A SENN MYSTERY

Royal Assassins

Chapter 32: Safe Haven for Monsters and Monks

Photo by Kyle Petzer on Unsplash

Senn patiently followed behind the family of six (and another on the way) as they boarded the chirpy, tourist-laden island hopper at Hoi An Bay.

It was a grey morning, but the sun kept cracking through the clouds, lighting up the waves like a swarm of flashing paparazzi. The lower deck was buzzing with an overstimulated gaggle of teenage schoolgirls and tourists restless to get going. He made his way to the upper deck and found a calmer spot behind a group of veteran Japanese couples who looked elegant in their white gloves, frilly hats, and bulky lenses.

But Senn's muscles felt taut as he cautiously scanned the Jetty from behind his I Love Hoi An hat and sunglasses. A couple of grim Police officers with an angry sniffer dog walked the pavement, minding the crowd. He knew the extreme consequences of being spotted and arrested, but he had found several additional files on Tess's chip that made this trip necessary.

She had discovered something tantalizingly sinister.

It was a 1995 Russian Navy map of the Hoi An Bay and the deep harbors dotted around it. This was from a time when the Soviet Navy had a strategic naval base in Vietnam to support its operations in the South China Sea. The mid 90's were a turbulent time in this region. It was the twilight of the Cold War and a period of high Sino-Vietnamese tension — Senn knew that Russian officers were defecting to the US and other European countries, taking their secrets and hoarded wealth with them.

It was hard to decode the map as everything was written in Cyrillic. Vietnamese names were roughly phoneticized into Russian (e.g., Hoi An becomes Халонг, Hong Gai becomes Хонггай). A bold purple ink stamp in the upper-right corner read — СОВ. СЕКРЕТНО (Top Secret).

The intriguing part of the map was the cave location markers, each tagged with the Greek letter Omega (Ω), placed at multiple points across the archipelago. There were 70 such markings, but two of them were hand-circled; all the caves had numbers indicating ceiling height and entry clearance. Senn knew this was a standard metric used by the Soviets to determine which caves could store munitions or hide small patrol torpedo boats from US or Chinese satellite reconnaissance.

A rogue Soviet Officer stationed in Vietnam may have used this kind of map to mark a hidden stash — perhaps gold, surveillance equipment, or weapon components — buried inside an unmarked karst cave, using Gauss-Krüger coordinates that modern treasure hunters cannot easily decipher. To Senn, the hand-inked red circles trailing off into the bay's deeper waters suggested a hidden consignment location that official history records may have omitted.

This area had another cunning advantage — the towering limestone karsts created massive radar blind spots. These were shown as shaded arcs on the map where a vessel could hide from US coastal radar surveillance. Intriguingly, both the hand-marked caves lay within these shaded regions.

It was clear that the two caves were precious to the soviets.

The hopper set off with a deafening hooter whistle, accompanied by loud cheers from the deck. Senn watched as their boat joined the choppy waterway, full of tourist boats and fishing trawlers crisscrossing each other. Senn unclenched his fingers and let out a little sigh of relief as he welcomed the salty vastness with the looming limestone karst forest beckoning in the distance. The last 24 hours had been claustrophobic and nerve-wracking, hiding in a small, damp room like a fugitive.

But during this time, he'd studied the map in detail, matched the tour boat's route, and found a point on the ride where the boats docked at a small island for lunch. Surrounding this island was a famous fishing village called Vuing Vieng, popular with tour boats, where tourists could get off to explore the karsts and go kayaking with local fishermen. The marked caves were located in a deeper bay area off the tourist route. Local fishermen lived in this area, but tourists were not allowed to wander there. He did not yet know how he would get to his destination, but he lived by the philosophy that will finds the way, so it was first critical to get to Vuing Veing.

The sky was turning grey as the wind picked up — a storm was coming. Senn checked the distance to the floating fishing villages on his phone— they were ten minutes away. As the boat moved deeper into the bay, the ocean was blanketed by a layer of white mist, obscuring the way. Simultaneously, the air temperature nosedived as a looming shadow rose around them. The boats' engine sounds deepened, and tourist chatter began to echo, ricocheting off this misty monster. Then, slowly, like an opera house curtain, the mist parted to reveal a millennia-old, colossal natural stone arch, draped in thick moss, welcoming them into the limestone cliff park. The immense scale of the karsts humbled the tour boats as they glided past them like ants. Senn looked up in awe at these grand sentinels and realized he had entered a sacred citadel that man could easily corrupt with its sordid secrets. Innocent Tess (in her journalistic quest to discover an ancient silk trade route for her CNN feature) had stumbled upon a monster that the Lava Dragons mafia and the Vietnamese Army were willing to kill for.

As he kept his eyes riveted on following the Russian map he had managed to watermark over Google Earth coordinates, his mind kept flicking back to the one other unsolved piece of the puzzle on the map that he knew was important but had no idea how to decipher. It was the three lines of Cyrillic code typed in red at the bottom.

Part of it was printed, and part was hand-scrawled —

(Printed) Глубины и высоты даны в метрах. Средний уровень моря 2.08 м. Приливное течение в точке 0°09' СШ достигает скорости 1.4 узла.

(Hand-Scrawled) Внимание! Обнаружена банка на глубине 13 м в районе изобаты 75 (кв. 4231–1875)

On the face of it, the translation looked like a typical navigational chart used by a submarine or reconnaissance vessel. The text mimicked hydrographic notes regarding depths, tides, and bottom sediments (mud/coral), and the handwritten ink scrawl in the margin, seemingly correcting a navigational hazard.

Line 1 (Printed): "Depths and heights are given in meters. Mean sea level 2.08 m."

Line 2 (Printed): "Tidal current at point 0°09' N reaches a speed of 1.4 knots."

Line 3 (Scrawled): Danger! Shoal discovered at a depth of 13 m in the area of isobath 75 (Square 4231–1875).

Senn wondered if it was a finer detail of the location or a code for something in the marked caves, which he still needed to figure out.

By now, he could feel the boat slowing down and being surrounded by wooden kayaks of local fishermen and hawkers shouting; some selling reed hats and memorabilia, and others offering to take tourists to their fishing villages or on kayak rides around the limestone karsts. The ocean had been converted into a temporary haggling, floating market all around him. Amused, he watched the banter and excitement of tourists around him while scouting for the right kayak for his journey.

But his mind froze in an instant as he spotted a Police boat speeding directly towards them.

tbc

https://www.amazon.com/author/andytravis