The Seventh Secret

Chapter 25 — Welcome Aboard

The next morning was overcast. Out on the sea, the bizarre occurrence had returned, but with Purdue’s new configuration the disturbances caused by magnetic waves were less conspicuous and certainly far less destructive. He was concerned that his locator may have been unable to establish the precise location of the wreck. Purdue found it increasingly peculiar that his sonar would occasionally report no object at all at the very spot the wreck had been detected a moment before.

“I am dumbfounded by the wreck disappearing every now and then,” Purdue mumbled behind his hand. His chin was resting on his palm as he leaned on the table, studying the oddity and considering every scientific theory he could summon to try and solve the conundrum.

“Maybe your magnetic waves are interfering with your sonar,” Nina suggested as she sank on the sofa next to him. The rest of the group was preparing to leave, so she had come to help him. “We can figure all that out on the boat. We have to go.”

“I know. I know,” he sighed. Purdue loathed admitting defeat when he couldn’t solve a scientific puzzle. With his knowledge of sound waves and frequencies, radar, sonar and the like, he expected to have at least some inkling of what caused the ship to disappear. But he was at a loss. He accompanied Nina onto the yacht he had hired to take them out to sea, courtesy of a local who was kind enough to go out this early and dumb enough not to ask why.

The yacht crashed down over each crest of white foam thrashing to the next wave as they were heading towards the edge of territorial waters. Sam and Crystal were keeping the skipper company while the security advisors seemed to be engaged in an argument over football scores. Nina held fast onto the steel railing next to the bench she sat on, trying to keep steady in the fierce rolling of the vessel. Mieke did the same, regretting that she had agreed to come on the trip to represent Dr. Malgas.

"Ewww," she winced as she caught sight of Sibu vomiting over the side, pale as a sheet from seasickness.

“Oh dear,” Purdue howled. “I hope he is the only one affected to such an extent. How are you feeling, Nina?” He smiled, knowing that he was going to get one of her looks again.

“Oh, I am just dandy, thank you,” she snapped, clinging to the handle and Purdue’s arm at the same time. He remembered something she had said before they had left the land, something that made more sense than she would have guessed.

“Nina, you said my sonar was disturbed by the EMR I used to induce the seismic activity, right?” he asked suddenly.

“Aye,” she answered, “but remember that I know very little about physics, Dave. It was a guess at best.”

No, I think you might have a point," he reassured her. "It could be that the ship is made of some material that makes it hard to locate by sonar."

Nina's dark eyes looked up at the churning gray skies as the wind whipped her thick brunette tresses across her delicate features. She was deep in thought, trying to recall something she had read about any stealth ship.

“Wait,” she said, resting her hand on Purdue’s leg while she still stared at the clouds. “During the Second World War, the Kriegsmarine had come up with a way for submarines to go unnoticed by deflecting or absorbing the pings of the enemy’s sonar with some kind of coating. Damn, I can’t remember what it was called exactly, but they made tiles of it that they fixed to the metal of the hull.”

“What was this material? Can you remember?” He asked, intrigued. “Crystal!”

Crystal left Sam with the skipper and joined Purdue and Nina. “Yes?”

“When you and Sam were diving to survey the wreck, did you notice anything unusual about the surface of the hull?” Purdue inquired.

Crystal shook her head. “Nope. As far as I could tell it was steel, bolted sheeting and a great deal of rust. Why?”

“Oppanol!” Nina cried, startling her companions. “Sorry. Oppanol. That is what they used.”

“What the hell is Oppanol?”

“Ah!” Purdue exclaimed. “It’s a synthetic rubber.”

“Okay, well, they fixed that to the hulls and found that it diminished the ability of sonar waves to effectively echo back from the material, weakening the signal,” Nina relayed what she remembered from the experiment.

“I wonder if that could be why ever once in a while the ship doesn’t register on my locator,” Purdue frowned. Crystal fought to keep her footing on the wet deck and sat down next to Purdue. She looked at Nina. “Did they use the rubber on submarines, you say, Nina?”

“Aye.”

She looked at Purdue. “But why would they have used it on a battleship? Sonar was not used to locate above surface vessels, as far as I know."

Purdue and Nina did not respond yet. Both mulled over Crystal’s observation.

Purdue sighed, clearly frustrated. “There goes that theory.”

“What is the problem? We know where the bloody thing is. We don’t need to worry why the computer could not find it,” Crystal shrugged.

“Still,” Purdue persisted with a slight trace of disappointment, “I would have liked to know why, so that I could rework my technology, see?”

“Aye, but Crystal is right. Let’s not dwell on that when it is not relevant right now,” Nina suggested, raising her voice against the hiss of the ocean.

Sam shouted from the starboard side, pointing at something, directing their eyes. When they followed his line of sight, they saw what they had been waiting for. Behind another wave trough, the salvage tug appeared, evoking a cheer from the group.

On the side, the name introduced the tug in both Latin and Arabic script, one above the other—

“Ladies and gentlemen, our home for the next week!” Crystal smiled.

