The shock of the icy water was enough to make Karl inhale with surprise. Momentum carried him down, but then the life jacket yanked him up. He broke the surface and sputtered, coughing and retching out the water he’d swallowed. He gulped in a few deep breaths and glanced back at the ship. He had to get away from the Gracechurch. She might turn. Even if she didn’t, if he was too close to her, she could suck him under when she went down. Maybe. Maybe not. Depended on how fast she sank and how close he was to the funnel and any open hatches.
Karl had grown up swimming in Kristall Lake near his home. He’d probably even swam in water this cold before on those warm days in late spring when the sun was bright and the newly thawed lake seemed inviting, no matter how much runoff from melting snow had chilled it. But swimming in a thick wool coat with his shoes and other clothing was a new, awkward experience. Clothing would help him retain body heat, though, so he didn’t strip. He looked ahead, hoping to see Jake or one of the lifeboats, but the tall waves made it hard to see much of anything. He swam farther out, then looked back. He turned on his red life light and hoped one of the lifeboats or one of the navy ships would see it soon. Otherwise, he’d die of exposure. Already, his teeth chattered and the skin of his fingertips felt numb.
The Gracechurch came in and out of view as Karl bobbed with the waves. She’d turned keel up. Each time the waves buoyed him up, the ship seemed smaller and smaller. The Gracechurch had never felt like home the way Falcon Point had, but it had given him somewhere to live. Somewhere to learn. Somewhere to start over. He wasn’t sure how long he watched and shivered, but finally, with one crested wave, the ship was visible, and then with the next, it was gone. Almost as if it had never existed.
Karl had to get out of the water. His feet felt like ice, even with shoes and socks to protect them. They felt heavy, too, so he kicked the shoes off and hoped he wouldn’t regret it later. No sign of anyone else appeared. What had happened to Jake and the Gracechurch’s lifeboats? The convoy and group of escorts had started the night numbering over fifty, and they had to be nearby, but it felt like he was all alone on the ocean.
He swam toward where the Gracechurch had sunk. At least, he thought it was back that direction. Maybe he’d find a piece of wreckage. Something to help him get out of the water. His numb fingers almost didn’t notice the difference when he swam into something that wasn’t quite right. Liquid but a different sort of wet. Oil? Karl tried to turn around, but his hands were already coated it in. Probably most of his arms and chest too.
Something glinted in the moonlight, drifting on the water not far away. Heedless of the oil, Karl swam toward it. A bit of debris, more than big enough for a man to fit on. Karl tried to climb on, but his oily fingers slipped, and the debris shot from his hands.
A few more strokes, and he caught up to it again. He remembered Mr. Blake’s advice and took the jackknife connected to his life jacket and stabbed it into the piece of floating wood. This time when he tried to climb onto it, his hand didn’t slip, but the wreckage flipped and smashed him on the head, causing a painful blur of light and blackness. He inhaled water and something else—something that burned his mouth and his throat. Then more coughs, more water into his lungs, and a lingering pain all around the top of his skull.
He tried to surface, but his eyes burned as sharply as his throat. He couldn’t see. Nor could he breathe. The life jacket pulled him up, but he bobbed against the piece of wood. Panic churned in his chest. Where was the end of the wreckage? He felt along the broken bit of ship for an edge. His frozen fingers didn’t register the texture of the object, just the pressure it made as he pushed against it. His arms felt sluggish, and so did his brain.
He finally found an edge and open water above his outstretched hand. But when he tried to swim from beneath the wreckage, he couldn’t. He was tangled in a line of some sort, and it held him back, refusing to stretch far enough for him to breathe. His lungs burned—not just with the oil but with the need for air. The edges of his eyesight grew fuzzy, and his hands grew even clumsier. He tried to push the debris up, just an inch or two, just enough for him to breathe, but it weighed too much. He pounded on it with his fists once in frustration, then in resignation.
He was going to die.
He was only eighteen. He hadn’t finished school, hadn’t defeated the Nazis, hadn’t fallen in love, hadn’t found his sisters. It seemed he would never get to do any of those things. The darkness crept closer and closer to the center of his vision, blocking out the red light of his life jacket.
“It’s not yet time, Karl.”
