“NKVD,” mumbled Lindsey under his breath. Hendrick looked at him curiously but said nothing. The NKVD, or Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs for the Soviet Union was the descendent of the notorious Cheka, which had terrorized Soviet citizens to keep them in line with Communist principles. The NKVD also supplied bodyguards for important party officials. One of the men they were protecting was Boris Deriabin who Lindsey knew was straight from Moscow. The other man Lindsey didn’t know.
Why were Russians boarding a Japanese ship? Lindsey asked himself. The Russians were allied with the United States in World War II, so why were they going to talk to the Japanese?
Lindsey stared through the binoculars at the group going up the gangway and noted a bag carried by Deriabin’s companion. The bright lights from the sides and superstructure of the ship glinted off something near the man’s wrist.
A handcuff! Lindsey exhaled quickly and strained to make out more detail, but the men abruptly passed from view and into the interior of the ship. Yes, thought Lindsey, it would make sense. Deriabin was sometimes used as a roving ambassador by the Soviet government. Ambassadors carry papers with them, letters of introduction and the like. And only the most important of these bags were manacled to a human being. If he could get a look inside the bag, then he would surely discover the Soviet mission to Japan.
Excited voices were heard in the distance. Lindsey and Hendrick immediately knew that the dead guards had been found. It was time to move.
Fifteen minutes later, Lindsey and Hendrick slid through the chilly waters of Singapore’s harbor about a quarter mile from where the Awa Maru was docked.
The water was as polluted as it was cold, with raw sewage mixing with garbage and a thin oil slick to produce a revolting slime on the surface of the water. The slime transferred itself to them as they raised their heads out of the water periodically to measure their progress. Here and there a rat swam by. They could clearly see the two blazing white crosses that made the sea side of the ship look like midafternoon.
They started to swim toward the nearest cross painted on the aft quarter of the ship. Lindsey kept a wary eye on the deck above for any alert soldiers. Lindsey remembered Hendrick’s comment that they would look like debris floating on the water. He prayed his friend was right.
The bright cross in front of them suddenly went dark, and Lindsey could hear the reaction of some of the crew to the failure of the lights. Shouts and the sounds of running feet floated down to them as Hendrick immediately sped up to reach the side of the ship before the failure was repaired.
Lindsey and Hendrick reached the ship just under the white cross and gave a nervous look forward toward the still-lit cross near the bow. They heard the slap of something against the side of the ship and looked up to see a rope ending three feet above the water. Hendrick leaped up and got a hand on the rope - a foot higher and they would both be stranded in the polluted water next to the half-lit ship. He pulled himself out of the water with strong hand-over-hand movements. Lindsey looked upward nervously for the sight of a rifle barrel pointed at them perhaps with an enraged Japanese soldier’s face hovering above it, but there was nothing.
His eyes followed the rope up the side of the ship until it curved over the railing and disappeared inside of the ship.
Hendrick got ten feet above the water, and Lindsey grabbed the now gyrating rope end and hauled himself upward. The two men climbed, feverishly anticipating the imminent repair of the electrical failure. Hendrick got to the deck, and after quickly looking around, slid underneath the railing and disappeared from view. Lindsey reached the top thirty seconds later and peered over the edge toward the interior of the ship. He could see two shadows near one of the aft hatches. He gave a quick glance around and swiftly threw his legs up to the deck and wiggled on board.
The two shadows moved quickly and were next to him in an instant. Lindsey could feel Hendrick’s presence near him, but the other man was a Chinese agent whose identity was a mystery and would always remain so. Lindsey knew better than to ask who he was. The two immediately began to coil up the rope. When the rope was stowed in its original position, the three men silently went forward to reach their ultimate destination, a sealed off space in the engineering area of the ship.
From there, and only at night, Lindsey and Hendrick would go about their work, determining the mission of the Russian delegation aboard the Awa Maru.
“Radar contact!” said the phone talker on the bridge of the USS Queenfish. Commander Charles Loughlin, captain of the Queenfish, looked quickly in the young man’s direction. They were in the Formosa Strait. It was April 1, 1945, 2200 hours.
“Range: Seventeen thousand yards!” said the phone talker. “Bearing two, three, zero degrees true!”
“Sound general quarters,” said Loughlin. “Battle stations surface!” The command was transmitted throughout the boat and the crew scrambled to their GQ stations.
Loughlin stared into the thick fog and raised his binoculars to his eyes. It was no use. He estimated the visibility at two hundred yards maximum. The fog passed by them in dense lumps, sometimes so thick that he had a hard time seeing the railing in front of him. Other times it would thin out, raising the hope that he might make visual contact with their target some eight miles distant. The sky was overcast, but occasionally the moon would break through the clouds without providing any increase in visibility on the surface of the sea.
The range at which they made contact suggested that their quarry was a Japanese destroyer, one of the most dangerous ships he could face. If he fired and missed, the destroyer would be on him in a matter of minutes.
“Contact’s speed is sixteen knots,” said the phone talker. “Course is zero, four, five degrees true. Recommended course is zero, five, zero degrees true.”
“Left standard rudder, come to course zero, five, zero,” ordered Loughlin. The helm repeated the orders and got a “very well” from the captain.
