A Thousand Suns (5 page)

‘Looks like a seller’s market. I don’t think you’re going to be able to haggle him down any,’ said Mark under his breath.

Chris turned back to Will. ‘Four hundred and you got a deal.’

The old man waved at Chris. ‘Been nice talkin’ to you.’ He headed back towards the hatch on the foredeck.

‘Bollocks,’ Chris muttered. ‘Five hundred, then.’

Will turned back round to face them. ‘I’ll take that in bills, if you don’t mind. We don’t do American Express round here.’

‘Cash? Yeah, I guess I can do that. So what time can you set off tomorrow night? I’m pretty keen to get over and see the -’

‘Settin’ off
tonight
sound good to you boys?’

Chris and Mark exchanged glances. ‘Sure.’

‘Be back here at nine o’clock then, and bring my five hundred dollars.’ Will winked at Chris. ‘Pleasure doin’ business with you.’

Chapter 3

Heading Out

At nine-thirty the trawler finally chugged noisily away from the wharf and passed Leonard’s Spur, a small rocky island about an acre in size and linked to the mainland by a sandy spit. A single flashing beacon on a tall metal spire marked it out.

Will hugged the channel tightly and passed close by the wet rocks of the spur that seemed to twitch and move with the pulsing flicker of the beacon’s light.

Chris watched Port Lawrence slowly recede, shuddering at the thought of the freezing dive ahead of him. He looked at his watch.

Say, forty-five minutes out to the buoy marking the wreck, half an hour underwater and forty-five minutes back.

He’d be soaking in a warm soapy bath in a little more than two hours’ time. Of course, it was never that easy. It would probably take a little longer to get out there, the dive might only take half an hour, but Mark would insist on a thorough equipment audit before and after. And then there was the task of checking the quality was there on film: process a contact sheet and print one or two of the shots large, and if he hadn’t got the shots he was after, they’d have to go out and do it all again.

One thing was for sure; when they got back later he was definitely going to have a bath. He was glad they’d ended up checking into the motel up at the pricey end of Devenster Street. It was a little more, and he was paying out on Mark’s room too, of course, but it was better than the couple of guesthouses they’d sneaked a look at. One of them only had one shared bathroom between ten guest rooms, while the other could offer only one room with its own shower, and that had looked pretty shabby.

Chris watched Mark on the aft deck. He was already at it, unpacking and checking the diving gear. He worked with a quick, silent efficiency, laying out the apparatus carefully in a deliberate order and fitting together the regulators and tanks with a precision that reminded him of a marine assembling his trusty M15.

‘Just like those ol’ navy SEAL days, uh?’ joked Chris.

Mark carried on oblivious, focused on the pre-dive drill.

Chris watched him for a while longer before making his way forward to the pilothouse. It was dimly lit by a single bare bulb in a wire cage that rattled with the vibration of the engine. Will had the helm in one hand and held a mug of something hot in the other. Ahead through the window he could see the foredeck brilliantly lit by a searchlight on the roof of the pilothouse. It cast a thick beam into the night ahead of them picking out the white suds on the water.

‘Hi,’ said Chris. ‘I assume you know which way the buoy is?’

Will turned and scowled at him. ‘I been fishin’ these waters for nearly thirty years. I know every nook and spit along this shoreline for twenty miles either way -’

Oh boy, I’ve hit this guy’s squawk button.

‘- I can tell you. Hell, I could even tell you how far out from shore we are right now just by listening to the rhythm of the water.’

Will slapped the engine into neutral and turned it off. The boat drifted silently for a while.

Chris was a little bemused. ‘Uh . . . are you going to turn that back on now?’

‘Shhhhh . . . Just listen to that, do you hear it?’

Chris could hear nothing but the sound of Mark outside working on the aft deck and the gentle slapping of water on the hull. He saw Mark stand up and come forward to the pilothouse. He opened the door and stuck his head in. ‘What’s going on? Why’s the engine gone off?’

Chris shook his head and shrugged. ‘I think Captain Salty’s listening to the water,’ he said quietly.

‘You hear that?’ Will said eventually. ‘You can tell by the ditty she sings just how far out you are. I reckon we’re about a half mile out.’

