The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  As Craig and Don set off for Vienna, it was still too early to know what my exact role in the project would be, but as the designated side-scan sonar and search expert in Eastport’s bid, I knew I would be a key figure whatever the case. Strangely, that question was answered by Judge Leiningen-Westerburg himself.

  While it was exciting to be involved in such a high-profile criminal trial, I mainly saw the Lucona project as the opportunity we had been waiting for to develop Eastport’s deep-water search-and-recovery business. The financial structure of our agreement with the court allowed us to purchase a state-of-the-art 6,000-metre-rated side-scan sonar system, including all the ancillary deck and cable handling equipment, and build from scratch a 7,000-metre-rated ROV. Taking the project on was still a huge technical and financial gamble, and we were under pressure straight away from our two closest competitors, who in truth were better placed than us to win the contract based on their superior track records. When their letters of protest to the court were forwarded to us for comment, I couldn’t help but feel personally slighted, as by then I had been named as the project’s manager. Nevertheless, we fought these protests as fiercely as we fought for the initial award, and soon there was no turning back for either the court or us.

  We had barely five months’ lead time to specify, acquire, design, build, assemble, integrate and test approximately sixty tons of equipment. It was an insanely ambitious schedule driven by the court’s procedural requirements, which meant that the first time all this new equipment would be together in the same location was when it arrived on the loading dock in Singapore, where it was to be mobilized on board an offshore vessel hired to support the search. Integration and testing would therefore have to occur in the field, which, though completely contrary to best engineering practice, was the only way we could meet the schedule dictated by Leiningen-Westerburg. That it placed an inordinate amount of responsibility on me and my small team to deal with any technical problems that arose was something we simply had to accept.

  During the five-month build period, my main responsibility was to assemble the integrated navigation system we would be using and look after the purchase of the side-scan sonar search system, which was being built to my specifications by a small Seattle-based company. Judge Leiningen-Westerburg also visited our offices in Maryland, along with one of his technical experts, the naval architect Dr Gerhard Strasser, to check on our progress. Because of his technical training and better command of English, Dr Strasser did most of the talking, although he would often confer with Leiningen-Westerburg in German. This led me to assume that it would be Strasser who would be joining us during the search, so I was quite taken aback when he told me that the judge would also be coming to sea with us, in addition to two other explosives experts. I could already imagine just how cramped the small vessel we had hired was going to be.

  The final surprise came when Leiningen-Westerburg swore me in as an official expert witness to the court. I had been warned that this might be required, but it still caught me a little off guard. Other than being responsible for directing the search operation and collecting evidence for the trial, I had no idea what else might be expected of me. Would I have to give evidence in court? At this point nobody, including the judge, seemed to know the answer to that.

  Prior to this I had given little thought to Udo Proksch and the crimes he had allegedly committed. My sole focus was what it would take to find and film Lucona’s wreck. Now, however, I thought I had better start reading up on Herr Proksch and his controversial life.

  Short, balding and grubby but undeniably charming, especially to women and politicians, Udo Proksch was the owner of the famous pastry shop and chocolatier Der Demel, once purveyors to the Imperial and Royal Court of Austria-Hungary. He was a colourful character, full of contradictions, who was perhaps best described as ‘a chaotic mixture of Salvador Dali and Orson Welles’. Over a period of some fifteen years, he held court in an exclusive club he established above Der Demel, cultivating and corrupting an elite cadre of friends who, wittingly or not, readily assisted his fraudulent business ventures.

  Born in Rostock, East Germany, in 1934, to a family of Nazi loyalists, Udo Proksch was sent by his father to study at one of the National Political Institutes of Education – otherwise known as NAPOLA – secondary boarding schools for the production of future SS officers and members of the Nazi armed forces. In spite of his small size, he ultimately became one of the elite boys in his class, helped in part by a visit from Heinrich Himmler himself, bearing greetings to Udo from his father. It is believed that NAPOLA is where the young Udo acquired his love of the military and his lifelong taste for the use of explosives. His view of the intrinsic human penchant for war was encapsulated in his declaration that ‘War is the father of all things. We will continue to fight and kill, this is what is inside us.’

