Riptide

Chapter 32

As site doctor for the Ragged Island venture, Hatch was required to handle the red tape relating to Wopner's death. So, bringing in a registered nurse from downcoast to watch the medical hut, he locked up the big house on Ocean Lane and drove to Machiasport, where a formal inquest was held. The following morning, he left for Bangor. By the time he finished filling out the reams of archaic paperwork and returned home to Stormhaven, three working days had passed.

Heading to the island that same afternoon, he soon felt more confident he'd made the right decision in not challenging Neidelman's decision to press on. Though the Captain had been driving the crews hard over the last several days, the effort—and the exhaustive new precautions the teams had been taking since Wopner's death—seemed to have dispelled much of the gloom. Still, the pace was taking its toll: Hatch found himself attending to almost half a dozen minor injuries during the course of the afternoon. And in addition to the injuries, the nurse had referred three cases of illness among the crew to him: a fairly high count, considering that the total personnel on the island had now dropped to half the original number. One complained of apathy and nausea, while another had developed a bacterial infection Hatch had read about but never seen. Yet another had a simple, nonspecific viral infection: not serious, but the man was running a pretty good fever. At least Neidelman can't accuse him of malingering, Hatch thought as he drew blood for later testing on the Cerberus.

Early the next morning, he wandered up the trail to the mouth of the Water Pit. The pace was obviously frantic—even Bonterre, emerging from the Pit with a handheld laser for measuring distances, barely had time for more than a nod and a smile. But a remarkable amount of work had been accomplished. The ladder array was now fully braced from top to bottom, and a small lift had been attached to one side for quick transport into the depths. A technician told him that the soundings and measurements of the Pit's interior were now almost complete. Neidelman was nowhere to be found, but the technician said the Captain had gone practically without sleep for the last three days, closeted in Orthanc, directing the gridding-out of the Pit.

Hatch found himself speculating on what the Captain would do next. It wasn't surprising, his throwing himself into his work in the wake of Wopner's death. But now the obvious tasks were almost done: the ladder array was complete, and the Pit would soon be fully mapped. Nothing remained except to descend the Pit and dig—with extreme caution—for the gold.

Hatch stood silently for a minute, thinking about the gold and what he would do with his share. A billion dollars was a stupendous amount of money. Perhaps it was unnecessary to put the entire sum into the Johnny Hatch Foundation. It would be hard even to give away such a sum. Besides, it would be nice to have a new boat for his berth in Lynn. And he found himself recalling a beautiful, secluded house on Brattle Street, close to the hospital, that was for sale. He also shouldn't forget that someday he would have children. Was it right to deprive them of a generous inheritance? The more he thought about it, the more it made sense to keep back a few million, perhaps as much as five, for personal use. Maybe even ten, as a cushion. Nobody would object to that.

He stared down into the Pit a moment longer, wondering if his old friend Donny Truitt was on one of the teams working somewhere in the dark spaces beneath his feet. Then he turned and headed back down the path.

Entering Island One, he found Magnusen in front of the computer, her fingers moving rapidly over a keyboard, mouth set in a disapproving line. The ice-cream sandwich wrappers and discarded circuit boards were gone, and the crowded racks of computer equipment, along with their fat looping cables and multicolored ribbons, had been placed in severe order. All traces of Wopner had vanished. Looking around, Hatch had the illogical feeling that the rapid cleanup was, in some strange way, a slight against the programmer's memory. As usual, Magnusen continued her work, completely ignoring Hatch.

He looked around another minute. "Excuse me!" he barked at last, feeling unaccountably gratified at the slight jump she gave. "I wanted to pick up a plaintext transcript of the journal," he explained as Magnusen stopped typing and turned to look at him with her curiously empty face.

"Of course," she said evenly. Then she sat, waiting expectantly.

"Well?"

"Where is it?" she replied.

This made no sense. "Where is what?" Hatch asked.

For a moment, Hatch was certain a look of triumph flitted over the engineer's face before the mask descended once again. "You mean you don't have the Captain's permission?"

