4

SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES

EARLY JULY

Havok opened the screen door and entered through the rear door of his bar. He looked into the large room and out through the front windows. A number of customers were quietly talking and enjoying themselves either inside the bar or out on the veranda. An original 1963 jukebox sat in the corner. A Johnny Cash song, “I Walk the Line,” intermingled with the patrons’ voices. Catalina was behind the bar, loading up a tray of drinks for Apple to deliver. Havok peered through the open kitchen door. Stone, wearing a pair of faded jeans, flip-flops, and a yellow T-shirt, stood at the kitchen counter about five feet away from Havok. He was making a sandwich.

“How was the dive?” Stone asked, keeping his attention on the food in front of him.

“It went OK,” Havok answered flatly. He looked at a brass nautical chronometer mounted above the veranda door. The black hands pointed to just after ten p.m.

Stone accepted Havok’s answer as he remained focused on his sandwich. On the steel countertop was a tray with a round loaf of pumpernickel bread, a plate heaped with thick slices of ham and Carr Valley Wisconsin cheddar cheese, a jar of spicy brown mustard, and a jar of German gherkins.

“Not much of a Dagwood,” Havok commented. “It almost looks like a normal ham-and-cheese sandwich.”

“Ran out of olive loaf and limburger cheese last night.”

“Thank God,” Havok remarked. “Hey, do not concern yourself with my gastronomic issues.”

Havok smiled slightly as he stepped into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and removed two San Miguels. He grabbed the bottle opener, which hung from the refrigerator door handle by a piece of kite string, and opened the beers, placing one on the steel counter in front of Stone. Havok turned his back to Stone and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, looking out into the bar. “How did it go here?”

“Quiet,” Stone answered. “The couple you met this afternoon is out front, and apparently Mr. Johnson saved your life during the war.”

“Cool. I’ll have to go and find out how he saved my ass.”

Leaving Stone to his sandwich, Havok walked into the barroom, nodding his head, first to Catalina and Apple and then to some regulars sitting at the bar. He made his way out to the veranda, where there were ten customers sitting in small groups. The concrete deck of the veranda was painted blood red and reflected a dull, gloomy light. Diesel exhaust from worn jeepney engines mingled with the muggy night air, but the pulsating breeze from the slowly rotating ceiling fans helped to evaporate some of the sweat that was forming along his hairline. Vendors shouted, trying to overcome their competition and the music from several nearby bars, as they hawked hand-carried wares. The throaty roar of truck engines and the piercing screech of jeepney horns tried their best to drown out the sounds of large insects frying on the electric bug zappers that fringed Havok’s bar.

A group of four customers sat at one table, five at another table, and one man sat by himself. The Johnsons were part of the five-member party. The lone man, wearing a pair of jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, seemed to be waiting for somebody. Havok sat down with the group of four, chatting with them for a few minutes while eavesdropping on Johnson’s exploits around the world. Havok noticed that Johnson’s face was flush. Probably from a day’s worth of drinking, Havok guessed. In addition, Johnson was so into his tale that he failed to see Havok sit only a few feet off to his left.

“I recall bein’ down to six hundred fathoms just off the coast of Michigan,” Johnson slurred. “And we’re trying to salvage an airplane that crashed back in the fifties. It was sitting a ledge and could’ve gone over the side at any minute. Havok was on the other side hookin’ his cable, but all of a sudden, the plane lurched to starboard. I knew if I didn’t get over there quick, Havok was dead.”

Johnson paused to sip his beer. June sat next to her husband, and Havok noticed her downcast look, narrow eyes, and tight lips. Her embarrassment was evident.

“But the problem was that my surface-supplied air hose wasn’t long enough,” Johnson continued as he pulled the bottle away from his lips. “So I ripped my face mask off and swam over the top of the plane to Havok, and just in time. He was trapped under the wing, so I placed my feet into the mud and lifted up the wing just enough for him to slip out from underneath.”

After taking another sip of beer, Johnson finished his tale of rescue. “I signaled him to go up. Then I swam back over the top of the plane, put my mask back on, and finished the salvage job.” Johnson sighed pensively as he leaned his chair back slightly. “Yes, sir. I’d say I’ve saved his life at least two or three times.”

It was not the first time Havok had heard such outlandish tales from people, and he chuckled inwardly. Six hundred fathoms is 3,600 feet underwater, and no human outside a submersible can work at that depth. It’s amazing what people can come up with in their own heads, he thought. Even believe their own lies.

