Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

  Using Muldoon’s diagram, she planned her dive. She would enter through the gaping wound in the U-boat’s hull and proceed into the flooded lower deck of the sub. Muldoon claimed to have searched the captain’s quarters, the only private space on the submarine, but found nothing. Mira, though uncertain of what it was she was supposed to be looking for, decided to begin her search there as well. Perhaps Muldoon, in his lust for gold, had overlooked something of greater, though less obvious, value.

  Beneath the surface of the Pacific, however, diagrams and well-laid plans had very little relation to reality. The chill of the water and the stale taste of compressed air sapped her enthusiasm for the search before it had even begun. The litany of dangers, everything from nitrogen narcosis to shark attack, paraded through her mind, causing her to second-guess almost every decision as she kicked her legs up and down, thrusting deeper into the heart of the sea.

  She kept her arms at her sides, moving them only when the growing pressure against her eardrums required her to press the diving mask to her face and snort through her nose to pop her ears. The bottom rushed up at her, bringing with it shadows and trepidation, but it was difficult to say whether her concerns were a psychic premonition or simply a natural fear at entering such an alien environment. SCUBA training had been just one more part of life on The Farm, and, she mentally reviewed those lessons, keeping her breathing steady so as not to hyperventilate, and got her dread under control.

  The U-boat lay on its side atop the seamount, looking not much different than the two-decade-old photograph Muldoon had showed her in his office. The encrustation of prolific oceanic life forms could not mask the knife-edge keel of the submarine. The vessel’s narrow-beam design represented naval architecture from a forgotten age. Modern submarine hulls were round, not unlike the torpedoes they carried, allowing for greater maneuverability beneath the ocean’s surface. Submarines and U-boats of the World War II era and earlier were built along the same lines as surface ships and were quite agile above the depths where they spent nearly eighty percent of their sailing time, but less able beneath the waves, which should have been their primary environment. The XXI boats, designed for extended voyages underwater, represented a step in the right direction for submarine engineering, but were developed too late in the war to make a difference for Germany.

  Muldoon’s sketch had showed a breach amidships, a long gash that tore through pressure hull, opening the guts of the U-boat to the sea. However, while the outline of the boat was unmistakable, a gently sloping angular plane about seventy-five meters long, the cavity that permitted access was not so easy to distinguish. Mira kicked toward the region of the ship where she expected to find the hole, hoping that it would be easier to discern up close. Schools of fish darted away with her approach.

  In spite of the colorful flora and fauna that had taken up residence on the hull of the U-boat, it remained a rust-colored hulk. She reached out to it tentatively with one neoprene-gloved hand, almost fearful that it would evaporate like a ghost before she could make contact. Instead, her touch stirred up a cloud of brown silt that did indeed cause the wreck to vanish, though for a more mundane reason. She continued pushing through the silt until her fingers found the unyielding surface of the boat’s outer hull. Her probing hands continued to work up a cloud of sediment and algae, but she soon found what she was looking for: a ragged edge breaking up the otherwise smooth face of the hull. Mira pressed her mask close against the skin of the submarine, trying to get a look at the fissure.

  The tear was horizontal along the keel, ten feet long, but less than three feet high. Mira found herself wondering how the bulky Muldoon, with two tanks of compressed air strapped to his back, had managed to slip through the narrow opening. The answer seemed dreadfully obvious; like almost everything else in his tale of Nazi gold and salvage, he had exaggerated. She wondered if he had ever actually ventured inside the wreck.

  With her face still close to the hole, she reached to her waist where a mesh bag was secured to her weight belt. The bag contained half a dozen magnesium flares, which along with the SCUBA gear and the dive knife strapped to her right calf, represented her entire array of equipment and weapons. She extracted one of the flares, pulling the nylon drawstrings tight before striking the chemical light. Brilliant white illumination pierced the veil of sediment, giving her a clearer glimpse of the passageway into the U-boat.

