The Sunken Secret

By Cristian Perfumo

Based on a true story

 

When diver Marcelo learns of a sunken 18th-century warship located off the coast of his Patagonia hometown, he can hardly wait to explore the wreck himself — but a shocking murder and a dangerous secret will turn his dive into a race for survival.

 

"Read of the year" by Diver, UK's best-selling SCUBA-diving magazine.

 

Cristian Perfumo writes thriller novels set in Patagonia, where he is originally from. In its Spanish edition, The sunken secret (El secreto sumergido) has sold thousands of copies worldwide. 

 

Find Cristian at www.cristianperfumo.com/en

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cristian Perfumo
• Release date: Sep 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781524240493

Cristian Perfumo

Cristian Perfumo lives in Spain and writes thrillers set in Patagonia, where he grew up. His first novel, The Sunken Secret, was inspired by a true story and has sold thousands of copies around the world. A successful self-published author, he has an established Kindle Direct Publishing following in Spanish-speaking countries. The Arrow Collector is his second novel published in English. Its original, Spanish version won the 2017 Amazon Annual Literary Award for Independent Spanish-Language Authors. Learn more about his work at www.cristianperfumo.com/en.

Book preview

BEFORE WE START

The events and characters from the XVIII century described in this work are real (ninety percent of the time).

Those from the 1980s, on the other hand, are a product of my imagination (except for the ones that aren’t).

Cristian Perfumo

PART ONE:

The H.M.S. Swift

CHAPTER 1

The first time Marcelo Rosales heard someone mention the Swift he didn’t know people had died for her, nor that still more would die.

Good morning, class, said Mr. Garecca. It was still dark and Marcelo and the rest of the fifth-year students, the seniors, were back in class for the first time since the winter break. According to the weather service, that Monday in July was one of the coldest days of 1981 in Puerto Deseado, Patagonia.

I hope you all had a good break and you’re fired up and ready to start the second half of the school year.

Instead of being fired up, Marcelo was sleepy. The fifteen minutes of icy wind on the way from his house to the school had frozen his face, but somehow it hadn’t woken him up.

For the rest of the year we’ll study quadratic, cubic, and exponential functions.

But everyone, including Garecca, knew they wouldn’t start talking about maths just yet. First they needed a bit of distraction.

Over the break, said a boy seated by the windows, I was at my grandfather’s farm. He told me that in the sixties a whole family that was living in the Lozadas’ house disappeared. He said the couple and the three daughters are buried in the yard. Is that true, Mr. Garecca?

Garecca was a walking encyclopaedia of the town’s legends, and there was no story about Puerto Deseado he could resist. He preferred talking about haunted houses to discussing logarithms. His students, especially Marcelo, even more so.

"It’s actually proven, he said, putting the chalk he’d just picked up back in its tray under the board, that that is nothing more than one of the many myths that circulate in this town. I was interested in buying that house quite a few years ago, in fact. In the end we didn’t close the deal, but I know the story perfectly well."

The Dietrichs, he continued, sold everything before moving north in ‘64. The house was bought by the late Leonardo Belizán, a loan shark who never lived in it and refused to rent it. One of the many people who didn’t care much for Belizán started the rumour that he had his motives for leaving it empty. From there the legend grew, eventually becoming five corpses buried in the yard. I don’t need to explain how rumours get twisted in this town, do I?

The teacher took a moment to catch his breath.

The house had two other owners before Mr. Lozada bought it in the late seventies. End of story. No graves in the yard.

But that’s how it always is, chimed in the only girl in the class wearing makeup. Around here people invent all kinds of stupid rumours. Every other day I’m supposedly making out in some corner somewhere with some guy or another. The funniest part is that no one steps up and actually says ‘I saw her’—everybody hears the story second hand.

Whispers swept through the classroom.

Mariela’s right, said Pedro Ramírez from the back of the room, not daring to look up. In this town we always have someone or something to talk about. Just the other day we were at a barbeque and my uncle was on his fourth glass of wine. He started talking about a treasure ship that sank in a storm near Deseado and I don’t know what other nonsense he said. Luckily, we all know what he’s like. My mom says he comes up with that sort of stuff to get attention.

And that was how Marcelo Rosales first happened to hear mention of the Swift, though without knowing its name. Or if it was just another rumour.

CHAPTER 2

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Marcos Olivera’s house was the only one in the entire town with a flagpole in the yard. At the top waved a faded Argentinian flag, tattered and frayed by the wind.

Good afternoon, Mr. Olivera? said Marcelo to the strapping figure who opened the door to him.

The man nodded as he put on the glasses he’d been carrying in his shirt pocket. When he seemed to have the image before him in focus, he raised his eyebrows and rubbed his meticulously-trimmed white beard. The lost look in his eyes gave the impression he was trying to remember something. After a few moments, he asked hesitantly, Aren’t you Diego Rosales’s son?

