Hardy was amazed as this compassionate creature told him about people who filled her life and from whom she derived so much pleasure. It was a family, Hardy suddenly realized, she was speaking of a family. Not just father-mother-brother-sister, but a gathering of people whose lives were linked through the kind heart of Beatrice Schiffer. Her sensitivity was boundless, her understanding of human nature and her acceptance of people and their foibles unlimited.
She stopped suddenly and turned in distress. “Oh,” she said. “I have done it again. Prattle on like a schoolgirl. Beatrice Marlene Schiffer, when will you ever learn? How can I be so silly?” She fixed Hardy with a look of sincere apology. “Captain Hardy, I must ask you to forgive me.”
Hardy stood, holding a half-filled gravy boat. He set it on the table. “Miss Schiffer,” he began. “Don’t…”
“Beatrice, please.”
Hardy nodded, not trusting himself to use her Christian name for fear that he would stumble over it. “You mustn’t concern yourself. I enjoyed very much those things that you spoke of. Ships and the sea. That’s all I’ve ever been. Around men of course. And old Firedancer. They are all that I have. I had forgotten that other lives exist, that there is something beyond what I have been accustomed to. Odd, isn’t it? I never considered anything that wasn’t right in front of these old, tired eyes.”
She watched him choose his words carefully, letting him speak at his own pace, feel his way around an unfamiliar subject.
“I must confess,” he drew a deep breath and was silent for a moment. “That I made excuses to come to the store so that I might have the opportunity to speak with you.” He abandoned all caution, surprising himself. “A few words from you were all that I needed to tide me over through the worst of times. I am probably the clumsiest man in the world when it comes to making myself known. It is nothing for me to do so on Firedancer. I know that sort of life all right. But with you. Here. Now. Well, that’s a different matter, altogether.” Hardy heard the front door open and the bell ring merrily.
“There,” Topper announced, pushing through the curtain. “Here I come with the sherry. Got the old man out of bed I did. Told him that I had a right proper hero to supper and that the man needed something to brace him against the cold.”
Beatrice and Hardy exchanged glances as Topper scurried about the kitchen, searching through cabinets for glasses, giving a blow-by-blow description of his discussion with the old man who ran the spirits shop. He stopped.
“Why, you’ve cleared the table,” he said in astonishment. “Bea, the table’s cleared.”
“Yes, Topper,” Beatrice said, smiling softly at Hardy.
“In front of the Captain?”
“Captain Hardy helped me, Topper.”
“Helped you? Good Lord, Bea, you didn’t put the man to work in the kitchen, did you?”
Beatrice turned to her brother. “He volunteered, Topper,” she said calmly.
“Quite right, Mr. Schiffer,” Hardy said warmly, his eyes falling on Beatrice. “It was my pleasure.”
Chapter 10
Even under the low light of the arc lamps, the S-boats of Flotilla 11 looked dangerous to Kommodore Walters. The armored skullcap bridge and the wheelhouse roof painted a dark gray, contrasting with the pale gray of the vertical surfaces, sat low on the deck; its black windows soulless eyes that stared into the dim interior. The clean hull swept back from the bow’s knife-edge to the sculpted cutouts for the enclosed torpedo tubes. Just aft of the bridge was a twin-mount 2cm gun with its armored shield surrounded by ammunition lockers, racks for extra barrels, and helmet boxes. Next was a large rubber dinghy and a 4cm Bofor’s cannon, its long, thin barrel secured so that it pointed aft.
It was the deepened and enlarged well in the bow that held Walters’s interest, or rather what sat in the well. The Trinity guns, he had been told, recoilless cannon with stubby barrels, were an aberration on a vessel whose sleek lines denoted speed. The guns and their mount, rising from within the deck, were a hideous growth, begging to be cut out and tossed overboard. That, in fact, was going to happen. The monstrosity would be removed and a 4-barrelled 2cm Flakvierling, or 3.7cm flak gun, would be inserted in the well.
Walters moved to the edge of the quay and peered into the dark water that surrounded the boat’s pale hull. The hull below the waterline was covered in a black, anti-fouling paint so that any light that penetrated the water was immediately sucked up by the dark surface.
“You can’t see them,” Reubold said behind Walters.
The kommodore turned as Reubold joined him at the edge. The Raven, he was called for his dark moods and fast boats. He looks ill, Walters thought, noting the man’s sunken eyes.
“There,” Reubold said, pointing into the dingy water. “If you lean over, you might see the leading edges of the struts and supports. Be careful not to fall in.”
Walters made a show of not being interested. He studied the roof of the pen. The large work lights glared back at him. Electric cables ran along the pitted concrete ceiling, clinging to the dull surface like thick vines, dropped down the wall, and disappeared into the rusting, gray metal cabinets. The large derrick that served the boats rumbled down its glistening rails suspended from the ceiling and stopped near the head of the pen.
Walters glanced around. “Busy place,” he commented.
“It’s the war,” Reubold said. “It continually interferes with day-to-day activities.”
“Are they as fast as they say?’ Walters asked, restraining himself from looking into the water. He knew that Reubold thought him a fool and Rommel’s stooge, and the act of peering into a greasy, stagnant pool of water simply reinforced that idea. There was a mutual distrust of staff and line: staff certain that the men who did the fighting were egotistical and erratic, with line firmly convinced that staff was nothing more than a brotherhood of fat, soft idiots who knew nothing of the sea or boat handling. The tension arose continually, when each thought that the other intruded in its domain, and lessened their efficiency. No matter, Walters knew; it was a common state of affairs that had to be dealt with. The kommodore viewed himself as a diplomat, and his mission was to investigate the resources of the Kriegsmarines in defense of the Atlantic Wall. Even if they were volatile men such as Reubold.
“ ‘They’ say so much. It’s very difficult to keep up with what is actually said.”
“Forty knots,” Walters said, baiting Reubold.
“Forty knots,” the fregattenkapitan scoffed. “You people… sixty knots and more if the sea is right. We can keep that speed for thirty minutes at a time.”
“Why just thirty?”
“Her wings won’t take any more than that.”
“Wings?”
“Hydrofoils,” Reubold said. “Waldvogel’s wings, we call them. The fellow that invented them and that mighty weapon on the bow.”
Walters watched as several men worked around the triple-gun mount, inserting chains and strapped through the supports. There was nothing threatening about the guns. They did not look deadly — they were just machines, awkwardly industrial. They were not graceful. They were functional and ugly.
“Off they come,” Reubold said, following the kommodore’s gaze. “Orders, you know. Perhaps your orders.”
“No, not mine,” Walters said, unfazed by the accusation. “What is their range?”