Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Read online

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  For my mother and father, two children of the Depression who were saved by a war and lived through it to love forever in peace

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To the civilian personnel at the Old Philadelphia Navy Yard, thank you for the great tour and explanation. Also a big shout-out to certain shadowy men and women at M.I.T.—your theories scare the hell out of me.

  PROLOGUE

  COLD SEAS

  Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

  —Herman Melville, Billy Budd

  BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

  SEPTEMBER 7, 1943

  The large man with the brown fedora sitting at its usual jaunty angle on his head sipped his coffee and watched the passersby on Flores Street. He sat beneath a green awning with the gold-scripted name of the business emblazoned across its front—Trans American Fruit and Grain. The lanky, broad-shouldered man removed the fedora and used the brim to fan his tanned face. He decided to forgo the hot coffee on this warm September morning and simply slid the cup and saucer away from him. His sunglasses hid the dark pupils that never wavered from the onlookers whose wandering eyes strayed his way as they passed by on the sidewalk fronting the shop. His white shirt was already starting to be saturated by his sweat even at this early hour. As much as he hated the climate, he was ever grateful not to be posted to Iceland or even, God forbid, Alaska. The man was here as a punishment for disagreeing with one of the more powerful men in government service. So, the sweat he would have to suffer with silently along with his banishment. His letter of resignation was written out and sitting upon his desk, ready for the military attaché’s signature and forwarding to Washington, D.C. The man was thinking that it may be past time to serve the war in a more direct way.

  A morning cloud eased its way past the city and gave a moment’s respite from the early morning sun, allowing the American to look up into the otherwise empty sky. He felt, or rather sensed, the man pull up a chair next to him.

  “Good morning, Colonel. You’re here early,” the younger man said as Colonel Garrison Lee, former senator from Maine, lowered his head and fixed the man with a curious look. He remained silent, content not to comment on such an obvious deduction.

  He was amazed at the youthful team he had been given for the job they had to do in South America. He had been lucky thus far in not losing one of these kids of his to enemy activity but knew with their “just out of college” arrogant, can-do attitudes, that blessing would not last long. His dark brows rose over the heavy sunglasses.

  “Sir, we finished that job last night.”

  Finally, Garrison Lee removed the sunglasses from his face and fixed the younger man with his deep and very disturbing blue eyes. He waited without saying a word. He could see the boy was nervous about something. It was usually best for these kids if they broached the subject of their nervousness on their own without being pushed to do so by him.

  “We planted the recorder on the professor’s phone with no problem and even fixed his car with a tracking broadcaster.”

  Lee had to shake his head in dismay at the term tracking broadcaster. That meant they had been successful at placing a ten-pound electrical tracker that was equivalent in size to a Motorola home radio.

  “Well, I see that old Wild Bill picked the right tenth-grade class to join the team down here.”

  The young officer flinched at the comment. He had graduated top of his class at the United States Naval Academy last year and had been one of the few handpicked by William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the American OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the country’s foremost intelligence gathering apparatus in wartime service. While not up to British intelligence in capability, the OSS was well on its way to becoming pretty good at their jobs, if he could keep these college campus all-stars alive long enough.

  “From the look on your face, Mr. Hamilton, I think I sense a but coming. A word of advice, young sir: with that terrible poker face of yours, stay out of gambling halls and never, ever try to bluff that new bride of yours with that hidden talent of giving away your poker hand. What’s the girl’s name again?”

  “Alice, sir.” The young naval ensign on duty in Argentina on detached assignment to the OSS swallowed and tried to look away from Lee’s eyes as they bored into him. “As I said, sir, we placed all listening devices and thought we were away clean, but—”

  “Hamilton, are you going to tell me before or after the damn Nazis finish their work in Europe?”

  “I guess we didn’t get away as cleanly as I thought, sir.”

  “Look, Hamilton—”

  Lee stopped in midsentence when he saw the small gray-bearded man with wire-rimmed glasses holding a leather satchel to his chest like it was armor plate. Garrison recognized the man immediately, and his eyes shot to young Hamilton, who found he couldn’t hold the colonel’s accusing gaze. The small man was thirty feet away and was looking toward the street nervously before his eyes again settled on the two men beneath the awning. Every time a passing vehicle moved by their location, the man would ease back into shadow. The experienced colonel caught all of this with one glance.

  “I guess you’ll have an excellent reason why one of the foremost Nazi climatologists is standing right over there and not currently being tracked by your tracking devices.” He held up a strong and brutal-looking hand before Hamilton could speak. “Don’t tell me. He bugged you and your men at the same time you were tagging him, right? I’m beginning to think that possibly old J. Edgar Hoover trained you himself.”

  “We were followed, Colonel. I take full responsibility for blowing our cover.”

