Artifact

Books by Kevin J. Anderson

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (with Brian Herbert)

Ignition (with Doug Beason)

Books by F. Paul Wilson

The Haunted Air

Conspiracies

Legacies

The Tomb

Deep as the Marrow

Implant

Available from Tom Doherty Associates

www.ebookyes.com

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

ARTIFACT: A DAREDEVILS CLUB ADVENTURE

Copyright © 2003 by Janet Berliner, Matthew J. Costello, F. Paul Wilson, and Wordfire, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Edited by James Frenkel

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-312-71006-2

First Edition: May 2003

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

Epilogue

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Robert L. Fleck, without whose hard work and dedication this book never could have been completed. Also Laurie Harper, an excellent agent and friend. And finally Jim Frenkel and the staff at Forge Books for making the editorial process smooth and enjoyable.

Additionally, thanks are due to our Grenadian friends Moses Findley, George Grant, and Winston, as well as Rebecca Moesta and Catherine Sidor.

Prologue

GRENADA, DECEMBER31, 1982

Show time!

Peta Whyte struck a Bob Fosse dance pose in front of the brooding edifice that was Richmond Hill Prison. Despite the tension of the moment, she smiled at the strange juxtaposition. The two-hundred-yearold fortress, with its view of Grenada’s harbor and the crystal blue Caribbean, was a perfect symbol of the harsh reality that now controlled her island, an island that had long been considered the jewel of the West Indies.

The U-shaped harbor and surroundings looked like a miniature Monte Carlo. A rainbow of brightly colored tin-and-wooden houses, small hotels, and provision stores which stocked little more than the necessities of life—rum, rice, cigarettes, and beer—meandered from the top of several hills down to the business and restaurant district which fringed the water. Fort George, like Monte Carlo’s famed Castle-Fort, crested the top of the right-hand hill. Below it, hidden from view on the far side of the hill, lay the central marketplace. Looming over that, at the top of Church Street, stood a cathedral whose bells pealed melodically and often. At the top of the opposite hill, replacing Monte Carlo’s casinos, was a gun emplacement which surrounded and essentially hid the island’s only radio station from view.

From where she was standing, Peta could hear her Rasta friend Jimmy and his buddies playing soca on the steel drums that lined the fringes of Tanteen Park, which lay directly below her. In her mind’s eye she could see the familiar scene at the bottom of the hill. Across the street from Jimmy, in front of the entrance gates to the docks, a series of booths sold food, smokes, and fireworks. Outside the neighboring fishery, old ladies, unmindful of the country’s unrest, were sitting at open grills, cooking corn and jacks, the long silvery fish so abundant in the waters around the island. The jacks looked like overgrown sardines and, even grilled to a crisp and eaten bones and all, tasted like kippers.

Between the bountiful waters and the fruit and vegetables available all year just for the plucking, the only reason anyone went hungry on the island was out of sheer laziness, Peta thought, wishing that she could be among the vendors and musicians, acting like a carefree teen instead of someone with murder on her mind.

Only, if she were, her mentor and friend, Arthur Marryshow, would be as good as dead, and it would be as much her fault as it would be the Communists’ who had imprisoned him.

Obedient to her instructions, Jimmy continued to play. His beat wafted up the slope on Grenada’s sunset trade winds, heralding the end of the old year and the start of the new. Any excuse was good enough for a party. And why not? Tomorrow would be time enough to return to politics; tomorrow, when everyone had slept off the rum and the beer and the ganja. She had told Jimmy to keep playing loudly for at least an hour or until she returned, whichever came first.

It occurred to her now that he would have played on anyway, and that a more intelligent instruction might have included telling him what to do if she didn’t come back, like calling her next of kin.

Such thinking was, she knew, counterproductive. She stopped herself and glanced up at the small window of the cell where Arthur was being held in solitary. His crime: suspected espionage against Grenada’s Cuban-backed New Jewel government. If her friend and mentor was watching, her pose would send him a message, a reminder of their trip to New York three years ago. The trip had been her thirteenth birthday present—and his thirty-first.

Peta had been a precocious thirteen. Her mother had been working several jobs since her father’s untimely death four years earlier, so Peta was left to take care of her younger siblings. Saved from feeling sorry for herself by natural intelligence and a streak of innate pragmatism, she’d managed to be practical, popular, and a good student.

All of which Arthur rewarded in as many ways as he could, including the trip to New York. They’d seenAll That Jazz, and declared the movie’s risk-taking protagonist to be their hero. Later, they’d eaten dinner at a place called Danny’s Seafood Grotto, and vowed to return there every year. On New Year’s Eve.

A good plan, Peta thought. Except that someone should have told the Cubans not to interfere with Grenada and told the New Jewel Movement to disband. Instead, a hunger for power and for the blood of the enemy, whoever that might be, had turned her island into a madhouse.

This was a small island. Half the people were related, and the rest knew each other’s business. Which was how she knew that William, her cousin’s husband, would be on guard duty outside the prison tonight.

She rubbed her shoulder, bruised from the heavy backpack she’d lugged up Richmond Hill for William and his partner. William was a militant, sadistic bastard who for the last few years had hit on her at every opportunity. He’d be happy to see her, and easy to convince that the real reason she’d trekked up St. George’s highest hill to spend New Year’s Eve at the island’s only prison was that he was, finally, irresistible.

And just in case his ego was on vacation, she’d brought ganja and the sweetness of the birthday cake and…

It had all sounded so simple in the planning that she hadn’t had time to be afraid or to indulge herself in prayers or wishful thinking. Besides, above all else, she was a doer. Even were that not her nature, she’d be a doer now. She was damned if she was going to let them put Arthur Marryshow up against a wall and shoot him.

Dead.

Or take machetes and hack him into pieces as a lesson to others who might be thinking of not toeing the line. Rumor had it Maurice Bishop and his Commie henchmen planned to do one or both of these things on the first day of the New Year.

Tomorrow.

With that sobering thought and the renewed realization that she was the parrot fish, the designated decoy, Peta took a last look at Burns Point and at the lagoon which lay adjacent to the harbor. She could see theAssegai, Fredrick “Frikkie” Van Alman’s 120-footer, anchored in the lagoon. The schooner rocked gently, and Peta wished that she were there too, lying safely in the warm waters of the Caribbean.

Trusting that her partners in this rescue attempt, Frik and his ex– Green Beret buddy Ray Arno, already had their asses in gear, she put on a dash of lipstick and adjusted the backpack. She hiked her short skirt level with her panty line and tuned in to Jimmy’s calypso. Never more aware of her physical beauty, and determined to use everything that good genes had given her, she set her body into deliberately sensual motion. Dancing around the corner of the stone facade of Grenada’s fortress prison, she prayed for this exercise to be over fast, as planned. It was one thing to play tease; it was quite another to have to deal with fully aroused male libidos.

“Hey, Joe. You see what I see?” Her cousin’s husband and his Soviet-made submachine gun leaned in a triangle against the wall. He touched the weapon as if to reassure himself that it was still there, removed his dark American shades, and grinned at Peta.

“I see it but I don’t believe it.” His buddy, squat and ugly as a blowfish, grinned back. “Whatchou doin’ here, girl?”

Peta danced into the circle of their lechery. She took off the backpack, dug into it, removed the ganja, and threw it to William. “Natalie says happy New Year.”

“You telling me you came all the way up here to give me this?” From his breast pocket he pulled out a packet of rolling papers and removed one. Reaching into the plastic sandwich bag filled with marijuana, he removed a couple of dried buds and rolled them between his fingers, which caused the bits of leaf to fall into the paper while the seeds and stem remained in his fingers.

“I need you to do me a favor, Willy,” Peta said as she watched him roll the ganja-filled paper into an expert joint.

“Anything.” William licked the end of the paper, rolled his tongue at her, and lit the joint. “Almost anything.” He drew deeply, then offered it to her. She took it and toked, drawing less deeply than it appeared, and passed it to Joe.

“It’s my birthday,” she said, taking the boxed cake out of the backpack.

Joe opened the box and pulled matches out of his pocket. He counted the candles. “Sixteen candles,” he sang out, jiggling himself. He put his arm around her and kissed her full on the mouth. “You legal now, girl.”

Peta pulled away. Grinned. Felt like throwing up. “I got a friend inside.”

“You want to go inside and celebrate with him?” Joe asked. “We not good enough for you?”

Willy laughed. “Sir fucking Dr. Arthur Marryshow, right?”

Happy birthday, dear Arthur, Peta thought.

“How about we light a fire under that cocksucker and turn him into a candle?” Joe said.

Animal! Peta thought, deliberately feeding on Joe’s callousness to harden herself for what lay ahead.

“Great shit.” William took another toke from the joint. “Bring anything else, sweetface?” He rummaged in the backpack and found the beers. “Let’s party.” He opened one of the bottles and slugged down the contents. “You too good to us, girl.” He belched loudly. Joe roared with laughter.

Their noises covered the sounds for which Peta had been waiting, three in succession, Frik’s practiced imitation of the distinctive deep-throated howl of the Mona monkeys he’d often hunted for his dinner pot. She looked at the sky. In the way of the Tropics, darkness had suddenly come upon them.

“Tell you what,” William said. “We’ll save the good doctor a beer and a couple pieces of cake in case he’s alive in the morning.”

“How about some for the other guards?” Peta asked, ignoring the loud beat of her heart in her ears.

“They’s inside. They’ll never know the difference. Nobody out here but us.”

There was a moment of silence as one man toked and the other opened and slugged down another Carib. Too late, Peta tried to cover the silence.

“What the fuck was that?” Joe said.

“Didn’t hear a thing.” William put his arm around Peta and pulled her toward him.

“Well, I did.”

“Okay, so maybe a dog took a loud dump. If it bothers you, go see what it was.”

Beer in one hand, weapon balanced by his forearm and lying across his shoulder, Joe took a step in the direction from which Peta had come. “I think I’ll just do that,” he said. He bent first to extract a large and messy chunk of birthday cake.

“You’ll miss the real party.” Peta pressed herself against William.

“I’ll be back,” Joe said. “Have to take a piss anyway. Might as well do a tour while I’m at it.”

He didn’t seem particularly worried until the sound came again—the harsh clang of something against metal. He stiffened and moved toward the noise.

Dear God, forgive me, I didn’t want it to come to this, Peta thought, as she swung into the action she and Ray had rehearsed.

Quickly, using maximum energy and strength, she removed the scalpel that had been disguised as part of her belt buckle. Imagine Willy’s a goat, she told herself; she’d helped kill those often enough before a family feast.

The illusion worked, aided by a massive rush of adrenaline. Before he realized what was happening, William’s carotid artery had been neatly slit. Her cousin Natalie’s husband.

She turned her attention to Joe, who was just about to round the corner that led to a scene he could not be allowed to witness. For a split second, she diverted her focus to William’s submachine gun.

“Don’t even think about it, sweetface.” Joe turned around, his weapon cocked. “This no toy in me hand, you know. Now, you mind telling Joe what be going on?”

“Sick dog was feeling me up,” Peta said, knowing how stupid she sounded after giving both of them the come-on.

“Sick dog?” Joe motioned at her with the rifle. “You sick bitch, if you ask me. C’moverhere.” She didn’t move. “Be a good girl, sweetface. Drop you knife and come over here. Slowly.”

She walked toward him, swaying her hips. She was taller than he was by some inches. As she came close to him, she could see over his right shoulder. Two figures stood behind him, no more than thirty feet away and exposed in the fullness of the New Year’s Eve moon.

Watching her, Joe put the remainder of the cake into his mouth. “Want some?” He held two fingers of icing next to her face. “Might as well. Fat won’t matter when you’s dead and you’s going be dead in a minute, you don’t tell me what’s going down.”

He had allowed Peta, encouraged her, to come close enough to implement Ray’s lessons. Praying that he had not yet released the safety on his weapon, she struck fast, kneed him in the crotch, and when he doubled over in pain, jabbed her thumbs into his eyes, then struck with the edge of her hand to the back of his neck. The gun clattered to the ground, along with his bottle of Carib. Clutching his balls and whimpering, Joe buckled and fell facedown into the dregs of the beer that had trickled from his bottle.

Thinking of the danger to Arthur, Frik, and Ray, and to herself, Peta did what she had to do.

He’s a goat, she told herself again.

In an act punctuated by the repeated clatter of a hard object against metal, she picked up Joe’s submachine gun and smashed his skull.

“I—”

“We saw what happened, Peta,” Ray said. “Thank you.”

“You all right, kid?” Frik asked.

An irreverent thought flashed through Peta’s mind. These two men were having fun. Educated, well traveled, experienced, they were not much more than altered, older versions of what William and Joe might have become. Ray, a demolitions expert turned stuntman, had come to Grenada to shoot some scenes for a Hollywood movie, and had stayed on when the revolution heated up. The truth was that he’d rather be shooting a gun than a film. As for Frik, the stocky expatriate South African was an oil magnate whose wealth was exceeded only by the size of his ego. Like Joe, he saw himself as irresistible to women. He acted as if he were Hemingway incarnate, and looked the part, especially when he had a crossbow slung over his shoulder.

“I had to hit the bars first,” Frik said, as if there were any way he could have been that accurate.

She looked at the crossbow, which was now in his hands. So the sound that had nearly gotten them killed earlier was an arrow—or a bolt, as Frik called it—hitting the bars of the window of Arthur’s prison cell and ricocheting back to the ground.

“Had to warn Art to get out of the way.”

Art? It’s Arthur, you dumb shit, Peta thought. She looked up at the window. Arthur was looking down at them. Even in the moonlight, she could see that his face was thin and drawn. He was a huge man, almost six feet five. Before his arrest he’d weighed over 250 pounds. By all reports, he had lost nearly a hundred of that during his year of confinement.

Peta waved and smiled at him, trying not to let her body language show how scared she really was, but he seemed to be too focused on Frik to notice anything else.

Frik was preparing to send up another bolt, attached to a nylon fishing line which was in turn attached to a rope.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Ray said.

Frik nodded, and this time the bolt found its mark between the bars. Arthur signaled to them, bolt in hand, and immediately began pulling up the rope. Ray checked the small black bag that was attached to his belt. It contained, he had told her, a fine powder, a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum. He patted his pocket, as if to reassure himself that he had the magnesium strips and matches he needed for ignition. Arthur disappeared from her view for a moment, then reappeared, giving a thumbs-up.

Ray tested the rope. “Hold it taut at the bottom,” he told Frik as he handed the end to the Afrikaner. Moments later, Ray was effortlessly scaling the wall, working his way upward toward the small barred window.

“Keep your eyes open, my little miss,” Frik said, holding on to the rope. “We can’t be sure someone won’t come looking for those buddies of yours.”

“They weren’t my buddies,” Peta said, more sharply than was necessary.And I’m not your little miss! She needed to release some of her pent-up fear and guilt. This was hardly an auspicious beginning to her adulthood. She knew that she’d had to kill to avoid being killed herself, but that didn’t mean she liked playing God…any more than she liked being patronized.

Above her, Ray had reached the window. First he pulled the magnesium strips from his pocket and wrapped them around the bases of the three bars farthest from the rope. After that, he took the explosive from his belt, tamped some of the aluminum–iron oxide compound around each of the bars, and lit a long match. He touched the flame to a fuse attached to the magnesium strips, then, with the skill of a coconut thief, slid a dozen yards down the rope. A series of crisp sizzles followed, each accompanied by a flash of light. Darkness returned.

When Peta’s eyesight had adjusted, she saw that there were huge scorch marks on the masonry below the window, and the bars had been bent out of the way. Ray was already halfway down the rope.

As soon as the stuntman reached ground, Arthur eased his spare frame through the window and followed suit. When his feet touched solid ground, he stopped for a moment as if the physical effort had worn him out. He bent over and took several deep breaths, then straightened up.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Taking their cue from Arthur, the four of them raced, as fast as his slower pace would allow, down the hill toward Grenada Yacht Services and the comparative safety of theAssegai .

The gated compound of GYS was unattended after midnight. Peta watched Frik use his membership key on the entry gate’s massive lock. As she walked inside and heard Frik click the lock shut behind her, she became aware of the silence. She realized, with wonder and what was almost a sense of discomfort, that no alarm had been raised at the prison. She was wrenched out of her thoughts by the sight of a large gun emerging out of the shadows.

“Evening, Frik.”

Peta breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized the voice and short, slight figure of Emanuel Sheppard, an old friend and freelance boat captain who seemed to live at GYS. “I see you brought some company.”

“Actually, amigo, if you know what’s good for you, you didn’t see anyone,” Frik replied.

A sly look washed onto Manny’s face and rolled away again with the tide of his easygoing nature. Peta had known this man her entire life, and had never seen a single person rattle him. Everybody seemed to trust him implicitly. She was sure that he knew almost every secret on the island, and just as sure that not one of them would ever pass his lips. If you pushed him, the most you’d get was a sly glance and a tall story about his days in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States security forces.

The group hurried along the creaking boards of the Grenada Yacht Services piers until they came to the two-masted beauty of theAssegai .

Frik’s Great Danes, Sheba and Maverick, greeted them ebulliently as they clambered on board, though Peta knew that the animals would not be so friendly were their master not in the group. Frik wasted no time in starting the engines. Still on the dock, Manny cast off the tie lines, and the yacht began a stately drift, aided by the motors, which thrummed to life.

“Happy New Year, all,” Manny called out in a stage whisper. Then softer, “It was nice not seeing you again.”

As they cleared the harbor, Arthur turned to Peta. He bent down to lift her into the air. Still too weak to do so, he simultaneously hugged and reprimanded her.

“Happy as I am to see you, girl, I want to know what you’re doing here.” He released her and looked at the others. “This is hardly a child’s game.”

The warmth Peta had felt with Arthur’s arms around her instantly dissipated. “Damn it, Arthur, I’m not a child. Tell him, Ray. Tell him why I’m here.”

“This was all her idea,” Ray said, somewhat grudgingly. “She planned the operation—”

“And set it up,” Peta interrupted. “I killed two men so theseboys here could play Scaramouche meets Robin Hood,” she went on. “Killed. As in dead. William—”

“Natalie’s William?”

Peta nodded. “He’s lying on the ground up there with his carotid sliced by one of your scalpels. And Joe—” She put her hands over her face.

“I’m sorry, Peta,” Arthur said quietly. After a moment he added, “What are we waiting for? I, for one, could use a drink.”

In short order, the three men were seated around Frik’s large wooden outdoor table, where a bottle of Westerhall rum, a dish of nuts, three highball glasses, and a bottle of guava juice awaited their return. Peta cynically assumed the last was her reward.

Arthur poured himself a short glass, adding juice, rather than his usual straight-up tumblerful. “It’s been a long time,” he said. “Happy birthday, Peta. Happy birthday to both of us.”

No one said much more until the rum was half gone. Peta sat away from the other three, on a locker which, she presumed, held life jackets. The spot was ideal in that she was close enough to see and hear them, yet far enough away from them to deal with the distraction of her own thoughts, which were none too pleasant. Every once in a while, a flying fish arced from the water, its silvery scales flashing in the moonlight, or a star shot across the heavens. She took solace in those signs, telling herself that the universe had forgiven her trespasses against it.

To port, she could see that they were rounding the peninsula of Point Saline. In a few minutes, the lights of the Cuban encampment would be visible, and the great black expanse of the airstrip they were building.

Her mind returned to the events which led up to tonight.

