The Mediterranean Caper

16

The restless sea curled to a tall crest and beckoned like the ominous finger of doom before it rammed into the unyielding gray cliffs. The air was warm and clear and stirred by a faint breath from the southwest. A ghost, or so the First Attempt seemed — a white steel ghost— glided at slow speed closer and closer to the boiling caldron, until it looked like disaster was inevitable. At the last instant, no sooner, Gunn spun the helm to starboard, sending the First Attempt on a parallel course to the rocky cliff base.

He kept glancing warily from the needle, traveling across the fathometer’s graph paper, to the surfline, a scant fifty yards away, and back again.

“How’s that for curb service?” he asked without turning. The voice was soft and controlled; he was as calm as a fisherman in a rowboat on a placid Minnesota lake.

“Your old seamanship instructor at Annapolis Would be proud of you,” Pitt replied. Unlike Gunn, he Was staring straight ahead.

“It’s not half as grim as it looks,” Gunn said, gesturing at the fathometer. “The bottom is a good ten fathoms below our keel!”

“Sixty feet in less than a hundred yards; that’s quite a drop-off.”

Gunn lifted one hand from the helm and took off his gold braided Navy cap, swiping a few beads of sweat that hung from his hairline.

“It’s not an uncommon occurrence in an area that’s free of outer reefs.”

“It’s a good sign,” Pitt said thoughtfully.

“How so?”

“Plenty of room for a sub to maneuver without surface detection.”

“At night maybe,” Gunn said. “Too obvious during the day. The water visibility is almost a hundred feet.

Anyone standing on the bluffs within a mile in either direction could easily look down and spot a three hundred foot hull that was crawling over the bottom.”

“It shouldn't be too difficult to spot a diver either,” Pitt turned and gazed up at the villa, nestled like a fortress on the craggy side of the mountain.

“You’re mad to take a chance like this,” Gunn said slowly. “Von Till can see any movement you make.

I’ll bet a dime to a donut that He’s had a pair of binoculars trained on us every second since we upped anchor.”

“I’m betting on it too,” Pitt murmured. He lost; himself for a moment in the beauty of the scene. The azure arms of the Aegean encircled the ancient island seascape in a dazzling reflection of sun and water.

Only the voice of the crashing surf answered the steady hum of the ship’s engines, punctuated occasionally by the shriek of a solitary gull. Above the rocky cliffs, a herd of cattle grazed on a sloping green pasture, like tiny immovable shapes in a Rembrandt landscape. And below, in sheltered coves among the lesser cliffs, piles of sun-bleached driftwood lay dead and still on tiny shell carpeted beaches.

Pitt nearly lingered too long. He tugged his mind back to the job at hand. That mysterious area of calm water was coming up now, only three quarters of a mile away off the port bow. He laid a hand on Gunn’s shoulder and pointed.

“The flat pond.”

Gunn nodded. “OK, got it. At our present speed we should be alongside in ten minutes. Is your team ready?”

“All set and primed,” Pitt answered briefly. “They know what to expect. I’ve got them stationed along the starboard cabin deck; out of sight to any prying eyes from the villa.”

Gunn replaced his cap. “Be sure you order them to leap plenty clear of the hull. Getting sucked into a prop can be a very messy business.”

“I doubt that they have to be ordered,” Pitt said quietly. “They’re all good men. You told me so yourself.”

“Damn right,” Gunn snorted. He turned to Pitt. “I’m going to keep the ship close-in to the shoreline for another three miles. We might fool von Till into thinking we’re on a routine sounding course to chart the shallows. It might work, I don’t know. For your sake I hope he’s taken in.”

“Well soon find out.” Pitt checked his watch against the ship’s chronometer. “What time do you make your rendezvous?”

"I'll run a series of doglegs on the return course and arrive back here at 1410. That gives you exactly fifty minutes to find the sub and get out.” Gunn dug a cigar out of a breast pocket and lit it “You and my men be waiting for the ship, you hear me?”

Pitt didn’t answer immediately. A broad smile broke across his lips, and his vivid green eyes seemed to be laughing.

Gunn looked puzzled. “What did I say that’s so funny?”

“For a moment you reminded me of my mother. She always used to say that when my ship came in I’d probably be waiting at the bus depot”

Gunn ruefully shook his head. “If you don’t come back at least I’ll know where to look. Well, let’s get on with it. You had better climb into your diving gear.”

