The Holcroft Covenant [antikvár]

PrologueMarch 1945The hull of the submarine was lashed to the huge pilings, a behemoth strapped in silhouette, the sweeping lines of its bow arcing into the light of the North Sea dawn.'f-The base was on the island of Scharhom, in the i Helgoland Bight, several miles from the German mainland ^ and the mouth of the Elbe River. It was a refueling sta- j tion never detected by Allied Intelligence and, in the cause of security, little known among the strategists of the Ger- ! man High Command itself. The undersea marauders came and went in darkness, emerging and submerging within several hundred feet of the moorings. They were Nep- tune's assassins, come home to rest or going forth to press their attacks.iOn this particular dawn, however, the submarine lashed to the dock was doing neither. For it, the war was ^ over, its assignment intrinsic to the origins of another war. ;Two men stood in the well of the conning tower, one in the uniform of a conmianding oflBcer of the Ger- ^ man Navy, the other a taU civilian in a long dark over- f coatthe collar turned up to ward off the North Sea winds^yet hatless, as if to defy the North Sea winter. Both looked down at the long line of passengers who slowly made their way toward the gangplank amidships. As each passenger reached the plank, a name was checked off against a list, and then he or she was ledor carried ^aboard a submarine.,A few walked by tiiemselves, but they were the ex- N ceptions. They were the oldest, some having reached their ^ twelfth or thirteenth birthdays.fcThe rest were children. Infants in the arms of stem- ^ faced army nurses, who surrendered their charges to a fc