By this time I knew I could count on Jedediah. They had tried to steal his soul and he was holding it against them forever. I didn’t know if he had truly been “saved” as he claimed, but he sure was a different person than the one who got all those tattoos and spouted the slogans. He wanted revenge. He undoubtedly knew that the Scriptures said vengeance was God’s, but he clearly thought he was the one God would use to exact that retribution.
While he headed toward the helicopters I took the suitcase and headed down the hallway. The suitcase had the Blood Flag, and in the lining underneath were fourteen bars of C4, each one inch by two inches by eleven inches wrapped tightly in thick green cellophane. This wasn’t what I had thought I’d be using them for. I had thought in my super-hero mind that when the BKA closed in on the castle in Munich I could destroy some of the weapons and vehicles; but even that hadn’t been all that well thought out. The BKA would almost certainly want to confiscate anything they found. Everything would be evidence. But now I was all about destruction. I couldn’t even explain my expectations to myself.
I looked both ways then turned down the passageway that ran athwart ships. It would almost certainly lead to a ladder that if followed down would lead to the bilge.
I walked aimlessly like I was unable to sleep and wandering around the ship. I turned down the passageway and still saw no one. I could feel the movement of the ship under my feet. It took me back to my days in the Navy. For some reason I felt reassured by the vibrations and movement.
I found a ladder and as I turned to go down it I heard a voice behind me.
“Where are you going?” I recognized the leader of the Russian neo-Nazi group. He spoke perfect English. Kobarov was his name, as I recalled.
“For a walk. I’m like a caged animal. I need to get around some.”
“By going below?”
“I’ll head up on deck in just a minute.”
“What’s in the suitcase?”
“The flag.”
“Yes,” he said smiling in a way I didn’t like. “I’d like to see it close up.”
“No, sorry. Not for showing any more tonight.”
“Why are you carrying it around?”
“It never leaves my sight.”
“What about your strong friend? Why couldn’t you leave it with him?”
“He’s snoring away in our stateroom. One of us has to stay up. I had to get away. Goodnight,” I said and turned quickly and descended the ladder, then another after that, and the one after that. I stopped, and listened, to see if he was following me. I heard nothing.
I could feel sweat forming in the small of my back. I turned away from the ladder and saw that to descend further I had to get through a closed hatch. It had a handle, like a steering wheel. It wasn’t locked. I tried to turn the handle but it was frozen. Maybe dogged too tight. I put all my force into it and it finally turned. I pulled the hatch cover up, and went down into the bilge, the lowest part of the ship, separated from the ocean only by the hull. I didn’t have a flashlight, but with the hatch open I could see just enough to move. A rat scurried away from me as I invaded his space. Some bilge water splashed underneath my feet. I could tell it was a single-hull ship. A double-hull ship would have presented different problems. This was an older, midsized container ship, and not well constructed.
I knelt down, pulled one of the bars of C4 out of my suitcase and jammed it against the hull in the corner with the crossbeam. I inserted the detonator and attached the timer to the detonator. I turned the dial to ten minutes, and hit start. I checked my watch and noted the time. I moved over as far as I could in that compartment to the far bulkhead and did the same thing. A rat ran across my hand as I jammed the C4 into the dark corner, inserted the detonator and set the timer for nine minutes forty-five seconds. I went to the other far bulkhead in that same compartment and did the same thing, and set that timer for nine and a half minutes. I hurried up the ladder, closed the hatch, and walked down the passageway outboard looking for another hatch. I couldn’t find one.
