The Midas Deep

by John Brosnan

Genres: Humor & Satire; Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

In the darkest depths of the Pacific lies a new, underwater frontier, where only the brave or the desperate dare to tread... Experts from the West, to harvest rich minerals - and to spy. The Russians, to further their plans for global domination. A team of sadistic mercenaries hired to protect mammoth business interests. And a British journalist, Christopher Maine, in search of a story - and the sinister truth. Down on the ocean bed a giant submersible forages for hidden treasures. But then the forces of man and nature terrifyingly unleash disaster after disaster - until the survival of the world itself is at stake.

Release date: December 21, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 302

Sample

At 1.20 a.m. on the night of 12 April, Professor Alan Melville left his office at Oceandeep Projects Incorporated and began the sixty-yard walk to the scene of his murder. It was a featureless two-storey building known as the Ocean Simulation Facility.

It was a typical La Jolla night. The air was pleasantly warm and filled with both the sound of the nearby Pacific Ocean and the tang of eucalyptus trees. He breathed deeply as he walked.

He met no one on his walk through the complex. This should have struck him as odd because there was always a strong security presence there twenty-four hours a day, but he was too preoccupied to notice. He was halfway to the Facility building before he even remembered that he’d promised his girlfriend that he’d be home by 10 p.m. She’d planned a special meal – it was an anniversary or something; he couldn’t recall what the occasion was exactly – and he’d forgotten completely about it. Once again his work had blotted out everything else. Miranda was going to be furious. He would have to call her from the OSF building.

He paused at the entrance to the Facility. There was only a single light burning within its cavernous interior and that was over in a far corner. The network of huge cylindrical and spherical pressure chambers, and their surrounding machinery, that grew out of the concrete floor cast deep shadows. There was no sign of the person who had made the urgent call to his office only minutes ago. Where had they got to?

Frowning, Professor Melville stepped into the gloom. He was still puzzled as to what they were doing here at this time of night anyway. There were no pressure experiments being carried out at the moment, so what could there possibly be in here that needed his urgent attention?

He called out again but there was still no answer. He stood still for a couple of moments listening carefully for any sound but there was none. He continued on towards the light.

Then, just as he was rounding the corner of one of the big cylindrical tanks, he heard the merest of sounds behind him – like the scuff of a rubber heel on the concrete floor.

He started to turn but it was already too late. Everything suddenly became very confusing and the world started to tilt to one side. With clinical detachment he realized that he must have been hit very hard on the back of the head and that he was now falling towards the floor, but there was no pain. Nor did he feel any pain when he hit the floor though he distinctly felt the jarring shock as his chin slammed into the concrete. Then he was falling through the floor and down into layers of black cotton wool …

Consciousness returned with a jolt. He knew immediately that something was very wrong – every cell of his body was telling him so. He was shaking violently – so violently it was almost a convulsion – and his skin felt as if it was being flayed. Every breath took an enormous effort and even then he wasn’t drawing in enough oxygen. What the hell was going on?

He tried to focus his eyes in the bright light that surrounded him. He then saw that he was lying on his back in one of the pressure chambers – the biggest of the cylindrical ones. It could, he knew, be pressurized to the equivalent ocean depth of 700 metres. Then it hit him. The system was functioning! He was in a pressurized environment … and if his symptoms were any indication he was already goddamn deep!

He rolled over onto his stomach and dragged himself up onto his hands and knees. The exertion made him feel worse and a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. His body began to shake even more violently.

He knew now what was happening to him. He was experiencing ‘helium tremors’, a condition that occurred when you were subjected to a pressure equal to a depth of over 300 metres while breathing a mixture of oxygen and helium. The way to overcome it was to slow down the rate of compression but he’d obviously been taken to this depth at an incredibly high speed.

A glance at his watch confirmed this. It was 2.40 a.m. In normal pressure experiments it was standard procedure to increase the compression in a series of slow stages with long adjustment periods in between … but he’d been taken to at least 300 metres in just over an hour!

His rising anger helped him to stagger to his feet. Whoever the crazy idiot was who was doing this to him was going to regret the day he was born.

