Straits of Power

while we’re noisy.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Tell the navigator to work out a course.”

“Speed, sir?”

“Twenty knots. We’ll be stealthy enough, and that should put us at the start of the Mozambique Channel in one day.”

“Understood.”

“Dismissed.”

Knipp left Schneider’s cabin.

Schneider called up a larger-scale nautical chart. This one showed the whole east coast of Africa, and the western part of the Indian Ocean, as far north as the Arabian Sea.

Once we achieve flank speed, it’s a few thousand miles to my new destination. Another three or four days. Enough time to think up good tactics. But not enough time to get back here before Challenger arrives and von Scheer sails. Whichever way that rematch goes, I’ll never gain command of von Scheer now.

Schneider stared at the nautical chart and cursed.

Chapter 28

Late Tuesday morning, toward the end of his regular office hours as a trade attache, Klaus Mohr hung up from a puzzling phone call. He sat at his desk and brooded. Traffic noise coming through the open window broke in on his thoughts. A muezzin called the faithful to noon prayer from loudspeakers on the minaret of a nearby mosque. As if in counterpoint, radios and disk players outside blared as each passed by, in cars or held by pedestrians, an ever-changing mix of Western and Turkish and Arabic music that ebbed and flowed in exotic dissonance.

The musical dissonance, and the tug-of-war between theological and secular, seemed to Mohr to reflect his own mental state.

The phone call had left him concerned and confused. The voice was pleasant, female, young, and spoke German with a Pakistani accent. She’d told Mohr she was a secretary at Awais Iqbal’s company. Mr. Iqbal sent apologies that he wouldn’t be able to make the party Friday night; an export-import deal abroad had hit some snags. Instead, one of his local friends would pick Mohr up, with the same arrangements as before. The new person would be Turkish, and unlike Iqbal, he spoke fluent German. Mr. Iqbal hoped Herr Mohr would have a better time than ever.

Mohr didn’t like this. What if Iqbal was captured by German security, and interrogated? What if the substitution of someone else on Friday night is a trap?

I need to be very careful.

The strain of it all was becoming too much. Just yesterday, he’d received a message from his wife in Berlin. She’d said she’d heard too much of his shameful philandering with prostitutes. She demanded a divorce, with full custody of their children. Legal papers were being prepared in case he resisted, and to show him she hadn’t the least desire to try to reconcile. The tone of her message was bitter.

Mohr would curtly agree to all her terms, of course. It meshed with his broader scheme perfectly. This was the ideal way to protect his family from Axis retribution — if he defected successfully, and also if he was caught.

But the reality of her message pierced Mohr’s soul. He dearly loved his wife and children. If only he could explain. But there was no way he could ever explain.

Other things troubled Mohr too. Activity in the classified part of the consular facilities was suddenly heating up. He feared the Axis knew there was a leak somewhere. The pressure to finalize everything for Plan Pandora had skyrocketed. He saw that this forced his hand.

I must be sure the equipment is working smoothly, very soon. No further delaying tactics or I’ll be faced with a guaranteed no-win: Lingering equipment trouble will mean I can’t go out Friday night with the Turk, a trivial matter compared to Pandora from my superiors’ point of view…. I might be put under scrutiny for sabotage, or arrested, if the technical work develops further glitches now…. And I won’t be able to assure that one Kampfschwimmer team with their crucial gear are in the safe house Friday after midnight.

That last thing screamed to be Mohr’s top priority. Without the gear, and with the Pandora schedule moved up, his knowledge by itself became quite worthless to the Allies — the same way his special gear, without him alive and present to explain it, would do the Allied cause no good.

Mohr pondered in near despair… Got it!

I’ll pretend one attack team’s gear set is a lemon. Plagued by gremlins, as the old American expression went…. Yes. The set I started fiddling with on Sunday, which I’ll fix but then miscalibrate in a different way before it’s field-tested again in the daytime on Friday.

Mohr knew he needed to have the other gear sets functioning flawlessly, to save his skin and keep viable his last-ditch hope of defecting — which meant he had no choice but to leave behind for German use ten copies of a working, terrible weapon.

Mohr’s stomach turned as he had another realization. If he told his bosses about the call he’d just received, they could, for entirely different reasons, refuse to let him go: A last-minute change might make his bodyguards suspicious. Iqbal had been inside the consulate before, and after meeting with Mohr he’d been covertly photographed, then given a discreet background check. Who was this other person? Mohr hadn’t even been given a name. He only knew that Iqbal’s secretary had said Iqbal told her he vouched for the man. Assuming that some clever explanation by the Turk when he showed up, or maybe a note signed by Iqbal — whose signature the lobby log had on file — kept that part from becoming a problem later, the altered invitation gave Mohr’s bosses an easy opening to order him to decline it now, and simply stay on duty and stick to Pandora…. Yet if Mohr’s phone calls were monitored by consular security, for him to not tell his bosses early would definitely raise a red flag.

He’d never dreamed that espionage could be this complicated.

Mohr had to report the change immediately. He prayed he’d still be allowed to attend the party. Smooth- talking his superiors got harder every time — he was running out of ideas and excuses, and they were getting visibly annoyed.

The answer stared at Mohr from on top of his desk. His callousness surprised him. He would use the letter from his soon-to-be ex-wife as a tool, as his ticket to go with the Turk on Friday night: Now of all moments, divorcing, he needed thoroughly decadent release to clear his head. But the people he reported to might answer in just the opposite way: Now of all moments, he needed to reserve his head for essential business only.

If he couldn’t attend the party, but was instead taken directly to the safe house with strengthened bodyguards, he’d never make contact with the Turk, never brief his rescuers on the safe house’s inner layout, or even be able to tell them where it was. Even if his rescuers managed to tail him anyway, he’d never evade his own bodyguards and the Kampfschwimmer — if shooting started he’d probably die in the cross fire…. And that assumed his bodyguards and the Kampfschwimmer didn’t have secret instructions to make sure Mohr was never captured alive.

Wednesday morning, Captain Johansen, with Admiral Hodgkiss himself, came into Ilse’s workroom. Ilse stood to attention, surprised to see the admiral there in person.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Hodgkiss said, “though nothing about this will be easy.”

“Yes, sir.” Ilse was crestfallen. She had an idea of what was coming. She was also frightened — to land in the clutches of America’s overstretched, imperfect criminal-justice system as an accused foreign spy in a war could be the end of her.

“The director of the FBI has gone over my head to try to convince the CNO to pull your security clearance and sever your relationship with the United States Navy.”

“What now?”

“I placed my reputation on the line to back you up. This bought us time, but not a lot. The FBI is having an indictment drawn up against you for espionage. They say they had enough to go to a classified-level grand jury. The CNO told JAG to use some Byzantine jurisdictional issues to delay the indictment as long as they can. The Naval