The Night Boat

by Robert R. McCammon

  In a dark clapboard house in Singapore a woman with blackened teeth and the smile of a cat stared at him over a plate of yellowed bones. She reached down and picked them up in her hands, rolled them around and then dropped them back. They were ordinary chicken’s bones, but the woman seemed to see something strange and important in them.

  A group of sailors from Moore’s freighter had gone with him to see the fortune-teller, and they stood in the shadows that fringed the room. “He’s going to inherit a fortune, is that it?” one of them asked jokingly, and the others laughed. “Fortune, hell,” said another. “He’s just going to be lucky enough to get out of this port without a colossal case of the drips.”

  “Someone waits for you,” the woman said in a high-pitched whine. The men laughed again; crude remarks were flung back and forth. Moore watched the woman’s eyes and believed her. “No. Two people,” she said; she lifted the bones again, rolled them, let them fall.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” one of the sailors asked.

  The woman looked into Moore’s face. “There is a great distance to be traveled yet,” she said, wet lips glistening. “I can’t see where they are. But they will not leave until you find them.”

  “Who are they?” Moore asked, and as soon as he spoke the men were quiet.

  “A woman. Tall. Very beautiful. A man. No. A boy child. They are very confused, and they don’t understand why you can’t hear.”

  “I…” Moore began, but then stopped himself. “Is there anything else?”

  She rolled the bones, dropped them, and probed as if looking for a particular one. Then she shook her head. “No. Fate reserves the rest.” She held out her hand for her money. “Anyone else?” she asked.

  The freighter’s lights had vanished; the horizon was black again and above it hung the separate, fiery dots of stars. Moore crushed out his cigarette. It was hard not to believe, but it was equally hard to believe. He wanted to believe, though; he desperately needed to, perhaps because of his persistent, unnerving feeling about Coquina. That it was the end of his journey. And the questions still to be answered, the ones that had plagued him day and night and sometimes made him cry out because he couldn’t understand. Why had he not died with Beth and Brian? Why had he been saved? Why had he been sent on a path that led…here? To Coquina? To find what? Fate reserves the rest, the old woman had told him.

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  Moore turned his head, his reflexes slowed by the effects of the rum. Jana was standing behind him on the porch, wearing a tight white blouse and jeans. He had no idea how long she’d been there. “Sure,” he said, and motioned toward another chair beside him.

  She sat down and put her legs up on the porch railing. Her hair was exactly as he’d imagined it: she wore it loose and it touched her shoulders, softly blond and very attractive. “It’s quiet,” she said after a moment of silence.

  “Yes, the bars closed early tonight. Usually there’s a lot of noise on a Saturday.” He glanced over at her, his eyes tracing the fine line of her profile. “Is your room all right?”

  “It’s fine, thanks.” She sensed that he wanted to be alone, but she wasn’t about to leave him. “It’s a shame you don’t have more visitors. I think your island has a lot of potential.”

  He grunted. “For what? Another tourist haven, where they destroy the jungle for a Hilton and a shopping center? It would mean more money coming into Coquina, but there are only a few natural places like this left in the Caribbean. That’s why I bought the hotel and decided to stay on for a while. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Are you against progress?”

  “Progress, no. Spoilage, yes. A few years ago some businessmen had a plan to build a hotel and marina over on the island’s north point. They dredged out a harbor and started blasting the jungle away with dynamite. They never finished it, and they ruined a perfectly good natural cove.”

  “What made them stop?”

  Moore shrugged. “Money, I suppose. And problems with the Carib Indians, who kicked their night watchmen around and stole their supplies; those people claim that part of Coquina, and they guard it jealously. But I’m glad they didn’t finish. You can keep your Jamaicas and Haitis; Coquina’s better off being left alone.”

  There was a pause, and then Jana said, “I didn’t know I’d touched a nerve.”

  Moore glanced over at her, he hadn’t meant to come across that strongly, and he knew it was partly the rum talking. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the tourists move in, but I’m attached to this place. I don’t want it to change.”

  “I can understand your feelings.”

  “Well,” he said, dismissing the subject with a wave of his hand, “enough about Coquina. I’m forgetting my manners. Would you like a drink?”

  Jana shook her head. “I don’t drink, but thank you all the same.”

  Moore sipped from his glass, listening for a moment to the sound of the ocean rolling across Kiss Bottom. The waves were harsher than usual, and that could mean a storm was building somewhere, chopping up the sea. “How long have you been with the Foundation?” he asked her finally.

  “A little over a year,” she said. “I worked in research for the British Museum after I finished school, and I had the opportunity to dive with Cousteau on the Britannic. That was mostly luck, but it helped me win a position in Kingston.”

  “What exactly does the Foundation do?”

  She smiled faintly and nodded toward the open sea. “That’s my laboratory. Out there are perhaps thousands of sunken wrecks. Some are charted, some aren’t; more are being discovered all the time. We document and study the ones that haven’t been identified. There are perhaps more wrecks in the Caribbean than any one place on earth, so that’s why I tried my damnedest to get the position. Pirate’s galleons, men-o’-war, sailing merchants, steamers, warships; the bottom’s a marine archaeologist’s paradise. What we’re doing is just as much for shipping safety as for the sake of history.”

