by David Wood
“If the boat did go down anywhere between here and here—” She ran her finger along the diagonal line. “—then your chances of finding it are pretty much nil. You’d be looking in anywhere from one to three miles of water. If it went down closer to the coast of South America, or maybe in the North Sea...” She waggled her hand to indicate the odds were only a little bit better. “Those would be the places to look, but you’d be looking for a needle that might not even be in the haystack.”
“And if it took a different route?” Professor asked.
She shrugged. “Might as well throw darts at the map, because I wouldn’t have a clue about where to tell you to start looking.”
“You said there were two U-boats that made it to Argentina, right?” said Bones. “What about the other one?”
Professor and Lia answered at the same time. “U-530.”
Alex grinned and typed in a new search entry. “Okay, the U-530, was a Type Nine B-forty boat—bigger than the Type Seven, which both the 977 and 398 were. Skippered by Oberleutnant zur See Otto Wermuth. Seven combat patrols, the last of which coincided with the end of the war. Wermuth refused the order to surrender and set out for Argentina, arriving on July 10.” She stopped her summary but her eyes continued to move back and forth as she read, and after a few seconds of this, her forehead creased in thought. “Interesting.”
“Why don’t you let us be the judge of that,” said Huntley, snarkily.
Unruffled, Alex elaborated. “Wermuth destroyed his log book so there’s no record of his journey. He also jettisoned the boat’s anti-aircraft gun.”
“Why would he do that?” Bones asked.
“Hard to say. Maybe to reduce ballast or free up room inside the vessel for additional food and fuel.”
“I mean the log book. Why destroy it?” He paused a beat before adding, “What did he have to hide?”
“That’s a good question. A lot of conspiracy nuts have speculated that he was carrying VIP passengers, whom he might have let off before surrendering to the Argentine navy at Mar Del Plata.”
“How do we know he didn’t?”
“Wermuth and his crew were all interrogated by naval investigators. They all told the same story. If they were all lying, there would have been inconsistencies. Little things, embellishments and so forth, but enough for a skilled investigator to pick up on.”
“Maybe they didn’t know what was going on,” suggested Professor. “Maybe the 530 was escorting another U-boat—the 398—and that was the secret he was covering up. The crew might have known what was going on.”
“There’s something else,” Alex went on. “About a week before Wermuth surrendered, a Brazilian cruiser—the Bahia—sank under mysterious circumstances. Thirty-odd survivors of a crew of about four hundred. According to them, the crew had been conducting an anti-aircraft live fire exercise when the ship exploded. It was assumed that they hit a mine, but when the 530 showed up in Argentina a week later, some of the Brazilian brass thought the Germans might have hit her with a torpedo.”
“Could they have?”
“The math doesn’t quite add up. The Bahia’s last reported position was zero-north, thirty- west. About six hundred miles from the Brazilian coast and about 3,000 miles from Mar Del Plata. There’s no way the U-boat could have traveled that far in six days.”
“But it could have been another U-boat. The 977. Or the 398.”
Alex inclined her head, ceding the point. “The official finding in the matter of the sinking of the Bahia is that it was an accident. In the course of the live-fire exercise, the AA-gunner inadvertently fired into the depth charges on the rear deck, triggering the explosion that broke the ship.”
Bones rolled his eyes. “And the Roswell crash was a weather balloon.”
“What if the Bahia encountered the 398 and they sank each other?” Professor mused.
“If,” Alex echoed. “It’s an unlikely if, but it would at least give you a place to start looking.”
“Zero-north, thirty-west,” Bones murmured. “Middle of nowhere.”
“Deep water, too,” Alex added. “Twelve to fourteen thousand feet.”
“Assuming that the U-boat went down in close proximity to the Bahia,” Professor interjected, “say, a ten-mile radius... That’s probably a generous estimate. Our search area would be relatively small. If we could get our hands on an Argo rig... Like what Bob Ballard used to find the Titanic... We could map the seafloor in a matter of days. If the U-398 is down there, we’d find it.”
“And if it’s not?” sneered Huntley.
“Then we’d be back to square one, but at least we’d know one place the 398 isn’t.”
Huntley shook his head disparagingly. “Sounds like a colossal waste of time. Not to mention taxpayer money.”
“If you think so,” retorted Bones, “then cut us loose. Believe it or not, the Navy actually has the resources to handle maritime search operations.”
That seemed to catch Huntley off guard. He eyed Bones warily as if sizing up a potential adversary. After a few seconds of this, he shrugged. “It’s not my decision. Let me make a phone call.”
Then, without further comment, he turned on his heel and strode from the room.
THIRTEEN
Trabzon, Turkey
The ferry pulled into the port of Trabzon, on the northern Turkish coast, about an hour before sunset, and quickly offloaded most of the passengers.
Most, but not all.
The three who remained aboard were not technically passengers at all, but stowaways. They had sneaked aboard the vessel in Sochi, blending in with the catering crew, pushing large carts full of food up the supply gangplank, and had managed to keep out of sight during the four-hour crossing of the Black sea. They lingered in hiding a while longer, waiting until the decks were nearly clear, and then, posing as janitors packing out bags of refuse, made their way down the gangplank and melted into the flow of pedestrian traffic.
