Koroayev lapsed into thought for a few moments, then seemed to come to a decision.
“Comrade Bakhtin, I would like you to do something for me. I could make it an order, but I would rather consider this a personal favor,” said Koroayev.
Bakhtin’s eyes grew wider at the notion that the head of Russian foreign intelligence would be indebted to him. But what would it be? Something very difficult? Something illegal?
“Of course, sir, I will help in any way I can,” replied Bakhtin who straightened a bit.
“Good. There are documents aboard the Awa Maru that must not see the light of day,” said Koroayev in a low voice. “It would be very embarrassing for Russia, and our service in particular, if they were found.”
Bakhtin opened his mouth in surprise. He did not expect anything of this sort. He knew better than to ask what the documents contained, but he did have one question.
“Documents aboard a ship that was sunk over sixty years ago? Would not the sea have taken care of them years ago?” he asked.
“I am told that these particular documents were in a sealed metal container. They could very well have survived all this time,” replied Koroayev. “We can’t let anyone see these documents.”
“I understand, sir,” replied Bakhtin after a moment. “I will recommend disapproval of the request immediately.”
“No,” said Koroayev thoughtfully after a moment’s pause. “No, I want you to do just the opposite.”
Bakhtin’s mouth opened further this time. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“This American, Hendrick, probably has treasure fever by now,” said Koroayev with a hint of a smile. “Nothing will stop him, not a disapproved request for the use of a submarine at any rate. I think that you will find that he has tried to salvage this ship before, and was unsuccessful. Now he wants a submarine to try it again. If he doesn’t get a submarine from us, he’ll get it from someone else.”
“We can stop him other ways,” replied Bakhtin, thinking of the murders his organization did routinely years ago.
“No, no,” said Koroayev. “That might only attract others. No, he must be given every chance to succeed. We must make him succeed at the salvage of this ship, and at the same time keep the documents from him.”
Bakhtin got a confused look on his face, then his features relaxed as he hit upon a solution. “He and his partner are trying to recruit a crew. I will make sure that he gets the right kind of crew. We have some ex-submariners in our organization. And there is Captain First Rank Golubev who just retired. Although he’s not in the Sluzhba, I’m certain we could convince him to be part of the crew.”
Koroayev smiled fully for the first time and nodded his head. Bakhtin waited for Koroayev to say something, but he just closed the folder and handed it back to him. Bakhtin turned to go.
“Let me make this clear, Comrade Bakhtin,” said Koroayev in a low voice. “If the documents are recovered by your people, then they must destroy them immediately before they are brought to the surface.”
Bakhtin was puzzled for a moment. “You don’t want them brought to you to be sure that they are genuine?”
“No,” replied Koroayev firmly. “There would be too much chance of them falling into the wrong hands.” He leveled his eyes on Bakhtin and held his gaze. “Destroy them immediately. Is that clear?”
“It is clear, sir,” replied Bakhtin.
Georgi Bakhtin leaned back in his chair, which pushed his thighs up against the bottom of his desk. This arrangement prevented him from leaning backward further, and by flexing his thigh muscles, Bakhtin was able to rock slightly back and forth. He had the habit of lapsing into what some would call strange behavior whenever he had a problem on his mind. Sometimes his tongue clucking would go on incessantly until someone would remind him of the noise he was making.
The meeting just concluded with Alexei Koroayev was still on his mind and wouldn’t let him alone. Documents aboard a sunken ship? He glanced again at the report from the research section. A ship sunk in 1945, at the very end of the Great Patriotic War. He had learned a lot of things in the last hour. This Awa Maru supposedly had up to five billion American dollars worth of goods on board when she went down. His mind stopped at the staggering sum. No wonder this man Hendrick wanted to salvage it.
But there was something else on board, he thought. Something damaging to the Russian state. Documents. What could possibly be on board a ship sunk over sixty years ago that could be damaging to Russia’s intelligence organization?
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. He could tell that the knock came from his assistant Kiselev. His knock was timid as if he were a chicken pecking at food.
