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‘You must be out of your head. It’s the only conceivable explanation.’
There was a knock at the door. Prager opened it and Sister Angela stepped inside. He said, ‘Sister, I’d like you to meet Fregattenkapitän Erich Berger. Erich, this is Sister Angela of the Little Sisters of Mercy.’
‘Good evening Captain,’ she said.
Berger looked down at the tiny nun for a moment, an expression of astonishment on his face, then he grabbed Prager by the arm and pushed him outside into the rain, pulling the cabin door behind him.
‘What in the hell am I going to do? What am I supposed to say?’
‘You’re the captain,’ Prager told him. ‘You make the decisions and no one else, or so I’ve always been given to understand. I’ll wait for you here.’
He walked to the mizzen shrouds on the port side. Berger cursed softly, hesitated, then went back in.
She was standing behind the desk, leaning over the chronometer in its box under a glass plate. She glanced up. ‘Beautiful, Captain. Quite beautiful. What is it?’
‘The seaman’s measure of the heavens, Sister, along with a sextant. If I can check the position of the sun, moon and stars then I can discover my own exact position on the earth’s surface – with the help of tables as well of course.’
She turned to the desk. ‘A British Admiralty chart. Why is that?’
‘Because they’re the best,’ Berger told her, feeling for some reason incredibly helpless.
‘I see.’ She carried on in the same calm voice. ‘Are you going to take us with you?’
‘Look, Sister,’ he said. ‘Sit down and let me explain.’ He pulled another chart forward. ‘Here we are at the mouth of the Amazon and this is the route home.’ He traced a finger up past the Azores and west of Ireland. ‘And if we get that far, there could be even greater hazards to face.’ He tapped at the chart. ‘We must pass close to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, a graveyard for sailing ships, especially in bad weather – which is usually six days out of seven up there. And if we survive that, we only have the Orkneys passage, the run to Norway, then down through the Kattegat to Kiel,’ he added with heavy irony. ‘Five thousand miles, that’s all.’
‘And how long will it take us?’
He actually found himself answering, ‘Impossible to say. Forty, maybe fifty days. So much depends on the weather.’
‘That seems very reasonable, under the circumstances.’
Berger said, ‘Tell me something. When you first came out here, how did you make the trip?’
‘A passenger liner. The Bremen. That was just before the war, of course.’
‘A fine ship. Comfortable cabins, hot and cold running water. Food that wouldn’t disgrace a first-class hotel. Stewards to fetch and carry.’
‘What exactly are you trying to say, Captain?’
‘That on this ship, life would be very different. Bad food, cramped quarters. A lavatory bucket to empty daily. Salt water only to wash in. And a blow – a real blow under sail – can be a frightening experience. In bad weather we can spend a fortnight at a time without a dry spot in her from stem to stern. Have you ever strapped yourself into a bunk in wet blankets with a full gale trying to tear the sticks out of the deck above your head?’ He rolled up the chart and said firmly, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t see any point in prolonging this discussion.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Tell me something. How does a German naval officer come to command a Brazilian trading vessel?’
‘I was captain of a submarine supply ship, the Essen, camouflaged as the US fuel ship George Grant. We were torpedoed in the South Atlantic on our third trip by a British submarine, which wasn’t taken in by the disguise. You may consider that ironic in view of the fact that I intend to try and pass the Deutschland off as a similar ship of Swedish registration.’
‘And how did you manage to reach Brazil?’
‘Picked up by a Portuguese cargo boat and handed over to the Brazilian authorities when we reached Rio. The Brazilians have been operating a kind of parole system for any of us who can find work. The Mayer Brothers, who own the Deutschland, are coastal traders, Brazilian citizens but German by origin. They’ve helped a great many of us. We make the run from Rio to Belém and back once a month with general cargo.’
‘And you repay them now by stealing their boat?’
‘A point of view; for which I can only hope they’ll forgive me when they know the facts. But we don’t really have any choice.’
‘Why not?’
‘The Brazilians are starting to play a more active part in the war. Last month they sent troops to Italy. I think things could get much more difficult for us here.’
‘And the other reason?’
‘You think I have one?’
She waited, hands folded, saying nothing. Berger shrugged, opened the drawer of his desk and took out a wallet. He extracted a snapshot and passed it across. It was badly creased and discoloured by salt water, but the smiles on the faces of the three small girls were still clear enough.
‘Your children?’
‘Taken in forty-one. Heidi, on the left, will be ten now. Eva is eight and Else will be six in October.’
