Cave Diver

by Jake Avila

  ‘Well, we have a way in,’ said Boerman cheerfully.

  While the big man took shots with the GoPro, Nash surreptitiously looked around for a likely weapon. If he could escape through the exit passage, double back and take Sura by surprise, he would have a pistol and a pilot. Frustratingly, the fragments of rusting steel were either too big or insubstantial. It would have to be a stone.

  He looked up to find Boerman assessing him with a shrewd gaze which suggested he knew full well what Nash was thinking.

  ‘OK, Mister Expert, let’s check out the rest of this bleddy hole. I’ll be right behind you.’

  They traversed the crumbling limestone walls, with the Afrikaner carefully checking each shadowy overhang to make sure it offered no means of escape. The stream terminated in a large crescent basin of deep, wonderfully clear water, and Nash’s hopes disintegrated. Somewhere, in the shadows of the sinkhole wall where it plunged out of sight, was the huge passage through which the water in the flooded gorge had escaped. Unfortunately, without dive gear, it was not an option.

  Back at the crumpled stern, Boerman held up his massive hand like a traffic cop.

  ‘Tomorrow we ferry in the gear. You’ll be staying here.’

  Now Nash understood the reason for their thoroughness.

  ‘Don’t look so pissed off.’ Boerman grinned. ‘I could have told you after you’d climbed back up to the rope.’

  Testing a handhold on the buckled steel of the stern, Boerman pulled himself up and climbed at speed to the conning tower. Nash watched as he efficiently jumared his way out of sight to the surface. The rope was then pulled up. Some time later, he heard the helicopter taking off, before the sound gradually faded away.

  Chapter 31

  Being the truthful account of Dr Jürgen Fürth (George Ford), July _? 1945

  It has been three weeks since we escaped the clutches of Martin Heider. Our escape is so miraculous no one would ever believe it. Fortunately, it is a tale that will never be told. When Ilse led me out of the submarine into the vast cave lake, I believed it was a hallucination. Electric lights strung over its superstructure made the I-403 look like an ocean liner, except it was crewed by dead men. The bodies of the Japanese collaborators lay where they had been gunned down. Ilse told me some of the SS had slipped away last night, but not before they had assembled two of the torpedo bombers.

  The sleek seaplane faced the bright opening of the cave, which hurt my eyes to look upon. Climbing onto one of the floats, Ilse told me to hurry, for Heider was preparing to leave. She opened a flap in the belly of the plane, and I saw the cavity was stuffed full of gold bars. Ilse began throwing them into the water, and we did not stop until we figured we had removed enough to compensate for our combined body weights. Not a moment too soon, we sealed ourselves inside, for Heider and the sole surviving Japanese pilot clambered into the cockpit, and started the engine with a deafening roar.

  The flight was terrifying. It seemed to take forever to get airborne and we bounced around in shocking turbulence. We were terrified the gold bars would shift and crush us in the cramped torpedo bay. Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when suddenly the gold shifted to the right, and the plane became unbalanced. I held Ilse in my arms as we descended with the engine roaring fit to burst. The impact was terrible, and I do not know how long we were unconscious, but I woke to the sounds of hammering.

  Opening the torpedo bay, I realised the plane was lying on its side on a muddy riverbank. Ilse was still unconscious when I slithered out onto the ground, and the first thing I saw was a silver Luger sitting on top of the body of the pilot. I could hear Heider in the water, working on something. I could barely crawl around the wreckage, but then I saw him. He was sitting inside one of the detached aircraft floats and practising paddling with a palm tree seed pod. I had never fired a gun in anger before. But seeing the monster preparing to escape his crimes, I could not let him go. When Heider saw me pointing the gun, he simply laughed. Whether it was confidence that I would be unable to pull the trigger, or merely acknowledging the irony of fate, I will never know, but I shot him between the eyes and he slipped down into the float and I watched it drift away. A short time later a native man appeared. Thank God there was kindness in his heart.

