“Come on, Jakob! What the hell’s keeping you?”
Mysteriously drawn to the black void that continued beckoning him onward, the Lapp ignored the call of his colleague. Only one thing mattered now, and that was reaching the bottom of this manmade pit, where no diver before him had ever penetrated.
It was just as his torch illuminated the flat keel of the boat, and he prepared to turn upward, a glittering reflection shot up from out of the blackness.
It appeared to have emanated from a portion of the keel only a few meters distant, and Jakob reached out into the void with his torch.
Then he saw it. About the size of a large brick, it looked to be comprised of a golden, metallic substance, and had a pair of familiar eagle-like creatures engraved on its surface. He reached for it and found it to be incredibly heavy. Swiftly he turned to join his companions for the long decompression that would soon follow.
It took Knut Haugen an entire day to locate an inflatable collar large enough to lift the entire rail car from the lake bed. He did so at a deep-sea salvage firm that was based out of nearby Konigberg.
While the collar was being expressed out to him, he got on with the task of finding some trustworthy assistants.
He recruited a cousin that was working part-time on the construction of a new hydroelectric plant outside of Eidsborg, and an old friend, who lived in the village of Heddal.
A major concern was where the heavy water would be stored once it had been extracted. The thirty-three drums promised to take up a lot of space, and Knut finally settled on a partially empty warehouse that was owned by a Hakanes-based lumber company. Though he would have preferred to find a more secure location, the building was close to the salvage site, and since the heavy water wouldn’t be there long, he supposed that it would do.
Ever practical, Knut made certain that the logistical problem of transferring the containers to the warehouse was solved long before the drums reached the lake’s surface, by renting a flatbed truck, a dozen wooden pallets, and a small forklift.
All of this equipment arrived on the same morning that the salvage collar reached him. This unique piece of gear weighed several hundred kilos, and took the combined efforts of both his muscular assistants to get it loaded onto the trawler.
By the time he returned to the site of the wreck, the excellent weather that had prevailed began turning for the worse. A stiff northerly wind was beginning to blow, and the once cloudless sky was gray and overcast. Fearful that the weather would only continue to deteriorate, Knut decided to go on with the attempt regardless.
A previously placed sonar transponder guided the ROV down to the sunken rail car The heavy collar was rolled overboard, and as it sank it was guided down to its proper resting place by the ROV, until it was securely tucked beneath the wreckage. Knut started up the air compressor, and a steady stream of air was pumped via an umbilical down into the icy depths. As the collar began to fill, slowly the rail car began to lift.
To insure that it rose on an even keel, he expertly utilized the ROV to insure that the partially inflated collar was evenly distributed. It took several long, frustrating hours to accomplish this task, and as he was nearly finished, a cold rain had begun to fall topside. Trying his best to ignore the worsening weather, he restarted the compressor and anxiously waited for this novel salvage technique to show the desired results.
It seemed to take forever for the collar to fully inflate, but when it finally did, the results were quick in coming. Rushing from the ROV’s control board in the trawler’s cramped, forward cabin, Knut reached the boat’s stern just as an agitated circle of white bubbles in the water beyond signalled the treasure’s imminent arrival. He looked on in wonder as the rail car shot onto the surface at a slight angle, its bent, rust-streaked frame completely surrounded by the fully inflated collar. Knut barely had time to count the thirty-two sealed drums that lay securely strapped to the car’s interior as he slipped into a wet suit and dove overboard to secure the collar with a winch-borne tow line.
The darkening sky didn’t really open up until the trawler was well on its way back to shore, but by this time, Knut really didn’t care. Ignoring the icy gale, he pulled up to the small wooden dock and screamed out in triumph. Yet his celebration was. brief, for he still had to get the heavy water unloaded onto solid land.
Though he had planned to immediately transfer the drums to the warehouse, the rotten weather and advancing dusk kept him from accomplishing this goal. It was all they could do to get the containers out of their bobbing raft and onto the dock before darkness was upon them.
Knut and his exhausted assistants decided to spend the night on the trawler. His original intention was that they would sleep in shifts, so that one of them would always remain awake to watch their treasure. Yet this was not to be, for Knut fell soundly asleep on the very first watch.
He awoke with a start several hours later, shocked to find the shiny barrel of a pistol pointed at his head.
“Don’t try anything brave, Viking,” warned a strangely accented voice from the darkness.
“What in the hell is going on here?” quizzed Knut as he started to sit up.
The cold, hard side of the pistol smacked into his jaw, sending him crashing onto his cot.
“Now, not another move out of you. Viking!” shouted his mysterious attacker.
“Or I’ll use this weapon like it was intended.”
Certain that he meant it, Knut dared not flinch.
As a stream of blood poured from a broken blood vessel in his nose, Knut summoned the nerve to question.
“Where are my crew mates?”
With his face and figure still hidden in the cabin’s dark shadows, the intruder answered.
“The lads are merely giving us a hand completing the job that you did not finish earlier today.”
Only then did Knut hear the characteristic whine of a forklift truck in the background, beyond the pattering sound off the constantly falling rain.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” blurted Knut.
“You don’t really think that you can get away with stealing that heavy water, do you?”
“Who said anything about stealing it?” returned the icy voice.
“We’re only taking back what was rightfully ours in the first place.”
Out of sheer desperation, Knut violently kicked up his foot in an effort to dislodge the pistol, but the stranger had been expecting just such a move and parried this blow with his forearm. Again Knut tried to sit up, and this time the solid butt of the pistol smacked into his temple. As the diver tumbled backward, unconscious, his attacker cursed in perfect German.
“You stupid swine! May your dreams last an eternity, Viking!”
From the thick wood of Norwegian pine that bordered the dock area, Mikhail Kuznetsov watched the tall blond stranger leave the trawler. Even through the sheets of pouring rain, the scarred veteran could see the chrome Luger that this figure carried in his right hand.
“The other one is taken care of,” said the stranger in German to his coworkers.
“But hurry all the same. I want to be on our way long before dawn.”
His colleagues were hard at work loading the recently salvaged drums onto a flatbed truck. There were five of them, together with the two unnerved Norwegians, who had been pulled from the trawler and forced at gunpoint to do the majority of the heavy labor.
Mikhail recognized four of the thieves as being from the local chapter of the Nordic Reichs Party.
They readily took orders from the two blond-haired figures that accompanied them. These were the ones in which Mikhail had the greatest interest, for they would unknowingly lead him to the lair of his arch-nemesis. Only then would Mikhail move in, to wipe from the face of the earth the Neo-Nazi organization known as Werewolf.