I finally found another hatch on the port side and tried to open it. It was impossible to open. It was stuck. I saw no lock, but the handle wouldn’t turn. I looked around for a tool but couldn’t find one. I ran back down the passageway and turned the corner and found the fire hose on the bulkhead. In the glass window was an ax. I opened the door, pulled out the ax, and ran back to the hatch. I stuck the ax head through the handles and out the other side so that it would catch the spoke of the wheeled handle, then I pulled on the ax handle. Still nothing. I sat on the floor and braced my feet against the wall and pushed with my legs as I pulled hard, and finally the wheel gave. I turned it again with the ax handle, then pulled the handle out and turned the wheel by hand. I pulled the hatch up. A horrible stench struck my nose. The smell was violent. I descended into the dark room, and slipped off the ladder, stepping onto something soft that gave way. I knelt down and reached out with my hand to feel what it was. I felt a hand and an arm. A rotting body. I wretched, and threw up. In the near complete darkness, I could barely make out six or seven bodies in varying stages of decay. Eidhalt hadn’t hired a ship, he’d stolen it and killed the crew and thrown them into the bilge. I held my breath as I planted the C4 under three of the bodies. I quickly took my cell phone out of my sock and took pictures in the darkness, hoping some would turn out. The flash of the phone camera told me I’d at least get an image. I quickly set the timer on the blast. I hurried back up to the ladder and closed the hatch. I ran to the other side of the ship and found another hatch; it opened quickly. I hurried down the ladder, set three more charges, and closed the hatch. I had three charges left, and less than seven minutes. I dashed up one ladder after another until I reached the open deck inside the simulated cargo containers. I walked to the structure that held the bridge, the electronics equipment, and all the radio equipment operating the ship. I opened my cell phone and searched for coverage. No service. Had to try. I texted the photo to Alex.
I heard a voice behind me, “What are you doing?”
I turned around to see Eidhalt as I slipped the phone into my pocket. He was smoking a cigar. “What are you doing?” I asked back.
“Getting fresh air and smoking a fine Cuban cigar. It was quite a day.” He took a deep pull on the cigar and inhaled the smoke. He said through the smoke, “But what are you doing up here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Too much excitement.”
“What were you looking at by the bridge?”
“I thought I saw something leaking.”
“Really. A leak? Did you find anything?”
“No, it was just a stain on the deck.”
“A stain?”
“I’m sure it’s fine.” He continued to stare at me, clearly not believing what I was telling him.
“I’d like you to come with me to my stateroom to discuss some things.”
“Nah, thanks. I just need to get some air.”
“No. Come to my stateroom now.”
“Actually, I’m not feeling very well. I’m a little bit seasick. And I’ve heard that if you stay up on deck, you are much less likely to get sick.”
“Perhaps. But you’re coming to my stateroom now.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out a gun and pointed it at me. “And I think it’s time that you gave me the Blood Flag.”
“So this is how it is, huh?” I kept my hands at my side, but was very conscious of the .45 in his hand. “We do everything you ask; we come over here and help you with your meeting. You feature our flag as your centerpiece and then you take it from us at gunpoint?”
“That flag is the last piece of the puzzle I have been putting together. I would offer to buy it from you, but I don’t believe you’d sell it to me.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
“You have nowhere to go. You were never going to leave this ship with the flag. We’ll just have this conversation now, earlier than I had originally planned. Come with me.”
“Who are you anyway?” I said closing the distance slightly, almost within arm’s reach. “Rolf Eidhalt isn’t your name. You think I wouldn’t know it’s an anagram used by Hitler when he was in exile? It’s the letters of “Adolph Hitler” rearranged. You didn’t think I’d know that?”
He smiled. “I actually hoped someone would. I chose it carefully and with pride. I knew you were smarter than the others.”
“You can’t have the flag.” I could almost feel the time ticking away. I had placed one of the C4 sticks against the superstructure right behind him. If it went off we’d both be vaporized.
“Yes I can. You have nowhere to go.”
He raised his handgun, which gave me the one second I needed. I grabbed his right wrist with my right hand and pushed his arm away from me. I leaned back and stomped on the outside of his right knee, smashing it to the deck and ripping tendons. He cried out in pain as I took both hands and twisted the weapon in his hand. He had to let go or his hand would break. I took his weapon and put it in my belt.
“Your time is over.” I brought my right foot up sharply and kicked him in the face. He fell over on the deck as I sprinted toward the back of the ship. The best I could tell the large tent-like covering that made the ship look like a container ship had only two openings, one forward near where we’d been standing and one in the stern. I ran to the stern, found the flap in the heavy fabric, pulled them apart, and dove off the ship into the black sea below. The deck was fairly high off the water and I would have preferred to have jumped feet first, but didn’t want to take the additional time.