He fell heavily against the curving wall of the chamber as the dizziness almost completely overcame him. Take deep breaths; he told himself. Because of the sheer effort of breathing at this depth, with the diaphragm and other chest muscles having to strain to push a heavier mass in and out of the lungs, he was breathing too shallowly and the lack of oxygen was adding to his symptoms.

Then his vision cleared and he was able to take in his surroundings. The first thing he looked at was the pressure gauge. It was as he feared – it read 380 metres. That was the equivalent of being over 1,000 feet below the sea!

He swore loudly – and was momentarily surprised by the squeaky tone of his voice until he remembered it was a side-effect of the helium – then staggered over to the intercom. He switched it on and yelled: ‘Hey, you out there! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

He waited for an answer but there was none. He then pressed the red Emergency Alarm button beside the intercom. That should have set bells ringing throughout the Facility, but when he listened on the intercom he couldn’t hear a sound. Was the intercom dead or had someone disconnected the alarm circuit? Suddenly his anger was replaced with a chill of fear. For the first time since he’d regained consciousness it had occurred to him that someone might be trying to kill him.

He went to one of two observation ports and peered out but could see no one. This wasn’t surprising as the thick glass port-holes were set in the upper curve of the chamber wall – observers standing on the small catwalk would be able to see into the chamber but all you could see from inside was the ceiling of the Facility. Melville banged on the glass with his fist and yelled though he knew it was futile. There was no way the sound would penetrate glass that thick.

The effort made him feel even weaker so he sat down on one of the narrow bunks. He took deep breaths and told himself to keep calm and to look at the situation rationally. It was ridiculous that anyone might be trying to kill him. It had to be some kind of crazy, dangerous practical joke. After all, if someone had really wanted to kill him they would have done so instead of just knocking him unconscious. But who on Earth did he know who would pull this kind of stunt for a joke?

He glanced at the pressure gauge. It now read 420 metres. They were taking him down even further! And at the same fast rate. Panic gripped him for a moment but he fought it away. He was in no real danger, he told himself. Lots of people had been subjected to greater amounts of pressure in this very chamber. What was the record? He strained to remember but concentration was difficult – another symptom of what was known as the ‘high pressure nervous syndrome’.

In theory the human body should be capable of withstanding enormous pressure providing the internal gas pressure stays in balance with the exterior, but physiologists had discovered that the compression of the actual cell membranes at depths past 300 metres had increasingly serious effects on the nerves. It was now believed that the human nervous system would never be able to cope with depths past 600 metres.

Experiments had shown that the high pressure nervous syndrome could be controlled providing the descent was made as slowly as possible, but as Melville was being taken down at such a fast rate he was getting the full brunt of all the syndrome effects. The trembling in his limbs was getting worse and he was sweating heavily, his body temperature rising because of the pressure.

He got to his feet again and immediately vomited as another wave of nausea overcame him. The pressure gauge was now showing 500 metres. That meant he was at the equivalent ocean depth of over 1,600 feet and being subjected to – he fought to concentrate – over 700 pounds of pressure per square inch of his body.

He went to the intercom and yelled for help but the effort made him short of breath and he had to stop. It was a waste of time anyway – whoever was out there operating the controls knew he was in here. He wondered again who it could possibly be, and he also wondered what had happened to the person who had called him here. For a brief moment he considered the possibility that they might be responsible for what was going on, but dismissed the idea immediately. It had to be someone else.

He pressed his face to the glass of the observation port, trying to increase his restricted field of vision, but it was no use. He still couldn’t see anyone out there.

And as he stared through the glass it suddenly occurred to him how isolated he had suddenly become. The world just 2½ inches away on the other side of the glass had become a hostile environment to him. It would take several days of slow and careful decompression before he could re-enter that world.

He was struck by an alarming thought. What if his unknown tormenter out there intended to kill him by suddenly decompressing the chamber? Panic gripped him again until he remembered that all the tanks were equipped with fail-safe devices that prevented the accidental rapid decompression of any of them.

But even so it would still be possible to reduce the pressure at a faster rate than his body could handle, with the result that the dissolved helium in his cells would start to form tiny bubbles. If the bubbles formed in the joints or in the nerve tissue he would suffer agonizing pain – the dreaded ‘bends’ – and if they accumulated in the blood he could die of thrombosis.

