With laborious toil, he moved to the holding cell where he had left the last two original crewmen of the Aleayn Yam. It would be a disgraceful offering, but he had to use what he had — dead men instead of a living sacrifice. He had to make his offering with a despicable act of cannibalism. Ali struggled to open the door, not only because of the dreadful breakers crashing over the salvage tug but because something was blocking the door from the inside.
Finally, after the umpteenth shove with his shoulder, the door gave way, just enough for his skinny body to squeeze through. The bloated corpse of the dead Egyptian he had drowned tumbled at his feet from the violently rolling ship. Ali choked at the thick, sweet stench of death and water. He rolled the dead body over to cut out its heart. As the point of his crudely fashioned steel sank into the spongy flesh and the oily fluids of decomposition started seeping from the wound, Ali swung around to vomit.
"May the gods forgive me," he gasped. "I am a pirate, not a ghoul!”
Sick and repulsed by the cadaver, Ali stumbled to the door, hoping that the storm would soon subside and that his men would believe he had done the unthinkable. It would be his secret.
Chapter 24 — Two Down
“Look what you’ve done, Purdue,” Nina screamed. She took the remote control from Sam and turned off the television. “You have caused a natural disaster in a part of the world where nothing like this ever happens. That should keep the coast guard away, I’m sure.”
“Oh, come now, Nina,” Purdue sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. “Did you not hear what the coast guard said on the news? They have no idea what caused it.”
“And since they are unfamiliar with tsunamis, they are desperately trying to explain it as freak waves,” Crystal added to Purdue’s argument. “What Purdue’s manipulator has done is unprecedented; therefore, the authorities here have no idea what could have caused the sudden spring tide.”
“Thank God we are not right at the beach. Those houses are flooded,” Cheryl said. “And all this damage without a cyclone… is… weird. Things like that don’t happen in South Africa… ever.”
“Agreed,” Dr. Malgas said from the couch where he had joined Mieke in a wine drinking marathon. “On the other hand, Mr. Purdue is right. They won’t know what to make of it. I’d say our secret is safe.”
“While half the region's coastal residences are under water,” Nina lamented. She could not help but feel sorry for the residents of Bluewater Bay, Algoa Bay and the coast further up north where they did not suffer the full brunt of the geomagnetically induced waves.
“The wreck is visible again,” Purdue noted nonchalantly.
“What the hell does that mean?” Nina frowned.
Crystal leaned in to see the vessel on the green and black LED screen. Sam turned to Nina to explain, "The wreck disappears every now and then."
“Excuse me?” Mieke gasped. "You say it disappears? A massive Nazi warship… just vanishes?”
Sam and Purdue nodded as if the phenomenon was nothing out of the ordinary. Nina winced.
“Christ, that is just creepy.”
“Maybe it is a problem with the sonar. Maybe the sound waves are prevented from reaching the wreck and fail to map it, creating the illusion that it is not there,” Sam reckoned, and Purdue considered it a good argument.
“That is very plausible.”
"So when are we actually going to salvage the ship?" Dr. Malgas asked a question all his affiliates had been harboring for the past few days.
“As soon as we have managed to pull it out of territorial waters, of course," Purdue said. He found it peculiar that an archeologist would be so ignorant of the proper procedure in acquiring any artifact.
“Not to mention that we cannot navigate the tug in these conditions, Dr. Malgas,” Crystal told Malgas. “These waves could well put us right down there with the Graf Spee." On mention of the ship's name, she drew the attention of Nina and Purdue for a split second before they silently went about their business again. "We'd all be nicely tugged in on the ocean floor, dead bodies occupying the salvage boat for all eternity.”
“Jesus,” Zain muttered.
Cheryl looked nervous. She needed to escape before they embarked on the salvage and before Zain and Sibu found out that the whole thing was a hoax.
“What is your problem?” Zain asked her under his breath.
Cheryl had to think quickly. “I am running out of medicine. You know what I’m saying?”
“So call your dealer and get enough for the trip,” he sneered. “I don’t want to be on the open sea with a paranoid bitch that might not be able to control herself and might blurt out my secret.”
Cheryl nodded obediently, “I will. Tonight, I’ll meet him a block from here. Otherwise, Billy will know I'm still a junkie." Her eyes had searched for her old mentor, once like a father to her before she had been replaced by Mieke, who knew her secret, yet never told Malgas about it.
When Cheryl had asked her substitute about it the night before, Mieke had revealed that she never told Malgas because she did not want to upset him even more what with all the stress he was already going through. But Cheryl could not help but suspect that Mieke was just keeping the revelation for the right moment.
In the evening, the waves had calmed enough for Purdue to program the next code for the satellite he had chosen. He stared at the screen, trying to spread the beam over a larger area to hopefully diminish the intensity of the waves it would cause. “Oh my God,” he muttered to himself. “It’s gone again. How the hell can it just vanish like that?”
Crystal’s phone rang.
"Oh, it's the salvage crew," she cooed. She jumped up and left the room. Sam stared at her as she vanished into the dark outside the sliding door. Nina watched him intently, amazed at his indifference toward her when Crystal was around. Sam looked spellbound by the lawyer, although he could not see her from where he sat.
“I have to know,” Nina suddenly said from behind him.
“What?”
“What is so bloody fascinating about her?” Nina snapped.
Sam smiled with that boyish charm that annoyed Nina so much, “Are you jealous, Dr. Gould?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she scoffed. “You are still almost hypnotized, even though you can’t even see her out there.”
Sam whispered, “But I can hear her.”
“Big deal,” she frowned.
“No,” he said, “you misunderstand. I am listening to her German conversation.”
“Sam,” Nina whispered back amusedly, “she is German.”
The journalist’s dark eyes played on hers for a moment, as if he was studying her. Calmly he sighed, “If her salvage contractors are Egyptian, why is she speaking German to them?”
Nina felt awfully stupid. “Let me just get my foot out of my mouth before I venture a guess…”
Sam decided not to milk the delicious moment of victory over the backfiring of Nina’s condescension and simply ran his palm down her arm, an affectionate gesture she secretly enjoyed.
“So, what is your theory on that phone call?” she asked Sam. “When I first arrived at Wrichtishousis she was on the phone for hours.”
“I have no idea. Maybe she is taking a personal call from a relative or something,” Sam speculated.
“Then why did she announce that it was the salvage crew?” Nina asked. Sam thought about it for a moment and looked at Nina. They were onto something, but what was it?