Donovans - Pearl Cove Part 16

"Somebody has to."

"Don't get caught."

"So far so good. Any chance of Uncle helping us on this one?"

Archer thought of what April had said. Odds are we wouldn't be on the same side. "No. Uncle would just as soon we dropped off the pearl scope."

Kyle sighed heavily. "Gotcha. I'll do what I can with the files you sent me. Nothing useful on any Pearl Cove employees yet."

"Thanks. How's Lianne?"

"Beautiful. She worries about you."

"Me? Why?"

"She thinks you've shot more than your share of troubles."

Weariness folded around Archer, darker than the night. "Give her a hug for me. A big one."

He disconnected and sat in the darkness, thinking about Len's cutting-edge ciphers and Uncle Sam.

Odds are we wouldn't be on the same side.

Blue on blue on blue, shades and tints, hints and tones, blends and startling curls of a pure primary color; the ocean surrounded Archer and Hannah in a huge embrace. Above them the surface of the water was a shifting, incandescent silver. Below them it was a deeply radiant turquoise. As they drifted with the tide, the bottom took a very gradual slide off into indigo mystery.

Archer floated about thirty feet beneath the silver ceiling. One of his hands was wrapped around a long line that trailed down from the small lugger Nakamori was piloting through the calm sea. Hannah trailed off the other side of the lugger. Using long flippers, she positioned herself in the sea with the economical, almost lazy movements of a seasoned diver. Silver and crystal bubbles swirled up from her in easy, rhythmic puffs. The yellow and black of her wet suit made her look like an exotic fish hanging in a huge turquoise aquarium.

Bathwater-warm at the surface, the ocean was cooler the deeper a diver went. Even if it hadn't been, divers still would have worn lightweight wet suits and protective gear for whatever flesh the wet suit didn't cover. Australia's warm, immense pearling grounds were home to Irukandji, a stinging jellyfish that injected nerve toxin into anything careless enough to get within range. Even though every dive ship carried an antidote, it wasn't unusual for divers to end up in the hospital with a case of Irukandji poisoning.

The only reason Archer was diving with just half of a wet suit was that no jellyfish had been sighted. If that changed, he would be in the lugger just as fast as he could cover the thirty feet to the surface. The narrow strings and hand-sized pouch that was Western Australia's standard swimwear for men didn't offer much protection. The stretchy black cloth covered less than a jockstrap.

Nakamori had chosen the relatively calm part of the daily tidal race for the dive, which meant that the bottom wasn't churned up and visibility was good. Yet after several drifts over the search area, they hadn't found any man-sized rectangular baskets of oysters sitting on the bottom.

Archer shifted his grip and looked away for a moment, letting his eyes rest. When he looked back, he didn't try to focus sharply. It was better to let the sea floor slide by with its shapeless lumps and liquid blue-green bouquets of life. Nature was fluid, quintessentially feminine; it was only man that created right angles and rectangles. An unfocused eye picked out the difference between nature and man more quickly than an intent, narrowed eye.

Perhaps thirty feet away from Archer, Hannah was also looking without focusing, floating, letting the sea flow around her. She loved the drifting, boneless feeling. It made her feel as supple as water, as weightless as sunlight, free all the way to her soul. Though her attention didn't wander, a dreamy kind of peace filled her.

When she spotted the sinuous ribbons of three sea snakes swimming along at the edge of her vision, her heartbeat didn't even pick up. The snakes were among the most deadly creatures on earth, but usually they were placid as milk cows. Some divers Flynn among them even amused themselves by handling the reptiles. The divers called the snakes Jo Blakes, using the rhyming c.o.c.kney slang that was impenetrable to outsiders. Jo Blake Roulette was a popular game among a certain stripe of diver. The fact that divers occasionally came across a cranky snake only made the game more interesting.

