Night Diver

by Elizabeth Lowell

  CHAPTER 4

  THE QUIET IN the dive center was so profound that Kate could hear her heartbeat. Even Volkert had stopped crunching. Then came a sound over the dive loudspeaker.

  “Holy,” whispered the diver, almost inaudible over his respirator. “Holy holy holy holy holy. Golden Bough, you be seein’ what I be seein’? Or maybe I be down here too long?”

  Kate looked at the screen and gasped, which drew Holden’s attention from Larry. Volkert dropped a chip from his thick fingers and began muttering words in his native South Afrikaans.

  The diver’s glove gleamed red as he put his hand closer to the camera and light, driving out the normal blue filter of deep water. Something glimmered in his hand, a glow that only came from high-quality gold. The links were about as big around as a pencil.

  “The sixteenth-century version of a portable ATM,” Kate said, recognizing it from the books that had filled her childhood. “The gold links are pure, soft enough to be parted and re-formed without tools. Need a blanket, food, a horse? Just break off the right weight in links and pay on the spot.”

  “Indeed.” And how very lovely to find for my arrival. Holden took his smartphone out of a pants pocket and snapped a picture of the screen. “Lucky timing, eh? This might not be a total cock-up after all.” With a quick motion he leaned over and took Volkert’s headset. “How long is the chain?”

  Holden’s brisk question jarred the diver into a more formal kind of English.

  “The length of my arm, twice. Maybe two meters. There might be more, but I’m running low on air.”

  “Right. Good work.” He handed the headset back to Volkert and looked at Larry. “Tell your divers to concentrate on that part of the grid. I will see you in the main salon after I check in with Antiquities. Do be sure that your grandfather attends our little meeting.”

  Nodding, Larry got out of the way.

  Kate didn’t.

  Holden looked at her, wishing he had more time to enjoy the effect of her smoldering in the light bath from the monitors.

  “Are you going to tell me what is going on?” she asked in a level voice.

  “That is what I’ll be discussing with the chap who is actually running the show—Patrick Donnelly. Do join us.”

  Though the words were polite, it was another command.

  Holden was gone before she could tell him what a nice man he wasn’t.

  After a moment to check her temper, Kate tilted her head toward the door and raised her left eyebrow at her brother.

  “What?” Larry asked, yawning. Then, “Oh. Damn, Kitty, I should be taking a nap.”

  He followed her out the door and waited while she closed it firmly.

  “You should be hiring a permanent business manager,” she said, “not napping.”

  “Easy for you to say. I’ve been pulling extra dive shifts. Damn divers these days like drinking better than working.”

  “At the wages you’re paying, you shouldn’t be surprised.”

  He shrugged. “If we get above a certain amount in expenses, there are penalties. That’s why we asked for an advance and got bloody Holden Cameron instead.”

  “You never should have signed that contract,” she said.

  “You’ll get us sorted out.”

  “And we’ve had this conversation before.” She hesitated, lowered her voice, and went to the point that had been worrying her. “How well do you know the diving crew?”

  “They’re cheap and competent enough. Same for Volkert, except the amount he eats, he should be paying us.”

  “That’s not what I asked. How well do you know them? Are they trustworthy?”

  Larry’s pale blue eyes narrowed. “Even though you hate everything about diving, that’s no reason to think divers are rotten.”

  “Do you think any of them are thieves?” she insisted.

  “I don’t hire thieves,” he shot back at her. “Just because we aren’t making a big haul doesn’t mean there are crooks aboard. Besides, we just found some gold. We should be celebrating, not arguing.”

  “You don’t have to yell, I hear you just fine.”

  “You’re not acting like it.”

  Kate rubbed at the headache that was waiting behind her forehead. “I’m sorry. You know I love you.” Then she heard herself and made a choked sound. “Time machines are real.”

  Her brother gave her a shocked look. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Just time lagged.”

  He began to look worried.

  She smiled crookedly. “Remember when you’d yank my ponytail and I’d yell at you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And then you’d somehow work the conversation around to me apologizing for having gotten the ponytail in your way?” she asked.