Pitt simply waved in acknowledgment, left the hot confine of the wheelhouse and dropped down the ladder to the First Attempt’s starboard cabin deck. He found five deeply tanned men waiting for him, probably. Pitt reflected, the five most eager and intelligent men he’d ever known. Like himself, they wore only black bikini swim trunks. All were busily engaged in adjusting breathing regulators and strapping on air tanks; each man rechecked the other’s equipment, making certain the tank valves and harness webbing were in their proper position.

The nearest diver, Ken Knight, looked up at Pitt’s arrival. “I have your gear all ready for you, Major. I hope a single hose regulator will be OK, NUMA didn’t issue us any doubles this trip.”

“A single hose will do fine,” Pitt replied. He pulled on a pair of fins and strapped a knife to his right calf; then he slipped a mask over his head and adjusted the snorkel. The mask was the wide-angle type that gave the wearer a one hundred and eighty degree range of vision. Next came the air tank and the regulator. He was about to struggle with the tank harness when suddenly the forty pound outfit was swept from the deck and held at his back by two massive, hairy arms.

“How you could ever get through a day without my services,” said the voice of Giordino pompously, “is a mystery to me.”

“The real mystery is why l put up with your jackhammer mouth and overabundant ego,” Pitt said sourly.

“There you go, picking on me again,” Giordino tried to sound wounded but couldn’t quite pull it off. He turned and looked down at the passing water and, after a long pause, muttered very slowly; “Christ!

Look at the clarity of that water. It’s sharper than a goldfish bowl.”

“So I’ve noticed.” Pitt unsheathed the barbed tip of a six foot pole spear and checked the elasticity of the rubber sling attached to the butt end. “Have you studied your lesson?”

“The old gray matter,” Giordino said, pointing to his head, “has all the answers filed and indexed.”

“As usual, it’s comforting to know you’re so sure of yourself.”

“Sherlock Giordino knows all, sees all No secret can escape my probing mind.”

“Your probing mind better be well oiled,” Pitt said: earnestly. “You’ve got a tight schedule to keep.”

“Just leave it to me,” Giordino said straight faced. ‘Well, it’s about that time. I wish I was coming along.

Enjoy your swim and have fun.”

“I intend to,” Pitt murmured. “I intend to.”

Two chimes from the ship’s bell sounded Gunn’s one minute warning signal. Pitt, walking awkwardly in his fins, moved onto a small platform that extended over the side of the hull.

“At the sound of the next tone, gentlemen, we go!” He said no more, partly because each man knew what he had to do, partly because there was nothing else to say that had any meaning.

The divers gripped their spear guns a little tighter and silently exchanged glances. One thought and only one thought was on all their minds at this minute: if the jump isn’t far enough, a leg could be lost in the whirling propeller. At a gesture from Pitt, they arranged themselves in a line behind the platform.

Before he lowered the mask over his eyes, Pitt took another look at the men around him and for the tenth time studied their identifying features, features he would be able to recognize at a distance under water. The man nearest him, Ken Knight, the geophysicist, was the only blond in the group; Stan Thomas, the short, runty ship’s engineer, wore blue fins and was the only member, Pitt surmised, who could probably handle himself in a tough fight. Next came a red-bearded marine biologist, Lee Spencer, then Gustaf Hersong, a lanky six-foot-six marine botanist — both those men seemed to be grinning at each other over a private joke. The anchor man was the expedition’s photographer, Omar Woodson, as true a deadpan character as Pitt had ever seen and who genuinely appeared bored by the whole show.

Instead of a spear gun, Woodson carried a 35 mm Nykonos with flash, swinging the expensive underwater unit over the railing, negligently, as if it were an old used box camera.

Pitt pulled the mask down over his eyes, whistling softly to himself, and gazed once more at the water. It was passing beneath the platform at a much more leisurely rate now — Gunn had cut the First Attempt’s speed to a crawling three knots — slow enough, Pitt decided, for a feet first entry. His eyes turned past the bow, looking forward with trance-like fixity at the approximate point in the sea where at any moment now he must dive.

At almost the same instant, Gunn scrutinized the fathometer and the jagged cliffs for the last time. His.

hand slowly raised, groped for the bell line, found it, paused, then gave one hard pull. The metallic clang burst into the hot afternoon air and carried across the surf to the steep coastal wall, echoing in a muted undertone back toward the ship.

Pitt, poised on the platform, didn’t wait for the echo. Holding the mask firmly in place against his face with one hand and clutching the pole spear in the other, he leaped.

