Kronos

16

Gulf of Maine-Aboard the Titan

Serrated teeth tore through flesh, rending sinew and vessel, crushing bones and doing a precise job at what they were designed to do-kill.

Atticus watched in amazement as white membranes slid over the obsidian eyes of the great white shark tearing into a tuna. He’d seen great whites feeding, as well as many other sharks, but never… never in the Gulf of Maine, nor a shark so enormous.

“It’s at least thirty feet long!” Atticus stood at what he now knew was a pane of glass looking out at the undersea world below the waterline.

“Twenty-eight, actually,” replied Trevor, who was now standing beside Atticus, watching the shark.

“You’re feeding it?” Atticus had seen the live tuna fall into the water, dazed and tired. It hadn’t stood a chance against the ocean’s greatest predator. Second greatest predator, Atticus reminded himself.

“Indeed. The little beastie is something of a pet, really.” Trevor placed his hand against the glass as the great white tore the fish in half and gulped it down. “Good girl, Laurel.”

“Laurel?”

Trevor smiled. “Named after a flower actually. Sheep laurel, a nasty little flower also known as Lambkill. It’s extremely poisonous and kills scores of sheep to be sure, and should a human ingest the flower, or worse, honey made from the flower, it is quite deadly. We’re lambs to the slaughter when it comes to Laurel,” he finished with a snicker.

Atticus watched as the massive shark polished off the tuna. He nodded. “A fitting name. But how is this possible…and why?”

“We spotted Laurel five years ago, in deep Pacific waters. She was quite big, even then, and for our amusement, we fed her. Her appetite was, as you’ve seen, voracious, and she followed us. We’ve been feeding her ever since.”

“But why would you want…”

“Protection, good doctor. This boat contains a wealth greater than that of many nations, and there are many who would love nothing more than to pilfer what is mine. Laurel does a nice job of stopping anyone who might attempt an underwater insertion.”

“I would imagine so,” Atticus said, picturing how he would feel encountering this giant underwater. “Does it work?”

Trevor smiled wide. “There have been a few times when she refused her breakfast. I can only assume she had her fill the night before. I cannot say whether she ate some poor fellow or not, but she has grown accustomed to her slow-moving meals. She never gives chase to healthy fish. If it moves fast, she won’t bother.”

Atticus made a mental note to not fall overboard, then turned his attention to Trevor. “What interest does the fifth richest man in the world have with a marine biologist?”

“I thought that would be very clear, Dr. Young.”

“Atticus will do.”

“Very well,” Trevor motioned to the chairs. “Please, sit.” They sat in the chairs, which were very comfortable. Atticus felt his body sink in, and, for the first time in days, his muscles relaxed. There was something about the room, being underwater yet not, that filled him with wonder while allowing him to lower his defenses.

On the coffee table, Atticus smiled upon finding two Sam Adams resting in a silver wine cooler, packed in ice. Based on Trevor’s invitation to tea, his thick British accent, and his almost feminine hand gestures, he expected to see a set of bone china with Earl Grey and crumpets.

Trevor read his expression. “I may be a Brit, but American cuisine tickles my fancy. Please, help yourself.”

Atticus pulled a bottle from the ice and popped the top with his teeth.

“Oh ho!” Trevor clapped. “A real man’s man!” He then produced a bottle opener from his pocket. “A much more civilized approach, don’t you think?” Trevor took the second beer, popped the top with a grunt, and drank greedily from the bottle.

Atticus wondered how such a diminutive man could drink like a college frat boy. Trevor was a living monochrome, black and white, day and night. Further study of the man would have to wait. There were more important issues at hand. “You were about to tell me why I’m here?”

Trevor placed the now-empty beer on the coffee table and sighed. “Ah yes.” He crossed his legs and placed his hands delicately on his knee. “Well, quite frankly, I’m bored.”

Atticus raised an eyebrow.

“Not right now, mind you. I meant to say I was bored, until I heard about your predicament…In no way do I mean to overlook your tragic loss, but this creature has stirred feelings in me I have not felt since I first laid eyes on the ocean as a child. I want to find the creature, Dr. Young. I want to find it and kill it.”

“Why kill it?”

“Well, you obviously have your reasons…but mine, I’m afraid, are much more selfish. Please, come with me.” Trevor stood with a grin. “To fully appreciate my goals, it would be best for you to see the collection.”

Atticus polished off the beer, retrieved his duffel bag, and followed Trevor to the door. He was led past the Easter Island sculpture and down a long hallway. The hallway, which wound in a wide arc, had doors along the right side, but the left was blank. Trevor led the way, humming joyfully to himself. Then the hall widened and opened into a grand foyer. Double staircases led down from the deck above and ended at three sculptures of hauntingly beautiful women. In every way the women were perfect, clothed only in formfitting robes. Their upper torsos displayed firm-looking breasts. Their slightly agape mouths showed full lips and supported high cheekbones. But their hair…snakes, coiled and twisting. And below the waist, where there should have been long, sumptuous legs, tightly coiled serpentine bodies reached the floor. “Medusa,” Atticus whispered.

“Only one of them,” Trevor said as he unlocked a pair of double doors with a skeleton key. Another oddity, Atticus noted. Most of the security on the ship thus far had been top-of-the-line stuff-voice-, retina-, and fingerprint-activated. Yet here, in the man’s most prized room, the contents were protected by a simple skeleton key. “The other two are named Stheno and Euryale; quite attractive really. They guard the collection.”

