The Last Airship (11 page)

To
his relief, his left hand touched something solid – something cylindrical.

Sam
opened the bottle and then closed it again. A gush of air bubbles were
released. The bubbles were large enough that he could take a deep breath of
air. It was an immediate solution to his need, but without a regulator he was
going to be using up his air supply within minutes.

Using
his hands to guide him through the hull, he reached for a drawer where he
normally stored a number of regulators and dive masks. Sadly, what his hands
found were a number of large pieces of splintered wood – the remnants of a
broken drawer.

Did
the regulator fall toward the transom and then out of the yacht, or did it fall
forward towards the bow?

He
had no choice, Sam had to assume that one of his regulators was somewhere at
the fore of the ship. If he had a mask, he might have easily been able to spot
it. As it was, he was nearly blind in the dark, turbulent water inside the
sinking ship, which was now more than twenty feet below the surface.

He
ran his hand along the internal teak flooring. It was covered in worthless
equipment. None of which was of any use to him unless he could find the
regulator, and soon.

Just
as he was about to turn around and swim back to the tank for another bubble of
air, his left hand grasped something that felt like a small hose. It was
rubbery, and could have just as easily been part of the yacht’s plumbing, but
luckily, it wasn’t.

He
pulled on it and felt for the end.

The
familiar emergency octopus valve, known as an Ochy, was in his hand.

His
head was spinning. It might be from hypoxia, or it as a result of the sudden
increase in pressure, while the atmospheric pressure doubled for every thirty
three feet of water above him.

Sam
flicked open the air tank four more times, releasing enough air bubbles so that
he could catch his breath. He then attached the first stage to the air tank,
and turned the tank valve so that it was completely opened.

Depressing
the blow off valve on the primary regulator, Sam watched as a huge gush of air
bubbled out from the valve opening, as water was cleared from the piping.

He
then placed his mouth on the primary, and inhaled.

It
felt like coming home.

This
was his normal environment. He was safe. He’d done this a thousand times
before.

He
scrambled to see the depth gauge at the end of the console. Its reading was, 80
feet. Sam remembered that he’d been sitting in 110 feet of water.

His
next concern was what was going to happen when his ship struck the seabed?

Sam
didn’t plan on waiting to find out.

He
carried his tank, regulator and weight belt to the back of the now-open transom
and swam outside.

Immediately
thereafter, he watched the seabed erupt as
Second Chance
collided into
it.

He
waited a minute for the debris to settle. It would have been nice to have the
luxury of giving it more time, but that wasn’t going to be possible. He was
sitting at 100 feet below the surface. His air supply was going to run out
pretty quick, and his maximum no-decompress time would be over even faster.

Sam
checked his dive watch. He always wore it on his left wrist, a trusty companion
that was always with him. It read 100 feet. Then at the dive tank, which was at
- 210 bar. His mind rapidly made the calculations, as only someone who has
spent a life time diving could – somewhere in the vicinity of 15 minutes.

Either
way, he needed to return to a lesser depth if he was going to remain submerged
long enough to escape his enemy.

Whoever
he is?

The
air was still hissing out of the end of the low pressure hose, which normally
would be attached to a buoyancy control device, known as a BCD. He needed to
get down to the wreckage and find one quickly, or his 15 minutes would drop to
5 minutes very soon.

Fortunately,
the ship landed the way she had sunk – keel down. Eerily, Sam noted that her
sails were still up, and she was standing upright on the seabed, looking as
though she had continued sailing on the bottom of the sea.

He
struggled through the wreckage to get to the center cockpit.

His
eyes stung as they tried to orient himself in the dark, murky water. He
couldn’t see much at all; but there, right in front of him, about twenty feet
away, he could just make out the faint red glow of the navigational instruments
behind the helm.

He
reached the helm and then felt around for a plastic compartment on his left –
no,
it’s not in there
. Then he felt for the one to the right of him. It opened
easily. The BCD began to float. Sam’s fast reflexes managed to catch it before
it disappeared toward the surface.

Next,
he continued to feel his way along, until his hands finally grasped the glassy
frame of his dive mask.

He
pulled it over his head, then placed his hand over the top half of the mask, as
he leaned forward and exhaled to clear the mask of water, so that he could once
again see.

He
checked his watch.

The
little symbol of a frog could be seen swimming on its face. Next to it was the
number 07:28 indicating that he had now been underwater for almost seven and a
half minutes, and was now at a depth of 91 feet. The NDT reading, short for No
Decompress Time, was eight minutes.

His
eyes quickly glanced at the console.