The impact shattered the sun-danced water into a blazing diffused pattern of blue brilliance. Immediately after the surface closed over his head, Pitt rolled frontward and kicked his fins as fast, it seemed to him, as a Mississippi River paddle wheeler at full throttle. Five seconds and fifteen feet later, he glanced over his shoulder and watched the dark shape of the ship’s hull slide slowly overhead. The whirling twin propellers seemed frighteningly closer than they really were: their thrashing sound traveled at forty-nine hundred feet per second underwater as compared to less than eleven hundred feet through air, and the light refraction magnified their flashing blades by nearly twenty-five percent.

Teeth clenched on the regulator’s mouthpiece, Pitt swung around and stared in the direction of the shrinking ship to see how the others had fared. His sigh of relief was answered by the hiss of his exhaust bubbles from the regulator. Thank God, they were all there, and in one piece. Knight, Thomas, Spencer, and Hersong, all in a group within touching distance. Only Woodson had dragged his feet; he hung in the water about twenty feet beyond the rest.

The visibility was startling. The long, purplish tentacles of a jelly-like Portuguese Man O’ War were clearly discernible nearly eighty feet away. A pair of ugly looking Dragonet fish swam idly across the bottom, their vivid blue and yellow scaleless bodies topped by high slender gill spines. It was a hidden world, a soundless world, owned by weirdly shaped creatures and decorated by graceful fantasies of form and vibrant hues that defied any attempt at human description. It was also a world of mystery and danger, guarded by a sinister array of weapons, varying from the slaughterous teeth of the shark to the deadly venom of the innocent looking Zebra fish; an intriguing combination of eternal beauty and constant peril.

Without waiting for signs of discomfort, Pitt began snorting into the mask to equalize the air pressure of his inner ears to that of the water pressure. When his ears popped, he slowly dove toward the majestic seascape under him and became a part of it.

At thirty feet, the reds were left behind, and the depths became a soft blending of blues and greens. Pitt leveled off at fifty and studied the bottom. No sea growth or rocks here, just a patch of submerged desert where miniature sand dunes meandered in unbroken snake-like ripples. Except for an occasional bottom-dwelling Star Gazer fish, buried with only a pair of stony eyes and a portion of its grotesque, fringed lips protruding above the sand, the sea floor was deserted.

Exactly eight minutes after they had left the First Attempt, the bottom began to slope upward, and the water became slightly murky from the surface wave action. A rock formation, covered with swaying seaweed, appeared in the gloom ahead. And then suddenly they were at the base of a vertically sheer cliff that rose at an unbroken 90 deg. angle until it disappeared into the mirrored surface above. Like Captain Nemo and his companions exploring an undersea garden, Pitt began directing his team of marine scientists to spread out and search for the submarine cave.

The hunt took no more than five minutes. Woodson, who had angled a hundred feet out on the right perimeter, found it first. Signaling Pitt and the others by rapping his knife against his airtank, he motioned for them to come and went swimming off along the northern face of the cliff to a point beyond a weed-encrusted crevasse. There he paused and held up a leveled arm.

And then Pitt saw it; a black and ominous opening just twelve feet below the surface. The size was perfect; big enough for a submarine or, for that matter, a locomotive to have been driven in. They all hung suspended in the clear crystal water, their eyes fixed on the cave entrance, hesitating, exchanging glances.

Pitt moved first, entering the hole. Except for a few dim flashes of light, reflected from the whites of his heels, he disappeared completely from view, swallowed by the yawning cavity.

He leisurely beat the water with his fins and let an incoming swell help carry him slowly through the tunnel. The bright blue-green of the sunlit sea rapidly transformed into a kind of deep twilight blue. At first Pitt could see nothing, but soon his eyes adjusted to the dark interior, and he began to make out a few details of his surroundings.

There should have been a myriad of marine life clinging to the tunnel walls. There should have been darting crabs, winking limpets and barnacles, or crawling lobsters, sneaking about in search of tasty shellfish. There were none of these. The rocky sides were barren, and they were coated with a reddish substance that clouded the water whenever Pitt touched the smooth, unnatural material. He rolled face up and inspected the arched roof, watching in fascinated interest as his exhaust bubbles rose and wandered across the ceiling, like a trail of quicksilver, seeking escape from a vial.

