Hidden Sun

by John Campbell

  Hendrick’s mouth popped open as an idea formed in his mind. He gave Malik an excited look. Malik had seen looks like this many times before, and he knew Hendrick had come up with something. As his partner had told him previously, his intuition was a beautiful thing to behold.

  “When the ship rolled to starboard, the safes fell out while momentum kept the ship going forward,” said Hendrick in a hushed voice. He didn’t want anyone to overhear them.

  “I guess we can kiss them good-bye,” said Malik. “Finding them is going to be impossible.”

  Hendrick glanced over his shoulder, then gave him a conspiratorial look. “I think we’ve already found them.”

  Malik gave him a strained look. “What? How?”

  Hendrick pulled out the sonar image of the Awa Maru and pointed to the penciled-in X’s he had made months before. “Remember those magnetometer readings we took, showing metallic objects strung out in a line from the wreck. We couldn’t figure out what they were. We thought maybe they were debris from the ship. They’re debris all right. Debris filled with diamonds!”

  Malik shook his head and wasn’t convinced, but he knew that they would have to check out the locations of those objects. And who knew? Maybe Hendrick and his intuition would hit a home run again.

  “Don’t tell anyone about this,” said Hendrick, his voice going lower. “I’ll use the ROV, while the rest of the divers go over the stern section.”

  Malik nodded to Hendrick. Where sunken treasure was concerned, it paid to have a few secrets.

  Two days later, after another uneventful recharging of the submarine’s batteries in the middle of the strait, the divers had gained entrance to Hold Number Five in the aft section of the ship, and had found tons of still baled rubber and an equal amount of tin. Although the tin was not corroded to the extent one might expect after over sixty years on the bottom of the sea, the rubber was clearly unusable. Some large salvage crew might make use of the metal, but they were after much more valuable, and smaller, objects. The divers got ready to enter Hold Number Four which was just forward of the larger Hold Number Five.

  Hendrick, meanwhile, maneuvered the ROV from the control station they had set up in a former ammunition space. The ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, was towing a magnetometer to accurately determine the location of the metal objects.

  Hendrick kept a close eye on the magnetometer readout as he let the ROV wander the sea bottom. He had programmed a search pattern into the control computer, but had only estimated the direction and speed of the underwater current. Even a current of one knot could greatly distort the pattern the small sub would actually travel. He knew he should measure the current, but he decided that it would take too long. He also had to wonder if he could find the safes in the presence of the large metal submarine, but he hoped that the safes would have enough metal in them to override the background distortion of the earth’s magnetic field caused by the submarine.

  He had been staring at the magnetic readout for four hours now and knew he should take a break. He hated to quit until Joe Malik was done his dive, which was set to enter Hold Number Four. After decompression Joe could relieve him and stare at the liquid crystal numbers that bounced over a small range as the ROV swam across the bottom of Taiwan Strait.

  Hendrick yawned and almost missed the increasing oscillation of the magnetometer voltage just before the reading over ranged and illuminated all the segments of the display. The voltmeter sent out a warning beep and automatically went to a higher range of voltage as Hendrick’s yawn hit its peak, causing his eyes to water and close, and greatly diminishing his hearing.

  His yawn ended, Hendrick looked around him with tear-filled eyes. He blinked furiously until his vision cleared. The voltmeter beeped again as it went to another higher range of voltage. The low audio tone set Hendrick bolt upright in his chair. His eyes locked onto the magnetometer reading, the number displayed not registering in his mind as much as the range to which the voltmeter had set itself.

  The voltmeter beeped twice more before the readout began to slowly drop. Hendrick activated a control switch, dropping a marker from the ROV to allow divers to more easily locate the object later.

  Hendrick ran his fingers through his hair. Now, let’s hope it’s not just a chunk of the hull, he thought.