  * * *

  The excitement of the gunship crew was perhaps the most sickening thing of all. Having flown back to Kinsame’s village, they attacked without warning, the people below mere vermin to be eradicated, point scores in a giant video game. An image, which would haunt Mia forever, was a mother fleeing below with her baby pressed to her breast, both dismembered when a heavy-calibre round punched through her back. White phosphorus rockets turned panicking families into flaming torches. Only a handful of Kinsame’s people escaped, mostly young men, fit and fast enough to avoid encirclement by the supporting Kopassus ground troops. While killings and torture in Papua were all part of a dirty war that had simmered for decades, this was a massacre without military purpose. Whatever crime they were helping Sura engage in, it was beyond belief or justification.

  Numbly, Mia watched from the helicopter doorway as they brought Frank Douglas out of Kinsame’s scorched hut on a stretcher. Already looking stronger, he was propped up on his forearms, eyes staring in disbelief at the carnage.

  ‘You gutless arsehole!’ he raged at Kapten Alatas, who was dispassionately smoking a cigarette while his men mopped up. ‘Why’d you do it?’

  When they loaded him into the gunship, Douglas’s eyes widened.

  ‘What happened to you, kid?’

  The concern in his voice opened the floodgates and her face crumpled.

  ‘Frank, I brought them here. It’s all my fault!’

  The faces of the dead swam accusingly in her mind – Paomente, Millie, Kinsame, the three young men whose names she’d forgotten. Hadn’t Kinsame told her to stay away? Douglas put a comforting hand on her shoulder while she wept.

  ‘You couldn’t have anticipated this. Mia, you didn’t know.’ He blinked away his own tears. ‘Come on, kid, let’s hold it together now and find a way out of this.’

  She took several deep breaths and wiped her face on her shirtsleeve.

  Douglas lowered his voice. ‘Did you manage to get a message out at the mission?’

  She shook her head. ‘The communications were destroyed. But at least I know what they’re after.’

  Douglas was stunned when she told him.

  ‘In the Hoosenbeck?’

  They broke off as Alatas clambered into the co-pilot’s seat. It was a short hop to the mission, which was now a hive of activity. As they circled to land, a soldier was slashing the grounds with the mission tractor. Two green canvas tents were pitched in the shade of the big fig. Mia’s empty stomach did a double flip when she sighted the familiar gold Jet Ranger beside the house; she dreaded seeing Sura, but at least she would see Rob.

  ‘An advance base,’ Douglas muttered as the engines wound down. ‘Looks like Sura had it all planned.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Wonder where Kaboro fits in?’

  ‘I think they’re collateral, Frank.’

  Alatas stepped into their compartment and prodded Mia’s back painfully with his boot.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Two soldiers opened the gunship’s door and dragged out Douglas’s stretcher.

  ‘Hey, take it easy,’ he growled as they roughly bumped him against the skid. ‘I’m not dead yet.’

  They were taken to Paul’s trashed office, given a can each of lukewarm orange soda, and a guard cut Mia’s cable tie so she could drink.

  ‘Where do you think Rob is?’ she sighed, rubbing circulation back into her wrists.

  ‘Probably still on the ship.’ By the gleam in Douglas’s eye, she realised her feelings were showing. ‘Don’t worry, kid.’ He gave her a wink. ‘He’s tougher than you think.’

  Under the watchful eye of a young guard, she checked Douglas’s wound. Incredibly, there was a healthy scab with not a trace of infection.

  ‘In th
ree days?’ She screwed her nose up. ‘That’s just not possible. How do you feel, Frank?’

  ‘Like a blue steak and an icy cold beer.’ While she chuckled, Douglas glanced casually over at the guard and, without changing tone, said, ‘You ugly dog-fornicator. Your mother must be a real bitch.’

  Mia tensed for an explosive reaction, but the guard simply continued to stare at a point above their heads.

  ‘You’d have to be a monk not to react to that.’ Douglas returned his attention to her. ‘Listen, we may not have much time to talk. I’m getting stronger, but not enough to run. You have to take off at the first opportunity you get. Don’t go back to Kinsame’s village – it’s the first place they’ll look. Head north till you hit the river. Find a village. Beg, borrow or steal a way downriver, just get across the border –’

  ‘But what about you and Rob?’ She was trying to keep her voice light, but the thought of leaving them was abhorrent.

