passenger, the same. We should certainly pick up all the bad luck in the world with seven nuns sailing with us.’
‘Five, Captain. Only five,’ she said and went out.
Berger frowned and turned to Prager. ‘You said seven passengers.’
‘So I did.’ Prager rummaged in the briefcase and produced two more Swedish passports which he pushed across the desk. ‘One for Gertrude and one for me. She, too, is waiting on shore with our baggage which includes, I might add, that wireless transmitter you asked me to try and get you.’
Berger gazed at him in stupefaction. ‘You and your wife?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Good God, Otto, you’re sixty-five if you’re a day. And what will your masters in Berlin say?’
‘From what I hear, the Russians are far more likely to get there before I do, so it doesn’t really matter.’ Prager smiled gently. ‘You see, Erich, we want to go home, too.’
* * *
When Berger went up to the quarterdeck just before two it was raining harder than ever. The entire crew was assembled on the deck below, faces pale, oilskins glistening in the dim glow of the deck lights.
He gripped the rail, leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. ‘I won’t say much. You all know the score. It’s one hell of a trip, I’m not going to pretend any different, but if you do as I tell you, we’ll make it, you and I and the old Deutschland together.’
There was a stirring amongst them, no more than that, and he carried on, a touch of iron in his voice now. ‘One more thing. As most of you will have observed, we’re carrying passengers. Herr Prager, once assistant consul at our embassy in Rio and his wife, and five nuns from a mission station on the Negro.’
He paused. There was only the hissing of the rain as they all waited. ‘Nuns,’ he said, ‘but still women and it’s a long journey home, so let me make myself plain. I’ll personally shoot the first man to step over the line, and so enter it in the log.’ He straightened. ‘Now everyone to his station.’
As he turned from the rail his second-in-command moved out of the darkness to join him. Leutnant zur See Johann Sturm, a tall, fair youth from Minden in Westphalia, had celebrated his twentieth birthday only three days earlier. Like Richter, he was a submariner and had served in a U-boat as second watch officer.
‘Everything under control, Mr Sturm?’ Berger enquired in a low voice.
‘I think so, Captain.’ Sturm’s voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I’ve stowed the wireless transmitter Herr Prager brought with him from Rio in my cabin, as you ordered. It’s not much, I’m afraid, sir. A limited range at the best.’
‘Better than nothing,’ Berger told him. ‘And the passengers? Are they safely stowed away also?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ There was a hint of laughter in the boy’s voice. ‘I think you could say that.’
A white figure appeared out of the darkness and materialized as Sister Angela. Berger swallowed hard and said in a low, dangerous voice, ‘Could you now, Mr Sturm?’
Sister Angela said brightly, ‘Are we leaving, Captain? Is it all right if I watch?’
Berger glared at her helplessly, rain dripping from the peak of his cap, then turned to Sturm and said, ‘Haul up the spanker and outer jib only, Mr Sturm, and let the anchor chain go.’
Sturm repeated the order and there was a sudden flurry of activity. One seaman dropped down the forepeak hatch. Four others hauled briskly on the halliard and the spanker rose slowly. A moment later there was a rattle as the anchor chain slithered across the deck, then a heavy splash.
Richter was at the wheel but, for the moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Sister Angela, glancing up, saw through a gap in the curtain of rain, stars pass across the jib.
‘We’re moving, Captain! We’re moving!’ she cried, as excitedly as any child.
‘So I’ve observed,’ Berger told her. ‘Now will you kindly oblige me by going below.’
She went reluctantly and he sighed and turned to the bosun. ‘Steady as she goes, Richter. She’s all yours.’
And Richter took her out through the harbour entrance, drifting along like some pale ghost, barely moving, leaving a slight swirl of phosphorescence in her wake.
Fifteen minutes later, as Captain Mendoza sat playing whist in his booth at the Lights of Lisbon with a young lady from the establishment next door, the man he had assigned to keep watch on the fish pier burst in on him.
‘What is it?’ Mendoza demanded mildly.
‘The Deutschland, Senhor Capitan,’ the watchman whispered. ‘She is gone.’
‘Indeed.’ Mendoza laid his cards face down on the table and stood up. ‘Watch her, José,’ he called to the barman. He picked up his cap and oilskin coat and went out.
When he reached the end of the fish pier, the rain was falling harder than ever in a dark impenetrable curtain. He lit a cigar in cupped hands and stared into the night.
‘Will you notify the authorities, senhor?’ the watchman enquired.
Mendoza shrugged. ‘What is there to notify? Undoubtedly Captain Berger wished an early start for the return trip to Rio, where he is due in eight days from now, although it would not be uncommon for him to be perhaps one week overdue, the weather at this time of the year being so unpredictable. Time enough for any official enquiry needed to be made then.’
The watchman glanced at him uncertainly, then bobbed his head. ‘As you say, Senhor Capitan.’
He moved away and Mendoza looked out over the river towards the mouth of the Amazon and the sea. How far to Germany? Nearly five thousand miles, across an ocean that was now hopelessly in the grip of the American and British navies. And in what? A three-masted barquentine long past her prime.
‘Fools,’ he said softly. ‘Poor, stupid, magnificent fools.’ And he turned and went back along the fish pier through the rain.
Barquentine Deutschland. 9 September 1944. Lat. 25°.01N., long. 30°.46W. Fourteen days out of Belém. Wind NW 6–8. Hove the log and found we were going twelve knots. In the past twenty-four hours we have run two hundred and twenty-eight miles. Frau Prager still confined to her bunk with the sea-sickness which has plagued her since leaving Belém. Her increasing weakness gives us all cause for concern. Heavy rain towards evening.
The morning weather forecast for sea area Hebrides had been far from promising: winds 5 to 6 with rain squalls. Off the north-west coast of Skye, things were about as dirty as they could be – heavy, dark clouds swollen with rain, merging with the horizon.
Except for the occasional seabird, the only living thing in that desolation was the motor gunboat making south-west for Barra, her Stars and Stripes ensign the one splash of colour in the grey morning.
Dawn was at
