by Steve Alten
“They’ve already started bribing me to solo. The Crown Prince offered me a hundred grand for every reality show episode I appeared in the water with the Lio; with a two million dollar bonus once it’s captured and loaded in the tanker.”
“Fucking Arabs; they think they can just bribe people to get what they want. You turned it down, I hope.”
“I told them I wouldn’t do it unless they offered you the same deal.”
“Wait, what?”
“Whatever I earn they have to pay you as well. They agreed.”
“The Crown Prince … salt-of-the-earth. And Mr. bin Rashidi—say what you will about him but the man grows on you. Where’s the Lio now? I bet you knocked some of the fight out of it.”
“The sonar buoys picked up a surface signal last night about twenty miles off the west coast of New Zealand, so it’s still heading south.”
“Don’t decide anything until you get at least eight hours of sleep. Fortunately, your old pal Monty brought a bottle of whiskey, just in case of emergencies.”
Aboard the Hopper-Dredge McFarland
Drake Passage, 525 Miles East of the Antarctic Peninsula
The Drake Passage is six hundred miles of open water, 11,000 to 15,600 feet deep, situated between the southernmost tip of South America and the South Shetland Islands, which are located a hundred miles northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. A combination of factors make this stretch of sea the most treacherous on the planet.
Three oceans converge upon the waterway—the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Southern Ocean. Within this climatic boundary cool humid, sub-polar temperatures meet Antarctica’s frigid weather. This draws cyclones and other low pressure systems which sweep in from the west, churning up waves that can surpass sixty feet. During winter months, sea ice can extend as far north as Cape Horn, adding to the dangers associated with the crossing.
* * *
The hopper-dredge McFarland was forty nautical miles south of Cape Horn when ominous gray clouds appeared over the western morning skies. By noon winds began gusting at thirty-five knots, the seas turning into white-capped peaks.
Two hours later the storm’s full fury was upon them, with swells reaching sixty-five feet.
The captain ordered the hopper filled with sea water to increase ballast and the ship trimmed so that it was listing fifteen degrees to starboard. This raised the port side, reducing some of the pounding, but the continuous rolling over mountainous crests into steep valleys was exacting a toll on both the ship and its crew.
Jonas and Terry Taylor held onto one another as they made their way down a slanted passageway that rolled beneath them like something out of a carnival funhouse. Seasickness had chased them from their cabin, now they sought a view of the horizon, hoping to anchor their lost equilibrium.
Accessing an interior stairwell, they began the long seven-story ascent to the bridge, each step precarious as the claustrophobic corridor heaved from zero to thirty degrees. After several minutes and assorted bruises, Jonas hugged his wife to his right hip, gripped the rail with his left hand and practically carried her up to the command center.
Reaching the bridge, they quickly realized the higher the vantage, the worse the pitch. With no empty chairs available, Jonas made his way with Terry to a support rail situated before the forward bay windows. Hugging her back from behind, he gripped the rail with both hands and held on as the bow plunged into the sea, disappearing underwater, only to burst free once more, sending plumes of spray across the main deck.
Turning to his right, he saw a flat-screen monitor bolted to the navigation table. The animated map showed their position, course, and speed. A Beaufort Scale categorized the storm conditions as a twelve—the highest rating on the chart.
The captain made his way over to the couple, one hand holding the support rail, the other a cup of coffee held inside a non-spill container. “You folks really don’t want to be up here. Best place to ride out the storm would be in the galley on Deck-2. It’s lower, it has interior windows, and it’s more centrally located. Up here—it’s a friggin’ rollercoaster.”
Jonas looked at Terry, whose Asian complexion had turned a whiter shade of pale. “It’s your call.”
She nodded weakly.
“Speaking of calls…” The captain reached into his jacket pocket and removed a folded slip of paper. “This transmission was received about an hour ago.”
Jonas opened the message.
TO: JONAS TAYLOR
FR: ZACHARY WALLACE
RE: URGENT MATTER
MEET ME IN GRYTVIKEN IN 48 HOURS. WILL JOIN YOU AND MY FELLOW SCOT TO LOCATE YOUR SON.
