The Hunter From the Woods (15 page)

Around midnight, as some of the crew came to fill their cups from the bottomless coffee pot, Michael sat at a table with Olaf Thorgrimsen and Billy Bowers. The cook had supplied some raspberry pie which actually tasted of raspberries, showing that pressure was good for the kitchen. Currents of cigarette smoke moved slowly in the air, and all conversation was hushed.

A gaunt, pallid man who entered the mess hall immediately became the center of attention.

Paul Wesshauser, in his black trousers and gray sweater, poured himself a cup of coffee. His eyes were dark-hollowed beneath his glasses. He looked like a man bearing a heavy burden. He sat down at a table by himself, spooned a half-cup of sugar into his joe, lit a cigarette and inhaled to the roots of his lungs.

Michael left his own table and walked the few paces to Wesshauser’s. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

Wesshauser shrugged, and Michael sat down.

“You holding up?” Michael asked; it was a stupid question, from the look of the man.

“I’m all right.” Wesshauser drew the smoke in again and let it slowly seep from his mouth. “How many died for me today?”

“Five.”

“
Five
,” Wesshauser repeated. He examined the burning end of his cigarette. “My God. I never meant for this to happen.”

“Of course not. And you’re not to blame for the deaths.”

“Yes, I am.” Wesshauser’s eyes flashed. “If I hadn’t taken it in mind to leave Germany, then…everything would be as it was.”

“That’s right,” Michael agreed. He took a sip of his own black coffee. “You’d still be in Germany, and you’d be working for the Nazis. A fine future that would be. Making weapons for them? You
do
make weapons, correct?” Michael hadn’t been told exactly what Wesshauser’s area of expertise was.

“I’m a designer,” said the man.

“You make that sound very elegant.” Michael watched the smoke drift from Wesshauser’s mouth. “I think you did the right thing. The
only
thing. If you feel the Nazis would misuse what you design then you had no choice but to get out. And it took a lot of courage to get this far.”

“Yes, I should be proud of myself for killing so many men, and for ultimately killing my wife, daughter and son.” Wesshauser smiled without humor. “Because that’s what I’ve done.” He bit down on the cigarette. “I went to see Captain Beauchene. To ask him to give us up. Do you know what he told me?”

“No, what?”

“He said he would not allow his crew to be killed like sheep. He said they would die as men, and that those who had already sacrificed their lives would not be dishonored. So, he said…no, he would not give us up. I stood before him and begged. And he told me to get out while I could still walk.”

“Good advice,” Michael said. He knew what part of it was: Gustave Beauchene the garbageman versus Manson Konnig the aristocrat. Michael found himself staring at the place on the floor where Enam Kpanga had died. A mop had soaked up the blood and the canvas-shrouded body had been consigned to the sea. “My daughter told me you’ve spoken with her.” Wesshauser adjusted his glasses as if to view Michael from a different angle. “That story about Vulcan. She found that very interesting. You know, she keeps to herself quite a bit.”

“Does she?”

“Oh, yes. It’s the leg, of course. And the
shoe
. She’s terribly shy about it. She doesn’t wish to stand out in that way. Her mother and I…we do our best to keep her from feeling so bad about herself, but…you know…she
is
crippled.”

“Hm,” Michael said.

“It’s difficult,” Wesshauser went on, “to hold such standards of perfection and have a daughter who…is afflicted. My own father was a perfectionist. He was the great shining example of the German engineer. Everything should fit together just
so
. And I have led my life the same way. So…it’s difficult…when—”

“Everything doesn’t fit together just
so
?” Michael interrupted.

“Yes. Difficult,” said Wesshauser. “And difficult for Marielle also.”

“I’m sure.” Michael finished off his coffee. He was ready to rejoin Olaf and Billy.

“But my high standards have suited me well,” Wesshauser told him. He drew deeply again from his cigarette. “That’s why they want to stop me from getting to England. I know what’s coming, very soon. They don’t want the British Navy to have access to my knowledge of torpedoes.”

“Hm,” Michael said once more, for want of a better comment. He thought this man was probably a self-important prick. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said, with a chill in it. He took his empty coffee cup back to the big stainless steel dispenser to fill it up again.

But before he got there the words
my knowledge of torpedoes
hit him. He stopped abruptly, with an idea lodged in his mind. A man behind him—one of the engineers—bumped into him and went around.

“Wesshauser,” Michael said when he returned to the man’s table. The eyeglasses peered up at him from behind the pall of smoke. “Could you…
make
a torpedo?”

“Make a torpedo,” Wesshauser repeated, without inflection.

“That’s right. You’re the specialist. Could you make one? Put it together from… well…whatever’s on this ship.”

“I have no idea what’s on this ship. It goes without saying that I’d need high explosives. There would have to be a steel casing and a detonator.” He frowned and dropped the cigarette butt into his cup. “What are you carrying?”

“Machine parts, ball bearings, hardwood logs and fertilizer.”

“Fertilizer,” Wesshauser said.

“That’s right. About three hundred oil drums full. Just common stuff, I understand.”

“Made with ammonium nitrate?”

“I don’t know.”

“And of course you have diesel fuel?”

“Yes.”

Wesshauser nodded. His eyes looked shiny. “Do you realize that amount of ammonium nitrate could detonate and blow this ship into outer space? And that combined with diesel fuel, the explosive compound is made
certain
to blow?”

Michael swallowed. “I…suppose…you’re saying—”

“I’m saying if the fertilizer is made with ammonium nitrate, you are carrying many hundreds of high explosive devices on this freighter. My God! Are you people
insane
? What are your conditions to prevent oxidation in the hold?”

“There are fans,” Michael said lamely. “When they’re turned on.”

Wesshauser stood up. “Listen to me!” His voice was urgent, because he’d realized that here might be—
might be
—a way out. “Do you have a machine shop? A welding station?”

