Hidden Sun Read online

  Malik scratched his beard. “So the ship snapped in two when it sank and left pieces of the hull strung out. It’s plausible if the current was strong.”

  “Why didn’t the Chinese find anything?” asked Hendrick.

  Malik shook his head, puzzled. “Are you sure that manifest you saw was the real thing?”

  Hendrick shrugged. “Yeah. I wouldn’t be out here if I thought it was just somebody’s wet dream.” Hendrick had seen the Awa Maru’s cargo list in a government office in Taipei. It had revealed a startling array of valuables from gold bars, silver pieces, jewelry, diamonds, even optical equipment. But how accurate was the manifest? Hendrick had his doubts but didn’t want to convey them to his partner.

  Hendrick eyed the depth on the sonar data. “Fifty-one meters down.” He did a mental calculation. “Over one hundred sixty feet.”

  “We’ll have to go through ten feet of mud before we hit anything,” said Malik.

  “Let’s get the ROV down there to see what it’s like,” said Hendrick.

  “Right,” answered Malik and moved out the doorway to the aft deck.

  Hendrick lingered, his eyes playing over the MAD detector’s data and the metal that was strung out on the sea floor. He shook his head. Pieces of the ship. Too high an indication from the MAD equipment for pieces of sheet metal, thought Hendrick. What were they really?

  The two of them got the remotely operated vehicle hanging over the side using the deck crane. The ROV was a short, squat device seemingly caught in a cage of thick pipe, which prevented damage to its multiple propellers if it collided with anything. The props were mounted on rotating joints so that they could be pointed in almost any direction. The highly maneuverable vehicle could wiggle its way into very tight spaces and with its cameras could reveal things about a wreck that divers would never get a chance to see.

  Hendrick used the joystick in the control room to move all the control surfaces and actuate the screws while Malik watched the ROV for the correct response. Hendrick turned on the cameras and Malik proceeded to lower the ROV into the water.

  Georgi Bakhtin clucked his tongue nervously as he stood in the conning center of one of Russia’s newest, and quietest submarines. The captain, an old sea dog named Golubev, was listening on the sub’s passive sonar in preparation for going to periscope depth. He and the rest of the crew knew that both the Taiwanese and the Chinese would get very excited if they knew a Russian submarine was patrolling the strait.

  Periodically the Russians surveyed strategic waterways, looking for any obstructions, or any new military installations. They surveyed the electromagnetic spectrum for any new emitters, or any changes to the existing emitters. They catalogued radars and radio stations, ships in ports along the coast, and any other military movements. And Bakhtin had been elected as the SVR representative for the tour.

  The Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, or SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency was his employer as had been the KGB in days gone by. Bakhtin had taken tours with the Russian Navy twice before and had never liked it. The close confines of the submarine bothered him. He supposed that he was an outdoor person, even though he rarely had the time to indulge himself.

  Captain Golubev gave him a quick look, his eyes framed between his iron gray eyebrows and heavy jowls, then went to wait by the periscope. Bakhtin could feel the submarine rise through the sea to sit near the surface. Golubev gave a quick order, and the thick, shiny tube next to him rose silently. He flipped the handles down and spun quickly around in a circle surveying the surface for any threats to his ship.

  This was Golubev’s last tour - the stocky captain would retire in the next few weeks. Bakhtin was envious. In his forties, he had thought more than once what retirement would be like. But he knew he had at least twenty years to go. Maybe more.

  He walked over to stand next to Golubev. He was taller than Golubev but heavier than most of the crew with a thick, bland face, perfect for an anonymous agent. The old sea captain would let him look at the outside world once in a while out of pity for Bakhtin’s discomfort. Golubev backed away slowly from the eyepiece and fixed his eyes on the SVR agent. Bakhtin eagerly peered through the eyepiece. He clucked his tongue again and received some annoyed looks from the crew and Golubev himself.

