Shadow Divers (13 page)

At the bottom, Hildemann attached a strobe to the anchor line. Visibility was perhaps thirty feet. The current blasted past his face. He paid out some line. He walked his arc and scanned the ocean floor. In every direction he was alone. The bloody green of the water grew more eerie with each pass. He found broken pieces of wood but nothing else.

McMahon was next. He tied his penetration line to the top of the wreck, then backed up slowly, allowing forty feet of line to unspool from his reel, never taking his eyes off the wreck. When the line went taut, he began sweeping, hovering ten feet above the ocean bottom to broaden his perspective. Nothing. He let out another twenty-five feet and began drifting backward. The wreck faded into wavy shadow, then disappeared. Now, wherever he looked, McMahon saw only dirty green water, sideways white particulates, and his one-eighth-inch white line stretching into the darkness. But no body. The jungle drums beat louder. He let out another twenty-five feet. A crab popped out of the sand and spoke to him.

“Keep coming, Mark,” the crab said. “Keep coming, man.”

McMahon was startled. But he was also enchanted. He stopped sweeping and looked closer. More crabs popped out of the sand. They all waved their claws to him. Each of them spoke perfect English.

“Over here, Mark, over here,” they said. “Keep coming . . .”

McMahon wondered if he should follow the crabs out to sea. He took a deep breath. He started talking to himself. “I gotta get outta here,” he said. “Crabs are talking to me. When a crab talks it’s time to go home.”

On board, McMahon told the divers that he too had come up empty. By now, Feldman could have drifted five miles from the boat. Dusk was approaching. It was a terrible thing to leave a diver behind, and it would be crushing for his family. But Chatterton and Nagle had reached a limit. “Someone is gonna get killed if we keep looking,” Chatterton said. He and Nagle agreed to pull up anchor and head back to shore.

In the wheelhouse, Nagle radioed the Coast Guard and reported a dead diver. It was four
P.M.—
five hours since he had first heard that Feldman had died. When the Coast Guard asked why he had not called sooner, Nagle told them he had been busy getting divers out of the water and then organizing the underwater searches. When they asked him for the accident location, he gave them rough coordinates, within a few square miles of the site; that would keep claim jumpers—and especially Bielenda—away from what rightfully belonged to the
Seeker.

The Coast Guard ordered Nagle to Manasquan, New Jersey, where it said it would meet the
Seeker
at the pier. The five-hour ride was melancholy and quiet. Some divers tried to console Skibinski, assuring him that he had done everything possible for his friend. Many speculated as to what had caused the accident, the consensus being that Feldman had succumbed to deep-water blackout, a not-uncommon condition of sudden unconsciousness that afflicted divers for reasons science still did not understand.

The
Seeker
arrived at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Manasquan Inlet at about ten
P.M.
Each man aboard the boat was taken inside and asked to write an account of the incident, then was released. Driving home that night, Skibinski thought back to a conversation he’d had with Feldman over dinner the night before. They had been discussing the trip—who was going, what they might find, the submarine’s identity, and especially how happy they were for the opportunity. Out of nowhere, Feldman had said, “If I ever die, I want to die diving because I love it so much.” Now, nearing home, Skibinski reached into his wallet for a phone number. At an Exxon station he called Feldman’s close friend Buddy and told him the bad news.

Most of the divers called wives and girlfriends from the dock and told them about Feldman. They did so to let the women know they were okay and because they needed someone awake when they got home.

Brennan returned after midnight. After his girlfriend went to sleep, he called Richie Kohler. This time, he played no Italian-accent guessing games with his friend.

“Richie, man, it’s Kevin. Something terrible happened.”

Brennan’s voice sounded so flat Kohler barely recognized it.

“What time is it, Kevin?”

“You know Feldman?”

“No. Who is he?”

“He’s dead.”

“Who’s Feldman?”

“Paul’s partner. He’s fucking dead. Oh, man, Richie . . .”

“Kevin, what happened? Go slow and tell me what happened.”

Brennan could choke out only the most basic details.

“I gotta go, Richie. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you the whole story.”

Kohler hung up the phone. He felt bad for the dead diver. But he had just one thought as he climbed into bed, and that thought hung over him until morning: he had to replace Feldman on the next trip.

