by P. W. Child
“Nina, you said my sonar was disturbed by the EMR I used to induce the seismic activity, right?” he asked suddenly.
“Aye,” she answered, “but remember that I know very little about physics, Dave. It was a guess at best.”
No, I think you might have a point," he reassured her. "It could be that the ship is made of some material that makes it hard to locate by sonar."
Nina's dark eyes looked up at the churning gray skies as the wind whipped her thick brunette tresses across her delicate features. She was deep in thought, trying to recall something she had read about any stealth ship.
“Wait,” she said, resting her hand on Purdue’s leg while she still stared at the clouds. “During the Second World War, the Kriegsmarine had come up with a way for submarines to go unnoticed by deflecting or absorbing the pings of the enemy’s sonar with some kind of coating. Damn, I can’t remember what it was called exactly, but they made tiles of it that they fixed to the metal of the hull.”
“What was this material? Can you remember?” He asked, intrigued. “Crystal!”
Crystal left Sam with the skipper and joined Purdue and Nina. “Yes?”
“When you and Sam were diving to survey the wreck, did you notice anything unusual about the surface of the hull?” Purdue inquired.
Crystal shook her head. “Nope. As far as I could tell it was steel, bolted sheeting and a great deal of rust. Why?”
“Oppanol!” Nina cried, startling her companions. “Sorry. Oppanol. That is what they used.”
“What the hell is Oppanol?”
“Ah!” Purdue exclaimed. “It’s a synthetic rubber.”
“Okay, well, they fixed that to the hulls and found that it diminished the ability of sonar waves to effectively echo back from the material, weakening the signal,” Nina relayed what she remembered from the experiment.
“I wonder if that could be why ever once in a while the ship doesn’t register on my locator,” Purdue frowned. Crystal fought to keep her footing on the wet deck and sat down next to Purdue. She looked at Nina. “Did they use the rubber on submarines, you say, Nina?”
“Aye.”
She looked at Purdue. “But why would they have used it on a battleship? Sonar was not used to locate above surface vessels, as far as I know."
Purdue and Nina did not respond yet. Both mulled over Crystal’s observation.
Purdue sighed, clearly frustrated. “There goes that theory.”
“What is the problem? We know where the bloody thing is. We don’t need to worry why the computer could not find it,” Crystal shrugged.
“Still,” Purdue persisted with a slight trace of disappointment, “I would have liked to know why, so that I could rework my technology, see?”
“Aye, but Crystal is right. Let’s not dwell on that when it is not relevant right now,” Nina suggested, raising her voice against the hiss of the ocean.
Sam shouted from the starboard side, pointing at something, directing their eyes. When they followed his line of sight, they saw what they had been waiting for. Behind another wave trough, the salvage tug appeared, evoking a cheer from the group.
On the side, the name introduced the tug in both Latin and Arabic script, one above the other—
ALEAYN YAM – Safaga
قضية يام - سفاجا
“Ladies and gentlemen, our home for the next week!” Crystal smiled.
The tempestuous blue made boarding and transshipping of the equipment a challenging feat for everyone, but finally, the complete salvage crew was on the tug. Introductions were like a scene from biblical Babel, with so many accents all speaking English.
“Are salvage crews always so ill-prepared?” Nina asked Purdue. “They don’t seem to be very comfortable handling the equipment.”
“I don’t know. I have never worked in marine salvage before. To tell you the truth, I usually just recover what's in the wrecks…never bothered to bring one up before,” Purdue said matter-of-factly.
“How was your trip down here, Ali?” Crystal asked.
“Very good, Mrs. Meyer,” the ebony skeleton-like captain smiled. “It is good to finally have you on board. We are going to make a lot of money.”
Behind him, his crew stood in silence, looking rather awkward. Their nature did not transpire outright, but Sam did not like the way they looked. He could not put his finger on it, but the gaunt men with their bloodshot eyes definitely did not strike him as very diligent in their duties. To this day, his instincts as an investigative journalist had never misled him. Then again, he thought, he was not familiar with this vocation and dismissed his suspicions as paranoia due to literally feeling out of his depth.
