The very thought of it made him laugh.
He opened the message and started reading.
Dear Sam,
My wife and I have been in Europe on a six month climbing holiday. You will never believe what we found! This was the only one, although we continued to search the area for two weeks before we were willing to let it go.
I was wondering if you could tell me where it could have come from, and whether or not you think we might find more like it?
Attached was a Jpeg file showing a small gold ingot bearing at its center, the impression of a letter G and a letter O, separated by an artistically designed infinity symbol.
Any advice you could impart would be much appreciated.
Kind regards, Kevin and Sally.
At the bottom of the letter, were the words: do you want to come on a treasure hunt?
Sam laughed at that.
Why is it that when people know that you work for an underwater salvage company in the role of Special Operations, they automatically assume you’re interested in treasure hunting?
He studied the picture for a couple of minutes.
Gold had never held any special interest for him. After all, what was he going to do with it? What piqued his interest was the story behind how the gold came to be.
He then forwarded the image to Blake Symonds, a merchant banker in Venice. A friend of his father’s, the man specialized in gold bullion and fine European antiquities. If anyone knew about where the ingot had come from, it would be him. With the photo attached, Sam asked the simple question, do you know whose emblem this is? He then drew a red arrow pointing to the G&O impression.
That done, Sam climbed into his bunk and went to sleep, while Second Chance sailed on south toward Hell.
*
Tom Bower was sitting in the dark hull of the Maria Helena, staring at his laptop. Despite the powerful air conditioning, his face glistened with beads of sweat as he examined the catastrophic low that was rapidly approaching the northeast coast of Australia.
He had hazel brown eyes and a permanent smile, which best expressed his happy-go-lucky attitude towards life. His dark, curly hair and olive complexion suggested a Mediterranean ancestry, even though he was a third generation American. At six foot four, he was considered much too tall to be a pilot, and even less suitable to the world of cave diving. At both of which, he was an expert. At the age of twenty eight, Tom had already achieved more than most people would achieve in a lifetime.
His general demeanor was relaxed, and he believed that he would always manage to get through whatever happened to him. His smile was kind, and his friends often found his insouciance, despite any given disaster, as one of his most endearing yet infuriating traits.
In front of him, were a multitude of meteorology reports.
Even after having discussed the weather with the three brightest meteorologists in the world, the best information he could gather was not much better than what had been available when he was a child.
There was a cyclone heading towards the northeast coastline of Australia, and depending on where it hit, there would almost certainly be a lot of damage to people, buildings and the environment.
All the science that was designed to protect them could sink right to the ocean floor, for all its usefulness today.
Tom had spent four years in Florida as a young boy while his father was posted there with the Navy.
He knew all about hurricanes, and he always hated them.
As a boy, he promised himself that he was going to move as far from water as possible. When he finished secondary school, he joined the Marines as a helicopter pilot, happy to have distanced himself from the sea and the risk of hurricanes.
Not long after his initial training, he served in Afghanistan, where he mainly performed Hot Drops with Navy SEALS and Medevacs. It was dangerous work, but at least there was no enormous body of water below him.
Two years ago, his chopper had been shot down. Of the twenty men aboard her, he was the only one to survive. It was pure luck, nothing more. There wasn’t anything he could have done to change that outcome. He should have been killed with the rest of them. When he attended their funerals, he felt no desire to change places with any one of the good men who had sacrificed their lives so that America could protect its way of living for future generations.
He felt no survivor guilt, but all the same, when he looked at their loved ones, their wives, children, parents, brothers and sisters, there was simply a deep well of pain inside him, which could never be repaired even with the military might of the U.S. Marines.
Tom tried to continue on with his military career, but it was pointless.
Much to the concern of his father, Tom eventually applied for an honorable discharge from the U.S. Marines. It had taken months for his discharge to be finalized. As a highly awarded helicopter pilot, with three separate tours of duty to the Sand Pit under his belt, he could only assume that despite his father being adamant that he would not intervene, he was indeed responsible for the delay. When it eventually came through, Tom signed the paperwork, handed in the last of his uniforms, and walked home from the base.
When he arrived home, Sam Reilly was there waiting for him, with a job offer he couldn’t resist.
Although they had been childhood neighbors, they came from very different walks of life; both struggling with their unusual vicissitudes with equal enthusiasm and tenacity. Tom’s own father was an Admiral in the Navy, and although he earned a salary well into six figures, and was even on a first name basis with a number of Senators and Congressmen, was considered relatively poor in comparison to the others living in the affluent community of La Jolla, California.
Sam, on the other hand, had more money than he would ever get to spend in his lifetime. The two men shared a similar love for cave diving since childhood. Once they reached adulthood, much to the disappointment of his friend’s father, Sam decided to join Tom, and the two became cadet helicopter pilots never had any aspirations to reach Flag rank in forty years’ of service to the Marine Corps.
