Dourado

CHAPTER 9

The Dourado had definitely been salvaged, though they went through the motions of excavating the wreck. By the end of the day, they had found only a few more coins, a statuette, and a few pieces of china. The statuette, in Kaylin's opinion, was further proof that this was the Dourado.

“It's definitely Middle-Eastern,” she said. “It's very likely something that would have been found in Rienzi's collection.”

The following morning, they mapped out their plan to search for the remaining artifacts. Utilizing the same program with which he had predicted the location of the Dourado, Jimmy had provided them with a chart that plotted the probable location of the remaining artifacts from the Dourado’s cargo. The search area was a crescent-shaped swath that swept down in an east-southeast arc from the initial wreck site to the spot where the ship had come to rest.

Dane inspected the chart and shook his head. It was a large area to cover, with artifacts possibly spread thin across the sea floor. He was beginning to feel discouraged, but knew that a negative attitude would kill morale.

“We'll make our way to the wreck site keeping to the center of the target zone.” His finger traced a path through the middle of the shaded area, up to Pedra Branca. “We'll run both the side scan sonar and the wave spectrometer, which ought to give us a unique signature for the different objects on the bottom. Once we get to Pedra Branca, we'll take stock of the readings we took along the way, and start our grid in the most promising place.”

“Let's do it,” Corey said enthusiastically. He was still excited over their success the previous day in locating the wreck.

The others nodded their heads, but Dane could read the skepticism in their faces: skepticism that he shared.

Dane looked out at the rocks of Pedra Branca, so named because of the massive quantities of seagull guano that had colored them permanently white. These very same rocks had claimed the Dourado. Somewhere between this spot and the ship's watery grave, he hoped, lay the sword of Goliath.

The readouts they had taken along the way had not painted a hopeful picture. Admittedly, it was only a narrow strip in a wide swath of search area, but the lack of positive hits was worrisome. His cell phone buzzed against his thigh, and he answered it with an annoyed voice.

“Yeah?” he snapped.

“Dane, how's the fishing?” Jimmy asked.

“Haven't caught a thing.”

“Want to know why?” the hacker’s voice had an odd ring to it, almost as if Jimmy were taunting.

Dane closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled and forced himself to relax. Jimmy could be annoying. A byproduct, Dane supposed, of spending too much time at a computer terminal. “Jim, I'm tired and more than a bit hacked off right now.”

“Fine, I'll start making sense. When you asked me to do some checking on the Dourado, I spread out the parameters of the search a bit. You remember how the captain claimed that there was half a million dollars on board?”

“Yes,” Dane said.

“Well, I checked on the colonial governor who reported the finding of the Dourado off the shore of Bintan. Seems that not long after the salvage efforts came up short, he found himself one quarter of a million dollars richer, and living high on the hog back in England.”

Dane perked up. This was starting to get interesting.

“Next, I followed up on the captain, a Francisco Covilha. He retired to America, a rich man. Settled in New York, and became a benefactor to several museums. Guess what he donated?”

“Artifacts from the Holy Land,” Dane groaned. “The son of a gun was in on it with the governor. They hoodwinked Rienzi and made off with everything.”

“That's the bad news. The good news is, I can't find any record of a Middle-Eastern sword turning up on the collections of any of the museums he supported.”

“So either he held on to it,” Dane mused, “or it's still somewhere on the bottom of the ocean.”

“Want to hear the weirdest part of all?”

“Not really.” Dane didn't think he could take any more of Jimmy's weird news.

“Just for a lark, I ran his name through Nexus, and I got a hit.”

Dane felt as if he had been plunged into an icy bath. He sat down clumsily on the deck. His legs were suddenly too weak to support him. “But, Nexus searches current periodicals. For Covilha's name to show up in Nexus means…” He paused, trying to get a handle on his thoughts. “Where did his name turn up?”

“In a small item buried in the New York Post. Someone robbed his grave.”