“The container problem is real enough,” Andrew said, “but we all know that’s not what happened.”
“They’re just looking for something that makes sense,” Chiffrey said.
“I’d like to move on.” Andrew said. He fished some papers out of his windbreaker and handed them to Penny. “Have a look at this from your father.”
“What is it?”
“Missing pieces of our puzzle.”
Chiffrey smiled. “This time, I’d be happy to let you have the honor of the telling, Captain.”
Without returning the smile, Andrew began. “Another story just broke on TV. Same station that sent Lorraine Hart and her team.”
“About Matthew?” Penny asked.
“Not this time. Transcripts of interviews with some people from a private yacht. One of those luxury white composites with all kind of chrome. Supposedly out fishing, though doesn’t make sense given where they were.”
She guessed at his meaning. “Slumming?”
“People do it,” Andrew said. “Get out of sight of land to feel like real sailors.”
“At any rate,” Chiffrey said, “they were out there when something went down. Seven days before Matthew’s last trip on the Eva Shay.”
“Then why did the TV station wait so long to run the story?” she asked.
“The people on the yacht were extremely confused,” Chiffrey answered. He looked at them and shrugged. “Yes, kind of like some of the people on the Eva Shay. And some of your people here.”
“The point is,” Andrew said, “this was before Matthew’s incident.”
“Exactly,” Chiffrey said. “It may even be when this whole thing began. The people from the Honey Pot—that was the name of the yacht—could not agree at all about what really happened. Then the TV station wanted more time to verify certain aspects of the story.”
Penny rustled the papers. “Says here the crew talked about witnessing a big explosion, but further down it notes there had been no reports of any accidents.”
Chiffrey yawned. “Excuse me. I was on the sat-phone—my secret one that you all know about—most of the night. Slept about two hours.”
“Need a break?” Andrew said.
“I’ll get some shuteye after this.”
Andrew scrutinized him for a moment, in a way that one almost didn’t notice because it was so obvious.
“Further down,” Penny said, glancing at the papers in her hand, “they indicate the Air Force wanted to hush the whole thing up.”
Chiffrey grinned.
“You got me. I confess. Guilty as charged!” He looked up at the sun, eyes closed, then said, “Listen, folks, not everyone appreciates being told the truth, especially when it leaves them no longer knowing what they’re supposed to believe, let alone do. That’s almost the definition of hell.”
“Whom do you work for?” Penny asked. “Really?”
“You all, of course. You pay my salary, too, and with the pension I’ll get, I expect to wind up in a one-room walkup somewhere. Or hopefully back in the hills, where one room would suit me fine.”
“Just tell it straight,” Andrew said. “The transcripts indicate you spent considerable time interviewing these people.”
“Then let them go,” Chiffrey said. “And the truth is, the first thing they did when they left us was to go back to the TV folks and use our contact with them to leverage the validity of their tale. Fortunately, the station didn’t feel there was enough to sustain a credible report, so the story dried up.”
“I’m not surprised,” Penny said. “It seems a little vague from what I’m reading.”
“Well, that’s how the one piece they did on it went over with most viewers, fortunately. They never saw the video, of course.”
“What video?” Penny asked.
“Thought I mentioned that.”
“No,” she said, “but it would have helped if you had.”
“My apologies. A ‘guest’ of the guys on the Honey Pot took some.” He patted his breast pocket. “Got it right here. Not a lot, but it is spectacular.”
“Then why didn’t they broadcast it?”
“The TV station never got to see it. The Honey Pot crew was holding it back as a bargaining chip, and we got there in time to wall it up before it got out. They told the people at the station we took it, but without the evidence in hand, the editor decided to distance the station from the story. It became more about the craziness of the crew rather than what they swore they had seen.”
“And I suppose now this video you confiscated will never see the light of day,” Penny said.
“You really want to have TV and media crews camped outside your homes twenty-four seven when you get back? People looking up everything they can about you, every detail of your life they can find going back to birth, using any means available, legal or otherwise, and the same for your family, friends, your old girl and boyfriends?”