“Enter,” said Bakhtin. The door immediately opened and Kiselev’s slight figure came into the room.
“You wanted a picture of the American who wants to rent a submarine,” declared Kiselev as a way of reminding his boss of a previous order. “The surveillance team that was placed on the two Americans, took some yesterday.” He spread the photos out on Bakhtin’s desk.
Bakhtin’s eyes immediately locked onto the larger of the two Americans. He was instantly familiar. Bakhtin picked up one of the enlargements of the man and noted that the name scribbled on the bottom of the photo was Stephen Hendrick.
Recognition suddenly clicked in Bakhtin’s mind. This was the same face he had seen through the periscope on the ship in the Taiwan Strait! He leaped to his feet and stared at the fuzzy enlargement on the wall. It was the same man. The brave men aboard the bullet-riddled ship were now going after a fortune in sunken treasure.
“So, Stephen Hendrick,” said Bakhtin in a soft voice as he stared with a smile at the photo. “We meet once again.”
CHAPTER 6
Hidden Sun
MOSCOW
Steve Hendrick’s head swam for a moment as he realized what the man on the phone was saying. Hendrick thanked the man profusely and hung up. He turned to his expectant partner.
“They just approved the sub deal,” Hendrick said with a big smile.
Joe Malik let out a whoop of joy and grabbed Hendrick’s arms to dance him around the room. He stopped suddenly and clapped his hands.
“All we need now is a crew,” said Hendrick.
“Yeah, Stashinsky is supposed to be here any minute,” said Malik.
Hendrick began to tick off the things they had to do before setting sail for the Taiwan Strait. “We’ve got to get the underwater gear shipped from the States to Petropavlovsk to be loaded on board the sub. And tell our salvage crew to get ready.” They had arranged for an experienced crew of six experts, a mixture of British and Americans to help them conduct salvage operations.
“Right. I’ll take care of that,” replied Malik.
“I have to get Topov his money,” said Hendrick. He pointed at Malik. “You’ve got to arrange for a boat to pick up the salvage and haul it back to the States.”
“Right. No sweat,” Malik said.
“Let’s see,” continued Hendrick. “It’ll take about three months to check out and load supplies on the sub. Then we’ve got those special fittings we want on the hatches -”
A knock on the door interrupted their planning. Malik answered it and ushered in Igor Stashinsky who waved several sheets of paper in front of him.
“I told you it would be no problem,” declared Stashinsky. “I have all the names and qualifications of the crew right here.”
“Good. Let’s see it,” said Hendrick.
Stashinsky pulled the paper close to him instead of putting it in Hendrick’s outstretched hand.
“I think we have to talk about what this is worth,” said Stashinsky.
“We already agreed on your fee and what each crew member will get,” growled Hendrick.
“I have found that I have certain other expenses,” began Stashinsky.
“How much?” asked Malik through clenched teeth.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” said Stashinsky boldly.
&nbs
p; “You can go to hell with your fifty thousand dollars!” shouted Hendrick. “Joe, throw him out!”
Malik grabbed the physically smaller man and marched him toward the door.
“I can do with five thousand dollars,” said Stashinsky in a hurry.
“Out!” replied Hendrick. “We’ll get our own goddamn crew!”
“Stop! All right!” surrendered Stashinsky. “I will lose money on this deal, but I will do it for the agreed price.”
Malik got the harried Russian to the door, then turned to look at Hendrick.
“Then let’s see your list,” said Hendrick.
Malik turned the man around and shoved him in Hendrick’s direction. Hendrick snatched the papers out of Stashinsky’s hand and began looking them over.
“The deal was forty dollars a day for each crew member, fifty dollars for the officers, and sixty for the captain,” declared Hendrick. “I hope nobody has a problem with that.”
“No, no,” replied Stashinsky hastily.
The pay for the crew was a pittance, but he couldn’t let the Russians think he had deep pockets, or else they would hold up the whole deal for months just to see what they could wring out of him.
