“No, Nikki,” Amanda replied, suddenly serious. She folded her hands in her lap and stared momentarily across the room. “No,” she repeated softly, her voice then gathering intensity as she turned back to look at him, “even I am not perfect enough for you. I remember well all your fantasy visions of gracious young goddesses. Somehow you had mixed the best parts of all the women in your favorite novels together with your teenage dreams. It always seemed to me that you had put women up on a pedestal; they had to be queens or princesses. But in the girls you actually dated, you looked for weaknesses, signs of ordinariness, and indications of common behavior. It was almost as if you were hoping to find them imperfect, to detect chinks in their armor so that you could justify your lack of interest.”
Jennifer arrived with the tea. Nick was uncomfortable. He had forgotten what it was like to talk to Amanda. Her emotional probing and her unsolicited observations were both extremely disquieting to him this morning. Nick had not come to see her to dissect his attitude toward women. He changed the subject
“Speaking of treasure,” he said, bending down to pick up his bag, “I found something very interesting yesterday while I was out diving. I thought maybe you might have seen something like it before.” He pulled the trident out and handed it to Amanda. She almost dropped it because she was not prepared for its weight.
“Goodness,” she said, her skinny arm trembling under the strain of holding the golden trident out in front of her. “What could it possibly be made from? It’s too heavy to be gold!”
Nick leaned forward and took the object. He held it for her as she ran her fingers over its exceptionally smooth exterior. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Nikki. I don’t need to get out all the books and the photographs for comparison. The smoothness of the finish is inconsistent with the processing techniques in Europe during or after the galleon days. This must be modern. But I can’t tell you anything else. Where in the world did you find it?”
He told her just the outline of the story, careful as always not to give away key bits of information. It was not just the agreement he had made with Carol and Troy; treasure hunters never really trust anybody. But he did share with Amanda his idea that perhaps someone had cached this particular piece, as well as some others, for later retrieval. Nick insisted that this idea of his was a perfectly plausible explanation for the tracks on the ocean floor.
“Your scenario seems very unlikely to me,” Amanda said, “although I must admit that I am baffled and have no better explanation. Maybe Miss Dawson has some sources that can shed some light on the origin of this thing. But there is almost no chance that I am mistaken. I have personally seen or viewed close-up photographs of every significant piece of treasure recovered from the Keys in the past century. You could show me a new piece today and I could probably tell you in what European country it was made and in what decade. If this object comes from a sunken ship, it is a modern ship, almost certainly after World War II. Beyond that I can’t help you.”
Nick put the trident back in the bag and started to leave. “Wait just a minute before you go, Nikki,” Amanda said as he stood up. “Come over here for a minute.” She took him by the arm and led him over to a spot just in front of the large painting. “You would have liked Walter, Nikki. He was a dreamer also. He loved to look for treasure. Every year we would spend a week or two in the Caribbean on a yacht, ostensibly looking for treasure but just generally sharing each other’s dreams. From time to time we would find objects on the bottom of the ocean that we couldn’t understand and we would create fanciful conjectures to explain them. Almost always there was some prosaic explanation that was inferior to our fantasies.”
Nick was standing beside her with his bag in his right hand. Amanda turned to him and put her hand softly on his left forearm. “But it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that most of the years we came up empty-handed altogether. For we always found the real treasure, our love for each other. We always returned home renewed and laughing and thankful that life had allowed us to share another week or ten days in which we had imagined and fantasized and hunted for treasure together.”
Her eyes were soft and loving. Her voice was low but full of passion. “I do not know when or if you will come again, Nikki, but there are some things that I have been wanting to say to you for some time. If you like, you can dismiss them as the ravings of a sententious old woman, but I may never have a chance to tell you these things again. You have all the attributes I loved in Walter, intelligence, imagination, sensitivity. But something is wrong. You are alone. By choice. Your dreams of treasure, your zest for life — you do not share these things. It is very sad for me to see this.” She stopped for a second and looked back at the painting. Then she completed her thought, almost as if she were talking to herself. “For when you are seventy years old and look back at what your life has meant, you will not focus on your solo activities. What you will remember are the incidents of touching, those times when your life was enriched by a moment of sharing with a friend or loved one. It is our mutual awareness of this miracle called life that allows us to accept our mortality.”
Nick had not been prepared for an emotional encounter with Amanda. He had thought that he would stop by to see her for a few moments, ask her about the trident, and then depart. In retrospect he realized that he had treated Amanda very callously over the years. She had offered genuine friendship and he had spurned it, taking her out of his life altogether when their interaction no longer suited him. He winced as he recognized how selfish he had been.
As he walked slowly down the street, idly looking at the gracious old houses built over a hundred years ago, Nick took a deep breath. He had experienced too many emotions for one morning. First Monique, then Amanda. And it looks as if the trident is not going to solve all my problems. Funny how things always come in groups.
He found himself musing that maybe there had been a lot of truth in what Amanda had said. He acknowledged that he had been feeling lonely lately. And he wondered if the vague loneliness was indeed coupled to a creeping awareness of his own mortality, to the passage of that phase of life enshrined by Thomas Wolfe with the phrase, “For we were young, and we knew that we could never die.” Nick was feeling very tired when he came to the end of the sidewalk and turned onto the pavement of the convenience store parking lot.
