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But even that vision couldn’t erase the shame he felt at having failed in his mission. He vowed that he would die with dignity, going down with his ship, rather than struggling to survive like a coward.
Three hours later, the seas flattened as the storm moved north. The depths had swallowed the four-hundred-foot-long ship without a trace. With no record of its journey and no escort or other vessels within hailing distance, its demise would go unremarked, its existence scrubbed from the official record, taking its final secret to the bottom with it.
Only four survivors were eventually rescued by an Allied ship; heavy weather and sharks killed the rest. The Allied command showed no interest in what a Japanese ship was doing so far off the beaten path, and the men pulled from the ocean had nothing to offer but stoic silence. Their part in the war was over, their disgrace a fate worse than death.
CHAPTER 3
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, present day
Three fiberglass skiffs tugged at the lines that secured their bows to palm trees as the cobalt blue water surrounding them sparkled in the afternoon sun. Sam and Remi Fargo sat in the shade of one of the palms, the fronds stirring in the light breeze. Remi shielded her eyes from the glare with a manicured hand and watched the heads of divers bob to the surface near a fourth boat ninety yards offshore.
Sam shifted and brushed his fingers through his medium brown hair and glanced at his wife and partner for life. Refined features bereft of makeup were framed by long auburn hair, and her smooth skin glowed from the sun’s caress. His gaze traced down her athletic form, and he reached out a hand to her. She took it with a smile and sighed. Even after countless globe-trotting adventures in search of archaeological treasures, they were still inseparable, a testimony to the strength of their bond.
“I could get used to lying on this beach, Sam,” she said, closing her eyes.
“It’s gorgeous, I’ll give you that,” he agreed.
“If only they had a Bloomingdale’s . . .”
“Or a decent dive shop.”
“To each their own.” Remi slipped a Valentino flip-flop off her heel and dangled it from her toe.
They hadn’t been sure what to expect when they’d agreed to fly to Guadalcanal and were relieved to find themselves in a tropical paradise of warm water and blue sky.
A tall, lanky man in his fifties approached from down the spit of sand, with a face that was red from sunburn, a pair of battered steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his hawklike nose. His scuffed hiking boots threw up a cloud of white with each step. A group of islanders lounged nearby, watching the divers, laughing among themselves at some private joke. The man’s shadow stretched long on the shore as he neared them. Sam looked up at the new arrival and a grin lit his ruggedly handsome face.
“Well, Leonid, what do you make of all this?” Sam asked.
“It’s definitely unlike anything else on the island,” Leonid said in his slight Russian accent. “Looks man-made. But as I said on the phone, that’s impossible. It’s in eighty feet of water.”
“Maybe you found Atlantis,” Remi offered brightly, teasing Sam’s longtime friend. “Although you’re about five thousand miles off the mark, if the traditional accounts are to be believed.”
Leonid frowned, his expression conveying nothing but his usual disapproval of anything and everything. An academic on a three-year sabbatical from Moscow, Leonid Vasyev was an unhappy man even when freed from the Russian winter to roam the globe in search of lost civilizations—his passion—made possible by a grant from the Fargo Foundation.
When Sam and Remi had gotten his call about reports of a sunken find in the Solomon Islands, they hadn’t hesitated to travel halfway around the world to join him on his quest. They’d landed that morning, arriving too late to secure diving gear until the following day, and had contented themselves with reading the background matter he supplied while enjoying the tranquillity of the beach.
Two weeks earlier, a baffled teacher on Guadalcanal had called her former professor in Australia with an odd story. Her husband and son had registered unusual readings on their new fish finder and had turned to her for help. The Australian had been too busy with classes to do anything besides refer her to Leonid, a colleague she knew was footloose and fully funded.
After a series of long-distance discussions, the reluctant Russian had flown in to see for himself what the teacher was describing. Over the past few days, he’d grown increasingly puzzled by the formations his divers reported. The fishermen had thought that the irregularities might have been war wreckage, but they were mistaken. Their fish finder, one of the first on the island, had spotted something unexplainable—what appeared to be man-made structures jutting up from the bottom of the sea.
That was when Leonid decided to seek out reinforcements. He was an academic, not a deep-water diver, and he knew that he needed help. Since the Fargos were his benefactors and friends, he decided to go straight to the top, and after a long-distance conference call they’d agreed to come join him on Guadalcanal.
“Your underwater camera system could use some fine-tuning,” Sam said, eyeing a blurry photograph taken the prior day. “And couldn’t you get some photo paper? This looks like someone spilled wine on a newspaper.”
“You’re lucky I found a place with a color printer. In case you haven’t noticed, Guadalcanal isn’t La Jolla,” Leonid said drily. He considered the image Sam was studying. “Come on. What do you think?”
“It could be just about anything. We’ll have to wait until I suit up and dive. This might as well be a Rorschach test, for all the detail it’s showing.”
“Do you see your mother’s angry face?” Remi asked innocently.
Leonid eyed them like they were insects in a jar. “I see the infamous Fargo sense of humor hasn’t melted in the heat. That’s quite a relief.”
“Lighten up, Leonid. We’re in paradise, and this seems like it might be exactly the kind of mystery we love. We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Sam said. “Although Mom did look kind of annoyed in that last snapshot.” He looked over at the divers. “You sure I can’t borrow some gear from one of
the locals?”
Leonid shook his head. “I already asked. They’re fiercely protective of their stuff. Sorry. We’ll reserve some for tomorrow once we’re back in town.” Because of the limited amount of equipment, during high season most of the island’s reliable gear was already claimed by the local dive tour companies.