Although they were in the country illegally, Turkey was a NATO ally, and as such, Maddock could easily have contacted the embassy in Ankara and obtained official approval for their presence, but doing so would have meant hours, or possibly even days, spent waiting for all the diplomatic hurdles to be cleared. It also would have meant exposing their mission to government officials who did not have a need to know, and who might very well inadvertently compromise them. He didn’t know how far Telesh’s reach extended, and didn’t want to find out the hard way.
They meandered through the city for several blocks, avoiding contact with locals and occasionally doubling back to make sure they weren’t being followed. Eventually, they came to a busy street bazaar, where Maddock risked approaching an English-speaking tourist who informed him that they were near the town square or Meydan. After making small talk for a few minutes, Maddock casually asked for recommendations—food, lodging, a bank. He was only interested in the latter.
After rejoining the others, Maddock found a pay phone and dialed the operator. Thankfully, the person on the other end of the line spoke enough English to make sense of his request, and in a matter of just a few seconds, he heard a ringing sound over the scratchy connection, and then a familiar if guarded voice came on the line.
“This is Maxwell.”
“Collect call from Mr. Hunter,” the operator explained, a little hesitantly. “International long distance. Will you accept the charges?”
Maddock felt a twinge of grief upon hearing the stranger utter the alias he had provided. He’d chosen it because it had been the unit callsign he’d used in Bosnia, and knew that Maxie would immediately recognize it, and the need for discretion, but hearing it aloud made him think of his father.
There was only the briefest hesitation as Commander Hartford Maxwell processed this information. “Of course.”
“Thank you.” There was a faint crackle of static as the operator disconnected from the call, and then the background noise disappeared. Maddock spoke quickly. “Uncle Maxie! You’ll never guess
where we are?”
There was a brief pause, which might have been transmission lag, and then Maxie replied. “I guess I won’t.”
“Turkey,” Maddock said. “A city called Trabzon. On the north coast.”
“How’s your vacation going? Your aunt and I were concerned when we didn’t hear from you after your flight.”
Maddock would have liked nothing more than to brief his superior on all that had happened to Leopov and himself, and he was burning with curiosity regarding the outcome of the mission to rescue Lia, but now was not the time for that conversation. “We’re doing great. I’m about to head out to pick up some souvenirs, but I’ll have to exchange some currency first. There’s a bank near the town square. I’ll probably go there.”
“Sounds like a plan. Pick me up something. And call again when you can.”
“Will do.” Maddock hung up without further comment and went back to where Leopov and Petrov were waiting. They continued idling in the bazaar for another fifteen minutes, setting aside a few items to purchase later—fresh clothes, food, and a cellular phone. Only then did Maddock circle back to the bank he had spotted earlier. Although it was past the end of the business day, he wasn’t at all surprised to find a man waiting by the door to meet him.
“You are Mr. Hunter?” the man said in halting English.
“I am. I believe you have something for me from Goliath.”
The man gave a satisfied nod upon hearing the prearranged codeword and admitted Maddock without delay. Five minutes later, he left with a fat roll of Turkish lira in his pocket.
He rejoined the others and, after paying for their various purchases, headed into the Meydan. While Leopov and Petrov voraciously tore into the repast they had purchased—none of them had eaten in well over twenty-four hours—Maddock used his newly acquired cellular phone to call Maxie.
“Took your sweet time,” grumbled the SEAL Team commander.
Maddock did not bother making excuses. “Did Bones and the others get out okay?”
“As far as I know, everything went according to plan. They reached Helsinki without any problems. Unfortunately, there was a change of management at the last minute. I haven’t heard a peep from him, which is strange. You know how he likes to talk.”
Although not encrypted, the wireless telephones were more secure than land lines, but there was always a chance that the call could be intercepted, particularly if Maddock was reading Maxie correctly. Change of management meant someone had co-opted their mission—almost certainly the CIA, but why had Bones gone radio silent?
Still, maybe it was for the best. “If you hear from him, let him know that we hit a few snags on our way out, but managed to slip away without too much trouble.” He paused a beat, then added, “Just like Luke and Leia escaping the Death Star.”
“O-kay,” Maxie replied, slowly, consternation audible in his tone. “I’ll pass that along. So what’s next on your itinerary?”
“We’re going to hop a bus to Ankara. We’ll need new travel docs so we can fly out of here.” He looked over at Petrov who seemed to be closely following the one-sided conversation. “There was one little wrinkle in our getaway. We’ve picked up a... a stray.” He gave a quick if vaguely worded summary of their capture and escape.
“I see,” Maxie said when he was done. “How do you want to handle that?”
Petrov evidently grasped that he had become the subject of the conversation. “I cannot return to Russia. Telesh would kill me.”
“If we can get you to the embassy,” Leopov said, “you can request asylum. But there are no guarantees.”
Petrov frowned. “Asylum? I had not considered anything quite so formal.”
Maddock raised a hand to silence them, then spoke into the phone again. “We’ll keep him with us for now. We’ll need some docs for him as well.”
“That may be a little trickier. The new management might have a thing or two to say about it but I’ll do what I can from this end.”