  Joe Malik led Ian Howard and a group of three divers toward the hole in the mud they had dug to allow them access to Hold Number Four. They had labored for hours to pry open the topside cargo hatch, and they placed some expandable jacks in the opening to keep the hatch from slamming shut on them in case the ship shifted.

  They were near the end of their dive, but Malik and Howard couldn’t resist a peek inside before going back to the submarine. They swam through the narrow crack formed by the edge of the hatch and the hatch cover, and experienced the strange feeling as the sides of the ship fell away into the darkness, giving him the impression of entering an impossibly large space. The beams from their lights fell into the distance, showing only the small particles of dirt floating in the water. Malik concentrated on swimming straight ahead to get to the bottom of the hold as quickly as possible.

  The bottom came up more quickly than he expected in a jumble of shapes that formed the irregular destination of their journey. They finally recognized the shapes as boxes colored brown by a thin layer of silt that had filtered through the cracks in the hull. The crates had been stacked neatly in the hold over half a century before and had tumbled to form a confused mass of wood as the ship rolled to starboard just seconds after the four torpedoes had slammed into its side.

  Howard selected a crate that had fallen in a nearly horizontal position and pulled a small pry bar from the tools around his waist. He waved the water near the top of the crate, clearing away the mud and saw a large cross painted on the lid. The red had turned to brown, but enough remained to show him that these were the legendary red cross crates that had been loaded into the ship’s holds by a large group of Japanese soldiers the night before the ship sailed from Singapore.

  He jammed the flat end of the tool under a seam between the lid and the sides of the crate. He pressed downward and the lid popped up easily as the nearly rusted-through nails pulled out of the sides of the crate. One of the sides fell away, revealing small box-like shapes, which were narrower at the top than at the bottom.

  Malik’s heart skipped a beat as he picked up one of the objects feeling its weight and surface hardness. He rubbed at the top of the object, working away at six decades of grime and revealed a metallic shine. Howard maneuvered his light around and shined it directly on the clean spot. The reflected light had a distinctly yellow tinge to it.

  Malik’s mind froze. All the years of wanting, waiting, planning, and scheming had been swept away in a single instant. His association with Steve Hendrick had been a question mark in his mind for some time now. How much longer would he tag after the younger, more impulsive man? Would Hendrick slow him down from real undersea exploration, which was his enduring passion? The questions were drowned in a sea of adrenaline that exploded through Malik’s bloodstream.

  Joe Malik held the ingot over his head and hooted into his mouthpiece so hard it almost popped out of his mouth.

  They had found the gold of the Awa Maru.

  “Steve, get a load of this,” said Joe Malik who slid quickly down the ladder from the hatch. He reached inside a bag strapped to his diving harness, then quickly shoved a gold bar under Hendrick’s nose.

  Hendrick’s eyes grew wide, then he took the bar of gold into both his hands and gaped at it as a wide grin shot across his face. He grabbed his partner in a bear hug, and they both danced around the confined space. Discovery of the gold was the culmination of a dream that had begun five years before. Hendrick let his skinny partner go and looked over the gold bar once again.

  “How many more of these are down there?” he asked in an emotional voice.

  Malik gave him a wide grin. “The starboard side of Hold Four is covered with them.”


  Hendrick looked around conspiratorially. “Let’s not let anyone else see this. No sense in getting our Russian friends all excited. They still don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. And I’d rather keep it from them as long as I can. And you, my friend, have got to get into that decompression chamber right now, or else you won’t live to spend any of this.” He turned Malik around and shoved him toward the open hatch of the chamber where Howard and three other grinning divers were waiting for him to join them.

  “There’s a problem,” said Malik who had returned to his partner’s side after the long hours of decompression. Hendrick looked at him briefly with a grin still on his face.

  “We were hoping that we could bring the gold aboard while still in their crates, and some are still okay, but most of the Red Cross boxes containing the gold are falling apart,” said Malik. “We’ll have to take each bar out individually and bring it through the airlock.”

  Hendrick’s grin faded. “The winch we have in the airlock can’t lower the crates through the hatch?”

