They climbed down to the deck from the ruined wheelhouse wanting more to get away from the debris and the captain’s body than anything else. On the deck, they were confronted with five dead bodies, now stripped of clothing, making their wounds more apparent and ghastly.
They’d all been riddled with bullets worse than the captain had.
“What should we do with them?” Jackson asked, hardly speaking above a whisper.
The boy gave him a funny look. “You’re asking me? You’re the adult.”
Jackson shook his head. “Well, yeah, but so far, you’ve saved both our lives. Twice. From the men finding us and the bombs. I have no idea what’s going on or what to do now.”
“Well, I’m just a kid, but I’m alive and can still think. I have a suggestion.”
“What?”
“Those guys set the explosions to go off very quickly after they left. Then they pulled away fast. I’m sure they must have noticed by now that there was no boom. Don’t you think they might come back to check? Their plan wouldn’t have included anyone finding a shot-up ship and naked bodies full of bullet holes. That must have been why they set the bombs—to destroy the evidence.”
Jackson’s eyes grew wider as the boy spoke. “My god, you’re right! We need to get out of here! Is there some sort of lifeboat? There must be.”
That got him a sarcastic stare and eye roll. Obviously, the boy wasn’t as shaken up as he was. “Yeah, but it’s not much, it’s not fast-moving and would take a long time for just the two of us to launch. Time we don’t have.”
“What then?”
“I’ll try to restart the engine. They shut it off, meaning the shooting didn’t damage it. I heard what it sounds like when it shuts down normally. They turned it off, probably to kill the noise it makes, and so the boat would sink where it is. I’ll try to get it going again, then we can use it to run. Hopefully they don’t have radar. I didn’t see any parabolic antenna. We might be okay.”
“They’ll chase us?”
“Maybe not. If they don’t find the boat here, they might think the explosions weren‘t as loud as they’d expected, and the boat sank.”
All the time he was talking, the boy was also making his way back up into the wheelhouse. Jackson followed. The kid went to the control module. The captain’s body still hung from the wheel. Jackson helped him remove it and set it out of the way. The ignition key was still in place. The boy turned it, pressed a button, and the engine came to life.
“I always wanted to run this thing,” the boy said. “I just hope the steering wasn’t damaged.”
It wasn’t. The boy pushed the throttle all the way forward, and as the boat started moving, he pulled the wheel hard to starboard, taking them off the course which they’d been on when the black boat had approached them.
They sailed on without speaking for ten minutes before the boy slowed the boat.
“Well done!” enthused Jackson. “That’s now three times you’ve saved us.”
“We’re not really safe yet,” the boy responded. “These waters are very tricky. The captain told me there are shallow places you can’t see; I don’t know where they are. I only know our regular route. I’m just hoping we don’t hit bottom. That’s one reason I slowed down. Less likely to tear the bottom open if we’re going slow when we hit. And this way, they’re less likely to hear us.”
Jackson was looking at him with wonder. “How can you be like this? You hardly seem scared and are making all the right decisions. Better than I ever could. And you’re what, 12?”
The boy grimaced. “I’m 15. I know, I know. I look young. Kids here my age are all starting to have sex with each other. I’d like to do that, too, but no one wants me. Everyone my age thinks I’m too young.”
“Girls have to think you’re cute. I mean, well, guys don’t call guys cute, but face it. You’re damn good-looking. You must have had opportunities.”
“Not much. I’ve had to work. And girls, boys? I haven’t figured that part out yet, and no one my age has been interested in me. That’s okay. I don’t have time for that shit yet anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have any parents. To stay out of a community home, I took an apprenticeship with the captain. Now he’s dead, so I shouldn’t say crap against him, but he wasn’t a good man. I’m not terribly sorry he’s dead, other than now I don’t have a job, a place to live, any money, anything. But I’ve been keeping busy working. No time for, what do you guys call it, ah, extracurriculars.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jan.” He pronounced it like it began with a ‘Y’.
“With a Y or a J?”
“J.”
“Well, Jan, for now, we’re together. Hey, I’ll stick with you as you’re much better at surviving than I’d be alone. We’ll figure out just what’s what later, but no way, after what you’ve done, am I letting you just walk away. Oh, and I’m Jackson. Not Jack. Jackson.”
At that point, they both felt the boat jerk, and the boy immediately cut the throttle to dead stop. Then he reversed the screw and slowly powered up again. The boat hesitated, Jan gave it a bit more power, and it pulled back from whatever it had come up against.
“Whew! Close one!” he said.
“What do we do now?” Jackson was miles outside his areas of knowledge and comfort zone.
“We either go back to Halmstad or continue on to Grenaa. I think the water would be better going back. But we’re much closer to Grenaa, and if the black boat comes back to check, we might run into it, but we aren’t fast. What’s your opinion?”
