Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3)

by Christine Kling

  “Yes, sir. That I am.” Cole unzipped the front of his wetsuit and began peeling off the wet neoprene.

  “What were you doing in the water?”

  Cole shook his head. “Well, this is a new boat, you see, and we’re doing our sea trials. We put variable-pitch props on her—you know, where you can dial in the pitch that will work for whatever you need to do at the time? And when we went to put her into reverse, the pitch stuck on the starboard engine, and we couldn’t get the mechanism to move.” He draped his wetsuit over the aft bulwark and Riley handed him a towel. “It just froze and I figured—”

  The officer interrupted him. “We got a call reporting that you were wreck diving without permission and stealing antiquities.”

  Cole was drying his face, but he lowered the towel, an incredulous look in his eyes. “Seriously? You think we’d be that stupid? I mean, look at that coast. We’re in plain sight of several thousand people. My mama didn’t raise no fool. And I’m not about to do something illegal in your country, anyway. I have too much respect for you.” Cole wrapped the towel around his waist like a skirt, then walked over to the tablet on the table and turned it facedown.

  The officer spoke to the other men in French. He explained to them that he wanted them to search the boat. He had some rather unkind things to say about what he thought of Cole and told them that if he resisted, they had permission to hurt him a little, but not enough to leave marks.

  “Monsieur, please bring me all your ship’s papers and the crew’s passports. Meanwhile my men will search your vessel.”

  Cole flashed them a wide grin. “Fine with me. I’ve got nothing to hide. Just so they don’t break anything. She is a new boat, after all.”

  The officer waved his men off, and they went in through the doors to the main salon.

  Riley said, “I’ll go fetch the papers on the bridge.”

  “Thanks,” Cole said. “Could we offer you fellows a cold drink? Something to eat?”

  Riley passed through the salon, where she saw the two guys going through all the cabinets in the galley. She thought about her own training for conducting a search. Clearly these guys hadn’t read the same manuals.

  When she got to the bridge, she went straight to the cabinet where she had stored her satellite phone just before they left. She stood next to the window and dialed Hazel’s cell phone, hoping it wouldn’t go to voice mail.

  “Hi there, girlfriend,” Hazel said. “Where are you?”

  Riley covered her mouth and spoke softly into the receiver. “We’re off Djerba Island in Tunisia, and we’ve just been boarded. They’re talking about seizing the boat because we haven’t cleared in properly.”

  “I haven’t received one of these calls from you in a long time.”

  “What calls?”

  “The sort where you use me as your ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”

  “Well, I was hoping you knew somebody who might know somebody.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Hazel.”

  Riley switched off the phone and returned it to the cabinet. She retrieved the pouch Cole used for the ship’s papers and went back down the steps.

  The atmosphere, when she went out the doors onto the aft deck, was quite strained. The three men sat around the teak table, but no one was speaking.

  Riley handed Cole the pouch. He took out the documentation and his clearance papers from Marmaris. Then he set out the three passports.

  The officer lifted up the passports and flipped through the pages, comparing the photos to the three of them. He was behaving like such on officious jerk that Riley began to fear that Cole would lose his temper and get them into worse trouble. That fear level escalated when the officer slipped the three passports into the breast pocket of his fatigues.

  “I will need those back,” Cole said.

  “You will get them when I am ready.”

  Riley saw the train wreck that was about to happen, so she jumped in. “You know, your English is quite good. Where did you learn to speak so well?”

  “I have worked in Malta.”

  “Really?” she said. “What a coincidence. We hope to go to Malta someday.”

  The man looked at her and narrowed his eyes.

  She continued. “In fact, there was a helicopter that flew out over us just a little while ago.”

  Cole looked at her, his eyebrows arched in puzzlement.

  Riley continued. “I could swear that the guy in it was Maltese. Do you know him?”

  From inside the boat they heard a loud crash. Cole winced. “Your guys are being a little rough with our stuff,” he said.

