by Nene Adams ©2004 on behalf of Rohan the Thunder Chick

"Enemy submarines are to be called U-boats.
The term ‘submarine’ is to be reserved for Allied underwater vessels.
U-boats are those dastardly villains who sink our ships,
while submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs."
--- Winston Churchill

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

"Captain!" The desperation in Kapitänleutnant Helmut Möhlmann’s voice bled through the man’s trained military calm. "The engine room has flooded; there is damage to the communications room and other compartments. We must surface!"

"Nein!" Beneath the black beard, Captain Taranis’ face was engorged with blood; his eyes bulged with the fervor of a fanatic. "We must avoid capture at all costs. Our orders come directly from the Führer and from Befehlshaber Dönitz. The future of the Fatherland depends upon us, Helmut. We cannot fail."

Möhlmann swiped at his sweaty face. U-Boat 3555 was capable of running underwater far longer than other submarines; there was no need to surface to re-charge the batteries but the air inside was bad and getting worse. Every breath dragged into his leaden lungs felt thick as porridge. If he moved too quickly, black spots swam in his vision. What was left of the crew was no better off. The U-boat was crippled, the crew dead and dying… we are being driven to Hell by a madman obsessed with his single goal.

"Sir, the Russian torpedo did too much damage," Möhlmann said, trying once more to reason with the lunatic who was his commander. "If we do not surface, we will all die – either when we suffocate from lack of oxygen, or when more compartments flood and drag us down to the bottom of the sea. We must surface and surrender ourselves. Your orders do not matter, sir. More important things have happened at home." For the third time, he tried to show the captain a crumpled piece of paper – the last communication received before the hull was breached and the communications room flooded, destroying their radio equipment.

"Lies," Taranis said coldly, making a minute adjustment to the helm. He had taken that station himself, driving U-3555 deeper under the ice. "All lies."

Möhlmann wished that he still had his sidearm, but in a fit of paranoia, the captain had confiscated all weapons and locked them inside his personal safe. "The code was properly authenticated," he said. "Hitler is dead, a suicide. Dönitz has been named Reichspräsident."

"It was Hitler himself who abolished the office of president," Taranis said, "so I know this communiqué to be false. Be silent, Kapitänleutnant." In the red emergency lighting, his countenance was like a demonic mask. "We will complete our mission."

"What is this cargo we carry that is so precious to our commanders?" Möhlmann demanded angrily. "What treasure is worth all our lives?"

Taranis did not answer. Instead, he smiled – a flash of white teeth cutting through the heavy black beard that bisected his face – and began singing Deutschlandlied in a surprisingly sweet tenor.

Möhlmann coughed and spat; his chest hurt abominably, as if his sternum was being slowly crushed. He struggled another breath into his lungs and was about to speak, but a loud crunching noise echoed through the control room; at the same time, a vicious jolt shuddered through the pressure hull, almost driving the second-in-command to his knees. He fought to stay on his feet and barked, "Ice! We’ve struck ice!"

"Silence, Helmut!" Taranis roared, then shouted, "Äusserste kraft!" to the pale young sailor at the engine controls.

Full speed? Aghast, Möhlmann made a dive for the helm but Taranis whipped a pistol out of his uniform belt and pulled the trigger. Agony blossomed across his side; warm wetness seeped through his wool jacket. Möhlmann fell to the deck even as he registered the gurgling, bubbling rasp that came from his own throat, sure sign that the bullet had struck his lung. He was going to die if he did not drown first, along with every other soul on the doomed submarine.

A spray of salt water from a sprung seam hit him in the face.

Another loud crunch as the bow struck a sheet of ice; the steel plates, stressed beyond their capacity to bear, began to crumple with ominous groans.

"Full speed!" Taranis shrieked, striking the hapless sailor with the butt of his pistol. "Full speed, I say! Do you suffer from tin-fright, boy? You should be more frightened of me than any depth charge in the ocean! Now give me full power, damn you!"

Möhlmann choked; bloody froth spewed from his mouth, mingling with the salt water.

All around them, the ice was cracking. The emergency lights flickered.

Kapitänleutnant Helmut Möhlmann was dying, but so was U-3555.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

CIA agent Amelia Peabody Emerson – God, how she sometimes hated her mother for burdening her with such a stupid literary moniker! – smoothed her navy blue DKNY jacket and checked her watch for the what seemed like the hundredth time since she had been summoned to the waiting room in the office of Senator Marian Donner, head of the Arms and Appropriations committee.

Emerson had no idea why the senator had sent for her but the woman had some serious political juju. The operative had been on assignment in Tangiers when the head of the Moroccan office had shown up with new orders and travel arrangements via a series of Navy air transports. Whatever Senator Donner wanted, she intended to get it by any means possible. That made Emerson very nervous. There had been no time to contact her boss and find out the reason behind the senator’s sudden interest in her. She had been whisked from the air field straight to Capitol Hill, although she had been allowed to change into more suitable clothing (provided by someone on the Senator’s staff) in the back of the limousine.

This can’t be good, Emerson thought, not noticing that her knee was jiggling nervously. I hate going into these situations without any intelligence at all. She eyed the secretary – one of those dragon-like females with permed hair and cat’s eye glasses – and wondered if she could sneak away and make a quick phone call to the Assistant Director.

It was very unusual for an ordinary agent to be summoned by anyone other than her direct superior or assigned controller. Under normal circumstances, it would be Emerson’s boss in the hot seat if Senator Donner was opening an inquiry into some CIA operation. What the hell was going on? Emerson gritted her teeth. Her firearm – and the back-up pistol she kept in an ankle holster – had been confiscated, as well as the knife in its spring-loaded sheath that she kept strapped to her forearm. The lack of weapons made her feel naked.

"C’mon, c’mon, c’mon," Emerson chanted under her breath, ignoring the secretary’s disapproving sniff.

The telephone on the secretary’s desk buzzed. She answered it, spoke briefly into the mouthpiece, then said to the impatient operative, "The Senator will see you now."

Thank the Great Ghu! Emerson sprang to her feet and practically raced to the door that led to Senator Donner’s inner sanctum. Despite her obvious middle age and pear-shaped figure, the secretary nevertheless managed to beat Emerson to the door; she opened it with a brittle smile that was as fake as plastic, and gestured the operative inside.

The first person that Emerson noticed was Senator Marian Donner herself. She was tall and elegant and lean, owning a classical beauty that reminded the agent of Jacqueline Bisset. The senator’s skin was well tanned, her hair styled in a deceptively simple fashion that screamed money. Donner rose from her desk – the top was clean of personal items except for a faded, sepia-toned photograph in a gilt frame of a man in uniform, a woman and a girl child holding a stuffed toy dog - and extended her hand in greeting. Emerson took it; the woman’s grip was firm and her palms dry. She glanced at the other person in the office, which caused her to stiffen in momentary shock.

"Hello, Amelia," the woman in the Navy dress whites said. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a smooth chignon at the base of her neck; her green eyes twinkled merrily, although her expression remained professionally neutral.

"Captain Anne Bonney, what a surprise!" Emerson said, drinking in the sight of her on-again, off-again lover. Their respective careers – she, a CIA operative and Bonney, captain of the Saber, a Sword-class U.S. Navy submarine – meant that neither of them were on dry land or in the same country long enough to sustain a physical relationship for very many weeks at a time. Even so, they connected whenever and wherever they could; the two women’s attraction was soul-deep and undeniable, regardless of the distance that circumstance conspired put between them.

"I understand that you two know each other." Senator Donner said, sitting back down behind her desk and clasping her hands together on the pristine blotter.

"Yes, last year we were involved in a joint intelligence operation… a downed satellite and a rogue agent," Emerson said, taking a seat in the chair next to Bonney. "I’m afraid that I’m not authorized to give you details, ma’am."

"That’s quite all right, Agent Emerson," the senator said smoothly. "What I’m after today has nothing to do with past CIA activities." She pressed a button to summon her secretary, who appeared immediately. "Agatha, bring me a cappuccino, please, and for my guests…" Donner broke off and looked at Emerson and Bonney, her eyebrow raised in mute inquiry.

"Nothing for me," Emerson said, followed by Bonney’s, "No, thank you, ma’am."

"Very well." When Agatha had gone, closing the door behind her, Senator Donner opened a folder on her desk and took out a photograph, sliding it across to Emerson. "This is a picture of a Type XXI U-boat, an Elektroboot which was built by Blohm & Voss for the German military between 1943 and 1945."

Emerson took the photo, glanced at it briefly, and handed it to Bonney. For an American, she noted, Senator Donner had a fairly decent German accent.

"This was the first real combat submarine," the senator continued, "developed to have the ability to run underwater for long distances. Before the Type XXI, other U-boats were mainly surface vessels that dived to hide from their adversaries or to attack enemy ships. With a battery capacity three times greater than its predecessors, she had enormous range and could stay submerged for two or three days at a time."

"If I may, ma’am," Bonney said, tapping the photograph with a finger. Her white dress uniform was crisp and fresh; the rows of gold braid on the sleeves were no less bright than her hair. "The Type XXI was a luxury boat for its kind; the crew quarters were more spacious, it was outfitted with a freezer for food storage, a shower, and was capable of running much more silently than other U-boats. Type XXI was also more streamlined and could load torpedoes in a fraction of the usual time. Had the Nazis developed the Elektroboot two years earlier, they might have won the war."

Well, I see my Annie’s been reading more than Patrick O’Brian novels lately, Emerson thought, and bit her lip to keep from smiling. The captain’s knowledge did not surprise her; like many sea commanders, Bonney was conversant in her occupation’s history and traditions.

"Thank you, captain." Senator Donner leafed through several pages in the folder before addressing the women again. "I’ve brought you both here for more than a history lesson, although you will need some background information in order to carry out your assignment. Captain Bonney, since you seem to have some knowledge of the subject, can you tell me what you know about U-3555?"

Bonney sat up very straight, which Emerson had thought impossible considering the captain’s normal ramrod posture. "U-3555, nicknamed Thunderbolt, was commanded by Kapitän Wilhelm Taranis." Bonney’s voice was precisely controlled, the tone identical to the one she used when explaining submarine operations to midshipmen-in-training. "She put out to sea in April, 1945, and was spotted off the coast of Norway by a Russian sub under the command of Pavel Ryndenko. He pursued and sunk U-3555 with all souls aboard."

"That may not be correct." Senator Donner took two more photographs out of the folder. These depicted a pair of paintings – Emerson thought she recognized the work of the late 19^th century fin de siècle artist Gustav Klimt.

The senator brushed a lock of her brown hair behind her ear and went on, "These paintings by Klimt – Lady with Red Hat and The Golden Willows – are known to have been looted by the Nazis from a Jewish merchant family in Vienna. In a recently discovered cache of Third Reich documents, it was found that these particular artworks, among others, were part of a cargo carried by U-3555, along with some gold and other treasures including a list of Hitler’s secret Swiss bank accounts that contain millions of dollars of assets.

"Taranis’ mission was to take this cargo to South America, to be delivered to Erik Gottschalk, an S.S. officer whose mission was to establish a sanctuary for top Nazi government officials fleeing Germany ahead of the Allies."

Emerson exchanged a glance with Bonney. "Herr Gottschalk is the head of a neo-Nazi organization in South America called der Blitzschlag."

"Yes, he is." Senator Donner paused when her secretary, Agatha, came into the office bearing a cup of cappuccino whose foamy milk topping had been sprinkled with cinnamon. It smelled delicious but Emerson was in no mood for treats.

Although she had never dealt with Gottschalk or der Blitzschlag, Emerson knew that the organization was well-known as being dedicated to the re-establishment of the Third Reich. They ran a propaganda machine that produced magazines, newsletters and websites for their members, which numbered in the low millions world-wide. Der Blitzschlag also funded clubs to recruit new members to their cause; it was suspected that Gottschalk and his cronies had also established a terrorist training camp in Argentina but that had yet to be proved. The Israeli Mossad had been trying to get the war criminal Gottschalk for years without success.

