Spartan Gold

CHAPTER 14

RUM CAY, BAHAMAS

Comprising as the island did an area of less than thirty square miles, finding a hidden base on Rum Cay might at first glance appear a fairly straightforward task to uninitiated adventurers, but Sam and Remi had been down similar roads before and knew the coastline, uneven as it was with hundreds of coves and inlets, was in reality at least six times the island’s gross circumference.

Originally known as Mamana by the local Lucayan Indians, the island was renamed Santa Maria de la Concepción by Christopher Columbus, finally gaining its modern name when Spanish explorers found a lone cask of rum washed up on one of its white sand beaches.

The island’s only village of note, Port Nelson, lay on the island’s northwest coast surrounded by groves of coconut trees. With a population that, according to the 1990 census, was somewhere between fifty and seventy souls—most of whom lived in Port Nelson—Rum Cay’s primary, if anemic, industry was tourism, followed by pineapple, salt, and sisal, all of which have waxed and waned over the decades. Other settlements, long since deserted and overgrown, bore exotic monikers like Black Rock and Gin Hill. Formidable reefs, coral canyons, and plunging seabeds encircle the island, making it a favored destination for pirates of old—or so said the brochure Remi had picked up in Nassau.

“There’s even a famous wreck,” she said as Sam banked the Bonanza to the right, following the contour of the island.

However unlikely they were to spot their target from the air, both thought it prudent to at least circumnavigate the island to get a better feel for what lay ahead.

“Blackbeard?” Sam asked. “Captain Kidd?”

“Neither. The HMS Conqueror, Britain’s first propeller-driven warship. Sank in 1861 in about thirty feet of water in a staghorn gully near Sumner Point Reef.”

“Sounds like it may be worth a return trip here.”

Rum Cay offered a few luxury resorts and even more beach cottage rentals. Judging by the azure waters, lush rolling hills, and relative seclusion, it struck Sam as the perfect get-away-from-it-all spot.

“There’s the airstrip,” Remi said, pointing out the window.

The 4,500-foot paved runway sat a couple miles from Port Nelson, a truncated white T amid a patch of forest that seemed determined to reclaim it. Sam could see antlike workers at the tarmac’s edge, hacking at the foliage with machetes. Just east of the runway they could see Salt Lake, and a few miles north of that, Lake George.

Though Sam had no fear of using the airstrip, they had asked Selma to ensure whatever aircraft they rented was equipped with pontoons. Exploring the island by car would have taken weeks at least and required miles of cross-country bushwhacking. With the pontoons, they could hop around the island’s shoreline, exploring interesting spots as they came across them.

Sam descended to two thousand feet, contacted Port Nelson Control, which verified their flight plan and permission, then banked around the northeast headland and turned south along the coast. As the least-inhabited part of the island, he and Remi thought it the best place to start their search. As the western half of the island was well explored and well populated—at least by Rum Cay standards—any discovery of the secret base would have been noted by now. Selma hadn’t come across any such reports, so Sam and Remi took this as a good sign. Providing the secret base wasn’t simply the concoction of some senile German Kriegsmarine.

“That looks like it’d make a good base of operations,” Sam said, nodding through the windshield at a three-quarter moon cove with sugar-white beaches. The nearest structure, what looked like an abandoned plantation house, sat six miles inland.

Sam banked again, bleeding off speed and altitude as he went until they were two hundred feet off the waves, then lined up the Bonanza’s nose on the beach. He did a quick visual check to make sure he hadn’t missed seeing a reef, then eased the craft down, flaring at the last moment and letting the pontoons kiss the surface. He throttled back to idle, letting the plane’s momentum carry them forward. The pontoons hissed as they contacted the shoal sand and they came to a gentle stop six feet onto dry land.

“Beautiful landing, Mr. Lindbergh,” Remi said, unbuckling her seat belt.

“I like to think all my landings are beautiful.”

“Of course they are, dear. Except for that time in Peru . . .”

