Polar Shift nf-6 Read online

  With the davit fastenings finally freed, the crewmen surged aboard, pushing aside women, some of them pregnant. Children and wounded soldiers didn't have a chance. Karl drew his pistol and fired a warning shot in the air. The crewmen hesitated, but only for a second, before they continued to fight their way onto the lifeboat. Karl fired another shot, killing the first crewman who had climbed into the boat. The others ran for their lives.

  Karl lifted a woman and her baby into the boat, then gave the professor a hand before climbing in himself. He allowed some crewmen aboard, so they could throw the dead man out and lower the boat to the water. The hooks attached to the lowering lines were unfastened and the motor started.

  The heavily burdened boat wallowed as it moved slowly across the sea toward distant lights from a freighter that was headed their way. Karl ordered the lifeboat stopped to pick up people floating in the water. Soon it became even more dangerously overloaded. One of the crewmen protested.

  "There's no room in the boat," he yelled.

  Karl shot him between the eyes. "There's room now," he said, and ordered the other crewmen to toss the body overboard. Satisfied that the short-lived mutiny was under control, he squeezed next to Kovacs.

  "You're well, Professor?"

  "I'm fine." He stared at Karl. "You're a surprising man."

  "I try to be. Never let your enemies know what to expect."

  "I'm not talking about that. I saw you help the wounded and women. You cradled that baby as if it were your own."

  "Things are not always what they seem, my friend." He reached into his coat and brought out a packet wrapped in a waterproof rubber pouch. "Take these papers. You are no longer Lazlo Kovacs but a German national who has lived in Hungary. You have only a slight accent and will easily pass. I want you to disappear into the crowd. Become another refugee. Make your way toward the British and American lines."

  "Who are you?"

  "A friend."

  "Why should I believe that?"

  "As I said, things are not always what they seem. I am part of a circle that has been fighting the Nazi animals long before the Russians."

  Light dawned in the professor's eyes. "The Kreisau Circle?" He had heard rumors of the secretive opposition group.

  Karl brought his finger to his lips. "We are still in enemy territory," he said with a lowered voice.

  Kovacs clutched Karl's arm. "Can you get my family to safety as well?"

  "I am afraid it is too late for that. Your family is no more."

  "But the letters-"

  "They were clever forgeries, so you would not lose heart and give up your work."

  Kovacs stared into the night with a stunned expression on his face.

  Karl grabbed the professor by the lapel and whispered in his ear. "You must forget your work for your own good and the welfare of mankind. We cannot risk that it will fall into the wrong hands."

  The professor nodded dumbly. The boat banged up against the freighter's hull. A ladder was lowered. Karl ordered the reluctant crewmen to take the boat out again to pick up more survivors. From the freighter's deck, Kovacs watched the boat push off. Karl gave one last wave and the boat disappeared behind a veil of falling snow.

  In the distance, Kovacs saw the lights of the liner, which had turned onto its port side, so that the funnel was parallel to the sea. The boiler exploded as the ship slipped below the surface about an hour after being torpedoed. In that short time, five times more lives were lost on the Gustloff than on the Titanic.

  1

  The Atlantic Ocean,

  the present

  Those who laid eyes on the Southern Belle for the first time could be forgiven for wondering whether the person who had named the huge cargo ship possessed a warped sense of humor or simply bad eyesight. Despite a genteel name that suggested eyelash-fluttering, antebellum femininity, the Belle was, simply put, a metal monstrosity with nothing that hinted at female pulchritude.

  The Southern Belle was one of a new generation of fast, seaworthy vessels being built in American shipyards after years of the United States taking a backseat to other shipbuilding countries. It was designed in San Diego and built in Biloxi. At seven hundred feet, she was longer than two football fields put together, with room enough to carry fifteen hundred containers.

  The massive vessel was controlled from a towering superstructure on its aft deck. The hundred-foot-wide deckhouse, which resembled an apartment building, contained crew and officer quarters and mess halls, a hospital and treatment rooms, cargo offices and conference rooms.