  Proksch’s first jobs in East and West Germany were menial positions – he was a swineherd, a coal miner and a corpse washer — that gave no indication of the ruthless flair for making money that became apparent when he moved to Austria. He always worked with partners or close friends in his business dealings, which were generally characterized as being secretive and dubious, if not outright illegal. Unusually for an avowed warrior, he went on to study industrial design at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna and became an award-winning designer and art director for an eyewear company, where through the 1960s, under the alias Serge Kirchhofer, he designed the famous Carrera and Porsche lines of sunglasses.

  In 1972, with the fortune he had amassed from his design work and other business ventures, Proksch acquired Der Demel directly from the Demel family, who had owned and run the business since 1857. Despite its grand history (it was first established in 1786) and status, his real interest appeared to be the third-floor suite of mirrored and chandeliered rooms above the pastry shop. There, with the urging of his close friend Leopold Gratz, who was mayor of Vienna and later Austria’s foreign minister, he formed the infamous Club 45, whose elite members from business, the arts, law, science, media and politics would meet in private, engage in debauched parties and hatch illicit money-making schemes.

  Everyone who was anyone in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) or the nation’s socialist elite was a member of Club 45. In addition to the founders, Proksch, Gratz and Austria’s finance minister Hannes Androsch, this included such leading government figures as interior minister Karl Blecha, defence minister Karl Lütgendorf, justice minister Harald Ofner and science minister Heinz Fischer. Proksch could count on all of them for favours and political protection when needed. He viewed Club 45 as his personal tool to gain control over its members by having intimate knowledge of their weaknesses and vices: ‘Now the proles have taken over the rudder, I’ll give them what they don’t have: a place where they can dance, gorge themselves and booze it up — but they’ll dance to my tune’.

  His connections were not confined to Austria, however. He claimed to be a friend of Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev, King Hussein of Jordan and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. He was alleged to be a spy, either for the KGB or the East German secret service, and was also suspected of being the middleman in various illegal high-tech exports and weapon sales to the Soviet bloc. But it was within the smoke-filled rooms of Club 45 that he hatched what he thought would be his biggest and surest money-making scheme. It depended on a ship called the Lucona not reaching its intended destination.

  Like the thousands of other unremarkable ships that transport trade goods from port to port around the world, the MV Lucona was a run-of-the-mill cargo vessel. Dutch-owned, the ship had been exclusively chartered by Udo Proksch via his Swiss-based front company, Zapata AG. Having loaded the allegedly precious cargo – the expensively insured uranium processing plant – in Chiogga, Italy, it was instructed to steam for Hong Kong, where it was to receive further instructions about its final destination. Its voyage was being carefully monitored by Proksch, who, unusually, demanded to be updated with its precise position at le
ast every three days.

  The Lucona had safely navigated the Adriatic, Mediterranean and Red seas and was now crossing the Arabian Sea, heading for the eight-degree channel marked by Minicoy, an Indian atoll north of the Maidive Islands. It was 23 January 1977, the seventeenth day of what had so far been an uneventful voyage for Jacob Puister, Lucona’s Dutch master. Although he had never sailed this route before, Puister had little to be concerned about, as his ship was making good progress in near-perfect weather conditions. On board with him were his wife, ten ship’s crew and the fiancée of the chief engineer.

  His watch having ended at noon, Puister handed over to the chief mate, Jacobus van Beckum, and then attended to some paperwork in his office before heading off to bed for a rest. The Arabian Sea in January is still very warm, so Puister, like most of the crew, had taken to sleeping without any clothes on. Suddenly, without any warning, he was knocked violently out of his bunk and thrown to the floor, where he stood naked trying to comprehend what had just happened. He knew rough weather wasn’t to blame, as the sea had been flat calm just an hour or so before, and he was sure he could still hear the engine running normally. Something was seriously wrong, though, as he could feel the ship shuddering to a halt. Whatever it was, he needed to get topside. Without stopping to get dressed, he rushed to the stairway leading to the bridge, where he found his wife looking shocked and panicked.

