Artifact: A Daredevils Club Adventure Part 8

"I know of Selene," the young man said, equally carefully.

"We were friends of her father's," McKendry said. "He died a little while ago."

"Didn't Selene's father work for Oilstar, the one with that big faulty rig off the coast between here and Trinidad?"

"The big rig in the Serpent's Mouth?" McKendry played dumb. "Oh, yeah, the Valhalla. What's wrong with it? I heard that it's at the top of its form."

"It-" The young man caught himself. "Well, I hear Green Impact has been claiming the rig is a monstrosity, unstable, a disaster waiting to happen." He shrugged, flashing an embarra.s.sed smile; his india girlfriend still said nothing.

"Selene's father was killed by the oil company," McKendry said. "Paul Trujold was a friend of ours, so we're not big fans of Oilstar either."

"I can't tell you where you can find them in the jungle. n.o.body knows that. Only official members. But I hear she's coming out of hiding real soon now. You'll see it on the news." He adjusted his guitar on his knee. "That is, when we get news out here. Green Impact wants to strike back, hit that platform out in the Serpent's Mouth or an oil tanker in the vicinity or something like that. You know, make a spectacle."

He seemed to catch himself, looked embarra.s.sed. "But other than that, I couldn't tell you how to find her. Just keep your eyes open."

"We will," McKendry said gruffly.

The india girl shook her tambourine in impatience, and the young man looked down meaningfully at the few coins in his guitar case. "Now, do you guys have any other requests? I mean, for a song instead of for information?"

Keene threw another hundred bolivars into the guitar case and requested "Stairway to Heaven."McKendry looked at him over their warm cervezas.

Both men knew where they were going next.

"Looking good." Keene took stock of himself in the bathroom mirror. He ran his fingers around his clean-shaven chin. "You could use a shave yourself, buddy."

McKendry grinned and elbowed his friend out of the way. He hadn't shaved since leaving Caracas. His beard, which had always grown fast, was already beginning to take shape.

"Tell me you're not thinking about growing it again. Remember last time? The good guys took one look at you and thought we were the bad guys...."

Reluctantly, McKendry picked up a razor. It had taken them two days to get back to Caracas. Amazing, he thought, how it always feels like it takes forever to get somewhere and no time flat to get back. Like shaving a beard. Takes forever to grow and comes off in a minute.

When they looked fully presentable again, McKendry called Rodolfo. The actor willingly gave him what he needed-a way to contact Security Minister Bruzual. The minister in turn connected McKendry with the harbormaster in the major refinery city of Puerto La Cruz, where Oilstar's largest tanker, the Yucatan, was currently moored.

The rig actually produced more oil than Frikkie's facilities on Trinidad could handle, and the refineries at Puerto La Cruz were the closest place he could use to turn a profit from the excess. The complex had been built to take crude from the long pipeline that extended through the deep jungles from the inland Orinoco oil belt. Oilstar had arranged with the Venezuelan government to use the refinery facilities-which had been nationalized in 1976-in order to prepare the offsh.o.r.e crude and send it up to the United States through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Keene-the better linguist-called the captain and made an appointment for them to speak with him, privately and in person.

"Perfect timing." He put down the phone. "We see Captain Miguel Calisto tomorrow morning while the Yucatan offloads. By afternoon she'll be on her way to refill at Oilstar's offsh.o.r.e rig, Valhalla, in the Serpent's Mouth."

"Now all we need is a way to hitch a ride. Any suggestions?" McKendry sounded dubious.

"Piece of cake," Keene said. "I'll explain over breakfast."

With no further explanation, Keene placed two calls. The first was to Bruzual. All McKendry gleaned from the conversation was that his partner had asked the security minister to send them a fax care of their hotel.

The second call was to Frik on board the a.s.segai. Again, Keene asked that a fax be sent to them at the hotel, one that urged Captain Calisto to give them all possible a.s.sistance.

"Frikkie's in Grenada," Keene said after he'd completed the call. "Simon's flying in today."

13.

Peta was pleasantly surprised when Simon called her before leaving Miami to ask her to pick him up atGrenada's Point Saline Airport and transport him and his equipment to the a.s.segai. Given the fact that she had made it so clear that she believed he was risking his life to dive again, now or ever, she had thought he would slip quietly onto and off the island.

Simon was one of the last people to debark. He looked pale and tired.

"How was your flight?" Peta asked.

"Fine until we landed. The pilot must have had a hot date the way he stopped short on the runway."

"I guess he didn't want to taxi very far. Lord knows there's no lack of runway. The Cubans saw to that."

Simon laughed. "As I recall, they were building it long enough to handle bombers. That's one of the real reasons why our forces took the revolution seriously, no matter what the president said about the medical students."

Nodding, Peta said, "Eventually they took it seriously, but not before a lot of good people were killed.

Arthur was almost one of them." She stopped talking and waited for the sudden wave of nausea to pa.s.s.

Simon was respectful enough not to try to say anything more.

