The Seventh Secret (Order of the Black Sun Book 11)

by P. W. Child

  "Nothing is ever easy when it comes to decisions. No matter what resources one has, no matter how well things are going. One wrong decision can obliterate years of achievement. Has that ever crossed your mind?" Purdue asked. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, scrutinizing Sam's face as if he was interested in his opinion.

  Sam was now convinced that Purdue was trying to tell him something. Either that or he was using the discussion to prepare Sam for some revelation.

  “Perhaps such decisions should be thrown onto the table among trusted friends, to ascertain the general consensus in that matter," Sam winked. He was trying to keep the conversation from getting weighty and thick, but he maintained a serious tone as not to trivialize Purdue's apparent predicament. "Get a second opinion, perhaps," he shrugged, looking over the waves that were rapidly disappearing under the veil of darkness and reduced to only the burbling sound of a salty breath.

  Purdue’s countenance remained unchanged as he looked at Sam, “What if it’s too late for that?”

  Ch apter 13 – The Eye of the Storm

  Turmoil prevailed on the salvage tug, Aleayn Yam. It had been three days since it departed from its home port of Safaga on the east coast of Egypt. Crystal Meyer owned several salvage operations across the globe, especially in locations and countries of historical significance where wreck salvages were common and dives for long lost scrolls and treasures were almost daily occurrences. On the Red Sea, the sun stung whoever stayed out on deck for too long, but the fishermen and dock workers of the coastal settlements were used to it.

  There was always work to be done, and hiding from the scorching heat of the climate here would interfere with their productivity. No-one could wait for the day to grow cool enough for comfort –nothing would ever get done that way. The incessant, almost year-round heat was part of the weather of Arabic countries and Africa in general. Most of the people here had grown accustomed to temperatures people from other regions couldn’t bear without falling victim to heat exhaustion.

  German master diver, salvor, and maritime lawyer Crystal Meyer owned the small tug operation in Safaga and had summoned the crew to sail south toward Madagascar for a project – the salvage of a World War II vessel, which was supposed to be conducted in secret.

  Many tribulations had troubled the tug boat since it left Safaga, but the worst struck just as it navigated into the waters of the Gulf of Aden. A freak storm ensued from the heat of the past day, which had been abnormal even by their standards. But the vessel stayed on its course as best as its crew could, considering the swells and currents that would have put any other ship with a less than competent skipper into serious trouble.

  Overhead, the clouds hung heavily even after spewing down torrents of rain into the heavy sea below. Ships and boats barely stayed afloat with every squall and leviathan breakers that battered them, but what disturbed the crew most was the storm itself. It was a rather rare occurrence, like the category III tropical cyclone that had hit the Arabian Sea a few years prior; but unlike back then, there had been no warning of these conditions by the weather stations in Yemen or India this time around. As a matter of fact, this insidious weather system had developed as if some malevolent god under the sea had summoned it.

  At least, the latter was what Ali Shabat, skipper of the tug, believed. His bloodshot brown eyes scanned the instruments before him, unable to make sense of what was happening outside. His leathery brown skin tingled with the bite of cold air that had come with the storm as he and his first mate Manni tried to keep the tugboat from crashing into a wave trough.

  The crew was terrified, but each man kept to his post while they pulled out the rum and khat for the nerves in the galley. On the tug, there were two engineers and eight permanent crew members, among which two mechanics, who handled countless tasks on the vessel, from cleaning and cooking to manning the cranes and checking the engines.

  “Hold course!” Ali commanded his first mate. He left the bridge and ran for the head. In the chaos of the sea storm, his stomach had turned on him. He bemoaned the awful timing of his digestive system as he just made it to the door before the fountain of bile surged.

  In the storage cabin, two men held on to the bars of the fixtures placed there for securing cargo. Praying and crying out, they were hoping their pleas would be heard by their god. Hissing and crashing against the hull and tiers of the tug, the sea made certain that screams were futile and that the limits of the ship were tested. One of the men, amazed by the resiliency of the Aleayn Yam, shouted to his crewmate, “Good thing this is a German-built boat!”

