A Thousand Suns (8 page)

Chapter 8

The Second Dive

They descended along the buoy’s rope in silence, the last flickering rays from the trawler’s floodlight quickly dwindling to nothing. Once again, at about fifty feet down, their torches picked out the wing tip of the B-17.

‘There’s
Medusa
. You beautiful thing, you,’ said Chris. This time around he didn’t want to waste any precious dive-time - straight inside was what he wanted; straight inside, hopefully to find something, or perhaps the remains of someone. Either way, he was almost certain he’d stumble across a
find
of some sort in the next half an hour.

Mark pointed his torch towards the front of the plane. ‘Let’s not hang about, then. You want to make straight for the cockpit, right? I’ll go in first this time, okay?’

‘Thanks. You can shoo out any critters in there for me.’

‘And like I said to you this morning, this time we’re staying together. Okay?’

‘You’re the boss, Mark.’

Mark swam towards the cockpit and Chris followed him down to the seabed beside the nose of the bomber. He shone his torch at the open belly hatch. ‘Right, Chris, gently does it this time. Okay?’

Chris nodded as he floated beside him.

The big American stuck his head up through the hatch into the observation blister and shone his torch round before pulling himself in carefully.

‘Okay. No eels in here. I’m going up the ladder into the cockpit.’

He moved slowly up the short ladder, feeling the edges of the hatchway catch on his air cylinder. He backed down, leaned forward and rose again slowly, listening unhappily to the gentle metallic scraping sound of the cylinder on the hatchway as he pulled himself up inside the cockpit.

He shone his torch around, coming to rest eventually on the body.

‘I’m in the cockpit, no eels here either,’ said Mark. ‘You can come up.’

‘Roger that.’

‘I’m going to move to the back of the cockpit to the doorway, there should be room for you to enter. Be careful on that hatch from the observation bit into the cockpit, it’s much tighter than the first hatch.’

Chris pulled a face, remembering the damage he’d done to Mark’s equipment.

‘I’ll go slowly. Promise.’

Chris eased himself up inside the plane with extra care this time, and then climbed the ladder and squeezed tentatively through the even tighter hatchway into the cockpit.

Mark was waiting beside the bulkhead leading back into the fuselage. ‘Hi there.’

Chris nervously shone his torch down through the opening, half expecting a rerun of his ghostly hallucination. The beam of light picked out the navigator’s desk and the bomb bay.

He then turned his torch on the body. ‘Okay, I want to make sure this guy wasn’t just a souvenir-wearing Yank, sorry, no disrespect, Mark.’ He reached out and peeled back the leather of the flying jacket. It tore like tissue paper and a cloud of soft debris billowed out.

‘Gross,’ said Mark, curling his lip in disgust.

The debris took its time to settle. Chris stared at the tattered shreds of the dark tunic beneath. The silver eagle on the right of the tunic was remarkably untarnished thanks to the leather that had been covering it for the last sixty years.

‘Okay, he’s either a German or he’s someone who took souvenir-wearing a little too far.’ Chris took a couple of shots of the exposed remains of the Luftwaffe tunic.

‘Seems like you really have got a genuine story on your hands,’ said Mark.

‘Let’s go in further. Somewhere back there we’ll find the story, the reason why this plane’s here.’

‘I’ll take point again.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Chris with a jittery, anxious grin.

Mark pulled himself through the bulkhead with an agility that reminded Chris of this man’s impressive experience in wreck diving. He followed through behind him, flippers clumsily disturbing a cloud of silt from the floor.

‘Go easy on the flipper action, Chris. There’s over half a century of undisturbed sediment sitting on every surface in here.’ He was right of course. The less motion they produced, the less time they’d waste waiting for it all to settle.

Mark panned his torch around the navigation booth. The beam picked out a small desk. He reached out a hand and very gently swept the silt off a corner of it. It billowed up into a small mushroom cloud that took a dozen seconds to settle to the floor.

‘See how I did that? If you sweep it off
gently
it settles down really quickly.’

‘Gotcha.’

Mark looked down at the corner of the surface he’d exposed.

‘There’s a map here.’