Loughlin picked up a bridge phone as the fog swirled around him. “Fire control, this is the captain. Is she zigzagging?”
“Doesn’t seem to be, Captain. She hasn’t changed course yet,” was the reply.
Loughlin concluded that they were facing a destroyer. Merchant ships normally went only eight or ten knots and zigzagged to avoid submarines. Merchants were much larger than destroyers as well and would be contacted by the Queenfish’s radar at ranges of twenty-five thousand yards or more. Furthermore the contact was headed toward the location of an action between another U.S. submarine, the Sea Fox, and a Japanese convoy. The battle happened earlier in the day, but it made sense that a destroyer would be sailing to the aid of the stricken convoy and intent upon taking out any U.S. subs it could find.
Loughlin turned to the phone talker. “Load all stern tubes,” he ordered. “Set depth for three feet.” The young sailor repeated the commands into his microphone. Loughlin was going to attack with his stern tubes, which would point him away from the target. He wanted to be in a position to escape quickly if their attack was unsuccessful.
The captain of the Queenfish listened to the range reports as they drew closer to their target.
Lindsey looked down the darkened hallway aboard the Awa Maru toward the rooms set aside for the Russian diplomatic party.
“Anyone left in there?” he whispered into Hendrick’s ear.
“They always leave at least one person inside each room,” answered Hendrick.
Lindsey glanced at his watch. The glowing radium dots told him that it was a little after eleven. He strained to hear any sounds coming from the rooms but could hear nothing except the constant drone of the ship’s engines and the rushing noise of the sea sliding by the hull. Normally they could hear the deep guttural voices of the Russians as they talked and argued over God only knows what.
Hendrick fished around in his pocket and produced the skeleton key for all the staterooms on the ship. Their ally, who had helped them get on board, man
aged to steal a master key for the night. Lindsey and Hendrick tiptoed around the corner of the passageway and crept up to the nearest door of the Russian staterooms.
The Soviet party kept out of sight during the day, not wanting anyone to know of their presence on the ship. At night when everyone else was asleep, they would take walks up on deck and imbibe in some of the captain’s private stock of liquor. They would only return at three or four in the morning.
Lindsey grabbed the lever that substituted for a doorknob and slowly rotated it. He didn’t get far. After moving a few degrees, he could move it no further. He slowly slipped the key into the lock, the lock making a soft click as the bolt slid back. Lindsey opened the door a crack, fervently hoping that the hinges wouldn’t squeak and betray them to anyone inside.
The room had two beds along the left wall and closets along the right wall. Light from the brilliantly lit crosses on the outside of the ship filtered through the thin curtain covering the small outside window. The light was enough for Lindsey to find his way around. He looked briefly at the beds in the dim light. One was neatly made, but the other had a pile of clothes and a blanket in disarray.
He went quickly to the closets and went through them one by one. At the bottom of the last one, he found what he was looking for. The bag with a handcuff still attached lay before him. If he could steal what was inside the bag, photograph it, then return it before the Russians found out, then his mission would be complete. The OSS agent put trembling hands on the briefcase latches. Hendrick produced lock picks and silently got the brief case lock open. Lindsey pulled the brief case open, and Hendrick reached inside. He pulled something out that looked like a pipe.
Lindsey suddenly heard a rustle of material close behind him.
“Fire four!” ordered Loughlin. Three quarters of a mile away from the Awa Maru, Commander Loughlin strained through the persistent fog to catch a glimpse of his four torpedoes, speeding toward the target. There was a hush throughout the boat.
Moments later, the bridge crew of the Queenfish heard the first explosion and saw a brief flash through the fog. In the seconds that followed, they heard three more explosions and saw each flash. All of their torpedoes had hit the target. Loughlin knew what the contact must look like at this point. With huge holes blown in her starboard side, the waters of Formosa Strait were gushing in rapidly and causing an extreme starboard list, one from which the vessel would never recover.
Loughlin squinted into the fog, which was as thick as when they began tracking the now rapidly sinking target. Neither he nor anyone on the Queenfish had actually sighted the target during the entire time of the attack even though they had closed the range to twelve hundred yards. Loughlin turned toward an elated bridge crew.
“Scratch one Jap destroyer,” he said and smiled.
Lindsey snapped back to the present with a start as he realized the meeting was over. He hadn’t contributed much, but someone had said to someone else, Have everyone who knows anything about the Awa Maru at the meeting. And that included him. So he had attended like the dutiful intelligence soldier he was, or had been.
A Russian had come up behind him so many years ago and Lindsey was forced to shoot him, the shot muffled by a pillow that Lindsey managed to grab. The torpedoes struck, and the world exploded around the two OSS men. They were separated in the chaos of the sinking ship, but both survived. Lindsey had swum to a nearby island, thinking Ed Hendrick had been killed, and only found out years later that his best friend had survived. A look at the USS Queenfish’s log revealed only one survivor from the Awa Maru, a Japanese. Lindsey had discovered later that Ed Hendrick had indeed been picked up by the Queenfish but had convinced the captain to omit his name from the boat’s log due to his OSS identity and their assigned mission.