  “Egyptian engineering is just as good,” the other one scoffed.

  “If you say so, Fakur! But can you imagine if this boat didn’t belong to Meyer? It would not have any of the high-tech systems that have helped us to many times,” he argued. Fakur, the other engineer, scowled.

  “You’re a fool. Either that or you’re an incurable optimist! How is your beloved German engineering helping us right now, huh? How is it going to keep us from drowning?” he roared, wincing as his knee hit the wall.

  “I know.” The other man said, “But whining won’t help us either. We probably won’t survive this storm. It is going to end badly for us, so why dwell on things we can do nothing about?”

  “We can do something about it!” Fakur hissed. His leg was aching unbearably. “But nobody has the guts to try and do it.”

  “One cannot go against fate,” his companion asserted. “Stop moaning about what you cannot change! You will just get tired.”

  "I'm tired already," Fakur admitted, trying to stay upright as a headache from the head injury he sustained when the trouble had first started grew worse.

  From there, the two men suffered their fate in silence and stopped arguing over something they had no bearing on. Ali felt dizzy from dehydration, but while the huge tugboat rocked, rose and fell at the whim of the sea, he made his way back to Manni in the bridge.

  “I’ve gone to sea more than twelve years now, Ali,” Manni said, looking out over the raw, untamed power of the water, “but I have never felt so close to death before, my friend.”

  "Maybe your mother's god is punishing you," Ali replied mockingly. He had a laugh and grabbed the bottle without a label that held the last of the rum they had been drinking to calm their nerves. Manni and Ali had been mariners all their life, but all men were capable of fear when it came to nature and her fury. There was something formidable about the destructive indifference of natural phenomena, especially the sea, where myths and legends remained abundant throughout the ages.

  “You’re joking, but you are tempting fate,” Manni warned, taking the bottle from him. “My mother’s god hates me. You know that. Don’t talk about him; not now, not here. It is like speaking out the devil’s name knowing he will come.”

  “You are too superstitious, brother,” Ali said. “That is why I am the skipper of this boat and not you. You give in way too easily. I thought you were strong, but now you sound like a woman.”

  Manni leered at his friend, but Ali ignored him. He had always hated Ali's indifference, his total lack of respect for the sea and the unseen forces. But he had no choice than to keep working with his childhood friend on this admittedly lucrative path they had chosen to embark on. He could become a laborer, but then his life would be without adventure.

  “We are approaching the Equator, Manni. I have not crossed it in over two years, you know?” Ali smiled, revealing his oversized incisors that shone brightly under his brown lips as he checked the instruments where the bearings changed by the second. Manni paid him no mind. So what if it is the first time in two years that Ali was crossing the Equator? It was not a special feat or an unusual thing for sailors, especially those in their line of business.

  The lightning did not hit the waters. It merely made the clouds light up. Manni’s heart pounded at the sight of the mighty forces that threw the boat about like a cork in a river.

  “Have you checked on the crew?
” Ali asked his superstitious mate.

  “No, I haven’t. I’ll do that when this storm subsides,” Manni replied. Ali turned to him with an intimidating stare. His teeth had now retreated behind his lips and when he stepped up to Manni the skipper’s 6’4” frame loomed over him. Ali was never one to pull rank, so the first mate nodded quickly and left the bridge to check on the crew.

  A few minutes later he reappeared in the door with wild eyes and panic in his voice. His skinny fingers clutched at the doorway as the boat fell deep left into the waves. “Ali! Ali! The engineers are gone! And so is Baashi!”

  Ali spun around. “How can they be gone? We are on the open sea, you imbecile!” he thundered over the boisterous rumble of the storm. Baashi was one of his best men and Ali was furious to hear that he was gone. He could not have left the boat unless…

  “Overboard? Get the others! Find out when they last saw them and find out where they are! Now!” Ali screamed. They had no time to lose, especially now that they were on their way to a particularly profitable venture in the Indian Ocean. He could not afford to lose any of his men. He would have searched the boat himself, but under these conditions he had to stand attention at the wheel or they would all perish before they even made it into the Southern Hemisphere.

