The Black Prince, Terror of the Kriegsmarine: From the Annals of the Shadow Committee, Part 1 of 3

Quijano Corbeau, the disgraced King of the Mississippi, is desperate to clear his conscience and kick fascists off the high seas. With some of the deadliest killers in the world on his tail, he’s found himself in purgatory. Fortunately, he has a plan, and it involves making Nazis fear the skull and crossbones once more.

The Black Prince, Terror of the Kriegsmarine is an upcoming swashbuckling adventure following a warring crew of gangsters, pirates, zealots, and maniacs united in the pursuit of smashing fascism at all costs. From the Annals of the Shadow Committee is an introduction to Prince’s voyages and features characters introduced in The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite.

Content warnings: Mild swearing, alcohol use, tobacco use, drug use, violence, gun violence, death, gore, Nazis.

FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 22, 1942
ABOARD U-459
47°43'26"N, 28°45'46"W

//Translated from German.//

“I have never seen fog so thick,” Kapitänleutnant Hans Sauer said. He leaned against the conning tower’s forward rail and watched for shadows in the mist. The sun was rising beyond it, illuminating its edges with fiery crowns. He handed his binoculars off to his executive officer.

“I have never seen one so sudden,” Fuchs said after studying the white clouds rolling across the ocean before them. He sniffed the air: “It is not smokescreen. It is natural.”

“It will serve to conceal us,” Sauer replied. He clenched his teeth and pulled his slicker higher against the salt mist kicked up by the steaming U-boat’s prow. He had been driving his men nonstop for thirty-six hours straight.

459 caught a wave awkwardly and he stumbled. Fuchs caught him and kept him on his feet. He felt the men on deck studying his back: he could not fall in front of them. He made them stay out here, manning the gun, fighting the wind and sea. He would not ask a man to do something he could not.

“Rest inside, Hans,” Fuchs hissed.

“Not until we are safe,” Sauer snapped.

“Then take this, you are withering.” Sauer felt Fuchs push a small tablet into his palm. He recognized it by shape alone: Pervitin.

“Than you,” Sauer said. He swallowed the little pill dry and leaned on the rail, watching ahead. Behind him, 459’s engine groaned. A British bomber had hit them with four depth charges. The damage had not been enough to stop them from sinking their target, but it had forced them to stay surfaced after the battle.

The dense fog roiled before them, thick as snow. It would hide them from the air as surely as if they were underwater.

“Confirm bearings,” he said. Fuchs relayed his order down and a confirmation from the navigator came back up. He sighed in relief. It would do no good to be blind and lost. “Full speed ahead.”

The fog enveloped them just as the first zaps of methamphetamine coursed into Sauer’s gray matter. The grasping fingers of exhaustion released their stranglehold. His own hands were suddenly aching and he realized that he was squeezing the steel rail. He let go as the infinite horizon around him came crashing down. White cotton walls collapsed in on 459. He could hardly see the bow. The crew manning the cannon shouted at one another, lost even a dozen meters in front of him.

They began hooting at one another, horsing around in the fog.

“Focus!” he shouted. He heard them all shuffle back to their places, grumbling.

“This is unusual,” Fuchs said, quiet enough that his voice did not carry to the gun crew on deck or the command stations below.

“It is fog, only fog. It will hide us from our hunters,” Sauer insisted.

“Yes, sir,” Fuchs replied. They churned onward, blind.

The red eye appeared before them fifteen minutes later.

“Contact ahead!” he shouted. The gun crew was already scrambling. A bright red light sat glaring before them, distance indeterminate in the fog. It cut through the obfuscation with enough strength to make Sauer shield his eyes. Above them, the sun was the size of a 10 Reichspfennig and only a fraction as bright as the bloody eye.

“Is it a ship?” Fuchs asked.

“Quarter-speed!” Sauer shouted past his second-in-command. 459’s abused engines squealed as they slowed. He hissed at Fuchs: “Megaphone, now!”

Fuchs found the microphone and handed it to Sauer. The captain struggled with the twisted cord, but eventually fought it free.

“Unknown vessel!” he shouted, his voice projected by the mighty bullhorns built into 459’s hull. “Activate your running lights and prepare to be boarded!”

“Is it a ship?” Fuchs asked again. Sauer ignored him.

“Take aim at that light!” he shouted at his gun crew. They adjusted the cannon, centering their sights on the red orb.

