Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  Slowly the corpse came into focus. Damn. She could tell by the exquisite undulating patterns on its feathers that it was a waved albatross, the first one she’d ever seen. Each wing, as long as she was tall, fluttered in the current as if the magnificent bird was still trying to fly. The hook was lodged in its throat. Double damn. She took a second to check her computer—she was down to less than 600 PSI. Time was running out. Holding down the coil of longline under a knee, she took a sad photo of the drowned albatross.

  Waved albatrosses mated for life. Was the mate of this one soaring somewhere above the islands, endlessly waiting for him to return?

  Letting the camera dangle again, she reached for the dive knife she kept in a sheath attached to the bottom of her BCD. She cut the line that led to the hook in the bird’s throat. Then she sheathed her dive knife again, shoved the corpse away, and reeled in the rest of the longline.

  There was one more hook, dangling a chunk of decayed fish. When she touched it, the glutinous mass slipped off the metal barb. Then the line ended. She was at 500 PSI and had been underwater nearly an hour, longer than she’d ever stayed before. She tucked the coil of line and hooks inside her largest BCD pocket, wrapping the hooks with the line so they wouldn’t puncture the vest’s air bladder. The zipper wouldn’t close over the bulky bundle, so she held a hand over the pocket opening as she finned her way back toward the boat, rising slowly as she moved up the flank of Ola Rock, holding her camera in the crook of her arm and watching her computer count down the recommended time to decompress.

  The engine noise increased and the visibility decreased as she got closer to the surface. She nearly collided with the panga, its gray rubbery skin abruptly appearing only inches in front of her mask. Surfacing, she inflated her BCD and spat out her mouthpiece. It was good to see blue sky, breathe endless air, and hear earthly sounds again.

  Eduardo was clearly happy to see her return, too. “I worry,” he said, taking the camera from her.

  “Sorry, the dive took longer than I thought. I found a piece of longline, so I had to retrieve it.”

  He frowned. “This line could drift from a long way, even from outside the reserve.”

  Or not, she thought to herself. Eduardo, like everyone else in the Galápagos, seemed eager to put the best spin on everything. “A waved albatross was impaled on one of the hooks.”

  “Very bad.” He made a face. “The bird see the bait fish from above, he dives, and then he swallow the hook.”

  He made a twirling gesture above her head with his hand, and she turned around to let him take hold of her tank valve. She unbuckled her BCD and shrugged out of it. Eduardo hauled the tank and her attached BCD over the dinghy bumper. Then she bellyflopped into the boat, sliding onto the floor like a beached mackerel. She righted herself and checked the slate on her wrist. Nobody else would be able to interpret her chicken scratches there, but she would remember well enough to make sense of the letters and numbers. She ripped apart the Velcro straps and set the slate carefully aside, then popped off her fins and face mask, pulled herself up onto one of the benches, and reached for a bottle of water.

  Eduardo shoved the panga away from the shore with an oar, and then pushed the throttle forward. Sam turned to face the bow. She couldn’t wait to post her last photo. The image might be gruesome, but the longlined albatross was a perfect example of what was at stake here.

  “Dan,” she murmured, raising her water bottle into the wind, “I did it for you.”

  She combed out her French braid with her fingers and let the breeze dry her hair as they sped back to Papagayo. She not only had survived diving alone, but had recorded the counts, taken her photos, and documented more evidence of illegal fishing. Hot damn, she was intrepid; she was Zing. But sadly, she was also a solo act again.

  Her schedule for Out There required not only the usual two posts today, but also two half-hour chat sessions that night. After reading Zing’s hate mail for the last two days, she worried about who might show up to debate with her alter ego. Until she could write about what happened to Dan, she’d have to pretend this trip was business as usual.

  As they neared Papagayo, Sam noticed the military boat anchored alongside. At the tiller, Eduardo tensed at this reminder of Dan’s death. Tony and another crew member were handing dive gear up to a uniformed sailor on deck. The two fiscalia officers, Schwartz and Aguirre, stood officiously at the bow, watching Sam and Eduardo as the inflatable bumped up against Papagayo’s stern. Nobody said a word. Tony disappeared through the engine room door. The other crew member helped Eduardo tie up the panga and then carried Sam’s dive gear and tanks into the engine room. As she and Eduardo climbed the stairs to the main deck, Tony emerged, wearing a wetsuit. He untied the Navy boat, and then leapt aboard as the boat pulled away. Obviously the search for Dan’s body was still in progress.

