“No problem,” Ethan said as he got inside the office and stood in front of Alan’s desk. “I know it was a bit of a short notice, but since we were in town I figured why not drop by.”
“Well, I’m definitely going to make some time for you two,” Alan said as he closed the door behind him before sauntering over to his desk. “I’m sure you’ve both heard the news about the Yank submarine going missing out in the Arabian Sea near India, right?”
Chloe nodded while sitting down on one of the guest chairs facing the desk. “We did. Ethan’s been calling his buddies in the Navy for more news, but everybody seems tight lipped about the whole thing.”
Alan rubbed his chin as he stood behind his desk. “Can I get you both anything to drink or something? Coffee, perhaps?”
Ethan shook his head politely. “No, we’re good, thanks.”
Alan sat himself down in a high-backed chair with a slight squeak. “I got a message from Mick about your sub, and I think you’ll be getting at least half a dozen orders once the institute gets their hands on the first one. Congratulations on that.”
Ethan chuckled. “Nothing’s final until the order has been placed and the contracts signed. Right now we’re just talking with Mick and his team.”
Alan winked at them. “I get what you’re saying. I’m sure you’ll get the order to go ahead the moment you’re out of our territorial waters. Less paperwork that way.”
Chloe leaned forward and clasped her hands together. “We sure hope so!”
“I looked at your website and the embedded video demonstration last night,” Alan said. “Very impressive. I might get one too once I’ve expanded my business, but I’m surprised Morgenstern Oceanic hasn’t contacted you about it. They could definitely use an undersea vehicle such as what you’re offering.”
Ethan looked down on the floor. “Actually, they did send an inquiry to us a while back, but Chloe and I don’t really like dealing with them, so we sort of gave them the brush off.”
Alan narrowed his eyes. “I know what you mean. I did a big job for them that lasted almost three years. I made good money out of it, but I wouldn’t want to work with them ever again.”
Chloe’s interest was immediately piqued. “Oh? My brother is one of their sat divers, and he’s somewhere out in the Arabian Sea right now.”
Alan’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “You don’t say. I wonder if his job might be connected with what my firm did.”
Chloe knew about Morgenstern Oceanic’s strict non-disclosure agreements. “I’m a bit worried since I can’t contact my brother. Can you talk about what you did for them?”
Alan paused for a short minute before he began explaining. “We signed a very strict non-disclosure agreement with them, but since we’re all mates here, I’ll tell you what little I know, so long as I have your promise that you didn’t hear it from me if the hammer comes down, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Ethan said.
“Absolutely,” Chloe added.
“Their reps came to my shop about three years ago,” Alan said. “They claimed it was for a very big job, and I would get a nice fat bonus if it was done on time, and I kept mum about it.”
Chloe bobbed her head slowly. “My brother said the same thing. I thought I’d be allowed to contact him by phone or internet, but all I’ve got was a canned email reply from his company saying he would be unavailable until after the job was done.”
“Same thing happened to me, Chloe,” Alan said. “My entire staff had to sign those blasted NDAs, and their lawyers hinted that legal action was possible if even just a word came from us. I thought about just telling them to piss off, but my crew said the money was too good to pass up and so we did it.”
Ethan leaned back in his chair. “And you worked with them for three years? It must have been a big project.”
“The biggest I ever did,” Alan said. “I normally build a diving bell or sat chamber once a year or so, but they wanted me to build a dozen of them, all joined together too. I reckon it would have been enough to house at least a dozen peeps.”
Chloe’s mouth hung open. “What?”
“Oh yeah,” Alan said. “They had their own specifications. Some corporate poms came in with their set plans and we just had to build them.”
Chloe was confused. “Poms?”
Alan grinned. “We call Brits poms here. Short for pomegranate since their skin turns red from all the sun we get.”
“I see. Please go on.”
“Right. Anyway we get the plans and we start building them,” Alan said. “Strange though. These modules they specified were doubled layered. It was almost as if they wanted to place the whole structure deep underwater, at least that’s what I was thinking, but they never told us what it was for.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “An underwater base? The only permanent habitats I know of are Aquarius Reef Base and MarineLab, both in Key Largo.”
“There’s a few themed restaurants around the world doing it too,” Alan said. “But what those Morgenstern people wanted were self-contained hyperbaric chambers with no portholes, and they would also have their own life support system within the overall structure.”
Chloe frowned. “No portholes? It would drive anybody working in those things nuts.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Alan said. “Judging from the schematics they showed us, it looked to be an underwater habitat, and in the kind of environment where it would have been pointless to have any windows, if you know what I mean.”
“It would have to be very deep then,” Ethan said. “Probably the deepest undersea base ever, but what would it be used for?”
Alan shook his head. “I don’t know, mate. As soon as we built the modules and tested them, they were all placed on a work barge and towed out using a diving support vessel. Right then and there, the bloody corporate reps take away all of our records, including schematics, blueprints and even our hard drives. They compensated us for it, though I can’t help but wonder if they were hiding something.”
“Maybe they’re in the drug business and they built an undersea base so the authorities would never find out where their stash is,” Ethan joked.
“They had plenty of specialized equipment built into the modules,” Alan said. “I believe they were medical machinery, like the ones you see in laboratories, but I can’t be sure since I don’t know anything about it. All of it was pretty dodgy if you ask me.”
Chloe crossed her arms. “If they towed it out and assembled it underwater, they can’t have done it all using just ROVs. They must have had a sat diving crew constructing it if it’s a deep water base.”
Alan snorted. “Oh, we did meet a bunch of divers during the build phase. Their leader was a bloody fleabag too.”
The obvious name popped up in Chloe’s mind as she began to put the various pieces of information together. “Was his name Clive Liger?”
“Yeah, that’s the pommy wanker’s name alright. We nearly got into it and I would have let him have it too if it wasn’t for the sizable payoff we were gonna get,” Alan said.
Chloe bit her lip. “Thanks for telling us all this.”
“I can’t help but wonder if whatever we constructed might have something to do with that lost submarine,” Alan mused. “In addition to those chambers, we were also contracted to build some sort of structure using massive metal and concrete modules. We built it in sections, and brought it to the barge—those things were the most confusing of all.”
Ethan was stunned. “What do you mean?”
Alan gave a solemn nod. “The building was designed to house something big. I know another contractor was doing the other sections and we never got to see the whole schematic, but it all looked like a gigantic underwater garage to me.”