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  His sympathetic commanding officer put off the decision on conducting a court-martial. That ploy fell apart when the Ukrainians who served aboard the sub signed a petition asking that their captain be allowed to rejoin his boat. The commander knew that this display of simple loyalty would be seen as potential mutiny. Hoping to defuse a dangerous situation, he ordered the sub to sea while a decision was made about a court-martial.

  Marinesko reasoned that if he sunk enough German ships, he and his men might avoid being severely punished.

  Without telling naval headquarters of their plan, he and his men quietly put the S-13 on a course that would take it away from the patrol lanes and toward its fateful rendezvous with the German liner.

  Friedrich Petersen, the Gustlojf's white-haired master captain, paced back and forth in the wardroom, sputtering like a walking pyrotechnics display. He stopped suddenly and shot a red-hot glare at a younger man dressed in the spit-and-polish uniform of the submarine division.

  "May I remind you, Commander Zahn, that I am the captain of this ship and responsible for guiding this vessel and all aboard to safety."

  Bringing his iron discipline to bear, Submarine Commander Wilhelm Zahn reached down and scratched behind the ear of Hassan, the big Alsatian dog at his side. "And may I remind you, captain, that the Gustloff has been under my command as a submarine base ship since 1942. I am the senior naval officer aboard. Besides, you forget your oath not to command a ship at sea."

  Petersen had signed the agreement as a condition of his repatriation after being captured by the British. The oath was a formality because the British thought he was too old to be fit for service. At the age of sixty-seven, he knew his career was washed up no matter the outcome of the war. He was a Leigerkapitan, the "sleeping captain," of the Gustloff. But he took some comfort in the knowledge that the younger man had been withdrawn from active operations after he botched the sinking of the British ship Nelson.

  "Nonetheless, Captain, under your supervision the Gustloff has never left the dock," he said. "A floating classroom and barracks anchored in one place is a far cry from a ship at sea. I have the highest regard for the submarine service, but you cannot argue that I am the only one qualified to take the vessel to sea."

  Petersen had commanded the liner once, on a peacetime voyage, and would never have been allowed to take the helm of the Gustloff under ordinary circumstances. Zahn bristled at the thought of being under the command of a civilian. German submariners considered themselves an elite group.

  "Still, I am the ranking military officer aboard. Perhaps you have noticed that we have antiaircraft guns mounted on the deck," Zahn retorted. "This vessel is technically a warship."

  The captain replied with an indulgent smile. "An odd sort of warship. Perhaps you have noticed that we are carrying thousands of refugees, a mission more fitting of the merchant marine transport."

  "You neglected to mention the fifteen hundred submariners who must be evacuated so they can defend the Reich."

  "I would be glad to acquiesce to your wishes if you show me written orders to do so." Petersen knew perfectly well that in the confusion surrounding the evacuation, no orders existed.

  Zahn's complexion turned the color of a cooked beet. His opposition went beyond personal animosity. Zahn had serious doubts about Petersen's ability to run the ship with the inexperienced polyglot crew at his command. He wanted to call the captain a burned-out fool, but his stern discipline again took hold. He turned to the other officers, who had been witnessing the uncomfortable confrontation.

  "This will be no 'Strength Through Joy' cruise," Zahn said. "All of us, navy and merchant marine officers, have a difficult task and bear heavy responsibility. Our duty is to do everything possible to make things easier for the refugees, and I expect the crew to go out of their way to be helpful."

  He clicked his heels and saluted Petersen, then strode from the wardroom followed by his faithful Alsatian.

  The guard at the top of the gangway had glanced at the tall man's document and handed it to an officer supervising the boarding of the wounded.

  The officer took his time reading the letter. Finally, he said, "Herr Koch thinks highly of you."

  Erich Koch was the murderous Gauleiter who had refused to evacuate East Prussia while preparing his own escape on a ship carrying looted treasure.

  "I like to think that I have earned his respect."

  The officer hailed a ship's steward and explained the situation. The steward shrugged and led the way along the crowded promenade deck, and then down three levels. He opened the door to a cabin that contained two bunks and a sink. The room was too small for the three of them to enter at the same time.