He had seen divers suffering from the bends. It was probably one of the most unpleasant ways to die there was.

But who would want to do this to him. And why?

The only answer was that it was someone from outside. Someone had managed to penetrate Oceandeep’s tight security net, as unlikely as that seemed.

He remembered how he had lightly dismissed the security chief’s warning about the strong possibility that the Russians would take covert action against the Proteus Project. But could that be the explanation behind all this?

Could this be the work of a Russian saboteur?

No, that was ridiculous. No outsider would be able to get into Oceandeep. And why would a saboteur make him the target? His death at this stage would only mean a minor set-back to the project. Most of the important work had been completed and Proteus would go ahead with or without him. And if murder was the object of this whole thing why would his assassin go to such complicated lengths? Who would want to make his death as slow and as painful as possible?

No, this had to be someone with a personal grudge against him. But who? He had no enemies that he knew of. Who had he antagonized recently? He strained to think but no one came to mind. Could it be a case of professional jealousy? Did someone want his job? No, it was impossible. He knew of no one at Oceandeep who would be capable of doing something like this …

He looked at his watch again. It was now 3.05 a.m. The gauge read 550 metres.

Hell, surely this couldn’t go on for much longer! Soon one of the security people would be along to check why someone was running an unscheduled experiment in the Facility. The noise of the pumping equipment would be attracting attention …

And there was Miranda. He was five hours late. She’d be worried by now. This was much later than he usually was. By now she’d have rung his office and found he wasn’t there. What would her next move be? Yes, she’d call the main gate and ask if he’d signed out yet. She’d be told no. Next step. Knowing Miranda she’d tell the guy to get off his fat ass and go check if he was all right. There’d be a search. It had probably already begun. Any moment now they’d be coming in here …

All he had to do was hang on. Miranda would save him. Miranda. Beautiful Miranda …

He woke up on the cold floor of the chamber again. He’d passed out. But for how long? He tried to focus his eyes on his watch. Finally he saw it was 3.40 a.m.

Why hadn’t help arrived by now? Where was everyone? This was a crazy nightmare! He was going to wake up soon in bed beside Miranda …

He hauled himself to his feet. His head was being crushed in a spiked vice. The pain was unbearable and his skin seethed as if every nerve ending was being stroked with a wire brush. Breathing took enormous effort …

A look at the pressure gauge explained why. It now read 670 metres. He tried to laugh. He had set a world’s record and he was still alive.

And he was going to stay alive. He knew 700 metres was the limit of the chamber’s machinery. If he’d gone this deep he could take another 30 metres. And by then help would have arrived.

Come on, Miranda, hurry!

Then he noticed it.

On the outside of one of the observation ports. A small lump of white clay-like substance. And leading away from it was a thin red wire. It was attached to the glass by a piece of adhesive tape.

He screamed. It was both a scream of terror and a futile attempt to empty his lungs of air. He knew, with a dreadful certainty, what was going to happen.

His scream was a grotesque one. The helium in his larynx made him sound like a character in a Mickey Mouse cartoon.

There was a flash of light and the glass in the port shattered. One moment the pressure in the chamber was 967 pounds – nearly half a ton – per square inch; the next it had dropped to the normal 14½ pounds as the mixture of helium and oxygen exploded out through the broken port.

As this happened Melville’s feet left the floor and he flew head-first into the 12-inch diameter opening. The impact, as his head shot through the port, splintered both collar bones, but these were minor injuries compared to the damage being inflicted upon the rest of his body.

Every space within him that contained trapped gas ruptured with explosive force – the pleural sac, the intestines, the Eustachian tubes, the sinuses … even tooth cavities.

In the same instant the helium was forming in such large bubbles in his blood stream that the blood began to froth and boil. It sprayed out from his mouth, ears, nostrils, eyes, anus …

There was a high-pitched shriek as the remaining gas in the chamber forced its way out past his jammed body then all was quiet in the Ocean Simulation Facility.

Elsewhere in the Oceandeep complex alarm bells had started to ring but Professor Alan Melville couldn’t hear them.

