“Good luck,” shouted Evie, to make herself heard through Pitt’s hood and face mask. She then busied herself shooting photos of Pitt as he sat on the edge of the ice before dropping off into the icy water. “You sure I can’t talk you into taking photos with a watertight camera down there?”
Pitt gave a brief shake of his encased head as his voice came over the speaker. “I won’t have time to play photographer.”
He gave a wave and rolled into the water, pushing off from the ice with his finned feet. He dove and leveled out at ten feet while he vented the air from his dry suit and waited to see if its heating element was compensating for the frigid drop in temperature. A cautious diver, in all his years of diving, Pitt had rarely encountered problems underwater. He constantly talked to himself, sharpening his mind to question and probe his surroundings, and monitoring his instrument gauges and body condition.
Beneath the ice pack, which was a little over three feet thick, he found a wildly different world. Staring upward, Pitt imagined the underside of the ice as looking like the surface of an unknown planet deep in the galaxy. Transfused by the light filtering through the ice, the flat white layer was transformed into an upside-down landscape of blue-green frozen mounds and valleys covered by rolling yellow clouds of algae that were fed on by an infinite army of krill. He paused to adjust the flow of hot water before looking down and seeing a vast green void that faded to black in the depths.
It beckoned, and he dove down to be embraced by it.
THE morbid scene slowly revealed itself as if a shadowy curtain had parted as Pitt descended to the bottom. No kelp or coral or brightly colored fish here. He glanced upward at the eerie glow drifting from the ice hole above to orient himself. Then he paused a moment to switch on his dive light and probe it into the wreckage while he equalized his ears.
The remains of the U-boat were broken and scattered. The center hull beneath the conning tower was terribly ruptured and mangled by the explosion from the missile. The tower itself had been blown off the hull and was lying on its side amid a field of debris. The stern appeared attached to the keel by only the propeller shafts. The bow section was twisted but resting upright in the silt. The soft bottom had embraced the wreckage, and Pitt was surprised to see nearly twenty percent of it already buried.
“I’ve reached the wreck,” he announced to Cox. “She’s badly broken. I’m going inside the remains.”
“Take great care,” Cox’s disembodied voice came back in Pitt’s earpiece. “Cut a hole in your suit from a sharp piece of metal and you’ll freeze before you reach the surface.”
“Now, there’s a cheery thought.”
Pitt did not attempt to enter the vessel immediately. He spent nearly ten minutes of precious bottom time swimming over the wreckage and examining the debris field. The warhead had been designed to destroy a much larger target and had left the submarine almost unrecognizable as a seagoing vessel. Pipes and valves and smashed steel plates from the hull lay as if thrown about by a giant hand. He swam over body parts, passing above the grisly remains as if he were a spirit floating over the horrendous aftermath of a terrorist bus bombing.
He kicked against the current and entered the crushed hull through the massive, torn opening below the mountings where the tower once stood. Two bodies were revealed under the dive light, wedged beneath the diving controls. Fighting the bile that rose in his throat, he searched them for identification, finding nothing of value, no wallets with credit cards or picture IDs sealed in Mylar. It seemed abnormal that members of the U-boat’s crew possessed no personal items.
“Eight minutes,” said Cox. “You have eight more minutes before you must ascend.”
“Understood.” The warnings usually came from Giordino, but Pitt was deeply grateful to the big bear of a seaman for his thoughtfulness. It saved him vital seconds when he didn’t have to perpetually stop and shine the light on the orange dial of his Doxa dive watch.
Moving deeper into the black of the hull, shining his light into the mass of tangled steel and pipes, he worked down a narrow passage and began examining the rooms leading off to the sides. All were empty. Ransacking the drawers and closets, he could find no documents of any kind.
He checked the air remaining in his tanks in preparation for his ascent and the required decompression stops. Then he swam into what had been the wardroom. It was badly crushed on one side of the pressure hull. The cupboard and chairs and tables attached to the deck were smashed and broken.
“Four minutes.”
“Four minutes,” Pitt repeated.
He moved on and found the captain’s quarters. With time running out, he frantically searched for letters or reports, even diaries. Nothing. Even the sub’s logbook was nonexistent. It was almost as if the wrecked sub and its dead crew were an illusion. He began to half expect it to fade and disappear.
“Two minutes.” The tone was sharp.
“On my way.”
Suddenly, without warning, Pitt felt a hand on his shoulder. He froze, and his slowly beating heart abruptly accelerated and pounded like a jackhammer. The contact was not exactly a tight grip; it was more like the hand was resting between his arm and neck. Beyond shock lies fear, the paralyzing, uncontrollable terror that can carry over into madness. It is a state characterized by a complete lack of comprehension and perception. Most men go totally numb, almost as if anesthetized, and are no longer capable of rational thought.
Most men, that is, except Pitt.
Despite his initial astonishment, his mind was unnaturally clear. He was too pragmatic and skeptical to believe in ghosts and goblins, and it didn’t seem possible for another diver to have appeared from nowhere. Fear and terror melted away like a falling quilt. The awareness of something unknown became an intellectual awareness. He stood like an ice carving. Then slowly, carefully, he transferred the dive light and briefcase to his left hand and removed the dive knife from its sheath with his right. Gripping the hilt in his thermal glove, he spun around and faced the menace.