“Understood. I’ll call again when we get to Ankara.”
As Maddock hung up, Petrov asked. “What about Lia? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” Maddock assured him. It was probably the truth.
Petrov wasn’t satisfied. “Where is she? Are we going to join her?”
“Not just yet. There’s something I want to check out first, and I think your expertise may come in handy.”
“My expertise? I am historian.”
“Exactly. The ruins of Troy, where Schliemann found Priam’s Treasure. They’re here, aren’t they? In Turkey?”
“Da. Is on the coast, near the Dardanelles.”
Maddock nodded. “Telesh wants Helen’s Charm. If we’re going to stop him, or get him off your back for good, we need to know what it is. Maybe we can get some answers in the place where it was discovered.”
Troy, Petrov explained, was not, in fact, one city, but nine different settlements, built one atop another over the course of nearly five millennia. It was the second of these—inhabited until about 2250 BCE when it was destroyed by fire—that Heinrich Schliemann identified with the besieged city described in the Iliad, and excavated, uncovering not only a portion of the city’s foundations, but also a collection of royal artifacts—many of them wrought of gold and silver. In the century-plus that followed, as the discipline of archaeology matured and the site was more thoroughly and scientifically explored, Schliemann’s determination was judged to be off by about a thousand years. If there had actually been a Trojan War—and there was no consensus on its historicity—then the city described in the Homerian epic would have been the seventh incarnation of the city, which existed between about 1300-1250 BCE.
Regardless of whether or not the events of the Iliad had any basis in history, the site—officially known as the Hisarlik archaeological complex—and the nearby city of Çanakkale benefited tremendously from the legendary association. The site was more a theme park, replete with an enormous mock-up of the Trojan Horse and battle re-enactments by performers in bronze armor.
“So what are you hoping to find here?” Leopov asked as the battle recreation concluded to a smattering of applause.
Maddock shook his head uncertainly. “I’m not sure. Context, maybe?”
“How is that going?”
He managed a smile. “You know, despite all the touristy stuff, I’m still in awe of what this place represents. Five thousand years of history. Even if the Iliad is fiction, the people who inspired that story lived and fought and died here.” He paused a beat, then added almost wistfully. “I think my dad would have really loved to see this.” He shook his head again and turned to Petrov. “Let’s see if we can find someone to tell us more about the site.”
A helpful tour guide directed them to one of the resident archaeologists who introduced himself as Dr. Aslan.
“You want to know about Schliemann?” Aslan seemed a little irritated by the topic, but managed a diplomatic smile. “A controversial figure. His methods were amateurish at best. He was a treasure hunter, a looter. More interested in proving that he had found the city of Homeric legend than in advancing the cause of real knowledge.” He sighed. “And yet... Without him, would any of this exist? Who can say?”
“Where did he find Priam’s Treasure?” Maddock asked.
Aslan produced a map of the site which delineated each of the levels of the city in different colors, and pointed to a rectangular structure near the center of the illustration. “Here. It was in May of 1873. Schliemann wrote that he had been excavating the wall of what he believed to be the palace of King Priam, when he discovered a large copper artifact—probably a shield or cauldron. Realizing that such a find would have great value, and not trusting his own workmen, he dismissed the laborers for their afternoon meal, and continued the work on his own, removing the items in secret in order to smuggle them out of the country.”
“How did he manage that?”
“He claimed that his wife hid them under her shawl.”
Aslan gave her a knowing smile. “The story is almost certainly a fabrication. In fact, Schliemann himself later admitted he had made it up. His wife, Sophie, was not even present for the discovery. At the time, she was in Athens, attending her father’s funeral. It is more likely that he had help from someone else. When Sophie Schliemann was photographed wearing the Jewels of Helen in Athens the following year, Amin Efendi, the official who had been tasked with monitoring Schliemann’s progress, was sent to prison, whether for simple incompetence or for taking a bribe to look the other way, who knows?”
“And the treasure ended up in Berlin?”
“Most of it. Schliemann sold a few items to raise funds, and later returned some of the gold to the Sultan in exchange for permission to return to the country for further archaeological investigations. Those pieces are on display at Topkapi Palace.”
“They let him come back?”
“Perhaps they believed he would eventually return the rest of the treasure. He had always claimed that his reason for removing it was to protect it from being stolen by corrupt government officials.
“You must understand, it was a very uncertain time in my country’s history,” Aslan went on, almost apologetically. “The Ottoman Empire, which had endured for nearly 700 years, was teetering on the edge of economic collapse. Perhaps the concession to Schliemann was an overture to the German government. The Sultan knew he would need to make alliances with European powers in order to hold the Empire together and resist Russian aggression.”
“A mistake as it turns out,” opined Petrov. “The alliance with the Central Powers put them on the wrong side of World War I. Things did not go so well for Ottoman Empire after that.”
“Politics do not interest me,” Aslan retorted with a shrug that did not entirely hide his displeasure. “My area of interest is the ancient world.”
“Getting back to Priam’s Treasure,” Maddock prompted. “You mentioned ‘the Jewels of Helen.’ I assume that Schliemann came up with the name?”
