Kate dragged Jake into the bedroom and stretched him out beside the bed, out of sight from the door. She turned the lights off in all the rooms and waited in the darkness for Reyna.
Reyna arrived about an hour later. Kate could see her outside, through the edge of the closed drapes, propping her AK-47 outside the door. Kate assumed the rifle was a sign for the guards, letting them know where she was. Reyna adjusted the large satchel that she had over her shoulder, slipped inside the house, and crept toward the bedroom with remarkable stealth.
Kate flattened herself against a wall in the bedroom, and when Reyna entered the room, Kate whacked her in the head with a frying pan she’d commandeered from the kitchen. Reyna went dead still for a moment, then crumpled to the floor with a hiss of air.
Kate flipped the light on, lifted the satchel off Reyna’s shoulder, and emptied it out onto the bed. It contained four nylon cords, rubber gloves, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and a filet knife. She looked back down at Reyna. “I don’t even want to think about what you were going to do with this.”
Jake started coming around as the tiny, rickety elevator dropped down the narrow shaft. He was on the floor, his back against one of the three elevator walls. Kate stood across from him, watching the sharp, rocky face of the shaft passing by on the open side where the closet door had been. The only light in the pitch-dark shaft came from the flashlight app on her father’s cellphone.
“Take it easy, Dad,” Kate said. “We’re in the elevator.”
“What happened after I passed out?”
“Reyna paid me a visit with pliers, a filet knife, and some nylon cords.”
“She was going to tie you up, pull out some fingernails or teeth, and maybe peel off a few layers of skin,” he said. “That wasn’t very friendly.”
“I’ll say.”
“Did you strangle her with your underwire?”
“Nope,” Kate said. “The garrote is in my other bra.”
“Another missed opportunity,” Jake said. “Is she alive?”
“Of course she is. Killing her would have messed up the whole con. But she’ll be tied up for a while. I bound her arms and legs to the bedposts with the nylon cords and gagged her with a towel. She’d left her AK-47 outside the guest house, warning off the guards, so we have some time before she either escapes from the ropes or is discovered.”
They hit bottom, and Jake got shakily to his feet. “There’s a deer trail through the gorge,” he said. “I left a Jeep on a fire road about two miles south of here.”
“Are you up for a walk?”
“Sure am,” Jake said. “I had a nice, restful nap.”
“What’s the plan after we get to the car?”
“We’ve got rooms at the Marbella Club.”
It was a five-star hotel, the posh resort of royals and movie stars. It had put Marbella on the map back in the 1950s, and it hadn’t lost any of its cachet since then.
“Nick has been a bad influence on you,” Kate said.
“Nick made the reservations for us. He said it was the FBI’s treat to thank us for our trouble.”
Nick knocked on Violante’s door and took him up to the deck shortly after daybreak. The skies were clear and there was nothing but wide-open sea in all directions. They could have been anywhere on earth.
Billy Dee operated the crane, lifting up the ROV and lowering it down to the water on the starboard side of the boat. Violante stood at the starboard railing, intently watching the process.
Nick handed Violante a cup of coffee. “It will be a half hour before it reaches the bottom,” Nick said. “Then the fun begins.” They stood at the rail and watched the ROV sink below the surface, slowly disappearing into the murk, until all they could see was the tether line and umbilical cable that the ROV was dragging down with it.
Rodney Smoot was sequestered in the cargo hold, ready to put his render farm to work. “We’re all set down here whenever you are,” Rodney said into Nick’s earbud. “We can pick up the video feed on descent if you want to get an early start on the show.”
“We could watch the feed on descent, but it’s pretty boring stuff,” Nick said to Violante. “I suggest we grab some breakfast and then make our way to the command center.”
The message was said to Violante, but meant for Rodney.
“Gotcha,” Rodney said. “The opening credits and theme song are all cued up.”
“Are we on top of the shipwreck?” Violante asked, following Nick to the deckhouse.
