Storm Warning

‘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?’