Douglas Preston - Riptide

"Sorry about this," St. John said with a grimace as Hatch requisitioned Macallan's decrypted journal and showed Neidelman's note to the guard. "I'd be happy just to print you off a copy, but Streeter came by the other day and had all the cryptological material downloaded onto disks. All of it, including the log. Then everything was erased from the servers, and the backups wiped. If I knew more about computers, I might have—"

He was interrupted by a shout from the dim interior of the shed. A moment later Bonterre emerged, a clipboard in one hand and a curious circular object in the other. "My two favorite of men!" she said with a wide smile.

St. John, suddenly embarrassed, fell abruptly silent.

"How are things down at Pirateville?" Hatch asked.

"The work is almost done," Bonterre replied. "This morning we finish the last grid. But, as with lovemaking, the best comes at the end. Look at what one of my diggers unearthed yesterday." She held up the object in her hand, grin widening.

Hatch could see it was intricately worked, seemingly made of bronze, with numbers etched finely into the outer edge. Two pointed lengths of metal ran out from its center like the hands of a clock. "What is it?" he asked.

"An astrolabe. Used to determine latitude from the altitude of the sun. Worth ten times its weight in gold to any mariner in Red Ned's day. Yet it too was left behind." Bonterre ran her thumb caressingly along its surface. "The more I find, the more I am confused."

Suddenly, a loud cry sounded nearby.

"What was that?" St. John said, starting.

"Sounded like a howl of pain," Hatch said.

Bonterre pointed. "I think it came from the hut of the geologiste."

The three sprinted the short distance to Rankin's office. To Hatch's surprise, the blond bear of a man was not collapsed in agony, but was instead sitting in his chair, looking from a computer monitor to a lengthy printout, then back to the screen again.

"What's up?" Hatch cried.

Without looking at them, Rankin held out a palm, commanding silence. He checked the printout again, his lips moving as if counting something. Then he set it down. "Checks out both ways," he said. "Can't be a glitch this time."

"Has the man turned fou?" Bonterre asked.

Rankin turned toward them. "It's right," he said excitedly. "It's got to be. Neidelman's been ragging me to get data on what was buried at the bottom of the Pit. When the thing was finally drained, I thought maybe all the weird readings would vanish. But they didn't. No matter what I tried, I kept getting different readings every run. Until now. Take a look."

He held up the printout, an unintelligible series of black blobs and lines along with one fuzzy dark rectangle.

"What is it?" Hatch asked. "A Motherwell print?"

"No, man. It's an iron chamber, perhaps ten feet on a side and fifty feet below the cleared part of the Pit. Doesn't seem to have been broached by water. And I've just managed to narrow down its contents. Among other things, there's a mass of perhaps fifteen, maybe twenty tons of dense, nonferrous metal. Specific gravity just over nineteen."

"Wait a minute," Hatch said. "There's only one metal with that specific gravity."

Rankin's grin widened. "Yup. And it ain't lead."

There was a brief, electrifying silence. Then Bonterre shrieked with glee and bounded into Hatch's arms. Rankin bellowed again and pounded St. John's back. The foursome tumbled out of the hut, shouting and cheering.

As more people heard the commotion and came running, word of Rankin's discovery quickly spread. Immediately, a spontaneous celebration erupted among the dozen or so Thalassa employees still working on the island. The oppressive aftermath of the Wopner tragedy, the continuous setbacks, and brutally hard work were forgotten in a frantic, almost hysterical, jubilation. Scopatti capered around, removing his boat shoes and tossing them into the air, clutching his diving knife between his teeth. Bonterre ran into Stores and emerged with the old cutlass excavated from the pirate encampment. She ripped off a strip of denim from the base of her shorts and tied it around her head as an eyepatch. Then she pulled her pockets inside out and tore a long gash in her blouse, exposing a dangerously large swath of breast in the process. Brandishing the cutlass, she swaggered around, leering horribly, the image of a dissolute pirate.

Hatch was almost surprised to find himself shouting with the rest, hugging technicians he barely knew, cavorting over proof— at last—of all that gold lying beneath them. Yet he realized this was a kind of release everyone desperately needed. It's not about the gold, he thought to himself. It's about not letting this damned island defeat us.

The cheering faltered as Captain Neidelman strode quickly into Base Camp. He looked around, his tired eyes cold and gray.

"What the hell is going on here?" he said in a voice tight with suppressed rage.

"Captain!" Rankin said. "There's gold, fifty feet below the bottom of the shaft. At least fifteen tons!"

"Of course there is," the Captain snapped. "Did you all think we were digging for our health?" He looked around in the sudden hush. "This isn't a nursery school field trip. We're doing serious business here, and you are all to treat it as such." He glanced in the direction of the historian. "Dr. St. John, have you finished your analysis?"

St. John nodded.

"Then let's get it loaded into the Cerberus computer. The rest of you should remember that we're on a critically tight schedule. Now get back to work."

He turned and strode down the hill toward the boat dock, St. John at his heels, scurrying to keep up.

Chapter 36

The following day was Saturday, but there was little rest on Ragged Island. Hatch, uncharacteristically oversleeping, dashed out the door of 5 Ocean Lane and hurried down the front walk, stopping only to grab Friday's neglected mail from the box before heading for the pier.

Heading out through Old Hump Channel, he frowned at the lead-gray sky. There was talk on the radio of an atmospheric disturbance forming over the Grand Banks. And it was already August 28, just days away from his self-imposed deadline; from now on, the weather could only get worse.

The accumulated equipment failures and computer problems had put work seriously behind schedule, and the recent rash of illnesses and accidents among the crew only added to the delays: when Hatch showed up at the medical office around quarter to ten, two people were already waiting to see him. One had developed an unusual bacterial infection of the teeth; it would take blood work to determine exactly what kind. The other, alarmingly, had come down with viral pneumonia.

As Hatch arranged transportation to a mainland hospital for the second patient and prepared blood work on the first for testing on the Cerberus, a third showed up; a ventilation pump operator who had lacerated his shin on a servo motor. It wasn't until almost noon that Hatch had time to boot up his computer, access the Internet, and e-mail his friend the marquesa in Cadiz.

Sketching out the background in two or three brief paragraphs, he attached transcripts of a few of his grandfather's most obscure documents, asking her to search for any additional material on St. Michael's Sword she could find.

He signed off, then turned to the small packet he'd grabbed from his mailbox that morning: the September issue of JAMA; a flyer advertising a spaghetti dinner at the firehouse; the latest issue of the Gazette; a small cream-colored envelope, without name or stamp.

He opened the envelope and recognized the handwriting instantly.

Dear Malin, I don't quite know how to say these things to you, and sometimes I'm not so good at expressing myself, so I will just write them as plainly as I can.