Clemency: The Saint Chronicles, Part 1

Prologue

For them to perceive the advantage of defeating the enemy, they must also have their rewards.

—Sun Tsu

December, 1940

They would never feel the cold air around them. There was no time for complaining. Their prey was upon them, and their Hitler made no compromises for victory. Their thick sweaters would have to be enough for now until they could surface and turn the diesel engine on to charge the batteries again. Every crewmember was in the quiet mode of attack.

In a bent position, the commander peered through the extended periscope and out across the waves of a relatively calm North Atlantic under the moonlight. Only he knew whether it was night or day. He gauged the speed of his quarry as it passed messages through light signals to a nearby ship in the moonlight. Pensively, he waited for the ship to fall into his crosshairs. When he raised his hand in the air, it would signal to the first watch officer their only chance at fame. The crew stood silent.

As the frigid waters rolled rhythmically back and forth, the commander waited patiently for the precise moment to give the command to fire. It would seem like forever before their fates would converge. The hunted slowly fell into the arms of the hunter as the huge hull eclipsed the captain’s eyepiece. Feuer!

The captain sliced the air with his uplifted hand then quickly brought it to the T-handle on the periscope and leaned into the eyepiece to witness the result as he heard the torpedo of his destiny hurl from his grasp and into the night. He watched the smoke trail of bubbles, perfectly centered on the upright post of his crosshairs, steam away toward the darkened hulk in the distance. He lost sight of it as the ship bowed forward in the brine to expose the moon from behind and send a streak of light across the wave tops before rising again to put the battlefield back into shadow.

Aboard the Liberty ship Clemency, the officer on watch carefully examined the crest of each wave, looking for any telltale sign of trouble in their midst. At night in the North Atlantic, vigilance was the thin line between safety and peril. Wartime toughened the task by adding to her threats, making her the victim of either the cold of the passing iceberg or the cold of the rushing steel of a torpedo. Periodically, moonbeams dancing across the water made this man’s job easier, but tonight they would come all too late.

As the mighty giant bowed her nose into the swells once more, the moon lit up the briny surface just in time for a watchful eye to see the foreboding streak of froth honing in on them. Panic seized his brain as he realized the terrible truth. Dashing to the nearby alarm bell, he rang the bell violently, yelling as the torpedo hit the ship. Like a gazelle ensnared by a leopard, the Clemency lunged immediately forward and could never recover. She fell further and further behind her advancing brethren, beleaguered by her fatal blow. Within the belly of her hunter, the hollow hit and explosion rang out its violent refrain. The thunder broke into cheers as the captain raised a victorious fist. The Clemency was on her way to the depths.

Water roared into her bow as she stumbled forward at an increasingly steeper angle. Loose items that once needed no restraints and weathered the roll of the sea suddenly rushed off their shelves. Bodies flew forward to meet the incoming torrent. There would be no escape. All hands rushed to the railings and leaped into the sea to avoid being pulled down in death. As her final third plunged headlong toward the waves, her nose slammed into the sand and stuck, if only for a few seconds. The roaring ceased, the surge subsided, and during those precious seconds, several victims were able to swim out of the remaining opened doors to the open sea.

But then she turned. She began a slow pirouette to starboard, rolling in the throes of death on this a crisp and moonlit night. Laden with water, all hatches open, and no time to recover, she turned onto her roof before disappearing with her propellers exposed. The sea ingested her, and then fell silent once more. All that would be left would be the telltale signs of her demise and memories of her in the minds of her crew and her hunter.

Aboard the U-boat, there was elation. Its crew cheered at the sound of her death and the crashing of her hulk in the sand hundreds of feet below. But unknowingly, their celebration would be short lived. For the hunter, in his moment of satisfaction, had become the hunted. Over the cheers and the sound of the crumpling of their prey, they never heard the splash over their heads. They never saw the barrels fall silently and gently tumble end over end toward them with random bubbles of air fleeing from them toward the surface, seemingly in terror. They only heard the sound of the explosion that nearly rent their mighty vessel in two. Before they could realize their fate, they were dead.

The next morning, as it had done so many millions of mornings in the past, the sun rose quietly over a place on earth so quiet and so barren that fates could change unnoticed.

Chapter 1

Thieves

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is bad luck. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time with no luck is a catastrophe.

—Unknown

September, 2003

They had come a long way personally and professionally, but not together. They certainly didn’t know each other well enough to have descended to the depths. At 291 feet, they were caged in a darkness rivaled only by the unseen depths of a cave and in a cold that kills in a few fleeting and delirious moments. In the most inhospitable environment on Earth, three souls were inextricably connected. Their destinies were identical now. Without each other, none would survive. But in the interest of the larger goal, they accepted this and clung to each other almost as much as they clung to their flashlights. Revelations were presented to them by the thin ribbons of light that pierced the darkness, forcing them to constantly identify, reevaluate, and determine where they were physically on this giant hulk. All would be disclosed and unfolded a single foot at a time.