When Agatha had gone again, the senator said, "The Klimt paintings were thought to be lost along with everything else on U-3555. However, three weeks ago in Amsterdam, both Lady with Red Hat and Golden Willows were sold to a private collector for $9 million and $5 million respectively."

Emerson let out a low whistle. "Are you sure the paintings came off that U-boat?"

"Whatever else one may say about the Nazis, they kept excellent records," Senator Donner said, narrowing her eyes. "As a further point of interest, the two owners of the art gallery which handled the sale belong to an underground organization called Nieuw Nederlands Front which is a Dutch offshoot of der Blitzschlag."

"Oh, my God." Bonney’s eyes glittered. "Someone’s found U-3555."

"Not someone," Emerson corrected grimly. "Gottschalk’s found it."

"Not necessarily." Senator Donner retrieved another photo from the folder. "It gets better, ladies. Take a look at this."

Emerson did as she was bid and bit off an exclamation that would have turned the air blue had she felt free to release it.

The photograph was black and white, probably taken with a digital camera with a zoom lens from across the street. It depicted a small group of people – five people, three men and two women – seated around a table at an outdoor café. An awning proclaimed that the place was named De Bakker’s Dochter, so it had to be somewhere in the Netherlands. That was not what concerned Emerson, or made her heart skip a beat.

One of the woman seated at the table was well known to her.

It was Rohan Tarnach.

She showed the photograph to Bonney; the captain had no scruples about letting out an obscene exclamation. "What is this?" Bonney took the picture and stared at it as if it was about to spit hellfire and damnation.

"Ms. Tarnach also participated in the satellite affair, didn’t she?" Senator Donner arched a brow. "This photo was taken by a CIA operative in Amsterdam; it depicts a meeting of members of the Nieuw Nederlands Front. One of the men is Klaas Donkersloot, co-owner of the art gallery where the Klimt paintings were sold."

"What happened to Rohan?" Bonney asked.

"She quit her job with the Daily Yell in Arlington, Virginia, two months ago," the senator said. She sipped her cappuccino and licked a smear of milky foam from her upper lip in one quick flick of the tongue. "Ms. Tarnach has been in communication with Donkersloot and the woman, Trudie van Geer, since just before she terminated her employment. I have copies of e-mails exchanged between Ms. Tarnach and Ms. van Geer."

Senator Donner slid the folder across the desk. Emerson took it and quickly scanned the contents, which would require a closer inspection later. One thing that jumped out at her was the depth of the relationship evident between Rohan and the van Geer woman; they seemed genuinely attracted to one another – on paper, at least. What she did not understand was why Rohan had become involved with a group of neo-Nazis! Granted, she did not really know the former journalist (no, researcher for the newspaper) very well, but it did not seem like something Rohan Tarnach would involve herself with.

Bonney must have been thinking similar thoughts, for she said, "That doesn’t sound like the Rohan Tarnach I know."

"People change." The senator shrugged an elegant shoulder. Clad in a cerise Westwood suit with a black-and-white checked silk shirt, she seemed the epitome of cool command. "You, Agent Emerson, and you, Captain Bonney, have been assigned to my office for the duration of your mission. I want you to go to Amsterdam and find out the location of U-3555. Destroy that sub if you have to; we can’t allow the resources to be exploited by der Blitzschlag or Nieuw Nederlands Front. You’re authorized to use whatever force necessary; the Amsterdam office will assist with all details."

"Ma’am, my boat…" Bonney began, and Senator Donner interrupted.

"Is in the capable hands of your Number Two, Commander Sherwood. The Saber is on patrol in the Denmark Straight, captain. I’m sure your crew will be able to get along without you for a few weeks, or however long it takes." The senator gave Bonney a hard look. "If U-3555 has to be scuttled, you’ve got the necessary expertise to do the job properly. Otherwise, if it is in operational order, you’re to pilot the sub to pre-determined coordinates. The information is in the file."

"Aye-aye, ma’am," Bonney said.

"And as for Ms. Rohan Tarnach…"

Unconsciously, Emerson leaned forward. She had a bad, bad feeling about this. The conversation had been pleasant so far but the other shoe was about to drop and she was willing to bet that it would make a hell of a thump when it hit.

Senator Donner continued, "Eliminate Ms. Tarnach once you’ve located the sub. Treason against this country is not to be tolerated. Is this understood?" This time, she focused that laser-beam gaze on Emerson.

"Yes, senator, I understand perfectly." Emerson managed to get the acknowledgement out coherently past a too-tight jaw, but it was not easy. Shit.

Rohan was not a friend but Bonney liked the plump, irritating, harem-scarem woman – why, Emerson could not fathom. Still, it would hurt Bonney if anything happened to Rohan… which is why Emerson needed to have a little chat with the head of the Amsterdam office when they arrived in the Netherlands.

There were ways to make a death seem natural.

Heart attack, stroke, cerebral hemorrhage… anything was possible when one had access to sophisticated chemical cocktails and cutting-edge delivery systems.

Emerson relaxed and sat back in the chair.

At least she could guarantee that Rohan would not suffer… or at least, the woman would not suffer for very long.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Captain Anne Bonney reminded herself that she was supposed to be an officer and a gentleman, which meant that no matter how much she might have liked drop-kicking Senator Marian Donner into the nearest sanitary tank, she would comport herself with dignity and professionalism - which is why she was sitting on a commercial airliner sipping indifferent champagne in first class rather than slurping Chief Engineer Xiang’s excellent Ethiopian roast coffee in the control room of her submarine.

At least she had Amelia Peabody Emerson to compensate for part of the inconvenience. Bonney shot a side-long glance at her seat partner. Emerson looked good; she had acquired a tan in Tangiers which further lightened her ice-blue eyes. The agent’s dark hair was worn loose on her shoulders and she had recently trimmed her bangs. Bonney’s breath caught, as usual, at the crystal clarity of Emerson’s beauty. She loved Emerson, yet she could not forsake her first beloved – the sea.

Bonney recalled a poem by Cale Rice, The Great Seducer –

That was how it was with her; no matter how much she adored Amelia Emerson, the first claim upon her heart and soul was made by the wild bitch-mistress called ocean. Bonney was wedded to the waves, ensnared forever by a saltwater addiction. She had never tried to pretend otherwise. One day she would retire, of course; find some little cottage on an island or oceanfront property on the mainland, buy a sailboat and spend her remaining years puttering around and making a nuisance of herself with the local sailing community. She hoped that Emerson might agree to retire with her.

Then again, the CIA is one of those organizations where certain people retire feet first in a wooden kimono, Bonney thought. She knew Emerson did wet work when required; Bonney would never forget seeing the agent in action aboard the renegade Kursk submarine Samara, when she had killed two men in less than ten seconds - one with a knife, the other with her fists and feet. Emerson was all deadliness and grace who probably knew a dozen ways to end a life using a cocktail umbrella.

Well, they would deal with that when the time came. Right now, the focus was on Rohan Tarnach and U-3555.

Bonney waved away the perky stewardess who was shimmying up and down the aisles offering more champagne and snacks that were emphatically not honey roasted peanuts. She wrinkled her nose at the salty/fishy smell of caviar. Beside her, Emerson grinned and slathered a cracker with the shiny black beads.

"Mmmm," Emerson said, cramming the caviar-laden cracker in her mouth and chewing vigorously. "Want some?"

"No." Bonney filched a stuffed mushroom off the other woman’s plate. "If you knew what kind of pollutants were being dumped into the Caspian Sea on a regular basis, you wouldn’t eat beluga caviar either."

Emerson shrugged. "Eh, who wants to live forever." She ate another two crackers in rapid succession, then started on the smoked salmon-and-goat cheese torte. "I’ve eaten grubs, Annie. Raw. Squirming. Grubs. And sheep eyeballs in Morocco, live eels in Japan, maggot cheese in Sardinia and had cat-shit coffee in Indonesia. Cancer-causing fish eggs don’t even make a guest appearance on my squick list."

Bonney chuckled. "Remind me never to try and gross you out with tales of blood pudding in England and sweetened seal’s fat in the Arctic."

"Not even close to gross, sweetheart." Emerson scooped the last forkful of torte into her mouth and wiped her lips with a napkin. "So… Rohan’s back."

"She never really left, Amelia." Bonney frowned. "I wish I could get hold of COW Halliday; he and Rohan were email correspondents. He might have some insight into this whole mess."

"I doubt it."

Bonney gave her partner a sharp glance. "You sound altogether too complacent, Ms. Emerson. Don’t tell me you’re going to seriously consider obeying the senator’s order to terminate Rohan."

"Goddammit, Annie, why don’t you say it a little louder, ‘cause I think some of the folks in third class didn’t hear you," Emerson said under her breath in a forceful whisper.

"You are not going to hurt Rohan," Bonney retorted, although she did lower her voice.

"I’m not a midshipman and I’ve got my orders already, thanks." Emerson leaned over and took Bonney’s hand, brushing her thumb over the knuckles back and forth in an unmistakable caress. "Listen, Annie… we won’t know how to handle the situation until we get more intelligence, which is why the senator chose us for the job. We got close to Rohan on the Saber – you more than me, because frankly I think the woman’s a pain in the ass – and so we’re the only ones who can get close enough to her now to suss out the truth."

"I suppose that makes sense." Bonney could not help feeling somewhat suspicious, however. She knew Emerson about as well as anyone else; if the agent thought that Rohan posed a threat, the woman would have no chance at all. "Just promise me, Amelia, that you won’t do anything rash."

"Rash? Moi?"

Bonney snorted. "Yes, you know – hasty, inconsidered, spur of the moment, off the cuff. Let’s hear Rohan’s side of the story before you go medieval on her ass."

It was Emerson’s turn to snort. "I knew I shouldn’t have let you see Pulp Fiction."

"Who was it quoting from The Hunt for Red October last month in Bimini?"

Emerson got a far-away expression on her. "Ah, Bimini… sun, sea, surf, sand, and you."

"And about two dozen tourists who were treated to a variation of the lampshade watusi when you got drunk on Zombies, ripped off your bathing suit, jumped on top of the beachside tiki bar buck-ass naked and gyrated to the steel drum band’s up-tempo rendition of Mandy." Bonney still felt a mixture of fond exasperation and a trace of smugness over that one. Emerson had danced for two minutes before explosively vomiting and passing out, taking half the tiki bar with her. The next morning had been one for hushed voices and Alka-Seltzer.

"Yeah, but I still got that James Warhola original painting of Peeled Paul as a Garbage Pail Kids concept," Emerson said, sighing. Her collection of quirky and disgusting trading cards from the 1980s was her pride and joy. "And I got it for a song, Annie! For a song!"

No matter where they went, Emerson managed to find someone who appreciated the Garbage Pail Kids as much as she did, and she was not above a little swapping or outright dealing if she came across a wanted item. Bonney did not understand why an otherwise sophisticated woman-of-the-world would want to collect controversial cards depicting snot, pus and puke-dripping Cabbage Patch dolls gone horribly wrong. It was an oddly endearing incongruity, just part of Emerson’s complex character that Bonney loved.

"But to get back to the topic at hand," Bonney said, not willing to be distracted from more serious considerations, "I want your promise that you aren’t going to hurt Rohan."

Emerson abruptly sobered. "I can’t make that promise, babe."

Bonney wanted to argue but Emerson squeezed her hand in a silent gesture meant to express ‘hush and let me explain.’

"What if Commander Sherwood – your good buddy Nathan… what if he resigned his commission and later, you found out he had joined a terrorist group. He tells you that he’s now working to undermine U.S. national security. Would you let him live because he’s your friend, or would you try and eliminate the threat if it was serious enough to warrant such action?" Emerson stared at her, and finally, Bonney nodded.

She understood sacrifices. She understood the necessity to safeguard the country she had sworn to protect. Bonney could, and would, do whatever was necessary to fulfill that mandate. She loved Nathan Sherwood like a brother but if she had to order his death and there was no other choice, she would do it. That was what command decisions were all about.

Bonney did not have to like it, though.

Oh, Rohan… what have you done?

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

The CIA maintained a small, unobtrusive office above a shop in the Kalverstraat, a street in the heart of Amsterdam. The Chief of the station was James Walker, a pale-haired and pale-skinned man sporting a magnificent handlebar mustache.