  “Quiet,” the official said.

  After another five minutes of listening to the noises from inside the boat, Cole shifted his weight and drew a deep breath. Riley knew the signs. The man had no patience. He was about to do something stupid.

  Then a cell phone rang with a pop-music ringtone. The official drew the phone out of his pocket.

  “Hallo?” As he listened, he stood up and walked to the far side of the deck. Riley could tell from the tone of his voice that he was furious, but she couldn’t make out the words. He ended the call and stood for almost a minute with his back to them. Then he lifted his hand and waved to the launch driver who had kept the police boat hovering just off their starboard quarter.

  The man turned around and slapped the three passports down on the table. He stepped to the cabin door and barked an order at his men. The two appeared, looking slightly disheveled and sweaty. The leader pointed to his boat and the two men climbed up on the bulwark, ready to jump to their vessel.

  “You have one hour. If you are not under way headed away from our shores, I will be back. I will seize this boat. Do you understand?”

  Cole nodded.

  When the patrol boat was up on a plane and heading back the way it had come, Theo said, “Let’s get Enigma back on board.”

  Riley picked up the tablet from the back table and turned it over. On the screen was a clear picture of the submarine beneath them. “Good thing he didn’t decide to take a look at this screen.”

  “What happened, anyway?” Cole said. “Did Enigma malfunction? She just stopped, so I left her behind.”

  Theo told Cole about the helicopter.

  Cole reached for the transom bulwark, straightened his arms and looked out across the water’s surface. “So, whoever it was had the money to charter a chopper and the juice to sic the local officials on us.” He turned around to face her and rested his bum on the bulwark. “What do you suppose made them back off?”

  Riley said, “You’ve got Hazel to thank for that. I called her on the sat phone when I went up to get the papers.”

  “You foreign-service brats know lots of folks at the State Department, don’t you?”

  Riley decided it would be diplomatic not to answer that one. “So do we take this threat seriously? Are we done with the Upholder?”

  “Not quite yet.”

  “While you’re taking your time deciding what to do next, I think it would be prudent to fire up the engines and at least make like we’re leaving.” Riley picked up the tablet.

  Theo said, “Yoda, start both engines.”

  Cole yelled, “Hold it! Don’t put ’em into gear. I really was down there around the props.” He scooped his face mask up off the deck and pulled it on his face. He dropped the towel at his waist and jumped off the stern of the boat.

  “What the heck is that all about?” Theo asked.

  “I have no clue.”

  Less than a minute later, Cole surfaced off the stern and heaved a net bag up onto the swim platform. They could hear the clank of something metal hit the teak grate. He climbed the ladder and picked up the bag.

  “When I heard the noise of that boat’s engines, I surfaced and caught the gist of what was going on. So I dove back down and hung this on one of the prop blades. I was pretty sure those knuckleheads weren’t going to take their search that far.”


  He handed the net dive bag to Riley.

  “It’s heavy,” she said. She pulled open the drawstring at the top of the bag.

  Cole said, “Direct from the galley of the HMS Upholder.”

  Riley pulled the blackened steel disk out of the bag. It looked like a metal garbage-can lid, and it was covered with slime and growth. One section of it had been rubbed clean, and she saw yellow metal that looked like gold.

  Theo said, “Would someone tell me what you’re looking at?”

  Cole took Theo’s hand and placed it on the disk. “Take a look for yourself.”

  His fingers slid lightly over the surface. “Underneath all this gunk, I think there’s some engraving on this metal.”

  “Yeah. Won’t be sure until we get it all cleaned up, but I think there’s more than a little engraving. The steel is black, but there is also some gold inlay.”

  “I feel some pitting, too, but after spending sixty years in seawater, there’s not that much damage. Can you make out the designs?”

  Cole moved Theo’s fingers over to the part of the shield he had cleaned. “Feel this. It’s one branch of a Maltese cross. My guess is this is a shield. You know, like knights in armor? I think it’s a shield that once belonged to a Knight of Malta.”