Chris glided over. He reached out to sweep away some more of the silt.

‘Gently . . . if that’s paper it’ll shred with the slightest touch. Here, let me.’

Mark lightly wafted his hand above the surface of the table. The sediment began to rise into a cloud. He stopped moving, and gradually it settled elsewhere, revealing a large section of the map detailing the coastline of New York State.

Chris looked up from the map. ‘They were heading for New York . . . or on their way back from a trip there?’

‘Jeeez.’

‘Mind your eyes.’ The camera flashed brilliantly as he took a couple of shots. ‘Do you know the story of Rudolf Hess?’

Mark shook his head. ‘No. A Nazi, I guess.’

‘Yes, a pretty senior one. I forget when it was, sometime after they’d kicked our arses out of France, near the beginning of the war . . . but this guy sneaked over to Scotland without Adolf’s permission to negotiate a peace deal with Churchill. He came over by plane.’

‘You think we might find the body of some other high-ranking Nazi, uh? Doing the same thing? Doing a Hess?’

Chris smiled. ‘Be one helluva great story, wouldn’t it?’

‘Don’t forget your old buddy when you’re rich and famous.’

‘Mark, if this turns out to be half the earner I think it’s going to be, then trust me, I’ll put a smile on your face too. Shall we press on?’

Mark checked his watch. ‘Yeah, we should. We need to be making for the surface in twenty minutes.’

Chris led the way. The space narrowed ahead as they passed through empty bomb racks on either side of a narrow walkway above an open space below.

Chris pointed down at it. ‘Bomb bay.’

‘Wow, there’s space for a lot of bombs on these racks,’ said Mark.

‘Yup. They carried a pretty impressive amount of ordnance.’

Chris shone his torch down into the open bomb bay. He could see past what looked like an immersion heater through the open hatch to the sea floor. The outer bomb bay hatch must have been open when she ditched, or perhaps ripped off by the sea on impact.

That’s an interesting shot.

It was a nice twist on the classic ‘bombs away’ image he’d seen in countless World War Two documentaries. The only world visible through the frame of the bomb bay was the sea floor. It was what Chris considered a concept shot; it summed things up nicely.

‘Mind your eyes.’ He took a couple more pictures.

They pressed on, making slow progress between the racks as their equipment frequently snagged and scraped on the metal spars. Mark looked anxiously at the racks. This kind of environment could trap a diver easily, especially with reduced visibility. He decided to reduce the dive time by five minutes to allow them some additional contingency. If they overran for whatever reason and had to come back through these racks in a hurry it would be inviting trouble, especially with Chris being so inexperienced at wreck diving and so easily disorientated, as the other night’s episode in the cockpit had clearly demonstrated.

Disorientated? Scared shitless more like.

Mark had been involved with a team of marine archaeologists who had discovered a U-boat off the coast of Gibraltar. It had attracted a lot of experienced divers with a passion for World War Two wrecks, and he’d been on site as a safety watchdog. One father-and-son team had pushed deeper into the sub than they should have and not allowed themselves a safety margin of air. They’d managed to kick up a lot of debris and lost their way in a blizzard of sediment and flakes of rust. The more they panicked the worse it had got. Mark pulled them out several hours later, quite dead. He had found them with the father’s regulator still in the boy’s mouth. The boy’s air must have run out first and the father had sacrificed his life to buy the lad a few more minutes.

On the far side, the plane opened up again and they came across the waist-gun ports.

Mark shone his torch down at the cabin floor. ‘Jesus, look at that.’

Mottled green cylinders the size of cotton reels littered the floor.

‘Spent shell cases. You see how many there are? This plane saw some pretty heavy action on the way over.’

‘The plot thickens, eh?’ said Mark.

‘Yup. Eyes.’

Mark closed his eyes as Chris’s flash popped with the succession of half a dozen shots. He stopped for a moment and looked up at Mark. ‘Here’s a question for you. Who was this plane fighting on the way over?’

‘Americans?’ ventured Mark.

‘Or Germans?’

‘Germans?’

‘Yeah. Maybe there was some rocket scientist looking to come over to join you guys and the Nazis didn’t want you to have him. How’s that for a story?’

