Hidden Sun

by John Campbell

  The information on the Awa Maru told of five safes, constructed just prior to the ship’s sailing that held some of the most important treasure. Hendrick and Malik speculated that these were in the forward section of the ship and that they held the diamonds and other jewelry. Accordingly the divers homed in on locating the purser’s cabin and its vault, which had supposedly held the mysterious safes.

  The forward section of the ship was lying on its starboard side, which left its top decks buried even deeper in mud. Hendrick estimated where the purser’s cabin was and ordered the divers to excavate mud in that area. In two days of toil they had dug an enormous cone-shaped hole in the silt, enough to clear a passage to the ship’s top deck and a hatch, which led to the decks below. Hendrick demanded to be the first one to go below deck in the Awa Maru and Joe Malik acquiesced. He knew better than to go against his friend when he had his mind made up.

  Hours later Steve Hendrick swam toward the forward section of the wreck of the Awa Maru with anticipation mounting in him. The water was filled with silt, making the divers’ lights in the distance seem dim and excessively remote, but Hendrick followed the lifelines strung between the sub’s outside hatch and the salvage site to insure that he wouldn’t get lost. Hendrick approached the divers and waved to them, but the cavern they had dug in the sea bottom made his breath catch in his throat. The hole in the mud was lit with bright lights from the other divers and looked like an entry to hell itself. The ship formed an enormous mound on the bottom of the sea two to three hundred feet long for just the forward section itself and some sixty to seventy feet high. And now there was a hole near one end of the mound twenty feet wide and over ten feet deep. One diver was working their mud vacuum cleaner around the walls of the hole to prevent the mud from sliding down and covering the opening they had created.

  Hendrick refused to ask himself why the sight of the hole in the sea bottom unnerved him, sending a ripple of fear through him. I guess I already know the answer, he thought ruefully. He hesitated for a moment, trying to get used to the idea of entering the hole to get inside the ship and hoping that the thought of a fortune in diamonds and precious stones would help him overcome his reluctance. Then there was his father’s incomplete mission. Would he recognize what his father had claimed to have had in his hands so long ago? The odds are against it, he thought. But he admitted that the elder Hendrick’s mission had inspired him to get this far. He wished his brother was with him.

  One of the divers clipped one end of a roll of line to a D ring on his harness. The line would play out as he made his way through the ship. He would use it on his return to find his way out from the interior of the wreck. What they were about to do was exceedingly dangerous. Entering a sunken ship was not something to be undertaken lightly, and they all knew it. They all knew of someone who had died doing exactly what they were about to do. The ship could shift and cover up the exit. Hendrick’s line could part, leaving him to trial and error to find his way out. Many divers in similar circumstances had run out of air while groping around for a passage leading outside a sunken ship. Shifting wreckage could injure a diver or cut his air supply leaving him helpless, or to drown quickly before help could get to him.

  Hendrick knew it all - Joe Malik had told him over and over again - and he also knew he would enter the ship anyway. Ian Howard, the diver who was with Hendrick when they had first located the ship, tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a thumbs up sign to ask if everything was all right. Hendrick nodded in exaggerated fashion and returned a thumbs up. Howard would follow Hendrick into the interior of the ship to assist him and to watch his back. The other three divers waited outside to assist, or to form a rescue team if needed. Hendrick moved toward the hole while the diver with the mud cleaner moved back to allow him access. Hendrick pushed with his flippers to nearly invert himself and pointed his light into the hole in the mud. He could see a hatch at the bottom, which had been pried open by the other divers. Hendrick shined his light into the hatch and saw nothing but blackness beyond.

  He swallowed quickly and thrust himself toward the open hatch with a scissors kick. He glided smoothly, continually adjusting his trajectory to put himself through the lower half of the opening, allowing the upper half for his tanks to clear the hatch rim. Hendrick glided through, then abruptly put on the brakes to keep himself from slamming into a bulkhead. He played his light about and saw that he was in a passageway that led fore and aft.

  Ian Howard was next to him moments later, and together they surveyed the corridor. Hendrick pointed forward, and Howard nodded. Not much sea growth was evident, and to Hendrick’s relief the water remained fairly clear of mud. They proceeded down the passageway and tried to get used to the corridor appearing wider than it was high due to the ship lying on its side. As they kicked slowly and drove themselves ahead, the light from their underwater lamps groped forward dissipating into the distant blackness. The light began to reflect from something ahead, and after a moment they saw that the corridor made a ninety-degree turn downward toward the sea bed.

  It’s a corridor athwartships, Hendrick thought. It will lead to the center of the ship and maybe the purser’s cabin. They got to the end of the corridor and Hendrick hesitated whether to go down toward the middle of the ship or go straight through a doorway where a number of staterooms were located. Did my father walk along this passageway? Through this door? Where was he when he had it in his hands? What was it? Hendrick felt inexplicably drawn to the staterooms. Is that where my father’s mission lay?

  Howard tugged on his arm and broke his reverie. Hendrick made a downward turn and headed toward the center of the ship, leaving the staterooms behind. Will I ever get answers to what drove my father to this place?