Joe Malik, seeing that their business was finished for now, opened the door to let Stashinsky out. The Russian took a tentative step toward the door, then looked at Hendrick again.
“Oh, yeah,” said Hendrick in an annoyed voice. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a roll of American currency. He tossed the roll toward Stashinsky who quickly caught it in midair.
“Five hundred dollars,” Hendrick stated. “You will get the remaining five hundred after we approve the crew.”
Stashinsky nodded quickly and practically ran through the doorway to the corridor beyond. He swiftly traversed the hallway amid the sound of the door slamming behind him and turned the corner toward the stairway. Stashinsky nearly ran over the man standing in his way.
“Well, Igor Denisovich, how did your meeting go?” asked Georgi Bakhtin pleasantly.
Stashinsky shook his head in frustration. “These Americans! I thought they would be easy to deal with, but they are pigs! Suki syn!” He turned his head to one side and made a spitting motion.
Bakhtin smiled. “What’s the matter, comrade? Didn’t they let you increase your price at the last minute? I think the Americans call that a gouge. It is your favorite trick, I know.”
Stashinsky gave Bakhtin a dirty look, then lowered his head.
This American Hendrick continues to impress me, thought Bakhtin. I knew he wouldn’t let this slime, Stashinsky cheat him.
“Is the deal made, Igor Denisovich?” asked Bakhtin quietly.
Stashinsky nodded his head. “Yes. It is done.”
“You gave them the crew list that I had made up for you?” Bakhtin persisted. Stashinsky nodded.
Bakhtin thought of the old experienced sea captain, Golubev with whom he had recently toured the Taiwan Strait. If anyone would get Hendrick through this adventure, it would be Golubev. The ragged old submariner had had a short retirement indeed.
But it wasn’t Golubev who would do what had to be done. For that he would need others. Loshak and Drukarev currently in Japan would be his real representatives on the submarine. Those two would destroy the mysterious documents on the Awa Maru.
Or, perhaps bring them back for his own examination.
“We have to pick a point to make the transfer of the treasure from the sub to another ship to take it back to the U.S.,” said Hendrick as he went back to reviewing all the project’s details.
Joe Malik went over to an attaché case and pulled out a chart and spread it out on the too-small table in their hotel room. “I’ve done some thinking about that. And I think I know just where to make the transfer.”
Hendrick looked at the chart, the names not registering in his mind. “Where is this?”
Malik held his finger up to his lips to tell him to be quiet. He glanced around in an obvious manner to tell him that the room was probably bugged. Hendrick nodded. He understood.
Malik took out a pad of paper and a pencil and sketched out the coast of China, Taiwan, and the Northern Philippines just south of Taiwan. He pointed to the chart, then pointed to his sketch between Taiwan and the Philippines. Hendrick understood that the chart was a blow up of the area between the two major island groups.
Malik then pointed to a relatively large island in the middle of the chart. Hendrick leaned closer to read the name. Itbayat Island, he mouthed soundlessly. Malik nodded.
Unknown to both of them, hidden in one of the numerous cracks in the ceiling was a lens attached to the end of a fiber optic cable. The fiber optic cable ran down an airshaft to the basement and fed optical signals into a small video camera. Two men with distinctly Asian features huddled over the small monitor, which showed the interior of Hendrick and Malik’s hotel room. With some post processing of the videotape, they would also clearly see the chart Joe Malik had laid on the table.
THE LUBYANKA
LUBYANSKAYA SQUARE, MOSCOW
Georgi Bakhtin blew the dust from the top of the file with distaste. He felt a sneeze coming on and threw the file down on a tabletop so he could rummage in his pocket for a handkerchief. He got the cloth up to his mouth and nose an instant before he issued a thunderous sneeze. Bakhtin sneezed twice more, then blew his nose with a vengeance. This research was starting to get to him, he knew, but he pressed on determined to discover more information on the mysterious documents that had Koroayev so worried.
