Artifact: A Daredevils Club Adventure Part 9

"No." Simon lowered his voice further. "Spielberg."

"OhmyG.o.d!" Her pale blue eyes widened as her hand flew to her mouth. "Oh! My! G.o.d!"

"Shhh!" he whispered, glancing around again and taking the pen and napkin from her. "Mum's the word." He scribbled something that might pa.s.s for "Brian Keith" on the napkin and pa.s.sed it back to her.

"Here. Write your name and number on the corner there and I'll give you a call when I get back in a couple of days."

"Sure." Her hand trembled as she wrote. She tore off the corner and handed it to him. "Really. Call me."

He glanced at the sc.r.a.p, then gave her a lopsided grin. "Will do, Lori. Talk to you soon."

At the end of the dock he found Frik waiting by an idling dark green Hummer. "Who was that?"

"Just another of my many fans." He feigned astonishment as Frik slipped behind the wheel. "What? No driver?"

"Like with my boats, I prefer to drive my own cars," Frik said. "And besides, with no extra set of ears around, we can talk."

"Can it wait? I'm not in the mood for talk right now." The potent Bloodies had relaxed him into a deliciously dreamy haze.

The Afrikaner nodded, and Simon leaned back into his seat to watch Port of Spain's squares, parks, and surreal mix of Catholic churches, Muslim mosques, and Hindu and Jewish temples slip past the window.

By the time they drove into the wooded uplands, he had tugged his cap down over his eyes and leaned back in the seat for a little siesta.

He awakened with a start as a loud thump was followed by Frik's shouted curses and the feel of the seat belt cinching across his chest. The Humvee jerked to a stop.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

Simon straightened himself and looked around. They were on the outskirts of a little village. The reason for the sudden braking was splattered all over the hood and windshield. At first he thought they'd hit a small animal, but he soon realized what the yellow-orange pulp dotted with black BB-sized seeds really was. Someone had pelted them with an overripe papaya.

The Hummer's heavy-duty wipers and windshield washers made quick work of the mess, and soon they were on their way again. As they roared through the village, Simon noticed an occasional raised fist and more than a few angry looks.

"I take it that piece of fruit didn't drop from a tree."

"Superst.i.tious Trini clods," Frik said, eyes straight ahead.

"May I also a.s.sume it's not Humvees they're superst.i.tious about?"

"It's the drill site. They've got some local legends about the Dragon's Mouth. They think drilling into the bottom there will offend the Obeahman and bring bad luck to the island."

Simon nodded. His years in the Caribbean had taught him a little about Obeah, though it was a much lesswell-known superst.i.tion than voodoo or Santeria. An Obeahman was a kind of sorcerer or shaman who controlled spirits which he could put into objects, like fetishes, and make them do his will.

Simon's one memorable encounter with an Obeahman was on Jamaica, where a buddy had almost hit one of them walking along the side of the road. The man threw something, which hit the car, and a moment later the engine sputtered and died. No matter what his friend did, the car wouldn't start. He had a mechanic tear the d.a.m.n thing apart and put it back together like new, but it still wouldn't work. Finally, he tracked down the Obeahman and gave him two dozen chickens as penance. After that, the car never so much as backfired.

"Did you know this beforehand?"

"Of course."

"But you went ahead and drilled anyway."

"This is the twenty-first century, Simon. About time they moved into at least the twentieth, don't you think?"

"And you're going to move them?"

"My civic duty."

Simon smiled and shook his head. Typical Frikkie logic. If he wanted something, he could always find a rationale for why he should have it. The rest of the picture was coming into focus.

"So that's why you need me: the local boys say no way, Jose."

"I could find somebody," Frik said. "Haven't met a superst.i.tion yet that's proof against the right amount of cold hard cash. But I need someone comfortable in deep water. And most of all I need someone I can trust implicitly."

Simon appreciated the last remark, but he was more interested in the one before it.

"How deep?"

"Not sure. The drill broke into the cavern about seventy feet below the floor, and the floor is an average of one hundred and twenty feet down."

Simon nodded. That meant an operating depth of two hundred or more, at over eight atmospheres of pressure-just the kind of dive the docs had warned him against. But what did they know? They weren't divers. He'd done it before.

"I'll need mixed gases, a tri-mix."

Frik glanced at him. "What's that?"