His look of surprise was answer enough. "New rules," she went on. "Only one hardcopy of the decrypted journal is to be kept in Stores, not to be signed out without written authorization from the Captain."

Momentarily, Hatch found himself left without a response. "Dr. Magnusen," he said as calmly as possible, "that rule can't apply to me."

"The Captain didn't mention any exceptions."

Without a word, Hatch stepped over to the telephone. Accessing the island's phone network, he dialed the number for Orthanc and asked for the Captain.

"Malin!" came the strong voice of Neidelman. "I've been meaning to drop by to find out how everything went on the mainland."

"Captain, I'm here in Island One with Dr. Magnusen. What's this about me needing authorization to access the Macallan journal?"

"It's just a security formality," came the reply. "A way to keep the plaintext accounted for. You and I talked about the need for that. Don't take it personally."

"I'm afraid I do take it personally."

"Malin, even I am signing out the journal text. It's to protect your interests as much as Thalassa's. Now, if you'd put Sandra on, I'll explain to her that you have permission."

Hatch handed the phone to Magnusen, who listened for a long moment without comment or change of expression. Wordlessly she hung up the phone, then reached into a drawer and filled out a small yellow-colored chit.

"Hand this to the duty guard over in Stores," she said. "You'll need to put your name, signature, date, and time in the book."

Hatch placed the chit in his pocket, wondering at Neidelman's choice of guardian. Wasn't Magnusen on the Captain's shortlist of saboteur suspects?

But in any case, in the cold light of day the whole idea of a saboteur seemed very far-fetched. Everyone on the island was being extremely well paid. Some stood to gain millions. Would some saboteur jeopardize a sure fortune over a larger, but very uncertain one? It made no sense.

The door swung open again and the tall, stooped form of St. John entered the command center. "Good morning," he said with a nod.

Hatch nodded back, surprised at the change that had come over the historian since Wopner's death. The plump white cheeks and the cheerful, smug look had given way to slack skin and bags beneath reddened eyes. The requisite tweed jacket was unusually rumpled.

St. John turned to Magnusen. "Is it ready yet?"

"Just about," she said. "We're waiting for one more set of readings. Your friend Wopner made rather a mess of the system, and it's taken time to straighten everything out."

A look of displeasure, even pain, crossed St. John's face.

Magnusen nodded at the screen. "I'm correlating the mapping teams data with the latest satellite images."

Hatch's eyes traveled to the large monitor in front of Magnusen. It was covered with an impossible tangle of interconnected lines, in various lengths and colors. A message appeared along the bottom of the screen:

Restricted video feed

commencing 11:23 EDT on Telstar 704

Transponder 8Z (KU Band)

Downlink frequency 14,044 MHZ

Receiving and Integrating

The complex tangle on the screen refreshed itself. For a moment, St. John stared at the screen wordlessly. "I'd like to work with it for a while," he said at last.

Magnusen nodded.

"Alone, if you don't mind."

Magnusen stood up. "The three-button mouse operates the three axes. Or you can—"

"I'm aware of how the program works."

Magnusen left, closing the door to Island One behind her without another word. St. John sighed and settled into the now-vacant chair. Hatch turned to leave.

"I didn't mean for you to go," St. John said. "Just her. What a dreadful woman." He shook his head. "Have you seen this yet? It's remarkable, really."

"No," Hatch said, "What is it?"

"The Water Pit and all its workings. Or rather, what's been mapped so far."

Hatch leaned closer. What looked like a nonsensical jumble of multicolored lines was, he realized, a three-dimensional wireframe outline of the Pit, with depth gradations along one edge. St. John pressed a key and the whole complex began to move, the Pit and its retinue of side shafts and tunnels rotating slowly in the ghostly blackness of the computer screen.

"My God," Hatch breathed. "I had no idea it was so complex."

