Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “Nice to meet all of you,” said Jason. “Come on in.”

  Jason led them into a living room where a middle-aged couple were both seated on a large couch with floral upholstery. He introduced everyone all around and the three of them sat down with Richard and Peggy Bruckner as if they’d stopped by to have a cup of tea. It was starting to feel a little surreal, and Dex was wondering where the old Captain might be.

  “I guess I should tell you,” said Richard. “This is all a really big shock to us.”

  Dex just sat there with a half-smile on his face as Richard confessed to knowing nothing of his father’s career in the German U-boat service. The family had always believed Erich’s assertion that he and his friend Manfred Fassbaden came to America in 1947 to work in a mutual friend’s restaurant.

  “How much has he told you?” said Dex. “About the U-Boat.”

  “Not much. He started to tell me about his last mission,” said Jason. “He said his crew rescued some scientists under the ice in Greenland. But he also said there’s more.”

  “That’s why he wanted to see you,” said Jason’s father. “He says he has to tell you the rest of the story.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Jason shrugged. “He says you might know what to do about it.”

  “About what?” said Tommy.

  “He didn’t say. He wants to talk to both of you first.”

  Dex grinned, trying to hide his impatience. “Well, here we are. Where’s your grandfather?”

  Jason looked at his father then back to Dex. “He said he didn’t want to talk about it here at the house. He says he feels more comfortable at Manny’s”

  “Okay…” said Dex. He had no idea what or where Manny’s might be, but he was going to find out.

  “He’s there now. Come on,” said Jason. “I’ll take all of you over.”

  Standing up, Dex looked at Jason’s parents who remained seated. “We’ll be staying here,” said Richard. “My father wants to talk to you alone.”

  Dex nodded, then added, “Listen, I’m feeling a little awkward here. I apologize if we’ve done anything to upset your family or anything like that.”

  Richard smiled. “Not at all. You did nothing wrong. My father’s always been a character, you know? You never get used to things like this, but you try not to let them surprise you either.”

  A few minutes later, Dex, Tommy, and Augie were riding into downtown Lancaster with Jason, who had seemed to relax visibly after leaving his parents’ house.

  “Manny’s Tap Room is the family business,” said Jason as he turned onto a main boulevard. “Bar and grill. I run it with my dad. But my grandfather and Manny opened it around fifty years ago. They built it up from nothing. It’s like part of the landscape now. Everybody in town knows Manny’s.”

  Dex nodded. “Sounds like a good spot.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Jason as he turned onto Prince Street and pulled the maroon SUV into a capacious spot along the curb. “Here we are.”

  As they all climbed out, Dex saw that Manny’s was no hole-in-the-wall tavern. Big, with lots of windows and awnings, hunter fans and tiffany chandeliers. Typical in a sense, but homey and comfortable too. No wonder it buzzed with customers. Jason held the door and they all filed inside.

  “Where’s your grandfather?” said Dex as they weaved their way among the tables toward a large bar.

  “Upstairs. Used to be an apartment where Uncle Manny lived. Now we use it for offices. Come on—this way.”

  Passing through a busy clanging kitchen dominated by a huge black guy wearing a floppy chef’s hat, they followed Jason into a short hallway leading to a staircase. It was narrow and lit by a single bulb above the landing at the top of the stairs. The dim, cramped space reminded him of the path down the gut of the old U-boats, and Dex felt a lump begin to form in his throat. A conflux of feelings washed through him as he realized he was going to meet a man he felt he already knew in a way few people ever do.

  Jason reached the door, tapped lightly on it.

  Slowly it opened, peeling back to reveal a thin, older man with deep, penetrating eyes and a stern, jutting jaw. He still had plenty of hair, and not altogether gray. Few wrinkles carved up his handsome features, and he looked like he was in his mid-sixties—tops. Hard to imagine he was close to a hundred—impossible, really. Dex had an image of the young, rakish Captain from his soldbuch photo, and it was obvious this guy was the same person. Some things about a face just never change.

  “Hallo,” said the man in a voice full of resonance as he extended a hand in friendship. He was wearing baggy khaki pants, a plain white button-down shirt, and a sleeveless golf sweater with a Slazenger logo. “I am Erich Bruckner…and I understand you found my boat.”

  Dex reached out, shook his hand. “Dexter McCauley. And yes, sir, I did.”

  Bruckner grinned, shook his head slowly as if to dispel the weirdness of the whole scene. “Please come in. Let’s sit down and talk.”

  Dex entered the room and introduced Tommy and Augie. Captain Bruckner grinned when he shook Augie’s hand—an instant bond of age and the wisdom of years formed between them. Everyone followed the Captain through a large room crammed with files, cabinets and a desk, and into another that looked like a den or a great place to spend Sundays watching football on the big TV in the corner. The floor thumped softly from the music playing in the bar below. Bruckner settled into the big chair with an extra pillow for back support, gestured to his grandson. “Jason, get us all something to drink. What would you like, Mr. McCauley? Tommy? Augie?”

  “I’ll take a beer,” said Augie.

  “Make that two.” Tommy held up two fingers.