  Golubev had focused on a ship that was pounding its way through the waves of the Taiwan Strait. Bakhtin increased the magnification and studied the ship. He noted with surprise that the ship seemed to be riddled with holes. Bullet holes? he asked himself excitedly. They seemed to follow a line across the superstructure as if an attacker had swung the gun barrel from side to side. Who had attacked them? The notorious pirates that terrorized the islanders in the strait? He looked at the ship and its occupants with new interest.

  He redirected his attention toward the stern and saw two men lower a submarine-like device into the sea. Surveying the sea bottom? Just like us, he thought. Only they are on the surface for all to see. And we . . . he left the thought unfinished.

  Hendrick kept an eye on the TV screen as the ROV descended into the depths. The visibility quickly went to zero. Hendrick turned on the ROV’s powerful lights, but they were only able to penetrate the mud filled water a few meters ahead. He had been told of the tremendous amount of silt in the water, and had read that the Chinese had removed some ten thousand cubic meters of mud in their salvage effort. It’s all back again, thought Hendrick disgustedly. Every damn cubic centimeter.

  “Can’t see shit,” mumbled Hendrick. After several minutes, he looked at the depth gauge. “All right. We’re at fifty-one meters.” Malik leaned over his shoulder to view the TV screen.

  Hendrick played the ROV back and forth over the area where they thought the ship was located, several times inadvertently driving the vehicle into the soft mud. The entire time they could barely see the front frame of the ROV. They stuck with it for two hours then gave up.

  The plan had been to confirm that the lump in the mud below was actually the Awa Maru, then call for the larger diving team they had assembled in Taipei to perform the actual salvage. They knew that time was fast running out. It was mid September. The onset of heavy weather was known to be abrupt in that part of the world. Frustrated, both men walked out of the cabin to retrieve the ROV.

  Bakhtin was ready. He pushed the button over and over to take pictures of the two men who worked to get the ROV back on the deck. The men looked tired. He sympathized with them. They apparently had had to fight off a formidable enemy recently.

  He took a dozen pictures then noticed Golubev’s burly presence next to him. Bakhtin was taking too long. The stocky captain was getting nervous, even though Bakhtin had to give up the scope every few minutes for Golubev to survey their surroundings. Bakhtin had lingered with the scene with equal parts curiosity about the ship and pleasure at seeing the outside world again. The men on the salvage ship probably weren’t a bona fide intelligence target, but he might decorate his office with the pictures.

  Bakhtin surrendered the periscope, his thoughts on the brave men aboard the ship. Who were they? Why were they endangering their lives?

  What were they after?

  It’s still there!

  His father’s words rang through his mind as he stared at the sea not ten feet away. Hendrick struggled with the memories of his too short relationship with his father. His father had been in World War II and had been on missions that he couldn’t talk about. Later on, it had come out in a conversation with his mother that his father had worked for the CIA.

  “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I got some air in the evening,” Maggie said. He turned quickly at hearing a voice so close to him. He nodded and returned to staring at the water. “I won’t ask if you’ve had any luck,” she said. “I can see it on your face.”

  “Mud,” he said, as if that would explain everything.

  “Why is the Awa Maru so important to you?” she asked.

  He smiled ruefully. “Because it’s still there.”

  “What’s
still there?” she asked. “The ship itself?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t know. Something onboard.” He turned to face her. “My father kept talking on and on about something he had in his hands when he was on the Awa Maru. It was something very important, something worth risking his life and the lives of several other agents.”

  “Agents? Your father was a spy?” she asked.

  He nodded. “He belonged to the OSS, Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.”

  Maggie’s eyes went wide open. “And he was on the Awa Maru?”

  “Yeah, the night it was torpedoed,” he replied.

  “Why was he there?” she asked, now thoroughly intrigued.

  Hendrick shook his head. “Don’t know. We never found out.”

  “He never told you,” she said, disappointed.

  “He never talked about what he did during World War Two,” said Hendrick. Or what he did afterwards, he thought. They were both silent for a moment.