"I can’t say that I’m entirely happy about this," Walker told them, ushering the women into a tiny office shoe-horned beneath a steep staircase. "It isn’t a good time. The AIVD/DIB – that’s the Algemeene Inlichtingen en Veiligheids Dienst and the Buitenlandse Inlichtingen Dienst, the Dutch intelligence community both at home and abroad – have been conducting some kind of sting operation in Amsterdam and they’ve shut us out completely."

Emerson grunted. "This have anything to do with the Klimt paintings?"

Walker gave her the fish-eye. "We think so," he answered slowly, hitching a hip on the edge of his cluttered desk and smoothing his mustache with a finger. "Look, all I know is that we received a communiqué from Senator Donner, authorized by the Director, ordering us to give you full cooperation and support on an unspecified mission. Maybe you can see your way to giving me enough details so I can do my job and help you do yours."

Emerson returned his fish-eye with a distinctly more evil one of her own. "We’re investigating the appearance of two Klimt paintings that were recently sold at an art gallery here. The works were believed to be lost."

"Yes, there’s some myth about a lost Nazi U-boat full of treasure, but a similar myth applies to the Amber Room that was in the Tsar’s palace. You know, the Germans dismantled all these amber and jeweled panels worth $142 million and shoved them on a U-boat which was subsequently torpedoed or ended up in Brazil or in an abandoned coal mine or some such bullshit. History as yellow journalism… it makes for a best-seller or an Indiana Jones movie, but there’s not a whole lot of provable fact in the theories."

"Be that as it may," Bonney said, "we want to interview the gallery owners."

"Not possible, hon." Walker shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a Zippo lighter he took from his shirt pocket. "We’ve been warned off by the AIVD/DIB. They’re handing the sale as a potential art theft."

"If that really was the case," Emerson said, "wouldn’t the police be investigating?"

"Hey, I just do as I’m told, and I was told not to make waves." Walker shrugged and smirked. "If you have a problem, I suggest you see Marieke Verhagen. She’s the DIB agent in charge of the operation."

Emerson reached out, plucked the cigarette from between his lips and tossed it on the floor. With Walker’s startled, "Hey!" still ringing in the air, she utilized a martial arts move from the blend of styles she had forged from tae kwan do, jeet kun do, akido, Shaolin, Indonesian silek, Russian Army systema, Samoan pi’inga wrestling, Maori rongomamau empty-hand techniques and native lua from the Hawaiian isles. Walker was lifted, flipped and held pinned face-down over the desk in less than a heartbeat, his arm twisted painfully behind his back in a position that might end in a dislocated elbow if he struggled.

He did not struggle.

Bonney tsked and shook her head. "Honestly, Amelia, I think you enjoy that too much."

"Yeah? Maybe I love beating the crap out of snotty assholes who think they can blow me off." Emerson showed her teeth in a feral grin. "Listen, James," she hissed, wrenching his arm up another half-inch and dragging a pained whimper out of the man, "let’s get something straight, okay? You do as I tell you and we’ll get along just fine. You and me, we’re not going to get into some kind of territorial pissing contest because, frankly, I’ve got more balls than you ever will. Big brass ones, in fact, so you do not want to get on my bad side. I figure you’ve got to be expendable, otherwise they wouldn’t have stuck you in this po-dunk office in the middle of bumfuck Europe. I disappear you, I just get a reprimand in my file. Got it?"

"Got it," Walker gritted. Emerson released him. The man rose slowly from the desk, his face crimson. "Technically, I’m your superior," he told the agent.

"Well, technically I could castrate you with that stapler, but in reality, it’d just leave you with a nasty wound instead of a clean amputation." Emerson shrugged. "Same result; you’d still be peeing through a straw for the rest of your life."

Walker put on a brave expression but Bonney could tell that he was intimidated. "What do you want?" he asked harshly.

"I want you to quit jerking me around." Emerson picked up the abandoned cigarette, which was still smoldering, and stuck it back into Walker’s mouth. "Arrange a meeting with this DIB chick as soon as possible. Get me copies of all your intelligence on the Nieuw Nederlands Front, Trudie van Geer, the activities of der Blitzschlag in Holland, the art gallery where the Klimt paintings were sold, the buyer and anything else related to those topics. Captain Bonney and I will be staying at the Hotel Krasnapolsky."

"That’s a five-star hotel," Walker said. "I’ve already arranged for…"

"Hey, we Jane Bond types go for luxury all the way. Use the company credit card to make our reservations, James. I’m sure the senator will approve." Emerson shoved away from his desk and jerked her head at the door. "C’mon, Annie. I’m sure Mr. Man here needs time to pull himself together and put on clean undies."

Bonney paused at the door. "Mr. Walker, we would also like to interview the agent who has had the Nieuw Nederlands Front under surveillance."

"That’d be a Dutch asset, Henk Koopmans. I’ll have him come by your hotel after eight o’clock tonight." Walker sounded sullen but there was still a spark of fear in the man’s eyes. Bonney almost felt sorry for him. Emerson could be a real force of nature and she was used to having her own way.

Emerson was tugging her arm gently. Bonney nodded at Walker – who ignored her – and went out of the office.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

The Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky was not too far from the Kalverstraat. Emerson and Bonney could have walked there in a few minutes, but first they needed to do some shopping. Fortunately, the Kalverstraat was one of the premier shopping areas in Amsterdam, full of boutiques and stores and shops crammed cheek-to-jowl on either side of the narrow thoroughfare. Emerson had been given a credit card with a high limit for expenses, and she had two more cards drawing from a special Agency account that she could use if needed.

They purchased shirts and trousers and other necessities, since the Senator had given them no opportunity to pack suitcases. Dutch fashion proved to be either very ordinary or outré; there seemed to be no middle ground. Emerson stuck to black – her favorite color – while Bonney chose navy blue (no surprise there) or khaki. Both women avoided the feathers and fringes and brown-and-orange retro 70s gear that was thick on the racks.

Bonney dragged Emerson into the famous American Book Store in order to buy some books in case she got bored with the spy vs. spy thing – Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail and Cochrane: The Life and Exploits of a Fighting Captain. Emerson rolled her eyes. She knew that Bonney considered ships and subs and sailing better than sex… well, almost, since Emerson could muster no complaints on that score. Bonney was enthusiastic, inventive and uninhibited – they matched as perfectly in bed as they seemed mismatched out of it.

Emerson snorted. She did love Anne Bonney; that was not the problem. No, the fly in the ointment of their relationship was that their careers meant they could only snatch a few days together every few months. Having spent a lot of time, money and effort training her, the CIA was getting their investment’s worth sending Emerson to trouble-spots around the globe, places where her particular expertise was needed. As for Bonney… the Saber and the U.S. Navy were huge and very important chunks of her life.

Then again, I don’t want some little wifey waiting for me at home with pipe and slippers and a shaken-not-stirred martini, Emerson thought. No, she enjoyed Bonney’s independence and was proud of her lover’s accomplishments. She just wished they could have more time together.

I wonder if I ought to think about retiring from active duty. Emerson put a hand on the small of Bonney’s back as she opened the door to usher the shorter woman outside. If I took an analyst’s position or opted into another program, I’d be able to pick and choose my assignments. Let’s face it – I’m not getting any younger. Once you’re on the wrong side of thirty, the reflexes begin to slow down no matter how much training you put your body through. One of these days, some young turk is going to be that much faster and that much better and it’ll be lights out for good.

Before she met Bonney, the thought of dying while in the service of the Agency had not really bothered her. It had been inevitable, she supposed. However, Emerson now had somebody to live for. In fact, she had already named Bonney as the primary beneficiary on her life insurance and put the woman down as next-of-kin in her personnel file.

They checked into the Hotel Krasnapolsky – the CIA had a permanent reservation for a room that was paid out of the Amsterdam office’s budget – and after changing into new outfits, went to the hotel’s Wintertuin for a drink. The Wintertuin was a 19^th century glass conservatory filled with palm trees and plants; the late afternoon sun was a blaze of gold that brought out the Titian highlights in Bonney’s hair. Emerson found a table and ordered Irish coffee for them both.

"Penny for your thoughts," Bonney said after their drinks arrived.

"Adjusted for inflation, that’s about a buck," Emerson replied. She toyed with the linen napkin a moment before saying, "Ah, hell, Annie… I miss you."

"I miss you too, Amelia."

"I miss you more." Emerson held up a hand to forestall Bonney’s next comment. "I’ve been thinking, babe."

"A dangerous prospect." Bonney took Emerson’s hand and entwined their fingers together. "All right, there’s something going on here. Spit it out before you choke on it."

Not even Emerson could resist the command growl in her lover’s voice, which she thought was kind of sexy. "I want us to be able to spend more time together. What would you say if I took a desk job?"

She closed her eyes just in time as a surprised Bonney spewed a mouthful of Irish coffee across the table, although her face took the brunt of the inundation. The ensuing mopping up gave Emerson an excuse to allow the other woman time to recover her composure. When Bonney finished wiping the dripping coffee trails from her face, Emerson said, "So? What do you think?"

"Have you hit your head recently?" Bonney threw down the sopping napkin. "You’d no more take desk duty than I’d turn into the Grand Poobah of Fiddler’s Green!"

"Well, your Poobah-ship, the time’s, they are a-changing." Emerson grinned. "Don’t look like I busted your dolly, babe. Us fire-eating, raw-meat chewing, kill-you-with-a-sanitary-napkin alpha bitches can’t keep up our dangerous ways indefinitely."

"I hear you," Bonney nodded slowly, apparently considering the matter. "You’re right, Amelia. You’re not getting any younger."

"And you are? No, that’s not fair. I’m sorry, Annie. What I mean is… I’m already losing my edge." Emerson took a sip of her Irish coffee, savoring the bitterness and the whiskey burn. "There are old agents, and bold agents, but no old, bold agents. I’ve either got to get out of the game soon or else…" She drew a finger across her throat.

Bonney took a deep breath. "What do you want to do?"

"I’m not sure." Emerson had not really given the matter a lot of conscious thought. "There’s a forensics program I could get into; it would mean some field duty but nothing like the assignments I’m doing now." Actually, the position was for a ‘cleaner’ – someone who was called in to crime scenes to either get rid of the evidence (including disposing of bodies) or alter evidence to make one thing seem like another – but Bonney did not need details.

"And then what? Are you going to be a sea widow, Amelia? Because I’ll tell you straight, I’m not ready to retire yet. The brass keeps trying to promote me to Admiral; I’m going to keep telling them to stow it until I can’t avoid land duty any longer." Bonney had the grace to look apologetic. "Don’t misunderstand me, darlin’. I want to be with you. I do."

"I know." Emerson patted her lover’s hand. "Believe me, I know. I’m not trying to pressure you into anything. It’s just time I made a change before something permanent happens, like the never-get-overs."

"It’s got to be your decision, but I won’t be unhappy to see you in a somewhat safer profession."

"Hah! Like being a thousand feet underwater in a tin can is safe."

"Statistically, your chances of breaking your neck at home in your own shower are greater than dying in a submarine."

"Tell that to the poor Russian bastards who were drowned on the original Kursk submarine back in ’00," Emerson said. She pushed an unruly lock of black hair out of her eyes. "Hey, we worry about each other, that’s good. We love each other, that’s even better. I just want us to have a little more togetherness time and besides, I figure the Agency owes me a cushy position after all the crap I’ve had to put up with over the years."

"Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you." Bonney suddenly grinned. "I’ve already listed you for spousal benefits."

"I put you down on my insurance," Emerson confessed. "So where should I start looking for seaside property?"

"Excuse me," a man’s voice said, interrupting their conversation. "I understand you wish to see me."

Emerson looked up at a dark-haired, clean-shaven young man with long sideburns that came to a point at the angle of his jaw. "Henk Koopmans?"

"Ja, dat ben ik." Koopmans stuck out his hand. Emerson took it, evaluating the man who had been recruited by Walker – an asset, in the Agency parlance, meaning a foreign agent working for the local CIA office.

