Amber (5 page)

Maddock felt around in the buoyancy compartment. He recalled his training days with the vehicles and how some of the instructors would place small spare gear items inside such as an extra pair of fins, or a knife...a mask! The SEAL’s hands instantly recognized the feel of soft rubber and smooth glass. He snatched the object up and knelt on the tank while he slipped the mask over his head. Then he cleared the mask of water, exhaling through his nose until the seawater was forced out of the mask and he could see again. Excellent! Huge advantage. Maddock felt his panic ebb a couple of notches as he picked up his tank and took a couple of deep pulls of air. Maybe there was another mask on Professor’s side?

Maddock got to an upright kneeling position on the side-runner, preparing to hop over to Professor’s side and check for him, when he happened to glance up at the pilot. Who was it, anyway, Yu or Jiminez? The man was hunched over the controls, full scuba gear on including a hood.
But wait a minute...
Maddock studied the pilot’s gear more carefully. Yu and Jiminez did both wear hoods, but they were all black. This hood had a dark colored stripe—perhaps red, which couldn’t be seen clearly at this depth due to the filtering of shorter wavelengths—and...

Suddenly the pilot turned around to look back at his passengers and Maddock got a look at his face through the mask. First of all it wasn’t the same type of mask, the shape was different. Same type of thing, functionality wise, but a different model. And the face itself—Maddock looked very carefully to be sure. After all, he had known Yu and Jiminez for mere hours. But no. This man was definitely neither of the two U.S. Navy SDV pilots!

Maddock turned away quickly, not wanting the pilot to see the alarm that must be registering on his face, or that he was now wearing a mask. He decided to continue with his original course of action and moved slowly but purposefully to Professor’s side of the SDV. His colleague still hunched on the seat without a facemask, one arm both wrapped around the scuba tank and gripping the edge of the wet sub’s rail. Maddock recalled how he’d been using only one arm for quite some time now and glanced at his other arm to check for injuries.

That’s when he saw it. Professor was gripping a golden object with his left hand, clutching it against his stomach, taking great care not to drop it.

Maddock couldn’t let
himself be distracted by whatever it was that Professor had found in the wreck. He wasted no time in searching the compartment on Professor’s side of the SDV for another mask. He was already thinking about overtaking their pilot imposter—
where was he taking them, anyway
—who must be one of the Russian team excavating the wreck site. That task would be much easier if Professor could see. If not, it would be Maddock fighting the good fight solo with Professor wondering what in the heck was going on, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. There was either a spare mask in this chamber or there wasn’t. Maddock’s hands swept through the space.

There wasn’t.

He came up empty. Tough break, but at least he had one mask. That alone would give a couple of SEALs a fighting chance. He had to make his move before this Russian pilot not only brought them to even more foes, but possibly gave them the bends by ascending too fast too soon. Maddock knew that the pilot would wonder why he was on the same side of the SDV as his dive partner the next time he turned around.

He tapped Professor on the shoulder and when he turned to look at him, Maddock glanced forward to make sure the pilot wasn’t looking and then in an exaggerated motion pushed both hands toward the deck of the SDV.
Stay put.
Professor pointed to Maddock’s mask, tapped the glass with his finger and shrugged.
Where can I get one?
Maddock shook his head and again signaled for him to wait here. He had no way of communicating the complexity of the situation without Professor being able to see clearly.

Maddock eyed the pilot again, as well as their depth. He no longer had a depth gauge so he couldn’t get an exact reading, but they were definitely rising. A quick look down and behind them showed the wreck barely visible in the hazy water. He hoped Bones and Willis wouldn’t wait too long before they came outside to look for them. And where was the other SDV? Maddock craned his neck around this way and that, seeking its sleek form, but it was nowhere to be seen. Had it been taken over as this one had?

There was no time to worry about it now. One piece of dive equipment Maddock still had was his knife. He removed the blade from the sheath strapped to his calf. He took a long pull from the scuba tank, closed the valve and set it on the side-runner next to Professor. Then he pulled himself forward along the SDV, careful not to let go of it because it traveled faster than he could swim and he would be left behind with no air supply.

As he reached the control cockpit the pilot glanced backward over his left shoulder. He did a double-take when he saw Maddock was no longer there on the left side-runner and whirled back around to look in the other direction.

He saw Maddock coming for him, but too late. Just a gleam of metal from a knife blade and his air hose to the regulator was severed, a torrential gush of bubbles obscuring vision for both adversaries. Maddock swiped the mask from his opponent’s face, letting the strap slip around his wrist before slicing the Russian diver deeply and casting him off the SDV to tumble in its wake. He regretted ruining the scuba outfit since they desperately needed one, but with only a breath of air in his lungs Maddock knew he was not in any position for a prolonged fight. He could eliminate the combatant and survive, so that’s what he would do. And he did manage to appropriate a mask for Professor.

The naval warrior positioned himself at the control cockpit. He leveled out the SDV and eyeballed the depth gauge on the simple instrument console: sixty feet. Good. No danger of the bends yet. Then Maddock hopped back to Professor and picked up his tank, cracked the valve and gulped some air. He pressed the mask into Professor’s hand that wasn’t holding the golden object.

What was thing, anyway? But there was still no time to examine it closely. While Professor gratefully donned his new mask and cleared it, Maddock, tank under one arm, hopped back up to the cockpit and retook the controls. Now wearing just a regular diving mask, there was no opportunity for underwater communications with Bones and Willis, or the other navy SDV pilot. With him and Professor breathing from bare tanks, the only prudent course of action was to get to the surface and back to their boat.

