The Deep

V

They traveled in silence. The windows were shut, and the air in the car quickly grew acrid with breath and sweat. As they passed a sign for the botanical gardens in Paget, Sanders rolled his window down.

He felt the point of the knife press at the base of his neck and heard Ronald say, “Up.” He closed the window.

They approached a traffic circle, where signs pointed to the right for Hamilton, straight ahead for Warwick and Southampton. A policeman stood in the center of the circle, directing the early-evening traffic. Sanders wondered if, as the driver slowed for the circle, he would have time to open the door, roll out, and yell for help. Then he saw the driver wave at the policeman, and the policeman smiled and waved back.

It was growing dark, and as they drove along South Road, never exceeding the 20 mph speed limit, Sanders could barely decipher signs for Elbow Beach, the Orange Grove Club, Coral Beach, and the Princess Beach Club.

High on a hill he saw the huge Southampton Princess Hotel and then the Gibb’s Hill lighthouse. They had traveled almost the whole length of the island.

The stuffy silence increased Sanders’ nervousness.

“How much farther?” he asked.

“Shut up,” said Ronald.

They crossed Somerset Bridge, and another fact from his Geographic past occurred to Sanders. He half-turned toward Gail and said, “That’s the smallest drawbridge in the world. It only opens wide enough to let a sailboat’s mast pass through.”

Gail did not answer. Sanders’ escape attempt had shaken her, and she did not want to encourage another confrontation.

Ronald motioned with his knife for Sanders to face front.

“For whatever that’s worth,” Sanders said, turning back.

The car went left off the main road, onto a dirt track, following a sign that said “Public Wharf.” They entered a clearing-a crowded square, filled with flsh-and-vegetable stalls and ramshackle shops. At the far end of the square was a rickety dock to which half a dozen weathered, patched boats were moored. There were no other cars in the square, and children scampered so carelessly in front of the Morris that the driver had to creep along in first gear. He parked in front of what seemed to be a grocery store. Canned goods and fruit were piled high in the window. A penciled placard advertised bait and pork rind. Faded letters on the gray limestone said, “Teddy’s Market.”

Two young black men were lounging by the doorway. One was casually flipping a hunting knife into the dirt.

The other leaned against the door jamb, arms folded, watching the green car; his shirt was open to the waist, displaying a fresh red scar that ran from his right clavicle to below his left pectoral muscle-macho graffiti. There was something familiar about the man; Sanders tried to place him, but couldn’t.

“Yon come quiet,” said Ronald. “No smart stuff, or they fillet you.” He jerked his head toward the men at the door, then got out of the car and held the back door open for Gail.

Sanders opened the front door and stepped out onto the dirt. A breeze was blowing across Ely’s Harbour, and it felt cool as it dried the sweat on his face.

“Inside,” Ronald said. He followed them through the door, saying to the man with the scar, “What’s doin’?”

“Waitin’ on you, man.”

It was the inflection on the word “man” that made Sanders realize who the bearer of the scar was: Slake, the waiter from Orange Grove.

Reflexively, Sanders turned to look at him, but he was pushed forward into the store.

Stepping into the darkness of the store, David could see nothing. There seemed to be rows of merchandise on both sides of an aisle. Gradually, as his pupils adjusted, he saw a faint light shining under a door at the rear of the store. “Where?”

Ronald brushed past him. “You follow me.” When he reached the door, he rapped once, then twice.

A voice inside said, “Come.”

Ronald opened the door and motioned Gail and David through. He followed them, shut the door, and leaned against it.

On the far side of the room was a desk, and behind it sat a young man-in his late twenties or very early thirties, Sanders guessed. The sweat on his forehead caught the light and made his black skin shine. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a starched white shirt. There was no jewelry on his hands, but around his neck was a thin gold chain that held an inch-long gold feather. Two burly men comolder than the ones outside the store-flanked him in formal symmetry, arms folded, beside the desk. The room was cluttered with cartons and boxes and file cabinets, and smelled of fish and dirt and sweat and overripe fruit. Two bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling.