  As soon as she got back to her cabin, she checked her cell phone, scrolling back through received calls. The last was an unidentified number—Chase’s frustrating message from this morning. Earlier was the call from her editor in Seattle and still earlier, the jarring listing of Kazaki, Daniel. Elizabeth had left no message. Had she been informed that Dan was missing and was mostly likely dead?

  Nobody had called since Chase’s message this morning. You can’t call me. That was so typical. Why didn’t she ever have normal relationships? The only men she attracted were those who used her to further their own careers—okay, to be fair, that was only one man, Seattle television reporter–now–San Diego anchorman Adam Steele—or men who were simply not there when she needed them. Okay, the latter category was only one man, too. And it was Chase’s job to disappear on FBI assignments. She was always traipsing off somewhere on jobs, too; so she really couldn’t justify feeling too sorry for herself.

  She hated it when her interior conversations ended in self-recrimination like this.

  She focused on putting together her blog posts. Writing for Wilderness Westin was easy enough with photos of flamingos and the post office barrel and the twisted history of Floreana.

  Creating Zing’s story was more of a challenge today. The pictures from Ola Rock were nearly as murky as the water had been there; she had to supplement with stock photos to show readers what a waved albatross and sea cucumbers actually looked like. She identified the pink ribbon of eggs as those of a nudibranch, or sea slug. She was starving and late for dinner, so she left Zing’s post in rough draft form and raced to slide into her seat with Brandon and Ken in the middle of the evening meal. As soon as she stepped into the dining area, the conversation died.

  “Ignore them,” Ken murmured. Brandon nodded his agreement. Constantino kindly brought her a salad and an extra large glass of wine in addition to the main course.

  As Constantino delivered the dessert course to the other tables, Captain Quiroga entered the dining area, wearing his white dress uniform. He cleared his throat. “Officers Schwartz and Aguirre of the fiscalia are here to question all passengers about Dr. Kazaki’s disappearance.”

  The cluster of tourists looked at each other. Most expressions were perplexed; a few people looked worried. Jerry Roberson, as usual, wore a glower.

  “It is the normal routine,” the captain assured them. “They will question the crew, too. We will begin after dinner.”

  After they’d finished dessert, the tour group was shepherded to the lounge for the customary evening lecture by Maxim. A few minutes after they had left the dining area, Officer Aguirre signaled Jerry and Sandy Roberson that they should follow him to the upper deck. Sam finished her meal alone in the dining area. Although she could see the other tourists and they could see her, for the moment everyone seemed to be pretending that she was invisible. After swallowing her last spoonful of passionfruit mousse, she slipped out through the doors onto the walkway, and then climbed the stairs to the captain’s office, where the interviews were taking place. Flattening her back against the outside wall near the open porthole, she listened as the officers questioned the Ro
bersons.

  “How would I know what he was up to?” Jerry Roberson said angrily. “All I know was that it had something to do with fish, and that he was a Jap.”

  “Jerry!” his wife admonished.

  Sam heard a brief exchange in Spanish between Eduardo and one of the officers. Then Eduardo quietly asked, “You mean he was Japanese?”

  “That’s what I said, a Jap.”

  Sandy again yelped, “Jerry!”

  Roberson then said, “Well, excuse me. These guys know what I mean. I served in Vietnam. My father and my uncle died on Okinawa in World War Two. Japs, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese—those slant-eyed bastards are all the same; they don’t give a shit about anyone except themselves. You guys know that. They’re the ones who are poaching all your fish, right? We always got problems with them off the U.S. coastlines, too.”

  No wonder Jerry Roberson had glared at her and Dan. To him, Daniel Kazaki was simply a Jap, and she was clearly allied with the enemy.

