Light rain has been falling. Otto breaks out slickers, and a Thermos of hot soup. Clouds, a dozen shades of gray, go scudding along the sky. Great misty heaps of rock, steep cliffs, streams in deep gorges, gray and green and spires of white chalk in the rain, go passing—the Stubbenkammer, the King’s Seat, and presently, off to port, Cape Arkona where waves crash at the base of the cliffs and on top the groves of white-trunked trees are blowing…. The ancient Slavs put up a temple here, to Svetovid, their god of fertility and war: Old Svetovid did business under quite a number of aliases! Three-headed Triglav, five-headed Porevit, SEVEN-faced Rugevit! Tell that to your boss next time he talks about “wearing two hats!” Now, as Arkona slides away off our port quarter—

“There she is,” Otto calls from the top of the pilot house. Far far away, hauling out to sea from behind the Wissow Klinken (the pale limestone latchkey with which Providence today is probing the wards of Slothrop’s heart), barely visible in the rain, dips a tiny white ghost of a ship….

“Get a bearing,” Frau Gnahb grabbing the wheel and bracing her feet. “We want a collision course!” Otto crouches by the pelorus, shivering.

“Here, Slothrop.”

Luger? Box of rounds? “What…”

“Came this morning with the egg delivery.”

“You didn’t mention—”

“He may be a little exercised. But he’s a realist. Your friend Greta and I knew him in Warsaw, in the old days.”

“Springer—tell me Springer, now, what ship is that?” Springer hands him some binoculars. In fine gold lettering, behind the golden jackal on the wraith-white bow, is the name he already knows. “O…. K.,” trying to see through the rain into Springer’s eyes, “you knew I was aboard. You’re setting me up, now, right?”

“When were you on board?”

“Come on—”

“Look—Närrisch was going after the package today. Not you. We didn’t even know you. Do you have to see conspiracies in everything? I don’t control the Russians, and I didn’t deliver him—”

“You’re really pushing that innocence today, ain’t you?”

“Quit bickering, idiots,” hollers Frau Gnahb, “and clear—for action!”

Lazy and spectral pitches the Anubis, growing no clearer as they close with her. Springer reaches a megaphone out of the pilot house, and bawls, “Good day, Procalowski—permission to come aboard.”

The answer is a gunshot. Springer hits the deck, slicker in rattling yellow flow, lies on his back with the megaphone pointing up funneling rain in his mouth: “We’ll have to without permission, then—” Motioning Slothrop over, “Get ready to board.” To Frau Gnahb, “We’ll want to lash on.”

“Fine but,” one look at the evil leer now lighting up Otto’s mother’s face and it’s clear that she didn’t come out today for money, “when do I get to, to ram her?”