Riptide

Chapter 30

By midnight the ocean had taken on the kind of oily, slow-motion swell that often came after a summer blow. Hatch stood up from his desk and went to the Quonset hut window, moving carefully through the darkened office. He stared past the unlit huts of Base Camp, looking for lights that would indicate the coroner was finally on his way. Lines of spindrift lay in ghostly threads across the dark water. The rough weather seemed to have temporarily blown the fog from the island, and the mainland was visible on the horizon, an uncertain strand of phosphorescence under the star-strewn sky.

He sighed and turned from the window, unconsciously massaging a bandaged hand. He'd sat alone in his office as the evening turned to night, unwilling to move, unwilling even to turn on the lights. Somehow, the darkness made it easier to avoid the irregular shape that lay on the gurney, under a white sheet. It made it easier for him to push back all the thoughts and quiet whispers that kept intruding onto the edges of his consciousness.

There came a soft knock and the turn of a door handle. Moonlight framed the spare outline of Captain Neidelman, standing in the doorway, He slipped into the hut and disappeared into the dark shape of a chair. There was a scratching noise, and the room briefly flared yellow as a pipe was lit; the faint sounds of drawing smoke reached Hatch's ears a moment before the scent of Turkish latakia.

"No sign of the coroner, then?" Neidelman asked.

Hatch's silence was answer enough. They had wanted to bring Wopner to the mainland, but the coroner, a fussy, suspicious man who had come down all the way from Machiasport, insisted on moving the body as little as possible.

The Captain smoked in silence for several minutes, the only evidence of his presence the intermittent glow from the pipe bowl. Then he laid the pipe aside and cleared his throat.

"Malin?" he asked softly.

"Yes," Hatch replied, his own voice sounding husky and foreign in his ears.

"This has been a devastating tragedy. For all of us. I was very fond of Kerry."

"Yes," said Hatch again.

"I remember," the Captain went on, "leading a team working deepwater salvage off Sable Island. The graveyard of the Atlantic. We had six divers in a barometric pressure chamber, decompressing after a hundred-meter dive to a Nazi sub loaded with gold. Something went wrong, the seal of the chamber failed." Hatch heard him shifting in his chair. "You can imagine what happened. Massive embolisms. Blows apart your brain, then stops your heart."

Hatch said nothing.

"One of those young divers was my son."

Hatch looked at the dark figure. "I'm very sorry," he said. "I had no idea . . ." He stopped. I had no idea you were a father. Or a husband. In fact, he really knew next to nothing about Neidelman's personal life.

"Jeff was our only child. The death was very hard on both of us, and my wife, Adelaide—well, she couldn't quite forgive me."

Hatch fell silent again, remembering the stark outline of his own mother's face that November afternoon they learned of his father's death. She had picked up a china candlestick from the mantelpiece, polished it absently with her apron, replaced it, then picked it up and polished it again, over and over, her face as gray as the empty sky. He wondered what Kerry Wopner's mother was doing at that moment.

"God, I'm tired." Neidelman shifted again in his chair, more briskly this time, as if to force himself awake. "These things happen in this business," he said. "They're unavoidable."

"Unavoidable," Hatch repeated.

"I'm not trying to excuse it. Kerry was aware of the risks, and he made that choice. Just as we all did."

Despite himself, Hatch found his eyes straying involuntarily to the misshapen form under the sheet. Dark stains had seeped through the material, ragged black holes in the moonlight. He wondered if Wopner really had made the choice.

"The point is"—the Captain lowered his voice—"we must not let this defeat us."

With an effort, Hatch pulled his eyes away. He sighed deeply. "I suppose I feel the same way. We've come this far. Kerry's death would be even more pointless if we abandoned the project completely. We'll take the time we need to review our safety procedures. Then we can—"

Neidelman sat forward in his chair. "The time we need? You misunderstand me, Malin. We must move forward tomorrow."