When his gear was loaded and they were pulling out of the airport, Peta said, "I'm going to keep trying to talk you out of this madness, you know."

"I know, but I'm going to do it anyway, so you might as well stop nagging me about it."

"If that's how you feel, Simon, why did you let me know that you were coming?"

"Tell you the truth, I don't know. Maybe I really did want you to talk me out of this." He looked at her and sighed. "Or maybe I just wanted to have the most beautiful woman in Grenada chauffeur me around.

Not doing too much else with women these days, not even the ugly ones."

"That's hard to believe," Peta said, though in fact she did believe him.

Simon changed the subject. "I'd like to see the Rex Grenadian," he said, referring to a large resort near the airport, one of the newest on the island. "Could we stop in for a drink?"

Peta hesitated. Simon's color was awful. Positively gray. "You probably shouldn't be drinking."

"You're not my nursemaid," he said. He sighed again, loudly. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you." He thankfully paused a moment while she negotiated one of the dangerous roundabouts along the two-lane strip of concrete called the Maurice Bishop Highway, and headed down the side road that would lead them to the nearby resort.

When they were safely driving through the small patch of palms and mahoganies that separated the northern beaches of Point Saline from the airport, Simon said, "It's about Arthur. I didn't have a chance in New York to tell you how sorry I was, not really. We're sailing tonight. I'd like to talk about him a little. Have a chance to-"

"You'll have Frik around. You can do that with him." Instantly she was angry with herself for her tone.

"Frik doesn't believe in mourning the dead."

"You're right. I'm sorry. I guess it was my turn to get snippy." Peta swerved to the left to avoid a water truck heading back to the main road, and turned onto the Rex Grenadian's driveway.The resort fronted on two beaches. One of them had no name that she could recall. The other was Parc a Boeuf Beach. Where they had found such an ugly name for so magnificent a stretch of sand was a mystery to Peta and everyone else. The hotel was frequented mainly by rich Americans; the Europeans preferred to be on Morne Rouge Bay or Grand Anse Beach. The Rex boasted a man-made, lushly landscaped three-acre lake, complete with aesthetically placed islands and waterfalls, as well as three restaurants, and an attentive staff.

All in all, it was an excellent facility for the traveler who was looking for a place to enjoy the tropical climate without having to interact with the people who actually lived there. Because it was too expensive to be a local hangout, it was not so Grenadian that you couldn't shut your eyes and imagine yourself on almost any tropical island.

Sitting at the resort's poolside bar, staring out over the Caribbean, Peta listened to Simon talk about his memories of the man she loved. She didn't nag him again about the dive or the drinking. It was obvious that he was feeling his own mortality very acutely.

A couple of hours later, she delivered a considerably more mellow Simon into Frikkie's hands.

14.

"Port of Spain is busier every time I see it," Simon said, admiring how gracefully Frik eased the sleek 120-foot a.s.segai into its berth at the private docks. Despite the residual effects of the lab accident to his left hand-and with the help of twin screws which made maneuvering easier-he operated the throttles with surgical skill.

Frik turned and grinned through the shade under the brim of his battered Panama hat. Barefoot, in white slacks and white shirt, he looked every inch the patrician yachtsman. "The busier the better," he said.

"Do I take that to mean you own a piece of the action?"

Another grin. "A big piece."

Just what Frikkie needs, Simon thought, looking around at the tankers and container-laden freighters that clogged the harbor and dwarfed the yacht. Another revenue stream.

In contrast to his host, Simon wore torn sneakers, raggedy cutoffs, and a profoundly ugly red-and-orange Hawaiian shirt-the uglier the better was his rule. With his bull frame and short silver hair, he'd been mistaken all over the world for Brian Keith by people blithely unaware that the actor had killed himself back in 1997. Thanks in large part to satellite TV, old shows and old stars seemed to live forever. He never disabused these folk of their mistaken notion, especially if they were female. Amazing how free women became with their favors in the presence of celebrity.

Simon tipped up the brim of his olive drab boonie cap, a concession to the skin of his face and ears, which was proving a gold mine for the dermatological profession, some of whose members were putting their kids through school as a result of all the little cancers they'd carved from his hide. Well, what could you expect after a lifetime in the tropical sun?

That sun hung hot and bright in the immaculate morning sky; the water lay calm below; a gentle briny breeze kept them cool on the afterdeck: a day to savor. But then, every day was a day to be savored when you'd been told time and again that you wouldn't have too many left unless you changed your ways. And what changes were those? Oh, not many, simply eliminate everything that elevated daily life from mere existence to something worth looking forward to.Simon caught the eye of Frik's man Friday and held up his gla.s.s, rattling the cubes. "Another b.l.o.o.d.y, if you please, Saaliim. There's a good lad, and make this one light...onthe tomato juice, if you get my drift."

Saaliim grinned as he took the gla.s.s. "I hear you clear, Mr. Brousseau."

"How many is that?" Frik said, staring at Simon.

"I haven't been counting."

"Aren't you supposed to be cutting down?"

"Where'd you hear that?"

