Session 17: Black/Deep

The following morning, HECTOR and MASON head, in separate vehicles, to the Naval Station. HECTOR is dressed in the coveralls favored by the contractors and gets on base with his stolen ID. MASON uses his military ID and brings his black bag, which now also contains a fishing pole. The bay where the USS San Francisco is held in dry-dock is surrounded by a stone breakwater. MASON walks along the length of this until he has a good vantage point from which to watch the workers. They are far off, but he has no trouble locating HECTOR from the new batch of workers arriving through the sight of his HK PSG-1. He wedges his fishing pole between some rocks.

HECTOR is walking around the site speaking with the workers. There are about a dozen of them on various levels of scaffolding. Sparks are flying as the welders do their work repairing the sub. “Do some work, HECTOR,” mumbles MASON to himself. To his eyes, HECTOR is looking suspicious.

Apparently the foreman thought so too, and MASON sees him approach HECTOR. There is some exchange, and it looks like the foreman is yelling. He escorts HECTOR up to the scaffolding and stands beside him as HECTOR dons a welding mask. The sparks begin to fly, and the foreman seems appeased; he leaves HECTOR alone. HECTOR continues his work until lunchtime and then packs up his bag and heads to the parking lot. MASON packs up his equipment (with a half-dozen rock fish in his bucket) and follows him. “Nice job, but it’ll never pass X-Ray,” he thinks.

Meanwhile, HAROLD is following up on the marine biologist, Timothy Vess. He goes online to find what he can about Vess’ research, and also to see if he has any record with INTERPOL. Of his work, he finds some articles published on esoteric (yet not sinister) marine biology subjects, such as the classification of mollusks and something calledd foramnifera . He has trouble understanding it as much of the terminology is in Latin. INTERPOL returns no information on the man.

He looks for the contact information of other professors in his department at the University of Auckland. One professor, Dr Barclay, answers the phone at his office when HAROLD calls.

“Good morning, sir, my name is Cornelius Jones, from the FBI. I am looking for your colleague Dr Vess. He may be of help to us in an investigation we are conducting into a recent submarine accident.”

Dr Barclay tells him that Dr Vess is not due back for over a week, but promises to get HAROLD Vess’ satellite phone number. “My secretary will get back to you,” he says. A half an hour later a woman calls HAROLD and gives him the number, which has a New Zealand country code.

HAROLD calls the number and Dr Vess answers. The connection is fuzzy. Vess is almost 200 miles from Guam but is on his way back. They agree to meet later that evening to talk.

In the parking lot of the base, HECTOR tells MASON that he spoke with one worker, named Cristobal Barcinas, who mentioned that he found a fragment of some kind of statue among the wreckage and took it home with him. The two agents wait outside the base until the shift changes, and then tail Barcinas to his three-storey apartment building in a low-rent part of town.

HAROLD, posing as a Jehovah’s Witness, locates Barcinas’ apartment from the directory at the door and knocks politely. The moment Barcinas answers the door, MASON kicks it in and throws him to the ground. HAROLD zip-ties his hands behind his back and they throw him on the couch.

Barcinas sees HECTOR, with whom he had recently been speaking at work. "You!" he says.

"Where is the statue you stole from the submarine?" demands MASON.

"It's in the kitchen, on the table!" he cries.

HAROLD goes to collect the statue. It is about twice as large as a man's fist. It is indistinct, perhaps eroded by the sea, but seems to depict some humanoid creature, with a bulbous head, stocky body and skinny appendages. The bottom of it, where the feet would be, has evidently been broken off. The statuette is made of some rock embedded with tiny shells.

"Where did you find this?" the agents ask him.

"It was stuck in some of the twisted wreckage on the sub. I assumed it belonged to one of the sailors, maybe the guy that was killed."

"What PART of the sub?" asks HAROLD.

"I was working on the lower deck when I found it," cries Barcinas. They ask him further questions on the nature of the damage, and he answers to the best of his ability.

MASON goes and pulls a whiteboard from the wall near the telephone. It has various phone numbers on it.

"Do you love your mother?" asks MASON. Barcinas assures him that he does. "Call her, and tell her to come over," he orders. Barcinas dials the phone and speaks unsteadily into it in Spanish.

"She'll be here in thirty minutes," he tells them. MASON nods, and turns on the TV. He sits down next to Barcinas on the couch. HAROLD goes to the refrigerator and makes a fish sandwich and cracks a beer.