The apparition before his eyes was a sight he would take with him to the grave.
21
A WOMAN, A BEAUTIFUL woman, or what had once been a beautiful woman, stared at him through wide, sightless, blue-gray eyes. The arm and hand that had tapped his shoulder were still outstretched, as if beckoning. She wore the standard Fourth Empire black jumpsuit, but its material was shredded, as though a giant cat had raked its claws across it. Tentacles of flesh strayed from the openings and wafted under the gentle current. A finely contoured breast was exposed by the torn cloth, and one arm below the elbow was missing. There were insignia badges of rank on the shoulder straps, but Pitt did not recognize their significance.
The face was strangely serene and bled white by the cold water. Her features were enhanced by a mass of blond hair that rose and floated behind her head like a halo. Her cheekbones were high and her nose slightly bobbed. Her lips were loosely open, as if she were about to speak. Her blue-gray eyes seemed to be staring directly into his opaline green eyes less than a foot away. He was in the act of pushing her away as if she were a demon from the underworld, when he thought better of it and realized what he must do.
He rapidly groped through her pockets. It came as no surprise when he came up empty of identification. Next he took a thin cable from a reel that was hooked to his weight belt and tied one end around the corpse’s booted foot. Then he ascended through the huge split in the U-boat’s hull and headed for the dim aura of light 160 feet above.
After his decompression stops, Pitt surfaced precisely in the center of the jagged hole in the ice and swam over to the edge where Cox and several members of the crew had gathered around. Evie Tan stood nearby, shooting pictures as Pitt and his bulky dive gear were pulled from the water onto the ice by several strong arms.
“Find what you were looking for?” asked Cox.
“Nothing we can take to the bank,” Pitt replied, after his mask was removed. He passed the line to Cox that led down into the
water.
“Dare I ask what’s on the other end?”
“I brought along a friend from the U-boat.”
Evie’s eyes stared at the obscure form rising from the depths. As it surfaced, the hair fanned out and the eyes seemed to be looking directly at the sun. “Oh Lord!” she gasped, her face turning as pale as the ice floe. “It’s a woman!” So shocked was Evie, she neglected to shoot photos of the strange woman before she was wrapped in a plastic sheet and loaded onto a sled.
Pitt was helped off with his air tanks and gazed at the sled with the body that was being dragged by crewmen toward the Polar Storm. “Unless I miss my guess, she was an officer.”
“A great pity,” said Cox sorrowfully. “She must have been a very attractive lady.”
“Even in death,” Evie said, sadly, “there was an undeniable sophistication about her. If I’m any judge of character, she was a woman of quality.”
“Maybe,” said Pitt, “but what was she doing on a submarine that should have been destroyed five decades ago? Hopefully, she’ll provide a piece of the puzzle if an identification can be made on her body.”
“I’m going to follow this story to its conclusion,” she said resolutely.
Pitt removed his dive fins and pulled on a pair of fur-lined boots. “You’d better check with the Navy and Admiral Sandecker. They may not want this affair leaked to the public just yet.”
Evie started to voice a protest, but Pitt was already walking in the tracks of the sled back to the ship.
PITT showered and shaved, soaking up the steam in the stall before relaxing with a small glass of Agavero Liqueur de Tequila from a bottle he’d purchased when he was on a dive trip to La Paz, Mexico. Only when he had collected his thoughts in proper order did he call Sandecker in Washington.
“A body, you say,” said Sandecker, after listening to Pitt’s postmortem of the events following the assault on the ship. “A female officer of the U-boat.”
“Yes, sir. At the first opportunity, I’ll have her flown to Washington for examination and identification.”
“Not easy, if she’s a foreign national.”
“I’m confident her history can be tracked down.”
“Were any of the artifacts from the Madras damaged in the attack?” asked Sandecker.
“All safe and intact.”
“You and everyone on board were lucky to escape without being killed.”
“It was a near thing, Admiral. If Commander Cunningham hadn’t shown up in the Tucson when he did, it would be the Polar Storm lying under an icy sea instead of the U-BOAT.”
“Yaeger ran an investigation of the U-2015 through his data files. The sub was an enigma. The records indicate that she was lost off Denmark in early April of 1945. However, some historians believe she escaped the war intact and was scuttled by her crew in the Río de la Plata between Argentina and Uruguay near the site where the Graf Spee was blown up, but nothing has ever been proven.”
“So her ultimate fate was never established?”
“No,” answered Sandecker. “All that is known for sure is that she was completed in November of 1944, sent to sea, but never entered combat duty.”
“What did the German navy use her for?”
“Because she was a new generation in German electrode-sign, she was considered far superior to any other submarines then in service by any nation at the time. Her lower hull, which was packed with powerful batteries, enabled her to outrun most surface vessels, remain submerged for literally months, and travel great distances underwater. What little information Yaeger was able to dig out of old German military documents was that she became part of a project known as the New Destiny Operation.”
“Where have I heard that term before?” Pitt muttered.
