The Deep

CHAPTER TWELVE

To tell or not to tell. That was the question.

One thing was certain: The interns had come up against a brick wall. Now that their stay at PUSH was over, they no longer had access to the wreck site. And they definitely had no way to investigate what Dante had spotted on the deepwater slope at the edge of the Hidden Shoals.

The next morning, in search of privacy, the four signed out bicycles and took to the dirt path that connected Saint-Luc’s tiny villages.

“We need help,” Kaz concluded, propping his bike up against a rock. “And that means we have to spill the beans to somebody. Who do we trust?”

Star laughed mirthlessly. “My mother, but she’s not here.”

Adriana adjusted her kickstand. “It has to be the captain,” she reasoned. “English hates us, Gallagher ignores us, Cutter’s the enemy, and Marina’s with Cutter.”

“We can’t trust anybody,” Dante said flatly. “Not with a billion dollars.”

“Then it stays down there,” Kaz argued. “And what good is that?”

Dante squinted out over the vast expanse of ocean visible from high ground. “How well do we really know the captain? So he’s a nice guy — so what? He could be in cahoots with Cutter. Or he could use our info to buy his way on to Cutter’s team.”

“Maybe,” Star nodded. “But I don’t think so.”

“Let’s put it to a vote,” decided Kaz. “Who says the captain’s in?” He raised his hand. Adriana was next, followed by Star.

Dante was distraught. “Do you guys realize how many zeroes there are in a billion?”

“If you’re so good at math,” Star pointed out, “then you know you’ve already lost this election.”

Painfully, Dante’s hand crept up to join the others. “I hope we’re not sorry about this.”

“You’re absolutely positive you’ve found Nuestra Señora de la Luz?” asked Captain Vanover.

They sat on aluminum folding chairs, sinking into the sandbar where the portable restaurant was located. La Mouette, translation “The Sea-gull,” was established every morning at low tide in six inches of water on the soft shoal about a hundred feet off the beach at Côte Saint-Luc. It could only be reached by rowboat or motorized launch. And it had to be dismantled every afternoon before high tide. But the spot could not be more spectacular, with gentle whitecaps breaking all around, and thousands of gulls and pelicans lighting on the glistening water.

The captain had invited the four interns to be his guests at lunch. They were ignored by Dr. Gallagher, avoided by Cutter and his crew, and despised by Menasce Gérard. Someone, he felt, had to be nice to them. “People have been looking for that ship for three hundred years.”

“We’re positive,” Adriana confirmed. “Every single artifact we took from the wreck was Spanish — all except for the JB hilt, which someone must have stolen or traded for, I guess. And according to the Spanish records, there’s only one galleon it could be.”

“If you’re right, you’re rich,” said Vanover.

“Or Cutter is,” added Dante mournfully.

Vanover scowled. It had been hard for him to believe that Tad Cutter, a Poseidon scientist, was abusing his credentials in order to hunt for treasure. But earlier that day, Menasce Gérard had said the same thing. “I should have listened to you the first time you told me he was up to no good. But I don’t think he’s found any more than you have yet. I’d notice if the Ponce de León had a heavy load in its hold. She’d wallow to the gunwales.”

“Then there’s still time,” urged Kaz. “Come with us when we tell Gallagher! He won’t listen to us, but he’ll have to pay attention to one of his own captains.”

Vanover took a bite of his seafood stew and chewed thoughtfully. “We could try that. But what good would it do? Poseidon fires Cutter — and then what? He’ll just find another boat and keep digging. Right now you have a real advantage over him. He doesn’t know that you know.”

“And he doesn’t consider us a threat,” added Adriana.

“He doesn’t consider us at all,” Star said bitterly.

“That’s a plus,” Vanover pointed out. “Right now he must be banging his head against the wall, wondering where the treasure is. In his wildest dreams, he’d never believe you kids are as close to it as he is.”

“Maybe even closer,” Kaz told him. Slowly, he explained Dante’s sighting of what looked like a trail of scattered objects, and his idea that the treasure might lie down there. “It’s just a theory,” Kaz finished, “but Dante’s never been wrong about what he sees underwater.”

The captain sat forward. “How deep was it?”

“I was at ninety feet when I spotted it,” Dante replied. “And it’s hard to judge, but it looked a whole lot farther away than the surface. English was with me, and he didn’t see anything.”

Vanover whistled between his teeth. “Sounds like two-fifty, three hundred feet. Out of diving range — at least, with standard scuba. But we might still be able to take a look.”

“How?” asked Star.

“Don’t ask me.” Vanover sat back and grinned. “Ask an old friend of yours.”

Dr. Igor Ocasek was thrilled to see them, and even happier to be asked for his expertise. “I’m kind of at loose ends while my lab is being repaired,” he explained.

The problem: how to examine a seafloor too deep for conventional diving.

The solution: lower a video camera to three hundred feet, and look around from the safety and comfort of the R/V Hernando Cortés.

The eccentric scientist was already making notes before they had finished telling him what they wanted.

“You’ll require floodlights at that depth,” he decided, “so there should be some kind of mounting platform. And weights for stability. Let’s see — four wide-angle cameras will provide a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweep. Three hundred feet of coaxial cable — no, better make it four hundred. Wouldn’t want to be caught short if we have to go deeper—”

“Don’t you want to know what we need it for?” asked Kaz in amazement.

“Mmmmm.”

And then there were six people on the face of the earth who knew about the mysterious objects on the edge of the Hidden Shoals.

The more the information spread, the greater the chance that someone would betray the secret. But the interns had no choice. Dr. Ocasek had to be aware of what he was looking for.

When they told him, he hardly even looked up. One-point-two billion dollars was the same as one-point-two cents to a man who cared only for science.