On the deck, Captain Petra gazed into the distance with a troubled, gloomy expression, seemingly lost in thought.
After twenty years of scraping by at sea, he had never been this nervous. Even when facing pirate raids, Petra had not been as tense as he was now.
There was no helping it—he had taken on a job he never should have accepted.
In truth, Petra knew this job carried risks. Sailing at night was extremely dangerous these days; under normal circumstances, no one would demand to leave port overnight.
But there were always exceptions. For the sake of Pound Sterling, Petra did not mind taking a risk.
As far as he was concerned, it was nothing more than smuggling a few people out. Petra had done this sort of thing many times.
Usually, though, people were smuggled into Britain from outside. Smuggling people out was a far rarer occurrence.
To Petra, those were all minor details. As long as the money was sufficient, everything was negotiable.
Everything had gone smoothly at first. It was only after these special passengers boarded that Petra realized something was wrong.
Having spent so many years at sea, Petra had seen much of the world. No matter how Vittorio Emanuele III disguised himself, the air about him could not deceive anyone.
Drawing on his years of experience, Petra saw at once that these people were far from ordinary. They were undoubtedly important figures.
The problem was that the Fulda was merely an ordinary cargo ship, with no comfort to speak of.
Unless it was a time of crisis, no important figure, however down on his luck, would choose such an obviously undignified means of travel.
No one wanted to take this kind of job, because it meant trouble as vast as the heavens. Before Captain