  “The crates are too big to fit through the hatch,” said Malik. “We’ll never keep what we found secret from the crew.”

  “We’ve got them isolated forward and aft with the center section of the sub for us,” said Hendrick. “That won’t do it?”

  “Steve, think of the time it will take,” replied Malik. “There’s thousands of gold bars down there.”

  Hendrick’s grin returned. “Yeah,” he said, elongating the word.

  “We’ve got to find a way to get the gold aboard faster,” said Malik.

  A thoughtful expression replaced Hendrick’s enthusiastic grin. “Okay, what are the ways to get in and out of the ship?”

  “The airlock hatch, the hatch down from the sail, the two escape hatches, forward and aft -” began Malik.

  “The torpedo tubes,” said Hendrick, his grin returning.

  Both men ran off to find Captain Golubev. Two minutes later, they rattled off their request to use the torpedo tubes to load cargo onto the submarine.

  “It’s an interesting idea,” said Golubev who scratched his head. “We could use the hydraulic ram to pull the material aboard. It might work. I’ll get some men on it right away.”

  Hendrick and Malik nodded in unison. “Thank you, Captain,” they said together.

  “You have found what you were looking for? Yes?” said Golubev as he studied the faces of both men. “I would like to know what you are bringing on my ship.”

  “Captain, we have found something,” replied Hendrick. “But our agreement states that we can keep our findings away from you as long as we agree not to bring on board anything that would be hazardous to the vessel or the crew. I can assure you that this is not hazardous in any way.”

  Golubev was silent for a moment. Hendrick hoped he was clearly remembering the agreement that he and Malik had made them sign before setting sail. The crew had even agreed to leave the ship entirely after docking on a yet-to-be-revealed island, so that Hendrick and the others could unload their salvaged material without revealing to the crew what it was.

  Golubev nodded thoughtfully, then frowned as he hit a snag. “Of course, you know that opening the torpedo doors will create noise.”

  “Don’t do it when anyone’s around,” Hendrick shot back with a huge smile.

  Golubev shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

  Hours later Hendrick and Malik waited in the forward torpedo room for the crate of gold from the divers outside the boat. One of Golubev’s crew had instructed them in operation of the hydraulic ram that loaded torpedoes into the tube. The ram also worked in reverse to pull torpedoes out of the tube if they hadn’t been fired. Joe Malik had instructed the divers to initially pick only the crates that were in good condition and appeared strong enough to survive being handled. Later they would be reduced to picking up individual bars of gold and transporting them back to the sub.

  The crew was curious and had crowded around the watertight door that led into the forward torpedo room, but Hendrick and Malik, assisted by Golubev, had chased them away. The two Americans, as well as the divers, tried to conceal their excitement, but the Russian crew felt it anyway. They knew the Americans had found something extremely valuable.

  Joe Malik gave Steve Hendrick a glance and Hendrick nodded. Malik hit the switch that flooded one of the torpedo tubes on the starboard side and anxiously listened to the seawater rush in to fill the void. The gurgling tapered off and a light came on telling them that the tube was full of water. Malik hit another switch that rotated the large metal outer door of the tube around to open it to the sea.

  Both of them imagined the divers struggling to get the case of gold into the tube. Malik had all but one diver out so that they could load as much gold as possible in the time left before another battery charging interval, reasoning that the divers could decompress while they recharged batteries. They only had a few hours left before they would have to leave and go into the middle of Taiwan Strait.

  They had activated three mini-submarines, which had been stored on the exterior hull, to haul the extremely heavy gold bars from the Awa Maru to the submarine. The divers would place a load of gold on a minisub and adjust the buoyancy such that the loaded minisub would float at the desired height above the seabed. They switched on the minisub’s powerful twin props and rode with the gold over to the submarine’s bow. By adjusting the buoyancy again, they aligned the minisub at the same level as the torpedo tube. They anchored the minisub to the submarine so that it wouldn’t shoot to the surface after the gold was unloaded then struggled to slide the load of gold into the torpedo tube.

