Christopher's Ghosts (15 page)

Paul did as Rima asked. They were lying together on the deck, Rima’s hair unbound, their clothes scattered around them, when the searchlight of the S-boat hit them an hour or two later. This light was so intense that it seemed to make a noise like a huge captive insect. There was just the light—no siren, no loud hailing. Also laughter from the darkness. The sailors were enjoying what they had discovered.

Rima grabbed her clothes and scurried below. As she ran, the searchlight followed her. The siren sounded. Then the loudhailer blared.

“Heave to!”

Only the mizzen sail was rigged. Still naked, Paul brought the boat about into the wind and dropped the sail. Someone aboard the S-boat tossed him a line. He made it fast, then put on his trousers and shirt and the American sneakers he had been wearing.

“What boat is that?” the man on the loudhailer asked.

“
Mahican
, out of Rügen.”

This was a magic name to the secret police, who were aboard all coastal patrol boats and also had boats of their own. Paul knew that many questions would be asked, that none of his answers would be believed. The episode could go on for hours, or that there might not be an end to it. It was strictly forbidden to sail this far from land at night.

The S-boat launched a small boat. The boarding party consisted of an overage navy lieutenant with a stomach and a petty officer with a submachine gun. A third man wearing a uniform with the blank collar patch of the secret police came down the rope ladder. As the small boat came alongside
Mahican
, the searchlight switched off. The secret policeman was in shadow. Paul could not see his face.

“Papers!”

Paul had no papers to show the boarding party. Neither he nor Rima had brought them. The papers for the boat were kept in a locked drawer in Hubbard’s desk. He told them this.

“No papers?” said the navy lieutenant, amazed. This was a serious infraction.

Rima appeared, fully clothed. Her hair was braided. She was composed—frozen would have been the better word.

“Explain,” the lieutenant said.

“We sailed on an impulse, without bringing documents.”

“An impulse.” The lieutenant’s face was stony, but his tone let Paul know that he knew what sort of impulse he was talking about. He snapped his fingers. “Like that?” he said. “That was your impulse?”

“We saw the aurora borealis,” Paul said. “We decided to sail out and look at it. We didn’t think. We apologize.”

“Names?”

Paul and Rima supplied the information the lieutenant needed. This included the usual dates and addresses and the names of their parents and grandparents. The lieutenant wrote them out by the light of a flashlight. He spelled Christopher with a K. Paul corrected him.

“That’s not a German spelling,” the lieutenant said.

“I’m an American citizen.”

The lieutenant was surprised. “You sound like a German. You look like a German. This girl is also an American?”

“No,” said the secret policeman in a voice of authority, breaking his silence. “She is a quarter-Jew. We know all about her. You, Christopher, where were you taking her?”

The voice belonged to Major Stutzer.

“Nowhere,” Paul said. “We were just sailing.”

“You were just sailing along,” Stutzer said, “boy and girl enjoying the evening, is that it?”

“That is correct, Major.”

“And merrily breaking the laws of the Reich as if they do not apply to Jews and American citizens. Is that also correct?”

“We had no such intention,” Paul said.

“We will see about your intentions,” Stutzer said. “You, Jewess. Did you steal this boat?”

“No, Major.”

“Before this is over, you may wish that you had.” To the navy lieutenant Stutzer said, “Take them in tow. I will stay aboard the sailboat.”

The navy lieutenant said, “You want to stay aboard this sailboat while it is under tow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Very well, Major.”

The navy lieutenant’s face was expressionless. “Make it so,” he said to the sailor, who fastened a line to
Mahican
.