"Please join us, Mr. Koopmans," Bonney said, shaking his hand in turn. "Would you care for a drink?"

Koopmans shook his head but he did sit down, turning the chair around and straddling it. "Mr. Walker said that you wanted to speak to me about some surveillance photos?"

Straight to the point. Good. Emerson finished her lukewarm coffee in a few swallows. "I’m interested in some pictures you took at a location called De Bakker’s Dochter."

"Trudie van Geer." Koopmans’ brown eyes narrowed. "And Nieuw Nederlands Front. A bunch of fascists, ultra-right garbage."

"What do you know about Trudie van Geer?"

"Not much." He shrugged. "She’s a student. Trudie used to be the girlfriend of Joop Voskuil, who owns Galerie De Twee Pauwen with Klaas Donkersloot. They’re all part of the Nieuw Nederlands Front. Mr. Walker pays me to keep surveillance on the three of them; Trudie in particular. He likes lots of photos."

Understanding dawned. Emerson asked casually, "You take a lot of candid shots, Henk?" At his puzzled frown, she elaborated, "Does Walker want you to photograph Trudie when she’s showering or undressing or just plain nude?"

"Of course." Koopmans shifted in the chair and took a pouch of tobacco and some Rizla papers out of his back pocket. He spent a few moments expertly rolling a cigarette, wetting the seam with his tongue. "Walker pays me extra for… what do you call it? Beaver shots. He likes porno, you know? I’ve got a telephoto lens, man; I can get real close."

Emerson bared her teeth in a not-grin. "Great. Just great. Listen, Henk… you’d better cool that Playboy shit, all right? If Walker’s bosses back home get wind that he’s been using budget money to pay for a personal stash of dirty pictures, there’s going to be some major shit-canning headed his way and you don’t want to get involved. Savvy?"

Koopmans lit his cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. "I gotcha," he said, pointing an index finger at Emerson and cocking back his thumb in a classic pistola gesture. "Not a problem, Agent Emerson."

She poked him in the chest, more to get his attention than as an intimidation tactic, although that was hovering in the wings, too. "I’d better not catch you hawking pussy-pics over the Internet, hoss. Otherwise, there’ll be hell to pay."

He affected a ‘who, me?’ expression that did not fool Emerson one bit. She propped an elbow on the table, fixed him with her best ‘do not fuck with me, boy’ glare, and went on softly, "They’ll never find your body. Believe it.

His face still expressed his doubts. Emerson cinched it by adding, "My code-name, by the way, is Widowmaker."

Koopmans almost inhaled his cigarette. Emerson sat back satisfied; not even Bonney’s half-amused, half-appalled look could put a dent in her enjoyment. Any day in which she could strong-arm not one but two grown men into pants-pissing submission was a good day, indeed. Emerson not only felt like a bad-ass, she was a bad-ass.

Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil… for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.

Emerson’s code-name was infamous within the Agency. Widowmaker had a reputation for cold-blooded violence that far outshined any other wet-work operative. Some of that reputation was pure bombast but a large portion she had earned with gun and knife and other weapons. Bonney had no idea about some of the nastier assignments she had weathered, and Emerson never wanted her lover to find out.

The cigarette extinguished and his breath regained, Koopmans took his leave. Bonney gazed at her, a speculative gleam in the captain’s emerald eyes.

"Widowmaker?" Bonney asked.

"We’ve all got code names," Emerson said, knowing Bonney did not have the necessary security clearance to pull her operation files. "Do you remember John Makepeace?"

"The renegade agent who stole the microchip out of the downed satellite on Royal Island."

"His code-name was Chaos." Emerson spotted a bicycle courier headed towards their table; the spandex-clad girl had a cardboard delivery box under her arm. "Hey, I think Walker’s sent those files we wanted."

Bonney rose from the table. "We’d better take them to our room."

"I can think of better things to do when we’re in private." Emerson waggled her eyebrows and leered, which made Bonney laugh.

"Come on, you goofus, before we give these poor folks a show they’ll have to bleach their eyeballs to forget."

"Speak for yourself, sailor. I’m so buff, they’d pay to see me in the altogether."

"In your dreams, land lubber. Let’s get underway because I think the Irish coffee’s gone to your head." Bonney smiled and started walking towards the elevators.

Having signed for the box, Emerson followed Bonney, humming happily beneath her breath. While the senator’s assignment was irritating in some respects, in others, she was quite content. Time spent with Bonney – even if it was a stolen hour or two – was worth any price. Emerson decided that she would definitely seek out the Assistant Director and ask about a transfer from active status. Aware that she was being watched by several hotel patrons, she executed a roll-snap of her hips and a quick cha-cha one-two-three that would have made her mother, the International Latin Dance champion, proud.

What the hell… you only live once.

She got into the elevator, still humming… and found herself face-to-face with Trudie van Geer. The Dutch woman had a gun – a workmanlike Sig Sauer P-226, the weapon of the serious professional – and it was pointed at Bonney.

Emerson’s day plummeted from good to extremely bad in less than a second.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Another woman entered the elevator and stabbed the button to close the door. She was a tall thin brunette – built like a stork, in Bonney’s opinion, all bones and skin and no meat to speak of – whose boxy Chanel-type suit was yellow trimmed with braid the same color as her hair. A bright Hermès scarf was wrapped around her throat. Bonney would have bet that the scarf alone was worth a week of her salary including hazard pay.

In contrast, Trudie van Geer was scruffy, wearing a Powerpuff Girls T-shirt and faded denim jeans with a hole in the knee. Her strawberry-blonde hair was gathered into two braids fastened at the ends with yarn bows. Bonney noticed that Trudie’s eyes were emerald green, the same as her’s. There were other similarities; to the casual glance, the two women might have been sisters.

There was nothing sisterly in the Sig Sauer pointed at her head, though.

Emerson growled. There was no other word for the sound that rumbled out of the agent’s throat.

The CIA operative was not the only one well-versed in empty hand combat forms. As a naval commander, Bonney had undergone some martial arts training; not as extensive as Emerson’s but it would serve well enough. Accordingly, she reached up and grabbed Trudie’s wrist, applying a forceful twist against the joint that was not only painful, it would cause nerves to spasm instantly and painfully, making Trudie drop the pistol.

Emerson reacted with typical swiftness; in a heartbeat, she had the other woman pressed against the side of the elevator, the Hermès scarf acting as an opportunistic garrotte.

"Who are you and what do you want?" she snarled.

Bonney put her foot on the gun and kept Trudie in a submission hold.

The well-dressed woman’s gaze never flickered. "Be at ease, Agent Emerson, Captain Bonney. My name is Marieke Verhagen, DIB." She eased a hand into her jacket, removed a wallet and showed them an identity card. "We must talk."

Emerson’s eyes blazed. "Nice greeting, Ms. Verhagen, and a good way to get yourself killed." She released the Dutch agent, shaking her head. "Idiots."

Bonney let go of Trudie, who stooped to scoop up the gun. The pigtailed woman shoved the Sig Sauer into the back of her jeans, pulling her T-shirt down to cover the weapon. "A precaution," she explained. "We’re playing a dangerous game, captain."

"You got that right." Emerson eyed Verhagen and Trudie with dislike. "I don’t know how they do things here in Tulipsville, sweetheart, but where I come from, you don’t stick a gun in somebody’s face when their pissed-off partner is around to kick your dumb ass from here to Asia headed eastward."

Bonney cleared her throat. Sometimes, Emerson’s protective streak went a little too far. "Do I look like Little Nell to you?" she asked

"Do I look like Dudley Do-Right?" Emerson shot back. "Okay, so you weren’t tied to a railroad track by Snidely Whiplash, but you were still in danger, Annie."

"And I handled it," Bonney pointed out.

"Ladies, as fascinating as this incomprehensible dialogue is, may we continue our business elsewhere?" Verhagen asked. Without waiting for an answer, she pressed the button that would take them to the floor where Emerson and Bonney’s room was located.

Trudie led the way down the corridor. She was an incongruous sight in the luxurious surroundings, dressed in her torn jeans and cartoon T-shirt. Bonney could believe the young woman was a student; it was more difficult to comprehend why such a sweet-faced female would be a member of a neo-Nazi organization. Or was she? Judging from the presence of the DIB agent Verhagen, Trudie van Geer was either more or less than she seemed.

Once inside their room, Bonney and Emerson sat side-by-side on the leather sofa while Trudie slouched against the wall nearby. Verhagen stood in front of them, smoothing her heavily sprayed helmet of brunette hair. "I received word from James Walker that you’ve been sent to investigate the Nieuw Nederlands Front."

Emerson nodded in acknowledgement, and Verhagen continued, "The DIB is already involved in a covert investigation. We will not tolerate American interference in what is a purely internal matter. Do you understand?"

"Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel," Emerson grumbled.

Bonney discreetly thumped Emerson in the ribs with her elbow. "We have no intention of interfering in your investigation, Ms. Verhagen. However, since it involves a U.S. citizen named Rohan Tarnach, I believe that our country’s interests cannot be wholly dismissed."

"Are you with the diplomatic corps?" Verhagen asked.

"United States Navy," Bonney replied.

They stared at each other a long moment, assessing. Finally, Verhagen broke off and sighed. "All right, in the interests of international relations, I concede the point. But," she added, pointing a scarlet-lacquered fingernail at Bonney, "my tolerance extends so far and no further."

Bonney would have liked to grab that scarlet talon and snap it off; she did not appreciate being pointed at as though she was a deck-ape called to task by the Chief of the Boat over some infraction. Instead, she stiffened her spine and said crisply, "I’m sure your superiors will appreciate the spirit of cooperation you’ve extended, ma’am… no matter how reluctantly."

Verhagen stared at her, then threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, nobody’s spoken to me like that in years!"

"Then it’s high time somebody did." Out of the corner of her eye, Bonney saw Emerson’s wide grin and decided to ignore it, as long as the DIB agent did not take offense. "Perhaps you can start by telling us about Ms. van Geer. We were told that she was a member of Nieuw Nederlands Front."

"I am," Trudie said, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. "I’m an undercover DIB agent."

"And I’m the Tooth Fairy," murmured Emerson.

Trudie shook her head, strawberry-blonde pigtails bouncing on her shoulders. "I look younger than I really am."

Verhagen chose a chair and sat down, crossing her long, slim legs. "Two months ago, a DIB informant told us there were rumors that U-3555 – Taranis’ Thunderbolt – had been found by a German researcher. We tried to follow the lead but it went nowhere. Then the two Klimt paintings appeared here in Amsterdam three weeks ago at Galerie De Twee Pauwen, being sold by the owners Klaas Donkersloot and Joop Voskuil."

"Who was the buyer?" Emerson asked.

"A Japanese investment firm," Verhagen said. "We’ve checked and Tokoyumi Enterprises has no connection to Nieuw Nederlands Front or der Blitzschlag."

Bonney rubbed her lower lip thoughtfully. "And the German researcher who supposedly found U-3555… would he be Professor Gebhard Kappelhoff by any chance? Of Stuttgart University?"

Verhagen raised both plucked eyebrows in surprise, while Emerson turned to Bonney and mouthed, "Who the hell?"

"How do you know Herr Kappelhoff?" Verhagen asked.

"He’s written several books on U-boats and their crews," Bonney said. "Kappelhoff is considered one of the world’s leading experts on World War II submarine warfare."

"I should have known," Emerson sighed.

"Herr Kappelhoff died three weeks ago, around the same time the paintings were offered for sale. Officially, it was a heart attack. Unofficially, there were faint marks of torture on the body. I’d say that he did not survive the first question; autopsy showed Kappelhoff had a weak heart." Verhagen offered this tidbit to Emerson, one professional to another.

Emerson tsked. "Sloppy work; the idea behind torture is to extract information, not kill your target the first time out of the gate." She explained to Bonney, "One of the favored methods of forceful extraction is electrocution – it was used a lot by the Stasi, the East German secret police, back when Berlin was still divided by a wall. Hotwiring causes a hell of a lot of pain, sometimes bleeding in the joints or muscle tissue, but the technique leaves no visible scars unless the torturer gets carried away. I guess Kappelhoff’s heart couldn’t take the voltage. One zap was probably enough to kill him."

