Monster: Tale Loch Ness Read online

  MONSTER

  A Tale of Loch Ness

  JEFFREY KONVITZ

  To Robert Littman, without whom this book would not have been written. And for my father, who hung in there to see it happen

  Part I

  THE

  COLUMBUS

  Preface

  Rolf Kreibel, chief design engineer of the Highland Fabricators Company, maneuvered the Rover sedan past affluent mansions to the top of the hill on Old Edinburgh Road and looked down at the city below.

  "Inverness," he announced, spreading the word with a heavy Bavarian drawl.

  Jerry Foster, director of public relations, Geminii Petroleum International, a portly man with an effusive personality, placed the stem of a pipe in his mouth, then squinted toward the west where late-morning sunlight splashed brilliantly against the Highland Mountains. "Not a bad-looking little place," he said, fingering his thick crop of handlebar moustache, barbered to perfection.

  "And it's a hell of a lot more colorful than Deenie," added Bob Reddington, the third member of the group.

  Inverness, which lay around the horn of Scotland and inside a shield of bays, the huge Moray and the smaller Inverness and Beauly firths, did not remotely resemble Aberdeen, the center of the North Sea oil industry on Scotland's east coast. First, there were no oil companies and few modern buildings. And second, the city possessed an architectural style far more pleasant than Aberdeen's ponderous stoniness, quarried to withstand the fierce winds and the pounding rains of the North Sea.

  Kreibel, who had picked up Foster and Reddington just minutes before at Inverness Airport, eased the Rover down the hill on to High Bridge Street, a long avenue of colorful storefronts, curiously embellished.

  Pastry stores had little cookie and cake monsters displayed in their windows. The kilt-maker shops were cluttered with toy Nessies and inflatable souvenirs. And one bookstore had an extensive exhibit of monster posters on its portico as well as an eye-catching welcome sign across its facade: GREETINGS

  FROM INVERNESS—HOME OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER.

  It was May. Tourists would be arriving in June. Inverness was ready.

  "Do you think the locals take the thing seriously?" Foster asked.

  Kreibel shook his head. "Would you if every summer you had to answer the same ignorant questions? I doubt it."

  Kreibel steered the car across the River Ness Bridge toward the Caledonian Canal, an artificial offshoot of the River Ness. The canal, like the river, was fed by Loch Ness and emptied into the Inverness Firth.

  "We're taking a detour," he said, turning the car to the west. "The big shake knocked out part of the Dores Road on the south bank. We'll have to pick it up outside the city."

  "Funny," Foster said. "We didn't feel the quake in Aberdeen."

  Kreibel's eyes widened. "Well, it was a corker here. We took a lot of superficial damage. We were lucky, though. At six-eight on the Richter, it could have been a lot worse."

  "What about aftershocks?" Reddington asked.

  "Two days' worth," Kreibel replied.

  "That's reassuring news before a dive," Foster said facetiously.

  Kreibel waved away the thought. "I spoke to a quake expert with the Forestry Commission this morning, and he said the activity had played itself out."

  Reddington shook his head. "From what I hear about those guys, we shouldn't lay the odds."

  Reddington, a big man with a boisterous sense of humor, laughed alone. Currently the drilling supervisor for Geminii Petroleum's wildcat venture in the Dundee North Sea sector aboard the semisubmersible rig Valkyrie, he'd come over to the North Sea four years before when Geminii, the operating partner in the multilayered international consortium, had received its first license to explore in the British Offshore Sector. Since then, he'd overseen three exploratory Dundee wells, the third of which had encountered a large pay zone of hydrocarbons and several delineation wells, which had established the boundaries of the Dundee field, now forecast to produce at over 30,000 barrels of oil a day. While waiting for completion of a permanent steel Dundee production platform being built by Highland Fabricators just north of Inverness, he was preparing to move with the Valkyrie to a separate license area and begin another round of wildcat exploration.

  Shortly before noon, they intercepted the Dores Road at Loch Ness about eight miles from the city, then headed toward the village of Foyers on the south loch shore.