Jackson said, “I need to get to Grenaa. I need to be there by eight AM, too. A ride’s waiting for me there.”
“Okay, I’d rather go there, too, and it is closer. Either way, we’re out of our usual channel, so we’ll be feeling our way. I think we should go back the way we just came for a short bit. Hopefully that’ll get us back into deeper water.”
“Aye, aye, captain. I’m the passenger; you’re the boss.”
Jan smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
Jan spent the next few minutes jockeying the boat, testing going one way and another. He tied a line to a heavy wrench he asked Jackson to retrieve from one of the toolboxes and had him stand in the bow, tie it off on the railing and throw it over. “This is to test the depth of the water as we slowly move forward. Watch it. If it hits bottom, let me know immediately.”
Jan told Jackson the boat had a two metre draft and so Jan had made the rope plus wrench a bit over two and a half metres long. Jackson kept a finger on it so he could feel if it began to drag.
“Looks good right now. Not dragging at all.” Jackson reported. “Don’t know about the depth to the right or left side. But we’re fine right in front.’’
The bow of the boat was only a few feet in front of the wheelhouse, and with the windows all shot out, it was easy for them to hear each other speaking in a normal voice, especially as the engine was running slowly.
“That’s the bow, not the front. And the right and left are starboard and port,” said Jan. “Got to get your terms right if you’re going to be a working sailor.”
“I have no intention of being a sailor,” Jackson rebutted. “I hope I’ll never have to get on a boat again.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
Jan gave him a funny look which Jackson didn’t see as he was watching the depth rope. “Huh? What? A secret job? Like a spy?”
“No, no, no. Nothing like that. But what I’m doing, like this trip, it’s all classified.”
“Okay. Like I’m going to blow your cover. I can guess, though. I’m allowed to guess,
aren’t I? No blindfold, last cigarette and standing against a wall just for guessing.”
Jackson didn’t even smile. He took the question seriously, not as Jan had meant it at all. “You can guess, but I can’t acknowledge whether you’re right or wrong. That was made clear to me.”
“By your boss?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“So this is very hush-hush. I saw that in a movie—hush-hush.”
“I guess so. Hey, Jan, I’m not comfortable talking about this.”
“I haven’t had my guess yet.”
“Okay, guess, but I’m not saying a word.”
Jan was silent then, thinking. As Jackson was still depth-checking and hadn’t mentioned the rope deflecting yet, Jan nudged the throttle wider open. He could sense rather than see some faint light southwest of their position. Grenaa, he hoped. He suddenly realized he had something to consider other than whatever Jackson was sensitive about.
They rode in silence again until it was apparent that the almost imagined light he’d seen hadn’t been his imagination. There was a village ahead. Jan cut back on the throttle.
“Why are we slowing down?” Jackson asked.
“It just occurred to me. If guys on that ship that attacked us aren’t sure we sank, they might realize we’d be heading here and be waiting for us. I don’t think we should just shoot on into the port. We need to be cautious.”
Jackson shook his head. “You think of all this stuff and I’m oblivious. So, what should we do?”
“If they’re waiting for us, they’ll be either in our original path, or just to one side of it. I think if we head north, up toward Frederikshavn, then work down the east coast of the Jutland, we’ll be just another of many boats making that trip. And the black-boat guys will be looking east, not north or west. We should be inside them, on the coastal side of them. Also, if we’re hugging the coast, they’ll be less likely to shoot at us. They’d worry they’d be seen.”
“I still have to be in Grenaa before eight.”
“I’ll try. Better to be late than dead. The ride will wait, won’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
Jan looked at Jackson for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m going to make my guess, but I’ll tell you first what I’ve been thinking. Okay?”
“Sure. Just don’t expect much response from me.”
Jan was turning the boat north. He slowed down again and told Jackson to keep checking the depth. It was about
130 miles by road from Grenaa to Frederikshavn. Jan thought he needed to go no more than twenty miles north of
their current position, then hug the coast going south and they’d be safe.
“Okay,” he said, not looking at Jackson but at the empty sky and black water ahead. “You said you’re not a spy. You wouldn’t admit it if you were, but you don’t seem like a spy and didn’t sound defensive when you denied it. No offense, but you seem kind of lost and unsure, and all the spies I see in the movies and read about in books are always confident, always thinking ahead and know how to handle themselves in catastrophes. Seeing how you’ve been behaving, I believe you; you’re not a spy.”
Jackson spoke. “The wrench just hit bottom!”
Jan turned slightly south, slowed a bit, but that was all. Jackson called up, “Clear.”
“Good. I’ll continue then. So, we agree that you’re no spy. So, those men in the boat. Were they looking for you or one of the other five passengers? That one’s easy: they were looking for you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they kept looking after they’d checked them out. Actually, they weren’t looking for any of the men. They were looking for a piece of paper one of the men was carrying. None of the men had it, yet they kept looking. They weren’t sure how many people were on the boat. They came below to see if anyone was hiding there and didn’t see anyone. They probably weren’t sure that this was the boat you were taking. But they wanted to cover their tracks, so decided to blow up the ship. Doing that would also kill anyone who was hiding. Two birds, one bomb.”