  “You’re very young to have come so far in your field.”

  Jana smiled openly; it was a warm smile, filled with a charm Moore had not seen until now. “I’ve heard that one before. Believe me, I worked my ass off to get where I am. It’s never been easy—it still isn’t—but I think the work is worth it.”

  “So what are you planning about the submarine?”

  Jana’s smile faded at once. She stood up and leaned against the railing, staring out into the night; when she turned back to him he could see the fierce determination in her eyes. “I’m not going to let that man sink it, if that’s what you mean. He doesn’t seem to realize how valuable it could be. To be perfectly honest, grants to the Foundation from Great Britain haven’t been pouring in for some time; the British Museum seems to be losing interest in our work. Something like this could spark a fire throughout the entire scientific community! No. I’m not going to return to Kingston and tell them I had a risen U-boat in my grasp, in remarkable condition, and let it be sunk right under my nose!”

  “Wait here a second,” Moore said suddenly, standing up. “I want to show you something.” He went to his study, found the scorpion paperweight, and brought it out to her. “Look at this,” he said.

  She stared at the glass object, holding it up to the dim porch light. Her expression was troubled and she seemed agitated. “Where did you find this?” she asked quietly, glancing at him and then back to the paperweight.

  “Inside the boat; there was a cabin just forward of the control room.”

  Jana nodded. “The commander’s quarters.” She turned it, examining the letters. Moore saw the color suddenly drain from her face. “Korrin,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s the name here. Korrin. Wilhelm Korrin. Do you see?” Her eyes were bright with excitement.

  “I suppose it could say that, yes.”

  “I know that name,” she said with finality.

  Mo
ore took it from her, held it into the light.

  “And now I know what boat that is,” Jana said.

  Sixteen

  “WE WERE OVER two hundred miles off the mark!” Jana was saying. “It’s incredible! If it weren’t for this…” She held the paperweight up as she sat on the sofa in the hotel’s front room. She was constantly turning it, studying the letters as if fearful they would somehow evaporate before her eyes.

  “You’ve been talking for fifteen minutes,” Moore called from the kitchen where he was making a pot of coffee, “and I haven’t understood a thing you’ve said. Wait until I get in there.”

  “When’s the earliest I can get a message off to Kingston?”

  “Hard to say,” Moore called back. “The relay operator sometimes works for an hour or so on Sundays, sometimes not at all.”

  “I’ve got to get a message off!”

  “Settle down,” he said, bringing in a tray with a coffeepot and two cups. He set it down on the table and poured some for her and then for himself. “If it’s all that important we’ll wake her at daylight.” He sat beside her. “All right, I’m listening. Who’s Wilhelm Korrin?”

  “He was one of the few U-boat aces of World War II,” Jana said. “There weren’t many others: Prien, Schepke, Kretschmer—and Korrin’s tonnage record equaled anything they sunk. Well, at the end of the war the others were all accounted for, either dead or in prison camps, but Korrin had vanished without a trace, and since the war he’s been a puzzle to military historians.

  “A few months ago a group of sport divers found a U-boat wreckage near Jamaica; there wasn’t much left of the boat, but on checking our records we found it was unidentified. Korrin’s last known command was in the Caribbean, so of course we assumed we’d found his U-boat. Now finding this paperweight makes all the difference. And it’s even more vital to preserve the U-boat now; there’ll be war diaries aboard, Korrin’s personal log—who knows what else. It’s a treasure trove for both the Foundation and military historians.”

  Moore grunted. “He was that important, was he?”

  “Very,” Jana said. “Korrin almost single-handedly blocked off the northeastern coast of the United States; on one particular tour of duty his U-boat crept inside a convoy to strike at three tankers. All of them went down, Korrin escaped, and that attack earned a Knight’s Cross for him in Berlin, but he never returned to accept it. In the early part of 1942 his area of operations was the Caribbean; he was one of the first U-boat commanders patrolling the area, and he was given a free choice of targets. The unverified reports say his boat shelled the Trinidad oil refineries, slipped into Castries harbor to torpedo an anchored freighter, and sank the British cruiser Hawklin with a single concussion torpedo that snapped it amidships. The Hawklin survivors testified that the U-boat returned several hours later to fire on their lifeboats; if that incident had ever been proved, Korrin would have gone on trial for his life—if he’d ever returned to take his punishment, that is. Communications between the U-boats were kept at a minimum for the sake of security, and there was no way Korrin’s movements could be tracked.

  “Then he vanished. His boat’s number—U-198—never reappeared on any of the German position logs. He was really quite something—a ruthless, highly intelligent man, a patriotic Nazi who asked for the most demanding missions. But for the last forty years he’s been a mystery.”

  Moore was impressed. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “I did as much research as I could when I was diving that U-boat off Jamaica. That’s primarily the reason I drew this assignment.” She put the paperweight down and looked at him. “Now I’d like to know something. This afternoon you didn’t even want me near the boat. Why was that?”