  A year before, a friend of Kreibel's named Harry Bailey had discovered an underwater fissure while diving off Foyers. Lacking sophisticated diving equipment, Bailey had chosen not to explore. Having been told the story, however, Kreibel, a monster buff, had decided to make the dive and had convinced Reddington and Foster, both scuba enthusiasts, to join.

  "What do you know about the loch?" Kreibel asked as they rumbled along.

  "Not much," Foster replied.

  Kreibel smiled. He was a pleasant fellow, soft-spoken, likable, athletic. Consumed by a burning curiosity about unexplained enigmas, he was also a thorough man who prided himself on research and preparation. "Ness and two other separate lochs lie in a giant geological fault which cuts Scotland in half," he began. "Loch Ness, though, which sits fifty feet above sea level, is the largest, about twenty-four miles long and a mile and a half wide at its widest point as well as nine hundred eighty feet deep, making it one of the deepest fresh-water lakes in the world."

  "It looks as cold as hell," Reddington declared.

  "Colder," Kreibel said, chewing into a stick of gum. "Though it never freezes. And it's murky dark because of the runoff of peat. That's why I ordered special headgear with torches designed specifically to accommodate loch conditions."

  "Do you have the dive coordinates?" Foster asked as the car moved along the narrow road whose sloping borders were gradually merging into the steeper wails of the rising mountain sides.

  "Yes," Kreibel replied. "If we're lucky, we'll find the fissure."

  "Then what?" Reddington asked.

  "You and Foster will perch outside. I'll go in with a camera."

  "What if you find the monster?" Foster asked, laughing, his thoughts on cookies and cakes.

  "I'll take its picture," Kreibel answered. "Close up." He pulled three envelopes off the dash, opened one, and withdrew a stack of photos. "This is some of the photographic evidence accumulated so far."

  Jerry Foster relit his pipe, while Bob Reddington examined the photographic plates.

  "The first reference to a monster was made by St. Columba, the Irish monk who brought Christianity to Scotland around 550 A.D., though we can pinpoint the rise of the modern legend to 1933, when engineers blasted the northside road from Inverness to Fort Augustus. Now I've studied hundreds of eyewitness reports. Most are frauds. But a good number appear to be legitimate." He noticed Foster's skeptical expression, then pointed to the pictures. "These are the best above-water photographs of the monster ever taken. The first was shot in 1933 by Hugh Gray. The second by a surgeon in 1934. The last by Tim Dinsdale in 1960."

  Foster craned his neck. "They all look like floating logs to me."

  "That's arguable," Kreibel said, glancing at Reddington. "What do you think, Red?"

  "Don't know," Reddington observed, shrugging.

  Reddington placed the plates back in their envelope, for Kreibel and opened the second as instructed, pulling out another set of exhibits.

  "These are sonar records," Kreibel said. "The first trace was recorded by the Rival III trawler in 1954. Some have claimed the trace was made by an undulating eel. But it's unlikely." He pointed to another exhibit. "That was recorded in Urquhart Bay by a team from the University of Birmingham. The object was calculated to be moving at four hundred fifty feet per minute. Now
no Ness current moves that fast, eliminating the possibility of water-carried flotsam." He quickly noted several other tracings. "Convinced?" he asked.

  "Not yet," Reddington said as he pulled up the sleeves of his military surplus shirt. He never bothered much about clothes. He was an outdoorsman. Very unpretentious.

  "Open the last envelope!" Kreibel suggested.

  Reddington tore the folder and placed the final exhibits on his lap as the jeep moved past Urquhart Bay.

  "That's Urquhart Bay," Kreibel said, pointing. "The loch's widest point. The ruin is Urquhart Castle."

  "How deep is the loch there?" Foster asked.

  "We're at the deepest point," Kreibel replied. "The locus where most of the researchers have worked, including the group responsible for the final photos and sonar tracings. The group's called the Academy of Applied Sciences, and they hit pay dirt in August '72, after they'd lowered their sonar equipment and an aligned strobe camera into the bay. On the night of August 7, the sonar scope printed out a large trace." He indicated the record. "Excited, the team theorized the camera must have photographed the object, too. They developed the film, and this is what they got." He held up a series of photos, apparently worthless, a méange of lines and shadows. "It doesn't look like much, I know. It didn't look like much to the academy team, either. That is, until the photos were enhanced by a computer. The computer picture looked like this." He pulled another photo. "Now tell me if that's not a goddam animal's body and a giant flipper!"

