Douglas Preston - Riptide

Bonterre was flashing her light along the ceiling. "Mon dieu," she breathed, "a classic example of the English Baroque style. A little crude, perhaps, but unmistakable."

Neidelman gazed at the ceiling. "Yes," he said, "you can actually see the hand of Sir William here. Look at that tierceron and lierne work: remarkable."

"Remarkable to think it's been here all this time, a hundred feet beneath the earth," Hatch said. "But what was it for?"

"If I had to guess," Bonterre said, "I would say the room served some kind of hydraulic function, yes?" She blew a long cloud of mist toward the center of the room. They all watched as it glided toward the grate, then was suddenly sucked down into the depths.

"We'll figure it out when we've mapped all this," said Neidelman. "For now, let's set two sensors, here and here." He tapped the sensors into joints between the stones on opposite sides of the room, then rose and glanced at his gas meter. "Carbon dioxide levels are getting a little high," he said. "I think perhaps we ought to cut this visit short."

They returned to the central shaft to find that Wopner had almost caught up with them. "There are two sensors in a room at the end of this tunnel," Neidelman said to him, placing a second flag in the shaft's mouth.

Above, Wopner mumbled something unintelligible, his back to them as he worked with his palmtop computer. Hatch found that if he stayed in one place too long, his breath collected into a cloud of fog around his head, making it difficult to see.

"Dr. Magnusen," Neidelman spoke into his radio. "Status, please."

"Dr. Rankin is getting a few seismic anomalies on the monitors, Captain, but nothing serious. It could well be the weather." As if in response, a low crump of thunder echoed faintly down the shaft.

"Understood." Neidelman turned to Bonterre and Hatch. "Let's get to the bottom and tag the rest of the shafts."

Once again, they began their descent. As Hatch moved past the hundred-foot platform toward the base of the Water Pit, he found his arms and legs beginning to shake from weariness and cold.

"Take a look at this," Neidelman said, swiveling his light around. "Another well-constructed tunnel, directly below the first. No doubt this is part of the original workings, as well." Bonterre placed a sensor into the nearby joist, and they began moving again.

Suddenly, there was a sharp intake of breath beneath Hatch, and he heard Bonterre mutter a fervent curse. He looked down, and his heart leaped immediately into his mouth.

Below him, tangled in a massive snarl of junk, lay a partially skeletonized corpse, draped in chains and rusting iron, the eyeless sockets of its skull flickering crazily in the light of Bonterre's headlamp. Ribbons of clothing hung from its shoulders and hips, and its jaw hung open as if laughing at some hilarious joke. Hatch felt a curious feeling of displacement, a detached sensation, even as part of his brain realized that the skeleton was far too big to be that of his brother. Looking away and trembling violently, he leaned against the ladder, fighting to get his breath and heartbeat under control, concentrating on the rush of air into, and out of, his lungs.

"Malin!" came the urgent voice of Bonterre. "Malin! This skeleton is very old. Comprends? Two hundred years old, at least."

Hatch waited another long moment, breathing, until he was sure he could answer. "I understand," he said. Slowly, he unlocked his arm from the titanium rung. Then, equally slowly, he lowered first one foot, then the other, until he was level with Bonterre and Neidelman.

The Captain played his light over the skeleton, fascinated, oblivious to Hatch's reaction. "Look at the design of this shirt," he said. "Homespun, raglan seams, a common garment among early nineteenth-century fishermen. I believe we've found the body of Simon Rutter, the Pit's original victim." They stared at the skeleton until a distant rumble of thunder broke the spell.

The Captain wordlessly aimed his headlamp beneath his feet. Following the beam with his own, Hatch could now make out their final destination: the bottom of the Water Pit itself. A huge snarl of broken crosspieces, rusting iron, hoses, gears, rods, and all manner of machinery poked up out of a pool of mud and silt perhaps twenty feet beneath them. Directly above the snarl, Hatch could see several large shaftways converge onto the main Pit, damp seaweed and kelp dangling like steaming beards from their mouths. Neidelman moved his light around the wildly tangled ruin. Then he turned back to Bonterre and Hatch, his slender form haloed in the chill mist of his own breath.

"Perhaps fifty feet beneath that wreckage," he said in a low voice, "lies a two-billion-dollar treasure." Though his eyes moved between them restlessly, they appeared to be focusing on something far beyond. Then he began to laugh, a low, soft, curious laugh. "Fifty feet," he repeated. "And all we have to do now is dig"

Suddenly, the radio crackled. "Captain, this is Streeter." To Hatch, listening in his headpiece, the dry voice had a note of urgency in it. "We've got a problem here."

"What?" the Captain said, his voice hard, the dreamlike quality suddenly gone.

There was a pause, then Streeter came on again. "Captain, we—just a minute, please—we recommend that you abort your mission and return to the surface at once."

"Why?" Neidelman asked. "Is there some problem with the equipment?"

"No, nothing like that." Streeter seemed uncertain how to proceed. "Let me patch St. John in to you, he'll explain."

Neidelman flashed a quick, questioning look at Bonterre, who shrugged in return.

The clipped tones of the historian came across the radio. "Captain Neidelman, it's Christopher St. John. I'm on the Cerberus. Scylla has just cracked several portions of the journal."

"Excellent," the Captain said. "But what's the emergency?"

"It's what Macallan wrote in this second part. Let me read it to you."

As Hatch stood on the ladder array—waiting in clammy darkness at the heart of the Water Pit—the voice of the Englishman reading Macallan's journal seemed to be coming from a different world entirely:

I have not been easy this se'ennight past. I feel it a certainty that Ockham has plans to dispatch me, as he hath so easily dispatched many others, once my usefulness in this vile enterprise has come to an ende. And so, by dint of the harrowing of my soule in the small hours, I have decided upon a course of action. It is this foul treasure, as much as the pirate Ockham, that is evil, and hath caused our miserie upon this forsaken island; and the death of so many in its taking. It is the treasure of the devil himself, and as such shall I treate it. . .

St. John paused and there was the rustling of a computer printout.

"You want us to abort the mission over this?" The exasperation of Neidelman's voice was plain.

"Captain, there's more. Here it is:

Now that the Treasure Pitt hath been constructed, I know my time draweth to a close. My soule is at rest. Under my direction the pirate Ockham and his bande, unbeknownst, have created a permanent Tombe for these unholie gains, got by such suffering and grief. This hoard shall not be repossessed by mortal means. It is thus that I have labored, by various stratagems and conceits, to place this treasure in such wise that not Ockham, nor any other man, shall ever retrieve it. The Pitt is unconquerable, invincible. Ockham believes that he holds the key, and he shall Die for that belief. I tell ye now, ye who decipher these lines, heed my warning: to descend the Pitt means grave danger to lyfe and limbe; to seize the treasure means certayne Death. Ye who luste after the key to the Treasure Pitt shall find instead the key to the next world, and your carcase shall rot close to the Hell where your soule hath gone."