Why had Arthur, her father’s godson, insisted upon playing hero and martyr? Sure, he was a Marryshow and thus by nature a political beast, but as much as she adored him, she sometimes wondered about his sanity. Everybody knew he was none too fond of Prime Minister Bishop and his Communist regime, but so what? Arthur was a doctor, for God’s sake, not a warrior or a politician. He could have kept his nose clean. Then he wouldn’t have been arrested, and she wouldn’t have had to kill two people.

She stopped. There was no point to those thoughts. She turned away from the receding coastline of her home and focused on her three shipmates. While they were unique in many ways, and two of them weren’t Grenadian, they were typical of Grenada’s male population, who were die-hard chauvinists. Arthur was less so than most, at least in their private moments, but in the company of men he acted little better than the rest, who adored females of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages but believed them to be creatures of service, there to nurture them and to bed them. Like the others, he had no quarrel with women entering nurturing professions. They could become doctors and nurses and teachers. Anything else, law for example, or engineering, was a man’s domain.

Like drinking rum, which, too, was some pathetic rite of manhood, she thought as they started on the second half of the bottle. Westerhall was as close as they could get to pure alcohol, so it was none too surprising that their tongues loosened. They began to regale each other with a succession of stories of prior adventures which grew more daring and less believable in inverse proportion to the amount of rum left in the bottle.

By five minutes to midnight, they were well into their next bottle. In their drunken state, they seemed to have completely forgotten that Peta was there.

“We are the best,” Frik said, raising his glass.

“The very best,” Ray agreed, doing the same.

“Uh-huh.” Arthur tilted his glass in their direction.

Frik started to hold forth. Peta stopped listening until the end of his pronouncement. “…Daredevils Club,” he said. “We’ll meet every year…. New Year’s Eve’s a good time. Swap stories. See which of ushas taken the biggest risk. Whatcha think, guys?”

Peta glanced at her watch in the moonlight. Thirty seconds and it would be 1983. She rose to her feet and approached the table. “Happy birthday, Arthur,” she said.

“Happy birthday, Peta,” he echoed.

“And happy New Year…everyone.” She turned toward Arthur. “Are we all going to meet at Danny’s Grotto for our birthdaysand the Daredevils Club.”

“Not you, little Miss Sweet Sixteen,” Frik said, grinning inanely. He looked at the others. “You’re a succulent piece of meat, but you’re a kid. Besides, we don’t play women’s games.”

“S’right,” Ray added. “You’re just a kid. I’m not gonna be responsible for a kid risking her life on a stupid stunt. Especially a girl.”

“What doyou say, Arthur?” she asked, in a voice so soft that she seemed to be shouting. “Do you also think I have to grow balls to be a Daredevil? You’re a plastic surgeon. You could make me some. Or is killing two men enough to prove that I’m as tough as you are?”

“She makes sense, gentlemen,” he said, looking at Frik and Ray. They shook their heads vehemently. He turned back to Peta. “I’m outvoted,” he said. He had begun to slur his words. “Besides, I promised your father that I’d keep you out of harm’s way.” Clearly exhausted and more than a little drunk, he put his head down on the table, in the crook of his elbow, and fell asleep.

Peta looked back at the small spot on the horizon that was Grenada. She imagined she could hear music and shouting as, all along Church Street, bells rang out.

“Happy New Year, assholes,” she said, loudly this time. Then, disgusted, walked toward the prow of the boat and stared into the vast, dark ocean that lay ahead.

1

TRINIDAD, DECEMBER1999

After a full day on the platform observing the core samples being raised at the Dragon’s Mouth test drill site, what little patience Frikkie Van Alman might have had to begin with had dissipated.

He wouldn’t have been there at all, but the crew, skittish to begin with, had been downright nervous since the drill had passed through an undersea cavern. Frik was not renowned for his vast store of patience, but he could not ignore the continuing gloom among his workers. At the other sites there was always music, always someone dancing, someone hiding a joint or a bottle of beer. Here, the only sounds were the wind and the sea, the mechanical whirring of the drill, and the padding footsteps of workers who, morose and silent, moved with the speed of turtles.

“What’s eating at them, Blaine? Give me your best guess.”

Frik thought of Eduardo Blaine as his wholly owned subsidiary. The Venezuelan ran the only hotel in San Gabriel and managed the ferries that brought workers out to this site in the Dragon’s Mouth, the northern channel into the Gulf of Paria. He was also a pretty fair diver and knew how to fly the helicopter which transported the owner of Oilstar to this jack-up drilling rig.

“They don’t care for work in the Dragon’s Mouth.” Blaine made a weak attempt at a smile. “Tell you the truth, I’m not too crazy for it myself.”

Before Frik could say any more, the drill returned to the surface and its load of sludge and rock was tipped onto the platform for examination. He had ordered a core sample of the floor of the cavern, wanting more evidence that there would be oil under it before he went to the trouble—and expense—of having another section of pipe sent down to keep any oil from flowing into this new cavern.

Lying on top of the mud were four irregularly shaped objects such as he had never before laid eyes upon. He had the immediate impression of the turquoise he’d known as a child in South Africa, but these were a bluish green color that he couldn’t quite identify.

He walked over to the silt pile and stretched out to touch them.

“Don’t touch, Mr. Frik! Bad stuff!”

Frik looked around to see who had spoken and saw the backs of his workers as they scattered, all except Eduardo.

“He’s right, Señor Frik. Better not to touch.” In a show of bravado, the Venezuelan moved to Frik’s side. “See where they come from first. Make sure they’re not Obeah, or the Obeahman might get us.”

“Don’t tell me they’ve got you convinced about their kaffir bogeyman.” He’d dealt with enough shamanistic beliefs in his boyhood on the veldt that he was unimpressed by the men’s fear that the objects might be fetishes. Besides, when he’d first been told of the local superstitions, the anthropologist he’d talked to had said that this particular myth predated the arrival of the Africans and their Obeah worship. It was probably, in fact, as old as the first Arawaks to cross the gulf from Venezuela on their migration northward.

Frik got up abruptly and strode over to the drill assembly. The bit looked like a giant apple corer, almost twenty inches in diameter. Hand on the side of the drill, he glanced through the base of the derrick to the water fifty feet below.

“I’m sending the camera down. I want to see the bottom of the bore hole.”

He set up the feedback equipment, attached the underwater video camera to a cable, and lowered the assemblage down the well. As it descended, he focused on the small screen that would show what the camera found. Despite the sophistication of the equipment, the image was grainy and cloudy with silt from the drilling process. It got even worse when, about seventy feet below the seabed, the camera passed through the hole in the roof of the cavern.

The light from the camera rig vanished into the cavern, which was apparently too large for the illumination to reach the walls. A large, indistinct fish swam in front of the lens, and the floating debris drifting away from the drill hole made it look as if he had suddenly picked upWhite Christmas on the monitor.

Frik’s frustration mounted. There was little chance on this monitor that he’d be able to distinguish any turquoiselike fragments which might have remained in the undersea cavern. The only way to be sure was for someone to dive down and enter the cave. Fortunately, the presence of the fish assured him that there was an entrance other than the hole his men had drilled.

“I’m not going down there,” Blaine said, anticipating what Frik had in mind.

“You’ll go where I tell you to go,” Frik said, “but you’re right. I need you around to fly me off this rig.” He yelled out the names of the few workers he knew. “You want to be paid?” he shouted when no one appeared.

One by one, the men returned. They clustered in small, silent groups, far from the strange objects.

“All right now. Who’s going down?”

Nobody moved. “You. Charles.” Frik stared into the man’s eyes. “You just volunteered. You, too, Abdul. Get your gear. Find the opening to that cavern. If there are any more pieces down there, bring them up. There’s a bonus for each one you find.”

The men did as they were told. When they had been lowered into the water, Frik said, “The rest of you bastards, no pay today. Tomorrow you work like men or—”

“They don’t want to work here anymore,” Blaine said.

“The hell they don’t.” Frik took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the lab.

“Trujold? Frik. Listen carefully. I want you to get the speedboat and bring your ass over here.”

“I’m not going anywhere near your boats,” Trujold said. “Your dogs’ll eat me alive.”

Frik thought for a moment. “All right. I’ll send Blaine for you. It’ll only take him a few minutes in the chopper, so don’t mess around.”

“What’s the emergency?” Trujold asked.

“None yet.” Frik looked at the indistinct image on the screen. “But I smell one coming on.”

2

The helicopter carrying Paul Trujold moved quickly toward the Oilstar drilling platform where Frik’s men had been testing drill sites in the Dragon’s Mouth. The passage earned its name from the toothy spears of rock that pierced the surface of the water and connected the dots between Trinidad’s Chaguara Peninsula and the coastal range of the Venezuelan mainland. Many a ship’s hull had been chewed by those teeth when her captain didn’t know the waters, or he was caught by a storm. Given that history, why would Frik think it surprising that some parts of the Dragon’s Mouth were also believed by the locals to be haunted or cursed?

“Sorry to pull you out of the lab,” Frik shouted over the slowing thump of the blades as he reached up and helped Paul out of the chopper.

Such courtesy, Paul thought. Must be something mighty important. “What’s going on?”

“I sent a couple of divers down. Only one of them came back, and he died kicking and screaming on the deck before he could tell us a thing.”

“Sounds like a bad case of the bends.” Must have shot straight to the surface without a decompression stop. What could spook a diver enough to do that? Paul winced at the thought of nitrogen bubbles fizzing through his bloodstream, ending in an air embolism to the brain. “No sign of the other?”

Frik shot him a look. “I told you. Only one came back. And the other’s tank would have run out long ago.”

Paul always felt an uncomfortable sense of obligation around Frikkie, to whom he owed a great deal of money, borrowed for his daughter’s long years of schooling. The debt forced him to stick around, but it didn’t change the fact that he neither liked nor trusted his boss. What’s more, Frik always made Paul, younger by a decade, feel like the older of the two. Somehow the older man had maintained the toned body of a man twenty years younger. Piercing blue eyes and even white teeth gleaming from a perpetually tanned face, dark hair just beginning to gray at the temples. Paul was shorter, darker, heavier, and, in the looks department, somewhat further down the evolutionary tree. All the way back to Amphibia class, he thought. A newt—no, a frog…waiting in vain for the princess’s kiss that would turn him into a Frik. Tough. Single-minded. An expert manipulator.

Like now.

Paul was sorry about the men, but that was hardly a reason for Frik to demand his immediate presence. “You brought me down here because of the missing diver?”

“Not exactly. I need your help with these lazy bastards who are refusing to go on working.”

“Why?”

“You’rea damn Trini. You tell me. They were bringing up a core sample and found some strange fragments,” Frik said. “That seems to be what spooked the hell out of them. Blaine here thinks the men may believe they are fetishes—Obeah—and that if we mess with them the Obeahman will hurt us.”

“What is it you think I can do?”

“Get someone to dive down and see if he can find Abdul.” Frik pointed at four objects lying atop a pile of silt. “Then take those back to the lab and examine them.”

Paul walked over to the objects and hunkered down to take a closer look. Though he was far more educated than his average countryman, he was born and bred a Trini. He knew the power of local superstitions. There was nothing he could do about the workers or about Abdul. As a scientist, a chemist, he dealt in atoms and molecules and exchanges of electrons—an unseen realm, but vastly predictable.

Most of the time.

But not this time.

There was something different about the objects. He wouldn’t go so far as to say “wrong,” because that was a moral or ethical judgment, and in his world, morals or ethics didn’t apply to lumps of matter. But he had to admit, if lumps of matter could be “wrong,” these four were pretty damn close. In the eyes of many of the Trinidadians working for Frikkie, these trinkets would be a sure sign of wrongness. The Trinis—whose heritage embraced both Africa and India—were an innately superstitious group.

He, on the other hand, was not. As far as he was concerned, what he sawwas…what he saw.

To him, the pieces looked like the stones he’d seen embedded in Native American jewelry in the States…asymmetrical matchbox-size lumps of bicolored turquoise from the Kingman Mine in Arizona, or something very much like it.

He picked one up. It didn’t feel like turquoise or any other kind of stone. More like a rather strange form of plastic. There was no specific design to the lumps, but they were definitely not naturally occurring shapes. These were fashioned objects, products of intelligence, though he could not guess what kind of intelligence could have made them.

That, Paul decided, was what had spooked the workers. No one had ever seen shapes like these before, so they automatically shied away from them. As far as he was concerned, it was a typical islanders’ response to the new and different.

He didn’t consider himself a typical islander, however, and while he couldn’t help Frik with his divers, he wanted very badly to take a closer look at these trinkets.

3

Where the hell is he? Paul wondered as he paced back and forth in front of Oilstar’s labs.

Frik was late, but what else was new? The man got a charge out of keeping people on hold. He was probably having another cup of coffee and taking his own sweet time getting here just to be annoying. Even if he’d stopped in at his San Fernando corporate office building on the way from his house, he should have been here by now.

If he was certain of nothing else, Paul was sure of one thing: once he had shown his discovery to Frik, the man would wish he hadn’t played games this particular morning.

Not that a few minutes, even a few hours, could make a difference. It was just that Paul couldn’t wait to share his conclusions. Those “trinkets” Frik’s drillers had raised from beneath the ocean bed just might change the whole damn world.

He gazed at the morning sky, a flawless pale blue, promising another perfect day. His lab was a squat one-story white stucco square which lay near the town of La Brea—a short way south of San Fernando on Trinidad’s west coast, with a good view of the Gulf of Paria. The sun had yet to crest the lush hills behind him, but it had reached the drilling platforms that studded the still water like ticks on a dog’s belly.

Trinidad…Paul loved the big, bold island. It anchored the Lesser Antilles to the continental shelf of South America. Nestled into a large depression on the northeastern coast, it played footsie with Venezuela with the extended toe of its southern tip, Punta del Arenal. He was born here and, except for college and postgrad years when he was earning his Ph.D. from Harvard, had spent his life here, lost a wife and raised his daughter, Selene, here. He planned to die here—but not for some time yet, thank you.

He inhaled the morning air. When the wind was wrong, you could smell Pitch Lake, but not today. This morning the air filtered from the northwest, clean, with a briny tang from its journey across the Gulf of Paria. Early morning was his favorite time of the day.

Early? He rubbed his burning eyes. Early for Frik, maybe, he thought, but late for me.

He’d been up all night, feverishly testing and retesting. The key to a true breakthrough in science was reproducibility of results. He had that now. Oh, Lord, he had that indeed. And he was dying to showsomeone .

But not just anyone. He had to keep this under wraps until Frik saw it—then they could tell the world.

To that end, Paul had given the staff the day off—with pay. Frik would squawk at that. If he wasn’t already a billionaire, he was knocking on the ten-figure door with champagne and flowers in hand. Yet how he pissed and moaned about the slightest overrun.

Well, once he saw what Paul had, he wouldn’t bitch about an extra paid vacation day for the small, bright crew of Trinis who staffed the lab. He’d forget all about it, the way he’d forgotten about the cost of the mainframe and electronic testing equipment Paul had asked for after it became clear that the apparatus had increased the efficiency of Oilstar’s refineries more than a hundred percent.

There…the rumble of a big engine down the slope. Seconds later, Frik’s Humvee hove into view. The roads around here could barely handle a couple of passing Nissans, and he imports a Hummer. Typical.

Paul waved as Frik skidded to a halt and hopped out. His boss didn’t wave back.

“This’d better be good, Paul,” he said. “I’ve got a sweet young dancer visiting from Mumbai sleeping it off in my bed. She knows tricks neither of us has ever dreamed of, and I’m looking forward to another demonstration when she wakes up.”

“This’ll make you forget all about the angle of your dangle,” Paul said, turning and leading the way to the lab entrance.

“I seriously doubt that.”

Paul smiled. He was tempted to trap Frik into a big bet, but decided that wouldn’t be fair. His boss was short-tempered, high-handed, and vain, and brilliant, funny, and loyal as well. Paul alternately loved and loathed him. Right now, he loved him.

Paul led Frik through what he thought of as his lab, though of course it wasn’t really his. The Oilstar insignia graced the glass entry doors, the stationery, and just about everything else. Since Frikwas Oilstar, he owned the lab. But Paul ran it, and he felt that made it his, too, in a way. The lab was a small cog in the giant Oilstar wheel, but an indispensable one. This was where the crude from Oilstar’s wells was analyzed before and after its journey through the refinery.

“My patience is wearing thin, Trujold. Let’s get this over with.”

“Your wish is my command.” Paul led his boss into a storeroom he’d converted for his personal experiments—the odds of his creating a new petroleum-based polymer with industrial applications were slim, but he could dream, couldn’t he?

“What’s that smell?”

Paul sniffed and turned on the lights. Damn, he thought. He knew the odor: ether. He’d been testing that and some other solvents on the trinkets. He spotted the open jar on his workbench. The all-nighter had made him careless.

“I’ll get rid of it.”

He recapped the jar and started the exhaust fan in the ceiling. As the fumes were pulled away, he turned on the two bench lamps and ignited both Bunsen burners. Then he pointed to the object sitting in the center of the cleared area on his workbench.

“Thar she blows.”

Frik stared at it. “What the hell is it?”

“It’s those trinkets your men found in that core sample.”

“I gave you four objects,” Frik said, staring at the assembly.

When Paul had started analyzing the objects, the first thing he’d discovered was that they weren’t made of turquoise or mother-of-pearl or anything else he had ever seen. The second was that they were all part of a whole. “And there they are, all four of them,” he said. “They click together like pieces of a three-dimensional jigsaw. I’m talkingperfect fit.”

Frik bent and stared at the unified object from different angles. “They look even weirder together than they did apart.”

Paul couldn’t argue with that. The assembly looked like something from an abstract painting. That was what he found most disturbing: how could objects that fit together with such fine tolerances appear so lacking in functionality?

“Looksweird?” Paul said, repressing a grin. “You don’t know weird until you see what itdoes . Watch this.”

He took a long pair of plastic forceps and grasped the object at what he’d by now determined was its center of gravity. He lifted it and began tilting it this way and that, rotating it back and forth.

Now we fricassee Frikkie’s mind.

“Paul,” Frik said when nothing happened. “Have you lost it?”

“Just be patient. It never seems to work the same way twice.”

Paul kept his eyes on the main piece—at least he called it the main piece. It was the largest and had a vaguely figure-eight or Möebius strip configuration. Telltale piece was probably a better name. He watched its outer edge, waiting…waiting….

He felt the now-familiar chill run over his skin. A heartbeat later the motor of the overhead exhaust fan rose in pitch and the room brightened.

Got it!

He moved the assembly again, and everything returned to normal.

“What just happened?” Frik asked.

“Watch that gooseneck lamp right in front of you.”

Paul rotated the assembly back, felt the chill again, and then the bulb flared, sixty watts climbing to one hundred. All the lamps in the room seemed to have doubled their wattage. The overhead fan whined and jittered, sounding as if it were about to take off. He’d had to move his computer terminal out of the room because he was afraid the power surge would damage it.

He heard Frik gasp. “What the hell?”

“Check out the Bunsens,” Paul said, keeping his eye on the telltale piece.

“They’re almost out.”

Paul lowered the assembly, and the light dimmed, the Bunsen flames grew.

Frik stared at it. “That’s doing it?”

Paul nodded.

“What is it? Some sort of rheostat?”

“Can’t really call it that—I’ve never seen it dim the lights, only brighten them. I don’t have the equipment to measure how much faster the fan goes.”