The tempestuous blue made boarding and transshipping of the equipment a challenging feat for everyone, but finally, the complete salvage crew was on the tug. Introductions were like a scene from biblical Babel, with so many accents all speaking English.

“Are salvage crews always so ill-prepared?” Nina asked Purdue. “They don’t seem to be very comfortable handling the equipment.”

“I don’t know. I have never worked in marine salvage before. To tell you the truth, I usually just recover what's in the wrecks… never bothered to bring one up before,” Purdue said matter-of-factly.

“How was your trip down here, Ali?” Crystal asked.

“Very good, Mrs. Meyer,” the ebony skeleton-like captain smiled. “It is good to finally have you on board. We are going to make a lot of money.”

Behind him, his crew stood in silence, looking rather awkward. Their nature did not transpire outright, but Sam did not like the way they looked. He could not put his finger on it, but the gaunt men with their bloodshot eyes definitely did not strike him as very diligent in their duties. To this day, his instincts as an investigative journalist had never misled him. Then again, he thought, he was not familiar with this vocation and dismissed his suspicions as paranoia due to literally feeling out of his depth.

Sam felt lost at sea, at the mercy of others for the next few days and perhaps he had a touch of cabin fever among all the strangers. He felt generally depressed and did not know why.

He watched Nina and Purdue follow Crystal and Ali into the superstructure, where he showed them their cabins. Something nudged him from behind. It was Sibu, looking very pale for a black man with Zain by his side who was supporting him. “What’s wrong, Mr. Cleave?” Zain asked. His inquiry was not sympathetic, but instead held some form of common understanding.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Sam answered as he started moving carrying his large canvas bag and his equipment case. With the two security guards in tow, he marched into the mess hall, keenly watched by the crew members who were talking about the newcomers on the quiet. “I just have a strange, uncomfortable feeling about all this.”

Sibu belched, threatening to throw up, but he contained the urge while Zain paid him no mind. He dragged his associate to catch up with Sam and kept his voice low.

“I have that same feeling, Mr. Cleave. Maybe it is my, uh, training, but these men seem a little scruffy to be salvage divers and engineers.”

Astonished, Sam faced Zain. "Christ, so I am not paranoid?" he gasped under his breath. "It's not just me, then." Zain shook his head. Sam whispered, "Well, let's keep our feelings to ourselves for now and see where this goes. But be on your toes, lads."

“Vigilance is our game, Mr. Cleave,” Zain assured Sam.

“Good. I have a feeling we’re going to need it,” Sam replied. He had made up his mind to keep his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. He walked past Ali with a fake smile and hoped that the captain would pay more attention to the seasick man behind him.

“Here Sam,” Crystal smiled. “Your cabin.”

"Thanks, Crystal," he winked with his usual charm, but in his peripheral vision, he noticed Nina watching.

“We will have lunch soon,” Ali smiled. “In the meantime I suggest you settle in and after lunch we can get started on locating the wreck so that we can prepare for the salvage, eh?”

The group collectively agreed and took to their rooms to unpack. Ali returned on deck and pulled Manni aside. The sea had settled as much as they had hoped for by now. Obviously, Purdue had stopped using his science fiction device for now and left nature to move at her own pace. Manni was busy checking the drills and welding equipment, making sure that there was enough sheeting to patch the bulkheads if need be. He was not an engineer, but he had previous experience working on large vessels in Mogadishu and Dar es Salaam before he moved to Mumbai when he had been a young sailor of twenty-four. In those days, he had still imagined himself as the great captain of a commercial vessel, but then his life had fallen apart, and he had been forced into illegal activities. Spiraling lower and lower as the years had worn on he finally had become a slave trader, trafficker, and pirate, but he had sworn to himself to stop one day when piracy had made him a rich man; rich enough to buy his own boat.

“They are settling in, poor idiots,” Ali said evenly as he offered Manni a joint. “We’ll bring up that ship and tow it to Xafuun. Meyer and her people will think we are taking it to Egypt. There we can sell them off or get ransom,” he declared, sucking in the smoke before handing Manni the joint.

“They won’t suspect anything? I mean they can probably tell that we are not Egyptians,” Manni asked with concern that they would be discovered before the right time.

“I fixed that already. As long as their people stay away from the bridge, they won’t find out that Fakur’s office manager has reported this ship and her crew missing yesterday. And we have disabled the automatic direction finder and the satellite antennas, and no cell phone or radio is going to work unless I connect the diverter," Ali revealed to his right-hand man.

“And the Egyptian crew?” Manni asked to make sure their stories meshed.

“I told Meyer I was the first mate,” he laughed in jest. “I told her Fakur and his brother sent me to take their place because they had a funeral to go to in Algeria!” His cackling laughter sounded like that of a witch. “And it’s not that untrue, Manni, isn’t it?”

Manni smiled. He was amused by Ali's ingenuity and admired the cruel captain for his ability to fool people into believing that he was harmless.