‘And their mother?’
‘Killed in a bombing raid on Hamburg three months ago.’
She crossed herself automatically. ‘What happened to the children?’
‘Herr Prager got word about them for me through our embassy in the Argentine. My mother has them in Bavaria.’
‘Thank God in his infinite mercy.’
‘Should I?’ Berger’s face was pale, jaw set. ‘Germany is going under, Sister, a matter of months only. Can you imagine how bad it’s going to be? And my mother’s an old woman. If anything happens to her …’ A kind of shudder seemed to pass through his body and he leaned heavily on the desk. ‘I want to be with them because that’s where I’m needed, not here on the edge of the world, so far off that the war has ceased to exist.’
‘And for that you’ll dare anything?’
‘Including five thousand miles of ocean dominated completely by the British and American navies, in a patched-up sailing ship that hasn’t been out of sight of land in twenty years or more. An old tub, that hasn’t had a refit for longer than I care to remember. An impossible voyage.’
‘Which Herr Richter, your bosun, is apparently willing to make.’
‘Helmut is a special case. The finest sailor I’ve ever known. He has invaluable experience under sail. Served his time as a boy on Finnish windjammers on the Chilean nitrate run. That may not mean a lot to you, but to seamen anywhere …’
‘But according to Herr Prager there are another twenty men in your crew who are also willing to make this so-called impossible voyage.’
‘Most of them with a reason roughly similar to mine. I can think of at least seventy men in Rio who would gladly stand in their shoes. They held a lottery for the last ten places in a German bar on the Rio waterfront two weeks ago.’ He shook his head. ‘They want to go home, Sister, don’t you see? And for that, to use your own words, they’ll dare anything.’
‘And my friends and I are different, is that it? We too, have families, Captain, as dear to us as yours. More than that, because of what lies ahead, home is where we are needed now.’
Berger stood staring at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. In any case, it’s too late. You’d need Swedish papers, that’s an essential part of the plan. Prager’s arranged them for all of us.’
She got to her feet, opened the cabin door and called, ‘Herr Prager!’
He moved in out of the rain. ‘What is it?’
‘My papers, please. May I have them now?’
Prager opened his briefcase. He searched inside, then took out a passport which he dropped on the desk in front of Berger.
Berger frowned. ‘But this is Swedish.’ He opened it and Sister Angela stared out at him from the photo. He looked up. ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to step outside for a moment, Sister. I’d like a few words with my good friend here.’
She hesitated, glanced briefly at Prager, then went out.
Prager said, ‘Look, Erich, let me explain.’
Berger held up the passport. ‘Not something you can pick up at twenty-four hours’ notice, so you must have known about this for quite some time. Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I knew you’d react exactly as you are doing.’
‘So you thought you’d leave it until it was too late for me to say no? Well, you made a mistake. I won’t play. And what about this mission station they’ve been operating? Is it suddenly so unimportant?’
‘The Brazilian Department of the Interior has changed its policy on the Indians in that area; moving them out and white settlers in. the mission was due to close anyway.’
‘They’re a nursing order, aren’t they? Surely there must be some other outlet for their talents up there.’
‘They are also Germans, Erich. What do you think it’s going to be like when those first Brazilian casualty figures start filtering through from Italy?’
There was a long pause. Berger picked up the Swedish passport, opened it and examined the photo again. ‘She looks like trouble to me. She’s been used to getting her own way for too long.’
‘Nonsense,’ Prager said. ‘I knew her family from the old days. Good Prussian stock. Her father was an infantry general. She was a nurse on the Western Front in nineteen-eighteen.’
Berger’s astonishment showed. ‘A hell of a background for a Little Sister of Mercy. What went wrong? Was there some sort of scandal?’
‘Not at all. There was a young man, I believe. A flier.’
‘… who didn’t come back one fine morning so she sought refuge in a life of good works.’ Berger shook his head. ‘It’s beginning to sound like a very bad play.’
‘But you’ve got it all wrong, Erich. The way I heard it, he simply let her think he was dead. She had a breakdown that almost cost her life and was just coming out of it nicely when she met him walking along the Unter den Linden one day with another girl on his arm.’
Berger held up both hands. ‘No more. I know when I’m beaten. Bring her back in.’
Prager went to the door quickly and opened it. She was standing outside talking to the bosun.
Berger said, ‘You win, Sister. Tell Richter to have you taken ashore to collect the rest of your friends. Be back here by two a.m. because that’s when we leave, and if you aren’t here, we go without you.’
