by P. W. Child
“I hate to rush this little party of yours," Nina told Purdue softly, "but we have a salvage tug on the way, and as yet still don't know what for or how it will be put to use."
“I agree,” Purdue smiled. “Let’s get ready, people! We have only so many hours left.”
With the coast guard safely moving in the opposite direction, Purdue opened the throttle and, at last, they made their way to the coordinates of the wreck. Within a few minutes, they had reached the location, according to Purdue's tablet and the instruments on the board. Crystal and Sam pulled on their diving suits while Purdue was still calibrating his tablet for deep sea data gathering.
“Hurry, Purdue,” Sam sniffed as the damp sea air filled his nostrils. “I don’t want to be down there too long.”
Purdue stood up and cocked his head at Sam’s remark. “Why? You’ve had longer dives before.”
"Aye, I have," Sam said, keeping the volume of his voice low. He leaned in toward Purdue. "I just don't want to leave Nina up here with these strangers too long, you know."
Purdue looked past Sam at Nina, sitting on her own, deep in thought.
“I know. She has been a tad more vulnerable of late, hasn’t she?’
“That is not what I am referring to,” Sam replied.
“But you know Dr. Malgas. Are you telling me we cannot trust him and his people?” Purdue asked, looking a bit alarmed at the sudden change in demeanor he picked up from Sam.
“No, you can trust him. Absolutely. I just have a bad feeling about those security guys,” Sam admitted.
“Why? Is there anything I should know, Sam?” Purdue persisted. “I’m not going under the water if Nina will be in trouble up here.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I just don’t like leaving one of our own alone with people we have not worked with before,” Sam shrugged.
“You are trying to downplay something that is bothering you a lot,” Purdue told Sam, pointing his long thin finger at Sam’s chest so that no-one would notice that they were discussing something serious.
“Look, I just don’t trust those guys completely, alright? I’m sure that Dr. Malgas and his assistants have no hidden agenda. But I just don't want to be away from Nina too long, and she refuses to dive. I asked her," Sam clarified, but his tone concerned Purdue greatly.
“I’ll stay up here,” Purdue announced.
“What?” Sam gasped. “No, we need you down there!”
“No, you don’t. I am sure a bright young lad such as yourself can handle a camera and carry a tablet at the same time. Crystal will guide you to the best and safest places around the wreck. You just gather information. Film as much detail on the size and shape as you can, and record the dimensions on my tablet,” Purdue reassured him. “Crystal is a professional. She knows what she is looking for, so you don’t have to babysit her. Just do your thing, alright?”
Sam put his arms akimbo and sighed. His eyes dropped to the floor as he thought it through. He could not deny that leaving Purdue with Nina took a great weight off his chest, knowing she was not fair game to God knows what those men were discussing. As a matter of fact, he would feel a whole lot better with Purdue maintaining the status quo on the yacht. Sam trusted Billy Malgas completely, but the man was very naïve, sometimes even a bit timid. Despite this being his find, he lacked the natural authority and strength of character to command beyond the lecture halls. Purdue, on the other hand, was the epitome of power and authority, even with his mischievous grin and playboy appeal.
"Alright. I appreciate it, Purdue," Sam sighed in relief. Purdue gave him a jovial slap on the arm and smiled. He said nothing, but Sam knew that the unsaid accord held fast between them. They both cared greatly for Nina, regardless of their constant secret competition over her. When they turned to face her way Nina was staring right at them. The three of them had been through so much together that there was some subliminal connection between them. They knew that she had caught wind of their intent just by watching their body language.
“She knows,” Sam said.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll explain it to her if she gets snoopy,” Purdue smiled.
Apparently, Nina was not the only woman who could read their mannerisms.
“What is going on, boys?” Crystal asked suddenly. She looked bewitching in her skintight diving suit, and her sex appeal rendered the two men speechless at first before their spell lifted enough to answer her.
“Purdue is going to stay on board. You and I will lead the dive for now,” Sam winked, trying to charm her from seeing the true urgency of Purdue’s decision. But once more he had underestimated female intuition.
