“Ready?” he called out to the four men in their diving suits. They turned and gave Sam a collective thumbs-up for a still photograph he took with his Canon long lens.
“With a bit of luck with the weather and the currents we’ll soon have more than a salute for your pictures, Sam!” Purdue cried. Vincent gave an approving crude roar before it turned into elated laughter. Sam smiled, but inside he genuinely hoped that the men would be safe. Perhaps he bought into the ludicrous legends of the doomed waters of the Alboran Sea because he’d almost fallen prey to its inexplicable madness himself, but he was deeply concerned for what was at play under the meters of water that surrounded the wreck. In his mind, thoughts and reminiscences of the tales told a few nights before prevailed. Could there really have been two German ships, unregistered, and equally doomed to sink at the same time? If so, what was it that had pulled them asunder?
The journalist shook his macabre musings off as the men fell backwards into the heaving seas, one by one. Sam’s thumb and index fingers cradled his stubble-ridden chin, pinching the thickening beard he was cultivating as he watched the four men sink beneath the white foam.
Under the waves, the world changed completely. For Purdue, Vincent, and the two crewmen, the environment was welcoming and quiet. Only the sound of their breathing apparatuses disturbed the silence of the swaying water, and its beauty was unparalleled by few reefs, even those found in the southern tropics. They’d expected the netherworld of the sea to be a tad murkier, especially on a day like this, where the air was cool and the wind strong enough to stir up the waves.
As they gently descended toward the blurry image of the resting hulk beneath, Purdue gave Vincent a favorable gesture. The tips of his thumb and index finger meeting and three fingers extended conveyed his appreciation of the stunning submarine topography. Gradually the wreck became clearer as they neared it. As Vincent had reported, it was indeed a German war ship, practically an exact replica of the infamous Admiral Graf Spee, one of a collection of armored ships commissioned by the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany.
The ship itself, or what was left of it after decades in the salt, stretched out over about 500 ft. in length, dependent on its decay. It would take a lot of time to even just scout the drowned vessel, but thanks to Purdue’s unique technology, they were able to determine the mineral values of each section. He led them straight to where the readings were highest, the screen of the locator device citing‘17: Au’ lit in red. It indicated the symbol and atomic number of the gold hidden from sight exactly where Purdue’s previous prying methods had yielded him the doubloon he’d brought to his yacht.
Pointing toward a hole in the starboard hull just below the main deck, Purdue made his way to the tear in the metal to guide the others in. In the back of his mind, the billionaire had no still harbored a wariness for the men of the Cóndor. He never lost sight of the fact that they could easily dispatch him under the water and make it look like a shark attack, even if they were timid enough to bother hiding his murder. Sam would be easy pickings up on the trawler, alone with a whole crew of foes.
Luckily Purdue’s scientific gadget had more than one colorful function. One of its settings was that of a laser beam strong enough to make popcorn in a man’s skull at close range. What masqueraded as antennae to track mineral values with, were in fact casings to accommodate laser propagation under water. The feature had been installed purely for cutting purposes should Purdue have to make incisions in metal while diving, but the other, less friendly, function would be an asset to any outnumbered man.
Into the wet darkness they floated, each one in turn switching on his flashlight. Apart from the occasional sea creature darting past them in startling detail, they were alone in the black cavern of steel and bone. Purdue tracked his previous way to where he had discovered the golden coins.
As he had explained to Vincent before, they were not accompanied by some king’s ransom. When he had retrieved the doubloon he had with him, he’d seen barely a handful more. But Vincent Nazquez was not impressed by ancient gold coins half as much as he would be if he could find the rest of the relic he already possessed—the prayer stick containing the incantations to unlock the gates of El Dorado.
In essence, both men were taking part in some quest into the past to still a hunger each of them had to know.
