"Just go with it… at least, until they are back in the room," Sam whispered.
Nina peered past Sam’s chest to see. “They are gone. The door is shut. Now let go of me. You just wanted an excuse to get close!”
“What? You snuck up on me,” he frowned. Nina was amused, but she was not going to let Sam see that. If he wanted to play with Crystal, she was going to let him. But he’d have to forget about the pleasure of enjoying Nina’s affection as well.
“We have to wake the others. The sun is already up,” she said blandly, grazing his chest with her hand as she walked away. Sam knew this game. He did not like it much, but somehow he constantly found himself in Nina’s penalty box. She was too sensitive to competition, even a brief flirt, in his opinion. Did she not know that he loved her and only her, even when there he was flirting with both of them?
He watched her walk over the white and gray tiles with bare feet. Her hair was wild and fell softly over her back and shoulders, and her smooth legs were only partially covered by the hem of the large shirt she was wearing over her bikini. It was autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere, but it still felt like summer. Once Nina’s thrall faded as she left him alone, he recalled the conversation he had overheard between the two security men.
‘Who is the whore they were referring to?’ he wondered, running his hands through his hair, pushing the strands out of his face. It had to be one of the women Billy brought with him, but which one, and why? It was cause for concern, but he was not going to ruffle any feathers by asking Billy. For all Sam knew, the lecturer had no idea what was going on and it could endanger the whole project.
Once everybody had gotten out of bed, the group sat spread out all over the premises. Outside, Sam and Billy discussed the tides and the coming dive of the day. Inside, Nina and Mieke cooked breakfast while Cheryl was still in the bathroom, doing what she had to do to survive the day without withdrawal symptoms. Zain had engaged Purdue in a conversation about the wreck and its estimated value, just as a matter of course. Purdue enjoyed talking about projected profits and thought nothing of the security advisor’s interest.
Sibu tried to impress the ladies in the kitchen, but he soon realized that he was just in the way. He tried very hard to stick to Zain’s rules, playing it cool and not causing any trouble by trying to hit on the women. The educated, smart women annoyed him immensely. They were not the kind of women he was used to. He preferred women on their knees — in every way. In his culture, women were there to serve the men and to take care of the home and the children. They were not supposed to have any social command. That was a man’s place.
But Zain had warned him; he had threatened to kill him should he ever do anything that could spoil their plan — and from what Sibu knew about his associate, the man was not one to go back on a threat. The day Sibu had seen Zain shoot his own cousin for taking away his business in the drug trade he had learned just how ruthless Zain was. Under that civilized coolness lurked a Copperhead poised for attack.
“Okay people, we have located what we think is the wreck,” Purdue spoke up after breakfast, once everyone was awake and fed, ready for the task at hand. “Here and here,” he pointed on the screen, “will be our entry points. Now, I believe Crystal Sam, and I will do the first dive, to scout the wreck?”
They all nodded in agreement. Nina did not like being left behind with the strangers, but the dive would not take longer than two hours. They decided to all join them on the yacht Purdue had chartered. At his request, the yacht had already been equipped with the necessary diving gear, and Nina had the consolation of knowing that the vessel had a big, well-stocked bar. Hopefully, she could keep Mieke and Cheryl off each other’s throats for the duration of the dive. It pissed her off that she had to babysit them like ill-mannered, bickering little girls, while her own temper threatened to flare should the childish competition continue.
“So we will get footage of the terrain we’ll have to deal with when the salvage tug arrives. Dr. Malgas, you will be able to see more detail on the wreck and Nina will help you validate if it is really the Admiral Graf Spee. That way you will be able to calculate what this find would be worth to — say, collectors or museums,” Purdue said to Billy in front of the group.
Zain and Sibu’s eyes met briefly before they cast a look toward Cheryl. She seemed satisfied that they knew she was making good on her promise of the prize. In fact, she seemed very content, but that was only because of the illegal substances cursing through her system after some happy time in the bathroom, courtesy of Pyramid Pete.
“And when are we expecting the salvage tug to arrive?” Sam asked Crystal.
She stood next to Purdue with her arms crossed over her chest. “I have notified them of our position. They are coming down along the coast from Egypt, so they should be here in a day or two,” she reported.
“That will give us just enough time to determine the condition of the wreck and decide on how we are going to recover it before figuring out how to tow it,” Purdue added with a smile.
Chapter 16 — Exploration #1
The boat’s owner had charged Purdue an extra fee for the yacht because he had insisted on chartering it without its crew. At first, the owner had been reluctant, but upon meeting him, the Scottish billionaire and the German lawyer had been able to convince the owner that his vessel was going to be in reliable hands. It had taken Crystal and Purdue little over an hour of coaxing and reassuring as well as several glasses of gin and tonic for the owner to finally change the contract.
After loading the sonar equipment and gear, Purdue arranged all the necessary devices for the use of his tablet to ascertain the status of the subterranean parts of the vessel once they reached the dive site. Nina was excited to see if it was truly the ship she had read about, although according to the documents she had found it had fled for the coast of Uruguay. She hoped that perhaps it was old propaganda since the pocket battleship of the Nazi Kriegsmarine was reported to have passed the Cape of Good Hope at one point, sinking several Allied ships in the process. It could have run aground on the east coast of Africa instead of the east coast of South America, who knows?
Sam loved diving. He was excited about the chance to float weightlessly in the quiet blue womb of the planet again and film the elusive ship that had only recently shown itself on radar and satellite zooms Purdue had run. Just the night before, in fact, they had come across something interesting. Once Purdue, Sam, and Billy had been properly oiled by the local alcoholic beverages, the subject of the oddity of the vessel’s elusiveness came up.
Sam had asked Billy if he was confident that local authorities had never before noticed such a massive piece of metal, which must have been right under their noses for almost eighty years. Billy, who had looked a bit bewildered by the question, had explained that his assistant had checked all records to make sure that no such on a potential discovery of the vessel had ever been entered. According to Billy, the ship had sunk and had been covered by the surface sediment of Bluewater Bay since the early 1940’s.
“Perhaps it was just buried in a shallow grave until recently. The coast here is known for its erratic currents and strong undercurrents, which could have been responsible for sweeping away the top sediment layer and revealing the dead ship,” he had speculated.
Purdue had shaken his head, “I’m no expert, but that’s something that would take decades, Billy.”
For the first time in his life, Sam had seen his sharp friend Billy looking speechless. To Sam's surprise, he had even looked a bit as if he did not know much about the find, but he had reckoned that it had just been his drunken bias judging the scrawny lecturer.