* * *
The interns cut power to their DPVs, gliding to a halt at the crater of shattered coral that was the wreck site.
Where was the boiling silt storm? More to the point, where were Reardon and the controlled devastation of the airlift?
Where was the Ponce de León?
Valving air into her B.C., Star ascended to forty feet — as high as she dared to go without risking decompression sickness. Sharp knives of sunlight cut the turquoise water, and she could clearly make out individual swells on the surface. Cutter’s boat was nowhere to be seen.
After fumbling around in the pitch-black, skulking by headlamp, this felt almost like a promotion. Soon they were harvesting artifacts at greater speed than ever before, enjoying the excellent visibility and natural light.
Dante’s sharp eyes made out a rounded edge. The photographer deftly plucked a pewter serving dish out of the debris and stuffed it in his bag. It was a nice find — the best of the day so far. But Dante wasn’t satisfied.
Where’s the money?
A Spanish galleon — the richest kind of shipwreck in the world. And what had the interns managed to salvage so far? Plates. Cups. Spoons. What were they supposed to do, have a tea party?
Of course he understood the archaeological value of these items. The stuff was a window back in time, three hundred years, maybe more.
Archaeology. That was Adriana’s gig. Dante snorted into his mask — easy for her not to care about getting rich. She was rich already, or at least her family was. Dante might need that money someday. Photography probably didn’t pay very well — black-and-white photography, anyway. And he was doomed to that specialty.
But with this treasure, or a share of it, he wouldn’t have to care about that.
He finned away from the excavation, scanning the area. Maybe they were looking in the wrong place. Galleons were big, weren’t they? What if they were working on the opposite end of the wreck from where the treasure had been stored? They could be salvaging some kind of seventeenth-century cafeteria while millions in silver, gold, and jewels lay a few yards off.
But where? And if the treasure lay buried under coral, how would they ever get at it? Cutter was the one with the airlift and the dynamite. Cutter had a boat that could winch anchors and cannon barrels up to the surface.
He stared at the reef’s rocky rind, poring over every bump and contour. Surely, there had to be some sign, some hint of a man-made shape encased in the living limestone.
He found nothing.
He kicked through the murky haze stirred up by the efforts of the others, swimming to the far side of the wreck site. Here, coral gave way to sand and mud bottom.
Now that’s searchable.
Expelling air from his vest, he dropped to the seafloor on his hands and knees and began to dig. Almost immediately, he was lost in his own silt cloud. As he labored, it occurred to him that if he’d thought to look here, so had Cutter.
Exhausted, and sucking far too much air, he sat on the bottom in a remarkably dry-land pose, elbows on his knees, chin resting on his knuckles.
The picture came into focus gradually, as silt resettled itself, and the murky water began to clear around him. He blinked in surprise.
He’d always imagined the shoal as a broad plain, but really it was more of a mountainside here. Not far beyond the wreck site, the seafloor sloped sharply downward, falling off so quickly that Dante could not make out the bottom.
This is where the Hidden Shoals end. It must drop to deep ocean from here.
He increased buoyancy and lifted off the sand, peering into the abyss. As he floated free of the silt, the downward slope came into perfect focus. That was when he saw it.
It was far below on the incline, right at the point where the exhausted rays of sunlight succumbed to the permanent darkness of the deep. He could just make out the shadows of —
Of what?
He couldn’t be sure. But it was definitely something. Half-buried objects, scattered along the distant slant as if they had bounced off the back of a runaway truck.
Could this be the treasure?
If I could only get a closer look …
Dante finned to the edge of the plateau, and angled his direction down, paralleling the slope of the bottom. Valving air out of his B.C. made descent easier, and he focused all his concentration on the faint hints of debris far below.
When he felt the tug on his leg, he yelped into his regulator, fearing the jaws of some prehistoric sea monster. No, it was another diver, waving a scolding finger.
Star?
He peered into the newcomer’s mask and recoiled in shock. Oh, no! It was English, clinging to a DPV! The guide must have followed them. They were caught.
Dante held up a finger — one minute.
English shook his head vehemently. He pulled out his slate and scribbled: TOO DEEP.
PUSH aquanauts were supposed to maintain depth between forty and eighty feet. Dante checked his Fathometer. Almost ninety.
But I just need to see it!
Dante wheeled and continued to kick down the incline. English sprang into action. Dropping the scooter, he lunged forward, latching onto the boy’s slim torso. Dante took evasive action, rolling out of his grasp. As English struggled to hold on, he accidentally yanked the boy’s weight belt clean off.
Now suddenly buoyant, Dante shot upward. Desperately, he fumbled to deflate his B.C. to slow the ascent, but couldn’t find the valve.
If I surface now, without decompression, the bends will kill me!
English’s glove snapped out of nowhere and put an iron grip on his ankle. At last, Dante emptied his vest. Neutral again, he clamped himself onto the guide’s arm and did not let go.
The weight belt floated to the sandy slope.
Clang.
The unmistakable sound reverberated under water, carrying even more clearly than it would have through the air.
Wait a minute. Lead weights hitting wet sand don’t clang.
English heard it too. Both divers descended to the spot where the belt lay. The guide removed a flipper and shoveled through the mud and silt.