Brennan called back the next day and told Kohler the whole story. At the end, Kohler spoke frankly; the men were tight and always Brooklyn direct with each other.

“Kevin, you gotta get me on the next trip.”

“I know, Richie. I’ll talk to Bill today.”

Brennan pitched Kohler that afternoon. To Nagle, the idea seemed perfect. Kohler was smart, tough, and relentless, one of the best wreck divers on the eastern seaboard. He had steeped himself in World War II history and knew German lore and artifacts. He was at home in crazy-deep water. And he would not go and get himself killed—the last thing Nagle needed after the Feldman accident.

Ordinarily, Kohler would have been included from the start of the expedition. But there were issues. First, Chatterton disliked Kohler, not just personally but for what he represented. Kohler was a member of the infamous Atlantic Wreck Divers, a hard-core and exclusionary dive gang that wore matching skull-and-crossbones patches sewn onto their denim jackets and raised hell on the boats they chartered. They were fearless and first-rate wreck divers—Chatterton would give them that—but he despised their overriding lust for tonnage, a collective instinct to take every last piece of crap from a wreck until their goody bags bloated with artifacts and their supposed manhood. None of them seemed to Chatterton to love diving for knowledge or exploration or for what the sport might reveal to a man about himself. They wanted shit and lots of it, period.

If Kohler’s membership in Atlantic Wreck Divers was his only failing, Chatterton could have forgiven that; he dove often with a few of the gang’s members and liked those men personally. But Kohler had committed a far graver sin, maybe the worst sin, and it was this black mark that lingered with Chatterton. Two years earlier, Kohler and others had set out on a mission that would fuck the
Seeker.

Late in 1989, Chatterton had squeezed through a tiny opening that led to the third-class dining room on the
Andrea Doria.
Many divers had spent years trying to access third class, but none had succeeded. Inside, Chatterton saw mountains of glistening white china, more than
Seeker
divers could haul out in years. Chatterton considered it a big opportunity for Nagle: divers would kill for a place on
Seeker
charters for access to these artifacts. The problem was that few besides Chatterton had the skill to shimmy through such a tight opening. He proposed a wild solution: he could use a Broco underwater torch on the next trip and burn away one of the steel bars blocking the opening. After that, anyone could swim in. Nagle told him, “You are one amazing son of a bitch.”

On a special
Seeker
run to the
Doria,
Chatterton assembled the torch and rigged its onboard oxygen cylinder and the hoses that delivered its fuel. Underwater, he changed into a diving mask to which he had taped a welding shield and fired up the Broco. The torch spit blinding red and white sparks as its ten-thousand-degree Fahrenheit rod boiled the ocean around it. That day,
Seeker
divers hauled perhaps a hundred bowls and dishes from the
Doria,
the first artifacts ever to come out of third class. One of the divers took video to commemorate the historic occasion. At the trip’s end, Nagle gathered the divers.

“It’s too late in the season to come back,” he said. “But first thing next year, we come back and kick ass in third class.”

A short time later, someone from the
Seeker
turned traitor. A copy of the videotape was leaked. Kohler and some other members of the Atlantic Wreck Divers watched the tape, astounded as Chatterton used the Broco to burn his way in—impossible! As the bar fell away and the hole opened up, the video showed a white mountain of dishes inside that looked piled by Walt Disney himself. More than one man muttered, “Holy shit.”

The video lasted just a few minutes. Kohler had never seen a bounty like this. Every cell in his body lusted for the easy ransom glistening in the room that Chatterton had opened. But there was bad news: word had it that Chatterton and Nagle were planning to go back to the
Doria
early the next season, long before most boats would even consider tackling that wreck. Their mission: to haul every last artifact from the area and leave nothing for Bielenda or the
Wahoo.

Often, a ribbon of salvation runs through the lives of deep shipwreck divers. This time, that ribbon weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds. Bielenda had planned his own trip to the
Doria,
a charter scheduled just two days before the
Seeker
’s. Kohler and the others could be there just in time to waltz into Chatterton’s area and take away as much as they could carry, leaving the site damn near empty by the time the
Seeker
got there. Knowing the bad blood between Bielenda and Nagle, Kohler believed this to be a heaven-sent opportunity for Bielenda. But the idea of beating Nagle to the
Doria
grinded against Kohler’s ethic: you don’t jump another guy’s claim. Still, the video was irresistible, the china so magnificent and endless. Kohler had met Chatterton just once, briefly, so he was not concerned about the skinny guy with the blowtorch. He liked and respected Nagle, and had had only positive experiences aboard the
Seeker.
He also believed Bielenda a blowhard and a follower, not a doer. He snickered at the name “King of the Deep.” But the china was so beautiful and stacked like snowy mountains, and his fellow AWD guys were going and . . .

