Depth Charge

by Jason Heaton

  Sir John Havelock nodded from his chair halfway down the table and relit his pipe. Though he was overseeing the test phase of the Tube Alloys project, he had not been a member of the MAUD Committee as long as the others; he’d been brought in only when the prototype device was nearly completed. Havelock’s reputation as a physicist and test engineer had preceded him, and he commanded respect from the men around the table.

  The possible loss of their only prototype was a devastating blow to the project, and Havelock took it personally. With Vampire and her unique cargo lying wrecked on the seafloor, it would be months before they could attempt another test. That is, unless they could salvage the device before its metal casing and complex wiring were damaged by extended exposure to seawater.

  The MAUD Committee, reputed to have been named for physicist Niels Bohr’s housekeeper, had been formed in 1940 by George Paget Thomson at the government’s request. It was responsible for overseeing “Tube Alloys,” Britain’s secret project to develop an atomic weapon. England was at the forefront of atomic research, with the discoveries of both the electron and neutron at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. It was also there that the first successful nuclear fission was carried out. When British intelligence found out that the Germans were working on an atomic weapon in March of 1940, Tube Alloys was quickly made top priority.

  Development of an actual bomb had been painfully slow, with the work spread out across four universities and enriched uranium sourced in Canada. Finally, in early 1942, a prototype was ready for testing. That’s where Havelock came in, based on his work at Cambridge and his experience pioneering weapons test protocols between the wars. It was his meticulous refinement of wind tunnel development that earned him a visit at Cambridge from Paget Thomson.

  But an atomic weapon was something entirely different. Testing had to be not only safe, but also observable and discreet. Havelock’s solution had been to propose a test detonation in a remote atoll, where the weapon’s effects could be viewed from ships anchored at a distance and there would be little chance of discovery by the Germans. Thomson took it up with the Ministry of Defence, who found a reluctant but ultimately willing partner in the Royal Australian Navy. The site would be the uninhabited Monte Bello island chain 120 miles north of the western Australian coast.

  The prototype bomb had been loaded onto the Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Vampire in Gibraltar under cover of night and sailed, well escorted, around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the U-boat infested Mediterranean. The stopover in Ceylon was supposed to be a routine refueling. Unfortunately, it had coincided with the Japanese surprise attack on Trincomalee.

  HMS Hermes, the second ship sunk along with the Vampire, was the world’s first purpose-built aircraft carrier, built in 1918 and would have been scrapped if not for the badly stretched Eastern fleet that made use of her flight deck to launch Fairey Swordfish biplanes. Both ships were fleeing Trincomalee harbor ahead of the Japanese attack, but were spotted and quickly pounced upon by a squadron of Mitsubishi A6M Zeros. Hermes took over 40 direct hits and went into a derelict circular limp before succumbing to her wounds and nosing beneath the waves, taking 309 souls with her. Vampire went down mercifully sooner, but with only nine crew aboard. The hospital ship, Vita, picked up survivors, while some managed to swim the eight miles to shore, where they were rescued by surprised villagers.

  The Americans, who had suffered their own surprise attack only months earlier at Pearl Harbor, were now in the war and pressuring the British government to collaborate on an atomic “deterrent.” Havelock was vehemently against the idea of sharing secrets with the Americans. He was glad they had joined the war effort, but begrudged them for taking so long while England bore the brunt of the Axis Powers’ fury. He wanted Tube Alloys to remain a purely British endeavor. Call it national pride, call it official secrets—he knew once the Americans got hold of their research, Britain would be reduced to a supporting role. And with the sinking of the Vampire, this looked all the more inevitable.

  Commander Colter stood and broke the silence in the room, his accent crisp, his tone clipped and perfunctory. “According to the last known position of Vampire and our own hydrographic charts, she lies in 50 to 60 fathoms.” Murmurs around the table as the committee members shook their heads and looked at each other. Colter continued.

