Page 44 of Midnight on the Scottish Shore

44

A burst of yellow and orange flame to the south. A boom shuddered over the waters.

“No! Cilla!” Lachlan cranked the wheel to port. “Lord, no!”

He couldn’t operate the radiotelephone and the boat simultaneously. “Lord, let Yardley see. Let him call out rescue ships.”

No aircraft or vessels in sight. Only Cilla’s mine could have caused such an explosion. “Cilla! Lord, let her live. Please.”

All of them. He didn’t want the German sailors to die either. If they were captured, they could never report on Cilla’s actions, never trouble Allied shipping again—they didn’t need to die.

Where were the ships Yardley had promised to send? He glanced behind him over the boat’s cabin. Were those destroyers on the northern horizon coming from Hoy Sound? Or an illusion in the night sky?

He couldn’t wait for them. He had to get to the wreck if there was even a chance Cilla had survived.

The light of the explosion flickered and faded, and Lachlan forced his addled brain to keep his course true.

Cilla had done it. She’d planted the mine and sunk the U-boat. She’d saved her family and friends and the Double Cross program.

A great welling inside, ebbing, building, crushing his heart and lungs. He was too late. Too late to protect the woman he loved.

****

Cilla spat out seawater. She was alive?

The back of her head throbbed, and her left arm and leg stung and resisted her efforts to tread water.

Men’s voices—screaming, calling. In the orange dome of light, the bow of the U-boat slanted out of the water like a giant shark’s fin, surrounded by jagged chunks of wreckage and half a dozen men. A dozen?

The water—so cold. She dipped below, and she kicked to the surface. Pain wrenched through her left leg, and she cried out.

“Cilla? Is that you?”

Hauptmann Kraus? He’d survived too? He’d been topside with her, blown free.

“Cilla! Your boat! Swim to your boat.”

About twenty feet to her left, Mar na Creag floated, bearing holes in her hull.

A man climbed up the rope draped over the side. He glanced around—and spotted Cilla. “Cilla! Come here.”

She should slip under and inhale a lungful of Scottish water, but her leaden limbs swam toward the boat, each stroke painful.

Kraus flung a rope ladder over the side, and she climbed up, her limbs protesting, her sodden clothes weighing her down, small cries escaping with each rung.

“Are you injured?” He helped her on board.

“My head.” She touched the back—slick with blood. A crimson ribbon snaked down her left calf, and the left sleeve of her coat was shredded.

“Superficial wounds, as are mine.” Kraus frowned at the scene. “I see no airplanes or ships. We must have hit a naval mine.”

“Yes. Yes, a mine.” Great shivers took hold of Cilla.

“Start the boat.” Kraus unbuttoned his greatcoat, reached inside, and pulled out a metal case, much like Cilla’s waterproof pistol case. He squatted down with it, his back to Cilla. Two dark ragged holes marred his side and shoulders. “We’ll go ashore and find one of our agents. I know names and addresses. They’ll help us return to Germany.”

Cilla sank down to the deck. Why hadn’t she died? Why couldn’t this end?

“Now!” Kraus glared at her over his shoulder. “Start the boat now.”

She stumbled to her feet and to the wheel. Down in the water, half a dozen men swam toward Mar na Creag , and she waved them closer. Kraus would help them on board.

Fighting trembling, slippery hands, Cilla ran through the procedures to start the motor—but nothing happened.

A crack shattered the night. Two. Three.

Kraus stood with his arm outstretched. A gun in hand. Light flashed from the tip.

He was shooting the men in the water! Cilla scrambled back to him. “No! No! What are you doing?”

“They cannot come with us.” He fired again. “They’ll slow us down, give us away. The English will catch us.”

“No! You can’t.” Cilla grabbed at his arm, but he shook her off.

Men screamed in the water, cussed, splashed, swam away.

Kraus fired again.

“No!” Cilla clutched his arm. “See? They’re going away. Let them be rescued by the English.”

Kraus shoved her.

She tumbled to the deck, wrenching her injured arm.

Facing her, scowling at her, Kraus knelt and reloaded his gun. “I hear ships coming. I cannot let the men be captured. The English will torture them and learn our mission, and they’ll search for us.”

“They won’t. They won’t.” Cilla struggled up to her knees.

No one called out. Only a few splashing sounds.

Kraus stood and fired three more times.

Silence.

“How could you?” The words shuddered and sobbed from deep inside her. “How could you?”

“They have died for Germany. They will be hailed as heroes.”

Tears mingled with the seawater tingling on her cheeks. “You murdered them.”

“I did my duty.” He waved his gun toward the wheel. “Start the boat.”

“I can’t.”

The gun swung her way. “You will.”

“No. I can’t. The motor won’t start. It must have been damaged in the explosion.”

Kraus cursed and dashed to the wheel, and then cursed the cold. “Search for blankets. We need to warm up.”

“Yes, Herr Hauptmann.” Pain slowed her movements, and grief dragged her heart low. He’d shot them—murdered them. But hadn’t she killed many more? And for what? Now she was in as bad a state as before.

In the cabin, she found two blankets, one in the Mackenzie tartan.