Abruptly the roof angled upward, and Pitt’s head broke the surface. He looked around but saw nothing; a gray cloud of mist obscured everything. Puzzled, he ducked his head back in the water and dove, leveling out at ten feet. Beneath him a cylindrical shaft of cobalt light flowed in from the tunnel. The water was as clear as air; Pitt could see every nook and cranny of the cavern's submerged area.

An aquarium. That was the only way Pitt could describe it. But for the fact that there were no portholes in the walls, the cavern could have easily passed for the main tank at Marineland in California. It was a far cry from the tunnel; marine life abounded everywhere. The lobsters were here, and so were the crabs, the limpets, the barnacles, even a heavy growth of kelp. There were also roving schools of brilliantly colored fish. One fish in particular caught Pitt’s eye, but before he could get closer, it saw his approach and flashed into a protective rock fissure.

For several moments, Pitt took in the breathtaking scene. Then suddenly, he started as a foreign hand grabbed his leg. It was Ken Knight, and he was motioning toward the surface. Pitt nodded and swam to the top. Again he was greeted by the heavy mist.

Pitt spit out his mouthpiece. “What do you make of it?” he asked. The rock walls amplified his voice to a roar.

“A fairly common occurrence,” Knight answered, roaring back matter of factly. “Every time a swell hits the entrance outside, the force runs like a piston through the tunnel, compressing the air already trapped in the cavern. When the pressure recedes, the expanded, moisturized air cools and condenses in a fine mist.” Knight paused to blow some mucus from his nose. “The swells are running at about twelve-second intervals, so it should start to clear up at any time.”

No sooner had he said it than the mist disappeared, revealing a dim cavern that arched to a dome sixty feet overhead. It was a drowned grotto and nothing more; no traces of man-made equipment. Pitt felt as though he had entered a deserted cathedral whose spires stood in ruined desolation from a World War I artillery shelling or a World War II aerial bombardment The walls were twisted and broken in jagged fissures, and. the shattered rocks at their base showed that another rock fall could come at any time.

Then the mist returned and smothered all vision.

Pitt, in the few seconds it took to survey the cavern, was conscious of nothing but the gnawing fear of self-doubt. Then came a creeping wave of numbed disbelief, then the chagrin that he had bungled it.

"It can’t be,” he muttered. “It just can’t be.” Pitt’s free hand curled into a white knuckled fist, and he pounded the water in an outburst of temper and despair. “This cavern had to be von Till’s base of operations. God help us from the mess that I’ve surely caused.”.

“I'd still vote for you, Major,” Knight reached out and touched Pitt on the shoulder. “The geology bears out your hunch. This would seem the most logical spot.”

“It’s a dead end. Except for the tunnel, there’s no openings, anywhere.”

“I saw a ledge on the far end of the cave. Maybe if

I—”

“No time for that,” Pitt interrupted impatiently. “We must get back out as fast as we can and keep searching.”

“Excuse me, Major!” Hersong had caught Pitt’s arm, an action that surprised Pitt by seemingly coming out of nowhere. “I found something that might be of interest.”

The mist went through its cycle and then cleared again, revealing a peculiar expression on Hersong’s face that caught Pitt’s attention. He grinned at the lanky botanist.

“OK, Hersong. let’s make it quick. We hardly have time for a lecture on marine flora.”

“Believe it or not, that’s just what I had in mind,” Hersong grinned back; the glistening water trickled through the strands of his red beard. “Tell me, did you notice that growth of Macrocystis pyrifera on the wall opposite the tunnel?”

“I might have,” Pitt answered flatly, “if I knew what you were talking about”

"Macrocystis pyrifera is a brown algae of the Phaeophyta family, perhaps, better known as kelp.”

Pitt stared at him, considering, and let him continue.

“What it boils down to, Major, is that this particular species of kelp is native only to the Pacific Coast of the United States. The water temperature in this part of the Mediterranean is far too warm for Macrocystis pyrifera to survive. On top of that, kelp, like in land plant cousins, needs sunlight to provide the process for photosynthesis. I can’t imagine kelp thriving in an underwater cave. Nope, if you’ll forgive the vernacular, it just ain’t done.”

Pitt was slowly treading water. “Then if it isn’t kelp, what is it?”.

The mist was back, and Pitt couldn’t see Hersong’s face. He could only hear the botanists rumbling voice.

“It’s art, Major. pure art. Without a doubt, the finest plastic replica of Macrocystis pyrifera I’ve ever beheld.”