Something splashed in the water alongside the U-boat.

“What is that?” he yelped, animal panic running roughshod through his mind. Six more red lights burst into existence, surrounding the U-boat. The white blankness around them glowed like embers. He pulled the Luger from his holster.

“Arm yourselves!” he ordered.

The red eyes watched, unblinking, unmoving.

“Gun crew, fire at the first target!” he shouted. He braced himself for the cannon’s report and was greeted with silence. He spun and roared again, feeling his voice cracking: “Fire!”

The cannon stayed silent. Red mist enveloped the emplacement.

Fuchs tried to grab him, but Sauer scrambled past and took the ladder down two rungs at a time. He wandered across the gun platform and found the weapon abandoned.

“Hello?” he asked the crimson vastness.

“Surrender your ship,” a voice grunted. Sauer thought it was English, but he’d never learned the language. He spun with his Luger, only for someone to snatch him by the hand, crushing his fingers in their grip. They wrenched the pistol away.

The man towering over him like an ogre was bald and scarred, a pitted burn where his ear had once been. He sneered down at the captain. A short man covered in tattoos appeared beside him, inked crosses and Marys twisting across his face as he spoke:

“Surrender with peace, sinner,” he hissed, his German tainted with an unfamiliar accent. “Or you will enter Hell today.”

“Where are my men?” Sauer demanded. The Pervitin was lightning in his veins. He coiled back, only for the ogre holding his hand to squeeze harder. He felt a bone pop in his wrist.

“Quiet,” the tattooed man hissed.

“Captain?” Fuchs called from beyond the red veil.

Sauer drew in a breath to shout a warning, but his voice never left his mouth.

“I said ‘quiet.’” The tattooed man slid a slender pen knife out of Sauer’s neck. Sauer’s blood stained the blade.

“On Michael’s sword, he wouldn’t surrender,” the tattooed man hissed.

“Good,” the larger replied. Sauer did not know their words, but he knew the tone. These men were eager killers.

The larger invader lifted a spiked club and brought it down on Sauer’s leg. The captain would have screamed if his larynx had not been split in two. He crumpled to the deck, wheezing wordlessly. On the other side of the gun, he saw his men thrown in a pile, still, bloody, and bound.

Four other strangers stood over them, brandishing clubs, ax handles, and brass knuckles. Just like the first two, they all wore corpse-pale coveralls, dry, emblazoned with neither flag nor rank.

Water lapped against a wooden hull and with his last surge of chemical strength, Sauer rolled over.

A small boat was lashed the 459’s hull. It was matte black and had a howling skull painted on its prow, ready to bite down on an Iron Cross. Twin cutlasses crossed below it, one white as raw bone, the other scarlet as the fog around him.

“Captain?” Fuchs called down again.

Silent invaders clambered from the strange boat onto 459: Negros, women, men with thick beards and twisted hair. Swords and shotguns filled their hands. A dark-skinned man with a trimmed beard directed them, issuing practiced, silent orders via hand signals. His braided hair stuck out from the back of his head. Even in the red light, Sauer could see the scars of battle on his face.

Within seconds, a score of enemies were aboard his ship.

“Take it,” the leader barked. A harpoon gun twanged and Sauer heard Fuchs cry out. The score of men and women rushed the open hatch. The lieutenant within tried to pull the hatch shut, but these killers were too fast. Gunfire erupted inside, traveling deeper and deeper through the U-boat. He could hear the horde move through 459 below him, taking it section-by-section.

It was over in minutes.

Sauer went limp and stared upward. Above and below, there was only red. He listened until the guns went silent. The pain in his wrist, throat, and leg brought him back from blackness.

The invaders trudged past him like a line of ants, prizes in hand: weapons and munitions, morphine, Pervitin, blankets, canned food, sausages, cash, souvenirs, rings, crosses, crown medallions, papers, journals, maps. They took everything they could carry and loaded it aboard their skull-emblazoned boat.

Vultures. Scavengers. Scum.

A face appeared over him, the gnarled visage of an old woman, her skin darker than diesel soot, her gray hair wild as rusting steel wool.

“Merci pour ton bateau,” she said with a smile that was missing more teeth than not. Her French was so heavily accented that he barely understood her. He tried to tell her that this was his boat, but his crew was dead, his body was broken, and he couldn’t speak. These animals had even stolen his voice.

