Hatteras Blue (19 page)

"The old guy, the one who left the note."

Keyes looked after the waitress. "I'm not sure who he is. Short, fragile—the girl's description isn't very helpful. But yes, I'd say there's a damn good chance of it."

"Uh-oh," said Galloway.

Keyes nodded somberly. "So you see why we have to move fast and cautious."

"Yeah____Okay, one more question. This Tarnheim.

You say it's some kind of mythical helmet. Obviously it means something else to these people. What?"

Keyes thought about that for a while. At last he said, "How much do you know about World War Two, Tiller?"

"More than most, I imagine ... growing up I'd read my dad's books ... why?"

"When they realized they'd lost the war the top Nazis started making plans for afterward. One plan was called Werewolf—for a guerrilla campaign after the war. It was a failure. A second was Operation Odessa— to smuggle out as many high-ranking Party people as they could. It was a success; years went by before the Allies even suspected its existence. I figure Tarnheim was their name for the third—to get this gold to them in Argentina, so they could set up a new organization there."

Neither of them spoke for a long time. Galloway scratched violently at his head. Days of salt water had made it itch. "Hell," he said. "A ton of heavy metal. At a hundred and eighty feet. That's the absolute limit for air diving. We'll have to fight narcosis the whole time we work. We'll have to time ourselves to the minute, or we'll end up with more bends than a pound of pretzels. What we want is inside a steel hull built to resist depth charges and gunfire. Problem: Find it, get it out, and get it to the surface,
off Cape Hatteras.
" He exhaled noisily. "Any bright ideas?"

'You're the underwater expert."

"I was afraid you'd fixate, as my parole counselor would say, on that inconvenient fact."

"I do want to say one thing, though."

"I'm listening."

Keyes leaned forward. His finger tapped the table as his cornflower eyes sought Galloway's earnestly. "Sure there are obstacles. Don't get hung up on them! Remember what I said about will, out on that trawler?

"Very few people on this planet want anything. I mean, want it with all their power! But without that kind of need they'll never get anything beyond their little paycheck and their little pleasures.

"A few men are different. They know what they want. Want it enough to fight for it. To kill or even die for it if they have to! Every mountain looks unclimb-able. To a man who doesn't know the word defeat, though, even the highest mountain has to yield."

"You really believe that, Dick? That stuff about the power of will?"

"Yes. Because that's the kind of man I am—and the kind of man I think you are."

Galloway glanced up at him. The blue eyes were welded to his. After a moment he had to look away. "Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?... Okay, let's talk salvage."

"Good enough," said Keyes softly.

Smoothing a napkin on the table, Tiller sketched a rough outline of a sub on it. "Do you have any idea where the stuff is?"

"Not precisely. But I've thought about it and done some research. Actually a lot of research. You have to realize, I've been thinking about this for years."

"I can believe it."

"Well. This model of U-boat, the Type Twenty-one, was called the
Elektro boot
because of the oversize battery, for more endurance and speed. Now, all submarines are sensitive to fore-and-aft balance. According to my dad's sea stories, transferring torpedoes, pumping fuel, even crew walking forward or aft, and they had to retrim the boat." Keyes placed his finger aft of and below the conning tower on Galloway's diagram. "Given that, the best place to put a one-ton weight not originally in the design would have been somewhere here, near the center of buoyancy—as low as possible. Perhaps they dismantled one of the battery cells and stacked the gold there in ingots." He removed his finger and looked at Galloway. "Make sense?"

"Sure does." Galloway finished his beer and signaled for another. When it came he said, "When I was with SEALS we inserted from an old diesel sub a couple of times in Nam. U.S., but they can't be that different. As I recall, you got to the battery by pulling up the deck-plates in the main corridor. If it's really there I expect the plates are either locked or welded down on it. So, we'll need the underwater cutting torch, and/or explosives." He jotted the two items down on the napkin. "Next: entry. The hatches were open, as I recall. So we can get in through there."

"There's a hole blown in the port side, low in the hull. That's what I was looking at when you found me."

He stared at Keyes for a moment. "In the port side? A hole?"

"I saw it. Fairly large, too."

"Good—that may be more convenient than the hatches. We'll see. Lights—we'll need hand-held lights. Airbags, big ones. Line, plenty of it. New regulators,

new O-rings for the compressor____" He looked up

from the paper, the questioning look back. "I just thought of something else."

"What?"

"Booby traps. I remember my—my father telling me the Krauts would set demolition charges as they abandoned ship. To go off if someone entered, so she couldn't be salvaged from shallow water by the enemy. Did your dad mention anything like that?"

"I don't think so. But I've never been aboard a submarine. A lot of what he told me I didn't understand. Or didn't think at the time was important to remember."

"We'll have to be careful, then." Galloway bit down on the pencil. "And we won't have much bottom time to play with, either. Maybe a diving vehicle would be the answer—to carry more tanks, let us stay down into decompression times. I know a guy in Beaufort's got one."

"Can he keep his mouth shut?"

"What'll he know? I'll just tell him I want it for salvage work."

"Whatever you need, get it. I'll pay for it. The question is, can you do it?"

Galloway finished off the beer. He rubbed his chin, then suddenly grinned up at the blond man. 'Teah," he said. "That's the question, isn't it? You want more water, or a Coke or something?"

"No." Keyes unfolded himself. "You going back to the boat?"

Galloway got up too. 'Teah, let's get some sleep."

As they stood at the desk Galloway slipped a local paper from the rack. He was folding it over, intending to read it back aboard, when he saw the headline halfway down the front page: "Men Sought in Death of Hat-teras Resident."

"Hold it," he said. Keyes, who was paying the bill, raised his eyebrows. Galloway read the article rapidly. Halfway through, the other man came around him and began reading over his shoulder.

