Poseidon's Arrow

53

THE PACKARD ROARED OUT OF THE PARKING garage and skirted past a white van at the edge of the outside lot before merging into the evening rush-hour traffic. Dirk crossed into Georgetown as an evening breeze tousled Summer’s hair in the open car. Turning down a shady residential street filled with elegant homes, Dirk stopped in front of a former carriage house that ages ago had been transformed into a courtly freestanding residence.

They had barely rung the bell when the front door was thrown open by a gargantuan man sporting an overflowing gray beard. St. Julien Perlmutter’s eyes twinkled as he greeted Dirk and Summer and invited them inside.

“I nearly ate without you,” he said.

“You were expecting us?” Dirk asked.

“Of course. Summer e-mailed me with the particulars of your Madagascar mystery. I insisted you both come by for dinner the instant you returned. Don’t you two talk to each other?”

Summer smiled sheepishly at her brother, then followed Perlmutter through a book-infested living room and into a formal dining area, where an antique cherrywood table sat overloaded with food. Perlmutter was a marine historian, one of the best on the planet, but he had a second love as a gourmand. His eyes lit up when Summer opened her bag and offered him three bottles of wine from South Africa.

“A Vergelegen Chardonnay and a pair of red varietals from De Toren.” He examined the labels with delight. “Outstanding selections. Shall we?”

He wasted no time in finding a corkscrew and pouring the Chardonnay.

“I am, of course, distressed to hear of your father’s absence. May he be in safe port,” he said, raising his glass.

While discussing Pitt’s disappearance, they dined on pork loin in chipotle sauce, fingerling potatoes, and baked asparagus. Fresh Georgia peaches in a cream-and-brandy sauce were devoured for dessert. The host’s French cook and housekeeper had the night off, so Summer and Dirk helped Perlmutter clear the table and wash the dishes before sitting back down at the table.

“The wine was delicious, Summer, but don’t toy with me,” Perlmutter said. “You know what I really want to get my hands on.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” She opened her travel bag and pulled out the carefully wrapped journal from the beached life raft. “The log of the Barbarigo,” she said.

“So that’s what this is all about,” Dirk said. “And here I thought you were just happy to see us.”

Perlmutter laughed with a roar that echoed through the house. A longtime friend of their father, he had readily taken to Pitt’s twin children as a sort of kindly uncle.

“My boy, your company is welcome anytime.” He opened and poured another of Summer’s bottles. “But a good nautical mystery is sweeter than wine.”

Perlmutter took the package and carefully unwrapped its oilskin covering. The leather-bound journal showed signs of wear, but was otherwise undamaged. He gently opened the cover and read the title page, written by hand in bold lettering.

“Viaggio di Sommergibile Barbarigo, Giugno 1943. Capitano di corvetta Umberto de Julio.” Perlmutter looked up at Summer and smiled. “That’s our submarine.”

“Submarine?” Dirk asked.

“The raft on the beach,” Summer said. “It contained the remains of crewmen from a World War Two Italian submarine.”

“The Barbarigo, a large boat of the Marcello class,” Perlmutter said. “She had an illustrious record in the Atlantic early in the war, sinking six vessels and downing an aircraft. But she lost her teeth in 1943 when she was assigned to a project with the code name of Aquila.”

“Latin for ‘eagle,’” Dirk said.

Summer gave her brother a suspicious look.

“Astronomy,” he explained. “I remember it from a constellation near Aquarius.”

“Mule would have been a more befitting name,” Perlmutter said. “The Germans were concerned over their high loss of surface ships while trading war materials with Japan, so they convinced the Italians to convert eight of their largest, and somewhat outdated, submarines to transport duty. The interiors were gutted and most of their armaments removed so they could carry a maximum amount of cargo.”

“Sounds like dangerous duty,” Dirk said.

“It was. Four of the vessels were sunk outright, one was scuttled, and the other three captured in Asia before completing a round-trip. Or at least that’s what the history books say.” Perlmutter began scanning the pages, examining the dates.

“So what happened to the Barbarigo?” Summer asked.

“Designated Aquila Five, she departed Bordeaux on June 16, 1943, bound for Singapore with a cargo of mercury, steel, and aluminum bars. Radio contact was lost a few days later, and it was presumed she was sunk somewhere near the Azores.”

He skipped ahead to the last page. “My Italian is deplorable, but I read the last entry as November 12, 1943.”

“Nearly five months later,” Dirk said. “Something doesn’t figure.”

“I have the answer, I hope, right here.” Summer pulled out a sheaf of printed pages. “I had Hiram scan the logbook into his computer system. He claimed it was child’s play to translate it into English and gave me the output right before we left.”

She began passing the pages around the table, letting Dirk and Perlmutter devour them like a pair of hungry coyotes.

“Here we go,” Dirk said. “It says here that they were spotted and attacked by two aircraft in the Bay of Biscayne shortly after leaving port but safely eluded them. Their radio mast was damaged, which prevented them from communicating with central command.”

Via the journal, they followed the Barbarigo’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. The submarine off-loaded its cargo in Singapore and then was diverted to a small Malaysian port near Kuala Lumpur.

“‘On 23 September, we took on 130 tons of oxidized ore called Red Death by the locals,’” Summer read. “‘A German scientist named Steiner oversaw the loading and joined the crew for the return voyage.’”

“The first officer later wrote that Steiner stayed holed up in his cabin with a stack of physics books for the rest of the trip,” Dirk said.