With fervor, Trevor pushed the two doors open, revealing a massive room beyond. It stretched for one hundred feet in either direction and stood four stories tall. But it wasn’t the size of the room that was most impressive. It was the absolute beauty of what it contained.

Atticus entered with wide eyes, taking in every morsel. Hanging on the walls were paintings he recognized from Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Picasso-famous paintings-the sort that hung in the Louvre, yet there they were, displayed as though they were the real thing. Again, Trevor seemed to read his thoughts, though Atticus imagined that everyone who saw the collection thought the same thing.

“They’re all real, I assure you,” Trevor said.

Atticus stood in front of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, beautiful in every way, even more impressive than the version the world adored. Atticus felt dwarfed by the fifteen-by-twenty-nine-foot painting. “The other is a fake?”

“Oh no,” Trevor said, clearly tickled to be able to explain, “They’re both quite real. But the one displayed at convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie is merely a practice run for the real thing…a very detailed practice run, mind you, but not the final product. Da Vinci would have known that tempera on gesso, pitch, and mastic wouldn’t last. This final version is oil on canvas, a much more durable…and vibrant medium. Don’t you think?”

Atticus nodded, his jaw slightly slack. He’d seen photos of The Last Supper and had never been that impressed, but this…this was a true masterpiece. He turned his attention toward the rest of the room. There were statues-Roman and Greek gods. A miniature version of the Sphinx, yet more complete than its famous companion in the Egyptian desert and sporting a lion’s head, stood alongside an ornately engraved obelisk. A variety of smaller artifacts from all over the world, the greatest treasures of mankind, lined the insides of several long glass cases. An entire portion of cave wall, covered in primitive pictographs, stood mounted, dark and brooding. Atticus stood before it, trying to decipher the meaning, but the images jumbled in his mind, impossible to glean any meaning at all.

“It’s quite possibly one of the earliest pictographs in the world.” Trevor stood next to Atticus.

“What does it mean?”

“Not a clue.” Trevor smiled. “Everyone who looks at it regardless of education and experience, is immediately confounded. O’Shea believes it was written when the Tower of Babel was built. God jumbled the world’s languages at the time and apparently its artwork as well. Can you imagine if everyone you spoke to was as confusing to hear as this wall is to gaze at?”

Atticus had seen more amazing things in the room than most men would in a lifetime, and yet Trevor had said he was bored. Could the man really have exhausted his interest in what he’d already collected? Rather than ask, Atticus moved to the center of the room, where the oldest, most unusual figure, the centerpiece of the space stood. A skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex and a triceratops locked in battle. The scene looked like something straight out of a children’s dinosaur book, except that the animals were real.

“There are two distinctions to be made between what you see here and what you find at your local museum,” Trevor announced. “First, these are very real. Both are full skeletons, complete in every way.”

Atticus’s mind whirled. He knew there were several T. rex specimens in the world, but he hadn’t heard of any complete specimens though he’d always assumed they existed.

“Most skeletons seen in museums are reproductions of the few complete samples, which are kept safe in climate-controlled warehouses and laboratories. Second…” Trevor moved in close and rested his hand on one of the Tyrannosaur’s tibia. “Here, Atticus, you can touch!”

Atticus moved in close, past Trevor’s gleaming smile, and rested his hand on a cool fibula of the world’s most fearsome land predator. A chill ran through his body. This creature had once lived, once breathed and eventually died on the planet earth. Looking up into its open jaw, seeing its large, pointed teeth, only reassured him that what he’d seen in the ocean, what he’d watched devour his daughter, was real. He removed his hand from the bone and locked eyes with Trevor. “You want to add it to your collection?”

“Precisely.”

“Dead?”

Trevor nodded.

“And what makes you think you can?”

Trevor smiled. “Because of this ship. While in appearance it is but a pleasure boat, I assure you, the Titan packs more than enough firepower to bring down a U.S. battle group, let alone a single flesh-and-blood creature. You’ll have considerably more at your disposal than that small arsenal you have packed in your bag there.”

It was Atticus’s turn to smile. He liked Trevor Manfred, despite what the media said about him, and the man was the best chance he had for exacting his revenge. There was only one question that remained unanswered. “Why me? If you have everything you need to find and kill the creature, you don’t need me.”

“That is where you are wrong, Atticus. Every great sea hunt needs its Ahab.”

“Then I’m here to entertain you, is that it?”

“‘Entertain’ is a harsh word.” Trevor pursed his lips for a moment. “You raise the stakes. For you this is personal. The emotions are real. I’m afraid that I’ve become too distant from the rest of the world to have any real human connections. It’s so rare that I experience emotions such as loss, despair, or rage. Consider it a moral lesson for me, an experience by proxy through a man with deeper convictions than mine.

“Plus there is the added bonus that you are an expert oceanographer, you’ve encountered the beast and lived…and you’re past…well; you know how deadly a man you are. To be honest, I’m not sure that we could accomplish our goal without you, even with the amount of technology at our disposal. One man possessed, as Ahab was, can do more to turn the tide against the wild than a cruise missile, though we will do our best to help you avoid Ahab’s fate.”