Hannah glanced over at Archer, wondering if he had seen the snakes or even knew they were poisonous. In the first instant of focusing on him, her stomach clenched: Len's wet suit was unique. Like a predatory fish, Len's dive suit was dark blue on the back and creamy silver along the belly. To a diver swimming above or below, the wet suit blended in with the lighter ceiling or the darker sea floor. She had seen Len swimming many times. In the water his strong arms made up for his useless legs. Diving gave him the freedom that he craved more than the morphine and booze that dulled the corrosive pain of his body. And his mind.

It's not Len, Hannah told herself fiercely.

Len was dead, beyond the reach of her fear or pity or sad dreams of what could have been if only she had been able to reach into the man she had married and lance the abscesses on his soul. But she hadn't been what he needed. Whatever chance there might have been for Len to heal the darkness within himself had vanished when he took pity on an innocent girl he had seduced and married her.

Forcing away the clammy veil of memory, Hannah looked again at the man who drifted nearby. Yes, there was a resemblance. Both men were broad shouldered, with unusual strength in their backs and shoulders and arms. Once, Len's legs had been powerful, too. Once, he had eaten the ground with his long strides, pulling her along at a trot until breath was a knife in her ribs. Once, he Again Hannah wrenched her thoughts back to the here and now, to Archer and the vast turquoise sea. And murder. She never forgot that.

Yet in the blue-on-blue dream of the ocean, she had a hard time focusing on death as an absolute evil. There were worse things than sliding into the radiant blue, feeling each shift of tone as a separate caress, shades of turquoise dissolving her slowly, slowly, until her eyes finally closed...

And opened as pearls, sightless and serene. No grave on earth could be more beautiful, no memorial more perfect.

And no man could be more compelling in her eyes than Archer, a man she shouldn't want at all. Swimming in the serene womb of the ocean, she could admit to herself what had always been true: she wanted Archer Donovan. She wanted the strength and the gentleness that surprised her each time he revealed it. A gentleness that disarmed her, made her yearn... and then his ruthlessness would surface, sending a chill that went all the way to her soul.

She couldn't risk her unborn children on a man who could shut off his emotions between one heartbeat and the next. Like Len, so much like Len.

And yet... and yet...

Different.

Len had made a naive girl dream. Archer made a woman hunger, even though experience had taught her how quickly such hunger vanished in the face of life's demands. Like a comet across night, s.e.xual desire was wild, beautiful, and utterly doomed. No one risked their future on a comet, but surely she could risk a few days, a handful of weeks, however long it took to drink the wine of pa.s.sion to its last bittersweet drop.

Surely she could risk that much. All she would lose riding the comet with him was time, time that would pa.s.s in any case, with or without the blazing arc of pa.s.sion.

The risk was hers. The choice was hers. She was no longer a girl whose possibilities were limited by her parents. She was no longer a wife whose possibilities were limited by her husband. She was a woman who answered only to herself.

She didn't have to marry in order to enjoy pa.s.sion. She was free.

An angular line at the edge of Hannah's vision sliced through her reverie. She turned toward it, focusing eyes and mind. At first she saw only the graceful undulations of sea snakes. Then she saw what could have been a right angle.

Even before her eyes were certain, she yanked her tow line twice and released it. Above and ahead of her the ceiling churned as the lugger's propellers kicked over, turning against the water rather than pa.s.sively drifting. The signal to stop had been pa.s.sed to Nakamori, who would attempt to hold the lugger stationary on the shifting surface of the sea.

The instant Hannah let go of her line, Archer swung toward her. He released his own line and finned after her. When he saw where she was heading, he doubled his speed. It wasn't the rectangle of the oyster cage that galvanized him. It was the graceful, deadly streamers of snakes playing above the cage.

Hannah reached the cage first. Finning rhythmically, easily, she approached the snakes even as she ignored them. One of them swam gracefully through the cage as though taunting the stolid oysters within. The other two snakes simply fluttered like ribbons in a dreamy wind, ignoring everything. Since nothing preyed on the snakes, they had no fear of anything, even man.