  While he monitored the engines and the bearings he could not help but feel a jolt of worry take hold of his mind. He didn’t have enough men for the job as it was, and now three were gone. At this rate, they would never successfully make it to Madagascar to get the exact coordinates from the South African team. They would be lost at sea or would have to return home, probably without sufficient fuel, or worse yet, no profit.

  Finally, when the nagging fear would let go, and he decided to leave the bridge to see what was happening aboard the Aleayn Yam. Water was pouring in with every onslaught from the massive waves that crashed against the hull of the boat. Ali slid down the jack ladder to get on deck where he had last spoken to the crew, braving the assault of the waves washing mercilessly over the vessel.

  He found nobody there, so he dashed for the shelter of the corridor where the majority of the cabins were lined along the length of the tug boat. Over the rush of the sea, he could vaguely hear two of his men shouting and followed the sound toward the other exit. As Ali reached the second door from the exit, it swung open with a mighty scuffling.

  Two men bolted from the cabin so fast he could hardly recognize who they were before they fell through the exit doors where one was hurled over the rail, disappearing into the white death of the furious spray. The other man desperately held on to the firefighting compartment that protruded from the wall. It was Manni.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” Ali screamed at him.

  “There is bad juju on this boat, Ali!” Manni screamed in terror. “Asaab is dead. The storm has cost us two lives already.”

  Ali helped him inside and wedged the doors shut. His stern eyes looked at the body of one of his men, Asaab, lying in the corner with a broken neck.

  Cha pter 14 – Convergence

  Sam watched Purdue survey the ocean on his tablet screen, rigged up to various radar devices. Even sonar technology was employed via Purdue’s echolocation and pulse reader, whatever that was. Sam had never enjoyed science. As long as Purdue knew what he was doing, Sam was willing to trust his judgment and not going to ask any questions.

  He had learned that lesson early on. Once you asked Purdue how something worked, it would inadvertently turn into a lecture involving countless other gadgets that would have to be explained as well to clarify the next and the next, and all that would just end up leaving Sam more clueless and confused than he had been before. So he silently sat with a cold beer, watching the playboy-inventor type in random sequences of numbers that gave Sam a headache.

  Until they found the wreck, went diving or to retrieve anything Sam would be left bored, save for the odd braai or a walk on the beach to get fishing tips from the locals.

  “When will you know if we have something here, Dave?” Crystal asked from the open kitchen where she poured some wine for her and Nina.

  "Very soon!" Purdue shouted. The volume of his answer was born from excitement, yet he did not smile or face any of them. He did not want to lose his train of thought or neglect the next sequence because finally he had reached a pinnacle of the laborious process. "I have picked up an anomaly just 5 km from international waters!”

  Sam perked up. At last, he had something to look forward to. For some reason, Nina was not paying much attention to him and Crystal seemed to reserve her consideration for Purdue’s search. She was more interested in what his green lines and shapes revealed than what she could be doing with a randy Scottish lad with a brand new tan. “Anomaly, as in a wreck?” he asked Purdue, shifting closer with his beer firmly in hand.

  “Looks like one,” Purdue answered, scrutinizing the numbers, writing them down and then changing the program. He looked at Sam, “How about a cold one for the hard working super genius over here?”

  Sam laughed and went to the fridge. He brushed past Nina, who had her nose in a book.

  “Good story, Nina?” he asked nonchalantly as he got two more beers out.

  “Aye,” she responded to Sam’s surprise. “It is fascinating, actually. Not a story, though, but true life accounts about treasure hunting and sea battles over treasures.”

  Her eyes briefly met his, but there was nothing there. Sam could not find any affection or warmth in them. He realized that Nina was just sharing the subject of the book with him – nothing more, nothing less. It stung him far more than he had thought it would, but he smiled, “Sounds riveting…maybe just a little too portentous,” and left immediately to hide his disappointment.