FOUR

 1 

The S-boat did not finish its patrol until dawn. Long before that, Rima was desperately seasick and so was Major Stutzer. The heavily armed patrol vessel, more than a hundred feet long, was driven by two engines capable of making forty-five knots. It spewed diesel fumes that were breathed in and vomited out by the three people aboard the yawl. In the S-boat’s twin boiling wakes,
Mahican
yawed and pitched and shipped water. Paul had observed many S-boats under way in the Baltic and had never before seen one moving this fast unless it was in pursuit of a high-speed target. Stutzer knelt in the stern, retching. His tight, tailored uniform was soaking wet. He had lost his cap with its death’s head badge. His brilliantined hair stood up in spikes. Paul had already lashed Rima to the main mast to keep her from being catapulted overboard. Now he secured Stutzer to the mizzen mast. It occurred to Paul that Stutzer may have become the first member of the secret police ever to be tied up by someone he had just arrested. He was too sick to protest. Paul checked the knots and made sure there was not so much slack in the line as to make it possible for Stutzer to fall overboard and be dragged behind
Mahican
. The last thing he and Rima needed was to dock at the navy pier with a drowned SS major in tow.

Paul, queasy himself, was afraid that
Mahican
’s wooden hull, which was at least twice as old as he was, might break up under the stress of being towed at high speed. Stutzer could not command the S-boat’s captain to slow down because he had no means of communicating with
him apart from shouting into the slipstream, which was useless, or gesticulating, which was hopeless because he was aft of the S-boat and all its lookouts were gazing forward or to port or starboard.

As soon as the S-boat was tied up at the navy dock, Stutzer scrambled ashore and demanded that the gangplank be lowered. As soon as it was he dashed aboard. Rima and Paul heard him screaming at the lieutenant. His voice was shrill. He threatened investigations, interrogations that would reveal the hidden reasons for this outrage. At the very least, a long term of imprisonment was inevitable. Execution, even. The middle-aged sailor who brought mugs of sugary coffee to Paul and Rima grinned happily as he listened to this tirade.

The apprentices, wearing civilian clothes, had been waiting on the dock for the S-boat. They too listened as their chief berated the captain. As yet they had no orders regarding Paul and Rima, therefore they ignored them. Stutzer went on and on, and although Paul could not see him, the memory of an enraged Stutzer uttering screams filled with spit formed in his mind. He had seen Stutzer in this condition once before, on the day when Lori slapped his face in the Kursaal Café. Had Paulus been captain of this vessel instead of the plump lieutenant, Paul thought, Stutzer would long since have been marched below in manacles if he had not walked the plank.

At last Stutzer came ashore. He was still wet and it was clear that salt water and bile had ruined forever the fine wool of his beautifully tailored uniform. He was still furious. The captain of the S-boat had had his joke. Now he had an enemy. In a shout, Stutzer gave orders to his men, then disappeared. The apprentices conferred. The sailor who had brought the coffee was still with Paul and Rima on the dock.

Paul said, “What happens to our boat?”

“We may want to keep it, it’s such a nice one,” the sailor said.

“I mean really.”

“You’ll probably get it back from the navy, if the navy holds onto it. After all, what have you done that’s so terrible?”

The apprentices approached, expressionless, marching in step. The sailor took back the empty coffee mugs and made a face. He acknowledged no authority but the navy’s.

At secret police headquarters in Bergen, Paul and Rima were taken not to separate cells as they had expected, but to a small room with a window, and told to sit in chairs at opposite ends of a table. When Stutzer returned, more than an hour later, he wore civilian clothes—a blue double-breasted pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a silk polka-dot tie the color of red vermouth. Exactly the right amount of starched shirt cuff, fastened by an opal cufflink, protruded from the sleeve of his jacket. The handkerchief in his breast pocket was artfully folded and the indispensable party badge pinned to his left lapel was in exactly the right place. He wore a gold watch on the inside of his wrist, like an aviator. His oiled hair was once again combed back flat on his narrow skull. His black shoes were highly polished and when he sat down, Rima saw that he was wearing gray silk socks with blue clocks, pulled tight over his ankles by garters.

Stutzer called her into his office, leaving Paul in the holding room alone. He ignored her for several minutes—the indispensable ritual—while he read a single sheet of paper. Then, suddenly, he struck. Decisiveness in his every movement, he wrote something on the paper with flying pen, blotted the ink, picked up the telephone on his desk, and snapped out an order. A man came in and took the sheet of paper away. Only then did Stutzer look at Rima. His eyes were peculiar. Pupil and iris were nearly the same shade of very pale blue. This made them seem colorless.

