Deep Blue (2 page)

“So when do I leave?”

“You’ve got two days to get your apartment back in order, then you’re out of here.”

“Two days!”

“That’s what I said. Since time appears to be of the essence, I’d suggest you get moving, Sinclair.”

Hope knew better than to argue. Instead, she grabbed her leather purse, her coat and scarf off the coat tree and headed out the door. On the cab ride back to her apartment, she phoned her best friend, Jackie Aimes, and told her about the vandals that had ransacked her place, about losing the story, and her upcoming trip to the islands.

“Sounds like a godsend to me,” Jackie said. “I can’t think of anything better than spending a few weeks in the Caribbean.” Jackie was a would-be novelist who looked more like a model, standing nearly six feet tall in her stocking feet. She was black, svelte, and beautiful, a woman who made her living by writing ad copy for a small-time advertising firm on the lower west side of the city.

“When do you leave?” Jackie asked.

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Mercy, girlfriend. You’re gonna need help if you want to get your place in shape before you leave. I’ll meet you at your apartment.”

Hope breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Jackie.” Aside from her two sisters, her dad, and stepmom, Jackie was the one friend she knew she could count on.

Jackie was already there when Hope arrived. She had wangled the keys to the new locks from the super and let herself in. She was busily at work when Hope knocked on the locked door.

Jackie blew out a breath as she pulled it open to let Hope in. “You weren’t kidding when you said this place was trashed.”

“I guess that was a bit of an understatement.”

“No kidding.” She grinned. “At least the CD player still works and most of your disks are okay.” Bernie Williams, one of Hope’s favorites, played soft jazz in the background. “Take your coat off, girl, and let’s get to work.”

Cleaning up was even harder than Hope had imagined. It was an exhausting, depressing job, but by the end of the following day, her apartment was back in order and at least passably livable again. She didn’t have time to replace the items that had been broken, but she could handle that when she got back home.

The clothes hanging in her closet—thank you, God—had been left untouched. She still had most of the loose pants and sundresses she had bought for her first trip to the islands, but she stopped by Bloomies and bought a new two-piece purple swimsuit, one that was less revealing than her yellow flowered bikini, though she tossed that one in for good measure.

By Friday morning, she was heading to the airport, a ticket on Air Jamaica in her hand. A private plane would carry her the rest of the way to Pleasure Island, about ninety-five miles off the coast.

If she hadn’t felt guilty for abandoning poor old Buddy Newton, she would have been excited. As it was, she was mostly just resentful she had lost what might have been a really great story to that slug, Randy Hicks.

Conner Reese knocked on the door to the office Professor Archibald Marlin had been assigned during his stay in Jamaica. The seventy-three-year-old professor was doing a series of lectures at a small, private college on the outskirts of Port Antonio, a beautiful old harbor that was once a banana shipping port. The professor had accepted the invitation to speak because he enjoyed talking about the subject he loved—the Spanish treasure fleets—and because it put him in close proximity to the expedition going on just ninety-five miles from the island.

Dr. Marlin opened the door. “Right on time, as usual. Good to see you, Conner, my boy.”

“You, too, Doc. Looks like island life agrees with you.”

The professor smiled. “Perfect weather. Views of the sea that go on forever. Except for missing Mary, how could it not?”

“How’s she doing?”

A cloud passed over the professor’s face. He was as tall as Conn, a little over six-foot-two, but bone-thin and pale-skinned with a leonine mane of thick gray hair. His pant legs were always perfectly creased but so loose over his thin legs that when he walked, Conn always got an image of Abraham Lincoln.

“I’m afraid Mary’s pretty much the same. My daughter is staying with her. They may come for a visit while I’m here.” Mary Marlin, the professor’s wife of nearly fifty years, was a victim of Alzheimer’s. It was a hard, hopeless disease that took its toll on everyone it touched.

“I’ve spread the map out,” Dr. Marlin said, changing to a less painful subject. “Come over and have a look.”

Conn paused long enough to pour himself a cup of coffee from the half-full pot on the hot plate of the machine against the wall. Then he walked over to where a map of the Caribbean lay open on the table, this one plotting the location of shipwreck sites as far south as Trinidad, as far north as the Florida coast.

Though the office was nicely furnished, with a desk, a table, four wooden chairs, and big windows looking over the distant harbor, the professor had cluttered the place up. Old maps and drawings, stacks of reference books, and endless sea charts made it look like his office back in South Florida, where Conn had first met him.

The professor looked down at the map. “If you recall, it was January when the seven galleons of the 1605 Terra Firma Fleet left Cartagena.”

“That’s right. And each ship in the line was heavily loaded with gold and silver bars and trunks full of gold and silver coins.”

The doc nodded, as if pleased that his student was learning. “And there were passengers, as well. Some of them extremely wealthy. The hurricane season was past. They thought they were safe. Then, when they were halfway between Jamaica and the now-Honduran coast, a freak storm came up. Two of the ships pressed on to safe harbor in Jamaica, one made it back to Cartagena, but four of the ships went down.”