"Do you speak from personal experience?" Verhagen asked coolly.

Emerson just looked at her and did not answer.

Bonney knew her lover was an assassin, a wet-work operative who killed people for a living, among other things. Her own profession was not that different; in the event of a war, she could be ordered to fire nuclear missiles upon a city of millions, the majority of whom would be innocent victims of their own government’s choices. Bonney could live with that; she would do her sworn duty but at no point would she try and absolve herself of responsibility. There would be no mealy-mouthed Nuremberg-type excuses about following orders. She knew Emerson felt the same and she was at peace with her lover’s work.

"Well, we think that Kappelhoff found U-3555 intact and took the two Klimt paintings as proof of his discovery. Joop Voskuil is an acknowledged Klimt expert," Verhagen said. "Kappelhoff must have wanted the paintings authenticated before he told the world about U-3555’s location. Unfortunately for the professor, Voskuil is a member of Nieuw Nederlands Front, which as you know is a branch of der Blitzschlag."

"I can guess the rest." Emerson leaned back and put an arm over the back of the sofa, letting her fingertips trail on Bonney’s shoulder. "Gottschalk, who’s an old horror preserved in formaldehyde, ordered Kappelhoff snatched for questioning because Gottschalk knows exactly what was in U-3555 and he wants that treasure, the greedy so-and-so. Problem is, the professor dropped dead before he revealed the location, so Voskuil and Donkersloot sold the paintings. Case closed."

"Not entirely," Trudie said. Bonney shifted her attention to the pigtailed woman. "Just days after Kappelhoff’s death, Voskuil ordered me to contact Rohan Tarnach in Virginia. I had already infiltrated Nieuw Nederlands Front posing as an art history student; that’s been my cover for two years. Voskuil trusts me because I’ve proved my loyalty in the past."

"What were your orders regarding Rohan?" Bonney asked.

"Voskuil was specific – I was to meet Rohan on-line in an Internet chat-room that she was known to frequent." Trudie tugged at the hem of her T-shirt, momentarily distorting the bright cartoon image on the front. "I was to charm her, seduce her and draw her here to Amsterdam to meet with Donkersloot and Voskuil. Rohan doesn’t know about Nieuw Nederlands Front; she’s accepted my cover identity and believes that I’m learning about the art business at Galerie De Twee Pauwen."

"And how is the seduction going?" Emerson drawled.

Trudie had the grace to blush a becoming shade of pink. "Rohan and I are…"

"Oh, by the Great Ghu! Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with that annoying little…" Emerson started to say, and Bonney interrupted.

"Rohan is a very nice woman," the captain said firmly. "I was lucky enough to make her acquaintance last year. I wouldn’t like to think that she’s been drawn into a dangerous situation without her full knowledge and consent."

Verhagen shrugged. "It’s obvious that Juffrouw Tarnach has something that Voskuil wants, and whatever Voskuil wants, Gottschalk put the desire there. You understand? I believe that Rohan Tarnach possesses knowledge regarding U-3555. Der Blitzschlag will stop at nothing to obtain that knowledge, which is why I authorized our operative van Geer to go ahead with Voskuil’s plan. With an agent in place, the situation is under control and any threat to Tarnach is significantly lessened."

"So you say." Bonney found herself getting angry. The captain had liked Rohan; the other woman had a somewhat embarrassing tendency towards hero-worship but she was intelligent and friendly, with not a scrap of malice in her. "This really is an unconscionable situation, Ms. Verhagen. Luring a U.S. citizen out of the country, under false pretences and with criminal intent… that just won’t do." Her voice was low and deadly but her eyes flashed with suppressed fury.

Verhagen’s own gaze was like polished steel. "Do you know what’s at stake? More than art treasures and gold, I can assure you."

"Enlighten us," Emerson said flatly. It was not a request.

"Millions of dollars of artworks and jewels were looted from European Jewish families with great efficiency by the Nazis. There are unclaimed bank accounts in Switzerland that are worth great fortunes. There are paintings and sculptures now in museums or private collections that once belonged to others." Trudie fidgeted and flashed Emerson an unreadable look. "One of the problems of survivors and their families who try to get compensation or make a claim is that it’s often impossible for them to prove prior ownership of a stolen item. Many records were lost in the war; the families weren’t given receipts by the Nazis and in the art world, provenance is everything." Her lips quirked in an almost-smile.

Bonney did not return that smile, but she nodded encouragement.

Trudie continued, obviously warming to her subject, "One of the most diligent of Hitler’s art acquirers was Fritz Jager, whose family operated a fine arts auction house in Berlin for three generations before the Nazi Party came to prominence. The younger Jager son was given a commander’s position in the Schutzstaffel under Himmler. Jager and his S.S. unit were responsible for dozens of raids on wealthy Jewish families.

"They would come at night, in the darkness… their boot heels striking sparks from the street stones," Trudie said, her eyes getting bigger, more mesmerizing as she told the story. "A fist banging on the door was all the warning the family received. Men, women and children were bundled out of doors, dressed only in their nightclothes, to stand shivering in the darkness while their home was torn apart by cruel, greedy men. What Jager’s men did not steal, they destroyed. In most cases, the Jewish families were transported to concentration camps. Anyone who resisted was killed or arrested and later executed. It was a terrible time, especially in occupied countries like the Netherlands."

"What does this have to do with U-3555?" Bonney asked.

"It has been long rumored that Jager kept private documentation on every raid that he and his men participated in, including from whom the works were taken." Trudie bounced on her toes in apparent excitement. "Do you understand what this means if it’s true?"

"I suppose some people will be able to make successful claims for compensation from the German government," Bonney said.

"Ah, but there’s more," Trudie said. "Hitler himself is said to have kept journals detailing orders to Jager to target specific homes for specific works. His journals are also supposed to contain account numbers and passwords for secret Swiss bank accounts; the money was made from the private sales of some works to places like the Vatican."

"I wouldn’t be surprised," Emerson said. "The Vatican Bank laundered millions of dollars for the Nazi Party in ’43. Stands to reason that the Pope would shell out some of his profits to plump out the Vatican’s art collection."

"If it could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Hitler specifically targeted certain families, and the profits of the sales of those looted items went into his private bank accounts, then the World Court would be able to order the Swiss government to open those accounts and pay compensation to legitimate claimants," Verhagen said.

"But I still don’t understand what Rohan has to do with this," Emerson said.

Verhagen got up and went to a sideboard, where she turned on the electric kettle to heat water for coffee. She turned and folded her arms across her scrawny chest. "It is the belief of the DIB that Rohan Tarnach’s grandfather was Ludger Taranis, captain of U-3555."

Bonney closed her eyes as goosebumps rose over her flesh, making her shiver.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Rohan stirred her cup of coffee; it was much smaller than the equivalent American version, but then she had found that almost everything in Holland was smaller, except the people. She had read that the Dutch were the tallest nation in Europe and she could well believe it. In a crowd, Rohan felt like she was surrounded by a redwood forest. The impression was reinforced by a typical Dutch attitude towards personal space – that is, the concept was almost nonexistent. People had no trouble pushing another person to the side if they were in the way. If you were lucky, you got a muttered apology. If not, you just accepted the treatment as normal and went on your way without getting upset.

Trudie was a big help when it came to adjusting to the Dutch way of doing things. Rohan smiled to herself, thinking of the pretty woman who was almost her lover. Almost. She let out a pensive sigh. She and Trudie held hands in public; in private, by mutual agreement, they had limited themselves to necking sessions in Trudie’s tiny flat.

This consisted of kissing and more kissing, from gentle loving pecks to spit-slick, open-mouthed, tongue-duelling, teeth-clashing, sloppy wet passionate embraces that left them both breathless. Rohan sighed again, this time because her spine was tingling; the electric sensation travelled down to lodge moistly between her thighs. She wanted Trudie, plain and simple. If that meant that she had to also accept Trudie’s friends… Rohan wrinkled her nose. That was the difficult part.

She was sure that Joop and Klaas were nice enough guys. Rohan had at first assumed they were a couple – as in, romantically involved – but she had quickly changed her mind on that score. They were a couple, all right – a couple of assholes. Joop could be charming when he put his mind to it, but Klaas looked at her with dead eyes, as though he was a python assessing his prey. Trudie was learning the art business from them, though, so Rohan tried her best to keep the men sweet. It was hard to stay polite. Joop and Klaas had what she considered to be a strange fascination for her past; they asked personal questions and seemed especially interested in her family background for some reason.

Rohan took a sip of coffee and watched a six-foot four-inch drag queen walk past, dressed from head to toe in purple fake fur, including enormous space boots and a leashed poodle dyed to match. When Trudie was not there with her, she wondered what temporary insanity had driven her to quit her job, abandon her home and fly across the Atlantic Ocean. When they were together, Trudie’s bright presence drove all doubts from her mind. She smiled, remembering the previous evening’s ‘date’, and then frowned when she recalled that after the movie and dinner, they had gone to Joop’s flat for more Q&A.

I wonder why Joop wants to know so much about my grandmother? Rohan nibbled the crisp, clove-scented cookie that came with the coffee and shook her head. The man asked a lot about Grandma Gewitter, like what part of Germany she had come from, and who her family was, and many other questions to which she did not have an answer.

Rohan had been orphaned almost at birth – an auto accident had taken both her parents – and she had been raised by her maternal grandmother. Grandma Gewitter was a German emigrant who had refused to teach her granddaughter any German or to speak about the life she had left behind when she had fled Berlin to America with her daughter – Rohan’s mother - in 1945. Rohan knew virtually nothing about the woman or her past.

She sighed a third time. Life was boring when Trudie was not there.

The café was close to Trudie’s flat, which made it a convenient place to get coffee and meals. Rohan was particularly fond of the uitsmijter – fried eggs and ham on bread – that came close to an ‘American-style’ breakfast, although the portion was smaller than she was used to. Rohan lifted her gaze and saw the postman in his red-and-brown uniform parking his bicycle near the café. Since she and Trudie were at De Bakker’s Dochter so often, he usually delivered the mail to their table instead of dropping it off at Trudie’s flat. Rohan grinned at the man, who greeted her with a hearty ‘goeie morgen’ and laid an envelope next to her cup.

Speak of the Devil!

The letter was from Grandma Gewitter.

Rohan was surprised, excited and then, a little worried. Her grandmother’s health had been declining the last few years but she was still active for a woman of her advanced years. It suddenly occurred to Rohan that she did not even know how old Grandma Gewitter was. She opened the envelope and drew out the letter, a faint apprehension clenching her stomach and making the uitsmijter turn sour. She read:

Rohan put down the letter, her hands shaking. She was numb all over, the sour taste of bile in her mouth. Oh my God.

Her grandmother was a Nazi. Her grandfather was a Nazi. Her mother was… well, not a Nazi as far as she could tell but certainly a cold-blooded bitch who had abandoned her at birth. Her grandmother – the woman who raised her - was probably dead. It was a little much to take in at once. The blood drained from her face. Rohan’s thoughts buzzed round and round. She had no idea how long she sat there, stunned, before someone touched her on the shoulder. Rohan let out a startled scream, almost falling out of the chair.

"Are you alright, Rohan?" Joop Voskuil asked, a look of fake concern on his fat bearded face. Rohan really, really disliked the man at that moment, but she also needed some kind of human contact after being dealt such a series of blows.

"I heard from my grandmother," Rohan said, scraping her dark hair out of her eyes. "She’s dying. She might already be dead."

"That is very bad news," Joop said, sitting down and taking her hand. His palms were unpleasantly damp. "Will you be leaving Amsterdam?"

Rohan had not thought that far ahead. Tears sprang to her eyes and she wiped them away angrily, not willing to show weakness in front of this man. She wished that Trudie would come. Yes, Trudie would put warm arms around her, pull her down to rest her aching head on a firm bosom, and croon loving words to soothe her pain.

It was unfortunate that right now, she had to deal with Joop instead of Trudie.