Frik pursed his lips. "I have my sources."

"Find new ones," Simon grumbled. "Yours are full of s.h.i.t." He hid his annoyance by accepting the fresh b.l.o.o.d.y Mary from the silver tray Saaliim proffered. He sipped, savoring the tang of the beef bouillon Saaliim always added to his pepper-laden tomato juice, and toasted the Honduran. "My compliments to the chef."

Three doctors now, four if you counted Peta, had told him the same thing: Take your prescriptions, cut the booze to two drinks a day, watch the saturated fats, drop thirty pounds, limit yourself to less energetic s.e.x, and subst.i.tute snorkeling-which Simon had always thought of as snorekeling-for scuba.

In other words, live small.

Simon didn't know how, nor did he wish to learn. Unless medical science took several giant leaps, he was going to die anyway, so why not go the way he had lived.

"h.e.l.l, Frikkie, just because I'm fifty-eight doesn't mean I'm ready for a nursing home."

"You're sixty-two, Simon, and I didn't mean-"

"I'm fine," he said, taking another gulp of his drink. "Fit as a fiddle-a frigging Stradivarius."

Yeah. One that's been run over by a truck.

According to the docs, he might be in his early sixties, but he had the heart of a man in his early eighties, and had to act accordingly-not run around like a guy in his thirties. He was suffering from a bad case of the ups and downs, with everything going in the wrong direction: his cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure all up, his erections down. If he took his nitroglycerin on schedule, he could get through most activities, even s.e.x, without chest pain; trouble was he couldn't get it up for s.e.x without a dose of v.i.a.g.r.a, but mixing v.i.a.g.r.a and nitro will kill you. So what he'd do was skip the nitro and pay for an o.r.g.a.s.m with the sensation of a bull elephant camping on his chest.

Getting old sucked.

"At least you stopped smoking."

Simon nodded. "Wasn't easy, but it got so every time I lit up it felt like the Marlboro cowboy's horse was taking a dump in my lungs, so I tossed them."

Frik laughed. "Simon Brousseau, ever the epitome of earthy.""Yes, well, I've always believed in calling a spade a s.h.i.t shovel," Simon responded, though he wasn't entirely sure how to take Frik's comment. At times like this he wished he'd had a little more education.

Not that he regretted for an instant dropping out of Florida State, but when he was around people like Frik and Arthur and even Peta, and they'd mention the t.i.tle of a book or recite a line from a play or a poem that he'd never read, he felt left out. He'd been boning up on Shakespeare-had a book of the Bard's plays in his duffel, in fact-but he was a long way from feeling comfortable with the strange sound of centuries-old English.

Maybe that was why he found the underwater world so alluring, and kept returning to it as often as he could. No subtexts with undersea life: if you're not looking for a meal you're trying to avoid becoming one.

He guessed growing up in Key West was a contributing factor too. He'd spent his youth living half a dozen feet above sea level, surrounded by reefs teeming with a mind-boggling array of life in a dazzling variety of shapes and colors that drew people from all over the world. Graduating from snorkeling to scuba at age eight, he was guiding tourists on a dive boat by the time he was twelve. Working as a salvage diver between his frosh and soph.o.m.ore year, he along with a buddy found the wreck of the Santa Clara. The long-forgotten galleon wasn't a treasure ship, but Simon's share of the salvaged jewelry and doubloons was enough to set him up in his own salvage business and make returning to college seem like a waste of time.

He'd kept going after deeper and deeper wrecks, and when the available equipment and gas mixes weren't up to the job, he made his own modifications. Over the years the income from the patents on those innovations had left him a wealthy man. At age thirty he'd sold his business to become a scuba b.u.m, hiring out for diving jobs that challenged his equipment and his nerve, and exploring the diving meccas of the world: off Yap, in the South Pacific, he'd gazed up in wonder from the sea floor at the schools of manta rays parading above; he'd hitched rides on the whale sharks of Ningaloo Bay; and, until two years ago, he'd held the deep-sea depth and endurance records.

Along the years he'd done a number of extreme dives for Frik, which eventually led to his induction into the club.

"Okay, down to business," Simon said, placing his empty gla.s.s on Saaliim's silver tray. "What haven't you told me about these doodads and the contraption they're part of?"

"Not much. And I think you'll better appreciate them if I show you rather than simply tell you."

As Frik led the way down the dock toward the parking lot, Simon heard quick footsteps padding up behind him.

"Excuse me?"

He turned to find a thirtyish brunette wearing a well-stuffed CCNY T-shirt and a bikini bottom.

"Mr. Keith," she said, smiling as she thrust her right hand forward; she held a pen and a c.o.c.ktail napkin in her left. "I'm such a big fan of yours. Would it be too much to ask you for your autograph?"

Simon glanced around as he shook her hand. He leaned close and spoke in a half whisper. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't let this get around. I'm here scouting locations for a hush-hush project."

She lowered her voice to his level. "Really?"

"And when Stevie gets here, he'll want a little s.p.a.ce.""Stevie Wonder?"