Hatch frowned. "How can we, in the wake of all this? For one thing, morale is rock-bottom. Just this afternoon I heard a couple of workers outside my window, saying the whole venture's cursed, that nobody will ever recover the treasure."

"But that's exactly why we must press on," the Captain continued, his voice now urgent. "Stop the malingering, make them lose themselves in their work. It's not surprising people are rattled. What would you expect after such a tragedy? Talk of curses and supernatural folderol is a seductive, undermining force. And that's really what I'm here to discuss."

He moved his chair closer. "All these equipment troubles we've been having. Everything works just fine until it's installed on the island, then inexplicable problems crop up. It's caused us delays and cost overruns. Not to mention the loss of morale." He picked up his pipe. "Have you thought about a possible cause?"

"Not really. I don't know much about computers. Kerry didn't understand it. He kept saying there was some kind of malevolent force at work."

Neidelman made a faint sound of derision. "Yes, even him. Funny that a computer expert should be so superstitious." He turned, and even in the dark Malin could feel his stare. "Well, I have been giving it a lot of thought, and I've come to a conclusion. And it's not some kind of curse."

"What, then?"

The Captain's face glowed briefly as he relit his pipe. "Sabotage."

"Sabotage?" Hatch said incredulously. "But who? And why?"

"I don't know. Yet. But it's obviously someone in our inner circle, someone with complete access to the computer system and the equipment. That gives us Rankin, Magnusen, St. John, Bonterre. Perhaps even Wopner, hoisted on his own petard."

Hatch was secretly surprised that Neidelman could talk so calculatingly about Wopner with the programmer's broken body lying only six feet away. "What about Streeter?" he asked.

The Captain shook his head. "Streeter and I have been together since Vietnam. He was petty officer on my gunboat. I know you and he don't see eye-to-eye, and I know he's a bit of an odd duck, but there's no chance he could be the saboteur. None. Everything he has is invested in this venture. But it goes deeper than that. I once saved his life. When you've been at war, side by side in combat with a man, there can never be a lie between you."

"Very well," Hatch replied. "But I can't think of a reason why anyone would want to sabotage the dig."

"I can think of several," said Neidelman. "Here's one. Industrial espionage. Thalassa isn't the only treasure hunting company in the world, remember. If we fail or go bankrupt, it would open the door to someone else."

"Not without my cooperation."

"They don't know that." Neidelman paused. "And even if they did, minds can always be changed."

"I don't know," Hatch said. "It's hard for me to believe that..." His voice trailed off as he remembered running into Magnusen the day before, in the holding area where artifacts were catalogued. She had been examining the gold doubloon found by Bonterre. At the time, he'd been surprised: the engineer, normally so controlled and devoid of personality, had been staring intently at the coin, a look of raw, naked desire on her face. She'd put it down quickly when he entered, with a furtive, almost guilty movement.

"Remember," the Captain was saying, "there's a two-billion-dollar fortune to be won here. Plenty of people in this world would shoot a liquor store clerk for twenty dollars. How many more would commit any crime, including murder, for two billion?"

The question hung in the air. Neidelman stood up and paced restlessly in front of the window, drawing heavily on his pipe. "Now that the Pit's been drained, we can reduce our workforce by half. I've already sent the sea barge and the floating crane back to Portland. That should make the job of security easier. But let us be clear about one thing. A saboteur may well be at work. He or she may have tampered with the computers, in effect forcing Kerry to join our team this morning. But it was Macallan who murdered Kerry Wopner." He turned suddenly from the window. "Just as he murdered your brother. The man has reached across three centuries to strike at us. By God, Malin, we can't let him defeat us now. We will break his Pit and take his gold. And the sword."

Hatch sat in the dark, a host of conflicting feelings welling up in him. He had never quite looked at the Pit in those terms. But it was true: Macallan had, in a way, murdered his innocent brother and the almost equally innocent computer programmer. The Water Pit was, at base, a cruel, cold-blooded engine of death.

