Jack was sharp again. “That the corsair ship is sailing under the Dutch flag, Ms. Weller, tells us only the opposite, that it is definitely not a Dutch ship, or from any other Allied country.”
She was quiet for a few seconds. “So, then that means . . .”
“It means they’re probably Germans.”
Elsa clasped her hand over her mouth.
“That also explains,” César said, scratching his neck, “why March is so eager for us to finish quickly.”
“Mon cher, I don’t follow,” Julie said.
“Well, I guess if Juan March knew the exact location of the wreck, the Germans probably do too. The seven days he gave us are probably the time it would take for a ship from the Kriegsmarine to get here.”
“Merde . . . If we leave, we lose the million dollars and open ourselves to March’s wrath, and if we stay we go against the Nazis. Great,” Julie said.
“I’d rather take my chances with the Nazis,” Marco said.
“How ’bout the rest of you?” Riley asked, running a hand over his face. “Are you prepared to go on?”
“What else can we do?” Jack muttered. “We found the ship, and it’s possible to go in. If we hurry maybe we can finish on time.”
Julie and César exchanged a few quiet words and nodded.
“And what would they do if they find us?” Kirchner asked.
Riley breathed in, about to answer, but Marco beat him to it. “You’re asking what the Nazis would do if they found us trying to rob one of their corsair ships that they don’t even want anyone to know about?” He was silent for a moment, relishing Kirchner’s fear. “I think a scientist oughta be a whole lot smarter than that.”
Once the meeting was over, each of them returned to their cabin to rest. Jack was preparing dinner, filleting some chicken breasts to go with potatoes and curry.
“And what the hell’s wrong with you?”
Jack turned and found Riley frowning at him from a seat at the table with a cup in his hand.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Jack answered, turning away.
“You know perfectly well. Since what happened on deck, you’re unbearable.”
“My job on this ship isn’t being nice.”
“You’re acting like an idiot.”
“I’ll act how the fuck I want.”
On any other ship, a response like that from the second-in-command to his captain would have prompted a severe scolding and an order to polish the deck with his tongue. Instead, Riley responded with a dry, humorless laugh. “Fuck, Jack,” he said, taking a sip. “I can’t believe at this point in your life, you’re infatuated with a girl who could be your daughter.”
Jack turned around. “Who I’m infatuated with is my business.” He pointed the kitchen knife at Riley. “And there aren’t that many years between us, so don’t act like I’m a freak.”
“It’s just I can’t believe—I thought the bet was just a joke. A way to kill time.”
“This has nothing to do with the stupid bet.”
“But come on, Joaquín,” Riley said, shaking his head. “How is it possible for a guy with so much experience to fall for a chick? It seems incredible with the number of women you know in all the ports we anchor in.”
“Whores,” Jack said. “With luck a bereaved war widow. But she’s different. Fuck. She’s practically another species.”
“That’s because she’s twenty-something. When she’s forty she’ll be just like the widows you comfort.”
“I don’t think so. Women like that are like good wine.”
Riley stared at him, realizing he’d get nowhere. “Okay,” he said, putting the cup down and rubbing his eyes. “So tell me, what’s your plan? Ask her to marry you? Live in your cabin and be a smuggler?”
“That’s not important,” he said quietly, slicing the chicken again. “It’s clear she’s already made her choice. As you’d expect, she went for the tall, handsome captain and not the short, fat cook. I really hope you’re happy.”
“You dick!” Riley strode over to him. “Are you hearing yourself?” He grabbed Jack roughly by his collar, bringing his face close to his, and lifted him off the ground. “I’ll tell you once, and I hope I don’t have to repeat myself. I have no interest in your little German friend. There isn’t and never will be anything between us, and as far as I’m concerned you can marry her and have fifteen kids if she’ll let you. But I’ll tell you one thing”—Riley brought his face an inch away—“if this stupid attitude of yours hinders our work, or in some way puts the crew, the ship, or especially me in danger, I’ll let you both off in Tangier and you can stay there without your cut.” He took a step back and glared. “Have I been clear enough?”
Looking away, Jack nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry for talking like this, my friend,” Riley added, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But I need you to concentrate on what we’re doing. We can’t have you walking around here like a mopey teenager. You understand, right?”
“I understand.” He sighed and looked up. “But can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, shoot.”
“Speaking of focusing on what we’re doing . . . Your drink,” he said, pointing at the cup on the table, “isn’t water, is it?”
17
They had to wait for the sun to rise a good height above the horizon in the morning for some of its light to reach the thirty yards to the wreck. So when Riley and Marco descended to the wreck again, they did so well rested and wide awake, with a good portion of eggs and bacon and a couple of cups of hot coffee in their stomachs.
The iron basket hanging from the crane submerged with Riley and Marco holding on. They then entered the silent universe where the animals flew with their fins, the air was scarce and tasted like rubber, and shades of navy blue were the only colors. Riley gestured to Marco to ask if everything was okay, and Marco responded affirmatively. They looked down at the growing dark shape.