  Hendrick and Malik heard a telltale clunking and scraping of the crate sliding along the bottom surface of the torpedo tube, then came the two muffled raps on the hull that signaled that the divers were done.

  Malik closed the outer door of the tube, then activated the pumps that sent the water in the tube back into the sea. Several agonizing moments later Malik was able to open the tube’s inner door, and Hendrick and Malik got their first close look of the treasure they had sought for so long. Hendrick leaned forward into the tube and gingerly touched the waterlogged case. He grinned from ear to ear then threw the custom harness they had rigged up around the case. He got out of the way and gave Malik a thumbs up. Malik activated the ram and pulled the case out of the tube.

  They both stared at the case for a moment, dumbstruck at what they knew was inside. Hendrick got a hammer and used the claw end to pry up the lid. The nails gave way with a squawk, and Hendrick pulled the lid up with enthusiasm. Malik quickly picked up a brown coated bar and rubbed it with a towel to clean it off. He quickly had the top surface of the ingot gleaming. Their mouths popped open at the realization that a mind-boggling fortune was at their fingertips.

  “You know, when I was a kid,” said Hendrick, “the nuns in my school always told us that God loves us. Now I’m sure of it.”

  Joe Malik’s face cracked into the biggest grin Hendrick had ever seen on his wiry partner. They hugged each other and did a little jig on the deck. Hendrick wanted to shout out loud with joy, but he restrained himself. The less noise the better, and he didn’t want to further stir the imagination of the Russian crew. Malik burst into laughter, then quickly put his hands over his mouth to silence himself. He started to giggle quietly. Hendrick started to giggle at Malik’s giggling.

  They grabbed the case and put it over on one of the empty racks that had been used to store torpedoes. Malik closed the inner torpedo tube door, flooded the tube with water, and opened the outer door. Hendrick counted the number of gold bars in a crate - there were six to each crate - then tried to figure out in his mind how much each crate was worth. He put one of the gold bars on a small scale and read the weight. Each gold bar is twenty-seven and a half pounds, he thought. And at sixteen ounces to the pound, that’s four hundred some ounces to a bar and over twenty-four hundred ounces to a crate. Now at about fifteen hundred dollars to the ounce … His
mind struggled to do the arithmetic. About four million dollars per crate!

  Hendrick let out a gasp at the estimate.

  Malik gave him a close look. “You okay?”

  Hendrick pointed to the crate full of gold. “Four million.”

  Malik’s eyes went wide open, and he grinned with even more enthusiasm than before. A few moments later thoughts of paranoia struck both of them.

  “We should have gotten our handguns out for this exercise,” said Malik.

  Hendrick nodded slowly. “Maybe you’re right. Too late now.”

  “I hope Golubev and his crew keep their agreement,” muttered Malik.

  “If they all came after us, the guns wouldn’t do us much good,” replied Hendrick. “We can’t very well shoot the crew that’s going to get us out of here.” Malik grunted assent.

  The clunking sounds of the next crate hitting the bottom of the open torpedo tube jolted them into action. After two raps on the hull told them that the divers were clear of the tube, they closed the door and pumped out the water. Moments later they eagerly laid their hands on the second crate filled with gold. Hendrick’s mind forgot about security and went off like a cash register’s bell. They now had about eight million dollars aboard. Even if they stopped now, they would make a huge profit on the salvage operation.

  Hendrick and Malik and their diving crew labored on over the next few hours loading crates onto the torpedo racks until the forward torpedo room was nearly full from top to bottom. They both jumped nervously as the door to the torpedo room was suddenly opened. Hendrick ran to the door to confront whoever had entered.

  Viktor Golubev stood squarely in the doorway with his hands on his hips. Hendrick came to rest only a few inches from his puffy face. He was a head taller than the stout Russian, but the old sea captain was not intimidated.