  Lee tilted his hat back on his head and unfolded his long legs from beneath the table and stood. His six-foot-five-inch frame was intimidating to all, including the young field agent. He simply patted young Hamilton on the shoulder and faced the Nazi climatologist the OSS had tagged as worth keeping an eye on. The small scientist was the last on their list of three hundred suspected or proven German nationals in Buenos Aires to be “tagged,” or bugged to keep track of their whereabouts.

  “Anything else I should know, son?” he asked as he rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up as he continued looking at the man from Dortmund, Germany, his hometown according to his OSS dossier.

  “He came in just a few minutes ago and asked to speak with the station chief.”

  This time Lee did look down at Hamilton. “In those words?”

  “Exact words, Colonel.”

  Lee smiled and then approached the smallish man, slightly overdressed in a tweed jacket. He noticed the good professor’s raggedy shoes and the moth-eaten material of his coat. The Nazis must not place too high a priority on what they pay their scientists these days, Lee thought.

  “Sir,” he said as he approached the man. “I’m—”

  “Don’t bothe
r with an alias, Colonel Lee. We really do not have time for it,” the man said as his eyes flicked to the street beyond, as if he suspected the devil would drive up at any minute. The man’s beady eyes behind his glasses moved around, examining the faces of the people passing by. He still held his leather valise protectively in front of him.

  Garrison Lee tried to hide his astonishment at the smaller man’s abruptness and his general knowledge of just who it was he was speaking to. It was obvious that the front of Trans American Fruit and Grain wasn’t playing well to German intelligence. The Gestapo was getting ever better at these things.

  “I suspect we can converse someplace more private?” the professor asked.

  Lee kept his curiosity quiet for the moment. This man already had too much information going in; no need to give him any more. He gestured to the door of the offices and the quieter and much cooler spaces beyond.

  “Mr. Hamilton, will you join us, please? Right this way,” Lee said as he held the door open.

  As they walked in, several women typing at their desks looked up as their machines went silent. Colonel Lee knew that every one of them had a free hand soothing the handle of a Colt .45 in a holder just below the level of their desks. The two men standing by a watercooler looked shocked as one of them even allowed the water in his conical paper cup to spill from his hands. Lee knew these two men were also on the highly secret detail to bug the scientist’s car and phone. Lee looked at them until the better part of valor made them shy away. The large American escorted his guest into his office and was followed by young Hamilton, who rolled his eyes at the secretaries, who weren’t secretaries at all, and the two men he had been assigned with the night before. He knew they were all probably going to end up in the Pacific Ocean after the colonel was finished with them. The old man took a seat, and Lee noticed the satchel was still pinned to his chest.

  “Coffee, or something a little stronger, Mr.…?”

  “Colonel—you know very well who I am. After all”—he looked up at Hamilton, who saw himself and his ineptitude reflect off the man’s glasses—“your men here practically informed me of your interest. By the way, young man, always check the door for tape across the door’s jamb, a simple trick for sure, but one that informs very well that your private property has been entered … how do you Americans put it? Oh yes, ‘on the sly.’”

  “All right, I’ll bite. Yes, we do know who you are, sir. You were being watched as an enemy agent of not only the United States but of the people of Argentina. You are Professor Arnold Wentz, climatologist and oceanographer. You’re sixty-one years old, from Dortmund, Germany. Fell out of favor with certain elements within the Reich and was sent into what amounts to permanent exile in South America. In the United States’ economic parlance, you make forty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents a week in salary. Not very appreciative of a man with so many letters following his name.”

  The Nazi remained silent. His guess as to who these Americans were was now confirmed. He also knew that since this Colonel Lee exposed everything to him, he would either be able to convince him of his sincerity or he would be found floating facedown in the River Platte. German agents within these borders had confirmed beyond doubt the large man knew his business.

  “Now, we seem to know each other, Professor. What can I help you with?” Garrison asked as he placed his size 15 shoes up on the desk and waited.

  Finally, the old man lowered his satchel and took a deep breath. Treason was not a thing to be taken lightly, especially against the Gestapo and the death dealers of the Third Reich. He opened the case and removed an item, and then, with untrusting eyes at both Lee and Hamilton, he opened a map and spread it out.

  “Six years ago, in the spring of 1937, I was employed by the Reich’s Marine.” He looked back at the tall and thin Hamilton. “That’s the German Navy.”

  Hamilton rolled his eyes and was about to say something when Lee’s raised left eyebrow stopped his retort.

  “The project was called”—Wentz smiled embarrassingly—“of all things, Operation Necromancer. This was a joint effort by the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, and the navy to find a feasible way to cloak machines of war from enemy radar, which was mostly theory at the time and not a practical application. Most of us thought it was pure speculative theory at the time. Now all the world powers have embraced radar as a tried-and-true science. Operation Necromancer was an attempt at a new science called the unified field theory. It combines the sciences of electromagnetic radiation and gravity. To put it more simply”—again, the look back at an already irritated Hamilton—“uniting the fields of electromagnetism and gravity into a single sustainable blanket field.”

