Марк Брендел - The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale

He turned the boat so that it was idling slowly along, parallel to the shore.

“Fluke,” Constance called. “Come close, Fluke.” She reached for the canvas harness on the deck beside her. She had already fastened the television camera and the searchlight to it. She slipped into the water and fitted the straps over Fluke’s head.

Jupe was pinching his lower lip. Three miles out, he thought. But three miles out from where? From Slater’s vague information the boat might have gone down anywhere along a ten-mile lane of ocean. It was going to be like looking for a lost nickel on a freeway unless they could fix the location of the wreck more exactly than that.

Constance had the light and the television camera fastened to Fluke’s head. She climbed back on board. Jupe sidled over to her.

“Did your father ever manage to say anything else to you?” he asked. “Anything about the night of the storm?”

Constance shook her head. “Nothing that made any sense to me,” she answered. “I told you what he did say.”

Jupe remembered. That stuff about keeping those two Polish guys in line. He might have meant anything. He might even have been talking about something that had happened years ago.

Jupe stared at the shore three miles away.

There was very little to see. The cliffs were high, hiding all but the distant line of mountains from the boat. An occasional house showed on the top of a hill. An office building rose out of the landscape. There was a tall television relay tower on top of another hill. What looked like a factory chimney showed way over to the right of it.

“Better get into a wet suit, Pete,” Constance said, “and we’ll check the air tanks so we’re all ready to dive with Fluke.”

Pete nodded and walked forward into the cockpit, where the scuba equipment had been set out for them.

Jupe was still staring at the coastline. He was pinching his lower lip so hard that he had pulled it all the way down to his chin.

Diego Carmel was an experienced sea captain. When he knew his boat was going down, he would have tried to take a sighting of some kind. If only he was well enough to talk…

Jupe’s eyes shifted quickly from the television tower to the tall chimney. Suddenly he saw them as they would look at dusk in a storm.

“Two poles.”

He grabbed Slater’s arm. This was no time to pretend to be stupid.

“Keep the two poles in line!” he shouted excitedly.

“What? What are you jabbering about, boy?”

“Captain Carmel,” Jupe told him. “When the boat started to sink, he tried to get a fix on the shore. He saw that television tower with the factory chimney behind it.”

“What?”

“Don’t you see?” It seemed to Jupe it was Slater who was being stupid now. “All we’ve got to do to find the area of the wreck is to go back down the coast until those two landmarks, those two poles, are in a straight line!”

Jupe stood on the foredeck with the binoculars to his eyes.

He held them focused on the shoreline three miles away. As the boat moved down the coast, the television tower and the factory chimney were drawing closer together. Another hundred yards, he figured.

Slater was at the wheel. “Slow speed,” Jupe called to him. “Steady.”

Closer and closer. And then they met. The tower was directly in front of the tall chimney.

The two poles were in line.

“Here,” Jupe shouted. “Hold it right here.” He lowered the binoculars.

The water was too deep to drop anchor. Slater would have to keep the boat motionless by idling the engine against the tide.

Jupe watched him as he turned the bow toward the shore. A few minutes ago he had thought Slater was pretty dumb, but he could see now that that bald head contained a lot of savvy. The man was handling the boat like a pro.

“Okay, Pete?” Constance had finished fastening the air tank to Pete’s back. He adjusted the mask over his eyes while Constance inspected his breathing hose and checked the air-pressure gauge.

The needle indicator on the gauge showed that his air tank was full.

Walking clumsily in his flippers, he followed Constance to the rail. She sat down on it, then, leaning out over the water, let herself topple gently backward into the ocean.

Pete tumbled in after her.

He straightened out a few feet below the surface and floated face down in the water. He was trying to remember everything he had been taught about scuba diving.

Breathe through your mouth so your mask won’t fog up. Keep checking the air hose to make sure it doesn’t get a kink in it. Don’t dive until the moisture inside your wet suit has had time to adjust to your body temperature. The deeper you go, the colder the ocean and the greater the pressure. At the first sign of giddiness surface immediately but not too fast.

For several minutes Pete swam around three feet underwater, lazily wagging his flippers and giving himself time to relax and get used to this underwater world.

He had always loved scuba diving. With the weighted belt around his waist counteracting his buoyancy, he felt as if he were flying. Flying the way a bird could. There was the same wonderful sense of freedom.

Constance and Fluke were floating a few yards away from him. Pete raised his hand, forming his thumb and forefinger into a circle. He was ready to dive.

Constance patted Fluke’s back. With the powerful light beaming ahead of him, the whale glided down. Deeper and deeper. Deeper than Pete, or even Constance, could follow him.

Jupe was keeping his eyes on the television monitor in the cockpit of the boat. Slater, at the wheel, was intently watching it too.

It was fascinating, Jupe thought. Like watching a space probe. The circle of light on the small screen seemed to be exploring the sky. A hazy, sometimes cloudy sky, across which swarms of fish suddenly darted like insects.

Whenever Fluke got too far from the boat, the circle of light began to dim. Immediately Slater steered toward the shore, keeping the tower and the chimney in line, following the direction Fluke had taken.

When the circle of light grew brighter again, he held the boat steady and motionless once more.

A patch of sand and gravel, a clump of weed, appeared on the screen. Fluke had reached the bottom of the ocean. The television camera on his head was scanning it foot by foot.

Pete had halted his dive far above Fluke. He didn’t dare go any deeper. He knew from his scuba lessons that when the pressure on the human body becomes too great, the diver feels a curious sensation like drunkenness. He becomes overconfident and can do wild, stupid things that may endanger his own life.

Far below him he could see the gleam of Fluke’s searchlight. Lucky Fluke, he thought. His body was better adapted to the depths. Some whales, Constance had told him, could dive down a mile and stay underwater for as long as an hour.

Pete raised his hand to straighten his breathing tube. He ran his fingers along the curved length of it to the air tank on his back.

Funny, he thought. He couldn’t find any kink in the hose, and yet…

He fumbled desperately along the tube again. There must be a kink in it somewhere. There had to be, because he couldn’t get any air into his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.

He snatched at the buckle of his weighted belt. Hold your breath, he told himself. Take that belt off.

Hold your breath and surface. Don’t panic, you idiot. Get that buckle undone.

But there no longer seemed to be any feeling in his fingers. And there was something wrong with his eyes. The water around him seemed to be slowly changing color. It was turning a pale rose and then a deeper and deeper red. So deep it was almost black.