“But the Bunsens—”

“The Bunsens burn sixty degrees cooler. And did you feel the air temperature drop? That was a full ten degrees. Your skin temperature drops as well. Only the device doesn’t change temperature. It appears to be impervious to cold and heat.”

Frik looked shaken. He turned, found one of the stools, and eased himself onto it.

“Christ, Paul…what is it?”

Paul couldn’t maintain his scientist poker face any longer. He burst into a grin. “I don’t know, but isn’t it great?” He heard an edge of hysterical laughter creep into his voice. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

“That it is, but—”

“You think you’ve just seen weird?” Paul was pleased with himself for having saved the best for last. “Get behind me here and watch.”

Frik stood and positioned himself as directed, his hand on Paul’s shoulder.

“Keep your eye on the big figure-eight piece while I move this around.”

He angled the assembly this way and that, slowly, methodically, until…the outer edge of the telltale piece began to blur.

He felt Frik’s hand tighten on his shoulder. “What—?”

“Wait.”

Paul rotated it a little further and half of the outer loop appeared to dissolve. The chill…the flaring lights…He raised his free hand and passed his index finger through the empty space where the loop had been. Nothing there but air.

“Christ, Paul!” Frik’s grip was painful now.

Paul rotated it back and the loop became whole again. The lights dimmed.

Frik released him and leaned back against the counter, staring at the assembly. His face was ashen under the tan.

“D’you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Paul’s excitement bubbled through him. He felt like a shaken champagne bottle, ready to uncork. “The edge of that piece doesn’t just disappear. It’s not an optical illusion—it’snot there . It goes away.”

“Goes where?”

“I don’t know. But it goes somewhereelse, and when it reaches that somewhere else, the room gets cold and anything using electricity within a dozen feet revs into overdrive.”

“A dozen feet?”

“Give or take a few inches. I spent half the night testing its range, and a dozen feet is about its limit. Do you have any idea what this means, Frik? This little artifact is going to rewrite the laws of physics. Not only does it promise free energy, I’m willing to bet it taps into another dimension!”

“Free energy?” Frik said, still pale. “No such thing as free energy. No such thing as freeanything . As for other dimensions—”

“All right, maybe not another dimension, but it goes somewhere, and another dimension is as good a hypothesis as any for now.”

“A dozen feet is a pretty limited area.”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s three feet, this is a whole new energy source, utterly revolutionary. And there’s one more thing you should know.”

Frik looked at him bleakly. “I don’t know if I can handle another revelation right now. But go ahead.”

Why isn’t he excited? Paul wondered. He should be dancing around. This is the find of the century—of the millennium!

Paul held up the assembly. “I don’t think this is all of it. It looks like there’s a piece missing.” He pointed to a pair of sockets opposite the figure-eight piece. “Somewhere down in that area of ocean floor you sampled is a fifth piece that fits here.”

“What do you think it will do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe act as an amplifier that will extend its range. Maybe something even more mind-blowing.”

Frik looked away and said nothing. Paul let the silence hang, waiting for his boss to announce the obvious next step: a search for the missing piece.

“Question,” Frik said. “Where did that thing come from?”

The question flustered Paul. “From the core sample that you—”

“No. I mean, who made it? That thing was buried in underwater shale. In pieces. Who buried it there? When? And why?”

“I don’t know.”

Good questions. Paul had been so taken with the artifact’s astounding properties, so focused on the impact it would have on the world scientific community when it was made public—he’d gone so far as to picture himself on a dais, the focal point of a thousand cameras, demonstrating the artifact—that he hadn’t asked the next question.

“What about your Trini brothers’ belief that it’s Obeah?”

Paul shook his head. “I don’t think this was made by some primitive shaman. I’m not even sure it was made on this planet.”

“Then where? By whom? Don’t you think we ought to know?” Frik said, eyeing him intensely.

“We can leave that up to others.” He waved away the concern like an errant mosquito. “When we go public with this, there’ll be experts from every discipline—”

“Public?” Frik said, straightening away from the bench. “I don’t think so. Not till we know more.”

“We’ve gone as far as we can with our limited resources. The next step is a university setting, a major research center—”

“No,” Frik said, steel in his voice. “Not yet. Not until we’ve found the fifth piece.”

4

“This is not open to debate, Paul,” Frik said. “I want absolute secrecy. In fact, I don’t want that thing to leave this room. And I want this room locked at all times. Is that clear? This is too important a find to rush into the public eye, especially in an incomplete state. Who knows what that fifth piece will do? For all we know it could transform the artifact into some sort of devastating weapon. No…we’ve got to proceed cautiously and weigh every move. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Paul nodded. He saw what Frik was saying.

Exactly what he was saying.

“Good.” Frik thrust out his hand. “Then can I have your word that you will keep everything you’ve discovered here secret until I decide the time is right to go public?”

“Very well,” Paul said, shaking hands reluctantly. He didn’t see that he had any other option, but in his raging heart he held back from a true promise.

He’s lying to me, so it’s only fair that I lie to him.

“Good! After all, Paul, my men found it, so I feel responsible for it.”

“Yes,” Paul said. “A terrible burden.”

In his peripheral vision, reflected in the shiny surface of the stainless steel door of a storage cabinet, Paul glimpsed the angry set of his own jaw. He was reminded of how his daughter had looked the day she’d turned her Ph.D. in physics into a paper boat and floated it off the dock. She’d resembled her mother so much that day, with the latté-colored skin of her mixed French-Arawak ancestry. As he’d stood with her and watched the breeze take away the piece of paper that had given him such pride, she’d announced her intention to go to Caracas and join a small group of like-minded people dedicated to the preservation of the environment, by any means necessary.

Much as he’d tried to dissuade her, much as he’d tried to tell her she’d be wasting her intellect, a part of him was proud of her. And wanted her to be proud of him.

“Keep working with it,” Frik said, clapping Paul on the shoulder. “Write up your notes, but do it yourself—no secretaries involved. We’ll talk tomorrow and decide our next step.”

“Yes.” Paul was afraid his anger would explode if he dared to say more than the absolute minimum. He clenched his fists at his sides; resisting the urge to throw something hard at the back of Frik’s head, he settled for tossing out the word “Tomorrow.”

When he heard the Hummer start up and drive away, Paul pulled out a plaster cast. He had made it to support earlier reasonably successful attempts to duplicate at least the look, if not the feel, of the artifact, which he’d wanted to study without always risking the original. Separating the device into its original four pieces, he used the largest of the authentic pieces as his base and constructed a polyurethane model of the artifact. Then he locked the two smallest real pieces together, put them in a padded envelope, and addressed it to himself.

The third, the one with the figure eight at one end, he packaged separately, along with a letter of explanation to the only person he could fully trust—the only person who, as a physicist, would understand what he was saying—his daughter, Selene. He wrote her name on the package. Nothing else. Since she’d joined that ecoterrorist group, Green Impact, she had given up on conventional addresses. His only route to her was through Manny Sheppard. The diminutive boat captain had been a friend of Paul’s wife. When she’d been killed, Manny had helped raise Selene, teaching her the joys of the ocean, and how to be true to herself.

Turning back to the model, Paul checked that it was solid and placed it in the middle of the lab table, as if it were no more important than the beakers and tongs. That little bit of “carelessness” should drive Frik crazy, he thought.

He put the packages in the wide pockets of his lab coat, draped the coat over his arm, and glanced at his watch. It was after four. Manny should be arriving down at the dock, if he wasn’t there already. Bone weary, Paul left the lab, making sure he heard the click as he pulled the door shut and it locked behind him.

Once outside the building, he walked to his Nissan, got in, and drove out of the parking lot. He followed the potholed, semipaved road for a few hundred yards, out of view of the labs, then turned onto a side road which wound down to the smaller of Oilstar’s two docking areas. In quick glimpses between the hills, fruit trees, and palms, he spotted theAssegai ’s tall masts. As he turned the final bend in the road, he saw Manny’s small cargo boat and something that made his heart leap: Frik’s Hummer, parked at the end of the dock.

Paul stomped on his brakes and threw the car in reverse. Using his cell phone, he dialed Frik’s ship-to-shore number. What he didn’t need was Frik walking in on his conversation with Manny.

He let the phone ring a dozen times. This was an emergency number that Frik always answered if he was on the boat. When Paul was convinced that his boss was not on board, he put the car back in gear and drove down to the dock. He had set up the duplicate device in the conviction that Frik would go back to the lab tonight to find it.

It suddenly occurred to Paul that maybe Frik hadn’t answered the phone because he was moving sooner than Paul had anticipated. The Afrikaner could easily have walked the quarter mile from the dock to the lab while Paul was making his preparations. He could have been hiding in the bushes when Paul left the lab, waiting for the building to be empty.

He could be in the lab right now, which made it even more imperative that Paul find Manny and rid himself of the packages in his pocket.

To his enormous relief, as he parked he saw Manny sitting on a piling, a cigarette loosely held between two fingers of his left hand, which also held a Carib. The diminutive seaman waved as Paul approached.

“Good to see you. Get you a beer?”

The chemist shook his head. “I’ve got something to tell you, Manny,” he said, “and a favor to ask. A large favor.”

Paul told Manny everything that had happened, beginning with the call from Frik and ending with the Afrikaner’s own words:Who knows what that fifth piece will do? For all we know it could transform the artifact into some sort of devastating weapon .

“The man’s a ruthless bastard, capable of anything.”

Paul nodded. “We both know why I’m working with him, but you? You have a choice—” He stopped himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s really none of my business.”

“I work for Frik for two reasons,” Manny said, ignoring Paul’s last comment. “The first is obviously money.”

“And the second?”

“I’d rather be in a position where I can keep my eye on him, and stay in touch with the few good people who work for him. Now, what’s that favor you wanted?”

Paul held out the two packages. “I don’t know where Selene is exactly, but I’m sure you do.”

“I know how to find her,” Manny said.

“I need you to get one of these to Selene and post the other to me. Wait a few days first.” Paul paused. “If anything happens to me, make sure Selene knows about it and get the other package from my place. Don’t risk keeping it yourself. Give it to someone you’d trust with your life, the way I’m trusting you with mine.”

Grinning, Manny replied, “I know just who the doctor ordered.”

5

Frik ducked deeper into the foliage as Paul Trujold stepped out the front door of Oilstar’s labs. The chemist’s lab coat was draped over his arm, and his shoulders sagged. He looked exhausted.

About time he came out of there, Frik thought. He glanced at his Rolex. Four o’clock. Thought he’d never leave. What was he doing all this time?

From the cover of a thick growth of hibiscus, he watched Paul lock the door and head for his car. He felt ridiculous. Here he was, the owner of this whole complex, hiding from one of his employees so that he could steal a piece of property that already belonged to him.

I should have demanded it from him, he thought. Should have stuck out my hand and said, Give it to me, Paul. It’s mine.

Much as he’d wanted to, he hadn’t been able to force the words past his lips. Had he done so, Paul would have known; he’d have looked down on him from the moral high ground he occupied and seen into Frik’s heart. He wouldn’t have uttered a word, but the look in his eyes would have said it all.

I know what you’re thinking, Frikkie. I know your intentions. You never want this artifact to see the light of day. You want to sail out past the edge of the continental shelf and hurl it into the sea, let the Guyana Current carry it into the abyss.

And he’d have been right, damn him.

That was indeed what part of Frikwanted to do. But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d never forgive himself for destroying a technological boon like that. If need be, he’d hide it, keep it to himself. Not forever, maybe, but for a long, long time.

He was not a man of science, yet he knew as sure as he knew this morning’s spot price on a barrel of sweet crude that the artifact operated comfortably on principles not even suspected by modern science. Just as surely, he knew simply by looking at the thing that it wouldn’t give up all of its secrets until it was complete.

When that happened, he would need people he could trust, people like Paul, to help him decode it, decipher its technology and break it down into patentable units to make it Oilstar’s technology. He’d call the shots then.

Paul’s car cruised out of the parking lot. Frik didn’t move. Best to give the man a few minutes on the road, in case he forgot something and decided to come back. He could think of worse places to hide than among these fragrant red blossoms. A little more time in the bushes wouldn’t kill him.

The sound of a familiar motor drifted up from the boat dock just down the hill from the lab. Manny had arrived with some of Frik’s favorite supplies, the ones he didn’t want passing through the sticky fingers of the customs inspectors in Port of Spain. He had left the Hummer down there and walked back up, knowing that anyone seeing it there would assume he was on his boat. When he went back down there to pick up his car, he could also pick up his loot.

The thought encouraged him to pull out his cigar case and remove a long, fat Cohiba Esplendido. He could have a celebratory cigar now without worrying about Paul seeing the smoke.

As he lit up he thought again about that scene in the lab this morning. Christ, what a moment that had been. He had imagined one of those gizmos attached to every car, truck, train, and plane engine, to every furnace, to every freaking dynamo in every power plant across the world. Frik could see his life’s work crumbling to smoke and ash if this device were reproduced and oil became as old-fashioned as vinyl records.

Paul had seemed somehow oblivious of the full implications of what he’d found. Yes, he was holding the key to a future free of dependence on fossil fuels. But that key, that odd little contraption he had assembled in there, could make Oilstar obsolete. No…obsolete was a euphemism here.

Extinctwas more like it.

Let’s not forget you assembled that thing from piecesI gave you, he thought. It’s not about money, Paul. As it is, I’ve got to rack my brains to begin to find ways to spend theinterest on my holdings. Money hasn’t been the point for a long time. It’s thedoing, Paul. This is my company.

Frik thought back to when he had left South Africa. His family’s fortunes in land and gemstones could have kept him in Cohibas and fine scotch for a lifetime, but it would have meant being under his father’s thumb. He couldn’t stand that. He’d filled theAssegai with supplies and sailed alone across the Atlantic to make a life he could control.

I worked as a stinking charter captain for a year to get together a few thousand bucks, he recalled. Hocked my soul for start-up money, sank my first well almost single-handed. Oilstar isn’t just a company, it’s not some soulless corporate entity. It’sme, damnit.

He was a bull tyrannosaur now, but that little gizmo Paul had assembled in there was a dino-dooming asteroid aimed straight at the heart of Frik’s personal Cretaceous period.

Think what you will of me, Paul, he thought. I’m not ready to become extinct.

Figuring he had waited long enough, Frik stepped out of the bushes. As he strolled down the slope to the lab, he fished a set of keys from his pocket.

Immediately after leaving Paul this morning, he’d returned to his office in San Fernando and put together a full set of keys for the lab building. He just prayed that Paul hadn’t at some time changed the lock on his personal lab.

He unlocked the front door and hurried down the central hallway. The key fit into Paul’s door…turned. He was in.

He crossed to the workbench but stopped halfway there. The artifact sat alone in the center of the black surface.

Christ, Paul hadn’t even bothered to stick it in a drawer. This was not something to leave lying about, even in a locked room.

He approached it slowly, cautiously, with the proper respect due a thing of such wonder. He leaned close to the bench top and stared at it. No question—there was something unearthly about this thing. Reminded him of the science-fiction paperbacks he’d read when he was a teenager, the ones with the abstract covers by someone named Powers who squiggled bizarre-looking shapes in the backgrounds of his paintings. This thing would have been right at home on one of those covers.

“Wheredid you come from?” Frik muttered.

He looked around and found the chopstick-length forceps Paul had used earlier. Turning on the bench lamp, he grasped the artifact with the tips of the forceps and lifted. He twisted it, turned it, rotated it this way and that, waiting for the loop of the figure-eight piece to fade away.

Nothing happened.

He kept at it, remembering how it had taken Paul a good bit of trial and error this morning before he’d found the precise orientation that made it work, and he’d had a whole night of practice.

Still nothing.

Frik felt himself starting to sweat. Why wouldn’t it work? Had Paul taken one of the pieces? No, all four were there. Then what—?

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Frik froze. The words had been spoken without inflection, with far more weariness than heat. And that only sharpened their edge. Clamping his cigar between his teeth, he turned to face Paul Trujold’s withering stare.

“Oh. Hello, Paul.” Frik maintained his game face and drew deeply on the Cohiba.

“Oh. Hello, Paul,” Trujold mimicked. “Is that the best you can do?”

The scientist’s dark eyes blazed. Frik fought the urge to step back as Paul stopped two feet in front of him.

“What were you going to do with it, Frik?”

“Put it in a secure place. This room is too vulnerable. I’ll feel better if it’s in the safe in my office.” He held up the artifact, still clasped within the forceps. “Perhaps you’re forgetting, Paul. This belongs to Oilstar, and Oilstar belongs to me.”

“Yes,Oilstar ’s yours Frik, but the artifact belongs to the world. One man can’t be allowed to keep it hidden.”

“Since when do you speak for the world?”

“Sincenow, you selfish son of a bitch.”

Frik couldn’t say exactly what happened next, what it was inside that snapped. In his mind, the bizarre object he was holding became a meteor, and Paul the inexorable laws of the universe that were propelling it toward Frik’s world. He reacted the only way he knew. Sure that the scientist was about to grab for the artifact, he dropped it and lunged at the smaller man. He grabbed Paul by the shirtfront and twisted him toward the lab table.

Paul took a swipe at Frik, knocking the cigar from his mouth instead. The Afrikaner pushed Paul backward into the workbench. It tilted under the force of the impact, and the very air seemed to explode, sending Frikkie staggering in the opposite direction.

When he recovered his balance, he heard screaming. Paul was rolling on the floor, his body bathed in flame.

“Paul! Oh, Christ!”

Frantically looking around for a blanket, a lab coat, anything to beat out the flames, Frik spied the red canister of a fire extinguisher on the wall. He ran to it, ripped it free, and carried it over to the wailing ball of flame on the tiles.

Don’t die on me! he screamed inwardly. God, don’t die on me. I didn’t want that.

It took him precious seconds to find the safety pin, yank it free, find the trigger, and start spraying. The conical nozzle coughed white plumes of CO2, enveloping Paul and seeming to take forever to douse the flames.

Frik stared at what had been Paul Trujold. He could recognize the face. Though charred, it had miraculously all but escaped the flames. The rest was nothing more than a twitching, man-shaped thing with only patches of clothing remaining. He didn’t know whether to retch or sob. With the room ablaze, there was time for neither.

“Jesus, Frik, get yourself out of here. I’ll get Paul.”

Where Manny Sheppard had suddenly appeared from Frik did not know or, at that moment, care.

Ignoring Trujold’s moans of pain, Manny lifted the man onto his back in a fireman’s carry. Frik started toward the door, but stopped when the artifact caught his eye. It lay at the edge of the flames, and it was burning.

He reached into the fire with his foot and kicked the object across the floor. The flames were doused by its tumbling flight. As he bent and picked it up, it oozed against his palm, searing his flesh. He cried out in pain that was more than just physical. The device was melting. Ruined. All but its base, which, amazingly, had remained intact and cool to the touch.

Tucking that against his shirtfront, he lurched toward the door.

6

The phone rang two, three times. Frik could not recall ever having felt so frustrated at the hollow ringing of an unanswered telephone.

“Come on,” he begged. “Pick up. Be there.” But at the end of the third ring, an answering-machine message came on.

“You’ve reached Dr. Arthur Marryshow. If this is an emergency, please call my service at 212-555-9239 or you may leave a message at the beep.”

The number Frik had dialed was Arthur’s personal one at the midtown Manhattan apartment where he’d lived for the last few years—when he wasn’t away on some mission or another. Had it been on voice mail, which Arthur refused to use because he felt it was too impersonal, Frik might have left a message. But he didn’t want to go through the service—not unless he had to. The less anyone knew about this the better.