“Red Death?” Perlmutter said. “I wonder if it is something like Edgar Allan Poe’s plague of the same name. I’ll have to take a look at that—and this fellow Steiner. Certainly a curious cargo.”

The trio flipped through several weeks of entries describing the submarine’s return across the Indian Ocean. On the ninth of November, the handwriting turned hurried, and the pages showed saltwater stains.

“This is where they got into trouble, while off the coast of South Africa,” Perlmutter said. He read aloud a terse description of the Barbarigo diving to avoid a nighttime air attack. After eluding several bombing runs, the crew believed they had escaped the attack—only to discover that the sub’s propeller had been disabled or blown off entirely.

Dirk and Summer sat silently as Perlmutter read of the resulting tragedy. With no propulsion, the sub remained submerged for twelve hours, fearing that additional aircraft had been called to the scene. Surfacing at midday, they found themselves in an empty sea, drifting to the southeast. Carried past the shipping lanes and without a long-range radio, the officers feared they might drift to their deaths in the Antarctica. Captain De Julio ordered the crew to abandon ship, and they took to the four life rafts stowed beneath the forward deck, saluting their beloved vessel as they left her side. In a mix-up of orders, the last officer off failed to prime the scuttle charges and sealed the main hatch. Rather than sinking before them, the Barbarigo drifted off toward the horizon.

Perlmutter stopped reading and raised his eyebrows like a pair of drawbridges. “My word,” he said quietly. “That is most curious.”

“What happened to the other three boats?” Summer asked.

“The log entries become spottier at this point,” Perlmutter said. “They attempted to reach South Africa and were within sight of land when a storm struck. The boats were dispersed in the rough seas, and Captain De Julio said the men in his boat never again saw the other three. During the ordeal they lost five men, all their food and water, and their sail and oars. The raft was carried east, drifting away from shore with the coastal current. Eventually the weather turned hot and dry. With no fresh water, they lost two more crewmen, leaving only the captain, the first officer, and two engineers.”

“Ravaged by thirst, they eventually spotted land again and were able to paddle closer. High winds and huge swells carried them ashore and tossed them onto the beach,” Perlmutter said. “They found themselves in a hot desert, desperate for water. The last entry states the captain went off alone in search of water, as the others were too weak to walk. The journal ends, ‘God bless the Barbarigo and her crew.’”

“We can attest to the barrenness of the region,” Summer said after a time. “What a tragedy that they nearly made it safely to South Africa and ended up a thousand miles away in Madagascar.”

“They fared slightly better than the crewmen in the other three boats,” Dirk said.

Perlmutter nodded, though he appeared lost in thought. He rose from his seat and padded into the living room, then returned a few minutes later with an armful of books and an inquisitive look. “Congratulations, Summer. It would appear as if you have solved two enduring mysteries of the sea.”

“Two?” she asked.

“Yes, the fate of the Barbarigo and the identity of the South Atlantic Wraith.”

“I’ll buy the former,” Dirk said, “but what’s this Wraith?”

Perlmutter opened the first book and flipped through its pages. “From the logbook of the merchant ship Manchester, off the Falkland Islands, February 14, 1946. ‘Light seas, winds out of the southwest three or four. At 1100, the first officer reported an object off our starboard beam. Appeared at first to be a whale carcass, but believe it is a man-made vessel.’”

He closed the book and opened another. “The freighter Southern Star, April 3, 1948, near Santa Cruz, Argentina. ‘Unknown object, possible sailing vessel, spotted adrift two miles distant. Black hull, small superstructure amidships. Appears abandoned.’”

Perlmutter picked up a third book. “Accounts of a South Georgia Whaling Station. In February of 1951, the whaler Paulita arrived with a kill of three mature gray whales. Captain reports spotting a ghost ship, low black hull, small sail amidships, drifting one hundred miles north. Crew called it the South Atlantic Wraith.”

“You think the Barbarigo is this Atlantic Wraith?” Summer asked.

“It’s entirely possible. For a period of twenty-two years, there were sightings of a supposed ghost ship adrift in the South Atlantic. For one reason or another, no one seemed to get a close view, but the descriptions are all similar. It seems to me that a bottled-up submarine could drift about an empty sea for quite a while.”

“At those southerly latitudes, the sub’s conning tower could easily ice over,” Dirk said, “so from a distance it resembled a sail.”

“That might be confirmed in the last recorded sighting.” Perlmutter opened the final book. “It was in 1964. An endurance sailor named Leigh Hunt was making a solo round-the-world voyage when he saw something unusual. Ah, here it is,” he said, and began reading aloud the passage,

“‘While approaching the Magellan Straits, I encountered a horrific storm, brutal even for these waters. For thirty hours, I battled twenty-foot seas and raging winds that tried with all their fury to drive me onto the rocks around Cape Horn. It was in the midst of this duel that I caught glimpse of the South Atlantic Wraith. I thought it a berg at first, for it was encrusted in ice, but I could see the dark, sharp edges of steel beneath. She washed by me quickly, carried with the winds and waves, toward a sure death on the shores of Tierra del Fuego.”

“Wow,” Summer said, “still afloat in 1964.”

“But apparently not for long, if Hunt’s account is accurate,” Perlmutter said.

“Is Hunt still alive?” she asked. “Perhaps we could talk to him.”

“I’m afraid he was lost at sea a few years ago. But his family might still possess his logbooks.”

Dirk finished his glass of wine and looked at his sister.

“Well, Summer, I guess you are still leaving us with two enduring mysteries to solve.”

“Yes,” Summer said, finishing his thought. “Where the Barbarigo sank and what she was carrying.”