China Jewel (22 page)

“We’re reporting to you from the deck of the United States aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. Early this morning the Peregrine radioed they had come upon the half-sunk wreck of the Louis 14, their competitor in this round the world race. Its crew was lost.” The television camera now panned over the side of the carrier deck and picked up, in the glare from huge spotlights, the upper mast detail of the Peregrine.

On the deck and on the yardarms men and women worked to bring the sails to the proper squaring. Small as she was, the wooden brig kept up with the larger steel ship while managing to stay clear of her huge nuclear-powered wake.

The reporter and her cameraman climbed down to the brig’s deck. When she arrived on the much smaller deck, she interviewed Captain Hall who praised his crew. Madeline Etranger was standing next to him, haggard in the bright lights.

“We understand that you were the first to spot the Louis 14.”

“It was on my watch, yessir,” she said, her English tinged with her French accent.

“Did you see your father?”

“No. No one.”

“We’re sorry,” said the reporter.

She turned and pointed to the bow of the Peregrine, “Show us where you took your watch.”

Madeline pointed to the fore top mast of the Peregrine, with was swaying back and forth in the swells. “Up there.”

“Way up there?”

“Yessir. In these waves you have to be high up.”

“Don’t the heights bother you, Madeline?”

“You get used to it, sir.”

Madeline was asked to comment on her father. She said, moving her hands to stop the tears, “He died the way he wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wanted to go down at sea in his ship if he died. He did not want to die. He deserved a longer life. More than anyone he should have lived long and hard. But, if he had to go, he wanted to be fighting for something he loved and that was the sea.”

“What was he fighting for?”

“He proved that a man is still a man not a number. He proved that even if he is part of a team he is still someone special.”

“You plan to keep sailing?”

“Yes, to China,” she said, staring hard at the camera. “My father wanted to win and I will win for him.”

Jamie had come up next to her. Cutter grinned as he heard his son speak. He said, placing his arm around her waist, “We use the wind. We don’t let it use us. Besides, that albatross sitting on the tip of the Peregrine mainmast likes the pancakes Madeline makes up for him. Couldn’t disappoint the bird or we’d all sink for sure.”

The video went to the sight of the large bird, who looked down at the lights below him.

Tolchester’s century old words came back to Cutter as he watched.

“Peregrine will come back. She’s not finished yet.”

Chapter 18

August 29, Midnight

Staten Island

Katy and Cutter returned to Staten Island. They drove into Narrows Beach close to midnight. She had arranged a motel near the shoreline within a hundred yards of the boat slip for the rental dive boat. A diner’s neon light blinked welcome nearby.

Katy said, “Come on.”

Inside, at a booth in the back of the room sat Peter Wingate and two other men Cutter did not recognize. By the time they were halfway to the table, Peter looked up and waved.

He shook hands and turned to the man beside him. “This is Captain Tate and his mate, Willie. I asked for Captain Tate because he’s looked for wrecks before,” said Peter. “They’ll be running the boat and helping with the dive gear tomorrow. How’s the brig doing?”

“One hundred days out making good time,” said Cutter. They joined the others on the red plastic booth seats.

“The eggs are good here,” said Tate.

Cutter said, “We’re hungry, that’s for sure. We just got off the road.”

“We have been going over the search route for tomorrow.”

The salvage expert, tousled hair and all, laid out his materials and went over his strategy for the underwater search. He unfolded a large yellow map.

“This is the New York 12327 chart. Hell of a busy harbor here. We’re not going to have a quiet little bay to ride up and down. Near the sandbar area that we plan to search there’s a yacht basin.”

Cutter asked, “What about the media?”

“We might be lucky and not be bothered. The boat I’ve hired is fairly old and non-descript. If we mind our business and don’t stir up any wake to speak of, there may be no notice of us.”

Peter shuffled the papers in front of him. He said, “You got to understand the research alone on this project is almost impossible. I don’t know for sure whether this is even the right location. You know what I mean, Katy.”

