Cryptonomicon

He begins looking around, trying to get his bearings. There's not much else to see except hanging meat. This cabin is a six-foot-long slice of U-boat, with a narrow gangway down the center, hemmed in by bunks. Or maybe they are bunks. The one directly across from him is occupied by a dirty canvas sack.

Fuck that. Where is the box with the purple bottles?

***

"It is amusing to read my communications from Charlottenburg," Beck says to Root, changing the subject to the message decrypts on his table. "They were perhaps written by that Jew Kafka."

"How so?"

"It seems that they do not expect that we will ever make it home alive."

"What makes you say that?" Root says, trying not to savor the Armagnac too much. When he brings it up to his nose and inhales, its perfume nearly obliterates the reek of urine, vomit, rotten food, and diesel that suffuses everything on the U-boat down to the atomic level.

"They are pressing us for information about our prisoners. They are very interested in you guys," Beck says.

"In other words," Root says carefully, "they want you to question us now."

"Precisely."

"And send the results in by radio?"

"Yes," Beck says. "But I really should be concentrating on how to keep us alive--the sun will be up soon, and then we are in for some very bad trouble. You'll remember that your ship radioed our coordinates before I sunk it. Every allied plane and ship is now out looking for us."

"So, if I cooperate," Root says, "you can get back to the business of keeping us all alive."

Beck tries to control a smile. His little tactic was crude and obvious to begin with, and Root has already seen through it. Beck is, if any thing, more uncomfortable than Root with this whole interrogation business.

"Suppose I tell you everything I know," Root says. "If you send it all back to Charlottenburg, you'll be running your radio, on the surface, for hours. Huffduff will pick you out in a few seconds and then every destroyer and bomber within a thousand miles will jump on you."

"On us," Beck corrects him.

"Yes. So if I really want to stay alive, it's best if I shut up," Root says.

***

"Are you looking for this?" says the German with the stethoscope, who (Shaftoe has learned) is not a real doctor--just the guy who happens to be in charge of the box of medical stuff. Anyway, he is holding up just the thing. The very thing.

"Gimme that!" Shaftoe says, making a weak grab for it. "That's mine!"

"Actually, it's mine," the medic says. "Yours is with the captain. I might share some of mine with you, if you are cooperative."

"Fuck you," Shaftoe says.

"Very well then," the medic says, "I will by-leave it." He puts the syringe full of morphine on the bunk opposite and one level below Shaftoe's, so that Shaftoe, by peering between a couple of Knockwursts, can see it. But he can't reach it. Then the medic leaves.

***

"Why was Sergeant Shaftoe carrying a German morphine bottle and a German syringe?" says Beck quizzically, doing his best to make it sound conversational and not interrogational. But the effort is too much for him and that smile tries to seize control of his lips again. It is the smile of a whipped dog. Root finds this somewhat alarming, since Beck's the guy in charge of keeping everyone on the boat alive.

"That's news to me," Root says.

"Morphine is closely regulated," Beck says. "Each bottle has a number. We have already radioed the number on Sergeant Shaftoe's bottle to Charlottenburg, and soon they'll know where it came from. Even though they may not tell us."

"Good work. That should keep them busy for a while. Why don't you go back to running the ship?" Root suggests.

"We are in the calm before the storm," Beck says, "and I have not so much to do. So I try to satisfy my own curiosity about you."

***

"We're fucked, aren't we!?" says a German voice.

"Huh?" Shaftoe says.

"I said, we're fucked! You guys broke the Enigma!"

"What's the Enigma?"

"Don't play stupid," says the German.

Shaftoe feels prickly on the back of his neck. That sounds exactly like the kind of thing a German would say before commencing torture.

Shaftoe composes his face into the cool, heavy-lidded, dopey expression that he always uses when he's trying to irritate an officer. As best he can when his legs are bolted down, he rolls over on his side, towards the sound of the voice. He is expecting to see an aquiline SS officer in a black uniform, jackboots, death's-head insignia, and riding crop, perhaps twiddling a pair of thumbscrews in his black leather gloves.

Instead he sees no one at all. Shit! Hallucinations again!

Then the dirty canvas sail bag in the bunk opposite him begins to move around. Shaftoe blinks and resolves a head sticking out of one end: straw-blond but prematurely half bald, contrasting black beard, catlike pale green eyes. The man's canvas garment is not exactly a bag, but a voluminous overcoat. He has his arms crossed over his body.