Riptide

by Douglas Preston

  He walked to the nearest window, gazed out for a moment, then turned. "I'm sure most of you know the details of the accident by now. As his crew was moving across the island, Ken Field broke into a boarded-over shaft, probably dug in the mid-nineteenth century. His safety rope stopped his fall before he reached the bottom. But as he was being pulled out, his rope became caught in an exposed beam whose underpinnings were rotted by time. The tug of the rope dislodged the beam, triggering a cave-in and breaching the adjoining flooded shaft."

  He paused. "We know what lessons can be learned from this. And I think we all know what our next duties must be. Tomorrow, we begin preparations for dye-testing the Water Pit in order to locate the hidden flood tunnel to the sea. We'll need to have the primary computer systems up and running by that point. The hardbody sonar array, the seismometers, tomographic systems, and the proton magnetometers must be assembled before work begins. The diving equipment should be inspected and ready to go by fifteen hundred hours. Most importantly, I want the tandem pumps up and ready for testing by end of day."

  Neidelman glanced briefly at each in turn. "As my core team, each person at this table will receive a share in the treasure instead of salary. You know that if we succeed, each of you will become enormously wealthy. That may not seem bad for four weeks' work, until you consider what happened to Ken Field. If any of you are contemplating leaving, now is the time to do it. You'll get the standard Thalassa compensation package, but no share. There will be no bad feelings, no questions asked. But don't come to me later, saying you've changed your mind. We're seeing this through, no matter what. So speak now."

  The Captain turned to a cabinet and extracted an old briar pipe. He removed a tin of Dunhill tobacco from the cabinet, pinched out a bowlful and placed it in the pipe, tamped it thoughtfully, and lit up with a wooden match. All this was done with deliberate slowness, while the silence around the table deepened. Outside, the omnipresent Ragged Island mist had grown denser, curling around the Griffin with an almost sensuous caress.

  At last, the Captain looked back and spoke through a wreath of blue smoke. "Very good. Before we adjourn, I'd like to introduce you all to the newest member of the expedition." He glanced at Hatch. "Doctor, I was hoping to have you formally meet my senior staff under more pleasant circumstances." He took in the group with a sweep of his hand. "As most of you know, this is Malin Hatch, owner of Ragged Island and partner in this operation. He will be our medical officer."

  Neidelman turned. "Dr. Hatch, this is Christopher St. John, the expedition's historian." He was the plump-faced man Hatch had seen looking back at him from the launch two nights before. A shock of unruly gray hair topped his round head, and the man's rumpled tweed suit displayed the telltale traces of several breakfasts. "You'll find him an expert on all areas of Elizabethan and Stuart history, including piracy and the use of codes. And this"— Neidelman indicated the slovenly looking man in Bermuda shorts, who was picking at his nails with a look of intense boredom, one leg thrown over an arm of the chair—"is Kerry Wopner, our computer expert. Kerry is highly adept at network design and cryptanalysis." He stared hard at the two men. "I don't need to tell you the paramount importance of cracking the second half of the journal, especially in light of this tragedy. Macallan must not keep any more of his secrets from us."

  Neidelman continued around the table. "You met our team foreman, Lyle Streeter, yesterday. He's been with me ever since our days cruising the Mekong. And here"—he pointed to a small, severe, prickly looking woman in sensible clothes—"is Sandra Magnusen, Thalassa's chief engineer and remote sensing specialist. At the end of the table is Roger Rankin, our geologist." He indicated a broad, hirsute brute of a man who sat in a chair that looked two sizes too small for him. His eyes met Hatch's, his blond beard parted in a spontaneous grin, and he tipped two fingers to his forehead.

  "Dr. Bonterre," Neidelman continued, "our archaeologist and dive leader, has been delayed and should arrive late this evening."

  He paused a moment. "Unless there are any questions, that's all. Thank you, and I'll see you all again tomorrow morning."

  As the group broke up, Neidelman came around the table to Hatch. "I've kept a special team on the island, preparing the net grid and the Base Camp," he said. "Your medical area will be stocked and ready by dawn."

  "That's a relief," said Hatch.

  "You're probably eager for some more background on the project. This afternoon would be a good time. How about coming by the Cerberus around fourteen hundred hours?" A thin smile appeared on his lips. "Starting tomorrow, things are liable to get a little busy around here."

