Jack Higgins - Thunder Point

In London it was raining, drumming against the windows of the house in Lord North Street where Rear Admiral Garth Travers sat in a chair by the fire in his book-lined study enjoying a cup of tea and reading the Times . When the phone rang, he made a face, but got up and went to the desk.

“Who am I talking to?”

“Garth? It’s Henry – Henry Baker.”

Travers sat down behind the desk. “Good God, Henry, you old sod. Are you in London?”

“No, I’m calling from St. John.”

“Sounds as if you’re in the next room.”

“Garth, I’ve got a problem, I thought you might be able to help. I’ve found a U-boat.”

“You’ve what?”

“An honest-to-God U-boat, out here in the Virgins, on a reef about eighty feet down. One-eighty was the number on the conning tower. It’s a type seven.”

Travers’ own excitement was extreme. “I’m not going to ask you if you’ve been drinking. But why on earth has no one discovered it before?”

“Garth, there are hundreds of wrecks in these waters; we don’t know the half of it. This is in a bad place, very dangerous. No one goes there. It’s half on a ledge which was protected by an overhang, or I miss my guess. There’s a lot of fresh damage to the cliff face. We’ve just had a hurricane.”

“So what condition is she in?”

“There was a gash in the hull and I managed to get in the control room. I found a briefcase in there, a watertight job in aluminium.”

“With a Kriegsmarine insignia engraved in the top right-hand corner?”

“That’s right!”

“Standard issue, fireproof and waterproof, all that sort of thing. What did you say the number was, one-eighty? Hang on a minute and I’ll look it up. I’ve got a book on one of my shelves that lists every U-boat commissioned by the Kriegsmarine during the War and what happened to them.”

“Okay.”

Baker waited patiently until Travers returned. “We’ve got a problem, old son, you’re certain this was a type seven?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well the problem is that one-eighty was a type nine, dispatched to Japan from France in August forty-four with technical supplies. She went down in the Bay of Biscay.”

“Is that so?” Baker said. “Well how does this grab you? I found the personal diary of a Korvettenkapitän Paul Friemel in that briefcase and the final entry is dated May twenty-eighth, nineteen forty-five.”

“But V.E. day in Europe was May the eighth,” Travers said.

“Exactly, so what have we got here? A German submarine with a false number that goes down in the Virgins three weeks after the end of the bloody war.”

“It certainly is intriguing,” Travers said.

“You haven’t heard the best bit, old buddy. Remember all those stories about Martin Bormann having escaped from Berlin?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well I can’t read German, but I sure can read his name and it’s right here in the diary, and another little bombshell for you. So is the Duke of Windsor’s.”

Travers loosened his tie and took a deep breath. “Henry, old son, I must see that diary.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” Baker said. “There’s the British Airways overnight flight leaving Antigua around eight this evening our time. I should be able to make it. Last time I used it we got into London Gatwick at nine o’clock in the morning. Maybe you could give me a late breakfast.”

“I’ll be looking forward to that,” Travers said and replaced the receiver.

The Professional Association of Diving Instructors, of which Henry was a certificated member, has strict regulations about flying after diving. He checked his book of rules and discovered that he should wait at least four hours after a single no-decompression dive at eighty feet. That gave him plenty of leeway, especially if he didn’t fly down to Antigua until the afternoon, which was exactly what he intended.

First he rang British Airways in San Juan. Yes, they had space in the first-class cabin on BA flight 252 leaving Antigua at 20.10 hours. He made the booking and gave them one of his Gold Card numbers. Next he rang Carib Aviation in Antigua, an air-taxi firm he’d used before. Yes, they were happy to accept the charter. They’d send up one of their Partenavias early afternoon to St. Thomas. If they left for the return trip to Antigua at four-thirty, they’d be there by six at the latest.

He sat back, thinking about it. He’d book a water taxi across to Charlotte Amalie, the main town on St. Thomas. Forty minutes, that’s all it would take, fifteen at the most by taxi to the airport. Plenty of time to pack and get himself ready, but first he had to see Jenny.

The waterfront was bustling when he walked down into Cruz Bay this time. It was a picturesque little town, totally charming and ever so slightly run-down in the way of most Caribbean ports. Baker had fallen in love with the place the first time he’d seen it. It was everything you’d hope for. He used to joke that all it needed was Humphrey Bogart in a sailor’s cap and denims running a boat from the harbor on mysterious missions.

Jenny’s Place was slightly back from the road just before Mongoose Junction. There were steps up to the veranda, a neon sign above the door. Inside it was cool and shaded, two large fans revolving in the low ceiling. There were several booths against the walls, a scattering of marble-topped tables across a floor of black and white tiles. There were high stools at the long mahogany bar, bottles on glass shelves against the mirrored wall behind. A large, handsome black man with graying hair was polishing glasses, Billy Jones, the barman. He had the scar tissue around the eyes and the slightly flattened nose of a professional fighter. His wife, Mary, was manager.

He grinned. “Hi there, Mr. Henry, you looking for Jenny?”

“That’s right.”

“Went down the front with Mary to choose the fish for tonight. They shouldn’t be too long. Can I get you something?”

“Just a coffee, Billy, I’ll have it outside.”

He sat in a cane chair on the veranda, drinking the coffee and thinking about things, was so much within himself that he didn’t notice the two women approach until the last minute.

“You’re back, Henry.”

He looked up and found Jenny and Mary Jones coming up the steps. Mary wished him good morning and went inside and Jenny sat on the rail, her figure very slim in tee-shirt and blue jeans.

She frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“I’ve got to go to London,” he told her.

“To London? When?”

“This afternoon.”

Her frown deepened and she came and sat beside him. “What is it, Henry?”

“Something happened when I was diving this morning, something extraordinary. I found a wreck about eighty or ninety feet down.”

“You damn fool.” She was angry now. “Diving at that kind of depth on your own and at your age. Where was this?”

Although not a serious diver, she did go down occasionally and knew most of the sites. He hesitated. It was not only that he knew she would be thoroughly angry to know that he’d dived a place like Thunder Point and it certainly wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. He just wanted to keep the location of the submarine to himself for the moment, certainly until he’d seen Garth Travers.

“All I can tell you, Jenny, is that I found a German U-boat from nineteen forty-five.”

Her eyes widened. “My God!”

“I managed to get inside. There was a briefcase, an aluminum thing. Watertight. I found the Captain’s diary inside. It’s in German, which I can’t read, but there were a couple of names I recognized.”

“Such as?”

“Martin Bormann and the Duke of Windsor.”

She looked slightly dazed. “Henry, what’s going on here?”