  Aboard the EV Shadow Chaser II

  Mediterranean Sea off Djerba Island

  April 22, 2014

  Riley’s and Theo’s heads were bowed together as they examined the shield, but Cole figured there would be plenty of time later to do that.

  “Hey, folks, those same guys who just chartered a helicopter to locate us are probably on their way back here by boat. I’d just as soon be gone when they get here.”

  Riley nodded. “You’re right. We should get moving.”

  “Theo, you start reeling in Enigma. Riley, ready the crane. I’ll get back on the swim platform to attach the lifting harness.”

  Cole was pleased with how efficiently they worked together as a crew already. By now he had sailed for years with Theo. Then he’d spent the last couple of years sailing with Captain Riley. Sometimes mixing crew together like this ended up causing rifts, and he was glad to see that it didn’t seem to be happening with them.

  “Theo, go ahead and raise the anchor and take her out. I assume the engines have been broken in well enough now we can go all-out?”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Okay. Let’s see what this baby can do.”

  “So what’s the destination, Captain?”

  “Malta.”

  Once Cole finished stowing all his scuba gear and cleaning everything off the decks, he headed up to the bridge. Someone had wrapped the shield in a towel and placed it on the table at the rear of the wheelhouse. Riley and Theo were sitting in the twin navigation chairs with their feet up on the dash, each with a bottle of beer in hand.

  “It looks like we’re hauling ass. How fast are we going?”

  “Fifteen knots, mon capitan.”

  Riley handed him a beer and clicked her bottle against his. “I propose a toast to the two most brilliant men I know.”

  Theo said, “I’ll drink to that.”

  “How much fuel are we burning?”

  “Um, I don’t think you really want to know,” Theo said. “The good news is it’s only about two hundred miles to Malta. We’ll certainly be there by morning at this speed, or we could slow down in a bit and conserve fuel.”

  “It sure is nice to know we’re capable of this speed when we need it. Speaking of which, what do you see on the radar or AIS? Do we have any company?”

  Riley said, “Not at the moment. And, by the way, I know it’s illegal, but I’m running the AIS in stealth mode.”

  “Good idea,” Cole said. “Given that we are also leaving the country with stolen antiquities, I’m not too worried about that transgression.”

  Riley said, “When we first got under way, I kept an eye on the radar. There is a small marina on the north coast of Djerba called Port Houmt Souk. I saw something start out from there and head south, but we’ve been moving so fast, I lost him in the sea clutter. That probably means he wasn’t very big.”

  “My guess is it was just a fisherman heading out for a night of fishing.”

  “So, Mr. Archeologist, are we going to try to clean that thing up and take a look at it?”

  “Sure, why not. We’ll need a big bowl of water, a soft toothbrush, and several of those microfiber cloths from the galley. Oh, and some baking soda.”

  “After you,” Riley said, pointing to the stairs. “I’m on watch.” She swiveled her chair back around and put her feet up on the dash again.

  “Really is hard to get good help these days,” Cole hollered as he went down the steps.

  Cole unwrapped the shield and spread out the towel on the table. He arranged his tools and began the process of dipping a cloth into the water and then gently washing the growth and slime off the metal. He kept up a running dialogue for Theo.

  “The shield is round, about one meter across. The way it’s resting on the table, the convex side—the side that would face the opponent—is up. Picture one of those conical hats the Vietnamese wear working in the rice paddies.”

  “I’ve got it,” Theo said.

  “In the very center of both the shield and the Maltese cross is a raised knob. Would hurt like hell if you hit a man in the face with it.”

  “That might be the point.”

  “Looks like the outline of the cross has been drawn with a thin line of inlaid gold, while the center of the cross is silver inlaid over the steel. The steel around the cross is black from oxidization. This type of work is called damascening.”

  “That’s a new one to me,” Theo said.