‘I think you’re reaching.’

‘Okay, so I’m just getting a little excited here.’

‘Shall we continue, Chris? I give us nine minutes, and we’ll have to squeeze back through those racks again on the way out.’

‘Yup, let’s go on.’

Both men began to head further down the plane when they picked out a second body on the floor of the cabin. It was completely buried by the silt, but the recognisable contour of a prone body was unmistakable. Chris swam closer and gently brushed some of the sediment away exposing another skeletal face.

‘Well?’

Chris looked up. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Very funny.’

He waited for the cloud of mud to settle before brushing away some more to expose the body’s clothes. Chris saw the faded yellow oak leaves on the collar.

He aimed his camera. ‘Another Luftwaffe guy. Eyes.’ The flash popped several times. Mark pulled himself over to look at the body.

‘Two guys only so far. I thought these big planes had big crews?’

‘Well, they did, about nine or ten I think. But you could get somewhere with just two, a pilot and a navigator.’

‘You think there were any more? Maybe some escaped from the plane when it ditched.’

‘Possibly,’ Chris answered, recalling McGuire’s story about the body on the beach.

Mark checked his watch. ‘We should quickly check the rest of the plane then start heading back out.’

Chris nodded. ‘Fine, let’s do it.’

They glided up to the tail-end of the bomber, briefly investigating the belly-gun hatch and the tail-gun. There appeared to be no other bodies aboard the plane.

Mark announced they had to start heading out, and Chris was happy to agree. He patted his camera, convinced that there was a big story sitting comfortably on the roll of film nestled inside it. What exactly the story was he had no idea. It looked like it was going to take some unravelling, and he wondered whether one place to start would be with this young lad and his father who supposedly vanished after the discovery of that body on the beach.

Chapter 9

Sean Grady

Chris had done this kind of thing once before, nearly fifteen years ago: attempting to track down the location of a young man, still a kid really, only fifteen, for his mother. The boy and a dozen or so other men, old and young, had been rounded up in a village in southern Bosnia by a small unit of armed Serbian militia and whisked away, never to be heard from again.

With hindsight, many years later, it was obvious that they, like many others who had
disappeared
, had met with a grisly end. But, at the time, Chris was willing to believe that the boy and his companions were either being drafted or taken to some hastily assembled prisoner-of-war camp, and that they could be tracked down. His efforts, of course, had led him nowhere.

This was hopefully going to be a little easier.

He had a name, two names, Sean and Tom Grady, and that was all. The first thing Chris thought to do would be to establish that the old man, McGuire, for lack of another name, had in fact been telling the truth, and that there had been a Sean Grady and his father living in Port Lawrence during the Second World War.

He left Mark to his own devices once more, tinkering with the diving equipment, while he headed out in the morning to visit the local church, perched on a small hill overlooking Port Lawrence. The preacher he managed to speak to there was only in his thirties and although very helpful and friendly couldn’t assist Chris at all when he mentioned the names. He suggested the Fishermen’s Social Club as possibly being of some use. If Tom Grady had worked on one of the fishing boats then he almost certainly would have been a member of the club. And, the man added, back then that was pretty much all they had for work round here, fishing, so it was more than likely that he would find this man’s name in their member register.

Chris thanked the young man and headed back into town, down towards the jetty end of Devenster Street, where he eventually tracked down the old weathered barn that still functioned as the Fishermen’s Social Club, as well as being used as a community centre.

He let himself in through a small door at the front. Inside, he found himself standing in a modest hall, dimly lit by several strip lights that shone coldly down onto a tired and scarred linoleum floor, and a low wooden stage upon which were stacked dozens of orange bucket seats. At the far end of the hall, he saw a small bar, which, surprisingly at this time in the morning, was open.

If it was anything like the working men’s clubs his dad had taken him into when he was just about old enough to shave, Chris imagined there were no formal opening times for the bar; it just opened when any member of the Fishermen’s Social Club decided it was about time for a drink.

Perched on one stool was a young man in his twenties, staring languidly at a small TV on a counter behind the bar. Another man, old enough to be his grandfather, was stacking bottles of beer in a fridge.

