up—their ears popping—to what they only could hope was the surface of the water.
Without warning, a crewmember in gray coveralls opened the door to the cell. His face was mottled with rage.
David swung his briefcase, which hit the sailor square in the jaw. He crumpled to the floor, unable to finish his sentence. David stumbled as he recovered his balance. “Oh, that felt good.”
“Come on, Lilibet,” Maggie urged, taking the girl’s hand, all senses straining. They made their way down the dark, narrow corridor. Red lights blinked at them and steam hissed through pipes.
Lilibet tripped and fell, letting out a small yelp.
“Come on!” David said.
Lilibet looked up at Maggie, her face white. “My foot. I think it’s broken.”
“Who?” Lilibet asked.
“A girl from long ago and far away.” Maggie was grateful for her morning regime of sit-ups and push-ups and all the early-morning runs she’d taken since those muddy days at Camp Spook.
The submarine’s emergency sirens continued to wails. Maggie, carrying Lilibet, and David retraced their steps back to the ladder that led back up to the hatch. Over the intercom, they heard,
“They’re saying ‘The prisoners have escaped!’” Maggie gasped.
“Oh, hell,” David said. “So much for stealth.”
He climbed the narrow gray-painted ladder to the hatch and wrestled with it until it opened. They had predicted correctly. The fire safety system had caused the captain to take the boat to the surface.
Then Maggie, breathing heavily, but not slowing down, went up the ladder first, helping Lilibet. With his free hand, David helped the young Princess when she emerged. Outside, on the hull, they all drew great breaths of cold fresh air, watching the frothy white caps crest on the grey waves. The channel was rough and the U-boat bobbed in the choppy water like a child’s bath toy.
“Do we have a plan?” Lilibet asked.
Maggie, helping a limping Lilibet, and David all scrambled over the top of the hull until they reached the sail. They climbed up yet another long, thin ladder to reach the highest peak of the sub.
Cold, damp winds gusted around them. They held on to the railing of the sail for dear life—David muttering curse words, Lilibet with her mouth set in a grim line, and Maggie, fighting panic, trying desperately to think of a next step. While she was overwhelmingly grateful for an escape from inside the submarine that had seemed impossible, being up on the sail of a Nazi sub in the middle of the gray-green North Sea didn’t seem all that much better.
The submarine could continue sailing this way, on the surface, all the way to France. Unless they wanted to swim in the freezing waters, they were as trapped on the sail as they were in the bowels of the submarine. Here eyes scanned the horizon for any sign of a British ship.
She looked at David and Lilibet. David had a nasty head wound; his blood still caked in his hair and on his face. Lilibet’s face had scratches and bruising and was stained with tears. Around them, on all sides, was nothing but sky and the ocean.
Gregory emerged from the hatch. He had a desperate expression on his face. He was followed by Boothby and two armed crewmen.
“No!” Gregory cried, his voice getting lost in the freezing wind, as he approached their perch on top of the sail. He climbed towards them as Boothby and the two sailors came behind him.
“Come back inside! You’re safe with me! I never meant to hurt anyone!”
The group stared at him in disbelief, as though he were an apparition. He certainly looked like one, his face gaunt, his eyes haunted.
“You don’t understand!” Gregory called. “I can’t go back to England!” His eyes leaked tears, as his voice grew frenzied. “I can’t do it!” He kept climbing. “It’s freezing cold up there in those planes, it’s dark—they shoot at you, you shoot at them. People die, but before they do, they scream—horrible high-pitched screams. Men cry. I’ve seen people with limbs burned off, with melted skin and bone.”
He reached them and raised his hands in supplication; his eyes had a cold, dead look to them. “I just want it all to stop. The nightmares and the memories and the horror—I can’t go back. Can’t even seem to drink myself to death! That’s why I made this deal with the devil. This way I
Gregory’s pain was palpable. Was he a villain, or just a casualty of war? Maggie felt a mixture of both horror and sympathy wash through her. She knew him—or thought she did.
“Then no more killing,” she said. “End it. You’re not your father—you don’t have to be.”
But he couldn’t meet her eyes, and turned away. “Let me worry about my conscience, Maggie,” he said, calmer now.
The wind began to die down and the waves weren’t quite as violent. The gray at the edge of the horizon was turning a delicate pink. And she could also hear the rumbling engine of a ship. They all looked towards the direction of the sound.
Whose ship was it? German or British?
“It’s German,” Gregory said, as if reading their minds. “You quite cleverly disarmed the sub, but they’ve radioed to France for a pickup from a German patrol boat. There’s nowhere for you to run. Even if I wanted to help you now, I couldn’t. Things are in motion and have taken on a momentum of their own.”
“That’s pathetic, Gregory,” Maggie called. “Don’t be a coward. Be the hero I know you can be.”
The sound of the engine seemed closer, and Maggie felt a tingle of horror. She knew what she had to do, if the worst happened. David would have to use his cyanide tablet, and she’d have to jump overboard. The Nazis weren’t going to take them alive. And she had to believe that Lilibet would be treated well in Germany and that Frain and Churchill would somehow rescue her.
The sky was turning a streaked scarlet. Maggie could see the Nazi patrol boat coming toward them, and she put her arm around Lilibet.
And then, without warning, the world seemed to explode. There was a wall of noise. Bright flashes and flares of light. The stench of smoke. Time itself was pierced by a thunderous detonation. The waves roiled and crested and the sub lurched to one side and back again. Boothby and the crewmen struggled to keep their balance.
Lilibet fell against Maggie, whose back hit the guard rail, hard.
David took advantage of the swaying to grab Gregory by his coat and sideswipe him with the briefcase, which hit his face with a loud
Maggie saw David struggling to get free from Gregory. She ran to Gregory and tried to pry his hands off David’s neck. Lilibet, seeing what was happening, crawled over to Gregory, brave as the Prince in
Gregory cried out in anguish and released his grip on David, who fell to the deck, gasping for air. Gregory stumbled backward and fell as well, curling into a fetal position.
“