They had never found out what the Russian mission was or what significance the cylinder had for that mission. Ed Hendrick’s report on the incident had described it as having Cyrillic letters embossed around it. What was inside it? Diplomatic documents?
And now another group of people were going back to see what they could find on the old wreck. Steve Hendrick, of all people, he thought with excitement.
The Special Intelligence Service, British SIS, liaison had mentioned that their agent on the salvage team would report at irregular time intervals due to the difficulty of sending radio signals from a submarine. Lindsey would look forward to those reports with keen interest.
Lindsey heaved his aging body out of the thick cushions and made his way to the exit. Would he ever find out what the Russians were doing aboard the Awa Maru? Would the truth ever come out?
CHAPTER 8
Chang
TAIPEI, TAIWAN
“I need to take a ship into the Taiwan Strait to survey the sea bed,” said Maggie Ramsey as she looked over the three men in front of her. “And I understand you gentlemen operate a salvage company.”
The men glanced at each other and seemed interested enough. Lin was the largest of the three, a bulk of a man who thoroughly filled the chair he was in. Lin wasn’t fat but had little muscle tone. Maggie could imagine him picking up a car and tossing it twenty feet. He regarded her through half-closed eyes and seemed the most skeptical of the bunch. He apparently didn’t understand much English; one of the other men translated for him. Maggie could have spoken to them in good Chinese, but she was in no hurry to reveal her knowledge of the language to these men.
Xu was the smallest and seemed to be the leader of the three. He smoked incessantly, lighting his next cigarette from the stub of the last. He smoked long, unfiltered cigarettes and let his saliva wet the end turning it a dark brown.
Yee was the quiet one, and Maggie judged that he was brought along for some sort of analysis. He seemed to be the technical expert of the group. He would start to rock back and forth, then catch himself, or have Xu tap him on the arm, and suddenly stop his motion. They made a typical group from the business community in Taipei, Xu the leader, Lin the muscle, and Yee the expert.
Maggie continued on, giving requirements on the equipment needed for her mission into the Taiwan Strait. She worried that they wouldn’t know what a side scan sonar or a magnetometer was, or how to procure them. She concluded her pitch and leaned back in her chair while the three of them continued to stare at her. She picked up her purse in a disinterested manner, totally ignoring their stares. She pulled out a compact and opened it, ostensibly to powder her nose. A glance into the interior of her pocketbook, past the small handgun she carried, told her once again that there were no telltale radio frequency emanations from the three men. The green light emitting diode on the radio frequency field strength meter was still lit - with any appreciable RF field the green LED would go out, and a red LED would light and blink on and off. Maggie had checked the device at the start of their meeting with the same result.
She lightly rubbed some face powder over her nose and across her cheeks then looked back at the three men. She returned their stares looking mostly at Xu. She knew negotiations of this kind required much patience in the Far East, and she was determined to be as patient as possible. They stared at each other for several moments, until Maggie decided to end what she considered to be a stupid game.
“I also need protection from the pirates that run the strait,” she added. “I’m sure you men will know how to do that.”
“Pirates?” asked Yee in a timid voice.
“Yes, there is one in particular that we will need to defend against,” replied Maggie. “His name is Chang.”
The three men looked at her impassively.
“Then we will make a voyage to the Balingtang Channel to do more surveying,” she added. To catch up with Hendrick at Itbayat Island, she thought to herself. She took time to wonder how the voice on the phone had known that information. It had been part of the encrypted message she had gotten several days ago.
“You gentlemen can take your time reviewing this information,” said Maggie smoothly as she stood to stretch her legs and
look about the hotel conference room. She went to a table on one side of the room and picked up a soft drink.
“When do you need an answer?” asked Yee. He apparently was the spokesman of the group while the real leader, Xu, just watched and waited.
“Take your time,” she said sweetly. “Next month would be fine.”
There was a pause for a few moments, then Xu spoke in a voice made hoarse by smoking. “What are you really after, Miss Ramsey?”
Maggie turned and regarded them coolly. She closed her eyes halfway in imitation of Lin.
“Surveying the sea floor,” she said slowly. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
The three pairs of eyes locked onto her face and grew cold. Maggie began to worry that these men were not the business men they seemed to be.
After another long pause, Xu spoke up, creating an ominous atmosphere. “We could torture you into telling us.”
Maggie’s eyes flicked immediately over to Lin who hadn’t batted an eye. Apparently the big man agreed with whatever Xu had in mind. She raised her handbag, opened it and put her hand inside.
“Well, gentlemen, let’s just say we’ve wasted each others’ time, and leave it at that,” replied Maggie. Her hand closed around the butt of the small automatic.
Lin’s eyes went from Maggie’s face to her handbag and stayed there. He slowly got out of his chair. She carefully watched his hands and made the decision that she wouldn’t let him reach inside his jacket. She pulled the gun out of her purse and pointed it at Lin.
“Get back in the chair, fat boy,” she said through clenched teeth. Lin slowly sank back next to his leader. Xu didn’t seem ruffled, but Yee got pretty upset. He wrung his hands, which Maggie didn’t mind, because it kept his hands in sight.
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