The man behind the desk stood up. “Mr. and iVI-RS. Sanders,” he said, smiling. “I am glad you agreed to come.”

Sanders recognized the man’s accent; he had heard it in Guadalupe; the accent of one whose native language is Caribbean French and who has learned English in a church school.

“We weren’t exactly invited,” Sanders said.

“No. But I’m glad you chose not to resist. I am Henri Cloche.” He paused, expecting the Sanderses to recognize

the name. When they did not react, he went on. “The name means nothing? So much the better.” He looked at Gail. “Forgive me, madam. You would like a chair?”

“No.” Gail looked directly at Cloche, hoping he would not see she was afraid. “Why are we here?”

“Of course,” said Cloche. He held out his hand.

“The ampule.”

Sanders said, “We don’t have it.”

Cloche looked back and forth, from David to Gail, smiling, holding out his hand. He snapped his ringers.

Sanders felt strong hands grip his arms and pin his elbows back. One of the men beside the desk stepped over to him, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and tore it open, stripping the buttons away. The hands behind him pulled the shirt off his back.

The other man made a move toward Gail, but Cloche stopped him with a wave of his hand. “Take your clothes off,” he said. “Both of you. Now.”

Gail forced herself to keep looking at Cloche.

Slowly, she unbuttoned her blouse and dropped it to the floor. One of Cloche’s men picked it up and examined it, feeling along the seams, bending the built-in collar stays. She unhooked her short, wrap-around skirt. The man held out his hand for it, but she dropped it on the floor at his feet. Still looking at Cloche, her eyes locked on his, she undid her bra and dropped it. The man caught it before it hit the floor, and he picked through the cups, checking the thin padding.

Sanders undressed less meticulously, shedding his clothes and letting the hands behind him take them from him.

It was not until he was naked that he noticed Gail staring at

Cloche. Her thumbs were hitched in her bikini underpants. He tried not to look at her, but the palpable excitement of the gawking men was contagious, and he sensed heat rushing into his groin. He closed his eyes, fighting the absurd tumescence.

Cloche had not taken his eyes off Gail’s face.

“Nothing,” said the man behind Sanders.

The word broke the trance, and Cloche’s eyes dropped down Gail’s body. He looked away.

“Put your clothes on,” he said.

Gail bent over to gather her clothes.

“I could conduct a proper examination of you both,”

Cloche said testily, “but never mind. I assume Romer Treece has the ampule. One alone is of no importance.”

“Then why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?” Sanders said as he pulled on his trousers.

“Do you know Bermuda, Mr. Sanders?”

“Some.”

“Then you will recall, perhaps, the ex-governor—the late governor, I should say—the one who was so fond of great Danes.”

Sanders remembered. On a warm night in 1973, Sir Richard Sharpies, the British governor of Bermuda, had gone for a late-night stroll with his pet Dane. Man and dog were found slaughtered in the gardens of Government House. “What does that have to do with us?” he said.

“He was a meddler. He refused to do business. I don’t like it when someone I approach refuses to do business.”

“Business?”

“I wanted to see the ampule solely to confirm my suspicions about it. The fact that you don’t have it, that you have entrusted it to Romer Treece for safekeeping—I assume that is what you have done—confirms those suspicions quite adequately. How many more ampules are there?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many did you find?”

Sanders looked at Gail, but her impassive expression did not change. “Two.”

“Do you know what they contain?”

“Not for sure, no.”

“But you know the legend. Or, rather, the story, since the legend seems to be coming true.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sanders, I am determined to acquire every ampule down there. Every last one of them.”

“Why?”

“They are valuable. We need them.”

“For what?”

“Never mind. It’s no concern of yours.”

Gail said, “Who are you going to sell them to? Kids?”

Cloche smiled. “How nice to see your interest finally piqued. But that, too, is no concern of yours. In fact, the less you know, the better for you.”