He laid his head back on the deck and closed his eyes. The woman clucked and grabbed his face with knobby, calloused fingers. His eyes snapped back open.

“Ne t'endors pas encore, petit nazi,” she chided. She twisted him so he could watch her comrades were carrying their prizes. His blood went ice cold.

They were carrying his safe, wrenched out of the bulkhead. His code books were inside, along with the letters from his wife.

He struggled, only succeeding in stabbing barbed pain through his ruined leg. She grinned down at him.

“Un capitaine doit rester avec son équipage,” she said. His eyes went wide. She stood and shouted for a passing crewman, a young Oriental man with a limp: “Ramos!”

He helped her to her feet and she babbled orders to him. She tottered away. Ramos babbled away in a language that Sauer did not recognize. Despite his gasping protests, Sauer shortly had sulfa powder and a bandage around his perforated neck and a splint on his pulped leg. One dart of a needle left him flowing across the deck like melted wax.

‘Why?’ he mouthed. Ramos shrugged and wandered away. He said something to the bearded man in charge then boarded their boat.

The invaders streamed past, loot in hand. Sauer groaned. He laid there for what felt like hours, both paralyzed by pain and drained by its absence.

Another ship pulled alongside 459, a British ship, but not. Its hull was crisscrossed with lightning dazzles and the same hungry skull stood three meters tall on its bow. The paint was strange, undulating before Sauer’s drug-addled eyes. In one moment it was black as the sea, in another: red as the sky.

The ship seemed to breathe. It bristled with all manner of guns and cannons, with torpedo cages welded to its sides and minelaying rails beside depth charge launchers on its stern. A towering trebuchet built from welded steel crowned its superstructure.

The men and women crewing it milled like ants. They extended a crane over 459, and within a few minutes the old woman had directed her men to detach Sauer’s eighty-eight-millimeter cannon from its mount. It swung high over his head. The invaders took every remaining shell from the hole it left, then peeled up the deck.

His remaining torpedos followed the shells, then the radio equipment. Hundreds, if not thousands of kilograms of material emerged from within his ship. What they did not want they cast into the sea. They stripped 459 down to the bone.

A brassy clang knocked Sauer out of his stupor for a moment. Two thin Negros lurched past him, carrying 459’s bell between them. As they passed, every member of the scavenger crew reached out to brush their fingers across its gleaming surface.

It was their trophy.

If Sauer’s tongue had been anything but liquid flesh oozing in his mouth, he would have sworn.

When his ship was little more than a husk bobbing on the water, the bearded man, the old woman, and the scarred ogre surrounded Sauer. Whatever Ramos had given him made his thoughts ooze slow as cold honey.

“We should drown him,” the woman croaked. “Give him to the Waves and the Winds.”

“He ain’t some sacrifice for your church,” the bearded man said. “I told you, he’s better for us alive.”

“I agree,” the looming ogre grunted.

“Putain de démocratie. Fine, take him,” the woman said, waving her arms in disgust before she waddled away. She spat over her shoulder: “Dis ‘bonjour’ pour nous.”

“This ain't a democracy,” the bearded man muttered to himself.

Sauer’s head was fuzzy. The shot had drained away what little French he had. He did not understand a word of English, but he knew they were discussing his life and his death.

“We'll send them all back to their people,” the bearded man concluded.

“We will show them who they’re fighting,” the ogre grunted.

The pair picked up Sauer by his shoulders and heels. The injection left him numb. He could feel the shattered bone shift in his leg, but it did not hurt. The sensation was a curiosity rather than torture.

He wanted to remark on it, but he could not hear his own voice. He did not remember why.

The two men lowered him down the ladder into the con. It was empty. They can scooped it out. Bare decking, dangling wires, and sawn-down bolts were all that remained. They carried him through, deeper and deeper into 459’s hollowed remains.

The bunks had been torn out, along with the footlockers. Not a blanket remained. The galley was emptied. Even the stoves and toilets were gone. These people had chewed through his ship like locusts. Long trails of diesel and fresh water led out of the U-boat, all that remained after they had pumped 459’s tanks dry.

They carried him past their glowering comrades. Grease and blood stained their hands. They were all slick with sweat and stank of alcohol and tobacco. Their cold faces, gray clothes, and grim silence made them seem ghastly and spectral, inhuman beings taking shapes somewhere between those of butchers and scrap-cutters.

When he and his captors reached the reached the electric motor room, the milling invaders tensed. A waiting Negro woman shoved the hatch inward, revealing Sauer’s crew.

