The Einstein Code

by Tom West

  ‘Pacific Ocean,’ she said, staring at the big screen hanging from the ceiling. ‘Dalton Island, the place the fucking Chinese have just bought for a few cents!’

  Freeman walked over to the panel and gave the operative instructions. The screen turned blue then flicked back to an image of the earth from space; the view from Satellite 21 in geosynchronous orbit above the equatorial Pacific. The image seemed to grow on the screen as the camera zoomed in, the edges dropping away as the satellite honed in on the coordinates punched into the mainframe of the station computer, 0° 46' 16"N 176° 35' 03"W.

  The centre of the screen displayed a green oblong. According to a scale on the side of the monitor, it was a little over three hundred yards north–south, sixty yards east–west at its widest point. A mere pinprick in the vast ocean, a featureless dimple skirted by sand.

  ‘Dalton,’ Freeman said. ‘Doesn’t look much, does it?’

  ‘It is what’s beneath it that’s interesting,’ Buckingham said. ‘What’s that?’

  The image shifted westward and refocused. They could see a large drilling vessel.

  ‘I would say that is an exploratory drilling rig. The Chinese must have got permission from the owners of the island to do some test boring . . . to see what they were buying.’

  ‘Now it’s theirs they can do want they want. I imagine the heavy plant will be on its way from the port of Shanghai as we speak . . . the bastards.’

  ‘OK, let’s see what’s down there,’ Freeman said.

  The view on the monitor changed, the satellite image moved south-west to close in on the expanse of ocean near the island, probing the depths to the ocean floor. The data on the screen informed them the rocky seabed lay at an average depth of 2,450 feet. The camera showed an undulating seascape of coral rich in a variety of marine life.

  ‘Switch to hi-res ultra spectral,’ Freeman told the operative. ‘Watch,’ he added to Buckingham and Secker.

  The screen filled with a red glow. Freeman whistled. ‘A whole lot of oil.’

  ‘Pan back out,’ Buckingham instructed, ‘keep focused on the top end of the spectrum.’ The operator followed orders and they all watched as the image expanded, pulling outward to show an area of some ten square miles of sub-terrain. The red shape filled half the field, shimmering, iridescent.

  ‘That has to be at least a couple of billion barrels,’ Secker said, barely able to believe what he was seeing.

  ‘OK, Freeman, zoom back in,’ Buckingham said calmly. ‘Skirt around the edge. I want to see if we can get an idea of its depth.’

  Freeman helped the operative at the control panel and the image on the screen changed once more. Flicking back to a normal spectrum, the camera zoomed in, breaking the surface again and descending towards the ocean floor.

  It was then that a strange object flitted in and then out of view.

  ‘Stop!’ Buckingham said.

  Freeman looked confused, but the operative had halted the pan.

  ‘Back. Same speed, about three, four seconds.’

  The image shifted, the panning slowed and they shot past the object again.

  Buckingham did not need to say anything, the operative knew. He nudged the controls, panning back at a crawl. The ocean floor flowed across the monitor, rocks, coral, a giant school of small fish . . . and stopped. There on the screen they could all see a white object like a distorted cross.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ Buckingham exclaimed.

  3

  Off Howland Island, Pacific Ocean. The next day.

  ‘Oxygen at ninety-eight per cent, Kate,’ Lou said and pulled round to face her.

  ‘Same,’ she said, checking his tank, giving him the thumbs up before turning to the two junior team members, Gustav Schwartz and Connor Maitland. ‘Keep comms open at all times, guys. We’ll be at seventy feet so we only have thirty minutes at the wreck.’

  ‘Cool,’ Gustav said.

  Lou Bates and Kate Wetherall sat on the side of the exploration vessel Inca, an eighty-five-footer leased by their employers, the Institute of Marine Studies in Hampton, Virginia. The boat was in the shallow reefs off Howland Island in the mid-Pacific close to the equator. The pair, along with two of their team from the institute, had boarded in the Gilbert Islands, three days away. They had been anchored here for the past twenty-four hours, preparing for the first in a planned series of dives to an old wreck, the Victoria.

