“No joke,” said the priest. “Prayer’s the most powerful weapon there is. It’s a tactical nuke to spirits. They hate it. Most people think it’s just something you do before you go to bed. There was a worldwide study proving how powerful it is. Most people’ve never heard of it though. It’s not the kind of thing you find in the news.”
They traveled over a causeway at the water’s edge that stretched to a round concrete blockhouse in the lake.
Bathed in halogens, the sub resembled a jet fighter only flatter with stubby wings and a propeller.
“Meet Nemo III. She can dive a thousand feet and has a top speed of ten knots. She has a carbon fiber hull, can descend at two hundred fifty feet per minute, ascend at four hundred fifty and has a range of fifty nautical miles. With her lithium-ion battery she can stay down five hours. Nemo IV when we get her will be able to dive the deep sea. Did you know more men have been to the moon than to the deepest parts of the ocean?”
“Why just men?” Cathy drawled. “And why are ships called she anyway?”
“Oh … well … The last time we went to the moon was ‘72. Things were different then,” said the priest. “As far as ships are concerned, that’s a good question. Why’s Mother Earth called Mother? Maybe it’s because all the early seafarers were men.”
“My uncle says we got kicked off the moon,” said Chase.
“Kicked off? By whom?” the priest asked.
“Aliens.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure he must have a very good reason for believing that,” the priest replied diplomatically.
“Father Kubriak says the Wright Brothers made their first flight in 1903,” Cathy added. “It was only seventy years from the invention of the airplane to landing on the moon. So how come it’s been over forty now, that’s a thousand in tech years, and we haven’t been back? Our science book says we were supposed to have bases on the moon a long time ago. Instead moon visits stopped suddenly for reasons that were never adequately explained and we never left low-Earth orbit again. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” said the priest. “Never thought about it.
Cathy was right. Not much beyond a hundred years ago in the first true motor race a Panhard et Levassor crossed the finish line after a grueling 48 hour race at a blistering average speed of 15 mph. Just twenty years before that the theoretical limit of travel was thought to be 30 miles per hour. Any faster and a person wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Humans have been dying to have bases on the moon. That was the whole purpose of the moon program. It was suddenly abandoned. Abandoned with the trillions of dollars in gold and precious rare metals badly needed for cellphones, stealth bombers and flat screens, not to mention the military advantage, the original purpose for bases on the moon. All spacecraft under construction for the planned future missions were sold as scrap to the highest bidder.
“But as I was saying, there needs to be more women in oceanography. We live on a planet that’s seventy percent water but we’ve mapped less than three percent of its bottom. And explored virtually none of its deepest parts. The oceans are one giant mystery. You should do something about it,” said the priest.
“Maybe I will,” Cathy replied flatly.
“And ninety percent of the planet’s animal life lives
in the oceans and most of it’s unknown to us. Un…be … liev …able. Who says space is the final frontier. And don’t get me started on what we know or don’t rather about what’s under our very feet. It’s 4,000 miles to the center of the earth. We’ve penetrated seven with a metal straw. Truth is we have no clue what’s under our feet. Don’t believe what you read. Theory passed off as fact.”
A young dark-skinned technician in a lab coat, his thick, coarse black hair pulled into a braided pony-tail and wearing Coke bottle lenses scurried about in the hot sticky air taking readings from banks of instruments. His thick round spectacles made him look like a comic book character with big boiled eggs for eyes, magnifying and accenting his every blink. He seemed hardly to notice his visitors.
“Soon we’ll retrofit her with robotic arms,” said Father Brainard. “There’re all kinds of things on the ocean floor waiting to be found.”
“Like manganese nodules?” said Chase.
“What do you know about those?” asked Father Brainard.
“It’s a long story,” replied Chase.
“Harris, prepare Nemo for launch.”
The Jamaican dropped his clipboard and moved to another bank of instruments.
“N fadder, do bringer bok deez time w’out nee damages and wit evy’ ting working, kay?”
With a thumbs up Father Brainard slid behind the controls. Matt took the seat beside him.
“Why do I have to sit in the back,” Cathy fumed.
“BDGOI,” Matt responded.
“What!”
“Big Deal Get Over It.”
“Oh great, not another Chase. No offense Chase,” she quickly added.
“None taken,” said Chase. “I’m surprised you don’t want to drive.”
“Can I?” Cathy asked.
“Some other time little lady,” the priest chuckled.
“She’s a pilot. Her dad too,” Chase added.
“Why didn’t you say so,” the priest replied. “Here, you two switch places.” Cathy beamed. Matt frowned.
“Fasten your belts,” said the priest.
After a few minutes explaining the dual controls Father Brainard donned a headset and handed one to Cathy.
Water gurgled across the canopy as the sub entered a portal to the lake. The electric motors whirred as the sub’s lights bathed the mouth of a submarine canyon.
“She handles like a jet ski as you can see,” the priest announced. “You have control.”
With a yank of the stick Cathy rammed the thruster control forward to its stop, laying the craft on its side just like when flying aerobatics in her father’s P-51. Nemo performed a tight counterclockwise circle outside the canyon then whipped sharply in the opposite direction.
Their bodies strained against their harnesses as bubbles engulfed the sub like a dropped fizzy drink.
“No need to be afraid to put it through its paces,” Father Brainard grunted.
“I wouldn’t have said that,” said Chase.
