Hatteras Blue (36 page)

"So I have to ask you. Tell me, if you know—who am I?"

Galloway looked at Straeter. The old man looked unsurprised; almost bored. But he said, "The three in the boat. Describe them."

"Two of them I don't think I knew. They were men. Dark clothes. I was afraid of them. The third I remember better. She carried me sometimes, sometimes I held to her hand. She had long blond hair. She called me ...
Puppchen
I never saw her again after that night."

Straeter stood up slowly. At last he said, "Well, there it is."

"Don't apologize. There wasn't any way you could have known. I didn't know myself."

"You remembered that night. And you read about the raft being found—"

"And I came back."

"For the gold?"

"That attracted me. Sure. But I hoped there might be something else too. Maybe I could find out who I really was."

"I suppose, you know, I should beg your pardon."

"For striking me? Forget it. You thought I was a thief. Now things are getting clearer." Keyes glanced at Galloway. "As long as we're straightening things out—you did kill him, didn't you? Old Aydlett?"

"I thought you did," said Galloway.

They looked at Straeter; he nodded casually. "Yes. And the old woman."

"You killed Mrs. Baum too?"

"We were closing off all leads."

"That's inhuman," said Galloway. "She couldn't hurt you. She was ninety years old! What was the sense in that?"

"Tiller. Cool it" Keyes flicked his fingers. "I understand him. They were old, useless; she probably welcomed it. And I planned to hit Aydlett later myself, after all this was over—for killing my mother."

Bernie whispered, "Who
is
he? Keyes?"

"Watch." Galloway looked at the two men.

Straeter bent forward, peering up into the face of the

man before him. Then he straightened, seemed to reflect for a moment. Suddenly his right arm shot out.

"Yes, I see him there," he said softly. His chin lifted; for a moment his age-worn face looked seventeen again. "It is truly Siegfried, son of Odin. The anointed.

"We saved the ideals, the money, the Party, for him. For years we worked in the darkness. Anonymous. Silent. For forty years we accepted the judgment of our enemies' lying 'history.' We gloried in it!"

His head lifted. He spoke to the sky.

"Tarnhelm has succeeded! In disguise he grew to manhood. Now he returns, just as we planned so long ago. Our leader. Our Fiihrer!"

His voice had a queer, bitter sound. Yet his eyes lit with an old fire as his arm shot out, held high, palm outward and fingers together.

"Heil Hitler!"

Galloway's spine prickled. It was the same declaration of faith and hatred that had sounded over these waters on a dark night forty years before. That had been unheard for so long the world had forgotten there were still men who believed in everything it meant.

"Do you know now?" he muttered to Hirsch.

She nodded, trembling.

Keyes's blond hair rippled in the sea wind, gleamed in the rays of the morning sun. Casually, almost negligently, he raised his arm to return the salute. Galloway followed his glance toward the black ship that rolled a hundred yards distant. Keyes—he supposed he ought to think of him by a different name now—was smiling. It was the smile of a man who knows at last who he is, and what he is; who accepts it, who glories in it. Not for what was past. But for what lies ahead.

The old man lowered his arm slowly. The light ebbed from his eyes. He looked down, then around the boat, as if trying to remember where he was.

"For his sake, I suppose—for the sake of all I was then, all we were and dared together—you deserved that salute, Mr. Keyes. I was wrong to think I could deny it to you."

"Thanks," said Keyes. "You did well. And I'll reward you. Let's get over to the sub, shall we?"

Straeter didn't seem to hear him. He went on, looking out over the Atlantic. 'Yes, we put you ashore. But then, unfortunately, we lost track of you. But I knew someday you would return here. I was content to wait."

"Sure," said Keyes. "Let's get moving, okay? I've got a lot of questions to ask. And we've got a lot to do."

The old man turned, and called roughly in Spanish to the boy with the gun, who had stood at the stern through the conversation. He moved up beside them now.

"What's going on?" said Keyes.

Straeter said slowly, "I spent forty years in exile because of your father's mad ambition. He destroyed Germany. He nearly destroyed the Party. You helped us find the gold. For that, thank you. But for the rest, Mr. Keyes, for what we plan now, you would be merely an inconvenience."

"What? What are you talking about, Straeter? If you're threatening me—"

The old man nodded to the boy with the gun. "This is Ramon, one of our newer members. He only understands a few words of English; simple commands, that sort of thing."

"Hello, Ramon," said Keyes.

"Shoot him," said Straeter.

A single shot cracked out, and Keyes, his face unbelieving, sagged slowly to the deck.

Straeter looked down at him for a moment longer. The blond man lay motionless, eyes closed, in a pool of blood. Finally the old man turned his back on him, and cleared his throat. "Well. I believe this is all the business we have for the present, Captain Galloway. So now I will say good-bye. Will you do me the honor of accepting a gift?"

Galloway felt Bernie's look. Her eyes were burnt holes in a white face. He looked back at the old man.
"You
mean you're letting us go?"

"Letting
you
go, Captain Galloway. Oh, don't think it is an old man's emotionalism. We have nothing to gain from killing you. The nature of the gift will guarantee your silence.

"But, more than that, I would like you to work with us. When we begin our deliveries, I don't want to risk coming close inshore. We could use someone with a boat, and with your background and contacts, to offload and distribute our cargo—to administer, shall we say, the North American end of our new business." He shifted his smile to Hirsch. "The
Judin,
naturally, will be coming with us. My men will be glad to entertain her for a time. But yes, we will let
you
go."

"You're filth," Bernie said. "You'll fail, you'll all be killed this time. The world is different now."

"That's right, my dear," said the old man, as if to a child. "The world is different now. Far different! Terror no longer shocks. Mass killing is no longer even news. The West is dead from within, riddled with Jews and Communists, rotten with drugs and luxury. Yet there is no hurry. We will take our time, build up our position in Central America. In a few years its people will turn to us as the only alternative to communism. Now the future belongs to us—once more."

