by Mims, Lee
“But that didn’t happen because you were hit, right?”
“We were running on the surface when suddenly, without any warning from the radar, a plane was on us, dropping bombs. One was a direct hit. Wolfgang and I just made it to the lifeboat … but we were the only ones. The sub sank in just a few minutes. All hands were lost. After we got over the shock of what had happened, we realized fate had wanted us to be together. So we rowed ashore and started a new life together. I had my passport and plenty of money, so I was able to purchase a fake one later for Wolfgang. I taught him French, and we changed his name on his new passport to Eudon Colbert. That’s because he so loved Claudette Colbert.”
My head was spinning. All this, and Claudette Colbert too. “I still don’t understand the purpose of making a map and hiding it in another country when the artifact was in Germany?”
“Who said it was in Germany?” He sighed heavily. “Even I didn’t know where it was. It was in twenty-seven enormous crates, so it wasn’t like a painting or something that could be easily moved.” He cleared his throat and smacked his lips. I dug out a fresh Evian from my tote—I keep everything in there—and handed it to him.
He took a swig. “Thank you, my dear.” Then, sensing our confusion, he went on. “You see, only Koch knew the exact physical whereabouts of the crates. That was pretty easy to accomplish since so many crates containing so much looted art were being shuffled around. Who knew what was in what crate? Hitler ordered him to create a map to the crates to stand as … well, tender.”
He took another sip, eyeing Viktor and me as we struggled to understand the plans of a madman. “Hitler already had plans in place for his escape to South America. The map to the crates was meant as payment to allow him admittance into one of the countries there. I was to await his orders, then retrieve the cylinder and bring it to him … wherever he ended up. Of course, as it turned out, Hitler was killed and Koch captured, so there was no one to call for the cylinder.”
“Did you take it to New York according to your orders, just to be on the safe side?” asked Viktor. “I mean, after you settled in North Carolina?”
“No. What would have been the purpose? Besides, I didn’t have it.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t have it?” I asked, stunned.
“Oh my God,” Viktor said. “It is still on the sub, isn’t it?”
“Of course. I told you, what was left of U-498 went down so fast that if Wolfgang and I hadn’t drilled beforehand, we’d have gone down with it too.”
“But, but,” I stammered. “Hunter said it wasn’t there.”
“Hunter?” Coester was confused, and I didn’t blame him.
“I told you about him, remember?” I asked. “He worked for the man who found the sub. He explored its remains with a remotely operated robot and reported the cylinder wasn’t there. I only have limited information here, and it’s second hand. But the gist was no cylinder, not even in the forward compartments.”
He smiled, “Ah. This I can explain. Several hours before we were hit by the American bombs, we were running submerged, trying to get some relief from the pounding we were taking during a storm. One of the crewmen realized there was no torpedo in the top starboard tube. U-498 had the usual configuration of four tubes, two up and two down. Not knowing the top starboard had been designated to hold the cylinder as well as some document boxes, he tried to load a torpedo in the tube, but of course, it wouldn’t go all the way in. Document boxes and the heavily wrapped cylinder were in the way. When the crewman tried to pull the torpedo back out, he couldn’t. It was stuck. I remember the day so well,” Coester said, shaking his head.
“Wolfgang didn’t want to risk an undersea explosion, so we surfaced. He had all nonessential crewmen move topside and stand at the stern while two crewmen disarmed the torpedo. I don’t know if you’re aware, but these bombs are very large. It takes two men to load one. Once they completely disarmed it, we tossed it overboard, and Wolfgang ordered the men back inside. Most went to their quarters. We were the last to climb down the hatch. That’s where we were when we were bombed, and I suspect it’s the reason we survived. We were the closest to the only means of escape. My knapsack was already with the inflatable. I loaned Wolfgang some of my clothes when we got ashore.”
I looked at Viktor. He looked at me, then at the elderly man who’d just finished telling us this extraordinary story. “In all these years, you never said anything to anyone about the Amber Room? Didn’t you feel some responsibility?”
“Of course we did. From the beginning, neither Wolfgang nor I had any intention of turning the room back over to Hitler. It was our plan to turn the map to the treasure over to the proper authorities once we got to a stable government and let them return it to its rightful owners. But that task was taken from us when the sub went down in over two thousand feet of water. It might well have been on the moon! And remember, we lived under constant fear of being revealed, not just as Germans, but as homosexuals.”
Just then, a commotion arose in the hall right outside the room. Goggles was confronting a large man in a ball cap wearing uniform-style work clothes, starched and pressed, his shirt out over his trousers. “Didn’t you hear me?” she demanded. “You need to come back and check in at the reception area before visiting a guest.”
It was then I recognized him. “Well, well, Miz Cooper,” said Davy Duchamp, pushing past the indignant nurse as he and his sons strode into the room. “We meet again.”
Viktor and I rose from our chairs so fast his fell over. Momentarily at a loss for words, I could only gape as Goggles, close on Duchamp’s heels, poked him in his beefy ribs. “I said you need to—”
“Get lost!” Duchamp snarled.
