Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

“Either way, we need to be gone from here by May 2nd. They’ll be here by then.”

“Who will be here?”

“KGB and Stasi. Black sedans will pull up to your old workshop and search their way here. Anyone they find will be arrested. You most of all. You’re the one remaining architect of Wermut. The Soviets are very keen on understanding what you did. It will not go well for you, no matter what you tell them.”

For the second time in as many decades, Zerrissen was being forced to break out of a Soviet siege.

A squawk and flurry of feathers announced Halina’s appearance. The conversation changed to lighter subject, though she looked quizzically at Nicolaus sensing otherwise.

“We were just discussing christening NIX before we leave tomorrow. Early. Before dawn. Do you want to break a bottle of champagne over the bow before we launch her?”

Zerrissen forced a smile and confronted them with a reality. “There won’t be an available bottle of champagne in all Europe the way Russians celebrate May Day.”

“Good. No one from the State gets up before sunrise on May Day.”

As they disbanded for the final time, Zerrissen, pulled Nicolaus aside curious about an issue that this chance could be the last to address. “You don’t have to tell me, but whatever happened to Ulf? Did you decide to let him go?”

Nicolaus smiled, confirmed that Halina was out of hearing, and answered cryptically. “Oh, he’s taken care of. In fact, he helped us clear the duct. Saugglocke needed ballast, didn’t it?”

Zerrissen caught his breath, realizing that Nicolaus worked alone when filling saugglocke and sealing the ends. In fact, Nicolaus never touched the welder again. Was Nicolaus capable of stuffing Ulf in among the other trash and ballast?

“I thought you promised Halina you would not kill Ulf…”

With a sly smile, Nicolaus quickly corrected Zerrissen. “What are you on about, Raynor? Ulf was alive the last time I saw him.”

Loch Ness Schlange31

Nicolaus and Halina left to make final arrangements. Buttercup was placed on its perch in the old shop to entertain the authorities when they showed up tomorrow while they gathered supplies for the journey which would last only one hour if successful or the rest of their lives if not. High carbohydrate snacks from the West for the stress, and some fresh water to wash them down.

After procuring a small bag of these sundries, Nicolaus tucked Halina away in a safehouse in the gay ghetto of Kreuzberg where Halina would be safer than anywhere in the world of heterosexuals who had raped her in the first place. There, she would also avoid accidentally informing the State of her condition, as they would not be inclined to let her birth a new citizen in the Free World after it had paid for her medical attention.

He made a final visit to his own flat, ensuring first that the Stasi or the KGB agents were not there already, and set some distractions to amuse and otherwise distract their inevitable visit. He left train tickets to Moscow to throw them off the trail, and some illegal porn that they would most certainly add to their own collections. He then added his final touches: human feces in plastic containers and some beer bottles filled with urine in the refrigerator as little amusements for his former colleagues.

Alone for the first time since inception of this project, Zerrissen was alone amid the collections of motors, casings, and barrels of fluids and the workshop now seemed cavernous. He contemplated the events of the next few hours, as well as the two microcassettes in his hand, one red for the worst-case scenario, the other blue, for the actual escape.

Telling himself he was making mere scientific inquires, the used his weight and balance mechanism with bags of sand in NIX to simulate a single passenger journey to the Netherlands.

Satisfied that the pipe would once again be neutrally buoyant one meter beneath the surface, deep enough to pass unseen (even by expecting eyes) in the murky, polluted waters of the Spree, Zerrissen lowered NIX into the duct opening, climbed into the pilot’s seat, pulled the hatch closed, and toggled the main power breaker that brought NIX to life. Needles swung into position, lamps indicated seaworthy status, levels and air pressure were good, and the magnetic clamps were holding.

Two gyroscopes used for navigation and attitude control began their slow climb to rotational velocity with a dual whine of increasing frequency. When they settled in at the operating speed of ten thousand cycles per second, he asked himself one final time,

“Do I really want to do this?”

His mind had no answer, but the vodka said “yes.”

Zerrissen climbed through the hatch, and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat, telling himself this would only be a test. He pushed the red microcassette into the sequencer. Never being one to give himself over to panic, he would not do so now.

He popped the power breaker to the magnetic clamps holding NIX in place, allowing the craft to slide down backwards inside the inclined duct on its wheeled cart accompanied by a grinding sound of grit against concrete. The cylinder resonated as a kettle drum as its hull scraped and bumped against the sides of the duct, Halina’s catfish whiskers feeling the sides of the duct, and feeding minute adjustments to the tail flip motion so the craft could find the duct’s center once again.

The sound of metal on concrete stopped with a bang. Zerrissen felt NIX drop, indicating that NIX was free and clear of the duct. It was in the Spree, its propulsion now entirely by Halina’s ingenious tail rather than by gravity. The inertia of falling off the duct floor sent NIX two meters deep in the river, a meter lower than its design depth, yet one it could survive momentary.

Zerrissen had steeled himself for this drop, his stomach gave up all the unmetabolized vodka just the same. The large depth meter on one