All forty-four men that had sailed aboard U-459 were crammed into the tiny room. They had been beaten bloody and stripped to their underwear, packed in so tight that the wounded among them could not even sit.

Still, they managed to find room to cower away when they caught sight of the demons in gray.

“Captain,” Fuchs groaned. Two torpedomen were holding him up. He had a harpoon shaft embedded deep in his upper chest. Sauer would have cried out if he still possessed an intact voice box.

The invaders stood him up and pushed him through the open hatch. His men caught him and dragged him off the floor before his broken leg could fail him completely. He twisted around to face the monsters who had broken him.

“Where’s our translator?” the bearded man snapped.

“Powell!” the larger one shouted. The tattooed man with the pen knife appeared after a few seconds. The bearded man conferred with him, then walked away. Powell grinned, warping the scripture inked onto his cheeks.

“Captain Corbeau wants you to know that we are not like you,” Powell explained. “The sailors of the Black Prince do not kill needlessly. There are enough ghosts to our names already. We take what we need and leave the trash for the ocean. We took, now we leave.”

“You are leaving?” Fuchs gasped. The harpoon wobbled in his chest with every word.

“We are. We’re leaving you Nazis this empty boat and each other,” Powell replied. “May the Lord see what you do, because the Prince is done with you.”

The Kriegsmarine’s finest looked at one another, in shock, confusion, and panic.

“Do not worry, we will tell your friends where to find you eventually. We want them to find you.”

Powell snickered and slammed the hatch shut. Sauer heard its bolts engage.

The forty-four sailors who had made 459 their home a weapon stayed silent. Those that were pressed against the bulkheads listened intently. Only when they were sure that both of the invaders’ vessels had cast off did they dare breathe again.

Had he a voice, Sauer could have calmed them. He would have told them that they were expected in Brest, and soon command would come to find them.

If he could have spoken, Kapitänleutnant Hans Sauer might have appealed to their reason. He would have organized them to fish in shifts, to boil seawater to drink, to soften leather to chew on until they could find real food. But he could not, so when the fighting for food reached its apex and he couldn’t move or speak, he was an easy choice for the first to go.

A Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor spotted the husk of U-459 dead in the water sixty-three days later. From the air, the only sign of life was a single column of smoke rising from the deck. When the nineteen survivors were finally rescued they could only describe their attackers as ‘devils.’

Superstitions spread among sailors faster than lice and good news. Four other ships had gone mysteriously missing since U-459 had disappeared. Whispers claimed those vessels had met 459’s fate. All listened carefully as the emaciated survivors raved about a phantom ship that turned the sky red and its damned crew who gutted their victims and left only gnawed bones behind.

If Hans Sauer could have spoken, he would have told them that it was not demons that butchered and ate him. He would have reported that they had been caught wounded and exhausted, tricked into lowering their guard by desperation. He would have told everyone that it was men: thieves, not devils.

But Sauer’s voice was long dead and his gnawed bones had been buried at sea. With no one left to deny the word of the survivors, each half-mad on salt water and long pork, the terror of the Black Prince coursed through the Kriegsmarine like a plague.

TUESDAY NIGHT, APRIL 21, 1942
SENATE WING, UNITED STATES CAPITOL
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

“Two more ships, just today?” the congressman asked, his mouth obviously hanging open behind his thick black hood. Mickey Malloy was disgusted. The anonymous senator acted like he was surprised that the convoy was out there getting torn apart. The hall around them was empty, Capitol Hill deserted at such a late hour: he had no one to dance off for. His false outrage was muscle memory more than anything else.

“That makes eighty-five ships lost this year, yes sir,” Rear Admiral Jules Desrochers confirmed. Desrochers was the Nautical Commander of the Office's Atlantic Oceanic Affairs bureau, which made him a Washington officer by necessity, more administrator than sailor. It had taken Mickey meeting the man six times before he believed that the squid was the only son of Valentin Desrochers. His dad had been a commando and a killer: the son was a politician.

Even thinking the word left a sour taste in Mickey's mouth. If he hadn't been sitting in in front of his boss he would've been inclined to spit on the floor.

“And you think this travesty is the solution?” called out another hooded congressman, obviously an old southerner by his Alabama twang. “This body has not issued a Letter of Marque in over one hundred and fifty years!”