  Crystal had taken her place by Purdue’s side and inspected the data he had printed. It looked like a massive hull pointing upward from the sand bed. On the screen, he had dimensions and a legend for scale purposes – even shading from the three-dimensional graphics. Sam decided not to disturb the two and their obvious captivation with the object and set Purdue's beer down next to him before taking a seat on a stool at the bar near the sliding door.

  “Should I get my equipment ready?” he jested just to break the silence.

  "Actually, it's going to happen sooner than you think, old boy," Purdue replied from over by the machine nest of wires and devices where he had made his home. "I believe that this is what Dr. Malgas was referring to."

  Nina closed her book and came to see what the model looked like. For a long moment, she examined the distinct inconsistency on the sea floor and frowned.

  “Excuse me if I sound daft, but is this just… half a ship? Or am I missing something? Am I misreading the contours?”

  “No,” Crystal confirmed, holding up the printout of the data for Nina to see. “You are quite right. Either the ship is broken in half or - and this part scares me –” she sighed, “the rest of it is actually buried under the ocean floor.”

  "Jesus! That would be impossible to pull out without a tanker and a humongous crane if that would even be doable!” Nina exclaimed.

  “And that’s why the mere possibility scares me,” Crystal answered.

  “Don’t you have the technical means to do something like that though, Crystal?” Sam asked from his stool in the sunshine. She looked at him with a hopeless expression. “I mean, with your resources,” Sam added, “could you not have something to get the job done?”

  “Sam, it is not about having the money to build such a thing, darling,” she clarified in her slight German accent that only made her sound sexier and smarter. “The problem with equipment the size we’d need for a salvage of that magnitude is that our little secret would not be a secret anymore, and we’d find our asses in jail in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “And we can’t… I don’t know… drag the thing along the sea floor until it hits international waters?” Nina asked, feeling as dumb as Sam had sounded a minute ago. She cast a glance in his direction, c
atching him staring at her.

  “That would be the only solution, provided the rest of it doesn’t get wedged somehow," Purdue smiled at Nina. "Not as far-fetched as you might think." He winked at her, drawing a smirk from the petite historian. Sam felt utterly sick at the dynamic within the group, wishing he had a way to recover from his current social shunning.

  His wish was granted in a quite curious way when two vehicles pulled up to the house and parked on the short grass that served as a sidewalk in front of the property.

  Sam peeked over the wall from his seat, then jumped up and cried, “Our associates have arrived!” He pulled on his running shoes, worried about the nasty thorns he unexpectedly stepped on the day before when he leaped barefoot over the fence to go to the beach. Nina followed him outside to welcome the rest of their multi-national expedition.

  It was nearing late afternoon when the historian and the journalist came out to meet the security and the academics.

  "So happy to see you, Sam!" Dr. Malgas cried from the car, elated to see his old acquaintance after so many years. He gave Sam a look of astonishment, briefly investigating his wild appearance. Gone was the clean-shaven, despondent and insomniac investigative journalist. Before him stood a matured man with an air of adventure, exuding a zest for life. The two men embraced heartily at meeting up after so long.

  Dr. Malgas exclaimed, “My God, you look like a survivalist!”

  “Or a male stripper,” Nina remarked, standing behind him, with her arms folded and an eyebrow raised. Both men turned their attention to Nina, then Sam pulled her closer to Dr. Malgas.

  "Billy Malgas, meet Dr. Nina Gould. Historian, academic, sharpest tongue and the most exquisite pain in the ass you will ever have to endure," Sam introduced her. Dr. Malgas’ face contorted to a smirk at Sam’s courage to talk about her like that in her presence.

  “It is a true honor, Dr. Gould,” he smiled. “I see you and Sam are close friends. Only good friends get to insult each other so openly.” He shook Nina’s slender hand, amazed at her grip. He noticed the tattoo.