  The two divers headed straight down the passage examining each door and hatch that led off the passage for the purser office. Heading downward in an almost vertical position took some getting used to. The blood started to pound in Hendrick’s ears as they neared the centerline of the ship. The Awa Maru, by any account was heavily laden on its last voyage with both its massive cargo and over two thousand passengers. Hendrick wondered why they hadn’t seen many human remains. Did most of them have time to jump overboard?

  Howard shined his light down the aft bulkhead of the corridor and illuminated a half open hatch. The hatch was being held open by something stick like in appearance, but Hendrick knew what it was with just a glance. They arrived next to the hatch and stared at the partial skeleton that held the hatch open. Flesh and most of the clothes were long gone, but the mud encasement of the wreck had provided enough protection to keep some of the bones intact.

  Hendrick swam up to the hatch and put his hand on the metal door, then looked directly at the skull that stared up at him with its sightless, gaping holes. A mixture of feelings ran through him. He knew the presence of this ship here at the bottom of the sea was a true tragedy of wartime, yet he found it difficult to envision the skull, just a foot away from him, wrapped in flesh and blood and holding unique life within it. The position of the skeleton in the doorway suggested that the door had slammed closed on him, but his body kept the door open enough for the water to enter. This is all ancient history, isn’t it, he asked himself. It all happened a long, long time ago.

  He looked up at Howard then braced one flippered foot against the bulkhead and leaned his body into the metal door. The hinges creaked and groaned in protest, but the door yielded under Hendrick’s determined assault. He barged his way in, then swung his light around to view inside the room.

  A host of bones were piled in one end of the room. Here and there some shoes and scraps of fabric were seen. Gravity had dragged them down to rest on the starboard bulkhead which now formed the floor of the space. Hendrick and Howard played their garish lights over the remains as they considered what the victims’ final moments must have been like. Hendrick could imagine them congregating in the room as the ship rolled to starboard after the four huge explosions from the Queenfish’s torpedoes.
There must have been panic, people screaming and getting sick from what they knew was going to happen.

  My father was here, on this ship, in the middle of hell, he thought. A surge of sadness ran through him. He had never really gotten to know his father, but he had increased respect for the elder Hendrick after seeing where he had been.

  Hendrick glanced back toward the skeleton in the doorway. Did they slam the door on him in their frenzied efforts to keep the sea away from them? Was he trying to get out, to get up on deck, to jump free of the ship? To what end? Most of the survivors of the Awa Maru refused the lifelines thrown to them by the crew of the Queenfish. They swam away to die what they thought to be an honorable death. Would the man caught in the doorway have taken the line thrown to him by the U.S. sailors? Or was his escape attempt all for naught, trapped in a sinking ship, water rising to engulf him, taking his breath away?

  Hendrick was suddenly aware of the mass of the ship around him, especially above him, and he felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia. He closed his eyes and a mass of memories assaulted his mind.

  He had swung his knife out in front of him, slashing away at their attackers. They wanted to back him up to get room to fire another volley of spears at him. He couldn’t let them do that and he closed with the three remaining divers. His knife found soft flesh. He slashed and mangled in a frenzy, the water turning red around them.

  He swung his knife again, the blade sliding across his enemy’s neck, the face of his nightmares floating in the void before him. He cocked his arm back for another swing at his enemy, but before he could deliver the next blow, another diver rapidly approached intent upon Hendrick’s murder. The other diver never reached him, a violent yank on his body made him accelerate in the opposite direction. Hendrick glanced at him, seeing that his head was gone. Another gave a gurgling scream, his light playing in a panic around the close inside of the ship, the flickering light mirroring their struggles. The lights went out leaving them in darkness with the hellish, mindless things intent on their death. Hendrick felt a huge, thick body next to him. It was moving spasmodically, jerking as he imagined the jaws doing their terrifying job. Rending, slashing, tearing.

  Howard grabbed Hendrick’s arms and stuck his facemask directly in front of Hendrick’s face. Howard shook him as hard as he could, then gave him a wide grin which was distorted by his mouthpiece.

  Hendrick opened his eyes and immediately locked onto Howard’s face, the moment of possible panic passing. Howard picked up his white writing board and showed it to Hendrick. On it, Howard had the Japanese characters for ship’s purser in stark, black grease pencil. Howard turned and pointed across the room, then looked back at Hendrick and pointed at the character on the writing board.

  Hendrick slowly shook off his memories and began to swim toward the door on the far side of the room. He pulled up his board and held it next to the Japanese character that was painted on the door. The character had faded over time but he could still make it out. He compared about half the lines when he decided that it was a match and began tugging on the door. The door gave in quickly, Hendrick quickly scrambling through the opening.

  A couple of desks were in a pile on the starboard side along with some bones and a jawless skull that still looked out across the room. Hendrick had the fleeting thought that it was the ship’s purser and that he was still guarding the treasures within the Awa Maru. He swung his light around and played it over the aft bulkhead in the room. The breath caught in his throat as he stared at a heavy, armored door. The door was the kind he had expected for a ship’s vault with a large wheel to operate the bolts in the door and the smaller dial of the combination lock.

