Vengeance 10 (35 page)
The men on the pier checked the moorings on the other boats and then moved off. Memling picked up the unconscious girl, stumbled through the blackness to the pier, and crossed slimy wooden planks to the third boat in the line. He eased down on to the deck, hanging on for dear life as the waves, even in the sheltered inlet, tossed the boat about. Checking quickly to see that the craft was unoccupied, he laid the girl on the deck in the shelter of the wheelhouse and found the engine compartment. The cover slid back with a squeal, and he froze. But the storm was loud enough to cover the firing of an eighty-eight-millimetre cannon.
Fifteen minutes of feeling about the greasy, fume-ridden space and he had found and set the magneto and opened the fuel petcock, all the while blessing his trainers for their hysterical insistence on operating machinery under the most adverse conditions. It took several tries before the engine coughed into life, and he left it to warm up then while he carried Francine down into the cabin. Even here he dared not risk a light. The cabin smelled of long occupancy and little cleaning, but it was dry. He stripped off her sodden clothing and chafed her cold body, covered her with dirty blankets found by touch in one of the lockers and tied her into the bunk with torn strips of cloth. It would be some time before he dared leave the wheel.
He then dried the machine pistol and left it under the other bunk. The Walther must have slipped from his pocket some time after he had left the house, but it made little difference now.
Balancing on the heaving deck, he tried to recall details from the map he had studied so carefully over the past weeks. The Greifswalder Boden was free of most navigational hazards except for the scattered sandbanks that edged this tideless inland sea. They would be the greatest problem, as all channel markers would have been removed at the start of the war. There was, however, no other choice. Accordingly, he slipped the bow mooring, ran back and lifted the stern-line off the cleat, and, as the boat swung about under the battering of the waves, raced for the wheelhouse. There was a grinding crash as the boat collided with the one to starboard, then a second, and he had the engine full astern and the wheel spinning over.
The boat responded sluggishly to the helm at first, its bluff coaster hull wallowing heavily, and as they cleared the point the gale-force winds laid her right over. Memling fought the wheel, pulling the throttle further and further open until the engine screamed in protest. The boat came reluctantly under control, and he reduced the rpm. He had no idea how much diesel oil there was in the tanks, but knew it would be damned little. There was a sail furled professionally about the boom, and he suspected it saw a great deal of use given the shortage of fuel in Germany.
By accident Memling found the switch that started the circle of glass set in the windscreen spinning to provide a semblance of visibility. Huge seas, only half-hidden by the darkness, reared about the boat, and spume snatched from the wave crests was flung away by the violent wind like shotgun pellets. Summer gales in the Baltic were doubly dangerous because of its shallowness, and Memling wondered if they would survive.
The sky began to lighten near dawn, revealing heaving white- flecked mountains of water towering in all directions. Irrationally Memling had expected the storm to moderate, but instead it seemed to increase in fury. The compass showed a north-easterly course. The fuel indicator was broken so there was no way of judging the distance covered or the magnetic correction factor to be applied to the compass; yet he felt they must have come far enough to have cleared the island of Rugen, which formed the northern rim of the Greifswalder Boden, and to have left the dangerous sandbanks behind. Memling was forced to guess at the magnetic correction as he altered course due north, turning the wheel a bit at a time until the compass needle was oscillating north, north-west. He was hazy about the exact directions and distances involved but recalled that the island of Bornholm also lay to the north of Usedom and was less than sixty kilometres from the Swedish coast. But Bornholm was occupied Danish territory, and he had no idea how to distinguish between it and neutral Sweden without actually landing. With the fatalism that his present predicament encouraged, he decided to worry about that if and when the time came.
The gale slackened a bit towards noon, and he was able to lash the wheel and hurry below. Francine was still in the bunk, but the blankets had been churned into knots. He found and lit a lantern and swore the souls of the four SD men to damnation. Any regrets over their killing disappeared at the sight of her breasts - where they had concentrated the cigarette torture. Bruises on her thighs suggested she might have been raped. When he eased her over, he discovered large crisscross weals on her back where they had used their belts.