The question hit Marcelo like a punch in the stomach. It was the last thing he was expecting. He tried to mask his discomfort with a smile and responded with a polite nod.

You’re the spitting image of your dad! I was in the service with him. Our beds were pretty much next to each other in the barracks. We were on sentry duty together, too.

Oh, I didn’t know that. I don’t talk about that stuff much with my father.

Actually, he hadn’t talked about that or anything else with his father for more than two years. The day of their last contact hadn’t been just any day, but even if it had been, Marcelo would still remember it and his father with the same hatred.

Well it was a thousand years ago, responded the old man, playing it down. The truth is I don’t even remember the last time we saw each other. It might have been in the service. I really don’t get around town much.

The probability that two of the two thousand five hundred people living in Puerto Deseado could go long without seeing each other was remote. Sooner or later everyone ended up crossing paths. In the supermarket, in the bank, in the post office, at Mass or at a funeral. It was just a matter of time before you’d end up bumping into everyone. Mr. Olivera, however, was one of the few exceptions. He’d spent almost his entire life at sea, working in the fishing industry, and when he was in town he preferred to stay home.

My name is Marcelo.

Marcelo, what brings you to my house?

This morning at school, a classmate said something about a ship that sank in Deseado, and Mr. Garecca said he’d heard that story, too. When class was over I asked him what else he knew about it and he sent me to talk to you.

Do you mean the Swift, the British warship?

Maybe.

The old man smiled and invited him in.

Wait here a moment. Sit down if you like, he said, pointing at a black leather sofa. I’m going to the back room to see if I can find something that I think might interest you.

The living room walls were full of pictures. On three of them – in no apparent order – there was a collection of oil paintings of birds, watercolours of landscapes, and extremely old portraits, perhaps Olivera’s ancestors. The fourth wall had a stone fireplace that helped dispel the memory of how cold it was outside.

Above the mantel were five pictures, arranged like the five points on the face of a die. The ones on the corners were framed sailor’s knots made from rope and mounted on blue velvet. In the middle was Olivera, at least twenty years younger, posing in front of the famous Perito Moreno glacier with a beautiful dark-haired woman at his side.

That wall, said Olivera, setting a dusty box down on a small table, represents my entire life. The knots I had to make millions of times during my career as a sailor and, in the centre, my wife, my only reason for wanting to return to dry land when I was aboard ship. But it’s all gone now. I’m retired and widowed.

And you don’t have children? asked Marcelo, immediately regretting it. If he had any, they would be in the centre photo.

It’s the only thing that was missing for Margarita and me for our happiness to be complete, said the old man, offering up a worn-out smile. "But hey, every now and then an old friend visits me and we spend long hours sharing stories of the high seas. Do you want some mate?"

Marcelo nodded and Olivera poured hot water from a kettle into a metal mate cup with an Argentinian flag on its side, the colours much brighter than those on the one waving in the yard. He handed the traditional tea to Marcelo, who drank the bitter liquid from the metal straw in the cup. The filter at the bottom of the straw had seen better days, he thought, as he felt bits of mate leaves on his tongue.

About the Swift, Olivera continued. It’s something I almost never speak of with anyone. Not that I don’t want to, but the topic generally doesn’t come up. Very few people believe that story.

Do you believe it?

That doesn’t matter in the least, he said, indicating with a nod for Marcelo to come closer and examine the box.

As you can see, he continued, wiping the dust off the top with his hand, this has been stashed away for a long time. When I received it, I spent several months listening to the account and imagining how things might have been at that time. Afterwards, I decided to put the box aside until someone showed some interest in the subject. If that didn’t happen I’d planned to donate it to the library when I was a little older.

"Listening to the account?" asked Marcelo, handing the mate back to him.

You’ll find out in a second. But before we begin, why are you interested in the story?

I’m a diver, said Marcelo without taking his eyes off the box, and if there’s a sunken ship in the estuary and we know roughly where it is, we could do some dives to try to find it.

If only it were that easy, sighed the old man, opening the box.

Inside was an antique tape recorder about the size of a typewriter. One of the reels of tape had a white label on it with the word AUSTRALIAN.

And what does that have to do with the ship?

One of the few disadvantages of youth is the lack of patience, said Olivera. Then he slowly unwound the machine’s cord and plugged it into an outlet in a corner of the room.

When the reels started turning, there was a low buzzing sound and then a female voice said in Spanish:

An account on the loss of His Majesty’s Sloop Swift, in a letter to a friend.

Just when Marcelo’s heart started to gallop in excitement, Olivera pressed a button, pausing the machine.

Is this the ship you were referring to?

I... I guess so, stuttered Marcelo. Even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter. He wanted to hear what came next.