That voice. Karl would know it anywhere—Papa. He twisted. Was the voice some oil-induced hallucination? It couldn’t be real. Real voices couldn’t be understood beneath water, and Papa was dead. But Papa would have found a way out from under the wreckage. He always had plans and backup plans and alternates should those plans fail.
Plan the first: find the rope. Karl’s head still spun, but he felt along his torso and along his legs until he found it. He pushed it down and pulled his feet free, then kicked with all his might and levered himself out from under the debris.
His head broke water, and he tried to inhale, but first, the bit of ocean he had swallowed had to come out. He spat up water and something else, something caustic. His stomach ached, his lungs hurt, and his limbs were numb. But there was air. He could breathe, even though the coughing continued for some time, so hard he was certain he’d pulled his ribs out of alignment.
The hacking and retching calmed a little, enough for him to consider his next danger: the water’s temperature. He looked at the piece of wreckage that had almost killed him. It still might kill him, but it also might save him.
His jackknife was either on the wrong side of the wreckage or heading toward the bottom of the Atlantic. His hands were numb, but maybe if he could get his shoulders and hips to roll onto the debris at about the same time, he might manage to pull himself from the water. He tried and failed. Once. Twice. Thrice.
His shivers came in waves, strong and painful. Chattering teeth were interrupted by fits of coughing. Pain plagued his ribs, lungs, and stomach. But Papa—or maybe just Karl’s imagination—had told him it wasn’t time yet. Not time to die, so he had to live. And he’d have a considerably better chance of living if he could get out of the water.
He prayed for help, then used his arms to slowly twist in the water, on the lookout for another easier-to-use piece of wreckage. Or a lifeboat. Anything, really, other than waves that swelled and fell in the moonlight and stars that shone in cold, distant splendor. A glow showed in the distance. A burning ship, if he were to guess. Perhaps a star shell. So many ships gone down all in one night. But the rescue ships might not find any of them until the sun rose, and Karl wouldn’t survive that long if he didn’t get out of the water.
A small red light caught his eye. Another emergency light attached to a life jacket? Mr. Blake had told them that clusters of survivors were easier to find than single shipwrecked sailors, so Karl grabbed the piece of debris that had almost killed him and kicked toward where he’d seen the light. He couldn’t see it at the moment—it had been visible only at the height of a wave.
There it was again, for a moment. Karl adjusted his course and kept swimming. In Kristall Lake, he’d usually been warm enough if he’d kept moving, but even exertion didn’t warm him in this water. The penetrating cold went to the bone with a chill that sapped energy. Though the movement didn’t give him any warmth, it did give him hope, something to do. Maybe the other man out there would have a better idea of how to survive.
The red light appeared and disappeared a few more times before Karl was close enough that the light remained steady. “Ahoy!” he yelled.
The reply was muffled but confirmed he headed toward a man, not a corpse. The red light moved toward him, and eventually, moonlight revealed a familiar face. Jake. He might have insulted Karl a few times in the past, but Karl could overlook that if it meant he wouldn’t have to be alone in the sea.
“What ship are you from?” Jake asked.
“The Gracechurch, of course.”
“Ecker? Goodness, your skin looks as black as Mr. Blake’s. Did you swim through oil?”
“Yes. And I don’t recommend it.” His throat still burned. Why couldn’t his throat be numb instead of his hands? “I found a piece of wreckage. I couldn’t get on by myself without flipping it, but maybe if I anchor it on my side, you can climb on, then help me up.”
“Okay.” Jake grunted and managed to get his torso out of the water.
Karl’s hands were so numb that he couldn’t feel them as he held the wreckage steady, couldn’t even feel the pressure as the makeshift raft bumped into him.
Jake struggled forward. “Hard to do anything. So cold.” He inched forward, eventually reaching the center of the debris. Then he kept coming until he could stretch out a hand to Karl.
Karl reached in return, tried to grip, but his hands wouldn’t work. He tried again, and this time, Jake did the gripping. Karl kicked with his feet, pushed with an elbow, and pulled with the hand holding Jake’s.
And the piece of wreckage slanted, making Jake slide right into Karl, dumping both of them completely into the water again.
Jake swore and chased after their makeshift raft. Karl followed, reaching it at about the same time.