“Then why bother us? You don’t need us,” Sanders said.

“You dive. And you know exactly where they are.”

“No. We know where two of them were. There’s no saying that there are any more. Besides, there are divers who know this area a hell of a lot better than we do.”

“Perhaps. But it is testimony to British foresight that very few of those divers are black. Just as they have successfully

kept the blacks from the professions, so they have kept most of them from becoming first-rate divers. I could import someone, but any qualified diver who came through customs—any black diver, that is—would come under immediate suspicion. You are here, you are tourists, you are white. You are above suspicion.”

Gail said, “We’re not pushers.”

“Pushers?” Cloche was unfamiliar with the word.

“Ah, vendeurs de mort. Nor am I. I am first a politician, and politics is the business of using means to achieve ends. I am also a businessman, and I am aware that in dealing with people unacquainted or unsympathetic with one’s political ends, one must appeal to different desires. Therefore, I am prepared to deal with you.”

He paused and looked at Sanders. “You will discover how many ampules there are. If there are only a few-if the legend is, indeed, a legend-you will tell me and no one else. Your reward will be continued good health and a carefree Bermuda holiday.

If, on the other hand, there is a multitude of ampules, you will recover them. We will, of course, provide you with whatever assistance you need.” Cloche turned toward Gail. “Once the ampules are in our hands, you will leave Bermuda. You will go to New York and you will call a telephone number I will have given you. You will leave instructions as to where in the world, six months from that date, you would like to collect one million dollars in the currency of your choice.”

Gail drew a quick, startled breath.

Cloche smiled, then looked at Sanders, who gazed back at him without expression.

“No,” said Sanders.

“Don’t be hasty, Mr. Sanders. I see by your lip that you have a tendency to be hasty.”

Sanders ran his tongue over his lower lip. A tender lump had risen, and the saliva made it sting.

“Think about it,” Cloche said. “Think about freedom, about the freedom you can buy… with a million dollars.” He gestured to Ronald.

“Where are their mobilettes?”

Ronald made a throwing motion. “The brush.”

Cloche said to Sanders, “They will be returned in the morning. A final word: Make no mistake about it—should you still be inclined to be… hasty… and go to the authorities, you will find that, officially, I do not exist. And should you try to get out of this by leaving Bermuda, you will also discover that, in reality, I exist everywhere.” His back stiffened.

“There will be no haven.” He turned to Ronald.

“Take them home.”

There was no conversation in the car during the thirty-minute ride to the Orange Grove Club. Ronald and the driver sat in front, David and Gail in back. As they pulled onto the main road, Sanders rolled down his window. When Ronald did not object, Gail rolled hers down, too.

The only sounds on the deserted road, other than the wind and the engine noise, were the calling of tree frogs and the chirruping of cicadas. The driver stopped the car at the entrance to Orange Grove.

He did not offer to drive them to their cottage; they did not ask. They walked silently up the driveway, stopping where the footpath to their cottage turned off to the right.

“You hungry?” said Sanders.

“Hardly.”

“We can order a sandwich from the room. I could sure use a drink.”

Inside the cottage, Sanders tossed the key on the dresser and walked toward the bathroom, where there was a refrigerator. “Scotch?” he said.

“Fine.”

He went into the bathroom, opened the refrigerator, pried some cubes loose from an old-fashioned ice tray, and dropped them into the two bathroom glasses. He heard Gail pick up the telephone, and he called, “I’ll have a turkey on white with lettuce and mayonnaise.”

Gail did not answer.

As he poured whiskey into the glasses, he heard Gail say into the phone, “Get me the police, please.” There was a pause. “Yes, that’s right.

No, there’s nothing wrong.” She sounded annoyed.

“Just get the police.”

Sanders set the scotch bottle on the sink and hurried into the bedroom. “What are you doing?” he said.

“What’s it sound like?” She spoke into the phone.

“What’s my room number have to do with anything? I assume this is a local call.”