  As soon as Puister reached the bridge, he realized that something calamitous must have happened, because all the wheelhouse windows were broken and glass was strewn everywhere. The thick toughened glass that protects a ship’s bridge crew from the elements is designed to withstand the most horrendous storms and powerful wave impacts, so whatever had caused Lucona’s windows to smash must have involved enormous force. As he struggled to make sense of the scene around him, Puister’s training kicked in and he pulled the engine speed lever back from full speed to dead slow. Looking ahead, he saw a greyish-yellow pall of smoke about ten metres distant. From the same direction there was a groaning, hissing sound.

  He ran first to the port door opening and then over to the starboard side to look at how the surface of the sea around his ship was reacting. By now the dense cloud of smoke had drifted aft, enveloping the bridge, so he could see no further than two metres in any direction. When his calls to van Beckum went unanswered, he walked out to the bridge wing and was shocked to see the water level just below his feet and at an extreme angle to the railings. Their dire situation was now clear to him: Lucona was going down rapidly by the bow. One of the mates called for him to release the ship’s lifeboats. Puister saw that there was no time for that and shouted to everyone to jump as fast as possible. With that, the Lucona lurched to starboard and he found himself being dragged underwater.

  Although he kept his eyes open, he was unable to make out what had caught his leg and was pulling him down with the ship. All he could see was the light from the sun straight above, and he pulled his body upwards with great convulsive strokes that ultimately tore him free. A few more strokes propelled him back to the surface, where he began looking desperately for his wife, praying that she and the others had been able to jump clear. His vision was blocked, however, by the unbelievable sight of Lucona’s upended stern descending into the bubbling froth that marked where the bow had already been swallowed by the sea. Her single propeller, the last part of her structure still visible, was turning slowly as she sank.

  Scarcely forty seconds had elapsed since the moment the slumbering Puister was knocked to the floor of his cabin. He hadn’t had time to fully understand or appreciate his predicament, but now, as he paddled amongst the floating remains of the 1,200-ton ship that had sunk inexplicably beneath his feet, he feared for the lives of everyone on board, especially his wife.

  In the end, half of those on board the Lucona lost their lives that day. The ship sank so fast that those who were unlucky enough to be working below deck or lying off-shift in their cabins never stood a chance. Trapped within the steel confines of Lucona’s hull, their deaths would have been mercifully swift but still terrifying and painful in the extreme. On the captain’s official statement of the missing, he listed the names of the chief engineer, his fiancée and four of the Cape Verdean mates. Their bodies were never found or recovered.

  The six who survived all did so because they were either working on the bridge or, like Captain Puister, were able to get to an upper deck immediately before the ship’s final plunge. In addition to Puister and his wife, the chief mate, the cook and two assistant engineers survived, although several suffered broken ribs and other injuries. Having jumped from the ship in the nick of time, they all eventually made it to the same inflatable life raft and were picked up by a Turkish tanker early the following morning. When they recovered from the shock of the sinking and were able to give their accounts of what happened, they all concluded that an enormous explosion in one of the two cargo holds must have been the cause. Puister added that the damage to the sides and bottom of the ship must have been catastrophic for it to sink so quickly.

  Two months after the Lucona sank, Udo Proksch, via Zapata AG, dutifully filed a claim with the Austrian insurers, Wiener Bundeslander Versicherung (the Viennese Provincial Insurance Company), for the total loss of his cargo in the amount of 31,360,725 Swiss francs, an unusually high figure for such a small cargo. The manifest listed it as an expensive uranium processing plant destined for export. Proksch had a few collaborators in Zapata, most notably his friend Hans Peter Daimler, of the Daimler-Benz fortune. The timing of the claim showed scant regard for the tragic loss of life caused by Lucona’s sinking. Proksch’s sole interest was collecting on the insurance claim as soon as possible.

