The Discovery

CHAPTER FIVE

Tad Cutter and his team had been sent from Poseidon’s head office in San Diego, California, to map the reefs of the Hidden Shoals northeast of Saint-Luc. Like many scientific undertakings, the results may have been interesting, but harvesting the data was very boring work indeed.

The job consisted of dragging a sonar tow that would measure the depth of the seabed below. To do this over 274 square miles of ocean would take every minute of the eight weeks budgeted for the project. To help them, Cutter and company had been assigned the four teenage interns. But as the early days of summer passed, Kaz, Dante, Adriana, and Star found themselves completely ignored by the Cutter team.

Day after day, the four would awaken in their cabins in the Poseidon compound to find that Captain Bill Hamilton and his Ponce de León, the boat assigned to Cutter, were already out there mapping, and had left them behind.

Cutter always had an excuse. “Sorry, guys, but we’re just so busy. To gather this much data in just a couple of months leaves us no wiggle room. If you’re not on board at five A.M., we’ve got to take off without you.”

The next day, they were there at five only to find that the Ponce de León had slipped its moorings at four-thirty. The day after that, they arrived at four. There they waited by the boat for three hours before realizing that Cutter and his crew had taken the catamaran to Martinique for supplies.

“We have to complain,” argued Dante. “This is our internship, and they’re not letting us do it. It’s a rip-off.”

But there was no one to complain to. Dr. Gallagher was far too busy to see them. And when they ran into him around the institute, he was always lecturing to the video camera that seemed to follow him like a tail. In addition, the director now wore a thick bandage on his forearm, which he carried in a sling. They were all pretty sure it had something to do with his great white shark jaw.

“If he doesn’t get away from here fast,” Kaz observed, “one of these days that thing is going to come down off the wall and eat him.”

Captain Vanover was sympathetic, but not a lot of help. “I know it’s lousy, but Tad’s probably not doing it on purpose. These research guys — when they get their teeth into a project, they’re like zombies. They eat, sleep, and breathe work. They just can’t focus on anything else. Don’t let it bum you out. I’m sure your time will come.”

“Maybe,” grumbled Dante, “but what year?”

Vanover promised to take them out for another dive. But the Hernando Cortés was booked almost every day by other scientists, so they would have to wait until the ship was free. In the meantime, the captain agreed to have a word with Bill Hamilton.

The only other person they knew around the institute was English, and no one was in the mood to ask him for favors. Whenever they passed the hulking dive guide in the halls or on the gravel paths of the grounds, they would slink by, and he would look right through them.

“You should talk to him,” Dante urged Star. “He likes you.”

“He doesn’t like anybody,” she growled. “He just hates me the least. Besides, he doesn’t have any clout around this place.”

Poseidon was only a part-time job for English, whose main employment was as a hard-hat diver for the oil rigs off the west side of the island. There his skill and toughness were legendary. He would work at incredible depths of one thousand feet or more, welding underwater pipe and repairing drills and equipment that weighed hundreds of tons.

The more they learned about Menasce Gérard, the more cowed they became.

Their situation did not make for a happy group. Staff members who took pity on them gave them odd jobs to do around the institute. But photocopying, pencil sharpening, and stirring iced tea were not what they had traveled to the Caribbean for.

The others were jealous of Dante, who at least had some meaningful work to do. He got permission to spend a couple of hours in the Poseidon darkroom, developing his underwater photographs. The pictures, though, were a big disappointment. They were excellent wildlife studies, beautifully framed and composed. But the color processing had been so overdone that the pale turquoise Caribbean appeared a deep purple.

“This is the reef?” Star said dubiously, examining the prints. “It looks like outer space.”

“It needs to be lighter,” Dante agreed.

“It needs to be blue,” Star amended. “A coral reef is the most beautiful scenery on Earth, not that you can tell from what you shot. You don’t have to be a genius to make it look good. Just so long as the water isn’t purple.”

“I specialize in black and white,” Dante admitted sheepishly. “I’m just getting the hang of working with color in the lab.”

They were all unhappy, but Adriana was downright miserable. After three summers with her uncle at one of the top museums in the world, this felt a lot like exile.

It was exile, she reminded herself, thinking bitterly of Payton with Uncle Alfie in Syria.

And for what? To run errands for a bunch of oceanography nerds. With the British Museum, she had dug on Roman ruins, translated hieroglyphics, and helped to present a paper at Buckingham Palace. This place was a joke by comparison, and a bad joke at that.

Eventually, though, the gofer jobs would run out, and the four would end up in the tiny village of Côte Saint-Luc, looking to keep busy. It wasn’t easy. Since Saint-Luc had no tourism, there was virtually nothing to the town itself. There was a small church with a bell tower, a butcher shop with emaciated chickens hanging upside down in the front, and a dark store with flyspecked windows that sold such strange and random items that Dante had taken to calling it Voodoo “R” Us.

There were two restaurants — a bar and grill that was much more bar than grill, and a European-style café that could have been on any street in Paris.

They preferred the bar and grill because the conch burgers were cheap, and Dante liked to sit at the outdoor tables, snapping pictures of the locals with his underwater Nikonos. When there were no passersby, he photographed his three dive mates.