Chris was impressed. ‘You can tell that just from the lapping sound? Sheeez, that’s pretty cool . . .’

Will smirked and shook his head; he turned the engine back on and slammed her back into gear. ‘Of course, it helps if you got one of these little babies.’ The old man pointed to a small digital Nav-Sat display beside the helm and snorted with laughter.

‘Oh, I see. Very funny.’

Mark slapped Chris on the shoulder. ‘Reckon he got you a good one there, buddy.’ He headed back outside to the aft deck and resumed checking the gear.

A little after ten o’clock, Will dropped the engine into neutral and panned the searchlight over the still water until he spotted the buoy that marked the wreck. He brought the boat slowly over towards it and let it run the last few yards on momentum only as he left the pilothouse and leaned over the side to scoop up the buoy with a gaff and bring it aboard. He tied it off on a cleat, wrapping it round in a figure of eight and a half hitch for good measure.

‘Here you are, boys, delivered safe and sound.’

Will had been quick finding the buoy; it had only taken them half an hour. A straight beeline out from Port Lawrence, Chris guessed they were about five miles out.

Chris and Mark sat on the aft deck in the neoprene dry suits Mark had brought along. Chris winced as he adjusted the tight-fitting rubber; it was pulling on his leg hairs.

‘Christ, Mark, it’s like going for the world’s worst waxing.’

‘How would
you
know?’

‘Ah well, you know what it’s like, gotta keep the bikini line nice ’n’ tidy.’

Mark snorted, typical Chris. The guy would last about five minutes with the sorts of ex-navy jocks he spent a lot of his time with, before being branded a faggot, or a geek, or maybe he would just get off being branded ‘weird English guy’. Mark liked that about him, though, you got a little bit more than just locker-room humour out of him.

‘These are smart,’ Chris said, picking up one of the diving helmets.

‘Yeah, I thought you’d like these, rather than the usual. This way we can talk to each other instead of sign. I think this’ll be better for you. If you lose sight of me you’ll still be able to at least hear me.’

‘Not planning on deserting me down there, are you?’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be on your back all the time, watching you do your thing.’ Mark gestured towards Chris’s underwater camera.

Will finished up in the pilothouse and joined the two men on the aft deck.

‘You got a lot of expensive-looking toys there,’ he said.

Mark absent-mindedly rested a defensive hand on one of the helmets. ‘Yes, some of this stuff is pretty expensive.’

‘How much are those funny-lookin’ space hats, then?’

‘The best part of five thousand dollars each,’ said Mark.

The old man pursed his lips in surprise. ‘Lotta money for a goldfish bowl.’

‘Hang on, that reminds me,’ said Mark, ignoring the jibe and delving into one of his canvas kit bags. A moment later produced a small black box and handed it to Will.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have, it’s lovely,’ the old man said sarcastically. ‘What is it?’

‘Radio receiver. It’s just for safety. You can listen in on us talking. This way, if something does go wrong, you’ll be ready when we surface,’ he said. Chris looked up anxiously. ‘Just a precaution,’ Mark added.

Will turned the black box over in his hands. ‘How does this damn thing work?’

‘It’s just a receiver. Switch it on at the back,’ said Mark. Will did so and grimaced as he was met with a warbling shriek.

‘Damn thing’s broken.’

‘No it’s not. It just needs to be tuned in. Give it to me.’

Will passed it back to Mark. ‘So, this plane you’re goin’ down to see . . . old wartime bomber, eh?’

Chris nodded. ‘One of your B-17s.’

‘You reckon on findin’ any of the crew?’

‘Don’t know the story yet, whether the crew bailed out or went down with it.’

Will nodded. ‘Well if you do find them, treat them with a bit of respect, eh? The waters here have claimed a lot of souls. Ain’t just your plane down there. There’s a lot of older wrecks, sailing ships and the like.’

‘Uh-huh, we’ll be respectful, Will, okay?’

‘They say when a squall whips up, it’s the dead below reminding the living to tread careful.’

Chris looked at Mark and gave him a discreet wink.

