Polar Shift (3 page)

A fleet of small boats, loaded mostly with women and children, blocked the way. The ship stopped and took the refugees aboard. The
Gustloff
normally carried 1,465 passengers, served by a crew of four hundred. As it began this voyage, the once-elegant liner was carrying eight thousand passengers.

The ship headed into the open sea, and dropped anchor late in the afternoon to rendezvous with another liner, the
Hansa,
to wait for their escorts. The
Hansa
had developed engine trouble and never showed up. Naval Command was worried that the
Gustloff
would be exposed to danger in open waters and told the ship to go it alone.

The liner plowed in to the whitecapped waters of the Baltic, fighting a stiff northwest wind. Hailstones rattled the windows of the bridge, where Commander Zahn seethed with anger as he looked down at the two so-called escorts that had been sent to protect the liner.

The ship was built for southern climes, but, with any luck, it could survive bad weather. What it could not survive was
stupidity.
Naval Command had sent the liner into harm's way with an old torpedo boat called the
Lowe,
or “Lion,” and the T19, a worn-out torpedo recovery vessel as escorts. Zahn was thinking that the situation could not get any worse when the T19 radioed that it had developed a leak and was returning to the base.

Zahn went to Captain Petersen and the other officers gathered in the bridge.

“In view of our escort situation, I suggest that we pursue a zigzag course at high speed,” he said.

Petersen scoffed at the suggestion. “Impossible. The
Wilhelm Gustloff
is a twenty-four-thousand-ton ocean liner. We cannot go from one tack to the other like a drunken sailor.”

“Then we must outrun any U-boats with our superior speed. We can take the direct, deepwater route at the full speed of sixteen knots.”

“I know this ship. Even without the bomb damage to the propeller casings, there would be no way we could reach and maintain sixteen knots without blowing out our bearings,” Petersen said.

Zahn could see the veins bulging in the captain's neck. He stared through the bridge windows at the old torpedo boat leading the way. “In that case,” he said in a voice that seemed to echo in a tomb, “God help us all.”

P
ROFESSOR,
wake up.” The voice was hard-edged, urgent.

Kovacs opened his eyes and saw Karl bending over him. He sat up and rubbed his cheeks as if he could squeeze the sleep out of them.

“What's wrong?”

“I've been talking to people. My God, what a mess! There are two captains and they fight all the time. Not enough lifeboats. The ship's engines are barely keeping us up to speed. The stupid submarine division ordered the ship to sail with an old torpedo boat escort that looks as if it was left over from the last war. The damned fools have got the ship's navigation lights on.”

Kovacs saw an uncharacteristic alarm in the marble features.

“How long have I slept?”

“It's nighttime. We're on the open sea.” Karl shoved a dark blue life jacket at Kovacs and slipped into a similar jacket.

“Now what do we do?”

“Stay here. I want to check the lifeboat situation.” He tossed Kovacs a pack of cigarettes. “Be my guest.”

“I don't smoke.”

Karl paused in the open doorway. “Maybe it's time you did.” Then he was gone.

Kovacs spilled a cigarette from the pack and lit up. He had quit smoking years ago, when he got married. He coughed as the smoke filled his lungs, and he felt dizzy from the strong tobacco, but he recalled with delicious pleasure the innocent debauchery of his college days.

He finished the cigarette, thought of lighting up another but decided against it. He had not had a bath in days, and his body itched in a dozen places. He washed his face in the sink and was drying his hands on a threadbare towel when there was a knock at the door.

“Professor Kovacs?” a muffled voice said.

“Yes.”

The door opened, and the professor gasped. Standing in the doorway was the ugliest woman he had ever seen. She was more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders straining the seams of a black Persian lamb coat. Her wide mouth was painted in bright red lipstick, and, with such heavily rouged lips, she looked like a circus clown.

“Pardon my appearance,” she said in an unmistakably male voice. “This is not an easy ship to get aboard. I had to resort to this silly disguise, and a few bribes.”

“Who are you?”

“Not important. What is important is
your
name. You are Dr. Lazlo Kovacs, the great German-Hungarian electrical genius.”

Kovacs grew wary. “I am Lazlo Kovacs. I consider myself to be Hungarian.”

“Splendid! You are the author of the paper on electromagnetism that electrified the scientific world.”

Kovacs's antenna quivered. The paper published in an obscure scientific journal had brought him to the attention of the Germans, who kidnapped him and his family. He said nothing.

“Never mind,” the man said genially, the clown smile even broader. “I can see that I have the right man.” He reached under his fur coat and pulled out a pistol. “I'm sorry to be rude, Dr. Kovacs, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you.”

“
Kill
me? Why? I don't even know you.”

“But
I
know you. Or, rather, my superiors in the NKGB know you. As soon as our glorious Red Army forces crossed the border we sent a special squad to find you, but you had already left the lab.”

“You're
Russian
?”

“Yes, of course. We would love to have you come and work for us. Had we been able to intercept you before you boarded the ship, you would be enjoying Soviet hospitality. But now I can't get you off the ship, and we can't let you and your work fall into German hands again. No, no. It just wouldn't do.” The smile vanished.

Kovacs was too stunned to be afraid, even when the pistol came up and the muzzle pointed at his heart.

M
ARINESKO COULD
hardly believe his good luck. He had been standing on the S-13's conning tower, oblivious to the freezing wind and spray that stung his face, when the snow cleared and he saw the enormous silhouette of an ocean liner. The liner appeared to be accompanied by a smaller boat.