“Why? What is wrong?” she asked, dismissing all Sam’s attempts at fooling her.
“It’s not a big deal, love,” Purdue said plainly. “We have more important things to deal with right now and those are things we only have a certain time window for if you catch my drift."
“Yes, I do catch your drift. But your data is crucial. Without your dimensions…”
“Sam is taking care of that,” Purdue almost snapped at her. It was unlike him to be impatient or brash, but he did not want to have to explain his protection of Nina right now. Sam lifted the tablet for her to see, looking boyishly victorious. Crystal did not fall for it all, but she was aware of the tug headed their way and the time limit they were pushing.
“Okay,” she said sternly, flashing Purdue a particularly sharp look. “Let’s go, Sam.”
A few minutes later the two divers descended into the temperate waters of Bluewater Bay. Sam followed Crystal’s lead as she navigated their route by the coordinates on her underwater mapping system, fixed to her arm just above her diving watch – a pivotal instrument on all her salvage dives. Upon closer inspection, Sam realized that the device looked like something Purdue may very well have designed and built for Crystal.
It appeared to be far more advanced than Sam’s humble depth gauge, but he had little time to compare technology now. His film equipment needed attention as she pointed out that they were approaching a particularly huge shadow below them. Sam looked down at what was a hint of something gigantic that had not been there a moment before. It startled him. A strange tingle crept up his spine that he reluctantly construed as a tinge of terror. He may as well have caught sight of a Great White shark by the way his heart was racing.
Crystal was probably used to seeing such ominous monsters lurking motionless in the deep because did not seem the slightest bit uncomfortable. Sam frowned as his camera's viewfinder captured the structure. He felt Crystal's gentle grasp on his arm. Had he not seen her approach him her touch would have frightened the life out of him.
The curious thing was that they were not even that deep, yet the water was almost completely dark – not murky – dark, as in void of natural light. Only a few sun rays were able to penetrate the water surface as far down as 200m, where the Disphotic zone – the twilight zone of the ocean – began. The wreck, according to Purdue’s software and sonar, was resting at approximately 190m below the surface in complete darkness.
Either his depth gauge was faulty, or they were deeper than initially measured. Crystal stared at Sam in befuddlement. He gestured to his depth gauge, and she brought hers next to his to check. Both instruments displayed a depth of 300m, although this part of the bay was not nearly as deep. Perplexed, they looked at one another. Crystal shrugged and Sam shook his head. She gestured for him to use Purdue’s tablet to measure and map the exact coordinates at this depth, just to record the confusing and extremely disturbing data. Once they came back to the surface, they would figure out the discrepancies.
With great reluctance, Sam followed Crystal’s lead to go deeper towards the eerie-looking wreck. He wondered why the vessel had such a strange effect on him. Not only did it radiate absolute evil for anyone with an ounce of emotional, sensory perception, but it also exuded intelligence.
‘Things that think without brains freak me the fuck out!’ Sam thought as his heart rac
ed. It felt as if the ship was watching them, yet Crystal went about her business as usual, checking if the salvage of the giant metal cadaver was feasible. She tried to ascertain whether the hull would be able to float with a bit of welding and checked the level of deterioration due to years of environmental factors at work.
In the meantime, Sam sucked it up and proceeded to record dimensions for Purdue, although it was hard to determine the measuring points. The ship was immensely complex in its construction, and Sam had not the slightest clue about shipbuilding. The countless rods, steel barriers, deck guns and other protrusions made it near-impossible to take exact measurements.
He did the best he could and made sure that he did not neglect his own mission of filming as many details as possible. Sam tried not to touch the wretched wreck out of sheer discomfort, but he had to film all the crevices and sub-levels. He also had to use the structure to hold on or to propel his body forward after taking pictures, while the light of his camera lit up the smothering darkness.