It
now showed that only seventy bars worth of air remained in the tank.
Where had
he miscalculated the rate of air usage?
Then the answer came to him.
Without the BCD attached, the low pressure hose had been constantly hissing out
air. However, recognizing the cause of miscalculation provided him with little
in the way of solutions to his problem.

Now
what?

He
could now see a little more clearly, and felt as though he’d gained just a
little control over his rising panic, now that he had regained the use of one
more of his five senses. 

Sam
resisted the urge to instantly begin the process of resurfacing, which would be
a death sentence. Only in James Bond films did the bad guys ever leave
immediately after thinking they’d killed the good guy.

Then
the answer to his predicament suddenly came to him – he was going to test his
new Sea Scooter!

Sam
made his way to the back of the center cockpit, where a large storage
compartment rested. Undoing the hooks, he found his Sea Scooter 120 - an
experimental version, capable of traveling at a speed of 20 miles per hour.

After
mounting the sleek scooter, he pressed the red start button.

For
a moment, Sam worried that seawater may have gotten into its electronics, but
of course, it was designed for diving and it started right up.

The
Sea Scout’s little electric engine started to whirl within the confines of its
protective mesh, which was there to prevent a diver from accidentally losing
any limbs or digits.

He
then opened the two air cylinders already attached to its frame.

A
soft, red light illuminated the computer screen, located between the handlebars,
just the same as those which would be on the dashboard of a motorcycle.

On
the top of the dashboard there was a sonar image of the seabed, reaching up to
500 feet ahead. Below, were three instruments. The one on the left was a simple
compass. The middle one displayed the current battery power, and like the
markings on a fuel tank, it showed a number of boxes up and down, and right
now, it showed all the boxes as filled in green, indicating that the tank was
full. The last gauge showed the air supply in BARs, at 920.

That
was another huge relief.

Sam
had already exceeded his maximum no-decompress time, but with that much air in
his tanks, he could take his time to resurface ensuring that he would be able
to incorporate enough decompression stops along the way to release the nitrogen
build up in his bloodstream, a necessary step in order to prevent getting the
bends.

Pointing
the Sea Scooter so that the compass arrow indicated due west, Sam turned the
throttle in his right hand, and the little electric motor started the propeller
whirling beneath him. He planned to head straight for the shoreline.

This
one is going to be hard to explain to the insurance company.

The
trip took less than twenty minutes to reach the shoreline, and another thirty
minutes for him to eliminate his risk of decompression illnesses.

Sam
then powered the Sea Scooter all the way up onto the sandy beach.

Taking
off his dive mask, he noticed that he’d reached an almost-secluded beach. To
the south, the point was creating a beautiful break, one that today, had been
forming into barrel waves, which then broke about fifty feet from the beach.

It
looked like a nice place to surf.

A
tanned blonde girl in a purple bikini flashed her sparkling blue eyes and with
a friendly smile, asked, “Hey, where did you come from?”

Sam’s
mind returned to the present.

“I’ve
been diving a wreck,” Sam replied, looking back at the waves breaking on the
beach. “It’s pretty choppy out there today. How’s the surf?”

“Really?
Where did you put in at? I’ve been surfing here for the past couple of hours
and I thought I had the break all to myself.” She sounded rather suspicious for
a girl who’d just spent her morning surfing in what could only be described as
a surfer’s paradise.

“There’s
a wreck dive out there and a beautiful sunken ship.” He then glanced over at
the malicious dark blue structure, which was still visible at more than two
miles out to sea. It looked like it hadn’t even moved. They were taking no
chances, that’s for sure. “It’s a long way out, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Aliana
looked at her Cartier wrist watch.

The
elegance of its solid sapphire bezel on its stem seemed oddly out of place on
the wrist of a woman who’d arisen early to see if she could catch a wave.

It
was already 9:30 a.m.

She
would probably make it back to her hotel in time if she left now. Besides, the
winds had started to pick up and were ruining the surf.

It
had been a nice morning so far. Cyclone Petersham, to the north, had now
dissipated, however, more than two thousand miles to the south, the result of
its passing was an enormous, continuous swell.

It
had turned an otherwise average surf beach into one bordering on perfection.
But, now that the wind had picked up, the surf had become much choppier.

She
tossed her short board onto the back seat of her Jeep, where it nestled along
her roll bar, climbed into the driver’s seat, and then made her way back into
town.

It
had been a nice morning for surfing.

Her
phone, which she’d left carelessly inside the glove compartment, showed a new
message from her dad.

I’ve
completed my work in Australia and will be leaving today. Will you be flying
home with me, or are you planning on staying longer?

She
thought about it for a moment.