“Hang up,” Sanders said. “Let’s talk about it.”

“What’s to talk about? We were kidnaped, for God’s sake! Threatened.”

“Hang up!” Sanders ordered. “Or I’ll hang up for you.” He held his index finger above the phone cradle.

Gail looked at him.

“I’m not kidding. Hang up!”

Gail hesitated for a moment, then said into the phone, “That’s all right, operator. I’ll try again later.” She hung up. “Okay. So talk.”

“Calm down,” Sanders said. He put his hand on her shoulder.

She brushed the hand aside. “I won’t calm down! Don’t you realize what we were asked to do?”

“Sure!” Sanders said as he went back into the bathroom to get the glasses. He handed one to her.

“But calling the cops is no answer. What are they going to do?”

“Arrest him.”

“For what? How are we going to prove anything? You heard what he said: He doesn’t exist. At least not officially. Didn’t you see that cop wave at the driver? He’s probably got the whole damn police force in his pocket.”

“Then let’s call the government. He sure as hell doesn’t have the British Government in his pocket.”

“And tell them what?”

“We were kidnaped. That’s—”

“For an hour. By a phantom. We’d have a hell of a time making a case out of that.”

“Assault, then. You can’t go around sticking knives at people and tearing off their clothes. And what about what he wants us to do? Sell him narcotics.”

“Not exactly. More like find them for him.”

Gail looked at him for a long moment without speaking.

Then she shuddered. “You think he’d really follow us?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to find out if he could. Maybe Treece’ll have an idea.”

“And maybe you’ll end up dead.”

“C’mon, let’s not…”

Gail sneezed. As she folded her handkerchief, she noticed a smear of blood. “I’ve still got a bloody nose,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘still’?”

“There was blood in my mask when I came up today.”

They left Orange Grove after breakfast the next morning. Sometime during the night, as promised, their motorbikes had been returned and parked in front of their cottage. When she saw the motorbikes, Gail shivered involuntarily.

“What’s the matter?” Sanders said.

“They were here.”

“Who was?”

“Those men. While we slept.”

“Sure they were. How else would they get the bikes back to us?”

“I know. But it’s creepy.”

When they arrived at Treece’s house, they waited outside the gate and called to Treece. When he told them to come in, the dog bounded down the path and escorted them to the kitchen door.

The kitchen table was covered with photostats of old documents. Treece saw Sanders looking at the papers, and he said, “Research.”

“What are they?”

“Logs, manifests, bills of lading, diaries, letters. A dividend of my study in Europe. I spent my holidays in the archives of Madrid, Cadiz, and Seville. Friends send me new papers as they surface.”

“What do they tell you?” Gail asked.

“What ships went to what ports, what they were carrying, who was on board, where they sank if they sank, how many people survived. They’re indispensable tools. Without them, you can dilly around on a wreck for months and not know what you’re looking at.”

Sanders picked up one of the pieces of paper. The writing was in Spanish, and he could decipher only a few words—like artilleria and canones—and the date: 1714. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m indulging myself in a bit of nonsense.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible that another ship did sink out there. That it went down with everything on it, and that it was never salvaged.”

Gail said, “Is that possible?”

“It’s happened before. Two storms, a hundred or two hundred years apart, spring up from the same quarter, catch two ships in the same circumstance, making for the same shelter, and drive them up on the same reefs.” Treece shook his head.

“What a mess.”

“I think it sounds fantastic,” said Gail.

“You do, do you? Take a nice clean wreck-nothing else around, fairly well contained, maybe even find a coin or two that’ll date her for you. You can spend a year mucking about in the sand and still not find a bloody thing. Now add to that another whole ship, all busted to pieces, andwitha cargo of live ammunition. That’s some way to get your jollies.”

“Have you found anything?” said Sanders.