“Never mind.”

Remi climbed out onto the beach and Sam handed down their backpacks and the duffel bags containing their camping gear. Sam’s satellite phone trilled and he answered.

“Mr. Fargo, it’s Selma.”

“Good timing. We just touched down. Hold on.” Sam called Remi over and put the phone on speaker. “First things first: You’re buttoned up?”

After learning the pedigrees of Bondaruk, Arkhipov, and Kholkov from Rube, Sam had ordered Selma, Pete, and Wendy to move into the Goldfish Point house and set the alarm system, which Sam had long ago tweaked to satisfy his engineer’s mind; the system, he knew, would give a CIA black-bag team a run for its money. And, as luck would have it, the San Diego Commissioner of Police and Sam’s thrice-weekly judo partner lived a half mile from them. Squad cars were on quick-response alert for their neighborhood.

“Safe and sound,” Selma replied.

“How goes the battle?”

“We’re getting there. Should have some interesting reading for you when you get home. First, some good news: I figured out what the bug is on the bottom of the bottle. It’s from Napoleon’s family coat of arms. On the right side of the coat is what looks like a bee. Though there’s some debate about this among historians, most believe it isn’t a bee at all, but a golden cicada—or at least that’s what it was in the beginning. The symbol was first discovered in 1653 in the tomb of Childeric I, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty. It represents immortality and resurrection.”

“Immortality and resurrection,” Remi repeated. “A tad conceited—but then again we are talking about Napoleon.”

“Let me get this straight,” Sam said. “Napoleon’s signature icon is a grasshopper?”

“Close, but not exactly,” Selma said. “Different branch of the family tree. The cicada is more closely related to leafhoppers and spittlebugs.”

Sam laughed. “Ah, yes, the royal spittlebug.”

“Between the cicada and Henri Archambault’s mark, there’s no doubt the bottle’s from the Lost Cellar.”

“Good work,” Sam said. “What else?”

“I also finished dissecting the translation of Manfred Boehm’s diary. There’s a line in there about ‘the Goat’s Head’ . . . ?”

“I remember,” Remi replied. Both she and Sam had assumed it had been a Rum Cay tavern Boehm and his shipmates had visited.

“Well, I massaged the translation a bit, using both High and Low German, and I think the Goat’s Head is a landmark of some kind—maybe a navigation aid. Problem is, I did some digging and I couldn’t find anything about a Goat’s Head related to Rum Cay—or any of the other islands, for that matter.”

“We’ll keep our eyes peeled,” Sam replied. “If you’re right, it’s likely a rock formation of some kind.”

“Agreed. And last, I owe you guys an apology.”

“For?”

“An error.”

“Say it isn’t so.”

Selma rarely made mistakes and those that she did were almost always minor. Even so, she was a strict taskmaster—more so with herself than anyone else.

“I was slightly off in translating the abstract from the German naval archives. Wolfgang Müller wasn’t the captain of the Lothringen . He was a passenger, just like Boehm. Another sub captain, in fact. He was assigned to the midget sub UM-77.”

“So Boehm and Müller and their subs are aboard the Lothringen, which sails across the Atlantic, puts in at Rum Cay for resupply and refit—”

“That’s the word the sailor—Froch—used in his blog, correct?”

“Correct. Refit.”

“Then a week later, Boehm’s boat, the UM-34 ends up in the Pocomoke River and the Lothringen is sunk. Which begs the question, where is Müller’s sub, the UM-77?”

“According to the German archives, it’s listed as lost. According to U.S. Navy archives, they found nothing aboard the Lothringen when it was captured.”

Remi replied, “Which means the UM-77 probably went down on its own mission—something similar to Boehm’s mission, I’m betting.”

“I agree,” Sam said, “but there’s also a third possibility.”

“Which is?”

“She’s still here. It’s the word ‘refit’ that got my attention. The Lothringen was what, one hundred fifty feet long?”

