Douglas Preston - Riptide

Neidelman approached a small baize-covered dry sink, laid with cut-glass ship's decanters and small glasses. Pulling two tumblers from their felt-covered moorings, he poured a few fingers of port in each. "Those engravings," he said, following Hatch's gaze, "are by Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage around the world. They're plant specimens he collected in Botany Bay, shortly after they discovered Australia. It was the fantastic variety of plant specimens, you know, that caused Banks to give the bay its name."

"They're beautiful," murmured Hatch, accepting a glass.

"They're probably the finest copperplate engravings ever made. What a fortunate man he was: a botanist, given the gift of a brand-new continent."

"Axe you interested in botany?" Hatch asked.

"I'm interested in brand-new continents," Neidelman said, staring into the fire. "But I was born a little too late. All those have been snapped up." He smiled quickly, covering what seemed like a wistful gleam in his eyes.

"But in the Water Pit you have a mystery worthy of attention."

"Yes," Neidelman replied. "Perhaps the only one left. That's why I suppose setbacks such as today's shouldn't dismay me. Great mysteries don't yield up their secrets easily."

There was a long silence as Hatch sipped his port. Most people, he knew, found silence in a conversation to be uncomfortable. But Neidelman seemed to welcome it.

"I meant to ask you," the Captain said at last. "What did you think of our reception in town yesterday?"

"By and large, everyone seems happy with our presence here. We're certainly a boon to local business."

"Yes," Neidelman replied. "But what do you mean, 'by and large'?"

"Well, not everyone's a merchant." Hatch decided there was no point in being evasive. "We seem to have aroused the moral opposition of the local minister."

Neidelman gave a wry smile. "The minister disapproves, does he? After two thousand years of murder, inquisition, and intolerance, it's a wonder any Christian minister still feels he holds the moral high ground."

Hatch shifted a little uncomfortably; this was a voluble Neidelman, quite unlike the cold figure that just a few hours before had ordered the pumps run at a critically dangerous level.

"They told Columbus his ship would fall off the earth. And they forced Galileo to publicly repudiate his greatest discovery."

Neidelman fished his pipe out of his pocket and went through the elaborate ritual of lighting it. "My father was a Lutheran minister himself," he said more quietly, shaking out the match. "I had quite enough to last me a lifetime."

"You don't believe in God?" Hatch asked.

Neidelman gazed at Hatch in silence. Then he lowered his head. "To be honest, I've often wished I did. Religion played such a large role in my childhood that being without it now myself sometimes feels like a void. But I'm the kind of person who cannot believe in the absence of proof. It isn't something I have any control over. I must have proof." He sipped his port. "Why? Do you have any religious beliefs?"

Hatch turned toward him. "Well, yes, I do."

Neidelman waited, smoking.

"But I don't care to discuss them."

A smile spread over Neidelman's face. "Excellent. Can I give you a dividend?"

Hatch handed over his glass. "That wasn't the only opposing voice I heard in town," he continued. "I have an old friend, a teacher of natural history, who thinks we're going to fail."

"And you?" Neidelman asked coolly, busy with the port, not looking at him.

"I wouldn't be in it if I thought we'd fail. But I'd be lying if I said today's setback didn't give me pause."

"Malin," Neidelman said almost gently as he returned the glass, "I can't blame you for that. I confess to feeling a moment of something like despair when the pumps failed us. But there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that we'll succeed. I see now where we've gone wrong."

"I suppose there are even more than five flood tunnels," Hatch said. "Or maybe some hydraulic trick was played on us."

"Undoubtedly. But that's not what I mean. You see, we've been focusing all our attention on the Water Pit. But I've realized the Water Pit is not our adversary."

Hatch raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and the Captain turned toward him, pipe clenched in one fist, eyes glittering brightly.

"It's not the Pit. It's the man. Macallan, the designer. He's been one step ahead of us all the way. He's anticipated our moves, and those who came before us."

Placing his glass on a felt-topped table, he walked over to the wall and swung open a wood panel, revealing a small safe. He punched several buttons on the adjoining keypad, and the safe door swung open. He reached inside, removed something, then turned and laid it on the table in front of Hatch. It was a quarto volume, bound in leather: Macallan's book, On Sacred Structures. The captain opened it with great care, caressing it with long fingers. There in the margins, next to the printed blocks of text, appeared a neat little hand in a pale brown wash that looked almost like watercolor: line after line of monotonous characters, broken only by the occasional small, deft mechanical drawing of various joints, arches, braces, and cribbing.

Neidelman tapped the page. "If the Pit is Macallan's armor, then this is the soft joint where we can slip in the knife. Very soon now, we'll have the second half of the code deciphered. And with it, the key to the treasure."

"How can you be so sure this journal contains the secret to the Pit?" Hatch asked.

"Because nothing else makes sense. Why else would he have kept a secret journal, not only in code, but written in an invisible ink? Remember, Red Ned Ockham needed Macallan to create an impregnable fortress for his treasure. A fortress that would not only resist looters, but would physically endanger them by drowning, or crushing, or whatever. But you don't create a bomb without knowing how to disarm it first. So Macallan would have had to create a secret way for Ockham himself to remove his treasure when he chose: a hidden tunnel, perhaps, or a way to defuse the traps. It stands to reason Macallan would keep a record of it." He leveled his gaze at his guest. "But this journal holds more than just the key to the Pit. It gives us a window into the man's mind. And it is the man we must defeat." He spoke in the same low, strangely forceful tone that Hatch remembered from earlier in the day.

Hatch bent over the book, inhaling the aroma of mildew, leather, dust, and dry rot. "One thing surprises me," he said. "And that's the thought of an architect, kidnapped and forced to work for pirates on some godforsaken island, having the presence of mind to keep a secret journal."

Neidelman nodded slowly. "It's not the act of a fainthearted man. Perhaps he wanted to leave a record, for posterity, of his most ingenious structure. I suppose it's hard to say what motivated him, exactly. After all, the man was a bit of a cipher himself. There's a gap of three years in the historical record, following his leaving Cambridge, during which he seems to have disappeared. And his personal life as a whole remains a mystery. Take a look at this dedication." He carefully turned to the title page of the book, then slid it toward Hatch:

With Gratefulle admiration

For shewing the Way

The Author respectfully dedicates this humble Work

To Eta Onis

"We've searched high and low, but haven't been able to determine the identity of this Eta Onis," Neidelman went on. "Was she Macallan's teacher? Confidante? Mistress?" He carefully closed the book. "It's the same with the rest of his life."

"I'm embarrassed to say that, until you came along, I'd never even heard of the man," Hatch said.