A bar of metal came up over the transom. The bodyguard staggered at its weight. When it thudded into the deck he turned again, reached down, and brought something else up too. Lighter than the metal. But this time his fingers lingered on it as he laid it beside the ingot. Visible through the thick plastic, double-wrapped, was a white, powdery substance.

"Two kilos," said the old man. "Pure, uncut Bolivian. Street value, let us say, a quarter million. I hope this repays you for your trouble."

Bernie turned to him then. Galloway saw that her cheeks gleamed with tears. "Tiller—you can't take it. You can't go along with this—"

"He can and he will. He is
ein besonnener sachlicher Mann.
A realistic man. Aren't you, Captain?"

But Galloway did not reply. He was staring down at the two objects, lying side by side on the bloody deck. Gold. And cocaine. Wealth beyond the dreams of the people he had grown up among. Pleasure to escape the hell of being what he'd become. Together they were all he had ever wanted. But that was not all he saw. For at the edge of his vision, he was also watching a hand.

The hand was pale and streaked with blood. Behind the two men who watched Galloway, waiting for his answer, it groped slowly over the smooth wood of the deck. It moved closer, centimeter by centimeter, to a piece of serrated steel and black plastic that lay forgotten between a locker and the gunwale.

It was Galloway's knife.

It was Keyes's hand.

twenty

G
alloway sucked in a breath, fighting to

keep his eyes steady on the bronze glints of the old man's.

As he shifted in his chair the pain seemed to move. It trickled down his spine and fell, drop by drop, into a sensationless void. That's where the trouble is, he thought. Something pinching or cutting the spinal cord. Aggravated by too-hasty decompression, nitrogen tended to accumulate at a site of previous injury.

He dropped his gaze from Straeter to the ingot. It lay canted on the deck. Silver drops spotted its black surface. It was one of the first that Keyes had passed up to them, for the coating was peeled back from one edge and the metal shone underneath as warm and yellow as sunset across Pamlico Sound.

Well, Herr Kapitan?"

But Galloway was studying the plastic-wrapped bundle now. Uncut, he was thinking. He'd never sold, but he knew there were two ways he could go. Step on it hard with lactose or borax, then ounce it through some men he'd met in Raleigh. Or sell it as it was, in grams, a little at a time. Either way the old man's snap estimate wouldn't be far off.

And either way he wouldn't sell all of it. It had been years. But his brain had never forgotten its white-lit energy, a lightning rod through the nose. He felt sweat prickle his back, seeing it five feet away...

"Galloway!"

He raised his eyes slowly. Put his hand on the wheel to steady himself—and to keep their attention with motion.

You'll let me go, you say?"

"Yes, yes. On your word to be silent, which is in your interest too. We will be in touch with you later about arrangements. Do you have some objection to that?"

"No-oo," said Galloway, drawing it out. He felt Hirsch, beside him, turn her head to stare.

"Good. We are agreed. I ask once more—would you like my doctor to see you before we leave?"

There might be many doctors now, Galloway was thinking. The spinal cord was delicate. If it was cut he had no hope of walking again. If it was just a pinch, and he kept still, got to a hospital, someday he might. And then again it might be transient, he might be able to recompress in Norfolk, be good as new day after tomorrow. There was just no way to tell.

"The doctor," he repeated, as if considering it. At the fringe of his vision he saw the pale fingers slowly engulfing the hilt, like a starfish closing around an oyster. He glanced at Hirsch. Her pupils widened suddenly and jerked back to his; she'd seen it too. "Well ... is he a good man?"

Behind the two Germans, his upper body braced on the corner of the locker, Keyes was raising himself slowly on one arm. His face came into view, bloody from lying on the deck. His eyes were deadly, protuberant, blue, fixed with hate and insane determination.

'Yes, very good. Paraguayan, educated in Europe ... listen, you must choose now, Galloway. I can stay here no longer." Straeter glanced toward the submarine. Sailors were moving around the davit, dismantling it, manhandling the boom down into the large hatch aft. He swung back. "For the last time, do you want assistance? Answer now! And you, woman—"

The blade caught the old man low in the back. He twisted, screaming, and toppled forward, his hands behind him.

At the same instant Galloway flung Hirsch forward with all the power he could put into his arm.

The blond bodyguard swung on Keyes, who was slumped back with a slight smile on his lips, and stitched a short, professional burst across his chest. He was half turned back to Galloway when Bernie slammed into him. He staggered backward toward the stern, dropping the weapon. For a second he contemplated the handle of the bread knife that she had till now concealed in the back of her shorts. Then he hit the transom, sat down on it, eyes still astonished, and toppled backward into the sea.

Galloway surveyed the carnage on his deck. The old man lay face down, the black grip of the knife growing out of a kidney. Keyes lay near him, shuddering out a breath; as he watched, the blond man's open eyes froze, and the red froth at his mouth went still. But at the same time, a faint groan reached Galloway from farther aft.

"Shad," he called. "Shadrach, you hardheaded bastard, is that you?"

"My head, my head." Aydlett's hand groped along the bloody bullet scar that furrowed the side of his skull. Below it one eye pried itself open; the other was swollen shut. "Oh, Jesus, I feel sick."

"How long you been awake?"

"A while ... didn't seem like the right time to say so, though. I heard him say, about my pop. The son of a bitch. Let's kill 'em all, Tiller."

"No other way to get out of here alive. Get me the carbine, Bernie."

She ran for the companionway; a moment later she handed it to him, and picked up the Schmeisser herself. She pointed it in the direction of the U-boat, half-closed her eyes, and triggered a burst, pulling the muzzle back down as it jumped into the sky.