  “Sure. It was fun, then,” he said rather wistfully.

  “Maybe for you. I got tired of always being in the wrong.”

  “I love you, Kitty. That hasn’t changed.”

  She let her forehead bang lightly against his shoulder. “I know. It’s the only reason I haven’t killed you. Come on. Let’s watch Grandpa and the handsome Brit go at it.”

  “Handsome? That arrogant son of a bitch?”

  “Part of that is the situation,” she said, not knowing why she bothered to defend Holden. “Part is cultural. You’re used to a relaxed island atmosphere and he is used to a right-and-tight city.”

  “Culture, huh.” Larry yawned and said, “I thought he was just a prick.”

  “That, too. I suspect it’s the lead item in his résumé.”

  She could hear her brother’s laughter following her as she climbed the steep stairway up to the main deck. The sound helped her ignore the terror gnawing at her soul, memories of the night she had bolted up the stairs like her heels were on fire.

  But there was no fire, only storm and the ravenous sea.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself. It won’t do any good. It will just get in the way of helping the family.

  I really wish they had waited for me before they signed that awful contract. Oh well, spilled milk and all that.

  She climbed the ladder up to the wheelhouse, reading the words that her grandpa had painted between the steps long ago and repainted every year since.

  ANYONE CAN HOLD THE HELM WHEN

  THE SEA IS CALM

  —Publius

  She half smiled. The saying was so like Grandpa. Whatever the sea threw at him, he overcame. Whatever it gave up to him, he spent. Whatever it took from him, he mourned. But not for long.

  It was an outlook Kate was still trying to master.

  She hesitated before knocking on the steel door of the wheelhouse. The porthole, which as usual was opened for air circulation, reflected sunlight in blinding flashes that kept time with the lazy swells rocking the ship.

  So calm. So beautiful.

  So deceptive.

  Larry’s voice drifted up behind her, telling divers about the new area of concentration.

  Kate knocked briskly on the gray door. “Grandpa, it’s me.”

  “Come in, Kitty darling. I’ll be yours in a moment.”

  Though he was a second-generation American, the lilt of County Cork curled around the words like a hug, telling her that he was in a good mood.

  Finding gold will do that for you, she thought, and pushed the door open.

  The wheelhouse was still a time-dulled stainless steel and lacquered teak, old and new materials mixed together with an eye to function rather than fashion. A sonar screen burned with brilliant blue, red, and yellow, mapping the bottom, which changed as the Golden Bough shifted lazily on anchor. The coiled line of a communications handset hung near the wheel like a corkscrew snake. Another screen lay beneath a light blue cotton shirt.

  “I see you’re still keeping all your displays clear,” Kate said as she pulled the shirt away and hung it on the chromed hook behind the door. When she turned back, she realized that she had revealed a screen displaying a satellite relay of current weather
overlaid on a graphic of the area. “I don’t see the storm that Holden is worried about.”

  “It’s coming,” her grandpa said calmly. “Don’t need fancy machines to tell me. I can feel it in the motion of the sea. If not in the next few days, then within the week.” He wrote in the captain’s log before he said, “Holden, is it? Do you fancy our new Brit?”

  “He has gorgeous eyes,” she said, then laughed when Grandpa turned swiftly toward her. “Gotcha.”

  “That you did, Kitty darling. Give an old man a hug.”

  “You’re not an old man. You’re my grandpa.”

  She went into his arms and was engulfed in the scents of the past—sea and tobacco and last night’s rum. His fringe of hair tickled her cheek. She was nearly as tall as he was, which surprised her. Age had compacted him, making his work-scarred hands and thick knuckles look too large for his wiry frame. When she was young, she used to believe he could hold up the sky with those hands.

  Everything aboard the Golden Bough was so familiar. She could almost hear her parents laughing on the dive deck.

  Part of Kate tensed, waiting for the nightmare to break free.