“No. Not sure I will.” Treece patted the pile of papers. “All I’m doing with this stuff is rooting around to see if I can find someone with the initials E.f. Probably a waste of time, but you have to start somewhere, and E.f.’ness all we’ve got. Now… tell me what brings you all the way out here this early. We’re not going anywhere till tonight.”

They told him about their meeting with Cloche. At the first mention of Cloche’s name, Treece started, as if a long-awaited piece of bad news had finally arrived. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. Otherwise, he sat, tense and quiet, and did not interrupt.

When they were finished, he said, “You were right not to ring the police.”

“Why?” said Gail.

“They couldn’t have done anything. He’s a shadow, that man. He has friends in many strange places. I know what he can get away with.” He shook his head.

“Damn. It is a robust piece of bad luck that we’re faced with him so soon. You’ve never heard of him?”

“No,” Sanders said. “Should we have?”

“I suppose not. He’s got a dozen different names. He comes from Haiti, originally. That’s the myth, at least. It’s hard to separate fact from fancy about Cloche; he’s built himself into a kind of folk hero among island blacks. A lot of them think he’s the reincarnation of Che Guevara. And not just here. All over. In the Windwards and Leewards, his mother is still powerful bush.”

“Bush?” Gail said.

“Magic, voodoo. You’ll see little statues of her in the huts on the hillsides of Guadalupe and Martinique. They adore her, like… well, I imagine Eva Peron is a parallel. She was a chambermaid in a hotel in Haiti. At the age of forty-three, she came down with glaucoma, and when it got so bad she couldn’t see to work, the hotel fired her without a sou. Cloche himself was nothing but a busboy then, but he was clever. He took mamma into the woods and set her up as a symbol of white oppression. He spread stories about her, made her into an all-knowing black princess, said she cured the incurable and raised the dead-all the standard stuff. People wanted to believe in her-Christ, ‘wanted’ isn’t the word: longed to. Once mamma was established, Cloche began to pass himself off as her messenger. He’s been all over the islands, thrown out of most of them two or three times, spreading the message. Nobody knows if mamma’s still drawing breath, but Cloche is still spreading the word.”

“What’s the word?” asked Sanders.

“It’s time for the blacks to get the biscuit. I suppose it was only a matter of time until he came back here.”

“It doesn’t look to me like Bermuda’s ripe for revolt,” Sanders said.

“It’s hard to tell.”

Gail said, “The blacks aren’t exactly what you’d call equal here.”

“No, but there’s been no serious trouble since the sixty-eight riots-aside from the Sharpies assassination, and there’s still no proof about that one.”

“Cloche as much as admitted that his people killed Sharpies,” said Sanders.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t he? No one else has been arrested, and it makes him seem like a bigger threat. It’s like those Arab fringe groups. Every time a plane crashes, some bunch of birds jumps up to take credit, claiming the crash was a revolutionary act. Crap. Of course Cloche may have killed Sharpies; I wouldn’t put it past him. But the fact that he says he did doesn’t make it true.” Treece looked at Gail. “In any event, Bermuda has been fairly peaceful for some time. It’s a dicey peace, though. Blacks are the majority here, and they get less of the pie than the whites. For my money, they get more as they merit more, and they’re getting more all the time. But a chap like Cloche can rile them, convince them that they’re oppressed, that numbers alone are enough to merit more.

Manipulate them for his own purposes. He’s a persuasive speaker, and they’re scared of him. Besides, there’s no trick to convincing people that they deserve more than they’ve got.

“Is he a communist?” Gail asked.

“Hell, no. He spouts a good Marxist line—‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,’ and all that. I think what he really wants is to set up some sort of island kingdom. He won’t call it that, of course. It’ll be the People’s Republic of some goddamn thing.”

“And the drugs?”

“Money. Power. I imagine he’ll try to sell the drugs in the States.” Treece paused. “I don’t want him to get them.” He looked at Sanders. “A million dollars? He is anxious. were you tempted?”

Sanders looked at Gail. “No,” he said.

“Though God knows we could use the money.”