“We’re not going to become celebrities over this,” she said.
“If what we have so far got out, you certainly would, all of you. Absolutely, and if there are any dark areas in your life, they’ll be lit up with flares in print, online, and everywhere else, over and over and over, and it will never go away. Your lives would become an industry. Maybe you’d like that. Could get a sizable book offer, I imagine.”
“I hope you’re not expecting thanks.” Penny said, looking intently at Chiffrey. “And I hope you’re not going to tell us that you didn’t look into our backgrounds.”
“Of course we did!” He said and laughed, shaking his head. “The difference is we’re not going to scream it all over the cover of some cheesy tabloid you’ll find staring back at you at the supermarket checkout.”
“Keeping this from becoming a sideshow is a common mooring point,” Andrew said. “Agreed?”
It did make sense, but Penny still didn’t trust Chiffrey.
“All right,” she said.
Chiffrey smiled. “My old Grampy always used to say, ‘get the devil behind you to push.’ So, I guess that’s me.”
She ignored his attempt to lighten the mood. “I’d like to ask you a few things. The ‘similar interference’ you spoke of when you first got here, a radar anomaly at your Air Force installation.”
“You’re right on target, sugar. It was at the exact time as the Honey Pot incident and that’s really the money shot.” He looked at Andrew then back at her. “That’s why we were so interested, although we couldn’t then see how this could be connected to a whale. Still can’t, really.”
“It would have been helpful to know about the Honey Pot and the video when you first arrived,” Penny said. “You’ve had this information the whole time you’ve been on the Valentina and just strung us along with your good ol’ boy act, and you wonder why we don’t trust you.”
“Yeah, but this is now, and the Captain’s right. We need to work together.”
“Then let’s have the rest,” Andrew said. “All of it.”
Chiffrey let out his breath and slumped just a little. He leaned on the gunwale and patted his breast pocket. “Time for the picture show, looks like. Who’s got the popcorn?”
After waiting for Andrew to check in on the bridge, they made their way to one of the smaller labs and sat down. Computers, monitors, sound equipment, and cameras of all kinds were stuffed into every available rack. Chiffrey struggled to slot the disc in the drive, which was upright, finally turned it around and it went in. He checked a few notes, and looked up.
“A preamble is in order. I’ll keep it short. When the folks on the Honey Pot brought in their story, the editor at the TV station called someone at the Coast Guard to see if they knew anything. As it turned out—luck, I guess—the ensign the TV editor talked to had been on the phone a few days earlier with someone from our Air Force base. Yup, because of their radar problems.”
She glanced at Andrew. “Okay, what else?”
“So, the Coast Guard ensign told the TV editor that it might be a good id
ea to call us. Not a bad fellow, really. I mean the TV flack. He helped us with a PR disaster when that F-16 went down in the suburbs last year. You remember?”
“Vaguely,” Penny said.
Chiffrey cocked his head and looked away for a moment. “Five people died. Maybe you ought to get out more.”
“You mentioned it in the context of a PR disaster, not in lost lives. You forfeited any claim to the high ground.”
“Focus, both of you,” Andrew said. “Not going to say it again.”
“Okay, what do you guess?” Chiffrey said. “A major at the Air Force base the TV editor talked to had been looking at the report of the interference at the station that morning. He noticed that the dates of the Honey Pot incident and our radar problems were the same, and after we got it, we compared the video time stamp with our incident.”
“And they matched,” Penny said.
“Right on the nose. To the minute, maybe the second. Plus, the yacht was dead center in the radar interference at the exact time it happened.”
“This yacht,” Penny said, “was it a sail boat?”
“No, one of those huge sea pigs, like the Captain mentioned. Over powered, very fast. Wouldn’t want to ride out a storm on it, although I suppose in an emergency, they could have used Doris Glister’s hairdo as a sail.”
“Who?”
