Blue Moon (22 page)

Tex regaled the crew with colorful stories of past adventures over lunch, and having been along on some of them, Gabe knew that the Texan had embellished more than a few of the details. But the grad students and his gullible Jeanne were completely spellbound by the older adventurer, while Prim was intrigued, and Pablo amused.

His
gullible Jeanne? Gabe had never been inclined to think of any woman as
his
. At least not in the context of permanence. And even if this wasn't simply a rambling notion, what could he offer her? A life running a fishing tour business on the
Angel
? She was the product of a close-knit family and was a budding name in her field. Gabe had left all that behind. While he called on holidays to check on them, he hadn't visited his parents in five years. The calls were painful enough, what with them imploring him to come back to Bermuda to finish his doctorate and pursue a career in marine biology.

“Yep,” Tex said with a toothy grin. “Findin' a wreck right off the bat was unheard of . . . till I met this golden gal here.”

Jeanne shrugged. “And who knows, maybe we'll find out if this is really the
Luna Azul
today.”

“Dream on, dream girl,” Gabe told her.

“No,” she objected, not the least daunted by his skepticism. “I've said from the beginning, this is a God thing. We found the wreck. We couldn't reach it. You found Tex. Now we can. For every bump in the road, God has smoothed the way over it.”

Gabe put his arm around her shoulders and shook her playfully. “That's what I love about you, sweet. That eternal optimism.”

Jeanne opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she was about to say stalled there. Gabe studied the confusion brewing in her expression. Gradually he realized it was due to his compliment. Utterly charming, he thought, fascinated as she regrouped, adapting a mischievous smirk that zeroed his attention on her lips.

“Watch out,” she warned. “
This
fallen angel”
—
she tapped him on the chest—“just might catch it.”

“Like I said,” Gabe countered. “Dream on.” His comeback was smooth, but her words left ripples of awareness within—
self
-awareness.

Confound it, he was, by admission, a fallen angel . . . and quite content to be one, he told himself as he suited up again to check out the results of the surgical demolition. That was just one more reason why Jeanne could never be
his
. Her cockeyed religious optimism was cute, but sooner or later it would cease to amuse and would instead stick like a thorn in his cynical side.

And that prospect continued to stick in Gabe's side after he was in the water. Shelving it in the far reaches of his mind, Gabe focused on the reef below. The water had cleared enough for him to see the success, or lack thereof, of their earlier efforts. It was also clear enough to see the barracuda and reef sharks that feasted on the windfall of fresh fish floating overhead. The barracuda were more intimidating in look than dangerous to humans, as long as one left them alone. One might tail a diver, but the moment the diver turned, it would swim off.

The reef sharks could be a little more trouble, but usually it was nothing that couldn't be handled by a good tap on the nose with an instrument. Aside from one black-tip shark that swam within a few yards of them, Gabe and Tex proceeded without attracting interest.

In the grays and blues of the deeper water, Gabe flutter-kicked deeper toward an opening in a hedge of staghorn and branch coral that ranged an average of thirty feet high from the plateau that hosted the lagoon. His light revealed the debris on the bottom from the blast that had brought the section down. As he and Tex approached it, smaller fish, scampering about feeding on the plant and animal life that had been dislodged from the rock-hard and razor-sharp habitat by the blast.

Gabe slowed in appreciation. Parrot fish, surgeonfish, red
Myripristis
, striped
Fissilabrus,
some small
Chromis . . .
Marine life never ceased to thrill him, even though that chapter of his life was closed. And the coral . . . It pained him to see even this small bit destroyed when it was not only integral to the underwater ecosystem, but held such promise of medicinal value of mankind too.

Feeling a nudge on his arm, Gabe turned toward Tex. He reminded Gabe of a muscular teddy bear in a wet suit—round in the belly, but hard as iron. Beaming, he gave Gabe a proud thumbs-up. If that bushy grin of his were any broader, the ornery coot would have lost his respirator. Tex was one of the best, and he knew it.

Gabe thought that the opening appeared wide enough for the
Fallen Angel
to get through, but knowing how water distorted distance perception, he'd brought along a measuring tape to be sure. Gabe brandished it from his belt in response.

There was just enough to give the
Angel
a little over five feet on either side. Beyond the breach there was swing, or maneuvering room. It was a go.

The moment Gabe's head broke free of the water by the swim platform of his boat, he spat the respirator from his mouth.

“Manolo!” he shouted to his deckhand. “Fire up the engines; we're going in!”

Nick let out a loud whoop as Gabe hauled himself up on the platform, no easy task with forty pounds of gear strapped to his back. “It's about time. All this charting and plotting has nearly bored me to death.”

“Yeah,” Stuart said. “I was starting to wish I was on that fishing boat I saw earlier.”

“Listen to 'em crow,” Tex said, a bit breathless from the exertion as he came aboard behind Gabe. “I'll bet you a piece of eight them guppies'll be beggin' for rest before the week's out.”

Jeanne looped an arm over the shoulders of each of the frolicking lads.

“I don't know,” she countered. “Sometimes I think waiting is just as hard as—”

“What fishing boat?” Gabe interrupted her.

The balloon of his elation pricked by alarm, he crawled to his feet, abandoning the gear he'd unfastened, and inspected the horizon.

“Manolo, did you see anything?” he called out as Nemo came forward to greet him. The deckhand shrugged from the sliding door overlooking the back deck. “A fishing boat,
nada más
.”

Nothing more. Gabe hoped that's all it was. But he trusted Manolo, who knew the likes of Arnauld and his cronies.

Jeanne propped her hands on her hips. “You're not going to go paranoid on us again, are you?”