—ZACHARY WALLACE
“Grytviken? Never heard of it.”
The captain moved to his navigation station, typing a command on a computer keypad. The monitor showing their position widened to encompass a tiny island cluster lying between the southernmost part of the Drake Passage and the Antarctic Peninsula.
“Grytviken is an old abandoned whaling station located on South Georgia Island. It’s on the way, but why your friend would want to meet you on that rust bucket makes no sense to me.”
They held on as a six-story-high swell lifted the McFarland’s bow toward the lead-gray heavens before plunging it three stories underwater.
Terry held on to her husband. “What did Zachary mean when he said he’d join you and his fellow Scot in finding David?”
“He must think Mac’s with me. Come on, let’s get you down to the galley before I hurl up a lung.”
20
Grytviken
South Georgia Island
Erected along the anchorage in King Edward’s Cove at the foot of the snow-capped peaks of South Georgia Island lies the remains of Grytviken, Antarctica’s first whaling station. Established in 1904 by a Norwegian whaling captain, the commercial enterprise not only hunted the beasts, they also sliced up the blubber and cooked the oils to produce meat, soap, fertilizer, margarine, nitroglycerin, and other oil-based products. By the time it was shut down in 1965, Grytviken and other stations like it had slaughtered over two million whales.
The McFarland’s captain anchored the hopper-dredge a hundred yards offshore, wary of the graveyard of rusted vessels listing along the quay. The storm that had battered the ship during the Drake Passage crossing had yielded to blue skies and sunshine. Jonas helped his wife into the motorized rubber raft, the McFarland’s executive officer, Leslie Manuel, assigned to pilot the boat. The crew lowered the Zodiac into the bay using the starboard winch. Releasing the cable, the XO started the outboard, guiding the raft past several rusted whaling vessels, their deck-mounted harpoon guns a stark reminder of the violence the ghost town’s occupants had once inflicted upon nature’s largest sea creatures.
Dozens of prefabricated steel buildings lined the deserted wharf, their rusted exteriors sharing the same burnt-orange look. Close by, a herd of sea elephants sunned themselves on the shoreline. King penguins stood watch on grass-covered knolls, while unseen fur seals barked out calls to one another.
The XO beached the craft, not trusting the century-old dock. “Are you sure your friend is here?”
Jonas pointed to a small white A-framed chapel, one of the few buildings that seemed habitable. A fit man in his forties was making his way down a path leading to the water, his brown hair long and pulled into a ponytail. He wore a ski parka and jeans, and a five o’clock shadow. An army-green duffle bag was slung across his back, a large object the size of a kitchen trashcan hugged to his chest with both arms. It must have been heavy because it forced him to stop every twenty paces.
Dr. Zachary Wallace set down the item encased in thick plastic, handed his duffle bag to the woman in the raft and embraced Jonas. “J.T, thank God. My chopper dropped me off yesterday; one day in this ghost town is enough. Terry, whit a nice surprise; I wasn’t expecting tae see ye here.”
She offered her cheek for a kiss. “No, apparently you were expecting your fellow Scot.”
Zach see
med surprised. “Mac’s not here?”
“He’s back at the institute with his family.” Jonas saw the perplexed look. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, I … of course not.” He picked up the heavy object and carefully passed it to the female officer in the raft. “Please be careful with this, lass. If ye could have yer crew bring it tae my quarters I’d be grateful. If ye could return for us in an hour, that would be most appreciated as I need tae show the Taylors something before we leave the island.”
The XO handed Jonas a two-way radio. “Call me when you’re ready.”
Jonas waited until the Zodiac pulled away. “So what’s so important that you had to meet me on this Club-Med for penguins, and what does it have to do with David?”
“I’m going tae show ye, only I can’t explain everything right now. Ye have tae trust me on this … for David’s sake. Agreed?”
“For now. Only I don’t like mind games.”
