Free Deep Sea One by Preston Child Page A

from specks flurrying in front of the light beams.
    In the dark rooms, lit by their flashlights, the walls looked grey and somber, the embrace of the dead from a time of turmoil and terror. Not much was disturbed in the vacuum of the U-boat belly and Nina could not help but consider that the last sounds in here were the agonizing screams of German men, doomed to suffocate if they survived drowning or incineration. She walked slowly through the silence, imagining the fear and sadness that prevailed here from their final moments. Did they pray? Did they weep? Who did they think of as a last thought? Were they still here, trapped in the cold dank purgatory of their fate?
    Sam stumbled over something at his feet and almost met the steel grid with a crash, but he corrected his balance and managed to scare the hell out of his colleagues with the sudden ruckus.
    "What's wrong?" Purdue asked, shining his light in Sam's eyes and momentarily blinding him. Answering in incoherent blabber, Sam attempted not to swear and kicked the obstacle that felt like a soft bag with hardware inside it. But it was, in fact, as he realized when he illuminated it, remains of the late seaman G. Lindemann. He felt bad for his assault when he read the withered name badge and Nina joined him with a pat on the back.
    "You showed him," she smiled, and walked off farther down the steel piping, which ran along the sides. "Air conditioning," she noted and checked the place for more remains, which were present occasionally along the short bridge.
    "Look for anything historical or anything of value the vessel could have been carrying," Purdue said. Crossing over the entrance to the bunks, they did not find anything particularly odd apart from the impeccably made beds, still tidy even after half a century or so. It was creepy, thought Nina, that the bunks looked like they had never been slept in and she was reluctant to check under the pillows.
    "Wow, I feel like such a messy slob now," Sam remarked, as he shone his light on one after the other creaseless bunks.
    "You are a slob," Nina teased.
    "You think?" he answered quickly, knowing that she was guessing correctly, "I'll have you know that my bed is always made."
    "But not in the German way, I bet," Purdue chimed in from the far side, where he was looking through a locker. They sniggered in the dead silence of the submarine mausoleum.
    "Come on, there has got to be something here," Purdue complained, "Don't you agree, Dr. Gould?"
    "I actually do concur. From my research these Elektroboots all contained Nazi treasure. On the way to Japan, to Spain, even to Czechoslovakia, would you believe? We have to keep looking."
    "Until we run out of oxygen?" Sam asked innocently, reminding them that time was imperative to survival down here. Nina gasped, "Yes, we have to hurry for now."
    "For now?" Purdue exclaimed, "I would like this to be the one trip we need to find treasure. The next trip should be reserved for recovering it, you see?"
    Setting aside their tourist sensibilities, the three continued on searching. Sam entered a small cabin marked "Kapitänleutnant" and found another meticulously made bed, however, the rest of the room was chaotic. A straight razor, several bullets and two small mirrors were strewn over the floor. There was no sign of any human remains, but there was a compass and stationary on the table. Rust had dropped from the bolts of the pipes moving through the wall and stained the table and toppled chair. Sam felt a sinister ambience in this cabin, although he would never admit to such nonsense. He moved toward the locker, which was slightly ajar with a black strip of shadow inside as he cast his light there. Something was hanging inside.
    "Uniforms," Sam said, as Nina entered the room to pry.
    "I'll check them. You check the bedside locker. That drawer looks impossible to wrench open," she suggested and he had to agree. It was firmly lodged in the cabinet from years of oxidation. Nina went to check