  A few miles to the west of Howland lay the tiny atoll of Dalton. Kate and Lou and the crew of the Inca had been following the news on the BBC website concerning international outrage at the recent Chinese purchase of the island. Earlier that day they had heard the boom of shallow ocean explosions resonating from Dalton. The BBC had shown aerial photographs and satellite images of Chinese exploratory vessels already beginning to exploit their new acquisition.

  Falling backwards into the water, Kate and Lou were instantly cocooned in the near-silent world of the Pacific Ocean, the sunlight shimmering on the surface above them, the coral-laden reef below. They were experienced divers who had explored dozens of wrecks during the three years they had worked together. To date, their most important work had been their key role eighteen months ago in finding a radiation source buried in the wreck of the Titanic. They had been brought into the investigation by a commander at Norfolk Naval Base, Captain Jerry Derham. What had begun as an incredible adventure exploring the inside of the Titanic had turned into a tangled drama in which the couple had skirted death several times in the space of a few days. Jerry Derham had saved their lives on at least two occasions, and they had grown very close to him.

  Lou and Kate’s involvement with tracking the source of radiation from the Titanic and the sensational story behind it had propelled them briefly into the public spotlight. They had been interviewed by Time, appeared on breakfast TV on both sides of the Atlantic, and they had just delivered to their New York publishers the first draft of Messages from the Deep, a co-written account of their adventures. Now, though, it was nice to be working on a small project – something a little out of the way. And this was special for another reason. They had married a week ago in Maryland, making this a working honeymoon.

  The Victoria lay in seventy feet of water, with Dalton the nearest land. Beyond that was the island of Howland, and the nearest habitation was the Gilbert Islands, some 800 miles to the west.

  The precise location of Victoria, a British trading vessel bound for Hawaii, had remained a mystery since it sank in a tropical storm in August 1889. Only two of the seventy-nine people aboard the ship had survived and reached the Gilbert Islands. They claimed to have been slaves, two of twenty-four men and women taken from the island of Vanuatu.

  The British governor of the Gilbert Islands, Sir Jonathan Southling, had refused to believe their story because slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire over fifty years earlier. The two men, known only as Daniel and Alfred, had been sent back to Vanuatu without compensation and forgotten about until their story was rediscovered soon after the end of the Second World War. During the 1950s, British marine archaeologists had begun to wonder about the validity of Daniel and Alfred’s claim. But it was not until a year ago that the wreck was spotted by a NASA satellite and the Institute of Marine Studies in Hampton acquired funding to investigate the wreck.

  The Victoria was in a very poor state. It had been an old ship when it had sunk and the warm waters and rich marine life in these parts had not treated it kindly. The timber hull and decks had gone completely. All that remained was the steel framework of the vessel resting on the reef like the carcass of a dead animal. Around it was strewn a miscellany of objects, clumps of coral-encrusted metal boxes, steel crates and remnants of the main mast.

  The safest way to enter the wreck was from directly above, in through the bow. From here they could see the ship’s metal skeleton stretching out across the coral and sand floor of the continental shelf. At a depth of seventy feet almost ninety per cent of light from the surface was absor
bed, but large powerful lights on Kate and Lou’s helmets and arms illuminated the site.

  ‘I’m going to take it slowly,’ Lou said through his comms.

  ‘Right behind you,’ Kate replied.

  Lou flicked his comms to link with Inca. ‘Gustav? Connor? Everything OK with you?’

  ‘No probs, Lou.’

  ‘We’ve reached the wreck and are about to go in through the bow end.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  The bow was pointing south-west and raised slightly above the rest of the ship. This part of the old vessel was nothing but a metal lattice and the beams of their helmet lights cut through the dark to reveal an interior coated in multicoloured oxides and crustaceans.

  They moved back along Victoria’s spine and found the remains of a deck framework covered with corroded steel sheets. Here there was an opening about ten feet across leading into the bowels of the ship. They swept their lights about trying to understand the layout of the interior. Slowly, they swam down to the bottom of the ship to what had once been the vessel’s hold.