“This isn’t a mind game, J.T., it’s more like one of those sliding block puzzles where ye can’t lift the pieces off the board; you have tae manipulate them around a track until everything aligns tae form an image.”
“Sounds like a mind game to me.”
Zach led them up a dirt path cutting through the heart of the station. “Grytviken isn’t as much a piece of the puzzle as it is a clue. A hundred years ago this camp was a slaughterhouse. Boats like those two steam-powered whalers decimated the entire whale population around these islands. The carcasses would be inflated with compressed air and towed back tae Grytviken, where winches would haul the catch ontae work areas. Crews worked day and night using knives on poles tae strip large sheets of blubber, which were then stuffed intae pressure cookers.” He pointed to a series of silo-shaped rusted objects. “Each one of those pressure cookers could process twenty-four tons of blubber. The oil was then pumped intae a plant for purification. Meat and bones were dealt with separately.”
They passed a blacksmith shop, a barracks for workers, a hospital, library, laundry, bakery, and a building Zach theorized had been a movie theater. A five-minute walk brought them to the outskirts of the station and two white-washed pink-roofed stucco buildings.
“This is the tourist section of town. Believe it or not, Grytviken gets about eight thousand visitors a year.”
“To see what?”
“I dunno. Ernest Shackleton is buried in the church cemetery.” He pointed at the two stucco buildings. “The caretakers live in that house during summer months when the cruise ships visit. The other building is our first destination—the whaling museum.”
They followed the dirt path to the two-story dwelling. On the front lawn was an immense three-thousand-pound steel appendage. “That was one of the claws used tae drag whales, tail first, up the stern ramps of whaling ships.”
They entered the museum. Framed black and white photos shared the walls with gruesome saws and cutting tools used by the whalers. Walking behind a glass case, Zach forced open a door swollen within its frame. Locating a battery-powered lantern he had stowed behind the counter, he led them down a set of rickety wood steps into the cellar.
Crates were stacked three and four high along the damp stone walls. An open sea chest had been emptied, its contents organized into piles of leather-bound books.
“These are the original logs of the whalers’ captains—at least the more recent ones. Everything prior to 1930 was either donated tae museums or sold tae private collectors. No matter; whit I was looking fer were any unusual events occurring at sea during the years 1940 through 1943.”
“Why those years?” Terry asked.
“Good question; I’ll answer that right after I read tae ye this passage.” He held up the top book on the pile. “This is the log of Captain Klarius Mikkleson, who hunted whales in these waters from 1935 through 1947. The text is written in Bokmål, and my translation of the Norwegian language is a bit rough, but I think ye’ll get the basic idea. In most of these entries the captain simply recorded the days’ catches. The first in a series of unusual entries begins on January 4, 1940.”
He turned to a bookmarked page and translated aloud.
“4 January: After ten days with no sightings, we arrived in the Weddell Sea. Late afternoon yielded two adult fin whales, a male (18 meters); and a female (12.5 meters). The calf was spared but remained in the area while the carcasses were inflated. At eight bells, first mate reported a whale breach less than one kilometer off the starboard bow. Harpooner estimated the creature at 22 meters and in excess of one hundred tons. Eyewitnesses claim the beast devoured the fin calf in one bite. First mate and harpooner remain divided over the identity of the species. Jaws and black coloring with white belly support the first mate’s claim of a giant species of killer whale. Harpooner disagrees; stating the telltale rectangular head clearly identified the creature to be a bull sperm whale. After two hours and no further sightings we continue southeast to the Antarctic coast.”
“5 January, 3 a.m.: Second mate reports creature has returned and is following our ship, feeding upon the two fin carcasses from below. This is behavior never before observed in a sperm whale.”
“5 January, 7:30 a.m.: Daybreak has chased our visitor away. Having seen its head and spout trail as well as its lower jaw, which enabled it to take great bites out of the fin carcasses, I believe it to be an undiscovered species of sperm whale, perhaps native to Antarctica. Sperm whale oil taken from immense chambers in the beast’s head is of the first quality and fetches a much higher price, and the size of this bull could render a yield equal to a month’s voyage. Therefore we shall use the day to dismantle the harpoon gun and move it from the bow to the stern in hope the whale returns tonight to finish its meal.”
