Sight Unseen (23 page)

“That’s Brand. You got ‘em. Better get going if you don’t want to be late.”

“Wish me luck,” Lockwood said.

“I wish you lots of luck,” Manners said. He held out his hand and smiled warmly.

Lockwood just looked at it before clasping it. “I haven’t made up my mind about you, Manners.”

Manners nodded and looked embarrassed. “I know.” He changed the subject. “You get all you wanted to out of Pops?”

“We went over it another couple of times, just to make sure,” Lockwood said. “Come on, guys. Let’s not be late with our gift
here.”

Following the roads Pops had pointed out on a map, the three in the Chesterfield truck reached the beach in twenty minutes.

“Now what do you have to do?” Peters asked.

“At three sharp, stand down there and blink this flashlight.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Just give me a hand. Don’t say anything. Let me do the talking. We don’t want anybody hurt.”

“Is that Luger loaded?” Brand asked. Lockwood had stuck Pops’ Luger in the waistband of his trousers.

“Yeah. Pops kept it in pretty good shape. Plus I got my .38 under my jacket. This is more for show.”

Lockwood had to blink the flashlight a dozen times before he got the recognition signal back—four longs and four shorts. He
flashed the confirmation signal. A confirmation signal was flashed back, and fifteen minutes later a triple-sized rubber raft
containing ten sailors paddled up to the shore.

Pointing, Lockwood showed the young blond officer the parked truck. The officer raised his arm and nine of the men came with
him. With the officer and Lockwood watching, the nine sailors and Peters and Brand picked up the crate and moved it to the
raft. Ever so easily, they loaded it.

“And now, you come with us,
ja?
” the officer asked in English.

“
Nein,
” Lockwood said, and continued in English. “I am to stay here.”

“
Nein
, my instructions were to bring a passenger. A dog, too. Where is the dog?”

“A change of plans. The old man thought he could be of more value to the Fatherland here.”

The sailors had surrounded the two of them. Several carried automatic weapons at the ready that looked ugly. Lockwood smiled
pleasantly.

Brand and Peters were outside the circle. Lockwood smiled at the German officer and shook his head at the two T-men. The officer
reached forward and took the Luger from Lockwood’s waistband.

“We are to pick up someone,” the officer said. “I will obey my orders. Come with us.”

“No,” Lockwood answered. “I have work to do here. This is ridiculous.”

“You come with us. The Captain will decide. You don’t look German.
Gefällt es Ihnen hier in Amerika?
”

“I don’t speak German. My parents were second-generation.”

“This is strange. You will come with us.”

“No. How will I get back?”

“Perhaps you won’t. Perhaps you will come to the Fatherland.”

“My value is here.”

The officer grinned and pulled back the breeching mechanism of the Luger, checked to make sure there was a shell in the clip,
and let it go. The men with the automatic weapons did something to them, too, cocking them.

“Now,” the officer said, “into the boat.”

Lockwood shrugged and said okay and walked toward the raft. He thought about making a run for it, but there was too much of
a chance of his being cut down with these nasty-looking automatic pistols. Not to speak of what would happen to Brand and
Peters. The image of the other two agents, Tom and Drew, dying in their own blood back on the asphalt struck him then, startling
him. No, he had got them into this, and he would make sure they got out. He stepped into the raft.

The officer stepped in, too, and several of the sailors, with some difficulty, pushed the raft off into the water. They waded
through the water and all jumped in.

By the faint light of the stars, Lockwood saw them pick up paddles. They vigorously paddled, and in minutes Lockwood lost
sight of Peters, Brand, and the truck. Lockwood felt he had a fix on where the shore was and stiffened his muscles preparatory
to a jump well away from the raft when the officer said, “Hold out your hands.” Lockwood looked down and saw the Luger pointed
at his stomach. Between him on both sides were sailors paddling. It would be impossible to get a secure enough footing to
jump over them without getting shot.

Lockwood felt the Luger poke him in the stomach. “Hold out the hands!”

He held out his hands and felt handcuffs tighten and click on his wrists. He had no choice now. He had to take the journey
to the submarine.