The two of them completed their pilot training and Sam had even served the start of one tour of duty in Afghanistan with him. But then, for no reason that anyone could comprehend, Sam had returned stateside and completed his studies at MIT. There had been some unsavory sentiment throughout the military that once Sam had tasted the awful realities of war, he had used his father’s influence to bring him home again.
To this day, Tom had never discovered the real reason behind his mate’s sudden and early departure from the Marines, but he doubted very much that Sam had been incompetent and Tom was incapable of believing his friend to be a coward. Sam had returned to MIT to complete his Master’s in Oceanography, and the two men usually met several times a year to go cave diving together. It wasn’t much, but it was all the off-time that the Marines would give him, and all that Sam’s studies would allow.
He was surprised to see Sam at the door on the very day that he had received his honorable discharge. It might have been sheer luck that their two lives were about to collide once again, but, although he believed in luck, Tom also knew that Sam was often the precursor to its development.
It wasn’t a coincidence.
Sam must have known what was going to happen.
Tom still remembered their conversation fondly, despite his current position, and the irony of all that he’d been offered.
It occurred just over a year ago now.
“I was formally discharged from the Corps today,” Tom said.
“So, I was told.” Sam looked cheerful and then said, “I’ll bet your dad was stoked.”
“Mom’s already called to give me the heads up that it will take him a while to cool down after this one. Anyway, that’s about all with me. I have no reason to feel sorry for myself. The truth is, I gave the Corps six years of my life, and three tours of duty in some of the most hostile conflicts in recent history. I’m glad to be out. I never had any aspirations to be an Ad
miral in forty years’ time like my old man. Now, since I doubt that you’re here to cheer me up, what do you want, Sam?”
“My dad has convinced me to return to the family business.”
“I thought you hated what your father does?”
“No, I’m indifferent to the whims of an overly rich hyper-intelligent man child.” Sam smiled again as he described his father. “Despite what he wants, I won’t ever become Global Shipping’s next Chief Executive Officer.”
“So, you’ll become what, a tugboat Captain?” Tom said, incredulously knowing that his friend wouldn’t find that interesting either.
“No, he wants me to take over one of his smaller auxiliary companies, Deep Sea Salvage.”
“Salvaging big ships and tugboat driving?”
“Not exactly, but I suppose we might be responsible for something like that. He’s offered me the position of Director of Special Operations, which is a fancy way of saying that I pick the work that I want to do, which is primarily ocean research, deep sea salvage operations, and water quality studies.”
“What did you just say to the offer?” Tom asked.
“I said, it depends whether or not I can convince you to leave the Marines and join me.” Realization slowly dawned in Tom’s eyes, as Sam continued, “My old man told me not to worry about it. You were thinking of quitting anyway.”
“I got a phone call at 8 a.m. today, telling me that the paperwork had finally gone through! When did you speak to your dad, Sam?”
“We talked at about 7:30.”
“That bastard! He’s the only person who has ever gotten the best of my father, and he controls the world’s largest Navy.”
“Yeah, not to discuss whose is bigger, but my dad controls the world’s richest one. So, what do you say, do you want to have an adventure or do you want to find out what other bureaucracy your father intends for you join?”
“You know I hate the ocean!” Tom knew that this wasn’t an entirely true statement. Since he’d nearly been killed by a hurricane during his boyhood, he’d subsequently had a number of nightmares regarding the sea and so, when he met and befriended Sam, he’d spent years being dragged out into the ocean on adventures with him. Hurricanes still scared the shit out of him, but he had learned to love the ocean as much he’d come to deeply respect its awesome power.
“No, you don’t hate it. You’re just a little frightened of it, that’s all. That will actually help where we’re going. Besides, we mainly look after diving operations, deep sea retrievals and leave the ocean disasters to the other guys. I can put you in charge of Special Projects. Besides, we need a helicopter pilot. What do you say?”
“It sounds like a lot more fun than moping about here,” and just like that, Tom had been hooked into a life at sea; a life in which he discovered a place and happiness he’d never before known.
Tom laughed as he recalled the conversation, and remembered how both Reilly men had the unique power to convince others to join them, regardless of their original intentions.
Tom’s thoughts returned to the present.
Despite the heavy soundproofing in the operations room, the 40,000 hp twin diesel engines could be heard humming away in the background as they propelled the Maria Helena at full speed towards the troubled Hayward Bulk, somewhere off the coast of North Queensland, Australia.
Tropical cyclones, he knew, were the southern hemisphere’s equivalent of his dreaded hurricane.
The Hayward Bulk was a 500,000 ton supertanker.
It was on the Japan to South Africa run when its engine impeller broke and the supertanker’s built-in safety system cut the power to the engines to protect it. The Mary Rose, which provided offshore support to the vessel, had refused to come to its aid because cyclone Petersham was on its way.