Every time Sam laid his hand on any part of the vessel, he felt a terrifying current engulf him, body and soul. It was not a physical sensation, but one of absolute intuition. He knew Purdue and Crystal would call him daft for admitting such nonsense, so he kept it to himself for now. Still he could not get the feeling out of his head, that the vessel had a mind of its own and that it had the ability to vanish at will, should he lose focus.
Never before had Sam hoped this much that he was mistaken.
Chapter 19 – Cabin Fever in the Open Air
“Why did you decide to stay up here, Purdue?” Nina asked when Purdue brought her a beer. She knew something was afoot since after a minute-long conversation with Sam his quite resolute plans had suddenly changed.
“What do you mean?” he asked nonchalantly. “I will go next time. It’s no big deal.”
“No, you were dying to see that wreck with your own eyes. Had it not been for the two bottles of Scotch and fourteen beers you ravaged with Sam, you probably wouldn’t even have slept,” she reminded him.
“It was not fourteen,” he scoffed. “At most eight.”
“Wow! That makes a difference. I stand corrected,” she smiled and licked a popsicle. She had been pleasantly surprised when she had found a stash of juice popsicles in the larger fridge below deck. The welcome coolness of the frozen popsicle alleviated the glare of the African sun somewhat.
“You sound almost disappointed that I chose to stay up here with you,” he teased.
“With me?” she replied in surprise. “Shouldn’t it be ‘with us’?”
Purdue chuckled softly at Nina’s psychological wiles he could so easily see through. He had known her far too long to fall for her mind games. With the wind muddling the feathery gray and blond hair around his ears and neck, his eyes gazed far across the gentle waves.
"Nina, you are a brilliant woman. You know full well that I would always relinquish the pleasure of diving for you. Come now,” he said dreamily without meeting her eyes.
“Aye. I got that a long time ago. But my question is why?” she reiterated.
He looked her in the eye for a moment, the reflection of the sun on the water highlighting the gray of his irises. “You know why. You know I have not given up on whatever we once had. How could I? You are, in my opinion, the pinnacle of feminine creation, my dear Nina, and I will be damned if I am going to let you run off with someone else. Someone… lesser… than you deserve.”
“Sam,” she replied with a faint smile drenched in hurt.
“I did not say that. Nevertheless, the notion remains the same,” he revealed, drinking the mix of sherry and ice cream Mieke Badenhorst had handed him. She had taken it upon herself to play bartender while they waited. It would keep her away from Cheryl, whom she did not trust, and give her something to do in the meantime. Until the wreck was towed and Dr. Malgas took possession of it, she pretty much had nothing to keep herself busy with.
The same went for Cheryl. The prostitute was forced to engage in conversation with Zain and Sibu to hold up the charade that they were her associates, but she could not wait to get rid of them. She had no idea that she had in fact become redundant to them, that they were only interested in what their new acquaintances had to offer – and that was so much more than what she could ever give them.
“This is much better than turning tricks,” she told Zain, enjoying the cold condensation on her glass against her palms. “Wish I could take on this line of business for good.”
Zain shifted in his seat, watching Sibu flirting with Mieke at the bar. A rare, barely perceptible smile crossed his face. "You could," he said amicably, "but, unfortunately, your addiction will never let you get off your knees.”
She looked hurt by his remark. For a second she had thought that Zain was a normal man with compassion. He had almost sounded civilized just then, uncharacteristically so, but she believed people could change. Somewhere inside of him, the small boy his mother loved had to exist, but his remark convinced her that it would take a whole lot of chiseling to get through to that core. That kind of chiseling that could only be successful with the use of an iron spike and a sledgehammer.
“Fuck you, Zain!” she sneered fearlessly.
"Be careful," he warned, but she was not intimidated. Here on the yacht, in the middle of a very important con with so many witnesses, he could not harm her for fear that it would compromise his cover, and she knew it.
"No, I mean it. Fuck you!" she repeated. It was a side of Cheryl he had not seen before. She was dead serious, unafraid and strong. "You love to kick people while they are down, you son of a bitch because it is the only time you score a hit.”