  Did Roberson, an ex–Navy Seal, hate Japs enough to murder a slant-eyed stranger from Delaware? Could he have borrowed the captain’s gear and slipped into the water after Dan? As far as she knew, the two men had never met before. An impromptu prejudice-motivated murder seemed improbable, to say the least, unless Roberson was a serial killer who traveled the world bumping off Asian strangers he met along the way.

  The interview continued, with Jerry insisting that he had been napping in Cabin 5 on the day that Dan disappeared. Sandy was snorkeling with the tour group. Neither knew where Dan Kazaki or Summer Westin was at the time.

  The mention of her name startled her. Why were the officers asking about her whereabouts? She’d already told them that whole story.

  Chair legs squeaked against the tile floor inside. Sam decided she’d better disappear before she was discovered eavesdropping. She hustled down the stairs to the main deck, opened the door and passed the tables that were now clear of dinnerware, and then entered the lounge.

  The fluorescent lights overhead seemed too bright, the conversation too loud. Constantino manned the tiny bar. The poor guy must work sixteen-hour shifts. She asked him for a Diet Coke just to have something to hold in her hands.

  As he poured it, she turned to survey the gathering. Brandon, Ken, both Birskys, and Paige Sanders sat on the L-shaped couch. Their attention was focused on Maxim, who, with marine encyclopedia in hand, endeavored to identify all the fish spotted during the day’s snorkel outing. Sam squeezed herself onto the vinyl-covered cushions between Brandon and Ken.

  “Goatfish?” Maxim pointed to a photo on the page in front of him.

  “I don’t think so.” Abigail Birsky shook her head. “It had horizontal black stripes.” She flashed Sam a weak smile that might have meant anything.

  Various members of the tour group scrutinized her out of the corners of their eyes; she felt their collective gaze on her. She tried to put herself in their shoes. In the beginning, she’d acted aloof because she didn’t know what was safe to say and she and Dan were not part of the group. Then they’d observed her in a hysterical state. Next, she got plastered, and now she was acting distant and mysterious again.

  What could they be thinking? That she and Dan had ruined their vacations? That she was a psycho who made up a story about a body? That she’d killed Dan? Why was nobody talking? She swallowed a sip of her cold drink, and then said, “I didn’t kill him.”

  She regretted the words as soon as they’d escaped. For an awkward moment, silence lay in the room like a dropped condom nobody wanted to claim. Finally, Paige Sanders held up the book of photos in her lap and asked, “Could Abigail’s fish have been a yellowtail surgeonfish?” And the conversation surged into safer marine mysteries.

  Sandy and Jerry Roberson returned, accompanied by Officer Schwartz and Eduardo, who told the Birskys that they were needed next. The older couple rose and left with Eduardo, but to her surprise, Schwartz remained in the room, taking a spot on the couch. Maxim ended his lecture and the group’s attention turned to refreshing their drinks and chatting with one another. Schwartz sat silently among them, observing. His demeanor reminded Sam of the lurking barracuda.

  As usual, Jonathan Sanders was missing from the group. Could that be significant? She watched the tiny bubbles in her glass climb from bottom to top. A whole day had passed, but she had no more clues about what had happened to Dan than she had at this time yesterday.

  Maxim leaned toward her. “You work for Out There.”

  She looked up, startled. Had Dan or Eduardo told him that? “You know Out There?”

  “I love Out There.” The young guide smiled. “You are Wilderness Westin, reporter and photographer, yes?”

  The tourists stared curiously, waiting for her answer. Schwartz was listening intently, too. She squirmed. “That’s the byline—the name—they asked me to use.”

  Maxim’s eyebrows lifted in a hopeful expression. “You know Zing?”

  She struggled to keep her face impassive. Maxim didn’t know she was Zing? She’d assumed that Eduardo was in on the secret. But now that she thought about it, maybe he wasn’t. So far, Sam hadn’t uploaded a photo as Zing with Dan or anyone else in it. As promised, she hadn’t been specific about their dive locations in her posts, and neither Eduardo nor Maxim were divers, so they probably had never seen the underwater landscapes. For all the world knew, Zing was diving from some other boat.

  She hedged, “I’ve met Zing.”

  “Where does she stay?”