  Lou scanned the hold with his helmet light then moved down to swim two feet above the base of the hull.

  ‘Well, what d’ya know?’ he said through his comms.

  Kate was there beside him, staring down. ‘No mistaking that.’ She moved in close to inspect a row of corroded steel shackles, ankle and wrist braces connected to the remains of the floor by thick crumbling chains. They ran in two lines, twenty-four pairs along the spine of the ship. ‘Daniel and Alfred were telling the truth.’

  She removed a camera from a pouch on a utility belt and started to photograph the objects. Lou had a video camera built into the sleeve of his suit and began filming, beaming the images directly to Inca seventy feet above their heads.

  ‘You guys getting this?’ he asked through his comms.

  ‘Crystal clear, Lou,’ Gustav replied.

  Kate was the first to sense the vibration in the water, a strong current pulling her away from the floor where she was taking close-ups. ‘What the hell! Lou, you feel that?’

  He straightened and lowered the video camera. ‘Yes.’

  Kate swung her light beams around cutting through the gloom. They could see the water filled with rust and flecks of metal. Something had shaken the wreck and dislodged loose oxides coating the framework.

  ‘Up to the main deck . . . now!’ Kate hollered and turned away from the metal shackles, Lou immediately behind her.

  ‘Guys, can you see anything unusual?’ Lou called through the comms as he swam fast through the water back up to the hatch and the open framework of the wreck above.

  ‘No, Lou,’ Connor replied. ‘What’s up?’

  They did not answer, just propelled themselves upward, emerging through a gap in the deck. Ten feet from the edge of the wreck they could see a huge metal object protruding from the sand and sediment of the ocean floor.

  4

  The debris-filled water foamed wildly. Pebbles and small pieces of detritus landed on them as they scrambled under the cover of a ragged piece of steel.

  ‘What was that?’ It was Connor aboard Inca.

  Kate and Lou panted into their masks as the water convulsed silently around them.

  ‘Guys? You OK? Kate, Lou, come in.’

  ‘We’re all right . . . I think,’ Lou managed to gasp.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Kate said. ‘Some sort of object has emerged from the ocean floor close to the wreck. Don’t know what it is. We need to let the sediment and sand settle before we take a look.’

  ‘How about you come straight back up?’ Gustav suggested.

  Lou looked at his chronometer. ‘We’ve got nearly ten minutes. Now we’re down here, we should try to see what happened.’

  He turned to Kate and they peered over the edge of the steel cover. The water had begun to clear. Still turbid, the larger pieces of material had settled. Pulling out from the shelter, Kate took the lead.

  It was only as they came within ten yards of the side of the thing they could make out what it was.

  ‘My God!’ Kate exclaimed through her comms. ‘It’s the fuselage of a plane.’ They floated a few yards away from the starboard side of the object.

  ‘Look, its wings have been ripped off almost back to the engines.’ Kate manoeuvred through the water to reach within arm’s length of the shattered aeroplane, pointing to a bundle of frayed and tangled wires.

  Lou turned towards the cockpit, pulling himself up from under the side of the plane and grappling his way over the curved metal. He glanced round, spotting Kate immediately behind him.

  ‘I recognize the shape of this plane,’ she said. ‘It’s a Lockheed Electra. Twin engine.’

  ‘Looks pretty old.’

  ‘First used in the 1930s.’

  They reached the glass of the canopy. The hatch was unlocked and vibrated a little in the current. The top was shattered, an opening about a foot wide ran halfway across it. The insides of the rip were discoloured with green slime.

  Lou leaned over and peered inside. He was silent for a few seconds then pulled back. ‘No bodies.’

  He tugged carefully at the jagged glass. The canopy crumbled at his touch, shards of glass tumbling away, falling slowly through the water and exposing the inside of the old cockpit.