“More or less,” Nick replied. “We’ll have to do some traveling underwater to get there.”
Violante followed Nick to the galley and helped himself to bread and ham and fresh figs. He topped off his coffee, and stood. He was ready to get on with his adventure. Nick took the hint and walked Violante down the corridor to the command center.
Violante paused for a moment in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He stared at the array of buttons, monitors, keyboards, and joysticks. It wasn’t necessary to know what any of it did. It was a big, shiny thing, and he was drawn to it like a salmon to a fishing lure.
“This is the heart and soul of our operation, the driver’s seat of the ROV,” Nick said to Violante.
Tom Underhill had been at the controls, but he gave up his chair to Nick when Nick came into the room. Nick took the seat and steered the ROV slowly over the seabed.
In the silence and darkness of the command center, Violante’s eyes fixed on the screen, and he felt as if he were swimming in the depths toward the treasure himself. His throat was dry and his heart was pounding. He hadn’t been this anxious or excited in years. The anticipation was almost unbearable and yet wonderful at the same time.
“Would it be possible for me to take a turn at the joystick?” Violante asked.
“Sure,” Nick said, vacating the seat. “Just think of this as a videogame. There’s a large outcropping of jagged rock coming up. You want to make sure you steer around it.”
Violante wrapped his hand around the stick and cautiously moved the ROV. The outcropping of rock appeared on the screen and Violante veered off to one side to avoid it. When the ROV cleared the rock Violante caught sight of the golden table, sticking upright out of the muck ahead, gleaming in the light cast by the ROV. The picture Hartley had shown him in Marbella hadn’t fully captured the grandeur of the riches in the murk of the ocean floor. The radiance of the gold on the table, and the intricate engravings on the legs, showed through the concretions that stuck to the table like dollops of brown plaster.
Violante was so caught up in what he was seeing that he stopped paying attention to his driving, and the screen shuddered as the ROV scraped the side of a large rock.
“You break it, you buy it,” Hartley said. “You’ve scraped the entire left side of the ROV against that rock. Looks like you took a light off.”
“Sorry about that,” Violante said, allowing the ROV to hover in place. “But it hardly matters in comparison to this vast wealth.”
It mattered to Tom, who heard Nick’s helpfully precise description of the damage through their earbud communications system. Tom signaled to Billy Dee in the crane to bring up the ROV. They’d have to replicate the damage to the vehicle before Violante showed up on deck. And they had to do it without damaging the vehicle so much that they revealed it was a hollow fake inside. It pained him to have to take a claw hammer to his beautiful creation.
The only thing that could have made the vision in front of Violante more dreamlike for him was if a mermaid swam by, beckoning him with her smile.
Beyond the splendid table, as far as the scope of the lights could reach in the murk, were piles of coins that had once been stored in wooden crates. The crates had long since rotted away, spilling the coins onto the ocean floor. Golden plates, goblets, flatware, candlesticks, and trinket boxes were scattered along with the coins, concretion-covered cannons, and cannonballs. It was a field of splendor, wealth, and legend beyond Violante’s wildest imagination. It was
a boyhood fantasy come true.
He looked past the gold and noticed something that didn’t fit. There were black boxes, the size of bricks, with tiny antennas on them. The boxes were spread in strategic spots around the table and the piles of coins and they were connected to one another with a blue cable.
“What are those boxes?” Violante asked.
“Insurance policies,” Hartley said. “Explosive charges capable of reducing all of this gold to dust and scattering it over a wide area, perhaps miles with the current.”
It sickened Violante that Hartley could even think about destroying something so glorious, so rare. Blowing up priceless riches that have withstood centuries in the deep would be a terrible crime, certainly worse than anything he had ever done. People could be replaced. But good luck finding a one-ton solid gold table anywhere.
“Destroying those priceless, irreplaceable artifacts would be sacrilege,” Violante said. “Unforgivable.”
“As an archaeologist by training, I agree with you,” Hartley said. “So don’t make me do it. If you want this, pay me for it.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of me.”