  The mottled brown of algae or rust seemed unchanged where the flickering rays of the torch cut through the cloak of darkness. Mindful of catching a hose or pranging the valves on the tanks, she eased forward into the hole. The flare continued to emit a rough sphere of illumination, but it took Mira several seconds to make sense of anything she was seeing.

  Sixty years of immersion in salt water had disintegrated the wood panels and beams that comprised all non-structural bulkheads and surfaces in the U-boat to reveal an intricate maze of corroded pipes and gauges. Mira eased cautiously into the narrow space and moved toward the forward end of the vessel. There was more room to maneuver than Mira had expected. Nevertheless, she pressed low against what would have been the port-side bulkhead, careful not to snag the tanks or lines on overhead protuberances.

  She quickly located the access hatch Muldoon had described and pulled through into what had once been the forward torpedo room. The uniform blight of corrosion made it difficult to distinguish the machinery and framework of the weapons system, but a haphazard cluster of gray sticks scattered throughout the compartment was easier to identify; the skeletal remains of German submariners.

  A circular hatch less than three feet in diameter led out of the torpedo room. Why the crew had not secured the watertight doors as soon as the collision alarm had sounded was a mystery that would never be solved. For reasons known only to the brittle bones of the Kriegsmarine sailors, when the belly of the U-boat had ruptured, the flood of seawater had inundated every deck, rolling the vessel onto its side, before any damage-control measures could be initiated. Perhaps the sailors had preferred a quick death by drowning to the slow suffocation of being trapped on the bottom of the ocean.

  Following her mental sketch of Muldoon’s map, she soon located the niche that had been the captain’s quarters. A wooden panel had at one time partitioned the small room from the rest of the ship. Only the commander of the vessel was privileged with private quarters, while the officers were accorded semi-private lodgings, and the crew shared the bunks that lined the corridors of the boat. Muldoon’s notion that the treasure, if it existed at all, was to be found in the captain’s quarters certainly made sense. A submarine did not have any sort of cargo hold. Foodstuffs for a prolonged journey were usually stored in the companionways, forcing the sailors to crawl through the corridors during the early days of a voyage. Yet, as she stared into the closet-sized space that by submariner standards was considered luxurious, she realized the fallacy in Muldoon’s reasoning. There was not enough room in the captain’s berth to conceal a meaningful quantity of treasure.

  Floating in the surreal light of the flare, Mira pondered this revelation. Of course, there was no gold, and Aimes would not have been interested in mere fortune hunting. What, then, was the connection between Atlantis and the wreckage of a U-boat off the coast of Chile?

  The captain’s desk had fallen prey to the ravages of time and salt water, disintegrating and leaving only a vague outline of metal runners, fasteners and knobs. A shapeless lump that had once been an article of clothing or perhaps several garments hanging in a small closet now rested against the bulkhead, sprouting several rusty coat hangers. Muldoon claimed to have thoroughly searched the cabin, but nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Curious, Mira pushed at the sodden lump of rotting cloth.

  A glimmer of gold caught her eye, and for a moment, she almost believed that she had found the elusive treasure. A moment later, however, her gloved hand drew back only a small lapel pin, gold indeed, but decorated with a cloisonné inlay that was all too familiar. A red and black swastika adorn
ed the coin-sized pin, the insignia of the Nazi party.

  Not all Germans had been loyal party members during the era in which Adolf Hitler ruled supreme. In fact, most of the rank and file in the German armed services were not Nazis. Only the upper echelons of the military, the generals and admirals, held that dubious distinction. Favored members of the National Socialist Party were rarely sent into combat. It seemed very improbable that a mere U-boat captain would have received the Nazi badge.

  Her probing fingers soon found another pin, though this one was badly discolored from exposure to the elements. Nevertheless, the silver insignia was unmistakable. It was the double-lightning bolt of the Waffen Schutzstaffel, the notorious SS guard.

  The U-boat had been carrying a distinguished passenger.