Hak Issen Saanderman smiled politely as the guard ran inexpert fingers over his clothing. The smile masked a mixture of loathing and disgust – he hated all forms of physical contact – as well as contempt. As before the young Sicilian had missed the knife. It had a flat hilt, wide five-inch blade and rested in a pigskin sheath taped to the small of his back.

As Saanderman continued to smile at both the guard doing the searching and his companion who was lounging nearby against the wall of the gatehouse, his right hand placed with grating obviousness inside his jacket, he wondered icily what would happen to them if their employer, Carlo Peracetti, learned they had overlooked the weapon.

No doubt the punishment meted out to these two swaggering young amateurs with their arrogant manner, greasy black hair and overpowering aftershave would be brutal. Knowing of Peracetti’s love of the old Sicilian customs it would probably fit the crime – they would be returned to their relatives with their eyes put out. Saanderman’s smile widened at the thought.

‘Okay, man,’ said the young Sicilian, ‘you can go in. Mr Peracetti is waiting for you beside the pool. You take the path up to the villa and …’

‘I know the way,’ Saanderman interrupted. He had only been here once before, and that had been over a year ago, but he had memorized every detail of the villa and its surrounds. He gave them each a polite nod and walked out of the shadow of the gatehouse into brilliant sunshine.

Peracetti’s villa was located on one of the upper slopes of the Pradels hills which stretch along the southern French coast between La Croix-Valmer in the west and Le Lavandou in the east. It is known as the unfashionable side of St Tropez but Peracetti had always believed in keeping a low profile with regard to his lifestyle. It was typical of the careful nature of the man. He had survived to his mid-sixties while most of his contemporaries had fallen by the wayside, usually in violent circumstances.

Saanderman, dressed in a cream-coloured lightweight suit with an open-necked blue shirt, strode easily up the steep incline of the hill. He was a tall, lean man but powerfully built. About 40 years old he possessed typically Nordic good looks which were spoilt only by his unattractively thin lips. His eyes were his most striking feature, being such a light blue they seemed almost luminous.

As he rounded the side of the villa an old man lying on a couch by the side of a large swimming pool waved and called to him. ‘Ah, the good Captain Saanderman. As punctual as ever. Come and sit down.’ He gestured at a nearby deck-chair under an umbrella then turned towards the pool and cried, ‘Jetta! Come meet our guest!’

Saanderman nodded at the old man as he sat down. ‘I came as quickly as I could, Mr Peracetti. Is there some problem?’

Peracetti gave him a benign smile. ‘Problem? No. No problem. I have a new assignment for you.’

‘Already? What is it?’

But Peracetti wasn’t to be rushed. He indicated a small table by his couch. On it was a bowl of fruit, two bottles of red wine and glasses. ‘Would you like a fig, or perhaps some grapes? The wine is only Provence red but quite drinkable.’

‘No thank you.’ Saanderman stared at him expectantly. Peracetti’s appearance was deceptive. Stretched out on the couch in his floral shirt and white shorts he looked like some ordinary old Italian on vacation. A retired delicatessen owner perhaps. He had a kind face, soft eyes and always wore an apologetic smile. One knew instinctively that neighbourhood children called him ‘uncle’ and could rely on him to slip them treats whenever he saw them.

In reality he was one of the heads of the world’s biggest and most successful drug smuggling empire and the only treats he slipped, indirectly, to children were heroin-flavoured. He was also one of the most ruthless, and most feared, men in the international underworld.

A girl had climbed out of the pool. She was about nineteen, pretty rather than beautiful, but with a shapely body well-suited for the tiny black bikini she was wearing. She posed at the top of the chrome ladder to enable Saanderman to get a good look at her, then came over to them and picked up a towel. As she dried herself provocatively she pouted at Peracetti and said, ‘Oh, Carlo! You said I would meet a real pirate this afternoon. But he doesn’t look a bit like a pirate.’

Peracetti chuckled. ‘Ah, but he is a pirate, my pet. He has probably sent more ships to the bottom than Black-beard ever did. It’s just that he is less flamboyant in his methods. Isn’t that so, my dear captain?’

‘If you say so,’ said Saanderman, despising him.