  Astounded, Reddington and Foster examined the plate.

  "What was the reaction?" Reddington asked.

  "A team from the Smithsonian concluded the object was probably animate. Now I won't lie to you. Others dismissed the evidence as inconclusive. But you form your own conclusions."

  Jerry Foster pointed, curiously subdued. "And those?"

  "Those are the pictures," Kreibel said, "taken during the academy's 1975 expedition. Two sequences of photos were obtained. A whole body photo and a head picture. Once more, the Smithsonian supported the findings, and once more, there were a whole slew of official and semiofficial detractors."

  The jeep moved through the village of Inverfarigaig, nearlng the outskirts of Foyers.

  "What's happened since '75?" Reddington asked.

  "Not much," KreibeI said. "The academy has returned several times. So have other groups. There've been interesting sonar tracings but no pictures of consequence."

  Foster glanced at the German. "Do you think it exists?"

  "Sure. Why not? And the fissure might well be its home."

  They arrived in Foyers ten minutes later. Foyers was a small village divided into two districts, upper and lower. Upper Foyers lay on the side of a mountain. Lower Foyers stood along the loch.

  Kreibel drove down to a dock.

  "The diving point is fifty feet eastward by thirty-seven offshore," Kreibel said.

  "Thirty-seven?" Foster asked, eyebrows raised.

  "I guarantee you'll find it deep enough. The shore of Ness is virtually nonexistent. In many parts of the loch, its underwater walls drop straight down to a near maximum depth within only a few feet of land." He laughed. "You'll find it a little unsettling at first."

  Kreibel stopped the Rover and jumped down. Reddington handed out the diving gear, which Foster and Kreibel carried on to the quay. When the equipment was in place, they checked their valves and oxygen tanks, then watched as Kreibel illustrated the use of a tether rope.

  "I'll lead," he said, spitting out the wad of gum. "Bob, you'll trail. Bailey estimated the strike depth as seventy-five feet. Once we find the fissure, I'll go in alone."

  They put on the scuba gear. Reddington and Foster tied a life line between themselves, then Foster attached one end of the tether to his belt. Reddington followed Kreibel and Foster into the water. They bobbed on the surface momentarily, eye contact assured, then went under.

  The water was cold, black, inky. They could feel the density of peat. Several feet below the surface, they began to lose light. Kreibel moved away from shore. Suddenly, the basement fell away. Kreibel started down. Foster and Reddington followed. They switched on the helmet torches. Streams of light pierced the murky blackness.

  The wall of the descent steepened. They were moving down alongside an underwater cliff, nearly vertical. When they had reached target depth, Kreibel moved horizontally, searching. Moments later, he waved. He'd found it. Reddington and Foster approached. No doubt. There was a huge opening in the rocks.

  Kreibel attached the tether line firmly to his diving belt, then moved inside the fissure. Several seconds later, he was gone, no trace of his beam in sight.

  Reddington and Foster watched the tether rope move through their hands. The line, marked every five feet by insoluble chalk streaks, ran to fifty feet, stopped, then continued out to one hundred and ten. Suddenly, the water began to cloud. Puzzled, they looked around, then heard it—a low rumble. Foster glared at Reddington, terrified. They waited. The water disturbance got worse. So did the muffled roar.

  Quake! The goddamn quake!

  They were jolted. Reddington grabbed tighter to the tether. The shaking and vibrations increased. The tether line brushed hard against the edge of the fissure. They pulled. The rock wall shook, then shifted, tearing the tether in half.

  Stunned, Reddington and Foster watched the free tether end disappear. Reddington moved to follow just as a huge tremor surged through the water, disorienting them. Panicked, Foster headed to the surface. Reddington followed. By the time they had broken water, the quake had subsided.

  They climbed on to the dock. The end of the tether line lay by Reddington's side, one end sliced clean. A small aftershock hit, then quiet. It was over.