Memling rummaged through the lockers but found nothing with which he could treat her burns and the cuts from the belting. He made her as comfortable as possible in the narrow bunk and retied the restraints. Her pulse was slow and weak, and her breathing noisy.
The gale picked up in violence again during the afternoon and raged on into the night. He was on the verge of total exhaustion, and some time during the night he fell asleep. A violent twisting, corkscrewing motion shook him awake, and he stared out at the phantom shapes rearing above. The rain had stopped, but the wind had worked up to a screaming frenzy, piling up water in unstable masses that struck down on the boat, threatening to smash her under at any moment. Memling realised that unless he could turn and run before the sea, they would be swamped. He shoved at the wheelhouse door, but it refused to open, held shut by the wind. He wasted no more time then. The waves were silhouetted against the night sky, lighter now that the rain had stopped. He waited until the boat forced its way to a crest, then risked a quick look at the following wave and spun the wheel hard over hard to port, yanking open the throttle at the same time. They dropped below the crest, sheltered from the wind for a brief moment, and the boat fought around. There was a moment’s sickening vertigo as the deck fell away and then a jolt, and the bow buried itself to the hatch cover. For one agonising moment Memling was certain the boat would go right under, but like a terrier, she shook herself free and bounded upright. With wind and wave now dead astern, her motion became easier. Memling slumped on the wheel, gasping for breath, exhausted beyond endurance. For the remainder of the night he fought the seas that threatened to turn them broadside as they raced south-east towards Germany.
Dawn brought an easing of the violent gale, although the seas were as wild as ever. Again he struggled to bring the boat about towards Sweden. The boat responded well enough and settled down to doggedly bashing a way through the waves. Once more Memling found it possible to lash the wheel and go below for a few moments. Francine’s condition did not seem to have changed, except for her breathing, which had become noisier, making him fear pneumonia. There was not much he could do but try to feed her some of the small supply of food he had found in one of the lockers and make her as comfortable as possible.
The day wore on into afternoon, and still the boat chugged on into seas that never seemed to change. Memling napped whenever possible and between times stared, hypnotised, at the heaving water. When the engine died, he was surprised but not disconcerted. As the bow fell off he slipped the cord over the wheel and dashed on to the deck.
He had prepared by tracing the sail’s hauling mechanism and the sheets that controlled its movement. He slipped the lashings that held the canvas sail to the boom, inserted the handle into the winch, and cranked like a madman. The sail came up freely on to the mast, bellying out in the thirty-knot wind, and the boat heeled to windward. Immediately she became easier as the huge cat-rigged sail balanced her, allowing her to heel so that a minimum of hull was in the water.
Memling found the boat amazingly responsive to the helm. This was what she had been built for, to bend the elements to her will, not to potter along under the impetus of a smelly diesel. There was an impression of great speed as the little boat shot along, bow wave creaming and wake stretching behind, and Memling, exhausted as he was, began to enjoy himself. He checked the engine and found that a cooling line had snapped, allowing the engine to overheat and seize up. But as long as the wind held steady, they were probably making better time under sail, and so he did not mind the loss of the engine. For hours they raced northward close-reached, wind steady over the starboard quarter. At four the weather and the seas had moderated, so he felt it safe enough to go below.
Francine was in a deep but restless sleep. Her face was flushed, her hair damp with sweat, and her skin hot and swollen. She tossed against the restraints, fingers plucking weakly at the blankets. When he examined her burns again, he found that several of the deeper ones had turned a puffy grey. Her breathing, Memling was certain, indicated that she had pneumonia. He covered her as best he could and rummaged through the cabin stores, finding only a dried, stringy sausage and a piece of cheese. There was a bare spoonful of tea in a canister, and he heated water over the recalcitrant alcohol stove and tried, without much success, to get her to sip a little. Her murmuring had turned to country German in which only the name Karl - a brother, he supposed, or a friend - was understandable. He made certain the lashings were secure before going back on deck with the rest of the tea. He knew she was going to die, and found himself cursing the fools who had sent her to this fate; then he stopped, recognising the futility of it all. He finished the tea slowly, making it last, and chewed on the tasteless sausage and cheese.