With a wracking sob, Cilla ripped off her waterlogged overcoat and wrapped herself in the plaid, held it to her nose as if she could inhale Lachlan’s strength.

Kraus stood in the door to the cabin. “I can’t start the boat either.”

Without a reply, Cilla handed him a blanket.

“Come. I have a plan.” Kraus beckoned her up to the deck and pointed northward. “The engine sounds—it isn’t a squadron of destroyers. It’s a single, smaller vessel.”

A dark shape approached in the moonlight.

The ring of Kraus’s hair stuck up in spikes, and his eyes shone wild. “This is our story. We are civilians cruising on our boat, father and daughter. They’ll believe me. I speak excellent English. I’ll say a U-boat exploded nearby and damaged us. We jumped in the water to rescue the survivors, but there were none.”

Cilla gaped at him. He might speak English well, but he had a German accent. And his story had more holes than Mar na Creag .

“They’ll rescue us.” Kraus parted his blanket, and he patted the pistol tucked into his waistband. “After they take us on board, I’ll kill the crew. If we have enough petrol, we’ll sail to the North Sea and find a German vessel. If not, we’ll go ashore and find one of our agents.”

Hunkered in the tartan blanket, Cilla squeezed her eyes shut. His plan wouldn’t work, nor did she want it to.

“Ach, a good fast boat.” Satisfaction smoothed Kraus’s voice.

Cilla pried her eyes open. The silhouette of the vessel reminded her of the motorboat Lachlan took across Pentland Firth each weekend.

Was it Lachlan?

Hope billowed inside, a sail full of wind and speed and the future.

Then holes ripped through the sail. Over and over, until it fell limp and tattered.

Kraus had a gun and a plan and no conscience.

Cilla clutched the tartan blanket tight. Go away, Lachlan. Go away.

****

Ahead of Lachlan, Mar na Creag floated at a slight tilt, with her bow pointing to him. Wreckage littered the water. Bodies.

His stomach lurched. He pulled as close as he dared, cut the engine, tossed the life ring, and searched his brain for the wee bit of German he knew. “Is anyone alive? Kommen Sie hier. Ich helfe. ”

“Please help us,” a man called in a German accent—from Mar na Creag . “Our boat is broken. We were sailing, and this U-boat exploded. No one—no one survived. Please help us to your boat.”

Two figures wrapped in blankets stood on the bow. A man—a German man who had certainly not been sailing the Mackenzie family boat.

And a woman? “Cilla? Is that you? You’re alive!”

“Go away.” Her voice—her bonny voice—broken by sobs. “I don’t want you here. Go away.”

“Go away?” the German man asked Cilla. “What are you saying? You know this man?”

Cilla gulped down a sob and pulled herself tall. “Hauptmann Kraus, this is Lieutenant Mackenzie.”

Hauptmann Kraus? Her Abwehr handler, and Lachlan’s breath turned to ice in his lungs. With his body concealed low in the boat’s cockpit, he slid his revolver from its holster.

“You stupid girl!” Kraus wheeled on Cilla. “You blew our cover. Is this—is this Samson?”

“Yes,” Cilla said, more a sob than a word. “He’s Samson.”

Kraus let out a sharp cry, grabbed Cilla by the shoulders, and shoved a pistol to her temple. “Help us to your boat, Lieutenant, or she dies. You love her, ja?”

Lachlan’s heart seized. To save her life, he had to play Samson, had to pretend Cilla was a true German spy, he knew it in his gut. But how could he? He was no actor. He forced his brain to recall everything he knew about Samson, what Samson would know, how he would feel.

“Samson?” Lachlan poured all his love for Cilla and all his fury at the situation into his voice. “That’s how you see me, Cilla? Aye? As Samson to your Delilah?”

“That’s right.” Her sharp tone would have slashed out his heart, were she not acting. “That’s all you are to me.”

“You’re a German spy? Aye, you are!” He thrust a finger in her direction. “A spy! I loved you. I loved you. And you betrayed me. How much did I tell you about British ships? About Scapa Flow? You took advantage of me—of my love. Go ahead, Kraus. I dinnae want her. Shoot her!”

Kraus jerked his head back.

Lachlan had stripped away Kraus’s most potent weapon—Lachlan’s love for Cilla. If Lachlan didn’t care whether Cilla lived or died, Kraus had no leverage to force his way onto Lachlan’s motorboat.

His boat bobbled in the current, turning her broadside to Mar na Creag , and Lachlan shifted his hand with the revolver behind his hip. The distant rumble of engines meant the British destroyers would arrive soon, far better armed than Lachlan. Kraus would be captured, and Cilla would be freed. MI5 would see to it.

Kraus prodded the gun to Cilla’s temple, tilting her head. “I will not allow them to capture us. If your ships come, I’ll shoot her, then myself.”

“Let him,” Cilla shouted. “I’d rather die than be trapped in Scotland again, trapped with the likes of you. Go away!”

No. His throat constricted and strangled his cry, and no sound came out. She was trying to save him, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t let Kraus kill her.

If only he could get Kraus away from Cilla.

A bit of Cilla’s storytelling ways prickled his mind. And he knew how to do it.