The girl, unaware that she wasn’t getting the attention from Saanderman she expected, pouted again and sat down beside Peracetti’s couch. She pulled of her black swimming cap to reveal short blonde hair. Her expression, as she stared at Saanderman, contained more than a hint of sexual challenge as well as open curiosity. Still chuckling, Peracetti caressed the side of her neck with the back of a gnarled hand on which green veins and liver spots formed an unappealing landscape.

‘Congratulations on the Edhessa job,’ he told Saanderman. ‘Our South African clients were well pleased.’

Saanderman inclined his head a fraction but said nothing.

‘What was this – Edhessa job?’ asked the girl.

Saanderman looked at her more closely. Northern Italian most likely. From a working-class family. Probably became involved with minor underworld characters while still at school. Decided she liked the good things in life and didn’t mind using her body to get them. Possibly not as stupid as she appeared to be. Kept her ears open. Realized she was on the fringe of Big Things. Might become ambitious. In a word – dangerous.

He shot Peracetti a quick glance. The old man made a dismissive gesture with the fingers of the hand resting on the girl’s shoulder. She didn’t see the movement.

Saanderman gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval. Peracetti’s gesture meant it was safe to talk in front of the girl. She would never have the opportunity to repeat anything she heard. No doubt when he eventually tired of her she would be found in an alley in somewhere like Marseilles with enough heroin in her body to have dropped an elephant.

‘The Edhessa was a supertanker,’ said Peracetti, stroking her hair. ‘A month ago it left the Omani port of Mina al Fahal carrying 170,000 tons of crude oil destined for Italy. The oil, of course, never got to Italy. It was discharged in Durban, South Africa, and replaced with sea water to give the impression that the tanker was still fully loaded. The captain then put out to sea again, his intention being to scuttle the ship and then collect the fat payment that would be waiting for him in Rome …’

Peracetti’s benign eyes shone with amusement. ‘The poor man was unaware that his employers, to ensure that the disappearance of the Edhessa would be regarded as a genuine disaster at sea and not just another suspicious incident involving a super-tanker and a missing cargo of oil in South African waters – with the inevitable investigation by the insurance companies – had taken certain steps. These involved myself – and Captain Saanderman here.

‘The Edhessa’s captain was unaware that four of his men worked for Saanderman. On the first day out of Durban Saanderman’s men took control of the vessel. Shortly afterwards the Edhessa rendezvoused with Saanderman’s own ship, the Necromancer. The captain and his seventeen crewmen were taken on board the Necromancer and the Edhessa was scuttled in 2,000 fathoms of water. The Edhessa’s captain was then persuaded to make a distress call saying that his ship had been hit by a freak giant wave and was sinking fast. The position he gave was some 200 miles from where the tanker had actually gone down. Am I right, Captain Saanderman?’

Saanderman nodded, his eyes hooded.

‘The Necromancer,’ continued Peracetti, ‘on the pretext of answering the distress call, then headed for the designated area. When it arrived there a rubber life-raft from the Edhessa was dumped upside down into the sea, under the cover of darkness, along with the bodies of the Edhessa captain and his men. These were subsequently picked up by other ships, providing proof that the tanker hadn’t been scuttled by its crew. Correct, captain?’ He beamed jovially at Saanderman.

‘Correct, yes.’ He was becoming impatient. He hadn’t come all this way in answer to Peracetti’s urgent summons to entertain some little whore.

The girl, her face flushed, was regarding him with new interest. ‘How exciting!’ she cried. ‘Then you are a real pirate!’ As she spoke she drew up her feet so that she was now sitting cross-legged, her thighs splayed out. This had the effect of stretching the vee of black nylon tautly over her pudenda and Saanderman could see wisps of blonde pubic hair protruding from under the edges of the material.

But it was all wasted on him. The female body held little attraction for him, on the contrary he was physically revolted by certain aspects of it, especially the sexual organs. In his opinion the vagina had all the aesthetic appeal of a gunshot wound and the idea of actually making love to a woman was abhorrent to him.

He wasn’t a homosexual though; asexual would be a more accurate description. Whatever sexual satisfaction he required he obtained subliminally by routes and means so oblique that even he didn’t fully comprehend the process.

He looked away from the girl, not bothering to conceal his disgust. ‘I don’t have much time,’ he told Peracetti. ‘It is a long drive back to the ship. What is this new assignment – another tanker?’

