Deep Sea One (8 page)

Liam, Tommy and Darwin were present at their posts to facilitate the launch of the new submersible that Purdue had purchased, a better model than the previous one, which could take three crew members to depths of more than 800 meters. The weather was freezing, more furious than the day before and above the platform the vast sky stretched in frightening twists of dark and light grey clouds, dancing under the guide of the gales.

"What's her name? Tea-and-butt, the goddess, is pissed again," Darwin nudged Liam.

"Tiamat, you arse," Liam snorted, with a shake of his head as the two engineers and mechanic prepared the tether to the minisub.

"I cannot believe Purdue and his pals are going under in this weather," Tommy sighed as he tested the camera function.

"Then again, down there it matters not the weather up here. They'll be fine," Liam said.

"Well, it doesn't make it easier to retrieve from up here and the undercurrents can get hairy down there," Darwin told them, as the three explorers came down to the minisub's dock. In the shelter of the surface dock the water lapped against the acrylic hull of the C-Explorer, blissfully exempt of the storm's fury.

"They are always so pretty when they are virgins," Liam said as he stood back, arms folded to admire the brand new machine's immaculate sheen.

"Yes! Yes, indeed, Mr. McGinty! And who are we to keep a hot lady waiting!" Purdue bellowed in high spirits, from the landing of the staircase he had just descended with his guests. The only boat more attractive to his affections than his new C-Explorer was the one laying in wait down on the seabed, begging to be explored like a new lover. After a brief introduction to the engineers and the two new explorers it was time to go.

Nina stood frozen, her eyes wide at the sight of the minisub.

"Nina?" Purdue urged.

"I can't," she said softly, planting herself against the banister of the steel stairs.

"Why not? It has a panoramic view. You would think you are outside, diving with the marine life alongside," Purdue defended cheerfully. "It isn't as if you have to squeeze into the tiny black space of the hatch or anything," he added. Sam nudged him quietly and whispered, "I don't think you are helping, Mr. Purdue."

"I am going to have to be cloistered in there though, view or no view. And the dive into the German U-boat . . ." her voice quivered. It was the terrifying thrust into the ice bound U-boat from Antarctica all over again, only submerged underwater! She winced.

"Nina, you know it's not the same as that time, right? This is different. As soon as we take the short trip down we will depart the little bug and be out in the open water. You don't have to go into the minisub's hatch if you don't want to, okay? Just hold on to my tether until I come back out," Sam cajoled as quickly and gently as he could. He knew one wrong word, one forceful tone and she would clamp up.

After looking in Sam's dark eyes for a few seconds Nina gathered the courage to get it done. There was, after all, a very good reason to set aside her personal fears. Whatever they discovered down there might very well bring her the Holy Grail of her career. Who knows, it might even be the actual Holy Grail, she thought.

They settled snugly into the surprisingly comfortable underwater vehicle and before long they were bobbing on the water, waiting to dive.

"Are you ready, kids?" Purdue called out excitedly, as always when he embarked on adventure. Nina looked overhead at the convex heavens and at once it dawned on her how small they really were in the palm of creation. As they sank below the surface Sam realized just how small they really were in the bowels of the great waters. Sound waves changed as they were swallowed by the thrashing grey waves and the three of them found themselves drifting downward like a falling leaf. All about them the world was infinite, fading from clarity into the murky substance before the distance became dark and menacing.

"We are so alone down here," Nina remarked, "so very alone."

The radio conversation between Purdue and his team above water vanished in the background as Sam looked to the depths, laying in striations of dark blue and purple. He imagined how deep it could go and tried to see through it, but there was no seabed yet. Then he looked at Nina, who was caught in wonderment. She was no stranger to traveling to strange places in her field of work, but by her fingers grazing the glass she touched in thought, he knew that this was a new and wondrous place for her and a sense of calm fell over Nina that Sam had never seen before.

☼

Chapter 11

Little by little their individual hearts began to beat faster, fraught with the anticipation of the sunken submarine. Purdue steered the cameras to locate his quarry and finally perked up slightly when he found it coming into view at 250 meters, safely secured within the sand bank.