They were brought here by research, desperation, and the drive for the almighty dollar—or rather the almighty ingot. Let there be no misgivings about their intent. They had weighed the risks and responded as best they could with the resources they had. Confidence was high, at least for one of them, and the objective was clear. Their dives were expected to be short; so where they could, they cut corners. If an off-brand item was cheaper, but it served the same purpose, they bought it. After all, they needed to pay the captain and for the fuel and expenses of his boat for a week. They would live or die on the razor’s edge between deliverance and death.

Inevitably, they would taste a little of the brine leaking in behind their regulators. They would be a little colder because circumstances deemed they forgo the better dry suits and thicker polar fleece liners. Even though much of their salvaged equipment had been rigged up in a garage because they couldn’t afford the catalog version, this was no suicide mission. The numbers were daunting; the margins for error were thin. But to these men, it was workable. The rewards far outweighed the risks. The act of suicide is not for those who have a fear and loathing of death; rather, it is a commitment for those who have a fear and loathing of suffering, which was the last expectation here. They imagined bills paid and dreamed of a blowout celebration at Christmas. Even though it felt like an Arctic winter at the moment, fortunes were about to change forever in fall 2003.

All were experienced divers even if not at this depth. As such, they didn’t talk about their cheeks burning from the subfreezing saltwater. They felt the salted water molecules entering every pore of exposed skin on their faces as if they were being reamed by a hot poker. They didn’t think about the fact that a twenty-two-story building’s worth of water was over their heads. They ignored the notion that one miscalculation while coming up from the depths would literally boil their blood with nitrogen. Strokes, heart attacks, and aneurisms, were just some of the ways that could end their dreams. They would die as victims of their own folly. There had been no more discussion of any of this. They had a leader, a plan, and an expected result. The rest of the possibilities be damned—at least there were no sharks.

As they floated effortlessly up the companionway of the Clemency, one diver casually banged a hammer on the side of her rusting hull. He was looking for a weakness, a soft spot, maybe her point of entry. The ship had suffered from the relentless grinding of the cold, the saltwater, and the tide. She no longer looked anything like her former self. Her clean, sharp lines and shining fixtures had been eaten from the inside out. The salt finally had won out and penetrated her skin. Violently pushing its way outward in silence, her skin was covered with rust that hung down like a wrinkled blanket over the entire ship. It was difficult to find even the telltale frames of her windows or doors.

The divers searched for raised mounds of rust that might indicate hinges and ghostlike wheels that protruded from the decay to reveal a door. Spinning the water up against her side with a fin or testing her metal with a hammer brought on a rash of complaints. These included a rain shower of rusty flakes and a brown, iron smoke suspended in protest, which covered her fresh multilayered pock of a wound. The brine had brought her to this point. It would continue to eat her flesh, layer by layer, year after year, decade upon decade, long after they were gone until she would finally collapse, exhausted.

The divers glided to a halt at the end of the companionway and faced the door to her upper hallway. Each diver reached down to remove his fins, clipped them together, and then clipped them to the remnants of the railing by their straps. As there could be no direct communication between them, save for hand signals and dive slates, the leader motioned for the others to move back before turning toward the door with his hammer. Violently and repeatedly, he banged on the spokes in the center of the wheel. The concussion of the blows, seemingly in slow motion under the pressure of the deep, rang out for miles in the desolate silence. Debris the color of milk chocolate rained down from above, enveloping the laborer in a fog of fury.

But in this contest, it would be the unyielding who ultimately would win out over the unwilling, forcing the years of decay to release its grasp millimeters at a time until the remnants of remaining sea grease in the bearings of the lock, coaxed the wheel to spin freely. The door sprang from its frame only a few inches and stopped, exposing a band of midnight darkness through the suspended sediment from the terrifying and inviting hall beyond. They knew where they were and exactly where they were going. Suddenly, it wasn’t as cold anymore; the sting of the frigid brine had become a memory.

Returning the hammer to its hanger on his belt, a diver raised his left, finless foot and planted it against the door jamb, pulling the door open with both hands as hard as he could through the water’s resistance. He quickly pushed the door all the way open and against the outer bulkhead. The divers paused and looked into the exposed, internal hallway with amazement. Now, after all the work, all the planning, all the fear, all the questions, and all the prayers for luck, their moment had finally come.

Three streams of light pierced the velvet darkness. The lead diver clipped a karabiner that was attached to a reel of white, nylon braided string to the railing outside before stepping back and motioning the others to proceed into the open hallway. They crept in like three thieves in the night. But these were thieves with entitlement. The leader followed them in, walking backward while paying out string from of a red reel in his hand. If anything went wrong—if lights were to fail; if they were turned around or panic were to set in; if there were equipment failures, miscalculation, or injury—that string would be the only way they could get back out. They knew they could follow it to safety. They also knew that their lives were only as safe as the length of that string. So like a religion, they would never abandon it.