"I don’t know," Rohan said, flattening the letter on the table and smoothing it out with her fingers. "I need to talk to Trudie."

"Oh, she’ll be along, I’m sure." Joop let go of her other hand and reached out to touch the letter. "May I?" he asked, while simultaneously snatching the paper out of her grasp.

"Hey!" Rohan exclaimed, jumping up and trying unsuccessfully to snatch the letter away from him. "What do you think you’re doing?"

He showed his teeth in a snarl that made her heart contract and freeze in place. Rohan was no coward but there was something feral in the man’s face that frightened her. Joop quickly skimmed the letter and said, "So, now you know about your glorious heritage, Fraulein Tarnach... or should I say Taranis?"

"Give me that!" Rohan grabbed the letter out of his hand and stuffed it into the pocket of her trousers. "What’s wrong with you, Joop?"

He rose to his feet; the man was taller than her and outweighed Rohan by a good seventy pounds or more. "Come with me," Joop said.

"I don’t think so!"

"Don’t make a scene, juffrouw. Otherwise…" He briefly flipped open his jacket to show the grip of a pistol in a leather harness under his arm. Joop’s voice was soft but his eyes were as hard and lifeless as agates. "I will shoot you and take what I want anyway, but if you come quietly, I won’t hurt you."

Rohan drew a deep breath. Her world was crashing around her, dissolving into confusion where nobody was who they seemed. Joop sidled closer.

She did the only thing that was possible under the circumstances.

Rohan opened her mouth and screamed, "Gun! He’s got a gun!"

Complete chaos broke loose at De Bakker’s Dochter.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

"Rohan will be waiting for me at the café," Trudie said, leading the way once they were out of the Hotel Krasnapolsky.

After some hot debating, DIB Agent Verhagen had agreed to allow Emerson and Bonney an opportunity to interview Rohan, although she did not want Trudie van Geer’s cover blown. The plan was that Emerson and Bonney would wait in Trudie’s flat, while the pigtailed woman went to fetch her oblivious lover.

Like most plans, Emerson thought as they neared De Bakker’s Dochter, their’s was not screw-the-pooch proof.

"Gun! He’s got a gun!" screamed a familiar voice at an ear-splitting, operatic diva’s volume that bounced and echoed off the buildings.

Freud in the Void! If Rohan chose not to return to her job as a newspaper researcher, the woman could always make an excellent living as a hog-caller, Emerson thought. She focused on the center of the milling chaotic mob that erupted around the café.

Some fat idiot was waving a gun – in public, no less! – while women and white-faced men ducked out of the way. In front of him was Rohan Tarnach, just as pale but stubbornly refusing to kiss the dirt. Why was she not surprised? Emerson cursed her lack of firearms. If Mr. Manic shot Rohan, she was too far away to do anything about it. Bonney must have come to the same conclusion; the captain was looking equally dismayed but continued towards the café in an efficient trot, her jaw jutted forward pugnaciously as if she was spoiling for a fight.

Ah, shit. Emerson braced herself for an ugly confrontation. Somehow, without her being aware of it, her priorities had shifted. Once upon a time, Agent Emerson would have fulfilled her mission and to hell with everything else. Nobody really mattered to her. She was the Widowmaker, deadliest and most efficient operative on two legs. The previous Assistant Director had believed that Emerson was a sociopath, but one that was controllable. Emerson had done very little to change that impression… until Bonney.

Now, she understood that Anne Bonney came first. To hell with Rohan, and van Geer, and Verhagen, Mr. Gun-Wielding Maniac and any other yutz that tried to come between Emerson and her beloved. To hell with the senator’s orders, too. Emerson felt an adrenaline surge in her veins. Her lungs expanded and more oxygen spilled into her bloodstream, priming her for action. If Bonney was threatened, she would tear the fat man to shreds with her bare hands and stomp what remained into sludge.

Trudie had drawn her Sig Sauer and was shouting something incomprehensible, probably Dutch; it all sounded like ‘rooten tooten zooten frooten’ to Emerson. Mr. Maniac swung around and pointed his gun at her. Stand-off! Emerson was close enough now that she might be able to take him, just a few more steps… Rohan spotted her, shrieked and swung her purse at Mr. Maniac’s head.

Emerson had no idea what women kept in their purses – she never carried such impedimenta herself – but she thought it must be stuff like lipstick, address book, cab fare, emergency tampons. Rohan must have been packing bricks because her leather bag collided with Mr. Maniac’s skull with enough force to knock him off his feet, over a nearby iron railing and into the canal, narrowing missing a tourist sight-seeing boat. Trudie tucked her gun out of sight, ran over to Rohan, threw her arms around the plump woman and began to run her hands all over Rohan’s body, checking for injuries.

Emerson grimaced, feeling the vertigo of adrenaline rush. Bonney steadied her with an arm. "Somebody mind telling me what that was all about?" Emerson asked harshly. She glared at Rohan. "Why is it that every time I meet you, you’re in trouble?"

Rohan burst into tears. Trudie held onto the sobbing woman; both she and Bonney gazed at Emerson like she was the kind of person who clubbed baby seals to death while destroying the ozone layer and the rain forest, and while she was at it, nuking the whales, too.

"What?" Emerson asked, looking around to see if there might be somebody behind her who deserved such an eye-whipping. No, her luck was not that good.

Bonney sighed. "Are you okay?" she asked Rohan, who nodded. "Miss van Geer, it would be better for us to go somewhere private before the police arrive."

"Yes, of course, my flat is close-by." Still clutching Rohan and making soothing sounds beneath her breath, Trudie staggered off down the street. Emerson and Bonney followed. From the distance came the odd ‘tah-too tah-too’ of police sirens.

Trudie lived in a flat at the top floor of a brick building with a stepped roof and white masonry trim. There was no elevator; the stairway was both steep and narrow. Graffiti on the walls included telephone numbers and comments done in black permanent marker – the Dutch equivalent of ‘for a good time, call…’ By the time they reached the fifth floor, Emerson wished she had brought climbing equipment, including a safety harness.

This isn’t a staircase… it’s a ladder.

Once inside, Trudie made a phone call. When she had finished, she turned to Rohan. "We need to talk."

Rohan turned paler and groaned, "Oh, no…" She looked at Bonney. "Does this have something to do with why you’re here, Annie?"

"I’m afraid so, Rohan." Bonney sat down next to Rohan on the battered sofa, while Trudie claimed the other side. Feeling a tad miffed, Emerson found an oversized cushion and took a seat on the floor. The broad leaf of a Swiss cheese plant kept brushing the back of her neck but the room was too cramped for her to do anything but grit her teeth and endure the irritation. Dutch interior decoration apparently called for a great deal of clutter crammed willy-nilly into a very small space.

Rohan pulled a crumpled and torn piece of paper out of her pocket. "I’m a Nazi!" she wailed as she flung her arms around Trudie’s neck, and started weeping again.

Trudie and Bonney glared at Emerson, who was incredulous.

"I didn’t do anything!" she protested.

Rohan sniffled. "My grandma’s dead and I’m a Nazi!"

Trudie made shushing noises and rocked Rohan back and forth.

Emerson rolled her eyes.

There was nothing sappier than an agent in love… and she ought to know.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Rohan pulled herself together long enough to call her grandmother’s lawyer, Mr. Olsen, who confirmed that Brigitta Gewitter had died two days previously in a hospice in Arlington, Virginia. Olsen had been asked to make funeral arrangements and he promised Rohan that the ceremony would be postponed until she was able to fly home. At the moment, she had no idea when that would be. There were too many unresolved issues for her to deal with in Holland, never mind the U.S.A.

For starters, Trudie van Geer was not an art student; she was a government agent investigating a Dutch neo-Nazi organization. Joop Voskuil and Klaas Donkersloot were owners of an art gallery but they were also members of that organization, in the pay of a real old-time Nazi named Gottschalk. Everybody was after a lost German submarine, U-3555… and it seemed that Rohan’s grandmother had known the location all these years.

The nice thing about shock is that you could only take so much before you went numb. Rohan was in that comfortably numb space now, floating and kind of disconnected from the rest of the world. Bonney and Emerson had taken the letter from her and were huddled together at the kitchen table. Trudie was on the sofa with her, talking quietly into her ear.

"I’m so sorry, liefje," Trudie said, her breath warm and moist on the side of Rohan’s neck. "I didn’t like lying to you but I was ordered to maintain my cover. We needed to find out why the Nieuw Nederlands Front was so interested in you."

"I understand." Rohan was sure that she could really understand once she came back to earth. She hoped that the re-entry burn would not turn her entirely to ashes. Just like my world, she thought, but was not upset, cushioned as she was by a merciful muffling veil.

"You must know that I did not lie about loving you." Trudie’s big green eyes were so sincere, Rohan knew she could fall forever into that treacherous gaze. Trudie squeezed her hands. "Do you hear me, liefje? I do love you."

Rohan blinked. Something was rushing towards her, out of the confusion and the darkness; a blur of light and sound and motion that was going to crash into her headlong and shatter her to pieces. She blinked again as reality crashed over her like a wave, a tsunami that swept her along, tumbling and gasping and wondering if this was all some awful dream. The pain of loss was so great, it was tearing her down to the bone. Rohan was not aware that she was crying until she felt Trudie wiping away her tears.

She jerked away, pulse pounding so hard, she felt woozy. "No, don’t!" Rohan was suddenly terrified. She could not catch her breath. Trudie tried to soothe her but Rohan did not want to be touched. She felt betrayed and the pain was agonizing, as though her heart had been cleft in two.

"I’m sorry! I’m sorry!" Trudie said, grabbing Rohan’s head with surprising strength. "Please, liefje, please!"

Rohan desperately tried to suck enough oxygen into her spasming lungs to keep from passing out. She stared wide-eyed at Trudie; some small part of her noted the terror in the other woman’s eyes.

"Here, breathe through this." It was Emerson with a paper bag, which she put over Rohan’s nose and mouth.

Eventually, the panic attack subsided and Rohan was able to push the bag aside. "Thank you," she said to Emerson, still a little breathless but doing much better.

The agent nodded.

Trudie was staring at her anxiously. "Rohan? Are you alright?"

"No, hon, I’m not alright. My grandmother’s dead, I have a mother that I’ve never met, my family were Nazis, some guy was going to shoot me, my girlfriend’s a secret agent… I don’t know when my life took a left turn into the Twilight Zone but I wish it would go back to the way things used to be." Rohan hiccupped and accepted the tissue that Emerson held out. She blew her nose loudly, ignoring the agent’s grimace.

"I do love you," Trudie said, cupping her cheek.

"Do you? Because I’m thinking you used me just like Joop and his partner were trying to use me." Rohan crumpled the wet tissue into a ball.

"Maybe at first…" Trudie blushed. "But then I got to know you, Rohan, and the more I knew, the better I liked you."

"I don’t know what the truth is anymore."

"May I?" Emerson squatted down in front of Rohan. "You and I get along about as well as oil and water, so you know I’m not going to lie just to make you feel better, right?"

Rohan nodded, pinned into place by the intensity of Emerson’s ice-blue glare.

"Agent van Geer’s cover has been blown," Emerson said, nodding at the miserable-looking woman, then turning her attention back to Rohan. "She has no reason to lie to you now. There’s nothing to be gained by further obfuscation. So if she says she’s in love with you, van Geer must be telling the truth."

That actually made sense. Rohan transferred her gaze from Emerson to Trudie. "Do you… do you really love me?" she stammered.

"Yes!" Trudie leaned in and kissed the corner of Rohan’s mouth. "Always, liefje."

Rohan was still reeling a bit but she did have a rock to cling to, so she held onto Trudie, who was warm in her arms, an amazing softness over firm muscle beneath. The woman smelled like musk and salt with a trace of floral scent that Rohan had bought her from Crabtree & Evelyn in the Kalverstraat. To Rohan, Trudie smelled like love.

After several long minutes, Rohan pulled back, took a deep cleansing breath and asked, "Okay, first things first… what are we going to do about U-3555?"

"Are you sure?" Emerson asked, not unkindly. "I can make arrangements with our diplomatic office for you to fly back to the States."