He saw her before she saw him. She was standing next to the driver’s side of her brand-new red Mercedes sports coupe. She had a small brown paper hag in her arm and was looking in the window of the car next to hers, Nick’s 1990 Pontiac Nick felt a quick rush of adrenaline followed by anger and distrust. She finally saw him just as he started to speak. “Why, Greta, what a surprise! I guess we just happened to be in this part of Key West today at exactly the same time.”
“Ya, Nick, I thought it was your car. How are you?” Greta put the paper bag on the hood of her car and approached him in a friendly manner. She had either missed or was ignoring the sarcasm in his greeting. She was wearing a sleeveless yellow tank top and a pair of tight blue shorts. Her blonde hair was pulled back in two short pigtails.
“Don’t play innocent with me, fraulein,” Nick overreacted. “I know you didn’t come here to shop. “ He was nearly shouting. He used his free arm to accentuate his comments and block Greta’s approach. “This is not one of the stops on your circuit. You came here to find me. Now what do you want?” Nick dropped his arm. A couple of passersby had stopped to watch the exchange.
Greta stared at him for a moment with those crystal-clear eyes. She was wearing no makeup. She looked like a little girl except for the wrinkles on her face. “Are you still so angry, Nick? After all these years?” She came up next to him and smiled knowingly into his eyes. “I remember one night, almost five years ago,” she said playfully, “when you were not so angry. You were glad to see me. You asked me if I would have you for one night, no questions asked, and I agreed. You were great.”
In a momentary flash Nick remembered the rainy night when
he had stopped Greta just as she was leaving the pier. He recalled also how desperately he had needed to touch someone, anyone, on that particular night. “That was the day after my father’s funeral,” he said roughly, “and didn’t mean shit anyway.” He looked away. He did not want to return her piercing gaze.
“That wasn’t the impression I had,” Greta continued in the same playful but otherwise emotionless tone. “I felt you inside me, I tasted your kisses. You can’t tell me — ”
“Look,” interrupted Nick, clearly irritated. “What do you want? I don’t want to stand here all morning arguing with you about some stupid night five years ago. Now I know that you’re here for a reason. What is it?”
Greta backed off a step and her face hardened. “You are a very difficult man, Nick. It could be such fun doing business together if you weren’t such a, how do you say, pain in the ass.” She stopped for a moment. “I have come from Homer. He has a proposition for you. He wants to see what you found yesterday in the ocean and maybe discuss a partnership.”
Nick laughed triumphantly. “So I was right all along. You were sent to find me. And now that bastard wants to discuss a partnership. Hah. Not a fucking chance. You won’t steal from me again. Tell your employer or lover or whatever he is to cram his proposition up his ass. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”
He started to walk around Greta and open his car door. Her strong hand grabbed his forearm. “You’re making a mistake, Nick.” Her eyes bored into his again. “A big mistake. You can’t afford to do it on your own. What you found is probably worthless. If it is, let him spend the money.” Her chameleon eyes shifted one more time. “And it would be such fun to work together again.”
Nick climbed into his car and turned on the engine. “No dice, Greta. You’re wasting your time. Now I’ve got to go.” He backed out of the parking place and then drove into the narrow street. The treasure was front and center in his mind again. He had been momentarily depressed by what Amanda had told him about the trident, but the fact that Homer wanted to see it gave Nick a feeling of power. But, he asked himself, how does he know already? Who talked? Or could someone have seen us?
5
WHEN Commander Winters returned to his office after a scheduled meeting with the public relations department, his secretary, Dora, was conspicuously reading the Key West newspaper. “Ahem,” she said, deliberately attracting his attention. “Is the Vernon Winters starring in The Night of the Iguana at the Key West Playhouse tonight anyone I know? Or are there two of them in this town?”
He laughed. He liked Dora. She was almost sixty, black, a grandmother more than a dozen times, and one of the few secretaries on the base who actually had some pride in her work. She treated everybody, including Commander Winters, like one of her children. “So why didn’t you tell me?” she said with feigned outrage. “After all, what if I had missed it altogether? I told you last year to make certain that you always told us when you were performing.”
He took her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I had intended to tell you, Dora, but somehow it just slipped my mind. And you know that my thespian activities are not exactly embraced by the Navy, so I don’t ballyhoo them about so much. But I’ll have some tickets for you and your husband in a couple of weeks.” He looked at the stack of message notes on her desk. “That many, huh? And I was only gone a little over two hours. It never rains but it pours.”
“Two of these are supposedly urgent.” Dora looked at her watch “A Miss Dawson from the Miami Herald will call back in about five minutes and that Lieutenant Todd has been calling all morning. He insists that he must see you before lunch or he can’t be properly prepared for the meeting this afternoon. Apparently he left a long, message on your Top Secret telemail sometime this morning. Right now he’s furious with me because I wouldn’t interrupt your meetings to tell you about his message. Is it really that important?”