  It was in surprisingly good condition. ‘I think most of the damage to the canopy was recent,’ Lou commented. ‘Look.’ He picked up a dagger of glass left jammed in the metal edging around the rim where it joined the fuselage. ‘No slime or any other organic material along the joins. The break in the top is old, smeared with the usual crap.’

  ‘That split would have been enough to have let marine life in to consume the bodies. Wouldn’t take long.’

  ‘The hatch of the canopy was open though,’ Lou observed.

  ‘Oh yes, strange.’

  Kate pulled herself up through the water and turned so she could get a good look inside the cockpit. Lou filmed her and Kate used her camera to get some close-ups.

  Lou checked his chronometer. ‘Two minutes, max,’ he said.

  It was a wide, shallow cockpit; two seats, two control wheels, a pair of throttle levers. The instruments looked old-fashioned: large, round dials, heavy Bakelite switches. The leather of the chairs had been almost completely eaten away, just a few slimy brown patches left untouched. Kate poked around the control panel. It was covered with crustaceans.

  ‘Definitely no trace of human remains,’ Lou observed, panning the micro camera around to take in the details. ‘Better go,’ he said.

  Lou saw Kate tuck her camera away, then glance back at the inside of the old plane.

  ‘Hang on . . . there’s something caught in the footwell.’

  ‘Kate. Gotta go.’

  ‘One sec.’ She slipped head-first into the cockpit until she had almost vanished, only her feet remaining above the canopy rim. Lou could hear her breathing heavily through the comms.

  ‘Damn it!’ she hissed.

  ‘Kate . . . please! I don’t want you spending the rest of our honeymoon in the tank.’

  Kate had reached the footwell and stretched to reach her quarry. ‘Almost . . . Got it.’

  She curled round gracefully and came into view. Lou could see her smiling through the visor. She was holding up a corroded metal cylinder about the size of a relay runner’s baton. ‘What’re we waiting for?’

  5

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt whose plane it was.’ Kate surveyed the faces of the three men around the table at one end of the lab aboard Inca. At the other end of the small room stood workbenches, specialized equipment bolted down, files in high-sided containers, three swivel stools firmly attached to the deck. Gustav Schwartz was flicking through some stills of the wreck on an iPad.

  ‘You really think it is Amelia Earhart’s plane?’ Connor Maitland said.

  ‘It stacks up,’ Lou said.

  Kate flicked on a flat screen on the wall above
Lou’s head and clicked a remote. The monitor lit up with the film they had shot of the tangled remains of the aeroplane unearthed beside Victoria.

  ‘It is definitely a Lockheed Electra. Both wings have very nearly been sheared off, but the engines are still in place. You can see, here and here.’ Kate tapped the screen with her fingernail.

  ‘What about the age of it though, Kate? You said when we were down there that the Electras were first put into service in the 1930s. When did Earhart’s plane crash?’

  ‘The morning of the 2nd of July 1937, about 8.30. She and her co-pilot Fred Noonan were attempting to land on Howland Island. Their last known position was close to here.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about Amelia Earhart,’ Lou commented.

  ‘Early teenage obsession,’ Kate replied. ‘My mother kept these wonderful old annuals. The Crackerjack Girl’s Own Book, 1959 had this brilliant feature about the great heroine, Amelia Earhart. I was hooked!’

  ‘Cute.’ Lou grinned at her.

  ‘So, this is a Lockheed Electra. But there were a lot of different models, right?’ Gustav asked.

  ‘I did some checking on Google.’ Kate brought up a new screen. It showed the schematic of a twin-engine, stub-nosed aeroplane. ‘A 1936 Electra,’ she said and superimposed it on a picture they had taken of the wrecked plane. They matched almost perfectly.

  ‘This is a model 10E. Earhart and Noonan were flying a heavily customized model 10E. But here’s the clincher.’ She clicked the remote to show a picture of Amelia Earhart standing beside her plane taken just before she left Darwin to begin the final stages of her attempted circumnavigation.

  ‘The serial number of Earhart’s plane was NR 16020. It was written on each wing. You can’t see the wing markings here, and of course the aircraft we’ve found has lost most of its wings anyway. But look . . .’