The Pandora Box

by Lilly Maytree

  “You can still quit,” she offered.

  “It’s too late to quit. You’ve got us in up to our necks with Eddington now. But you sure enough better quit keeping things to yourself, I’ll say that much. Start by telling me everything Peterson told you about this thing.”

  “Well, the important stuff is in code. Beginning with pages thirty-seven, forty-eight, and ninety.”

  “That sounds like location, latitude and longitude.”

  “It is, how did you know that?”

  “Sailing around the world twice, I’ve plotted a lot of courses. Mind if I take it down and work out the exact position on the chart? I’d like to look it over more anyway.”

  “How could I say no?”

  He tapped the journal thoughtlessly against his palm for a moment. “You can’t.” Then he bent down long enough to brush the side of her face with a kiss. “Goodnight, Dee Hawkins.”

  “Shhh!” Now she looked toward the dark companionway as if one of the others might materialize at any moment.

  “Don’t worry, sugar, your secrets are safe with me.” He tapped the top of her head with the journal before turning to leave. “All of them.”

  Dee sank back onto the nearest seat cushion as if she had barely averted a catastrophe. What had just happened? Once again, he had surprised her by behaving totally opposite to the kind of person she thought he was. What’s more, that brief inkling of anger had rustled like a gust of blustery wind that was here one moment and gone the next. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she felt an incredible sense of relief that, not only had he kept his temper in check, their strong connection was still intact. She had confronted him with the one thing she had dreaded most to tell him, and they were still friends.

  Still married.

  Married!

  Her lawfully wedded husband. The man she had just poured her innermost feelings out to, when she had never in her life been that open with anyone else. It happened so easily. As if there were no walls, at all, between them. That he had even gone so far as to say “her secrets were safe,” had actually intensified that odd sense of protection she felt in confiding them to him in the first place. Or even being physically next to him. The truth was, she felt safe standing next to Wayne Hawkins, no matter what they thought of each other. But that he had understood her so perfectly, and obliged her, was the last thing in the world she would have expected from someone like him.

  Dee pulled a pair of black knit gloves out of the pocket of her jacket and put them on as she thought about all this. She actually felt relieved at not having to keep her guard up anymore or be so careful of what she did, or didn’t, reveal. And when a momentary drop in wind intensity came as Pandora glided down into the trough of a long, rolling swell and then snapped back into the sails with a sudden freshness and quickening speed as it rose up on the other side… a sense of thrill came over her. She was on the adventure of a lifetime. At this very moment. With the most dedicated, dearest (in spite of all their quirks), friends in the world. And she absolutely, loved sailing!

  The very nature of it. The giant grandeur of the sea, and the power of the wind. And the amazing experience of being able to control those two things to such a degree that something as small as Pandora could ride between them and make her feel as safe and content as a baby in a cradle. She liked the rhythmic rocking sensation that soothed one’s nerves and had given her some of the deepest, most relaxing sleeps she had ever had in her life. Not since she was a kid anyway. Then there was the complete and exquisite order of this little man-made world as it glided through all that was unpredictable in the natural world around it.

  She even liked the deep peaceful privacy of the night watches, where one could actually hear themselves think and thought about things that hadn’t surfaced in years or even decades. Where little shafts of understanding broke through with quiet whispers, until even the most confusing of issues gained new perspectives and began to make more sense. During this night watch, in such a state, Dee even began to contemplate what life like this might be like on a permanent basis. Frivolous daydreaming, really, because she would have no claims on any of it by the end of their journey. Not really.

  For while she took a promise (a solemn oath) seriously, Hawk did not. In fact, he was probably at this very moment, below decks dreaming dreams of his own that did not include her. Something that she could do little about, no matter how she felt about him. They had married in California. In a day and age where a claim of “incompatibility” by either partner was enough to sever all ties. No one took solemn oaths seriously, anymore. One could become worse entangled in a business contract. So her mother had been right, after all. A person could become enchanted by a monster, if they spent enough time with them.

  But exactly what did one do about a mistake like that, after it had already been made?

  23

  The Journal

  “Love! That wonderful something—the source of bliss, the cause of maddened anguish!” ~ Nellie Bly

  “How’s the novel coming, Mare?” Dee asked the next morning at breakfast. “I heard you typing away last night like things were really rolling.”

  “Oh, they are!” Marion wiped up the counter as she talked. “I think the sea inspires me.”

  “More than a basement apartment downtown?”

  “How right you were.” She laughed at the thought. “If you had inherited a boat a year ago, The Ghost and Charlie Hooper might be done by now.”

  “The Ghost and Charlie Hooper?” Starr sopped the last traces of golden yolk off his plate with a piece of toast. “That sounds more like a kid’s book than a great American novel.”

  “It is,” Marion replied.

  “You mean all this time you’ve been working away in there, telling us it’s the greatest work of your life, it’s just some…some kinda kid’s book?”

  “Not a kind-of kid’s book, Starr,” she corrected. “A for sure one. Children are the hope of the future. Especially in this day and age. Why, childhood is the closest we come to perfect in this life. It’s when today is forever and tomorrow never comes. Absolutely magic! Come on now, don’t you look back on your own childhood as the most wonderful, life-inspired days you ever had?”