“It’s a decent amount of cash, no doubting it,” Treece said, slapping the photostats in front of him. “But if I can find some parts to this puzzle and we really get lucky, there might be a like amount of real goodies down there.”

“Do you think there may really be a treasure?” Gail said.

“No. But I’m not convinced there isn’t. You never know till you’ve had a good look.”

“What do we do about Cloche?” Sanders said. “Is there a way to get around him? I don’t like the thought that he might follow us to New York.”

“For the moment, there’s nothing to do. You’re stuck either way, until we know what’s really down there.

We’ll have a look around tonight. If we don’t find any more ampules—and it’s possible these two are a fluke—you can deliver the two you found to Cloche and wish him well. If there’s nothing else there, I don’t think he’ll bother with you any more. With luck, that’s what’ll happen. But before we go down again, I want to talk to Adam Coffin.”

“Who’s he?”

“The Goliath survivor. I imagine he’s still chary about talking about the drugs, but perhaps the sight of a couple of ampules will jar his memory.” Treece put the two ampules in his pocket. “Leave your bikes here. You’ll be coming back later to dive. We can all fit in Kevin’s car.”

“About the diving,” Gail said. “My nose has been bleeding since yesterday.”

“Bad?”

“No.”

“Not to worry. When you haven’t been wet in a while, a day or two of ups and downs will irritate the tissues in your sinuses. Stay out of the water for a bit, and it’ll clear up.”

“What about tonight?”

“I wouldn’t. There’s no sense pushing it. The two of us can manage.” Treece opened the kitchen door for them. “You go ahead on your bikes, then. I’ll come by the hotel, and you can follow me down to Coffin’s.”

The house was tiny—a limestone cottage perched on a neatly tended patch of weeds overlooking Hamilton Harbour. There was no driveway, only a dirt shoulder wide enough to permit one car to pull off the road and stop without risking a rear—end collision with the passing traffic. Treece nosed the Hillman into the brush beside the shoulder, leaving room behind for the two motorbikes. His immense frame looked ridiculous in the car: he was hunched forward so his head wouldn’t jam into the roof, and his legs were so long and so cramped that he could not put them out of the car first. The only way he could get out was to open the door and fall to the right, supporting himself with his hands on the ground, dragging his legs after him.

“Damn fool things,” he said as he wiped his hands on his pants. “Built for bloody midgets.”

“If you ever had an accident in that car,” Sanders said, “they’d have to cut you out with a torch. Why don’t you ride a motorcycle?”

“Suicide machines. Only good thing about them is they keep the black population down.” Treece looked at Gail and smiled. “Forgive me. I’m a relentless bastard.”

They walked up the dirt path to the house. A small man was on his hands and knees, digging in a flower bed beside the front door.

“Adam,” Treece said.

Coffin’s head snapped around. “Treece!” he said, surprised. With a nimble motion he pushed himself backward and rolled to his feet.

He wore nothing but a tattered pair of denim shorts. His body was tan, lean, and sinewy, without a trace of fat. Strands of aged muscle coursed along his arms and chest as visibly as a drawing in an anatomy text. His eyes were fixed in a permanent squint that had cut deep grooves in the dry brown skin on his cheeks and forehead. A shaggy mane of white hair hung down the back of his neck. He smiled at Treece, displaying abused gums spotted here and there with chipped and yellowed teeth. “It’s good to see you; been awhile.”

“Aye, it has.” Treece enveloped Coffin’s bony fingers in his enormous fist and pumped once briskly up and down. “We stopped by to chat you up.” He introduced the Sanderses to Coffin.

“Come in, then,” said Coffin, leading them into the dark house.

The one-room house was divided by furniture into three sections. On the right there was a hammock, suspended catty-corner by two steel rings embedded in the stone wall. Behind a half-open curtain David saw a toilet and a sink. In the middle of the room was a single stuffed chair, facing a i95os-vintage television set. On the left were a sink, a hot plate, a refrigerator, a cabinet, and a card table, around which were two chairs and two stools.