"A deep-diving nitrox mix that lowers your oxygen for the bottom time, and raises the other gases. You have to know what you're doing, lowering one gas, raising the other. You couldn't breathe that mix at the surface.... It would kill you."

"I'll have all the tanks you'll ever need waiting on the platform."

Frik turned off the road and stopped before a heavy wrought-iron gate with "Oilstar" arching above it.

The guard waved from his narrow kiosk as the gates swung open, and they were on the move again. Heswerved the vehicle to a stop before a row of low white stucco buildings, and led Simon into the first.

After rattling off a string of orders to a male secretary-one of them arranging for tri-mix at the drill site-he motioned Simon around behind his large mahogany desk. A few taps on his keyboard popped an array of thumbnail photos onto his computer screen.

"These are scans and three-D models of the artifacts," Frik said, clicking on each to enlarge them.

Four objects filled the screen in succession, each more bizarre than the last. The final scan showed all four locked together into some weird-looking shape. Frik hit a key, and the shape began to rotate in three dimensions. Simon didn't know much about art, but this looked like something Pica.s.so might have pieced together. Or Dali.

"Why scans? Where's the real thing?"

"The one piece I have of it is under guard."

"It's that valuable?"

Frik shrugged. "Not sure yet. I won't know until I have all five pieces and fit them together."

"And the fifth is somewhere in an undersea cavern." He shook his head. "Christ, why don't you fly me to the Chesapeake and ask me to find one particular oyster."

"Oh, come now," Frik said, grinning. "It's not that bad. This will be a piece of cake for someone like you."

Simon stared at the rotating a.s.semblage. Something about each piece had bothered him, but the aggregate was even worse. He had a feeling that finding the final piece might not be such a good thing.

15.

Simon checked his depth gauge: the arrow lay just a hair to the far side of the 130 mark. Even at this depth he was comfortable in a 1.5-mm dive skin.

He looked around. The light level was decent, typical for this depth, though the true colors of the fish and coral were washed out. Sunlight's spectrum got pretty well bleached out after struggling through 130 feet of water.

He'd hoped he'd be diving the cavern through the bore hole, much like descending the limestone cenotes in the waters of the Yucatan, but the hole was too small and there was no hope of widening it any further.

So he went hunting for the natural entrance to the cavern. He found it, a dark, narrow, anemone-fringed opening in the wall of a rift in the continental shelf. The wall was encrusted with sponges, guzzling the fringe of the Guyana Current as it swept nutrients up from Venezuela's Orinoco River.

Simon also found the missing diver, Abdul. A rock the size of a Porsche Boxster-loosened by the drilling, perhaps?-had slipped from the wall above the opening and crushed him. The crabs and yellowtails had been snacking on his exposed flesh, but his mask was still fastened around his head, sparing his wide-open, milky eyes. Their empty gaze brought back a few lines he'd just read in The Tempest: Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes....

Simon shuddered and looked away. A sight like that could make you believe in the Obeahman. Empty sockets would have been better.

The stone had also partially blocked the mouth of the entrance. The opening that remained might admit a child but never an adult, especially one of Simon's girth.

Which meant the stone had to be moved. And since the local labor pool consisted of himself and one curious green sea turtle, that meant it was up to him.

After a thorough inspection, he found a spot where he could wedge himself between the rock and the rift wall. It meant disturbing some sponges and dislodging some of the smaller clinging sea life, something Simon loathed doing. The Caribbean reefs took enough abuse without his adding to it.

But he had no choice.

With knees bent almost to his chest, his flippers against the rock and his back against the wall, he took a deep breath and kicked out with everything he had. After half a minute of straining, he felt the rock move.

Heartened, he found a little extra strength and increased his effort.

Slowly, moving a fraction of an inch at a time, the rock began to tilt away from him. Simon squeezed shut his eyes and, shouting into his regulator's mouthpiece, pushed even harder.

And then he stopped, gasping as a crushing weight slammed against his chest. He opened his eyes and wouldn't have been surprised to find that the rock had fallen back on him, pinning him to the wall. But no, the rock was falling away, tumbling end over end in slow motion toward the floor of the rift. The pain was coming from his heart. He could feel that battered old pump pounding out an irregular beat, thudding in his ears as his vision wavered.

He slowed his lungs, taking deep, measured breaths, hoping his heart would follow suit, and cursing himself for being so careless as to have left behind his backup nitros, the fast-acting sublingual tablets for when his angina broke through the extended-release pills.