She nodded.

“I began with the statement by the steamer captain at the time the ship was wrecked. We are told by this captain who said he saw the wreckage disappear under the storm waves that the brig was located directly one and a half miles offshore on the sea side of the West Bank shallows and to the southeast of the Quarantine Hospital. He said that the old shot tower was directly to the north of the wreck, on a sight he could make before the masts were washed away.

“From my friends at Mystic Seaport Museum I got copies of several maps of New York Harbor. We have one for 1840, one for 1850, and another for 1890. They were similar but you’d be surprised the changes in the coastline that come even during those close years of mapmaking.” He spread out the charts.

“You guys can see the Quarantine Hospital on the 1840 map. According to the eyewitness the wreck was about here,” he measured with a ruler. “This is about one and a half miles offshore to the southeast. Comes up near this sandbar that is called the West Bank.”

Cutter pointed, “The old sailor watched the entering ships from this spot.”

Peter looked up. “Who?”

Katy said, “When we talked to the Tolchester relative out here, we found a later cousin who used to help pilot ships by mooring along here. Kind of a local celebrity.”

“Interesting,” said Peter, thinking for a moment. “You say he was a Tolchester, a relative of the clipper ship captain?”

“Yes.”

Peter thought a little longer then shrugged. “Maybe he knew something.” He moved the 1850 map to the top of his charts.

“Unfortunately the hospital is not on this map or any of the later ones. Something happened to that landmark.”

“Did you find anything?”

Peter smiled. “Turned out there is a monument to the old building. The place helped the sick sailors and passengers who came in to the harbor on the sailing ships. They were kept until they could be cured or sent home. Smallpox, that kind of thing.”

He went back to his new harbor map. A few hundred feet back from the shoreline near the Verrazano Bridge was penciled in a latitude and longitude mark. “See the point where the old hospital was located? I got it from my GPS standing at its monument.”

He pulled his compass from his briefcase and drew an imaginary circle out from the hospital point. “Due southeast on this line which is one and half miles out, if that old steamboat man wasn’t drinking, is the intersection we want.”

He pointed to another pencil mark. “The spot is slightly south of the West Bank.”

Tate said, “Now you got to get the north marker.”

“I drove to the north about ten miles from the old hospital site. I had to go up in the morning. The tower was about here on the 1840 map.” Turning over the later maps he indicated the spot. “I thought I might have some luck. I went to Jersey City, and drove around. Turned out I found nothing but several intersecting railways.”

He looked at Katy. “You ever work with the railroads?”

“The last time I did, I had to go all the way to the president of the line just to get permission to walk across a track,” she said.

“I wasn’t about to get into that kind of bureaucracy. There simply wasn’t time. I decided to find someone in the train yard who might remember a tower. So I drove around some more. I found the freight office and an entry gate into the closest train area approximately near the spot I wanted. I went inside and found nobody anywhere. Nothing was inside but a lot of dirt and dust as if the place wasn’t even being used. Outside there was a truck backed up to the platform and some men unloading freight.

“Well, I went up to them and asked about the tower. No one knew anything. The boss, a short heavy set man with no hair on his head, tried to get rid of me. He told me I was holding up the unloading of his truck. Then a kid called out that he knew about the tower. There was a hubbub as the boss shouted to him to get back to work. The other workmen shouted back that he had a right to tell me. Anyway, they pushed him to the edge of the truck container. He was small, stripped to his boots and jeans and covered with dirt. He told me that his grandfather took him to a foundation nearby to look at birds. He said it was left over from an old tower building. He pointed to where it was located.

“Within ten minutes I had crossed the track and found what appeared to be a square set of walls stretching at least one hundred feet in each direction. The bricks were set several rows wide as if they had been planned to hold great weight. The foundation was incomplete, intersected by the ties for several rails. Much of the brick wall was taken out, I guess for use in some other building.