“Not to mention the Paris Declaration of 1856 that outlawed privateering!” pointed out another. Politicians were always going to get a word in, even anonymously.

“First, I am not trying to sell this as a solution to the wolfpacks,” Desrochers countered, “Just as a distraction. And second, the United States never put pen to that declaration.”

The assembled group of hooded congressmen split into knots and began discussing the topic in rapid, anxious whispers. Each had a small candle before him, and a single sheet of paper to take notes regarding the proceedings.

Mickey shifted painfully in his seat. His bruises from his escapades training in Canada were just starting to bloom, and sitting in on a secret congressional hearing after traveling for fourteen hours was not his idea of a fun Tuesday night. The seven veiled men sitting before him listening to the admiral's testimony were not his ideal company, right then or ever, and he was getting sick of watching their machinations. He took his eyes off the conniving politicians and studied the other occupants of the subterranean chamber.

Chip Klavin sat to Mick's right in a sharp black suit, all creases and starch. His gnarled, scowling face sat piled atop the coal-black wool. He'd forced Mickey to buy a new suit since his old one had gotten ruined in New Orleans, soaked with blood and sweat and the stink of aged cigars. The new jacket was just a little too tight, and the tie a bit too short, making Mick look like he was lugging around a gut two sizes too big.

George Keaton, Wailey Earp's go-to guy, was seated behind Klavin. Keaton was a pretty quiet guy, and he looked wholly unremarkable. Average height, thinning brown hair cut somewhat poorly, dull brown eyes, and no features of note. He was the perfect official, a man perpetually lost in a crowd. Mick couldn't have even described Keaton to a sketch artist if he was sitting right next to him.

Desrochers sat to Klavin's right, the co-author of this insane scheme. The man was just thirty-five, young for a flag officer. No man that young could be wearing stars and shoulder boards on his dress whites using only his own accolades, and Desrochers was no an exception.

The elder Desrochers, Valentin, had been one of the first members of the Office. Mickey had fought through that damn castle alongside him. Val hadn't made it out, but his wife had raised Jules in America to be as good a man as a Navy paper-pusher could be.

Mickey looked around the near-empty hearing room. Only twelve chairs were filled in a chamber built to host congressional testimony and seat three hundred. He looked around anxiously. He hadn't joined back up with the Office to get cornered by congressmen. He was a spy-smasher, more comfortable with dirty alleyways than marble halls. His collar felt tight, he was uneasy with all the eyes on him, especially the ones on his back. Mick, Klavin, and the admiral awaited further questions from the seven senators that made up the United States Congressional Shadow Committee.

When President Roosevelt had needed to drum up secret funding for the Office in '39, these anonymous vultures were his gate-keepers. They'd funded every war the U.S. had fought, real or imagined, since the Revolution. These seven meddlers held the purse strings tight as a garrote.

It was wrong that men with that kind of power hid their faces.

It felt almost as wrong as the glowering goon in the back of the room.

The man hadn't gotten up, hadn't said a word, and hadn't let go of the blood-stained spiked club since the four officials had walked in. It made Mickey yearn for his his own club, but Keaton had confiscated his arsenal before they even left the hotel. The only person bearing arms in the room was the brooding man in the unadorned uniform.

“Admiral, you are certain this program could make a difference in Europe?” one of the hooded congressman asked.

“Any ship they save is hundreds of tons of materiel, at the very least, if not hundreds of fighting men, at minimal cost to us, and no liability.”

Mickey thought Desrochers made a good point.

“You propose retrofitting a decommissioned British frigate and crewing it with criminals!” another congressman demanded. “How would this single ship make any difference for our supply fleet?”

“This ship would operate completely independently of any other American vessel, using unique, non-traditional, merciless tactics. They would have no contact with the American military, there is no chance that any German vessel would have warning of an imminent attack, or of the Prince's position.”

“The Prince, Rear Admiral?” one of the congressman demanded, leaning across the stand.

“Yes sir, the Black Prince II, after the first privateer commissioned by Benjamin Franklin. I felt it would help give this project historical perspective.” The hooded politicians looked at each other, nodding in approval, each thinking he'd go down in history as the next Franklin.

Mickey was pretty sure that the only thing that these ghouls had in common with Franklin was syphilis.

“You say the Prince would operate independently of any Navy contact or control. Without official supervision, how do you expect your proposed crew to refrain from prioritizing their criminal predilections over their mission?”