"I don't know about any saboteur," he said, speaking slowly. "But I think you're right about Macallan. Look at what he said in his last journal entry. He's designed that Pit to kill anyone who tries to plunder it. That's all the more reason to take a breather, study the journal, rethink our approach. We've been moving too fast, way too fast."

"Malin, that's exactly the wrong approach." Neidelman's voice was suddenly loud in the small office. "Don't you realize that would play right into the saboteur's hands? We have to move ahead with all possible speed, map out the interior of the Pit, get the support structures in place. Besides, every day we delay means more complications, more hindrances. It's only a matter of time before the press gets wind of this. And Thalassa is already paying Lloyd's $300,000 a week in insurance. This accident is going to double our premiums. We're over budget, and our investors aren't happy. Malin, we're so close. How can you suggest we slow down now?"

"Actually," said Hatch steadily, "I was suggesting we knock off for the season and resume in the spring."

There was a hiss as Neidelman sucked in his breath. "My God, what are you saying? We'd have to take down the cofferdam, re-flood the whole works, disassemble Orthanc and Island One— you can't be serious."

"Look," said Hatch. "All along, we've assumed that there was some key to the treasure chamber. Now we learn that there isn't. In fact, it's just the opposite. We've been here three weeks already. August is almost over. Every day we stay increases the chance of a storm bearing down on us."

Neidelman made a dismissive gesture. "We're not building with Tinkertoys here. We can ride out any storm that comes along. Even a hurricane, if it comes to that."

"I'm not talking about hurricanes or sou'westers. Those kinds of storms give three or four days' warning, plenty of time to evacuate the island. I'm talking about a Nor'easter. They can swoop down on this coast with less than twenty-four hours' notice. If that happened, we'd be lucky just to get the boats into port."

Neidelman frowned. "I know what a Nor'easter is."

"Then you'll know it can bring crosswinds and a steep-walled sea even more dangerous than the swell of a hurricane. I don't care how heavily it's been reinforced—your cofferdam would be battered down like a child's toy."

Neidelman's jaw was raised at a truculent angle; it was clear to Hatch that none of his arguments was making any headway. "Look," Hatch continued, in as reasonable a tone as he could muster. "We've had a setback. But it isn't a showstopper. The appendix may be inflamed, but it hasn't burst. All I'm saying is that we take the time to really study the Pit, examine Macallan's other structures, try to understand how his mind worked. Forging blindly ahead is simply too dangerous."

"I tell you we may have a saboteur among us, that we can't afford to slow down, and you talk to me of blindness?" Neidelman said harshly. "This is exactly the kind of pusillanimous attitude Macallan counted on. Take your time, don't do anything risky, piss your money away until nothing's left. No, Malin. Research is all very fine, but"—the Captain suddenly lowered his voice, but the determination in it was startling—"now's the time to go for the man's jugular."

Hatch had never been called pusillanimous before—had never even heard the word used, outside of books—and he didn't like it much. He could feel the old hot anger rising within him, but he mastered it with an effort. Fly off the handle now, and you'll wreck everything, he thought. Maybe the Captain's right. Maybe Wopner's death has me rattled. After all, we've come this far. And we're close now, very close. In the tense silence, he could make out the faint whine of an outboard coming over the water.

"That must be the coroner's launch," Neidelman said. He had turned back toward the window, and Hatch could no longer see his face. "I think I'll leave this business in your hands." He stepped away and headed toward the door.

"Captain Neidelman?" Hatch asked.

The Captain stopped and turned back, hand on the knob. Although Hatch could not make out his face in the dark, he could feel the extraordinary force of the Captain's gaze, directed inquiringly toward him.

"That sub full of Nazi gold," Hatch went on. "What did you do? After your son died, I mean?"

"We continued the operation, of course," Neidelman answered crisply. "It's what he would have wanted."

Then he was gone, the only mark of his visit the faint smell of pipe smoke, lingering in the night air.