Authors: Nina Berry
Pagan crouched and, using her hands for balance, crawled into the narrow space between the shelves and onto the crowded landscape of the pallet. The boxes and crates were crammed together more haphazardly than most shipping containers would be. These guys were in a hurry, and all these boxes of animal kibble, empty cages and lab equipment were now trash, evidence of Von Albrecht's activity that would very likely be dropped off the side of the ship once they got to sea. So they hadn't bothered to stack it with care. There was just enough space between a large cage, filled with animal dung and dirty newspaper, and a metal tank marked Propane for a girl to squeeze in.
Pagan had always wanted to be tall enough to be a real model. Clothes just looked better on those long, elegant bodies. But now even her five-foot-six felt enormous. She slotted her head into a space between two higher level crates and hoisted her hips to sit on the cage, her legs, dirty and bruised, wedged between it and the propane.
The angle she was forced to lie in sent a stabbing pain down the small of her back. The foul smell of old animal urine and feces was cut with the nostril-curling odor of gas.
She thought of her mother's favorite perfume, the soft, romantic L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain. Bergamot and tuberose this was not. Mama would not approve.
Just another reason to do it.
With a jolt, the cart began rolling. Pagan's head jerked forward, banging her nose on the crate in front of her face, and she stifled a cry of pain. Above the grating sound of the wheels and the creak of the cargo around her, she heard the voices of Dieter's crew shouting to get the warehouse doors open. The last pallet was coming through.
The last pallet and one very cramped girl.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Docks, Buenos
Aires
January 12, 1962
VOLCADA
To tip over, capsize. A falling step.
The temperature dropped as Dieter's boys rattled the cart carrying Pagan's pallet outside, and the ride got rougher. Pagan was grateful for the darkness, and flexed one foot experimentally to keep the muscles from seizing. If she skewed her eyes way to her left, she could just see a slice of night, which lightened and then was blocked out by the brown painted metal of the crane.
Loud male voices shouted, and the pallet shook as they slung things around it and hooked cables to it. Pagan couldn't see exactly what they were up to, and it was taking forever. Her neck was on fire from the strain of holding it at this absurd angle.
It's only been a minute. Calm down.
The pallet lurched upward and swung like a carnival ride. Pagan's stomach dropped as her entire body slid and bumped toward the edge of the pallet. She caught a glimpse of the ground falling away, before she grabbed the edge of a crate and jammed her foot between two boxes to stop her fall.
Air rushed down at her. Cable groaned. A view of the ship flashed past as the pallet spun in midair. Pagan loved roller coasters and every sort of carnival ride. She shrugged at heights. But she'd never before lain on a pallet as it swirled and threatened to tip her out like a fried egg from a buttered skillet.
Her head swam. Gorge rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard.
Just another few seconds. Hang on.
The pallet hit the deck with an earsplitting smack. Pagan bounced up at least six inches and slammed down onto the crates beneath her. The edge of the cage cut into her ribs. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep from screaming.
A man circled the pallet, disengaging the hoisting cables, and she stayed as still as she could. Each breath sent a jab of agony through her. Could you tango with broken ribs? Just as well she'd all but quit the movie.
The man yelled something in Spanish she didn't understand and threw his arms up. The crane lifted the cables away from the pallet. They vanished into the dark of the night sky above her. Heavy boots walked away, and it got quiet.
She yanked her foot out of the crevice she'd jammed it in, and experimentally wiggled her toes inside her shoe. At least those weren't broken. The pain in her ribs had calmed to a red growl in her side. Maybe it was only a bruise. She sat up, one hand easing her neck, and peered over the top of the nearest box.
She was seated pretty high up on the crates and had a view out over the front half of the ship, piled haphazardly with other pallets. It looked like a cityscape in miniature, the towers of boxes like skyscrapers with deep alleys zigzagging between. She was King Kong, with a view of a miniature New York.
No sign of Von Albrecht or Dieter. The ship's bridge lay behind. A knot of men was busy doing something to some crates over on the...port side, was it? All her knowledge of shipping came from watching pirate movies. That might be where they were going to dump the animals overboard.
“Que demonios esta hacienda aqui?”
Pagan's throat closed and her head swiveled around. A skinny man in corduroys and a work shirt scowled below at her. He had a gun tucked into his belt.
But he wasn't pointing it at her. She was young, female and rumpled enough that she probably looked like a runaway, or a drug addict who'd fallen asleep in the wrong place. Certainly no threat to a dockworker moving illicit cargo for a once and future Nazi.