  With its glowing ranks of twenty-six-inch touch display screens, the Belle's, bridge, on the top level of the six-deck superstructure, resembled a Las Vegas casino. The spacious center of operations reflected the new era in ship design. Computers were used to control every aspect of the integrated systems and functions.

  But old habits die hard. The ship's captain, Pierre "Pete" Beaumont, was peering through a pair of binoculars, still trusting his eyes despite the sophisticated electronic gadgetry at his command.

  From his vantage point on the bridge, Beaumont had a panoramic view of the Atlantic storm that raged around his ship. Fierce, gale-force winds were kicking up waves as big as houses. The waves crashed over the bow and washed halfway across the stacks of containers tied down on the deck.

  The extreme level of violence surrounding the ship would have sent lesser vessels scurrying for cover and given their captains sweaty palms. But Beaumont was as calm as if he were gliding in a gondola along the Grand Canal.

  The soft-spoken Cajun loved storms. He reveled in the give-and-take between his ship and the elements. Watching the way the Belle blasted her way through the seas in an awesome display of power gave him an almost sensual thrill.

  Beaumont was the vessel's first and only captain. He had watched the Belle being built and knew every nut and bolt on the ship. The ship had been designed for the regular run between Europe and America, a route that took it across some of the most cantankerous ocean on the face of the earth. He was confident that the tempest was well within the forces that the ship had been built to withstand.

  The ship had loaded its cargo of synthetic rubber, fiber filaments, plastics and machinery in New Orleans, then sailed around Florida to a point halfway up the Atlantic Coast, where it began on a straight-line course to Rotterdam.

  The weather service had been right on the nose with its forecast. Gale-force winds had been predicted, developing into an Atlantic storm. The storm caught the ship about two hundred miles from land. Beaumont was unperturbed, even when the winds intensified. The ship had easily survived worse weather.

  He was scanning the ocean when he stiffened suddenly and seemed to lean into the lenses. He lowered the binoculars, raised them again and muttered under his breath. Turning to his first officer, he said:

  "Look at that section of ocean. Around two o'clock. Tell me if you see anything unusual."

  The officer was Bobby Joe Butler, a talented young seaman who hailed from Natchez. Butler had made no secret of his wish someday to command a ship like the Belle. Maybe even the Belle itself. Following the captain's lead, Butler surveyed the ocean around thirty degrees off starboard.

  He saw only the gray, mottled water stretching toward the misted horizon. Then, about a mile from the ship, he sighted a white line of foam at least twice as high as the sea in the background. Even as he watched, the mounding water grew rapidly in height as if it were drawing power from the surrounding waves.

  "Looks like a real big sea coming our way," Butler said in his Mississippi drawl.

  "How big do you estimate it to be?"

  The younger man squinted through the lenses. "Average seas have been running around thirty feet. This looks to be double that. Wow! Have you ever seen anything this big?"

  "Never," the captain said. "Not in my whole life."

  The captain knew his ship could handle the wave if the Belle faced into it bow first to cut down the area of impact. The captain ordered
the helmsman to program the auto-steer to face the oncoming wave and keep it steady. Then he grabbed the mike and flipped a switch on the console that would connect the bridge with speakers all over the ship.

  "Attention all hands. This is the captain. A giant rogue wave is about to hit the ship. Get to a secure location away from flying objects and hold on. The impact will be severe. Repeat. The impact will be severe."

  As a precaution, he ordered the radioman to broadcast an SOS. The ship could always send out a recall, if needed.

  The green, white-veined wave was about a half mile from the ship. "Look at that," Butler was saying. The sky was lit up by a series of brilliant flashes. "Lightning?"

  "Maybe," the captain said. "I'm more concerned about that damned sea!"

  The wave's profile was unlike anything the captain had ever seen. Unlike most waves, which slope down at an angle from the crest, this one was almost straight up and down, like a moving wall.

