“It seems that many things long buried wish to be found again,” said the woman from South Korea. Her melodic voice cut right through the chatter, catching all of our attention. Her English was measured and carefully pronounced. “We were cautioned by our ambassador not to speak of it, but I believe we may have a related issue. In our region there was a disturbance on the ocean floor.” I hadn’t noticed that we’d been joined by one of the translators from the People’s Liberation Army. He snapped something at the woman from Korea, and though I couldn’t understand a word of her response, I’m pretty sure her sharp response basically told him to go screw himself. The government interpreter ran off, probably to tell on her.
“Pay no attention to him. There was an incident which was embarrassing to his country’s navy. Our two governments had an agreement not to speak about this, but from what I am hearing now, I believe this should be known to all of you.”
“Your government? You are private or government?” the big Pole asked, suspicious. MHI really did a have a lot in common with our competitors.
“I am privy to some things. You could call me a consultant,” she answered innocently.
“Consultant? More like secret agent ninja,” one of the Australians whispered to me. Apparently he was familiar with the woman.
“An anomaly appeared on the ocean floor, in over two thousand meters of water. It rose from the mud overnight.”
“Anomaly?” I asked.
“A city.” When she said that it stunned the whole group. “It is two kilometers across, and sonar indicates that there are approximately twenty structures, the tallest of which was over a hundred meters.”
“Deep Ones, maybe?” the Pole asked.
“Far too advanced for such creatures. We do not know what inhabited it, but we were warned to be on the lookout, since it appeared that the inhabitants abandoned the city as soon as it rose from the mud. We do not know where they went. The beggar’s navy, pardon me, North Korea lost a spy ship over the disturbance, and then the Chinese navy lost a submarine to an unknown force while investigating. They then destroyed the city to keep it from falling into the hands of the Americans.”
“When did this happen?”
“Two weeks ago.”
Her comments caused quite a bit of commotion. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, and that was one of the most coherent comments of the bunch.
Earl’s hunch had been right. There was a pattern emerging, and it was scary as hell.