  “He only started to speak about it when the Alzheimer’s got a good grip on him,” he said. “And then we only got disjointed fragments of what went on onboard the Awa Maru.” His father’s voice ran through his mind. I had it! I had it in my hands! “Most of the time he didn’t recognize me.”

  “How old were you then?” asked Maggie in a voice quiet with sympathy.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe twelve or thirteen,” he said.

  “Your father wasn’t there when you were growing up. How did that make you feel?” she asked.

  Hendrick didn’t reply to the closely personal question. He had desperately wanted to help his father, somehow make the ravages of his mind cease for a week, a day, a minute. But there was no help to be given, no way to bring the elder Hendrick back into reality. His mother would whisper, “He’s back in the war, and there’s no bringing him out of it.”

  Then he had gotten angry at his father. Why do I have to get saddled with a retard for an old man? he would ask himself. Other kids respected their fathers, but how could he respect someone who drooled and babbled on and on that he had had it in his hands and let it get away. What was it? Why was it so important? Why was he obsessed about that and not his own family?

  Then there was that one unholy afternoon when his father wandered off and his mother went after him. He shoved the thought away. In later years as he grew up, Steve Hendrick realized that he had been unfair to his father and felt guilty at how he had felt toward him.

  Hendrick suddenly realized that he had been revealing to Maggie a side of him that almost no one knew. Only Malik knew the whole story, and his brother, Frank, who could never tell anyone anything again. He resisted answering Maggie’s question, not wanting to have her glimpse his inner feelings.

  Maggie waited for him to answer, then gave up and stunned him with her next remark. “So you want to complete your father’s mission.”

  His eyes flicked up to her face, searching for how she knew what was still buried deep inside him. Only Frank, and later Joe Malik, knew he had rashly proposed just that when he was eighteen years old. Frank had immediately scoffed as older brothers do, but the idea had taken hold of their imaginations and wouldn’t let go. Without realizing it, the brothers had, over the years, gravitated toward the day when they would enter the Awa Maru and discover what had so obsessed their father. Now Frank will never be there with me, he thought. That is, if I ever make it to the Awa Maru myself.

  “My father’s mission ended over sixty-five years ago,” said Hendrick.

  “The gold then?” she asked.

  “Yeah, there’s always the gold,” he replied.

  Maggie was silent for a moment. “What do you think it could be?”

  He shook his head. “We’ll probably never know.” He looked toward the horizon at the dark clouds that were rapidly approaching.

  “You’ve been going after the Awa Maru for quite a while,” she said.

  “Whenever we can scrape up the money.”

  “It must take quite a bit to mount a salvage operation like this,” said Maggie.

  “I saved some money from the jobs I had as an electrical engineer, and we got some funding from salvaging other wrecks and from relatives. Now I do this full time.”

  “You good at it?” she asked.

  “I’m no Robert Ballard,” he said, referring to the leader of the search for the Titanic.

  “Modest too,” she said, smiling. “So how did you meet Joe Malik?”

  “Joe and I met when we were in the navy. Joe is one of those guys who’s always kicking around the sea, fascinated by the power of it, and by the mystery of long forgotten ships. I guess that’s why he left the navy - too much shore duty. I was only going to stay in for a few years and I knew it, so it was no big deal when I left. I guess I infected him with my obsession with the Awa Maru.” He gazed into the water. “The Awa Maru represents a kind of Holy Grail to us. It’s supposedly the largest hidden treasure in the world. Joe and I have been building up to this salvage mission for about five years now.”

  She gave him a sideways glance. “You two don’t look like you go together. You’re like the odd couple.”

  Hendrick laughed. “Yeah, so who’s the sloppy one?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “You both haven’t shaved in days.”

  Hendrick rubbed his stubble. “Last thing on my mind.” Hendrick grew thoughtful. “The poor bastard saved my life once, and now he thinks he has to stick with me to do it again if need be.”

  Maggie’s eyes went wide open. “How did he save your life?”