While Hannah snapped an inflatable float onto the cage, the natural drift of the tide over the sea floor slid the two snakes away from the cage like decoys painted on a carnival conveyer belt. The third snake, caught by whatever pa.s.sed for curiosity or play in its reptilian mind, twined around the cage for a while before swimming free and drifting off with the restless tide.

Archer took a breath, discovered that it had been too long, and took another. Bubbles whirled around him with the grace of laughter, but he wasn't feeling humorous. Hannah must have known how deadly the snakes were, yet she had gone swimming with them as though they were pets. The feeling of helplessness he had had while he watched was as bad as anything he had ever known.

She triggered a carbon dioxide cartridge and watched the rapidly growing yellow float shoot to the surface. A thin line trailed down from the float, anchoring it to the cage. Soon a heavier line would sink down from the lugger. She would attach it and then let herself be towed up with the cage.

Wishing he could haul her off "upstairs" and yell at her for being a reckless idiot, Archer swam past Hannah. Without a glance in her direction, he started examining the heavy wire strands of the cable that had once connected the cage to a grid of huge floats. He didn't bother to check the health of the oysters jumbled inside the framework. The water wasn't deep enough or cold enough to kill them. Even if it had been, the oysters and their potential treasure weren't what fueled the urgency driving him.

He needed to find out as much as he could as quickly as he could. He couldn't shake the certainty that Pearl Cove wasn't a healthy place to be for Hannah. Or himself. The "accident" in the shed had been a warning as plain as a shout.

After a few moments Archer found the end of the cable snarled beneath the heavy cage. He shoved and pushed, trying to free enough of the cable to see the severed end. If it had been pulled apart by the force of the cyclone, the cable would be ragged and frayed, with fine wires going every which way, because each strand would have snapped separately.

It took only a glance to see that the end of the cable was as smooth as gla.s.s.

Ten.

"Cut," Archer said curtly.

He yanked the screen door shut behind him and stalked through Hannah's living room with his borrowed fins jammed under his arm.

"What?" she asked, following him.

"The cables."

"What are you talking about?"

"The cables were cut. That's why the raft came apart in the cyclone. The cables that weren't cut somehow pulled free of the grid. If I thought it was worth the exercise, I'd check the ruined grid cables. But my gut already knows what I'd find."

Hannah hesitated, then gestured for him to follow her into the bathroom. "You think they were cut, too?"

"I sure as h.e.l.l do."

She dumped her fins in the bathtub and ran her hands up and down her wet suit as though trying to rub up a little warmth. She was always cool after a long dive, but not like this. Not queasy chills. "Why would anyone slash the rafts apart? That's killing the goose that lays the golden eggs."

"Len's gold. Not theirs." Archer's fins made a smacking sound as they landed on top of Hannah's.

She stepped into the tub, grabbed the shower wand, and began rinsing off the wet suit she still wore. "Is it that simple?"

"Greed usually is. The question is, who? Did Len talk with you about his plans to sell the special pearls?"

"He didn't plan to sell," she said as she bent over to rinse out her hair.

"Ever?" Archer asked.

"I don't think so." Her voice was m.u.f.fled by water. "The rainbow blacks were... a religion to him, I guess. As close as he came to G.o.d."

"What did he want from his religion?"

"Want? What do you mean?"

"Len wasn't raised in any church. Converts almost always have an agenda. Wealth, acceptance, power, happiness, peace, health..."

Health.

For a minute there was only the sound of water dripping and splashing on porcelain.

"I didn't mean religion in the literal sense," Hannah said. "A church, a set of ceremonies, that sort of thing."

"Yet you called pearls his religion."

She shut off the water and combed wet fingers through her dripping hair. "It's the only way I could think of to describe his intensity about them. He collected and perfected the Black Trinity as though his next breath depended on it."

"How insane was he in the last few years?" Archer asked quietly.

Hannah bit her lip. "On a scale of one to ten?"

"Yes."