"Look!" Purdue yelped, as the view of the massive war machine faded in slowly from the gloomy water to grace the screen. "There she is!"

Nina's heart raced now. As the minisub found the ground they marveled at the magnitude of the big submarine, corroded and eerie in its watery grave. Purdue had spent four days learning the ins and outs of his new submersible when he first took delivery of it. Expertly he handled the controls to settle them steadily on the ocean floor, checking the tethers and reporting to the boys on the platform.

The three explorers finished getting their dive gear ready, double checking that all was in order, before exiting the minisub to begin the adventure.

The water this deep was even more frigid, enveloping the streamlined submarine, which reminded Sam of a bullet for a hunting rifle. She was beautiful, old but sleek and smooth. In length she measured more than 76 meters and her deck guns were absent, as was most of other clutter that normal submarines sported, such as the forward hydroplane, snorkel, antenna and DF loop, which were retracted inside the super structure. The design of this boat differed substantially from previous models. Against the hull the rust gave way in places to reefs where marine creatures had made a home.

Sam pointed to the top and Purdue and Nina followed his direction. On top of the sub there were none of the usual components, such as a conning tower. Instead there were three small openings, enough for the deck officers, Sam reckoned. Purdue gestured that they get inside and Nina followed the two men, more interested in touching such a special relic of the Second World War, something she never thought she would experience. Her gloved hands caressed the side of the hull as she slid upward to enter the hatch and inside her suit, she was smiling.

Once inside, the three took a moment to compose themselves. It had been a tricky dive with the strong currents sweeping so deep. They quickly turned on their extra strong flashlights to navigate the enormous subsea casket, which last held living souls before its visitors were even born.

"It's so thin," Sam remarked through the headset that connected their communication. "It's unbelievable that it could withstand the pressure like this."

Purdue slapped the interior hull, "Steel aluminum alloy, my friend, toughest of her time."

"Her shape made her virtually undetectable," Nina said, as she cast her beam from one side of the floor to the other to check the space they were in.

"Come, let's see what she ate before she went to sleep," Purdue eagerly pressed and continued into the next section. The atmosphere inside the boat was terrifying and lonely. Her empty soundless and narrow corridors were deafeningly quiet and the only movement apart from their own came from specks flurrying in front of the light beams.

In the dark rooms, lit by their flashlights, the walls looked grey and somber, the embrace of the dead from a time of turmoil and terror. Not much was disturbed in the vacuum of the U-boat belly and Nina could not help but consider that the last sounds in here were the agonizing screams of German men, doomed to suffocate if they survived drowning or incineration. She walked slowly through the silence, imagining the fear and sadness that prevailed here from their final moments. Did they pray? Did they weep? Who did they think of as a last thought? Were they still here, trapped in the cold dank purgatory of their fate?

Sam stumbled over something at his feet and almost met the steel grid with a crash, but he corrected his balance and managed to scare the hell out of his colleagues with the sudden ruckus.

"What's wrong?" Purdue asked, shining his light in Sam's eyes and momentarily blinding him. Answering in incoherent blabber, Sam attempted not to swear and kicked the obstacle that felt like a soft bag with hardware inside it. But it was, in fact, as he realized when he illuminated it, remains of the late seaman G. Lindemann. He felt bad for his assault when he read the withered name badge and Nina joined him with a pat on the back.

"You showed him," she smiled, and walked off farther down the steel piping, which ran along the sides. "Air conditioning," she noted and checked the place for more remains, which were present occasionally along the short bridge.

"Look for anything historical or anything of value the vessel could have been carrying," Purdue said. Crossing over the entrance to the bunks, they did not find anything particularly odd apart from the impeccably made beds, still tidy even after half a century or so. It was creepy, thought Nina, that the bunks looked like they had never been slept in and she was reluctant to check under the pillows.

"Wow, I feel like such a messy slob now," Sam remarked, as he shone his light on one after the other creaseless bunks.

