The Seventh Secret

Chapter 16 — Exploration #1

The boat’s owner had charged Purdue an extra fee for the yacht because he had insisted on chartering it without its crew. At first, the owner had been reluctant, but upon meeting him, the Scottish billionaire and the German lawyer had been able to convince the owner that his vessel was going to be in reliable hands. It had taken Crystal and Purdue little over an hour of coaxing and reassuring as well as several glasses of gin and tonic for the owner to finally change the contract.

After loading the sonar equipment and gear, Purdue arranged all the necessary devices for the use of his tablet to ascertain the status of the subterranean parts of the vessel once they reached the dive site. Nina was excited to see if it was truly the ship she had read about, although according to the documents she had found it had fled for the coast of Uruguay. She hoped that perhaps it was old propaganda since the pocket battleship of the Nazi Kriegsmarine was reported to have passed the Cape of Good Hope at one point, sinking several Allied ships in the process. It could have run aground on the east coast of Africa instead of the east coast of South America, who knows?

Sam loved diving. He was excited about the chance to float weightlessly in the quiet blue womb of the planet again and film the elusive ship that had only recently shown itself on radar and satellite zooms Purdue had run. Just the night before, in fact, they had come across something interesting. Once Purdue, Sam, and Billy had been properly oiled by the local alcoholic beverages, the subject of the oddity of the vessel’s elusiveness came up.

Sam had asked Billy if he was confident that local authorities had never before noticed such a massive piece of metal, which must have been right under their noses for almost eighty years. Billy, who had looked a bit bewildered by the question, had explained that his assistant had checked all records to make sure that no such on a potential discovery of the vessel had ever been entered. According to Billy, the ship had sunk and had been covered by the surface sediment of Bluewater Bay since the early 1940’s.

“Perhaps it was just buried in a shallow grave until recently. The coast here is known for its erratic currents and strong undercurrents, which could have been responsible for sweeping away the top sediment layer and revealing the dead ship,” he had speculated.

Purdue had shaken his head, “I’m no expert, but that’s something that would take decades, Billy.”

For the first time in his life, Sam had seen his sharp friend Billy looking speechless. To Sam's surprise, he had even looked a bit as if he did not know much about the find, but he had reckoned that it had just been his drunken bias judging the scrawny lecturer.

Then, when the subject of the conversation had drifted to the women, Sam had joked about how superstitious sailors had always been when it came to women on board. Soon after that, the discussion had taken a creepy turn, one Sam still mulled over now as they packed the gear to put out to sea.

Purdue, who had a penchant for the dramatic and the metaphysical when he had had too much to drink, had come to the fore with a chilling what if…

In the fire of the braai, his eyes had flared with mystery as he had leaned closer to his audience, now including the two security advisors and Nina.

“What if the ship was not there at all? Until now?” he had slurred, hands extended in a dramatic gesture. "What if the ship simply appeared there after some scientific anomaly facilitated its shift from one part of the ocean floor to another?"

“Ghost ship?” Sam had asked, fascinated.

"Aye, like a life-sized trinket of doom set up in a particular place to lure the greedy and desperate to try and claim it," Nina had added to the notion.

“That’s right!” Purdue had gasped.

“Aw, that is a good one!” Sam had chuckled, applauding.

Dr. Malgas, Cheryl, and Sibu had looked at each other with wide eyes at the possibility of the existence of such an insidious ghost ship. While Dr. Malgas knew that it couldn’t be a ghost ship, the notion instilled quite a bit of fear in him. Cheryl had felt uncomfortable as she had been using Dr. Malgas’ discovery for her own gain and Sibu, had immediately seen the devil in the water out to punish him. As a son of the Xhosa tribe and culture, the superstition and witchcraft had always been close to his heart, prompting him to go off into a torrent of curses and incantations at the talk of these things in his presence.

The Scots had loved the idea, and Purdue had even encouraged Sam to venture into fiction with his publishers and conjure up a similar kind of tale the next time he was going to be asked to write a book. Sam and Purdue had had a toast to such a novel, but by then Billy Malgas had sunk into a world of his own, lamenting his own reasons for allowing Mieke to lead everyone on a giant scale charade. If the surfacing ship represented his fate, then he would not be able to escape the consequences of his lies.

After discussing the alcohol-induced theories of otherworldly ships and the general possibility of mythical objects of retribution, the group had come to the conclusion that the wreck ‘was what it was.' That had seemed to be agreeable to all, scientific skeptics and gullible believers alike.

Nina, however, had given the subject more attention even after it had been replaced by more tangible matters.

Even while they were outfitting the yacht in the mid-morning sunshine under the pristine sky, she sat on a deck chair with a can of soda, overlooking the mysterious ocean. Her mind transcended reality into an almost psychic realm where she allowed her body and senses to listen to the vast expanse of water teeming with life and history. For a minute she closed her eyes, blocking out the banter between Sam and Purdue, Crystal and Mieke discussing sunscreen, and the bustling noise as they lugged the equipment around to where they needed it.