Commander Winters shrugged his shoulders and opened the door to his office. I wonder what Todd wants, he thought. I guess I should have checked my telemail before running off to the meeting with the chief. “Did you put all the rest of the messages on the computer?” he asked Dora before he closed the door. She nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk to Miss Dawson when she calls. Tell Todd that I will see him in fifteen minutes.” He sat down at his desk and turned on his computer. He activated his telemail subdirectory and saw that he had three new entries already this morning, one in the TOP SECRET queue. Commander Winters identified himself, entered the top secret code word, and started to read Lieutenant Todd’s transmission.
The phone rang. After a few seconds Dora buzzed him and told him that it was Miss Dawson. Before they started, Commander Winters agreed that the interview could be on the videophone and that it could be taped. He recognized Carol immediately from her occasional appearances on television. She explained to him that she was using the communications facility at the Miami International Airport.
“Commander Winters,” she said, wasting no time, “we have an uncorroborated report that the Navy is engaged in a search for something important, and secret, in the Gulf of Mexico between Key West and the Everglades. Your press people and a Lieutenant Todd have both denied the report and referred all questions to you. Our source also told us, and we have subsequently verified both of these facts, that there are today a large number of technology ships sailing in the Gulf and that you have been trying to rent sophisticated ocean telescopes from the Miami Oceanographic Institute. Do you have any comment?”
“Certainly, Miss Dawson.” The commander wore his best acting smile. He had carefully rehearsed the response in his morning meeting with the admiral. “It’s really amazing how rumors fly, particularly when someone suspects the Navy of nefarious deeds. “ He chuckled. “All the activity is just preparation for some routine maneuvers next week. A few of the sailors who man the technology ships are a little rusty and wanted some practice this week. As for the MOI telescopes, we intended to use them in our maneuvers to check their value in assessing underwater threats.” He looked directly at the camera. “That’s it, Miss Dawson. There’s nothing special going on.”
Carol watched the commander on the monitor at the airport. She had expected someone with an imposing air of authority. This man had a softness in his eyes, some kind of sensitivity that was unusual in a career military officer. Carol had a sudden idea. She walked up close to her own camera. “Commander Winters,” she said pleasantly, “let me ask you a hypothetical question. If the Navy were testing a new kind of missile and one test flight went astray, possibly even threatening population centers, wouldn’t it be likely that the Navy, claiming national security reasons as its defense, would deny that such a thing had happened?”
For a fleeting fraction of a second the expression in the eyes of Commander Winters wavered. He looked shocked. Then he regained control. “It is difficult to answer such a hypothetical question,” he intoned formally, “but I can tell you that it is Navy policy to keep the public informed about its activities. Only when the flow of information to the public could significantly undermine our national security would any kind of censorship take place.”
The interview wound up quickly. Carol had accomplished her objective. Damn, said Commander Winters to himself as Dora announced that Lieutenant Todd was waiting to see him. I should have expected that question. But how did she know that? Did she somehow trick Todd or one of the other officers? Or did someone in Washington spill the beans?
Winters opened the door to his office and Lieutenant Todd nearly stormed into the room. With him was another tall young lieutenant, thick shouldered with a bushy mustache whom Todd introduced as Lieutenant Ramirez of the Naval Intelligence Division. “Did you read my telemail message? What did you think? My God, it’s almost unbelievable what those Russians have done. I had no idea they could be so clever.” Todd was almost shouting as he paced excitedly around the office.
Winters watched Todd jumping around the room. This young lieutenant, he thought, is in a big hurry to
get somewhere. His impatience is oozing out of every pore. But what in the world is he saying about the Russians? And why is this Mexican muscleman here with him?
“Sit down. please,” the commander replied, motioning at the two chairs opposite his desk. He looked sternly at Lieutenant Todd. “And start by explaining why Lieutenant Ramirez is here. You know the regulations; we were all briefed on them again last week. Only officers at the rank of commander or higher can authorize sharing information on a need-to-know basis.”
Todd immediately defended himself against the reproach. “Commander Winters, sir,” he replied, “I believe that what we have here is a major international incident, far too big to be handled by special projects and systems engineering alone. I left word on your telemail interrupt at 0830 this morning for you to contact me ASAP, that there was a significant new development in the Broken Arrow project. When I had not heard from you by 1000, even though I had tried several additional times to reach you by telephone, I became worried that we might be losing valuable time. I then contacted Ramirez so that he and his men could start their work.”
Todd stood up from his chair. “Sir,” he began again, the excitement rising in his voice, “maybe I didn’t make it clear enough in my telemail message. We have hard evidence that someone commanded the Panther to go astray, right after the APRS was activated. We have confirmed from a special manual search of the intermittent telemetry data that the command receipt counters went crazy during a two-second period just before the missile veered off course.”
“Calm down, Lieutenant Todd, and sit down again. “Winters was irritated, not just by Todd’s nonchalant dismissal of the regulations issue, but also by his undisguised accusation that Winters had been delinquent in responding to his messages. The commander’s day had begun with a meeting with the admiral who ran the air station. He had wanted a briefing on all this Broken Arrow business. So Winters had not even been in his office, except for a couple of minutes, until after he came back from the public relations department.