. The room was almost certainly once a storehouse, harkening back to when perhaps the only resident on the whole island was the lighthouse keeper. The keeper would have benefited from a storeroom that was virtually impregnable to rats and raccoons. Such a room makes an excellent prison.

  She completed a circuit of the room, and swore to herself. No openings, no windows, not even a promising crack. The door seemed the only way in or out.

  She scoured the floor for anything of value. Finding nothing, she withdrew the shard of glass from her pocket. Her sole weapon. She experimented with her grip on it, settling on a tight pinch, almost a pencil grip. She practiced a slashing motion, finding that a backhand slash gave her the most power in her swing.

  She tore a bit of cloth from her blouse, wrapped it around one edge of the glass, and gripped it tightly. That might save her fingers.

  She backed against the wall adjacent to the door and flattened herself against it. Her heart was thudding as she pictured how this could unfold. She tried to visualize each possible combination of moves and the chances of success for each. The outcomes didn’t look promising.

  Outside her prison, the wind whistled, growing in intensity. Celeste was closing in. A crack of thunder split the air nearby. Below the sound of the rising storm came another sound. Footsteps. Approaching.

  There was a soft clink of metal against metal and the heavy sound of a bolt being slid in an outer door somewhere. She drew a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and raised the shard of glass even with her shoulder. She would get one chance. She had to make it count.

  * * *

  Captain Remarque’s Journal

  Shreck paused importantly, letting me imagine him about to put a bullet through the face of Franklin Roosevelt. “A voice hissed at me from behind, in German,” he said at last. “‘Agent, abort the mission immediately!’

  “I twisted about, ready to kill. It was Wolfe. The last person I expected. As I said, he was not the field type.

  “‘This mission is ended,’ he continued. ‘We are withdrawing.’

  “I was of no mind to continue the discussion within shooting range of armed guards. We backed out of the wet ditch and slipped through the pine woods, silent as the night, until we had removed ourselves a kilometer from the kill point.’

  “At last, Wolfe spoke. ‘You have a new mission.’

  “‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

  “‘Child’s play. I found the only point at which you could succeed.’

  “My estimation of Wolfe rose. ’I was mere seconds from completing the assignment,’ I added.

  “‘The new mission is vastly more important.’

  “‘More important than assassinating the President?’ I was incredulous.

  “‘That would amount to mere noisemaking. Now you have an opportunity to alter the war, perhaps even win it.’

  “And then I received my new orders.

  “Wolfe took me back to Atlanta. My cover changed once more. I bathed and shaved and was furnished with a business suit and briefcase. I was provided a car. Wolfe vanished and I was on my way once again.

  “I drove north from Atlanta, crossing mountains, into Tennessee. From Chattanooga, I turned northeast and in a few hours I entered a small valley.

  “I consulted my map. I was to find Robertsville, a tiny hamlet. There it was, on the map … but it was not there. In its place was a sprawling installation.

  “I was baffled. I knew the names and locations of all major military installations in America. Or so I thought. But here was something very big, and very secret.

  “I left my car by night in a wood and covered it in brush, kilometers from the installation, and began my examination, skulking once again through the night forest, crawling upon my belly through ditches.

  “Over the next two days, the enormity of it all sank in. The complex sprawled across tens of thousands of acres, across small valleys, each separated from the next by high ridges. Security and isolation were endemic to each. No one moved between the isolated areas; no one working in one area would be aware of what happened in the next.

  “Barbed-wire and guarded gates everywhere. Armed patrols everywhere. All of it new. A new city, with no name, on no map.

  “Entering was impossible and pointless. If I somehow gained entry, I had no earthly idea what to do or look for.

  “Someone else would do it for me. Wolfe had given me a name. Dr. Lawrence Roth. PhD. Physics.

  “Roth was not a traitor, but he had two critical things: access and weakness. Why governments guarding secrets allow such weakness is a mystery. But they do and duty compelled me to take advantage of that weakness, distasteful as I may find it.