Mickey'd seen his crew list and had to agree: some real lowlifes on there.

“I'd like to allow Inspector General Klavin to answer that question,” the admiral answered, taking a seat. Klavin grunted and stood, carefully buttoning his coat before he spoke.

“Each of these crewmen is in the custody of of the Office or the Navy and has conditionally agreed to serve the war effort in exchange for early or eventual release. I've vetted them one and all,” Klavin said. Mickey'd seen him silently practicing this speech in the car.

“General, please justify to me some of these... some of these...” The hooded congressman sneezed inside his mask. Mick almost burst a vessel forcing himself not to laugh. “Justify some of these names for me!”

“Of course, sir,” said Klavin, ignoring the sneeze. The senator held up the list and pointed out a name at random.

“Alan Zanowitz, also known as Al Zano, convicted of arson, robbery, public inebriation, horse theft, and indecent exposure on church property. You expect a man like this to represent our country?”

The rear admiral cut in:

“In his defense, the county in which Mister Zanowitz was caught exposing himself has since passed a law differentiating public urination from exposure.”

“Rear Admiral, the question was not directed at you, do not interrupt again,” the interrogative congressman reprimanded him. Desrochers' mouth stayed open. The congressman leaned forward and demanded: “Is that quite all?”

“A mule, sir,” the admiral answered sheepishly.

“What?”

“He only stole a mule.”

“That is all.” The congressman concluded for the admiral. Desrochers sunk down in his chair and shut his trap. Mickey smirked.

“Georgia 'Ruby' Crawley, Inspector General. A pickpocket, a jezebel, a card sharp, and a woman! A woman crewing a ship! What foolishness.”

“Miss Crawley has crewed river boats with these men since she was fourteen years old, I have no doubts as to her safety and ability,” Desrochers answered smartly.

“Even so, look at the rest of your list: 'Wink' Alderman, 'Banjo Tony' Roberts, 'Skinny' Old Bear, Jefferson Crépuscule, 'Mangler' Hobbes, and, on top of it all, Quijano Corbeau, the King of the Mississippi himself, leading three-score other smugglers, deserters, mutineers, and killers.”

The congressman obviously read the yellow newspapers that had been headlined with crime every day 'til this war started; he knew these names. He was the stereotypical bloodthirsty policy-maker that Mickey hated, eager to read about blood and guts, not so quick to put his own on the line.

“What makes you think Corbeau has any interest in representing this body overseas?” another hooded man asked.

“Mister Corbeau has no desire to do anything but be back out on the water, doing his part the best way he knows how,” Klavin replied.

“You mean by leaving your custody and captaining his own ship?”

“That is a stipulation.”

“I am not convinced, Inspector,” the congressman said with a huff.

“That is why Deputy Regional Inspector Michael Malloy is here.” Klavin motioned for Mickey to stand. Mick's knees popped as he groaned his way to his feet.

“There was a ‘Malloy’ on the Office’s original roll call,” the Southern senator noted. Mickey nodded.

“Yeah, I was there,” he grunted. He was sore as hell after scrapping with Dangerous Dan, and the last-minute red-eye to D.C. hadn't helped. He was not in the mood to humor dumb questions.

“You foiled the hijacking of the Queen Anne, didn't you?” another asked.

Mick sighed and nodded again.

“You saved several associates of mine, Inspector Malloy,” a third one added.

“Yeah, yeah, you're welcome.” Mickey didn't have the patience for hot air and he wasn't so sure that his feelings about the caliber of guests aboard that boat would've been welcome in his present company.

“What is your opinion on Mister Corbeau?”

“The guy saved my life,” Mickey started, “But I wouldn't leave him with my car, and I wouldn't let him stand behind me with a gun.”

Desrochers kicked him in the foot.

“You wouldn't leave him with an automobile, but your superior is proposing we issue him a warship?”

“What I can say is that Corbeau will kill every Nazi you give him the opportunity to come across, and that his crew will do whatever he says, no matter what your records say about him. The people he leads would die at his say-so.”

“And what of the rest of the proposed crew? Rear Admiral Desrochers has composed the remaining crew from a gaggle of disgraced sailors in military prisons spread across this country. What makes you think they'd follow a criminal?”

“All due respect, sir, he didn't lead a gang of top-notch bandits and not get caught for fifteen years by being a putz. He can handle it. He'll earn their loyalty.” Mickey said his piece and dropped back into his chair. If that didn't convince the committee, he didn't have anything else to say that would. The hooded congressmen looked at their files.