  "What the hell do we do now?" Foster asked.

  "I'm going down!" Reddington said.

  "Are you crazy?!"

  "We've got to do something."

  Reddington returned to the water. Foster waited on shore, trembling. Reddington was not gone long.

  "I can't see a goddamn thing down there," he said, surfacing.

  "The torch?" Foster asked.

  "Useless!"

  Reddington climbed from the loch and fell to the ground, exhausted. Foster moved next to him. Immobile, they watched the water, the now-quiet surface. Above them, residents of Lower Foyers had emerged from their homes, looking for damage. Eventually, Reddington glanced at his watch and stood.

  "His tanks must be empty by now."

  Foster stood, too, wobbling toward the Rover. "We'd better call the police!"

  Frantic, Rolf Kreibel moved quickly along the wall of the cavern. He could feel his lungs pulling desperately, his entire body wracked with pain. Shortly before, he had opened the emergency reserve valve, but now even those tanks were almost empty. And God, he was exhausted, having moved in endless circles, fighting to get out of the maze and back into the open waters of the loch.

  Blood was pouring from a deep gash on his forehead. Part of his wet suit was torn. His fingers, too, were raw, eaten to the bone, the flesh shorn by desperate lunges along the rock wall.

  The torch was still working, barely illuminating the black, glistening walls. He continued to search, spearing at threads of hope. However, he'd begun to feel the final ebb of the reserves. He clutched his throat, holding off suffocation, then darted quickly ahead and slammed into a wall. Directly above, the cavern was spreading; he might be near the entrance. Gasping, he surged through the quake debris. Yes, he was certain; he was near the mouth. He moved even quicker. Suddenly, however, the view grew dark again, as if the exit had been sealed. Puzzled, his body bursting inside, he committed himself to a final assault, exploding forward.

  He was jolted aside. As his vision clouded, he whirled about and felt a surge of terror accompanying the onslaught of unconsciousness.

  Something was there.

  Directly in front of him.

  There!

  Two days after Rolf Kreibel's disappearance, Jerry Foster and B
ob Reddington were summoned to Foyers by Detective Constable James MacKintosh, Fort Augustus Division, Northem Constabulary, Criminal Investigations Division. Since the accident, they had been staying at the Clachnaharry Inn near the Beauly Firth. The first day had been consumed by interrogation, the second by an interminable wait for the procurator fiscal's ruling concerning the nature of Rolf Kreibel's disappearance. The crown's chief prosecutory official in Inverness, the procurator was charged with determining cause of death and, in criminal cases, bringing indictment under the jurisdiction of the lord advocate. As such, he held their immediate futures in his hands.

  Reddington and Foster arrived in Foyers in the late mornlng. Two police vans were already at the site. MacKintosh was there with several uniformed constables.

  "Gentlemen," MacKintosh said perfunctorily as Reddington and Foster climbed from the Rover, "the procurator has ruled the disappearance an accident."

  Foster and Reddington strained to pick up the words. MacKintosh, an expatriate from the Glasgow Lowlands, had a very heavy brogue and mountainous illiterate style.

  Reddington looked up at the sky, which was heavy with clouds and moisture. "Then I suppose we can go?"

  "Sure as the Word is good," MacKintosh said. "But we'd like you to look at something first. For identification purposes. A villager was fishing this morning and found a diving helmet along the shore. He called us. We assumed the helmet belonged to Kreibel. We'd like you to take a look."

  MacKintosh motioned to one of the uniformed officers, who brought over a helmet covered with dirt and a grayish-blue film.

  "That's Kreibel's," Foster said. He reached into the Rover and took out one of the other helmets, handing it to MacKintosh. "We each had an identical one."

  "Do you agree, Mr. Reddington?" MacKintosh asked.

  Reddington did not reply.

  "Mr. Reddington?"

  Reddington's eyes shifted. "Yes," he said, running his fingers across the helmet's torch.

  "Good," MacKintosh declared. "Gentlemen, I'm sorry this had to happen. But I'm right pleased we were able to expedite things quickly. You have my number if you need speak to me, and we have yours in case there are further questions or in the event the body is recovered."