  “As you surmise, gentlemen, yes, this is deep,” he said. “More than twice as deep as the Laurentic, with which I am sure you’re all familiar.” There were nods around the table as he conjured the name of the famous wreck salvaged off the coast of Ireland for its government gold after the Great War. “And the southeast monsoon is still blowing in Ceylon, which will make things a bit more… sporty.” Havelock thought he made this sound like an afternoon of shooting clay pigeons. “But our diving unit has the latest in underwater technology, and we have brave men who we feel can carry out this operation.”

  “Besides the obvious dangers of the diving,” Havelock asked, “how will you be able to carry out a mission in those seas, with the Japanese Navy about?” He liked Colter’s confidence but worried about yet another attack. “What if we manage to bring the bomb up, only to have it captured or destroyed by the Japanese?”

  “It’s a risk we’re prepared to take,” Colter said, as if he’d rehearsed the line, or maybe said it a dozen times in his career. “With Hermes sunk and Trincomalee’s capabilities diminished, we’ve had to reroute two cruisers from the Eastern Fleet. The Australians are sending another destroyer. We assume we can load the cargo onto that ship for further transport to your test location.”

  Havelock felt better knowing there would be additional naval support. He nodded and sat back in his chair.

  “We should have our diving team in place within the week.” Colter said, and sat.

  “Excellent, Commander,” Paget Thomson chimed in. “We wish your men the greatest of luck.” He looked around the table. “I suggest we reconvene next week when we’ve news of the operation’s success.” He gave a thin smile to Colter, who didn’t return it but nodded and stood up crisply.

  The committee adjourned, and a few of the men lingered, pouring more sherry, as if toasting what they were convinced would be a success. John Havelock wasn’t so sure. He lingered at the window, looking down at the rain-soaked courtyard, where Commander Colter was climbing into an Austin saloon with Royal Navy markings. As he shut the door, the navy man glanced up, as if sensing Havelock’s gaze on him. He nodded to him as the car drove off, joining the evening Mayfair traffic.

  “Godspeed,” Havelock whispered, and turned to go. He had a train to catch back to Cambridge.

  Invertebrates and a Crow’s Foot

  Galle, Sri Lanka. Present day.

  Julian Tusk, “Tusker” to his friends, couldn’t decide which was worse: the acrid stench of the harbor or the detritus-strewn muddy sea floor below it. At least it was cooler underwater. Slightly. He still wore a full-length two-millimeter wetsuit as some protection from whatever permeated this rainbow-sheened soup polluted with diesel, garbage, and a city’s effluence.

  There were few fish—living ones, at least. The silty sea bed was littered with the bones of discarded bycatch and cleaned carcasses from the fishermen above, who tossed what wasn’t wanted over the side after their night of hauling in nets offshore. Various invertebrates occasionally scuttled across his limited field of view. He couldn’t name them. Tusker was an archaeologist, not a biologist, and he was braving this toxic morass not for the wildlife but rather to identify a nameless pile of lumber unearthed in yet another of the government’s dredging projects.

  The city of Galle lies on the strategic southwestern tip of Sri Lanka. This location made it prized by the country’s European occupiers. First the Portuguese came, building a fort on a cliff high above the sea, with sweeping views from its ramparts across the Indian Ocean. Then the Dutch swept in and ruled for over a century. Finally the British added what was then called Ceylon as a coda to their East India empire. They all made use
of the fort and today within its walls is a bustling town bearing the remnants of all three of its former occupiers, in varying states of charming decay: buildings with Mediterranean tiled roofs line dusty streets with Dutch names and distinctly English hotels. Galle Fort is peopled with descendants of all three occupiers, living side by side with local Sinhalese fishermen and Muslim shop owners.

  Over its long history, Galle Harbor would have seen any number of its former occupiers’ ships that called on the nearby fort. As he peered through the swirling cloud of silt, Tusker wondered, was this half-buried wooden spine a Portuguese barquentine? A Dutch frigate perhaps? Or just a lowly fishing boat?