In some ways, their journey resembled a walk on the moon. With each step, the dust, decay, and debris on the floor fled from under their feet, creating a dust cloud in the water like a dry stampede. As they struggled among the exposed pipes, broken beams, and parts laying everywhere, the lead diver casually passed a gloved index finger along a short section of the wall to create a thin, muddy line in the water from the crumbling debris. With this, he once again demonstrated to himself and the others how the Clemency was deteriorating before their very eyes. She was critically fragile. Ultimately, she would be reduced to nothing more than loose debris on the sea floor that would move silently away with the tides. But right now, in this state, she was an impending danger. She was less than herself. As with all things wounded, she was more unpredictable. She was unstable and could strike at any moment.

The key was to avoid the catastrophic silt-out that would impair their visibility. Unlike blindness, darkness can be overcome. If they rushed down the hallway to their destiny now, they would disturb decades of decay that was slowly consuming the Clemency. They would kick it up, spin it, and blend it into the water around them. Ultimately it would spread around the hallway like impenetrable, black soot. No light would cut it. With visibility reduced to inches, there would be no difference between up and down, right or left, and vertigo would set in. The loss of precious moments of air would ultimately lead to death. Watching the direction of the air bubbles to determine which way was up, dropping a weighted object to see which way was down, and all the other little tricks divers had been taught to help avoid vertigo and disorientation were useless in a zero-visibility situation. There just wasn’t enough air available to work out complex problems. That little string might be able to help during moments such as these, but only if they could find it and never exceeded it.

But they were experienced, and now they were so close. They made their way carefully down the hallway, deeper and deeper into the ship’s core, staring at the wheel of the door that blocked their future. That single wheel represented the culmination of all their work. It was the answer to all their questions and the repayment of all their debts. Just beyond that wheel, their new lives awaited; that wheel was their future. Their arrival had not been ignored by the Clemency. She had marked their trail. Standing almost knee deep in the mist of decay, their footprints left perfect marks in the mud of the rust.

When the hammer was unsheathed from its hanger and raised to strike the wheel, smiles came to the eyes of those divers who, in that instant, forgot the cold, forgot the darkness, forgot the depth, and forgot the danger. They also forgot the razor’s edge.

They would never see the first tiny shards of iron creep over the threshold of the open doorway from the outside. They would never see the creeping masses increase like ants onto freshly cut fruit. They would never see the flow grow to a steady stream several feet high like muddy water flowing down a stream. They were focused on receiving their reward. Ultimately, they would awaken from their sweetest dreams to a blasting blizzard of sludge through the one door that had brought them here and was their only way out. Unfortunately, the tides of their fortune had changed.

The silt, iron, rust, and dirt overtook them from behind like an angry bear. It stood up upon them and filled the open doorway to the outside, compacting to advance into this newly found void. By the time the divers realized they couldn’t see one another anymore, it was too late. One diver managed to turn toward the door in a futile attempt to scramble against the torrent before the rest tried to follow. No fins, no chance.

Clemency shuttered. She shuttered in a broadening cadence that culminated with the sound of complaining hinges and an explosive bang that sealed off forever the remaining light that the divers were desperately running toward. Terror at this depth was silent. Death was an isolated and hopeless affair.

Chapter 2

Innocence

All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

—Earnest Hemingway

February, 2004

He sat quietly on the bench alone, contemplating the shackles on his feet. He concentrated on making sure they were turned to the inside, so he wouldn’t stumble when called to stand up. Occasionally, he glanced at the curves in the chain that connected the two cuffs that bound his hands on his lap in front of him before looking up to the corner of the hall at the speaker who would ultimately erupt with his name. Washed in the sunlight streaming in from the windows behind him, the walls and bars almost looked as though they had been freshly painted. But this was no way to live out one’s days. There had to be a way out. There had to be a way to change his life so that he could go get his life, rather than have it handed to him through a slot in the bars every day.

As the speaker barked some garbled rendition of his name, Peter rose to his feet. Wearing the same clothes and the same slippers as last time, he hoped his guest wouldn’t mind. Looking at his feet, he shuffled his ankles over one another so that the hinges were on the inside. Rolling his wrists so that the cuffs wouldn’t bind, he looked toward the barred door at the end of the hall and began to waddle toward his meeting. Maybe today he would finally win.

Peter studied the face on the other side of the glass. The man was older now and more battle weary with the years, but his steel gray eyes and frozen look of resolve remained. Resolve at rest would best describe it. This was a man who must be able to sleep with his resolve—at least in this case. Peter quietly moved the microphone closer to his mouth. You look good, John Lance.

The face drew closer to the glass. Thanks, Pete. Just getting older, I guess. You okay?

Peter studied the walls and people over John’s shoulder. I’m good, yeah. Are you going to be able to help me this time?

John took a deep breath and moved his head in an attempt to engage Peter’s eyes. John’s face sunk. I can’t. I can’t help you anymore, Pete. We can’t come up with the money to get you out this time because the banks aren’t lending. I tried. And even if you were out here, the costs of the treatment center are way over the top. We’ve got to get you out of this cycle. I can’t do it for you in there, and I can’t afford to do it for you out here.

Peter looked down at the shackles. With fingers interwoven, he began to rock slowly in his chair. Well, I guess, thanks for coming in then, John. You’re still a good lawyer you know.

Once again, John tried to catch