In late afternoon the sun broke through to cast long pillars of light on to the sea. At seven o’clock he sighted a smudge of land. For a long moment the old fear rushed back. Neutral Sweden or Nazi-occupied Bornholm? There was nothing to do now but wait. He went below then to check on the girl and clean the machine pistol.
Francine was comatose; her skin was hot and dry to the touch, and her mouth worked with the effort to breathe. Fluid was filling her lungs with unbelievable rapidity. He sat helplessly on the bunk, holding one limp hand. There was nothing he could do other than to keep watch while she died.
When he went back on deck an hour later, the skies had cleared almost completely. The wind had dropped, and the sail slatted sullenly. The aircraft had apparently been circling for some time, engines throttled back. Memling grunted; its appearance had been inevitable. The plane had twin booms, three engines, and stabilising pontoons slung beneath the wings. He identified it as a Bv138 naval reconnaissance seaplane-an aircraft the Swedes did not use. Half-heartedly Memling waved, hoping they would think he was a Swedish fisherman. The plane made one more circuit and climbed for altitude until he lost it in the darkening sky. Radioing for instructions, he suspected.
The smudge of land had taken on definition in the time he had been below. A low range of hills were visible, as were one or two lights along the shore: Sweden, he realised, as Bornholm would have been blacked out. Not that it mattered much now. He judged that he was well within neutral Swedish territorial waters, but he also knew that such niceties would not deter the Nazis who could not allow him to escape with the information he had gathered at Peenemunde.
Memling began the preparations he had thought through earlier. He took the hatch cover off the engine compartment and punched a hole in the fuel tank, hoping that enough fuel remained to do the job. Earlier he had gone down and prised boards away to let the oil seep into the aft hold. He found two bulky cork life-belts and took them into the cabin. Francine was delirious and much weaker now. A matter of hours, he thought. He balanced the knife in his fingers and bent over her, easing her chin back. It would be so much kinder to slip the blade in quickly; death would be instantaneous. But he could not bring himself to do it. He did not even like her very much, and he doubted if she cared at all for him. They had been given a job to do. As she had seen it, sex was a part of that job, a part she enjoyed, but a job nevertheless. He, in turn, had used her, partly because she was willing, partly because he was reacting to his own problems with Janet, and partly because her magnificent body offered a relief from his own fear. Each had been a convenience to the other, nothing more.
He cursed himself as he slid her arms through the cork jacket and tied the thongs securely. He could kill when it was an enemy and there was no other choice, but not a helpless woman who had shared her body with him, for whatever reason. If there was any chance at all, he meant her to have it. Jan lifted her from the bunk, then, grunting in the confined space, carried her up and placed her on the deckhouse floor. He went below again for the alcohol stove and the dead SD man’s machine pistol. He poured a panful of diesel oil on the limp sail, lit the stove with difficulty, and sat down beside the feverish girl to wait.
The reconnaissance plane made its first attack from dead astern at sea level. Machine-gun fire chewed across the deck, and the aircraft swept past so close that Memling saw the pilot staring down at him. The gun turret forward of the cockpit swivelled as the pilot sideslipped to give the gunner clearance, but the burst went wide. The plane banked sharply, fell off one wing, and swept down on them, again at sea level. Memling knelt behind the engine compartment and held his fire until the last possible moment; a split second before the twin machine-guns opened up, he fired a long burst that exhausted the Schmiesser magazine. The turret shattered and the aircraft swept past without response. One dead gunner, he hoped.
Memling rammed home the other magazine and watched the aircraft sweep away low, then climb swiftly. The pilot would not make that mistake again. Regretfully he dropped the machine pistol and picked Francine up, easing her over one shoulder. She muttered something through cracked lips, and he held her tightly for a moment, then bent, picked up the stove, and opened the valve until the flame roared.
