Purdue used his laser device, set to a sonar detection unit feature, to survey the problem. After some calculations, he came to an unlikely conclusion — that the jam was being caused by means of a vacuum: the room beyond was void of water. Laboriously Purdue explained it to Vincent in hilarious, but effective, gesturing. They had to enter from the bottom level to gain access to the dry room from below.
The scanner in Purdue’s belt indicated that they had reached the site successfully, but the painfully neat galley they climbed up into through the floor baffled them. It was too unassuming. But they found their answer soon enough when they opened the pantry doors. Purdue and Vincent could not believe their eyes. Piled upon one another like sardines in a matchbox were a good number of bodies, still dressed in tattered uniforms. Sure enough, the emblems on their clothing bore the Swastika and other SS-insignias.
Inside the dry chamber, the men momentarily removed their mouthpieces to speak.
“Keep your oxygen on. You never know when a freak current will swell up and flood this galley,” Vincent instructed Purdue.
“I know,” Purdue answered, “but then again, if it hasn’t flooded in so many decades…”
“Look at this,” Vincent remarked, kneeling next to the corpses. “More piled behind these. There must be over a hundred bodies here!”
“More like the entire crew and officers,” Purdue speculated. “Good God, here are more! Look inside the ovens and cupboards.” He peered further in, past the sickening dust and putrefaction that salt and humidity had caused to the corpses. “The back of these storage compartments have been removed, Vincent. It looks like they lead to one of the boiler rooms.”
“Can you get through?” Vincent asked, wincing at the ghastly sight all around them.
“Do I have to?” Purdue asked, rather uncharacteristically.
Vincent gave a dry chuckle. “Well, we are here for you now. Isn’t this what you came for?”
“It is,” Purdue sighed. He was naturally very curious, yet he rued having to dislodged some of the mummified skeletons to get through to the boiler room.
“Hurry,” Vincent urged him. “The tides are changing in about ten minutes and we won’t have much time for the first lift to be completed.”
“We have to get as much done in one session as we can, old boy,” Purdue reminded him as he pulled some of the remains aside. “There are easily a few hundred German soldiers down here, and,” he hesitated as he grasped at something, “more of these.”
Vincent shook his head when Purdue showed him more of the golden coins. “These seem to be everywhere the dead guys are. Maybe they were carrying it?”
“God knows. I hope they did not swallow these treasures in some desperate errand to hide or claim it. That is greed taken a bit too far,” Purdue remarked.
“Would serve them right, though,” Vincent scoffed. “Look, David, I don’t want to speak out of place, but these boys don’t look like common skeletons, hey? Am I off or what? By the looks of them, their skins are still on them, hair, the lot. They look like… mummies?”
“Could be,” Purdue muttered as he disappeared into the boiler room adjacent to count more bodies. “Perhaps the heat from the boiler room and the ovens petrified their remains?”
Vincent felt decidedly creeped out by the grisly scene, and with the undertow bringing all kinds of sounds through the broken carcass of the battleship, it made for an experience that could make even the devil uneasy. “Do hurry, David! We have to get topside before the tide changes!”
Purdue was silent behind the wall of bodies. Only the echoes of the dead ship accompanied the skipper of the Cóncord as he took samples of fabric from the uniforms, and, reluctantly, peeling minute samples of skin and hair from the bones of his nearest gruesome donor.
“My God! I don’t believe this!” Purdue shouted from the other room. “Vincent! You have to get one more pulley down here before we pack up for the day, old boy!”
“What? What is it?” Vincent asked eagerly, very grateful to hear his diving partner’s voice again. He chose to follow through the morbid obstacle of corpses to see what Purdue was on about. With great toil he finally managed to get through with the heavy tanks still strapped to his back. His blue eyes grew wild at the vision before him, bringing tears to his eyes.
“Unbelievable. Oh Christ, she is beautiful,” he wailed as Purdue smiled.
“Do you know her?” Purdue asked playfully, assuming the golden statue of an Inca woman in full royal dress was the relic Vincent was looking for.
“I know her,” Vincent said softly as he waddled towards the full-size artwork. He looked at Purdue with an expression of absolute shock and admiration, his thick, gloved hands shaking. “Do you realize what this means, David?”
“Your prophecy can come true?” Purdue guessed, still not certain about the pursuits of the mariner with the oddly blue eyes.
“This is the statue reputed to have been melted down by the greedy Spanish conquistadors under that dog, Pizarro, after the sacking of Cuzco in 1533. Do you know the account of Atahualpa, the Inca emperor the Spanish held ransom?”
Purdue shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve heard of Atahualpa, but I fear I lack the smaller details.”
“Murdering, greedy bastards, they were,” Vincent lamented.
A loud clank against the gunwale jolted them both back to reality. They gathered the samples, designated the area with bright orange luminous paint and returned to the surface with far more than they ever thought they would find.
21
The Sun Man
“How am I going to go to school while we’re here?” Raul asked Madalina.
The two of them were sitting in a quaint little restaurant in the main street of Sax. Outside the window the massive thirteenth century Sax Castle leered down upon the modern highway that ran past the town, casting its mighty shadow like a stone guardian that stood up from the soil.
“You don’t have to,” Madalina smiled. “I’m a teacher. I will teach you anything you need to know.”
“But if you teach me I’ll have no friends, Madi. I want to go to school to have friends, not to learn,” he objected, while stuffing his eager mouth with ice cream and chocolate sauce. Madalina only had a coffee. She had to conserve what little money she had left after the hasty trip they recently undertook. Having paid the B&B upfront for a week she felt a bit more relaxed, at least until her brother would hopefully show up. Madalina knew that she would be in a world of trouble, not only with the police, but Javier was going to be so disappointed in her for everything she had done.
To exacerbate matters, she honestly had no excuse or reason for what she had done. Her desperate actions that had led to a murder and a kidnapping came from nowhere in particular, apart from a need to get the boy away from the wicked mother figure he was with. It had been several days since Madalina had taken the boy, yet still he did not once ask where Mara was, or if she were dead. He didn’t treat Madalina like the stranger she was, and this unsettled her somewhat. She was grateful that he wasn’t resisting her, but his unconventional reaction to it all had her logic knotted up, begging her to resolve it by asking Raul why he was so complaint.
Perhaps, she thought, he could have suffered such trauma from the incident that he has not yet processed it. On the other hand, she had to concede that he was far too resilient and steadfast of mind to crumble. The boy was clearly of great intelligence, not in the ‘child genius’ way, but in an ‘old soul’ way. His sharpness was similar to that of a teenager, a curiosity that belonged to youth and the experience of a hard life combined.