  “That’s a good question.” Sam thought quickly. “We communicate via email and cell phone when we travel.” Maybe that would obfuscate the process enough that no one would question the logic. The tourists already looked bored and were turning back to their own conversations.

  “You know Bomber Bryant?” Maxim persisted.

  “I never met him.” At least half the people listed on Out There’s staff page were marketing creations. She’d be happy to expose the virtual reporters if she hadn’t signed a nondisclosure agreement promising she wouldn’t. And then there was the fact that even she didn’t know for sure which reporter was a real person and which wasn’t.

  Now she worried that Maxim was following her daily posts. He was in the twenty-something age group that Out There tended to attract. “What kind of a computer do you have, Maxim?”

  The guide made a face. “A very old one. Here, I see Tony’s, and I am saving.”

  So Tony and Maxim were following her daily posts? Who else?

  “Will you write about this?” Maxim asked.

  She hesitated, acutely aware of Officer Schwartz sitting only a few feet away. But then, he supposedly didn’t understand English. “Do you mean about what happened to Dr. Kazaki?”

  Maxim nodded.

  “Yes, I’ll write about it.” It. Dan’s death. Her throat suddenly felt tight.

  Maxim nodded soberly. He rubbed his hands on his thighs, then abruptly jumped up, clapped his hands for attention, and launched into a description of the group activities planned for the next day: a visit to Darwin Station and a tour of Puerto Ayora. At the end of his statements, he focused on her again. “Will you come with us, Wilderness?”

  Sam winced at Maxim’s use of her pseudonym. “I’m coming to Puerto Ayora, but I can’t stay with the group. I’ve got to work to do.”

  She studied the ice cubes in her glass for a second, and then checked her watch. Eight thirty. She had half an hour to post her stories and get ready for her chat sessions. The vinyl cushions squeaked as she rose. “Night, all.”

  She went outside for a breath of fresh air before descending to her cabin. The wind had picked up. Papagayo swung on its anchor. Waves rolled from bow to stern. As she made her way along the metal grating of the exterior walkway, her nostrils picked up the acrid odor of burning tobacco. She glanced up to see a dark silhouette leaning against the deck rail above, the red ember of a cigarette creating a tiny pocket of brightness in the night shadows.

  Jonathan Sanders. H
e and Paige had come on board after she and Dan had. Was that coincidence? Or had she and Dan been followed?

  13

  In her cabin, Sam uploaded the posts for Zing and Wilderness and then reviewed her photos and notes, trying to get into the proper frame of mind for talking to her audience at Out There. She clicked through the pretty photos from her first Galápagos dive. Sunbeams piercing jade water. Purple sea fan. Sea turtle. It seemed impossible that she'd taken these only three days ago.

  Her heart lurched at a shot of Dan, holding out the sea cucumber, his almond-shaped hazel eyes clearly visible through his face mask. His gaze was sharp; she’d snapped that photo before the carbon monoxide had dulled his thoughts. It was a very nice photo; she should send it to Elizabeth.

  Look after my husband.

  “Oh, Dan,” Sam murmured. “What happened?”

  A loud thump on her door made her jump out of her chair. Sergeant Schwartz and an Ecuadorian Navy officer stepped into her room. Eduardo stood in the doorway.

  She could tell by their faces. “You found him.”

  “Yes.” Eduardo looked as if he might start sobbing at any second. “He is floating near Leon Rock.”

  Schwartz studied her as if he had been tasked with memorizing every freckle on her face.

  “Can I see him?” she asked. Not that she really wanted to stare death in the face again, but now she wanted to look at Dan more closely, for marks and injuries. For any hint of what had happened.

  “The police take him to Puerto Ayora,” Eduardo told her.

  Sam took a deep breath. “Has Dan’s wife been notified?”

  The two men exchanged rapid-fire Spanish sentences, after which Eduardo said miserably, “The American Consulate in Guayaquil is calling.”

  Sam felt like a coward. Should she have answered Elizabeth Kazaki’s call last night, broken the horrible news herself? She rubbed her bare arms and met Schwartz’s unwavering blue-eyed gaze. “What will happen now?”