  Chapter 11

  At 2:00 P.M. precisely, the Plain Jane, moving slowly in the calm water, pulled free of the last tendrils of mist surrounding Ragged Island. Ahead, Hatch could see the white outlines of the Cerberus riding at anchor, its long, sleek superstructure low in the water. Near the waterline, he made out a boarding hatch, with the tall, thin shape of the Captain silhouetted within it, awaiting his arrival.

  Cutting the throttle, Hatch angled in alongside the bulk of the Cerberus. It was cool and still under the vessel's shadow.

  "Quite a little boat you've got here," Hatch called out as he came to a stop opposite the Captain. The ship dwarfed the Plain Jane.

  "Biggest in Thalassa's fleet," Neidelman replied. "She's basically a floating laboratory and back-office research station. There's only so much equipment we can off-load to the island. The big stuff—the electron microscopes and C14 particle accelerators, for example—will stay on the ship."

  "I was curious about the harpoon gun up in the bows," Hatch said. "Do you spear a blue whale every now and then, when the deckhands get peckish?"

  Neidelman grinned. "That betrays the ship's origins, my friend. It was designed as a state-of-the-art whaler by a Norwegian company about six years ago. Then the international ban on whaling happened, and the ship became a costly white elephant even before it was fitted out. Thalassa got it for an excellent price. All the whaling davits and skinning machinery were removed, but nobody ever got around to dismantling the harpoon gun." He nodded over his shoulder. "Come on, let's see what the boys are up to."

  Hatch secured the Plain Jane to the side of the Cerberus, then ran the gangplank across to the ship's boarding hatch. He followed Neidelman through the hatch and into a long, harrow corridor, painted a light gray. The Captain led him past several empty laboratories and a wardroom, then stopped outside a door marked COMPUTER ROOM.

  "We've got more computing power behind that door than a small university," Neidelman said, a trace of pride in his voice. "But it's not just for number crunching. There's also a navigational expert system and a neural-net autopilot. In emergencies, the ship can practically run itself."

  "I was wondering where all the people were," Hatch said.

  "We keep only a skeleton crew on board. It's the same with the rest of the vessels. It's Thalassa's philosophy to maintain a fluid resource pool. If necessary, we could have a dozen scientists here tomorrow. Or a dozen ditchdiggers, for that matter. But we try to operate with the smallest, ablest team possible."

  "Cost containment," Hatch said jokingly. "Must make the Thalassa accountants happy."

  "Not only that," Neidelman replied, quite seriously. "It makes sense from a security perspective. No point tempting fate."

  The Captain turned a corner and walked past a heavy metal door that was partially ajar. Glancing in, Hatch could make out various pieces of lifesaving equipment attached to wall cleats. There was also a rack of shotguns and two smaller weapons of shiny metal he couldn't identify.

  "What are those?" he asked, pointing to the stubby, fat-bellied devices. "They look like pint-sized vacuum cleaners."

  Neidelman glanced inside. "Flechettes," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "A kind of nail gun. It shoots tiny, finned pieces of tungsten-carbide wire."

  "Sounds more painful than dangerous."

  Neidelman smiled thinly. "At fi
ve thousand rounds per minute, fired at speeds over three thousand feet per second, they're plenty dangerous." He closed the door and tested the handle. "This room shouldn't be left open. I'll have to speak to Streeter about it."

  "What the hell do you need them around for?" Hatch frowned.

  "Remember, Malin, the Cerberus isn't always in such friendly waters as rural Maine," the Captain replied, ushering him down the corridor. "Often, we have to work in shark-infested areas. When you're face to face with a Great White, you'll quickly come to appreciate what a flechette can do. Last year, in the Coral Sea, I saw one shred a shark from snout to tail in a second and a half."

  Hatch followed the Captain up a set of steps to the next deck. Neidelman paused for a moment outside an unmarked door, then rapped loudly.

  "I'm busy!" came a querulous voice.