In her imagination, she was sinking. Without a body, she submerged herself beneath the friendly breakers and descended slowly into the cold eternity of the deep. There, set her sights on the shape she had seen on Purdue’s screen the day before, but here, in her mind, the lines turned into an actual structure. For some reason, the vessel terrified Nina, and an irrational fear took a hold of her heart with an icy hand squeezing tighter, the closer she came.

No longer was it a mere sunken ship, forgotten by time and mankind. It had become a beacon of something terrible, a seemingly insignificant wreck that beckoned her in a silent siren song to something sinister. Even if it was the vessel Dr. Malgas thought it was, it had been serving a different purpose— very different than what the history books implied.

Suddenly she didn’t want to float closer to the submerged monster of rust and bent metal, fearing for her very life. It lay motionless, yet it moved. It wasn’t the current she was floating on, it was actual motion. Nina watched as the hull opened just above the ship’s propeller and formed a mouth with jagged metal teeth. It screamed. Nina’s heart raced as she heard it screaming in a thousand voices; men bemoaning their imminent demise and women in pain, begging for the lives of their children.

Sam tapped Nina on the shoulder, jolting her from her terrifying daydream with such force that she yelped in shock. He pulled her in his arms tightly and held her until she realized that she had been dreaming.

“Jesus Christ, Sam!” she fumed when she came to her senses. Nina roughly freed herself from Sam moved away. “Do you want to give me a heart attack?”

“Oh my, I apologize, Dr. Gould!” Sam retorted. “I had no idea you would be taking a nap in the middle of our first exploration journey! I thought you were staring at the waves. Good God woman! Keep your mood swings in check!”

He stormed off, leaving a whole collection of dumbstruck faces staring at Nina, before she looked out over the ocean again, ignoring the unwanted attention.

“Are you alright, love?” Purdue asked softly from where he stood protectively between her and the curious stares of the others, who were only reluctantly resuming their work. Nina wanted to cry. Her emotions were suddenly all over the place. She was startled by Sam’s touch, horrified by the ship in her dream and its vivid warning, and furious that she lost her temper in front of all these people.

"I'm alright, thank you, Purdue," she muttered softly without looking at him. The dream had snuck up on her, caught her off-guard; now it lingered and refused to release her no matter how much she tried to think about mundane things.

“If you need anything,” he whispered in her ear, his lips so close that his breath stirred the tips of her hair. “…just let me know.”

Nina turned to look at Purdue. His light blue eyes were warm and welcoming, a look she remembered seeing on his face on those cold Scottish mornings when she woke up in his arms after a passionate night.

“Purdue!” Sam called, breaking the spell between Nina and her ex-lover.

‘I bet you did that on purpose, Sam,’ Nina thought as she looked him with narrow eyes. ‘Didn’t you?’

But her thoughts were biased. Fortunately, she did not say it out loud. It would have only brought her a bunch of bitch-points, no doubt. Sam had a legitimate reason to summon Purdue. The coast guard had appeared behind them. Sibu and Zain nodded at each other, grabbing their Berettas, but Cheryl shook her head in alarm, mouthing ‘no’ to stop them from escalating a possibly friendly exchange.

“I’m so sick of having to take orders from that bitch,” Sibu whispered to his associate.

“I know, but she knows when we should back down. She knows these people and how they work, Sibu. We’ll get our chance to waste the lot as soon as we know what’s on that wreck. Just don’t fuck it up,” Zain replied under his breath.

Purdue stopped the yacht to let the coast guard board. As he spoke to the office, Nina stayed on her own, watching Crystal encroach again between the two men the historian had held dear in her life, more than any, for the past fifteen odd years. She allowed the lawyer her space, particularly when she would prove valuable with her knowledge of international maritime laws. Besides, Sam and Crystal had started spending more and more time close to each other. To Nina, it was a clear indication that Sam's interest in her withered in the presence of powerful women.

“Your permit, sir?” the officer smiled. “Vacation this time of year? Smart.”

“Why?” Sam asked cordially.

"Offseason. This place is a nightmare during peak times!' the officer explained, sighing as he pretended to look at the coastline. Actually, Mieke noticed, he was checking the gear lying on the starboard floor before taking a look at the passengers. Cheryl was relieved that she had told her two thugs to dress casually that morning. They blended in well as a bunch of overweight fishermen.

“I can imagine,” Purdue chuckled.

“And all this?” the officer asked, pointing his pen to all the diving gear and sonar screens. By any standard the level of technology was more than adequate, bordering on suspicious.

"I am a film producer," Sam jumped in, flashing his dashing smile. "Might make a documentary about your lovely city's marine life. Just scouting for now."

Nina shook her head and sank to her seat. “Here we go.”