China Jewel (27 page)

They set out in a small rubber raft launched to the left of the cruiser. Peter put a small detection instrument aboard that he could use for shallow water. Katy climbed aboard, wearing her snorkel breather.

Working along the bar, and watching their GPS locator, Peter outlined a simple search program. He picked up the contact right away. They relocated the boat and planned a grid for exploration forty feet square. A dive marker was dropped.

“The water's not very clear,” she said as she surfaced from her first dive.

Katy said, “I’ll take the search to the left along the inside of the sandbar.” She adjusted her snorkel and went back under. The water was murky and until she had reached the bottom she had not been able to see anything. Then she noted the mud surface and wisps of seaweed and trash. On this shoreline side of the bar the ocean water could not wash the bottom bare so a soft bottom had formed. She brushed against the marker line. Beyond that, she could see about three feet. She went on, trying to head in the same direction before she had to come back to the surface.

When they surfaced, Katy told her partner she had found nothing. She headed back. The stirred up silt from their activity had further reduced underwater visibility.

Ahead of her, she saw the bulk of the large pipe that had been on the map. It was large, about four feet in diameter and had sunk into the mud. Below her, her hands touched what appeared to be a wooden log in the water. Its end stuck under the side of the pipe. As she approached the pipe she could see that while it headed north and south, the log was perpendicular to it, pointed to the shoreline or east. She mentally noted the piece of log and went up for air.

“I’ve found an object caught under the conduit pipe,” she called to Peter.

“I’ll come see.”

Together they went back to the log. Their faces were close and he could see her excitement through the oval glass of her mask. She was pointing to a projection from the log of what might be heavy encrusted metal coated with sea growth.

Peter got closer to examine the bottom. He signaled to Katy that more small logs or planks of wood headed back toward the sandbar. There was a strip of sea growth that appeared to be a long shape heading into the muck. He had to return to the surface.

They both continued to explore, working hard to find other sections of growth that might resemble the side ribs of a wooden ship. There was nothing visible. After a while they stopped topside and talked.

“It might be part of a keel. It is well sunk into the sandbar. We can try the ocean side. Remember, if we dig it has to be done carefully.”

This time they went down in an area located on the oceanside of the sandbar and opposite the wooden artifact. They had underwater lights and small trowels. On the other side of the pipe there was nothing to be seen on the scoured hard packed bottom. In the distance however they both saw a growth of weed like a small waving island in the tide current.

Peter immediately began to paddle toward the spot, observing his instruments as he did. Katy followed. When they got to the spot they found that it was an upright growth, something that might resemble an upright rib of a ship’s hull. It was not more than a foot above the muck of the bottom and was heavily encrusted with sea growth and clamshells. Around it was flat bottom mostly clear of other growth.

Peter dug at the object but could find nothing but more encrustation. After another few moments they went back up.

Peter had got some readings on his magnetometer. “There’s metal, probably nails. It is about in the similar area where we had recorded what I thought was an anchor.”

“Could it be part of the wreck we found on the other side of the sandbar?”

He nodded. “Might be. Something like the boat’s keel straddled the sandbar when it broke up. Could be a schooner or bigger. With the anchor nearby there’s a sure case for them to be connected. However, with all the shipwrecks here don’t get your hopes up.”

“Could it be part of a hundred foot ship?” asked Katy

“Might be. Figure the water has destroyed it some. Yes, could be wide enough wood for a keel section.”

He added, “We’ve got to map the site and then come back with proper excavation equipment.”

She said, “I’d like to cut a piece of the wood and have it examined.”

“Makes sense,” said Peter.

Katy said, “Unfortunately we need more immediate information. Analysis of sunken wood takes a long time. I haven’t got the time.”

“You’ve got to do this right or not do it at all. If we ruin the site there’s nothing to be found.”

“I have to take off my historian hat on this one, Peter,” she said. “We need whatever we can get and quickly.”