  Tusker’s six-month stint in Sri Lanka as a visiting professor of marine archaeology meant investigating the glamorous as well as the decidedly less so. A sample of the wood poking up through the thick clay sea bed from this nameless vessel, sent to the lab in Colombo, could help pin down its age and possibly its origin. But something more substantial—a piece of china, a windlass, an anchor—would be more conclusive.

  Tusker looked up from his tedious excavating. Through the haze he made out the silhouette of Upali, swimming just above the sea floor ten yards away, jabbing the sand with a long rod. Tusker nodded to him and Upali returned the gesture with a pinkie and thumb “shaka” hand signal. It was typically upbeat for Upali, who made even the most mundane work seem fun.

  Upali Karuna worked for the Sri Lankan Ministry of Culture, History, and Archaeology, or “MOCHA.” They’d gone to school together at Michigan Tech, just about as antipodal as you could get from the perpetually sweaty hug that was Sri Lanka. It was Upali who’d invited Tusker to Sri Lanka for a visiting fellowship, and he who had given him his nickname, a play on his last name, but also a reference to the elephants of Upali’s homeland that grew big ivory. Julian latched onto it after a lifetime of hating the first name his parents had cursed him with.

  After graduating, Upali had gone on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Miami and then returned to his native Sri Lanka to teach and dive, before finally settling into a director’s job with MOCHA. He liked to joke that he’d invited Tusker to Sri Lanka this year as “payback” for the long winters in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the frigid dives they’d done in the Great Lakes. “I’ll keep your drysuit for you,” Tusker had told him when he left. “You know you’re going to miss it.” That was over a decade ago and Upali had still never returned. Meanwhile, Tusker stayed on, becoming faculty at Michigan Tech, teaching underwater archaeology there, and using the plentiful shipwrecks of the Great Lakes as his classroom. As he liked to tell Upali, “It's unsalted and there are no sharks.”

  Tusker turned back to the task at hand. Two months of surveying and digging had exposed a good deal of the wooden structure, but there was much to be done and work would continue long after he returned to the States. He peered at his wristwatch, a huge, old Aquastar Benthos. It was a gift from his father, who’d worn it during his stint as a support diver on the U.S. Navy’s Tektite project in the early ‘70s. Its timing ring was faded and its case had a dent, but Tusker had faithfully kept it serviced since his father’s death and it never left his wrist. He never wore a modern dive computer unless he really needed its additional functionality.

  The watch’s bright orange hand showed that 45 minutes had passed since their last tank swap. When he finished with this one, they’d break for lunch. Then Ian Walsh, the salty expat Brit, would swap places with Upali underwater.

  Twenty minutes later, Tusker’s tank was down to 200 psi. Time for lunch. He banged on his tank to get Upali’s attention and gave the thumbs up “ascend” signal. Upali signaled back with an “OK” and started to ascend. Tusker slowly lifted off the sea bed, following Upali to the surface.

  “‘Bout time,” said Ian, who was sweating profusely under his broad-brimmed hat as he leaned over the gunwale of the rickety skiff. “I’m starving.”

  Raj, the fisherman whose boat they’d rented for three months and who was helping them during this project, greeted Upali on the opposite side of the boat with a barrage of Sinhala and a hearty laugh.

  “Got the kettle on?” Tusker smiled, handed his weight belt, tank and harness up to Ian, and heaved himself into the boat. He stripped off the upper part of his sopping wetsuit, tying the empty arms around his waist. Months in the tropics had tanned his torso a deep shade of brown, except for a long scar across his left shoulder that stood out as a slash of white. He ran a hand through his wet, sun-bleached hair, which he hadn’t cut since arriving the previous autumn. Without the care of a local barber, it had grown out, saltwater and sun stiffening it to the consistency of dry grass.