“I think it’s worse going in a second time.” Jake’s voice sounded as raw and cold as Karl’s. “You try getting on first this time.”
When the two were on opposite sides of the board, Karl used one elbow, then the other, then a knee. It didn’t feel much warmer, but he was out, and that was something. “Would have been considerate for the U-boat to torpedo us in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean instead.” He tried imagining warm water, but his imagination wasn’t strong enough to override his bitter reality. He scooted forward and reached for Jake. And Jake did the same thing Karl had. The raft tilted with their combined weight, and Karl slid back into the sea. Getting out of the water hadn’t made Karl any warmer, but going back in certainly had the opposite effect. The crashing shock of cold made him inhale so abruptly that he swallowed water again.
He coughed a few times before he could speak. “Maybe if we try at the same time, from opposite ends?”
Jake’s teeth chattered as he nodded. “Yeah, we can try that.”
Karl swam around to the other side.
Jake called out the movements. “Elbows and shoulders, not much more than those at first . . . Okay, that seems stable. Out to our hips now . . . A little farther for you, I think I’m heavier . . . Okay, now the rest of us.”
They had done it. They lay there, on elbows and bellies, heads near each other’s shoulders as they caught their breath.
“Now what?” Karl asked.
“Try to sit so we can wring the water from our clothes.”
That turned into another balancing act, one that had to be coordinated with care. But they managed. Karl pulled off his wool coat and life jacket to get at the bottom layers. He had lost his hat, so he wrapped his undershirt around his head, then replaced his damp shirt and damp coat. Trousers were more complicated to wring out because taking them off shifted the balance of the raft so much. It was a lost cause anyway. They weren’t in the water anymore, but the sea spray still showered them with regular surges.
When they were damp instead of dripping, they carefully lay down on the piece of wreckage.
Jake shivered. “As much as I hope they’ll pull us out soon, we’ll be hard to spot before daybreak. Don’t take this the wrong way, but we might need to share body heat if we want to make it that long. I’d rather snuggle with Greta Garbo or Hedy Lamarr, but they ain’t here, so you’ll have to do.”
They wedged themselves together as tightly as they could while wearing life jackets, taking care not to overbalance their makeshift raft.
“You’re definitely not a movie star, Ecker. You’re not even that warm, but at least you block some of the sea spray.”
“I could say the same about you.” Karl’s voice shook with the cold.
“So, who would you cuddle with if you had a choice?” Jake asked.
Karl felt a smile form on his face. He and Jake had never discussed women before, but before the shipwreck, cordial words from Jake had been a rarity. Maybe talking would at least take their minds off the numbing cold. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. You just don’t want to tell me.”
“It’s not that.” At least, not entirely that. “I only saw her a few times. Met her at a café in Zurich when she broke her pencil and asked if she could borrow mine to finish her crossword puzzle. She was going to help me alter my passport so I seemed old enough to join the Royal Navy, but then I found out the Royal Navy doesn’t accept recruits born in enemy countries.”
“You wanted to join the navy?”
“The Nazis took my country, and then they took my father and my home. I wanted to fight back. That seemed like the best way.”
“Well, we were in the thick of it tonight.”
Karl sighed. “We may have been in the middle of it, but I feel more like a target than a threat to the Reich.”
“Naw, don’t believe that. No one pays much attention to merchant sailors, but it’s people like us in ships like the Gracechurch that keep Britain from losing. Without us, they’d have no choice but to negotiate with the Nazis. Or surrender. Wouldn’t have the means to wage war. We bring materials for their factories, fuel for their planes and ships, food for their soldiers and their civilians.”
War was like that—dependent on so many people doing their part. Stop any portion of the process and the balance could tip.
They didn’t speak for a while, then Jake asked, “What’s she look like? The girl you wish were here?”
“I don’t wish she were here. She might freeze to death. I was picturing us together somewhere else. A nice beach in Brazil, maybe. But that’ll never happen. I lost track of her.” Miss Mildred Stevens had answered his first letter, but not his second. Millie’s father, an American diplomat, had been scheduled for a change of assignment over the summer, so Karl hadn’t a clue where to address any future letters. They might have moved to any one of the countries the United States held diplomatic relationships with. Given American neutrality, that left virtually the entire globe as a possibility.
