have.”
The tide was low, the waves splashing against the exposed supports of the pier and filling the air with the scent of salt and seaweed and rust. Cutting between the warehouses, they walked out onto a weathered wharf littered with stacks of barrels and cargo containers, some so oddly shaped they looked as if they must have been especially built to fit beneath the U-boat’s floor plates or in its torpedo tubing. Every one of the containers showed signs of having been ripped open.
Jax said, “Were any of these broken into before the militia arrived?”
“A few, yes. But not many.”
“So what is all this stuff?”
“So far we’ve found everything from a disassembled Messerschmitt jet fighter to diplomatic mail and technical drawings.”
“A fighter?” October had been staring at the rusted hull of the old U-boat, its aft section caved in by depth charges. Now she turned. “Why would the Germans have been sending a fighter to Japan?”
“So the Japanese could copy it,” said Jax, hunkering down to get a closer look at one of the barrels. “Ever hear of Operation Caesar?”
“No.”
“It was a project the Nazis started in late 1944 or early ’forty-five. By that point even Hitler had to admit the war was not going well. Someone in Berlin got the idea that if they could prop up the Japanese, then maybe the Allies would be forced to put more effort into the War in the Pacific-and take some of the heat off Europe.”
“Prop them up how?”
“The Germans had made some incredible advances in technology during the war-way ahead of where we were at the time. They started sending the Japanese everything from armor-piercing shells to design plans for missile guidance systems and rockets.”
“I’ve even heard of Hitler shipping out German scientists and engineers,” said Andrei. His eyes crinkled into what might have been a smile. “But I’ve never heard of the Nazis sending Japan any gold.”
“Not to Japan,” Jax admitted. He pushed to his feet, his gaze shifting to the old U-boat. The submarine’s wooden decking had long since rotted away, leaving a rough, pitted surface. The original ladder on the conning tower was gone, too. Someone had propped a new one in its place.
“Come,” said Andrei, leaping the distance to the U-boat’s deck. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”
Jax jumped after him, then turned to hold out his hand to October.
“That’s okay,” she said, her face held oddly tight. “I think I’ll wait here.”
“What’s the matter? Claustrophobic?”
She looked down, her attention all for the task of buttoning her jacket against the sharp wind. “Not exactly. Just…take my advice and watch where you step.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see.”
“What do we do now?” said Dixon, drawing the Kawasaki up beside the Range Rover.
They were parked in the shadows cast by a copse of beech at the crest of the hill. Looping the loose strap of his binoculars around the fist of one hand, Rodriguez watched the Russian and their target drop through the conning tower’s open hatch. Then he swung to focus on the girl.
She was small and slim and young, probably no more than twenty-four or-five. As he watched, she hunched her shoulders and shivered, as if she were cold-or afraid.
He had a VSSK Vychlop sniper rifle with an integrated bipod and silencer in a case on the floor of the backseat. The 12.7mm VSSK had been developed by the Russian Design Bureau at the special request of the FSB. Designed for counter-terror and high-profile anti-crime operations, it offered silent firing and superior penetration. Even at this range, he could blow her to pieces with a single shot and be long gone before anyone below figured out what had happened.
On the downside, the hit would not only leave their main target-Alexander-alive, it would also warn him.
“We watch,” said Rodriguez, shifting his gaze back to the U-boat.
“We should have blown the fucking sub when we had the chance,” said Salinger for something like the tenth time.
“It’ll blow,” said Rodriguez. “It’ll blow.”
21
Swinging through the open hatch, Jax felt the thick, dank air of the U-boat close around him. He set his jaw and slid down the aluminum ladder to land with a light thump beside what he realized too late was the grinning, mummified skull of a long-dead German submariner.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelped, hopping to one side and making a grab for the ladder to keep his balance. “What the hell is he doing still here?”
Andrei shrugged. “Moscow’s supposed to be sending over a team of anthropologists. They told us to leave the bodies alone.”
Jax studied the cadaver’s sunken body cavity, the tattered uniform, the dark, leathery flesh stretched across the cheekbones and clawlike fingers. “I could have landed on him.”
Andrei’s eyes creased with quiet amusement. “The Ensign did warn you to watch your step.”
Jax turned in a tight circle, his gaze taking in the control room’s jumble of ducts and valves, hand wheels and switches, gauges and wires. The militia had rigged up a string of electric lights that ran toward the bow, casting ghostly shadows around the tight compartment. He could hear a faint hammering coming from the bow, the vibrations reverberating down the length of the hull.
He brought his gaze back to the desiccated body sprawled at their feet. “You didn’t tell me the hull had held all these years.”
“Most of it,” said Andrei, leading the way forward. “The two aft compartments were torn apart by depth charges, which flooded the diesel and electric engines. That’s why she sank.”
Jax glanced back at the closed, watertight hatch that had sealed the control room off from the aft compartments, and felt the hairs rise along the back of his neck. “Sonofabitch,” he said softly. “They suffocated.”
Andrei nodded. “Poor bastards.”
Stepping over two more bodies, they ducked through the open round hatch in the front bulkhead and pushed toward the bow in silence. They passed the radio room and the listening room, the captain’s corner with its faded green curtain still in place, the men’s quarters with their bunks stacked four high on each side of the passageway.
Not all the bunks were empty.
“So exactly what did you bring me down here to see, Andrei? It must be good.”
Andrei ducked through another bulkhead, then stopped abruptly beside a small WC. “You Americans. Always so impatient. It’s here.”
Jax peered through the gaping door beside them. “We’re here to look at an old German toilet?”
“Not the toilet. That.”
Jax shifted his gaze to the shattered storage compartment that lay just beyond the WC and fell silent.
“How’s your German?” said Andrei.
Reaching out, Jax ran his fingers across the broken wood, where boldly stenciled letters warned ACHTUNG! GEFAHR! Danger. “A hell of a lot better than my Russian. It was like this when you found it?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think was in here?”
“That, we do not know. But it doesn’t look like it was designed to hold gold, now, does it?”
Jax hunkered down to study the floor plates, searching for some clue as to what the space might once have contained. “No,” he said. “No, it doesn’t.”
