The Deep

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was almost noon before Adriana awoke, the powerful Caribbean sun threading through the gap in the curtains and all but searing a hole in the center of her forehead. She looked to the other bed. Star was still asleep, snoring softly into her pillow. Divers always snored. It was a side effect of time spent at depth and pressure. Even Adriana had woken herself a few times with a loud snort.

She sat up, yawning and stretching, then caught a glimpse of her hands, and gasped aloud. Thick brown mud was caked under all ten fingernails. Her immaculate, stylish mother would faint dead away!

Ballantyne ladies see to their grooming. Adriana had been hearing that since birth. Mother, obviously, had never had to handle a hundred-pound camera array that had scoured the seafloor. To her, the purpose of the ocean was for cruising, and to supply sushi.

She padded barefoot into the small bathroom, and switched on the light. Digging through her toiletry bag, she came up with her manicure set and began to clean her nails.

Yuck! This job is disgusting. You could plant potatoes in the blob I just excavated from under my thumbnail!

And then the blob twinkled.

Huh? Adriana blinked.

It was a tiny particle in the dirt, about half the size of a grain of sand. It was bright yellow, and when it caught the light, it gleamed.

She looked closer. Not yellow, exactly. More like — gold.

Intrigued now, she spread a tissue on the counter, popped the dirt onto it, and used an eyebrow tweezers to separate the shiny fleck from the rest of the material.

It was very shiny — and soft, too. The sharp tweezers could not cut the particle. Strong pressure just left an indentation.

Her breath caught. This didn’t just look like gold; it was gold!

She finished cleaning her nails onto the tissue, and examined the results. Only dirt. Head spinning, she sat down on the edge of the tub, trying to sort out her thoughts. The dirt under her nails came from carrying Iggy’s camera array. That was mud dredged up from the sloping ocean floor near the second debris field from Nuestra Señora. How could it be a coincidence — a tiny piece of gold from the very spot where they suspected a vast treasure lay hidden?

But Spanish gold came in bars, coins, great decorative chains. This was barely larger than a particle of dust.

When the answer came to her, it brought with it so much adrenaline that the feeling was closer to terror than understanding. She leaped to her feet, unable to contain the excitement within one body.

“Star! — Star!!”

At a quiet corner table in the Poseidon cafeteria, the four interns met with Captain Vanover.

Dante stared at the tiny fleck on Adriana’s fingertip. “That’s not treasure! That’s a molecule!”

“It’s a gold molecule,” Star said in irritation. “And keep your voice down.”

“It is pretty small,” Vanover pointed out. “I can’t explain it, but I guess there’s a chance it occurs naturally.”

“I thought so too,” said Adriana. “But then I remembered something I read on the Spanish government web site. All treasure arriving in Spain from the New World was heavily taxed. But you could never know how much more was smuggled in to avoid the taxes. And the easiest treasure to sneak past the authorities was gold dust.”

“Yeah,” said Kaz dubiously, “but one piece?”

Star took up the explanation. “Think about what happens when a boat sinks. It creates a whirlpool effect, like the Titanic. Something as light as gold dust would get sucked up into the whirlpool, and end up spread out all over the bottom around the wreck.”

“So we tried a little experiment,” Adriana took up the tale. “We pulled all our muddy clothes out of the hamper. And there was another speck on Star’s shirt.” Her eyes shone. “We’re not wrong about this. The debris field we photographed last night has the treasure in it — the real treasure! We can’t get at all that dust, but the rest of it is lying there, just waiting to be claimed!”

Dante choked back a whoop. “I can’t believe it! We found it! It’s ours! Now all we have to do is figure out how to bring it up.”

“Not so fast,” the captain said seriously. “What we saw last night was at three hundred and fifty feet. And that was just the top of the debris field. Who knows how much farther down the slope the treasure could be? There’s no way I can let you kids — even you, Star — dive so deep.”

Star’s jaw stiffened. “That’s not your decision to make! No offense, Captain — you’ve been great to us. But we’re talking about a billion dollars here!”

“It isn’t worth a dime if you get yourself killed going after it.”

Dante was horrified. “You mean we’re just going to leave it there?”

“Calm down,” Vanover soothed. “There are ways to salvage things from deep water. It’s possible, but it’s tricky. And you have to know exactly what you’re doing. Take it easy. We’ve got time. Cutter’s looking in the wrong place; and he doesn’t know that you guys are looking at all.”

Kaz and Dante exchanged a worried look. “That’s not exactly true,” Kaz began slowly. He told the others about finding the footprints on the cabin floor in front of the bell. “We have to assume it’s Cutter,” he finished. “Who else could it be?”

Star looked alarmed. “That’s trouble. If he sees us nosing around the second debris field, we’ll be leading him right to the treasure.”

Captain Vanover looked like a man who had just made up his mind. “All right — here’s what we’re going to do. Poseidon maintains a research sub called Deep Scout. I’m going to requisition it, and we’re all going down there. If we can snag a piece of that treasure and match it to the cargo list on the web site, we can file a claim on the wreck with the International Maritime Commission.” He made eye contact with all four. “Then it won’t matter what Cutter knows. It’ll be our prize, not his.”