Polar Shift Read Online Free

refugees aboard. The Gustloff normally carried 1,465 passengers, served by a crew of four hundred. As it began this voyage, the once-elegant liner was carrying eight thousand passengers.
    The ship headed into the open sea, and dropped anchor late in the afternoon to rendezvous with another liner, the Hansa, to wait for their escorts. The Hansa had developed engine trouble and never showed up. Naval Command was worried that the Gustloff would be exposed to danger in open waters and told the ship to go it alone.
    The liner plowed into the whitecapped waters of the Baltic, fighting a stiff northwest wind. Hailstones rattled the windows of the bridge, where Commander Zahn seethed with anger as he looked down at the two so-called escorts that had been sent to protect the liner.
    The ship was built for southern climes, but, with any luck, it could survive bad weather. What it could not survive was stupidity. Naval Command had sent the liner into harm's way with an old torpedo boat called the Lowe, or "Lion," and the T19, a worn-out torpedo recovery vessel as escorts. Zahn was thinking that the situation could not get any worse when the T19 radioed that it had developed a leak and was returning to the base.
    Zahn went to Captain Petersen and the other officers gathered in the bridge.
    "In view of our escort situation, I suggest that we pursue a zigzag course at high speed," he said.
    Petersen scoffed at the suggestion. "Impossible. The Wilhelm Gustloff is a twenty-four-thousand-ton ocean liner. We cannot go from one tack to the other like a drunken sailor."
    "Then we must outrun any U-boats with our superior speed. We can take the direct, deepwater route at the full speed of sixteen knots."
    "I know this ship. Even without the bomb damage to the propeller casings, there would be no way we could reach and maintain sixteen knots without blowing out our bearings," Petersen said.
    Zahn could see the veins bulging in the captain's neck. He stared through the bridge windows at the old torpedo boat leading the way. "In that case," he said in a voice that seemed to echo in a tomb, "God help us all."
     
    Professor, wake up." The voice was hard-edged, urgent.
    Kovacs opened his eyes and saw Karl bending over him. He sat up and rubbed his cheeks as if he could squeeze the sleep out of them.
    "What's wrong?"
    "I've been talking to people. My God, what a mess! There are two captains and they fight all the time. Not enough lifeboats. The ship's engines are barely keeping us up to speed. The stupid submarine division ordered the ship to sail with an old torpedo boat escort that looks as if it was left over from the last war. The damned fools have got the ship's navigation lights on."
    Kovacs saw an uncharacteristic alarm in the marble features.
    "How long have I slept?"
    "It's nighttime. We're on the open sea." Karl shoved a dark blue life jacket at Kovacs and slipped into a similar jacket.
    "Now what do we do?"
    "Stay here. I want to check the lifeboat situation." He tossed Kovacs a pack of cigarettes. "Be my guest."
    "I don't smoke."
    Karl paused in the open doorway. "Maybe it's time you did." Then he was gone.
    Kovacs spilled a cigarette from the pack and lit up. He had quit smoking years ago, when he got married. He coughed as the smoke filled his lungs, and he felt dizzy from the strong tobacco, but he recalled with delicious pleasure the innocent debauchery of his college days.
    He finished the cigarette, thought of lighting up another but decided against it. He had not had a bath in days, and his body itched in a dozen places. He washed his face in the sink and was drying his hands on a threadbare towel when there was a knock at the door.
    "Professor Kovacs?" a muffled voice said.
    "Yes."
    The door opened, and the professor gasped. Standing in the doorway was the ugliest woman he had ever seen. She was more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders straining the seams of a black Persian lamb coat. Her wide mouth was painted in bright red