June finally looked up and saw Havok. She straightened, and her eyes widened. With a slight nod toward the dive shop next door and a poke of her tongue out of her mouth, she gave Havok the “get me the hell out of here and take me to your bedroom and screw the hell out of me” signal.

Havok winked at her.

She smiled.

The other three people at Johnson’s table, a middle-aged American couple and a young adult who might have been the couple’s son, were drinking sodas. The trio appeared to be swallowing every piece of crap Johnson was spewing.

Havok shifted his eyes to the lone man. He looked to be about seventy and approximately six feet tall. He was also balding, sported a rotund gut, and had a bulbous drinker’s nose with tiny capillaries that road-mapped the blotched and porous skin. His arms, though, still possessed the thick, knotty muscles of a working man. Havok noticed that the man’s beer was almost empty. He waved two fingers in the direction of the bar’s front window. Apple, who was inside the bar, saw Havok’s request. Havok chuckled to himself as Johnson started on another outlandish story of derring-do involving Havok. Something about chasing pirate treasure off the Florida Keys. Havok stood and walked over to the lone customer. Johnson was still too into himself to have noticed Havok.

“I’m Joe Havok, the owner. Buy you a beer?” Havok asked the old man.

The man looked up. “You sure can, mate,” he accepted with an easygoing grin. “I’m John Wheatley.” He spoke with an Australian accent.

Apple swung by, placed two beers in front of the men, and then moved off to Johnson’s table. Both Havok and Wheatley took a heavy pull from their bottles. Wheatley pulled a white handkerchief from his shirt pocket to wipe his forehead and then looked up at a bug zapper in the corner as it sizzled another insect.

“And I thought they grew ’em big in Queensland,” he remarked.

“Is that where you’re from?” Havok asked. “Queensland? Australia?”

“No, I’m from Alice Springs, but I visited Queensland a couple of times. We’re up here on a short holiday. My son-in-law, Jack English, is part owner of a hotel at the other end of Baloy Beach. He invited Mum and myself up for a visit. We’ve been here a week but are leaving tomorrow around noon.”

Havok recalled meeting Jack English some time ago, as most of the resort owners either helped each other out on occasion or just had drinks together. “Where’s your wife now?”

“She’s shopping,” Wheatley said. “I told her when she gets done, I’ll be right here.”

“What do you do back in Australia?” Havok asked, raising his beer bottle to his lips.

“I’m retired. Used to run a sheep station, but now all I do is listen to my wife complain about me being underfoot.” Now it was Wheatley’s turn to ask a question. “Why ‘P.J.’s’?”

“Short for Peso Pete and Olongapo Joe’s. Named after me and my business partner, Pete Stone.”

“Sounds catchy. How did you end up with this place?”

Havok looked down at the glass on the table, appreciating a time long past. “At the start of the Second World War, millions of Philippine silver pesos were about to be captured by the Japanese. So, to keep the silver from falling into the hands of the Japanese, the Philippine government, with the help of the US Navy, smuggled as much of the silver out as they could with submarines and used boats to dump a bunch more in various places around Manila Bay, figuring the latter portion could be recovered after the war.”

He paused to sip his beer and noticed that Wheatley’s mood had changed over the course of the short account. The old man had lost that merry-old-grandfather face and had taken on the expression of a man searching a distant past.

Havok continued: “I’ve always been a reader, especially when it comes to lost ships and treasure, and after coming across some firsthand accounts, I just thought I would give it a shot. Did my research and talked Stone into coming here with me. We rented a boat and gear, and found a cache of silver pesos. After paying off a long line of government officials, we put the rest in a bank in Manila and settled up with business elsewhere before opening this place.”

Havok finished his story and noticed that Wheatley was sitting ramrod straight in his chair.

“You know how amazing this is?” Wheatley’s voice trembled with shocked disbelief.

“How’s that?” Havok asked.

“My old man was in the Navy during the War. He saw an American submarine crew dumping pesos, boxes of them!”

“Where? When?” Havok drilled in quick succession.

“Is he telling you that old muck?” asked a strong feminine voice.

Both heads turned toward the voice.

“Hello, Mum,” Wheatly said. “Mr. Havok, this is my wife, Alice.”

Havok stood to meet Mrs. Wheatley. She was about five feet, six inches tall. She had a trim, sturdy frame and steel-gray eyes. Her silver-blue hair was drawn back into a bun, which gave her a stern but somewhat benevolent appearance.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Wheatley,” invited Havok just as Apple walked up to the table. “Would you like a drink?”

“Why, yes, thank you. A double Maker’s Mark,” she said, taking a seat and placing her shopping bag on the concrete floor. She poked her slouching husband. “Straighten up, please.”