  In the harbor the last of the fishing fleet was tying up, a mix of rickety wooden vessels with small outboard motors, ugly fiberglass skiffs like the one they were on, and a few traditional oruwa catamarans. The air reeked of rotting fish and diesel exhaust. Tusker had a sudden urge to be back home. It would be spring there, woodsmoke on the wind, the smell of damp soil, still some snow in the shadows. Heading back soon enough, he thought and shook off the daydream.

  “Anything promising down there today?” Ian asked once they’d settled in the skiff.

  “No luck today, it seems,” Upali said. “Not exactly the way I wanted to finish out the week before I head over to Batticaloa.”

  “You sure chose a fine time to abandon us here,” Tusker jabbed him, shaking his head. Upali laughed.

  “Yeah, another posh holiday disguised as official business,” Ian chimed in. “What is it this time? Interviewing female interns poolside?”

  “All right, all right, guys,” Upali shook his head. “It might be another goose chase, but a fisherman reported snagging his lines on something deep offshore. HQ figured it’d be worth looking into, given all the lost war wrecks over there. I’m going to make a search grid and run some sonar scans.”

  “A likely story,” Tusker replied. “You get the glamorous gigs while Ian and I are left here to dig in the mud.” He grinned at his friend and winked behind his sunglasses. “Batticaloa,” Tusker stumbled on the town’s name, “That’s a fair drive to get there, yeah?”

  “From here it’ll be a good six hours cross-country. The funny thing is, it’s only about 350 kilometers. In the US, that’d take you two, maybe two and a half hours? But here, it’s all narrow roads and lots of small towns.”

  “Oh, I’m well familiar now,” Tusker said. “I certainly will not miss the traffic here when I go back home. Where are you staying over there?”

  “For the east coast work, MOCHA partners with a dive resort in Batti called the Deep Blue. They cater to the tech diving crowd, these macho foreigners who want to tick the Hermes off their bucket list.” Upali said, referring to the wreck of the British aircraft carrier, sunk by a Japanese aerial attack during World War II. “If I get some free time, I might do a dive or two. I need to keep my proficiency up, you know.” He grinned.

  “Ah, the truth comes out,” Ian replied as he fished their lunch packets out of a sun faded cooler. “A diving holiday!”

  Raj’s mobile phone interrupted the banter, ringing shrilly. He wiggled his head side to side in apology and fished it out of his shirt pocket. He spoke in animated Sinhala for less than a minute, then put the phone away and said something to Upali.

  “That was a call from the guy who’s fixing the pump,” Upali translated. The tired dredging pump they’d been using to excavate sea bed had sputtered to a halt two days earlier. It required constant fiddling to keep running, but it did make their work a lot easier. They’d finally left it with a motorcycle mechanic in Galle to tinker with. “Sounds like it might be ready this afternoon.”

  Tusker gave an exaggerated double “thumbs up” gesture. “Well, that’s some good news. Ian, if you want to go into town and pick it up, we can keep at it since we’re already suited up.” Tusker gestured to Upali and then at the muddy harbor. He took a pull on an insulated flask that had lost its battle with the tropical sun and got a mouthf
ul of lukewarm water that tasted faintly of iodine.

  “Right-o, I’m sure it just took a little gaffer tape and a whack with a big spanner,” Ian replied in his sharp Geordie accent. “I’ll go pick it up in the van and then start my weekend early.” He grinned.

  “Got a big date, Ian?” Upali asked. “Still pursuing that waitress at The Lighthouse?”

  “I’m waiting for you to teach me some more Sinhala so I can impress her!” Ian shot back.

  “I’m not sure what would confuse her more, your Newcastle accent or your attempted Sinhala!”

  Tusker laughed out loud. “Seriously, Ian. People say I sound like the characters in that show, Fargo, but the Midwestern U.S. has got nothing on the north of England when it comes to accents. It’s taken me six months to finally understand a word you’re saying.”