“You’re right about that,” he said, looking up at the helicopters filming them. “I can’t guarantee that the treasure hunters won’t be all over this place now that our dive boat has been seen here.”

“There is one thing we can do. While you are working on this chunk of wood, can I get that anchor out?”

“That we can do. An anchor is an anchor. It won’t have significant archeology we can disturb and we might even be lucky and trace it to the ship.”

“Right. All this work and we don’t even know if we’ve found her,” said Katy.

“I know it’s the ship. I feel it,” said Peter.

The anchor was several hundred feet from where Peter was working. He suggested Katy swim into the deeper water where it was, using her air tanks. She could get some firm lines on it so then the dive boat hoist could pull it up for examination.

The best plan, Peter told her, was to put a harness around the whole anchor and any chain still with it. They rigged a netlike arrangement of various lines that the diver could attach around the object.

Katy went out to begin setting the harness. Peter worked the other sites. The captain and his assistant watched her lines from the deck. Her first report on the radio in her gear was that it was a small anchor with some of the shaft protruding from the bottom.

The captain said, “I suspect it’s a kedge. The ship must have put it out. They’d pull on it to try to get the brig off the sandbar. Can you get the lines around it?”

“I think so.”

By now other boats in the area had nosed closer even though the captain tried to wave them back. Overhead a helicopter was circling, barely high to keep from rippling the water surface.

The captain radioed, “There’s nothing we can do about them. Let’s just get our anchor and get back to shore.”

After a short dive she surfaced giving the ready sign to the captain who began running the hoist. Katy went back to the bottom to supervise the lifting.

As the anchor began to rise she saw an attached square mass of conglomerate that had appeared under the sand and mud. It was a heavy crust of solid mud, dead marine growth and weed that had attached to the links of the old anchor chain.

Her hand slipped under the side of the conglomerate as it lifted out of the sand, a cloud of murky silt drifting up.

Then she was aware of an arm pulling under her chin, pulling her head back. Her air hose was pulled from her mouth. The intruder was pushing her further down, into the bottom sand. She pretended to go limp as her mind overcame her fear. She plotted how she was going to survive.

The fingers of her right hand grabbed at the mud beneath her, trying to find anything, a stone or something, that she could use to hit with. She felt what might have been a rotten stick. It was round like a pipe. She didn’t wait as she closed the fingers of her hand around it. She brought it upward, twisted suddenly in the killer’s grip, and moved her arm to jam it beneath the mask of her attacker. She pushed hard and then saw a cloud of dark water from around the face of the person. The grip on her loosened and she saw the figure drift backward, its arms hanging lifeless. The cloud increased and she knew she had stabbed deep into the neck of the other diver.

She moved toward the surface and broke into the air, gasping.

“Someone tried to kill me,” she blurted. The captain called for help. His assistant dove into the water.

A few yards away, a bloody face and upper body of a man drifted to the surface, surrounded by dark water. Peter looked at the figure and said, “His head is almost cut off. Whoever he was, he is dead now.”

Then a Coast Guard utility pulled up next to Katy. Another boat with New York State police signaled the captain that it was coming to assist. She was helped into a harness and brought into the utility. Paramedical staff went over her condition. The other person was hauled out too. It was a young man with a beard and he was dead. He lay covered with blood and lifeless on the fiberglass deck of the State Police launch.

“What happened?” asked Peter, kneeling over her.

She said, “I was scared for sure. All I could remember was something my Ranger boyfriend Cutter told me.”

“What was that?”

“A grenade reaction.”

“What’s that?”

“When a person rolls a live grenade at you, you have to decide to run or pick it up and throw it away. You have to overcome the flinch.”

“Good advice from that Ranger,” said the captain. “Doing nothing gets you dead.”

The captain held up a metal object with clusters of conglomerate on one end. “This is what you killed him with.”

“It looks like an old knife.”

“Yes, the brass blade kept off the growth while the animal life clung to the old handle, probably some kind of ivory. “

“That is a huge knife.”

