The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 11

In the railway station, their first task was to find the Bureau de Change. It was not difficult, there was an information point with a plan of the station, and the Bureau de Change was clearly marked. They studied the plan, oriented themselves, and headed off through the crowds to the little office where they could change their money. Ricky handed a couple of banknotes to Chris, who put the same amount of his own with it, and queued behind two other people. When it was his turn, he just handed the money across the counter and asked for it to be changed to the local currency.

While Ricky waited for Chris's transaction to be completed – apparently it involved his passport, Ricky had no idea why – he took the opportunity to do a little people-watching. Strange, he thought, how railway stations attract the eccentrics and misfits. Not just in England. Quite a few of the men were wearing Lederhosen, leather shorts with decorative braces. There were a number of flamboyant handlebar moustaches. A woman a in a floor length skirt which didn't quite hide her grubby bare feet was taking flowers from a bunch in a paper wrapping and threading them through her long unkempt hair. Ricky loved to see people living their own lives, unaffected by what other people thought of them. Good for you, he thought, watching her happily decorating herself with sweet peas.

Chris joined him with a fistful of Deutschmarkes and they wandered over to the ticket office. This time Ricky queued and Chris got to watch the funny people.

When Ricky returned with two tickets to Bremerhaven, he found Chris deep in thought.

“Penny for them?” he asked.

“Ricky, do you still have your list of emergency telephone numbers? The one Dad gave each of us? Only mine's in my bag back at the airport.”

Ricky pulled the sheet from his trousers back pocket. A little crumpled, having been sat upon, but otherwise undamaged.

“Thanks. I think before we get on the train we should make a phone call, don't you? Let your parents know that we didn't catch the plane and why? And let the authorities know we saw Kamille?”

“Who should we phone?”

“Best to make only one phone call, I think. I don't know if I've got enough coins in the change from the tickets for more than one call. We could phone your Dad, but I think we should phone Mr Farquharson. He's the one who needs to know about Kamille. And he'll get a message to your parents and to mine too.”

So they phoned Lord Beaulieu and explained everything to him, and asked him to tell their parents what they were doing. Rather to their surprise, he didn't try to change their plan for them, he listened carefully and didn't comment.

The boys didn't think it was likely that there was any more danger to them from Kamille, so they were in relaxed mood as they found their train waiting at platform eleven. They climbed aboard and found seats in a fairly empty carriage, seats with a table to themselves. Chris took the window seat and sat wedged against the carriage window so that he could watch the landscape as they sped through it. His memory struggled, but he remembered that they'd calculated a speed of over one hundred and twenty miles per hour on the journey down to Munich, and he expected the same or a similar speed in the other direction.

Ricky sat next to Chris but almost as soon as the train pulled out of the station he was asleep and his head lolled against Chris, where it banged repeatedly against his friend's bony shoulder. Bowing to the inevitable, Chris shifted around so that Ricky's head could rest against his chest, and he brought his arm around to cradle the smaller boy, to ensure that he didn't slip off the chair. He settled to a long boring journey, and shortly fell asleep himself, his head in the wing of the high-backed chair.

The two boys woke some time later to find the train stationary. Out of the window they could see the name of the station at which the train was standing. BREMERHAVEN, said the sign.

“How long did we sleep?” asked Ricky, peeling his face off Chris's neck.

Chris found he ached all over, and twisted his head with difficulty to look out of the window. He saw the sign. He registered its significance. “Ricky! We've arrived! Get off me, get going! We're at Bremerhaven, get off the train before it sets off again!”

They clambered out from behind the table and scrabbled for the door of the carriage, throwing themselves through it and closing it behind them. Once on the platform, they took stock. “Actually, this is the end of the line. We didn't have to hurry.”

“Even so, the train isn't going to stay here forever, it'll move again at some point. No harm in making sure we aren't on it when it does.”

“Point taken. What now?”

“We find the docks. Can you remember the way?”

“No, and I don't think we can afford a taxi. Let's look for an information board, see if there's a map of the city, or maybe of the bus routes.”

They walked off down the platform, following all the other passengers towards the exit. They passed a number of bench seats, some occupied, some not, and paid no attention to any of them. Maybe they would have been wiser to pay more attention. As they passed, a newspaper, held open and well raised, hiding the head and upper torso of the reader, dipped slightly, revealing a pretty young woman with long dark hair flowing over her shoulders, loosely tied back, with a headscarf, off her face which had elfin features and piercing blue eyes. She was watching the two boys like a hawk, but when Ricky turned slightly to read a noticeboard she dropped one side of her newspaper, reached up and delicately slid the pair of oversized sunglasses from the top of her head down onto the bridge of her nose where it hid her eyes from view completely, but judging by the way she held her head and took up her newspaper again, it didn't prevent her from seeing adequately. She seemed still to be following the movements of the two boys closely. When they reached the exit from the platform and turned out of sight, she picked up her handbag from the seat beside her and followed at a brisk pace. The boys were blissfully unaware of her presence. Would they have recognised her if they'd noticed her? Who knows. It is remarkable what a long auburn wig can do.