The most sensitive of the ancient archives of the KGB, and before that the NKVD, were stored in the basement of the Lubyanka in Lubyanskaya Square, formerly Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow. The square reverted to its original name sometime after the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, which had been displayed prominently in front of the KGB headquarters, was ripped down by the citizens of Moscow in a display of anger at the KGB. In the 1920s Feliks Dzerzhinsky was the leader of the Cheka, the ancestor of the KGB, and as such, was the target of continuing hatred from the Russian people.
Bakhtin had used his intelligence clearance to rummage around in the dusty, decaying files to see what he could discover about who might have been on the ill-fated Awa Maru carrying those mysterious documents.
On the search for about a month, he was beginning to think that he would never find anything on this situation, because he knew that many KGB files were destroyed to cover up wrongdoing by the agency’s members. He confined his search to files created in the latter half of the Great Patriotic War, which the rest of the world called World War II. This led him to the dankest parts of the building, and safes built into the walls with doors that screamed with reluctance when opened. He carried an oiling can to coax them open, and to silence them as well.
Bakhtin had opened his twentieth safe and had pulled out a single, thin, corroded folder from the bottom of the safe. He wiped the cover of the folder clean and squinted to read its title in the dim light from the single bulb in the center of the ceiling of the basement room.
“Skrytoe Solntse,” murmured Bakhtin to himself. Hidden Sun was the name of the covert project documented in the folder. He opened the folder and found only a single memo on yellowing paper. It was dated February 26, 1945. Bakhtin read the two typewritten paragraphs quickly and clucked his tongue at the lack of information in the memo. Typically the folders, even the old ones, had a description of the project, then had supporting memos and reports of the setup of the project and the results. This project had, on the other hand, only a single, cryptic memo describing a diplomatic mission that would travel through China. It didn’t even say what the mission’s purpose was, or whom they would contact.
Of the twenty missions he had reviewed, this was the only one that had occurred roughly at the same time and was even remotely in the same area as the Awa Maru. The facts swirled in his mind, but he was unable to connect any of them.
A metal cylinder containing documents, a diplomatic mission, and a sunken
freighter over half a century old. And a note in an old file to inform Alexi Koroayev, the head of the SVR, of any information on that sunken ship. Then orders to destroy the cylinder and its documents, never again to see the light of day. How were they connected?
Why would Koroayev want to suppress information over sixty years old?
FOUR MONTHS LATER
TAIPEI, TAIWAN
Maggie Ramsey took a sip of her strawberry daiquiri as she looked about the bar from her vantage point at a small table in the corner. The clientele was about evenly divided between Taiwanese and a half dozen foreign nationalities, all chattering away in a myriad of dialects creating a buzz with an international flavor in the large room. Here and there she could pick up a sentence or two, sometimes only a fragment, which tantalized her with lost information.
She couldn’t decide if she really liked the place with its dinosaur decor. The building had skeletons of dinosaurs on the roof and on the outsides of the building, with dinosaur bones sticking out of the ceiling, walls, and floor in the interior. The waiters and waitresses continued the Paleolithic theme by wearing shirts with dinosaur bones on them. It was quite a gimmick and totally unexpected in the Far East, but it drew a horde of customers, making the owners happy.
It was late in the evening and she had gotten bored in her hotel room, so she wandered down a nearby street and into this conveniently located watering hole. She hoped the activity in the bar would distract her from thinking about Steve Hendrick, but the thoughts continued even as the alcohol in her drink wound its way to her brain and began to relax her mind.
He had dropped her off in Taipei a few months ago, and she hadn’t heard from him since. The most intriguing man she had ever met, Hendrick had come on strong with that stolen kiss as they had come in out of the rain, but then there was nothing. He must really be obsessed with the Awa Maru, she thought. I usually have more of an effect on men than that.
She had been true to her original mission, to find out what Hendrick was up to in the Taiwan Strait. She had found that out and more. The report she filed was long and detailed. Bad luck had brought the pirates across her path, but dumb luck had dumped her right into Hendrick’s lap.
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