Clive Cussler - Pirate

He laughed. “I certainly hope so. I’d hate to think how many people have spent millions of dollars digging a hole in the same spot looking for something that isn’t there.”

“Good point,” she said as he left them to join the group again. Through the trees, she saw the boat speeding away, and she looked over at Sam. “What now?”

“Come back tonight and figure out what they found so interesting on that other island.”

Sam skyped Selma on Remi’s tablet when they returned to their hotel.

“Good morning, Mr. Fargo,” she said from her desk. “You’ll be pleased to know that Bree is safely on her flight and will be landing in just a few hours.”

“Good,” Sam replied.

Remi took a seat on the sofa next to him, asking, “What fascinating theories have you discovered so far?”

“Lazlo believes the cipher wheel is for a simple substitution code.”

Lazlo’s face appeared on the screen behind Selma. “Good show, you two,” he said, his British accent evident. “Miss Marshall informed us of your timely rescue. That must have been frightful.”

“It was,” Sam said. “About the cipher…?”

“Right-o. Actually, what I believe is that you’re looking for a shipwreck off the southern tip of the island, according to the hidden map.” He shuffled through some papers, then held up the photo of the map Professor Hopkins had found behind the endpaper. “I was able to translate part of the text,” he said, “but not all of it. To do that, I need to have the key. Unfortunately, the drawing of the cipher wheel on the map the professor found is merely an illustration of what we’re looking for. If I had to guess, an actual instrument. One hopes it wasn’t on paper because that supposedly was lost in said shipwreck.”

Remi sighed. “Never easy, is it?”

Sam asked, “Do we have this shipwreck narrowed down?”

“I’m assuming the map of the island is either where it was buried or perhaps even where the ship was wrecked. There is one word that has popped up twice — assuming I have translated it properly. Serpens . Being that it’s Latin, it could be snake, dragon , or serpent .”

“That narrows it down,” Sam said.

“Quite.” Lazlo turned Selma’s tablet so that he was once again in the frame. “One other thing that has popped up is a reference that whatever it is will be found on or near the southern tip of the island.”

Remi and Sam exchanged glances, Remi saying, “That has to be why they were digging there.”

“Who?” Lazlo asked her.

“Avery’s men. We spotted them on the island across from Oak Island.” She gave a brief description of what they’d witnessed.

“Ah,” Lazlo said. “It appears they’re one step ahead of us in the translation of the ciphers. Let’s hope they haven’t found the actual cipher wheel. I certainly haven’t found any specific location. But if they’re digging there, at least we know we’re on the right track.”

Selma poked her head into view. “We’ll update you as soon as we know more.”

Remi said, “We have every confidence.”

“In the meantime,” Sam told Selma, “we’re going to need a motorboat for this evening. Something small enough to maneuver ourselves.”

“On it,” she said. “Any other equipment?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam replied. “We have wetsuits and dive gear. I think that’s about it.”

Sam was about to end the call when Remi added, “Don’t forget insurance.”

Selma’s brows raised slightly. “As hard as you two are on equipment? That goes without saying. Along with detailed plans so we know where to find you in case anything happens.”

Sam gave her a mock look of offense. “I’m shocked you’d have so little confidence in us.”

“Not you, Mr. Fargo. It’s the type of people you tend to run into on these ventures of yours. Greed brings out all sorts of evil.”

Two hours before sunrise, Sam and Remi donned their wetsuits, then set out for Frog Island from the Gold River Marina at the north end of Mahone Bay in their seventeen-foot Boston Whaler. It wasn’t the fastest of vessels, but it would blend in with any other boats that left before dawn.

Even though the Oak Island guide had made mention of an underwater passage between there and Frog Island, neither Sam nor Remi believed anyone from the seventeenth or eighteenth century had the skills to build something of that nature.

Then again, the attention to Frog Island intrigued Sam for a different reason. In past centuries, the area surrounding Nova Scotia had certainly been frequented by seamen, from French and English warships to pirates. The rumors of buried treasure in the area had always been bandied about — Oak Island happened to be the most popular location.

But Frog Island? Like many of these small islands in the area, it was privately owned. This one boasted a large house on the southeast side, probably a vacation home, and one Sam hoped wasn’t occupied at the moment — not that they expected to be there for that long.

He cruised toward the small cove at the southernmost tip of the island. They wanted to see the area where Avery’s men had been seen. What they were doing there was anyone’s guess, but the way they were digging made Sam wonder if they weren’t looking for this cipher wheel that Lazlo had mentioned.

“Look,” Remi said, pointing to the sky. “The aurora borealis.”

Sam glanced up. Through a parting of the clouds, he saw a faint greenish glow that seemed to pulsate. “Too bad it’s not a clearer night.”

“A glimpse is better than nothing. Right now, the cloud cover’s a good thing. No moon to give us away.”

“Pragmatically said.” He slowed as they approached the cove.

Remi shined a light along the shoreline. “That looks like the area they were poking around,” she said. “I remember that heart-shaped boulder.”

“That’s a heart?” he said, eyeing the massive boulder near the water’s edge. He let up on the throttle. The boat slowed and bobbed in the surf. “It looks more like a two-humped camelback.”

“No sense of romance, Fargo.”

“What if I said I ordered the aurora borealis just for you?”

“It seems someone lost their line.”

“I thought it was a pretty good line.”

“Not you. Fishing line.” She aimed the beam of her flashlight near the base of the boulder.

Sam saw nothing other than rocks and water lapping against them in the growing wake of their boat. “Where?”

“About a foot to the left of the, uh, camel-humped boulder. A bit of moss or something stuck on it.”

There it was, the wisp of moss or seaweed hanging from a nylon line about six inches above the waterline, possibly secured to something on the land behind the boulder. His gaze followed the glint of light on the line before it disappeared into the dark to his left, and the same to the right.

Whatever that line was caught on, it was tight. Their boat moved up and down with the current, but the line remained still.

“Call me paranoid,” he said, maneuvering the boat to one side of the boulder for a better view, careful not to move in too close, “but that has all the markings of a trip wire.”

“Do you really think they wired explosives?”

“They certainly had enough time. An even better question is, if they wired them because they knew we’d be coming here to investigate?”

“You think they set us up?” Remi aimed the beam near the boulder and a pile of small rocks behind it.

Sam saw the light reflecting off copper wiring disappearing into the midst of the pile.

“We’re idiots,” she said. “Of course they did. Otherwise, why make such a big show? That boat engine was the loudest in the bay. Making sure we would hear them and see them. Knowing we’d probably investigate…”