There was, however, another number he could try, one Arthur had asked him not to use except in dire circumstances.

He dialed Arthur’s cell phone number.

The phone clicked and rang.

“Yes.”

“Arthur?”

“Who else would it be, Frik? You dialed my number.” Arthur sounded annoyed at the interruption. Still, Frik had never been so glad to hear someone pick up. “This had better be important.”

“It is. I need help. I need it fast and discreet. There’s been an accident at the lab—and—”

“Frik, where are you?”

“Trinidad. Look, I need you to get here fast. Right away. You can use the Oilstar jet. It’s at Kennedy.”

Excellent chess player that he was, Frik automatically considered multiple options before embarking on any action, like the tone best used in this call. “Could you please” had been easy to discard because it left Arthur with too much of a choice. Offering recompense was out. Arthur, a plastic surgeon who had specialized in burn medicine, years before had pioneered grafting and reconstruction techniques that gave disfigured victims a chance at a normal life. It had made him loved, almost worshiped. It had also made him wealthy.

Of the two alternatives left to him, Frik had chosen the imperative. If that failed, he would take the I-scratched-your-back, you-scratch-mine mental leap which generally got him what he wanted. You owe me, Marryshow, he thought, picturing the prison escape in Grenada and the half dozen times he had saved his fellow Daredevil’s life in the intervening seventeen years and conveniently dismissing the equal number of times the roles had been reversed.

“What is this about, Frikkie? What happened?”

Frik sighed with relief and outlined a carefully edited version of the night’s events.

“You must get Paul and yourself to a hospital. You—”

“No.” This was the hardest part: telling Arthur only enough so that he’d come and help with their wounds—especially Paul’s. The scientist’s skin was dotted with great blackened patches, as though someone had taken a brush laden with tar and swiped at it. “I can’t.”

Frik could hear Arthur’s fury. “Call the hospital, get an ambulance, and…I’ll…”

Frik took a deep breath and chugged Lagavulin straight from the bottle. A friend had sent him the bottle of his favorite single-malt scotch from Argyll, Scotland, and he’d kept it for a rainy day.

As far as he was concerned, it was storming.

He couldn’t tell how bad his own burns were, but he could see only hazy fog through his left eye, and the left hand felt like it was being prickled by a hundred poisonous black sea urchins. His whole body was an archipelago of pain, the little islands only occasionally blurring together. A flash here, a flash there.

The alcohol was keeping the isles from connecting into a continent of agony, but it was also getting him drunk. He had to stay clear enough to make Arthur understand.

“We found something, Arthur. And if Paul spoke about it, at the hospital, under drugs, it would be bad—”

“You are one stubborn bastard. I should hang up. What have you done for him?”

Saaliim, Frik’s assistant, a native of Honduras who wore a perpetually thoughtful look, stood by the door, waiting to see what would happen. Frik relied on Saaliim for everything and anything. He was about the only person in the world, other than the members of the Daredevils Club, that Frik fully trusted.

“I gave him morphine from one of the kits. He’s either asleep or unconscious, I’m not sure which. I think he’ll be okay for the three, four hours it would take you to get here.”

“Sooner. I’m in Grenada. Your call was transferred here.”

Thank you, Lady Luck, Frick thought.

“If I cancel tomorrow’s appointments, if I drop everything and run to you, I could fly myself over and be there in an hour, maybe less,” Arthur continued.

Being the man of integrity that you are, you’ll do exactly that, Frik thought. “Thank you,” he said, without waiting for Arthur’s full agreement. “There’ll be a car waiting for you and I’ll be sitting at the window, watching the road.”

“You expect me to work in your house?”

“I can get you anything you need.”

“Right. Like a burn center?”

“Mount Hope Medical Center has an HBO chamber but nothing for burns.” Frik had to make his friend understand. “You have to trust me, Arthur. What we found, it’s too important to risk having anyone learn about. It could change the world.”

“And changing it could use. All right, Frik, I’ll come. But I’m warning you, this had better be damn good.”

7

To Frik, the next hour seemed like a lifetime. Arthur had called on his way to the airport and issued instructions for what would be needed. Frik jotted them down and repeated each one, a slur creeping into his voice. When he put down the phone, he handed the list to Saaliim and told him to go out and collect everything Arthur wanted.

Saaliim was also given a second mission.

After showing Saaliim the piece of the artifact that he’d rescued from the fire, Frik ordered his assistant to search the remains of the lab and Trujold’s house and car for the three missing components of the strange object.

Reluctant to leave Frik alone for long, Saaliim returned in less than an hour. He had gathered everything Arthur needed, but he’d found nothing that in any way resembled the pieces of the artifact. Maybe he’d made the wrong choice, not taking Paul directly to the hospital. Chances were, they would have ignored his babblings there, but they could have done something to keep him alive—at least long enough for Frik to extract from him the whereabouts of the missing pieces.

Then again, he’d learned to trust his first instinct, which in this case was to keep things under tight control.

Leaving the matter of the artifact to be dealt with later, Frik settled down to wait for Arthur. Every car he saw on the road had to be his…until it was swallowed by the balmy night. He cursed himself for not arranging to have a helicopter waiting for Arthur at Piarco. The airport was only forty or fifty kilometers from the house. Marryshow, an accomplished pilot, could have been here long ago. Christ, how he hated inefficiency, especially his own, he thought, as the pain came back and he gulped more scotch. He couldn’t risk taking morphine and losing control of this situation. Have to make Arthur help me, he kept telling himself.

Car lights cut through the darkened room.

Paul, finally knocked out by the drugs, didn’t stir. Frik turned on a light. Seconds later, Arthur came into the house.

“Frikkie, I’ve just sent Saaliim to get some more things. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. By the way, you look like hell.”

Frik realized that he hadn’t done anything to clean himself up. “Like I told you, there was a fire. I—”

Arthur was already standing beside Paul. He pulled back the sheet exposing the black splotches where fire had seared the skin. “My God. If you’re up to it, hand me my bag.”

Frik handed him a medical bag that looked more like an oversized attaché. “We have to talk,” he said.

“Let me check him first. I’ll listen to what you have to say later.”

Arthur checked Paul’s vitals. “His pulse is thready. His breathing’s ragged at best.”

Frik ventured closer. To his astonishment, Trujold had opened his eyes. Clearly, he was struggling to say something, but what emerged from his scorched lips was little more than a series of croaks. He seemed to be saying “Anny.”

“He’s trying to say Manny,” Frik said. “Manny carried him out of the flaming building.”

“Easy, Paul,” Arthur said. “Don’t try to speak.” He motioned Frik to follow him out of Paul’s earshot. “He’s a mess. Chances are he’s not going to make it. His only hope is to be moved out now.”

“No.”

“Excuse me? Paul needs things I can’t do for him here.”

Frik glanced over at Paul. He had closed his eyes and seemed to have fallen unconscious again. “Listen to me, Arthur,” he said. “We’re talking about the man’s life.” Arthur’s harsh whisper held both contempt and anger.

“You have to know there’s a reason I didn’t take him straight to Mount Hope,” Frik said. “Not onlya reason, but one that’s more important than Paul or you or me.”

“I must move him to the hospital right away, Frik,” Arthur said. “And I should take a look at you, too.”

Frik shook his head. “We found something, Arthur. In the deep test drilling area. I wanted to hide it, but Paul had already—”

Arthur looked over at Paul.“Found something?”

Frik nodded. He described—as best he could—the indescribable, and watched Arthur’s eyes narrow. This had to be a strange night for him. Flying here, seeing both of them burned, now this. Frik anticipated a barrage of questions, but when he’d finished, Arthur only asked, “Where is it?”

Frik shook his head. “That’s the point. I thought I had it. I thought I was bringing the device out of the lab. When it started melting in the heat, I knew most of it was only a goddamn replica Paul had made. Only one piece of the real thing was left. It’s right over there.” Frik nodded in the direction of a side table. On it, under a lamp, sat the one piece of the artifact Frik had. It reflected the artificial light with an unnatural eeriness. From the confused look on Arthur’s face Frik concluded that he sensed it too.

Saaliim came into the room with some ice and glasses and a small pitcher of water. Arthur grabbed the bottle of Lagavulin and poured himself a few fingers’ worth.

“Tell me…what did you plan on doing with the…whatever it was?”

Frik moistened his lips and looked over at Paul. Best-case scenario, the man regained consciousness long enough to disclose the whereabouts of the fragments to Frik—and then died. If he lived, the truth would come out. Or at least Paul’s fantasies of the truth.

“What were you going to do with this incredible device?” Arthur asked again.

“If I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it…control it? I was going to hide it. For as long as I could,” Frik said.

As if he had heard Frik’s words, Paul groaned slightly. An intake of air. Arthur walked over to him, looked at Paul, then at Frik. “I must move Paul now. There’s nothing more I can do for him here. Have Saaliim call for an ambulance.”

At that moment, Frik’s assistant returned to the room. “I took the liberty, Dr. Marryshow, of ordering Oilstar’s medevac chopper. It should be here shortly.” His words were punctuated by thethump thump thump of the emergency helicopter approaching.

Frik said, “Most efficient of you. Thank you, Saaliim,” but his words lacked true conviction, and the younger man averted his eyes.

Arthur turned back to Paul and rechecked the burned man’s vitals. The thumping outside became a torrent against the side of the house, and then quieted.

Two EMS techs ran into the room pushing a gurney. Frik watched them gently shift Paul from the small daybed.

“Careful,” Arthur said.

The techs looked from Arthur to Frik. One asked, in accented English, “You ’kay, Mr. Van Alman?”

Frik nodded.

“Get him on the chopper.” Arthur indicated Paul. “I’ll be right out.” The tech nodded, and they wheeled Paul out.

“Frikkie, you need medical attention too. You need to come with us to the hospital.”

Frik poured another scotch. “Arthur—I want our club to find those pieces. The Daredevils.”

He turned toward his old friend. Arthur’s face showed consternation, even anger. “I have a patient to deal with, Frik. We’ll have to have this discussion another time.”

“But—”

Arthur cut off Frik’s response by turning on his heel and walking through the door. Over his shoulder he called out, “If Paul has any relatives, I suggest you contact them.”

Frikkie downed the scotch and reached for the bottle. As he sank back into the cushions of his leather sofa, the torrent of noise outside returned. Small twigs and leaves battered the windows and walls of the house as the medevac chopper took off.

Frikkie snapped awake at the sound of the telephone. His first sensation was pain, searing, aching pain. He reached for the bottle of Lagavulin and knocked it over, but nothing poured out. Empty.

“Master Frik, you’re awake.” Saaliim’s voice was soft and full of concern. “Dr. Marryshow is on the line.”

“What time is it?”

“Half-four. Should I bring you the phone?”

Frik waggled his head to try to clear it. It took a few moments for all of the previous day’s events to return to him. “Yes,” he said at last. “Also some coffee and anything you can find for this pain, short of morphine.”

As Saaliim left, Frik tried to stand. A wave of nausea passed over him and he dropped back onto the leather sofa he’d been sleeping on. His left hand was a mass of pain. His mouth tasted as if he’d washed down the embers of a campfire with a bottle of whiskey, which he supposed wasn’t far from the truth.

Suddenly the receiver of a telephone appeared in front of him. He picked it up and croaked, “Hello, Arthur?”

“You don’t sound good, Frik.”

“I’m fine if you discount the pain, and the aftereffects of a bottle of scotch. The important question is, how’s Paul?”

There was a pause on the line, and Frik knew the answer to his question.

“He died twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn it. Wasn’t there anything you could do?” As soon as he’d asked the question, Frikkie knew it was a mistake.

“Had he been brought straight to a hospital instead of your house, maybe. But—”

That line of discussion wouldn’t get them anywhere, so Frik cut in, saying, “His wife died years ago, as did his parents. Saaliim is trying to locate Paul’s daughter.” The smell of fresh coffee wafted into the study.

“I think I’ve got that taken care of,” Arthur said. “Manny stopped by to see how Paul was doing. He just left. He said he can get a message to…Selene, right?”

Frik inhaled deeply of the comforting coffee aroma. “Yes. Selene. She’s not particularly fond of me. She’s one of those environmentalists.” Saaliim returned with a cup of coffee and a Vicodin. Frikkie washed down the pain pill with a swig of the liquid, which his assistant had cooled just enough with the addition of milk.

“I’m sorry to bring it up at a time like this, but…” Frik paused and took a deep breath. “The Daredevils Club meeting is less than two weeks away. Tell me that you’ll support me in this, Arthur. We have to find that device.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Frik took another swallow of coffee. He couldn’t wait. The sense of dread that had seized him in the lab was eating at him, trying to get another grip. “Tell me you’ll help, damn it. You’re my friend.”

Arthur would have to back him in this. You owe me, he thought again, but as they had done right after the accident, the words remained unspoken. There was silence on the line. Were it not for the background murmur of the nurses at the station from which Arthur was making the call, Frikkie would have thought that his friend had hung up.

“Your answer?”

“No, Frik. I don’t think so. The club has never been for the aggrandizement of any individual member. Besides, there’s something unsavory about all this—”

“You don’t understand. You could be throwing away the key to the universe.”

That made Arthur laugh. “Some lids are meant to remain locked, Frikkie. I’m not willing to be Pandora, here.”

“Damn it, Arthur—”

“Over my dead body, Frik. The whole thing smells wrong to me. I suppose you can bring it up at the meeting New Year’s Eve, but I’ll fight you on it.”

This time, the silence on the line was absolute.

Frikkie put the receiver in its cradle and lay back on the sofa. The alcohol he had consumed had not fully left his system and the narcotic was beginning to numb his extremities. He tried to focus on the events of the day, and on how to proceed, but things quickly got hazy. One diaphanous plan melted into another, until he passed out cold.

At around midmorning, Frik awoke again, stiff and groggy and in his own bed. He assumed he’d been carried there by Saaliim. Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought. He didn’t know which was worse, the pain in his hand, the tightness in his chest from the smoke-filled lab, or his pounding hangover headache.

“Saaliim!”

His call instantly brought his assistant into the room.

“Coffee, my man. And something for this pain.”

“Dr. Marryshow, he sent you some medicinals,” Saaliim said. “Right there on your nightstand.”

The younger man left the room and Frik picked up the white paper bag with a note in Arthur’s handwriting stapled to it. Inside the bag there was antibacterial ointment for the burns and a small bottle of painkillers. The note contained cursory instructions about how often to take them and a warning not to drink alcohol while he did so. At the end of the instructions, Arthur had added:

I’m leaving the island. Take it slowly for a few days, Frikkie, and don’t overdo the medication. By then you’ll have come to your senses. Arthur

Or maybe you’ll have changed your mind, Frik thought, and promptly swallowed twice the recommended dose of pills. By the time Saaliim returned with coffee, he was falling back into blackness.

For three days, Frik remembered little except pills, coffee, pain, and Saaliim’s quiet presence floating in and out of the room. By the fourth morning, he was up and trying to dress when Saaliim knocked on the door.

“Telephone, Master Frik.”

“Who is it?”

Arthur, he told himself as the events of the past few days returned to him. He’s changed his mind.

“Missy Selene. Yesterday I told her you can’t talk. Today she don’t sound too good.”

“I’ll talk to her.” Frik sat down on the side of the bed. Saaliim plugged in the extension phone, which he’d apparently kept unplugged for the last few days.

“Hello? Selene?”

“Frik.” Selene’s voice was like an ice cube.

He shivered, despite the heat of the morning. “I’m sorry about your father, Selene. He was a good man.”

“Sorry? I’ll bet you are. You lost a major workhorse, not to mention his discovery. You’ve never given a damn for anyone’s safety but your own, you bastard.”

“Selene—”

“You and your fucking oil drilling,” Selene yelled. “By the time we’re finished with you, Oilstar will be nothing but a memory.”

The phone went dead in Frik’s hand.

He pieced together what he knew about Selene. It wasn’t much. She was bright, attractive, and had a Ph.D. in physics for which he had paid.

The penny dropped.

Green Impacthad to be the “we” to which she had referred.

That was when the second penny dropped.

She knows, Frik thought. Her father must have sent her the pieces of the artifact. But how? There was no way she could have received them yet unless they’d been hand delivered. But by whom? Manny?

No. That was laughable. Manny was too smart to bite the hand that fed him.

How then? Maybe she hadn’t received them yet. Maybe her father had told her he was sending them but—

It doesn’t matter, Frik told himself. All that matters is that she knows. If Paul had told her about the artifact, then even if he hadn’t sent them to her, he might have told her where he’d hidden the missing pieces. In order to find out, he’d have to capture Selene, and for that, he’d need some help.

The Daredevils Club remained his only choice. He’d have to convince them, whether Arthur objected or not. Whatever it took, Frik needed the club. He wasn’t going to go into extinction quietly, damn it. He was no dumb tyrannosaur, he was Frikkie Van Alman, head of Oilstar, man of adventure. Nothing would stand in his way.

Nothing.

8

NEWYORKCITY, DECEMBER31, 1999

Shivering from the cold, Peta pulled open the door to Danny’s Seafood Grotto. She had made eighteen visits to New York, trips punctuated by high school and college graduation, the beginning and end of medical school, and taking over Arthur’s Grenada practice during his long visits to Manhattan and his absences when he sojourned to destinations unknown. By now she should have expected it to be cold, but she was never quite prepared for its reality.

“Peta! Welcome back.” Danny’s maitre d’ took her coat. “Stunning as ever.” He hugged her like an old friend. “Lucky man, Arthur. He’s waiting for you over at the piano. I’ll take care of your coat.”

It didn’t surprise Peta that George greeted her by name, not after this many visits to the West Forty-sixth Street restaurant. On the one hand, she thought, it was boring to be that predictable; on the other, to be welcomed so effusively in a city like this made her feel rather like a celebrity.

Arthur sat at the piano bar, his back to her. To her surprise, he was engaged in earnest discussion with his buddy, Raymond Arno. She felt a spark of annoyance. This was her time, her part of the evening. Bad enough that she was excluded from their damn Daredevils Club meeting that started at midnight every New Year’s Eve.

She felt herself pouting and stopped. With Arthur, there was no use making a fuss. Ever. He did what he did, and generally for what he believed was good reason.

At that moment, the piano player looked up and saw her. Grinning happily, he switched gears into “Happy Birthday to You,” played a few bars of “Hot, Hot, Hot,” then segued into a lively rendition of “Dollar Wine.”

Peta broke into the sensual steps of the Caribbean soca. There was a round of applause. Arthur looked up and waved. Even at a distance, his expression softened. If only he looked that way more often, she thought. She moved to the rhythm for a moment longer before pushing her way through to the piano.

“You two look as if you’re plotting a world takeover,” she said.

“You’re early.” Arthur kissed her. “And beautiful.”

“I’ll second that,” Ray added. “You’re a lucky man, Marryshow.” He pecked her on the cheek.

Ray and Arthur exchanged a quick glance, then Ray gestured in the direction of the men’s room. “Too many beers,” he said, though his tough, firm body belied the statement. “Think I’ll leave you two to conduct your annual birthday meeting and slip out the back way when I’m done. Happy New Year, Peta. Nice to see you again. Quick, take my seat before someone else does. Happy birthday—to both of you. See you later, Arthur.”

Arthur patted the seat. “Don’t be angry with me, Peta. Ray and I had some things we had to discuss. Seemed like as good a time as any to do it.”