Maddock tilted the nose of the craft upward at a shallow angle. He checked the SDV’s console mounted compass and pointed the craft toward their boat. Or at least where they had left it. Now that they had been compromised, he had no idea if it would still be there. Either way, whatever air remained in these tanks wasn’t going to last forever, so they had to get to the surface. He ascended to a depth of twenty feet so that they could be decompressing at that shallow depth while simultaneously covering the horizontal distance back to their boat.

He glimpsed around when he could, searching for other divers or the other SDV, but by the time they had gone what he judged to be three-quarters of the distance back to the boat, he had still seen nothing. He glanced back at Professor once and saw him sitting on the side-runner, gazing at the object he cradled against his abdomen. He could hear the sounds of boat engines without being able to tell where they were coming from. Sound traveled well underwater water but it was difficult to determine its direction.

Maddock kept on course and before long the outline of their boat was limned against the light above. He cruised until the SDV was directly beneath it, twenty feet down. He consulted his dive watch, determining that sufficient time had elapsed to avoid the bends if they ascended the rest of the way to the surface slowly from this depth. After taking a last 360-degree look around as well as up and down, he activated the controls to ease the SDV up to the boat.

The first sound he heard when his head broke the surface was that of Professor taking in great lungfuls of fresh air. Maddock too was overjoyed at being able to breathe once again without having to carefully position his mouth around an open tank valve. But he knew they had no time to revel in this great relief. He sidled the SDV up to the boat and they climbed into it.

Maddock tied the SDV alongside and then glanced at his watch again. Bones and Willis must be using all of their remaining air to look for them around the wreck, but they would have no choice but to surface soon. He picked up a pair of range-finding binoculars and scanned the water over the wreck. If they didn’t hook up with the other SDV, they might not have had enough air to swim the distance to the boat underwater, which was preferable to the risk of being seen on the surface, and would have no choice but to come straight up.

He saw no sign of anyone yet, so he removed the dummy from the captain’s chair, took its place and then set the marine radio to scan the channels for traffic in case it might turn something up. While he sat there he glanced back at Professor, who sat on one of the bench seats on deck. He was turning over the golden object in his hands.

“Whatcha got there, Prof?”

“Something that I hope makes the hell we went through down there worth it.” He held the object up and faced it in Maddock’s direction.

A golden cherub.

A small figurine, perhaps a foot high. An angelic face framed by thick, wavy hair frozen in place, and a set of wings protruding from its back. Maddock was speechless as he looked at it. He knew it couldn’t be amber, which wouldn’t have survived open to the ocean for so many years.

“Is that—“

“Gold.” Professor completed the sentence for him. He hefted the cherub in appreciation of its substantial weight for so small an object before sliding into the lecture mode which had given him his nickname.

“The Amber Room, while mostly comprised of its namesake, also consisted of a fair amount of gold, both in the form of gold leaf for the wall backing and solid gold statuettes such as this little guy, here. Could be one of the many cherubs that adorned the room.”

Maddock gazed at the diminutive statue in wonderment. Could it be? An actual piece of the Amber Room? He wanted to believe it but the skeptic in him wouldn’t let him take things at face value that easily. “How do we know it was really part of the room?”

Professor turned the piece over in his hands, tracing a finger over its smooth golden surface. “This looks exactly like the ones from the archive photos in the briefing materials. It’s the right size...” He scrutinized the recovered item some more before continuing. “Found it deep down in that crack that opened after the explosion.”

Maddock reached out his hands and Professor passed him the cherub. He examined it carefully, running his hands over it. “Sure does look and feel like gold. But it’s in pristine shape. Not much corrosion or encrustation.”

“Completely normal. Gold doesn’t corrode much in seawater, and the Baltic is quite cold, which would slow whatever degradation process there is.”

Maddock raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Shouldn’t we rinse it with fresh water or something, to preserve it now that it’s come into contact with the air?”

Professor shook his head. “Nah. You know what they say is the best way to preserve gold you bring up from the sea?”

“What’s that?” Maddock turned his attention briefly back to the water, where he did a 360-degree visual check for any activity. He saw none, except for the Baltic itself, which was fast becoming angry, a quick, biting wind whipping up spirited whitecaps.

“Keep it in a safe.”

Maddock chuckled and raised his underwater camera. He took a few snapshots of the cherub and then handed the precious metal back to Professor. “Okay, so if we go on the assumption that this angel thing is in fact a piece of the original Amber Room, then what does it mean?”

Professor shrugged. “That the Germans tried to ship the Amber Room away somewhere on the
Wilhelm Gustloff?”

Maddock turned down some static on the radio before answering. “Or that someone stole a piece and tried to make off with it. Meaning, the whole room was never on the ship, just this one piece of it.” He eyed the glistening cherub.

At length, Professor nodded slowly. “It does seem unlikely that the entire room was ever on board. There’d be a lot more cherubs if it were, and we only saw one. Not to mention the hundreds of divers over the decades who’ve scoured it for artifacts.”

“But it does tell us one thing.” Maddock looked out at the water again.

“Which is?”

“If this piece still exists, it means that the entire room was not destroyed during the bombings in World War II, which is the leading theory as to its fate.”

Prof held up the statuette. “Where there’s one, there’s more, is that it?”

Maddock nodded. “We just have to find them. It’s time to get back to land and move on to our next objective. We need to check in with Admiral
Liptow.”

“We should also get this thing to a Navy specialist, have them authenticate it.”

“Absolutely. Let’s find something to put it in so we don’t attract attention.”

“Don’t worry, if anyone sees it I’ll just say I won a Prussian Emmy award.” He hefted the figurine and gave a big fake grin. “I’d like to thank the Academy...”

“And the Russians.”

“What?”

Maddock was stone-eyed as he lifted his hands slowly skyward. “Don’t make any sudden moves. They’re here.”