She’d
enjoyed the Australian coast and was happy to stay for another few days. Then,
she responded with,
Think I’ll stay until the end of the week. Will try to
and see you again before returning to college. I’ve had fun. Thanks. Aliana.

When
she turned the car key, the powerful, limited edition 6.2 Liter engine kicked
into life,
and she started making her way back into town.

She
still couldn’t shake the image of the man she’d seen coming in from a dive
earlier that morning. There were many good dive sites in the area, but she’d
never heard of or seen one out near the point. Not that she knew the area all
that well, having stayed there for barely a week. Still, there was something
about him that seemed wrong – she just couldn’t figure out what it was.

She
shook the thought from her mind as irrelevant and continued driving.

Her
father had said that his work in Australia would take about three weeks. It was
rare these days for her to follow him on these expeditions, but since she was
on vacation from her studies, she’d decided to join him.

Aliana
and her father had never quite seen eye to eye, but she knew that he loved her.
He was driven by the power that accompanied the fortune he’d amassed, and
consequently, he worked hard to maintain it. For Aliana, it was different. She
became a microbiologist for two simple reasons, first, the science was
fascinating, and second, it was a way to genuinely help people. At times, she
wondered if her father even liked the fact that his discoveries had improved
the lives of millions of people around the world.

Driving
on, her thoughts returned to the man on the beach. She recalled his blue eyes,
his kind face, and his disarming smile.

There
was something about him that intrigued her. He certainly wasn’t there for the
reason he had given her – of that much she was certain.  A part of her felt
ashamed to automatically discredit his story. The man had appeared to be
friendly enough. He certainly hadn’t meant her any harm. The two of them had
been the only two people on the beach. Upon reflection, she thought that she
probably should have been at least a little frightened by him.

It
might have been the scientist in her, but if she was going to be honest with
her self-analysis, it was quite possible that her own father had fostered such
distrust in her, not just because of the way he’d treated her mother while she
was alive, but because her father had raised her to try to understand people,
and people, she knew, were the most self-serving creatures on the planet.

Despite
her mistrust, Aliana thought that she would have liked to get to know the man
on the beach a little better. 

She
again wondered what it was about his story that just didn’t ring true.

Then
it struck her
– the man hadn’t been wearing a wetsuit.

*

At
the age of sixty-seven, John Wolfgang showed little sign of aging. He had
always been healthy. Despite growing up in socialist East Germany, his father
had often told him that he came from good German stock.

John
was finally back in his office, and wearing a $15,000 tailored suit – one of
more than a dozen made specifically for him. He felt comfortable in it. He was
much happier to be returning to his lavish lifestyle rather than being out on
some ship investigating a new microbe that one of his scientists had recently
discovered in an iceberg which had broken off from the Antarctic shelf. He was even
happier to have returned from his other project, which Cyclone Petersham had
delivered.

When
he had boarded the long-haul return flight to Massachusetts, where his company
Neo Tech was based, John had a number of important business calls to make, and
one important call to receive. Although he was the sole passenger aboard his
private jet, he was still dressed as if he were at sea, and he felt it impolite
to do business in anything other than business attire. Now, after having a hot
shower, he was comfortable in his familiar office, and in his perfectly-fitted
suit; after a week out at sea, it was nice to feel clean again.

John
felt that he was now ready to receive those important calls, while sitting at his
desk in the largest room of his luxurious Lear Jet G6. Its accoutrements looked
far more like they graced the office of a Wall Street billionaire than the
inside of a luxurious Lear jet.

The
room was simple but performed its purpose well. State of the art sound proofing
allowed him to forget that he was on a plane.  An imperial oak desk, a secure
satellite phone, two separate computer monitors were all that made up his
office.

A
single painting graced the wall – an original Monet, depicting water lilies on
a lake. It was the master’s first attempt, which he’d thrown out having been
displeased with it for an obvious technical mistake in the method he used to
depict the water lilies. Having been retrieved by a neighbor, and given to a
cousin in Germany, it had adorned the Wolfgang family room for three
generations, under the assumption that it was an imitation. Two years ago, the real
origins of the painting had become known, and it became the most valuable Monet
still in existence. Before reaching auction, it had been stolen.

It
was only after its loss, that John had discovered the real value behind the
great painting, which made it far more valuable than the 80 million dollars
that the assessor suggested it could fetch at auction.

Only
after the efforts of a billionaire and luck of the impending catastrophe of
Cyclone Petersham, was John able to reacquire the painting.

John
stared at it for a moment.

He
cared little for the artwork itself, and wondered what his father would have
said if he’d known what he’d hid, in plain sight, for most of his lifetime.
Either way, it was on its way home now, and John only hoped that it wouldn’t
destroy the world.