And he had to escape.

In fifteen minutes the raft reached the submarine. Amid gutteral shouts, the crate was carefully lifted from the raft and
lowered by a crude hoist through a hatch into the hold.

Lockwood heard vigorous comments he took to be about himself between the captain of the U-boat and the officer who had ordered
him along. He understood no German, but sensed that the two were having a disagreement over him. The officer ordered Lockwood
to get out of the raft onto the deck of the sub. Still handcuffed, his wound aching, Lockwood found this difficult with the
raft and the sub rocking in opposite rhythms from the waves, but he managed it.

“How about taking the chains off?” Lockwood asked the young officer.

“Down the ladder,” the officer answered.

“Hey, I’m on your side,” Lockwood complained. “How come you’re treating me like the enemy?”

“Neither Captain Mannheim nor I can understand how you work for the Fatherland and do not speak German.”

“I never had the chance to learn,” Lockwood said. “I am in love with the ideals of Germany. One race over all the world, with
the other lesser races subdued.”

“The master race to rule.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Us, the master race. That’s what I want, too.”

“Down the ladder.”

“I’m placed in this country where I can do the most value.”

“Down the ladder. We have some checking to do.”

“Will you take these damn cuffs off?” Lockwood asked. “I can’t make it down the ladder in them.”

The officer relented, but shouted for a couple of guards to come over. Two sailors with automatic pistols held them on Lockwood
as he carefully walked over the slippery steel to the open hatch.

On the way down, the foul air hit him. It smelled of oil, sweat, sauerkraut, and piss, and of men packed together for weeks
in a tin box. How did men live like this? The metal ladder seemed as slippery as the deck above.

At the bottom of the ladder he found himself face to face with the captain.

“Mine English is not so good as Klien,” the captain said. “We make radio to our installation here to see if you belong.”

The captain was a beefy-looking fellow with a paunch and a dirty white uniform. He looked more like the chief petty officer
in charge of the boiler room than the captain.

The sub rocked, and Lockwood reached out for support. The captain grinned at him.

“You are a sailor not,” he said.

“Right.”

Behind him, Lockwood heard the sound of men coming down the ladder, and he saw the officer, Klein, come down with the other
men. They pulled the hatch shut and secured it.

“Hey, I want to go back,” Lockwood said. “I’m not supposed to go to Germany.”

“I know you think that,” Klein said. “But we have orders, and we are learning the value of following orders.”

“A great virtue,” Lockwood said. He tried to pace the guy, to figure out what he was thinking and match it.

“We lost the last war,” Klein said.

“Yes, we lost it,” Lockwood echoed.

“We shall not lose this one!”

“No, we shall win!” Lockwood said, and he strove to put into his voice what Klein was putting into his. He saw the glint of
pride and arrogance in Klein’s eye, a look Lockwood imagined a horse would have before he reared up and cut you with his hooves.

“Hans!” shouted Klein. Then he said something in German that Lockwood couldn’t follow, but he got the gist well enough when
a man wearing earphones poked his head out of a cubbyhole to the right of the captain and shouted something back.

“Your name, Mr. American?” Klein asked.

“My name?” Lockwood asked.

“Yes, we are now in touch with the Bund offices here.”

“I’m registered there as Richard Fischer.”

He heard Klein tell the radio operator something with the words “Richard Fischer” in the middle of it. He hoped that this
guy Fischer wasn’t standing right there now, otherwise he wouldn’t last till the sub plunged below to its end. According to
Peters, the bomb in the crate would go off when the sub reached a depth of thirty feet.

He heard the steady tak-tak-tak of the telegraph key.

God, it was cramped down here! The captain had picked a spot where he could stand completely straight, but Lockwood was positioned
where he was forced to stoop a little because of the pipes and conduits that ran along the iron ceiling. Sweat lathered Lockwood
as if he had run for miles. The heat was intense and rising, and he felt under a strain as he kept himself outwardly calm
but inwardly alert for he didn’t know what to fly at him. He still had his .38 Special under his waistband next to the small
of his back, covered by his jacket, but he wasn’t going to get far using it with these characters holding tommy guns or whatever
on him.