Gabe silenced the warning bell in the back of his mind. He probably was being overly cautious. But as the old adage went,
once
burned
. . .

He brandished a false grin. “No. Just being cautious.”

Remy's voice sounded from the bridge. “That's rich, coming from someone who swims with sharks.”

Biting his tongue, Gabe handed his tanks over to Nick. Surely the author of
love thy neighbor
had never met Remington Primston.

CHAPTER TWENTY

At the bottom of the lagoon, the colorful coral faded to blue and gray formations, broken by patches of sand and limestone. Yet in Ann's camera light, where Jeanne and her partner, Remy, swam, the shadowy water world came alive with the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of coral. Sillouettes of fish darted through the beams to become glorious displays of color and patterns as they fled the divers' approach.

Disgruntled that she'd chosen Remy as her dive partner, Gabe searched an adjacent grid on the mound that had been marked off by that morning's work with Tex.

Staring at the irregular bottom reminded Jeanne of childhood days spent looking up at clouds. At first, the clusters of coral and drifts of sand and limestone appeared to be exactly what they were. But if one stared at them long enough, they began to take on shapes like the clouds in the sky.

Gabe had already found a small cannon, the sort mounted at the most forward or aft positions on the ship where they could be swiveled to cover the vulnerable spots left by the larger, fixed cannons. He'd chipped away at the coral encrusting it with a small crowbar until its bore could be more clearly distinguished for the camera. After marking the find and taking some coordinates on a small clipboard, Jeanne and Remy returned to their own sector.

Some tube worms, which in the right light looked like stacks of gold coins, withdrew their tendrils in alarm as Remy disturbed them in passing. Jeanne's mental smile froze as she spied a small, rounded mound of sand—another cannon barrel perhaps?

Drifting to her knees, she dug around the base of the outcropping with her hands. The sand she stirred disbursed with the strong current. Tomorrow they'd definitely bring out their stored airlift, a huge vacuum cleaner that dumped debris from the bottom into a mesh float where it could be sorted through for artifacts. But for now, they'd pay for their shortsighted thinking—that the clearing of the opening and laying the grid would take up most of their day—by doing it all by hand.

It was wood, a piece that had survived the destructive
teredos
. . . maybe a brake handle. The thrill of holding something that hadn't been touched by human hands for centuries washed over her.

God, I just thank You that I'm here, now, doing this. I am so blessed,
I just can't stand—

The glint of something shiny in Ann's underwater lighting stopped Jeanne's prayer in midthought. The hand with which she'd been brushing away sand froze above it. Jeanne's heart thudded against her breastbone.

Gold! No mistake about it. It was the only thing that held its original luster against the ravages of time and the sea. Almost afraid to touch it, lest it be some kind of mirage, Jeanne forced herself to run her palm over it, clearing more of the sand away.

Unable to move beyond its confines, her staggered heart began to beat again, and the breath she'd inadvertently held released a long stream of bubbles from her respirator. It wasn't a brick. Excitement drove her pulse as she dislodged the round, ridged object from its nearly three-hundred-year-old bed at the foot of the rising coral massif. In the periphery of her vision, she spied Remy making haste toward her, but her attention was riveted on the head staring up at her.

And that's what it was, she told herself in disbelief. It was a man's head made of gold.

Her mind raced to the letters indelibly etched in her memory. Ortiz had written of a noble, a Spanish official who had died in Veracruz. His body had been sealed in a giant urn for its return to Spain. A vain man, he'd had a bust of gold made in his image.

Jeanne stared at the narrow, aristocratic face. And if this bearded fellow was Duque Alonso Garcia de Fonseca, then this
was
the wreck site of the
Luna Azul
.

“You are beyond a doubt the luckiest little lady I've ever met,” Tex drawled in amazement, once everyone returned to the
Fallen Angel
.

“We know—it's a God thing,” Gabe said with a smile, cutting Jeanne off as he turned the heavy gold bust in his hands. About ten pounds. That translated into enough money to make his knees weak. The silly optimist had just brought up seventy thousand dollars or so in her own hands
and
identified the wreck that she'd set out to find. If she kept this up, she might make a believer of him yet. “Of course, good research and science helped,” he added, more for his benefit than for the others.

Remy beamed like a lighthouse over his prodigy and her find. “Like the Good Book says, the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

Jeanne pulled a playful face at her mentor that tugged at Gabe's green streak. “I don't think that's quite Scripture-based, Remy, but I will admit we've
all
done our part. And I'll put my team up against anybody.” She lifted a bottle of water up in a toast. “To Genesis. I love you all.”

Plastic bottles clicked in the air over the bust, accompanied by a clashing chorus of “Hear, hear!” and “To Genesis!”

“I hate to put a damper on this lovely parade,” Gabe spoke up, “But you do realize that we need to keep this quiet.”

“And why is that?” Remy challenged with the look of a man ready to mount a soapbox. “This is history unfolding before our very eyes.”

Tex twisted off the top of a lemonade drink. “I'm with Gabe on this one. If we were diving in U.S. waters, I'd have no problem, but we're not. South of the border, anything can happen . . . no offense, there, Pablo.”

Glancing up from charting the locations where they'd found the other artifacts now spread on the bait box lid—bits of pottery, a pulley, and a belt buckle—Pablo nodded. “None taken. But after our good fortune today, I am going to the cathedral and kiss the statue of the Virgin as soon as we return.”

“And I also,” Manolo agreed.

The entire crew, even Pablo, was a little drunk with excitement. From their expressions, only Tex remained on Gabe's cautious side.

“That's fine and dandy, so long as you don't say why you're so reverent,” Gabe replied. “I say we keep the Duke on the
Angel,
just like we have the coins, and keep mum.”