  Neidelman gave Hatch a knowing smile and eased open the door, revealing a dimly lit stateroom. Hatch followed the Captain inside, tripped over something, and looked around, blinking, as his eyes became accustomed to the low light. He saw that the far wall and its portholes were entirely covered by banks of rackmounted electronic equipment: oscilloscopes, CPUs, and countless pieces of dedicated electronics whose purpose Hatch couldn't begin to guess. The floor was ankle-deep in crumpled papers, dented soda cans, candy wrappers, dirty socks, and underwear. A ship's cot set into one of the far walls was a whirlpool of linen, its sheets strewn across mattress and floor alike. The smell of ozone and hot electronics filled the room, and the only light came from numerous flickering screens. In the midst of the chaos sat the rumpled-looking figure in flowered shirt and Bermuda shorts, his back to them, typing feverishly at a keyboard.

  "Kerry, can you spare a minute?" Neidelman said. "I've got Dr. Hatch with me."

  Wopner turned away from the screen and blinked first at Neidelman, then Hatch. "It's your party," he said in a high, irritated voice. "But you need everything else done, like, yesterday." He pronounced the word yestidday. "I've spent the last forty-eight hours setting up the network and haven't done jack shit with the code."

  Neidelman smiled indulgently. "I'm sure you and Dr. St. John can spare a few minutes for the expedition's senior partner." He turned to Hatch. "You couldn't tell from appearances, but Kerry is one of the most brilliant cryptanalysts outside the NSA."

  "Yeah, right," said Wopner, but Hatch could see he was pleased by the compliment.

  "Quite a rig you've got here," Hatch said as he closed the door behind him. "Is that a CAT scan I see there on the left?"

  "Very funny." Wopner pushed his glasses up his nose and sniffed. "You think this is something? This is just the backup system. They shipped the main rig off to the island yesterday morning. Now that's something."

  "Are the on-line tests complete?" Neidelman asked.

  "Doing the last series now," Wopner replied, shaking a lock of greasy hair from his eyes and swiveling back to the monitor.

  "A team's completing the installation of the island network this afternoon," Neidelman said to Hatch. "Like Kerry said, this is the redundant system, an exact duplicate of the Ragged Island computer grid. Expensive way of doing things, but a real time saver. Kerry, show him what I mean."

  "Yassuh." Wopner tapped a few keys and a blank screen winked to life overhead. Hatch looked up to see a wireframe diagram of Ragged Island appear on the screen, rotating slowly around a central axis.

  "The backbone routers all have redundant mates." A few more keystrokes, and a fine tracery of green lines was superimposed on the rendering of the island. "Linked by fiber-optic cables to the central hub."

  Neidelman gestured at the screen. "Everything on the island— from the pumps, to the turbines, to the compressors, to the derricks—are servo-linked into the network. We'll be able to control anything on the island from the command center. One instruction, and the pumps will fire up; another command will operate A winch; a third will turn off the lights in your office; and so forth."

  "What he said," Wopner added. "Totally extensible, with thin OS layers on the remote clients. And everything's tweaked up the wazoo, believe you me, miniature data packets and all the rest. It's a huge net—a thousand ports in one collision domain—but there's zero latency. You wouldn't believe the ping time on this bad boy."

  "In English, please," Hatch said. "I never learned to speak Nerd. Hey, what's that?" He pointed to another screen, which showed an overhead view of what appeared to be a medieval village. Small figures of knights and sorcerers were arrayed in various attitudes of attack and defense.

  "That's Sword of Blackthorne. A role-playing game I designed. I'm dungeon master for three on-line games," He stuck out his lower lip. "Got a problem with that?"

  "Not if the Captain doesn't," said Hatch, glancing at Neidelman. It was clear that the Captain gave his subordinates a fair amount of freedom. And it seemed to Hatch that—however unlikely—Neidelman was genuinely fond of this eccentric young man.

  There was a loud beep, then a column of numbers scrolled up one of the screens.

  "That's it," Wopner said, squinting at the data. "Scylla's done."

  "Scylla?" Hatch asked.

  "Yeah. Scylla is the system on board the ship. Charybdis is the one on the island."

  "Network testing's finished," Neidelman explained. "Once the island installation is complete, all we have to do is dump the programming to Charybdis. Everything is tested here first, then downloaded to the island." He glanced at his watch. "I've got some odds and ends to attend to. Kerry, I know Dr. Hatch would like to hear more about your and Dr. St. John's work on the Macallan codes. Malin, I'll see you topside." Neidelman left the stateroom, closing the door behind him.