“This was a blueprint drawn up by top Nazis, in collaboration with the Perón government in Argentina, for the flow of immense wealth accumulated by the Nazis during the war. While other submarines were still maintaining combat patrols to sink Allied shipping, the U-2015 was traveling back and forth between Germany and Argentina on a mission of transferring hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver bullion, platinum, diamonds, and art objects stolen from the great collections of Europe. High-level Nazi officials and their families were also transported along with the treasure cargo, all discharged in absolute secrecy at a remote port on the coast of Patagonia.”
“This went on before the war ended?”
“Right up to the bitter end,” Sandecker answered. “The story that circulated in unconfirmed reports suggests that Operation New Destiny was the brainchild of Martin Bormann. He may have possessed a fanatical adoration of Adolf Hitler, but he was smart enough to see the Third Reich crashing and burning in flames. Smuggling the Nazi hierarchy and a staggering amount of valuables to a nation friendly to Germany was his goal even before the Allied armies crossed the Rhine. His most ambitious plan was to smuggle Hitler to a secret redoubt in the Andes, but it fell through when Hitler insisted on dying in his bunker in Berlin.”
“Was the U-2015 the only U-boat transporting riches and passengers to South America?” asked Pitt.
“No, there were at least twelve others. All were accounted for after the war. A few were sunk by Allied planes and warships; the rest were either turned over in a neutral country or scuttled by their crews.”
“Any clues as to what happened to the money and passengers?”
“None,” Sandecker admitted. “A sailor from one of the U-BOATS who was interviewed long after the war—he disappeared shortly after—described heavy wooden crates loaded onto trucks sitting at a deserted dock. The passengers, dressed in civilian clothes, looked and acted as if they were important personages in the Nazi party, and were hustled off in waiting cars. What happened to them or the treasure is not known.”
“Argentina was a hotbed for old Nazis. What better place to recruit and organize a new world order on the ashes of the old?”
“Probably less than a handful are still alive. Any Nazi who held a high position in the party or military would have to be ninety or older.”
“The plot thickens,” said Pitt. “Why would a bunch of old Nazis resurrect the U-2015 and use it to destroy a research ship?”
“For the same reasons they tried to kill you in Telluride, and Al and Rudi on St. Paul Island in the Indian Ocean.”
“I’m remiss for not asking about them earlier,” said Pitt regretfully. “How did they make out? Did they find a chamber with the artifacts?”
“They did,” Sandecker replied. “But then they narrowly missed death when their plane was destroyed before they could take off and return to Cape Town. As near as we can figure, a cargo ship sent off a helicopter with six armed men to kill any island intruders and lay their hands on whatever artifacts the passengers from the Madras left after their visit in 1779. Al and Rudi killed them all, as well as shooting down the helicopter. Rudi took a bullet that badly fractured his tibia. He’s stable and will mend, but he’ll be wearing a cast for a long while.”
“Are they still on the island?”
“Just Al. Rudi was picked up about an hour ago by helicopter from a passing British missile frigate returning to Southampton from Australia. He’ll soon be on his way to Cape Town for an operation in a South African hospital.”
“Six killers and a helicopter,” Pitt said with admiration. “I can’t wait to hear their story.”
“Quite astounding, when you consider they were unarmed during the initial stage of the battle.”
“The Fourth Empire’s intelligence network is nothing short of amazing,” said Pitt. “Before the U-boat begin blasting at the Polar Storm, I had a brief chat with the captain. When I gave him my name, he asked how I came to be in the Antarctic after Colorado. Beware, Admiral, it pains me to say it, but I think we may have an informer in or near your NUMA office.”
“I’ll look into it,” said Sandecker, the thought stirring him to anger. “In the meantime, I’m sending Dr. O’Connell to St.
Paul Island for an on-site study of the chamber and artifacts found by Al and Rudi. I’m arranging transportation for you to meet her and oversee the removal and transportation of the artifacts back to the States.”
“What about the French? Don’t they own the island?”
“What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“When do I get back to civilization again?”
“You’ll be in your own bed by the end of the week. Is there anything else on your mind?”
“Have Pat and Hiram had any luck in deciphering the inscriptions?”
“They made a breakthrough with the numbering system. According to the computer’s analysis of the star positions on the chamber’s ceiling, the inscriptions are nine thousand years old.”
Pitt wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Did you say nine thousand?”
“Hiram dated the construction of the chamber on or about 7100 B.C.”
Pitt was stunned. “Are you saying that an advanced civilization was established four thousand years before the Sumerians or Egyptians?”
“I haven’t sat through a course in ancient history since Annapolis,” said Sandecker, “but as I recall, I was taught the same lesson.”
“Archaeologists won’t be overjoyed to rewrite the book on prehistoric civilizations.”
“Yaeger and Dr. O’Connell have also made headway in deciphering the alphabetic inscriptions. It’s beginning to develop as some kind of record describing an early worldwide catastrophe.”
“An unknown ancient civilization wiped out by a great catastrophe. If I didn’t know better, Admiral, I’d say you were talking about Atlantis.”
Atlantis Found (A Dirk Pitt Novel) Page 23