“What do you mean, ‘muck’?” Havok asked.

“It’s OK,” Wheatley said, straightening up in his chair. “She always kids me about that story. She says if it were true, my old man or I would have got it a long time ago. Everybody else thought he was just blotto.”

“Why didn’t you go back and get it?” Havok asked. He ignored the doubt that was creeping into his mind.

“You know, I really don’t know why. Money? Family? The fact that my old man had a rough time after being captured by the Japanese?” he reflected. “I guess I just got too busy with my sheep station in the middle of the Australian outback and didn’t have a clue where to start even if I wanted to.”

“Go ahead and finish,” Havok said. “It sounds like great ‘muck’ to me.”

Apple returned with the drinks and placed them on the table, which gave Havok a moment to think. Two people who know where treasure was dumped, and they didn’t get it.

“Well, my father was a sixteen-year-old ordinary seaman in the Australian Navy. In April 1942 he was on destroyer duty. They were trying to get back to New Guinea when two Japanese airplanes attacked. The planes shot the bloody hell out of the crew and ship with bombs and cannon and machine-gun fire. Dad said the ship’s crew tried to evade, but the bombs damaged the steering gear and they abandoned the ship, but the Japanese kept shooting as the survivors tried to make it to rafts floating in the water. Fortunately, it was almost dark and the planes were shooting blind. When the Japs gave up and left them alone, there were only seven survivors and one damaged raft. When morning came, they could see an island way off to the northwest. Dad said that it was part of the Spratly Islands.”

Havok immediately pictured that group of islands in his mind. The Spratly Islands were a widely scattered and largely uninhabited group of islands east of the Philippine archipelago.

“He said the way the wind was blowing, they would get close to the island around sunset.” Wheatley paused to sip his beer. “Finally, the wind brought them to a beach on the island’s southeastern shore.”

“Sounds like a pretty wicked tale of survival,” Havok commented.

“Yes, it was,” Wheatley said. “Fortunately, none of the survivors were badly hurt in the attack. All were well enough to walk. He said they walked north along the beach until they came to the edge of a mangrove swamp. They were looking for fresh water and a native village. Dad said they followed the edge of the mangrove until they came across a path that looked like it led through the swamp. As they walked that short path, they heard splashes, and once they got through the mangrove, they saw a surfaced submarine on a long, narrow bay. The sub was about two hundred yards offshore and the sun had just set, but Dad said they all could see well enough. Several men were on the foredeck of the submarine, and three men were up in the conning tower. The men on the foredeck were dumping wooden crates over the side and talking quietly to each other. Dad and his mates listened until they heard English, at which point they ran across the beach like a pack of dingoes, yelling at the sub. One of the men in the conning tower gave an order to the men on the foredeck, and they dropped what they were doing and climbed into a rubber raft tied alongside the submarine. Two men paddled while a third man, armed with a Thompson submachine gun, stood in the bow. The sub and crew turned out to be Yanks. Dad said he and his mates identified themselves and explained their predicament. The men in the raft paddled back to the sub. About five minutes later, it came back and picked them up.” Wheatley paused to wipe his forehead.

“Dad and his mates entered the sub through the aft hatch and were led forward. When they stepped through the control room, Dad glanced at the chart table. The Yanks had a chart out, and on it was the island that they were just picked up from.”

With calculating anticipation, Havok asked, “Did he tell you the name of the island?”

“He said it was named Terumbu,” Wheatley answered quickly. “The Yank captain joined them in the mess. He said Bataan had fallen a few days earlier, and only Corregidor was holding out. He had been ordered to smuggle out vital personnel and equipment and make his way to Australia. Before the captain left the mess, one of my father’s mates asked him what they were dumping over the side. The captain said his submarine was dangerously overloaded and he stopped at Terumbu to dump excess gear. The captain said that for the remainder of the journey, the Australians needed to remain mostly in the mess. They could leave to use the privy or go up on deck in pairs while the sub was surfaced. Dad said the sub got underway, and for the remainder of the night and well into the next day, he and his mates slept in the crowded mess. The next night, the Yank submarine surfaced to charge the batteries. My father and a quartermaster from his ship were the last pair to go up. They sat on deck, just forward of the conning tower and by the main hatch, ready to jump in just in case they were attacked again.