  He put his cup on the table and paused for a moment, then said very quietly, “Something happened when Kip and I went in; something I can’t understand or explain. It’s dangerous…very dangerous.”

  “Tell me.”

  He took a deep breath, realizing Jana was going to probe until she found it. “The bodies inside aren’t skeletons; they’ve been mummified. It’s not a pretty sight…”

  “I can handle it.”

  “No. It’s more than that.” He paused, feeling her gaze on him; he sipped at his coffee, wondering how to say it. “Something moved inside there,” he said finally.

  Jana started to laugh, but then she saw he was deadly serious and she stopped herself. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” He let out a deep sigh and clenched his hands together. “I’ve gone over it in my head a hundred times. Kip says it was a hallucination, the effect of the fumes we breathed; but damn it, I know I saw something real there, in the boat’s central passageway. And it looked like a man.”

  “A man? Perhaps someone else was hiding on board.”

  Moore shook his head quickly. “I mean it looked like one of the…things we found lying together in the control room. I know I sound like I’m losing my mind and maybe I am, but there’s something terrible inside, and I’m not going into the boat again.”

  “Sometimes the imagination…” Jana began.

  “NO!” Moore looked up at her, and his expression frightened her because she could see his own fear, working deep within him. “It was not something I imagined; it was real.”

  They sat in uneasy silence for a few moments. Jana put the paperweight aside, finished her coffee, and then stood up. “It’s time for me to be turning in,” she said. “I’m an early riser. I’m afraid I’ll have to be depending on you for transportation around Coquina; if it’s too much trouble I suppose I could rent a bicycle down in the village.”

  “It’s no trouble,” he said quietly.

  “Well, if you’re sure. I’d like to make a quick check of my plane in the morning, and of course I’m going to have to talk to the constable.”

  “I don’t think Kip’s going to change his mind.”

  “We’ll see. If I have to, I’ll fly back to Kingston to get legal intervention.” She stood over him for a moment and then she said, “Good night,” and moved toward the stairway. When she had gone up a few steps she turned back to reassure him but then thought better of it and continued on to her room.

  Moore sat on the sofa for a long time. And then he felt it—the sensation that very near to him was evil, an intense, burning hatred that at any moment could rise up and destroy the village. It was the same sensation he’d had while in the boat, and he was unable to shake it. Then he thought of the forty-five-caliber automatic he kept in a drawer in his room. He stood up and locked both the screen door and the wooden door, walked through the corridor into the kitchen, and bolted the rear door as well. Only when he was satisfied the hotel was secure did he snap off the lights and mount the stairway in the dark.

  Thick, bilious clouds swept through the night, covering over the moon and the stars. A brief shower sent droplets spattering against windows and roofs, and rivulets of water crept along gutters. The sea flattened, pocked by the rain, and when the dawn came both sea and sky were plains of slate that merged at the horizon. Only a lighter patch of gray above the turbulent ocean indicated where the sun was hanging. The wind that had forced the clouds in from the northeast had died away just before morning, and now a grim stillness and silence lay across Coquina.

  Kip hadn’t slept well. He had been awakened continually by imagined noises: something moving in the brush outside his window, a far-off crying of birds, the scratching of rats at the walls. He had gotten out of bed and read until dawn, trying to keep his attention on the printed pages, but his mind was too full to allow him to concentrate. He turned the pages automatically without really seeing what was there. And now, as gray light filled the small house and Myra cooked breakfast in the kitchen, Kip sat with his hands folded before him, motionless and lost in thought.

  “We’ll be ready to eat in a few minutes,” Myra said, looking in on him. “Shall I wake Mindy?”

  “No,” Kip said. “Let her sleep a while longer.”


  The woman understood that her husband wanted to be alone, so she went back into the kitchen and began to get out the silverware.

  For the past few days, he knew, he hadn’t been as warm to her as he usually was. The enemy has reached us, he thought suddenly; they have found us through the barriers of both time and death, and they will not sleep until they destroy us. The U-boat was eating into him, obsessing his sleep, contaminating the very air he breathed. What kind of men, Kip wondered, had made such a death machine as that? Who drove the rivets, who hammered the iron plates, who strung the miles of wiring beneath the decks? Who packed explosives into the torpedoes, set the equipment into place in that hellish control room, torched the water-tight bulkheads into their frames? Every inch of the thing had been conceived and built for one purpose: destruction. In life it had prowled the currents seeking to carry out its purpose, and in death the thing’s image seemed burned into his brain. The enemy has reached us, Kip thought, and there is no escape.

  He ate his breakfast quickly, barely hearing what Myra was saying to him; she knew his way of working out problems was often to draw inside himself until he had found a solution. He helped her with the dishes, kissed her and the still-sleeping child, and then left the house for his morning rounds.

  He wondered how he was going to handle the Thornton woman. She would never understand his reasoning; she couldn’t see what he had seen or feel what he felt, and there was no use trying to talk to her. He would have to do what he felt was right, because he was the law and he was responsible for all of them.