Peta watched Ray disappear into the dimly lit passage that led to the rest rooms and the storeroom in the back. She knew the layout well: a right into the alcove with the two rest-room doors; a door straight back to the “family” exit through the storeroom and into the back alley. Turning to Arthur she said, “Get me a drink and you’re forgiven. I was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t think he’d be here at all this year. Isn’t he supposed to be opening a new casino in Vegas about now?” She snuggled up to her mentor and friend. “In case you don’t know it, it’s cold as a witch’s tit out there.”

Though he was more than half again her age and a little craggy, Arthur was a handsome man, very tall and, like her, elegantly dressed. They blended seamlessly into the crowd as Danny’s grew dense with New Year’s Eve partygoers. The bodies around the piano bar were two and three deep and it took influence, bribery, or a very loud voice to so much as order a couple of drinks.

“I see you wore it,” he said, fingering the exotic pendant he’d given her earlier in the day. She wore it around her neck, a smooth and somehow oily-looking irregular blue-green disk, bezel set and hung upon a twenty-four-carat gold chain.

Peta placed her hand over his and pressed it against her. She could feel the pendant against her skin. It was as if it were sucking the heat from her body, and yet it didn’t feel uncomfortable. “What the devil is it, Arthur?”

“That’s my secret. Just take good care of it.”

“You and your secrets.”

He smiled. “Call it a lucky piece. That’s what I call mine.” He opened his hand and showed her his stone. “I use it like a rubbing stone.”

An hour passed with Arthur and Peta sometimes silent, often animated, always affectionate. Yet despite her best efforts, something was making Peta uncomfortable. Searching to find a reason for her discomfort, she noticed that Arthur was playing the time-conscious physician’s game of glancing a little too frequently at his watch. When he did so twice within two minutes, Peta covered the face of the watch with her hand.

“You just looked,” she said. “You’ll have plenty of time to get to your meeting at midnight. This isour celebration. I get you for another hour.”

While Arthur had many mysterious missions in his life about which he said little to her, the Daredevils Club bothered her more than the others. She resented the fact that he would say nothing about the club’s activities and that she was not welcome there. After all, she had been the instigator of the adventure that created the club. Her exclusion seemed personal.Was personal, all the more so since at least one woman had been admitted. And died.

“You’re a bunch of nasty little misogynists,” she said, knowing he would understand the reference.

“I’ve told you over and over that I swore to your father I would not ever knowingly encourage you to endanger your life. Not while I was alive. So stop thinking about it, darlin’,” Arthur said. “The meeting is something I do and you don’t. It’s that simple.” Yet one more time, he glanced at his watch.

Peta sipped her wine. “If it’s that simple, what are you so nervous about?”

As if he’d made a sudden and difficult decision, Arthur said, “I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise me that you’ll keep it to yourself.”

She nodded. It seemed odd for him to be telling her secrets in public, but she knew that sometimes an anonymous crowd made for more privacy.

“There’s new trouble brewing in the Middle East,” Arthur continued. “Big trouble. After the meeting, I’m going to Israel. I’ll be teaching medics about frontline emergency burn treatment. God knows I’ve had enough experience. There’ll be danger.” He leaned toward her and stroked her cheek. “I’m getting tired, Peta,” he confessed. “Tired is bad in my business.”

Peta was thrown by Arthur’s serious tone and flattered that he would risk the implicit danger of taking her into his confidence. She’d known for some time that he occasionally worked with some secret branch of the American government, but he’d never so much as whispered any of the details until well after the fact.

Not wanting to trivialize what he’d told her, yet knowing he would not want her to be melodramatic, she said, “Make sure you’re back here next year, Doctor—if we don’t cross paths again before that.”

“I promise.” His smile returned playfully. “In fact, I’ve already made reservations for dinner, instead of just drinks. Five o’clock won’t be too early for you, will it?”

“Are you sure you can spare seven whole hours? Or does that mean you’ll be leaving early for your meeting?” She tried to match his humorously sarcastic tone, but the words came out sounding petulant.

Immediately the smile faded from his lips. “I won’t have to be there until midnight. Promise.” He downed the rest of his rum and stood up. “My turn for the men’s room.” He took out his wallet and handed it to her. “Do me a favor, settle the bill.”

To Peta’s surprise, he kissed her hard on the mouth. He was a private man, and such overt displays of affection were not his norm. She watched him turn on his heel and head in the same direction as Ray had gone earlier. Fighting jealousy about his anxiety to get to his “meeting” on time, she counted out the money and handed it to the waiter. She stuffed a fifty-dollar bill in the piano man’s glass, blew him a kiss, and wished him a happy New Year. Having retrieved her coat from the coatroom, she put it on and stood near the exit door, people-watching while she waited for Arthur.

He should have come out of the rest room by now, she thought. It occurred to her how much simpler it was to check on an escort in Grenada, where most bathrooms were unisex. She was seriously considering asking George to check on Arthur’s welfare, when there was a flash in the bathroom hallway and a concussive blast shook the restaurant.

In an instant that seemed to last an hour, a man who had been walking toward the bathrooms staggered out, a gash on his forehead pouring blood. The fire sprinklers burst to life, like a sudden tropical storm trapped inside the restaurant.

Immediately everyone was in motion. Men and women alike screamed as they rushed for the exit.

Panicked bodies pressed Peta out of the door into the small foyer. She fought against the current, finally sidestepping into an eddy created by aVariety dispenser. “I’m a doctor,” she called out. “Let me through!”

By the time the flow of people eased enough for her to get back into the bar, she could hear sirens approaching. Even under the circumstances, the thought flashed through her mind that the police and fire department were responding astonishingly fast.

Inside, she stumbled around the overturned furniture. As she made her way toward the hall to the rest rooms, George blocked her way. “You don’t want to go in there, Miss Peta.”

Stomach clenched with a painful sense of knowing, she moved past him into the cramped passage. Chunks of the bathroom door lay in the small alcove, covered with gore. Within the bathroom itself, she saw a portrait of blood and mashed body parts. One thing told her irrefutably that the victim was Arthur Marryshow: lying in the midst of the grisly evidence was the stone matching the one around her neck.

Her knees failed her and she sagged to the floor. Seemingly with a will of its own, her hand reached for what Arthur had called his lucky piece.

“Hey, lady. What do you think you’re doing?” A policeman took her by the arm. “You have something to do with this?”

“I’m a doctor.” Peta used all of her courage to stem her emotions. “The…victim…isa friend of mine. Dr. Arthur Marryshow.”

“I’m sorry about your loss, ma’am, but there’s nothing much you can do for him now.” The cop took her arm and helped her to her feet. “Come on.”

The torrent from the sprinklers had been shut off. The police officer led Peta across the wet floor to a chair at the far side of the bar. “I hate to intrude, ma’am, but I need to ask you a few questions.” He took out his notebook. “What did you say your name was?”

“Whyte.” Automatically, she spelled it.

He wrote it down. “Dr. Whyte. And you said the deceased was named Marryshow?”

“Yes. I…” Her voice trailed off into silence. George appeared at her side with a glass of scotch, which she downed in a single motion.

“No offense, Officer, but I really don’t think she’s in any condition to answer your questions right now.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. Is there somewhere we can get in touch with you, Doctor?”

Mechanically, she pulled a card out of her purse and handed it to the officer. “I’d like the piece that matches this.” She held up the pendant she was wearing. “It’s in there with…with—”

“If it’s with the…it’s evidence, ma’am. When we’re done with the investigation we’ll get in touch.” He glanced at the card. “Grenada,” he said, mispronouncing it Gre-nah-da.

“Hey, John,” a fellow policeman called out. “We need you over here.”

“We’ll be in touch, Doctor.” The cop named John turned to the maitre d’. “Get her out of here. Now.”

9

Numb with shock, Peta found herself relegated to the street outside the restaurant. She stood there unmoving. Rooted to the concrete.

“Peta! Peta, are you okay?” The familiar face of Ray Arno forced itself through her stupor. “I was on my way to the apartment. What happened in there?” He stared at the flood of gawkers and the half dozen camera crews that had been drawn away from the New Year’s Eve action in Times Square. “Where’s Arthur?”

“Ray!” Peta leaned against the man she’d known for seventeen years, since together they’d saved Arthur’s life. “There was an explosion. Arthur’s…he’s dead, Ray.”

Ray looked stunned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Peta at last let go. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she described what she had seen.

Ray gripped her shoulder. “I’ll find out who did this to him. I swear I will.”

“Did this tohim ?” Peta repeated. “You think someone was out to murder Arthur?” Somewhere at the back of her presently fuzzy mind she remembered Arthur telling her about his mission to the Middle East. Was this a directed act, connected to the trouble in Israel he had mentioned, rather than a random act of violence?

“He was into a lot of dangerous stuff. You know that.” Ray paused. “I’ll miss him too,” he said, more gently. “He was one of my oldest and dearest friends, Peta.” His eyes filled with tears, and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked middle-aged.

“Look, I don’t mean to sound callous but there’s nothing we can do for Arthur. Not right now. It’s not going to be easy to get through the crowds, but I have to be at the meeting by midnight. So do you.” He put his arm around her. “Arthur said he wanted you to take his place if something…permanent…ever happened to him. There has to be a vote and it has to be unanimous, but—”

Peta shook off his arm. She was stunned. Angry that Ray could even consider such a thing right after Arthur’s death. “You’re still going to have the meeting? After this?”

“Yes.” He buttoned up her coat, took off his scarf and wrapped it around her neck. Then he put his arm back around her. “Listen,” he said. “Before we go, there’s something I should warn you about. No matter how much we loved Arthur, you won’t see us mourning his death, not in any conventional way. It’s an agreement we made after our first member died. The meetings go on and we grieve privately, each in our own way.”

Peta felt her temper rise, but pragmatism and emotional exhaustion won out. Therewas nothing else she could do right now. She allowed Ray to lead her through the drunk and rowdy New Year’s Eve celebrants to Arthur’s Manhattan penthouse, a one-bedroom apartment that sat squarely in the middle of the flat roof of the Time Hotel.

The prewar hotel was on West Forty-ninth, half a block from Broadway in the heart of the theater district. At the Ambassador Theater next door, a performance was just letting out. Peta didn’t see the people, didn’t notice anything but her sorrow. She couldn’t think beyond Arthur: his mentoring and friendship; their first visit to New York; their first lovemaking, on her twenty-second birthday, and the evolution of that night into an abiding, all-encompassing love.

She was oblivious to the greetings of the doorman, who knew her from her annual visits and waved them inside, seeing in her mind’s eye the pieces of Arthur’s tortured and scarred body. She followed Ray into a small, antiquated elevator. On the ride up to the sixteenth floor, she remembered the first time she’d used this elevator, the first time she’d stayed overnight with Arthur, their pillow talk about his dangerous work as an undercover plastic surgeon for a small outcropping of the CIA that sent its people onMission: Impossible jaunts into the firing line—including surgeries on the famous and the infamous.

The elevator opened into Arthur’s apartment. Frik stood on the rooftop, his back to her, staring down at the city. Three more men waited inside. She recognized them as acquaintances of Arthur’s.

Stone-faced, Ray poured brandy into two glasses and handed one of them to her. “Drink it,” he said. He downed most of the contents of his own glass. Then he turned toward the others and told them that Arthur would not be at the meeting that night, or ever again.

Each of the men reacted in his own way. One stood up and began to pace. Another, whom she’d known for some time, had tears in his eyes. He put his face in his hands, as if he did not want the others to see his weakness. The third man yelled out “No!” His cry brought Frik to the doorway.

“What’s happened?” he asked, standing in the half shadows.

“It’s Arthur,” Ray said quietly. “He’s dead.”

Frik stared at Ray. “Here,” he said, reverting to his native Afrikaans. “God.” After a moment he asked, “How did it happen?”

As Ray began his recounting, Peta felt on the edge of hysteria. In emotional self-defense, she fell into the habit born of years of training. She looked at the members of the Daredevils Club and cataloged what she knew about them and their activities.

While he’d kept the details a secret, Arthur had told her small things, nonspecific things. She knew that they gathered every New Year’s Eve to exchange tales of the past year’s most daring and death-defying adventures, that they were all people who, by inclination or profession, risked their lives on a regular basis. They sought out trouble, took on jobs that nobody fully sane would do, and put their lives on the line at every opportunity. The playground for their adventures was the world—be it in military installations, deep undersea trenches, or just on the mean streets of New York. They risked their lives for the thrill, the glory, or the money, and they came together to share their adventures because half the fun was telling the tale.

Peta tried to remember what specifics she could about the three men sitting in Arthur’s living room.

The one she knew best, outside of Frik and Ray, was the man who had cried and called out. He was Simon Brousseau, a Miami-based inventor of scuba-diving gear, a womanizer, and an underwater junkie. Judging by his pallor, he had a bad heart condition. Were she his physician, she’d be warning him to take it easy.

The other two men she’d met only briefly, over dinner during one of her trips to New York. The burly one was Terris McKendry, a freelance security specialist. She remembered him as a thorough, stoic, and patient man—the type who could probably sit unmoving for hours when concentrating on something, a man who always had a Plan B thought out in advance. He was trained as a civil engineer but had spent many years working for a large personal-security firm that hired him out as a personal bodyguard. According to Arthur, Terris had received a huge bonus when he’d saved one of his clients, a foreign diplomat, from an assassination attempt. With his reward in hand, he’d set off on his own.

The last man, the pacer, was Joshua Keene, McKendry’s “partner in insanity,” according to Arthur. Keene was McKendry’s opposite, a wild man who placed great stock in his instincts and his intuition. He had a quick and winning smile and was the guy who always bought the next round of drinks. He’d dropped out of college after a succession of majors and was mostly self-taught, a voracious reader and learner who bounced from one fascination to the next and lived in and for the moment. He seemed to have succeeded in life by always doing the unexpected.

Peta had not found McKendry’s gruff manner particularly appealing. Keene, however, she’d found to be gregarious and likable.

“That’s all I know,” Ray said at last. In the ensuing silence, he added, “You’re all aware that Arthur wanted Peta to be his successor if something happened to him.”

Frik, who had stayed in the doorway listening to the details of his old friend’s death, stepped into the light. Peta immediately noticed burn scars on his face. He was wearing gloves, but she could see the traceries of more severe scars on his left hand in the gap between the sleeve and the glove.

“Peta’s entry fee for membership will have to be the same as it is for any man,” Frik said. “Proof of participation in a new adventure that makes her worthy of inclusion in the club.”

“Damn all of you.” Peta hurled her brandy glass in Frik’s direction. It hit the wall closest to him and splintered, leaving behind a golden brown trickle. “Your friend is dead. Dead. And why? For all I know, it’s because of some stunt he pulled to impress you.”

She pushed past Frik and went out onto the rooftop. In the distance, she could see the lights of a vessel making its way up the Hudson. Closer and down below, people streamed around the corner toward Times Square to wait for the ball to drop and for the new year to be upon them.

As if it mattered what year it was, she thought. The days and months—and years—would march on. Gradually the pain would leave her. For now, tending her island patients and Arthur’s was all she could think of doing to get herself through.

She looked up into the cloudy sky. “Happy New Year, Arthur,” she whispered as her tears once again rolled freely, “wherever you are.”

In the heat of her fury at the callousness of the men inside the apartment and despite the depth of her sorrow, she considered Arthur’s last wish—her inclusion in the club. She wasn’t willing to go outlooking for life-threatening stunts so that she could prove herself to the Daredevils. Her own line of work brought her into more than enough danger all of the time. Life-and-death decisions were her stock-in-trade. Then again, if the original members hadn’t considered the rescue of Arthur from prison dangerous enough to overcome the fact that she was female, these idiots certainly wouldn’t agree that what she accomplished daily was suitably perilous.

Behind her, inside the apartment, someone turned on the local news, apparently to see if the aftermath of the explosion was being televised. Peta moved close enough to see the screen.

Her timing was impeccable, although whether impeccably good or bad was, she thought briefly, up for grabs. Though she’d been unaware of it at the time, it seemed a cameraman had picked her out of the crowd. There she was, a full shot first, then her face filling the screen.

She walked into and across the living room and entered the small bedroom she’d so often shared with Arthur. She stared at herself in the small mirror she’d used to put on her makeup, took off the coat she was still wearing, and fingered the pendant Arthur had given her. Taking it off, she placed it lovingly in her handbag, and began to pack her things.

10

In the living room, Frik leaned forward, staring intently at the television screen. The announcer said that a lone Muslim extremist had claimed responsibility for the blast, and the camera closed once again on Peta. Encircled by a gold bezel, suspended from a gold chain, was a fragment of the artifact.

Filing away the certainty that she knew everything Arthur had known, he turned his attention to the people in the room. “Meeting’s in order,” he said. “You go first, Ray.”

With visible reluctance, Ray pulled a videotape out of his coat pocket and slipped it into the VCR. It began with Channel 8 hype about the preopening advertising for his hotel.

“Ray Arno, owner of the new Daredevil Casino, is much more than a wealthy investor in a business suit,” Paula Francis ofEyewitness News began. “He’s a well-known Hollywood stuntman, an Evel Knievel, if you will. You’re about to see him perform a spectacular, death-defying stunt to highlight his new adventure hotel, with its theme park full of thrill rides and its high-stakes casino.”

“Behold one of those stupid macho stunts Peta was talking about,” Ray said. “You will notice that there is no safety net.”

Followed by cameras and reporters, Ray could be seen climbing to the top of Las Vegas’s Stratosphere Tower—the tallest observation tower west of the Mississippi. He smiled, took a deep breath, and leaped into space. The camera tracked his shrinking figure until a rectangular skydiver’s parachute unfurled behind him.

The camera angle changed to a shot of a wedge-shaped building with what looked like a space shuttle jutting from one side. A large neon sign in front of the structure proclaimedTHE DAREDEVIL . The image panned up to show Ray in his bright jumpsuit, expertly gliding toward the roof of the casino.

The report switched to a cameraman on the Daredevil’s rooftop helipad. As Ray stuttered to a stop and removed his parachute, he said into the camera, “Follow me to the Daredevil.You may use the front door.”

The screen filled with snow as the tape ended. “That’ll do,” Frik said. No one disagreed. “Who’s next.”

Briefly, as if they were reading Cliff’s Notes, each of them, including Frik, added a tale of derring-do. Frik summarized an African man-faces-rhino ecoadventure that sounded like an outtake from Hemingway’sGreen Hills of Africa ; Keene and McKendry gave a précis about having infiltrated a white-supremacist group to rescue a black professor who had been taken hostage; and Simon described a shark attack during the exploration of a wreck near the Bermuda Triangle.

“Listen, everyone,” Ray said after Simon had finished. “Why not talk about next year and call it a night? We obviously won’t be able to meet here from now on, so how about my place in Vegas?”

“Your place?” Joshua Keene looked amused.

“My new hotel. Look, I realize this apartment was Damon Runyan’s home, which made it perfect for us, and the Strip isn’t Times Square—”

“But it’s the next best thing to being here.” Keene lifted his glass in a mock toast.

McKendry chuckled, appreciative as always of his friend’s sense of humor.

“Someday I’m going to buy this place and turn it into a casino,” Ray said. “But that’s not happening quite yet. Meanwhile, why not some desert R and R away from the…um”—he glanced at Arthur’s bedroom—“the memories?”

The venue was readily agreed upon. Glasses were refilled, and a few people munched on pretzels and nuts.