The former sailor resumed the playback with the same button.

Dear Sir, having frequently mentioned to you some of the circumstances attending the loss of the sloop Swift, off the coast of Patagonia...

The woman’s voice began narrating the adventure lived by the ninety-one British men whose ship sank on Tuesday, the thirteenth day of March 1770 off the coast of Puerto Deseado. The tale was told in the first person and had been written by Erasmus Gower, first lieutenant of the H.M.S. Swift.

The Swift had left from Port Egmont, the only British naval station in the Falkland Islands at the time, with the objective of exploring the coast of the Patagonian desert. But six days after setting sail, a massive storm exhausted the crew’s strength, forcing them to stop in Puerto Deseado to regain their stamina and repair the damage.

Puerto Deseado was well acquainted with ships and sailors in distress. Magellan had named it Bay of Troubles, but later the British corsair Thomas Cavendish rechristened the estuary after his ship, the Desire. Although Port Desire appeared on all the nautical maps when the Swift arrived there in 1770, it was not until twenty years later that the Spanish built a fort and a whale oil plant, which did not survive more than two decades. Not to mention the fact that the town itself wouldn’t be founded for another one hundred and fourteen years. The coast that the men on the Swift encountered that fateful morning was as deserted as the rest of Patagonia.

Upon entering the estuary, they ran aground on an uncharted rock. After unloading all the ballast, along with a large portion of their potable water, the crew managed to free the ship. But their joy lasted only a few minutes, as a sudden gale slammed the Swift into a second rock. This time it was fatal, for both the ship and three of the crew: the cook and two marines.

At six o’clock in the afternoon on that Tuesday, the H.M.S. Swift, armed with fourteen cannons and twelve swivel guns, sank into the depths of what Marcelo and all the inhabitants of the town knew as the Deseado Estuary.

CHAPTER 3

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The most desperate aspect of the situation, according to Lieutenant Gower, was that when they set sail Captain Farmer had not given the captain of the Favourite the details of their planned course. That meant that the only other British ship in the Falklands didn’t know when or where to start looking for them. Put another way, they were stranded in one of the most arid and hostile corners of the world, with only themselves and their luck to depend on.

Because of the need to establish a shelter for the crew in a land without trees or people, some of the sailors were ordered to swim out to the masts – still visible above the water – to recover some of the sailcloth to use as tents.

But this only solved part of the problem. There were many more day-to-day struggles in Patagonia while they tried to decide whether to head to Buenos Aires by land, or return to the Falklands in one of the small cutters. Rats ravaged the few provisions they had managed to salvage, the animals they tried to hunt became more evasive, and winter loomed closer, threatening to freeze them to death.

When their ammunition ran out, they loaded their muskets with stones to shoot at the few sea lions and cormorants that came within range. Soon, they found themselves without drinking water. The only well they were able to dig yielded a murky, brackish liquid.

Eventually, the carpenters reinforced one of the cutters – a small craft, seven metres by two – and seven men were sent on a desperate mission to the Falklands, almost 600 kilometres away. But as fate would have it, that night, only a few hours after the cutter set off, a storm broke. Its tremendous force was enough to obliterate the hopes of the eighty-one men who remained ashore.

Within a few weeks, they were convinced that the hoped-for miracle had not occurred. They decided that Gower himself, along with four other men, should travel along the coast to Buenos Aires to seek help. But on the morning that they were preparing to leave, the sails of the Favourite appeared on the horizon. The seven men they had believed dead had managed to reach the Falklands with little more than a compass.

Twenty-eight days after the ship wreck, the crew of the sloop-of-war Swift began the return trip to Port Egmont, safe and sound. All, except the three who had gone down with the ship. Of these, only one – the cook – had been buried, once his corpse washed ashore.

A month and a half after the crew returned to the Falklands, a Spanish frigate docked at Port Egmont to request drinking water. Three days later, four others joined it. They had arrived to expel the British and reclaim the islands as part of the Spanish Empire. After making the crews of the Swift and the Favourite wait for a month, the Spanish then compelled them to return to England, where they arrived after seventy-eight days of navigation.

The woman’s voice announced the end of the account.

There’s something that’s not at all clear to me said Marcelo as he compulsively tapped the floor with his left foot, We’re talking about the sinking of an English ship more than two hundred years ago. How come there’s a tape with a recording about it? And how come the recording’s in Spanish?

And how come you’re asking all these questions? joked Olivera. Seriously though, I think somebody who had a copy of the original account, in English, translated it into Spanish. That same person – or perhaps someone else – recorded the translation. That’s my theory.

"Your theory? Are you telling me you don’t know where this tape came from?"

I know where it came from. What I don’t know is who recorded it.

Marcelo didn’t have to tell him that he didn’t understand a thing.