“Yes. Both.”

“No shortage of steel.” Wesshauser was talking to himself. Then, to Michael: “Machine parts, did you say? Of what nature?”

“You’d have to ask the captain. Even he might not know.”

“All right, all right.” Wesshauser ran his fingers across his mouth. “Let’s say a watertight casing can be made and the machine parts would be suitable to form a detonator. Wait…wait!” He shook his head. “No. Ridiculous! There’s no possible way to
deliver
the weapon. No torpedo tube, no way of
aiming
the thing.” His hand crept up and his forefinger beat against a vein at his right temple as if to wake up a sleeping part of his brain. “Mathematics,” he said. “There’s so much mathematics involved in aiming and delivering a torpedo. And even so…the odds are that the weapon will not hit its target. This ship…there’s no possible way to send a torpedo from this ship to strike the
Javelin
. I could make a dozen torpedoes, if I had the time and materials, but without a delivery device—”

Wesshauser stopped speaking. He blinked suddenly, as if startled by a flash.

“You’re carrying logs,” he said. “What length are they?”

“Varied lengths. Five to ten meters. Why?”

“Herr Gallatin,” said the German, “we need to see Captain Beauchene.
Now
.” They climbed the stairs into the wounded bridge, where fog swirled in through the opening where the glass had been. A single low lantern illuminated
Sofia
’s master, who clung to the wheel of the drifting vessel with one hand and held in the other a fresh—or nearly, since it was again half-empty—bottle of brandy.

“What the
fuck
do you two want?” he growled.

In Beauchene’s cabin, revealed by the lantern’s candle, Wesshauser leaned over the desk and on a piece of fly-specked paper drew a diagram with a fountain pen.

“Very well, I understand the torpedo part,” Beauchene said as he and Michael watched the diagram take shape. “I understand about the fertilizer.” The document signed by the cargo master indicated the presence of ammonium nitrate in the black oildrums. “I understand about making a casing and a detonator and all that…but
what
are you scribbling?”

“A design,” Wesshauser explained, with the candle’s glow in his glasses, “to make this
ship
the aiming and delivery device. Look here,” he said, and tapped with the pen’s point. “The bow. We need a steel socket attached to the bow at the waterline. Something with clamps that can hold a ten-meter-long hardwood log. If you have saws, the log itself should be squared off from end to end and reinforced with steel on all sides to keep it rigid. Then…here…you see?”

“I’m looking, but I’m not seeing.
Yet
,” Beauchene added.

“Here, at the far end of the log, another steel socket should be inserted. That should also have clamps to hold the torpedo steady. The torpedo will be underwater, at a depth of possibly a meter or so. You see what I’ve drawn?”

“A ramming device,” Michael said.

“An
aiming
device,” Wesshauser corrected. “A torpedo on the end of a steel-reinforced beam, secured to the ship’s bow. With any luck, the detonator makes contact with
Javelin
under the waterline, and sends an electrical spark into the explosive packing. Add to the packing a payload of ball bearings, and the potential for damage to
Javelin
is further increased. It’s going to be at best an uncertain proposition, because of the imperfect working conditions…but if I can find the right elements on board, I believe I can make this torpedo.”

Beauchene frowned. “There is one small problem here, sir,” he said dryly. “
Un peu de pas
. We would have to be, as I calculate with my great brain, less than ten meters from
Javelin
to make this work. As you gentlemen may recall,
Javelin
has large fucking guns. So how, sir, do we get within ten meters of
Javelin
without being blown to pieces?” He finished his question with an eye-watering swig of brandy.

“
We
have to become the hunters,” Michael spoke up, seeing the plan. “We have to seek out
Javelin
and go on the attack. It’s the only way.”

“In this fog?” Beauchene asked. “How do we find a ship in this? And if it clears as we’re charging for her, won’t she just speed out of danger?”

“We have to hope the fog holds, then,” said the German. “No one on
Javelin
will be expecting our surprise. Herr Gallatin is correct; it’s the only way.”

“If they can’t find us—and God, I hope they can’t—then we can’t find them.”

“That may not be entirely true,” Michael said. “The continuous jamming signal. Can the radioman determine the direction that’s coming from?”

“I have no idea.” The radioman had been released from duty for the night, and the radio shut down even as the jamming cacophony shrieked on. “Maybe he could twiddle his dials and his thumbs and make an educated guess, I don’t know.”

He’s a Russian, Michael thought. He remembered a saying from his life in the circus: Russians know from which way the wind blows and from which way the shit flows.

“An educated guess might do,” he said.

Beauchene looked from Michael to Wesshauser and back again, searching for either sanity or hope. He took another long drink. “It’ll be dawn in five hours,” he told the German. “What do you need to get started?”

Twelve

Dead Ahead

Lamps hung from
Sofia
’s bow. By their fog-dimmed glow, men worked from three lifeboats in the swells. A cable snaked down to an air-powered rivet gun, which made a tremendous racket in use. The work was charged with tension, because if a watch on
Javelin
heard that noise and the ship followed it, for most men dawn might never come.

A steel cage-like apparatus with a pair of claw-shaped clamps had been riveted in position just at the waterline. Now, moving ponderously and slowly, the men in the boats guided what appeared to be a ten-meter-long gray steel beam into the cage. The clamps were shut down upon it and fastened tight with wrenches. A smaller version of the cage-like device was already bolted to the far end of the squared-off log that masqueraded as a steel beam. There was a groove within the cage for a cylindrical object to be inserted and seized by the second pair of clamps.

A wooden seat descended between a pair of ropes. Dylan Custis came down with a bucket of yellow paint and a brush. He began to paint upon the bow a pair of female eyes complete with eyelashes, as below him the other men watched and waited.