‘Look, Will, uh . . . you’ve caught me out once already with the ol’ salty sea dog routine -’

The old man glanced sternly at him. ‘I don’t joke much about dyin’ at sea. There’s many a bad story from this stretch of water, without me making stuff up to add to it.’

They were preparing to go down to the graveside of some poor souls, and despite the photographer’s assurances, they were going to disturb it, poke it and prod it. He was uneasy. It felt a little too much like grave-robbing.

‘Let me tell you something that happened out here.’

Chris looked up at Mark, who was smiling.

Here comes the ten-cents tour.

‘- there was a ship come over from England, this is way back . . . eighteen hundred an’ something, back when England was as tainted with the slave trade as we were. This ship was called the
Lady Grey
; she was due for Charleston, but winds had blown her up north a ways.’

‘She was carryin’ a few dozen payin’ passengers and two or three hundred negro slaves. She hit ice comin’ in. She was only half a day’s sailin’ from shore. They had a small hole, but water was comin’ in faster than they could bail it out. She was goin’ down all right, but slowly. Still, they got within a mile from shore when they decided to call it a day and abandon ship. The crew, the payin’ passengers, even pretty much most of the more expensive items of cargo, were ferried in row boats from the sinkin’
Lady Grey
to the shore. All the while she’s slowly goin’ under.

‘People from Port Lawrence gathered on the beach kind’a helpin’ out, maybe even helpin’ themselves to a few choice things. This ferryin’ went on for the best part of the day, and all the while you could hear it from the shore, the hammerin’ of hundreds of palms against the inside of her wooden hull, and hundreds of voices wailin’ and screamin’ to be let out. Finally the question is asked of the captain, “What about them negro slaves locked up below decks?” He says, “Leave ’em. The condition they’re in, them negroes would be worth more on shippin’ insurance than sold at a slave market.” He says the valuable cargo’s already been saved. People up here hadn’t much to do with negroes back then, many had never even seen one. They were pretty shocked at the captain’s answer.

‘That evening, the
Lady Grey
finally lists to one side and quickly then she jus’ slides under. All the while the people on the beach could hear the hammerin’ and screamin’. The story goes, you could still hear them slaves for a while after she’d gone down.’

The old man struck a match and lit his cigarette.

‘I presume there’s some hackneyed moral to that tale?’ said Chris, a little uneasily.

‘They say them slaves are still down there screamin’. When folks go missing at sea round these parts, they say “the slaves have got ’em”.’

Chris nodded sincerely. ‘Right, okay . . . I’ll keep my eyes peeled for them, then.’

‘You hear that distant hammerin’ and screamin’ and you’re in big trouble, boys.’

‘If I hear hammering and screaming down there, trust me, Will, I’ll be back in this boat and halfway home before you can say scooby-doobie-doo,’ said Chris, smiling nervously.

Mark shook his head. ‘No you won’t, you’ll be spending five minutes decompressing with me on the way up. Then you can run away.’

Chris nodded at Mark. He was right, and now wasn’t the time to be goofing around.

Will smiled, perhaps reassured that his little story had sobered things up some. ‘You enjoy your dive, boys. And mind you treat that wreck with the respect it deserves.’ He headed back towards the pilothouse and poured himself a steaming mug of something from a thermos flask stashed beside the helm.

Chris shivered. ‘He could have offered us one, the tight git.’

‘I guess that would cost extra.’

‘Yup. On that note, care for a swim?’

Mark pulled his helmet on and twisted it until it locked with a reassuring clunk. Chris did the same.

‘You hear me okay?’ Mark’s voice sounded tinny over the helmet speaker. Chris gave a thumbs-up.

‘You can talk, you idiot.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot. Okay, Mark, you can take point.’

Mark rolled off the stern of the trawler and splashed into the Atlantic.

‘Here goes,’ said Chris as he followed suit and disappeared into the ink-black water, leaving behind a circle of splash suds that were quickly washed away.

Will turned off the floodlight that bathed the aft deck and turned on a fan heater and his FM radio. It was tuned to a station that played classical. The soothing melody of
Cavalleria Rusticana
quickly eased away some of his misgivings as he watched the faint glow of submerged torchlight slowly recede.