Two years ago the director of LRI200 radio came to my house with this recorder. We went to school together, and he knows I collect everything to do with the sea. When he gave it to me, he told me they’d found it when they were cleaning their archive.

And this sticker? asked Marcelo, pointing to the word AUSTRALIAN.

That’s the same thing I asked the director. According to him, it probably has to do with whatever was recorded on the tape before Gower’s account. He told me it’s very common to re-use these tapes to keep costs down. In any case, Australia wasn’t known by that name in 1770.

The voice, said Marcelo sounds very familiar to me. I’m almost certain I’ve heard it before somewhere, but I can’t think where.

That would be a big help. If you tracked down the person who recorded this, you could ask them where they got it, and find out if it’s a true story or not.

Marcelo stayed silent, his gaze fixed on the tape. Could there really be a sunken ship at the bottom of the estuary where he’d gone diving so many times? Or was this just another false rumour – albeit a more elaborate one – among the many circulating in Puerto Deseado?

I’d love to stay and chat, said Olivera but I have to go to the doctor in half an hour. At my age you spend half your time between the clinic and the pharmacy. If you’re interested, you could come whenever you like and copy it out on paper. Tomorrow at the same time, maybe?

Great!

For the next three days, Marcelo went religiously to the old man’s house at three in the afternoon. While he transcribed the account, Olivera solved crosswords at the rate of one whole magazine a day.

They worked at their tasks in silence, sipping anis and accompanied by the intermittent voice of the old recording. When the time came for Marcelo to leave, the old man would rinse the glasses and place them next to the bottle of anis, and then store the recorder in the carob wood dresser in the dining room.

On Thursday, unlike the three previous days, Olivera saw Marcelo out.

You see this flagstone? he said touching the paving outside the house with the point of his shoe.

Marcelo nodded. It was exactly the same as the all the others.

Under the tenth stone from this one there is a copy of the front door key, said the old man, pointing to another one two metres to the right. If one day I have to go to the doctor and you want to come in and listen to the recording, you have my permission.

Marcelo looked at the flagstone embedded in the ground. One would hardly have noticed that it was looser than the others.

Thanks. But I don’t think it’ll be necessary. I don’t have much left to do. I might even finish it tomorrow and then I won’t disturb you anymore.

It’s not a disturbance for me, quite the contrary. Are you going to remember it’s ten stones you have to count?

Of course, same as Maradona’s number

No, the same as Kempes, said the old man with a wink. "When that Maradona fellow wins as many cups as The Matador, that’s when I’ll have to rename the flagstone."

Marcelo laughed and began walking home. This business of counting ten stones was too sophisticated. Sure, everyone in Deseado had a hiding place for their keys, but nobody went to the trouble of lifting up the paving. Usually they just put them under a rock or in the hollow of a tree. Besides, why bother hiding the keys when people nearly always left their doors unlocked? Creatures of habit, he thought, and began to hurry because of the cold.

CHAPTER 4

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When you’re underwater, the most important thing is to keep breathing, Skinny.

That was how Marcelo Rosales’ first diving class had begun, back before his sixteenth birthday. Neither he nor Claudio Etinsky, his instructor, could have imagined that those first words would determine Marcelo’s nickname for the remainder of a relationship which, little by little, would grow into a firm friendship. It had been February, and the water a glorious fourteen degrees.

Now, more than two and a half years later, Marcelo floated on the surface after his one-hundred-and-fourth dive. Nearby, Claudio swam on his back, his mask still covering his eyes.

Worst visibility in a long time, said Marcelo, coming up alongside him.

Terrible. At one point I stretched out my arm and couldn’t see my hand. In theory, visibility should be better in winter. Otherwise, why are we risking hypothermia in water that is... five... no, five and a half degrees? he said, checking the thermometer strapped next to a compass on his left wrist.

Claudio Etinsky was thirty years old, and he had been diving since he was thirteen. His father was one of the pioneers of scuba diving in Argentina, and had trained the first Federal Police forensic team specialising in underwater investigation. At that time the Etinskys lived in Bahia Blanca, which was, as Claudio was fond of pointing out, a real city, unlike small, boring Deseado.

Claudio and Marcelo dived together at least once every weekend. At first, Marcelo had paid for the classes, but over time the outings became an activity shared by friends.

Just as well Ariel didn’t come, said Marcelo as he clambered into the Piñata, Claudio’s Zodiac inflatable dinghy.

When we tell him, he’ll be glad he has a cold.

Ariel was the only other person in town under the age of sixty who had any interest in diving. He was seventeen and went to the same school as Marcelo, but was in the class a year below him. He had started diving eight months earlier, also as a student of Claudio’s, and for four months now he had not missed a single weekend dive. But today he had a cold.

The common cold was a diver’s worst enemy, as it prevented the eardrums from adjusting properly to the changing pressure during the descent.