Deadlock

44

The Dutch fishing vessel, Utrecht, which should have reached its home port, was stationary. A quarter of a mile astern of the stately floating glow-worm which was the Adenauer.

The huge liner was almost stationary on the dark sheen of the smooth sea, waiting for the lighters to come out with passengers. Two large dinghies with outboard motors slid across the water, midway between the Utrecht and the Adenauer. Painted black, they were invisible.

One dinghy was directly astern of the liner – less than four hundred yards away. The second dinghy, launched from the Utrecht earlier, was approximately a quarter-mile ahead of the liner, its motor turned off, drifting gently with the current.

Four scuba divers slipped over the side of the first dinghy, paddled water as two specially-constructed nets were handed down to them. Each net was grasped by two men who then went under the surface, hauling a net between them.

Each net contained two sea-mines with the switches tuned to a specific radio band. They swam on under water with ease – the contents of the nets were light in weight, shaped like large eggs, painted a dull metallic non-reflecting grey colour, with squat clamps like suckers protruding.

The first team reached the liner, swam deeper under the vast hull, and paddled on until they were just beyond amidships. Here they stopped paddling, bobbing up and down beneath the dark shape above them. With practised hands they opened the net, released the mines which floated upwards, attracted by the fumes inside the engine room.

The swimmers followed their cargo upwards, each man attending to one mine, swivelling it until the suckers contacted the hull. He pressed a switch. Metal legs shot out, thudded into the hull. The mines were attached. Immovable.

The second team swam in under the enormous twin propellers, performed the same actions at a point half way between the propellers and the location where the other mines had been attached.

Their mission completed, the two scuba divers swam on under the hull of the Adenauer. Clad in wet suits, face masks and feet flippers with oxygen cylinders strapped to their backs, they glided through the water, their deft movements almost balletic in their grace.

Emerging beyond the massive bow, the lead man checked the compass attached to his wrist, changing direction by a few degrees. Like his comrades ahead of him he was making for the second dinghy.

He surfaced briefly, looked swiftly round in the night. A pinpoint green light – visible only at sea-level – located the waiting dinghy. He dived under and swam on. Ten minutes later both teams had been hauled aboard the dinghy. They had left behind four sea-mines – armed with enough explosive power to destroy the 50,000-ton liner.

Once Klein pressed a certain button on his control box the four mines would detonate simultaneously. Most of the fifteen hundred souls aboard would die in the first tremendous blast wave – a thousand passengers and five hundred crew. The blast would rip open the hull, surge upwards through the engine room, the explosive wave continuing through the five decks above. Those who survived the blast would be immolated in a sheet of flame with a temperature of over one thousand degrees.