“Lo siento,”
she said, trying to imitate Emma's German-Argentine accent. It wasn't easy. “Please don't tell anyone.”
He snorted. “Come down from there,” he ordered, flapping his fingers at her. “You can't stay on the ship.”
She stood up, but took care to keep the top of her head from going past the top of the crates around her to avoid anyone else seeing her. She had to get rid of this guy somehow, without anyone else noticing.
And without getting shot. One of the smaller empty cages was piled up to her left, towering over the skinny dockworker. She put one hand on the back of it and pressed. It was heavy, but it shifted slightly when she pushed.
“But I'm Dieter Von Albrecht's girlfriend,” she said. Oh, crap, maybe she should've claimed to be Emma instead. “I just want to say goodbye to him.”
The man's eyes narrowed. “They why not drive here and wave? No. No stowaways. Come down.”
He put one hand on the grip of his gun, flicking off the holster snap that held the pistol in place. “Hey!” He looked off to his left, shouting to his fellow sailors. “Come look what I fâ”
Pagan shoved the smaller empty cage with all her strength off the crate beneath it. It shot forward and fell with a horrible rattling thump right on the dockworker's face. He crumpled in a flurry of flailing arms and legs. The cage tumbled off him to the side.
In two bounds, she was beside him, pulling his gun from its holster. He stirred, blood oozing from a cut on his forehead.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and smacked him between the eyes with the pistol.
He fell back and lay still. She put one shaking hand to the vein in his throat and felt his pulse beating beneath her fingers. He'd live.
But had anyone paid attention to his shout? They were in a pool of darkness in the middle of a crate-filled deck. It wasn't easy to pick out anyone unless you were up high. But the sound of the falling cage would draw attention, too.
“Juan?” a man yelled.
“Something fell. Over there.”
“I heard it.”
The voices were coming from
that
direction. So Pagan backed up between her pallet and its neighbor in the opposite direction, then rounded a corner and began winding her way through the jungle of crates in what she thought was the direction of the bridge.
Once she got to the bridge... What the hell was she going to do then? She had a gun now, and that should help her intimidate the ship's captain into keeping the vessel here. If that didn't work, maybe she could shoot the steering wheel or whatever steered a ship. Even her appearance there might stall them long enough.
The faint thrumming beneath her feet whirred into a full-body vibration, and someone sang out the Spanish version of “All ashore that's going ashore!”
Pagan began to run, darting in between stocked pallets and piles of crates. Behind her, a man called for a doctor. Her unconscious dockworker had been found.
Maybe transporting the injured worker off the ship would stall them a few minutes.
She rounded the corner of a very large crate to see the edge of the ship with animal cages piled high along it and Dieter and Von Albrecht standing only ten yards away. Two other men were busy with the cages. Two went splashing into the water as she watched. She couldn't bear to think that they'd contained any animals. The gangplank cut a line from ship to shore ten yards beyond. She'd gone in completely the wrong direction and ended up on the dockside of the ship.
She managed not to curse out loud and darted back between two crates, crouching low. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt her injured ribs.
Had they seen her?
“Enough begging!” Von Albrecht was saying to Dieter. Oh, good. He was still arguing with Dieter, which meant he hadn't spotted her. “I'm tired of your selfish pleas. Get off this ship and go look after your sister. Wait for my signal.”
“Yes, Papa,” Dieter said, disappointment heavy in his voice. “Just say the word, and I'll organize a revolt right here. All of South America...”
His grandiose dreams were interrupted by a sharp barking sound and a ferocious growl.
“Stupid cur,” Von Albrecht said. “Hurry up and throw it overboard before I do it myself.”
The dog. It was still alive. And about to be killed.
She looked around, gun in hand, for something, anything, to help. With Von Albrecht, Dieter and those two men there, her gun couldn't keep them all at bay. She needed a distraction to pull some of them away. That would keep them from killing the dog for now. Then, if she could get Von Albrecht in her sites with only Dieter as backup, she could order him to stall their departure.
Hell, she hated him so much she might even be able to shoot him if he said no.
All around here were boxes, crates, cartons and bins labeled Glass, Instruments,
Gasolina
and Waste. One, more pristine, painted white and strapped to the deck itself, was labeled
Emergencia
and had a bright red stripe across it with smaller writing on the lid. But all it probably held was life jackets or inflatable boats or something.
Wait. Gas.