"The mapping teams have been downloading their measurements into the computer twice a day. My job is to examine the Pit's architecture for any historical parallels. If I can find similarities to other constructions of the time, even other works of Macallan's, it may help us figure out what booby traps remain and how they can be defused. But I'm having a difficult time. It's hard not to get swept away by the complexity. And despite what I said a minute ago, I have only the faintest conception of how this contraption works. But I'd rather swing from a gibbet than ask that woman for help."

He struck a few keys. "Let's see if we can clear away everything but the original works." Most of the colored lines disappeared, leaving only red. Now the diagram made more sense to Hatch: He could clearly see the big central shaft plunging into the earth. At the hundred-foot level, a tunnel led to a large room: the vault where Wopner was killed. Deeper, near the bottom of the Pit, six smaller tunnels angled away like the fingers of a hand; directly above, a large tunnel climbed sharply to the surface. There was another narrow tunnel angling away from the bottom, plus a small array of side workings.

St. John pointed to the lower set. "Those are the six flood tunnels?"

"Six?"

"Yes. The five we found, plus one devilish tunnel that didn't expel any dye during the test. Magnusen said something about a clever hydrological backflow system. I didn't understand half of it, to be honest." He frowned. "Hmm. That tunnel right above with the gentle slope is the Boston Shaft, which was built much later. It shouldn't be displayed as part of the original works." A few more keystrokes, and the offending tunnel disappeared from the screen.

St. John glanced quickly at Hatch, then looked back at the screen again. "Now, this tunnel, the one that angles toward the shore—" He swallowed. "It isn't part of the central Pit, and it won't be fully explored for some time yet. At first, I thought it was the original back door to the Pit. But it seems to come to a waterproofed dead end about halfway to the shore. Perhaps it's somehow linked to the booby trap that your brother..." His voice trailed off awkwardly.

"I understand," Hatch managed to say, his own voice sounding dry and unnaturally thin to his ears. He took a deep breath. "They're making every effort to explore it, correct?"

"Of course." St. John stared at the computer screen. "You know, until three days ago I admired Macallan enormously. Now I feel very differently. His design was brilliant, and I can't blame him for wanting his revenge on the pirate who abducted him. But he knew perfectly well this Pit could just as easily kill the innocent as the guilty."

He began rotating the structure again. "Of course, the historian in me would say Macallan had every reason to believe Ockham would live long enough to come back and spring the trap himself. But the Pit was designed to live on and on, guarding the treasure long after Ockham died trying to get it out."

He punched another key, and the diagram lit up with a forest of green lines. "Here you can see all the bracing and cribbing in the main Pit. Four hundred thousand board feet of heart-of-oak. Enough to build two frigates. The structure was engineered to last hundreds of years. Why do you suppose Macallan had to build his engine of death so strong? Now, if you rotate it this way—" He poked another button, then another and another. "Damn," he muttered as the structure began to whirl quickly around the screen.

"Hey, you're going to burn out the video RAM if you twirl that thing any faster!" Rankin, the geologist, stood in the doorway, his bearlike form blotting out the hazy morning light. His blond beard was parted in a lopsided smile.

"Step away from that before you break it," he joked, closing the door and coming toward the screen. Taking St. John's seat, he tapped a couple of keys and the image obediently stopped spinning, standing still on the screen as if at attention. "Anything yet?" he asked the historian.

St. John shook his head. "It's hard to see any obvious patterns. I can see parallels here and there to some of Macallan's hydraulic structures, but that's about it."

"Let's turn it around the Z-axis at five revolutions per minute. See if it inspires us." Rankin hit a few keys and the structure on the screen began rotating again. He settled back in his chair, threw his arms behind his head, and glanced at Hatch. "It's pretty amazing, man. Seems your old architect may have had some help with his digging, in a manner of speaking."

"What kind of help, exactly?"

Rankin winked. "From Mother Nature. The latest tomographic readings show that much of the original Pit was already in place when the pirates arrived. In natural form, I mean. A huge vertical crack in the bedrock. That might even have been the reason Ockham chose this island."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"There's a huge amount of faulting and displacement in the metamorphic rock underlying the island."

"Now I'm sure I don't understand," Hatch said.