This time no school of tuna crossed them on their descent, but a sinuous silhouette appeared and disappeared quickly on the edge of Riley’s vision without giving him time to identify it. Immediately, the disturbing image of a shark stalking them in the distance came to mind, but he disregarded it as his mind playing tricks on him, convinced it was just a shadow transformed into a marine predator, thanks to underwater optical illusions.
A minute later, when they were ten feet above the keel, Riley used the signal cord to maneuver the basket down the port gunwale. They hadn’t even gone the ten feet when Marco grabbed his arm and pointed wildly toward the stern of the ship.
They could see several large holes, each four yards in diameter. The holes had irregular edges of sharp iron sheets twisted inward like crooked teeth. They opened far below what had been the waterline of the ship, and each was separated by some twenty yards. It did not take a genius to figure out that they were the reason the Phobos had gone down, and what had made those huge holes was no mystery either. Only torpedoes could have caused such destruction on that part of the ship, out of the reach of any missile or conventional bomb.
Riley figured the most likely scenario was that the corsair ship had been hit by a torpedo from a ship or from a Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber from Gibraltar. Still, it was strange the British had been able to realize it wasn’t an ordinary freighter, since the Phobos wouldn’t have done anything suspicious so close to an English naval base. Riley considered its crew’s fate and prayed that nothing similar happened to his beloved Pingarrón.
Riley discovered the lifeboats were still attached to their moorings, and fear came over him. Very few men had been able to escape. Based on the size and position of the breaches, the ship had probably tilted sharply to the port side, flooded, and gone under in less than a minute.
The inside would be full of bodies.
When they got down past the deck, Riley stopped their descent. Soon they were in front of a wide-open hatch on the second floor of the superstructure.
Riley t
ook his right foot from the basket and supported it on the lower edge of the hatch. Then he grabbed the edge tightly with his left hand and pulled himself inside.
The first thought that crossed his mind was that he’d ended up in one of those haunted houses he’d seen at carnivals where chairs and tables—with their respective plates, glasses, and linens—were nailed to the roof, and the lamps were vertical above the floor. He felt a flash of disorientation and dizziness as his brain tried to figure out if he or the rest of the world was upside down. There were no tables and chairs and the like in the hallways in front of him, but the position of the doorways flush with the ceiling, and the emergency lights and the pipes running along the floor, were enough to confuse anyone.
When the initial uneasiness had passed, he took a step and entered the corridor. When he fell more than half a yard, dragged by his lead shoes, and hit his knees on the ground, he cursed and realized how stupid he was. He still hadn’t fully realized that the world was upside down and, as a result, didn’t take into account the separation between the upper—now the lower—frame of the hatch and the ceiling—now the floor—of the hallway.
With as much dignity as possible, he stood back up and turned toward Marovic, making a gesture to indicate that he was perfectly fine. He had no doubt, however, that the mercenary was dying of laughter inside his helmet. Riley shined his flashlight down the dark corridor, unsure of what would come next.
They slowly went deeper into the interior of the ship until they found the stairs to the bridge. What had once been a stairway was now a descent into a gap. Fortunately, they had the necessary tools with them, including five yards of rope ladder with a wrench tied to one end. They attached the ladder to the railing and let it drop down. Though the length of the air hoses wasn’t a problem, they had to be extremely careful climbing. If the hoses got cut, crimped, or blocked, the air would stop, and Riley and Marco would become permanent parts of the ship.
They went down the ladder and reached the bottom—the upper deck in whose forward part the bridge was supposed to be. Riley reached a closed hatch with a metal plate and an indecipherable word written backward, taking it for granted that he had reached the bridge of the Phobos.
Because the mechanism hadn’t had time to rust, it wasn’t too difficult to turn the wheel on the hatch—though being flipped, it was above his head. Riley squeezed hard and opened the steel hatch. In front of him, as he had assumed, was the Phobos’s helm, deathly deserted, and he felt momentarily confused again on finding all the instruments and control consoles stuck to the ceiling like absurd icicles.
Careful not to trip again, he climbed to the frame of the hatch and crossed the threshold with a jump. Standing in the middle of what had been the roof of the bridge, he looked around to decide where to start looking among the mountains of junk piled in the corners. All the heavy objects that hadn’t been bolted down, along with maps, documents, and books swollen with water like puffer fish, floated in an orgy of disorder, especially on the ceiling where, around some dwindling air pockets, everything from chairs to shoes swirled around.
Despite the mess, it was clear the bridge was much larger than the Pingarrón’s. It was also full of the latest precision navigation technology and instruments, as well as a bunch of indicators Riley couldn’t identify, probably for controlling the torpedoes. The large windows, most of them broken, looked like square mouths of jagged teeth.
He hooked his flashlight on his chest restraint, went to the nearest pile of trash, bent down, and started digging carefully. Marco jumped down after him, and Riley motioned for him to start looking on the other side.
Hindered by the rigidity of the suit and the thick rubber gloves, Riley moved the objects that did not interest him away, trying not to stir the water too much and cause a swirl of shredded paper. But he felt as clumsy as a gorilla playing the piano, and as he made his way through the pile of debris, the water around him rippled and made his work more difficult.
