chain was around his neck and Siegfried was pulling the young naval officer backward.
The chain had been knotted at the center, forming a murderous chunk of metal that could crush any Adam's apple and throttle any larynx or windpipe. The hands on the chain were powerful and Pritchard knew he would have only a few seconds to fight.
He flailed at his attacker. He kicked and twisted. He was not weak. He landed several blows of the elbow to Siegfried's body. None slowed the killer. Siegfried only clutched more tightly, as if he were trying to snap Billy Pritchard's neck in half. The youth's head was throbbing. His eyes felt as if they would spurt out of his head.
Pritchard managed to twist just enough to face his executioner. From a distance of inches, he saw the firmness and muscle of the flesh. He saw that the gray complexion was from powder of some sort, rubbed deeply into the crevices around the nose, eyes, and mouth. He saw that the lines were from a pencil. The gray hair, he now assumed, was a dye.
Who…? Pritchard wondered insanely. Why…?
With a final spasm of effort, Pritchard hammered at his assailant's ribs, pounded with an elbow, and brought a knee upward toward the man's genitals. But the killer blocked Pritchard's fists with his forearms. He stopped the knee with his thigh. And all the time, the chain tightened like a steel tentacle around the young ensign's throat.
Billy Pritchard's brain coursed with obscenities. His eyes felt as if they would explode. Then everything was fading and Billy felt terribly weak.
He thought of home in Ohio… He fancied he was on his way there.
Then everything was black.
Working by moonlight, Siegfried stripped the young sailor of his uniform, then dragged the corpse fifty feet into a wooded area where he already had prepared a shallow grave. He laid the body in it and covered it with dirt. He dragged several branches and broken brambles into place across the grave.
Siegfried returned to Newark by car. As was usual, he quietly entered his rooming house through a rear door. He was unobserved. He removed the dye from his hair and the makeup from his face. He shaved.
Then he slept, secure in the knowledge that sometimes great sacrifices or odious deeds were necessary in order to perpetuate a far greater good.
It was the great new Aryan state, after all, that was important. Not the individual. Adolf Hitler thought that, preached that, and said that. And Siegfried believed it.
FOURTEEN
A special terror struck Siegfried when he reached the quiet, winding corridor that led to the engine room of the HMS Adriana. He stood in Billy Pritchard's white uniform, a black bag in his hand, and he waited, like a sentry frozen in place, to hear the slightest sound of a footfall.
There was none. But the terror convulsed him nonetheless.
How foolish his gambit suddenly seemed! He had no cover story and no weapon. His black bag carried only the evidence of his purpose there. He had only this sizzling anger toward those morons in Berlin.
Discover what you can concerning the Adriana…!
The fools. They would take him seriously in the future. Berlin would have no choice. His shirt was clinging to his ribs. “Come on! Move!”he told himself. “Keep standing in one place and you're nothing but a target.”
He stepped into a large communal toilet room and watched the corridor in the mirror. He calmed slightly. Everyone was on the top deck or in the yard. One of the last warm days of August, Siegfried mused. Well, if these Brit sailors liked heat, wait till they tasted Siegfried's latest device.
When there was no sound or movement in any direction, he crossed six feet of corridor and entered the deserted engine room. Two huge turbines, gray and ponderous and bracketed by all sorts of filthy black pipes, loomed in the center of the chamber. Somewhere in the distant background a large generator hummed, providing the Adriana's alternate power while the ship was docked. The twin turbines were silent.
Just perfect, Siegfried thought to himself. Now move again! Are you waiting for a confrontation? Do you want to be arrested?
Siegfried stepped between the two turbines and studied them. Yes, he grinned, one good bomb located between them would disable the vessel.
Siegfried looked across the concrete floor. His bomb was about twelve inches long and nine inches thick. He had to leave it somewhere where it would not be found, perhaps for several days. The device was Siegfried's most ingenious. It was keyed with nitroglycerin and would be detonated by combustible heat and the severe rocking motion of the ship once the turbines were working again, and once the Adriana was at sea. No one in the engine room, Siegfried mused idly, stood a chance. But where to place it? It had to be between the turbines and out of sight. There wasn't anyplace.
Or was there?
Siegfried eyed the area carefully. The hand on the black bag was soaking. His heart pounded. The two turbines were flush to the concrete floor. But between them was a sheet of steel, elevated about eighteen inches above the concrete. The steel formed a platform that would boost a man of normal height just enough to reach the top of the turbines. Then Siegfried was on his hands and knees, flush against the floor, peering underneath into the dark crawl space between the steel and the concrete.
A wave of claustrophobia splashed across him. He shuddered. Was there no other place? No, there wasn't. He removed his cap and tucked it into the black bag. Then he came to another brutalizing realization. He would have to mount the bomb against the underside of the steel to assure that it would blow directly upward. To do that, he would need to lift his arms. So Siegfried turned onto his back. He edged his way under the steel platform, squirming deeper, farther into the darkness until he had a creeping sense of being in some tomb, estranged from the rest of the world, a steel and concrete coffin.
He edged ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet under the platform, pulling his bag along with him. His whole uniform was soaked. And filthy! He hadn't counted on the grime and grease. And now the air seemed thin, as if he were suffocating. His heart jumped and all of his fears came back to him. Why did he have to prove himself to Berlin?
A vision of the Reich suddenly was before him. An open-air stadium in Nuremburg. The military marching music. A glorious sky. A thousand flags and fifty thousand uniformed troopers!
He pushed onward. He was where he wanted to be. He gingerly pulled the bomb from the bag and pressed it to the steel nine inches above his face. He pulled a heavy bolt of tape from the bag. Just a few more seconds and…
Siegfried froze.
He heard two male voices in the engine room. God in heaven! He heard the door close and the voices drew closer. Siegfried barely breathed.
Now he could feel the sweat running down his temples from his forehead. Footsteps came ever closer, and he heard the brogue of the northern reaches of the British Isles, Cumberland or Scotland, he couldn't be sure. His ear was not good enough on English dialects. And it barely mattered, anyway.
Then, with a tremendous thump, two sailors were on the platform above him. Their feet shuffled and they were inches above his face.
Inches above his device. If their thumping sets it off prematurely
… Siegfried did not finish the thought. His hand was still on the bomb. He knew what would happen if the device were detonated.
He could feel the ship rocking gently. A panic seized him and he almost wanted to surrender. He would go to jail. Anything! Just get him out of that tomb!
He bit his lower lip. He heard snatches of conversation from above, the unswerving topic of interest for sailors at work.
'So how's she look? She got big ones, does she?'
'I've never seen Janie's friend.'
'I want a girl with big ones, you know.'