  Wopner returned to his manic typing, and for a minute Hatch wondered if the youth planned to ignore him completely. Then, without looking away from the terminal, Wopner picked up a sneaker and hurled it against the far wall. This was followed by a heavy paperback book entitled Coding Network Subroutines in C++.

  "Hey, Chris!" Wopner yelled. "Time for the dog and pony show!"

  Hatch realized that Wopner must have been aiming at a small door set in the far wall of the stateroom. "Allow me," he said, stepping toward the door. "Your aim's not so good."

  Opening the door, Hatch saw another stateroom, identical in size but completely different in all other ways. It was well lit, clean, and spare. The Englishman, Christopher St. John, sat at a wooden table in the center of the room, pecking slowly away at a Royal typewriter.

  "Hello," Hatch said. "Captain Neidelman volunteered your services for a few minutes."

  St. John stood and picked up a few old volumes from the desk, a fussy expression creasing his smooth, buttery face. "A pleasure to have you with us, Dr. Hatch," he said, shaking his hand, not looking at all pleased with the interruption.

  "Call me Malin," said Hatch.

  St. John bowed slightly as he followed Hatch back into Wopner's stateroom.

  "Pull up a seat, Malin," Wopner said. "I'll explain the real work I've been doing, and Chris can tell you about all those dusty tomes he's been lifting and dropping in the back room. We work together. Right, old chum?"

  St. John compressed his lips. Even out here on the water, Hatch sensed a certain air of dust and cobwebs about the historian. He belongs in an antiquarian bookshop, not on a treasure hunt, he thought.

  Kicking aside the detritus, Hatch pulled a chair up next to Wopner, who pointed to one of the nearby screens, currently blank. A few rapidly typed commands, and a digitized picture of Macallan's treatise and its cryptic marginalia appeared on the screen.

  "Herr Neidelman feels that the second half of the journal contains vital information about the treasure," said Wopner. "So we're taking a two-track approach to break the code. I do the computers. Chris here does the history."

  "The Captain mentioned a figure of two billion dollars," Hatch said. "How did he arrive at that?"

  "Well now," said St. John, clearing his throat as if preparing for a lecture. "Like most pirates, Ockha
m's fleet was a ragtag collection of various ships he'd captured: a couple of galleons, a few brigantines, a fast sloop, and, I believe, a large East Indiaman. Nine ships in all. We know they were so heavily laden they were dangerously unmaneuverable. You simply add up their cargo capacities, and combine that with the manifests of ships Ockham looted. We know, for example, that Ockham took fourteen tons of gold from the Spanish Plate Fleet alone, and ten times that in silver. From other ships he looted cargoes of lapis, pearls, amber, diamonds, rubies, carnelian, ambergris, jade, ivory, and lignum vitae. Not to mention ecclesiastical treasures, taken from towns along the Spanish Main." He unconsciously adjusted his bow tie, face shining with pleasure at the recital.

  "Excuse me, but did you say fourteen tons of gold?" Hatch asked, dumfounded.

  "Absolutely," said St. John.

  "Fort Knox afloat," said Wopner, licking his lips.

  "And then there's St. Michael's Sword," St. John added. "An artifact of inestimable value by itself. We're dealing here with the greatest pirate treasure ever assembled. Ockham was brilliant and gifted, an educated man, which made him all the more dangerous." He pulled a thin plastic folder from a shelf and handed it to Hatch. "Here's a biographical extract one of our researchers prepared. I think you'll find that, for once, the legends don't exaggerate. His reputation was so terrible that all he had to do was sail his flagship into harbor, hoist the Jolly Roger, and fire a broadside, and everyone from the citizens to the priest came rushing down with their valuables."

  "And the virgins?" Wopner cried, feigning wide-eyed interest. "What happened to them?"

  St. John paused, his eyes half closed. "Kerry, do you mind?"

  "No, really," said Kerry, all impish innocence. "I want to know."

  "You know very well what happened to the virgins," St. John snapped, and turned back to Hatch. "Ockham had a following of two thousand men on his nine ships. He needed large crews for boarding and firing the great guns. Those men were usually given twenty-four hours, er, leave, in the unfortunate town. The results were quite hideous."