Now the beep-beep-beep of the mainland’s signal came in, and he saw “Sparks” or whatever his name would be in German scribble
something on a pad.

Sparks tore off the page and brought it to the captain who looked at it in a puzzled way and handed it to Klein as he added
something in German.

Klein studied it for a whole minute.

“Show me something that proves you are Richard Fischer,” Klein said.

“I’m working undercover,” Lockwood said.

“Show me what cover.”

Lockwood took out his wallet and flipped it open to show him the badge that Manners had given him that said,
U.S. Department of the Treasury
. “As I said, I am too well placed to be going back to Germany.”

Klein took the wallet and studied the gold shield. He looked to be spelling out the lettering. He looked up at Lockwood.

“This is real?” he asked Lockwood.

“It’s real, all right. That’s how we managed to steal the bombsight.”

“Don’t talk, please,” Klein said. His eyes flicked at the captain and the sailors. “They don’t know what is in the crate,
and it’s better they do not,” he added so that only Lockwood could hear him.

Everything shifted for Lockwood with that statement. He had been struggling to figure out who was who here, and it had felt
tangled. But he knew enough about how men operated and that somebody gave the orders to know from the tone in Klein’s voice
that he was the kingpin here. Probably he had been sent along to handle the whole business of picking up this crate; it would
explain why he had come along on the raft. The captain might be captain of this boat, but he took orders from Klein because
this was Klein’s mission. He had to convince little Mr. Klein that it was in his best interest to deposit him back on shore.

“I want a drink to celebrate,” Lockwood said.

“A drink?”

“Schnapps,” Lockwood said. “I have been working on this project for twelve months. It’s a great victory for Germany that’s
in that crate.”

“Yes, let’s have a toast,” the captain said. “One won’t hurt.”

“We have to get back to Germany with this crate, Captain. We don’t have time for foolishness,” Klein said.

“We have come very far,” the captain said. “We do not know what for. The men are tired of being under water so much, with
the air so bad-smelling.”

“For morale, right, mine Captain?” Lockwood shouted with a laugh in his voice.

The captain raised a pudgy fist and shook it. “To make the men have more brave.”

From the captain’s smirk, Lockwood gathered that he wanted an excuse for a drink as much as any of his men.

“Bring out a bottle!” the captain said in English and then added something in German.

Klein gave a little snort and shrugged just a bit, as if to say, Yes, the lower orders will have to be indulged. A bottle
surfaced from somewhere and glasses appeared in the hands of the dozen men Lockwood could see, and then hands and faces popped
out from behind pipes and down the long corridor so that he couldn’t tell how many men the sub contained. Every hand had some
container—from what looked like a canteen top to a thimble. When the bottle had been passed around—Klein himself had a water
tumbler, Lockwood another—Lockwood raised his glass for a toast.

“To the Fatherland!” he shouted.

The answer came back like a rusty rumble. From behind pipes and up the cramped corridor a chorus rang out that sounded like
a bad imitation of his toast in thick English.

A second round was poured, the bottle bobbling its way around the cramped space that looked like nothing to Lockwood so much
as the inside of a boiler. He saw a second bottle down at the end of the corridor. Herr Klein couldn’t control everything.

Lockwood raised his glass. “To our great Fuehrer!”

Again he heard a raspy imitation of his toast and to his left he heard Klein’s crisp-sounding, “
Seig Heil!
”

The captain had to toast the successful arrival of the “mystaire box.”

Lockwood toasted the bravery of the crew and the safe return to the Fatherland.

The captain drew himself up and looked serious and toasted the generous allies of the Fatherland in America. “May ve join
our hands together and danze in the streets of New York one day.”

Lockwood raised his tumbler and shouted back, “Here’s to our dancing in the streets of New York!”

Everyone shouted. The party could have gotten a lot warmer then had not Klein arranged his pretty but hard face and said,
“It is almost morning, Captain. I should not have to remind you that America has a coastal patrol.”

“How about the raft, Mr. Klein?” Lockwood asked.