The activity on deck soon increased. Feet clumping quickly. Orders shouted. Muffled by the locker walls, Newman couldn't be sure, but he thought they were talking in Russian. He waited half an hour before he risked lifting the lid again. He was very puzzled – that power cruiser, big as it was, could never take on board the Skorpion load Stahl had brought from Leipzig.
The cruiser was lashed to the side of the Wroclaw. Loading was well under way. But it wasn't the Skorpion boxes they were transhipping to the cruiser. He watched as seamen, organized in a chain, transferred small sacks to the cruiser.
More seamen were now aboard the cruiser, taking the sacks handed down to them from the freighter. Newman couldn't see inside the cruiser, but he had the impression the sacks were being carried below decks. No sign of Anders. No sign of the man in the balaclava helmet. And it was impossible to see the name of the power cruiser. He lowered the lid carefully and sat down again. What the hell was going on?
Newman drank more mineral water, ignored the vodka. He was scared again. One of those seamen might take it into his `head to peer inside the locker. Life was like that. You relaxed, thinking the worst was over – and the worst was to come. It just needed one of those Russian-speaking seamen to find him and he was dead. He shivered with the cold.
The events of recent days passed through his mind like film shots. Crossing the border under the watchtower after he'd left Peter Toll. The first confrontation with Schneider inside the mist-bound forest. Cycling with Falken – with Gerda behind them. The lock-keeper's cottage. Schneider bursting in on them. Gerda shooting him with a short burst from the Uzi… The road-block… Radom's farm… The zigzag… Karen Piper… Hiding inside the camper under the bridge… Driving the camper through the water-filled gulch… His last sight of Falken diverting the Intelligence men… of Gerda bundled into the patrol car. Not now, dear God. Not now.
He switched on the torch and double-checked the chart. A cross showed the position of the Wroclaw – with the vessel's name neatly printed. The position where it was stopped now, presumably. A line showed the south- westerly course he must follow…
He stopped looking at the chart. He could hear the engine of the power cruiser starting up, fading rapidly away. He realized the clumping of feet, the sound of voices, had stopped. He checked his watch. 10.30 p.m.
He hurriedly stowed everything away inside the dinghy -including the enamel jug. He stuffed the folded chart inside his belt. He'd just finished doing these things when the lid was lifted. He tensed, looked up. Anders stared down. It was night.
`Time to go,' Anders said.
`I'm ready…'
`Get out then. This side…'
The starboard side of the deck was deserted. In the dark the freighter's lights glowed, bow and stern and on the bridge. Anders hauled out the dinghy, coiled the rope, lowered the dinghy down the side of, the hull. The heavy outboard touched the calm water first, then the rest of the dinghy settled.
Newman was glad he'd stowed away everything inside the compartments lining the interior. The dinghy bobbed up and down against the hull as Anders held on to the other end of the rope.
`You understood the chart?' he asked.
`Perfectly. And I know Lubeck.
`Listen carefully. I've posted lookouts forward but not aft. You found the paddle? Good. You're going down this rope into the dinghy. I'll hold on until you're inside and then drop the rope. Coil it inside the dinghy. Wait! You must wait – until the Wroclaw starts moving. There's a risk.' His voice was grim. Tut it's the only way you can leave unseen by a lookout. The moment the ship starts moving push yourself away from it with the paddle. Then paddle like hell away from us – the risk is you'll get caught up in the screws. You'll end up as mincemeat if that happens. The outboard would get you clear in good time – but you can't start that until we are well away. The motor would be heard. If it wasn't, you'd be seen. Do you understand?'
`Perfectly. I'd better go…'
`You say you know Lubeck?'
`Yes…'
`Then you might make it.'
Newman swung himself over the rail, grasped the rope, began the descent. He understood now why Anders had knotted the rope at intervals. He grasped the rope just above each knot. Without the knots he could have slid, endured agonizing rope burn. He used his feet like a mountaineer, bouncing out from the hull with each phase, then planting the flat of his shoes against the hull. It seemed to go on forever. His arms were weak from hours of enforced confinement inside the truck and then cooped up in the locker. He felt at any moment he'd let go. Then he remembered Anders, taking the whole brunt of his weight. The Pole had the strength of a lion. He gritted his teeth, kept moving. If Anders could stick it, so could he.
When he was least expecting it, his feet landed in the dinghy, which rocked all over the sea. He paused, still holding the rope, then gingerly lowered himself inside the dinghy. He looked up for the first time since he'd come over the side. Anders, feeling the rope slacken, was peering down. He dropped the rope, disappeared.
Newman began hauling in the rope which had dropped into the sea. A loose rope was dangerous – just the thing which could get tangled up with the ship's screws. He worked fast, coiling the rope. Then began the nerve- wracking search for the paddle, the one thing he'd missed when examining everything inside the locker. He couldn't locate it. Anders must have arranged some signal with a crewman on the bridge – he'd had no time to return to it. The crewman had contacted the chief engineer. In a frighteningly short period of time the Wroclaw's engines came to life, throbbing with increasing power. Where the devil was the bloody paddle?
He found it seconds before the Wroclaw's hull began sliding past him, bringing the screws at the stern closer every moment. It was strapped to the starboard side of the dinghy. He pulled it free, took a firm grip on the handle and pushed against the hull with all his strength. The dinghy drifted a few feet away. Not far enough. He paddled furiously, dipping into the water, now choppy from the forward movement of the freighter. The dinghy bobbed, fell, bobbed, fell again over the waves. He seemed to be as close to the freighter as before.
Now he could see – hear above the beat of the engines – the churning wash of the great screws slicing through the water, a powerful gushing sound as the Baltic was threshed into a foaming wake. The undertow! If he wasn't clear of the vessel, the undertow swept up by the revolving screws would sweep him back, take him straight into the mincing machine Anders had warned him against, chopping him to pieces.
He thought of the blonde girls who'd been savaged by some maniac in Travemunde, the horror Kuhlmann had described. They'd been scratched compared with what would happen to him if those screws sucked him in.
The hull continued to slide past. He forced his weary arms to continue paddling. With fearful slowness the dinghy seemed to drift away from the Wroclaw. With fearful speed the stern came closer, the thrashing roar of the screws grew louder. He glanced over his shoulder.
The stern was abreast of him. The maelstrom curdled round the dinghy. He could feel the insidious pull of the undertow, dragging the dinghy to destruction. He paddled madly in the frothing sea. The dinghy rocked furiously, almost tipping him overboard. Water slopped inside it. He could no longer tell what was happening. He looked quickly over his shoulder again, stared.
The stern of the Wroclaw was receding. The water was less choppy. The ship sailed on, turning due north for the Fehmarn Belt, the stretch of the Baltic dividing Denmark from West Germany. Newman stopped paddling. He collapsed, leant forward, utterly exhausted.
Forty-Six
His first landmark was the flashing light at the top of the Hotel Maritim in Travemunde Strand. The sea was still lake calm and he sped towards it at full speed.
`Thank God,' he said to himself. 'I'll make the western channel.'
Which was rather important. The eastern channel on the other side of Priwall Island was inside the DDR. He'd waited awhile to gather the strength to start up the outboard. It had responded to the third pull. He was soaked to the skin. He'd used the enamel jug – after emptying it – to bale out the dinghy.
He felt he'd been away five years as the lights on shore came closer. It was after midnight. There was no