“Well, we’ll just see what security has to say about this.” She sniffed and stomped out without apparently noticing that Viktor and I were in breach of the rules as well.
“Davy. What are you doing here?” Viktor asked.
“Following you and her. We need to talk.”
“I declined your invitation last night. Apparently you didn’t get my drift,” I said with way more authority than I was feeling.
“Well, you’re not declining again.” He stepped aggressively up to me.
“Now just a minute,” Viktor pushed between us only to get the stiff arm from Davy.
“Back off, Kozlov,” Duchamp ordered. “I’m going to make this short and sweet. She is coming with me. I’m going to put her where she won’t be in my way, and she’s going to stay there until I get what belongs to me and my boys. After all, we’re the ones that found the treasure.” Then back to me: “You should have taken the hint to steer clear when Hunter caught you trying to read the internal log on the ROV and roughed you up pretty good. But you didn’t—”
Realizing at last what had prompted the attack from Hunter in the first place, I started to protest the misunderstanding—I can’t imagine why—when the question of how he’d managed to jump to that conclusion came to mind. I opened my mouth to ask, but about that time the twins jumped in the fray.
“Dad!” they cried in unison.
“You just kept on,” Duchamp continued. “You hacked into Hunter’s computer, learned way more than you needed to know. You’re just like that stupid Eskimo, trying to take something that’s not yours. I might remind you that what happened to him could happen to you.”
What did that mean? “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m saying that until we get the cylinder and I settle my deal with the Chinese, you’re going to be out of my hair.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Viktor said in disbelief. “Are you insane? She’s not going anywhere!”
“Look here,” Duchamp said, “it’s time for you to pick a side—”
“Pick a side?”
“He already has,” I said firmly, taking Viktor’s arm and wondering two things: One,
why I hadn’t realized until this second that Hunter’s body washed up on a Thursday, yet if my memory served me correctly (and I was pretty sure it did), Viktor had told me Voyager called him on Wednesday? So Duchamp must have known—from the twins?—that Hunter wasn’t just missing, he was dead. And two, how would we make it safely past Duchamp and his sons?
“Viktor’s with me, and we’re leaving.” I didn’t get a chance to try, however because just then more visitors stepped into Gerhard Coester’s room.
Twenty-Three
“What the hell are you doing here?” I squawked to Detectives Pierce and Myers.
“I’ve been following you, of course. Myers had his doubts, but I knew eventually you’d lead me to a person of interest, and so you have. Actually, they were following you, too, but that’s beside the point.”
“Wait!” I said. “I’m confused. You were following them, following me … ”
“No,” Myers said. “We were tailing you. Then those guys—two of whom we’ve already interviewed—fell in behind you, too, so all we had to do was follow the crazy train here, stand outside the door, and listen.”
“Yeah,” Pierce said, turning to the twins, “I must say, it was very interesting. Apparently we need to have another chat. This time we’ll include your dad and find out what you three might know regarding a dead crewman and a certain cylinder.”
“Damn straight,” Myers said. “You guys had me doubting my partner, which leaves me a little embarrassed, so what say we all go back to Morehead where we can take some statements?”
My mind was flying everywhere at once. For one thing, I’d just had another brilliant insight. The ROV team wore orange jumpsuits—the same bright orange as a particular little scrap of material Pierce and I had found stuck in Hunter’s watchband. And all along I’d thought it was from Bud’s lucky shirt. Now I was embarrassed … again. It wasn’t enough that I’d stupidly thought an internal log was one kept by the tech team not the ROV itself.
But overriding all my thoughts was the driving need to complete what had became a treasure hunt for me the moment all the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place and I’d realized I could go down in history as the person who found the Amber Room. In short, everything else paled when compared to the possibility that I could still pull this off. The gambler in me strained to go for broke. Now, I realize this is a bad character flaw in myself and that I should have been happy to tell the police everything I knew about this whole mess. See that truth and justice prevailed and all that. And, I would … maybe. Just not right now.
After all, Viktor and I were still the only ones with all the pieces. With a little luck, we could be the first to the cylinder. We just needed to convince the cops that we were not involved with anything Davy Duchamp and his boys might have been up to. Then we could skedaddle back to the Magellan, where we’d somehow manage to fish the cylinder up from the sub. I hadn’t concocted a way to do that undetected yet, but I had some ideas.
However, I didn’t have to give my dilemma any further consideration, because just then Duchamp pulled a handgun from his belt where it’d been hidden under his shirt.
“My boys and I aren’t going anywhere,” he said.
“Dad!” Dean shouted. “Stop. This whole thing is—”
“—getting way out of control!” Tim cried.
See, I should have realized this. I should have totally cottoned on to the fact that with a treasure as vast as the Amber Room, for Christ’s sakes, a person would go to any extremes to acquire it, including taking on the law using a gun—a practice frowned upon by federal, state, and local authorities, to say the least. I was trying to think of something that would defuse the situation when our bedridden host—who, unbeknownst to us, had crept to the foot of the bed—did something that, just like in the movies, changed real time into slow motion. He launched himself off the bed straight at Duchamp, trying, I suppose, to swipe the gun from his hand!