Dante spotted the dark object immediately. It was just below the sand, barely buried. The two wrested it free of the shoal, and English hefted it in his arms. It was about the size of a lampshade, dark with rust, and eaten through in about half a dozen places. But it was unmistakable — a brass bell.
The thoughts sparked instantly in Dante’s brain: Adriana! She had to see this! Old ships had bells, didn’t they? Adriana would know if this was from a Spanish galleon.
A white-toothed grin penetrated English’s perpetual scowl. He reached down and handed Dante his discarded weight belt. Dante reattached it, and the two kicked away in tandem, holding the bell between them like a trophy.
The dive guide’s smile disappeared as they crested the slope. He took in the sight of the other three interns, busily harvesting artifacts from the ruined reef. They looked up at his approach, as though receiving his white-hot anger by telepathy.
Seething, English passed off the bell to Dante and swooped over the reef, examining the destruction. The strokes of the underwater pencil against his dive slate reverberated like gunshots.
YOU DO THIS?
Kaz blustered his denial, and wound up choking on salt water.
They were a hundred percent innocent, but how could they ever explain the whole story down here, where more than a syllable or two was impossible?
Star drew out her slate and wrote a single word: CUTTER.
English’s stark expression plainly said he did not believe her.
At that moment, all explanation became unnecessary. Sixty-five feet overhead on the surface, a dark shape moved into position. Minutes later, an anchor dropped, settling on the reef ten yards away from them.
The Ponce de León.
The four interns retrieved their scooters and purred off to the ridge of coral that had served as their hiding place before. English followed, bu
t his eyes never left the shadow of the research vessel above them.
They watched from the cover of the ridge as two dark figures descended through the filtered sunlight — divers wearing weighted boots instead of flippers. Chris Reardon and Tad Cutter. Instead of the long serpentlike tube of the airlift, each man carried what looked like a futuristic weapon, connected to the surface by a hose.
Kaz stared. What were those things? Dynamite charges? Spear guns? He did not have long to wait. The moment Reardon’s boots thudded to the bottom, he positioned the six-inch blade against the unbroken reef at the edge of the excavation. With a monstrous roar, the device began pounding at the coral, smashing it to pieces.
Kaz gasped. A jackhammer! They were widening the search area!
Cutter’s machine blasted to life, working on the other side of the gash. Within seconds, the two treasure hunters disappeared inside an enormous cloud of silt and powdered coral.
Soon the interns couldn’t see anything. But there was no question that the operation was proceeding. The vibration of the jackhammers seemed to rip at the very fabric of the ocean. At that, it was nothing compared to the vibrations of outrage emanating from Menasce Gérard. To a native islander, this wanton destruction of the living reef was nothing less than a crime against nature. It took every ounce of self-control he had, learned from a lifetime of diving, to hold himself back from physically attacking them.
Star understood his agitation. She scribbled on her slate and held it up for him to read:
TREASURE HUNTERS.
His expression thunderous behind his mask, English indicated Dante, who was close by, still hugging the bell. Their mesh bags bulged guiltily. The irony almost cut Kaz in two: If Cutter’s the treasure hunter, how come we have all the treasure?
Mastering his anger at last, English turned his DPV back in the direction of PUSH and beckoned the others to follow.
They did not break free of the cloud kicked up by the jackhammers until they were a third of the way home.
* * *
The wet porch rang with anxious voices.
“We didn’t do anything to that coral!” Star pleaded their case. “Cutter broke it up with dynamite! We were just nosing around.”
“This never was a real internship,” Kaz continued. “The whole thing was a sham — a smokescreen to hide the fact that they were looking for a shipwreck.”
“And they found it,” Dante added. “Actually, I found it. But they stole it. And now they’re digging up half the ocean looking for the treasure.”
“It’s the truth, Mr. English,” Adriana said earnestly, “whether you believe us or not.”
“I believe you,” the guide said gravely.
They were struck dumb. It had never occurred to them that Menasce Gérard might take them at their word.
“Oh,” said Kaz, surprised. “Great. So what happens now?”
The giant ignored him and pulled off his dive hood, checking the security of the Band-Aid on his head.
Dante spoke up. “You know — what’s our next move? How do we stop Cutter?”
English shrugged hugely, his massive shoulders blotting out all view of the pressure hatch that led to the entry lock. “It is not my job for save the world, me.”
“You mean you’re just going to let him steal everything?” Dante protested.
English raised both expressive brows. “This is my property on the bottom of the ocean?”
“Well, shouldn’t we at least call the cops?” asked Star. “That reef is protected, and they smashed it. They’re smashing it right now!”
English laughed mirthlessly. “The cops — you refer to seven Saint-Luc men with the asthma. They cannot dive, so they are the cops.”
“What about the government?” Adriana prompted.
“The government is eight thousand kilometers away, in Paris. The local magistrate is on Martinique, and would not know coral from corral, the place where you keep the horse.” He looked earnestly into their faces. “Tiens, I agree with you. This is a terrible thing — a waste. But this is not my business. I am a diver. Justice is for someone else. A judge, peut-être.”
