Division Thirteen, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia:
Saturday 24 October 5:25 P.M. local time
No one in the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to be transferred to Division Thirteen. Any project or assignment with the potential to be either personally embarrassing or a career wrecker was handed down to the guys in the Division.
There’d been a time when Jax had been considered one of the Agency’s hotshots. Then he’d lost his temper over American involvement with right-wing death squads in Colombia and slugged a United States ambassador in the middle of a diplomatic dinner party. Definitely not a good career move, although Jax might eventually have been able to live it down if the ambassador involved-Gordon Chandler-hadn’t been named the new Director of the CIA.
“A phantom Nazi sub?” said Jax, staring at Matt von Moltke across the width of the basement cubbyhole that served as the Division’s offices. “Please tell me this is a joke.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Matt, coming from behind a row of filing cabinets with a sheaf of printouts in his hands. He was a big guy, with a wild head of dark curly hair streaked with gray and a bushy beard that covered most of his face. He’d earned his transfer to Division Thirteen long ago, back in the eighties, when he’d objected to some of the dirty arrangements that became known as the Iran-contra affair.
“U-114. We located it back in 2003, lying in about three hundred feet of water off the east coast of Denmark. A British destroyer sank it with depth charges just days before the Nazis surrendered.” Matt paused. “I’m told it’s what they call a Type XB.”
Jax leaned against the doorjamb, his hands on his hips. “That’s significant?”
“Very.” Matt limped over to start assembling the books and papers scattered across the battered chrome-and-Formica table that took up most of the floor space in his office. The table looked like something out of the fifties, and the folder he was shoving the papers into probably hailed from the same era. “The XBs were the biggest subs used by the Kriegsmarine in World War II. Originally they were designed as mine layers, but because of their size they were eventually converted into transports. They hauled all kinds of shit to the Japanese in the Pacific, and brought back raw materials to Germany.”
“What was this U-114 carrying?” said Jax, pushing away from the door frame.
Matt held out a black-and-white photo of a long, slim submarine lying on a sandy seabed. “They think it was gold.”
“Nazi gold?” Jax took the photo. “Sounds like somebody’s been reading too many paperback thrillers.”
Matt didn’t even crack a smile. “It’s no joke. The Nazis were sending all kinds of shit out of Germany near the end of the war. Some of it was war material and research to help the Japanese. But some of it was just loot.”
Jax came to perch on the edge of the sturdy old table. “So why is the CIA interested?”
“You’ve heard about the NSA intercept?”
“The latest terrorist threat? Are you kidding? Who hasn’t?” The administration had deliberately leaked information on the intercept to the press. Terrorist threats were always good for the President’s popularity ratings, and at the moment President Randolph needed all the help he could get.
“What isn’t so well known,” said Matt, “is that the bad guys made a passing reference to some old World War II U-boat. It didn’t make any sense until the Navy checked on U-114 and realized it’s gone.”
Jax stared down at the grainy photo in his hand. He was no longer laughing. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“Just that. Gone.” Matt handed Jax another photo. This one showed the same stretch of seabed, empty now except for a long depression in the sand and what looked like a few broken cables and chunks of rusting metal. “That image was shot this morning. Ever since we located the sub, we’ve been keeping an eye on it. Given its cargo, our government wanted to raise it, but the Germans refused. A lot of men went down with U-114. They consider it a gravesite and they didn’t want it disturbed.”
“Looks like somebody disturbed it,” said Jax, studying the two photos.
“The guys running the task force at Homeland Security think the terrorists must be planning to use the gold from the Nazi sub to finance their attack.”
“That’s a stretch, isn’t it? I mean, there must be a lot of easier ways to get money than to salvage a sunken U-boat.”
“All I know is what I’m told.”
Jax reached for one of the books on the table, an old hardcover with a torn yellow-and-blue dust jacket that read, Iron Coffins: A personal account of the German U-boat battles of World War II. He wasn’t exactly claustrophobic, but the thought of being trapped beneath the sea in an overblown sardine can wasn’t something he cared to dwell on too long. “Just how hard is it to raise one of these suckers, anyway?”
“That depends on how deep it is, and whether or not it’s still in one piece. There’s a Monsoon lying in 500 feet of water off the coast of Norway with a cargo of weapons-grade mercury that’s started leaking. The Norwegians don’t know what the hell to do with it. It broke in half when it was sunk by a torpedo, and they’re afraid it’ll come apart completely if they try to lift it.”
Jax nodded toward the photo of the missing U-boat. “This one looks like it’s in pretty good shape.” He squinted at the ghostly image. “Except for that raggedy bit at the end there.”
“It is. And it was in fairly shallow water, so raising it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Back in 2002, the Brits let out a contract to salvage the captured U-boats they sank off Ireland and Scotland after the war as part of Operation Deadlight. Those are scuttled war prizes, so the subs technically belong to the Brits rather than the Germans. And of course, there aren’t any bodies.”
Jax frowned. “I don’t get it. What do they want them for?”
“The steel.”
“Sounds like an expensive way to get steel.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t just any steel. This is pre-1945 steel.”
Jax shook his head. “Am I missing something? What difference does it make when the steel was manufactured?”
“All steel manufactured since 1945 is radioactive.”
“Radioactive?”
“That’s right. Steel production involves a lot of air, and we’ve exploded so many nuclear bombs in the atmosphere in the last sixty-odd years that the air is radioactive. Steel picks it up.”
“Now that’s a scary thought.”
“No shit. The problem is, we need clean steel for certain kinds of sensitive instruments. The only place to get it is from old ships.”
“And subs,” said Jax, staring down at the book in his hands. “Maybe terrorists didn’t have anything to do with your missing U-boat. Maybe it was simply stolen by someone looking to make a quick buck salvaging the steel.”
“You’re forgetting the NSA intercept.”
Jax huffed a soft laugh. “Right. You know as well as I do that most of the linguists the NSA has translating their intercepts would have a hard time ordering a cup of coffee in Cairo.”
“Maybe. But these guys were speaking English. Unaccented English. Which is why Homeland Security thinks this operation is homegrown.”
Jax reached again for the image of the empty seabed, and frowned. “Our satellite photos don’t show anything?”
Matt shook his head. “We weren’t targeting that area. It’s open water. We’re running computer checks to see if we might have picked something up by chance, but it’s gonna take time. And time is one thing we don’t have.”
“What kind of timeline are we looking at here? Any idea yet?”
“These guys were talking about a terrorist attack going down on Halloween.”
“A week? Shit.” The administration hadn’t leaked that, either. Jax was silent for a moment. “How long has it been since anyone saw this sub on the ocean floor?”
“It was there ten days ago.”