Sam felt lost at sea, at the mercy of others for the next few days and perhaps he had a touch of cabin fever among all the strangers. He felt generally depressed and did not know why.
He watched Nina and Purdue follow Crystal and Ali into the superstructure, where he showed them their cabins. Something nudged him from behind. It was Sibu, looking very pale for a black man with Zain by his side who was supporting him. “What’s wrong, Mr. Cleave?” Zain asked. His inquiry was not sympathetic, but instead held some form of common understanding.
“Nothing, I suppose,” Sam answered as he started moving carrying his large canvas bag and his equipment case. With the two security guards in tow, he marched into the mess hall, keenly watched by the crew members who were talking about the newcomers on the quiet. “I just have a strange, uncomfortable feeling about all this.”
Sibu belched, threatening to throw up, but he contained the urge while Zain paid him no mind. He dragged his associate to catch up with Sam and kept his voice low.
“I have that same feeling, Mr. Cleave. Maybe it is my, uh, training, but these men seem a little scruffy to be salvage divers and engineers.”
Astonished, Sam faced Zain. "Christ, so I am not paranoid?" he gasped under his breath. "It's not just me, then." Zain shook his head. Sam whispered, "Well, let's keep our feelings to ourselves for now and see where this goes. But be on your toes, lads."
“Vigilance is our game, Mr. Cleave,” Zain assured Sam.
“Good. I have a feeling we’re going to need it,” Sam replied. He had made up his mind to keep his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. He walked past Ali with a fake smile and hoped that the captain would pay more attention to the seasick man behind him.
“Here Sam,” Crystal smiled. “Your cabin.”
"Thanks, Crystal," he winked with his usual charm, but in his peripheral vision, he noticed Nina watching.
“We will have lunch soon,” Ali smiled. “In the meantime I suggest you settle in and after lunch we can get started on locating the wreck so that we can prepare for the salvage, eh?”
The group collectively agreed and took to their rooms to unpack. Ali returned on deck and pulled Manni aside. The sea had settled as much as they had hoped for by now. Obviously, Purdue had stopped using his science fiction device for now and left nature to move at her own pace. Manni was busy checking the drills and welding equipment, making sure that there was enough sheeting to patch the bulkheads if need be. He was not an engineer, but he had previous experience working on large vessels in Mogadishu and Dar es Salaam before he moved to Mumbai when he had been a young sailor of twenty-four. In those days, he had still imagined himself as the great captain of a commercial vessel, but then his life had fallen apart, and he had been forced into illegal activities. Spiraling lower and lower as the years had worn on he finally had become a slave trader, trafficker, and pirate, but he had sworn to himself to stop one day when piracy had made him a rich man; rich enough to buy his own boat.
“They are settling in, poor idiots,” Ali said evenly as he offered Manni a joint. “We’ll bring up that ship and tow it to Xafuun. Meyer and her people will think we are taking it to Egypt. There we can sell them off or get ransom,” he declared, sucking in the smoke before handing Manni the joint.
“They won’t suspect anything? I m
ean they can probably tell that we are not Egyptians,” Manni asked with concern that they would be discovered before the right time.
“I fixed that already. As long as their people stay away from the bridge, they won’t find out that Fakur’s office manager has reported this ship and her crew missing yesterday. And we have disabled the automatic direction finder and the satellite antennas, and no cell phone or radio is going to work unless I connect the diverter," Ali revealed to his right-hand man.
“And the Egyptian crew?” Manni asked to make sure their stories meshed.
“I told Meyer I was the first mate,” he laughed in jest. “I told her Fakur and his brother sent me to take their place because they had a funeral to go to in Algeria!” His cackling laughter sounded like that of a witch. “And it’s not that untrue, Manni, isn’t it?”
Manni smiled. He was amused by Ali's ingenuity and admired the cruel captain for his ability to fool people into believing that he was harmless.