  Lee removed his fedora and tossed it on his desk. He placed his hands behind his head and fixed the Nazi weatherman with a glare as if the man were wasting his time. “Invisibility.” Lee had read an article from the London Times about the theory, and the article was distributed to all station chiefs across the world. Lee thought the theory had far too many holes in it to make it work. But then again, he was a former politician with no mind toward the sciences. The ceiling-high bookcases filled with science periodicals in his office attested to the fact that Lee was trying to change his ineptitude in that regard.

  “Correct, Colonel. I can see you have heard of this theory before.”

  Lee didn’t respond; he just waited.

  Wentz cleared his throat, unable to gauge the temperament of the giant American before him. The younger agent was easy; he was an eager beaver as the Americans called it. But this man was one of experience and something perhaps a little darker than any man he had ever met.

  “Our first attempt at this science was using field generators the size of which were unheard of before this. The test would take place on board the obsolete battle cruiser Schoenfeld. A vessel chosen for its size and space. Of course, these generators were the most powerful German science could obtain and implement at sea. The final product of this attempt would be that these field generators would make it possible to bend light around an object via refraction so that the object became completely invisible to the naked eye. It also could achieve the desired effect of rendering the ship in question completely invulnerable to radar systems. This was gained through the use of capacitors arranged around the steel hull of said ship. In essence, gentlemen, it allowed the radar waves to pass harmlessly around the object.”

  “Comic book stuff,” Hamilton mumbled, drawing a look and raised brow from Lee.

  “Young man, I believe I explained the process is attained through built-in transducers disbursed throughout the ship’s exterior hull, designed so that it wasn’t noticeable to the casual observer. Basic science.”

  Hamilton again rolled his eyes, and Lee caught it but said nothing, simply because he was also inwardly doing the same thing as the kid: not believing a word the professor was saying. Maybe an obvious ploy to get American sympathy and a free pass to the States for his own personal protection. But, of course, the young Hamilton couldn’t hold his tongue.

  “Buck Rogers crap if ever I heard.”

  Professor Wentz turned and once more looked at Hamilton. “Buck Rogers, yes, exactly. Your disbelief was and is to our main advantage in developing this science. So fantastic that no intelligence agency or military in the world would ever commit resources to stopping it.”

  “Okay, so you were working on a cloaking device that would, if it were successful, make ships invisible to visual detection and defeats radar. What happened, Professor?” Lee asked.

  “The project was stopped in its tracks by the party and Adolf Hitler personally.”

  “This is going to take one hell of a long time, Professor, if you don’t stop with your dramatic pauses.”

  “The ship, the battle cruiser Schoenfeld, was lost with all hands. Five hundred and thirty-seven men just vanished, never to be seen again, or so we thought.” The professor looked down at his worn shoes and then removed his glasses, which Lee noted were cracked in the left-side lens
.

  “Continue.”

  “The experiment not only rendered the Schoenfeld invisible to our primitive radar systems of the time. It physically vanished from the view of over a thousand eyewitnesses. Just vanished.” Wentz reached down and brought six black-and-white photographs out of his satchel. Each was stamped in German in big red letters that Lee was educated in—TOP SECRET. “The reason I accepted this so-called banishment to this hot and miserable country was the fact that this experiment has to be stopped at all costs. One of the flaws in our system was in sustaining the energy needed from the power generators. They just weren’t powerful enough—that is, until a very distinguished man came up with the novel application in using what we now know as industrial-grade blue diamonds, found only here and in South Africa. Very rare and very valuable. I was sent here not because I fell out of favor but because I am tasked with finding these very elusive diamonds.”

  “Now those little gems I have heard of. The University of Chicago has placed feelers out to all diamond and mineral companies around the globe.” He looked at Hamilton. “Now we know why—power generation applications.”

  The professor spread the six photos out on the desk, and after a second of hesitation, Lee sat up and looked.

  “The Schoenfeld abruptly returned two years later in the fall of 1939 just outside of Le Havre. She was found and towed in by the German navy. This is the Schoenfeld as she looks today.”

  Lee, with a curious Hamilton, looked at the black-and-white photos. The Schoenfeld was clearly shown. She had been dry-docked somewhere in Germany. As Lee looked closer, he reached for a magnifying glass on his desk and then reexamined the first photo. His mouth fell partially open—emotion the experienced intelligence man never allowed to show openly.

  “My God,” Hamilton said, disappointing Lee in the fact that he expressed surprise in front of the German scientist. He had been told to always act as if you are never surprised. But this time even Garrison Lee was at the very least uncomfortable looking at the photo.