  Nothing came but the clank and creak of a working boat, with the steady undertone of the generator making electricity.

  “Did you hear what a diver pulled up?” she asked.

  “Mingo,” her grandfather said.

  “What?”

  “Kid’s name is Mingo.”

  “Oh. He pulled up almost two yards of gold chain,” she said.

  “About time that whelp earned his keep.”

  “Once you would have been shouting to the sky about the chain.”

  “Then the treasure was mine. I don’t waste energy on another man’s gold. So what do you think about the Brit? You always were a shrewd little one.”

  “Don’t be misled by his proper accent. He’s not just a stuffed shirt.”

  Grandpa grunted. “Larry calls him Cookie Monster.”

  Kate took a moment to absorb that her brother had already briefed her grandfather.

  Just like the old days. Nothing personal. I’m a little girl, not a big manly man. Fun to tease, a decent cook, a good diver, and a great bookkeeper.

  And if Larry thinks Holden is as amiable as Cookie Monster, he’s in for an unhappy surprise.

  “Well,” Grandpa said philosophically, “maybe the new Brit will be more use than Malcolm the Geek. If it’s not in a dive log, Malcolm doesn’t see it. On the other hand, he doesn’t get in the way. Hope this Cameron fellow doesn’t, either.”

  “Sharks don’t get in the way,” she said. “They just follow their teeth.”

  “Shark, huh? Maybe I’ll arrange a meeting between him and Benchley, show him what real teeth look like.”

  “Who’s Benchley?”

  “The fourteen-foot tiger shark that began cruising around the Golden Bough not long after we set up shop out here.”

  Kate remembered the muscular black shadow cutting across the dive screen, a shark overwhelming a rectangular goldfish bowl. “You dive with a tiger?”

  “You’ve been away too long,” Grandpa Donnelly said. “Sharks are a fact of life for divers here. To the crew, Benchley’s good luck, so long as he isn’t hungry. This Cameron fellow gets in the way, we’ll feed him to Benchley.”

  “It wouldn’t help. The Brits would just send someone else.” But he probably wouldn’t look like Holden, all surefooted and dragon-eyed.

  Kate cut off the thought. She’d clearly been knocked loopy by being aboard again.

  “Maybe the Brits would lose interest,” Grandpa said.

  “That’s not going to happen. Especially now that we’ve found some more signs that this is an old Spanish wreck.”

  The old man smiled bitterly. “What Mingo has in his hands is a trifle. I’ve pulled out money chains that could girdle the wheelhouse three times and have enough left over to put diesel in the boat for a month of cruising.”

  “Grandpa, you were lucky to find even this wreck. There’s only so many left out there in easy reach.”

  “What makes you think I found this? I’m just an errand boy diving on a grid someone gave me. But sure as hell, I’d have found her by now. We were so close . . .” He shrugged. “Not close enough. Like chasing the devil’s own rainbow. God-rotting bureaucrats. The sea was meant to be free to anyone with the wit and guts to survive her.”

  “So was the New World once. Now it’s all claimed several times over.”

  “Vultures feeding on the carcass of men’s dreams.”

  “At least you don’t have a court fight ahead of you,” Kate said. “Silver lining, Grandpa.”

  He said something under his breath, raised his pipe, and clamped his teeth around the stem.

  “And you’re only having to go about eighty feet down, ninety if it’s on the slope to the drop-off. Much easier on the divers,” she added. “Faster salvage, too.”

  “No point breaking your balls on those deep wrecks. Most of the time it takes more millions in equipment to recover anything and then a battalion of lawyers to keep governments at bay. Recovery costs far more than any treasure is worth. Besides, having robots do the work of men is for nancy boys and bureaucrats. I’m neither.”

  Kate braced for the rant to come. Even when she’d been a child, Grandpa had hated modern technology almost as much as he hated modern laws and the governments that thought them up.

  He’s afraid, she realized suddenly. The past is gone and he doesn’t fit in the present.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  “For what? Last time I looked you were family, not bloody government.”

  For being young, she thought. For fitting into the present better than you do.