  “You might have seen the jewelry they make in Spain. Gold inlaid into black oxidized steel. Not surprising that the Knights of Malta would have imported this art, given that the Spanish langue was one of the auberges from the start.”

  “You lost me there, Skipper.”

  “The design of the Maltese cross is very deliberate. As a cross, it has four branches. But there is a V cut into the end of each branch, which gives the cross eight points. Originally, the eight points of the cross were supposed to represent the eight beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. But as the Order grew, they built hospitals, and, as a charitable order, hundreds of properties were donated to them. By the thirteenth century, they owned thousands of feudal manors, which had to be defended and managed, and which provided income. The Order developed what they called commanderies all over Europe. They were somewhat like local forts, with Knights whose job it was to collect money and provide protection to their properties.”

  Riley said, “That sounds to me like the beginning of their naughtiness.”

  “I suppose you’re right. They were definitely into wealth and power, even back in the Middle Ages when they were still at Rhodes. The Order had grown into a huge international organization, and it required more structure. So they eventually organized themselves into eight branches, or langues, which is French for ‘tongues,’ or languages. The original eight langues were Castille, Aragon, Germany, England, Italy, France, Auvergne, and Provence.”

  “But Castille and Aragon are both in Spain,” Riley said.

  “This happened in the fifteenth century. What we now think of as countries didn’t have the same borders back then. It’s the same with France, Auvergne, and Provence.”

  “Okay,” Theo said. “Enough with the history lesson, Professor. Get back to this shield.”

  “Well, the gold and silver bits look in fairly good shape, but the steel is badly pitted. So thin in this area near the edge, it has corroded all the way through.”

  “A hole?”

  “Yeah, but small. Only about the size of a pencil eraser. The metal is very thin and fragile all around there, though.”

  Riley was sitting up at the nav station, monitoring the sea ahead, as a good watchkeeper should, but Cole noticed she kept glancing over her shoulder
to watch his progress.

  “There is a circle, drawn again by a thin line of inlaid gold, around the Maltese cross. That circle and the outer edge of the shield form a band around it. That’s where most of the engraving is. There are leaves and vines and little fleur-de-lis shapes. Lots of fancy curlicues. It’s going to take some work with the toothbrush to clean it all up.” Cole grabbed the box of baking soda and sprinkled some onto the shield. He dipped the toothbrush in the water to make a paste. As he brushed it on, the tarnish turned the paste black, but the metal beneath brightened. He moved the brush in ever-larger circles. This is going to take a while, he thought.

  The sun was lowering into the western sky, and the light slanting through the wheelhouse windows was a soft gold color. Cole dipped the toothbrush into some more baking soda and brushed it onto the silver cross. The corrosion washed off, and what had been black began to shine. He glanced up at Theo. Cole wished his friend could witness this moment on their new boat, cleaning up their first artifact.

  “So how old do you think this could be?” Theo asked.

  “No clue,” Cole said. “If it truly is from the period the Knights were in Malta, that would be somewhere roughly between 1500 and 1800.”

  Riley swiveled her chair around to face them. “I wonder why this shield would be important, though. Why would your father want you to retrieve it, and why is there somebody following us and trying to keep us from getting our hands on it?”

  “I don’t know,” Cole said, “but just the fact that they don’t want us to have it makes me want to keep it out of their hands. I don’t like these guys. They tried to blow up my boat.”

  “I agree we don’t let them have it. So why,” Theo said, “would they go so far like that over this shield? Is it that valuable?”

  “What if it isn’t the antique value?” Riley said.

  “Then what?” Cole said.

  She got up and walked over to the table. She pointed to the part of the shield where the metal was corroded through. “Right there. Look.”

  “What?”

  “There in the design. It looks like letters.”

  “Where?”

  Riley handed him the magnifying glass she’d brought over from Bonefish. His close vision had been deteriorating for years. She wanted him to get reading glasses, but he couldn’t bear the thought. Now he held up the magnifying glass and squinted at the part she was pointing at.