Zain was grinding his teeth, fighting his instinct to strike her with every fiber of his being. The audacity that she had dared to speak to him like that, more yet to insinuate that he was a weakling and a coward, merited a good beating. But to keep up his mask of trust he had to listen to a dirty slut insulting him. What was worse was that he knew her words came not from an attempt to hurt him, but from the depths of her heart. Every victim of his endeavors perceived him like that, the very perception that he usually ignored because he could not bear confronting it. Cheryl was the voice of all his victims, all his associates and moreover, his employers.
"You call me a whore, slut, skank, you name it," she continued, finally finding the defiance to get it all off her chest. “But think about it, Zain. You are nothing more than a fucking lackey, the boss’ little bitch on your knees just like me, a well-trained lapdog that runs to bark and bite whenever your boss gives the order. You know why?” she panted hoarsely, slowly picking her hurtful words and reveling in their slow delivery. “Because you can only perform when someone gives you orders; nothing but a bottom, a sub who follows orders because he cannot think for himself. Everything you do on your own will turn into a fuck-up, a failure… just… like… you.”
Zain jumped up, fuming with rage, but the racket drew looks from the billionaire and the academics as well as his own associate, Sibu. Cheryl laughed out loud and rose to her feet. She addressed everyone in a graceful manner, “Oh, looks like Zain having trouble getting his sea legs!”
Everybody laughed with her, offering words of encouragement to Zain. Zain reined in fury for the moment, but his eyes were wild and murderous. That was it. Cheryl’s fate was sealed. But he had time. He still had to wait until he could efficiently claim the wreck after it had been towed and sea to find its treasures.
‘We’ll see then, bitch,’ he thought, watching Cheryl striding toward the bar to get another drink. ‘Then I’ll have more money than God and your useless carcass will be lying on the ocean floor.’
“What is your friend’s problem?” Mieke asked Sibu.
“Probably feeling sick,” Sibu replied with a shrug, far more interested in the blue-eyed blonde with the astonishing rack she so happily showed off in her bathing suit. He deplored her choice to wear board shorts though, but for now, her cleavage would suffice in kee
ping his eyes content.
"Doubt it," she replied. "He doesn't look sick at all. Actually, he just looks utterly pissed off. Maybe you should talk to him."
“Nah, he’s alright," Sibu answered. Cheryl joined them with a wide grin on her face. Sibu was elated to have two beautiful women in his presence, and neither one was screaming, crying or fighting him off. It was a rare occasion for him indeed.
“Can I have another of those excellent ice cream devils of yours, Mieke?” Cheryl cooed as she set her empty glass down in front of the baffled blonde. As far as she recalled the Malay beauty hated her guts.
“Are you sure? It sounds like you’ve had quite enough, even after just one,” Mieke told her.
"No, no! Give her another one," Sibu urged. Inebriated or drugged women were just his type. "She is relaxing. Let her have another one. If she throws up, I'll take care of her."
Cheryl gave him a condescending look. “In your dreams.”
‘In your dreams, sweet thing,’ Sibu lusted in his thoughts. ‘As soon as you fall asleep your ass is mine.’
Mieke obliged. She saw Nina watching her and Cheryl as she had been since they started disagreeing over just about everything. Sibu walked away to join Zain.
“If this guy is your taste, honey. You are a bigger whore than I am,” Cheryl told Mieke. “And a lot more desperate.”
“Well, you are the one who brought him here. That should say enough,” Mieke retorted snappily. “And mind your fucking manners. Her Highness is watching us like a hawk.”
Cheryl frowned at first, but then she realized that Mieke was referring to Nina. A fresh glass of alcoholic ice cream shake found its way to Cheryl’s lips and the two adversaries stood in quiet company for once, in a forced truce for Nina’s sake.
“Why do you think Dave Purdue suddenly decided to stay behind?” Mieke asked Cheryl. She could not fathom his reasons. If it was for the historian, Mieke guessed, it was odd since he could have her anytime, by the looks of them. She could not believe she was having this conversation with her predecessor, though.