  “Bourbon, rocks would be great. And, please, just call me Dex.” He sat down in the chair closest to Bruckner and placed the backpack on the floor next to him

  “Only if you will call me Captain.” The old man laughed. “Just kidding. Please…call me Erich.”

  Dex liked him immediately. He remained as sharp and perceptive as he’d been all those years ago. While Jason disappeared back down to the bar, Bruckner asked Dex a quick series of questions designed to get him up to speed on how they’d found his boat, how it looked, and what had caused the accident.

  Dex and Tommy provided the details as concisely as possible. They didn’t say anything about the attack and the people chasing them—not yet. Bruckner seemed pleased to learn Dex was also a navy vet, and expressed surprise the 5001 had remained in such good shape. But there was something couched behind the old man’s eyes which suggested there was more than just a nostalgic interest in his old boat.

  “Tell me more about my boat,” said Bruckner. “You were able to get inside, yes?”

  Dex nodded.

  “You saw the plane?”

  “We got up into the hangar, we saw it.”

  “What else? What else did you find?”

  Reaching down, Dex picked up the backpack, unzipped it to retrieve the steel box from the captain’s locker. “Well, we also found this…”

  “Mein Gott!” said Bruckner. His English was so natural, the German expression sounded almost odd falling from his lips. “I can’t believe it. May I see it, please?”

  Dex handed it to him and he was unlatching it just as Jason returned with a tray of drinks and some bar snacks.

  “Jason, look at this…” Bruckner opened the lid and Dex could see him get lost in the vision and the memory of the last time he’d touched that box, the last time he’d closed it.

  “What is it?”

  “Pieces…pieces of my life,” said Bruckner. He reached in, picked up the fragments of his medals, his soldbuch, and finally his log. Holding up the last item, he showed it to Jason and the others. “Jason, this is the story I was telling you. Right here.”

  “Amazing,” said Jason as he took the log, t
urned its fragile pages carefully.

  Bruckner looked at Dex sternly as he indicated the log. “Did you read this?”

  “I did.” He pulled his printouts from the backpack. “Had to translate it first.”

  “Oh, of course. I forgot—it is in German.” Bruckner looked embarrassed as he spoke. “So, you know what we were sent to do?”

  “Well, I think I do. I’d rather hear it from you.”

  The old man waved his hand dismissively. “There is more. That is why I knew I must reach you. There is more I must tell you—just in case.”

  Dex had picked up his glass for a small sip, but paused. “In case what?”

  “Just in case anyone else ever visits that place again.”

  Dex took a taste of his drink, leaned closer. “What do you mean? Why?”

  “I am not sure how to phrase this,” said Bruckner. “But have there been any…incidents? Anything you know about?”

  “What do you mean by ‘incident’?”

  Bruckner shrugged. “Anything. Anything at all that might be out of the ordinary. Anything happening around the Greenland Shelf?”

  Dex wasn’t sure what he meant. “You mean like now? Recently?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Nothing I know about. I mean, nothing you’d see in the news or the ’net.”

  Bruckner held up his index finger like a teacher bringing up a single point. “No, I meant something you may have heard while in the Navy, something that would not be on the news.”

  Dex considered this, shook his head. “Sorry…”

  Bruckner picked up his bottle of beer, allowed himself a small swallow. “Well, regardless, I must tell you the rest of my story.”

  “Believe me, I want to hear it,” said Dex.

  Bruckner nodded, then gestured to his grandson to hand him back his logbook. Taking out his reading glasses and fitting them slowly to his face, the captain began to turn through the thick pages with great care.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I must find the dates I am looking for, to see how I…how I phrased things back then, and how much explaining I will need to do now.”

  “Take your time,” said Dex.

  The old man flipped through the brittle pages.

  “You should know,” he said slowly. “The events of…let me see…on the 3rd of May…well there was something I did not put in the log…something I could not bring myself to record.”

  Dex said nothing. Although he was getting antsy as hell watching Bruckner and his deliberate manner, there was no rushing him. He’d come this far—another few minutes didn’t mean a thing.

  “Very well.” Bruckner sat up a little straighter in his chair, moved a hand over his button-down shirt as if to smooth it for an inspection. His eyes, clear and bright, deepened as he began to relive a day more than six decades distant…

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Rear Admiral Parker Whitehurst

  The Pentagon

  Upon returning from lunch, he sat behind his big polished desk in an office that was part of the vast honeycomb of rooms in the D-Ring. It was typical of the warrens they reserved for the guys who’d served well—the military’s version of the fancy CEO suite. Parker Whitehurst liked where he’d ended up so far, but at fifty-five, he wanted to believe he wasn’t done yet. And he hoped his superiors felt the same way. Although he still had a shot a Full Admiral’s pension, he also knew time was running out. As the head of the Navy’s Deep Sea Rescue Ops, his assignment represented the final stepping stone to getting his own fleet. But there were more candidates than fleets to go around, which was the way it should be, he supposed.

  The topic of his pension was never far from center court in his thoughts, but there were always plenty of other tasks to keep him occupied. In the hour and a half he’d been away from his desk, a new stack of call-memos had accumulated and twice as much e-mail on his screen. Absently, he shuffled through the small sheets, recognizing all the notes except one—Dexter McCauley.

