Peter Benchley - The Deep

“What’s the matter?” Sanders said.

“They were here.”

“Who was?”

“Those men. While we slept.”

“Sure they were. How else would they get the bikes back to us?”

“I know. But it’s creepy.”

When they arrived at Treece’s house, they waited outside the gate and called to Treece. When he told them to come in, the dog bounded down the path and escorted them to the kitchen door.

The kitchen table was covered with photostats of old documents. Treece saw Sanders looking at the papers, and he said, “Research.”

“What are they?”

“Logs, manifests, bills of lading, diaries, letters. A dividend of my study in Europe. I spent my holidays in the archives of Madrid, Cadiz, and Seville. Friends send me new papers as they surface.”

“What do they tell you?” Gail asked.

“What ships went to what ports, what they were carrying, who was on board, where they sank if they sank, how many people survived. They’re indispensable tools. Without them, you can dilly around on a wreck for months and not know what you’re looking at.”

Sanders picked up one of the pieces of paper. The writing was in Spanish, and he could decipher only a few words—like artilleria and canones—and the date: 1714. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m indulging myself in a bit of nonsense.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible that another ship did sink out there. That it went down with everything on it, and that it was never salvaged.”

Gail said, “Is that possible?”

“It’s happened before. Two storms, a hundred or two hundred years apart, spring up from the same quarter, catch two ships in the same circumstance, making for the same shelter, and drive them up on the same reefs.” Treece shook his head.

“What a mess.”

“I think it sounds fantastic,” said Gail.

“You do, do you? Take a nice clean wreck-nothing else around, fairly well contained, maybe even find a coin or two that’ll date her for you. You can spend a year mucking about in the sand and still not find a bloody thing. Now add to that another whole ship, all busted to pieces, andwitha cargo of live ammunition. That’s some way to get your jollies.”

“Have you found anything?” said Sanders.

“No. Not sure I will.” Treece patted the pile of papers. “All I’m doing with this stuff is rooting around to see if I can find someone with the initials E.f. Probably a waste of time, but you have to start somewhere, and E.f.’ness all we’ve got. Now… tell me what brings you all the way out here this early. We’re not going anywhere till tonight.”

They told him about their meeting with Cloche. At the first mention of Cloche’s name, Treece started, as if a long-awaited piece of bad news had finally arrived. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. Otherwise, he sat, tense and quiet, and did not interrupt.

When they were finished, he said, “You were right not to ring the police.”

“Why?” said Gail.

“They couldn’t have done anything. He’s a shadow, that man. He has friends in many strange places. I know what he can get away with.” He shook his head.

“Damn. It is a robust piece of bad luck that we’re faced with him so soon. You’ve never heard of him?”

“No,” Sanders said. “Should we have?”

“I suppose not. He’s got a dozen different names. He comes from Haiti, originally. That’s the myth, at least. It’s hard to separate fact from fancy about Cloche; he’s built himself into a kind of folk hero among island blacks. A lot of them think he’s the reincarnation of Che Guevara. And not just here. All over. In the Windwards and Leewards, his mother is still powerful bush.”

“Bush?” Gail said.

“Magic, voodoo. You’ll see little statues of her in the huts on the hillsides of Guadalupe and Martinique. They adore her, like… well, I imagine Eva Peron is a parallel. She was a chambermaid in a hotel in Haiti. At the age of forty-three, she came down with glaucoma, and when it got so bad she couldn’t see to work, the hotel fired her without a sou. Cloche himself was nothing but a busboy then, but he was clever. He took mamma into the woods and set her up as a symbol of white oppression. He spread stories about her, made her into an all-knowing black princess, said she cured the incurable and raised the dead-all the standard stuff. People wanted to believe in her-Christ, ‘wanted’ isn’t the word: longed to. Once mamma was established, Cloche began to pass himself off as her messenger. He’s been all over the islands, thrown out of most of them two or three times, spreading the message. Nobody knows if mamma’s still drawing breath, but Cloche is still spreading the word.”

“What’s the word?” asked Sanders.

“It’s time for the blacks to get the biscuit. I suppose it was only a matter of time until he came back here.”

“It doesn’t look to me like Bermuda’s ripe for revolt,” Sanders said.

“It’s hard to tell.”

Gail said, “The blacks aren’t exactly what you’d call equal here.”

“No, but there’s been no serious trouble since the sixty-eight riots-aside from the Sharpies assassination, and there’s still no proof about that one.”

“Cloche as much as admitted that his people killed Sharpies,” said Sanders.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t he? No one else has been arrested, and it makes him seem like a bigger threat. It’s like those Arab fringe groups. Every time a plane crashes, some bunch of birds jumps up to take credit, claiming the crash was a revolutionary act. Crap. Of course Cloche may have killed Sharpies; I wouldn’t put it past him. But the fact that he says he did doesn’t make it true.” Treece looked at Gail. “In any event, Bermuda has been fairly peaceful for some time. It’s a dicey peace, though. Blacks are the majority here, and they get less of the pie than the whites. For my money, they get more as they merit more, and they’re getting more all the time. But a chap like Cloche can rile them, convince them that they’re oppressed, that numbers alone are enough to merit more.

Manipulate them for his own purposes. He’s a persuasive speaker, and they’re scared of him. Besides, there’s no trick to convincing people that they deserve more than they’ve got.

“Is he a communist?” Gail asked.

“Hell, no. He spouts a good Marxist line—‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,’ and all that. I think what he really wants is to set up some sort of island kingdom. He won’t call it that, of course. It’ll be the People’s Republic of some goddamn thing.”

“And the drugs?”

“Money. Power. I imagine he’ll try to sell the drugs in the States.” Treece paused. “I don’t want him to get them.” He looked at Sanders. “A million dollars? He is anxious. were you tempted?”

Sanders looked at Gail. “No,” he said.

“Though God knows we could use the money.”

“It’s a decent amount of cash, no doubting it,” Treece said, slapping the photostats in front of him. “But if I can find some parts to this puzzle and we really get lucky, there might be a like amount of real goodies down there.”

“Do you think there may really be a treasure?” Gail said.

“No. But I’m not convinced there isn’t. You never know till you’ve had a good look.”

“What do we do about Cloche?” Sanders said. “Is there a way to get around him? I don’t like the thought that he might follow us to New York.”

“For the moment, there’s nothing to do. You’re stuck either way, until we know what’s really down there.

We’ll have a look around tonight. If we don’t find any more ampules—and it’s possible these two are a fluke—you can deliver the two you found to Cloche and wish him well. If there’s nothing else there, I don’t think he’ll bother with you any more. With luck, that’s what’ll happen. But before we go down again, I want to talk to Adam Coffin.”