On the Argentinian cargo ship Orpheila four individuals are plotting a hijack. They are Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter; and Doctor Jackal, timid physician with his less than timid friend Mister Hades.

Cargo Ship Orpheila, Eastern Mediterranean Sea, August 1942

How about a leopard in the engine room?

Sven Hyse smiles a very feline smile and looks around the small cabin aboard the cargo ship Orpheila at his colleagues. Staring back at him with a mixture of surprise and amazement are his co-conspirators Madeleine Forsyth, Doctor Henry Jackal and Mimi Dubois.

Twenty four hours earlier.

Tobruk, Libya, August 1942

With the help of Madeline I disguise myself as a local and dress in the clothes that Ahmir provided, including a hijab which I pull across to partially conceal my face, and head out towards the docks from the safe house. I wander along looking into the hostelries, it is lunchtime and I am hoping to find a likely target. After a few minutes I spot a couple of foreign sailors finishing their meal and a drink at the bar of one of the eateries.

I wait for them to leave and make sure that I stumble into them. Having been knocked to the floor, I hold my hand out to be assisted back to my feet. One of the sailors, an Italian based on his profuse apologies, takes my hand and helps me up. As I am holding his hand I mentally reach out and ‘borrow’ his ability as a sailor. I then slip away into the afternoon crowd.

We spend the rest of the day resting in the safe house and checking all of our equipment. I make sure that the blade of my knife is keen and strip down and clean my pistol, the others do the same and the evening passes quietly. There is an air of tension, that normal feeling as we all gear up towards the start of a mission. An hour before dawn, dressed in our German clothes but with local garb over the top, we slip out of the safe house and head to wear we left the kubelwagen. As we near where we parked we step into a dark alley and remove our local disguises and step back out onto the street as Captain Orleff and his staff.

Sven, or rather Lieutenant Schlin, loads all of out luggage into the vehicle and then speeds towards the docks. Just before oh six hundred hours the kubelwagen screeches along the dock and comes to a halt next to the loan gangplank onto the Orpheila. Captain Orleff and his secretary, Miss Furhmann, walk up the gangplank and present their papers to the officer stood there. While we are standing there, a shadow detaches itself from the kubelwagen and slides up the underside of the gangplank and onto the side of the ship, it then begins to slide aft.

The Argentinian officer quickly looks at our papers and then looks up at the bridge and shrugs. A few minutes later, the captain meets us on deck. He reads through the travel orders that Captain Orleff handed over, he then looks up and in broken German says;

This is very irregular, I was not aware of any requests for passage, but your papers seem in order.

Captain Orleff replies;

These are last minute orders. The Reich has authorised a healthy payment as recompense for your inconvenience.

The ship’s captain smiles and states that he believes that he can accommodate us. He asks if it is all three of us. And Captain Orleff tells him that it will only be himself and his secretary, he also insists on two cabins. Captain Orleff orders Lieutenant Schlin to bring the luggage aboard and then we are shown to the ship’s saloon.

Once Schlin has brought all of the luggage on board, he snaps off a perfect salute to Captain Orleff and then leaves the ship. Lending great credence to our cover story. One of the ship’s crew serves us coffee in the saloon and moments later a shudder runs through the deck as the ship sets sail from Tobruk harbour.

Eventually we are shown to two cabins on the starboard side of the main deck, and the ship’s crew deliver our luggage. I stand in the doorway of Captain Orleff’s cabin, holding the door firmly open, for several minutes and while I am there the shadow of a woman passes across the deck and through the open door. At almost exactly the same time a large seagull, that had hastily flown from the mainland, alights atop one of the ship’s masts. All of the team are aboard.

I step into Captain Orleff’s cabin and close the blinds. We wait inside for a couple of hours and then, leaving Madeline in the cabin, I head for the ship’s galley and Captain Orleff takes a stroll around the deck talking loudly in German at the Argentinian sailors. None of them seem to understand him, and they politely point at the bridge.

I wander into the galley and find one of the crew preparing a basic breakfast, I ask if I can assist and he happily accepts. The rest of the crew are very pleasantly surprised when at oh eight thirty hours their breakfast is served to them by the beautiful German secretary. As I move about the tables I engage the crew in polite conversation, which they are very happy to indulge me in. I touch hands with several of the crew, but in particular, I hold the chief engineers hand for several seconds. During that time I ‘borrow’ his skill with the ship’s engines.

Henry/Captain Orleff has breakfast with the ship’s captain, during which he asks if he can have a tour of the Orpheila. The Captain is only too happy to show us around. We finally get to see below decks at the stern of the ship which houses the rest of the crew’s quarters and the engine room. The morning passes uneventfully, with Captain Orleff dictating numerous letters to me in the saloon.

After lunch we retire to Captain Orleff’s cabin, just before I close the door a seagull hops through it. We all settle down to work out how we are going to capture the ship with as little resistance as possible. Henry believes that the best time for us to change the ship’s course will be sometime between midnight and oh four hundred hours. If we want to do it gently, without anyone becoming aware, it will be better to do it just after midnight.

We all agree that we need to capture the bridge, engine room and the radio room. And we also agree the we will do it not long after the shift change at midnight. So oh oh thirty hours. Henry suggests that we drug some coffee, and that I can deliver it and encourage them to drink it. It is at that point that Sven surprises us all by suggesting that the best way to take control of the engine room is for him to enter it as a leopard.

The plan is then to round up the crew and, with the exception of one of the engineers, force them into the lifeboats and tow them behind the ship. With the outline of a plan agreed we go back to putting on a show of normal routine.

At approximately sixteen hundred hours we hear the sound of an airplane. From the deck it is obvious in the clear blue sky of the Mediterranean that there is a twin engined German plane flying over the ship. It banks and passes over us twice more before continuing onwards. As it was passing, Captain Orleff just happened to be stood outside the radio room and managed to overhear one of the sailors identifying the ship and it’s route in German.