  Hendrick turned to Howard and hooted in his mouthpiece and shook his fist with excitement. Howard gave him a thumbs up and swam to the door to try the lock. After a long minute, he turned to Hendrick and shrugged.

  Hendrick directed his light to the floor of the room where it met the starboard bulkhead. The bulkhead seemed to be pushed back from the deck forming an open seam. He swam over and threw one of the desks out of the way.

  Hendrick shined his light into the gaping hole in the deck and saw that the ship was damaged greatly below their deck. He stuck his head through the hole, looked about, and saw what he considered to be a miracle. The vault room floor had been ripped apart, a large crack running the width of the room. They could enter the vault room by swimming through the hole in the deck and into the space below the vault room, then squeeze through the split in the steel floor. Hendrick waved excitedly to Howard and swam ahead.

  They both gingerly swam through the crack in the vault floor, then played their lights about in a chaotic, excited pattern. Hendrick forced himself to calm down and to methodically search the room for anything that looked like the mythical safes that were supposed to contain the diamonds. The room was empty.

  Disappointment immediately swept away the euphoria of finding the vault room. He fought the feeling down with only partial success and swam downward to get to the room’s starboard side. Anything that was in the room would have shifted to starboard. Hendrick gazed at the starboard bulkhead for a few seconds and was puzzled at the brown, uneven surface, looking like the seabed itself.

  He quickly pulled out his retractable metal probe and plunged it into the silt. The mud gave increasing resistance, but he felt nothing that would stop the pole completely such as an intact bulkhead. Hendrick felt a hand on his arm.

  Howard pointed to his dive computer, which he had strapped to his forearm. Their dive was nearly over. They had agreed on an amount of time that they would spend in decompression after the dive was completed, and the dive computer was showing that they were nearing that limit. Hendrick had the urge to disregard Howard, but he didn’t want to spend the next two days in the decompression chamber. Every added minute required many tens of minutes added to the decompression time. And no diver ignored the decompression times - he wanted to survive to enjoy the treasure, if they ever found any. There would be time for more dives.

  Hendrick reluctantly turned to follow Howard out of the vault room. He stopped and played his light around the space one more time. Was the whole damn ship empty? he thought with rising frustration.

  His eyes caught the reflected light of a rough metallic edge in the middle of the aft wall of the vault. He swam over, leaving Howard behind, and stared at a hole in the wall that had been obviously cut with a torch leaving blobs of molten metal around the edge of the roughly rectangular window. He shined his light through the hole and squinted at the reflection of the light from the dirt and sea life suspended around him.

  A smear of red to his left caught his immediate attention. He swung the light around to illuminate what turned out to be a piece of red cloth. Hendrick gaped at the rectangular material, realization roaring through him like a tidal wave.

  It was the flag of the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese had been there before him.

  CHAPTER 11

  Gold

  KURCHATOV

  TAIWAN STRAIT

  Joe Malik stared at the red flag Hendrick had given him after returning from his last dive. The flag was made of some kind of plastic material so that it would last many years within the sunken ship. The Chinese had obviously wanted to let future salvage operators know who had found the ship before them.

  Steve Hendrick walked up to stand next to his friend and partner after just finishing his two hours in the decompression chamber.

  “You think they got it all?” asked Malik in a subdued voice. He felt, rather than saw, Hendrick shake his head.

  “We’re never going to know unless we look over the whole ship,” replied Hendrick. “The news reports back in the late seventies and early eighties had the Chinese claiming that they never found anything. They found some human remains and some personal effects which they returned to the Japanese, but they had always claimed that they had never found any treasure.”

  “They could have lied.”

  “Yeah, t
hey could have,” answered Hendrick and let out an explosive sigh. “Or they could have told the truth. They admitted to the world that their underwater technique wasn’t very good.”

  “You don’t suppose -” began Malik, then let his voice trail off.

  Hendrick read his mind. “No, I don’t suppose,” he replied angrily. He knew Malik referred to some researchers who claimed that there never was any treasure on the Awa Maru. One had even gone to the extent of reviewing recently declassified Japanese messages intercepted by U.S. forces during World War II. He had claimed that no reference in those messages between the ship and Japanese headquarters was ever made to any treasure carried by the Awa Maru. Malik would bring up the possibility rarely, and Hendrick would always insist that the treasure was aboard as the ever increasing legend claimed. Hendrick instinctively knew that he had always used the treasure as an excuse to interest others in salvaging the Awa Maru. Without the treasure, he would be left alone to discover his father’s mission.

  Malik decided to change the subject. “What’s this business of the starboard bulkhead being covered with mud?”

  The question set Hendrick to thinking about how that much mud could have gotten inside the vault room up on B deck. He told Malik about the probing with the stick and how it didn’t contact anything but mud.

  “Maybe the bulkhead is no longer there,” mused Malik. “Maybe a torpedo blew the bulkhead apart, then when it rolled to starboard and sank, the open side of the vault room buried itself in the sea bottom.”