20
Mummy Dive
The divers slid through the seemingly endless dark. Around them, the interior of the ship’s engine room was unrecognizable as such. After so many years, it in no way resembled a man-made structure anymore. Pipes had become conduits of minor currents, cramped havens for shy octopuses to ambush their prey from, while steel dials, generators, and large ducts had become shapeless thrones of gloom. In some places the divers found themselves doing a double take on the algae structures, often resembling men. It was an unusual presumption for the party of four seasoned divers, but they all felt the macabre semblance eerie.
Purdue halted and pointed to a hatch under them, easy to open. He reached down and pulled the hatch upward. Its rubber skirting and wedge bar had long been eaten away by time and tide. Their faces contorted in horror as the rushing water, sucked through by the opening hatch vacuum, caused the most awful howl. Reminiscent of a bear’s growl, it filled with a torrent of bubbles that glimmered in the beams of their torches.
Purdue himself bolted backwards at the vocal sound released by the captive water under the hatch. A numbing fear momentarily gripped him, sending numerous Lovecraftian images through his head before he realized that it was merely the sound of the water through the mouth of the hatch.
Relieved, they finally followed the billionaire explorer through the large steel aperture. Below, they found what would make any treasure hunter fume in frustration. But these were not just treasure hunters. These were not men fueled by greed or monetary gain. Half-ransacked trunks, once carrying substantial riches in gems, silver jewelry, and gold, lined the one side of steel wall. They were distorted by the sea’s offspring claiming them, but what was left inside was still evident.
Even though the trunks had practically been emptied by previous visitors, they were heavy enough to constitute a pulley system to be recovered. Purdue and one of Vincent’s men took to measuring the dimensions of the large wood and iron boxes appearing to hail from the eighteenth century by design and material. Vincent took his time to scrutinize the contents of the first trunk. After a while he moved on to the second one, unsatisfied. They contained gold and gems like the others, but that was not what Vincent was seeking.
After all eight of the boxes had been measured, Purdue and Vincent recorded the dimensions at 2.2 meters in length, 2.8 meters in width, and their height at 1.3 meters. Vincent was getting impatient by the time he reached the seventh trunk and still had not found what he was looking for. His heart sank in despair when he completed his investigation of the eighth and found only the doubloons and jewels. He knew he had to be grateful for the immense bounty he they’d found, but there was little satisfaction in caviar when all you want is a beer.
Purdue motioned that he was going on to look for the bone locker his scanner had picked up when he was still lazing on his deceased yacht. Vincent nodded, and gestured for his two men to surface and rig up the pulleys. He was adamant to accompany Purdue to see what morose prizes the rich rewarded themselves with.
Through the intricate iron works of the bridge the two men went. They had no need for much paddling as a strong current carried them along until Purdue’s scanner lit up in bright red once more. It read as expected, combining symbols P and CO with the highest composition of the Ca symbol and the atomic number 20, making up the definitive chemical combination he was looking for.
Bone.
Purdue grabbed onto a thick post to his right and Vincent’s fleeting body was anchored by his grasp. Holding on to the skipper until he had secured his own place, Purdue waited for the scanner to read again before choosing the way down as indicated. By the looks of the cascading
hollow, it was once a stairwell down to the sleeping quarters. Bunks were stacked one above the other in pairs, now the playground of nocturnal and shy specimens.
Ahead of them there were more of the crates they’d found the gold in above on the upper level, but these had been empty before the ocean’s children had taken them over and revamped them into shelter. Suddenly, Vincent urgently grabbed onto Purdue’s arm. Quickly, as if by reflex, the wealthy inventor had his laser device readily in his grasp, but what he mistook for an attack was just an observation to be shared.
Vincent pointed to the long sheets of rusted floor under them, lighting the area. Purdue looked down to find a whole trail of golden doubloons and assorted jewelry lying about, scattered like the entrails of a gutted treasure vault. Astonished at the sight, Purdue descended to the floor to clarify the nature of the sporadic glitters the coins gave off in the light of the flashlights. As he dusted the sediment that had settled on the floor, the particles ascended in a delayed slow motion allowing his fingers to reveal the strewn treasures.