‘No. It involves our South African clients again but it has nothing to do with oil.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s to do with potatoes.’

‘Potatoes?’ repeated Saanderman blankly.

‘Yes, potatoes,’ laughed Peracetti. ‘And don’t worry, I haven’t gone senile. I’m talking about the rock potatoes that apparently lie scattered beneath all the oceans of the world. I believe they are called “magnesium nodules”.’

‘Manganese nodules,’ corrected Saanderman.

‘Ah, then you know what I’m talking about?’

‘Of course,’ said Saanderman impatiently. ‘They were discovered a long time ago. At least a century ago. They contain a wide variety of valuable minerals – manganese, iron, cobalt, titanium, aluminium, nickel, copper and so on. In total they are worth billions of dollars but raising them presents many technical problems. They are a deep-water phenomenon. They lie at depths between nearly two and four miles. Don’t tell me you have become involved in a scheme to mine them. It would be exorbitantly expensive.’

Peracetti was very amused by this. ‘Good God no. As much as I like to diversify my interests, legitimately as well as illegitimately, I would never get into anything so speculative. But there are plans to raise these nodules, are there not?’

‘Yes,’ said Saanderman, wondering where all this was leading to. ‘Many feasibility studies have been carried by consortiums formed in France, Canada, West Germany and the USA, but as far as I know the first big-scale mining operation is still a long way off. The best method has yet to be decided. The French favour a technique that involves dragging a long chain of buckets, connected between two ships, along the sea bottom, while the American plan to use a giant vacuum cleaner to suck the nodules straight up. But as far as I know this latter device has yet to be perfected. The prototypes have failed to operate properly at the required depths.’

Peracetti regarded him slyly. ‘You seem well informed on the subject.’

‘I make it my business to know about everything that concerns the sea.’

‘Well, I am going to tell you something you don’t know. Or at least I don’t think you do. Have you heard of the Proteus Project?’

Saanderman shook his head.

‘It’s been kept under careful wraps but soon the whole world will learn of it,’ said Peracetti. ‘It represents America’s first serious attempt to mine the nodules on a large scale.’

‘I’m surprised,’ said Saanderman truthfully. ‘This means they will be acting in open defiance of the Law of the Sea treaty. It was inevitable, of course, but I didn’t expect it would happen so soon. The Americans are still carrying on negotiations about the treaty.’ One of the aims of the Law of the Sea treaty, which had been under discussion since 1972, was to ensure that the poor and landlocked countries would receive a share in the vast mineral wealth that the seas contained. The idea was to set up an International Sea-Bed Authority, to be dominated by Third World countries, which would control deep-sea mining throughout the world. Any company or consortium applying for a licence to mine would have to agree to hand over seventy per cent of its profits to the ISA as well as transfer its technology to the Authority for a nominal sum.’

It had been presumed that America would be a signatory to the treaty, but when Reagan became President he pulled his country out of the treaty conference, much to the relief of American mining interests. Reagan later relented and sent representatives back to the treaty discussions but made it clear he would not sign unless radical changes were made. In the meantime the US government had been pursuing negotiations with seven of the richer nations to reach an agreement under the US’s 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, which allows American companies to win sea-bed mining permits from either the US government or a ‘reciprocating state’. It was an obvious attempt to set up a mining authority in opposition to the proposed ISA, and already France and Japan, which were desperate to assure supplies of nickel, cobalt and manganese for its giant steel industry, had agreed to join.

And now this latest development. The Americans were going to start mining before the ISA could be properly established.

‘When does it begin?’ asked Saanderman, ‘and where?’

‘Less than six months from now in an area north-east of Hawaii which has some of the richest and most concentrated nodule deposits in the world. It’s called the Midas Deep because the nodules there contain traces of gold as well as all the other minerals – a unique phenomenon.’

‘How much gold?’

‘Enough to affect the price of gold if you raise the nodules in big quantities. Our South African friends are getting worried.’

‘I see,’ said Saanderman thoughtfully.

‘And it’s not just the South Africans. Other African states who depend on their mineral resources are getting kind of anxious too. Uganda, which until now was cornering the m