“Some kind of old fashioned combat knife, maybe a Bowie,” said Peter.

Peter touched the small square of conglomerate and the part of the anchor to which it was attached. He treated it carefully, afraid he might break it. “I can get at this on shore. I know what to do. It will take some time but we might have some answers.”

Katy had an expert come from the Maryland Historical Society conservation department as soon as she could. Together they worked with Peter keeping the conglomerate in a pail of ocean water.

They transferred their finds to the nearby museum where Katy had seen the name board. With careful work the mass of material yielded its secrets. They found the bones of two hands clasped over each other around the piece of chain. Under them were the remains of a metal box. They determined from its lack of rust that it was the lead inside of a tea chest which had originally been made of wood outside. It was about twelve inches square.

“They called them catty boxes,” said the Maryland expert.

“Cutter told me one like this was in the Peregrine model case at Cutter’s headquarters,” said Katy

“Someone held on and died, his hands kept the grip, the fish ate him away and the hands stayed around the box. The conglomerate grew over it.”

“How did he get to the anchor?”

“The anchor must have been put out to get them off the reef. I expect there was lull in the storm swells. He went out from his ship half swimming and half walking, found the anchor then hooked the treasure box to it so he could come back and find it later. He worked too long and the lull in the wind stopped. That’s the delay that cost him his life. He found himself holding on to the anchor and the chain while the water came in and covered him. He may even have become entangled in the chain and couldn’t get lose. He drowned holding the catty box.”

“These could be Captain Tolchester’s hands,” said Katy.

Peter nodded, tapping on the box. As he did, the old metal top fell off and the box opened. A large emerald fell out on the floor near the tank of seawater.

No one spoke. The room was silent. The round shaped jewel made a rolling sound as it went along and then came to rest against a table leg.

Katy let out her breath and stared at Peter.

“It’s the missing jewel.”

The Maryland conservator said, “It’s worth a fortune. It’s so large.”

Peter looked at Katy. “Tolchester wanted to get it back to the Chinese.”

“It’s a national treasure.”

Later when she was talking with Cutter the first thing he asked her was how she was.

“I’m not shaking anymore.”

“I should have been there. What did you kill the guy with?”

“What did I kill him with? That’s the strange part. The captain thought it was a Bowie knife. It must have been there in those waters for decades.”

“You were lucky.”

Katy said, “I did find out what it was. I remembered the letter that had been found in the research. It was mentioning Tolchester’s bowie knives. It said,

One of the knives is fashioned from bronze and while it is not as sharp as the steel examples, it creates a particular flash of reflected light from its shine as it flies something which excites those who watch
.

“It sure excited that bastard. Did they find out who the killer was?”

“That is the other strange thing. He must have been trailing us all along.”

“The police found a red Honda?”

“Yes. He had a beard too.”

She went on. “They identified him as the son of the former owner of the Williams Company.”

Cutter said, “She told me he was making a lot of money in the electronics business in California.”

She said, “I guess not. Anyway he figured out about the old ship and was trying to find the jewel the same as us. He did not want the boat to get any attention.”

“So he tried to sabotage it.”

“I imagine so. They will find out more as they investigate him.”

“You happened to be in the way when he finally guessed where the emerald was located.”

“I guess so.”

“How is his mother doing?”

“The newspapers write that she is standing by him. I think your boss talked to her.”

“Bill is getting human in his old age,” said Cutter.

“Yes, it was nice of him. I mean, she is on his board of directors, but still the press is beating her up pretty bad. You know, mother of the killer, that kind of thing.”

Katy asked, changing the subject “Is the Peregrine all right?”

“On the way to Guangzhou,” he replied.

“I want you to get me aboard the Peregrine for the last stretch. I’m going to the finish.”

Cutter said happily, “I was hoping you’d say that. I can’t wait to see you and hold you and tell you how happy I am that you are all right. I’m not going to let you get that far away from me ever again.”