“About next year.” Frik got ready for what needed to be a convincing performance. “I have something to propose. Something urgent that I cleared with Arthur, on condition the rest of you agreed.”

He too glanced toward the bedroom where Peta had gone, then sat back and put forth his proposal. He went over what information he wished to divulge: the discovery of the artifacts; the fire that had killed Paul Trujold; a description of how he had sustained third-degree burns on his face and left hand.

Having gained the group’s attention, he went on to talk about his suspicion that Selene Trujold had at least one piece of the device, sent by her father, and he recounted her threats to destroy Oilstar. Of course, he said nothing about his true purpose, making it easy for everyone to agree upon a treasure hunt for the missing pieces of the artifact.

“I don’t mean to minimize what you’re suggesting, Frik,” Keene said grimly, “but shouldn’t we be putting our energies into finding out who killed Arthur?”

“You’re right, Josh,” Ray said quickly. “Given the relative skills of the rest of you, you’ll have no difficulty divvying up Frik’s search. I’ll handle Arthur’s death on my own. I can always call on the rest of you if I need help. Sound reasonable?”

Frik held his breath.

There was silence while the others thought everything through. “Sounds more than reasonable to me. I’ll dive for the piece that was left behind,” Brousseau said, not mentioning what Frik already knew—that his doctor had warned him that his heart condition made deep-sea dives not just dangerous, but potentially suicidal.

Frik said nothing about it. Simon’s reaction was perfect, imperative to his plan. The only risk was that Simon could mess things up by dying underwater before retrieving the piece, but that was a chance he was willing to take. “You can fly back with me,” he said.

Simon shook his head. “I have to take care of some things in Miami first. Tell you what. Bring theAssegai to Grenada. I’ll fly in there in a couple of weeks and you can sail me to Trinidad. I could use a good sail, a little time on top of the ocean.”

Keene and McKendry volunteered to track Selene Trujold and her gang of ecoterrorists. From her father’s notes and earlier comments, Frik knew that she had tended to focus her Green Impact activities in the main Venezuelan oil fields, near Maracaibo. If he was right, that was about to change. Now Oilstar’s large newValhalla rig, just beginning production in the Orinoco Delta, would become her prime target.

“There is something elseyou can do,” Frik said to Ray. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that you told me you were building a state-of-the-art laboratory adjacent to your penthouse.”

“Yeah. In my guilty moments I tell myself that I built it to develop a new means of detecting and neutralizing land mines and live shells in war zones. Really, though, I’m just a kid with a four-million-dollar chemistry set,” Ray said, grinning.

“A useful one. If you don’t mind, I’ll have Trujold’s computer models and results transmitted from our mainframe in Trinidad to your computer in Las Vegas. I need you to study them and determine if his findings were correct.”

“Okay with me,” Ray said. “Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have to check on preparations my people are making for an important guest at the Daredevil.”

He left the room to use the phone in Arthur’s kitchenette. By the time he returned, Peta had reentered the room. Frik could see her closed suitcase standing upright on the floor near the open doorway.

“Fly back with me in the Oilstar jet,” he said to her. “I’ll divert and take you to Grenada before going on to Trinidad. Sure you won’t come with us, Simon?”

Simon shook his head. “Aside from anything else, there’s some diving gear I want to pick up in Miami.”

“Diving gear?” Peta sounded shocked. “Are youtrying to kill yourself?”

“What are you talking about?” Ray asked. “He’s been diving forever.”

“I’m a doctor, remember,” Peta said. “I don’t need to do an EKG to see that he has a heart problem.”

“Is that true?” Ray looked at Simon as if he hadn’t really seen him before.

“Leave him alone, both of you,” Frik said, more brusquely than he had intended. “He’s over twenty-one.”

“Yes. Stop fussing over me. I’m going to do this.” Simon crossed his fingers, put his hand behind his back, and grinned like a little boy. “Tell you what, though. I promise you, this will be my last dive.”

11

“We’re hanging out in the wrong places, Terris. Let’s go get dirty.”

McKendry grunted in agreement. He didn’t need to comment further; he and Keene had been working together long enough that they often seemed to read each other’s mind. For that reason, they had hardly spoken about Arthur’s death. Each knew how much the other would miss him, but since no amount of talk would bring their friend back, they mourned him in silence. Having lost friends before, McKendry understood his own process. For him, acceptance would come slowly, but come it would, ultimately turning the open wound of loss into one more scar on the body of his life.

“The sooner we get out of Caracas, the better.” Keene slurped the last of hismichelada, a concoction of lime juice, beer, ice cubes, and salt. He had taken a great liking to the drink, which he compared to acerveza margarita . “We need to start sniffing around the oil operations. I’m betting Selene’s moved from Maracaibo and is headed east to focus on Frikkie’s operations near the Orinoco Delta.”

McKendry knew that at any other time, Joshua Keene would have enjoyed hanging out in nightclub after nightclub, where the dancers were topless and the salsa music too loud. Not now. “You just want to get into the jungle,” McKendry said.

“And you don’t?”

McKendry gave a small, unintelligible response which seemed to satisfy his partner. In any event, Keene was right about Caracas. Someone like Selene was unlikely to be here by choice. Besides, at this moment in their lives, the city was far too civilized a place for the two of them. Yes, it was magnificent, the jewel of Venezuela, but a postcard would have sufficed. Shining buildings and upscale restaurants, sidewalk cafés with bright yellow awnings, lavish marble-and-brass hotels and wild nightlife never had been his idea of a good time.

Still, McKendry thought, the search for Paul Trujold’s daughter needed to start somewhere. This had seemed to be as good a place as any. He hadn’t actually expected to find her here—Frikkie’s information said that Green Impact worked primarily in the western oil fields of the Maracaibo Basin—but this was where he had contacts in Venezuela. He knew people who could potentially lead them to Green Impact, or lead them to someone who could lead them to someone….

People like Rodolfo. The Spanish action-film star, one of McKendry’s former employers, was very popular in South and Central America, though his career had gone nowhere in the United States. He had hired McKendry as a bodyguard and tough guy, a brawny piece of furniture to hover behind him every time he went out, even when they went where nobody knew who Rodolfo was.

The work had been a profitable and not unpleasant contract job. The star was less obnoxious than several full-of-themselves celebrities McKendry had guarded in the past. But when the six-month contract came up for renewal, he politely declined further service and moved on to another freelance assignment. He preferred to provide real protection rather than testosterone-filled eye candy.

When the two Daredevils were arranging to fly down to Venezuela and begin their search for Selene, McKendry had called the action star and asked what connections he might have, what help he could offer.

Rodolfo seemed delighted to hear from him and offered to do what he could. At Simón Bolívar International Airport, in glistening tropical sunshine, the star had welcomed them both with all the enthusiasm of a long-lost Italian uncle. During their first few nights in Caracas, the grinning and too-tanned film star showered them with free champagne and front-row tickets to all the hottest nightclub shows. He took them to dinner at Tambo, Il Cielo, and other jet-set favorites, and provided them with a spacious suite in the Eurobuilding Hotel, far from the outlying shanties and slums and the lush jungle-covered mountains that rode high on the horizon; they were further yet from the political, economic, and natural disasters that inevitably piled one upon the other in various parts of the South American continent.

McKendry played along for five days, asking questions and enduring the pampered treatment. Five long days; five noisy nights in nightclubs. They had been seen by all the local celebrities, by important political people in Caracas, by hotel managers and casino owners. Rodolfo was doing his best and glorying in the doing of it.

For a different assignment, perhaps, McKendry might have been able to use these new connections he had made, to pull strings and apply leverage. But not this time. No self-respecting member of Green Impact would ever hobnob with such people.

“We’re getting nowhere,” Keene shouted across at McKendry. He pounded on the table, signaling the nearest waitress for another michelada; so far, they had experienced no difficulty meeting the nightclub’s expensive minimum-consumption requirement.

The music picked up tempo. Several topless showgirls jiggled coffee brown breasts as they danced past the table en route to the small central area cleared for occasional performances. “Nice,” McKendry said. “Very nice.”

Keene ran his fingers through his curly hair. He smiled appreciatively but said nothing. When his fresh michelada arrived, he slurped salt from the edge, tasted it with an extravagant flourish, and handed the waitress a large tip.

The dance number finished with a brassy finale followed by a shower of applause from well-dressed Venezuelan businessmen and their various foreign guests.

“If Selene Trujold is an ecoterrorist, self-proclaimed or otherwise, she wouldn’t be caught dead in Caracas,” Keene said. “She wouldn’t let any of these bozos so much as buy her a drink.”

McKendry drained his too-sweet drink and stood up. “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll check out tomorrow.”

“Not quite yet.” Keene made a motion with his hand and forearm, parrying with it as if it were a sword. “Zorro the Gay Blade approaches.”

McKendry turned toward the door. He really does look like George Hamilton playing Zorro, he thought, watching Rodolfo weave his way through the crowd.

“So soon you leave me?” The star arrived with his latest accessory. “But I have just found a wonderful man for you to meet. Quite a coincidence. I have brought him over here to you.”

A stranger accompanied Rodolfo, a small, wiry man with quick eyes and a feral smile. His mode of dress, not glamorous but prosperous, made it clear that he was in the Venezuelan government, and well placed at that. More important, as far as McKendry was concerned, the man’s furtive glances and calculating stare showed him to be in a security field—police, military, or something even more useful.

“Don’t think of it as leaving you, Rodolfo.” Keene rolled ther and lengthened the vowels. “Think of us as lost sheep and know we’ll find our way home.”

McKendry stifled a laugh and thought, not for the first time, that his partner should have been in movies.

Keene went on, “But who is your friend here? We haven’t had the pleasure.” He thrust his hand toward the official.

Rodolfo responded as the perfect host. “Ah, my manners. Terris, Joshua, this is Juan Ortega de la Vega Bruzual,ministro de la seguridad . Juan, these are my friends whom I told you about.”

Señor Bruzual’s lips twisted up on one side of his face. “My pleasure,” he said, shaking first Keene’s hand, then McKendry’s.

Music blared from the sound system as more scantily clad dancers rushed onto the stage behind them. Keene leaned in and shouted, “We can’t hear ourselves think here. Why don’t you join us in our suite for a nightcap?”

McKendry considered that a very good idea, now that Rodolfo had finally brought in someone who might have information for them, or at least suggestions on how to proceed. He noticed that Rodolfo seemed very pleased at Keene’s offer and motioned his muscle man to clear them a path out of the nightclub, but Juan Ortega touched the star’s arm and gestured back toward the table where he had been sitting. “But my own guests, Rodolfo. I can’t simply desert them.” The minister looked genuinely stricken, then brightened. “Perhaps…I hate to impose, my friend, but could you entertain them until I return?”

Well maneuvered, McKendry thought, nodding good night to his former employer, who bravely went to join Señor Bruzual’s guests.

The ride up in the glass-enclosed elevator was fast and filled with chitchat between Keene and Señor Bruzual. McKendry, lacking their obvious gift for inane chatter, kept silent.

When they reached the suite, one floor below the top of the towering hotel, the minister got right down to business. While Joshua poured drinks, Bruzual said, “I can tell that you are not men of leisure, that you would prefer to be direct. I have heard of your interest in Green Impact. Why do you seek this terrorist group?”

“We’re actually only interested in one of their members, Selene Trujold.” McKendry took a scotch and water from Keene. No reason to beat around the bush. Bruzual had been apprised of their search.

“Well,” the Venezuelan said, sipping his own drink, “Selene Trujold is not just a member of Green Impact, she is the leader.”

McKendry didn’t want to get sidetracked. “That complicates things a bit. I suppose now you’re going to tell us that Green Impact is no longer operating from the Maracaibo Basin.”

Bruzual’s lip twitched up into his crooked smile, but instead of answering, he asked, “Why do you seek Señorita Trujold?” He sipped his own scotch, obviously savoring it. During the headiest days of the oil boom, Venezuelans had consumed the highest per-capita amount of fine scotch in the world, and their taste for it had not declined despite higher tariffs and import restrictions.

McKendry nodded to Keene, who said, “We’re working with Oilstar. She may have information about a sensitive…item stolen from Oilstar’s labs. We’re here to recover it.”

The security minister nodded. “I have had a task force keeping an eye on Green Impact’s troublesome activities for many years. For the most part, their terrorism has amounted to nothing more than an annoyance. However, two months ago their former leader was found shot along with several security guards at the site of an attempted sabotage in Cabimas. None of the guards had fired their weapons.

“A week later, we received reports of sabotage campaigns in the east led by a woman. Our information shows that Green Impact has gone at least as far as Maturín, and it is said they have an encampment in the Delta Amacuro.”

Keene looked at McKendry. “Just like Frik thought. Not far from Oilstar’s operations between Trinidad and the Venezuelan coast.”

“That is all I can give you.” Bruzual downed his scotch and stood up. “It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen.”

McKendry stood and extended his right hand. “Thank you, Señor Bruzual. We will return the favor.”

“Just bring me Selene Trujold’s head. One of those dead guards was my nephew.”

As the door closed behind the Venezuelan, Keene grinned. “You pack,” he said. “I’ll see about getting us a ride. Should I bring an Enya CD for mood music?Orinoco Flow , maybe?”

“Very funny.” McKendry grimaced at Keene, pulled out his suitcase, and started to pack. His friend was well aware that Terris had turned down a lucrative assignment with the New Age star because he couldn’t stand to listen to her music.

Keene chuckled. “I didn’t think so,” he said, and picked up the phone.

12

Sitting directly behind the pilot of the Cessna they’d hired to fly them from Caracas to Maturín, McKendry had a clear view of the gray ribbons of pipe forming stripes through the woven tapestry of green and brown and tan that was the coastal range. The pipelines delivered crude from the rich Orinoco oil belt in the south over the mountains to refineries in Puerto La Cruz and other cities to the north, on the Caribbean coast.

From his seat, he couldn’t see the vast central plains and forests of the Venezuelan interior, but from Keene’s bored expression and constant attempts to find something to talk about over the growl of the engines, he knew there couldn’t be much excitement down there.

McKendry instead used the time to review their plans. The pattern of Green Impact’s movements made it clear that Selene was attacking targets of opportunity as the terrorists relocated for their campaign against Frikkie and Oilstar. The obvious place for them to hide was the maze of the Orinoco Delta, which lay due south of Trinidad on the east coast of Venezuela. The delta, a vast fan of swampy streams and dense jungles that covered nearly eight thousand square miles, emptied into the ocean across more than a hundred miles of coastline.

The northwestern curve of the delta fan flowed into the Gulf of Paria—where Frikkie had most of his oil wells—and the nine-mile-wide channel known as the Boca de la Serpiente, or Serpent’s Mouth, which separated the southern tip of Trinidad from the Venezuelan mainland. On the map, McKendry thought, the island’s southern peninsula looked like the head of an adder set to strike the giant body of South America.

The snake analogy was not appealing. For all of his daredeviltry, there were two things McKendry preferred not to face: snakes and sharks. There was little he could do about the latter except avoid them, to which end he confined his swimming to lakes and pools. As far as the former were concerned, he habitually wore heavy boots and always carried a fresh snakebite kit in his backpack.

Pausing in his review, he checked to make sure the kit was there.

Deciding that the scenery held no further interest to him, he leaned back, closed his eyes, and napped for the remainder of the trip.

Upon landing, McKendry and Keene hired a truck and a driver to take them from Maturín across the Tonoro River to the Mánamo, on the western edge of the delta.

They kept to the lowlands, to the less-inhabited villages, where they considered it most likely Selene Trujold had gone to ground. They paid with worn bolivar notes to take guided boats up and down some of the delta riverlets—calledcaños by the locals. In U.S. terms, the money they spent amounted to little, but McKendry was aware that their frequent hiring of the poor boat pilots helped the local economy a great deal.

Everywhere they went, Keene and McKendry asked about Green Impact, trying to uncover secret support for the environmental group. They moved in a “drunkard’s walk” pattern across the coast, one day heading up a caño into the interior, the next doubling back down another, tending in an easterly direction, but occasionally circling around to see if their earlier questions had raised any alarms behind them.

They met with no success. Oilstar’s work was the salvation of the local economy. The local Warao Indians did not seem to have much of a global perspective, and it was clear they would not have joined Green Impact’s cause. The same was true of most of the villagers who lived in thatched huts atop stilts in the muddy marshes. They cared little or nothing about protecting the ecology. In fact, many of the taro and yucca farmers were in the process of hacking down rain forests and slashing and burning the land so they could plant crops.

Time trickled by like the water in the languid river, but just like the river, the current of days was deceptive. McKendry, perhaps because he understood the people less, was growing impatient. It annoyed him that his partner seemed perfectly content to go on sitting in dockside cantinas, looking out toward the ocean, or sometimes just under overhanging foliage beneath an awning on a dock beside the river, drinkingmicheladas and asking questions. While they both understood the language, McKendry freely admitted that his partner seemed far more comfortable with the culture.

Eventually, they began to pick up word of a group of radicals headquartered in some unnamed village farther south, a group led by a young woman. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know exactly how to find them.

More likely, nobody gave a damn.

“Damn bugs,” McKendry said as they sat in yet one more cantina eating yet one more plateful of black beans and spicy empanadas filled with an unknown meat from the jungle.

“To them, you’re a necessary part of the food chain,” Keene said, grinning.

Terris pushed the rest of his meal aside and reached for his beer. He was about to make some rude comment when two newcomers entered the cantina.

The owner sat in a chair behind the bar and paid no attention to the strangers, but instinct born of long experience told McKendry to take note of the young white man and his companion. The man marched into the restaurant as if he belonged there. He wore his hair in a long ponytail, a floppy leather hat, and a plaid shirt, and had a guitar in a case slung over his shoulder. Hisindia girlfriend, a short dark-haired beauty, held a tambourine, and spoke not a word.

The young man slipped his guitar case off his shoulder, opened the case on the floor, and eyed McKendry and Keene the way a con man eyes his marks.

McKendry did not change his expression, but Keene sat forward and stared with intense interest. With a preliminary strum of the strings, the young man played and sang, though not particularly well, a Beatles song followed by an old Bob Dylan tune.

“Hey,” Keene called out to him. “Why don’t you play one of those old activist songs, like how the oil companies are wrecking the environment?”

He raised his eyebrows and looked over at his partner. McKendry cleared his throat and nodded.

“How ’bout ‘The Wreck of theExxon Valdez, ’ sung to that old Gordon Lightfoot tune?”

The young man laughed and strummed his guitar. “Well, I’d have to make up the words.”

“That’s all right,” McKendry said.

Joshua Keene fidgeted, but could not contain his impatience. After the young man struggled through half a song, Keene clapped loudly. He tossed a handful of coins into the guitar box. “Say, you wouldn’t know anything about Green Impact, would you?”

The young man stiffened. “That’s a terrorist group, and they’re not terribly welcome around here. Why would I know anything about them?”

“Not saying you do, amigo,” Keene said carefully. “It’s just that we’re looking for Selene Trujold. She’s supposedly one of their members, maybe even their leader.”

“I know of Selene,” the young man said, equally carefully.

“We were friends of her father’s,” McKendry said. “He died a little while ago.”

“Didn’t Selene’s father work for Oilstar, the one with that big faulty rig off the coast between here and Trinidad?”

“The big rig in the Serpent’s Mouth?” McKendry played dumb. “Oh, yeah, theValhalla . What’s wrong with it? I heard that it’s at the top of its form.”