  "Not exactly the Fuhrer suite," the steward said. "But you're lucky to have it. The head is four doors down."

  The tall man glanced around the cabin. "This will do. Now, see if you can get us some food."

  A flush came to the steward's cheeks. He was tired of being ordered about by VIPs traveling in relative comfort while ordinary mortals had to suffer. But something in the tall man's cold blue eyes warned him not to argue. He returned within fifteen minutes with two bowls of hot vegetable soup and chunks of hard bread.

  The two men devoured their food in silence. The professor finished first and put his bowl aside. His eyes were glazed with exhaustion, but his mind was still alert.

  "What is this ship?" he said.

  The tall man scraped the bottom of his bowl with the last of his bread, then lit up a cigarette. "Welcome to the Wilhelm Gustloff, the pride of Germany's Strength Through Joy movement."

  The movement was an ongoing propaganda stunt to demonstrate the benefits of National Socialism to German workers. Kovacs glanced around at the spartan accommodations. "I don't see much strength or joy."

  "Nonetheless, the Gustloff will again one day transport happy German laborers and party faithful to sunny Italy."

  "I can hardly wait. You haven't told me where we're going."

  "Far beyond the reach of the Red Army. Your work is too important to fall into Russian hands. The Reich will take good care you.

  "It looks as if the Reich is having trouble taking care of its own people."

  "A temporary setback. Your welfare is my utmost priority."

  "I'm not concerned about my welfare." Kovacs hadn't seen his wife and young son for months. Only their infrequent letters had kept hope alive.

  "Your family?" The tall man regarded him with a steady gaze. "Have no worry. This will soon be over. I suggest you get some sleep. No, that's an order."

  He stretched out on the bunk, hands clasped behind his head, and shut his eyes. Kovacs was not deceived. His companion seldom slept and could snap fully awake at the slightest provocation.

  Kovacs examined the man's face. He could have been in his early twenties, although he looked older. He had the long head and craggy profile portrayed in propaganda posters as the Aryan ideal.

  Kovacs shuddered, remembering the cold-blooded way the Russian soldier had been dispatched. The past few days had been a blur. The tall man had arrived at the lab during a snowstorm and produced a document authorizing the release of Dr. Kovacs. He had introduced himself only as Karl, and told Kovacs to gather his belongings. Then came the madcap dash across the frozen countryside and the narrow escapes from Russian patrols. Now this miserable ship.

  The food had made Kovacs drowsy. His eyelids drooped, and he drifted off into a deep sleep.

  While the professor slept, a squad of military police swept the Gustloff in search of deserters. The ship was cleared for departure, and a harbor pilot came aboard. At around one in the afternoon, the deckhands cast off the mooring lines. Four tugs came alongside and began to pull the ship away from the dock.

  A fleet of small boats, loaded mostly with women and children, blocked the way. The ship stopped and took the refugees aboard. The Gustloff normally carried 1,465 passengers, served by a crew of four hundred. As it began this voyage, the once-elegant liner was carryi
ng eight thousand passengers.

  The ship headed into the open sea, and dropped anchor late in the afternoon to rendezvous with another liner, the Hansa, to wait for their escorts. The Hansa had developed engine trouble and never showed up. Naval Command was worried that the Gustloff would be exposed to danger in open waters and told the ship to go it alone.

  The liner plowed into the whitecapped waters of the Baltic, fighting a stiff northwest wind. Hailstones rattled the windows of the bridge, where Commander Zahn seethed with anger as he looked down at the two so-called escorts that had been sent to protect the liner.

  The ship was built for southern climes, but, with any luck, it could survive bad weather. What it could not survive was stupidity. Naval Command had sent the liner into harm's way with an old torpedo boat called the Lowe, or "Lion," and the T19, a worn-out torpedo recovery vessel as escorts. Zahn was thinking that the situation could not get any worse when the T19 radioed that it had developed a leak and was returning to the base.

  Zahn went to Captain Petersen and the other officers gathered in the bridge.

  "In view of our escort situation, I suggest that we pursue a zigzag course at high speed," he said.

