“Sir… Sergeant Withers?”
Fertig pointed to the second rubber boat coming through the surf. With
the same apparent difficulty that those helping the first boat had had, Withers was trying to hurry it ashore.
“Excuse me, sir,” Whittaker said, and ran into the surf. He returned with a very small sailor riding on his shoulders.
“Send “B,”” Whittaker ordered as he set the small sailor onto the beach.
Joe Garvey flashed the Morse code signal for “B,” a dash and three dots, from a flashlight with an angled head.
There was an immediate response from a signaling light on the conning tower of the submarine. Garvey hurriedly took a pad from his pocket and wrote it down.
“What was that?” Fertig asked.
“Garvey sent them “B,”” Whittaker explained. “”B’ is ‘safely ashore, with equipment, in contact with U.S. forces in the Philippines.”
” “Sir,” Radioman Second Joe Garvey reported, “Drum messages, “Aloha God Bless.”” Fertig looked out at the submarine. It was under way. The colors had already been hauled down. Its deck was already awash. It was going back under.
It didn’t matter. If one came, others could. Others would.
“My men seem to be having a time getting your boats ashore, Captain,” General Pertig said, trying valiantly to sound nonchalant.
“We’ve got medicine for you, General,” Whittaker said.
“And some small arms and ammunition. And a million dollars in gold coins. You wouldn’t believe how much a million dollars weighs until you try to tow it around in a rubber boat with a five-horse outboard motor.”
[TWO]
St. Gertrud’s Prison
The Tatra dump truck scraped the stones in the tunnel between the courtyard and the street with the left edge of its bumper.
A little harder than usual, Eric Fulmar, riding against the cab in the bed of the truck, thought idly. And then there was immediately another proof that it was going a little harder than usual. Instead of squeaking on through, the truck jerked to a stop and, with a clash of gears, backed up.
Oh, Christ, now what?
Then the gears clashed again, and the truck moved forward, and they were through the tunnel and onto the street.
It had snowed again overnight, not much, just a white dusting over the slush. Fulmar had hoped for freezing rain. That made the ride to the mine more interesting. He had concluded that all the truck drivers he had met since they had been locked up shared one quality: They had all learned how to drive last week and tried to hide this by driving as fast as the trucks would go.
On the slippery cobblestone streets on the way to the mines, they often skidded the truck into a ditch or into something hard enough to bend the fenders into the tires. This was routinely followed by marvelous displays of Hungarian temper and absolutely marvelous attempts to get the trucks out of the ditches by doing precisely the wrong thing.
Sometimes, as much as two hours would be lost. It was more pleasant than handling a donkey in the mines, and Fulmar looked forward to icy road conditions.
He was disappointed this morning when the driver managed to negotiate a turn that had several times seen the truck skid into a ditch so steep that the rear wheels of the truck left the ground.
They were maybe a kilometer away from the mine when he felt the brakes lock, and the truck skid, and then jolt to a halt.
He could not see over the cab, so he had no idea what they’d hit.
A moment later, there was a call in Hungarian for everybody to get out.
Getting everybody out to push was routine, too. And while it wasn’t as interesting as watching the Hungarians try to get the wheels of a dump truck back on the ground by swearing and throwing stones at it, it would still delay the journey into the mines.
It wasn’t until he had slid from the truck bed and turned around that Eric saw that whatever was happening was not routine.
There were men behind the truck, Hungarian civilians with pistols; and the two Keystone Kops on the motorcycle who trailed the truck were on the ground, spreadeagled As Fulmar watched, the driver and his assistant were brought to the rear of the truck and forced onto the ground beside the cops.