Cha pter 26 – The Enigma of the Seven Seas
Lunch was brought from the galley into the mess hall.
“Looks delicious!” Crystal exclaimed at the colorful dishes. “Looks like the guys here go all out. I should go on more salvages, I think.”
“I’ll tell Jonah and the kitchen boy that you like it, Mrs. Meyer,” Ali grinned as he sat down with the expedition team.
“Your crew?” Purdue asked. “Aren’t they dining with us?”
"Oh no, sir. They have already eaten. Besides, now that the sea is a little calmer we have much to get ready before we are attacked by the storms again, right?" Ali said jovially. "For now, you have Manni and me as company."
Nina noticed a tattoo on Ali's forearm, exactly the same as the other members of his crew. At first reluctant, she now used the social gathering to ask about it.
"Ali, your ink, that symbol on your arm… what is it about?" she asked sweetly.
She could see Sam's body tense up at her inquiry and his big dark eyes looked into hers for a long moment, but he said nothing. The captain looked bewildered at first. He never counted on the observational skills of the newcomers and had neglected to cover up the tattoo all the pirates of his wretched crew shared. It would seem uncanny that a salvage crew would mark themselves with the same sigil. A costly mistake, but he could still employ his well-practiced trickery-skills to come up with and excuse. He could see Manni swiftly cover his tattoo at Nina’s question.
“Call me old fashioned, but I am a superstitious old sailor,” Ali said, less amicably than Nina had hoped. “The symbol is to ward off the water walkers.”
His reply was so nonchalant before he took another bite of his food that Nina and Mieke had to pry. Both women found the tall tales of mariners fascinating.
“Water walkers?” Mieke asked in absolute glee. “You have to tell us!”
Without ceremony Ali only said, "Manni, tell them,” and continued eating his food. Sam saw a tiny shard of the captain’s true nature seeping through, but he hoped he was wrong. Manni, who had hardly touched his food out of his habit of eating next to nothing, shifted in his seat and looked at the two women. He loved telling stories.
“The water walkers don’t swim. They don’t float. They don’t fly. They are not like the fish or the gulls or the ships. They walk on the water. Dead men, died at sea for sacrifice,” Manni relayed with great drama and a typically hoarse voice that perfectly complimented his wrinkled face and tobacco stained teeth. Mieke nudged Nina with a fascinated smile on her face. Purdue chuckled in silent mockery.
“You think it’s a joke, Mr. Purdue?” Ali sneered with food between his teeth, half chewed. His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward to address the rude white man. Purdue was not intimidated. To him, it was a refreshing twist to welcome land lovers onto the seven seas, nothing more.
“No, no, of course not,” Purdue smirked and continued to eat, allowing Manni to tell his tale in peace. Please, go on.”
Ali remained silent for the remainder of the story.
Mieke’ expression was dark, but her voice was fresh as she pressed Manni, “Go on. What do you mean by sacrifice at sea?”
“Like… for a god?” Nina asked.
Manni shook his head. “Sacrifices to appease, but not a god or any sort of deity. Such nonsense is for Christians,” he said with derision. “It is like… when you can choose to die yourself or pick somebody else to die in your place instead. The sacrifice is somebody else's, but you determine his fate. That is true power."
Silence prevailed for a while at the stern words of the sailor that sounded just a bit too serious. Only the sound of cutlery had filled the mess hall before somebody else broke the tension.
“Where did the sacrifice originate?” Mieke asked Manni.
“Since the first timber tasted the tide,” Manni affirmed. “Always. Like the fish know how to swim. Like the shark knows that seals hold blood.”
Wisely, the members of Purdue’s expedition left it at that.
***
After lunch, Crystal and Purdue readied their diving gear. With them, Benjamin and Isho also checked their tanks and synchronized their watches. Benjamin was a seasoned diver. He had once been a treasure hunter who had sold his stolen goods on the black market before he had been incarcerated in Yemen. After his seven-year stint in prison, he had decided to join a syndicate, rather than to run the risk of operating alone and getting noticed by the wrong people.
