Deker was in his cell when the walls started to shake and the sentries outside the door shouted. The shaking was followed by the unmistakable explosion of antiaircraft fire from above. Not waiting to be buried alive, the sentries escaped down the corridor, leaving Deker on his own as blocks of stone started to fall from the ceiling.
He took cover in a dark corner of the cell, crouching into a small ball and throwing his arms over his head for protection. At least the Allies had made good use of the intelligence he had provided them, he thought. Not that it mattered if von Berg managed to escape with Aphrodite and the atomic bomb.
From the next cell came the screams of another prisoner. “You cannot leave me!” the man cried in German. “I am Dr. Xaptz, personal counselor to the Führer! Don’t leave me here to die!”
Deker heard a key rattling inside the lock of his own cell door. He lowered his arms and looked up. The iron gate scraped open, and in stepped an old man wearing a sentry’s uniform. Quietly, he closed the door and turned around, two ramlike eyes shining out of a wizened face. To Deker, it felt like the devil himself had come from hell to fetch him, and he shrank back into the shadows.
“I know you,” Deker said in a trembling voice. “I’ve seen your face somewhere before.”
“Come,” said the old man in Greek. “We must hurry. The Baron is escaping in his submarine. I saw him on my way in.”
It occurred to Deker where he had seen that face—in a mirror at the Monastery of the Taborian Light in Meteora. He was very confused. That couldn’t be.
Deker exclaimed, “You’re Hadji Azrael!”
Deker then remembered the destruction of the Monastery of the Taborian Light. “You died in the fire.”
“Strange. That’s what Aphrodite told me about you, Christos.”
“Aphrodite?” Deker cried out. “We’ve got—” He broke off at the sound of an ominous rumble down the tunnel. Through the window slot in the door, he saw the sentries who had disappeared now running toward the cell, chased by a wall of water. “Get back!” he shouted.
Deker and Philip shrank back from the door and huddled in the corner of the cell, waiting for the torrent to burst through and flood the cell. But the thick door blocked the water, as did one of the captors, who slammed into the metal barrier and whose face plugged the window slot. Deker looked up at the German’s eyes, turning round in terror. The entire door seemed ready to give way from the buildup behind it, and water started spurting around the edges, but the visible bulge in the center of the door flattened, and the blue face in the window slipped out of sight as the water receded.
Deker looked at Philip, who was making the sign of the cross. He then stood up and walked to the cell door. The force of the water had cracked the door’s frame. After a few pushes, they were able to force the door open.
The entire network of tunnels beneath the submarine bay was flooded, they discovered, and all who were inside had drowned, including the prisoner in the neighboring cell. Deker found a couple of German corpses floating about and helped himself to a Schmeisser.
“I have to find Aphrodite,” he told Philip as they waded through the sea water toward some stone steps and made their way up to the bay level.
Philip said, “She’s on the Nausicaa with the Maranatha text.”
“No,” said Deker. “The text is upstairs in von Berg’s study—unless you saw him take it aboard the submarine.”
Philip shook his head. “I don’t believe he took anything with him.”
At the top of the steps, they reached a dry corridor outside the submarine bay, still below the surface of the hillside but undamaged by the flooding in the lower levels.
“You go after Aphrodite,” said Philip. “I’ll go after the text.”
They were silent a moment, only dimly aware of shouts and gunfire in the distance. Deker looked into the old monk’s eyes. He hardly knew this man and yet had so many questions he would have liked to ask him. Philip seemed to grasp a greater world than Deker knew. But the Baron was getting away, and both he and Philip understood that there was no time now.
“Good-bye,” Deker said as they separated.
“God help you!” cried Philip, and he disappeared down the dark corridor.
Deker turned around, pulled out his Schmeisser, and started toward the submarine bay. Sirens blared, and soldiers ran past him in the opposite direction. He encountered no resistance, as everybody was preoccupied with their own survival. But when he entered the submarine bay, he was greeted by machine-gun fire from the aft deck of the Nausicaa, and he dove for cover behind some crates.
When the gunfire ceased, Deker peered over the crates and gazed out over the cavernous submarine bay. Large chunks of rock were falling from the ceiling. With all the smoke and confusion, Deker couldn’t see the submarine and feared she was gone. Then a curtain of smoke parted, and he could see the unreal image of the Nausicaa slipping away. Behind her giant gun on the aft deck was Franz, who spotted him behind the crates. Franz swung the gun toward him and unleashed a burst of fire.
Deker ducked as the bullets drilled a neat row of holes into the rock over his head. The Nausicaa’s antiaircraft guns were designed to lock at a parallel angle, no doubt to prevent the gunners from tearing up their own deck. But in these circumstances, they frustrated Franz’s attempt to point the barrels low enough to kill him.
Deker emerged from behind the crates and ran beneath the line of fire until he reached the end of the stone pier. Only ten feet of water separated him from the Nausicaa. But to him, it could have been ten miles. He froze in fear.
Franz reached for his Luger to pick him off. Deker saw him and quickly lifted the barrel of his Schmeisser, fell to one knee, and fired, knocking Franz off the aft deck of the escaping submarine. Deker took a deep breath and dove into the water, crawling wildly toward the Nausicaa before it could get away.
He climbed up onto the Nausicaa’s aft deck and lay sprawled on his back, gasping for air. They were slowly making their way through floating debris out of the cave. Behind them lay fiery destruction, before them a gaping hole and the open sea.