“Four bombs,” Jackson corrected.
“I’m uncertain about the piece of paper. Did they want that intact, or were they happy to just destroy it? I don’t have an answer to that. Maybe they just didn’t want that piece of paper found, or maybe they wanted it and didn’t want you found!
“Anyway, what I figured out is, you have that piece of paper. You also said your business was classified, which would be the case if you had a secret piece of paper. So, you’re not a spy, but are traveling with some paper you don’t want anyone to know about. I’d say that makes you a diplomat of some sort, except you’re too young for that.”
He stopped, and Jackson, caught up in Jan’s insightful reasoning, asked, “So what’s your guess?”
“I guess you’re someone who carries classified documents from one place to another and doesn’t want anyone knowing you’re doing so. If there’s a name for that job, I don’t know it. But that’s my guess.”
“Well, as I said, I can’t discuss it.”
“I guess not. But I think there’s something you should think about.”
“What’s that?”
“You might want to wonder how anyone would know you were on this boat—or in Halmstad looking for a boat. I’m sure it was secret, but someone knew. Someone knew you had a classified document, and they either wanted to keep you from delivering it—all that shooting and the mention of a paper suggests that—or to get hold of it to use or destroy. Your job and that paper are both classified, state secrets, yet both were known. Your cover and trip are both blown. You have a leak.”
Jackson’s whole world seemed to tilt on him. What Jan just said was entirely correct, and there were only a very few people who knew about him and the document. They were all high government officials, people who spent their time on government assignments keeping secrets.
If what Jan was suggesting was true, he was in great danger till he passed on the document.
How could there be a leak, though? One thing was clear: he had to talk to his handler. And as soon as he thought of that, he had to wonder. Could he trust him? Could he trust anyone? And how would he know?
No, he couldn’t trust anyone. He couldn’t tell anyone he’d been compromised, because if the wrong person knew, that person could cover any tracks he’d made and notify his people. All the gloves would come off then. They were already trying to kill him, but then it would be with a vengeance—and quick if he told the wrong person. They’d want him dead before he told anyone there was a traitor in their midst.
So, if he couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t ask for support or instructions, what should he do?
Only one thought came to mind. If he completed his assignment and passed along the document he was carrying, there would be no more reason for him to be killed.
That was what he was going to have to do. Continue on, try his best to stay out of harm’s way, and deliver the document.
There had been silence since Jan had said there was a leak that had almost gotten Jackson killed. Jackson had been musing. Now he had come to a decision.
“I think you’re right. It’s the only thing that makes sense. But I don’t know where the leak came from or whom to trust now. I think I just have to keep going, and be as alert to danger as possible. So, let’s go with your plan. Hug the coast and take us to Grenaa.”
Jan nodded. “We need to be careful. This boat isn’t fast, and we have no weapons. We just have to be alert and hope for the best.”
There was enough light now to see the coast. They were about a mile offshore at this point and well north of Grenaa.
“I’ll get as close to the shore as I think is safe. The captain said the bottom fell off sharply just off the Jutland coast, so we can probably stay within a couple hundred yards of the shore.”
Jackson didn’t say anything. He was still trying to get his head around the fact he’d been betrayed. And that his own government was involved as well.
Jan moved them as close to the land as he felt comfortable with, then turned south. “Probably half an hour, forty-five minutes to Grenaa,” he told Jackson. “From here I can just make out the few lights that are on this early. Keep an eye on that dangling rope.”
Jan thought of something else. “Jackson, I’m going to check in the locker up here. There were binoculars in there. If they haven’t been shot, I’ll hand them to you to use to look ahead of us and out into the bay. That black boat could be sitting out there. Their watch would probably be eastward, but who knows? If they see us, we need to get to land immediately. We’d be dead pigeons out on the water.”
“Dead ducks,” Jackson said. “Get your terms right.”
“Whatever,” Jan said, glaring at him. “I’m looking for the binoculars.”
Jan checked and found the binoculars. One of the barrels had been damaged, but only one. Jackson would be able to use them as a monocular.
Jan passed them through the shot-out front window to Jackson who took them to the bow rail. He scanned what was in front of him and out into the bay. He did that, then dropped the monocular. “It’s there! The black boat. And I think it saw us. He’s turning our way!”
“Hold on,” Jan yelled back and hit the throttle to full power and the wheel to starboard. He locked the wheel and rushed down to meet Jackson where he was standing and grabbed the monocular.
“Okay, they’re three to four minutes behind us but will make up the time the longer we’re in the boat. We should hit bottom about 20 metres from shore in a half minute. Can you swim?”