  Petersen scoffed at the suggestion. "Impossible. The Wilhelm Gustloff is a twenty-four-thousand-ton ocean liner. We cannot go from one tack to the other like a drunken sailor."

  "Then we must outrun any U-boats with our superior speed. We can take the direct, deepwater route at the full speed of sixteen knots."

  "I know this ship. Even without the bomb damage to the propeller casings, there would be no way we could reach and maintain sixteen knots without blowing out our bearings," Petersen said.

  Zahn could see the veins bulging in the captain's neck. He stared through the bridge windows at the old torpedo boat leading the way. "In that case," he said in a voice that seemed to echo in a tomb, "God help us all."

  Professor, wake up." The voice was hard-edged, urgent.

  Kovacs opened his eyes and saw Karl bending over him. He sat up and rubbed his cheeks as if he could squeeze the sleep out of them.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I've been talking to people. My God, what a mess! There are two captains and they fight all the time. Not enough lifeboats. The ship's engines are barely keeping us up to speed. The stupid submarine division ordered the ship to sail with an old torpedo boat escort that looks as if it was left over from the last war. The damned fools have got the ship's navigation lights on."

  Kovacs saw an uncharacteristic alarm in the marble features.

  "How long have I slept?"

  "It's nighttime. We're on the open sea." Karl shoved a dark blue life jacket at Kovacs and slipped into a similar jacket.

  "Now what do we do?"

  "Stay here. I want to check the lifeboat situation." He tossed Kovacs a pack of cigarettes. "Be my guest."

  "I don't smoke."

  Karl paused in the open doorway. "Maybe it's time you did." Then he was gone.

  Kovacs spilled a cigarette from the pack and lit up. He had quit smoking years ago, when he got married. He coughed as the smoke filled his lungs, and he felt dizzy from the strong tobacco, but he recalled with delicious pleasure the innocent debauchery of his college days.

  He finished the cigarette, thought of lighting up another but decided against it. He had not had a bath in days, and his body itched in a dozen places. He washed his face in the sink and was drying his hands on a threadbare towel when there was a knock at the door.

  "Professor Kovacs?" a muffled voice said.

  "Yes."

  The door opened, and the professor gasped. Standing in the doorway was the ugliest woman he had ever seen. She was more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders straining the seams of a black Persian lamb coat. Her wide mouth was painted in bright red lipstick, and, with such heavily rouged lips, she looked like a circus clown.

  "Pardon my appearance," she said in an unmistakably male voice. "This is not an easy ship to get aboard. I had to resort to this silly disguise, and a few bribes."

  "Who are you?"

  "Not important. What is important is your name. You are Dr. Lazlo Kovacs, the great German-Hungarian electrical genius."

  Kovacs grew wary. "I am Lazlo Kovacs. I consider myself to be Hungarian."

  "Splendid! You are the author of the paper on electromagnetism that electrified the scientific world."

  Kovacs's antenna quivered. The paper published in an obscure scientific journal had brought him to the attention of the Germans, who kidnapped him and his family. He said nothing.

  "Never mind," the man said genially, the clown smile even broader. "I can see that I have the right man." He reached under his fur coat and pulled out a pistol. "I'm sorry to be rude, Dr. Kovacs, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you."

  "Kill me? Why? I don't even know you."

  "But I know you. Or, rather, my superiors in the NKGB know you. As soon as our glorious Red Army forces crossed the border we sent a special squad to find you, but you had already left the lab."

  "You're Russian?"

  "Yes, of course. We would love to have you come and work for us. Had we been able to intercept you before you boarded the ship, you would be enjoying Soviet hospitality. But now I can't get you off the ship, and we can't let you and your work fall into German hands again. No, no. It just wouldn't do." The smile vanished.

  Kovacs was too stunned to be afraid, even when the pistol came up and the muzzle pointed at his heart.

  Marinesko could hardly believe his good luck. He had been standing on the S-13's conning tower, oblivious to the freezing wind and spray that stung his face, when the snow cleared and he saw the enormous silhouette of an ocean liner. The liner appeared to be accompanied by a smaller boat.