“Rear Admiral, we would block this program if we had any other options.”

Desrochers popped to his feet the instant he was addressed. Mickey rolled his eyes at the eager young man, though he was jealous that he couldn't move that fast any more. The senator continued: “But the situation in the Atlantic has come to a head, faster than our Navy can compensate. We need a new solution to take pressure off of our convoys. How fast can you make the krauts start looking over their shoulders?”

The hooded congressman did not sound confident in his proclamation, but as he said, what other options did they have?

“The Prince can sail in fourteen days, sir,” Desrochers answered. “She's ten days from from exiting dry-dock.”

“Some stones you have, going ahead without approval, admiral,” an anonymous Midwestern representative said. Mickey stifled that laugh so hard that it awakened all his contusions from the day before. He starting coughing, a bad fit that almost knocked him out of his chair. He'd never heard a congressman talk about 'stones' before. He regained his composure after thirty seconds, but the whole room was staring at him.

“Excuse me,” he said. He poured himself a glass of water and settled back into his seat.

“It seems the only arrangement left to make is this Letter of Marque, our permission to launch,” one committee member said.

“With your blessing, we can have all seventy men transported from their various incarceration facilities within forty-eight hours,” Desrochers continued. “We'll give them four days to familiarize themselves with the ship, and then they're gone.”

“The Office has also taken the liberty of scrubbing all the the crew members' histories, destroying any paper trails that would link them in any tangible way to to the United States government,” Keaton added. “The Prince won't even have an American flag on board. The serial numbers on every piece of equipment have been burned off with acid. Once that ship leaves port, it will not have any connection to this country.”

“And they will have no reason to remain loyal, save for Corbeau's dubious level of dedication. And his motivation is not even to serve his country, but rather to kill Nazis!” One of the hooded congressmen was standing now, pounding the table as he made his point. “This committee demands you install our representative on the crew, as second in command.”

“And who would you recommend?” Desrochers asked.

“Me.”

The brooding thug in the back of the room was standing. His voice grated like a steamroller. Mickey, Klavin, and the admiral turned to look at him.

“You are...” Desrochers started.

“Clark Smith, Shadow Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, holder of the True Mace of the Republic,” Klavin answered for the brute. The Inspector General made it his business to know everyone. He probably knew who every man under each of those hoods was, too.

“The True Mace has seen combat in every American conflict since the Revolution,” Smith droned, his voice a gravely monotone, like a teacher whose class you'd fall asleep in, though Mick didn't know who'd dare once they saw those scars, those eyes, and the rainbow of combat ribbons decorating that brawler's chest. “The Shadow Sergeant has soaked blood from every nation into its grains. It has seen use against pirates and founding fathers alike. It is time it saw this war.”

“The Shadow Sergeant has represented the will of this committee since its inception, and the True Mace has been the realization of that will. Its presence on the Prince conveys the ultimate support of the United States government. Sergeant Smith will interpret our will upon the seas, or your ship shall not sail.” The hooded congressman giving the speech put his single page of notes over the candle in front of him. The treated paper burst into red flame, burning so quickly that it didn't leave smoke or ash.

Keaton had told Mickey that this was the symbolic closing of a discussion in the Shadow Committee.

“Hear, hear.” The endorsements came quickly. Six more sheets burst into flame.

The seven hooded men stood, blew out their candles in unison, then silently filed out. The session had ended, leaving officials and Smith sitting in the large, empty room. The Shadow Committee had given the Black Prince II permission to set sail, with Smith aboard to hold Corbeau's leash.

Mickey studied Smith. The man was large and brutish, and he studied Mickey like they were on opposite corners of a boxing ring. Smith looked older than Mick, though he was built like a rhinoceros. His bald head was traced with battlefield-stitched scars and a waxy tangle of burns that covered the left side of his skull. An explosion had shredded off the man's ear long ago. The weapon he held seemed at home in his calloused hand.

The True Mace of the Republic was a weapon of war from the seventeen-hundreds, a knotted length of blood-lacquered oak, starting with a wear-smoothed leather grip, extending out in a sturdy brick-red shaft dotted with hobnails, then terminating in a spiked iron collar, all worn from two centuries years of combat and cleaning. Smith carried it like it was an extension of his body. It was no ceremonial weapon, and the Shadow Sergeant-at-Arms of the House was no ceremonial position.

