The Afrikaner had a worrying look in his eye that Nash recognised from the massacre.

The last cabin in the compartment was the only one fitted with a solid steel door.

‘It must be a strongroom,’ said Boerman eagerly.

Perhaps expecting it to be locked, he wrenched the handle and pulled. The heavy door swung down like an axe and slammed into the wall with a loud bang, missing Nash by millimetres. Boerman nonchalantly clambered inside.

‘Get up here, Nash. I need more light.’

The tiny room was clearly a security store. Rows of empty lockable drawers lay in piles. The big man began tossing them out, and they clattered and banged eerily down the long passageway.

‘Ha!’

Boerman reached into the far corner. There, in the middle of his wide hand, a golden ingot gleamed under their torch lights.

‘One bar?’ Nash tried not to sound too pleased.

‘There will be more.’

It was much easier to open the next bulkhead door. On the other side they found a dry passageway of storerooms filled with jumbled piles of swollen tins of ancient food, and sacks of rancid rice flour hardened into bricks. Nash spotted an intact bottle of blue kerosene and a carving knife in a galley, but with Boerman watching his every move, he could do nothing beyond note them for future reference.

The final bulkhead door led into the torpedo room. Here, every possible thing that could be dislodged had been flung backwards when the submarine crashed down. Nine-metre torpedoes had slid back out of their cradles like a collapsing stack of lumber, and the crumpled propellers were blocking the bulkhead door like a portcullis. Surveying the tangle of lethal debris above his head, Nash was amazed it hadn’t blown.

Boerman led them back down to the second section and located a side door, which gave them access to the port-side pressure hull without having to go all the way back to the split amidships. There was no corresponding strongroom on the lower port side, but they found a ladder accessing the top deck, which had also remained dry, and from here were able to double back around to the upper starboard side.

‘You see,’ Boerman said happily, standing before an identical strongroom door. ‘What did I tell you?’ Finding it locked, he beamed. ‘Now we’re in business.’

After a nerve-racking climb down, they returned to the gantry below the split hull and clambered into the ghostly control room. Here, even Boerman could make no impact on the bulkhead doors leading aft.

‘No matter,’ he reasoned, spitting on his inflamed palms. ‘We’ll cut our way in to the opium.’

Then he ran untethered to the end of the gantry. Victoriously holding up the ingot of gold and the MP40 he expanded his mighty chest and roared ‘Banzai!’ at the top of his lungs.

Chapter 35

Chapter 35