  “The homes were new but ugly, the ugliness varying with the status of the worker. Roth’s house was among the more attractive ugly houses.

  “Security, so impenetrable around the vast factories and labs, was weak in the housing districts. When Dr. Roth returned to his sparkling ugly home late one night, he had an unwelcome guest. I sat in his living room, smoking a cigarette. I hate the things, but they lend an ominous air when smoked in the dark of one’s home by an intruder.

  “‘Welcome home, Dr. Roth,’ I said. ‘Do not run. I would kill you before you reached the door.’

  “Roth froze. ‘Get out of my house,’ he said. His face paled as he glanced about the small house. “‘Where —?’

  “‘Doctor, please sit. Your wife and daughter are safe. Do as I say and you will soon be with them.’

  “‘Where are they?’

  “‘Safe and sound. Now. You have a choice before you.’

  “‘How much do you want? I’ll pay anything.’

  “‘You can’t be that stupid.’ The good doctor was laboring under the misconception that he had any control over the moment. I decided to disabuse him of that notion. I stood and punched him in the stomach, doubling him over. ‘Now. You have access to something precious. You know what it is.’

  “‘Information,” he said resignedly. ‘Very well. I will tell you what I can.’

  “‘Information,’ I repeated. ‘We have all the information we need. Why else do you think I’m here? No. I want the prize itself.’ I spoke my lines well, though I had no idea what I was actually after. I just had a phrase. ‘Deliver Manhattan to me.’

  Roth’s eyes widened with fear. “‘Manhattan? Who are you?’

  “I punched him again in the stomach, where no mark would show. I needed him looking well if this was to have any chance of success. ‘Why, I’m a Nazi spy, of course.’ There was no point in lying; any moron would have deduced as much by now.

  “‘Are you insane? You think I can steal the core and pass it off to you?’

  “I had no idea what the core was, but it was clearly of paramount importance. ‘Precisely. Bring me the core.’

  “‘I won’t do it!’

  “‘Doctor, what do we know about the war?’

  “‘Your side is all but beaten,’ he said.

  “‘Yes. Th
erefore, the core won’t make any difference, will it? The war will be over before I return to Germany. So you can’t really affect the outcome. Yet you can save your family. Bring me the core and you have your family back. Fail, and I will begin with your wife. While your little girl watches. When I’m done with Judith, I will move to your little girl. Sally is a precious thing; how old is she, ten? After I am finished, you will receive the both of them, or what’s left of them. And Germany will still lose the war. So therein dwell the difficult choices. Your loved ones in exchange for a piece of hardware that in the greater scheme of things won’t matter. You have three seconds to decide.’

  “Roth trembled and tears welled in his eyes.

  “‘Time’s up,’ I said.

  “‘I’ll… I’ll steal it,’ he said in a breaking voice.

  “‘Tonight,’ I said. ‘Now.’ In my work, I find it unwise to give desperate men time to mull over options.”

  * * *

  A crease of light appeared beneath the door. Kyoko tensed, swallowed her breath. The lock rattled and the door creaked slowly inward. Light flooded into the blackness. A hand appeared against the door… and stopped.

  Time to act. Kyoko slashed downward with the glass shard, slicing the intruder’s palm open, and sprang into the doorway and drove her knee hard into the intruder’s stomach. She slashed at his face, drawing a line of red across the cheek.

  The man staggered and swung a fist, striking a glancing blow to the side of her head. Sparks flashed in her mind and she stumbled sideward. She recovered and slashed again. The shard snagged in the man’s shirt and was nearly wrenched from her grip, cutting deeply into her fingers, but she maintained her hold on it. She struck wildly, knocking the flashlight free. It clattered to the floor, throwing light and shadow into a frenzy. She caught a glimpse of her enemy.

  Blount.

  One of only a handful she had trusted on this island.

  She clawed his face and lunged again. Blount stumbled and she was past him. She kicked the flashlight through the door, snatched it up, bolted out of the room, raced for the outer open door and slammed it behind her. She felt for, found, and shot the bolt home, locking the door.