“Sure. You?”
“Yes. Just be ready to jump overboard when we hit bottom. Not sure of the 20 metres, but it should be close to that. But the water will be freezing cold. Just expect it and swim fast. Take off your coat. We should take off our shoes, too, but we’ll need to run when we reach shore. Best leave them on.”
Jan was already taking off his coat and heavy sweater.
The shore already seemed to be rushing at them faster than Jackson expected. He was holding tightly onto the rail.
“Do you have the document?” Jan asked.
“Yes, it’s sealed in plastic and taped to my chest under my shirt. The water won’t hurt it.”
“Get ready, we’ll hit any second now.”
Just as Jan said that the boat slammed into the bay bottom. Both of them were thrown hard against the rail.
“Let’s go!” Jan shouted. He stepped over the rail and dove into the water. Jackson followed suit.
Jan had been right. The water was a complete shock, so cold it felt like it should be frozen. Jackson put the
thought out of his head, surfaced, located the shore and began swimming. Jan was right in front of him.
It took less than a minute to reach water shallow enough to wade the rest of the way. Jan looked back. “We have about three minutes. Go, go. Running should warm us up.”
He started running.
There were a few scattered houses lining the shore. This was either the outskirts of Grenaa, Jackson thought, or a smaller coastal community. He also wondered where Jan was headed but was quite comfortable following him.
Jan turned and ran past the first house they came to, one showing no lights, and turned into the second. He ran up to the door and pounded on it. It was opened almost immediately by a middle-aged man.
“Do you have a car,” Jan asked. He spoke in Danish; Jackson had no idea what he said but could hear it was a question.
The man showed a variety of expressions, but amazement was at the top of the list. Still, he answered the question. “Of course.”
“Well, if you give us a ride into Grenaa and we can be in the car in the next thirty seconds, we’ll pay you well. But fast. We’re being chased.”
“How much?” the man asked, and Jan said, “No time. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” the man said, and Jan said, “Bring two towels!”
“Meet me at the garage,” the man said and shut the door. Jan and Jackson ran to the attached garage and watched the door grind open. The man was already in the car and had two towels. When they were all in, the man drove off, punching the button to close the garage door as he did. Jackson was in the back, Jan in the front, both vigorously toweling themselves, Jan with his shirt off, Jackson staying dressed.
“How much?” the man said again but with a smile.
“Jackson, you have money, don’t you?” Jan asked.
“Yes.”
Jan turned back to the man. “What’s a fair price?”
The man gave him a price in krones. Jan figured it out in dollars and told Jackson what was needed, doubling the figure the man had asked for. Jan handed the money to the man and said, “This is much more. Perhaps if anyone says they saw us in your car and asks you where you took us, you’ll give them the wrong place? Thanks for helping us out.”
The man took the money. Jan asked Jackson where he was to meet his ride, and Jackson named a restaurant in town. Jan passed that to the man, and he nodded that he knew the place.
Both were still cold and damp but no longer dripping. They were still shivering and waiting for the car’s heater to begin throwing off warm air. When it did, the man turned up the heat all the way and the fan as well. That helped. Jackson found a car rug in the back and wrapped it around himself. His teeth were still chattering, but he was getting warmer.
It was a fifteen-minute trip to the restaurant. They thanked the man, paid him and entered. The warmth of the restaurant enveloped them as they stepped inside, causing them both to shudder.
“Do you know the man you’re meeting?” Jan asked.
“No, but he’s supposed to have a book with a purple cover lying on his table. We have identity code words to say. We’ll just have to find him. The problem is, we’re a good half hour early.”
“We couldn’t have waited outside, damp and without coats. We’d have frozen to death! Let’s see if he’s here. If not, we’ll get our own table and wait for him. He’ll be the man carrying a purple book.” Jan grinned.
This is a damned game to him, Jackson thought.
Though Jan’s advice was certainly sound, Jackson still was uncertain, as that was his nature. “Won’t we be sitting ducks if the men from the black boat look for us here? This might be one of the few places open this early in town. It would be one of the places they’d be sure to look. We’re too exposed here.”
Jan put a hand on his arm to calm him down. “First off, they probably think we’re hiding near where we left the boat. Second, I doubt they have a clue what we look like or even if there are two of us. They recognized the boat we were on but weren’t close enough to see us. They stripped all they shot, even though none of them looked like you, meaning they don’t have a description of you. If we don’t do anything to draw attention, even if they come in here, why would they suspect us?”
“Maybe because we don’t have coats on and are still damp?”
“No one else has a coat on, either. They’re all hanging by the door. And we don’t look that wet now. But there is one thing: you should do something about your hair. Mine’s always messy, but you need to go into the men’s room and fix yours, at least with your fingers. Do that while I grab a table.”
Jackson headed for the facilities and Jan found an empty table for four and sat down.