"I'm talking about an intersection of fault planes right under the island. Planes that got pulled apart somehow."

"So there were underground cavities all along?"

Rankin nodded. "Lots. Open cracks and fractures running every which way. Our friend Macallan merely widened and added as needed. But the question I'm still struggling with is, why are they here, under this island only? Normally, you'd see that kind of displacement on a wider scale. But here it seems restricted to Ragged Island."

Their talk was interrupted as Neidelman stepped into the hut, He looked at each of them in turn, a smile flicking across his face, then vanishing again. "Well, Malin, did Sandra give you the permission chit?"

"She did, thanks," Hatch replied.

Neidelman turned toward Rankin. "Don't stop on my account."

"I was just helping St. John here with the 3-D model," Rankin said.

Hatch looked from one to the other. The easygoing geologist suddenly seemed formal, on edge. Has something happened between these two? he wondered. Then he realized it was something in the way Neidelman was looking at them. He, too, felt an almost irresistible urge to stammer out excuses, explanations for what they were doing.

"I see," Neidelman said. "In that case, I have good news for you. The final set of measurements has been entered into the network."

"Great," Rankin said, and tapped a few more keys. "Got it. I'm integrating now."

As Hatch watched the screen, he saw small line segments being added to the diagram with blinding speed. In a second or two, the download was complete. The image looked much the same, though even more densely woven than before.

St. John, looking over the geologist's shoulder, sighed deeply. Rankin hit a few keys and the model began spinning slowly on its vertical axis once again.

"Take out all but the very earliest structures," St. John said.

Rankin tapped a few keys and countless tiny lines disappeared from the image on the screen. Now, Hatch could see just a depiction of the central Pit itself.

"So the water traps were added toward the end," Neidelman said. "Nothing we didn't already know."

"See any design elements common to Macallan's other structures?" Rankin asked. "Or anything that might be a trap?"

St. John shook his head. "Remove everything but the wooden beams, please." Some more tapping and a strangely skeletal image appeared against the blackness of the screen.

The historian sucked in his breath with a sudden hiss.

"What is it?" Neidelman asked quickly.

There was a pause. Then St. John shook his head. "I don't know." He pointed to two places on the screen where several lines intersected. "There's something familiar about those joints, but I'm not sure what."

They stood a moment, a silent semicircle, gazing at the screen.

"Perhaps this is a pointless exercise," St. John went on. "I mean, what kind of parallels can we really hope to find to Macallan's other structures? What buildings are ten feet across and a hundred forty plus feet tall?"

"The leaning tower of Pisa?" Hatch suggested.

"Just a minute!" St. John interrupted sharply. He peered more closely at the screen. "Look at the symmetrical lines on the left, there, and there. And look at those curved areas, one below the other. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were transverse arches." He turned toward Neidelman. "Did you know the Pit narrowed at the halfway point?"

The Captain nodded. "From twelve feet across to about nine at the seventy-foot level."

The historian began to trace points of contact across the wireframe model with his finger. "Yes," he whispered. "That would be the end of an upside-down column. And that would be the base of an interior buttress. And this arch, here, would concentrate mass distribution at one point. The opposite of a normal arch."

"Would you mind telling us what you're talking about?" Neidelman said. His voice was calm, but Hatch could see sharp interest kindling in his eyes.

St. John took a step away from the monitor, his face full of wonder. "It makes perfect sense. Deep and narrow like that. . . and Macallan was a religious architect, after all..." His voice trailed off.

"What, man?" Neidelman hissed.

St. John turned his large calf eyes to Rankin. "Rotate the Y-axis 180 degrees."

Rankin obliged, and the diagram on the screen rotated into an upside-down position. Now the outline of the Water Pit stood upright, frozen on the screen, a glowing red skeleton of lines.

Suddenly there was a sharp intake of breath from the Captain.

"My God," he breathed. "It's a cathedral."

The historian nodded, a triumphant smile on his face. "Macallan designed what he knew best. The Water Pit is nothing but a spire. A bloody upside-down cathedral spire."