When Mrs Barcinas arrives MASON seizes her and drags her into the living room.

"Is your boy Cristobal a good boy?" he asks her. She says yes, he is. "We're all going to be staying here for a while. Make yourself comfortable." She joins them on the couch and HAROLD turns on "Dancing With The Stars." MASON and HAROLD chat casually but the Barcinas family seems to have little to say. HECTOR goes to get some take-out chinese and HAROLD leaves for his meeting with Dr Vess (with the statue), leaving MASON to hold down the fort.

The meeting with Professor Vess, coincidentally, takes place at Hiram's Bar and Grille. HAROLD arrives and finds a man with a weather-beaten face and strawberry-blond hair and beard seated at a table drinking a beer.

"Dr Timothy Vess?" asks HAROLD.

"Hello," says the man, offering his hand. "I don't know how I can help you, I haven't been to America in ten years."

"We're actually investigating an incident on international waters. There was a submarine accident."

"Yes, I read about that," he says. He has a thick accent.

"You sound like Russell Crowe," says HAROLD.

"Russell Crowe is Australian. I'm from New Zealand." He sounds slightly offended.

"Were you in the neighborhood when that happened?" asks HAROLD.

"No, I haven't been out that way in months. I have been working over near Palau, actually."

HAROLD tries to size the man up. He doesn't look like a cultist, but you can never be too sure.

"I read some of your work. Pretty complicated stuff. Do you ever see anything strange out there? Have you been to the location where the accident happened?"

"Hard to say... The ocean's a big place. I have been in the Mariana Trench, but it is hundreds of kilometers long."

"Your submarine. Does it go very deep?"

"Oh, yes. My bathyscaphe is one of the best in the world. I can go very deep into these deep ocean trenches."

"Are there others who can go that deep?"

"Well," he smiles, "it's a matter of debate. Instrumentation is not very accurate at those depths, but Hiroki's team from Japan claim they can go deeper. I don't know if I believe them. There's a Belgian team too, with a good bathyscaphe."

"What lives down there?"

"You'd be surprised," he says. "Volcanic vents allow for certain protist species, like algaes, to survive down there. My research is very often centered on Foramnifera, a very old family of single-celled creatures that construct shells."

"How big do they get?" asks HAROLD.

"Well, these shells, as the protists migrate, can become several centimeters across."

"Not big enough to take down a sub?"

Dr Vess laughs. "No, not that I've ever seen." He continues talking at length about his work. HAROLD begins to space out as he can't follow it. He decides that Vess is probably not behind this.

"What do you make of this?" he asks, producing the statue.

"Interesting," says Vess. "Where did you get it?"

"What can you tell me of the rock it's made from?"

"Well, it's a conglomerate, you can see the volcanic rock here and here, but it's been formed via sedimentary processes, as you can tell by these shells, these forams, here. The pressure of many kilometers of water has the ability to create rocks such as this."

"It was in the submarine that crashed. It's from the Mariana Trench."

Vess blinks. "I can assure you that it's not. These shells are not native to the Mariana Trench. In fact, I have seen their like just the other day, in the Palau Trench."

"What's in Palau?"

"It's a very nice place. But if you think Guam is remote, try visiting Palau. Lovely seafood and beaches, though. I will actually be going back there myself, en route to Papua New Guinea, tomorrow morning."

HAROLD thanks Dr Vess for his time and leaves the bar. He returns to the Barcinas apartment and relates this information.

They all sleep in the apartment that night. Mrs Barcinas is placed in the bed between HAROLD and the wall. She doesn't sleep all night. The next morning MASON gets their hostages together.

"You will never tell anyone of our visit," he tells them. He brandishes the white board. "See this? I have your phone list. If I ever find out that you spoke of us to anyone, I'll be back, and all your friends and family will pay."

They return to the hotel to collect their things. Amilynn finds MASON and tells him that she found a strange skull in the trunk of her family car, the one that the agents had discovered in the Green Box.

"Don't worry about that," MASON says. "We're trying to prevent someone from stealing a nuclear warhead from the Naval Station. We need to go to Palau for a bit."

"I've been there," she says. "My cousin moved there and we visited her once."

They head to Dr Vess' research ship. The bright orange submersible hangs over the deck. HAROLD finds the Professor and arranges to have them transported to Palau.

Two days later, they arrive in Koror, the capitol city of Palau.