Chris, being taller, was not so hampered by the crowds of people, all making their way purposefully in one direction or another. He could look over their heads and spotted the information point and they made their way through the crowds until they stood before it and concentrated on understanding it. There was a map showing the bus routes, and they found the number of the bus they would need to catch to get to the docks. Fortunately it would not involve a change of bus.

Outside the railway station, they stood at the right bus stop, having checked the metal signpost, and a bus arrived after a wait of only about ten minutes. They got on the bus, this time paying the fare because their foldable U-Bahn tickets only worked within the Munich area. Behind them the young woman who had watched them so intently climbed onto the bus, but now she was paying them no attention at all, apparently she didn't know them from Adam and had no interest in them. Or so it seemed. They boys still didn't notice her.

The bus took them around the town and eventually to the docks where they alighted. The suspension of the bus lowered when they were at the kerb so that passengers would not have too far to step up or down. It was the first time Ricky had seen such a thing. As they walked away he looked back at the bus, leaning lop-sided against the kerb. The last passenger to get off the bus was the woman from the railway station, who immediately turned away from them and walked briskly off in the opposite direction, until she had overtaken some other pedestrians, and then she slowed to their pace, hidden from the boys' view by other people.

Ricky continued to stand and stare, until the bus driver closed the doors with a hiss of pneumatic pressure. Then, pushing another button, he raised the bus back up to its functional height and moved off.

“Isn't that amazing?” Ricky commented as they walked away towards the dock area. They didn't look behind them again, or they might have seen the woman was now following them discreetly.

They found their way into the docks and looked for a ferry that would take them across the English Channel. But it soon became clear that there were no ferries. However there were a number of big ships and Ricky and Chris went from one to the next, asking people where the ships were headed. Two of them were going to England. The boys enquired about working their passage. The first ship, however, already had the captain's nephew on board, who according to the deck hand they were talking to would not be pulling his weight, and the captain would certainly not consider taking even more inexperienced crew members on board. The boys protested that they had crewed the Malcolm Miller but the man just smirked and remarked that this ship was nothing like the Malcolm Miller – which was not in doubt, really.

They tried again at the second ship they discovered bound for England and this time were invited on board to talk to the captain. It was a strange experience, the sheer size of the ship and the metal containers piled high on its decks and presumably below decks as well, dwarfing the people walking along the deck towards the cabins near the stern. Their guide took them into the deckhouse, along a narrow corridor and eventually knocked on a varnished wooden door, before opening it and announcing them. The boys walked into a comfortable room with a bed on one wall and armchairs and a table. The captian was a big man with an enormous black beard but a bald head. Ricky suppressed a giggle – it made him look as though his head was on upside down.

“What can I do for you boys?” Despite his fearsome beard he spoke kindly and the boys felt at ease with him.

“We need to get home to England. We wondered if you would be kind enough to take us. We would work our passage.”

“Well, now, if it was up to me the answer would be yes, I'm always one to take pity on waifs and strays. But I don't own this ship, you know. It belongs to a big shipping company. And the company has rules. More rules than you'd believe. And one of those rules is we don't take passengers. And nor do we talk on crew members who don't have the necessary qualifications, including experience working on international shipping. So I'm afraid the answer's no.”

Chris spoke up, telling him about their experience crewing the Malcolm Miller. But he interrupted him by shaking his head. “I tell you what, though, you'd be much better off asking around the smaller vessels. Here, let me show you.” And he led them back out on deck, and, leaning against the railing along the side of the ship, he pointed out across the dock at a series of smaller ships.

“Go ask over there. You're much more likely to get a ride home from them.” He peered across the water, making Ricky wonder if his eyesight was not very good. “Can you see that little ship, right in the middle of that group? Low in the water, black painted, with a very tall mast? That'll be Pieter van Kemp. I reckon if you tell him you've sailed the Malcolm Miller he'll take you across, even if he wasn't planning to go to England! Go talk to Pieter, that's your best bet!”

The boys thanked him and made their way back ashore. On the dockside they turned back and saw the captain waving to them from high above. They waved back and called “Thank you!”

In the shadow of a big wooden crate on the dockside waiting to be lifted onto a ship by crane, a small dark-haired woman watched that exchange and made the wrong assumption – that the boys had succeeded in getting a lift home on this ship, and were off, perhaps to get something to eat, before re-boarding their ship later. That error saved the boys' lives.