  ‘We’ll scoot as soon as we get the chance. Right now, you’re our best shot at getting the word out.’

  ‘But what good will that do? Someone high up in the PNG government is already involved, and I doubt our authorities will do anything more than make overtures. By then it will be too late for you.’

  Douglas acknowledged this with a solemn stare. ‘Mia, would you rather we all just conveniently disappeared? If you get word to the embassies, maybe it will put the pressure on the Suyantos, muck up whatever grubby scheme they’ve got going. We’ve got to find a way to push back or they win.’

  ‘OK,’ she nodded, thinking of the jungle trails she had walked to the river. ‘I’ll do it, Frank.’

  ‘Good girl. We’ll wait until dark. If necessary, I’ll create a diversion.’

  Sounding tired, Douglas lay back with one arm under his head and ran his eyes over the old world books and paintings scattered over the floor.

  ‘Say, how the hell did you ever find this place?’

  Mia smiled as she remembered her first visit. How bizarre it had been to find an archaic chunk of European culture transplanted to the tropics, for the mission website had given no indication she would be stepping back in time. Paul had welcomed her with a gin and tonic, invited her to sit down in a rattan chair on the wide veranda, then talked his head off while a cooling zephyr from the distant mountains blew the humidity away.

  ‘Fate, I suppose. But none of this makes sense, Frank. Work was Paul’s life, and he worked non-stop every day of the year. I can’t believe he was interested in money.’

  ‘Takes a lot of money to run a hospital, though.’

  ‘Yes. And there are sister hospitals in Africa and South America, too. But who keeps gold under their bed in this day and age? Especially in a place as tumultuous as Papua?’

  Douglas raised a shaggy eyebrow. ‘Hate to say it, kid, but usually it’s someone with something to hide.’ He sucked on his mangled lower lip for a moment. ‘What I don’t get is how the Hoosenbeck fits in. No one in their right mind would stash gold up there, surely?’

  They mulled over it for a time, and then Douglas asked her why she’d wanted to work here. She explained it was the people – the sense of purpose and energy she had found helping those with so little.

  He looked puzzled. ‘And you couldn’t find that back home? Your health system doesn’t do much for the poor, does it?’

  Mia grinned self-consciously. ‘You’re absolutely right, Frank. But doling out antidepressants and blood pressure meds to overweight, indifferent people living off junk food is demoralising. Out here I get to vaccinate kids who would otherwise die. I get to keep people healthy so they can physically carve out a living. In Papua you don’t have a choice about getting off the couch. And, I will admit to loving the adventure!’

  Douglas smiled at her approvingly. ‘I get it. After Vietnam, I couldn’t hack civilisation. I needed the nitty-gritty of the frontier. No buggers strutting around telling you what to do, wide open spaces, and freedom to go where you bloody well choose. Course, that starts to pale when you get old. Then you start thinking about creature comforts. Pathetic, really.’

  Mia thought of her parents’ snug life in Connecticut. Its convenience, security and conformity were charms lost on her. When she’d announced she was returning to Papua, her father had put down his paper and sighed.

  ‘Aw, Mee, we thought you’d got it out of your system.’

  Her mom, always averse to emotional displays, had even cried.

  ‘We thought you might take over the clinic one day. And stop telling me it’s not dangerous.’

  Then they had hugged her tightly and given her their blessing.

  Wishing she could tell them how much she loved them, Mia looked over at Douglas, who still had a faraway look in his eyes. While her father was biologically young and healthy, the expat bore the scars of a long and tough existence.

  ‘Just how long have you been out here, Frank?’

  ‘Almost half a century.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I was going to quit this shithole and try to get a job teaching snot-nosed grammar school kids how to fly. But something always drew me back.’

  ‘Was it the people?’

  Douglas frowned, but perhaps the last three days had changed him, because with a thoughtful nod he conceded, ‘You know, kid, you might just be right.’

  They heard laughter out in the hallway, and then Alatas and Sura came in. They were looking so exuberant that Mia was instantly outraged.

