Tidal Rip

was quite an annoyance.

“I have the conn,” Stissinger said. He shot the captain a barely suppressed grin.

“You have the conn.” Beck smiled too; he appreciated Stissinger’s backstopping and support.

“This is the first officer,” Stissinger announced formally. “I have the conn.”

“Aye aye,” the watchstanders acknowledged.

Beck followed the messenger aft toward his own cabin.

Beck saw von Loringhoven waiting for him in the passageway. He opened the door and let the baron precede him, as the guest, then locked the door behind them.

“I suggest we sit first,” von Loringhoven said.

Beck sat, leaving von Loringhoven to take the other chair, the one with its back to the door.

A small ploy, but let him feel slightly vulnerable. I have the power position, facing the door.

Von Loringhoven leaned forward and gave Beck one of his piercing eye-lock gazes.

Typical. Beck returned the gaze, impassive, not blinking. He waited for the other man to speak.

“I think this phase of our relationship has gone on long enough.”

“Baron?”

“We will open the next envelope with your orders soon. But much of what it says, I prefer now to anticipate and tell you in my own words.”

“As you wish.”

“We will have the kampfschwimmer leader Shedler join us when the orders are opened.”

“Fine. I suppose it’s his job to deliver our cargo?” The crated atom bombs, which Beck, while in Norway, had naively thought were bound for Boer South Africa. The bombs I learned at the Rocks, to my horror, are destined for Argentina instead. The bombs to which he gradually reconciled himself by falling back on his unfailing concept of duty and discipline.

“No. I see you do not fully understand.”

Beck tensed. Then he saw it, all of it.

A even worse atrocity. More innocent blood on my hands.

Beck felt his face turn purple with rage — at himself for his prior stupidity, at fate for putting him in such an insanely repugnant role, and at von Loringhoven for being the instrument of his moral self-destruction.

“That American warhead. It was never meant for intelligence purposes! You, you…”

Von Loringhoven held up both hands. “Captain, please. I did not make these decisions. I am under orders as much as you. Do you think I enjoy implementing the necessities of war any more than you do?”

“Frankly, yes! I think you enjoy it a great deal. I think you love power, and you find murder and destruction almost erotic. I’ve met your kind before.”

“Your previous captain?”

“Among others.”

“You hated him.”

Beck looked back within his mind. The memories were unpleasant. “I suppose I thoroughly hated him.”

“Yet you did your job very well.”

“Of course!”

“You’ve no need to raise your voice. I read your formal patrol report. The one you filed after your rescue… The most brilliant tactical gambits played by your last ship were your ideas as einzvo, not your commander’s.”

“Please get to the point.”

“You and I are tools of our government. We have our instructions, distasteful though they may be. We’re participants, both of us, in the continuum of history. Our task is not to make value judgments. The distinction between military and civilian targets is specious. The distinction between war at sea and war on land is a fallacy. The whole purpose of seapower is to influence events on land. Even American naval officers study and memorize that overwhelming, inescapable fact.”

“Then what exactly is our job, if we’re indeed amoral instruments as you say?”

“While Shedler and his men emplace the American warhead, equipped with new timer and arming equipment, you hold von Scheer ready with the cargo of German atom bombs. I leave with the kampfschwimmer, to show my face to old friends and strengthen relationships with the faction that supports us in Argentina.”

“And meanwhile I just linger offshore? Under combat conditions? With atomic war about to erupt between adjacent countries hard on our bow?”

“We’ll be in friendly waters. The Argentine Navy commanders are already behind us in secret. And as you know, there are no hostile contacts for thousands of miles, thanks to your subterfuge verging on genius in the Atlantic Narrows…. Since this is in large part a military operation, all the crucial orders must be issued by you yourself, as commanding officer of the kaiser’s most powerful modern capital ship.”

Beck felt heartsick. “What about our attaches right there?”

“We can’t have divided command on such a crucial and ticklish venture. That’s textbook military science, and it would be the road to disaster for Germany here…. Only you have been briefed on everything. For security. On a submarine at sea observing radio silence, there can’t be careless talk or enemy spies…. And we dare not have our people based in Buenos Aires try to contact Berlin, to verify shocking instructions or shift the blame.”

Beck thought it over, then nodded. Besides the risk of enemy signals intercept, he could easily picture embassy bureaucrats, when confronted with such aggressive escalation of the war, calling home to Germany for help, or stalling… or both. “You seem to know consulate habits well, Baron.”

“This is what I do for a living.”

“Where exactly are you going, then?”

“To a big house, on the pampas.” The fertile prairies of Argentina.

“A big house? You make it sound like a children’s story.”

“Sorry, that’s an expression in Spanish. It means a mansion, a villa. On a working cattle ranch. Owned by a native Argentine, a wealthy friend from when I was stationed in Buenos Aires. Outwardly, my visit is merely a gesture of friendship to a neutral being persecuted by a mutual enemy, the United States abetted by Brazil. The foreign aid you’ll deliver via minisub, the German-made bombs, won’t be sent ashore until long enough after our faked American blast that everything will appear as fully legitimate — so the scheme should make you feel better, Captain, not worse.”

Beck nodded; he couldn’t deny the awful logic of one appalling act designed to justify the other.

“By that time as well,” the baron went on, “and through the selfsame enabling event of the pseudo-American blast, our local friends will have seized control of Argentina’s armed forces and the central government.”

“It’s all so Byzantine.”

“That’s how these things work.”

“If you say so.” Events are moving too fast.

Beck knew his hesitation had to be obvious.

“Think how this will benefit your career,” von Loringhoven said. “It can’t be easy for you, as the son of a dairy farmer. Unless you achieve great victories in battle, and implement grand strategies so ‘Byzantine’ as you call them, you’ll never earn a von after your name if the kaiser still smells cow manure beneath your fingernails.”

“I don’t give a damn about titles.”

“Such titles are hereditary. Do it for your sons.”

Beck sat and pondered. To go backward now would be cowardice and treason. To go forward might well