“In the center of the walls were the remains of a brick herringbone-style floor. I found several dark lead balls about one half inch in diameter, almost like ball bearings. I held them up to the light and decided that they may have been the products of an old shot tower. I figured I had found the place.

“I took the global location with the instrument right then and there. I was as close to the old site as I was going to be.

“Back in my car I estimated the wreck location.” He pointed to the marks on his map. “That gave me this line here which intersects at the point of proper distance from the shore. As I say, if the witness was on the ball, this is where the ship went down.”

“I would say,” Peter added, “that those old guys were used to judging from shoreline by eyesight. Remember they didn’t have the instruments we have today. Their judgment was critical. I’m counting on that.” He stretched and said, “Well, guys, we have a spot to search. Are you all still with me?”

Katy nodded, “What’s next?”

Peter pointed again to the map. “I’ve planned a series of sweeps on this spot. We’ll come along in our boat with our tow fish doing the side scan sonar at intervals.”

He added, “There are still some problems.”

“What?”

“This site has been disturbed probably many times. We look in these projects for an undisturbed site so the sunken object is untouched. If the site has been dug the object may have been moved. Any relics we can get might have been so destroyed or turned around that we can’t read the site properly.”

“Who dug there?”

“There’s a large pipeline that was put through very close to our search point. Also to the north there’s a wreck of a small freighter that was sunk here during World War Two to close and protect the harbor from submarines. There may be scatter of fragments of that ship that have come into our search area and will confuse the electronics.”

They went to bed soon afterward. Cutter took his boots off and sat back on the squeaking bed. Katy was in the bathroom. They had just finished pushing the old wooden bureau for security against the steel motel door. Outside the front of Katy’s car was within two feet of the door entrance. The place was all that Laura could get at short notice in this tourist town. Outside about one hundred feet was the main street of Narrows Village and the flow of traffic and walking passersby indicated that the tourist season was in full swing even this late at night.

Katy came back. She too was not undressed yet. She had taken her shoes off like him and now plopped beside him, curling up in his left arm.

“What do you want when this is all over?” she asked suddenly, looking up at him from the bed.

“What brought that on?” he asked with a grin.

“I’m wondering about us, Cutter. I was thinking on the ride here.”

Cutter said, “I know I want more out of life. Maybe I’ll make some changes,” he said.

“Can you really change? Can you be willing to give up your own life and love the life of someone else? Can you do that?”

“I’d like to.”

“Does all this include me?”

“Yes. I think as a matter fact that you are the chief instigator.”

“Then I have to think about that,” she said, rubbing his leg. “I have to think about what I want to give up. You’d be more of the kind of person I could be with full time.”

“I can give up my career,” he said.

“Me too,” she said.

Cutter said, thoughtfully, “I remember when I was at war. We had a purpose to help people. Now I feel as though I have a purpose to help myself and I work for the same kind of people who commanded the enemy in those days, selfish aggressive men and women who would trade the lives of their soldiers for some criminal purpose.”

“So if you leave Johnson, what then?”

“What I’d like to do is spend more time with Jamie and with you.”

“I’d have to give up a lot of my research to make time for us.” She poked him in the chest.

They hugged. She slipped back on her pillow and was quiet. He didn’t say any more, lying there thinking about her and Jamie and the way his life had been going in the last few years.

The alarm clock went off at five. As he reached to turn off its buzzer, Cutter heard the knock of a fist on the door.

“All right,” he yelled. “We’ll be there in five.”

He nudged Katy and she smiled, already half-awake. “Time,” she whispered.

“Yes, we got to go.”

They were a bedraggled lot as they arrived at the boat. Their figures were silhouetted against the orange haze of the dawn sky. Sun rays bounded off the black water washing the small pier and the dim white hull of the forty-foot cabin cruiser. Tate, a gruff character with a pull-down ball cap was already smoking his first cigar, his beard puffing smoke drifting upward to cover his eyes.

Katy had on shorts, halter top and sandals and wore a wide brim straw hat. Cutter had his ball cap and shorts and was barefoot.