“She’s the woman who shot the video. Big hair and gold lamé deck shoes. Their ‘guest,’ get it? She’s probably why they wanted to be out so far from land: less chance of running into anyone. However, she also gave the most detailed account of what happened. The others had trouble remembering and kept coming out with all kinds of other weirdness. In spite of her appearance, she was pretty sharp, truth to tell.”
“Someone who’s been around the block a few times would be.” Penny sighed and shook her head. “It’s not what’s on that tape that led you to us. It’s how the people on the Honey Pot were affected.”
“Yes. By then we were looking and listening for anyone else who had run into something strange on that part of the sea. Heard about the Eva Shay and talked to some of Matthew’s crew in Victoria. They had the same vibe as the Honey Pot folks, and Matthew’s name came up. Found out he had suddenly joined the crew here. I followed my hunch and followed you. Ready to see this now?”
“Let’s have look,” Andrew said.
Chiffrey started the video and the screen became full of a light so blinding that at first there was no detail.
It descended slowly, an immense pulsating formless mass of swirling light and color, shrieking like a wind howling through a million bells. Brighter and brighter, it touched the water, then white hissing light and widening waves rolled toward them, but as the steam drifted away, there was nothing.
“Did you see? Did you? It just…where’d it go? Sunk, it’s…did you…” Ritzik was jabbering like an ape. “Big as a tanker! Where’d it go?”
He gripped the railing of the Honey Pot, the veins in his forearms bulging out. The boat engine had slowed to an idle. The setting sun cast a cutting glare in his flickering eyes.
“That’s what it was, dumb ass, a tanker!” Measey said, tossing the remaining ice from his drink over the stern. The glass slipped from his hand as well and sank beneath the slowly receding wake of the boat, but he didn’t seem to notice. “The glare on the water,” he said again, in an exaggerated matter of fact way. “Couldn’t see, but it had to be a tanker. Fuel or something must have exploded. Maybe a bomb. What else could—”
“Tanker? That was no tanker! I’ve seen tankers. They don’t look like…It was round!” Ritzik was increasingly agitated, his breath pumping and puffing in his chest.
“Shut up,” Measey said. “Take it easy, will you?” His hands were rubbing each other as if trying to rid themselves of some unwanted stain. He brushed his forehead and slid a hand back across his hair, seemingly oblivious that he had knocked his hat off. It, too, fell into the wake of the Honey Pot.
“It was no tanker!” Ritzik whimpered. “It wasn’t!”
“Stop your whining!” Measey yelled, his thickening neck arching out and turning red.
“Don’t scream like that! Are you crazy?” Ritzik’s eyes darted around in his head like tiny fish trying to escape, and he began to yell. “Doris! Where’s Doris? Honey, where are you?”
“Okay, okay, let’s all cool it. That’s enough.” This came from Braswell, up in the pilothouse. “There may be survivors and we’ve got to help them.” He gunned the engine to full throttle and the Honey Pot spun around, almost dumping Measey overboard.
“Hey watch it, for cripes sake!” bellowed Measey. “This isn’t even the right direction! It was more over that way.”
“Not a tanker, no way,” Ritzik muttered. “Wasn’t it over there?”
“Measey!” yelled Braswell. “There’s a line with a float down in the cabin. Move it!”
“Well, who does he think he is, Captain Bly? I’ve had enough,” Measey said, pushing past Ritzik.
“Not going to…find nothing,” Ritzik gasped. He crouched on the deck as far as he could, hanging on as if the boat was going to fly. The Honey Pot slowed again. Braswell had binoculars and was scanning slowly counterclockwise.
“Bad luck!” yelled Measey. “That’s bad luck!”
“There’s nothing,” Braswell said. “I don’t see a single thing.” He brought the binoculars down. “I don’t see how any ship that size could explode and sink so fast, there’s no debris.”
“Because it wasn’t a ship, you idiots!” Ritzik had gotten to his feet. “It wasn’t anything like that! It was, it was…Didn’t you see?”
The camera moved in closer to them and footsteps clicked behind it, sharp as glass.