“Please do not imagine that you are under my protection,” Stutzer said.

Rima had no idea what, if anything, he wanted her to say in reply. Why should she think, even for the shortest moment, that this man would protect her? From what could he possibly protect her except himself?

Stutzer said, “What was Paul Christopher’s plan?”

His plan? Rima said, “I don’t understand, Major.”

“It is a simple question,” Stutzer said. “What was his intention last night? Where was he taking you?”

“For a sail. It was my idea, because of the northern lights.”

“You just went for a romantic sail under the aurora borealis. And
let him stick his Aryan cock into you. Did you also suck it?”

Rima lowered her eyes and said nothing.

“Where was he taking you?” Stutzer asked. “It’s a simple question.”

“Truly, Major, just for a sail. No destination was discussed except a return to Rügen.”

“The two of you agreed to return to Rügen?”

“Not in so many words. It was taken for granted that we would do so.”

Stutzer continued to stare. This was not the answer he wanted. He began to breathe audibly. His face reddened, his eyes widened. Again he was motionless, not even blinking. Suddenly he screamed at her.

“Tell me the truth or you will wish you had! You will wish you had never been born, you… .”

He called her names, he described depraved sexual acts he believed she had committed, he repeated the details of her father’s shaming, he recited her ancestry including the names of her great-grandparents, he described the dark-skinned men her mother was sleeping with in Buenos Aires and the things they did to her and she to them. The entire tirade was delivered while every part of Stutzer’s body was perfectly motionless except his twisted face and popping eyes and his tongue, which was visible, red and narrow and making words inside his wide-open mouth. Despite the raving it was a remarkable demonstration of knowledge. He had memorized everything about Rima even though she was just one of what must have been hundreds of suspects. He was telling her that he knew everything, that he was capable of anything.

Stutzer stopped shrieking as suddenly as he had begun. One moment he was rabid, the next he was composed and speaking in a calm, even genteel tone of voice.

“Now, Miss, you must tell me the truth,” he said. “This information is vital to the Reich. It is more important than you can possibly know. Where was your American going to take you?”

Rima was disoriented, nauseated. Once again she could not control her trembling body. Against her every conviction, she was overcome by the desire to placate this man. But she was struck dumb. She couldn’t form words. Stutzer had cut the circuit between her brain and her tongue.

He said, actually smiling at her with small crooked teeth, “Think carefully, my dear. All you have to do is tell the truth.”

 2 

It was midnight before Hubbard discovered that
Mahican
was missing. Paulus advised him to wait till morning before worrying. After all, it was Midsummer night, the moon was up. No doubt Paul and Rima had sailed out to look at the aurora borealis. If their minds were elsewhere, the current might have carried them quite a long way. Possibly they had come ashore somewhere else on the island and at this moment were probably leaping through a bonfire. Even if they were still adrift, the sea was calm. Paul was a good sailor, the girl was capable. Patience was the thing. By dawn the innocents would more than likely be discreetly asleep in separate rooms.

Paulus saw no need to discuss this situation with Hilde. Hubbard could think of any number of reasons not to discuss it with Lori. She would assume that Paul had been arrested again, that this time he might be gone for good. Lori was fearless no longer. How could she be, how could anyone be? They lived in a world in which all the signposts had been taken down.

Hubbard rose at first light, as usual, and when he went downstairs he found Paulus waiting for him in the hall. Paulus beckoned him outside. Paulus had already been down to the mooring.

“They’re not back,” he said. “No sign of the boat.”

“This is not like Paul,” Hubbard said.

“No, but perhaps he is a different Paul. This is the first time he’s sailed out to look at the northern lights with a beautiful girl on board. I’ll make inquiries.”

What Paulus said he was going to do, he did immediately. He got out his army model bicycle, put the clips around his trousers cuffs, and rode off. In Paulus’s opinion, sunrise was the best time of day to go calling. People were more likely to tell the truth when they had just opened their eyes. In war and on maneuvers he had always gone out to talk to
his troopers before reveille. They said what really was on their minds when they were half asleep and hungry and had a useless morning erection and the urge to urinate.