Chapter 4

The Wreck

The reinforced-plastic diving helmet felt infinitely less claustrophobic and uncomfortable than a regular diving mask and regulator. They were Mark’s latest equipment purchase, his pride and joy.

It’s like being an astronaut, going EVA.

Chris looked around. He was immersed in total darkness. Above him there were only a couple of flickering shards of light from the trawler. Suddenly a strong blue shaft of light cut the world in two in front of him as Mark aimed his torch upwards.

‘You might want to turn your torch on,’ Mark’s voice hissed out of the speaker. Chris fumbled for the switch on his torch and found it.

‘Whoa, that’s bright,’ he said, panning it around, admiring the power and length of the light beam.

‘Two-hundred-watt halogen bulbs,’ said Mark proudly. ‘Only got about forty minutes charge time on the battery pack, though.’

Mark shone his torch at the buoy’s line.

‘Okay. We’re going to follow that down.’ He kicked his legs out and began to swim down, holding the line in one hand and torch in the other. Chris followed suit, keeping an eye on the dwindling beam of Mark’s torch below.

‘Not so fast, mate,’ he said with an edge in his voice. ‘You’re leaving me behind.’

‘Relax, I’m just down here. You can see my torch, can’t you?’

‘Yup.’

Chris kicked his legs and pulled himself down the buoy’s line. Mark was waiting for him, treading water.

‘See? I’m here. Stay calm, okay? Things go wrong only when you lose your cool and start getting worked up. We’ve got half an hour, remember. So we haven’t got a lot of time.’ He checked his depth gauge. They were thirty feet down. ‘It’s seventy-five feet down, you said? We should see it soon.’

Mark resumed swimming downward with slow strong strokes. Chris followed, struggling to keep up and breathing harshly with the exertion. For a few moments all that he could hear over the helmet speaker was the even, relaxed, rhythmic breathing of his partner. It was strangely soothing, like a heartbeat or the ticking of a clock.

‘Ahh here we go . . . I think I see something down there.’

Chris pushed hard with his legs and a moment later he was floating alongside Mark. Below, their two torch beams picked out the unmistakable oval silhouette of a wing tip. The beams worked their way along the wing, passing over the bulge of an engine casing, then another, and finally coming to rest on the cylindrical form of the plane’s fuselage.

Chris turned to Mark. ‘Bingo.’

They swam down the last few feet and settled with a gentle bump on the wing. Chris reached out and ran a hand along its surface. Only a slippery coat of algae covered the sheet metal. It belied the years underwater. His fingers danced over rivets that had experienced only a small amount of corrosion.

‘Isn’t it bloody beautiful?’

‘Amazing. This is a
big
plane,’ said Mark.

‘It’s a B-17, nicknamed the Flying Fortress. Looks in fantastic shape.’

Mark studied the ghostly grey giant. ‘Yup, it is. But then it’s a cold, low-salt water environment.’

‘No, I don’t mean corrosion, or marine growth. I mean there’s hardly any impact damage. It’s like it was just gently placed here.’

Chris pulled out his camera and took a couple of shots. The flash on the camera flickered like a strobe. He swam along the wing towards the inner port engine.

‘Look at that.’ He gestured towards the propeller.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘The propeller blades are intact. Do you know what that means?’

Mark shook his head. ‘Not really.’

‘It means this particular propeller wasn’t spinning when she touched down on the ocean. If it had been the blades would be bent to buggery.’

‘Oh.’ Mark watched as Chris photographed the engine and the prop. He checked his watch; they had been down five minutes. Twenty-five left.

Chris swam back to the fuselage and slowly drifted down the side towards the rear. His torch eventually picked out the barrel and small opening of the portside waist-gun.

‘Come and look at this!’

Mark followed the glaring beam of Chris’s torch and found himself staring at a long line of bullet holes that ran diagonally up the fuselage side towards the waist-gun’s porthole.

‘Looks like she’s seen some action. Maybe that’s why she ditched?’

Chris shook his head. ‘That would make some sense off the coast of France or England.’ He looked at Mark. ‘But off the coast of Rhode Island?’