  “I do,” Dee agreed as she sipped her coffee.

  “More like the most confusing, kick in the butt days I ever had, if you want my opinion,” Starr intoned. “All that rat-a-tat I’ve been hearing in my sleep every night and it turns out to be a pop-up book!”

  “The subject of ghosts would be highly inappropriate material for a pop-up book,” Marion said defensively. “Why, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that.”

  “Hey, sugar!” Hawk called down from the cockpit. “Come on up here a minute.”

  “Here.” Marion handed her a thermos of fresh coffee. “Might as well take this up while you’re at it. Tell him if he doesn’t come down pretty soon, he’s going to miss breakfast.”

  Dee reached for the thermos and started up the ladder. On deck, a brisk wind was blowing Pandora along at six and a half knots under an overcast sky. The sweltering heat and whisper breeze of the last two days had finally slipped behind them with the miles, and she realized she was going to have to go back down and exchange her shorts for jeans again. The deck was slanted at more than the usual angle so that she had to fairly pull herself up out of the hatchway.

  Hawk had rigged for speed and was trying to make up time.

  He finished taking in the jib sheet and stepped down off the upper deck. His eyes softened when they met hers. “Go get the journal and logbook out of my cabin, will you, sweets? Then let’s get everyone up on deck for a round table before Starr goes to bed.”

  “Sounds like you made a decision.” She set the thermos in the wire holder attached to one of the seat lockers.

  “Several.”

  “Hawk, are you going to…”

  “Let’s wait until the others get up here. We should all be in on this. Unless you want to hear something personal like
how I was up most of the night thinking about you.”

  “I think I’ll go get the others.” She pulled the hood of her lavender sweatshirt up over her hair to keep it from blowing in her face.

  Suddenly and without warning, he took her by the waist, lifted her out of the open companionway to where the others couldn’t see them and kissed her before she could resist. The sensation was too exhilarating for pretense. One moment she was grappling with a chilly wind on an uncertain deck, and the next she was swept up in the contrasting warmth of an alluring kiss.

  “The cake’s good, too,” He told her when she didn’t resist. Then he placed her hand, almost subconsciously, on one of the mainstays so she would have something to hang onto before he let her go.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She clasped the supporting wire with both hands and looked away from him and out toward the sea. So much for avoiding any advances.

  “It means, why be satisfied with just snatching a taste of frosting, when you’re invited to stay for the whole dessert. That’s what it means.”

  “Shhh!” She glanced toward the open hatchway and asked in a demanding whisper, “Are you going to act like this all the way to Russia?”

  “If you keep wearing outfits like that, I am. Short cut-off jeans, bare feet, and colors that make your eyes look like violet…your skin look like honey…”

  “Hawkins! Are you going to honor your agreement, or aren’t you?”

  “I’ve already done the honorable part. So did you, as I recall. I distinctly remember the judge asking you to solemnly swear―”

  “Shhh!”

  “To take me as your…” He leaned close and whispered each word slowly and distinctly, “lawful… wedded… husband.”

  “Wayne Hawkins, that’s not fair! Are you telling me what you agreed to, last night, was nothing but a fickle promise?”

  “A solemn oath overrides a fickle promise, every time.”

  “Well, I’m not listening to another word.” She backed off and would have stumbled if he hadn’t reached out a hand to steady her. Which she did not refuse until she reached the safety of the companionway. “Hawk wants us all up on deck for a round table,” she informed Marion and Starr on her way past. “I’ll be along as soon as I change clothes. It got cold out there.”

  They watched her disappear down the narrow aft companionway, after which Starr observed, “That’s not all it got out there. Those two are either gonna kill each other or move in together. I give them about a week.”

  “Dee wouldn’t do that,” Marion replied. “She’s not the type.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He got up to rinse his mug out and then put it back in the cupboard wet. “Definitely too much of a softie to commit murder.”

  Outside of a brief glance the first night they moved aboard, Dee had never really looked closely at the captain’s cabin. In the daylight, the full impact of it was a little overwhelming. It confronted her in the same way the empty salon had the night before, like a stirring of lives past. A bank of windows against the stern drew in the lonely turbulence of a brooding sea. There was a long window seat beneath them, an almost hypnotic place that might keep one spellbound for hours.

  Like the rest of the yacht, the room was luxurious with dark paneling. It even had an oriental carpet tacked to the floor. There was a small private bath and a desk with a leather-tufted chair beneath a row of bookshelves along one wall. The bed was large, with drawers underneath and covered by a beautiful woven throw of navy blue and red.

  The journal and logbook were lying open on the desk, and as she reached out for them, her attention was drawn to a small, framed photograph on the wall above. It was of a robust handsome man in his early forties. He had light golden hair and eyes the color of the sky. All at once, a feeling as if someone were watching came over her so strongly she turned suddenly to check the doorway.

  But no one was there.