  The captain had a peculiar out-of-body sensation. Part of him watched the advancing wave in a disinterested, scientific fashion, fascinated by the size and power, while another part stood in helpless wonder at the immense, menacing power.

  "It's still growing," Butler said with unabashed awe.

  The captain nodded. He guessed the wave had grown to a height of ninety feet, nearly three times as high as it was when it was first sighted. His face was ashen. Cracks were starting to appear in his rock-hard confidence. A ship the size of the Belle couldn't turn on a dime, and it was still facing the oncoming sea at an angle when the gigantic wave reared up like a living thing.

  He was expecting the shock from the wave but was unprepared when a trough big enough to swallow his ship opened up in the ocean in front of him.

  The captain looked into the abyss that had appeared before his eyes. "It's like the end of the world," he thought.

  The ship tilted into the trough, slid down the side and buried its bow in the ocean. The captain fell against the forward bulkheads.

  Rather than strike head-on, the wave collapsed on top of the ship, burying it under thousands of tons of water.

  The pilothouse windows imploded under the pressure, and the entire Atlantic Ocean seemed to pour into the bridge. The blast of water hit the captain and the others on the bridge with the force of a hundred fire hoses. The bridge became a tangle of arms and legs. Books, pencils and seat cushions were thrown about.

  Some of the water drained out through the windows, and the captain fought his way back to the controls. All the control screens were dead. The ship had lost its radar, gyro compasses and radio communication, but, most seriously, its power. All the instrumentation had become short-circuited. The steering gear was useless.

  The captain went to a window and surveyed the physical damage. The bow had been destroyed, and the ship was listing. He suspected that the hull plating may have been penetrated. The lifeboats on the foredeck had been swept from their davits. The ship wallowed like a drunken hippopotamus.

  The big wave seemed to have stirred up the seas around it like a demagogue rousing a mob. Waves rolled across the foredeck. Worse, with its engines having failed, the ship was lying transversely to the seas, drifting in the worst possible position.

  Having survived the wave, the ship lay with its side exposed, in danger of being "holed," in the colorful jargon of the sea.

  The captain tried to remain optimistic. The Southern Belle could survive even with some compartments flooded. Someone would have heard the SOS. The ship could float for days, if necessary, until help arrived.

  "Captain." The first officer interrupted the captain's thoughts.

  Butler was staring through the broken window. His eyes were locked in an unbelieving stare on a distant point. The captain's gaze followed Butler's pointing finger, and he began to tremble as the thrill of fear went through him.

  Another horizontal line of foam was forming less than a quarter of a mile away.

  The first airplane arrived two hours later. It circled over the sea and was soon joined by other planes. Then the rescue ships began to arrive, diverted from the shipping routes. The ships lined up three miles apart and combed the sea like a search party looking for a lost child in the woods. After days of searching, they found nothing.

  The Southern Belle, one of the most advanced cargo ships ever designed and built, had simply vanished without a trace.

  2

  Seattle, Washington

  The arrow-slim kayak flew across the sapphire surface of Puget Sound as if it had been shot from a bow. The broad-shouldered man in the snug cockpit seemed at one with the wooden craft. He dipped his paddles in the water with an easy, fluid motion, concentrating the power of his brawny arms into precise strokes that kept the kayak moving at a steady speed.

  Sweat glistened on the kayaker's rugged, sun-burnished features. His piercing, light blue eyes, the color of coral under water, took in the broad expanse of the sound, the fog-shrouded San Juan Islands and, in the distance, the snowcapped Olympic Mountains. Kurt Austin gulped the salty air into his lungs and spread his lips in a wide grin. It felt good to be home.