  When faced with the claim, the Viennese insurers baulked. Knowing Proksch’s reputation, they were immediately suspicious and requested documentation to prove the loss. When Zapata failed to comply, the insurers refused to pay, although one of their subsidiaries did compensate Lucona’s Dutch owners in full for the loss of their ship. Proksch’s suit against the insurance company for non-payment was unsuccessful, and it led in turn to a counter-suit alleging that Proksch had made a fraudulent claim. This legal stalemate continued for six years. During this time the insurance company hired a Swiss private detective, who quickly compiled an impressive dossier on Proksch showing that part of the cargo had been worthless coal-mining equipment and that he had used a timed explosive to destroy the Lucona.

  In 1983, the detective’s file was handed over to the criminal prosecutors in Salzburg, who brought charges of murder and aggravated fraud against Proksch and Daimler. However, when the case was referred to Vienna for approval, the justice minister, Harald Ofner, had it blocked. The following year the judge assigned to continue the investigation ordered a search of Proksch and Daimler’s premises, and a large number of incriminating documents were confiscated. It was the turn of the interior minister, Karl Blecha, to come to Proksch’s rescue. His order for the police to immediately drop all inquiries into the Lucona affair lasted exactly one day before the outraged judiciary forced it to be rescinded.

  In February 1985, the same judge had Proksch and Daimler arrested to prevent them from leaving the country and for obstruction of justice. This time, Leopold Gratz, the foreign minister and co-founder of Club 45, produced documentation, never seen before, that appeared to certify what Proksch and Daimler had been unable to prove for the past eight years: that the uranium processing plant was real, it had originated in Romania and had been delivered to another middleman before being supplied to Proksch. It took Gratz just two days to get Proksch freed, but before that he demonstrated his personal concern for his friend by writing him a warm letter in jail: ‘Dear Udo, don’t get discouraged by this course of action; the truth will come to light.’

  This ill-advised intervention on Proksch’s behalf brought the Lucona affair into the wider public light and at the same time permanently damaged Gratz’s political ambitions for higher office. He had been expected to be the so
cialist candidate for president in the 1986 election, but this was never going to happen after his close ties to Proksch were fully exposed. In addition to the Romanian document being revealed as a forgery, Gratz was forced to admit that he had actually been in Chiogga and inspected the storage sheds where Proksch kept his cargo, although he couldn’t say what it consisted of.

  In December 1987, the right-wing investigative journalist Hans Pretterebner published an explosive book which laid bare in painstaking detail Proksch and Daimler’s criminal conspiracy and the network of political and social connections they relied on to cover their tracks and shield them from prosecution. Despite its serious subject, Der Fall Lucona (The Lucona Case) read like a thriller and became an instant bestseller throughout Austria. The accusations detailed in the book sparked a major public outcry and a parliamentary inquiry that poured even more pressure on Proksch. With his political friends hamstrung, the judiciary was no longer restrained and was able to go after him without fear of intervention. The endgame appeared near when on 8 February 1988, the federal attorney’s office called for a full-scale probe into the affair. However, Proksch was one step ahead of the law again, and after yet another tip-off fled to the Far East the same day.

  Despite international warrants for his arrest, the fugitive Proksch was able to travel freely using a passport that he forged himself. His favourite hideout was the Philippines, which conveniently didn’t have an extradition treaty with Austria and where he was able to resurrect his friendship with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. One of the gems Pretterebner was able to turn up in his research was a photo of Proksch, dressed in white tie and tails, dancing with Imelda at the famous Vienna Opera Ball. Imelda must have been wearing a pair of the highest-heeled shoes from her huge collection, as she towered over Proksch’s balding head by at least a foot. With Interpol actively hunting for him, Proksch realized the net was closing in and he would have to keep moving. He left the Philippines, and the comfort of the Marcoses’ hospitality, but not before altering his appearance with plastic surgery. He may have sported a new nose, dimples sculpted into his cheeks, thicker eyebrows, a moustache, beard and hairpiece, but he was still a short, rotund figure who was not easily missed.