As he prayed for the pain to ease, proving this wasn't the Big One, motion to his left caught his eye.

Abdul, free of the entrapping rock, was pulling away from the wall and gliding toward Simon. His face came closer, his dead wide eyes staring into Simon's as if to say, Join me...Join me....

With his face close enough to kiss, Abdul turned away. His bloated body began a slow ascent, belly first, arms and legs dangling behind, returning at last to the world of air and light it had departed.

Just as slowly, the crushing weight lifted from Simon's chest. His heart slowed. Just angina. A bad attack, but the 40 percent oxygen in his tanks had helped.

He pushed away from the wall and stared at the now wide-open pa.s.sage into the cavern. No way. Not today. He didn't have the strength. He'd make up an excuse for Frikkie, tell him about the stone, tell him he'd used up too much daylight moving it, tell him he'd finish the job tomorrow under the high morning sun, tell him anything except the truth about his heart.

Not that his health would prompt Frik even to consider calling off the dive. A shark bit off your left leg?

So? The right one still works. Get back down there and find me that fifth piece!

No, it was no one else's business.Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'd find Frik's d.a.m.n doodad with no problems, no complications.

Right now what he needed was a drink.

Weak, tired, and perhaps even a little depressed, Simon shot a bolus of air into his vest and began a controlled ascent.

16.

McKendry and Keene walked confidently along the docks in Puerto La Cruz, fostering the impression that they knew where they were going. At the terminal, the giant tanker Yucatan rested far enough offsh.o.r.e that the long walkway looked like a tiny bridge that extended hundreds of yards out into the muddy green water. Pipes paralleled the walkway, heading from the port and the tank farm, the fractionating towers, and the smelly refinery equipment that had turned what must have been a beautiful jungle coastline into an industrial nightmare.

Bleed-off gas flames burned and hissed from the tops of derricks, and gasoline trucks drove around, taking a small fraction of the production to Venezuelan markets. Other tankers came into the port to fill up and redistribute the petroleum products, but the Yucatan used the facilities in reverse. It brought fresh crude from the offsh.o.r.e rig to the refineries, rather than hauling separated petroleum of different grades away from the port and to other customers.

Pa.s.sing a poorly guarded chain-link gate, McKendry strode behind Keene down the walkway, listening to the water lap against the pilings-a peaceful sound compared to the chaos of inland refineries.

"Let's get this set up as soon as we can," Keene called out. "We've got better things to do."

McKendry marched forward with determined strides. He saw his partner look back and cover a smile, doubtless Keene's response to the way he always took everything so seriously.

On the way out to the deck of the tanker, a bored-looking security guard stopped them, probably more suspicious of the two because they were white-skinned Americans than for any other reason. Keene invoked the only name that would matter to the man. "We have an appointment with Miguel Calisto. El capitan? Comprende?"

The guard scowled, but waved them onward.

After they had walked across a deck as big as several football fields and climbed six flights of rickety metal stairs that led up alongside the crew housing and habitation areas, McKendry and Keene stood on the bridge deck.

Within moments, the first mate approached them. "You are not allowed up here."

Keene said again that they had a meeting scheduled with the captain. Eventually, the mate conceded and led them to the captain's quarters.

Miguel Calisto was a ruddy-skinned man whose long pointed chin was graced with a scouring pad of a beard. A rim of dark hair surrounded the gleaming bald spot on the back of his head like a crown. He listened to what the two men had to say, but exhibited no patience with them whatsoever.

"Your request is most audacious," the tanker captain said, choosing to speak English. He narrowed his eyes and sat down at his small desk in the cramped ready room off the bridge. "The Yucatan is not a pa.s.senger ship. We don't give rides to curiosity seekers. My crew is not here to pamper Americans.""On the contrary," McKendry said, remembering the too-soft beds and too-garish nightclubs they had endured in Caracas. "We don't want to be pampered."

"Amen," Keene muttered.

"In fact, we don't even want the rest of your crew to know we're aboard. We'd rather find a corner down in the pump room or the engine control room. Keep ourselves out of the way where no one can see us. We're investigating a potential...threat."

"Top secret," Keene added.

"I'm afraid that is not possible," the captain said. His lips became thin and hard, like the slash of a scowl.