Cryptonomicon

Chapter 94 LANDFALL

The sailing ship Gertrude wheezes into the cove shortly after sunrise, and Bischoff cannot help but laugh. Barnacles have grown so thick around her hull that the hull itself (he supposes) could be removed entirely, and the shell of barnacles could be outfitted with a mast and canvas, and sailed to Tahiti. A hundred-yard-long skein of seaweed, rooted in those barnacles, trails behind her, making a long greasy disturbance in her wake. Her mast has evidently been snapped off at least once. It has been replaced by a rude jury-rigged thing, a tree trunk that has received some attention from a drawknife but still has bark adhering to it in places, and long dribbles of golden sap like wax trails on a candle, themselves streaked with sea salt. Her sails are nearly black with dirt and mildew, and rudely patched, here and there, with fat black stitches, like the flesh of Frankenstein's monster.

The men on board are scarcely in better shape. They do not even bother to drop anchor—they just run Gertrude aground on a coral head at the entrance to the cove, and call it a day. Most of Bischoffs crew has gathered on the top of V-Million, the rocket-submarine; they think it's the most hilarious thing they've ever seen. But when the men on Gertrude climb into a dinghy and begin rowing towards them, Bischoff's men remember their manners, and stand at attention, and salute.

Bischoff tries to recognize them as they row closer. It takes a while. There are five in all. Otto has lost his pot-belly and gone much greyer. Rudy is a completely different man: he has long flowing hair ponytailed down his back, and a surprisingly thick, Viking-like beard, and he appears to have lost his left eye somewhere along the way, because he's got an actual black patch over it!

“My god,” Bischoff says, “pirates!”

The other three men he has never seen before: a Negro with dread-locks; a brown-skinned, Indian-looking fellow; and a red-headed European.

Rudy is watching a stingray furling and unfurling its meaty wings ten meters straight down.

“The clarity of the water is exquisite,” he remarks.

“When the Catalinas come for us, Rudy, then you will long for the old northern murk,” Bischoff says.

Rudolf von Hacklheber swings his one eye around to bear on Bischoff, and allows just a trace of amusement to show on his face. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?” Rudy asks.

“Granted with pleasure,” Bischoff says. The dinghy has come alongside the round hull of the submarine, and Bischoff's crew unrolls a rope ladder to them. “Welcome to the V-Million!”

“I have heard of the V-1 and the V-2, but…

“We could not guess how many other V-weapons Hitler might have invented, and so we chose a very, very large number,” Bischoff says proudly.

“But Günter, you know what the V stands for?”

“Vergeltungswaffen,” Bischoff says. “You're not thinking about it hard enough, Rudy.”

Otto's puzzled, and being puzzled makes him angry. “Vergeltung means revenge, doesn't it?”

“But it can also mean to pay someone back, to compensate them, to reward them,” says Rudy, “even to bless them. I like it very much, Günter.”

“Admiral Bischoff to you,” Günter returns.

“You are the supreme commander of the V-Million—there is no one above you?”

Bischoff clicks his heels together sharply and holds out his right arm. “Heil Dönitz!” he shouts.

“What the hell are you talking about?” asks Otto.

“Haven't you been reading the papers? Hitler killed himself yesterday. In Berlin. The new Führer is my personal friend Karl Dönitz.”

“Is he part of the conspiracy too?” Otto mutters.

“I thought my dear mentor and protector Hermann Göring was going to be Hitler's successor,” Rudy says, sounding almost crestfallen.

“He is down in the south somewhere,” Bischoff says, “on a diet. Just before Hitler took cyanide, he ordered the SS to arrest that fat bastard.”

“But in all seriousness, Günter—when you boarded this U-boat in Sweden, it was called something else, and there were some Nazis on board, yes?” asks Rudy.

“I had completely forgotten about them.” Bischoff cups his hands around his mouth and shouts down the hatch in the top of the sleek rounded-off conning tower. “Has anyone seen our Nazis?”

