“As I said, things are not always what they seem. I am part of a circle that has been fighting the Nazi animals long before the Russians.”

Light dawned in the professor's eyes. “The Kreisau Circle?” He had heard rumors of the secretive opposition group.

Karl brought his finger to his lips. “We are still in enemy territory,” he said with a lowered voice.

Kovacs clutched Karl's arm. “Can you get my family to safety as well?”

“I am afraid it is too late for that. Your family is no more.”

“But the letters—”

“They were clever forgeries, so you would not lose heart and give up your work.”

Kovacs stared into the night with a stunned expression on his face.

Karl grabbed the professor by the lapel and whispered in his ear. “You must forget your work for your own good and the welfare of mankind. We cannot risk that it will fall into the wrong hands.”

The professor nodded dumbly. The boat banged up against the freighter's hull. A ladder was lowered. Karl ordered the reluctant crewmen to take the boat out again to pick up more survivors. From the freighter's deck, Kovacs watched the boat push off. Karl gave one last wave and the boat disappeared behind a veil of falling snow.

In the distance, Kovacs saw the lights of the liner, which had turned onto its port side, so that the funnel was parallel to the sea. The boiler exploded as the ship slipped below the surface about an hour after being torpedoed. In that short time, five times more lives were lost on the Gustloff than on the Titanic.

NUMA 6 - Polar Shift

1

THE ATLANTIC OCEAN,

THE PRESENT

THOSE WHO LAID EYES on the Southern Belle for the first time could be forgiven for wondering whether the person who had named the huge cargo ship possessed a warped sense of humor or simply bad eyesight. Despite a genteel name that suggested eyelash-fluttering, antebellum femininity, the Belle was, simply put, a metal monstrosity with nothing that hinted at female pulchritude.

The Southern Belle was one of a new generation of fast, seaworthy vessels being built in American shipyards after years of the United States taking a backseat to other shipbuilding countries. It was designed in San Diego and built in Biloxi. At seven hundred feet, she was longer than two football fields put together, with room enough to carry fifteen hundred containers.

The massive vessel was controlled from a towering superstructure on its aft deck. The hundred-foot-wide deckhouse, which resembled an apartment building, contained crew and officer quarters and mess halls, a hospital and treatment rooms, cargo offices and conference rooms.

With its glowing ranks of twenty-six-inch touch display screens, the Belle's, bridge, on the top level of the six-deck superstructure, resembled a Las Vegas casino. The spacious center of operations reflected the new era in ship design. Computers were used to control every aspect of the integrated systems and functions.