“About that,” Selma replied.

“To refit a ship that big would have taken a fair-sized facility—something big enough that it would have been discovered by now. I’m beginning to think the refitting they mentioned was for the UM-34 and the UM-77, and if we’re right about their mission being top secret, they sure as hell weren’t going to do that in the open—not with U.S. Navy PBY spotter planes flying out of Puerto Rico.”

“Which means . . . ?” Remi asked.

“Which means we may have some spelunking in our future,” Sam replied.

They finished unloading the Bonanza, then staked her tie-downs deep into the sand and started looking for a campsite. Nightfall was only a few hours away. They’d get a fresh start in the morning.

“We’ve got a competitor,” Remi said, pointing down the beach.

Sam shaded his eyes with his palm and squinted. “Well, that’s not something you see every day.”

A quarter mile away, nestled against the tree line along the cove’s northern arm, was what looked for all the world like a Hollywood version of a tiki hut, complete with a thatched conical roof and plank walls. Hanging between the hut’s two front posts was a hammock; in it was a figure, one foot dangling over the edge, rocking the hammock back and forth. Without looking up the figure raised a hand in greeting and called, “Ahoy.”

Sam and Remi walked the remaining distance. In front of the hut was a fire pit surrounded by wave-worn logs for seating. “Welcome,” the man said.

He looked distinguished if not a bit weathered, with white hair, a well-trimmed goatee, and twinkling blue eyes.

“Don’t mean to intrude,” Sam said.

“Nonsense. Wanderers are always welcome, and you two certainly look the part. Have a seat.”

Sam and Remi dropped their gear in the sand and found seats on a log. Sam introduced themselves to their host, who simply said, “Happy to have you. In fact, I’m going to turn the estate over to you. Time to move on.”

“Don’t go on our account,” Remi said.

“Nothing of the sort, dear lady. I’ve got a previous engagement in Port Henry. Won’t be back for a couple days.”

With that the man disappeared into the trees and emerged a few seconds later pushing a Vespa scooter. “There’s a fishing pole, lures, pots, pans, and all that inside,” he said. “Make yourselves at home. There’s a trapdoor wine cellar. You’re welcome to try a bottle.”

Sam, strangely certain he could trust this stranger, said, “You haven’t heard any legends about a secret base around here, have you?”

“A Nazi submarine base, yes?”

“That’s the one.”

The man put the scooter up onto its kickstand. He went inside the hut and came back out carrying what looked like a tray-sized square of sheet metal. He handed it to Sam.

“To carry our dinner?” Sam asked.

“That’s a hydroplane, son. From a pretty small sub, too, by the looks of it.”

“Where did you find this?”

“Liberty Rock, on the north side near Port Boyd.”

“Sounds like the place to start looking.”

“I found that in a lagoon. My guess is it washed out of an underground river. Here on the east side of the island they all flow south to north. Problem is, they’re not strong enough to push anything heavier than that plane.”

“No offense,” Remi said, “but if you knew what this belonged to, why haven’t you looked for it yourself?”

The man smiled. “I’ve done my fair share of exploring. I figured sooner or later someone would come along asking the right questions. And here you are.” The man walked toward his scooter, then stopped and turned back. “You know, if I’d been a German sailor back then looking for a place to hide out, I would’ve loved to have stumbled across a sea cave.”

“Me, too,” Sam said.

“As luck would have it, Rum Cay is full of them. Dozens along this shore alone, most unexplored—most connected to underground rivers.”

“Thanks. By the way, ever heard of anything called the Goat’s Head?”

The man scratched his chin. “Can’t say I have. Well, I’m off. Good hunting.”

The man puttered off on the scooter and disappeared.

Sam and Remi were silent for a few moments, then Sam said, “I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“We didn’t even think to get his name.”

“I don’t think we need it,” Remi said, pointing at the hut.

Beside the door was a wooden plaque. In hand-painted red letters it said, CASA DE CUSSLER.