Clifton Aydlett had died in a fire at his home two days before. Lyle Galloway of Kinnekeet, N.C. and another, unidentified white male were wanted for questioning.

"Oh no," said Keyes.

"Christ. Christ! Old Cliff dead."

"And they think we did it."

"This is rough," Galloway muttered. "It's rough enough on me. It's going to be hell on Shad."

Keyes looked at him sideways. "Are you going to tell him?"

"We can't let him find out from anyone else. That'd be the last straw. No, we've got to tell him."

"Would you rather I did it?"

"I'm not sure. Let me think about it."

"Thanks, keep the change," Keyes said to the waitress. "Coming?"

"I think I need another beer now."

He felt the other's hand on his shoulder, just for a moment, and then he was gone. When the door closed on Keyes and the night, Tiller Galloway stood by the desk for a moment. Then he went to the bar. He ordered another draft and stood with his foot on the rail and drank this one slowly.

He considered what he had just learned, and what he had just been told. It was quite a story. It might all be true. It might be partially true. Or Keyes could be lying through his teeth for a reason he, Galloway, would understand only when it was too late.

His client couldn't have been involved in old Ayd-lett's death though. Or could he? No, Galloway had been with him every moment. But he could have hired someone else. It could even have been an accident: a blind man bumbling around in there with all that paint and varnish, a kerosene flame—it was only too possible.

What should he believe?

He could think of only one way to find out.

twelve®

H
irsch slammed the restaurant doorbe-

hind her. She was so angry she stumbled down an unremembered step. To be shut out of his business, after she had counseled him. Stood up for him at parole review. Even served as his unpaid crew—not without endangering her career. If Mr. Moulton found out how she was spending her vacation time he'd have her off Galloway's case fast as a parole hearing for Sirhan Sirhan.

What a fool she'd been! But there was a limit to how far she'd go for him. And she'd just reached it. Rubbing the bruises on her arms she walked rapidly and blindly past gift shops, fish markets, tackle shops, hardware stores and chandleries, small motels set back from the waterfront street.

But as she walked her anger cooled into a kind of rejected melancholy. She stopped to gaze at the fluted leaves of a fig tree. She looked in the window of the City News bookstore for a while and then went on, strolling now and looking about her. A tint of red, a fragment of day still lingered in the west, reflected in the still waters of a marina basin. Against that tint of rose a lacework of masts and drying nets edged the darkening sky.

Gradually she realized she was not alone. She glanced around. A few were trawlermen, in bib overalls or green work trousers, clean white T-shirts, and billed hats. Tourists, wearing jackets against the sea wind, carried tote bags and guidebooks. Pleasure boat owners swung along in summer dresses or blazers. But most looked to be local teenagers. They were all walking in the same direction. She moved around a car parked awkwardly across the sidewalk, and stopped to listen.

Music lifted for a moment ahead of her.

She came out a few blocks later at a small park. Cars and vans were jammed along its edges. Kids were lying on the hoods, on the grass, the older teens and a few self-conscious younger marrieds dancing to amplified rock played by a local group from an old-fashioned bandstand. She only half took it in. She was becoming angry again. She found a bus bench down a side street and sat down, throwing her legs out. Not stopping to think, she lit a cigarette.

Yeah, he had potential, she thought, blowing a stream of smoke into the sea wind. But he had problems too. Big ones. Galloway was ill at ease in freedom. He thought he was finished as an honest man. That was natural. Everyone felt that way. She'd told him that often enough! But for some reason he didn't believe, somewhere deep, that he could do it. Or else—and she'd considered this too—he didn't want to, was just biding his time till the restrictions of parole were over.

She wondered if he'd grown in four years in prison. If he hadn't, then sooner or later he would be tempted again, and there would be nothing, nothing at all, anyone could do to help him then.

The group shifted to old Creedence Clearwater, and she leaned back against the wood and closed her eyes. When the solid mass of the street, the town, the earth began to roll under her she put out her arms, bracing herself. It was like that whenever she came back after time at sea with Galloway. She thought about him at the wheel during the storm. Her anger ebbed as she remembered how strong he'd been, and at the same time, when the cleat tore out and she thought they were lost, how gentle. When the hair on his arms was wet it curled into tight curls, like the curve of foam behind the boat when she put it into a tight turn____

She recalled herself sternly. She had to set her feelings for him aside. She knew she had a weakness for older men. She'd even felt it, briefly, for Keyes.

This deal he was sucking Galloway into ... at first she'd thought it a positive step, a good job for Tiller, more challenging than blowing the occasional wreck or recovering lost outboard motors. She didn't know what he wanted, only that it involved salvage. That was legal. If Keyes knew of something out on the sea bottom, it was his to recover, as long as he declared it and paid taxes afterward. Naturally he wanted to do it without publicity; anyone else had as much right to bring it up and sell it as he did. So at first she'd had no reason to assume there was anything untoward going on.

But then someone had tried to kill them. And the longer she spent around Keyes the less she trusted him and the more she feared. She remembered that awful scene over her bikini. It made her wonder if he was even sane...

"Mind if I sit here?"

"Go ahead," she said. Then something in the voice jogged her memory, and she opened her eyes and looked up.

The old man was smiling at her in the starlight, the cold eyes and time-ravaged face distinct even in shadow. "I've been waiting for you for some time," he said.

If her throat had not closed with terror she would have screamed. She threw up her arm, gathered her legs under her, her eyes blown wide.

"No, don't run," he said softly but urgently into the sudden silence of a break between songs. Scattered clapping came from the audience, hidden by night "Don't cry out I'm sorry to startle you, but you and I must talk."