Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt 21)

The deliveryman smiled as he eyed the thick stack of currency. “I wonder if the Germans would pay this much to sink a ship and murder a general,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to be working for the Kaiser, now, would you?”

The minister firmly shoo

k his head. “No, this is a theological matter. Had you been able to locate the document, this would not have been necessary.”

“I searched the manor three times. If it was there, I would have found it.”

“As you have told me.”

“You are certain that it was carried aboard?”

“We’ve learned of a meeting on the general’s schedule with the Father Superior of the Russian Orthodox Church in Petrograd. There can be little doubt as to the purpose. The document must be aboard. It will be destroyed along with him, and so the secret shall die.”

The Vauxhall’s tires touched wet cobblestone as they entered the outskirts of Portsmouth. The driver navigated toward the city center, passing block after block of tall brick row houses. Reaching a main crossroads, he turned into the rear driveway of a nineteenth-century stone church labeled St. Mary’s as the rain began to fall with intensity.

“I’d like you to drop me at the railway station,” the deliveryman said, observing the large motorcar bisect a churchyard cemetery and pull to a stop behind the rectory.

“I was asked to drop off a sermon,” the minister replied. “Won’t take more than a moment. Why don’t you join me?”

The deliveryman suppressed a yawn as he looked out the rain-streaked window. “No, I think I’ll wait here and keep dry.”

“Very well. We’ll return shortly.”

The minister and driver walked away, leaving the deliveryman to count his blood money. As he attempted to tally up the Bank of England notes, he had trouble reading the numbers and realized his vision was blurring. He felt a wave of fatigue sweep over him and quickly tucked the money away and lay down on the seat to rest. Though it seemed like hours, it was only a few minutes later when a mist of cold water struck his face and he pried open his heavy eyelids. The stern face of the minister looked down upon him amid a shower of rain. His brain told him that his body was moving, but there was no feeling in his legs. He focused his blurry eyes enough to see the driver was carrying his legs, while the minister dragged him by the arms. A mute sense of panic rang within his skull, and he willed himself to retrieve a Webley Bulldog pistol from his pocket. But his limbs refused to respond. The brandy, he thought with momentary clarity. It was the brandy.

A canopy of green leaves filled his vision as he was carried beneath a grove of towering oak trees. The minister’s face still swayed above him, a sullen mask of indifference illuminated by two frigid eyes. Then the face fell away, or rather he did. He heard more than felt his body drop into a trench, splashing down hard into a muddy puddle. Flat on his back, he gazed up at the minister, who stood high over him with a faint aura of guilt.

“Forgive us our sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he heard the minister say solemnly. “These we take to the grave.”

The back side of a shovel appeared, followed by a clump of soggy dirt that fell and bounced off his chest. Another shovelful of dirt tumbled down, and then another.

His body was paralyzed and his voice frozen, but his mind still operated with reason. With crushing horror, he fully grasped that he was being buried alive. He fought again to move his limbs, but there was no response. As the dirt piled high within his grave, his screams of terror blared only within his mind, until his last breath was painfully snuffed out.

THE PERISCOPE CUT a lazy arc through the boiling black water, its presence nearly invisible under the night sky. Thirty-five feet beneath the surface, a baby-faced German naval Oberleutnant named Voss slowly rotated the viewing piece three hundred and sixty degrees. He lingered over a few speckled lights that rose high in the distance. They were lantern lights from a scattering of farmhouses that dotted Cape Marwick, a frigid, windswept stretch of the Orkney Islands. Voss had nearly completed his circular survey when his eye caught a faint glimmer on the eastern horizon. Dialing the viewing lens to a crisper focus, he patiently tracked a steady movement of the light.

“Possible target at zero-four-eight degrees,” he announced, fighting to contain the excitement in his voice.

Several other sailors stationed in the submarine’s cramped control room perked to attention at his words.

Voss tracked the object for several more minutes, during which time a quarter moon broke briefly through a bank of thick storm clouds. For a fleeting moment, the moonlight cast a sheen on the object, exposing its dimensions against the island hills behind it. Voss felt his heart flutter and noticed his palms suddenly grow sweaty on the periscope handgrips. Blinking hard, he confirmed the visual image, then stood away from the eyepiece. Without saying a word, he sprinted from the control room, scrambling down the tiny aft passageway that ran the length of the sub. Reaching the captain’s cabin, he knocked loudly, then slid open a thin curtain.

Captain Kurt Beitzen was asleep in his bunk but woke instantly and flicked on an overhead lamp.

“Kapitän, I’ve spotted a large vessel approaching from the southeast approximately ten kilometers off. I caught a brief glimpse of her profile. A British warship, possibly a battleship,” Voss reported excitedly.

Beitzen nodded as he sat upright, flinging off a blanket. He had slept in his clothes and quickly pulled on a pair of boots, then followed his second officer to the control room. An experienced submariner, Beitzen took a long look through the attack periscope, then barked out range and heading coordinates.

“She’s a warship,” he confirmed nonchalantly. “Is this quadrant clear of mines?”

“Yes,” Voss replied. “Our nearest release was thirty kilometers north of here.”

“Stand by to attack,” Beitzen ordered.

Beitzen and Voss moved to a wooden chart table, where they plotted a precise intercept course and relayed orders to the helm. Though submerged, the submarine rocked and pitched from the turbulent seas overhead, making the urgent task more stressful.

Built in the shipyards of Hamburg, the U-75 was a UE-1 class submarine, designed primarily for laying down mines on the seafloor. In addition to a large stock of mines, she carried four torpedoes and a powerful 105mm deck gun. Her mine-laying duty was nearly complete, and none of the crew was expecting an encounter with an enemy warship.

Under Beitzen’s command, the U-75 was on only its second mission since being launched six months earlier. The current cruise had been deemed a minor success already, as the sub’s mines had sunk a small merchant ship and two trawlers. But this was their first crack at a prize of major stature. Word quickly rippled through the crew that they were targeting a British warship, boosting the focus and tension to high levels. Beitzen himself knew that such a kill would guarantee him the Iron Cross.