Part One: Twin Dirge

Somewhere Northeast of the Shetland Islands, the Norwegian Sea

1440 hours, 29 May, 1938

Raymond Burgess studied the steel grey sea below. He'd remained in the same position for over an hour; leaning against the Duralumin hull, his right arm resting over the port side window, his forehead pressed against it while his eyes scanned the unkind waters beneath him. He'd already suffered a succession of several mild concussions by having his head bashed into the thermoplastic window from turbulence before he settled into this current position, which afforded him the least amount of discomfort. The least amount of discomfort is the best you could hope for as a passenger on this flight. The droning of the twin 920 horsepower Pegasus X engines that carried the R.A.F. Supermarine Stranraer through the air had caused him to slowly and painfully become temporarily deaf; a sort of mixed blessing, because while the unbearably noisy engines had receded to the background, there still remained some sort of ringing stuck in his ears. The vibration of the entire plane felt like an electric current coursing through his body, which only lessened while the craft was frequently buffeted by severe crosswinds.

Still, he and the other crewmembers had a job to do, however unlikely it may be that they find success.

The tips of the waves were frosted white with foam, discernable from their altitude. You would think that picking out an object the size of a human body against a mostly single-colored backdrop from 3,000 feet wouldn't be too difficult, but when trying to cover a region the size of the southern Norwegian Sea, a surface area of well over a half of a million square kilometers, the likelihood of discovering something so comparatively small dropped off to virtually nil.

He could tell they were circling around again because the shadow of the Stranraer crossed his field of vision. As he looked up temporarily to the horizon, he thought he spotted something. He squinted and reached for the Bausch & Lomb field glasses that he had strung around his neck, yelling at the pilot to steady and hold position.

The R.A.F. captain turned back in his seat, shouting over the racket of the roaring engines and the tumultuous winds battering the craft. "What!"

Raymond turned to yell directly at him, trying to hold his line of sight to the area where he thought he'd seen it. "Hold position!" he yelled back, and returned to his window, bringing the binoculars up to his eyes. It was difficult to keep them steady, and the magnified image he saw through the eyepieces darted back and forth like an angry hornet stirred out of its nest. He managed to hone in on the location he was looking for, holding it steady long enough to confirm that something was there. Too far away to tell what, though; probably more debris, he thought. They'd already had several departures from their pre-planned search path only to get a closer look at some wreckage floating below.

He moved forward to the cockpit between the pilot and co-pilot to indicate that they should steer off to the left. He remained there, watching through the front windscreen until the indeterminate speck became more discernable. He pointed, and they continued towards it, gradually descending to about 500 feet. As they came up on it, the pilot tilted the left wing downward to give them a clearer view through the port side window. Flying directly over it, they looked down into a makeshift raft that contained a single figure huddled up on its side.

Premature exhilaration welled up. There's only one, thought Raymond, and they aren't trying to get our attention. Not a good sign.

The pilot brought the plane around again and prepared to land. He made several attempts to contact their controller over the radio, but only received bursts of static in response. They were approximately fifty miles northwest off the coast of Unst, the northernmost of the main Shetland Islands, searching an area where a merchant ship had recently been. But upon discovering the drifting wreckage of it two days ago, the search party turned their focus from looking for a ship to looking for the survivors of a shipwreck, the likelihood of which hadn't been very optimistic from the start.

The co-pilot noticed Raymond still standing next to him and yelled something at him that he couldn't quite make out, and as the pontoons made their first contact with the sea, Raymond nearly rammed his face into the array of gauges, knobs, levers and selectors that made up the console as the forward momentum of the craft suddenly decreased. Understanding dawned on him, and he climbed back into the main hold without having to be told by the co-pilot a second time. There were another five or six jarring impacts that he had managed to brace his self against before the plane finally settled upon the rolling surface of the sea. The engines revved and then steadied, throttling down to idle and then shutting off. The two-man rescue crew unlatched and opened the side hatch, throwing their collapsible canvas life raft out the door opposite of Raymond, where it instantly unfolded and landed on the water. The raft was tethered to the plane by a thick cord of oiled sisal, which the other spotter, a crewmember named Jeffries, used to keep the raft in position as the rescue team hopped into it and rowed out to the derelict craft.

Raymond stood at the starboard door with Jeffries watching them row out, waiting to assist them when they returned. As he watched, he saw the solitary figure in the damaged lifeboat sit up, and he felt a rushing tide of relief.

As the rescue team transferred him to their boat and paddled back to the Stranraer, Raymond glimpsed the cold, tired, stubbled face of special agent Eric Stillwell. It had been well over two years since the last time he had seen him. His hair was longer, and he looked pale and withdrawn from exposure, but otherwise, he looked the same. Bracing himself in the doorway, he waited, ready to lend an arm to facilitate Stillwell up and into the sea plane's fuselage. The two rescuers helped him climb through the hatch while Raymond and Jeffries grabbed his arms and heaved him upward and inwards. They slowly helped him towards the rear of the plane to lie down. Stillwell moved stiffly, shuffling his feet and shivering in the comparative mild coolness of the interior of the craft. After he sat down on a makeshift cot, the spotter returned to the door to assist hauling the life raft back into the plane's hold. In the background, Raymond heard the pilot trying to reestablish radio contact with their home port.

