"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."