Lindrath saw him looking at the lowering hatch-cover and said, ‘Ingenious, yes? There is no sign from above of the helicopter or of any spot where one could land. The landing deck now appears simply to be the cover of a hold. The principle of operation is, of course, the same thing precisely as the lifts in an aircraft-carrier. When the platform reaches the bottom of the hold, the helicopter is wheeled off to bed!’ He gave a deep, throaty chuckle and nudged the sub-machine-gun into Shaw’s backbone, but not in the thrustful kind of way that Nosey would have done it. ‘You will please forgive me,’ he said, ‘but I have much to do, so forward again now, if you please. And do not fear… you will be quite comfortable, Commander Shaw. As one seaman to another, I give you my word on that.’
‘Thank you,’ Shaw answered sardonically. ‘The point is, how long am I going to be comfortable for?’
‘If you mean are you going to come to harm,’ Lindrath said, ‘I think the answer will be no, but that is not in my hands. You will be told all, quite shortly. I myself am under orders, and I do not care to speak, you understand. Now — open the door ahead of you — you see? — and mind the coaming, please, and the companion-ladder.’
Shaw did as he was told. Stepping over the coaming into another dim blue glow of light he felt for the steps of the ladder. As the German Captain came in behind him and closed the door, a bright white light clicked on automatically, and Shaw, reaching the foot of the ladder, found himself in a warm, steel-lined alleyway with doors opening off it at intervals. Again he had the feeling, stronger than ever now, of familiarity. This vessel was of warship build and, incredibly, it bore the stamp of British design and construction. Still puzzled, he was halted outside one of the doors.
Lindrath reached out, pushed the door open, and clicked on a light. ‘Please enter,’ he said.
Shaw walked into a small cabin, a well-appointed cabin with a comfortable-looking bunk over which was a porthole, now with its deadlight secured, presumably in conformity with the Moehne’s darken-ship regulations. There was a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a small desk, a chair, and a wash-basin with hot and cold taps. The cabin was well lighted, the deck was thickly carpeted, there was a curtain over the door, a blower was turned on to admit warmed air, and on the desk stood a box of a hundred German cigarettes and a small pile of books.
Comfort and more than comfort. Shaw wondered what the game was.
Standing massively in the doorway, Captain Lindrath said, ‘You will remain here until you are sent for. Food will be brought shortly. Do not try to escape, Commander. There will be a seaman guarding the door continually, and he will have orders to shoot if you act suspiciously.’ Once again he gave his deep, rumbling laugh; Shaw, seeing him now in the full light, saw that he was a good deal older than he’d thought from the voice and the outline in the dim blue light earlier. He was, at a guess, well on the wrong side of seventy; his neat imperial, as well as his hair, was snow-white. Perhaps he was the only Captain they could find for such an enterprise, for a lonely ship lying just to the north of the Horn and concerned in God alone knew what intrigues. Lindrath was going on, ‘To make any such attempt at escape would in any case be quite useless. The area of Cape Stiff is a most inhospitable place.…’
‘Thanks, I’d already worked that out for myself,’ Shaw said dryly. Then he added with a touch of curiosity, ‘You speak of Cape Stiff. Isn’t that unusual in these days — or have you been around this way before?’
Lindrath’s bearing gave the answer, and showed his pride in the fact that he was able to give it. He said quietly and with dignity, and with his blue eyes steadily holding Shaw’s, ‘When I was a boy, a mere lad — an apprentice, you understand — I made the passage of the Horn in the English barque Falls of Halladale. Three voyages — then I became Second Mate of a German full-rigged ship, also rounding the Horn for Iquique. So I call him Cape Stiff, just as we used to then. We are old friends, you see, or perhaps I should say old enemies. In any case, I respect him.’ He turned away, then hesitated and came back, shutting the cabin door behind him. He said in a low voice, ‘Commander, I am sorry. We are both men of the sea, you and I. Each has his duty, and I would like to think each respects the other because he carries out that duty. But I do not like all I have to do… and because of this I shall make it my business to see that you are treated properly, and as an officer.’
Shaw nodded. He said evenly, ‘Thank you, Captain. I appreciate that. By the way… how did you know who I was as soon as you saw me?’
‘You were expected. I had been warned by signal from Rio Grande that you were coming, you and the big-nosed man Hanson, whom also I had not met.’
‘Who sent the message?’
‘It came from Hanson.’
‘Uh-huh. Perhaps you’ll tell me something else.’ Shaw gave him a direct look. ‘Has a girl come aboard your ship, Captain — a girl called Patricia O’Malley?’
Lindrath shook his head. ‘No. There is no girl.’
‘I see. Thank you…’ Shaw frowned. ‘Captain, you spoke about not liking what you have to do. Why, if you don’t like it, do you do it? You don’t look like a kidnapper to me!’
Lindrath drew himself up again, and a curious light came into his eyes. He said stiffly, ‘One has often to do what one does not like. I have said that I have my duty, and that is correct. My duty is principally to my country. The Fatherland must come first, Commander. You will understand it. It is also like that with the British, no?’ Curiously, there seemed to be something like pleading in his eyes, but then suddenly the look changed and his right hand shot stiffly out at an angle to his body, palm outstretched and held downward, fingers together. His heels clicked sharply. ‘Sieg Heil!’ he said. Then he turned about and marched from the cabin.
Shaw shook his head in perplexity. Odder and odder… perhaps he had a bunch of maniacs to deal with. If this old-timer really imagined he was still living under Adolf Hitler, then that was the only possible explanation.
Or was it?
In the morning, after a sleepless night rendered the more infuriating by continual, regular, and slow-moving footfalls on the deck above, as though a policeman was patrolling a beat, Shaw unfastened the deadlight of his port and stared glumly out through the glass at a grey and lowering sky. His heart sank. Lindrath, who must know this part of the world better than most people, had called it inhospitable. That was about the biggest understatement of the century. This place was utterly barren, utterly dismal, and horrifying. The Moehne was anchored in a more or less sheltered bay, and the nearest point of land was about a mile distant, maybe a little less. That shore was rockbound, murderous; a slow, irresistible ocean swell, sweeping in from beyond the Horn itself, surged around the base of the rock face, malignantly, filled with invisible menace as it dragged and sucked at the rocks with its malevolent undertow. Any man making the attempt to swim ashore and scale those rocks would die, battered to a pulp against their steel-hard sides and then sucked out to the ocean wastes to become food for the hundreds of seabirds that called and circled overhead, their cries setting up a continual din to fill the mournful morning. And there were other sounds… a distant surge and thunder, and a high, eerie wailing… the winds, the unceasing torment of the westerlies, blowing off the Horn, blowing their tempestuous and icy way around the world’s circumference in the High South Latitudes. And still that monotonous, up-and-down march above his head.