Jeffrey pondered this. “I can’t leave my ship.”
“You can, and you will. That’s the whole point.”
“Oh… From da Gama’s perspective, applying the same sort of logic he used against our ambassador, the fact that I am where I am, right off the Brazilian coast, would be hard confirmation that I have good reason for being here. Challenger being in South American waters, not a whole ocean away near Africa and the convoy, helps prove the von Scheer must be real, and must be somewhere close by too. Otherwise, why would I be wasting my time anywhere near Brazil, thousands of miles from where the convoy action is and from where Challenger would do any good?… And if von Scheer is here, therefore not chasing the convoy, she must have other nasty business in Latin America now herself.”
“We simply must convince da Gama of our sincerity. We simply must convince him that atomic war in his front yard is very imminent. And at the same time we must convince him we have a strong resource in place, able to intervene to help him. You.”
“And all the talk-talk and pictures of a sunken destroyer could be empty promises and simple fakes. But me speaking to da Gama, there in the flesh as he watches my eyes, would do the trick?”
“Vital national interests are at stake…. It’s the best the State Department and the national security adviser and everybody else here can come up with, given the deadlines and the distances and travel times involved.”
Jeffrey took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Sir, with respect, how am I supposed to get into Brazil, and keep Challenger meaningfully in the fight? How do I maintain stealth with Axis agents lurking everywhere and von Scheer on the prowl? How do I know there isn’t a car bomb waiting for me? ”
“Our communications between here and there have been spotty the last few hours, they’re being tampered with or jammed…. We need to wrap this up quick, before some Axis hacker puts a cork in this conversation, Captain…. We have a plan that makes sense to me from the technical perspective, and da Gama is willing to go along, covertly. It keeps Challenger heading south, with your XO in acting command. You show your face to Getulio da Gama. Bond with the guy as much as you can. He’s supposed to be an excellent judge of character. Your orders are to win him over. Convince him we’re the good guys in this. Get him to perceive the actual threat, in real-time today, so he can take steps to try to fend off a nuclear holocaust. Get him to accept our help, and give us all of his help, to stop the maniacs in Berlin and Buenos Aires before it’s too late.”
“What sort of help from Brazil would make any difference? I’d much prefer to work on my own in international waters.”
“No, no, no. Because of those stolen warheads, everything is changed. American involvement crosses the coasts. This thing is way too big to sneak in just a small commando team covertly. We need outright permission for staging recon drones, deploying Special Forces, getting logistics support, and we need it fast. Your trip had been given the code name Operation Mercury. This also comes from the very top. If you need something from us yesterday, help or backup of any kind while you’re ashore, stick Mercury in the message header.”
“Mercury, like the planet?”
“The swift messenger of the gods from ancient mythology. Mercury. Invoke his name and the bureaucratic Red Sea of tape will part before your eyes.”
Jeffrey hesitated. “Sir, will I be asked to even the score, to give Brazil some of my nuclear weapons?”
“Negative. You will neither give any such weapons to Brazil, nor will you use atomic devices within the two-hundred-mile limit of the continent, under any circumstances whatsoever.”
This complicated things by reducing the options, but even so, Jeffrey felt immense relief. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m having my people here switch into digital mode. Details on how you get from points A to B to C will come through at your end in a text message once I sign off. We don’t know where the von Scheer is, but we do know where she isn’t. The routing instructions you’ll get make use of that to play things safe. And the Brazilians promise to get you back to Challenger as rapidly as they can.”
“Understood.”
“Cheer up,” Hodgkiss said. “I know about your private chat with the president. You did well, Captain. He’s very impressed. Now’s your chance to make it two for two.”
“Yes, sir.” Jeffrey felt doubtful inside. It seemed much more like double or nothing, a game he’d rather not play.
“It’s just like the good old days. When ships’ captains had to go ashore and act as diplomats. When the United States Navy was young, and the ink on the Monroe Doctrine was barely dry. Commodore Perry opening Japan. Teddy Roosevelt sending his Great White Fleet around the world…”
“That was a very long time ago, Admiral.” Hodgkiss is either supremely shrewd or exceedingly desperate.
“Besides,” Hodgkiss added as if he’d read Jeffrey’s mind through the radio, “ever been to Rio de Janeiro?”
“No.” Jeffrey’s head was spinning.
“It’s beautiful. You’ll love it…. And this could be your last chance for a visit before the place gets nuked.”
Ernst Beck had the conn in the von Scheer’s hushed and crowded Zentrale. The steady rhythm of normal changes of watch, submerged in a pressure hull that hadn’t seen the open air in days, gave him a feeling of intimate and cozy timelessness. The rising and setting of the sun, high affairs of state, trivial matters of human beings scurrying about on land in their teeming billions on different continents, all slipped into unreality. It was only the ship’s chronometer set to Berlin time, plus some mental juggling, that let Beck know what hour, what date it might be up on the surface.
It was only the thought of his orders that prevented him from having complete peace of mind.
He eyed his console screens. The ship’s depth was steady at 275 meters — 900 feet. Her speed was thirty knots. She was over very deep water, drawing toward the South American coast. Conflicting ocean currents in what was called the Subtropical Convergence, where warm seas from the equator clashed with cold from frigid Antarctica, garbled local sonar conditions and greatly aided stealth.
Beck was pleased with his crew and with himself. There were no signs at all of enemy pursuit. The only sonar contacts were biologics, as von Scheer carefully stayed far outside civilian shipping lanes. Schools of shrimp, sardines, and tuna clicked and splashed and digested food in this less despoiled part of the ocean. Humpback whales sang hauntingly, evocatively as they migrated south — their normal seasonal movements rendered perhaps more urgent by the human battle erupting far behind.
Beck had even been able to sneak back to the Rocks in the initial acoustic confusion of the atomic skirmish with Challenger to quickly recover von Scheer’s minisub with all the surviving kampfschwimmer. Shedler and his men were vital for what von Scheer needed to do next.
As the German captain scanned through other screen pages using his console menu, track marble, and keyboard, he was surprised to see Stissinger enter the Zentrale from aft, accompanied by a messenger.
“The baron requests a meeting with you in your cabin, sir. At your convenience, he said.” Stissinger rolled his eyes meaningfully. He obviously found the diplomat as tough to take as Beck did.
Beck sighed. “Very well, Einzvo. Now’s as good a time as any. You take over here.” Von Loringhoven