Cloak and dagger Washington-style politics exhausted Mickey. The True Mace method of diplomacy was more his style, though he was afraid it would drain the rest of his motivation to do government work if he learned the specifics of the Mace's peacetime activities.

Mickey could tell one thing: it would be a hell of a thing to see Smith's first meeting with Corbeau, his new captain.

“So, gentlemen...” Mickey was the first to speak, “What now?”

“Now we give the keys to a warship to a pirate and hope it doesn't bite us,” Klavin sighed. Desrochers had collapsed forward, the stress having completely drained him. His forehead was flat on the table.

Smith tapped the tabletop with his gory weapon, snapping the rear admiral back up.

“Under my command, we will have our first U-boats by September,” he declared. “The prow will be lined with ship's bells by year's end, trophies of victory, like the Vikings of old.”

“You mean under your 'second-in-command,’” Mickey said. The look on Smith's face was priceless: this government enforcer taking orders from a criminal was something Mickey'd pay to watch.

“I guess we got some pirates to spring from the poke, then,” Mick said, pushing up out of the chair. He ambled toward the door.

“Where are you headed?” Klavin called after him.

“I'm going to finish my bourbon and get some sleep, so get George to fork it over,” he answered, lighting a cigarette as he looked back, “Because I assume we're getting an early start.”

“Your buddy Corbeau is still locked up in Oh-Four. A car will be waiting at oh-six-hundred to take you to the airstrip. Colorado is a long flight.”

“Then I'd better drink fast.”

With that, Mickey pulled his black fedora low over his eyes and let the chamber door swing shut behind him. He didn’t see whether Keaton had followed him out, and he was too preoccupied to care.

Quijano Corbeau free, loose on the high seas. God, Mick hoped that wouldn't bite them in the ass.

Mickey trudged up the narrow stairs and emerged from the hidden door behind the towering painting of Benjamin Tallmadge. The guards let him wander on out the front doors of the Capitol Building. He stood at the top of the stairs and watched the sleeping city. His shirt was sticking to him despite the March chill.

Washington in March was still cold. He pulled his coat tight and his hat low to keep the sweat that had beaded across his forehead from freezing.

Somebody once told him that the D.C. was built on a marsh, and that all the buildings were slowly sinking. Between the shadow committees, secret meetings, anonymous politicians, and government leg breakers, he wasn't surprised. Politics was for bottom feeders. They'd be right at home when this place disappeared under the mud.

Mickey groaned. He'd been beaten to a pulp in the name of training. Everything hurt.

“You okay there, Mick?” Keaton asked from right behind him. Any other day, Mickey would’ve shot out of his shoes, but he was too tired to jump. He held out his hand and he felt his flask get pressed into his palm.

“Yeah, I'm good,” Mick muttered.

“The Inspector General isn't going to be too happy with you after that,” Keaton advised.

“Yeah, well, let him take a look at the shit I pulled off in Louisiana, then he can bellyache,” Mick said. “Meanwhile, I'm going to debrief.”

Mick unscrewed the cap and took a hard pull. It burned in that cheap, greasy, reassuring way that cheap stuff always did. Klavin had insisted Mick refrain while they were within the rotunda, but all's fair out on the Hill. He watched the stars waver in the reflecting pool.

“Quijano Corbeau, huh?” Mick eventually said to the man lingering behind him.

“King of the Mississippi, Savior of the Atlantic,” Keaton replied.

“You think he can do it?”

“I don't think we're in a position to turn down any kind of help,” Keaton answered.

On that, Mick could agree. He'd seen the film coming in from spies inside Fortress Europa. Whatever it took to stop the Nazis was worth it. Even letting a thief and killer out into the wild. Mickey wondered what Corbeau would say when Mick darkened his pre-fab doorway. The man had taken a bullet for him during that whole Queen Anne dust up, after all.

Mick wondered what he'd say to Corbeau. Most folks that stuck their neck out for Mickey Malloy died for their trouble. He'd never been able to thank one in person.

“Let's go,” he grumbled.

“Where?” Keaton asked.

“There's got to be some kind of speakeasy, hole-in-the-wall around here somewhere,” Mick answered. He took the stone stairs one at a time, each step shooting pain through his freshly-beaten body. He told Keaton over his shoulder: “If we're in the pirating business now, I'm switching to rum.”

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Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.