“The quartermaster was wondering why the Yank captain had stopped at Terumbu if he was escaping to Australia. The island was at least a hundred miles out of his way. The quartermaster said that if they wanted to dump the stuff for recovery later on, there were plenty of uninhabited islands all along the shortest route to Australia. The quartermaster figured out what he thought were the captain’s motives—the captain had said that the Japs had set up a blockade between all the narrow island passages in their effort to trap escaping ships, and he was avoiding the noose. The quartermaster also said, if the cargo was dumped closer to the Philippines, it might be discovered. He even joked with my dad about gold ingots being in those crates instead of radio equipment.”

Havok sipped his beer with rapt attention, but he could tell Wheatley had started to tire. Alice gulped her whiskey and watched her husband as if she could tell when it was time to go back to their room.

“My dad then said a Jap airplane suddenly attacked from the east. It turned on its spotlight and dropped two bombs. Both landed square on the deck behind the conning tower, and the explosions rocked the sub so hard they knocked Dad and the quartermaster into the air. They landed in the water forty feet from the sub. The sub went down so fast that only two Yank lookouts remained on the surface. The four survivors spent the rest of the night just trying to stay afloat. They were picked up by a Jap destroyer the next morning.” Wheatley stopped talking to sip his beer.

Havok noticed the other customers, including the Johnsons, had left.

Wheatley continued the recounting: “They spent two days on the ship while being taken to a POW camp in Singapore, and while onboard, one of the Yank lookouts told my father something fantastic. The night before the Yank submarine had left Corregidor, while the crew was loading stores and those crates of vital equipment, the lookout was working in a guard shack on the pier when he overheard the captain and somebody else talking outside. It turns out that those crates were full of thousands of silver pesos. The Yank lookout told my father that if he helped him stay alive, he could have half of the silver after the war.”

As Wheatley described his father’s adventure, Havok could feel his own heartbeat quicken word by word. The force of the blood pressure pounded thunderously against his eardrums.

“Dad said that he and the other prisoners were dropped off at Singapore, where they were assigned to a small work party made up of captured Allied soldiers who were forced to work in the city itself. A few days later, one of the Japanese guards, called Old Bad Eye by the prisoners, beheaded the Yank lookout for some reason. I think the lookout tried to bribe the Jap with his knowledge about the silver. Later on, my father’s mate, the quartermaster, was also executed. Old Bad Eye tried to have my father killed on some charge, but the guard was transferred out before he could lop my dad’s head off. Dad survived the war and was freed in Indochina.”

“Do you think that the lookout told your father’s mate, the quartermaster, about the silver pesos? And what about the other American lookout? Do you think the lookout who knew about the silver tried to bribe him as well?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure of it,” Wheatley answered, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief before yawning widely. Alice finished her whiskey.

“Did the second lookout get beheaded like the other two?”

“I couldn’t tell you. He might have been. It seemed Old Bad Eye wanted to kill the four of them especially.”

“What about your mates in Australia? Do you think any of them took your father seriously?”

“Not those sots,” said Wheatley. He pushed his empty beer bottle from his hand and stared through the glass tabletop. “Even if they did, I doubt it if any of them could muster up enough courage to step ten paces away from O’Leary’s.”

Wheatley went quiet, and Alice stood. She gathered her bag and nudged her husband. Silently and unsteadily, he pushed himself to his feet.

“The drinks are on me,” Havok said as he helped Mr. Wheatley steady himself.

“Why, thank you,” Alice replied. “We’re leaving at noon tomorrow. Why don’t you come down and see us before we leave? Did Mr. Wheatley tell you where we’re staying?”

“Yes, he did,” answered Havok. “And I would love to see you off.”

After Havok helped Alice Wheatley load her husband into a passing jeepney, he returned to the veranda to think. His finger traced the rim of his beer bottle while he was lost in thought. Some of the world’s most valuable archaeological sites, artifacts, and historic wrecks have been found by chance encounters or passing words. He recalled hearing such stories, including the story of a Ming vase worth over $3 million bought at a garage sale for two dollars. Hell, even the Dead Sea Scrolls were only found because of a donkey hoof going through the ceiling of a small cave. As a diver, he’d had his encounters with drunks at docks and in bars from Spain to Panama to the Indian Ocean, and all the drunks seemed to know where Spanish gold, hordes of WWII plunder, or pirate treasure was buried. Nine times out of ten, it was bullshit, but Havok knew that all it took was that tenth encounter. A plan started to formulate in his brain as the minutes slipped by.

As Havok pondered the possibilities, a movement disturbed him. Bringing his attention to the veranda, he saw that Mrs. Johnson had returned without her husband. She stood inside the bar, framed by the large front window, watching Havok. Apple stood in the doorway next to the window, playing a videogame on her phone and waiting.