He
let the phone ring once only, then picked up the handset.

John
was expecting the call. Dreading it almost as much as he longed to receive it,
so that it would finally be over.

He
noticed the small tremors on his otherwise still hand.

That’s
new,
he thought.

“John,
is this line secure?” The man spoke English; the tone of which could only be
mastered by one the British aristocratic elite. An accent acquired at Oxford or
even Cambridge, he guessed. It was a voice that betrayed the speaker’s lavish
breeding. It had been years since he’d actually heard this man’s voice, but
despite that, he recalled it as though it had been only yesterday.

And,
after the information he received yesterday, he had no doubt that the man would
contact him today about it.

“It
is.” He said, unwilling to say more.

“Have
they been taken care of?” The man on the phone sounded displeased.

“Yes.”

“All
of them? Are you certain?”

“Yes.
I took care of the last person myself.” John was unused to being questioned
like this, by anyone, even the man on the other side of the phone.

“Now,
how long before we have it?” The man's voice was coarse, sounding like that of
someone in their eighties, who had spent a lifetime, smoking tobacco.

John
nearly choked on his 30 year old Glenfarclas whiskey. Terrified, he looked up
at his recent acquisition on the wall, terrified that this man knew about it
already.

But
how could he know? I didn’t even know its value until three months ago?

Suddenly
remembering exactly why this man had called, John responded with his prepared
response, “The thing’s been missing for seventy five years. It may still take
some time before it’s found. Things generally are when they wish to remain
lost. And this, was supposed to disappear forever. It’s a hard area to search,
but we’ve already got people over there. Once they find her, we’ll send in our
own team to retrieve it. It’s not like we can send in a team of mercenaries without
anyone noticing. We have to be extremely careful exactly who we do send to do
this, and we must be discreet, otherwise we’ll have every treasure hunter after
her.”

“Do
I need to remind you of the consequences if you fail to deliver it?”

“Fuck
you!” John was done being servile. The man on the other end of the line might
be his master, but he was long past his willingness to be treated like a dog by
anyone. “I’m well aware of the outcome if I fail. I know exactly how dangerous
this thing is.”

“Good.
Then at least, in that, we are in agreement.” The man coughed and then said, “I
will call you in a week to see how you have progressed.”

“No,
you won’t. I’ll call you when we have it, and if you’d like to be the first to
have her in your possession, you will remember to permit me to do my job.”

John
hung up the sat phone, ending the call.

On
the desk in front of him, there was only one photo. It was a picture of him and
his daughter at her graduation after she had completed her undergraduate degree
at MIT. She had a big smile on her face, and you could see the pride on his own
face from a mile away.

He
studied that picture for a moment.

What
have I done?

*

John
Wolfgang had more phone calls to make.

His
business was worth a fortune and he rarely slept for more than a few hours at a
time these days.

The
company, which was started by his grandfather before Hitler lost the war, had a
prolonged moratorium after his grandfather lost all credibility and financial
support. John took over the family business shortly after the Berlin Wall came
down. Since then, he had immigrated to the U.S., where his scientific acumen
could take him further. His pharmaceuticals had saved millions of people
worldwide, not to mention winning him the Nobel Prize for medicine.

John
placed the graduation photo back on his desk, his determination visible in his
eyes.

He
was committed now and there was nothing he could do to change that.

He
knew when he first accepted the man’s help that it would be difficult to say no
to him when it was time to return the favor. To fulfill this obligation would
be unconscionable. However, failure to do so now, was unthinkable. It all
seemed so far away at the time, that John secretly believed that it would never
be found, or that he would be the one to release its horrible wrath.

All
that he had worked for would be lost, because they had maintained control over
him and over everything held dear.

As
painful as this was, John would have been more than willing to suffer it all
alone, the blame landing squarely upon his head; the price of fulfilling this
obligation was too terrible for the world.

Before
he was even given a chance to falter in his obligation to the man he’d never
met, a package arrived.

We
own you – don’t falter.

Those
were the only words displayed on the outside of the brown package. They were
handwritten, in the carefree scrawl of someone who knew, without a doubt, that
John would never go to the police.

Its
contents confirmed what he already knew, there was no way he could get out of
this.

It
was a picture of his daughter. She was in her pajamas, having breakfast alone.
John recognized the room. It was the 32
^nd
floor penthouse he’d
bought for her while she was still studying at MIT. It was a secure apartment,
and he had taken steps to ensure that few people knew where she lived.

But
somehow, they’d found her.

They
always would.

How
can a father bring himself to choose, between the well-being of billions of
people, or the life of his only daughter, the one thing he’d managed do right
in his entire life.