"You are a slob," Nina teased.

"You think?" he answered quickly, knowing that she was guessing correctly, "I'll have you know that my bed is always made."

"But not in the German way, I bet," Purdue chimed in from the far side, where he was looking through a locker. They sniggered in the dead silence of the submarine mausoleum.

"Come on, there has got to be something here," Purdue complained, "Don't you agree, Dr. Gould?"

"I actually do concur. From my research these Elektroboots all contained Nazi treasure. On the way to Japan, to Spain, even to Czechoslovakia, would you believe? We have to keep looking."

"Until we run out of oxygen?" Sam asked innocently, reminding them that time was imperative to survival down here. Nina gasped, "Yes, we have to hurry for now."

"For now?" Purdue exclaimed, "I would like this to be the one trip we need to find treasure. The next trip should be reserved for recovering it, you see?"

Setting aside their tourist sensibilities, the three continued on searching. Sam entered a small cabin marked "Kapitänleutnant" and found another meticulously made bed, however, the rest of the room was chaotic. A straight razor, several bullets and two small mirrors were strewn over the floor. There was no sign of any human remains, but there was a compass and stationary on the table. Rust had dropped from the bolts of the pipes moving through the wall and stained the table and toppled chair. Sam felt a sinister ambience in this cabin, although he would never admit to such nonsense. He moved toward the locker, which was slightly ajar with a black strip of shadow inside as he cast his light there. Something was hanging inside.

"Uniforms," Sam said, as Nina entered the room to pry.

"I'll check them. You check the bedside locker. That drawer looks impossible to wrench open," she suggested and he had to agree. It was firmly lodged in the cabinet from years of oxidation. Nina went to check if anything was hidden in the captain's uniform. She opened the door to find the uniform hanging in the cupboard, but the captain was still inside it and Nina belted out an unearthly scream at the terrible sight, compelling Sam to jump bolt erect and look for attackers with a stupid expression of fear on his face. Only when he realized she was just startled at something did he relax. He winced at the awful emaciated corpse that appeared to have committed suicide by hanging.

"What?" Purdue called from the other cabin.

"Just a dead captain, Mr. Purdue." Sam called back.

"Fuckin' hell, talk about being hung," Nina panted with her hand still firmly over her mouth while the other kept her heart from jumping out. "Gute nacht, mein herr," she clicked her heels and started closing the closet door to conceal the hideous thing, but she noticed that his left hand was locked over a brass handle fixed to the wall of the inside cupboard. Above the handle a swastika was drawn roughly in red. A symbol similar to an elongated version of the fleur-de-lis
ran vertically through it.

"Sam," she said in a low voice, "Sam."

Sam was still fighting with the rusty cabinet and he did not enjoy her insistence.

"Yeah?" he answered in an irritated yap.

"I have never seen this symbol before. Now, I might be overzealous to find something down here, but I think I just found something down here," she said, without taking her eyes off the drawing. Sam came to have a look.

"You know, when they talk about Nazi art being on U-boats, I'm not sure this is what they were referring to, dearest," he remarked expertly.

Nina slowly turned to give him a look. That look he always got when he resorted to childish mockery in the wrong company. Nina did think it was a little funny, though; but she would never let him know.

"That handle? Any thoughts?" she asked.

"You go for it," Sam suggested, "What if a spider jumps on my hand?"

"Sam," Nina said plainly, with a long blink of impatience.

"Okay, all right," he said. Reluctantly the journalist nudged the corpse aside lightly as not to dislodge him from the noose and invoke his Nazi wrath. Carefully Sam's hand approached the dead captain's hand.

"Euw, eeuuww, oh, God," he whined, as his hand folded over the papery claw of the skeleton. He tugged at the handle. Nothing. Again he jerked at it, but it only gave a bit, spewing rusty residue onto Sam.

"Almost there," Nina coaxed. He returned the look she gave him before and pulled with all his strength, hoping that he would not be releasing any unpleasant gasses or booby traps in the process.