“Sit,” said Coffin. He opened the cabinet and waved at an array of bottles. “Have a charge? I’m on the tack myself. Old guts can’t take the fury of the juniper berries.”

Confused, Sanders looked at Treece and saw that he was grinning at Coffin.

“I’ll have a spot of rum,” Treece said. “How long’ve you been on the tack?”

“A good while now,” Coffin said. “It’s not hard if you have a disciplined soul.” He looked at Sanders. “For you?”

“A gin and tonic would be fine,” Sanders said.

Gail nodded. “The same. Thank you.”

“Comin’ up.” Coffin took four glasses from the cabinet, filled two of them with Bombay gin-no ice, no tonic-and passed them to David and Gail. The other two he filled with dark Barbados rum. He gave one to Treece, took a long swallow from the other, and sat down.

“I thought you were on the tack,” Treece said.

“I am. Haven’t had a drop of gin in months.

Rum isn’t drinking; it’s survival. Without it, your blood doesn’t circulate proper. That’s a fact.”

Sanders took a sip of the warm gin and suppressed a grimace as the harsh liquid burned his throat.

“Tell an old man what brings you by.” Coffin smiled. “Or is this just your day to visit the elderly and infirm?”

Treece reached in his pocket and, without a word, placed the two ampules on the table.

Coffin did not touch them; he simply stared at them and said nothing. He looked up, first at Treece, then at the Sanderses. His face showed no emotion, but there was something different about his eyes, a shininess that Sanders could not diagnose-excitement, perhaps, or fear. Or both.

Coffin jerked his head toward the Sanderses and said to Treece, “How much do they know?”

“All still know. They found the pieces.” Then Treece told Coffin about Cloche’s proposal to the Sanderses.

“Cheeky bastard,” Coffin said when Treece had finished. “He should have come to me with his million dollars. They’re mine.”

“You’re supposed to be a fool, Adam. Keep it that way. It’s safer. Besides, Goliath isn’t registered to you any more. I checked. Now-truth. How many were there?”

Coffin hesitated. “Truth is a pain in the ass,” he said, holding one of the ampules to the light. “I told the truth once, and damn near got killed for my trouble.”

“Cloche may come and finish the job, Adam, if we don’t get the stuff up and out of there fast. How many were there?”

Coffin finished his glass of rum, reached for the bottle, and refilled his glass. “They were in cigar boxes. Forty-eight to a box, separated by cardboard grids. The manifest said there were ten thousand boxes, and I believe it. I stacked every one of the bloody things by hand.”

“Did the manifest say what was in the glass?”

“No, but we knew. Morphine, mostly. Some raw opium, a bit of Adrenalin. But almost all morphine.”

“No heroin?” Sanders asked.

“No. At least—”

Gail interrupted. “It’s the same thing.”

“What do you mean?” Sanders said.

“It is. I edited a book about drugs once.

All heroin is, is morphine heated with acetic acid. As soon as it gets into the body, it’s reconverted into morphine.”

“Then why don’t junkies take morphine?”

“It’s not up to them. They take what the pushers push, and the pushers push what the smugglers smuggle.

The smugglers smuggle heroin because they make more money from it: a pound of pure morphine converts into more than a pound of heroin, and you don’t have to take as much heroin because it’s stronger than straight morphine-something to do with the way it gets to the brain.

Anyway, if you figure that from that cargo you could make half a million doses of heroin, street value somewhere between ten and twenty dollars a dose, you’re talking about a total value of five to ten million dollars. Lord!”

Treece said, “Where was it carried, Adam?”

“Number three hold. The lot of it. Amidships. I had it bagged about with flour.”

“Was there anything beneath it?”

“Aye, the ordnance. We chucked our ballast and put the cases of shells down there. It was a dicey sail, I tell you. One of the mates went in irons for three days for sneaking a cigarette. And that was topside.”

“She didn’t roll over when she went down, did she?”