Chris took a couple of shots of the bullet holes and the waist-gun and then pulled himself closer to the opening and shone his torch inside it. He could see little past the corroded barrel of the old machine gun.

‘I want to find a way in.’

Mark looked at his watch. ‘We’ve used six minutes. Twenty-four left. If we find a way inside, we give ourselves a clear ten minutes to find our way out. Okay? That means you get fourteen minutes from now to do all the inside stuff you want, and that’s all.’

‘Okay, Mom. Listen . . . you work your way to the back of the plane and I’ll work my way to the front. There’s bound to be some hatch we can prise open to get a look inside.’

‘No way. I’m not leaving you on your own. You’re paying me to -’

‘Mark, I appreciate you’re looking out for me, but time is limited, I’ve got to get a shot inside . . . okay?’

Mark wasn’t convinced.

‘Please, I promise I won’t go inside without you, we’re just looking for a way in, that’s all.’

‘You’ll be okay, if we lose visual?’

‘Yeah . . . I’m getting braver.’

‘That’s what’s worrying me.’

Mark headed aft, one hand dragging along the rough metal of the fuselage for guidance, the other panning his torch up and down in search of an opening. Chris headed the other way, towards the front of the plane.

It didn’t take him long before he came across the plexiglas canopy of the cockpit. He shone his torch across the panels hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside, but they too were coated in a thin layer of algae.

Swimming down, he found the front end of the plane was raised enough to swim underneath her belly. And then he found what he was looking for.

‘Mark! I’ve found a way in.’

‘What have you got?’

‘It’s a hatch leading up into the cockpit. It’s open. I’m going to stick my head up inside.’

‘Be careful! I don’t want you knocking that equipment, or even worse, puncturing your tank. No squeezing through anything, okay?’

‘Okay . . . okay, no squeezing.’

Chris shone his torch up through the belly hatch into what looked like the bomb-aimer’s observation blister. The torch beam slid across the plexiglas panels and metal struts of the canopy, throwing them into sharp relief and sending phantom shadows dancing across the confined space. He could see a short ladder leading up from the blister into another area above.

The cockpit?

Chris studied the width of the hatch and decided it was wide enough to climb through. With a tug on the hatch rim he pulled himself up. His helmet thudded noisily against a cross strut inside. ‘Shit!’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing, I’m fine.’

‘I’m
fzffzf
ing forward.’ Mark’s transmission crackled. Chris silently mouthed a curse. He must have given the radio a knock. There’d be a lecture coming his way when they went topside, and Mark discovered the damage.

Great.

He shone his torch down inside the fuselage. There was a bulkhead six feet back and a narrow doorway. The light picked out a cloud of floating debris hanging in the space between the blister and the bulkhead. Shreds of paper, a pair of headphones, several life jackets.

‘Some of this stuff looks like it could have been left here a couple of days ago.’

‘Yeah? I’ll be ther . . . a second.’ Mark’s signal was getting worse.

Chris took another couple of shots and then reached out for the short ladder leading up to what he guessed must be the cockpit. He studied the size of the opening, it was narrower, but still just wide enough to get through. Chris, much more carefully this time, pulled himself up through the opening. He heard his air cylinder scrape noisily against the edge of the hatchway and cringed at the thought of the scratches it would leave.

Mark was going to kill him.

He shone his torch around inside the cockpit. There was a lot less space than he’d imagined, and he found himself bumping and scraping on all sides. His torch panned up and across the co-pilot’s seat.

He lurched backwards. ‘Oh Jesus!’

‘What . . . it?’ he heard Mark call.

He took a few deep breaths to steady himself and then trained his torch back on the seat.

‘I . . . uh . . . think I’ve found one of the crew,’ he said pulling himself closer to get a better look.

The skeletal remains, long since stripped of soft organic material save for a few fibrous strands, seemed to be held together and in place by the body’s clothes and the seat’s harness. It was all there, a complete human form except for one of its hands. Chris spotted a leather flying glove on the cockpit floor. He picked it up delicately by a fingertip and a cloud of organic mush floated gently out, followed by a cluster of small white bones that see-sawed down through the water and settled on the grey, silt-covered floor.