  “Please don’t take it out on the messenger,” she said softly.

  “You?”

  “Holden Cameron.”

  “That miserable bastard. Who is he to be talking about thieves?”

  Kate stepped into her usual family job. Peacemaker. “For what it’s worth, if the Brits wanted to shut down the operation and revoke the contract, Holden would have done it the second he set foot on the boat. Or sooner. A radio call would have taken care of it.”

  “So he’s here to spy,” Grandpa snarled.

  She sighed. “More like a guard to make sure that the Golden Bough doesn’t disappear into the sunset with a hold full of treasure that the British government claims.”

  He gave her a narrow-eyed glare. “If I’d intended to do that, I never would’ve taken this contract.”

  “You didn’t. Larry did. It’s his signature on the bottom line.”

  “Larry’s a good boy, but he couldn’t tie a proper flat knot without being reminded how to. You only needed to be shown once,” he said, looking directly at her. His faded green eyes held the regret of a dream that hadn’t come true. “You should be running this show. We’d not be in a pickle if—”

  “Don’t start,” she cut in. “I didn’t come here so that you could rail at me in person for letting the family down.”

  “You have your father’s intelligence and your mother’s fire.” A faint smile softened the weathered lines of his face. “All right, Kitty darling. No more on that subject. So tell me, have you found a way to drain the red ink filling the bilge?”

  She shook her head. “For someone who’s as old-fashioned as you insist you are, this operation has spent a saint’s ransom on electronics and expensive air mixtures for the divers.”

  “That’s all Larry’s doing. The boy thinks he’s going to find the next hundred-million-dollar wreck. I put my foot down when it came to rebreathing gear. He can play all he wants with his own toy, but old-fashioned scuba gear is good enough for me. Cheaper, too.”

  Neither mentioned that her parents had died using rebreathing gear.

  “Even if Larry found a lifetime wreck,” she said, “and you could reach it, some government would claim it. Spain, Portugal, Britain, France—even Mexico and South American count
ries are trying to claim sovereignty over old shipwrecks. People are very possessive about history.”

  “Only when it’s worth money,” he said cynically. “So far this job is red ink and frustration. Can you keep us afloat?”

  “I can see about restructuring various old and new debts.” Which never should have been taken on. “With less going out to service debts, you’ll have a chance.” She hesitated, then said, “Don’t sign another contract until you run it by me. Moon Rose can’t survive it.”

  “I’m not the captain.”

  “That’s not what you told Holden.”

  Grandpa resettled the pipe stem in his teeth. “Larry can’t handle that stuffed shirt. I can.”

  She let that go by. “What about the crew? Can Larry handle them?”

  “He hired them.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Grandpa bit down on the pipe stem.

  “You’ve worked with divers all your life,” she said. “Are these men honest?”

  “As honest as anyone is.” Then he added impatiently, “Larry has been Golden Bough’s official captain for five years.”

  “Larry is the best first mate you could ask for and an even better diver,” she said. “But after two minutes aboard, I knew he wasn’t the captain in anything but name.”

  “I’m an old man, Kitty darling. It was never supposed to be this way. But your father died, you left, and Larry stayed.”

  Cold to the soul, tugging at her father’s slack body, screaming “Where’s Mom? When did I lose her? Where’s Mom!”

  Nothing answered but the spray of salt water over the workboat’s gunwale.

  Nothing ever had answered.

  Kate forced memories aside. She couldn’t change the past. She just had to live with it.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said, “but I can’t help if you know more than I do. I think that Holden Cameron is the kind of man who is sent out when his bosses don’t trust the salvage crew.”

  “So what? If I had the treasure, I’d have taken it and sold it in Venezuela or any other place that wants to spit in the eye of the West. But I’m here, so I don’t have the treasure.”

  “Don’t be so contrary,” she said. “I know you and Larry, but I don’t know the crew. This is serious. Holden was taking pictures of the gold that we just found, as if he suspected it wouldn’t make it up to be cataloged.”