Southtrap

'Mr Petersen,' I said. 'Full ahead, please.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

I put down the instrument. 'Wegger,' I said. 'You won't get away with this. Where do you think you're going to run to in Antarctica? There aren't any ports. There's nowhere to hole up…'

He seemed amused. 'I know. You don't have to tell me.'

There was still something else imperative that I had to know.

'What about the buoy launch tomorrow?'

The hell with the launch,' he replied. 'I couldn't care less about the bloody GARP programme or whatever its name is.'

He had played me an ace with this reply. 'Fine. No launch then. No satellite trackings. No buoy or balloon positions. When that happens, a general alert will go out. The world weather spotlight is on this ship. After ten o'clock tomorrow morning the Quest will be the most sought-after ship in the Seven Seas.'

'You could be right,' he answered to my astonishment. I hadn't any idea how his mind was working; we were on different wave-lengths.

Linn interrupted, This was my father's ship. It's mine now. I'll use it any way I can to see you answer for what you did to him and the others.'

The lightning blazed in Wegger's eyes. 'They were bastards, all three of them. They got what they deserved.'

'You know as well as I do that the radio black-out won't last more than another couple of days,' I persisted. 'As soon as we're missed the search will be on. The Weather Bureau knows our expected daily position precisely.'

Linn added, 'We're also due to land the three met. men on Marion Island. The radio station there will be monitoring us round the clock from the launch-time tomorrow.'

Wegger said, completely out of the blue, 'I need people around me with guts. Shotton, how would you lose a ship in these parts if you had to? This ship in particular?'

The question and his changed tone took me wholly aback. 'The question's purely academic as far as I am concerned.'

He eyed me. 'I wonder.'

'What are you driving at, Wegger?'

'Nothing can get round the fact that you've killed four men,' Linn said hotly.

'I wonder,' he repeated.

'Say what's in your mind, Wegger,' I told him. 'You didn't bring us here to listen to riddles.'

'I would rather have discussed it with you alone, Shotton,' he answered. 'But the girl's thrust herself on us. If that's the way she wants it, fine. It means she'll have to pay the price also, if necessary.'

'You can't scare me,' rejoined Linn. 'I'm ready to pay any price to see you brought to book.'

'Fine words,' he sneered. 'Words are cheap. Deeds could be worth ten million dollars.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' she replied.

'Your father did,' retorted Wegger. 'That's what this cruise is all about.'

It was Linn's turn to look puzzled. 'Ten million dollars? This cruise? I don't know what you mean.'

Wegger looked penetratingly from her to me. 'What did Prestrud and Jacobsen tell you about the capture of the whaling fleet?' he demanded.

'Little enough,' I answered truthfully. 'Captain Prestrud gave me his account when he was dying. It was incoherent. Jacobsen filled me out, but he became cagey when it came to Prince Edward Island and the details of the escape.'

Wegger said in a carefully controlled voice, The capture of the whaling fleet took place in January 1941 but the story goes back a lot further than that. Goebbels' propaganda blew up the capture until every angle was sucked dry.It was a great single-handed feat all the same, and Kruder was the man to carry it out. The bag was eleven catchers and two factory ships filled with whale oil. We — ' I did not miss his use of 'we' for the Nazis — 'were desperately short of oil at that time. Kruder was a hero in Germany. He was awarded the Iron Cross.'

He began to speak rapidly. 'The whaling fleet was important enough for the German Naval High Command to position the pocket battleship, Admiral Scheer, only six hundred miles from Kruder as a backup if needed. In the event she wasn't as you know.'

I interrupted him. 'Kruder knew the whaling fleet's rendezvous. You were responsible, Wegger. You sold your own country's secret warship, the Teddy, down the river.'

'It was war,' he shrugged. 'What does that matter now?'

'What does it matter now?' I echoed.

Linn sat down at the desk. The vibration of the Quest's engines at full revolution-plus rattled the fitments.

'You gave me a shock when you pulled out Teddy's chart,' said Wegger. 'However, it only told me what I already knew, that Prestrud was not on a pleasure cruise to Prince Edward Island.'

'It was my father's dream,' Linn said vehemently. 'He talked about it for years. He saved and bought his own ship especially to go to Prince Edward.'

'So would I have, if I hadn't been in gaol,' he retorted. 'So would I, for the sake of ten million dollars.'

'Go on,' I said, watching all the time for an opportunity to jump him.

'I was one of three radio operators in Pinguin,' he went on. 'I handled the confidential signals from OKM — German Naval High Command — to Kruder. Would it surprise you to know that the whaling fleet was only the raider's secondary objective? That the pocket battleship had sealed orders to stand by because… because…'

He stumbled, as if he couldn't bear to part with the secret.

Then he said, 'I will tell you. When Germany attacked Poland at the beginning of the war the Free City of Danzig, which was the real reason for the Allies' intervention — they had guaranteed its status — sent its entire gold holding to the United States for safe-keeping. It was in gold ingots — ten million dollars' worth. That was what Pinguin and the Admiral Scheer were after, not the whaling fleet.'

His disclosure had Linn sitting bolt upright in her chair.

The Danzig authorities consigned it via Narvik,' he went on. 'The gold was in Narvik when we Nazis attacked the port. The Norwegians escaped with it in their whaling fleet. That is why OKM despatched Kruder into the Antarctic after the fleet, and into the bargain was willing to risk a pocket battleship. At that time Germany was desperately short of foreign exchange in the form of gold. Ten million dollars of it would have been a godsend.'

'How do you know all this, Wegger?'

'I saw it,' he answered simply. 'I lived with it for eight months. In the great cave on Prince Edward. Gold ingots. Ten million in gold. In a torpedo casing.'

'A torpedo casing!'

'Prestrud, Torgersen and Jacobsen took the torpedo with them when they escaped,' he continued in a strained voice. 'They were very daring. Prestrud towed the torpedo clean past Kruder. Jacobsen and Torgersen shielded his flanks with their catchers so that the raider wouldn't spot it. I heard them talking about it when I came round and they had got clear.'

Linn and I stared at him.

He went on matter-of-factly, 'The Free Norwegians had hidden the gold in a German torpedo casing during the attack on Narvik — no one would have looked twice at a stray torpedo casing in all the confusion. They had it rigged in the slip of one of the factory ships. All they had to do was to knock out a shackle and it slid into the water of its own accord. That's how Prestrud got it and towed it away. The plan had all been carefully worked out beforehand. It worked — except for me.'

'You're imagining things, Wegger,' I said. 'Prince Edward must have blown your mind. If those three skippers had wanted to stash the gold away the last thing they would have done was to have left you there with their secret.'

They meant me to die!' he burst out. "They meant me to die, don't you understand! They never thought I'd survive and be rescued! It was cleaner than shooting me!'

'So you told the British cruiser about the gold and everyone lived happily ever after!' I retorted derisively.

The cruiser's boat never landed — I told you that!' He started to shout. Then he got a grip of himself and said more quietly, "The gold is still there. On Prince Edward. In the great cave. Deep. That's why I had to stop Holdgate. No one has ever been deep inside it, except me. That's the reason why Prestrud organized this cruise. It was a cover. He intended to lift the gold — my gold, you hear! My gold! I lived with it, nearly went out of my mind watching over it, month after month…'