  Austin's duties as the director of the Special Assignments Team for the National Underwater and Marine Agency constantly took him to far-flung parts of the world. But he had acquired his taste for the sea on the waters around Seattle, where he was born. Puget Sound was as familiar to him as an old flame. He had sailed boats on the sound almost from the day he could walk, and had raced boats since he was ten. His big love was racing boats; he owned four of them: an eight-ton catamaran, capable of speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour; a smaller, outboard hydroplane; a twenty-foot sailboat; and a scull that he liked to row early in the morning on the Potomac.

  The latest addition to his fleet was the custom-made Guillemot kayak. He had bought it on an earlier trip to Seattle. He liked its natural wood construction and the graceful design of the thin hull, which was based on an Aleut craft. Like all his boats, it was fast as well as beautiful.

  Austin was so intent absorbing the familiar sights and smells that he almost forgot that he was not alone. He glanced over his shoulder. A flotilla of fifty kayaks trailed a few hundred feet behind his ribbonlike wake. The heavy, fiberglass, double-cockpit kayaks each carried one parent and one child. They were safe and stable, and no match for Austin's racehorse. He removed a turquoise NUMA baseball cap, revealing a jungle of prematurely gray, almost platinum hair, and waved it high above his head to urge them on.

  Austin had not hesitated when his father, the wealthy owner of an international marine salvage company based in Seattle, had asked him to lead the annual benefit kayak race he sponsored to raise money for charity. Austin had worked six years for Austin Marine Salvage before being lured into a little-known branch of the CIA that specialized in underwater intelligence gathering. After the Cold War ended, the CIA closed down the investigative branch, and Austin was hired by James Sandecker, who headed NUMA before becoming vice president of the United States.

  Austin dipped his paddles in the water and steered the kayak toward two boats anchored about a hundred feet apart, less than a quarter of a mile ahead. The boats carried race officials and press people. Stretched between the boats was a huge red-and-white plastic banner with the word finish written on it. Rafted together on the other side of the finish banner was a barge and chartered ferryboat. At the end of the race, the kayaks would be pulled up on the barge and the participants would be treated to lunch aboard the ferry. Austin's father was watching the race in a forty-eight-foot white-hulled powerboat named White Lightning.

  Digging his paddle in, Austin was preparing for a sprint to the finish when he noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to his right and saw a tall curved fin cutting through the water in his direction. As he watched, at least twenty more fins popped up behind the first one.

  Puget Sound was home to several pods of orcas, who fed on salmon. They had become local mascots, and a big boom to the economy, att
racting tourists from all over the world who flocked to Seattle to come out on whale-watch boats or take part in kayak adventures. The killer whales would come right up to the kayaks and often put on a show, breaching partially or jumping clear out of the water. Typically, the orcas would glide harmlessly past, often within a few feet of a kayak, without disturbing it.

  When the first fin was about fifty feet away, the orca stood on its tail. Nearly half its twenty-five-foot length was out of the water. Austin stopped paddling to watch. He had seen the maneuver performed before, but it was still an awesome sight. The whale inspecting him was a big bull, probably the leader of the pack, and must have weighed at least seven tons. Moisture glistened on its sleek, black-and-white body.

  The whale splashed back into the water, and the fin again moved rapidly in his direction. He expected from experience that at the last second the orca would duck under the kayak. But when it was only a few feet away, the whale again reared up and opened its mouth. The rows of razor-sharp teeth set in the pink mouth were close enough to touch. Austin stared in disbelief. It was as if a beloved circus clown had morphed into a monster. The jaws began to close. Austin jammed the wooden paddle into the creature's maw. There was a loud snap as the teeth closed on the paddle.

  The whale's massive body came down on the front part of the thirty-five-pound kayak and smashed it to splinters. Austin went into the cold water. He sank for a second, then bobbed to the surface, buoyed by his personal flotation device. He spit out a mouthful of water and spun around. To his relief, the fin was moving away from him.

  The pod of whales was between Austin and a nearby island. Rather than head in that direction, he began to swim farther out into the bay. After a few strokes, he stopped swimming and rolled onto his back. The chill that danced along his spine was not caused by the cold water alone.