A large metal tank sat under a pile of wooden boxes with the word
Gasolina
stamped across it in big black letters. Would a bullet penetrate the tank? How big of an explosion would it make? Big enough for any nearby police or firemen to come running? Big enough to set the ship on fire?
At the very least it should make a fine distraction.
Pagan backed off twenty feet, ready to run, aimed her pistol and fired.
Clang!
The bullet slammed into the metal tank, and Pagan turned to run.
“What was that?”
She was halfway around the corner of a huge pallet of boxes when she realized. No explosion. No fire. Nothing.
But the gun had banged loudly. That would draw at least a couple of them away. Heavy footsteps were moving around, searching. She circled the crate next to the gas tank to approach it slowly from another angle and peered around a corner.
The bullet had punched a large hole in the side of the tank, doing more damage than she'd thought. Liquid spilled out, pooling on the deck. The nose-curdling tang of it indicated that indeed it was gas. But shooting it hadn't ignited diddly-squat.
Served her right for learning everything from the movies.
The heavy footsteps were still searching. They hadn't found her yet, and they probably hadn't had time to deal with the dog. Still, she needed to set that fire. It could be both signal to the authorities and a chance to stop the ship from leaving, if she could just get the dang thing to light.
The liquid, spilling from the tank. If she could light that... She fumbled in her pocket for her Zippo, the lighter she'd stolen from Alaric Vogel. She'd have to throw it into the biggest puddle of gas from farther away or risk getting burned herself. She flicked the flame to life.
“You're a fool, Pagan Jones.”
That horrible voice.
Pagan turned to see Von Albrecht standing ten feet away between towering crates, looking down his long nose at her.
She raised the gun. “Who's the bigger fool?” she asked. “The fool, or the fool who calls her names when she's carrying a loaded gun?”
A large hand reached out from the darkness beside her and grabbed the gun.
Dieter. Sidling with eerie quiet down a narrow trench between crates.
Pagan gasped, but managed to kick his shin as she tried to twist away. Her toe slammed into bone, and Dieter grunted. But he didn't flinch. With ridiculous ease, he wrenched the pistol from her fingers. She stared at it helplessly as he backed off a step and pointed it at her.
His thick lips curled smugly, and he gave her one hard shove on the shoulder. She stumbled backward and sat down hard on the white
emergencia
box.
“Idiot,” Von Albrecht said. Smoke curled around his head from the cigarette in his mouth as he walked up to stand next to his son. She'd been so busy tracking the other men's steps she hadn't heard these two come at her from different angles. And now her gun was in Dieter's hand.
But she did have a tank spilling propane and a lighter. Hands trembling, she managed to flick the lighter back on and held it out over the puddle of gasoline growing larger every second, on the other side of the
emergencia
box.
“Hello, Dr. Van Alt,” she said.
Von Albrecht raised his gray eyebrows at the sound of his real name, his Nazi name.
“Yes, I know who you really are,” she said. “And all the terrible things you've done. One step toward me and I'll light us up,” she said.
Von Albrecht made a scornful sound in the back of his throat. He removed the cigarette from his lips and threw it right into the stinky puddle of gas.
Pagan exclaimed, and jumped, scrambling for cover. Dieter moved sideways with amazing speed for someone so tall, and shoved her back down onto the white box.
The cigarette sank into the puddle of gasoline and went out.
“Go ahead and throw the lighter,” Von Albrecht said. “You will only prove that you're as stupid as you look.”
She stared down at the growing puddle, not understanding. “But...it smells like gas.”
“It is gas,” Von Albrecht said. His smirk showed how it pleased him to lecture her. “But it is the vapor which explodes at low temperatures, not the liquid. The liquid requires higher temperatures or a larger spark for ignition.”
So the movies had lied about both guns and cigarettes setting gas on fire. She really needed to have a chat with those screenwriters. If she got out of this alive.
“Where's a blowtorch when you need one?” Pagan said. Her voice was miraculously steady. “Look, I'm all for your plan to blow up Berlin. Mama would've loved it. I just don't like it when people hurt animals. So let me take the dog in that cage with me, and you can lift anchor. No hard feelings.”
Von Albrecht considered her without emotion, but Dieter snickered. “Let's take her with us, Papa,” he said. “She has been to East Berlin before. Let her die there.”
“I believe in what you're doing!” Pagan said. Her voice had a desperate edge that was real, but it seemed appropriate. “I told you before, Doctor. Mama told me all about you. She taught me well. I won't give away your secret.”
Von Albrecht pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. “You are not your mother.”