Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

This was interesting. Like the kind of thing I do, except this clue was three hundred years old. I asked her, "Any more theories?"

"Well, the prevailing theory is that these numbers represent paces, which is the traditional method of pirates recording the location of their buried treasure."

"Paces?"

"Yes."

"Paces from where?"

"That's what Mrs. William Kidd knew and you don't."

"Oh." I looked at the numbers. "That's a lot of paces."

"Again, you have to know the personal code. It could mean" — she looked at the napkin — "forty-four paces in a direction of ten degrees, and sixty-eight paces in a direction of eighteen degrees. Or vice versa. Or, read it backwards. Who knows? It doesn't matter if you don't know the starting point."

"Do you think the treasure is buried under one of those oak trees? Captain Kidd's Trees?"

"I don't know." She added, "Either the treasure has been found and the person who found it didn't advertise it to the world, or there was never any treasure, or it's still buried and will stay buried forever."

"What do you think?"

"I think I should go open my shop." She crumpled the napkin and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. I paid the bill and we left. The diner was five minutes from the Peconic Historical Society where Emma had left her van. I pulled into the lot, and she gave me a quick peck on the cheek, like we were more than just lovers.

She said, "See you at four. Whitestone Florist, Main Road, Mattituck." She got out, hopped into her van, honked, waved, and pulled away.

I sat in my Jeep awhile, listening to the local news. I would have gotten on the road, but I didn't know where to go. In truth, I'd exhausted most of my leads, and I didn't have an office where I could go and shuffle papers. I wasn't going to get any calls from witnesses, forensics, and so forth. Very few people even knew where to send me an anonymous tip. In short, I felt like a private detective, though I wasn't even licensed to do that.

All things considered, however, I'd made some startling discoveries since meeting Emma Whitestone. If I had any doubts about why the Gordons had been murdered, that number, 44106818, which was in their chart book, should put the doubts to rest.

On the other hand, even if it were true that Tom and Judy Gordon were treasure hunters — and I had no doubt they were, based on all the evidence — it didn't necessarily follow that treasure hunting was what got them killed. What was the provable connection between their archaeological digs on Plum Island, and the bullets through their heads on their back deck?

I called my answering machine. Two messages — one from Max, asking where to mail my one dollar check, and another call from my boss, Detective Lieutenant Wolfe, again strongly urging me to call his office and indicating that I was in deep doo-doo and sinking fast.

I put the car in gear and drove. Sometimes it's good to just drive.

On the radio, the news guy said, "An update on the double homicide of two Plum Island scientists in Nassau Point. The Southold Town police and the Suffolk County police have issued a joint statement." The news guy — it sounded like Don from Tuesday morning — read the statement verbatim. Jeez, if we could get the network hotshots in the city to read our press releases without comment, we'd be in public relations heaven. The joint statement was a hot air balloon with no one in the gondola except two dead bodies. The statement stressed the theft of Ebola vaccine as a motive. A separate statement from the FBI said that they didn't know if the perpetrators were foreign or domestic, but they were pursuing some good leads. The World Health Organization expressed concern over the theft of this "vital and important vaccine" that was desperately needed in many Third World countries. And so forth.

The thing that really pissed me off was that the official version of what happened had the effect of branding Tom and Judy as cynical, heartless thieves: first they stole their employer's time and resources, then when they secretly developed a vaccine, they stole the formula and presumably some samples, and intended to sell it for a huge profit. Meanwhile, people in Africa were dying by the thousands of this horrible disease.

I could picture Nash, Foster, the four suit guys I'd seen coming off the ferry, and a bunch of White House and Pentagon spin-control types burning up the phone lines between Plum Island and D.C. As soon as everyone learned that the Gordons were involved with genetically altered vaccines, then the perfect cover story presented itself to these geniuses. To be fair, they wanted to avoid panic about plague, but I'd bet my potential three-quarter lifetime disability pension that not one person in Washington considered the Gordons' reputations or their families when they concocted the story branding them as thieves.

The irony, if there was an irony here, was that Foster, Nash, and the government were undoubtedly still convinced that the Gordons stole one or more biological warfare diseases. The Washington insiders, from the president on down through the chain of command, were still sleeping with biocontamment suits over their jammies. Good. Screw them.

I stopped at a deli in Cutchogue and bought a container of coffee and a bunch of newspapers — the New York Times , the Post , the Daily News , and Long Island's Newsday . In all four papers, the Gordon story had been relegated to a few inches on the inside pages. Even Newsday didn't give the local murder much attention. I'm sure a lot of people in Washington were happy that the story was fading. And so was I. It gave me as much of a free hand as it gave them.

And while Foster, Nash, and Company were looking for foreign agents and terrorists, I'd followed my hunch and gone with my feelings about Tom and Judy Gordon. I was happy and not too surprised to discover that what I'd thought all along was true — this was not about biological warfare, or about narcotics, or anything illegal. Well, not too illegal.

Anyway, I still didn't know who murdered them. Equally important, I knew they were not criminals, and I intended to give them their reputations back.

I finished the coffee, threw the newspapers in the back seat, and got on the road. I drove up to the Soundview, a 1950s waterfront motel. I went into the office and inquired after Messrs. Foster and Nash. The young man behind the desk said the gentlemen I was describing had both checked out already.

I drove around — I hesitate to say aimlessly, but if you don't know where you're going or why, you're either a government employee or you're aimless.

Anyway, I decided to drive to Orient Point. It was another nice day, a bit cooler and breezier, but pleasant.

I drove to the Plum Island ferry station. I wanted to check out the cars in the lot, see if there was any unusual activity, and maybe see if I ran into anyone interesting. When I pulled into the facility and approached the gate, a Plum Island security guard stepped into my path and held up his hand. Softie that I am, I didn't run him over. He came around to my window and asked me, "Can I help you, sir?"

I held up my shield case and said, "I'm working with the FBI on the Gordon case."

He studied the shield and ID closely, and I watched his face. Clearly, I was on this man's short list of saboteurs, spies, and perverts, and he wasn't very cool about it. He stared at me a moment, cleared his throat, and said, "Sir, if you'll pull over here, I'll get you a pass."

"Okay." I pulled to the side. I hadn't expected a security guy at the gate, though I should have. The guy went into the brick building, and I continued on into the parking lot. I have a problem with authority.

The first thing I noticed was that there were two military humvees parked at the ferry slip. I could see two uniformed men in each humvee, and as I got closer, I was able to identify them and the humvees as Marine Corps. I hadn't seen a single military vehicle on Plum Island Tuesday morning, but the world had changed since then.