  A strange sense of heaviness flooded over her, then, and she hurried back through the slanting corridor, past Starr’s unkempt cabin, through the galley, and up on deck. When she finally arrived in the center of the cockpit, amid the comfortable ordinary chatter of her friends, she was irritated at herself for having been so easily spooked. She felt a sudden need to be occupied. “Would anyone mind if I fished during the meeting?”

  “Oh, no,” Marion moaned.

  “I’ve only got one pole left,” Starr replied, “but go ahead, I guess.”

  “Get your safety line on,” Hawk said when she handed him the two books, then took the pole out of the seat locker and quietly began to busy herself with the gear, instead.

  She reached for the last line and clipped it onto her jacket.

  “Let’s get on with the meeting,” said Starr.

  “Well, to begin with, there’s a problem with the journal.” Hawk poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos and sat down next to where Dee was now totally involved in attaching one of the lures.

  “You looked at the journal?” Starr asked.

  “Last night. But Matta Hari, here, neglected to inform us that the whole thing was in German.”

  “I resent that implication,” Dee objected without looking up from her project.

  “Who’s Matta Hari?” Starr questioned.

  “Some famous lady spy you read about in history books,” Marion explained. “Go on, Hawk, we’re listening.”

  “According to Dee, Peterson gave her some sort of page numbered code to work out the exact location. But without speaking the language, the only information I could get was latitude and longitude.”

  “But we already had latitude and longitude,” Starr said.

  “Exactly. So, the missing element we’ve all been making fools of ourselves over hasn’t told us anymore than what we already knew.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?” Dee asked. “Peterson told me the exact location was there and that’s what I told you. I did hand it over, and I did tell you the code. Which is why I resent the Matta Hari thing.” She dropped her six-inch, three-pronged lure over the stern and began letting out line.

  “Not that one,” Starr whispered an aside to her. “You want to catch a blasted marlin or something? Stick to the small stuff.”

  “Oh, all right,” she whispered back and reeled it up again. “But they’re not as much fun.”

  “However,” Hawk went on, “from what I could make out last night, the journal isn’t Peterson’s at all. I think it belonged to someone else.”

  A chorus of disbelief went up, and Dee quit reeling in line to turn around in surprise.

  “Look.” Hawk opened both books before handing them across to Starr for inspection. “The handwriting is different. And the logbook—which is in English—is written by the captain of this boat, describing an expedition to recover the diamonds back in 1946. An expedition headed up by one…Heinrich Keller.”

  24

  Peterson’s Story

  “We sat on deck talking or nervously walking about…” ~ Nellie Bly

  “So even if the journal was Keller’s,” Dee pointed out, “everything still fits. Peterson said he got the jewels from a German officer, he just never mentioned his name or that he had been an aide to Goering. Probably knew I wouldn’t have agreed to get him out, if I had known he hobnobbed around with war criminals for years on end.”

  “You tried to get a Nazi war criminal out of the loony bin?” Starr’s expression was one of unveiled surprise.

  “How was I supposed to know who he really was? He lied to me.”

  “Dee, you could have been killed!” Marion’s voice carried the same tone as a death bell on an old church. “Why, he could have murdered you the minute you got him to the first—”

  “Let’s not even go there,” Hawk interrupted. “The point is, the log is full of the name, Heinrich Keller. It tells a story of how he switched sides during the invasion of Russia. He got away with it because he spoke perfect Russian. His mother was Russian, a wealthy aristocra
t who married a German officer, named Friedrich Keller before World War I, which is why Heinrich Keller spoke German, some Swedish that he and Peterson communicated in, and Russian. He didn’t speak any English back then.”

  “But what difference does it make whose book is whose, as long as they substantiate each other?” Marion asked.

  “Peterson spoke English,” Hawk replied. “He wrote the log in English to keep an account of the expedition that he didn’t want Keller to know about. I think he suspected him right from the start, the moment Keller commissioned him and the Pandora to go get the diamonds. Both their countries were in post war pandemonium. Keller was probably just out to save his own hide. But…” He picked up his forgotten coffee cup and took a long thoughtful drink of the cold brew. “He never expected the new U.S.S.R to close itself off from the rest of the world indefinitely. Or the Cold War that followed after that.”

  “Maybe he started off trading sensitive information as a way of working himself back into the country.” Dee’s tone sounded almost hopeful. “It’s just hard to believe he could have been so… so evil. He sure never seemed that way when I knew him. Crafty, yes. But you’d think I would have had warning bells going off all over the place, if he was such a horrible person. Wouldn’t you think so, Marion?”

  “All spies look ordinary,” she said, as a matter of fact. “That’s one of the requirements.”

  “We even said a prayer together!”

  “About what?” Hawk asked.

  “He killed a lot of people during the war and he didn’t want to go to hell. I thought he meant as a soldier. Fighting the enemy and all that. Which is not the same thing as murder, in my opinion. We had a lot of military people in our family that gave everything they had and then some. So nobody can convince me otherwise.”

  “Probably meant killing Keller,” said Starr. “Last entry in the log was nothing special. Position and weather conditions from somewhere in the Arctic Sea, about a week off from the island. Poor duffer never saw it coming.”