  ‘Well, well, the intrepid Doctor Carter . . . didn’t you turn out to be elusive?’ Sura sat down on the leather couch, crossed her slim legs and looked around. ‘You know, this place is like an adventure novel come to life – evil Nazis hiding out in the jungle, sitting on a stolen fortune for generations. If I hadn’t found the evidence myself, I would never have believed it.’

  Hate was an emotion Mia Carter had no experience of, but she could feel it coating her tongue and the words dripped out thickly.

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about. The only evil I’ve ever seen in this place is sitting right in front of me.’

  ‘Oh, so Paul never spoke to you about his mysterious mother and father – how he came to be living in the middle of nowhere? Show her what he kept in the safe, Kapten.’

  Alatas produced an exotic pistol finished in gold and silver. In one smooth motion, he cocked it and pointed it at Mia’s face. She barely heard Douglas’s cry as the smirking Alatas pulled the trigger. The loud click was followed by girlish giggles from Sura, and Mia had to hang on to the orange soda rumbling in her gut.

  ‘That was a dog act,’ said Douglas shakily.

  Alatas reversed the pistol and held it up so Mia could see the details.

  ‘It’s a Luger 9 mm, handcrafted in Berlin in 1937 for Paul Ford’s biological father. Observe the engraved initials on the barrel.’

  ‘M. H.?’ Mia glanced dully at Sura. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Paul’s surrogate father, and the founder of your precious Ford Mission, was Jürgen Furth, a Nazi doctor travelling back to Europe on a Japanese submarine which deviated up the Sepik in 1945 – the only one out of several hundred Japanese sailors and a squad of brutal SS men to make it out alive. He found his way back to Germany, only to return a few years later as George Ford. It’s not hard to understand why, Doctor Carter. Four tonnes of gold bullion is a compelling incentive.’

  Whether this fantastic tale was true or not, Mia could only wonder what she had done to make this woman hate her so much.

  ‘What exactly do you want from me?’

  Sura raised an eyebrow. ‘Clearly you don’t have to be intelligent to gain a medical degree. What I want, Doctor Carter, is the gold, and an incentive for your new boyfriend to get it out for me.’ She stared at Mia’s hands, then looked at Alatas in annoyance. ‘Why isn’t she tied up? I want these two on location first thing in the morning.’

  Chapter 32

  Being the truthful account of Dr Jürgen Fürth (
George Ford), Papua, October 1945

  My darling Ilse is pregnant. The news should fill me with joy, but the dates do not lie: it is Heider’s. Ilse is bereft; she calls it her abomination and wants me to end it, but I won’t do it. Her fever is so bad I fear she will lose the child anyway. I am terrified of this because a stillbirth out here will surely kill her. I curse the lack of equipment, the heat and the insects. These simple villagers have done their best to help us with food and shelter, but the few medical supplies we fled with are almost gone and I think I must return to the submarine. This has been the darkest of days.

  * * *

  Perhaps a world-class free climber might have found a way up the sheer and crumbling sides of the sinkhole, but for Nash, without a rope and pitons, it was suicide. And had there been any likelihood of finding usable rope inside the submarine, it might have justified a daring traverse of the log jam to reach the cracked hull. Which left the crescent pool as the only possible way out.

  Nash warily eyed the still water. Free diving caves was known as sump diving, and it was one of the most dangerously stupid things you could do. He had retrieved several bodies of those who’d tried – most of them cocky teenagers on a dare who’d panicked and drowned in terror. But he also knew the submerged exit passage could just as easily rise up to fresh air and freedom.

  Thanks to years of training for big wave hold-downs, Nash could hold his breath for a full three minutes under exertion. But there were other factors to consider. Diving alone in darkness, without a light, his autonomic nervous system would flood his system with adrenaline, gobbling up precious oxygen. The lack of a mask, weight belt and fins would compromise his efficiency and duration, and, as ever, there was the lurking threat of claustrophobia. He decided on an initial foray of two minutes, setting the timer on his dive watch for a one-minute turnaround.