  The submarine was riding on the surface in heavy seas. Its crew had been at battle stations since sighting the lights from boats moving against the coast. The captain had ordered the submarine's buoyancy reduced so that it would ride lower in the water and thus evade radar.

  Reasoning that the ships would never expect an attack from shore, he ordered his crew to bring the sub around the back of the convoy and run a course parallel to the liner and its escort. Two hours later, Marinesko turned the S-13 toward his target. As it closed in on the port side of the liner, he gave the order to fire.

  In quick succession, three torpedoes left their bow tubes and streaked toward the unprotected hull of the liner.

  The door opened, and Karl stepped into the cabin. He had been outside, listening to the murmur of male voices. He was puzzled when he saw the woman standing with her back to him. He glanced at Kovacs, still holding the towel, and he read the fear in the professor's face.

  The Russian felt the blast of cold air through the open door. He whirled and shot without aiming. Karl was a millisecond ahead of him. He had put his head down and rammed it into the Russian's midsection.

  The blow should have cracked the assassin's rib cage, but the heavy fur coat and the stiff corset he wore were like padded armor. The head butt only knocked the wind out of him. He crashed into a bunk, landing on his side. His wig fell off to reveal short black hair. He got off another shot that nicked Karl's right shoulder muscle at the base of the neck.

  Karl lunged at the assassin, and with his left hand groped for the throat. Blood from his wound spattered them both. The assassin brought his foot up and kicked Karl in the chest. He reeled back, tripped and fell onto his back.

  Kovacs grabbed the soup bowl from the sink and threw it at the assassin's face. The bowl bounced harmlessly off the man's cheekbone. He laughed. "I'll tend to you next." He aimed the pistol at Karl.

  Va-room!

  A muffled explosion thundered off the walls. The deck slanted at a sharp angle to starboard. Kovacs was flung to his knees. Unused to the high-heeled boots on his feet, the assassin lost his balance. He fell on top of Karl, who grabbed the man's wrist, pulled it to his mouth and sank his teeth into cartilage and muscle. The pistol clunked to the
deck.

  Va-room! Va-room!

  The ship shuddered from two more massive explosions. The assassin tried to rise, but again lost his balance when the ship lurched to port. He teetered on the verge of standing. Karl kicked him in the ankle. The Russian let out an unladylike yell and crashed to the floor. His head came to rest against the metal base of the bunk.

  Karl braced himself against the sink pipes and drove his hobnail boot into the man's throat, crushing his larynx. The man flailed at Karl's leg, his eyes bulged, his face went dark red, then purple, and then he died.

  Karl staggered to his feet.

  "We've got to get out of here," he said. "The ship's been torpedoed."

  He muscled Kovacs from the cabin into the passageway, where there was pandemonium. The corridor was filled with panic-stricken passengers. Their screams and shouts echoed off the walls. The ringing of alarm bells contributed to the din. The emergency lights were on, but a pall of smoke produced from the explosions made it difficult to see.

  The main stairway was clogged with an unmoving crush of panicked passengers. Many of them had stopped in their tracks as they gagged from the throat-burning fumes.

  The mob was trying to push against the river of water that spilled down the stairs. Karl opened an unmarked steel door, dragged Kovacs into a dark space and shut the door behind them. The professor felt his hand being guided to the rung of a ladder.

  "Climb," Karl ordered.

  Kovacs dumbly obeyed, ascending until his head hit a hatch. Karl shouted from below to open the hatch cover, and to keep climbing. They went up a second ladder. Kovacs pushed another cover open. Cold air and wind-driven snowflakes lashed his face. He climbed through the hatch, and helped Karl into the open.

  Kovacs looked around in bewilderment. "Where are we?"

  "On the boat deck. This way."

  The icy, sloping deck was eerily quiet, compared to the horror in the third-class section. The few people they saw were the privileged passengers whose cabins were on the boat deck. Some were clustered around a motorized pinnace, a sturdy boat built to cruise in the Norwegian fjords. Crew members had been chipping away with hammers and axes at the ice on the davits.