  Hendrick shook his head and grew serious at the memory. “I was over a hundred feet down, surveying a site, not too far from here where we thought the Awa Maru had gone down. Instead we found an old scow called the Han Gao.” He stopped. A cloud passed over his face.

  Maggie sensed that this was a memory he struggled with. “Bad dive?” Her eyes looked over the long scar on his right forearm.

  Hendrick reeled with the memory of that fateful battle. The flickering light, the dark blood in the water flooded his consciousness. And then there was the face. Always the face. He began to talk quickly in a futile attempt to change the memory.

  “Some guys thought that it was their wreck, and I got into a fight with them,” answered Hendrick. “When I didn’t come up in time, Joe came down …” His voice trailed off. The memory of the previous night’s dream swept through his mind, but he fought it. After five years I should be able to keep it away, he thought. It was the face that unnerved him, always that face.

  Maggie was intrigued by the adventure. She suspected that he had just told her the heavily abridged version.

  He smiled again then turned serious. “You never told me how Chang got a hold of you.” He was anxious for a change in subject.

  Emotion filled her face. She became serious and sad. “I had some business in Taipei, so rather than fly there, I decided to take a cruise from Tokyo to Taiwan. Some British and Americans were going that way on a schooner, and I hired on board as a crewmember. I didn’t know anything about sailing, but they said they’d teach me. Imagine ten guys and me, the only woman on board.” She lightened up a bit. Hendrick nodded.

  “They were real nice,” she said. “Everything was perfect until a storm came up and wrecked the ship. Knocked the masts down, and the ship capsized when it lost its centerboard. We floated about for two days until Chang showed up.” Tears filled her eyes. She stopped talking.

  “Let me guess,” said Hendrick in a voice filled with compassion. “They kept you and murdered the rest.”

  Maggie nodded quickly and turned her head away.

  The wind began to pick up, driving the waves to new heights and rocking the salvage craft with increasing energy.

  “Another storm,” she said, sounding thankful for the distraction.

  Hendrick gave her a brief smile. “We had better get in before we get soaked.” Seconds later, they felt some wind-driven drops of rain begin to pelt t
hem with considerable force.

  They headed for the ship’s superstructure and were halfway there when the wall of rain hit. Hendrick grabbed Maggie by the arm and dragged her toward the doorway. He flung the door open, and the two of them rushed inside. He turned his back to the bulkhead to break his momentum. Maggie tumbled in after him and tried to stop, but skidded on the wet deck and slid into Hendrick’s arms. She looked up in surprise and found her face an inch from Hendrick’s.

  She lingered there for a second, taking in his sharp features and thin lips, and deciding that he had sex appeal, in a rough, animalistic way, even when he wasn’t smiling. Maggie brought her hands up, over his powerful chest under his shirt and pushed away slowly. He held her for a moment resisting her movement, then relaxed his hold on her and let her move away. On impulse, he roughly pulled her back to him, looked at her for a second, then pressed his lips to hers. She gave no resistance and sank surprised into his arms. Their lips swam together, and he could feel his excitement build explosively as she slid her body against his.

  She suddenly pushed away, this time far enough to break his hold on her. Breathless, she stared at him for a few seconds, really seeing him for the first time. Maggie mumbled that she would go back to her cabin and walked down the passageway and around the corner. Did she want him to follow her?

  Hendrick’s eyes followed Maggie as she rounded the corner. The feeling of her lips on his and her body next to him lingered and sent his blood pounding. She’s one of the most exciting women I’ve ever met, he thought. Hendrick heard the double squeak of the hinges on her door and knew Maggie had gone inside her room. He hurried around the corner, his mind in a fever, thinking about Maggie alone in her stateroom. Joe Malik entered the hallway from the opposite end and stopped when he saw Hendrick walking toward him.

  “Loh wants to talk to you on the bridge,” Malik said.

  Hendrick gave him a look of irritation. “It can wait.”