“Just being careful,” Hartley said. “Would you like to take some souvenirs home with you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Pick a pile of coins, and we’ll scoop some of them up,” Nick said.
Violante pointed to the pile directly in front of them. “Those will do.”
Nick showed Violante how to use the left robotic arm to remove a white plastic bucket from the ROV and hold it steady on the seabed while using the right robotic arm to shovel coins into it. The process took about forty-five minutes, and Violante enjoyed every second of it.
The experience brought back a childhood memory. He was at an arcade with his dad and tried one of those coin-operated machines that gave you a chance to scoop up a stuffed rabbit with a joystick-operated claw hand. He wasn’t able to get the animal and threw a fit. His father smashed the glass and gave him the stuffed animal. When the manager came over and chastised them, his father shot the man in the face. It was a happy moment. This would be too. Maybe he’d shoot Nick Hartley in the face to come full circle.
Violante used the right arm to put a lid on the bucket, and used the left arm to secure the bucket to the ROV.
“Excellent,” Nick said. “You’ve really got the hang of it. Time to bring the ROV back up to the surface. I’ll take over the controls now.”
Violante stood behind Nick and watched the ROV trace its path back around the outcropping of rock, skim over the ocean floor, and make a slow ascent. The screen went black and Violante gasped.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The crane operator has taken over,” Nick said. “Our ROV is being lifted out of the water. Time for us to go on deck.”
Nick and Violante reached the starboard railing just as the ROV was carefully set on the deck. The left side of the ROV was badly scraped, chrome hanging from the nacelle and a large gash where one of the side lights had been. Nick thought Tom had done a great job replicating the damage Violante had supposedly caused.
There was a white bucket on a shelf underneath the nose of the craft. Tom stepped up, lifted the wet, heavy bucket out of the ROV, brought it over to Nick and Violante, and set it down at their feet.
Nick handed Violante a pair of rubber gloves. “Put these on. The concretions on the gold can be sharp.”
Tom lifted the lid off the bucket, which was filled with murky water and smelled like rotting fish. Violante reached into the cold water and came out with a handful of coins. The coins were dripping with muck, but the gold still shone through, glittering in the sunlight.
“Magnificent,” he said, and dropped the coins back into the bucket.
“It’s time for you to go back to your room,” Nick said. “Take the bucket with you, if you like.”
Violante replaced the lid and carried the bucket back to the deckhouse. He stopped at the door to his cabin and turned to Nick.
“I want the treasure,” Violante said.
“I want eighteen million dollars,” Nick said.
“You mean seventeen and a half million dollars.”
“That was before you damaged my ROV,” Nick said.
Violante grimaced as if feeling physical pain, and Nick knew that Violante was checking his temper, resisting the urge to strangle him on the spot.
“I’ll want maps, sonar readings, anything and everything I will need to precisely locate the wreck,” Violante said. “And I will need those bombs removed.”
“Of course. All part of our customer service. I will need the money in cash.”
“Do you realize how much cash that is?”
“Enough to fill a bathtub, and that’s just what I might do with it.”
“It’s going to be extremely difficult to gather that much cash quickly and without attracting unwanted attention.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Be reasonable. It would be so much easier, and more discreet, for me to draw the funds from various accounts around the globe and put them directly into your preferred bank account.”
“I want cash,” Nick said. “It’s a deal breaker for me.”
Violante narrowed his eyes as best he could, considering his face was stretched as tight as a drum. “Why?”
“The same reason you wanted to stick your hands into the bucket and hold the coins in your fingers. I want something I can hold in my hands, or bathe in, or scatter around my bedroom. I’m not getting the coins, or the shiny gold table, so this is as close as I am going to get to tangible treasure. I need to be able to look at it, to feel it, to admire it. I know you understand.” Violante nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll call you a day before I want to meet and give you the details of the transaction.”
Nick locked Violante into his cabin with his gold, and went up to the bridge. Willie was at the helm and Boyd was slumped in the captain’s chair, watching the activity on deck, and looking generally mopey.