‘Can I help you?’ the older man asked, his voice echoing down the hall.

‘Hi, I wonder if you
can
help me actually.’ Chris walked over towards the bar. ‘Somebody suggested I try this place, so hopefully you can. I’m trying to trace someone who lived here a while back. I’ve got a name, but that’s all I have.’

‘How far back?’ the younger man asked.

‘Oh, 1945 . . . war time.’

He shrugged. ‘Too far back for me, sorry.’ The young man resumed gazing at the TV opposite.

The old man behind the bar sauntered over to stand opposite Chris. ‘What name have you got?’

‘Grady, Tom Grady.’

He stroked his chin as he pondered the name. ‘Hmm, Tom Grady. Can’t say the name rings any bells.’

‘He had a son, Sean Grady.’

The old man’s face lightened up. ‘Sean Grady, now that . . . that, yes . . . I remember Sean Grady. Yes, he was a lad in the school. A year above me if we’re talking about the same Sean . . . he was a character, there’s no doubt about that.’

Chris sat down on one of the stools. ‘Do you think his father might have been a member here?’

‘Easy enough to find out, young man. I can have a look at the member register. Just give me a moment.’

The old man came out from behind the bar and wandered across the hall to a doorway. He let himself in and closed the door behind him.

Chris nodded a greeting to the lad propping up the counter beside him. ‘All right?’

‘Sure.’ The lad studied Chris for a moment. ‘You Canadian?’

‘English.’

‘You the reporter guy come to look at the wreck?’

The question took Chris aback. He wondered if there was anybody left in Port Lawrence who still
didn’t
know about the wreck and Chris for that matter.

‘Yeah, that’s me, I guess. I’m just looking up a relative for a friend of mine back in England. They lost touch during the war.’

‘Right,’ the young man responded, uninterested in Chris’s tacked-on cover story; once more his dull gaze transferred back to the TV behind the bar.

The door opened and the old man returned with a large, dog-eared, leather-bound book.

‘Yes, we did have a Tom Grady as a member. I think that’s the one you’re looking for. Here -’

He set the register on the bar and ran a finger down a column of handwritten names.

‘He was a member at the club for about ten years. Ahhh, I can see he left owing us a subscription!’

‘Would you have any details on his next of kin, or, I dunno . . . his employer, or bank details. Perhaps a forwarding address?’

The old man laughed. ‘This is a social club, not a census bureau. That’s all we have I’m afraid.’

Chris cursed under his breath.

‘But, I do recall they had family not so far away. Up the coast about fifty miles, a place called New Buxton. If you can find them, maybe they can help you.’

Chris looked up New Buxton on his road map when he got back to his room. It looked like a small town, and that was good news. If they were family on the father’s side, he was in business. Otherwise, that would have to be the end of the trail. If he was lucky there would be a few Gradys living there, and he could ring them up in turn. But first, he needed some numbers to ring.

He knocked on Mark’s door and let himself in.

‘Can I have a quick go on your lappie?’

Mark looked up from the laptop. Chris could see from the flickering screen he was mid-session in a game of
CounterStrike
.

‘For work?’ he sighed.

Chris nodded. ‘Yes, for work. Sorry, mate, I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Mark quit the game. ‘Here you go, all yours,’ he said, sliding the laptop across the bed. ‘Chris, how much longer are you thinking of staying up here? I know it’s easy money you’re paying me, but I’m sort of getting bored.’

‘Hmm, not much longer. Two or three more days I guess.’

‘Do you think you’ll want to do any more dives down on that plane wreck? You do, I’ve got to go and restock the cylinders, and that’s a drive.’

‘Right. I think I might want to do another one and that’s probably it. But I want to fill in a few more of the blanks first,’ he said. As an afterthought he added, ‘Bear with me, Mark. This feels like a bloody good story, I just need to snoop around it a bit more.’

‘Ah well, have fun. I’ll go sort the air tanks out, then. See you later on. We’ll get a beer this evening?’

‘Sounds good. Here -’ Chris tossed him the keys to the Cherokee.

