And the deep blue sea

might be too late. Each time he rose to the crest of a swell he looked anxiously ahead in the direction she had to be. Then he saw her. She rose to the top of a swell less than fifty yards away, only the back of her head visible above the surface.

She disappeared, and looked as though she had gone under. No, she’d probably just dropped away behind the swell. He threshed ahead. He saw her again, closer now, but she was in trouble. She went under, and he could see her struggling weakly. A hand came out. Then her face emerged for a few seconds. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth opened as she tried to gulp for air, water ran into it, and she sank from sight. She didn’t come up again. He was still twenty yards away.

Gasping for breath himself and driven by the awful compulsion to hurry, he tried to keep his eyes fixed on the spot as he flailed ahead, but it was next to impossible in the tilting planes of the swell. He was above it, then cut off from it, and then below it. The sun was in his face, glaring off the surface and making it impossible to see beneath. The only thing to do was go beyond, and turn, with the sun over his shoulder so he could see down. He should be over it now. He lunged on for a few more strokes, and swung around, searching frantically. It might already be too late.

Luck was with him; he saw her almost at once. A swell passed under him, and with the sun’s rays striking almost perpendicularly into the plane of its retreating slope, it was like looking into a shop window. A flash of gold caught the corner of his eye off to the right, and he turned, and she was only three or four feet below the surface less than ten feet away. He swam over and dived, twined his fingers in the aureole of blonde hair streaming outward from her head, and kicked to the surface.

Her eyes were closed, and there was no responsive movement from her body, no attempt to clutch at him at all as he held her against him with her face above the surface. How did he get the water out of her when they were both immersed in it to their chins, with no way to raise her above it? Maybe if he lay flat with the life ring under his back he would have enough buoyancy. When he was positioned, he hauled her body over his and pushed up hard into her midriff, but before her face could clear the water they both went under.

That was hopeless, and he had wasted precious seconds. He threw one leg over the rim of the life ring and stood vertically in the water astride it. It supported them with no need to tread water when he took her in his arms and held her upright against him. He brushed back the wet hair plastered to her face. Taking a deep breath, he forced her mouth open, placed his over it, and blew. He pressed in hard on her ribs to force her to exhale.

He took another breath and blew it into her lungs, and repeated the cycle. Twice, three times, four times. He was doing it too fast, driven by the frantic need to sense in her some sign of returning life. Slow down, damn it, he told himself harshly; it has to be the same rhythm as natural breathing. Keep going. She’s not dead. She can’t be. Please, she can’t be.

He looked around at the numbing emptiness of the horizon and wondered if he were already mad. So after he had revived her, they’d have a scared and shaky laugh at what a close call it had been, get in the car, and drive home. Why the hell couldn’t he leave her alone? She was free, already beyond the agony and the consciousness of dying; why condemn her to go through it again? He didn’t know. She just had to open her eyes.

He had his lips against hers, blowing inward, when he felt her move. There was a little shudder, and a gasp, and a hand brushed against his side. He pressed, and she exhaled, and when he started to force breath into her again, her rhythm caught and she inhaled herself. He was suddenly aware then of the intimacy of the way he was holding her, as if they were kissing or making love, with his mouth over hers and her breasts pressed tightly against his chest. The bra had gone, apparently ripped away by the force of her plunge feet-first into the water or when she was whirled through the maelstrom of the wake.

He cursed himself for a voyeur and a ghoul, but he was aware at the same time there was nothing erotic about it; he just wanted her to open her eyes. When she did, and saw him, and said something, he would no longer be alone. Admittedly, this made no sense, but as far as he could see that was why he’d come back here. He freed the life ring, put it over her and under her arms, and held an arm across it behind her to keep her in it and to support himself. She gagged and retched and was briefly sick from the salt water she had swallowed. He washed her lips and continued to hold her while her breathing became stronger, and in a moment she opened her eyes.

There was no comprehension in them at first. She looked blankly at him, and then around at the lonely expanse of sea and the squall bearing down on them. He expected her to cry out, or become hysterical, or faint, but she didn’t. Perhaps it couldn’t penetrate fast enough to slug you all at once. She turned her eyes back to his face, still seeming more bewildered than anything. ‘You—’ She gagged, and tried again. ‘You didn’t jump in—after me?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘They threw me over.’ He explained briefly how he happened to have the life ring. She said nothing. Her chin trembled for a moment, and he could sense her struggle for control.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘No.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘It was my fault. If I’d stayed behind you—’

‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ His gesture included them and all the empty sea. ‘You had it made, if I’d left you alone.’

‘Oh. You’re apologizing for saving my life?’

‘Saving?’

‘Well, all it ever is is a postponement.’ She choked, and began to cough. ‘And the ship might come back if the others know about it.’

‘The others haven’t got guns,’ Goddard said. He told her of Mayr’s running out into the well-deck. ‘Either the smoke drove him out or they’d already moved him to another hiding place and somebody discovered him.’

‘Well, it’s failed now. Everybody knows he’s still alive. What can Lind do?’

'I don’t know,’ Goddard said. The thing that baffled him was that Lind could have saved himself any time in the past two days if he’d wanted to, simply by getting rid of Mayr. He’d apparently sacrificed Krasicki without a qualm; why not Mayr too? When he saw the illusion was coming apart at the seams and they were all going to be exposed it would seem the simplest way out, for a man as ruthless as Lind, would be to destroy the evidence. Instead, he had gone on in his futile and dangerous attempts to shore up the dike by getting rid of Captain Steen and Mrs. Lennox. Discipline? Ideological fanaticism? That made no sense. Of what value was Mayr to any resurgence of Naziism? He couldn’t surface anywhere on earth without being arrested, and he was the symbol of nothing but butchery and final defeat. But still Lind was apparently willing to destroy the whole crew if he had to in order to pull it off.

Thunder crashed, nearer now, and erratic puffs of wind began to riffle the surface of the swell. To the north and west the sky was blotted out, and the impenetrable curtain of rain swept down toward them only a few hundred yards away. Suddenly Karen cried out, ‘Look!’

Goddard turned and stared. Less than a half mile to the west of them the Leander had emerged from the gray line of rain. A towering column of smoke poured up from her after well-deck, shot through with red tongues of flame to the height of her stack. The fire had burst out of number three hold at last. She seemed to be on a southerly heading, but before he could be sure, the squall engulfed them and she was blotted out.

* * *

Antonio Gutierrez crossed himself, but seemed to be incapable of any further movement. He had never been on the bridge of a ship before and he wished devoutly that he had never seen this one, but if he moved somebody might notice him. He was no longer sure any of this was really happening, anyway; his belief in his own sanity already shaken by the resurrection of a dead man, he was now confronted with the fact that he had seen a woman with long blonde hair fall overboard but when he’d told the officer and pointed, what they had seen emerge from the foamy water back there was a man’s head with short black hair. Fortunately, the officer hadn’t seemed to notice this discrepancy in his story; he had told the steering man to turn the ship around and had thrown over the salvavida, but now the big first officer was striding through the wheelhouse toward them. Somebody had said he was now the captain, and his eyes were very cold and mean.

The ship had already started her swing and Harald Svedberg was staring aft, trying to determine whether the man in the water had seen the life ring fall, when he looked around and saw Lind coming through the wheelhouse.

‘Mr. Svedberg!’ Lind snapped. ‘Back on your course!’

‘There’s a man overboard,’ the third mate started to explain, when Lind cut him off.