Jake grunted. “So, what’s she look like?”
“Nothing like you.”
Jake chuckled. The sound wasn’t loud, but they were so close that Karl could feel the movement.
“She has brown hair, brown eyes. A smile that . . . well, her smile made it seem like everything was going to be all right after all.” And he’d first seen that smile after a stretch that included the worst days of his life. He’d needed Millie’s smile. “When I met her, her lipstick was smeared a little on one of her lips. I kept wanting to reach over and trace her mouth.”
“Huh. So you don’t want to cuddle her. You want to smear that lipstick a little more.”
Karl gave Jake a noncommittal grunt and focused on his memories of Millie. The night didn’t feel quite so cold. Either the memory was strong or he wasn’t as wet.
Quiet surrounded them, except for the lap of the ocean. If other ships were sounding alarms and blasting their horns in warning, they were too far away for the noise to reach them. Karl was so tired. He’d been planning to sleep when relieved from watch duty, but the U-boat had altered his plans. Now the cold, the struggle, and the sudden stillness made sleep more desirable than just about anything. Food could wait. A shower and dry clothes could wait. But sleep . . .
Karl jerked himself awake, rocking the raft. Falling asleep now, when they were wet, was dangerous. They might never wake up.
He glanced over his shoulder at Jake. His lips looked dark in the moonlight. Blue? His eyes were shut. Karl elbowed him. “Jake, stay awake, or you’ll never wake up again.”
Jake moaned, and his head lolled, but his eyes stayed shut.
“Come on, Jake.” Karl turned and shook his shipmate’s shoulder. When that didn’t work, he slugged him.
Jake’s eyes finally opened, looking confused. He glanced around in a panic, and Karl put a hand on his shoulder so he wouldn’t tip the raft.
“Easy. I don’t want a dip in the ocean again,” Karl said.
Jake grimaced. “I know better than to fall asleep like that.”
“Keep talking. That’ll help keep us awake.”
Jake shifted, making the debris bob. “What’s to say? The Gracechurch is gone. All her cargo. The camera I bought when we were in Halifax. All my money. Your shoes.”
Karl groaned. “I shouldn’t have kicked them off. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a new pair.”
“At least you’re alive to regret something.”
The conversation lapsed, and Karl felt his exhaustion again. “Keep talking. Tell me why you hate all Krauts.”
“We’re at war with ’em, ain’t we?” Jake’s teeth chattered. “Reason enough to hate them. Plus, they just torpedoed my ship and the two ships behind us in the column.”
“Maybe we should have been on a tanker instead. In the center of the convoy. Harder for the U-boats.”
Jake grunted. “Yeah, and they go up like a torch when anything goes wrong. No slow death with enough time for the crew to get to the lifeboats. Besides, my dad won’t be master of a tanker. He could have made ship’s master a long time ago, but he didn’t want a tanker.”
Karl could understand that. Any ship loaded with incendiary material had diminished chances of survival if the enemy attacked. He was covered in oil from a normal steamer—how much more oil would be on him had a tanker’s cargo leaked? And if it caught fire . . . well, that would leave most sailors with the choice of burning or drowning. There probably wasn’t any more to say, but Karl needed to keep Jake talking. “Go on.”
“He went to sea during the Great War. December 1917, he had shore leave at home, went to see his parents. They lived just a few streets up from the harbor in Halifax. He heard a pair of ships blowing their horns at each other, saw them collide. One of ’em caught fire, burned bright enough that everyone stopped to watch. Burned for a good long time. Then it went up. Huge explosion. Unbelievable. Never been anything like that before. Flattened a good part of the town. Dad was watching from his window, and the glass blew in on him.”
That explained the captain’s scarred face. Karl had noticed as soon as he’d signed on, but he’d never asked about it. That wasn’t the sort of question an ordinary sailor asked the ship’s master, no matter how much kindness the skipper had shown in hiring and mentoring someone with no previous maritime experience.
“Hit one of his eyes too,” Jake said. “The doctors managed to save it. He says he was one of the lucky ones. The blast made part of his house collapse, not just the glass, and then everything on the block caught fire. His mom didn’t make it out. Nor did his sister.”
