“I will give you three seconds,” he said, as a small red glow of fury burned deep in his eyes, “to convince me you’re not either a liar or a madman.”
Michael saw no need to waste time. “I was placed here to protect the Wesshausers if necessary. But mostly to watch the crew, just in case a member of the secret police got aboard. I know the histories of everyone here. You, Mr. Kpanga, are a very intelligent and ambitious man who did extremely well with his studies at the University of London. Medina, you broke your wife’s right arm in a fight two years ago and your brother-in-law swore to kill you. You wound up putting him in the hospital in Seville with a knife to the belly. And you, captain…well, I know you also. Want me to tell you about the Swede?”
“No,” said Beauchene.
Michael nodded. The less said about that child-molester at the helm, the better.
Beauchene handed the pistol back to Medina. Then, moving surprisingly fast for a man his size, he slapped Michael across the mouth with his right hand so hard the blood bloomed from Michael’s lower lip and for a few seconds tears of pain fogged his vision.
“How dare you,” said the captain, in a voice made of sharp-edged gravel. “How dare you bring this on my crew and on my ship. You British! You self-centered prigs! Playing your spy games! Fuck you and fuck all of you!” The spittle flew from his mouth. “I hope you will be very happy with the outcome of this! Monsieur Medina!”
“Sir!” said the Spaniard.
“All Stop.”
Medina moved toward the engine order telegraph.
“Don’t touch that,” Michael said.
“Oh, how he threatens!” Beauchene’s ugly mug twisted in an uglier grin. “And him without a gun! Go on, give the order!”
“You stop those engines,” Michael said, “and every man on this ship is dead.”
“Christ, this one believes in himself, doesn’t he? All right, my fine fucking fellow, how do you propose to kill every member of my crew?”
“I won’t. You will. By stopping those engines. You let that ship take the Wesshausers, and you’ll think that’s the end of it. But then the men on that ship will bring their machine guns and grenades and whatever else they have aboard, and they will begin murdering everyone here. Why? Because the Nazis want no international incident. They don’t want the British press or the press of any other country on earth to get wind that they’ve kidnapped a weapons expert who was trying to get away from them. And taken his family, as well.” Michael paused to wipe his lip with the back of his hand. The smell of his own blood, to him, filled up the wheelhouse.
“You know what they’ll do,” Michael continued, and now he cast his gaze around at Medina and Kpanga to draw them in. “They’ll kill everyone and then sink the Sofia. And I’m sure they didn’t come unprepared for that. The Sofia becomes another statistic. A freighter, lost in the North Sea. Who can say what happened? But I can promise you, there will be no one left alive to tell the tale. So, Captain Beauchene, you stop the engines and give the Wesshausers over, and you and I and every man on this ship are dead.”
No one spoke.
No one moved, but for the Sofia herself.
The rain had strengthened, and thrashed against the glass.
“Madre de Dios,” Medina whispered, his eyes huge above the black beard.
“Captain, sir!” It was a voice from a room along the shadowed corridor. Michael recognized a Russian accent. “We’re receiving a radio message!”
No one stopped Michael when he followed the captain, Kpanga and Medina back to the small radio room. The Russian-born radioman, a sallow long-jawed drink of brine, had his earphones resting around his neck and was tuning the dials on a slab of a radio with louvers in it that displayed the red heartbeat of its tubes.
Over a noise of static and tones that sounded like a half-drunk Scotsman playing a bagpipe as a scorched cat howled along, a firm and clipped voice from the radio’s speaker said, “Repeat: this is the German vessel Javelin, to the Norwegian freighter Sofia. Captain Manson Konnig requests you to follow his instruction. Stop engines and prepare to be boarded. Repeat: stop engines and prepare to be boarded.”
Then the static and tones increased in tumultuous noise and the radioman had to dial down the volume.
“Still jamming us,” he told Beauchene. “We can’t get anything out, sir.”
“Merde!” The captain smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Merde! Merde! You can’t break it?”
“No, sir.”
Beauchene shot a glance of disgust at Michael. “You see what you’ve done? We can’t even send an SOS! We’re helpless out here!”
“Tell me about their ship.” Michael was addressing Enam Kpanga. “When did you first spot it?”
“Just after sundown. Through the binoculars it looks only like another merchant. Maybe one hundred and thirty meters in length. Wheelhouse toward the bow. Normal running lights. Two masts strung with cargo netting. The ship is riding high, so it’s not loaded down. It’s even been flying a Norwegian flag. We tried to hail it by radio and got no reply. Very strange, that was. It held its position for awhile off the portside stern, and then it picked up speed. We saw it drop the flag of Norway and raise a German banner. Right after that the jamming started.”
“Can you determine its speed?”
Kpanga adjusted his glasses. Was his hand trembling just a little bit? It was hard to tell. “If you’re asking if Javelin is faster than Sofia, I would say definitely yes. It caught up very quickly. We can make top speed of seven knots—”
“Eight,” the captain interrupted with a sneer. “Shows how little you know!”
“I’d say Javelin can make sixteen,” Kpanga said to Michael, his face as impassive as stone.
In layman’s terms, Michael thought, the German ship could run rings around this piece of wallowing wreckage.
The static and droning tones on the radio ebbed though they did not go away. The Russian dialed up the volume. A clipped voice said, “German vessel Javelin to Norwegian freighter Sofia. Captain Konnig has generously given you thirty minutes to comply with our request. Repeat: you have thirty minutes to comply with our request or severe action shall be taken.”
The jamming increased in volume once more, and again the Russian turned down the racket to spare everyone’s ears.
“Do you have guns aboard?” Michael asked anyone who could answer.
“Some in the storeroom,” Medina said. He looked pale and stunned. “Four or five rifles. A pistol or two. Mutiny insurance. Ammunition for everything.” He shook his head, defeated. “I don’t know.”
“Any machine guns?”
“I’ve got a Thompson in my quarters.” Beauchene motioned toward another closed door across the way. “I like to have my mutiny insurance under my bunk.”
“Good. You’re going to need it, I think.”
Beauchene’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your name? Gallatin, you said? Well, Monsieur Gallatin, you’re going to pay for this when we get out of it. Believe me. Monsieur Medina, order engines full ahead. And change course, thirty degrees to starboard. After ten minutes, change course…oh….make it eight degrees to port. Set up a zigzag every ten minutes afterward, but keep that damned ship in our wake.” The Spaniard was slow in responding. “Move today!” the captain growled.