“It—” The young man caught himself. “Well, I hear Green Impact has been claiming the rig is a monstrosity, unstable, a disaster waiting to happen.” He shrugged, flashing an embarrassed smile; his india girlfriend still said nothing.

“Selene’s father was killed by the oil company,” McKendry said. “Paul Trujold was a friend of ours, so we’re not big fans of Oilstar either.”

“I can’t tell you where you can find them in the jungle. Nobody knows that. Only official members. But I hear she’s coming out of hiding real soon now. You’ll see it on the news.” He adjusted his guitar on his knee. “That is, when weget news out here. Green Impact wants to strike back, hit that platform out in the Serpent’s Mouth or an oil tanker in the vicinity or something like that. You know, make a spectacle.” He seemed to catch himself, looked embarrassed. “But other than that, I couldn’t tell you how to find her. Just keep your eyes open.”

“We will,” McKendry said gruffly.

The india girl shook her tambourine in impatience, and the young man looked down meaningfully at the few coins in his guitar case. “Now, do you guys have any other requests? I mean, for a song instead of for information?”

Keene threw another hundred bolivars into the guitar case and requested “Stairway to Heaven.”

McKendry looked at him over their warm cervezas.

Both men knew where they were going next.

“Looking good.” Keene took stock of himself in the bathroom mirror. He ran his fingers around his clean-shaven chin. “You could use a shave yourself, buddy.”

McKendry grinned and elbowed his friend out of the way. He hadn’t shaved since leaving Caracas. His beard, which had always grown fast, was already beginning to take shape.

“Tell me you’re not thinking about growing it again. Remember last time? The good guys took one look at you and thought we were the bad guys….”

Reluctantly, McKendry picked up a razor. It had taken them two days to get back to Caracas. Amazing, he thought, how it always feels like it takes forever to get somewhere and no time flat to get back. Like shaving a beard. Takes forever to grow and comes off in a minute.

When they looked fully presentable again, McKendry called Rodolfo. The actor willingly gave him what he needed—a way to contact Security Minister Bruzual. The minister in turn connected McKendry with the harbormaster in the major refinery city of Puerto La Cruz, where Oilstar’s largest tanker, theYucatán, was currently moored.

The rig actually produced more oil than Frikkie’s facilities on Trinidad could handle, and the refineries at Puerto La Cruz were the closest place he could use to turn a profit from the excess. The complex had been built to take crude from the long pipeline that extended through the deep jungles from the inland Orinoco oil belt. Oilstar had arranged with the Venezuelan government to use the refinery facilities—which had been nationalized in 1976—in order to prepare the offshore crude and send it up to the United States through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Keene—the better linguist—called the captain and made an appointment for them to speak with him, privately and in person.

“Perfect timing.” He put down the phone. “We see Captain Miguel Calisto tomorrow morning while theYucatán offloads. By afternoon she’ll be on her way to refill at Oilstar’s offshore rig,Valhalla, in the Serpent’s Mouth.”

“Now all we need is a way to hitch a ride. Any suggestions?” McKendry sounded dubious.

“Piece of cake,” Keene said. “I’ll explain over breakfast.”

With no further explanation, Keene placed two calls. The first was to Bruzual. All McKendry gleaned from the conversation was that his partner had asked the security minister to send them a fax care of their hotel.

The second call was to Frik on board theAssegai . Again, Keene asked that a fax be sent to them at the hotel, one that urged Captain Calisto to give them all possible assistance.

“Frikkie’s in Grenada,” Keene said after he’d completed the call. “Simon’s flying in today.”

13

Peta was pleasantly surprised when Simon called her before leaving Miami to ask her to pick him up at Grenada’s Point Saline Airport and transport him and his equipment to theAssegai . Given the fact that she had made it so clear that she believed he was risking his life to dive again, now or ever, she had thought he would slip quietly onto and off the island.

Simon was one of the last people to debark. He looked pale and tired.

“How was your flight?” Peta asked.

“Fine until we landed. The pilot must have had a hot date the way he stopped short on the runway.”

“I guess he didn’t want to taxi very far. Lord knows there’s no lack of runway. The Cubans saw to that.”

Simon laughed. “As I recall, they were building it long enough to handle bombers. That’s one of the real reasons why our forces took the revolution seriously, no matter what the president said about the medical students.”

Nodding, Peta said, “Eventually they took it seriously, but not before a lot of good people were killed. Arthur was almost one of them.” She stopped talking and waited for the sudden wave of nausea to pass. Simon was respectful enough not to try to say anything more.

When his gear was loaded and they were pulling out of the airport, Peta said, “I’m going to keep trying to talk you out of this madness, you know.”

“I know, but I’m going to do it anyway, so you might as well stop nagging me about it.”

“If that’s how you feel, Simon, why did you let me know that you were coming?”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t know. Maybe I really did want you to talk me out of this.” He looked at her and sighed. “Or maybe I just wanted to have the most beautiful woman in Grenada chauffeur me around. Not doing too much else with women these days, not even the ugly ones.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Peta said, though in fact she did believe him.

Simon changed the subject. “I’d like to see the Rex Grenadian,” he said, referring to a large resort near the airport, one of the newest on the island. “Could we stop in for a drink?”

Peta hesitated. Simon’s color was awful. Positively gray. “You probably shouldn’t be drinking.”

“You’re not my nursemaid,” he said. He sighed again, loudly. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” He thankfully paused a moment while she negotiated one of the dangerous roundabouts along the two-lane strip of concrete called the Maurice Bishop Highway, and headed down the side road that would lead them to the nearby resort.

When they were safely driving through the small patch of palms and mahoganies that separated the northern beaches of Point Saline from the airport, Simon said, “It’s about Arthur. I didn’t have a chance in New York to tell you how sorry I was, not really. We’re sailing tonight. I’d like to talk about him a little. Have a chance to—”

“You’ll have Frik around. You can do that with him.” Instantly she was angry with herself for her tone.

“Frik doesn’t believe in mourning the dead.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess it was my turn to get snippy.” Peta swerved to the left to avoid a water truck heading back to the main road, and turned onto the Rex Grenadian’s driveway.

The resort fronted on two beaches. One of them had no name that she could recall. The other was Parc a Boeuf Beach. Where they had found such an ugly name for so magnificent a stretch of sand was a mystery to Peta and everyone else. The hotel was frequented mainly by rich Americans; the Europeans preferred to be on Morne Rouge Bay or Grand Anse Beach. The Rex boasted a man-made, lushly landscaped three-acre lake, complete with aesthetically placed islands and waterfalls, as well as three restaurants, and an attentive staff.

All in all, it was an excellent facility for the traveler who was looking for a place to enjoy the tropical climate without having to interact with the people who actually lived there. Because it was too expensive to be a local hangout, it was not so Grenadian that you couldn’t shut your eyes and imagine yourself on almost any tropical island.

Sitting at the resort’s poolside bar, staring out over the Caribbean, Peta listened to Simon talk about his memories of the man she loved. She didn’t nag him again about the dive or the drinking. It was obvious that he was feeling his own mortality very acutely.

A couple of hours later, she delivered a considerably more mellow Simon into Frikkie’s hands.

14

“Port of Spain is busier every time I see it,” Simon said, admiring how gracefully Frik eased the sleek 120-footAssegai into its berth at the private docks. Despite the residual effects of the lab accident to his left hand—and with the help of twin screws which made maneuvering easier—he operated the throttles with surgical skill.

Frik turned and grinned through the shade under the brim of his battered Panama hat. Barefoot, in white slacks and white shirt, he looked every inch the patrician yachtsman. “The busier the better,” he said.

“Do I take that to mean you own a piece of the action?”

Another grin. “A big piece.”

Just what Frikkie needs, Simon thought, looking around at the tankers and container-laden freighters that clogged the harbor and dwarfed the yacht. Another revenue stream.

In contrast to his host, Simon wore torn sneakers, raggedy cutoffs, and a profoundly ugly red-and-orange Hawaiian shirt—the uglier the better was his rule. With his bull frame and short silver hair, he’d been mistaken all over the world for Brian Keith by people blithely unaware that the actor had killed himself back in 1997. Thanks in large part to satellite TV, old shows and old stars seemed to live forever. He never disabused these folk of their mistaken notion, especially if they were female. Amazing how free women became with their favors in the presence of celebrity.

Simon tipped up the brim of his olive drab boonie cap, a concession to the skin of his face and ears, which was proving a gold mine for the dermatological profession, some of whose members were putting their kids through school as a result of all the little cancers they’d carved from his hide. Well, what could you expect after a lifetime in the tropical sun?

That sun hung hot and bright in the immaculate morning sky; the water lay calm below; a gentle briny breeze kept them cool on the afterdeck: a day to savor. But then, every day was a day to be savored when you’d been told time and again that you wouldn’t have too many left unless you changed your ways. And what changes were those? Oh, not many, simply eliminate everything that elevated daily life from mere existence to something worth looking forward to.

Simon caught the eye of Frik’s man Friday and held up his glass, rattling the cubes. “Another Bloody, if you please, Saaliim. There’s a good lad, and make this one light…onthe tomato juice, if you get my drift.”

Saaliim grinned as he took the glass. “I hear you clear, Mr. Brousseau.”

“How many is that?” Frik said, staring at Simon.

“I haven’t been counting.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be cutting down?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

Frik pursed his lips. “I have my sources.”

“Find new ones,” Simon grumbled. “Yours are full of shit.” He hid his annoyance by accepting the fresh Bloody Mary from the silver tray Saaliim proffered. He sipped, savoring the tang of the beef bouillon Saaliim always added to his pepper-laden tomato juice, and toasted the Honduran. “My compliments to the chef.”

Three doctors now, four if you counted Peta, had told him the same thing: Take your prescriptions, cut the booze to two drinks a day, watch the saturated fats, drop thirty pounds, limit yourself to less energetic sex, and substitute snorkeling—which Simon had always thought of assnore keling—for scuba.

In other words, live small.

Simon didn’t know how, nor did he wish to learn. Unless medical science took several giant leaps, he was going to die anyway, so why not go the way he had lived.

“Hell, Frikkie, just because I’m fifty-eight doesn’t mean I’m ready for a nursing home.”

“You’re sixty-two, Simon, and I didn’t mean—”

“I’m fine,” he said, taking another gulp of his drink. “Fit as a fiddle—a frigging Stradivarius.”

Yeah. One that’s been run over by a truck.

According to the docs, he might be in his early sixties, but he had the heart of a man in his early eighties, and had to act accordingly—not run around like a guy in his thirties. He was suffering from a bad case of the ups and downs, with everything going in the wrong direction: his cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure all up, his erections down. If he took his nitroglycerin on schedule, he could get through most activities, even sex, without chest pain; trouble was he couldn’t get it up for sex without a dose of Viagra, but mixing Viagra and nitro will kill you. So what he’d do was skip the nitro and pay for an orgasm with the sensation of a bull elephant camping on his chest.

Getting old sucked.

“At least you stopped smoking.”

Simon nodded. “Wasn’t easy, but it got so every time I lit up it felt like the Marlboro cowboy’s horse was taking a dump in my lungs, so I tossed them.”

Frik laughed. “Simon Brousseau, ever the epitome of earthy.”

“Yes, well, I’ve always believed in calling a spade a shit shovel,” Simon responded, though he wasn’t entirely sure how to take Frik’s comment. At times like this he wished he’d had a little more education. Not that he regretted for an instant dropping out of Florida State, but when he was around people like Frik and Arthur and even Peta, and they’d mention the title of a book or recite a line from a play or a poem that he’d never read, he felt left out. He’d been boning up on Shakespeare—had a book of the Bard’s plays in his duffel, in fact—but he was a long way from feeling comfortable with the strange sound of centuries-old English.

Maybe that was why he found the underwater world so alluring, and kept returning to it as often as he could. No subtexts with undersea life: if you’re not looking for a meal you’re trying to avoid becoming one.

He guessed growing up in Key West was a contributing factor too. He’d spent his youth living half a dozen feet above sea level, surrounded by reefs teeming with a mind-boggling array of life in a dazzling variety of shapes and colors that drew people from all over the world. Graduating from snorkeling to scuba at age eight, he was guiding tourists on a dive boat by the time he was twelve. Working as a salvage diver between his frosh and sophomore year, he along with a buddy found the wreck of theSanta Clara . The long-forgotten galleon wasn’t a treasure ship, but Simon’s share of the salvaged jewelry and doubloons was enough to set him up in his own salvage business and make returning to college seem like a waste of time.

He’d kept going after deeper and deeper wrecks, and when the available equipment and gas mixes weren’t up to the job, he made his own modifications. Over the years the income from the patents on those innovations had left him a wealthy man. At age thirty he’d sold his business to become a scuba bum, hiring out for diving jobs that challenged his equipment and his nerve, and exploring the diving meccas of the world: off Yap, in the South Pacific, he’d gazed up in wonder from the sea floor at the schools of manta rays parading above; he’d hitched rides on the whale sharks of Ningaloo Bay; and, until two years ago, he’d held the deep-sea depth and endurance records.

Along the years he’d done a number of extreme dives for Frik, which eventually led to his induction into the club.

“Okay, down to business,” Simon said, placing his empty glass on Saaliim’s silver tray. “What haven’t you told me about these doodads and the contraption they’re part of?”

“Not much. And I think you’ll better appreciate them if I show you rather than simply tell you.”

As Frik led the way down the dock toward the parking lot, Simon heard quick footsteps padding up behind him.

“Excuse me?”

He turned to find a thirtyish brunette wearing a well-stuffed CCNY T-shirt and a bikini bottom.

“Mr. Keith,” she said, smiling as she thrust her right hand forward; she held a pen and a cocktail napkin in her left. “I’msuch a big fan of yours. Would it be too much to ask you for your autograph?”

Simon glanced around as he shook her hand. He leaned close and spoke in a half whisper. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let this get around. I’m here scouting locations for a hush-hush project.”

She lowered her voice to his level. “Really?”

“And when Stevie gets here, he’ll want a little space.”

“Stevie Wonder?”

“No.” Simon lowered his voice further. “Spielberg.”

“Ohmygod!” Her pale blue eyes widened as her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh! My! God!”

“Shhh!” he whispered, glancing around again and taking the pen and napkin from her. “Mum’s the word.” He scribbled something that might pass for “Brian Keith” on the napkin and passed it back to her. “Here. Write your name and number on the corner there and I’ll give you a call when I get back in a couple of days.”

“Sure.” Her hand trembled as she wrote. She tore off the corner and handed it to him. “Really. Call me.”

He glanced at the scrap, then gave her a lopsided grin. “Will do, Lori. Talk to you soon.”

At the end of the dock he found Frik waiting by an idling dark green Hummer. “Who was that?”

“Just another of my many fans.” He feigned astonishment as Frik slipped behind the wheel. “What? No driver?”

“Like with my boats, I prefer to drive my own cars,” Frik said. “And besides, with no extra set of ears around, we can talk.”

“Can it wait? I’m not in the mood for talk right now.” The potent Bloodies had relaxed him into a deliciously dreamy haze.

The Afrikaner nodded, and Simon leaned back into his seat to watch Port of Spain’s squares, parks, and surreal mix of Catholic churches, Muslim mosques, and Hindu and Jewish temples slip past the window. By the time they drove into the wooded uplands, he had tugged his cap down over his eyes and leaned back in the seat for a little siesta.

He awakened with a start as a loud thump was followed by Frik’s shouted curses and the feel of the seat belt cinching across his chest. The Humvee jerked to a stop.

“Goddamn bastards!”

Simon straightened himself and looked around. They were on the outskirts of a little village. The reason for the sudden braking was splattered all over the hood and windshield. At first he thought they’d hit a small animal, but he soon realized what the yellow-orange pulp dotted with black BB-sized seeds really was. Someone had pelted them with an overripe papaya.

The Hummer’s heavy-duty wipers and windshield washers made quick work of the mess, and soon they were on their way again. As they roared through the village, Simon noticed an occasional raised fist and more than a few angry looks.

“I take it that piece of fruit didn’t drop from a tree.”

“Superstitious Trini clods,” Frik said, eyes straight ahead.

“May I also assume it’s not Humvees they’re superstitious about?”

“It’s the drill site. They’ve got some local legends about the Dragon’s Mouth. They think drilling into the bottom there will offend the Obeahman and bring bad luck to the island.”

Simon nodded. His years in the Caribbean had taught him a little about Obeah, though it was a much less well-known superstition than voodoo or Santeria. An Obeahman was a kind of sorcerer or shaman who controlled spirits which he could put into objects, like fetishes, and make them do his will.

Simon’s one memorable encounter with an Obeahman was on Jamaica, where a buddy had almost hit one of them walking along the side of the road. The man threw something, which hit the car, and a moment later the engine sputtered and died. No matter what his friend did, the car wouldn’t start. He had a mechanic tear the damn thing apart and put it back together like new, but it still wouldn’t work. Finally, he tracked down the Obeahman and gave him two dozen chickens as penance. After that, the car never so much as backfired.

“Did you know this beforehand?”

“Of course.”

“But you went ahead and drilled anyway.”

“This is the twenty-first century, Simon. About time they moved into at least the twentieth, don’t you think?”

“And you’re going to move them?”

“My civic duty.”

Simon smiled and shook his head. Typical Frikkie logic. If he wanted something, he could always find a rationale for why he should have it. The rest of the picture was coming into focus.

“So that’s why you need me: the local boys say no way, José.”

“I could find somebody,” Frik said. “Haven’t met a superstition yet that’s proof against the right amount of cold hard cash. But I need someone comfortable in deep water. And most of all I need someone I can trust implicitly.”

Simon appreciated the last remark, but he was more interested in the one before it.

“How deep?”

“Not sure. The drill broke into the cavern about seventy feet below the floor, and the floor is an average of one hundred and twenty feet down.”

Simon nodded. That meant an operating depth of two hundred or more, at over eight atmospheres of pressure—just the kind of dive the docs had warned him against. But what did they know? They weren’t divers. He’d done it before.

“I’ll need mixed gases, a tri-mix.”

Frik glanced at him. “What’s that?”

“A deep-diving nitrox mix that lowers your oxygen for the bottom time, and raises the other gases. You have to know what you’re doing, lowering one gas, raising the other. You couldn’t breathe that mix at the surface…. It would kill you.”

“I’ll have all the tanks you’ll ever need waiting on the platform.”

Frik turned off the road and stopped before a heavy wrought-iron gate with “Oilstar” arching above it. The guard waved from his narrow kiosk as the gates swung open, and they were on the move again. He swerved the vehicle to a stop before a row of low white stucco buildings, and led Simon into the first.

After rattling off a string of orders to a male secretary—one of them arranging for tri-mix at the drill site—he motioned Simon around behind his large mahogany desk. A few taps on his keyboard popped an array of thumbnail photos onto his computer screen.

“These are scans and three-D models of the artifacts,” Frik said, clicking on each to enlarge them.

Four objects filled the screen in succession, each more bizarre than the last. The final scan showed all four locked together into some weird-looking shape. Frik hit a key, and the shape began to rotate in three dimensions. Simon didn’t know much about art, but this looked like something Picasso might have pieced together. Or Dali.

“Why scans? Where’s the real thing?”

“The one piece I have of it is under guard.”

“It’s that valuable?”

Frik shrugged. “Not sure yet. I won’t know until I have all five pieces and fit them together.”

“And the fifth is somewhere in an undersea cavern.” He shook his head. “Christ, why don’t you fly me to the Chesapeake and ask me to find one particular oyster.”