  Mira knew enough about maritime tradition to know that a captain rarely surrendered the privileges of his rank, but it was easy enough to imagine one of Hitler’s elite officers demanding the privacy of the captain’s quarters for himself. It was admittedly a minor aberration, but the presence of an SS officer aboard the submarine certainly lent credence to the idea that the U-boat concealed some darker riddle. She quickly probed through the remains of the cabin, searching for anything else that might shed light on that mystery.

  Nothing.

  The dive chronograph Muldoon had loaned her, an antique in its own right, revealed that she had spent nearly half an hour in the water. And she was already eating into the time reserved for her decompression stop. If the U-boat did not give up its secret soon, she would be forced to abandon the search and return to Muldoon’s boat. No more answers would be found in the captain’s quarters, but she had no idea where to turn next. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine what must have happened in the minutes following the collision.

  The SS officer would not have been in the control room in the seconds preceding the disaster. Likely, he would have steered clear of the boat’s essential areas, keeping to the privacy of his appropriated lodgings, venturing out only to take his meals. Yet, there were no human remains in the captain’s cabin.

  In her mind’s eye, Mira could almost see the arrogant SS officer, startled perhaps out of a nap by the sudden collision. As alarms rang throughout the boat, heralding a torrent of rushing water, he would have fled in terror.

  No, there was more to it than that. The SS man had been in possession of something, some hidden knowledge or discovery that had been his to protect. Walter Aimes had learned about it decades later, suggesting that the Nazi had held something pertaining to Atlantis. In his final moments of life, the SS agent would have sought to protect that secret.

  Backing away from the captain’s berth, Mira quickly reoriented herself and continued down the passage. As she entered the galley, she was forced to navigate a corkscrew path around tables and fixed benches. Skeletons littered the area, but she did not slow to examine the naked remains. Farther down the companionway, she found what she was looking for: a ladder-like stair that accessed the uppermost deck of the U-boat. Using it as a handrail, she pulled herself into the narrow cavity.

  Here she found the greatest concentration of bones. Apparently death had not come swiftly enough to prevent a human stampede, frantic sailors trampling one another in a mad, but futile, rush to the top hatch. The skeletons all but choked the passageway, yet in the light of her flare, Mira could distinguish nothing extraordinary about any of them. Uniforms had long ago rotted away—a final equalization of rank. If the SS officer had lain among them, he would have gone forever unidentified. More than that, her intuition told her that this was a dead end for her as well. Frustrated and running short on time, she backed out of the passageway and returned the way she had come.

  As she swam through the now familiar companionways, she tried again to replay her version of the U-boat’s final seconds. She could almost see the SS officer, a cardboard cutout lifted from a World War II movie, bursting from the captain’s quarters onto the heaving deck. As water rushed around his knees, threatening to overwhelm him, he would have looked about frantically for some way to protect . . .

  If only she knew what secrets the SS officer had carried into his watery grave. Perhaps he had possessed nothing more substantial than a bit of knowledge, the location of Atlantis or one of the outposts founded by her refugee survivors. Such knowledge might have caught Aimes’ interest, but Mira already knew where once-mighty Atlantis had fallen into the sea. It was hardly information worth killing the elderly researcher over.

  I’m missing something, she thought again. The answer has to be here.

  Unable to fight his way through the panicking seamen, the SS officer would have looked for some other means of salvation. Perhaps he knew that the sub’s top hatch could not have been opened with tons of seawater weighing down upon it. Where, then, would he have gone? The torpedo tubes seemed a logical answer. The only practical way to exit a submerged U-boat was to get in the torpedo tubes, then close and flood them, equalizing the pressure. She wondered if, in the heat of the crisis, the SS officer could have planned such an egress rationally.

  Suddenly the answer literally broadsided her.

  As she attempted to pass through the maze of obstacles in the galley, an unexpected collision stopped her dead in the water. The unyielding barrier was a wall of algae-slicked stainless steel that had survived the corrosive march of time in remarkably good shape. Mira stared at it for a moment, trying to guess its function. Only when she turned her head sideways, looking at it as the crew would have when viewing it aright, did she resolve the mystery. She had run into the freezer.