The submarine was riding on the surface in heavy seas. Its crew had been at battle stations since sighting the lights from boats moving against the coast. The captain had ordered the submarine's buoyancy reduced so that it would ride lower in the water and thus evade radar.

Reasoning that the ships would never expect an attack from shore, he ordered his crew to bring the sub around the back of the convoy and run a course parallel to the liner and its escort. Two hours later, Marinesko turned the S-13 toward his target. As it closed in on the port side of the liner, he gave the order to fire.

In quick succession, three torpedoes left their bow tubes and streaked toward the unprotected hull of the liner.

T
HE DOOR OPENED,
and Karl stepped into the cabin. He had been outside, listening to the murmur of male voices. He was puzzled when he saw the woman standing with her back to him. He glanced at Kovacs, still holding the towel, and he read the fear in the professor's face.

The Russian felt the blast of cold air through the open door. He whirled and shot without aiming. Karl was a millisecond ahead of him. He had put his head down and rammed it into the Russian's midsection.

The blow should have cracked the assassin's rib cage, but the heavy fur coat and the stiff corset he wore were like padded armor. The head butt only knocked the wind out of him. He crashed into a bunk, landing on his side. His wig fell off to reveal short black hair. He got off another shot that nicked Karl's right shoulder muscle at the base of the neck.

Karl lunged at the assassin, and with his left hand groped for the throat. Blood from his wound spattered them both. The assassin brought his foot up and kicked Karl in the chest. He reeled back, tripped and fell onto his back.

Kovacs grabbed the soup bowl from the sink and threw it at the assassin's face. The bowl bounced harmlessly off the man's cheekbone. He laughed. “I'll tend to you next.” He aimed the pistol at Karl.

Va-room!

A muffled explosion thundered off the walls. The deck slanted at a sharp angle to starboard. Kovacs was flung to his knees. Unused to the high-heeled boots on his feet, the assassin lost his balance. He fell on top of Karl, who grabbed the man's wrist, pulled it to his mouth and sank his teeth into cartilage and muscle. The pistol clunked to the deck.

Va-room! Va-room!

The ship shuddered from two more massive explosions. The assassin tried to rise, but again lost his balance when the ship lurched to port. He teetered on the verge of standing. Karl kicked him in the ankle. The Russian let out an unladylike yell and crashed to the floor. His head came to rest against the metal base of the bunk.

Karl braced himself against the sink pipes and drove his hobnail boot into the man's throat, crushing his larynx. The man flailed at Karl's leg, his eyes bulged, his face went dark red, then purple, and then he died.

Karl staggered to his feet.

“We've got to get out of here,” he said. “The ship's been torpedoed.”

He muscled Kovacs from the cabin into the passageway, where there was pandemonium. The corridor was filled with panic-stricken passengers. Their screams and shouts echoed off the walls. The ringing of alarm bells contributed to the din. The emergency lights were on, but a pall of smoke produced from the explosions made it difficult to see.

The main stairway was clogged with an unmoving crush of panicked passengers. Many of them had stopped in their tracks as they gagged from the throat-burning fumes.

The mob was trying to push against the river of water that spilled down the stairs. Karl opened an unmarked steel door, dragged Kovacs into a dark space and shut the door behind them. The professor felt his hand being guided to the rung of a ladder.

“Climb,” Karl ordered.

Kovacs dumbly obeyed, ascending until his head hit a hatch. Karl shouted from below to open the hatch cover, and to keep climbing. They went up a second ladder. Kovacs pushed another cover open. Cold air and wind-driven snowflakes lashed his face. He climbed through the hatch, and helped Karl into the open.

Kovacs looked around in bewilderment. “Where are we?”

“On the boat deck. This way.”

The icy, sloping deck was eerily quiet, compared to the horror in the third-class section. The few people they saw were the privileged passengers whose cabins were on the boat deck. Some were clustered around a motorized pinnace, a sturdy boat built to cruise in the Norwegian fjords. Crew members had been chipping away with hammers and axes at the ice on the davits.

With the davit fastenings finally freed, the crewmen surged aboard, pushing aside women, some of them pregnant. Children and wounded soldiers didn't have a chance. Karl drew his pistol and fired a warning shot in the air. The crewmen hesitated, but only for a second, before they continued to fight their way onto the lifeboat. Karl fired another shot, killing the first crewman who had climbed into the boat. The others ran for their lives.

Karl lifted a woman and her baby into the boat, then gave the professor a hand before climbing in himself. He allowed some crewmen aboard, so they could throw the dead man out and lower the boat to the water. The hooks attached to the lowering lines were unfastened and the motor started.

The heavily burdened boat wallowed as it moved slowly across the sea toward distant lights from a freighter that was headed their way. Karl ordered the lifeboat stopped to pick up people floating in the water. Soon it became even more dangerously overloaded. One of the crewmen protested.

“There's no room in the boat,” he yelled.

Karl shot him between the eyes. “There's room now,” he said, and ordered the other crewmen to toss the body overboard. Satisfied that the short-lived mutiny was under control, he squeezed next to Kovacs.

“You're well, Professor?”

“I'm fine.” He stared at Karl. “You're a surprising man.”

“I try to be. Never let your enemies know what to expect.”

“I'm not talking about that. I saw you help the wounded and women. You cradled that baby as if it were your own.”

“Things are not always what they seem, my friend.” He reached into his coat and brought out a packet wrapped in a waterproof rubber pouch. “Take these papers. You are no longer Lazlo Kovacs but a German national who has lived in Hungary. You have only a slight accent and will easily pass. I want you to disappear into the crowd. Become another refugee. Make your way toward the British and American lines.”