“6 January, 6:30 a.m.: No sightings. Female fin whale had to be cut adrift as its bite wounds attracted sharks.”
“7 January, 3:00 p.m.: Longboats killed three minke whales, all under nine meters. No sperm whale sighting.”
“8 January, 1:30 a.m.: First mate informed me the sperm whale has returned.”
“8 January, 11:00 a.m.: A long night. The sperm whale was harpooned and dragged the ship aft-first for seven kilometers, nearly to the ice sheet. Longboats finished the beast by daybreak, but at a cost. Three crewmen were lost, along with a longboat which was smashed by the beast’s fluke. With our haul we return to Grytviken.”
Jonas and Terry looked at one another, sharing the same thought.
“Ye’re wondering why I read this tae you.”
“Or what a sperm whale harpooned more than seven decades ago has to do with our son.”
“Not a sperm whale, J.T., but an ancestor of our modern-day sperm whale—a creature possessing an orca’s jaw and fifteen inch teeth … a predator that dated back tae the Miocene Period and competed with Carcharodon megalodon for food.”
Zach removed a folded manila envelope from his jacket pocket, handing Jonas photocopies of an article published in National Geographic. “Paleontologists first found the creature’s fossils in a dried lake bed in Peru back in 2008. They named the extinct sea monster Livyatan melvillei, combining the Hebrew spelling for the biblical Leviathan with the surname of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. It’s a fitting title for a predator that not only owned one of the most vicious bites in history but the largest teeth.”
“As my husband said, what does this have to do with our son?”
“It doesn’t … yet. But I suspect it may. I ken, I know, I’m babbling like an idiot, but pieces of a moving puzzle are sliding intae place very fast now. David’s part of it, so is the Liopleurodon. I thought by having your engineers install air bags in the Manta subs it would be enough. Now I’m not sure … not after whit jist happened.”
“What just happened?”
He took out his iPhone. Scrolling through a series of photos, he held one up for them to see. “These pictures were taken along the Antarctic Peninsula four days ago. Here’s a better shot, you can see the creature’s lower jaw as it bite
s down on the humpback’s fluke. That’s definitely not a sperm whale … agreed?”
Jonas widened the screen. “Kind of hard to tell. What did you call it?”
“Livyatan melvillei.”
“I don’t understand,” Terry said. “Where did this extinct creature come from?”
“A subglacial lake. There are hundreds of them concealed beneath the Antarctic ice cap. These are saltwater lakes that have remained liquefied because of the immense pressure generated by the ice sheet. Many of them are heated by geothermal vents, which reside above the continent’s crustal plates. The ice age that froze Antarctica fifteen million years ago happened very quickly, trapping its inhabitants. Chemosynthesis replaced photosynthesis and new food chains replaced the old. Livyatan melvillei was one of the predators that survived.”
Terry nodded. “The years 1940 through 1943—I’m guessing these were unusually warm years?”
“Yes. Global temperatures spiked. Antarctica shed massive tabular bergs, many as large as Texas. There are three major subglacial lakes located along the Weddell Sea coastline, buried beneath a mile and a half of ice. Subglacial rivers connect these lakes tae the Weddell Sea. One of the passages must have opened back in the austral summer of 1940, releasing the whale that Captain Mikkleson wrote about in his log book. Thanks tae global warming, these last five summers have been among the hottest on record. Last summer, a major section of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf collapsed intae the Weddell Sea. This summer a passage leading from one of the subglacial lakes may have opened up, allowing at least one of the trapped Miocene whales tae escape.”
“And what are we supposed to do about that?” Jonas asked.
“Capture it. Or help me hunt it down and kill it, I don’t really care which. As long as we maintain secrecy in regards tae where the whale came from.”
“Why?” Both Taylors asked the question at the same time.
