“No, he wants me to take over one of his smaller auxiliary companies, Deep Sea Salvage.”
“Salvaging big ships and tugboat driving?”
“Not exactly, but I suppose we might be responsible for something like that. He’s offered me the position of Director of Special Operations, which is a fancy way of saying that I pick the work that I want to do, which is primarily ocean research, deep sea salvage operations, and water quality studies.”
“What did you just say to the offer?” Tom asked.
“I said, it depends whether or not I can convince you to leave the Marines and join me.” Realization slowly dawned in Tom’s eyes, as Sam continued, “My old man told me not to worry about it. You were thinking of quitting anyway.”
“I got a phone call at 8 a.m. today, telling me that the paperwork had finally gone through! When did you speak to your dad, Sam?”
“We talked at about 7:30.”
“That bastard! He’s the only person who has ever gotten the best of my father, and he controls the world’s largest Navy.”
“Yeah, not to discuss whose is bigger, but my dad controls the world’s richest one. So, what do you say, do you want to have an adventure or do you want to find out what other bureaucracy your father intends for you join?”
“You know I hate the ocean!” Tom knew that this wasn’t an entirely true statement. Since he’d nearly been killed by a hurricane during his boyhood, he’d subsequently had a number of nightmares regarding the sea and so, when he met and befriended Sam, he’d spent years being dragged out into the ocean on adventures with him. Hurricanes still scared the shit out of him, but he had learned to love the ocean as much he’d come to deeply respect its awesome power.
“No, you don’t hate it. You’re just a little frightened of it, that’s all. That will actually help where we’re going. Besides, we mainly look after diving operations, deep sea retrievals and leave the ocean disasters to the other guys. I can put you in charge of Special Projects. Besides, we need a helicopter pilot. What do you say?”
“It sounds like a lot more fun than moping about here,” and just like that, Tom had been hooked into a life at sea; a life in which he discovered a place and happiness he’d never before known.
Tom laughed as he recalled the conversation, and remembered how both Reilly men had the unique power to convince others to join them, regardless of their original intentions.
Tom’s thoughts returned to the present.
Despite the heavy soundproofing in the operations room, the 40,000 hp twin diesel engines could be heard humming away in the background as they propelled the Maria Helena at full speed towards the troubled Hayward Bulk, somewhere off the coast of North Queensland, Australia.
Tropical cyclones, he knew, were the southern hemisphere’s equivalent of his dreaded hurricane.
The Hayward Bulk was a 500,000 ton supertanker.
It was on the Japan to South Africa run when its engine impeller broke and the supertanker’s built-in safety system cut the power to the engines to protect it. The Mary Rose, which provided offshore support to the vessel, had refused to come to its aid because cyclone Petersham was on its way.
The Hayward Bulk was one of more than thirty supertankers owned by Global Shipping. Deep Sea Expeditions was its smaller arm. It’s CEO and owner, shipping mogul and old man, James Reilly, had contacted the skipper of the Maria Helena and informed him that they were being diverted from their current duties in Townsville in order to deliver a team of engineers and some heavy equipment to the lame ship.
If they reached her in time, Tom would be required to fly them over to the troubled vessel.
For twelve months his good luck had kept him away from any such disaster at sea. As he stared at the meteorological reports on his laptop, Tom realized that Cyclone Petersham was going to be one of the worst to ever reach this part of the world.
Fate, he realized, was inexorable.
The swell had risen above forty feet, and for the first time since leaving Sydney, Sam started to wonder if he’d gone too far this time. Where the waves had previously been spotted with whitecaps, they were now walls of water, forty feet high and covered in white, angry, frothy sea. The wind had risen to 80 knots, gusting up to 120.
To make matters worse, the extreme low off the coast of South Australia was just about to collide with the southern tip of Cyclone Petersham’s low. This would form the most deadly of barometric systems, known as a squeeze. Seen on a synoptic chart, the two lows could be identified by a number of gradient pressure lines, with an area of relative normal pressure in the middle about to be squeezed between them. There was no rational way to predict how the sea would respond to such a collision of natural forces.
Sam relished this type of meteorological event at sea.
Below deck, barely audible above the sounds of the storm, he heard his satellite phone ringing. Only three people in the world had this number — his father, James Reilly, his meteorologist, Mark Stanton, and his best friend, Tom Bower. Even his mother didn’t have it.
Whatever had happened, it would be important.
He stepped down the ladder and picked up the phone.
“Sam here.” Despite the cold air, he could feel the sweat on his hand with which he held the phone against his ear.
It had to be his father.
He’d already spoken to Mark earlier today, and the man had made it abundantly clear that there was no possible way to tell, with any reasonable certainty, what the hell was going to happen when the weather systems collided. So, that left only his father, who never called unless there was a problem. Sam decided to hope that it was Mark on the phone, telling him the storm was going to be worse than he’d originally predicted.
“Sam, its Blake Simonds.” There was a pause after that. What the heck is Blake doing ringing me? “I got your picture,” the man continued, as though he’d anticipated Sam’s lack of response as an indicator of non-recognition.
He’d almost completely forgotten about the gold ingot.
“Oh, yeah, do you know where it’s from?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, it’s from the Oppenheimer and Goldschmidt family.” He could tell by the tone of Blake’s voice that the man assumed that everyone knew about the family.
“Never heard of them.”
“They were an extremely wealthy Jewish family who disappeared during the Holocaust.”
“Don’t you mean that they were murdered?” Sam corrected him.
“No, their deaths couldn’t have been kept secret, not even during the Holocaust.”
“Any idea where they are now?” Sam asked.
“No.” Sam heard Blake sigh on the other end of the line. “But that’s just it. No one’s heard from them since.”
“Any relatives?”
“No, the last anyone saw of them was when they tried to escape Munich on the Magdalena.” Blake sounded excited, as though he was close to discovering something of great importance.
“What’s the Magdalena?”
“She was a luxury airship, like the Titanic’s equivalent of a Zeppelin airship. It was said that her owner, a Mr. Peter Greenstein, made a number of trips aboard her, attempting to rescue rich Jewish families in the early days of the war.”
“Just the rich ones?” Sam, having grown up with a father who considered himself in financial trouble when his name didn’t appear in the Top 10 Rich List in Forbes Magazine, found that irritating and typical.
“It’s what I heard.” Blake said.
“That figures.” Sam had seen firsthand what was offered to the rich. “What happened to him and the rest of the people on the Magdalena?”