“What was her course?”
Ahmed laid a ruler on the chart. “According to the Liberator’s log, the U-boat was heading at approximately 230 degrees. From her recorded position, that puts her on a course directly for the Socotra archipelago.”
Jack looked keenly at Ahmed. “Is anything else known about her?”
Ahmed shook his head. “Very little. It’s as if she’d been erased from history.”
“At that point there were U-boats taking fleeing Nazis and their possessions to safety, weren’t there?” Ibrahim said. “Isn’t that how some of them reached South America?”
“The northwest Indian Ocean seems a pretty unlikely place to try and establish a new Reich,” Ahmed said.
Costas looked at him. “Weren’t the Type XB cargo subs used in the secret trade between Germany and Japan?”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Jack replied, remembering what Louise had told them a few days earlier. “The exchange of gold for raw materials and technology. U-234 is a documented example, captured at the end of the war in the North Atlantic with arms, medical supplies, optical glass, even a broken-down Me 262 jet fighter, all destined for Japan in exchange for gold.”
“If gold is in the offing and the Deep Explorer researchers have got wind of it, then that’s surely enough to explain their presence here,” Ibrahim said.
Jack thought hard for a moment. He remembered his encounter at the National Archives with Collingwood, the indications that he had been on to something new for Deep Explorer and Landor to find in these waters. Everything was beginning to fall into place.
“U-234 was carrying something else, wasn’t she, Jack?” Costas said quietly.
Jack felt himself go cold, and swallowed hard. “Yes, she was,” he said. “It was classified for years after the war, kept secret by the US intelligence officers who emptied her after her capture. She was carrying fifty lead cubes about ten inches across labeled U-235, as well as gold-lined lead cylinders with the same label. U-235, just to be clear, is not a U-boat designation.”
“Uranium-235,” Ahmed said. “Uranium oxide.”
“About twelve hundred pounds of it, enough to yield almost eight pounds of U-235 after processing,” Jack said. “It’s thought that the Americans who captured it sent it on in secret for use in the Manhattan Project, and that it may even have ended up in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, a terrible irony if so, given that it had been destined originally for use by Japan. It would have made up about ten percent of the fissile material needed for one of those bombs. In its unrefined state, anyone with basic bomb-making knowledge could use it to make dozens of dirty bombs, enough to irradiate cities across the world.”
“Good God,” Ibrahim said quietly. “That raises the stakes horrifyingly.”
“Landor wouldn’t stoop to that, would he?” Costas said. “The only possible takers would be terrorists.”
Jack gave him a grim look. “I don’t think he has much in the way of morality left.”
Costas tapped the map. “What I still don’t understand is where the U-boat was going. Were there any supply bases in this area?”
Ahmed leaned forward, looking at Costas intently. “With this coast being under Italian control in the early part of the war, it seemed conceivable that they might have built a secret pen for their long-distance submarines. The breakthrough came when my club was diving off the village of Bereeda in the northeastern extremity of Somalia, only fifty nautical miles from the nearest islands in the Socotra archipelago. An old fisherman who knew of our interest in Second World War wrecks told us that he had seen an Italian cargo ship anchor close to one of the islands during the summer before the war started, and unload heavy machinery. The ship remained there and men carried on working at the island for several months afterward, and then they disappeared. There was little to be seen for all their efforts except a small naval coast guard station, and he and the other fishermen were warned off when they got too close. He never returned to the island after the war, as the fishing was no longer any good.”
Costas looked at Jack. “What drives a U-boat captain to take his sub to a secret pen way off the route between the Atlantic and Japan after Germany’s war is finished?”
“Turn the question on its head,” Jack replied. “What would drive a U-boat captain to continue delivering his cargo to Japan? Not all U-boat captains were fervent Nazis, and by that stage many of them probably just wanted the war to be over. And even for the Nazis among them, there was little love lost for the Japanese and little interest in furthering their cause after Germany had been defeated.”
“So you’re saying he found a bolthole to ride it out, a secret pen far from the war zone?”
“Possibly more than that,” Jack said. “If he was also carrying a consignment of gold, he and his crew might have been able to get something out of the war after all.”
“Providing they hadn’t irradiated themselves as well,” Costas said. “Maybe that’s why the fish all died out.”
Jack turned to Ahmed. “Can we speak to the fisherman?”
Ahmed glanced at Ibrahim. “He disappeared two days ago. His boat is still in the harbor, and his wife said that men came in the night for him. I’m afraid that happens quite a lot around here, but there’s been a particular development that might explain this case. Over the last few days, since Deep Explorer arrived offshore, there have been questions asked all along the coast about the location of wrecks. The men asking the questions are the same agents who normally recruit for the pirates or for the terrorists, and we think they’ve been paid by someone who came ashore from the ship. One of them was questioning fishermen in Bereeda the day before the old man disappeared.”
Jack exhaled forcefully. “Do you know where the island is?”
Ahmed put a finger on the chart. “Near the islands of Samhah and Darsah, within the archipelago that lies between Socotra and the Somali mainland. The island is uninhabited, though nominally under Yemeni control. We haven’t had a chance to get out there yet.”
Jack turned to Ibrahim. “Let’s assume that our friends on Deep Explorer have got hold of this account of U-409. How do you think they are going to play it?”
Ibrahim thought for a moment, and then pointed at the chart. “Deep Explorer is here, about two days’ sailing from Socotra. We know they’ve employed the Badass Boys from their base about two thirds of the way up the coast, only about a hundred nautical miles from the island. During piracy raids, the Boys operate from a trawler that acts as a mother ship to the fast skiffs they use to board the merchant vessels. Here maybe Deep Explorer is the mother ship, and the trawler is the vessel that’s going in. The trawler would be far less conspicuous, a factor of particular concern with the Iranians beginning to fly aggressive sorties along that sector.”
Jack’s mind was racing. If there were a secret U-boat base on the island, could it also have been a place used by the Ahnenerbe to store the artifacts they had stolen during their expeditions in northeast Africa, from places such as Magdala? It would have made sense to transport the artifacts back to Germany by U-boat, a plan that might have been stalled indefinitely while the sea lanes were controlled by the Allies. He stared at the chart, looking at the island of Socotra and the smaller cluster to the west, midway between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian shore. Then he glanced up at Ibrahim. “You say you have good cooperation with the Yemeni navy?”