Dante hefted the bell. “Well, here’s one thing Cutter’s not going to get. What do you make of it, Adriana?”
She took it from him. It was heavier out of water, about the weight of a small TV. “It’s the ship’s bell, all right. We can try to clean off some of this rust. I think these things were engraved, so we might be able to identify the ship.”
“For what?” grumbled Dante. “So Cutter can know whose gold he’s getting rich on?”
“For historical value,” Adriana insisted. “We know the artifacts are Spanish. Maybe the Spanish government keeps online archives we can check.” She turned to English. “Do you think?”
“Why do you look at me?” the dive guide said, almost defensively. “What do I know about the Spanish treasure, me? A Frenchman named English.”
The interns were taken aback. That was almost a joke! Humor from the implacable Menasce Gérard. It didn’t seem possible.
“You know, you never explained that,” Star ventured at last. “Where your name comes from, I mean.”
“Exactement,” English agreed. “I never explain you this thing.”
He turned away to shrug out of his wet suit. And for a moment it seemed as if the subject was closed. But then the enormous guide spoke again.
“My ancestor was English,” he said, his back still to them. “From the shipwreck.”
“Really?” Adriana was impressed. “How long ago?”
The famous shrug. “This is maybe, I think” — he paused, searching for the right word — “baloney? A rumor in the family. Here, aux Antilles, so many boats sink over the years, everybody think his ancestor sail with Columbus.”
Kaz regarded English intently. “I know you don’t like us because we don’t belong at the institute. But now maybe you understand that it isn’t our fault. We’re not properly qualified because Cutter wanted us that way. He picked us because we’re not great divers, and he picked Star because he thought she would be handicapped.”
The guide tossed his wet suit onto the drying rack. He said, “You get better.” And he ducked through the pressure hatch, leaving them alone.
The four interns stared from one to the other. First humor and now this. Had English actually said something nice to them?
The old ship’s bell, after more than three centuries at the bottom of the Caribbean, now sat in a glass tub, soaking in a mild acidic solution. On the other side of the lab area, in PUSH’s entry lock, Adriana pounded the keyboard in search of clues to the identity of the mysterious galleon.
The lists and numbers that passed across the screen astonished her. The web site was maintained by the Spanish government. It contained a complete archive of every ship that had ever sailed to and from Spain, including its cargo. There were passenger manifests and bills of lading all the way back to the fifteenth century.
If that wreck is what we think it is, it has to be in here somewhere, Adriana reasoned.
Outside the viewing port by her shoulder, a lobster hunt was in progress. English was leading Star, Kaz, and Dante on a search for a dinner that was worthy of their last night on PUSH. Seafood was on the menu; peanut butter most definitely was not.
She got up from the chair and knelt down in front of the bell. Using a long-handled soft brush, she dabbed gently at the coating of rust on the brass. A cloud of reddish-brown particles flaked off into the surrounding liquid.
She squinted at the mottled surface. Was it getting cleaner, or was that just wishful thinking? She could make out faint lines of engraving, but nothing was clear enough to read.
She glanced up. Outside the porthole, Dante had cornered one of the clawless Caribbean lobsters in a rock crevice, and was trying to coax it out.
“Stay in there, kiddo,” she advised the creature. “He wants to cook you.” With a self-conscious laugh, she realized she had spoken aloud.
Da
nte lay on the rocks, his head almost completely inserted in the opening. As he reached out to grab, a huge dark shadow fell over him.
Adriana gaped. An enormous manta ray came flapping down to take a look at the diver with his head in a hole. Frantic, she banged on the window with both fists, hoping the concussion of her knocking would carry through the water. Perhaps it did, because Dante emerged with his captured lobster to find the twenty-foot wingspan of the devilfish looming over him.
Adriana couldn’t hear anything, but it was plain that Dante was screaming his head off. He spat out his regulator, and howled a cloud of bubbles that seemed to have no end. Star and Kaz tried to come to his aid, but Dante was out of control.
English finned onto the scene, with bubbles pouring from him as well. Adriana felt a stab of fear. The guide was afraid of nothing. Just how dangerous was this big beast that hovered like an alien spacecraft?
Then she realized that English was not in the grip of terror. He was laughing.
Somehow they managed to get Dante calmed down. He was inconsolable, though — in the excitement, his lobster had made its escape. With sign language, English instructed the others to watch. Then, astoundingly, he climbed right onto the manta’s expansive back.
Adriana stared through the viewing port. The monster just hung there and allowed itself to be mounted, great wings undulating slightly. Then, with a nudge from its rider, it took off, sailing gracefully over the reef, bearing English like some begoggled jockey. It was out of Adriana’s view almost immediately, but she could see the others watching with undisguised awe.
She returned her attention to the bell, and brushed a little more. The solution was now growing cloudy with rust particles, and the engraving was definitely beginning to appear.
1! But no — there was a crosspiece on top! T, then! She dabbed the brush gently but firmly, holding herself back from scrubbing. If she ruined this artifact, she would never forgive herself.
T-O-L-L — no, the second L was an E!
Outside the habitat, the manta flashed by, this time with Star on its back. What was this — a carnival? Manta rides: fifty cents?