“Oh, come now,” Frik said, grinning. “It’s not that bad. This will be a piece of cake for someone like you.”

Simon stared at the rotating assemblage. Something about each piece had bothered him, but the aggregate was even worse. He had a feeling that finding the final piece might not be such a good thing.

15

Simon checked his depth gauge: the arrow lay just a hair to the far side of the 130 mark. Even at this depth he was comfortable in a 1.5-mm dive skin.

He looked around. The light level was decent, typical for this depth, though the true colors of the fish and coral were washed out. Sunlight’s spectrum got pretty well bleached out after struggling through 130 feet of water.

He’d hoped he’d be diving the cavern through the bore hole, much like descending the limestone cenotes in the waters of the Yucatán, but the hole was too small and there was no hope of widening it any further. So he went hunting for the natural entrance to the cavern. He found it, a dark, narrow, anemone-fringed opening in the wall of a rift in the continental shelf. The wall was encrusted with sponges, guzzling the fringe of the Guyana Current as it swept nutrients up from Venezuela’s Orinoco River.

Simon also found the missing diver, Abdul. A rock the size of a Porsche Boxster—loosened by the drilling, perhaps?—had slipped from the wall above the opening and crushed him. The crabs and yellowtails had been snacking on his exposed flesh, but his mask was still fastened around his head, sparing his wide-open, milky eyes. Their empty gaze brought back a few lines he’d just read inThe Tempest :

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes….

Simon shuddered and looked away. A sight like that could make you believe in the Obeahman. Empty sockets would have been better.

The stone had also partially blocked the mouth of the entrance. The opening that remained might admit a child but never an adult, especially one of Simon’s girth.

Which meant the stone had to be moved. And since the local labor pool consisted of himself and one curious green sea turtle, that meant it was up to him.

After a thorough inspection, he found a spot where he could wedge himself between the rock and the rift wall. It meant disturbing some sponges and dislodging some of the smaller clinging sea life, something Simon loathed doing. The Caribbean reefs took enough abuse without his adding to it.

But he had no choice.

With knees bent almost to his chest, his flippers against the rock and his back against the wall, he took a deep breath and kicked out with everything he had. After half a minute of straining, he felt the rock move. Heartened, he found a little extra strength and increased his effort.

Slowly, moving a fraction of an inch at a time, the rock began to tilt away from him. Simon squeezed shut his eyes and, shouting into his regulator’s mouthpiece, pushed even harder.

And then he stopped, gasping as a crushing weight slammed against his chest. He opened his eyes and wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the rock had fallen back on him, pinning him to the wall. But no, the rock was falling away, tumbling end over end in slow motion toward the floor of the rift. The pain was coming from his heart. He could feel that battered old pump pounding out an irregular beat, thudding in his ears as his vision wavered.

He slowed his lungs, taking deep, measured breaths, hoping his heart would follow suit, and cursing himself for being so careless as to have left behind his backup nitros, the fast-acting sublingual tablets for when his angina broke through the extended-release pills.

As he prayed for the pain to ease, proving this wasn’t the Big One, motion to his left caught his eye.

Abdul, free of the entrapping rock, was pulling away from the wall and gliding toward Simon. His face came closer, his dead wide eyes staring into Simon’s as if to say,Join me…Join me ….

With his face close enough to kiss, Abdul turned away. His bloated body began a slow ascent, belly first, arms and legs dangling behind, returning at last to the world of air and light it had departed.

Just as slowly, the crushing weight lifted from Simon’s chest. His heart slowed. Just angina. A bad attack, but the 40 percent oxygen in his tanks had helped.

He pushed away from the wall and stared at the now wide-open passage into the cavern. No way. Not today. He didn’t have the strength. He’d make up an excuse for Frikkie, tell him about the stone, tell him he’d used up too much daylight moving it, tell him he’d finish the job tomorrow under the high morning sun, tell him anything except the truth about his heart.

Not that his health would prompt Frik even to consider calling off the dive.A shark bit off your left leg? So? The right one still works. Get back down there and find me that fifth piece!

No, it was no one else’s business.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d find Frik’s damn doodad with no problems, no complications.

Right now what he needed was a drink.

Weak, tired, and perhaps even a little depressed, Simon shot a bolus of air into his vest and began a controlled ascent.

16

McKendry and Keene walked confidently along the docks in Puerto La Cruz, fostering the impression that they knew where they were going. At the terminal, the giant tankerYucatán rested far enough offshore that the long walkway looked like a tiny bridge that extended hundreds of yards out into the muddy green water. Pipes paralleled the walkway, heading from the port and the tank farm, the fractionating towers, and the smelly refinery equipment that had turned what must have been a beautiful jungle coastline into an industrial nightmare.

Bleed-off gas flames burned and hissed from the tops of derricks, and gasoline trucks drove around, taking a small fraction of the production to Venezuelan markets. Other tankers came into the port to fill up and redistribute the petroleum products, but theYucatán used the facilities in reverse. It brought fresh crude from the offshore rig to the refineries, rather than hauling separated petroleum of different grades away from the port and to other customers.

Passing a poorly guarded chain-link gate, McKendry strode behind Keene down the walkway, listening to the water lap against the pilings—a peaceful sound compared to the chaos of inland refineries.

“Let’s get this set up as soon as we can,” Keene called out. “We’ve got better things to do.”

McKendry marched forward with determined strides. He saw his partner look back and cover a smile, doubtless Keene’s response to the way he always took everything so seriously.

On the way out to the deck of the tanker, a bored-looking security guard stopped them, probably more suspicious of the two because they were white-skinned Americans than for any other reason. Keene invoked the only name that would matter to the man. “We have an appointment with Miguel Calisto. El capitán? Comprende?”

The guard scowled, but waved them onward.

After they had walked across a deck as big as several football fields and climbed six flights of rickety metal stairs that led up alongside the crew housing and habitation areas, McKendry and Keene stood on the bridge deck.

Within moments, the first mate approached them. “You are not allowed up here.”

Keene said again that they had a meeting scheduled with the captain. Eventually, the mate conceded and led them to the captain’s quarters.

Miguel Calisto was a ruddy-skinned man whose long pointed chin was graced with a scouring pad of a beard. A rim of dark hair surrounded the gleaming bald spot on the back of his head like a crown. He listened to what the two men had to say, but exhibited no patience with them whatsoever.

“Your request is most audacious,” the tanker captain said, choosing to speak English. He narrowed his eyes and sat down at his small desk in the cramped ready room off the bridge. “TheYucatán is not a passenger ship. We don’t give rides to curiosity seekers. My crew is not here to pamper Americans.”

“On the contrary,” McKendry said, remembering the too-soft beds and too-garish nightclubs they had endured in Caracas. “We don’t want to be pampered.”

“Amen,” Keene muttered.

“In fact, we don’t even want the rest of your crew to know we’re aboard. We’d rather find a corner down in the pump room or the engine control room. Keep ourselves out of the way where no one can see us. We’re investigating a potential…threat.”

“Top secret,” Keene added.

“I’m afraid that is not possible,” the captain said. His lips became thin and hard, like the slash of a scowl. “Yes, indeed. Most impossible.”

McKendry looked at the man, trying to discern whether he was opening a door to a large bribe or if he simply enjoyed playing hard to get. Calisto seemed honestly indignant, with no interest in providing passage for the two men, regardless of the circumstances.

Keene stepped in, speaking in the man’s own language. “We understand your position, Captain. However, this is a serious political matter. I’m sure that you understand the delicacy of the arrangements between Oilstar and the Venezuelan government. If anything should happen to interfere with that…relationship, many people could be out of jobs.”

“Show him the faxes,” McKendry said.

Keene took out letters from Juan Ortega de la Vega Bruzual for the Security Ministry, and Fredrick Van Alman for Oilstar, both of which firmly requested cooperation “in whatever these two gentlemen desire.”

The captain sighed. “Politics!” He practically spat out the word.

“If you wish, we will pass on your reluctance to Minister Bruzual”—McKendry could see by his flinch that Calisto recognized the security minister’s name—“and arrange for you to discuss the matter with him. However, he’s a busy man and may not take too kindly to being disturbed.”

“I’d prefer to know more about your…activities,” the captain said. “What are you trying to do?”

Keene’s nostrils flared. “I will have Señor Bruzual contact you. You will be able to ask him as many questions as you like, provided you still have a job.”

The captain gave best. “What is it you want of me?”

McKendry saw his partner’s relief. “We need to go with you to theValhalla platform and return here, if necessary.”

“Why?”

“Yours is not to reason why.”

McKendry shot Keene a look to tell him to let up a little.

“After we load from theValhalla platform, I’m going up to the Caribbean next,” the captain said. “Not back to Puerto La Cruz.”

“Wherever.” Keene shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll manage.”

“There’s a utility closet down in the pump room. No one goes there except for maintenance, and we’re not due for any. You’re welcome to stay there. Sleep if you can.” Calisto reached up to point at a chart on the wall, a large and detailed map of the Venezuelan coast and the Caribbean.

“We’ll head out of here in an hour and make our way around the Araya Peninsula between the coast and la Isla Margarita”—the captain’s finger traced a line along the northeastern coast of Venezuela—“around the Paria Peninsula through the Dragon’s Mouth”—his finger passed through the narrow patch of blue between the point of the Venezuelan coast and the northern edge of Trinidad—“down the Gulf of Paria and into the Serpent’s Mouth to theValhalla platform.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Keene said.

The captain looked at him as if he believed he was not all there. “Remember the map well, because you won’t have a view. There are no windows in the pump room.”

“We’re not tourists,” McKendry said.

The captain nodded. “Very well. There will be a new moon tonight. We will arrive at the pumping station at approximately ten o’clock. Most of my crew take a boat over to theValhalla for their replacements. Until then, you are to stay in your quarters. Around midnight they should all be out of the way and you can safely come out on deck.”

17

After countless hours hidden in the cramped metal-walled crawl space down in theYucatán ’s pump room, Keene’s idea of what was and wasn’t reasonable had undergone a 180-degree change. The passage so far had been long and dreary, with nothing to see, no creature comforts, and too much time for reflection. He would have liked to play a card game or even do something as simple-minded as tic-tac-toe.

Anything to keep himself from thinking about Arthur. By now, after so many years and so many adventures in the Daredevils Club, it should have been easy to accept the death of a member—par for the course. But it was never easy. Were it not for this confinement, the loss of Arthur would have come in sharp stabs of pain, engendered not so much by memories as by sights and sounds that reminded him of his friend. Out of deference to his partner, who was perfectly content to spend the time in silent contemplation, he did not suggest any trivial amusements.

The droning engines stopped a little after eleven-thirty as the tanker pulled up to theValhalla ’s secondary pumping pier. Keene glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. “Nearly two hours late. Our Captain Calisto seems to be a true Venezuelan. Mañana, mañana…What do you say we give them half an hour to anchor themselves and get the crew off before we wander up and take a look around?”

McKendry didn’t answer.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Keene said.

This time, McKendry’s answer was a light snore.

As Keene fidgeted impatiently, an idea began to take form. By midnight, it had become a plan. He tore a page out of the small notebook he carried in his pocket. Using a red felt pen he’d found on the floor, he wrotemidnight at the top of the page. Then he wrote a brief note to McKendry, who would be awakened soon enough by the silence of the engines:

Always wanted to piss into the wind from a great height so I’m swimming over to the rig to play King of the Hill. If you can’t see me swimming back by 2 a.m., start worrying.

He threw the pen aside, placed the note where McKendry was sure to see it upon waking, and, groping his way up the metal staircase, left their quarters. Practiced in moving stealthily without losing time, he made his way up the seven decks to the bulkhead door that opened onto the sprawling main deck of the tanker.

Once outside, he took a welcome breath of fresh, albeit humid, air and looked around.

The empty supertankerYucatán was anchored under quicksilver starlight in a calm black sea, about a quarter of a mile from the monolithic offshore oil-production platform. The rig itself stood like a skyscraper on the ocean, raised up out of the water on four enormous concrete piers like stilts. The platform’s tall derrick, numerous cranes, helipad, and flare boom rode several hundred feet above the water. The long shaft through its center plunged down into the sea bottom like the proboscis of a voracious mosquito.

Keene had once invested a small amount of money in offshore drilling. The investment had led to a significant amount of reading for which, he thought, he was presently grateful. Without that, he would not have had the vaguest understanding of what was going on. Because of it, he knew that theValhalla rig pumped crude oil from strata deep beneath the sea, but did not bring it up into the big platform itself; instead, the fresh crude was shunted to a pipeline laid across the ocean floor toward a separate derrick, a stand-alone pumping station to which the oil tanker was secured.

On a crane high above the secondary platform, heavy nozzles dangled downward. With the cargo holds of theYucatán open beneath them like the gaping mouths of hungry birds, the crude oil from theValhalla rig gushed out of the nozzles, filling the numerous interconnected but compartmentalized chambers that made up the bulk of the tanker.

TheYucatán had a double hull, an outer shell to avoid punctures of the inner compartments—extremely conservative efforts designed to prevent disastrous oil spills. The crude petroleum poured out from the pumping platform at an enormous flow rate, but even so it would take many hours to fill the supertanker. The respite gave plenty of time for most of theYucatán ’s crew members to shuttle over to the relative metropolis of theValhalla rig.

Keene was struck by how much the tanker’s deck looked like the Great Plains, only uglier. The expanse was dirty and stained, a long series of riveted metal plates studded with hatches and vent chimneys. Lines of different colors—red, blue, and yellow—were painted in patterns across the deck, zone demarcations of some sort. The hieroglyphics were too large for anyone to make out at this level. He figured that they were something like the lines and roads Incas had made in the South American plains, depicting giant shapes visible only from high-flying aircraft.

The crane holding the hoses from the pumping substation extended down into the prow’s main hatch, pouring into the primary tank holds. Behind them, the tall nine-deck structure of the bridge housing and habitation levels looked the size of an office complex. Lights blazed from the windows, gleaming up on theYucatán ’s radar mast and the long cable of the radio antenna.

Keene fixed his gaze on the huge structure of theValhalla platform a quarter mile away. Holding the tanker’s deck rail, he stared at the rig—a dazzling cluster of lights riding high above the gentle Caribbean waves. A torch of natural gas blasted from the end of the flare tip which extended on a long derrick far from the rest of the structure. A tall derrick stood like the Eiffel Tower in the center of the airport-sized deck.

When he saw a challenge like that, he had to go for it. The central derrick was the highest thing around. He wanted to touch it, the way a kid reaches for the star on the top of the Christmas tree. McKendry would say he was thinking crazy—which was true. On the other hand, that was what he was good at.

Keene stripped to his shorts. He climbed down the metal ladder on the outer hull of theYucatán and plunged into the tropical waters. The water was calm and warm, and the tanker and the production rig were huge landmarks even under the pallid moonlight. A powerful swimmer, he estimated that he could relax and cross the distance in less than twenty minutes.

Just enough to work up a little sweat, he thought, interrupting his steady, gentle strokes to tread water so that he could look up at the star-studded night sky. Neither the weather nor the distance concerned him. Unlike McKendry, he didn’t have a problem with whatever critters inhabited the depths of these Caribbean waters.

He recalled one time on Lake Tahoe. A couple of dancers had taken the two of them on one of those boat tours around the lake. About halfway around, one of the women took it into her head to move to the rail and yell, “Shark!”

To give him his due, McKendry hadn’t been the only one to go on automatic and suspend disbelief. However, while the others moved to the rail on a shark watch, McKendry paled and moved farther away from it.

Time to get over it, buddy, Keene thought, laughing out loud. As far as he was concerned, if he couldn’t outswim a shark for a mere quarter of a mile, then he wasn’t much of a swimmer.

Stroke after stroke after stroke.

Doing nicely, Keene thought, a little surprised despite himself. He was feeling the effort in his muscles, but that was to be expected. It had been some time since he or McKendry had done any serious exercise. His partner would feel the strain every bit as much.

Closing in on theValhalla platform, thinking about his partner, Keene became aware of the sleek death of sharks swimming below. The idea, he admitted to himself, was not exactly pleasant. He wanted to believe that the noise and chemical leakage and higher temperatures from the offshore structure would drive away such predators, but he knew differently. Part of his education as a short-term investor had taught him that the environment around oil platforms was a boon for fish, and with the increased schools living among the concrete support pillars, he supposed that sharks might also hang out in the better feeding grounds.

He increased his speed, and was happy to reach the shadow of the platform and pull himself up to the metal rungs alongside the fat elephant leg of the pier. Better not rest here, he told himself. You look like somebody’s midnight snack. He grasped the rungs and scrambled up, not stopping until he was ten feet out of the water.

Access ladders led up the concrete support legs to the main platform. He looked at the long line of rungs waiting for him. It was quite a way to climb, especially if he wanted to make it to the top of the central derrick in good time.

He climbed higher, to the underpart of the main platform. It hung like a broad airplane hangar above him. Lifeboats dangled under the deck; in an emergency, they could drop a hundred feet down to the sea. Keene recalled having read somewhere that more people were killed during oil rig safety drills testing out the hazardous systems than had ever been hurt in other kinds of accidents on oil rigs.

He listened to the waves echoing in the superstructure, looked at the immense core of theValhalla, and found himself awed that something this huge could be built in a harbor and towed out to sea to be anchored elsewhere.

“Moving on up,” he said into the wind.

He began to climb again. Once he reached the undercarriage of the main platform, he followed catwalks, ascended metal steps, ducked through hatches until he stood on the main deck.

A helipad covered a large, flat circle atop the main platform. Next to that was an oil-processing area filled with huge tanks and a nightmare maze of piping. Radio masts and cranes protruded like spines from the rig.

At any moment, Keene expected to be stopped by a security patrol, but the platform supervisors were ridiculously complacent in their security. The pumps and generators hummed and clanked, making loud sounds in the night, but he met no one. Most of the blazing lights he had seen from a distance seemed to be for decorative purposes only, except for the natural blowtorch off to the side; the flare tip hissed and blasted its perpetual flame, removing excess natural gas from the operations.

Keene sprinted across the platform deck toward the central derrick, which stood like a skyscraper in the middle of theValhalla . He could have taken an elevator, of course, but that would have been too easy. And too noisy. Even sleeping security guards could be awakened if the noise was loud enough. Instead, he took the winding ribbon of metal stairs around and around the iron latticework of the structure, heading toward the narrow tip that supported the rig’s central production shaft and pipe.

Panting heavily, dripping with sweat, he reached the top platform. The sultry breeze brushed his sweaty chest. Between breaths, he could hear the whispers and clatter of the rig’s superstructure, the thrumming guide wires and anchor cables holding the various portions in place. A searchlight beacon flashed around and around in a slow strobe, signaling low-flying aircraft of the danger.

He stood in silence, grinning at the night and gripping the rails. Under stormy seas, he thought, this place must dance like a hiccuping marionette. He looked around the top level. Like a crow’s nest on an old sailing ship, it was adorned with the spikes of lightning rods and radio towers.

He raised his fist in the air and gave a short yelp of triumph. “I’m King of the Hill.”

Good as that felt, it was not enough to gratify Keene. Still needing completion, he went to the edge, pulled down his shorts, and urinated. Then, grinning and satisfied, he sat down, leaned against the rails, and fell asleep.

The sound of an insomniac seagull woke him from his nap. Not until the third successive squawk did it occur to him that the gull was McKendry, at the bottom of the derrick.