Isho, on the other hand, had once been a subsea engineer when he was in his thirties.
“Hey, Isho, I could have used you a few years ago on one of my oil platforms in Scotland,” Purdue jested when he was made aware of Isho’s education.
"Oh?" the middle-aged Somali asked with interest.
“Yes, I had a submersible that I used to comb the ocean floor. I also used it to check the support structure under the platform, you know, the posts and steel piping, to make sure the place did not collapse!” Purdue explained as he pulled up his suit.
“Oh yes. I have worked with many different oil companies and deep water systems,” he told Purdue with a big smile, reminiscing the days before he had become a ruthless killer. “But where I lived, in a small village on the coast, it was hard to get much work after I finished my studies."
“What town are you from, Isho?” Crystal asked.
Isho and Benjamin exchanged rapid glances. They were not very familiar with Egyptian coastal villages and could not afford to be found out on such a technicality.
“Come! We have to go,” Benjamin shouted through the howl of the salty wind. “If the wreck is still in territorial waters we will have problems.”
“That is true,” Crystal agreed. “We had better get a move on. Is Sam not coming with this time?”
“No,” Purdue replied as he buckled his harness. “He has the footage we needed. Now we just have to see where we need to patch the old girl so that she can sail again.”
Isho, Benjamin, Crystal, and Purdue disappeared under the surface as Nina and Sam watched the ocean swallow then up leaning against the railing. Nina was beyond excited to see what kind of ship it really was. As far as she could tell from Sam’s footage, it was a very close replica of ships manufactured for the German Kriegsmarine, if not the real deal. But her research had delivered nothing specific regarding of a lost ship. According to the World War II records, every pocket battleship was accounted for, either scuttled or dismantled. It was immensely intriguing to find something that was that similar to the Deutschland-class cruisers anyway.
Sam looked absent-minded where he stood filming the dive. He took the opportunity to film more than necessary. Nina decided to abandon her juvenile vendetta if only for a while and joined Sam.
“What is so interesting about the ropes and the cranes, Sam?” she asked with a flutter in her voice he had not heard in a while. Without breaking taking his camera down, he chuckled, and as he panned on the small group of crewmen standing around Ali, Sam whispered, “You will be surprised what interesti
ng things happen around mundane objects, Nina. Look down there.”
“Aye, a bunch of loud mouth seadogs chatting with their captain,” she jested.
Sam looked at her. She seemed even-keeled, but he knew something was amiss in her heart. It took everything inside him not to ask, but he knew his reluctance to pry could be the death of their relationship – whatever was left of the romance between them.
"What is wrong, love?" he asked. "Just come out and tell me so that we can fix it."
He just asked, and he feared he was going to regret it, but he did not. Now that they were in their early forties it seemed that the time for mind games and tests of loyalty was very much obsolete, and he did not care if it pissed Nina off. He had to know because secrets were the cancer of the heart.
Nina was taken aback by Sam's straightforward approach. At first, she wanted to snub him for it, but his genuine appeal revealed his willingness to listen. Above all, the fact that he insisted and offered to make amends for whatever shortcomings she was punishing him for only proved that he deemed her important enough to give a damn. She could not fault him for that.
“You and Crystal...are very…” she wavered, having no idea how to express her jealousy, “…chummy.”
“Chummy?” he gasped melodramatically in his humorous playfulness. He raised one eyebrow as he acted out the hyperbole. “She is just a sexy shark, love. I have no intention of getting to know her better than say, a plate of chips.”
Nina tried hard not to laugh. Her smile was not born from his jokes but from her relief. Within the past three minutes, while engaged in this discussion, she had experienced countless emotions, hoping it would not flare into a fight again. Nina was so tired of fighting with Sam and then spending her nights in tears of fury while the laid-back journalist appeared to go about his business completely unfazed by her disgruntlement. It felt so nice to hear him inquire about her feelings, and it felt even better to be reassured that he was not interested in hooking up with Crystal.