  He hadn’t seen that name in a few years, but it jogged memories of a guy who had been one of the finest men who’d ever served under him. Why would he be calling? And how did he ever find me?

  Picking up the memo, Parker read its contents carefully: I have information on the following: Station One Eleven, U-5001, and coordinates Longitude 39.49 W / Latitude 69.60 N. Very important I speak with you.

  Now what the hell was that stuff all about?

  Checking his watch, he had a meeting coming up with a budget advisor within the hour. He knew Chief McCauley extremely well, and the man wouldn’t have called him to just say hello or see if he wanted to play eighteen holes. McCauley knew he wouldn’t get an immediate call-back unless he did something to get Parker’s attention.

  He looked at the three items, casting about in dimmer corridors of memory for some meaning to attach to the words. Station One Eleven. He vaguely recalled seeing something on that, but what had it been? The other two references meant nothing.

  But they must mean something important to McCauley or he wouldn’t have included them in his message. And that was enough for Parker to take action. Calling in his aide, he instructed Commander Hanson to get all the information he could on the three subjects from the memo. ASAP.

  By the time he finished arm-wrestling with the budget wonks, maybe he’d have some answers.

  Almost four hours later, when Parker returned to his outer office, Pye Hanson looked up anxiously. “Admiral…that stuff you wanted me to check on?”

  “Yes? What about it?”

  “Sorry it took so long.” Hanson grinned. “But there’s plenty in the archives. Look at this…”

  Parker regarded a stack of files as thick as the New York phone book. No way he would have the time to go through all that shit—even if he took it home, and he’d made a habit of doing that as little as possible. Not so much he cared what Karen might say, but more to guarantee himself some down-time from his job.

  “Pye, are you kidding me?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, can you give me the condensed edition on any of it?”

  Hanson stood up, nodded. “I can try…”

  “Inner sanctum,” said Parker. He headed into his private space with Hanson lugging the stack of folders right behind him.

  They moved to the small conference table by the window and Commander Hanson spread out some of his paper. “Okay, let’s see—Station One Eleven is the code name for a secret Nazi base in the Arctic region. It was—”

  Parker snapped his fingers—an old habit he hated, but couldn’t break—and nodded. “Of course. I knew I’d heard that name. We never found it, right?”

  “No sir, not a trace.” Hanson shook his head. “OSS swore it was real. But it was never located and a lot of people believed it might have been mythological. Disinformation, maybe.”

  Parker recalled some of the stories surrounding One Eleven, linking it to its Antarctic counterpart, Station Two Eleven. The latter had been very much a real entity, and had been the target of a post-WWII task force called “Operation High Jump.” Parker knew many details from the Top Secret files—in 1947, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal sent 40 ships under the command of Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Krusen and Admiral Byrd to find and destroy a Nazi base under the ice that had survived the end of the war in virtual autonomy.

  Parker gestured to his aide. “What do you have on the other things?”

  Hanson picked up a single file folder. “Not much on U-5001. Not much at all. It doesn’t fit any of the standard German submarine designations, and officially never existed. There is one report—undocumented—which suggests it was the prototype of a new class of U-boat that never got off the drawing board. Some kind of secret weapon.”

  Parker nodded. “That it?”

  Hanson grinned. “As far as our records, yes. But there’
s been an item on the news—I guess you didn’t catch it—about some divers who found a Nazi sub in the Chesapeake Bay, and—”

  Parker made a habit of never watching any news programming. Most of it was so editorially skewed as to be worthless. “Let me guess. It’s called the U-5001.”

  “Yes sir, but that’s not all. The dive boat exploded, killing everybody on board. One of the divers’ names was Dexter McCauley.”

  Okay, now this was getting more than strange. “But you said he just called me, left this message.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So what the fuck is going on here?”

  “Sir, I’m not sure, but there’s more…”

  Parker exhaled. When he’d been up to his elbows in Deep Sea Rescue, he used to rely on an internal alarm system that had grown reliable from equal parts experience and instinct. And oddly enough back then, he relished the feeling of possible danger or unpredictability. He’d been out of the game for a while now, and obviously a part of him missed it.

  He gestured for Hanson to continue.

  “The coordinates pinpoint a position just off, or slightly beneath, the Greenland Shelf. And that location, or ones damned close to it, turned up in a few really weird files,” said his aide.

  “Weird like how?”

  “I mean, like totally unrelated…and I started wondering what the odds would be of that. And what the connections could be.”

  “Go on…”

  Hanson flipped through some pages. “Fish-kills,” he said.

  “What? What’re you talking about?”

  Hanson laid out sets of pages on the conference table. “Each of these are incidence reports from a variety of agencies and private companies. They document a series of fish-kills at or around those coordinates. Large areas in the sea which contain huge populations of fish—dead and floating belly-up.”

  “Just fish?” said Jeff. “Or everything?”

  “Actually, everything. Every type of sea creature—right down to the plankton.”

  “Wow…and how ‘large’ an area are we talking about?”

  Hanson shrugged. “Not sure. The estimates vary depending on how soon after the ‘killing event’ has happened. But it’s at least 20 square miles.”