Mark closed the door behind him, and Chris listened to the heavy sound of his feet down the hallway before firing up Explorer. He tapped in the address for
NeighborSnoop
, a handy, if somewhat shady, search engine he used to make use of all the time during his paparazzi days to track down the details of his latest quarry. He had a surname and a town; more than enough to flush out the phone numbers of anyone living there under the surname Grady.

Five minutes later, he had three phone numbers to call, and had decided, and quickly rehearsed, how he was going to handle them. The first number he dialled was engaged. The second answered after three rings.

‘Hello?’ a woman’s voice answered.

‘Hi, this may seem like a very odd call, it’s not a sales call, though, okay?’

‘Who is this?’

‘My name is -’ it occurred for the very first time to Chris that it might be wise to start being a little bit more careful ‘- Jason Schwartz, I’m from the New England Fishermen’s Union. We arrange, from time to time, reunion gatherings for crews, and get-togethers from various social clubs. I’m trying to track down one of our members, his old crew are looking to meet up, you see . . . so I’m trying to get hold of Tom Grady. I was told he had family living out in New Buxton. But I’ve got no record of his current address see, so . . . there you go, hence the call.’

There was a pause as the lady absorbed Chris’s story, and in turn Chris held his breath in anticipation. It had sounded okay in practice, but just now it had sounded forced, as if read from a script. Chris reminded himself not to rehearse next time; busking this kind of thing always ended up sounding more natural.

‘Tom Grady? That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long, long time.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Tom Grady was my uncle.’

‘Was? Oh dear, I’m sorry -’

‘Oh, don’t be. I don’t know if he’s passed on, young man, I haven’t seen him in sixty years. I guess he probably must be dead by now. He moved out of state with his son. I guess that was . . . not long after the war. I think only a few days after the war, thinking about it.’

‘Oh . . . why do you think he moved away?’

‘I heard he came into some money, but I think that’s just hearsay. More likely he knew, with our boys coming home soon, that they would fill up the places on the trawlers once more, and he’d have trouble finding work any more. There’s not a lot else to do in Port Lawrence, other than fish, you know? I guess that’s still the way?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Fishing, and processing fish, that’s pretty much what we got over here,’ replied Chris, wary that he was exaggerating the drawl too much. He decided to try another angle - after all it was always his mum who was the one who bothered to write out and send the Christmas cards each year.

‘Did you ever hear from Mrs Grady?’

‘Oh, there was no Mrs Grady, Mr Schwartz. My aunt died some years earlier, before the war.’

Shit
.

‘Well, I must say it is a surprise to have someone ask after Tom and his boy after so many years,’ she added after a moment or two.

‘You never heard from them again?’ Chris probed.

‘Well, thinking about it, yes. I think it was a year or so after they disappeared, we received a letter from Tom. He said that they’d moved to Florida, and he was working again and they were happier down there, and not to worry, that he would be in touch again when they had settled into a home.’

‘Do you have an address?’

‘No, not any more. I replied to his letter, but he never wrote again. I think they must have moved home once more and just . . . well, you know how it is with family. Sometimes they just give up on each other. Tom and I were never that close, not even when we all lived in Port Lawrence.’

Damn
. This was feeling like a dead end.

‘Well, I’m sorry to hear about this. I’ll have to let Tom’s crewmates know he can’t be found. I do apologise for disturbing you.’

‘Not a problem, young man.’

He said goodbye and hung up.

The woman seemed, at least to some degree, to have confirmed McGuire’s little tale. That his childhood buddy, Sean, and his father had been gently
hustled
out of town . . . and probably with enough shut-up money for them to start over very nicely, thank you very much. And that, along with McGuire’s tale of navy ships at sea and the cove cordoned off with barbed wire and soldiers, that . . . and the fact that there were two Luftwaffe bodies lying off the coast of New England, inside a B-17 riddled with bullets. When it came to writing up the story, the old boy McGuire might well prove useful - he’d definitely get something out of it. But it was a shame he couldn’t track down this boy, Sean . . . an old man now, of course.

Chris decided following up on Sean Grady could wait until he was done with the diving up here. Then that was a line of enquiry he could pursue later on . . . just to add a bit more meat and gristle to the story.