I wished it even more when I hit the water. I had over rotated and landed nearly flat on my back. It knocked the breath out of me as I sank into the water. I held my breath and tried to maintain my consciousness while evaluating whether I had broken my back. I didn’t go too deep because of the flatness of my entry, and I was soon back on the surface. I gasped for breath and began treading water. I took my shoes off and let them drop into the Baltic. I was in the process of removing my pants when I heard a voice.
“You okay?” It was Jedediah rowing one of the lifeboats from the ship.
“Yeah,” I said, breathing hard. “I thought I broke my back.”
“That was some exit. I thought you’d be a little more cautious.”
“Eidhalt found me planting C4 by the superstructure. He was holding me at gunpoint.”
“Shit. What happened?”
“I grabbed his gun and smashed his knee and ran for the back. Here I am. Thanks for picking me up.”
“You get the charges set?”
“Yeah.” I looked at my watch. “One minute.”
Jedediah rowed away from the ship as the ship steamed away at eight or nine knots. I waited. I thought of everything that had transpired, everything I had done, every place I had been. Everything since the summer in France, which now seemed so long ago.
I stared at the ship as it got smaller. I was beginning to wonder if I had set the charges right, when I heard the first one go off. I expected a sound like a crack or a loud bang, but instead it was a muffled whoompf followed in rapid succession by several other explosions. Some loud, some muffled, but now cascading over each other as the shockwaves rolled over us. Suddenly, more lights came on and the ship stopped dead in the water. I thought I saw the bow come up, and then I saw the frame that held the tent-like superstructure painted to resemble containers collapse. The bow of the ship was pointing upward in a sick broken way. The ship’s back had broken. The stern now pointed upwards and raced the bow to the sky. Jedediah continued to row slowly as we watched the ship sink. From the first explosion until the ship vanished was less than four minutes.
Jedediah said, “Nice job setting those charges. Are you a secret ordnance guy or something?”
“Just went low and stayed by the waterline. You get a big enough rupture the ship just can’t stay afloat. All the damage control in the world won’t help you.”
“I’ve never seen a ship sink before,” Jedediah said.
I listened to the lifeboat cut through the flat Baltic and stared in the direction of the ship. “I found a bunch of rotting bodies. Ship’s crew I’d bet. I got a couple of photos, but my phone is now soaked. I tried to text one to Alex. I think Eidhalt stole the ship and murdered the crew in cold blood.”
“Guess he got what was coming to him.”
“We’ll need to keep rowing to make sure we don’t run into any of their lifeboats.”
“Nothing to worry about there.”
I turned and looked at Jedediah behind me. “Meaning?”
“I disabled some of their lifeboats, and locked the others to the deck with steel cables.”
I stared at him in the dark and he stared back at me. I saw no remorse. “They don’t have lifeboats?”
He shook his head slowly with satisfaction.
“We’ve got to go get the survivors!” I moved toward Jedediah who held tight to the oars. I knew I couldn’t wrest them out of his hands.
“Not a chance. They are a bunch of murderers.”
“Yeah but we’re not. I didn’t come here to kill anybody. I just wanted them floating out there, so the German Navy or Polish Navy or whoever could pick them up and put them in prison. We have them for even more murders with the ship’s crew. Turn around!” I stood in the bobbing lifeboat.
Jedediah continued to row slowly. I heard the slap of the oars against the water. He said, “This is exactly what you wanted since the day we met. You just needed me around so you could tell yourself it was all my doing.”
I scoured the water for survivors. I listened for cries. Nothing. I sat down.
He kept rowing, then asked, “What happened to the flag?”
“I wrapped it around one of the bricks of C4.”
“Gone forever,” he said with satisfaction. He rowed in silence, then said, “Your father will be proud.”
After contemplating I finally answered him. “I’m not so sure.”