“Not so far’s I know. But I didn’t linger to see how she fell.”

“So if her guts were ripped out clean, it’s likely that the shells went down first and farthest. The cigar boxes would be atop them.”

“Those boxes were wood, remember, and flimsy. They’d be nothing now.”

Treece nodded. “Still, they’d not have been crushed by the cases of shells. And the ampules’ mass in water is almost nothing, so they’d not have sunk deep in the sand.”

“If you ask me, the storms has busted ’em all up by now.”

“I’d have thought so, too.” Treece fingered one of the ampules. “Until these turned up.”

“But they were in a hole, you say, protected. The others is gone, I’ll wager.”

“Like as not. But we’re having a look tonight.”

Coffin drained his glass and banged it on the table.

“Damn fine. I’ll be ready.”

Treece smiled. “No. We’ll go. If we find some more, then we’ll need you.”

“But it’s my ship!” Coffin hammered his chest with a fist. “You think I’m not fit, is that it?”

His eyes were bright, his face flushed from the rum.

“I’m fit as a bloody stallion! How old do you think I am?”

Treece said calmly, “I know how old you are, Adam.”

“You, then,” Coffin said, glaring at Sanders. “How old do you think I am?”

Sanders looked at him, quickly matching dates in his mind. Coffin had to be at least seventy. “I’d say… sixty.”

“See that, Treece?” Coffin laughed.

“Sixty!” He turned back to Sanders. “I’m seventy-bloody-two, my boy! Fit as a stallion!”

“Adam,” Treece said, touching Coffin’s arm, “no one said you weren’t fit. But I don’t want anyone to see you diving on the wreck. You’re too well known.”

Treece warmed to his lie. “You’re a bloody celebrity! If people knew you were diving on that wreck, they’d right away spot something was up.”

Coffin leaned back in his chair, mollified by the flattery. “There’s sense in what you’re saying. Wouldn’t want to give anything away.” He eyed his empty glass. “I say let’s drink on it.”

“No,” Treece said, standing up. “I’ve got work to do.”

Coffin followed Treece and the Sanderses down the path to the road. Treece opened the door of the Hillman and-like an octopus insinuating itself tentacle by tentacle into a crevice in a reef-slowly fit one long limb after another into the driver’s compartment.

Coffin said, “Don’t breathe too deep, or you’ll blow the horn with your chest.”

Treece said to Sanders, “You want to follow, or can you find your way?”

“We’ll find it. You go ahead.”

Treece looked at Gail. He paused, apparently considering his words. “You’ll stay at the hotel tonight?”

“I guess so,” she said. “Why?”

“D. And keep your door locked. I don’t want to scare you, but Cloche is sure to know you’re there.”

Gail remembered the sight of the motorbikes that morning. “I know.”

Treece started the car, waited for a taxicab to pass, then made a U-turn on the narrow road and chugged off toward St. David’s.

After the car had disappeared from view, Coffin stared down the empty road. The Sanderses mounted their motorbikes and put on their helmets.

“Good-by, Mr. Coffin,” Gail said.

Coffin did not respond. “I knew him when he was a boy,” he said. “A fine lad.”

Gail and David looked at each other. “I’m sure,” she said. “He seems to be a fine man.”

“Aye. Straight as God Himself. He deserves better.”

“Better than what?”

“Loneliness. Sadness. It’s one thing for old croaks like me. We’re supposed to be lonely. But a young fella like him-it ain’t right. He should have sons to pass along what he knows.”

Sanders said, “Maybe he likes living alone.”

Coffin looked at Sanders. His eyes were cicatrices in his bony head. “Likes it, huh?” he said sharply. “Likes it, does he? A lot you know.” He turned away.

David and Gail watched Coffin walk up the hill into his house.

Sanders said, “What did I say?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it was wasn’t the right thing.”

Sanders looked at his watch. “Let’s go. I’ve got to get all the way back to St. David’s before dark.”