loud.
Van Gelder and his men needed to maintain absolute silence, because the enemy was so near. But they also had to work quickly. The cruise missile vertical launch array was already reloaded, but there was so much still to be done. Van Gelder stood on Voortrekker’s hull behind the sail, next to the open weapons- loading hatch which led down to the torpedo room. He paused for just a moment, to wipe his dripping brow. He eyed his wristwatch and frowned. He glanced up from his labors and looked about the secret hold to take stock of the situation. The feeling of being on tenterhooks wouldn’t subside.
The Trincomalee Tiger was well equipped — with the special cranes needed to transfer weapons to a nuclear submarine, and with the nuclear weapons themselves. The German Kampfschwimmer commando team that ter Horst had told Van Gelder to expect was already below with their gear.
But the loading of torpedoes — Van Gelder’s major remaining task to supervise — was taking much longer than planned, in part because the seas around the Tiger had gotten so rough. Van Gelder thought the tropical storm off Australia must be stronger than forecast. Or maybe a different storm had formed unexpectedly off Antarctica; Antarctic weather often changed suddenly, violently.
The worse the weather outside, the longer the last of the loading would take. The longer the loading took, the worse the weather. Van Gelder just couldn’t win.
The biggest problem was that, because of these delays, the Australian destroyer arrived. With typical British Commonwealth seamanship and flair, the Aussies sent over a motorized launch with a well-equipped repair party. They were aboard the Trincomalee Tiger right now. Sometimes Van Gelder could hear banging beyond the aft end of the submarine hold, where Royal Australian Navy sailors were trying to help fix machinery that wasn’t really broken. Voortrekker’s weapons reloading was supposed to have been completed, and the fake mechanical problems on Tiger solved, well before the destroyer ever got there.
Outwardly, Van Gelder maintained the appearance of calm and confidence. He didn’t allow crew discipline to slacken in the least. Inwardly, the thought of enemy forces so close, with Voortrekker so defenseless, sent chills right up his spine. Van Gelder’s hands felt like ice cubes, yet he sweated all the more. He listened to his men whispering urgently while they worked.
Van Gelder glanced aft apprehensively. How much longer will our luck hold out? The maritime patrol plane was still orbiting overhead, and the destroyer would be well armed with nuclear antisubmarine weapons. This meant that Voortrekker dared not leave until the destroyer was gone — to even have the freighter open the secret hold’s bottom doors, with the destroyer’s sonars listening nearby, was an appalling risk.
Worst thought of all, if the enemy realized what the Trincomalee Tiger really was, her neutrality would be forfeit. She could be sunk quite legally, with Voortrekker still inside. There might be no advance warning down here in the hold, and a stream of five-inch armor-piercing shells might come through the Tiger’s sides at any time.
Van Gelder wiped his dripping forehead on his uniform sleeve yet again. Yet again he urged his loading crew to work faster, without making noise. Any strange thuds or clanking forward of the Tiger’s engine room might easily trigger suspicion, and cause an investigation by an armed Australian boarding party. If the freighter’s crew were lax in their acting skills, or seemed nervous in the wrong way face to face with Royal Australian Navy officers and chiefs, the game would be up that much sooner. The Australians might even disable the tender’s bottom doors, and capture the Tiger with Voortrekker trapped inside.
A crewman dropped a wrench. It made a dull thunk against the soft anechoic tiles that covered Voortrekker’s hull. Van Gelder almost jumped at the sound. He turned to the man and scolded him under his breath. The loading work went on.
A few minutes later Jan ter Horst climbed up on deck through the open forward escape trunk. Van Gelder was surprised to see he wore a pistol belt. Two Kampfschwimmer followed, the commander and the chief, lugging scratched-up, old Russian AK-47 rifles. Ter Horst must be as worried at this point as I am.
On Challenger, inside the Prima Latina “Buenos dias, Senor Capitan.”
Jeffrey, standing outside the open weapons-loading hatch of Challenger, shook hands with the bearded seaman. Up close, now, the man looked not so much scruffy as authoritative and shrewd. He smelled strongly of cigar smoke and stale sweat.
“Yes, buenos dias,” Jeffrey replied. That much Spanish he knew.
“I am sorry for the rough ride before, Capitan. The Russians, since the war, they do not like Cuba so much, you know. Sometimes they try to scare us with the hazardous maneuvers. Their trawlers make our freighters get out of the way, and we file protests. Sometimes they even throw garbage, and we throw garbage back.” The man laughed from deep in his belly, like it was all some great sailor’s joke.
“Exactly who are you?”
The man touched the side of his nose. “My real name does not matter. The important thing is that I am a friend. You may, I suppose, call me Rodrigo if you wish.”
Jeffrey looked him square in the eyes. “Who do you work for?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“I couldn’t begin to.”
“But surely you can guess. Don’t you enjoy guessing games, Senor Capitan?”
“You’re not American,” Jeffrey stated.
“But I am, or should I say, I was. I was born in Miami. My family returned to Habana, our ancestral home, after the Great Reconciliation, when our former enemy Castro retired. As Fidel himself was able to foresee, socialism and democracy are not so contradictory after all. Now I only use my Cuban passport.”
That was all well and good, but Commodore Wilson expected Jeffrey to trust his command to this guy, and to whomever he represented. “So who do you work for?”
“Why, the CIA of course!.. Please, Capitan, please, come with me.”
Jeffrey followed the man up the catwalk inside the Prima Latina’s clandestine hold. They came to a small hatch.
“I apologize that we must go now on our hands and knees. The secret passages must be small, you understand, so as not to be discovered by an adversary.”
Jeffrey nodded. Wilson had told him to go with the man, but told him nothing more.
“And please do not mind the rats.”
“Rats?”
“Every aged tramp steamer must have rats, no? They discourage customs inspectors from inspecting us too closely.” Rodrigo laughed again, a hearty, confiding laugh. “But do not worry, they are our pets.”
“You keep rats as pets?”
“Si. These are all former laboratory rats. How do you say? Pedigreed. Please, Capitan, after you.” Rodrigo gestured at the entry into the crawl space.
Jeffrey hesitated.
“The rats are tame, and had their shots. I assure you they do not bite.”
Jeffrey climbed into the tight companionway, followed a bend, then took the ladder up. He didn’t see any rats. On Rodrigo’s urging, he undogged the hatch at the other end of the crawl space.
He came out in a dark and dingy cargo hold, filled with stacks of large cardboard cartons on pallets. The deck he walked on was a solid floor of wooden packing crates. The hold reeked of stinking bilgewater. Jeffrey jumped when something on the deck, brownish and ugly, hissed and scurried out of his way.
“My apologies,” Rodrigo rushed to say. “I forgot to mention we also have the spiders.”
“That thing was a spider?” It was the size of a dinner plate.