‘God bless you, Captain.’
‘I think he’s got enough on his plate at the moment without me.’ As she moved to the door, he added, ‘Just one thing. Try not to let the crew know before they have to.’
‘Are they likely to be disturbed by our presence?’
‘Very much so. Sailors are superstitious by nature. Amongst other things, sailing on a Friday is asking for trouble. Taking any kind of a minister along as a passenger, the same. We should certainly pick up all the bad luck in the world with seven nuns sailing with us.’
‘Five, Captain. Only five,’ she said and went out.
Berger frowned and turned to Prager. ‘You said seven passengers.’
‘So I did.’ Prager rummaged in the briefcase and produced two more Swedish passports which he pushed across the desk. ‘One for Gertrude and one for me. She, too, is waiting on shore with our baggage which includes, I might add, that wireless transmitter you asked me to try and get you.’
Berger gazed at him in stupefaction. ‘You and your wife?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Good God, Otto, you’re sixty-five if you’re a day. And what will your masters in Berlin say?’
‘From what I hear, the Russians are far more likely to get there before I do, so it doesn’t really matter.’ Prager smiled gently. ‘You see, Erich, we want to go home, too.’
* * *
When Berger went up to the quarterdeck just before two it was raining harder than ever. The entire crew was assembled on the deck below, faces pale, oilskins glistening in the dim glow of the deck lights.
He gripped the rail, leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. ‘I won’t say much. You all know the score. It’s one hell of a trip, I’m not going to pretend any different, but if you do as I tell you, we’ll make it, you and I and the old Deutschland together.’
There was a stirring amongst them, no more than that, and he carried on, a touch of iron in his voice now. ‘One more thing. As most of you will have observed, we’re carrying passengers. Herr Prager, once assistant consul at our embassy in Rio and his wife, and five nuns from a mission station on the Negro.’
He paused. There was only the hissing of the rain as they all waited. ‘Nuns,’ he said, ‘but still women and it’s a long journey home, so let me make myself plain. I’ll personally shoot the first man to step over the line, and so enter it in the log.’ He straightened. ‘Now everyone to his station.’
As he turned from the rail his second-in-command moved out of the darkness to join him. Leutnant zur See Johann Sturm, a tall, fair youth from Minden in Westphalia, had celebrated his twentieth birthday only three days earlier. Like Richter, he was a submariner and had served in a U-boat as second watch officer.
‘Everything under control, Mr Sturm?’ Berger enquired in a low voice.
‘I think so, Captain.’ Sturm’s voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I’ve stowed the wireless transmitter Herr Prager brought with him from Rio in my cabin, as you ordered. It’s not much, I’m afraid, sir. A limited range at the best.’
‘Better than nothing,’ Berger told him. ‘And the passengers? Are they safely stowed away also?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ There was a hint of laughter in the boy’s voice. ‘I think you could say that.’
A white figure appeared out of the darkness and materialized as Sister Angela. Berger swallowed hard and said in a low, dangerous voice, ‘Could you now, Mr Sturm?’
Sister Angela said brightly, ‘Are we leaving, Captain? Is it all right if I watch?’
Berger glared at her helplessly, rain dripping from the peak of his cap, then turned to Sturm and said, ‘Haul up the spanker and outer jib only, Mr Sturm, and let the anchor chain go.’
Sturm repeated the order and there was a sudden flurry of activity. One seaman dropped down the forepeak hatch. Four others hauled briskly on the halliard and the spanker rose slowly. A moment later there was a rattle as the anchor chain slithered across the deck, then a heavy splash.
Richter was at the wheel but, for the moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Sister Angela, glancing up, saw through a gap in the curtain of rain, stars pass across the jib.
‘We’re moving, Captain! We’re moving!’ she cried, as excitedly as any child.
‘So I’ve observed,’ Berger told her. ‘Now will you kindly oblige me by going below.’
She went reluctantly and he sighed and turned to the bosun. ‘Steady as she goes, Richter. She’s all yours.’
And Richter took her out through the harbour entrance, drifting along like some pale ghost, barely moving, leaving a slight swirl of phosphorescence in her wake.
Fifteen minutes later, as Captain Mendoza sat playing whist in his booth at the Lights of Lisbon with a young lady from the establishment next door, the man he had assigned to keep watch on the fish pier burst in on him.
‘What is it?’ Mendoza demanded mildly.