  Unlike most submarines of her day, the XXI U-boats were equipped with extraordinary creature comforts, not the least of which was a deep-freeze compartment for storing meat and other perishables. Though Mira had no way of ascertaining when the submarine had left port fully stocked, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that the crew would have consumed most of the boat’s frozen goods by the time it had reached the Pacific coast of South America. Nor was it difficult to imagine the frantic SS officer seeking shelter in the sealed compartment in the moments following the collision. It was a theory easily enough tested.

  Twisting around to brace her flippered feet against the doorframe, she gripped the latch handle and pulled. Though the mechanism yielded to her effort, the door did not budge. She continued straining against the handle for several seconds until, without warning, it snapped off in her hand, sending her backward into a sideways table edge.

  Tossing the useless handle aside, she returned to the freezer door and inspected the damage. The entire latch mechanism had separated from the door, leaving only a ragged cavity in the metal and foam insulation visible within. Separating the metal hatch from the compartment was a thin, partially decomposed rubber gasket, but it was difficult to imagine the door becoming fused shut with the passage of time. That left only one explanation: the freezer compartment was watertight. The pressure of thousands of tons of water at depth was holding the freezer door shut, preserving the dry environment within.

  Mira drew the Tekna knife and rotated to a position beneath the freezer. The carbon steel blade easily pierced the sheet metal, and though more effort was required, she soon drew a meter-long diagonal cut in the side of the freezer. She worked the blade back and forth until it was free, then repeated the process, cutting a large X in the metal. Cautiously peeling the metal away revealed the insulation underneath, likewise scored by the blade. Using the blade, she quickly removed all of the foam from the area exposed by her cut and uncovered another metal wall.

  As soon as the tip of her blade pierced the freezer’s inner wall, a rush of water streamed in through the cut. Heartened by the realization that whatever lay inside the freezer had escaped the despoilment caused by more than sixty years of salt water immersion, she hastily cut another X in the inner wall and bent the metal inward. As she pushed into the freezer, a compartment that was at least as big as the captain’s quarters had been, she saw that her assumption was at least partially co
rrect.

  A human form sat unmoving on the sideways bulkhead not far from where she had entered. An inch or so of water had flooded the lowest portion of the compartment, dampening the remains, but the air pocket within kept the rest at bay. The sealed crypt of the freezer had preserved the corpse remarkably well. Mira carefully pulled herself over the sharp metal edges of her cut, and knelt in front of the body. She continued breathing the compressed air from her tank, realizing that the man who had sought refuge here so many decades before had likely died of suffocation after consuming all of the oxygen trapped with him in the compartment.

  The man had perished with his head resting against his knees, his arms protectively clutching a leather briefcase to his chest. He wore a simple white shirt and dark trousers, rather than the uniform of a Kriegsmarine sailor or officer, and no indication of rank or identity except for a silver ring bearing the likeness of a skull and crossbones.

  With a triumphant grin, Mira realized that she had found her man.

  Careful to avoid too much contact with the corpse, she took hold of a lower corner of the case and tried to pull it from his eternal grasp. His lifeless limbs remained unusually pliable, and he almost seemed to shrug his shoulders as the parcel slipped past his elbow.

  Her eager fingers were unwieldy in the confines of the gloves, and it took her several attempts to loosen the catch. Once the fastener relented, she all but dived into the recesses of the bag to see what secret the SS officer had been so desperate to protect. She was almost disappointed when the briefcase yielded up nothing but papers. A rapid flip through the documents, several pages written in German block script, revealed little about their contents. Her grasp of the Teutonic language, courtesy of The Farm, was adequate, but the volume of text was too great and the verbiage too tedious for her to even begin to get a grasp on what was written in the papers. Deciphering the contents of the case would require at least a few hours and a decent bilingual dictionary.