Kaz, who was camera shy, commented, “One more click out of that thing, and it’s your nose ring.”

“Take me,” put in Star. “I’ve always wanted to be purple.”

Dante put down the camera with an exaggerated crash. The boredom and frustration were beginning to set them at one another’s throats.

“We’ve been here a week,” said Star, turning her attention to Adriana, “and you have never worn the same pair of shoes twice. How many shoes did you bring? How many shoes do you own?”

“Enough to wedge one where the sun doesn’t shine,” Adriana snapped back readily.

“Nice shot,” chuckled Kaz, his mouth full of fries.

“Mind your own business, rink rat,” Star warned. “What do hockey players know, besides how to put each other in the hospital?”

She wasn’t sure how, but it was clear that she’d struck a nerve with that comment, because of the deathly quiet of Kaz’s reply:

“Don’t you ever, ever say that again.”

Tempers flared like that regularly. But nothing came to punches; nobody stormed off down Rue de la Chapelle. All four knew that there was nowhere to go.

We’re stuck here, Adriana reflected, out in the back of beyond. We’re in this together.

And suddenly, she was looking straight at it. Across the narrow alley was a tiny neat cottage. The windows were open for ventilation, and in the largest one hung some kind of large wooden sculpture. She couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but she had worked at the museum long enough to recognize its age. Time had dulled the sharpness of the carving, the paint was present only in small faded chips, and the wood was weathered and bleached. She had seen pieces like this before — ornate newel posts from mansions and cathedrals that dated back hundreds of years.

She jumped up, almost knocking over her chair. “Guys, you’ve got to see this!”

They followed her across the dirt lane to the little house.

“It’s an eagle,” she explained, now that she could see the piece close up.

“What?” asked Star. “That lump hanging in the fishnet? I thought it was a big piece of driftwood.”

“See? Here’s the beak and the wings, and the talons are carved in relief against the body,” Adriana went on excitedly. “I make it at least three hundred years old, maybe more.”

“It’s busted,” commented Kaz, indicating the jagged break along the eagle’s body. “It looks like a giant snapped it off the top of a totem pole.”

“Totem poles are North American,” Adriana lectured. “I think this came from Europe.”

Star looked disgusted. “I know you’re, like, wondergirl from some snooty museum, but how could you possibly know something like that?”

“It’s oak!” Adriana exclaimed. “There’s no oak on Saint-Luc. It’s all tropical stuff here. It had to have been brought in by ship. Dante, take a picture. I can scan it at the institute and e-mail it to my uncle.”

Dante hefted the camera, grumbling, “You don’t need a Ph.D. to tell you what that is. I’ll tell you right now.” He clicked the shutter. “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

As Dante spoke, the occupant of the little house appeared in the window. Kaz tried desperately to clamp his hand over the photographer’s mouth, but it was too late. The man had heard everything.

It was English.

The enormous guide scowled at them, reached out his long muscular arms, and closed his hurricane shutters with a loud slam.

“Nice timing,” snickered Star.

“Oh, why did it have to be him?” Dante lamented. “Hey, what are you doing?”

Adriana was marching purposefully to the front door. She rapped smartly and called, “Mr. English, it’s us again. Could you please tell us the history of that piece in your window?”

At first, it seemed as if English intended to ignore them. But finally, he thrust open the door, glowering at Adriana.

“You Americans, you have the nerve! You call every shark in the ocean with your macho stupidité! Then you steal my octopus! Now you come and insult me in my own home! Vas-t’en! This means go away!” And he shut the door in her face.

“I’m from Canada,” called Kaz, but he kept his voice low.

Adriana reached out to knock again, but Star grabbed for her wrist. “Forget it. Who cares what he hangs in his window?”

“So long as it isn’t us,” added Dante feelingly.

But that night, over dinner at the Poseidon commissary, Adriana asked Captain Vanover about the diver’s strange window decoration.

The captain chuckled. “No wonder you couldn’t get an answer. I think he’s embarrassed about that thing.”

“How come?” asked Star.

“It’s an old family legend,” Vanover explained. “Probably a load of hooey. He’ll tell you when he’s good and ready.” He added, “Or he won’t.”

“He definitely won’t,” predicated Dante. “Not after I called it ugly.”

Adriana shook her head in amazement. “That piece must be hundreds of years old, and he just hangs it in an open window. I hope he has insurance.”

The captain brayed a laugh. “That’s a good one — stealing from English!” He noticed Tad Cutter walking to a nearby table. “Hey, Tad — over here.”

The blond, blue-eyed man set his tray down at an empty place. “Hey, Braden — guys—”

“Your sonar’s been in the water for almost a week now,” the captain said amiably. “Why don’t you have the kids give it a scrub when they’re diving with you tomorrow?”

If Cutter was caught off guard, he didn’t show it. “Yeah, it must be pretty crusty with salt by now. Thanks, guys. See you in the morning.” He walked off to join his crew.

“He’s going to blow us off,” Star predicted resentfully. “He says that every night, and he hasn’t taken us out once.”

“Oh, I know that,” the captain agreed. “But if you’re going to teach a horse tricks, it helps to be smarter than the horse. Wait till midnight and then go sleep in the boat.”