"And leave you all behind to get into trouble without me?" Rohan attempted a smile that probably looked as shaky as it felt. That earned her another kiss from Trudie, which went a long way towards mending the ache in her heart.

Bonney came from the kitchen with the letter. "The coordinates given by your grandmother are definitely in Norway," she said, "but I’m not familiar with the precise location. Do you have an atlas?" she asked Trudie, who shook her head, pigtails dancing.

"I’ve got to contact Verhagen as well as Walker," Emerson said, rising to her full six-foot height. "We’re going to need transportation, among other things."

"So we are going to look for U-3555?" Rohan asked. Despite the grief and hurt that still coursed through her veins, the tiniest bit of excitement was beginning to make itself felt.

"Better dress warmly," Bonney said, a smile lighting her emerald eyes. "Ladies, we’re going to Norway."

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Bonney did not mind flying; she understood the fundamentals of aerodynamics and had even learned to fly a microlight in her youth. What she did not like was turbulence, particularly the kind that wrenched the airplane up and down in roller-coaster fashion while lightning and rain lashed the wings in equally horrendous waves.

She, Emerson, Trudie van Geer and Rohan had caught a transport plane from the U.S. military base Ramstein AB in Germany, headed to Stavanger Air Force Base on the southwestern coast of Norway. The cargo section of the C-130 Hercules was forty-one feet long, but the four women were seated together in the front, near the flight section. The rest of the huge space was empty. They had been given headphones so that they could communicate with each other over the loud drone of the engines but no one had really felt like talking. Emerson was the only one of the group who had not turned green around the gills.

The pilot had passed out sickness bags when the turbulence started. At first, Bonney refused to take one but Emerson had persisted until she gave in just to shut the other woman up. Bonney had never been seasick in her life, not even during a training run in the Caribbean when Saber had been unable to dive due to equipment failure and the crew had been forced to ride out a Category Three hurricane on the surface. The decks had been awash in vomit and Sickbay had run out of Dramamine within the first twenty minutes.

After that infamous episode, Bonney thought she had a cast-iron stomach. She was wrong. After the fourth time the plane hit an air pocket and dropped like a stone, she spewed into the bag and kept on vomiting until her toes curled. Trudie and Rohan followed right behind her, while Emerson smirked and cackled and said things like, "Greasy pork fat with stinky cabbage, mmm mmm good," until Bonney seriously considered opening up the cargo bay door and shoving her lover out sans parachute.

Look out below, indeed!

Judging from the hateful looks being cast her way by Trudie and Rohan, Emerson should, by rights, have been pushing up daisies. Instead, the agent cracked jokes with the pilot and co-pilot and showed every evidence of enjoying herself at everyone else’s expense. Bonney rolled bloodshot eyes in Emerson’s direction and contemplated mayhem… just as soon as her belly stopped rebelling.

Finally – thank you, God! – the Herc landed at Stavanger Base, where they were met by the civilian liaison officer, Lt. Brian Cudahy.

"Welcome to Stavanger AFB," Cudahy said with a boyish grin. Bonney thought the young man was not bad looking, but his prominent front teeth gave him a rabbit-like air.

In short order, Cudahy showed them the guest facilities, where a thoughtful person had provided toiletry kits including much-needed toothbrushes and toothpaste. After taking some time to get refreshed – and maliciously spurning Emerson’s advancements – Bonney found herself in a conference room with the rest of her companions. Cudahy was no longer in evidence; he had been supplanted by the Station Chief Malcolm Fletcher, who headed the local CIA office.

"I’ll get straight to the point," Fletcher said, shiny fluorescent lights reflecting from his bald head. He switched the toothpick he was chewing from one side of his mouth to the other; Bonney figured he was trying to quit smoking. "The Assistant Director is ready to go all the way on this U-3555 business but only if plausible deniability is in effect. As far as he’s concerned, this operation is under the auspices of Senator Donner only. You’re on your own, kids. Furthermore, the Norwegian government doesn’t have a clue and we want to keep it that way, so it’s hush-hush, need-to-know."

"So what do you want from us?" Emerson asked, her eyes hooded in that deceptively lazy manner that reminded Bonney of a dozing panther. In reality, the agent was coiled for action and ready to pounce.

"We’ll provide you with a contact so that you can hire a civilian ship," Fletcher said. "Your cover story is that you’re looking for a group of oceanographers studying whale migration patterns who disappeared two years ago off the coast of Norway."

Emerson shifted impatiently and crossed her arms over her chest.

Fletcher chewed his toothpick and continued, "Our agreement with the Dutch is that we’ll allow Agent van Geer on the recovery operation, and they get first crack at any records which may be aboard U-3555. We’ll take custody of everything else, including the sub itself, until proper disposition can be made."

Bonney knew that meant the U.S. government would get the financial benefit of any gold or jewels, since ownership would be virtually impossible to prove, although the German government might make a claim, which could be delayed for years in the courts.

"If recovery is not possible, the submarine must be scuttled to avoid U-3555 being claimed by hostile agents," Fletcher went on. "The Dutch are in agreement with us on this. Emerson, you can requisition C-4 and other supplies from our office’s stores."

"We’ll also need other gear," Emerson said, "including weapons."

"Whatever you need, within reason," Fletcher said. "Senator Donner has authorized the expenditure and we’ve been given a budget surplus to cover the cost."

"Before we do anything else, I need navigational maps," Bonney said, "and satellite photos of the area." Her stomach heaved slightly and she swallowed it back down. "I also want access to SLCSAT." She pronounced it ‘slick-sat.’ "I need to contact my boat."

"Now, captain, that probably isn’t such a good idea," Fletcher said, running a hand over his bald dome. "The assignment is strictly need-to-know. remember?"

Bonney fixed him with her glacial commander’s eye. "My boat is in the Denmark Straight, Mr. Fletcher, and I’ve decided that my 2IC needs to know in case we need a little assistance successfully fulfilling our goal."

"Captain Bonney, the United States government requires plausible deniability, which can’t happen if your intentions are broadcast over the Naval laser communications band!" Fletcher’s face infused with crimson which spread from jowls to crown.

"I have no intention of broadcasting my intentions." Bonney’s mouth stretched in a shark’s grin – all teeth and not a smidgen of humor. "Mr. Fletcher, I am normally in complete control of a multi-billion dollar piece of military hardware capable of firing six nuclear warheads at any coastal target in the world. I think I can be trusted with one phone call."

Fletcher backed down, although he was still muttering. Emerson patted Bonney’s back and said, "You go, girlfriend."

Rohan giggled.

Puzzled, Trudie van Geer frowned and shrugged.

Lt. Cudahy appeared to be ecstatic at the prospect of providing a satellite link-up to SLCSAT. The communications/operations center at Stavanger was small, crammed full of equipment, and reminded Bonney of the radar shack aboard Saber. The chief communications officer, Commander Jezebel Mallory, was a lanky blonde with a nasal twang. She and Mallory were left alone while Cudahy showed the other three women to the mess hall.

Mallory fiddled with dials and buttons and a computer mouse, chattering all the while. "Gotta hook up to AFSACTOM – that’s Air Force Satellite Communications – and bounce the signal over to SLCSAT. Son-of-a… ‘scuse me, ma’am. We’ve been having trouble with sunspot activity last couple of weeks. Our hook-up got blasted. Lemme try again."

"Carry on, commander," Bonney said.

"Okay, okay, c’mon baby… gotcha!" Mallory fiddled some more. "Yeah, Saber, this is Stavanger AFB, do you read?" she asked into the mic connected by hair-thin wires to the micro-bead ‘phones inside her ears.

A blast of distorted noise came out of a speaker, making Bonney flinch. Mallory quickly made some adjustments. "We’re five by five, Saber. Stand by."

She gave Bonney what looked like an old-fashioned telephone receiver; it also resembled the 1MC intercom system interface on her submarine. Before she clicked it on, Bonney asked, "Is this line secure?"

"Not Pentagon secure but the signal is encrypted on both ends," Mallory replied.

Bonney held the heavy receiver to her ear and said, "Saber, this is Captain Anne Bonney. Give me Sherwood, ASAP."

"Aye-aye, sir!" caroled Saber’s communications officer, surprise evident in her voice.

When Sherwood came on, Bonney filled him in on the situation as much as she could, being careful not to mention U-3555, but only to say that she was in the area and that Saber should stand-by in case they were needed. "And don’t forget the HUFF DUFF," Bonney concluded. "Captain out."

Mallory gave Bonney a funny look after she had signed off. It was obvious that the commander had been eavesdropping on the conversation. "Ma’am, I don’t think anybody’s used HUFF DUFF since, um, the 1940s, I think."

High Frequency Direction Finding was a system used by the Allies to pick up U-boat transmissions; that was about the sum of Bonney’s knowledge of Unterseeboot radio communications, and she has used it as a hint for Sherwood to keep monitoring pre-satellite radio frequencies. She was confident that he would figure out her reference; he was a real U-boat buff who often traveled to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Technology to visit the only German U-boat captured by the U.S. Navy. U-505 Type IX-C was part of a big indoor exhibit and was deemed a National Historic Landmark. Sherwood and Bonney had been stationed together for years; he would understand what she could not say.

Bonney shrugged at Mallory and said, "Carry on, commander."

She left the room without answering Mallory’s question, and the operator’s curious gaze burned a hole in her back as she walked away.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Isbjørn – the Ice Bear – was the small ship chosen by Bonney to ferry them as close to the Drekkjarhorn Fjord as it was possible to get by sea. The Navy captain had insisted on hiring a boat which she could pilot herself, not trusting the local talent. Emerson could sympathize with the desire to be hands-on. Besides, nobody wanted a civilian hanging over their shoulder while a treasure hunt was on. She narrowed her eyes and scowled at Rohan, still not believing how the plump, irritating woman had wrangled her way aboard the ship.

Emerson had wanted to leave Rohan at the Air Force base. It was safer, she had argued, than ending up Ghu-knew-where in the ice. Rohan was a civilian. She had no training for this kind of thing. What if she got injured or killed? They had no back-up and while airlift rescue was possible, it could come too late.

Rohan had scorned every objection. Bonney and van Geer had given Emerson the ‘murderer-of-helpless-baby-animals’ look. The agent had caved in, albeit reluctantly. Several days later, Emerson clung to the ship’s rail, dressed in foul-weather gear (yellow slickers including the dumb fisherman’s hat) that made her feel like a dork and left her wondering what she had done in a previous life to merit such bad karma now.

The ship’s bow dipped, then rose and crashed through a white-capped wave, sending a rooster tail of spray over the deck. Emerson clung tighter to the safety line, blinking salty, cold Atlantic water out of her eyes. She tried very hard not to think about the theme song of Gilligan’s Island. Naturally, since she could have gone the rest of the day without thinking about Bob Denver and the most idiotic sitcom of the 1970’s, she could not get the song out of her head. The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed…

Nausea swelled and burned the back of Emerson’s throat. She was not going to toss her cookies. No way. No how. Not in front of the Tulipsville chick and the most annoying woman in the world. Not when she had been so mean to everybody on the Herc (and weren’t seasickness and airsickness related enough so if she had immunity to one, she wouldn’t get the other?) She was not going to be sick especially while she was encased in yellow rubber dork gear that was about as sexy as Bob Denver... and there she went again, dammit.

At least underneath she was wearing a comfortable black turtleneck and flannel-lined black trousers, with another black sweater over the top of that. Thanks to Fletcher, Emerson was also packing a .45 Glock semi-automatic in a shoulder holster, a .22 in an ankle holster, another .22 in a holster at the small of her back, a knife up her sleeve, another strapped to her calf, an extra handcuff key taped to her shoulder within reach of her teeth, and a length of wire around her waist that could be used as a garrote.

Emerson felt fully dressed for the first time in days.

It was almost enough to make her feel happier about riding this bucking bronco of a vessel while her lover – who might have shown a tad more sympathy – grinned and said cruel, nasty things to her like, "Remember to empty your breadbasket on the lee side so you won’t get hit in the face by your dinner."

Maybe she had been Hitler in her last life. Talk about karmic justice!