Cathy looped and rolled until they were all quite sick, including the priest who doubled over and with a great ‘ARRGGHHH’ disgorged the meatball sandwich, potato salad and Coke he’d had for lunch all over the instrument panel. Face pale with nostrils dripping he retarded the thrusters. “ENOUGH!” Matt directed a quivering finger at a monstrous fish twice the size of the sub. “LOOK!” he gasped.
The wall of armored bony plates wriggled past. With a lazy wag of its tail it was gone. The priest grabbed Matt’s outstretched arm.
“Where did you get that!” for a ring worthy of a king graced Matt’s finger. A silver signet ring used to stamp important documents, it bore the Star of David and the real name of God in Hebrew.
“I have control,” Father Brainard muttered. He yanked the stick and hurried back to base.
Chapter 13 – THE CROWN JEWELS
The good father reached across his desk to his pipe rack accidentally knocking over an ornately-carved wood plaque that read, When in Doubt Kill Everyone, God Will Sort Them Out – United States Army. Plucking it from the carpet he lit his pipe.
“Alright, why are you kids here?” he asked, drumming his fingers on his desk.
Chase, Cathy and Matt began talking all at once. They told him what they had learned about giants.
The father studied the ring. “If that’s what I think it is. . . I know this sounds crazy . . . I want you to do something. It’s just a hunch . . . Say ‘Queen’s crown jewels appear on Father Brainard’s desk.’ ”
Matt leered across the desk at the crazy man.
“Humor me,” said the priest.
“Crown Jewels of England - appear on Father Brainard’s desk,” Matt obliged. The priest leaned back in his chair and took a slow drag of his pipe.
“Well, it was worth a ...” The priest’s jaw dropped. His eyes bulged from their sockets. Spilling over the desk were the most splendid purple robes and breathtaking bejeweled crowns, gold orbs, rings, priceless jeweled scepters, dazzling bracelets and gold daggers. Reaching down he plucked the Sovereign’s Orb made for Charles II’s coronation in 1661 from the floor, a gold orb inlaid with precious stones and pearls. Thinking it a delusion he picked up his desk phone.
“Sister Cherry, would you step in here a moment please.”
The door popped open. In stepped a perky young sister wearing a habit.
“Sister Cherry, what do you see?”
“Ummm ….…you mean the robes and costume jewels and crowns and stuff?” Her confused eyes darted back and forth between the objects on the desk and the floor for where had she been when they were carted in? She had been at her desk all day.
“Thank you, Sister Cherry . . . thank you, sister . . . you can go now sister,” said the befuddled priest as a no less befuddled Sister Cherry backed her way to the door, her eyes fixated on the priest’s desk. She stumbled against a table sending a lamp crashing. Father Brainard stared at his phone and counted down for the red LED to light up, the one that told him Sister Cherry was on her phone. Sure enough in the time it took her to reach her desk it lit.
“You’d better put those things back before somebody misses ‘em.”
Too late. Somebody already had missed them. A Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Member of the Sovereign's Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary, commonly known as the Beefeaters, who had been guarding The Crown Jewels scratched his head. The first time he had looked The Crown Jewels were there. The next they were gone. The next again they reappeared before his eyes! The poor bloke would need to undergo months of therapy.
“I knew it! That’s the lost ring of King Solomon,” the priest proclaimed.
A knock sounded. It was Sister Cherry.
“I’m, ah . . . going on break,” she said as her eyes searched the room.
“Where are The Crown Jewels?” she whispered.
“Hypnotic suggestion,” the father replied.
“Oh,” said the poor Sister Cherry unable to resist one last perplexed look. Her LED lit up again.
The father went to his bookshelf and returned with a book. He slid it across the desk. “The two hundred worst human monsters in history,” he announced. Matt noted it was also the title. “Can you imagine what any of these psychos would have done with that ring? That ring must never fall into the wrong hands.”
“No women, right?” Cathy smugged.
“Actually there are . . . And Hitler, the great corporal,” Father Brainard sneered, “one of the evilest men on earth, was obsessed with finding that ring … and the Ark of the Covenant … and the DNA of fallen angels . . . and the Holy Grail. All part of the failed artist’s plan to create a super race to rule the world. He sent his agents to the far corners of the earth to find them. Who would’ve guessed it was here the whole time.”
The priest shook his head, “We should have lost that war you know. They had jets sooner, rockets sooner, far better tanks, far more ferocious machine guns. During the war, the medium Edgar Cayce said unless there’s “divine interference” the Axis will win. Note he didn’t call it intervention. He called it interference. That tells you which side the mediums were on. The Allies got their divine ‘interference.’ ”
Matt’s brain struggled to comprehend the deaths of so many attributed to one depraved lowly corporal turned führer acting with lots of help. They were thoughtful, kind, loving people like Anne Frank whose diary he had read in English class.
During a field trip to the Holocaust Museum he had seen the steel cups with the Star of David on them. The ones the children carried to their deaths thinking they were going to get soup. He became angry. Then he cried. Some kids can view the past as the past. Others are condemned to live it. Matt became the little boy carrying his cup to the gas chamber in his new shoes. He couldn’t bear to finish the field trip. A terrible wrong had been done. He had to do something. But what?
“Why are some people good and some bad?” asked Cathy.
“Well now there’s a good question,” said Father Brainard. “T