Doris Glister spoke in a giddy voice. “It came down from the sky, and while you guys were leaping and howling like apes, I got it all on the camcorder!” She turned the camera toward herself. Her lipsticked mouth framed a sly smirk that seemed totally out of place.
“Want to take a look?” she purred and raised her eyebrows.
Then she started a laugh that got progressively more out of control. The camera waved around, catching the incredulous faces of two of the men, then hit the deck along with, by the sound of it, Doris Glister.
“That’s all, folks,” Chiffrey said. “She lost it in the end like the men, but when we met her, she was in better shape than they were. Pity she didn’t get the real beginning. I mean, the event had already begun when Doris pushed the record button so, in spite of her claim, we don’t really know where that thing came from. Up or down or wherever.”
“They all seemed so crazy,” Penny said, “except the man behind the wheel.
Chiffrey nodded. “Harvey Braswell. It’s his boat. He seemed relatively steady, but recently he left the megachurch where he was a deacon for years and declared himself to be some kind of pagan. Checked it out. Guy’s wearing antlers, incantations, that sort of thing. The Ritzik fellow left his house—and apparently his wife—with a real estate agent after a big garage sale where he rid himself of everything he couldn’t fit in his Escalade. Then he headed down to Sonora. They all seem to have lost all interest in telling their story, and their behavior does seem reminiscent of what happened on the Valentina when the whales did whatever they did.”
Penny shot a glance at Andrew, who took over as if he had been expecting this hand-off. He eased a little closer to Chiffrey and said, “Maybe. That didn’t look anything like something blowing up.”
“I agree. Experts examined the video and they told me it doesn’t fit the signature of any kind of explosion. You noticed it was moving down?”
“Yes,” Andrew said. “You searched the area?”
“Sure did, up and down. Used the best side-scan sonar in existence for the bottom, everything we have. The Navy has some hot stuff. Can spot your toothbrush a thousand fathoms deep. I asked, so I finally know what a fathom is, by the way. Also some other gear that would have located any reasonably sized object even i
f it was buried in sand. Found not a thing.”
“Would like to see the printouts,” Andrew said.
“All that will be in digital files. I wasn’t there when they were searching, by the way.”
Andrew seemed to ponder this for a moment, then said to Chiffrey, “Like to have a look soon. That possible?”
“Now it is, sure thing. Just about anything you want.”
Andrew shifted back against the bulkhead and turned his gaze at them one by one. Penny couldn’t help noticing that he looked at her in particular. “Chiffrey has told us some of what he knows. Considering that he gave us his information without any preconditions, I think we should reciprocate. I expect he’s guessed much of it.” He said nothing more and folded his hands around his belly.
Matthew was going to have to open up and tell Chiffrey everything that happened on the Eva Shay and maybe after. She knew their ways and means would inevitably clash at some point, but there was no point in making an issue of it now. Andrew was right, at least in principle, yet Chiffrey would always hold something back, no matter what he claimed. And so would they.
CHAPTER 29
“What do you think about this video and their story?” Penny asked Chiffrey in a voice that sounded suddenly too loud in the small lab.
He scratched behind his ear, longer than seemed necessary. “Even if I hadn’t seen the video, I would still have been convinced that these people were sure they saw something extraordinary, just from speaking with them.”
“They were telling the truth?”
“In the sense that they believed it to be. They weren’t lying.”
“Was it you who interrogated them?” she said.
“More like I talked with them, a conversation. Not the Inquisition. That doesn’t really work anyway, not for what we want. We have people who are good at reading folks, who can catch a lie, just like that. So they sat in on the interviews. Got a little bit of training in that area myself, truth to tell.” He smiled but looked down as he did. “We didn’t lean on them, we conversed with them a little, but mainly the idea was to let them talk. It’s the only way I work. We put them in conditions where they felt they would be listened to in a respectful way, and then listened. And believe me, once these folks got going, we logged plenty of listening, although much of it was the same over and over and much of it was digression into practically anything you can imagine, including Doris’s recipes for eel pie. Her mother was a Cockney, though she grew up in the States.”
Far From The Sea We Know Page 19
