Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“It’s dark now up there,” says Skopšík.

The men are quiet. Their expressions are grave: the mission is now affecting their nerves. Kubeš sits with his legs up on the map table. Bosun Anděl is wearing earphones, searching for noise. He turns round and reports: “No noise of ship screws, sir.”

“Fancy that!” says Kubeš. “I was expecting it to be teeming with Russian ships. And there aren’t any.”

He gets up and nervously paces the command centre.

“Or maybe they’re all sitting overhead with their engines off, waiting for us to surface,” Libáň jokes.

“That’s easily checked,” notes Lieutenant Commander Kraus.

All eyes discreetly turn to the commander.

Kubeš thinks for a while, then reaches in his pocket for a cigarette and puts it in his mouth.

“Surfacing stations!” he says.

The words have an immediate effect. The general tension eases, the white lamps are turned off in the tower and the red light is on.

“Surface to periscope depth!” says Kubeš.

The pumps come on, Petrovič corrects the balance as the boat rises to the surface.

“Periscope up!”

Kubeš turns the shield of the cap back and circles the periscope. Clearly, there is something suspicious, as he keeps turning the periscope and observing the surroundings.

“Zapletal, did you clean the optics?” he asks loudly, not taking his eyes off the viewer.

“Yes, sir, I cleaned and tested them carefully,” replies the petty officer.

“Interesting. It looks as if somebody’s covered them with a white veil,” says Kubeš. “Surface! Periscope down.”

He turns to Libáň.

“It’s night now, after all, isn’t it? I’m not mad. It’s not possible for it to be so bright outside. And there’s not supposed to be any moon.”

The periscope descends the shaft. The first warrant officer opens his mouth to say something, but changes his mind. The hissing of compressed air in pipes and along metal walls is drowned by water bubbling up, flowing through the flooding openings: all noise is drowned by Libáň’s voice:

“Tower hatch is open!”

Nobody rushes up. Everybody is looking at the radar screens.

“There’s nobody around us for miles, in fact,” Kubeš shakes his head. “What sort of a blockade is that? What can you say? Russians…”

Libáň slowly opens the valve of the air duct from the tower to the bridge, to equalise inner and outer air pressure.

Compressed air whistles out of the boat through the pipe. Kubeš takes his binoculars, a gift from Sosna, off the hook, puts them round his neck, climbs up the ladder, opens the hatch and jumps onto the bridge. A cold wind hits his face. An unusual diffuse light surrounds the boat. Kubeš looks in surprise at the sky; Libáň and Kraus climb up as well. The northern lights gradually turn to all the colours of the rainbow.

“Good: we should have realised,” says Kubeš, sounding annoyed, as if the Russians had let him down. “Extend the air pipe. Dive to snorkel depth. Both engines half power ahead!”

* * *

At about ten in the evening, the Kamýk surfaces on the North Atlantic’s freezing waters and rocks on the waves by the shore. The watch climbs to the bridge. After them, Kubeš climbs out, too.

The weather is freezing. A wind is blowing from the northeast, 6–7 knots strong. It’s a gale. It’s just before high tide. The tide comes at a speed of one knot from the southwest. Wind and tide from opposite directions make the sea full of unexpected dangers, currents, vortices and so on.

Kubeš knows that the shore is close: it showed on the radar. It can’t be long before they see it. He is satisfied to note that, as they approach the coast, the wind slackens. He carefully cleans his binocular lenses and searches in the sector where he hopes to find dry land; from the left to the middle. There is nothing to be seen, though.

Petty Officer Koniarczyk has unusually sharp sight. But even he can’t see anything.

It has to be here, thinks Kubeš. He saw it on the radar screen. Or was the coast under snow? In that case, the visibility may be lower than one mile and that can be dangerous both for crew and guerrillas. The radar has to be turned off, so that the enemy can’t get their bearing. Unknown, changing currents could push the submarine onto ice floes or rocks.

Kubeš is about to give an order below, to ask about the depth below the hull, when Koniarczyk reports: “Land on the horizon, sir.”

Kubeš looks through his binoculars. Petrovič’s navigation was not bad at all, he thinks with relief. The land that he sees is at an angle of forty-five degrees on the right. It’s indistinct and its features merge with the night sky and the sea. This is Junja, close by and wrapped in deepest darkness.

“Coast in sight,” he reports downstairs. “Slow ahead!”

The submarine stops about half a mile from the shore. Water spray drenches Kubeš’s binoculars. While he wipes them with a chamois leather, he carefully observes the outline of the rocks on the right and tries to get a general picture of the coast. On his right Koniarczyk peers into the darkness, on his left is Libáň.

“I think we’re at the right spot,” says Libáň.

He points his hand at the characteristic shape of a hill above the bay, reminiscent of a sleeping walrus.

Kubeš tries to survey the coast thoroughly, hoping to find yet another visible point to help them locate their boat even more precisely. They both spent a lot of time on planning the operation, so they remember the topography of the area well. In the darkness one hill looks like another.

“Look, Jan,” says Kubeš and points further. “Every hill looks like a sleeping walrus, with a little bit of imagination.”

Libáň is quiet. The shore ahead seems deserted. There are no signs of life. Suddenly, around the limit of the impenetrable darkness, a tiny light comes on. Soon a fire is roaring and some hundred metres from it another one joins it.

“Two fires!” Koniarczyk shouts. “It’s the signal.”

“Well then, we’ve come to the right spot,” Kubeš nods. “They’re waiting for us.”

“I’d like to have their eyes,” says Libáň. “To spot us in that darkness and snowstorm they must really have eagle eyes.”

“They’re hunters,” says Kubeš. “They depend on their eyes.”

“But even so…” says Libáň and shakes his head in disbelief.

“Launch the motorboat!” orders the commander. “Watch B will be the first to deploy. They’ll be armed; it could still be a trap.”

Four sailors in a rubber dinghy vanish into the darkness with a farting engine noise.

“Now we’ll see who gets sea-sick,” says Libáň looking at the waves tossing the boat as if it were made of paper.

Kubeš descends to the command centre. He calls in first warrant officer Bouček.

“Is everything ready for handing over the goods?” he asks him.

“Yes, commander,” nods Bouček. “We’re ready to off-load. As soon as they bring their boats, we open service hatch C8. It’ll go like a dream.”

“So get ready,” says Kubeš. “We’ll free up some space tonight.”

“We’ll be able to play football,” says Zrno the cook, who’s brought the command centre a pot of hot coffee in one hand and cups in the other. “Coffee, commander?”

“Did you put sugar in it?” asks Kubeš.

“Sugar and cream,” says Zrno. “Specially for you.”

Kubeš and Bouček each get a cup.

“This will be a long night,” says Kubeš.

The submarine gently rocks on the choppy surface of the bay. The men on the bridge vainly peer through their binoculars into the darkness.

Before long, they hear the familiar sound of the outboard motor. The boat brings two guerrillas. Kubeš welcomes them and shakes their hands. The guerrillas speak a particularly incomprehensible kind of Slovak, but in the end they all understand one other.