“How did one ship cause that much damage?”
“It was full of TNT, guncotton, and benzol.”
Karl let out a whistle, but that made his throat hurt, and he started coughing again. “But you rebuilt?”
“Not me, but, yeah, Halifax did.”
Their conversation lapsed again. Jake yawned. “This night is crawling by. It’s worse than standing watch during the new moon when it’s colder than you expected and you’re out there shivering and the sky is cloudy and you can’t see the stars or anything else either.”
“Just keep talking. Morning always comes.”
Jake grunted. “Thanks for waking me up.”
“You would have done the same for me.”
“Yeah. Funny, I didn’t like you much when you came aboard, but I’m glad to have you as a shipmate tonight.”
Karl gestured to the raft. “On the SS Rubbish?”
“Not SS. It’s not a steamer. The LB Rubbish. Lifeboat.”
“Is that why you didn’t like me? Because I’m too much of a landlubber?”
Jake was quiet for a while. Maybe Karl shouldn’t have asked. Maybe he didn’t want to hear whatever reasons were behind Jake’s prior animosity. Confidence was something Karl used to have in abundance, but 1940 had changed all that, and he wasn’t sure he could rebuild his morale again if Jake said anything too harsh.
“I guess I didn’t like you because you sounded German. And because you looked rich, you know, like you’d always had everything handed to you on a silver platter.”
There was a bit of truth to that. Karl’s family had been wealthy. He’d never had to worry if there would be enough food to eat, never had to wonder whether the tuition or fees for something might be higher than his family could afford. Vacations had been limited only by time, not by expense. “Actually, the platters were always gold. Encrusted with rubies and diamonds.”
Jake shifted again. “Really?”
“No, not really. Who would put diamonds on a platter? Most of the platters were made of wood.” There had been at least three made of silver, but Karl didn’t feel the need to share that fact. “You’re right. The Nazis took a lot away from me. A grand home. Fancy serving dishes. Financial security. Land that’s so beautiful it ought to be in a painting—or a set of paintings, one for each season because they’re all so different. But I’d give it all up again in a heartbeat to escape the Nazis. What I really miss, what I really wish I could have back, is my family. My papa. My two sisters. My mama, too, but disease stole her away, not the Nazis.”
“What happened to the rest of them?”
Karl had told a shortened version of events to the captain, but apparently, Captain Jacob Tremblay, Sr., hadn’t passed it on to Jacob Tremblay, Jr. “My father had an old friend. An SS colonel. He wanted my father to work for him—for the Reich anyway. My father didn’t like Hitler and didn’t want to help his war effort, so he planned our escape, but his old friend showed up too soon. He killed my father. My sisters and I ran. They chased us, and we got separated. Anna is with our former nanny, so she’ll be all right. And Ingrid . . . she knows to go to London. I was hoping they’d both be there last time we sailed to England. They weren’t yet, but they’ve had time now, so I’m hoping . . .”
The ocean lapped at the edges of the raft. Splash from the waves sprayed across Karl’s cheeks. He’d thought he would get back on the train in Linz, where he’d left Anna. He hadn’t thought he was leaving her for months and months when he’d tried to distract the men hunting them. And Ingrid . . . if he’d just run a little faster, reached a little farther. He’d been so close.
“You had a nanny?” Jake asked.
“Yes.”
Jake scoffed. “So, I was right. You are a spoiled rich kid.”
“Not anymore. Now I’m a shipwrecked sailor. I’m completely broke, and we stop getting paid the moment we abandon ship, don’t we?”
“Yeah. ’Cause saving our lives doesn’t count as company time.” A huff. Then a sigh. “I’m sorry about your family, Ecker. I imagine there’ll be time for a trip to London when we put in, assuming we survive the night. I’ll even go with you, if you like, and make sure no one hears your accent and arrests you because they think you’re a German spy.”
“Thanks, Jake.” Karl shivered and studied the positions of the stars and the moon. Jake was right. The night was crawling along much too slowly. And memories of his flight from Austria made him feel cold the same way memories of his time with Millie had made him feel warm. “We have to keep ourselves awake. What’s the rowdiest sea ditty you know?”