They followed the trail of the glimmering valuables, picking up some of the coins as they went. Both men noticed that the doubloons were all marked with a peculiar symbol, much like the one Purdue had collected on his initial dive. In no way did they resemble typical Spanish coins, but Purdue thought to investigate their origin later. Vincent and Purdue reached another hatch entrance, but it did not lead to another section on the current level; it led to the floor below, deeper into the living quarters of the men.
Aside from the wreck’s outward appearance being that of German World War II battleship, there were no telltale signs or insignias irrefutably proving it to be a Nazi vessel. Thus far, Purdue and his accomplice could find no trace of identification on the ship, which was highly unusual, especially in a military environment. The hatch refused to move, and after some time the men realized that it was not rust causing the lock to jam, but water pressure.
Purdue used his laser device, set to a sonar detection unit feature, to survey the problem. After some calculations, he came to an unlikely conclusion—that the jam was being caused by means of a vacuum: the room beyond was void of water. Laboriously Purdue explained it to Vincent in hilarious, but effective, gesturing. They had to enter from the bottom level to gain access to the dry room from below.
The scanner in Purdue’s belt indicated that they had reached the site successfully, but the painfully neat galley they climbed up into through the floor baffled them. It was too unassuming. But they found their answer soon enough when they opened the pantry doors. Purdue and Vincent could not believe their eyes. Piled upon one another like sardines in a matchbox were a good number of bodies, still dressed in tattered uniforms. Sure enough, the emblems on their clothing bore the Swastika and other SS-insignias.
Inside the dry chamber, the men momentarily removed their mouthpieces to speak.
“Keep your oxygen on. You never know when a freak current will swell up and flood this galley,” Vincent instructed Purdue.
“I know,” Purdue answered, “but then again, if it hasn’t flooded in so many decades . . .”
“Look at this,” Vincent remarked, kneeling next to the corpses. “More piled behind these. There must be over a hundred bodies here!”
“More like the entire crew and officers,” Purdue speculated. “Good God, here are more! Look inside the ovens and cupboards.” He peered further in, past the sickening dust and putrefaction that salt and humidity had caused to the corpses. “The back of these storage compartments have been removed, Vincent. It looks like they lead to one of the boiler rooms.”
“Can you get through?” Vincent asked, wincing at the ghastly sight all around them.
“Do I have to?” Purdue asked, rather uncharacteristically.
Vincent gave a dry chuckle. “Well, we are here for you now. Isn’t this what you came for?”
“It is,” Purdue sighed. He was naturally very curious, yet he rued having to dislodged some of the mummified skeletons to get through to the boiler room.
“Hurry,” Vincent urged him. “The tides are changing in about ten minutes and we won’t have much time for the first lift to be completed.”
“We have to get as much done in one session as we can, old boy,” Purdue reminded him as he pulled some of the remains aside. “There are easily a few hundred German soldiers down here, and,” he hesitated as he grasped at something, “more of these.”
Vincent shook his head when Purdue showed him more of the golden coins. “These seem to be everywhere the dead guys are. Maybe they were carrying it?”
“God knows. I hope they did not swallow these treasures in some desperate errand to hide or claim it. That is greed taken a bit too far,” Purdue remarked.
“Would serve them right, though,” Vincent scoffed. “Look, David, I don’t want to speak out of place, but these boys don’t look like common skeletons, hey? Am I off or what? By the looks of them, their skins are still on them, hair, the lot. They look like . . . mummies?”
“Could be,” Purdue muttered as he disappeared into the boiler room adjacent to count more bodies. “Perhaps the heat from the boiler room and the ovens petrified their remains?”
Vincent felt decidedly creeped out by the grisly scene, and with the undertow bringing all kinds of sounds through the broken carcass of the battleship, it made for an experience that could make even the devil uneasy. “Do hurry, David! We have to get topside before the tide changes!”