"You're lucky, you know?" Raymond spoke unnecessarily loud, his ears still ringing.

Stillwell's head bobbed slightly as his eyes rolled in their sockets, trying to focus. He finally managed to aim them mutually in a single direction, and it seemed for the first time he recognized his old friend. Looking up at Raymond, he smiled and weakly replied, "They already told me that," pointing at the rescue team. It was apparent that he had taken a beating sometime in the recent past; he had various cuts and abrasions that had scabbed over on his face. The flesh immediately surrounding his eyes were mottled blue and purple, and his lips had blistered and peeled. He also reeked of diesel fuel.

The rescue team had gotten their raft back onto the aircraft, and the one named Chesterfield came back to check on Stillwell while the other one, Novak, collapsed and stowed the raft with help from Jeffries. Pulling out his kit, Chesterfield prepared an I.V. "If you want to help," he crisply advised, "then get him out of those wet clothes and dry him off. Help keep him warm before he completely goes into shock. There are blankets there," he indicated a bank of compartments between a row of bulkheads. "Otherwise, please stay out of the way."

Raymond retrieved three heavy wool blankets, and started to strip Stillwell out of his shirt. He pulled the jersey up over his head, and after he finished pulling his arms through, he found himself staring at two terrible looking deep gashes across his abdomen that had reopened and begun to slowly bleed again. "Good God, Stillwell!" he exclaimed.

Stillwell ignored Raymond's shock. "Go easy," he calmly advised him with the demeanor of a drunk. "I think I've got a fractured rib."

The medic peered around his patient to view the damage that had startled Raymond so much. After securing the catheter to Stillwell's arm to begin the I.V. drip, he laid him down on his side with his back facing him and opened a packet of sulfa powder, which he poured over the wounds before bandaging them. "Get those pants off and start rubbing his feet to keep his circulation going," he instructed Raymond as he draped one of the blankets over Stillwell's shoulders.

Raymond silently nodded and loosened the oilskin gaiters, pulling the gumboots from Stillwell's feet, then unbuttoned and removed his dungarees, covering him up with the two remaining blankets. He grabbed his feet, rubbing them vigorously, bringing warmth and sensation back into them. After about fifteen minutes of Chesterfield tending to various other wounds and Raymond warming him up and preventing him from falling asleep, some of the color had started to return to their patient's cheeks and lips.

The medic finally felt it was safe enough to get back into the air and return to land where they could administer more thorough medical treatment. The quiet calm was wiped away by the sound of the engines sputtering to life, and after they had settled at a steady idle, the pilot began to increase the throttle of the craft until it proceeded to increasingly lurch and buck as it cautiously moved across the uneven surface of the sea. Raymond fought to restrain himself and Stillwell at the same time against the jolting ride until it broke free and started its ascension. After a brief struggle to get airborne, the plane leveled off at 6,000 feet, heading southeast.

"So what happened?" Raymond had moved in close to Stillwell, speaking loud enough to be heard by one another, but not loud enough to be heard over the engines by the rest of the crew. He knew that his debriefing would officially begin after his medical needs had been attended to, but there was an urgent need to establish what the threat had been. If actions needed to be taken, then it would be best if they were set in motion the instant he got back on the ground.

Stillwell's eyes stared straight up at the ceiling of the fuselage as if he hadn't heard a word. Then he shrugged and responded, "I couldn't tell you. Me and Finnegan and Lawson were making our way to Iceland on a diesel-converted Clyde Puffer named the Pictish Pebble. Our first evening out, I was on deck when the whole thing just blew up." He paused, as if the realization of the event had only now dawned on him. His eyes went out of focus momentarily before he regained his train of thought, and continued. "I was knocked out and thrown clear. I came to quick enough to see her aft section go down." He shrugged again, speculating. "Saboteurs? U-Boat? Accident? Who knows what happened. The mission failed, my team died." Then he bitterly added, "I didn't."

Raymond sat on the edge of the cot next to Stillwell, watching him. He lay there with a stoic expression upon his ragged face, as if he had just announced that he was going for a walk. He struggled to come up with a few words of comfort. "You couldn't have done anything. I know a man like yourself will never believe that, but there will always be variables out of your control, especially in this line of work."

"I know that," he placidly replied, "but I don't have to like it."

The wind whistled through the drafty sea plane. Raymond rubbed his hands together in an effort to keep them warm. "No, you don't," he agreed. "And you don't have to put up with it either. You can get out at any time. Just say the word." He sat there, waiting for a response. He knew that Stillwell didn't like his job, but he was driven to do it, because at this point in his life, it was all he had and if he walked away from it now, he'd eventually come back because he'd miss the purpose it gave him. He'd tried it twice before, and came back within two weeks both times. When no response came, he told him, "There's a new job coming up. Something a bit different from what you've been doing. I need to know if you're interested."

He lay there, periodically blinking. Thinking. "What else am I going to do?" he asked, more to himself than to Raymond, and rolled back onto his side, effectively ending their conversation.