The Hayward Bulk was one of more than thirty supertankers owned by Global Shipping. Deep Sea Expeditions was its smaller arm. It’s CEO and owner, shipping mogul and old man, James Reilly, had contacted the skipper of the Maria Helena and informed him that they were being diverted from their current duties in Townsville in order to deliver a team of engineers and some heavy equipment to the lame ship.
If they reached her in time, Tom would be required to fly them over to the troubled vessel.
For twelve months his good luck had kept him away from any such disaster at sea. As he stared at the meteorological reports on his laptop, Tom realized that Cyclone Petersham was going to be one of the worst to ever reach this part of the world.
Fate, he realized, was inexorable.
*
The swell had risen above forty feet, and for the first time since leaving Sydney, Sam started to wonder if he’d gone too far this time. Where the waves had previously been spotted with whitecaps, they were now walls of water, forty feet high and covered in white, angry, frothy sea. The wind had risen to 80 knots, gusting up to 120.
To make matters worse, the extreme low off the coast of South Australia was just about to collide with the southern tip of Cyclone Petersham’s low. This would form the most deadly of barometric systems, known as a squeeze. Seen on a synoptic chart, the two lows could be identified by a number of gradient pressure lines, with an area of relative normal pressure in the middle about to be squeezed between them. There was no rational way to predict how the sea would respond to such a collision of natural forces.
Sam relished this type of meteorological event at sea.
Below deck, barely audible above the sounds of the storm, he heard his satellite phone ringing. Only three people in the world had this number – his father, James Reilly, his meteorologist, Mark Stanton, and his best friend, Tom Bower. Even his mother didn’t have it.
Whatever had happened, it would be important.
He stepped down the ladder and picked up the phone.
“Sam here.” Despite the cold air, he could feel the sweat on his hand with which he held the phone against his ear.
It had to be his father.
He’d already spoken to Mark earlier today, and the man had made it abundantly clear that there was no possible way to tell, with any reasonable certainty, what the hell was going to happen when the weather systems collided. So, that left only his father, who never called unless there was a problem. Sam decided to hope that it was Mark on the phone, telling him the storm was going to be worse than he’d originally predicted.
“Sam, its Blake Simonds.” There was a pause after that. What the heck is Blake doing ringing me? “I got your picture,” the man continued, as though he’d anticipated Sam’s lack of response as an indicator of non-recognition.
He’d almost completely forgotten about the gold ingot.
“Oh, yeah, do you know where it’s from?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, it’s from the Oppenheimer and Goldschmidt family.” He could tell by the tone of Blake’s voice that the man assumed that everyone knew about the family.
“Never heard of them.”
“They were an extremely wealthy Jewish family who disappeared during the Holocaust.”
“Don’t you mean that they were murdered?” Sam corrected him.
“No, their deaths couldn’t have been kept secret, not even during the Holocaust.”
“Any idea where they are now?” Sam asked.
“No.” Sam heard Blake sigh on the other end of the line. “But that’s just it. No one’s heard from them since.”
“Any relatives?”
“No, the last anyone saw of them was when they tried to escape Munich on the Magdalena.” Blake sounded excited, as though he was close to discovering something of great importance.
“What’s the Magdalena?”
“She was a luxury airship, like the Titanic’s equivalent of a Zeppelin airship. It was said that her owner, a Mr. Peter Greenstein, made a number of trips aboard her, attempting to rescue rich Jewish families in the early days of the war.”
“Just the rich ones?” Sam, having grown up with a father who considered himself in financial trouble when his na
me didn’t appear in the Top 10 Rich List in Forbes Magazine, found that irritating and typical.
“It’s what I heard.” Blake said.
“That figures.” Sam had seen firsthand what was offered to the rich. “What happened to him and the rest of the people on the Magdalena?”
“Well, that’s just it. They were never seen or heard from again after the night that the Oppenheimer and Goldschmidt family disappeared.”
Now, the story behind the treasure hunt began to pique his interest.
“Thanks for that.”
“Not a problem. You haven’t found the gold, have you?”
“No, just doing some research for a friend. Say, how did you get this number?”
“My father told me the story about the lost Magdalena when I was a boy, so when I saw the image, I just had to know the answer. I rang your father and told him that it was urgent that I speak with you. He gave me this number. Said you wouldn’t mind. By the way, he told me to give you his regards and that he hopes your new job is working out for you.”
It had been a year since he’d reluctantly taken the job, but he and his dad didn’t talk too often.
“Not a problem. Thanks for that.”
“Hey, if you find anything more on the final resting place of the Magdalena, I’d love to know about it. Can you keep me in the loop?”
“Sure.”
He hit the end button on his sat phone and then scrolled down through his address book until he reached Tom Bower’s number.
He hit the call button.
Sam heard the first and the second ring. He never heard the third one. Instead, there was a loud bang as an unusually large wave hit Second Chance’s portside, very nearly causing her to broach and flooding her. Dropping the sat phone, he heard the sudden rush of water engulfing the center cockpit.
The Last Airship Page 4