Once he’d searched the first pile, he headed to the second, under the wheel. He noticed how inanimate objects seemed to gather together after disasters just like people, looking for company so as not to face tragedy alone.
He moved aside the biggest pieces of junk with the back of his hand and found the bridge clock. It had elegant roman numerals, a beautiful wooden frame carved with dolphins, and a glass face incredibly intact. It was stuck at four forty. He held it for a moment, thinking about whether or not to take it back to the Pingarrón, but his gut told him not to rob the dead.
The writing machine they were looking for was in a wooden box in the photograph, but it was definitely made of metal, so it wouldn’t be floating above them. The possibility that it had fallen overboard and was now lying somewhere on the seabed was one Riley was not yet willing to consider. He knew for sure the ship’s captain and officers had evacuated the helm, since no one was there. He and Marco hadn’t seen anyone yet, which seemed to indicate the majority of the crew had jumped overboard before the ship sank. This made him feel somewhat relieved. Nazis or not, they were people.
After going over his half of the bridge, he turned toward Marco, who stood up and opened his hands to show he’d found nothing. Marco pointed to a wooden door on the rear bulkhead, and Riley walked over carefully, holding his hose like the train of a dress. He saw the word Funkraum written in a traditional German typeface. Radio, he thought, mouthing the word. According to March’s reports, they were likely to find the machine in the bridge deck or radio cabin, so Riley grabbed the handle and opened the wooden door.
A white corpse flew out of the doorway and crashed into him. For a horrible instant he was face to face with a grossly swollen visage, partially eaten by fish, whose empty eye sockets looked at him disapprovingly. Riley fell backward and landed on his backside as the deformed body of a man in civilian clothes floated above him like a ghost until it got stuck, still looking down as if to see what they were up to.
Little by little, Riley regained his composure and concluded, finally, that not everyone had been able to escape the wreck. This was probably the radio officer, the one who had managed to transmit coordinates before they sank. March had gotten them somehow, after all, probably using his connections high in the German government and lots of cash.
When Riley tried to get up and go inside the cabin, a gloved hand offering him help appeared, and through Marco’s helmet he could see a row of teeth in a joking smile. Riley reluctantly accepted, stood up, climbed on the doorframe, and, after lighting up the floor with the flashlight, jumped inside.
Much smaller than the bridge deck, the radio room had only one function, and its six square feet were more than enough to hold the equipment and the operator, who was more than likely the corpse who had just left the room so quickly. Bolted upside down to the floor above him were a couple of tables, and next to them floated a wooden chair. The ground was covered in pieces of electronic equipment that’d had time to shatter against the ceiling when the ship capsized, before water flooded the room. On seeing that hodgepodge of cables, buttons, and relays scattered at his feet, he felt a stab of worry at the possibility that his machine, the one he had been promised a million dollars for, was part of that particular pile of junk. But there was no use worrying about that. All he could do was search the place thoroughly, so after turning to Marco to tell him not to go in, since there wasn’t room for both of them, he started carefully inspecting every square inch of the room, which looked like a junkyard.
It didn’t take him long to see there was no trace of the device. That left three possibilities: it was destroyed beyond recognition; a member of the crew had taken it when they fled; or it was still somewhere on the Phobos. The last would mean they’d have to search dozens of cabins, holds, and various other rooms. That could take days or even weeks with the boat docked. Ninety feet under with everything upside down, it would be impossible.
Riley heaved a sigh of disappointment, though he would have been shocked if things had gone too smooth
ly. He looked at his dive watch and realized they’d already been under for forty minutes, so he urgently motioned to Marco that they should start heading back. They retraced their path, following the line of their hoses. Despite difficulty climbing the rope ladder in all their equipment, they were back up on the basket in less than ten minutes. They gave three tugs on the signal cable and started to float toward the bright surface, where the sunlight danced to the sound of the waves.
18
“It’s very strange,” Julie said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Very, but I assure you we didn’t find any other bodies. Just that guy, who was probably the radioman.”
“Well,” said Jack, leaning back in his chair with his pipe, satisfied from lunch, “you really only explored a tiny part of the ship.”
“Still,” Riley said, “we didn’t see anyone in the hallways . . . no dead people, I mean. How could there not have been a single officer on the bridge?”
“Maybe they all jumped overboard,” César said. “They could’ve reached the coast swimming.”
“That’s a possibility,” Riley said. “But I have trouble imagining the whole crew, including the officers and captain, jumping into the water and leaving the radioman in his cabin.”
“Maybe he didn’t know how to swim,” César said.
Riley looked at him with an even-you-don’t-believe-that face.
Elsa, who’d been following the story with great interest, rested her fork on her plate of spaghetti and pesto and raised a finger. “How many people . . . sailors would have been on the Phobos?”
Riley exchanged a glance with Jack, giving him the floor. “Given the size of the ship,” Jack said gravely, “I’d say between two and three hundred—maybe more.”
“My God,” said Elsa. Riley remembered that, though Nazis, the men were, after all, her countrymen.
Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1) Page 12