Paul Christopher - The Lucifer Gospel

“Crossroads of the world,” said Hilts, lugging their dive gear under cover and wrinkling his nose at the faint, musky odor given off by the dead tabby in the corner. “If we had time I’d clean the place out.” In her exploration Finn had discovered that the lighthouse itself was locked up tight; their was no light keeper, so the light was either automatic or out of service. The padlock on the door looked reasonably new and the woodwork seemed well maintained, so she was betting on automatic.

“It might get a little cool at night,” Hilts commented. “Maybe we should sleep on the plane.”

“I’d rather camp on the beach,” said Hilts. “We’ve got sleeping bags.”

“Whatever.” The pilot shrugged. It was obvious he didn’t like the idea.

“What’s the matter, afraid of wild boars or something?” Finn asked.

“Daffy’s our only way off this chunk of coral; I’d like to stay close, that’s all.”

“We’re a long way from Libya,” said Finn.

“You think Adamson’s forgotten all about us?” Hilts responded. “They slaughtered Vergadora in his villa and they tried to kill us in Paris. These people are serious.”

“What are they after? It’s not like we found some kind of buried treasure.”

“If I was going to put money on it I’d say that thing you have around your neck,” answered Hilts, pointing to the Lucifer medallion. She’d bought a chain for it at a jewelry shop in Nassau.

“Kill for this?” she scoffed, fingering the silver-dollar-sized medallion.

“Kill for what it means. You heard that old rabbi in Italy. There’s been lots of speculation about Luciferus Africanus and his legion over the years, but that’s the first hard evidence. It’s proof of his theory, or Adamson thinks so. At the very least it’s the kind of thing that could get some interest going, maybe some scholarly competition, and I think he’d be willing to kill if he could stop that.”

“You think he’s that crazy?”

“It seems to run in his family. Schuyler Grand insisted that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Jew, a communist, and the Antichrist all wrapped up in one. Great place to start a political dynasty.”

“I’m hungry. What did you catch us for lunch, O great hunter?”

“Here,” he answered. He reached into a cooler at his feet and threw Finn a foil-wrapped bundle. She snatched it out of the air, found a place at the edge of the beach to sit down, and unwrapped the package.

“Peanut butter?”

Hilts sat down beside her and handed her a dewy can of Kalik. She popped the top and took a sip of the ice-cold, honey-flavored beer.

“Arthur wanted to make us something exotic with cilantro and kiwi fruit in it. Peanut butter sounded more efficient.”

“The Wonder Bread’s a nice touch. I’m surprised he had it.”

“So was I. Arthur refers to it as one of his master’s ‘aberrations.’ Apparently Mills insists on egg-salad sandwiches made with Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread. Drives Arthur nuts.”

“I’d say so,” said Finn, and took another sip of the Kalik.

“He’s eighty-six or something. Doesn’t seem to have hurt.”

“Good genes.”

“I’ve got a theory,” said Hilts, tearing off a chunk of his own sandwich and chewing thoughtfully as he stared out toward the reef. “Health food is like chiropractors. Once you start on either you get addicted, you wind up in some kind of weird symbiosis with them. People who believe in magnets and crystals and high colonics and feng shui too. Best to stay away from them in the first place before you catch them like some kind of disease.”

“And you think Rolf Adamson is crazy,” she said and laughed.

“What I really think is that single-minded obsessive and very rich people can be dangerous. They start to believe that just because they think something is right and true makes it so. What Senator William Fulbright once referred to as the arrogance of power.”

“So how are we supposed to fight against that?” Finn responded wearily. “He’s got everything and we’ve got nothing.”

“In the same speech Fulbright quoted an old Chinese proverb: ‘In shallow waters dragons become the prey of shrimp.’ ” He shrugged. “He was talking about Vietnam and American vulnerability in a war we didn’t know how to fight, but maybe the same thing applies here; we can do things Adamson can’t. We can fly under the radar while he’s always in the spotlight.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better and change the subject at the same time.”

“I’m not sure I even know what the subject was.”

“Your approval of Wonder Bread. Which is disgusting, by the way.”

“We couldn’t all be brought up in whole-grain heaven in… where was it, Columbus?”

“That’s right,” she answered. She looked out over the sea, then turned to Hilts, a serious expression on her face. “Are we kidding ourselves about this? A ship that’s been missing for half a century, evidence of something that’s just a myth to the rest of the world? Why us when no one else has managed to find it over the last two thousand years?”

“I used to know a guy who bought lottery tickets all the time. I told him he was crazy, the odds were stacked against him, he didn’t stand a hope in hell. Didn’t faze him in the least. You know what his response was? He said, ’Somebody’s gotta win, and you can’t win if you don’t play.’ He was right.”

“Did he ever win?”

“Not that I know of.” Hilts smiled. “But the point is, he could have. He was in the game, not just on the sidelines. He was a player. That’s what we are.”

“You’re a romantic, Virgil; an incurable romantic.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He blinked, then blushed furiously.

“Hilts,” he answered. “Just Hilts.”

They finished lunch and then loaded the magnetometer array into the inflatable.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” said Hilts, watching as she stowed the equipment in the stern of the little boat.

Finn shrugged off the compliment. “I’ve used them before on my mother’s digs in Mexico and Belize, usually on land. They’re really nothing more than sophisticated metal detectors.”

They took the boat out to the reef line then turned and began to cruise parallel to the little island, keeping just outside the broken line of white water that marked the coral shoals where the Acosta Star had gone down, at least according to Tucker Noe. They made one run to calibrate the magnetometer pod dragging behind them, accounting for the presence of the Widgeon, then turned and came back along the same line. They found what they were looking for with remarkable ease. The ping in Finn’s headphones was almost deafening.

“Are you sure?” asked Hilts.

“It’s something pretty big. Either Tucker Noe was right and it’s the Acosta Star or it’s leftovers from the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“Not something organic?”

“Not unless the reef is made out of cast iron instead of coral,” she answered, shaking her head.

Hilts took out the Garmin portable GPS locator Mills had lent him and took a reading that identified their exact location, then tossed out a lead line to get some idea of the depth they were looking at. The line slacked at slightly less than fifty feet.

“How can it be that shallow?” asked Finn. “We know they’ve had other divers here before-nude ones from Katy, Texas. Surely they would have spotted something this big.”

“Maybe not,” said Hilts. He pointed to the lead line, dragging away to the north, pulling out of his hands. “We’re at the tag end of the reef and there’s quite a current; we’re almost in the channel. Sport divers wouldn’t come this far unless they were looking for something in particular.”