It looked like the remains of a KFC dinner. Chris felt his stomach churn ever so slightly at that thought.

He heard his helmet speaker crackle. ‘. . . found?’

Chris tapped the radio casing with his torch. It crackled and hissed in response.

‘Mark? Can you hear me? I’ve found one of the crew.’

‘Jeeeez, glad you found him and not me.’ Mark was coming through clearly now.

Must be a loose wire, then.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘He’s not a pretty boy. I’m going to grab a couple of shots.’

‘Okay. I’m coming up over the other side of the fuselage. I can’t see any tears or breaks or any way to get in. How do I . . . in up there?’

‘Hatchway right under the nose.’

‘Okay, see . . . in a second.’ The signal was breaking up again.

Chris continued to study the corpse. He was amazed at how intact the clothing and equipment was. The only concession to sixty years of undisturbed submersion was a thin coat of grey sediment that seemed to have settled on everything. The leather flying cap still rested dutifully on the body’s skull, a solitary tuft of pale blond hair poking out from beneath it, and its radio mouthpiece dangled from the end of a short length of coiled rubber flex beside the lower jaw of the skull. The jawbone had at some point fallen away and now rested on the collar of the thick, fur-lined flying jacket.

Chris reached out slowly for the jawbone, careful not to disturb too much of the sediment. He lifted it up and placed it back as it should be and then pulled the radio mouthpiece in underneath to hold it in place.

He felt a passing twinge of guilt for messing with the body. But, it
did
make for a better picture, having the skull and jaw reunited again. Without the jaw it simply wasn’t a face. Chris had learned from freelancing in several war zones in the last ten years that you needed to have a face in the shot when photographing a body. People always look for it, look for an expression on it. Perhaps as a way of understanding what death must be like, what emotion is drawn at the moment it occurs.

Without a face, a body is just a bundle of clothes.

Chris unhooked his camera and aimed it at the long-dead pilot.

‘Say cheese.’ The flashlight of the camera strobed again as he hit off a few shots.

He heard Mark’s voice. ‘I can li . . . out seeing the . . .’ The popping and whistling on the helmet speaker was driving him mad. He tapped the radio housing.

‘What’s that, Mark? Your signal’s breaking up again.’

He tapped it again, this time much harder, hoping his big-mallet repair philosophy would deliver the goods. The low-frequency, almost inaudible buzzing that had been constant since locking the helmet down and turning on the speaker suddenly stopped. The only sound he could hear now was his own breathing reverberating inside the plastic bowl of the helmet.

‘Mark? Can you hear me?’

Nothing.

It’s not just a loose wire now, you muppet; you’ve broken the bloody thing.

Mark was going to be pissed at him for that. He decided he’d offer the guy money to replace it. He could afford it.

He turned back towards the body of the co-pilot and took a few more shots. The camera flash strobed again, throwing a blinding white light at its fleshless face. He half expected the skeleton to angrily reach out with its one remaining hand and snatch the camera from him.

Professional guilt. Ignore it and finish the job.

Movement.

An eel shot out through the opening in the bulkhead; a silvery streak headed straight towards his face and thumped against the glass plate of his helmet. Chris, startled, dropped both the camera and his torch. The torch landed face down in the silt. The light inside the cockpit was suddenly gone, leaving it in absolute darkness. He could sense the eel thrashing around in the cockpit with him, disturbed currents of water, disturbed sediment floating once again.

‘Shitshitshitshitshit!’

Chris felt himself beginning to panic. The damn thing was going crazy. He felt its long and strong body bump against him several times, each time anticipating the needle-sharp teeth slicing through the neoprene of his dry suit and into his flesh. It passed between his legs, and then with no warning he felt it clunk against the glass of his helmet again.

A hard clunk, not a soft thump. That was the sound of a tooth hitting the glass.

And then suddenly it was gone.

Chris could feel the water around him quickly growing still once more. He waited for the eel to return, to renew its attack on him. Seconds passed.

It was gone.

He bent down carefully and let his hands fumble along the floor, desperately seeking the torch.

‘Mark? I’m in trouble. Mark?’ He heard his voice beginning to break. It scared him even more.