And, just like in the movies, Viktor and I shouted, “Noooo!” simultaneously and lunged for him, as did Goggles and an enormous black orderly in a white uniform, the pair of whom had just arrived in the room. But, like I said, it was as if we were all moving in slow motion. Duchamp, eyes bulging in disbelief, was backpedaling so hard he lost his balance and careened into the rollaway food tray, the back of his head striking it first with a loud thwack! This was followed by another loud bang, much louder, as the handgun went off. Then, like a marionette with its strings cut, Duchamp, weapon still in hand, crumpled slowly to the floor.
Then real time resumed and total pandemonium broke out.
It’s funny the things you notice in such a situation, but you know what stood out during the chaos that ensued? How tender and protective Goggles was toward Coester as she and the orderly gathered him up and placed him, unharmed, back in bed. You’d have thought he was her granddad or something. Go figure. Anyway, it seemed like forever before all the cops, EMTs (there must have been four that responded to the scene), and other government types who felt their presence was a total necessity in circumstances involving a firearm (regardless of the fact that no one was hit) did what they do and left.
Viktor and I had moved our chairs to the hallway to be out of the way. Pierce had ordered us not to leave. With no real privacy, we hadn’t had a chance to speak alone since the shooting and just when I thought we would, Pierce and Myers approached us.
“We’ve just got word from Raleigh PD that Duchamp has regained consciousness,” he said. “This is their jurisdiction, so we have to wait until they make their charges before we can take him into custody. Right now, though, he’s still in the emergency room, so Myers and I are headed over there. His sons are waiting for us. But first, I’ve just got a couple of questions for you.”
“Uh, sure,” I said not without trepidation.
“Why were you two here? What’s your connection to Mr. Dubois?”
“Don’t ask me,” Viktor said. “I’m just here with Ms. Cooper.”
Pierce directed his gaze to me. “Well?”
I struggled to remember what I’d told helpful Mr. Devereaux, over at Women’s College.
“You gonna tell us today?” Myers said.
“Well, uh, neither Viktor nor I needed to be back on the Magellan until this afternoon so, since we had some time this morning and since Mr. Dubois used to be my aunt’s French professor and I try to stop by when I’m in the area to say hello for her, I figured today would be a good time.”
Pierce’s eyes drifted sideways as he considered this. Then he said, “And you were in the area because …”
“Well, you may remember my friend here,” I said, indicating Viktor. Pierce and Myers shook their heads in the negative. I introduced him as a Voyager crewman who was also working on his dissertation in economic petrology, then explained, “He and I were going to stop at the Archdale Building—it’s practically across the street, you know.”
I got blank stares. “The Archdale Building houses academic geologic papers as well as those produced by the North Carolina Geologic Survey.”
Myers made a rolling motion with his hand.
“So, after I’d completed my social obligation,” I told him, hurriedly, “we planned to do a little research on some of the latest papers on … siliciclastic sequence stratigraphy and …”
“Unstable progradational shelf margins,” Viktor chimed in.
“Whatever,” Pierce snapped. “So you’re saying you were just making a social call, then going to do a little work-related research. Last question for now: those guys were following you because …”
When I didn’t finish his sentence, Pierce raised his eyebrows.
I really didn’t want to say this in front of Viktor so I pulled Pierce aside, lowered my voice, and said, “Maybe they think I remember what happened the night of the attack and it might tend to implicate them. The thing is, I’d rather discuss th
is with you in private.”
“Tomorrow then,” Pierce said. He called to his partner, “Okay Myers, let’s make like a baby and head out.”
It was almost three o’clock when Viktor and I headed back to Morehead. He was driving and not saying much.
“What do you think of our chances of getting the ROV and finding the cylinder?” I asked.
Viktor looked at me briefly, then said as if he’d already been thinking about it, “I’m pretty sure I can get the ROV without too many questions asked. What I’m worried about is how long it’ll take to find the sub. We need to be able to go straight to it, not waste time looking, bumbling around, hoping the obstacle-avoidance sonar alerts us to something or we just happen to see it. The lights only project out about twenty-five feet down there.”
“I think I can help with that,” I said, grabbing my purse from the backseat. “It just so happens I have a copy of the seismic data that Global used to make the site survey.”
“That’s what’s been bothering me!” Viktor smacked his palm on the wheel. “In this country there are strict guidelines on how close to a shipwreck a wellhole can be placed. Davy must have altered the seismic survey before he gave it to Global. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. All we need is an older survey.”
“Don’t feel bad, the thought occurred to me a little late in the game too,” I said as I struggled to spread the map in my lap. “And you’re right about an older survey; we could use it to pinpoint the exact location of the sub by comparing the contours and seeing exactly where Davy changed the offsets. But …”
“We don’t have one?” Viktor asked.
“No. This isn’t the Gulf, where everything’s been mapped and surveyed many times over. Anyway, I seriously doubt another company has surveyed this area, because if they had, they would have found the sub. Besides, anything done by another seismic survey company would be proprietary, not available to the public.”