Arthur Guiterman’s parody poem Sea Sickness ran through her head, momentarily supplanting Gilligan and his island:

Ha! Next time Annie wanted to take her out to sea, they would be going by way of a fully stabilized cruise liner with a casino, an off-Broadway show, a midnight chocolate buffet and cabana girls who served tropical cocktails and coconut suntan oil on the Lido Deck.

A shout from Bonney made Emerson’s head snap up.

"We’re approaching the anchoring point!" Bonney hollered above the wind and the slapping waves. This far north, the Atlantic Ocean was a wild thing, rough and stormy and unpredictable. Emerson rode out another dip-and-slide and risked a glance at her partner. Anne Bonney was in her element, a huge grin wreathing her face, strands of blonde hair escaping from her ponytail and lashing her cheeks.

Emerson blinked again. Ah, Annie was so beautiful, it made her chest hurt to look at her. The sun created a glowing halo behind her head, giving her the semblance of a saint. Emerson was aware that she had a big goofy smile on her face and did not care. Bonney’s eyes crinkled in her direction and Emerson’s heart lurched in a good way.

It did not take long for Bonney to navigate Isbjørn as far up the Drekkjarhorn Fjord as she could before the channel became choked with ice. After anchoring the boat and gathering their supplies, the four women took a rubber Zodiac boat to the edge of the packed ice. Bonney had a handheld GPS navigation system which she consulted from time to time to ensure that they remained fixed on the coordinates. Securing the Zodiac, they trudged along the pristine white, frozen surface of the fjord that was known as the Drinking Horn.

Emerson’s boots crunched noisily on the hard packed snow as she followed Bonney, keeping her gaze fixed on the delectably swaying ass that played a starring role in some of her favorite fantasies. And my favorite realities, too, she thought, licking her lips and grimacing at the taste of Vaseline. Focus, Amelia, focus…now is not the time to dwell on what Annie looks like wearing her captain’s hat and nothing else.

"Be careful of crevasses," Bonney said to the group, frowning at the GPS read-out. She shifted her backpack, settling the straps more comfortably on her shoulders. "The Drekkjarhorn Fjord is a mile deep in some places. We’re fairly close to the coordinates in the letter but it won’t do us any good if somebody breaks their leg or their neck."

"Aye-aye, sir!" snapped Rohan in an excellent imitation of Navy tradition.

Emerson mouthed the words, ‘suck up’ to her.

Bonney – who must have had eyes in the back of her head – reached around without looking and thwacked Emerson on the upper arm. "Behave," she said crisply. "Honestly, Amelia, the way you squabble, sometimes you’re worse than the lowest knuckle-dragger I’ve ever had the misfortune to command."

Emerson resisted the impulse to beat her chest like the alpha love monkey she was and swallowed the Johnny Weissmuller-esque Tarzan cry that was begging to emerge. She did, however, give in to the urge to whisper, "Ook, ook," in Bonney’s ear, earning herself another swat.

Harsh blue-white sunlight turned Trudie van Geer’s red-gold hair into a fiery blaze. "How much further, Anne?"

"About a kilometer north," Bonney answered.

Rohan unshipped a stainless steel thermos from beneath her parka. "Coffee, anybody?"

"We didn’t come to Norway for a coffee klatch," Emerson snarled at her, and endured another stereo ‘you monster, you’ glare from Bonney and Trudie.

While they walked along, Trudie said in fine operatic recitative style:

Father, don't be so severe!

Emerson was surprised when Bonney continued the song in a bathroom soprano:

Mm! how sweet the coffee tastes,

Rohan nudged Emerson in the ribs with a none-too-gentle elbow. "From Bach’s Kaffee Kantata," she said.

For good measure, Bonney sang the aria in the original German:

The song was swallowed up by the vast, empty silence of the fjord, where all that could be seen in every direction was ice and snow and more ice. Nevertheless, Rohan and Trudie applauded, and Bonney made a shallow bow.

"Your accent is not bad for an American," Trudie said, "but only the Dutch can mimic a German accent with anything approaching real accuracy."

"It’s a hobby, not a profession. We’re almost at the coordinates," the captain said, shielding her eyes with an upraised hand.

Emerson felt the tremor a split-second before the awful thing happened.

A crack zig-zagged from the place where Rohan’s booted feet were planted, and widened with a loud gunshot snap. Rohan’s eyes turned into comically wide and startled O’s. That was the image impressed into Emerson’s mind just as a scream erupted from Rohan’s mouth and the plump woman disappeared into the darkness of the open crevasse.

Trudie let out a full-throated scream of her own and fell to her knees beside the crack. "Rohan! Rohan!" she shouted, struggling to remove her backpack.

Bonney put a hand on her shoulder. "You won’t do Rohan any favors if you fall in yourself," she said. "Stand down, Agent van Geer. Let’s assess the situation before we jump in with fangs out and hair on fire."

Trudie nodded, short and sharp. Bonney got down on her belly at the edge of the crevasse. Emerson grabbed her partner’s ankles, just in case. Things seemed fairly stable now, but then again, nobody had predicted that Rohan would fall through, either.

"Rohan? Can you hear me?" Bonney shouted, her breath steaming in the cold air. Flakes of ice shivered into the lightless hole.

"Anne? Trudie? I’m okay, I think," Rohan called back. "The thermos is a loss, though. I landed on it. You know, it’s kind of dark in here."

"Hang tight and stand by," Bonney said with a smile of relief.

Trudie sang out, "If you can reach the flashlight in your backpack without moving around too much, liefje, take it out and see if you’re on a ledge. We need to know your situation before we can pull you up."

"Good idea," Emerson muttered. "Wouldn’t want her to go splat before we can haul her ass out of there."

Several long moments of silence later, an impatient Emerson was ready to jump into the damned crevasse and fetch Rohan out herself. "What is she doing in there?"

"Making sure it’s safe," Trudie answered, tossing her head to flip a lock of hair out of her eyes. "Rohan, how does it look?"

"I found the flashlight… oh! Oh! Oh my God!" Rohan screamed, her voice ringing loudly enough to make Bonney wince.

After that, no matter how many times they called her, Rohan did not answer.

Even Emerson’s heart sank at the prospect that something bad had happened to the most annoying woman in the world.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Rohan grasped her chest with her free hand, as if by squeezing hard she could prevent the trip-hammering organ from beating its way out of her ribcage. Other than bruises, her body was okay, but her mind was another matter. Was she hallucinating? She did not think she had struck her head on the way down. The other hand, which held her flashlight, was trembling violently; the circle of yellowish-white light bobbed around and around, illuminating a rust-streaked grey steel shape that reared out of the ice.

"Oh, my God," she repeated in a whisper.

Rohan Tarnach had found U-3555.

Shivering as much from a combination of excitement and dread as from cold, Rohan tried to control her shaking hand so that she could sweep the flashlight from side to side. The streamlined hull was long - she estimated over 75 meters - and the narrow conning tower with its twin double-barrelled 3cm anti-aircraft cannons, snorkel and periscope base was sheathed in dripping ice crystals that reflected the light in dazzling waves. If the modern submarine was a shark, U-3555 was a barracuda, sleek and deadly from chisel-tipped bow to the rear hydroplanes that looked like stubby fins.

Rohan moved closer, focusing the beam of light above her head. In the utter blackness of the cave, her flashlight could only reveal the U-boat in fragments, a little at a time, flashes of the past looming out of the darkness. She squinted, trying to put it into perspective as she drank in the sight of Taranis’ Thunderbolt, lost for so many decades.

The walking deck was also covered in a thin layer of sparkling ice; blue-white icicles formed wicked points all along the length of the boat. Trapped within the cavern of the fjord, U-3555 was a frost giant, a massive Jötunn caught fast in the perpetual Fimbulwinter of Norse legend. Rohan could feel the cold dampness cutting straight through her parka. The aromas of spilled coffee (the thermos lid had somehow been torn off in her fall) and salt-eaten steel were strong enough to be almost palpable.

At last, Bonney and Trudie’s frantic shouts cut through her daze and Rohan answered, "Yes, I’m okay! Hey, I found it!"

"What? What did you find?" Bonney asked, her voice oddly distorted by echo.

"I found the boat. U-3555."

"Stand clear!"

Rohan jumped as something plummeted from the hole in the ceiling, striking the ground with a loud thump. She trained her flashlight on it, mouth suddenly dry. After a terrifying moment, Rohan realized that the dark shape was not a huddled human body but a backpack. Two more followed in rapid succession, then a thin snake of nylon rope unspooled into the cavern.

Bonney came down first, rappelling in a blunt but well-trained way, followed by Trudie who slid down so fast it was a wonder she had any skin left on her palms. Emerson came last; the CIA agent was grace personified, practically floating through the air and landing on her feet. When her toes touched the ground, she leaped up and executed an entrechat quatre, her feet crossing rapidly in mid-air in fine ballerina style.

Upon coming to earth once more, Emerson made a familiar grimace and said, "What? My mom insisted on classical training before I learned tango and paso doble. Just don’t ask me to do go en pointe. After I broke three toes that way, I quit the class."

Rohan almost resented Emerson’s abrasiveness but Trudie was hugging her hard and burying that sweet cold nose in her neck, so Rohan decided not to hold a grudge.

With four flashlights working in concert, the contours of U-3555 became more solid, less dream-like. Bonney and Emerson found a ladder leading to the walking deck. "Stay here," the captain ordered. "We’ll go aboard and see how the generator’s held up. In the meantime, you two keep your asses at anchor."

Rohan nodded her acceptance; she had no desire to go aboard the U-boat just yet. Trudie hugged her tighter, making a deep bruise on her ribs scream in protest, but she did not care. Ignoring the pain, she stared at U-3555 – her grandfather’s boat, the last hope of the Nazi government that had tried to exterminate everyone who did not fit into their narrow, bigoted, fascist world view. Rohan herself, in spite of her antecedents, was not made along the blonde and blue-eyed Aryan ideal. She was small and dark; in Hitler’s time, she might have been accused of being ‘tainted’ with a despised Jewish or gypsy strain.

The fact that her own grandmother and grandfather – and perhaps her mother, too – were part of that evil made her sick to her stomach. Rohan tightened her hold on Trudie.

The Dutchwoman said, "It doesn’t matter, liefje. They lost. We won." Trudie jerked her chin at the U-boat.

"But it still persists," Rohan said, shivering again.

"Evil always does, but as long as we stand against it, the new Nazis will never prosper."

"God, babe, I hope you’re right."

"So do I."

Rohan leaned against Trudie and waited for the moment when she would enter U-3555 and finally unveil the mystery of her past.

~~~ooox0xooo~~~

Bonney led the way up the ladder, her boots clanging on the steel rungs. The coating of ice made navigation slippery, the footing uncertain. Doing her best not to fall down or worse, break an ankle, Bonney managed to slide her way along the walking deck to the conning tower, where another ladder led to the closed hatch on top.

She tried the hatch-control wheel but it would not budge. "Frozen shut," was Bonney’s assessment. "We can try the rear escape hatch but it’s probably in the same condition."

"What do we need to do?" Emerson asked.

Bonney kicked the wheel lightly with the toe of her boot, considering. She had brought a small butane torch, the kind that would be used by a dessert chef to caramelize the sugary top of a crème brulee. The question was, would the little torch prove powerful enough to thaw the wheel mechanism? There was also rust to consider.

"Did you bring that industrial-sized pot of Vaseline?" she asked Emerson, who nodded.

"Okay, go back down the ladder and get the butane torch from my pack and the Vaseline from yours," Bonney said. "We’ll also need some rope."

Emerson moved to the ladder and disappeared. In a few minutes, she returned with the requested items. "I brought the extra butane as well," she said. In the light of the two flashlights that were propped on the deck, her eyes were the same color as the icicles that decorated the rail.

Bonney pressed the ignition switch on the torch; immediately, a yellow-red flame with a flickering blue heart hissed to life. She played the flame around the base of the wheel, nodding in satisfaction as years of ice melted into trickles of water that pooled on the hatch cover. When she finished with the wheel, she work