The command echoes down the length of the U-boat from sailor to sailor: Nazis? Nazis? Nazis? but somewhere it turns into Nein! Nein! Nein! and echoes back up the conning tower and out the hatch.

Rudy climbs up V-Million's smooth hull on bare feet. “Do you have any citrus fruit?” He smiles, showing magenta craters in his gums where teeth might be expected.

“Get the calamansis,” Bischoff says to one of his mates. “Rudy, for you we have the Filipino miniature limes, great piles of them, with more vitamin C than you could ever want.”

“I doubt that,” Rudy says.

Otto just looks at Bischoff reproachfully, holding him personally responsible for having been thrown together with these four other men for all of 1944 and the first four months of 1945. Finally he speaks: “Is that son of a bitch Shaftoe here?”

“That son of a bitch Shaftoe is dead,” Bischoff says.

Otto averts his glare and nods his head.

“I take it you received my letter from Buenos Aires?” asks Rudy von Hacklheber.

“Mr. G. Bishop, General Delivery, Manila, the Philippines,” Bischoff recites. “Of course I did, my friend, or else we would not have known where to meet you. I picked it up when I went into town to renew my acquaintance with Enoch Root.”

“He made it?”

“He made it.”

“How did Shaftoe die?”

“Gloriously, of course,” Bischoff says. “And there is other news from Julieta: the conspiracy has a son! Congratulations, Otto, you are a grand-uncle.”

This actually elicits a smile, albeit black and gappy, from Otto. “What's his name?”

“Günter Enoch Bobby Kivistik. Eight pounds, three ounces—superb for a wartime baby.”

There is hand-shaking all around. Rudy, ever debonair, produces some Honduran cigars to mark the occasion. He and Otto stand in the sun and smoke cigars and drink calamansi juice.

“We have been waiting here for three weeks,” Bischoff says. “What kept you?”

Otto spits out something that is pretty bad-looking. “I am sorry that you have had to spend three weeks tanning yourselves on the beach while we have been sailing this tub of shit across the Pacific!”

“We were dismasted, and lost three men, and my left eye, and two of Otto's fingers, and a few other items, going around Cape Horn,” Rudy says apologetically. “Our cigars got a little wet. It played havoc with our schedule.”

“No matter,” Bischoff says. “The gold isn't going anywhere.”

“Do we know where it is?”

“Not exactly. But we have found one who does.”

“Clearly, we have much to discuss,” Rudy says, “but I have to die first. Preferably on a soft bed.”

“Fine,” Bischoff says. “Is there anything that needs to be removed from Gertrude before we cut her throat, and let her barnacles pull her to the bottom?”

“Sink the bitch now, please,” Otto says. “I will even stay up here and watch.”

“First you must remove five crates marked Property of the Reichsmarschall,” Rudy says. “They are down in the bilge. We used them as ballast.”

Otto looks startled, and scratches his beard in wonderment. “I forgot those were down there.” The year-and-a-half-old memory is slowly resolving in his mind's eye. “It took a whole day to load them in. I wanted to kill you. My back still aches from it.”

Bischoff says, “Rudy—you made off with Göring's pornography collection?”

“I wouldn't like his kind of pornography,” Rudy answers evenly. “These are cultural treasures. Loot.”

“They will have been ruined by bilge water!”

“It's all gold. Sheets of gold foil with holes in it. Impervious.”

“Rudy, we are supposed to be exporting gold from the Philippines, not importing it.”

“Don't worry. I shall export it again one day.”

“By that time, we'll have money to hire stevedores, so poor Otto won't have to put his back out again.”

“We won't need stevedores,” Rudy says. “When I export what is on those sheets, I'll do it on wires.”

They all stand there on the deck of V-Million in the tropical cove watching the sun set and the flying fish leap and hearing birds and insects cry and buzz from the flowering jungle all around. Bischoff's trying to imagine wires strung from here to Los Angeles, and sheets of gold foil sliding down them. It doesn't really work. “Come below, Rudy,” he says, “we need to get some vitamin C into you.”