“Sign me up,” he told Bielenda. Kohler could not remember ever seeing Bielenda so ravenous to lead a charter.

Bielenda’s trip was scheduled for June 23. Kohler kept his mouth shut about the charter. But someone’s conscience had kicked in. The plan was leaked to Nagle, including the date of the
Wahoo
trip. Nagle called Chatterton, drunk and furious.

“Those motherfuckers!” he screamed into the telephone. “We gotta do something!”

Chatterton devised his own plan. He and Glen Plokhoy, an engineer and frequent
Seeker
diver, would build a metal grate to block the opening Chatterton had burned into third class. The
Seeker
would go to the
Doria
two days before Bielenda’s trip. They would fill their bags with china. Then Chatterton and Plokhoy would install the grate. When the
Wahoo
divers arrived they would find the hole closed.

The plan sounded perfect to Nagle. But Chatterton never stopped at phase one of any plan. He formulated additional criteria:

—  He and Plokhoy would design a grate that they could open and close; simply welding a grate in place would lock out everyone, including
Seeker
divers.

—  The grate must appear to the
Wahoo
divers to be loose and easily removable so that they would waste time and look foolish struggling with it.

—  The grate must still allow a diver to pass through the tiny opening Chatterton had originally wiggled into so that anyone wanting to work to get in, as Chatterton had, retained that opportunity.

Chatterton and Plokhoy went to work on the design in a local dive shop’s classroom. They studied the videotape and took reference measurements, then sketched plans for a five-by-six-foot, three-hundred-pound iron grate. Rather than weld it into place, they would chain it down, so that the grate would shake and the
Wahoo
divers would believe it was loose. They engineered a device that could be unlocked only by a custom-made wrench, and then had a friend make the wrench. Finally, they squirted grease into the grate’s recessed bolt assembly to disguise the custom nature of the lock—the divers on Bielenda’s boat would be like monkeys trying to open the grate with standard wrenches.

The
Seeker
set out for the
Doria
forty-eight hours before Bielenda’s scheduled trip. For two days, the divers were Christmas elves, stuffing their bags with third-class china until they could not carry any more. On the afternoon of the second day, Chatterton and Plokhoy suited up to install the grate. They told Nagle that they planned to leave a sign for Bielenda and the
Wahoo
divers, something clever and subtle that would make their point. Nagle’s face turned red.

“You should write,
FUCK YOU, BIELENDA, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
”

“I don’t know if that’s exactly our point,” Chatterton said. “Anyway, we’ve already prepared a message.”

The installation of the grate was flawless. It shook but did not give. It looked easy but was bulletproof. Chatterton reached into his bag for the slate and tie-wrapped it to the grate. In block letters he had written:

CLOSED FOR INVENTORY
PLEASE USE ALTERNATE ENTRANCE
THANK YOU
CREW AND PATRONS OF
SEEKER

Bielenda’s boat set out that evening for the
Doria.
As the
Wahoo
settled over the great wreck, two crew members splashed to set the hook as close to the third-class hole as possible. Bielenda then had divers draw straws for the chance to enter the hole first. Kohler and fellow Atlantic Wreck Diver Pete Guglieri won. They made a simple plan: fill as many bags as humanly possible. As Kohler splashed, he could not remember ever having been more excited.

The divers hit the wreck a minute later and came face-to-face with Chatterton’s sign. For a time they simply hung there flabbergasted. Then they got mad. Guglieri shook the grate. Kohler pounded it with his sledgehammer. They inspected the grate from every angle, trying to figure a way to beat the lock. Both men worked in construction and understood how things came apart. They tried every trick they knew. Nothing worked. Kohler nearly lost consciousness from anger. Once his air supply was depleted, he could do nothing more than cut off the sign Chatterton had left.