“Plastic?” Knight boomed, his tone echoing around the cavern. “Are you sure?”

“My dear boy,” Hersong said disdainfully. “Do I question your. analysis of’ core samples or—”

“That red slime on the tunnel walls,” Pitt cut in. “What do you make of that?”

“Couldn’t say for sure,” Hersong said. “Looked like some type of’ paint or coating.”

“I’ll back him. Major.” The face of Stun Thomas suddenly materialized out of the fading mist. “Red anti-fouling paint for ship hulls. It contains arsenic; that’s why nothing grows in the tunnel.”

Pitt glanced at his watch. ‘Time is running out.

This must be the place.”

“Another tunnel behind the kelp? Knight asked in a careful sort of voice. “Is that it, Major?”

“It’s beginning to look encouraging.” Pitt said quietly. “A camouflaged second tunnel that leads to a second cavern. Now I can see why von Till’s operation was never discovered by any native of Thasos.”

“Well,” Hersong purged the water from his mouthpiece. “I guess we keep going.”

“We have no other option,” Pitt said. “Are we all ready for another go?”

“All present and accounted for, except for Woodson,” Spencer answered.

Suddenly, at that instant, a flashbulb flooded the cavern in a bright blue light

“Nobody smiled,” Woodson observed sourly. He had drifted off to the far wall of the cavern, trying for the widest possible lens angle.

“Next time, yell sex.” Spencer joked back.

“It wouldn’t matter,” Woodson grunted. “None of you know what it means anyway.”

Pitt grinned and moved off. He rolled forward and jackknifed. diving to the bottom like an airplane on a strafing run. The others followed, spaced out at ten-foot intervals.

The forest of counterfeit kelp was thick and nearly impenetrable. Thin branches rose from the bottom to the surface, flaring into a wide, spreading canopy. Hersong was right: it was a work of art. Even at arm’s length Pitt couldn't have told the plastic from the real thing. He unsheathed the knife and began slicing his way through the brown swaying stems. Working his way forward, stopping only to untangle his air tank, he finally broke into another tunnel. The second had a larger diameter than the first but was much shorter in length. After four stout kicks, Pitt surfaced in a new cavern, only to be enveloped in the unending white. mist Every few moments, the splash of a head breaking the water, announced the arrival of another member of the team.

“See anything?” The voice was Spencer’s.

“Not yet,” Pitt replied. Mechanically, his eyes strained unblinkingly into the damp gloom. He thought he saw something now, something more imagined than real. Gradually, he became aware of a dark shape, materializing out of the fog. And then suddenly, it was absolutely and concretely there the smooth, black metal hull of a submarine. Pitt spat out his mouthpiece, swam over to the sub and grabbed hold of’ the bow planes, pulling himself onto the deck.

Pitt’s mind became absorbed in the submarine. At least ten times he’d wondered how he'd react, how he would feel when he finally touched the heroin’s underwater carrier. Elation at being proved right — that and more. Anger and disgust flooded over him. If they could only talk, what tales of insidious tragedies these steel plates could relate.

“Please drop your spear on the deck and keep very, very still.” The voice behind Pitt was hard, and so was the gun barrel that dug into his spine. He eased the pole spear slowly to the wet deck. “Good. Now order your men to drop their weapons on the bottom. No tricks. A concussion grenade in the water can turn a swimmer into an ugly mass of jelly.”

Pitt nodded at the five floating heads. “You heard the man. Drop the spear guns… the knives too.

There’s no sense in antagonizing these nice people. I’m sorry men. It looks like I’ve blown it.”

There was nothing else left to say. Pitt had led these five men into a trap from which they might never escape alive. All emotion left him, he was conscious now only of time. On cue, Pitt raised his hands over his head and slowly turned around.

“Major Pitt, you are an uncommonly aggravating young man.”

Bruno von Till stood on the deck of the submarine, grinning like Fu Manchu about to feed a victim to the crocodiles. His eyes were narrowed slits beneath the skin-topped head, and he seemed, at least to Pitt, to radiate a personal and long-practiced repulsiveness. But something was wrong, terribly wrong. The old German had both hands in his jacket pockets; he carried no gun. It was the man beside him who held the gun — a mountain of a man with a face of carved stone and a torso like a tree trunk. Von Till’s eyes fully opened, and his voice rose in a mocking tone.

“Forgive me for not offering introductions, Major.” Von Till gestured toward his companion. “But I understand that you and Darius have already met.”