Purdue was silent behind the wall of bodies. Only the echoes of the dead ship accompanied the skipper of the Cóncord as he took samples of fabric from the uniforms, and, reluctantly, peeling minute samples of skin and hair from the bones of his nearest gruesome donor.
“My God! I don’t believe this!” Purdue shouted from the other room. “Vincent! You have to get one more pulley down here before we pack up for the day, old boy!”
“What? What is it?” Vincent asked eagerly, very grateful to hear his diving partner’s voice again. He chose to follow through the morbid obstacle of corpses to see what Purdue was on about. With great toil he finally managed to get through with the heavy tanks still strapped to his back. His blue eyes grew wild at the vision before him, bringing tears to his eyes.
“Unbelievable. Oh Christ, she is beautiful,” he wailed as Purdue smiled.
“Do you know her?” Purdue asked playfully, assuming the golden statue of an Inca woman in full royal dress was the relic Vincent was looking for.
“I know her,” Vincent said softly as he waddled towards the full-size artwork. He looked at Purdue with an expression of absolute shock and admiration, his thick, gloved hands shaking. “Do you realize what this means, David?”
“Your prophecy can come true?” Purdue guessed, still not certain about the pursuits of the mariner with the oddly blue eyes.
“This is the statue reputed to have been melted down by the greedy Spanish conquistadors under that dog, Pizarro, after the sacking of Cuzco in 1533. Do you know the account of Atahualpa, the Inca emperor the Spanish held ransom?”
Purdue shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve heard of Atahualpa, but I fear I lack the smaller details.”
“Murdering, greedy bastards, they were,” Vincent lamented.
A loud clank against the gunwale jolted them both back to reality. They gathered the samples, designated the area with bright orange luminous paint and returned to the surface with far more than they ever thought they would find.
21
The Sun Man
Solar Eclipse Imminent: 68%
“How am I going to go to school while we’re here?” Raul asked Madalina.
The two of them were sitting in a quaint little restaurant in the main street of Sax. Outside the window the massive thirteenth century Sax Castle leered down upon the modern highway that ran past the town, casting its mighty shadow like a stone guardian that stood up from the soil.
“You don’t have to,” Madalina smiled. “I’m a teacher
. I will teach you anything you need to know.”
“But if you teach me I’ll have no friends, Madi. I want to go to school to have friends, not to learn,” he objected, while stuffing his eager mouth with ice cream and chocolate sauce. Madalina only had a coffee. She had to conserve what little money she had left after the hasty trip they recently undertook. Having paid the B&B upfront for a week she felt a bit more relaxed, at least until her brother would hopefully show up. Madalina knew that she would be in a world of trouble, not only with the police, but Javier was going to be so disappointed in her for everything she had done.
To exacerbate matters, she honestly had no excuse or reason for what she had done. Her desperate actions that had led to a murder and a kidnapping came from nowhere in particular, apart from a need to get the boy away from the wicked mother figure he was with. It had been several days since Madalina had taken the boy, yet still he did not once ask where Mara was, or if she were dead. He didn’t treat Madalina like the stranger she was, and this unsettled her somewhat. She was grateful that he wasn’t resisting her, but his unconventional reaction to it all had her logic knotted up, begging her to resolve it by asking Raul why he was so complaint.
Perhaps, she thought, he could have suffered such trauma from the incident that he has not yet processed it. On the other hand, she had to concede that he was far too resilient and steadfast of mind to crumble. The boy was clearly of great intelligence, not in the ‘child genius’ way, but in an ‘old soul’ way. His sharpness was similar to that of a teenager, a curiosity that belonged to youth and the experience of a hard life combined.
“You can make friends once my brother takes us to a new home, alright?” she said, trying to appease him. He said nothing. He was in deep thought, concentrating on his ice cream, using the spoon to sculpt it. “What are you making? Oh, the castle up on the mountain?” she asked, trying to divert his attention from the tight situation they were in.
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