He was struggling to fight off gloom. The antibiotic was gone, the cave destroyed, and the U-boat contaminated. The other volcano was smoking more than ever and a full-scale eruption might make a return impossible. Which meant his dreams had been utterly imperiled by the woman he'd loved. Almost destroyed! Lord, how he hated her.
There was a rattle and he looked down to see bits of ice rasp along the side of the launch. He shivered. He still couldn't swim and he wondered how deep the ocean was here. It seemed bottomless.
"Seals." One of the storm troopers pointed.
There was a group of them on an ice floe, as indolent as ever. Drexler remembered that Greta had claimed some of them were fierce predators, huge and swift. The thought was absurd! The sluggish beasts barely moved except to yawn and defecate. They stank and whelped and did nothing more. Worst of all, they were indifferent to the Germans, caring nothing for what they were up against. It was a kind of arrogance that annoyed him. It was like the indifference of God.
"Give me your gun."
"My gun?"
"Give it to me!"
The lazy animals had no fear of man. That must change. He pulled back the lever on the submachine gun to arm it and fired a burst, the rattle surprisingly clamorous in the hushed whiteness. One of the seals recoiled, barking in surprise and pain, and suddenly the snow was bright with blood. In a flash the animals slithered off the ice and into the water.
"Damned slugs." Drexler threw the gun back at the soldier.
The storm troopers looked at one another uneasily. Bad luck.
"What was that?" Greta's head had come up.
Hart looked around uneasily. "Maybe just a glacier calving. Or a breakup of ice." He frowned. It had sounded like a burst of gunshots.
They'd been rowing slowly and carefully, picking their way through the ice toward the open sea. Now the pilot clambered forward to where the mast was stepped, pulling himself up its short length and clinging with his legs.
"Careful!" Greta warned. The boat rocked dangerously.
Hart squinted across the ice. He didn't see the German boat so much as spy movement: motion in a place that otherwise was calm and still. He slid down, heartsick.
"It's them. In the motor launch. Somehow they saw us, or realized what we're doing. They're trying to cut us off by sea. How did they figure it out?"
She looked pained, then determined. "Jürgen always figures it out. But I'm not going back with them."
"We're not to that point yet. I'm going to raise the sail. Maybe we can outrun them in this ice."
There was just breeze enough to fill the canvas. He hoisted the sail and it caught, the lifeboat heeling slightly. They'd lashed the rudder amidships and now he untied it and began to steer, meanwhile grasping the boom line. "Stay on the upward side of the boat to help balance."
She nodded. "I've sailed. I can help tack when you give the word."
They began coasting, dark water gurgling up from the stern. How many thousands of miles to go? Hart looked in the direction of the Germans.
"And Greta? You'd better unlash the submachine gun."
She nodded. "They may be surprised that we have it."
"Colonel! A sail!"
The SS men were pointing and Drexler lifted his binoculars. It was them, trying to ghost away as if they were making a pleasure sail on the Havel outside Berlin. He could imagine them laughing together, thinking they'd infected all the tiresome Germans and joking about the fool they'd made of the cuckold Jürgen Drexler. Except that Jürgen Drexler wasn't ill, not yet. And even if he already was— even if he felt perhaps the murmur of fever in his brain— it was still just a whisper. He had plenty of time to catch them and punish them and swallow the cure.
"Full power! Full speed!" The engine roared as the helmsman gunned it. "Watch for ice! But go, go, go!"
The added breeze from their acceleration was colder. While the helmsman steered, the other SS men checked their weapons and then crouched low behind the gunwales for shelter, a peeking pride of lions.
"Speed, dammit!" A small floe banged against the hull and Drexler was forcibly reminded of the Schwabenland's mishap. "But be careful!"
He spotted a wide patch of open water to port and pointed. "Go there!" They were faster than the sailboat and could afford to loop around the unpowered craft, blocking the fugitives from the ocean. With that pathetic mast sticking upward like a pointing flag the adulterous lovers couldn't hope to hide. He had them! Oh, he had them.
The Germans charged across the open water, spray arcing off their prow, a tendril of greasy engine smoke drifting behind. Each swell that lifted gave a better view of the fleeing sail, tacking first this way and then that. Predator and prey, strong and weak. The way of the world! Now the storm troopers were between the lifeboat and the open sea. Owen and Greta were caught against the island.
"Now, that way! Into that lead there! We'll pin them!"
The motor launch wake churned the flat water of the ice lead, its wake heaving the floes up and down. The sail was getting tantalizingly close, flapping aimlessly now as the couple hunted for fickle wind. He could imagine their panic. He could feel their dread. It was sweet revenge, imagining what they must feel like as the soldiers inexorably gained on them. Would she weep at the end? If she did, it would no longer move him. He was sure of it.
They churned through a tiny connecting channel and then they were in the same polynya of open water as the sailboat. Where had they gotten the craft? Drexler suddenly looked around as if the American might have allies ready to attempt a rescue. But no, the horizons were empty. Still, it was as if Hart was some kind of magician, able to conjure improbable escapes and sudden resources at the last moment. It baffled him: the pilot had been a plague since that first night at Karinhall. Well, the showdown had finally come. No more tricks.
The sail abruptly dropped and the pair unshipped their oars; they were going to try to reach the edge of the ice and escape on foot. Drexler calculated. The Nazis would catch them a few feet short of their goal. "Faster!"
Suddenly there was a burp of gunfire in Drexler's ear. Spouts of seawater flew up near the fleeing lifeboat. One of the SS men had opened fire.
Drexler cuffed him. "Not yet, you fool! Not until we've recovered the drug!" Morons. Was he the only person on this voyage capable of thought?
Then Hart bent, sat up, and there was a flicker of muzzle flash in return. "He's got a gun!" the helmsman cried as water and wood splinters filled the air and one of the SS men cried out. The motor launch veered abruptly away, lurching toward the ice on the opposite side of the watery channel. They hit with a glancing blow and Drexler and the other men landed in a tangle on the bottom.
"Get off me, dammit!" He struggled upward. The pair were rowing again, taking advantage of the Nazi confusion. The couple hit the other side of the ice and scrambled out, dragging their packs behind them.
"Damn! Make for them!" But Hart had already staked their boat to a line and the two were jogging away like a pair of taunting foxes.
"Fuck! Now we'll have to catch them on foot." There was a groan, and Drexler looked down in irritation. It was Walther, one of his SS men. He was hit in the stomach and spewing blood all over the damn boat. Well, he'd be envied if they didn't recover the drug. And if they did it would be too late to save him anyway. The groaning would stop soon enough.