“Congratulations, Nick,” Willie said. “That was a great show.”
“Thank you. We’ll head back to Málaga tonight,” Nick said. “Is something wrong, Boyd?”
“I was expecting a larger role in the action. Instead, I’ve been stuck up here with Willie.”
“At least you could leave,” Willie said. “I can’t. I have to drive the boat. I’ve been a captive audience. Do you think it’s a joy having to listen to you blather on all day about your fictional life at sea while you hobble around the bridge, bumping into things?”
“I’ve made an effort to stay in character, to add depth and color to my performance, not that it was put to much use.”
“It’s true you had a supporting part, and not the lead, but you were perfect,” Nick said. “You exuded authority and were the key player in establishing the realism of our charade. Violante was utterly convinced by your character. Besides, you still have another role to play before this con is over.”
“Is it a juicy part?”
“It’s pivotal.”
Nick’s cellphone rang, and he knew from the ringtone that it was Jake calling. He was surprised when he heard Kate’s voice at the other end.
“I’m poolside at the Marbella Club drinking sangrias and working on my tan,” Kate said.
“Nice. I’m assuming the hostage thing didn’t work out for you.”
“Reyna’s hostess skills leave a lot to be desired. Dad showed up at just the right time last night and took a chocolate for me.”
“Don’t you mean a bullet?”
“Reyna laced the chocolates in my room with knockout drops and Dad ate one. I returned the favor and left Reyna tied to the bedposts. I loaded Dad into the secret elevator, and here we are, leading the good life.”
“What was your weapon of choice?”
“Frying pan.”
“Nice to know you have a domestic side,” Nick said. “Did Reyna see your father?”<
br />
“Nope,” Kate said. “She was unconscious when we left, and I sent the elevator back up to the closet so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious how I escaped.”
“Then we’re fine,” he said. “We’ll express our anger at your treatment by jacking up the price by two million dollars.”
“Violante isn’t going to be happy about any of this,” Kate said.
“No, but he has no leverage. We have the gold. He’s seen it, and now he wants it. So he’ll apologize, pay the extra money with a smile, and plan on getting his retribution later.”
It was midafternoon before one of Violante’s guards began to wonder exactly what was going on in the guesthouse and was brave enough to ignore the AK-47 by the front door. He found Reyna Socorro tied up spread-eagle on the king-size bed with a gag in her mouth. He untied her, and as soon as circulation returned to her hands, she broke his neck.
As much as she appreciated being found after sixteen hours, she couldn’t let anyone live who’d seen her subjugated and powerless. If she had, she would certainly have lost whatever authority she had over her men. He had to die, but she knew it wasn’t fair and offered her sincere apology to his corpse.
She inspected the guesthouse for possible avenues of escape and finally reached the conclusion that Kate had gone out the front door and somehow eluded the guard. He’d probably been asleep on the job and deserved to die, Reyna thought. She assembled her security force and told them to search the compound. She returned to the guesthouse and reconsidered the closet. If somehow Kate had discovered the secret elevator, she was long gone. Probably in London by now. The elevator simply looked like a closet. Hard to believe Kate was resourceful enough to realize that the closet was an elevator and rotate the coat hook.
Reyna reached for a chocolate and instantly snatched her hand back. She’d already lost half a day. She didn’t need to drug herself and lose more time. The Hartley bitch was most likely hiding on the property somewhere, and when she was found she’d pay dearly.
Reyna’s equipment was still spread out on the bed, including the throwaway cellphone that connected her to Nick Hartley. A feeling of dread swept over her when the phone rang. She thought Nick was most likely calling in a ransom demand, and she’d lost her hostage. Not good. She was beginning to wonder if perhaps the smartest thing she could do, for her own survival, was to take whatever cash she could from the house, make a run for it now, and hope that she could hide from Violante, if he lived, or from the Menendez cartel, if he didn’t.