Noel Hynd: The Sandler Inquiry

They watched the deck. No reaction at all. The bullet had sailed into the gray expanses over everything. He lowered slightly and fired again on the next crest. Nothing. A third time. Nothing.

Zenger stood, seeming to brush the dirt and water off himself, secure in the knowledge that the pursuing ship had run out of fuel and was stranded. Perhaps the submarine would wham it on the way home. Why not?

Thomas lowered his sight dramatically, approaching desperation.

He fired the first of the last three bullets in the magazine.

The sailors on the deck and Zenger looked in his direction with suddenness. Perhaps theyd heard the rifle for the first time. The wind had shifted slightly. Instead of blowing from the side it now blew from behind the smaller boat.

They could hear the noise. And they'd looked below them, hearing the sound of a steel bullet hit the seamless iron hull of the submarine.

Thomas fired again. A second or two later a large yellow deck light several yards from Zenger seemed to burst and extinguish itself. Now the sailors began to scramble, back toward the hatch which would lead them down and under the deck to safety.

Zenger stood alone on the deck, looking back as if to inquire indignantly as to who was shooting at him. Never imagining that another shot could come so close.

A siren sounded on the submarine. A dive signal.

"He's got us beat'" Leslie cursed.

Thomas fired again. And missed.

He felt a sickened sensation in his stomach.

The siren on the submarine was still audible through the gray mist.

Thomas glared through the sight at his tormentor. Almost instinctively, Zenger sensed that his opponents had thrown at him their last offensive weapon.

The master spy stood calmly on the dleck, exhilarated at being shot at and missed, and grinned in their direction.

Then, with the quintessence of the American gestures that he'd learned over thirty years, the spy raised two hands toward the small boat. Each hand's extremity was marked with a sole upraised center finger, the universal but particularly American gesture of ill will.

"We're beaten" Thomas mumbled bitterly. He slapped the rifle in a fury.

"We can't be" she snapped coldly.

He looked at her in frustration and almost anger. What did she want him to?

"Try another magazine" she said.

And disbelievingly she 'held out another steel-cased magazine, six long bullets therein.

He looked at her and looked at the weapon. He looked at the deck of the submarine.

Zenger had turned. He walked defiantly and cockily toward the open hatch which would lead him on a fluorescent and air-purified trip to another world, one in which he would be a hero.

"No way," Thomas Daniels said.

"He's gone' ' She grabbed the rifle from his hands as an inspecting dill sergeant might. Quickly her hands had torn out the empty magazine, sent it overboard and slammed the full magazine into its place.

The wind felt the same. The boat eased from its rocking for a few seconds. She braced herself against a cabin wall and held the rifle's butt against her shoulder, quickly bringing the weapon into a perfect firing position. Her movements were precise, practiced, and comfortable.

Moments later she began firing, aiming not quite so high and not quite as left ward as Thomas had. She pulled the trigger quickly in a rapid succession, firing four, five, and then six shots, trying to spray the area where Zenger was.

There was a delay of several seconds before any bullet sailed the distance between the rifle and the submarine. Thomas souinted and watched.

He had no idea which bullet found its mark, whether it was the first or the final. But the fact remained that as Zenger stepped the last few yards to the hatch, the lower half of his skull exploded with the impact of a viciously tumbling bullet.

The man's body went limp and fell immediately, the red explosion in the back of the head being instantly apparent even at that great distance.

The gray rain continued to fall.

Other sailors emerged from the watch, gawking, incredulous at first.

Thomas and Leslie stared with their naked eyes as three sailors pulled the fallen body toward the hatch.

Leslie set down the rifle. She had no quarrel with the Russian sailors. They had their duty just as she and Thomas had had their-S.

The seamen reclaimed a body; Thomas and Leslie had reclaimed a soul, an identity. The body had always belonged to the Soviet Union. The identity? That had been borrowed.

Leslie picked up a floodlight from the small boaes cabin. The light could be flashed on and off. She blinked an internationally understandable cease-fire signal to them.

The sailors stood on the deck, working nervously for a few seconds, hoisting the fallen, semi beheaded body by its red shoulders.

They dragged it below.

Minutes later the submarine began to move. Thomas and Leslie wondered if it would ram them or sink them; it easily could have.

But, as if in reciprocation for the voluntary cease-fire and the surrender of the spy's body, the submarine turned east in the ocean. It began moving on the gray surface, pointing away from them, until it was lower on the horizon.

Then only the periscope was visible, breaking through the waves.

Then nothing. The ocean was vacant, except for two small pleasure craft, both adrift and powerless. For a moment it was as if the underwater goliath had never been there. Then they felt its wake, rippling from a mile away.

Leslie sat on a cushioned seat within the cabin, her dark hair soaked and matted, an expression of exhaustion across her face. For her, the long intrigue with her father was over.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Then,

"Lucky shot" she offered.

He looked at her, understanding.

"No, it wasn't."

There was a pause and he continued.

"No one makes a shot like that on luck. No one guesses how to fire a rifle with accuracy like that" She nodded and a slight, unwilling smile crossed her face.

"How long have you known?" she asked.

"Known?"he answered.

"For about two minutes. Suspected? For a long time. Ever since I learned you had gulled your own foster father, George McAdam, into thinking you were dead. Where'd you learn it all? From him?"

She nodded.

"Learn from the best' she said.

"George McAdam was one of the best British agents of is day.- "And now I'll bet you're one of the best. But not British. American."

She shrugged.

"I try," she answered.

"It's really the only thing I'm trained to do. Not much money in painting, you know."

"Would you honor me with an honest answer or two?"

"Of course."

"Why me?" he asked.

She almost laughed.

"It's not obvious?"

"Oh, I understand that part" he said.

"My father was a double agent, recruiting for the Americans while all the time he was working for the Russians. And he headed a postwar network-" '-financed by counterfeit English and American banknotes she continued.

"A,network which grew old but continued to compromise British and American Intelligence. When William Ward Daniels died, he was just about to be uncovered. He was lucky he died when he did ' "But then why'd you come to me?"he insisted.

"Because the network was still working very well after his death' she explained.

"From our perspective it was clear. He'd passed the leadership on to someone else. You."

Thomas Daniels was without words. The final piece fit neatly into place. He knew the reason he'd been sucked into this treacherous vortex of events: He'd been under observation the entire time, by the American government and by the British government. He was a suspected spy, suspected of inheriting the position from his father. just as William Ward Daniels had probably intended.