"An eight," she said bleakly. "Some days, worse. A nine, maybe. But he wasn't consistently insane. Except on his very worst days when he locked himself in the shed he could talk very intelligently about the problems of periculture and the nuances of the pearl-marketing monopoly."

"What were his crazy areas?"

"Black pearls. The rainbow kind. He could never have enough, or have them perfect enough. It was an obsession."

She slicked water from her wet suit. "No, it was beyond obsession. It was a sickness. Except for the pearls that escaped his security measures, he destroyed any rainbow pearl that was less than perfect. Considering the rarity of the rainbows, he must have ground several million dollars into dust. And this was at a time when we could barely meet our bills."

Archer whistled softly and thought of what Kyle had discovered in Len's files: the articles on pearls as a medicine for every ill. "Did he ever talk about pearls as a cure for certain diseases?"

"He talked about pearls as his 'little miracles' but he didn't take them like vitamins or anything. At least, I don't think he did. He could have. Some of the Chinese divers grind up the inferior, usual kind of pearls and drink them in a potion."

"What about the Black Trinity? It must have represented something very special to him."

Hannah frowned. "Last week, when I was color-matching the strands of the Black Trinity yet again something he made me do at least twice a week I said it couldn't be any better. The last harvest hadn't added even one pearl to the strands."

"Odd. Most matches can be better."

"That's the beauty of the rainbow pearls. The orient the mix of color overtones on all the rainbows was usually quite close. All that really had to be matched was size, surface perfection, and shape."

That kind of ident.i.ty was rare, except with clones. Archer made a mental note to look into experiments to clone oysters. "Go on," he said.

Frowning, Hannah slicked back her hair with her fingers. Still salty. She turned on the water and bent over to rinse more thoroughly. Her words mixed with the silvery splash and drip of water. "Len refused to believe that the new harvest of experimental pearls couldn't improve the size or perfection of the Black Trinity. He started screaming at me to look again, it wasn't perfect, it couldn't be perfect, because if the Black Trinity was whole, he would be, too."

A chill went over Archer's skin that had nothing to do with his recent dive. "That explains what he wanted from his religion. A miracle."

"That's..."

"Insane?" Archer asked softly. "We've already agreed that Len wasn't a poster boy for mental health."

Hannah straightened, dripping and flushed, and handed Archer the shower wand. "Your turn," she said, stepping out of the tub.

Archer stepped in, picked up the wand, and began rinsing off his diving gear. "Tell me about Len's enemies."

"Everyone he met became an enemy, sooner or later." Frustrated, Archer raked his hand through his rapidly drying hair. Salt made his scalp itch, but he noticed it only at a distance. He had more pressing problems than dried brine irritating his skin. No matter how he arranged the information in his mind, it came up with red flags sticking out all over.

He held his wrist under the water, rinsing off the watch that had gone diving with him. Seconds were fleeing while he looked, seconds turning into minutes, minutes turning into hours, hours turning into too much time lost and not enough information found. He was no closer to an answer than he had been when he arrived yesterday.

The watch told him that he had wasted several hours diving. Maybe it hadn't been a complete waste. Before diving he had guessed sabotage. Now he knew it. What he didn't know was who and why.

"My guess is that it took more than one man to cut those cables before the full force of the cyclone hit." Archer flipped the fins over, cleaning them thoroughly before tossing them out on the floor. He didn't worry about making a mess. The tile floor slanted down to a small grate, which funneled water into the darkness beneath the house. Standard plumbing in the rural tropics for everything but toilets. "Are any of Len's enemies good friends with each other?"

"Are we talking about personal enemies or business compet.i.tors?" Hannah asked, using her fingers to comb her wet, seal-dark hair away from her face.

Archer thought about the fluid alliances among pearl producers. The Chinese, the j.a.panese, the French, the Indonesians, and the Australians all had periculture ventures. Even the Americans had set up a pearl-farming business in Hawaii.

Len's coalition of small farmers wasn't much by itself, but given the right opening, the independent pearlers could shift the balance of marketing power in one way or another by joining with one of the larger alliances.