He flicked a glance toward the blue-green sea outside the window. “Hundreds of millions in treasure was lost, and thirteen hundred passengers drowned in the violent seas off the treacherous Serranilla Banks.”

He turned back to Conn and a faint smile curved his lips. “At least that is what most of the academic community believes.” Marlin was an archeologist, an expert on the Spanish treasure fleets that sailed from Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Conn had heard this recitation before, but it never seemed to bore him.

He took a sip of his coffee, then grimaced at the bitter taste of the hours-old brew. “According to the history books, most people think all four ships were lost in the shallows, but you think one of them—the
Nuestra Señora de Rosa
—was making for Jamaica when she was blown off course. Your theory is she survived as far as what was then called
Isla Tormenta,
and went down on the reefs around the island.”

“Exactly. Which brings us to the point of your visit. You want to know if the ship could have gone down somewhere along the southern shore instead of on the reef to the north.”

“I’m concerned that it might be possible, and if it is, we might be looking in the wrong place.”

The professor leaned over the map and pointed to the tiny speck of land lying south of Jamaica. The Spanish had called it
Isla Tormenta
—Storm Island. Eddie Markham, its latest owner, had renamed the place Pleasure Island to give it a better image.

“You’re discouraged because the reef is so thick,” Doc Marlin went on. “You think it could be hiding the ship and you might never find it.”

“It seems like a good possibility. We’ve been out there for weeks and haven’t found a thing. I was thinking maybe we’d do some side-scanning along the southern shoreline.”

“I think you should stick with the reefs a while longer. Leasing a boat the size of the
Conquest
isn’t cheap. We need to make the most of the time we have use of it.”

“We aren’t paying for the boat—Brad Talbot is. And he doesn’t seem overly concerned with the cost. But you’re right. We need to concentrate our efforts where they’ll most likely be rewarded. For now, we’ll stay near the reef.”

“Maybe you’ll pick up a signal from one of the cannons or maybe an anchor.” He was talking about the magnetometer, a device that could detect undersea metal objects. So far it had only found a couple of rusting oil drums.

“Yeah, maybe we’ll get lucky. Thanks, Doc. I’d better get going. I need to catch that plane heading back to the island.”

“Call if you need anything else.”

Conn just nodded.

As he left the office, he reached into the pocket of his khaki shorts and pulled out the single gold coin that was his good-luck piece. He had been managing a dive school on Key West but visiting a friend, diving off a place just north of Vero Beach, when he had found the coin. A couple of galleons had gone down in the area, his best friend, Joe Ramirez, had told him, and occasionally after a storm, artifacts turned up.

Joe was one of the guys on his former Navy SEAL team, a Cuban-American, the cliché of a hot-tempered Latino, but bigger than most. Both of them had left the SEALs some years back but were using their diving skills to make a living.

When the coin turned up, Joe had been nearly as excited as Conn. And both of them were determined to discover which ship it had come from.

“I know this guy,” Joe had said. “My archeology professor in college. He’s an expert on this kind of stuff.”

Professor Marlin had retired from teaching, but the old man had never lost his fire when it came to Spanish treasure. He’d told Conn the coin came from a shipwreck of the 1715 treasure fleet, which was lost to a hurricane off the Florida coast. He also said much of the treasure had been recovered and that salvaging the wrecks was growing more and more difficult.

But the conversation had sparked Conn’s interest, and over the next few years, he and the professor had become close friends.

Conn thought of those early days as he continued along the path to the car he had driven from the airport, an old blue Toyota Corolla with a left-hand drive they had bought to get them around the island. He looked down at the coin in his hand, remembering the incredible tale that had led them to the Caribbean and the search for Spanish gold.

He knew finding it was a long shot—all of them did. And they knew how dangerous this kind of search could be. Mel Fisher had lost his son and daughter-in-law trying to locate the galleon,
Atocha.
Even the four-hundred-million in treasure Fisher had finally found couldn’t make up for that kind of loss.

Still, if the
Rosa
was out there, hidden in the waters off Pleasure Island…

Conn tried not to think of the problems he and the crew had already faced during the weeks they had been searching the reef. He had known it wouldn’t be smooth sailing. He shoved the coin back into his pocket and wondered what kind of trouble would find him next.

Hope disembarked from the Air Jamaica jet that had flown her from JFK to Kingston International Airport and headed for the baggage claim, making a brief stop first in the ladies’ room along the way.

As she left the bathroom, she paused in front of the mirror. She looked tired, no doubt of that. Her eyes were a little puffy and her lipstick long gone, but her hair looked pretty good. She liked the slightly longer style, swinging smoothly just above her shoulders. It was a really great cut, straight but curling under at the ends, even when she’d just gotten out of the shower. The deep red color had always suited her, different from her two blond sisters, as different as Hope felt she was from her siblings.

Both Charity and Patience were younger and a lot more naïve. Hope had been eleven when their mother had died. With her father grieving and barely able to function, Hope had stepped in to help raise the two younger girls. Her father had remarried by the time Hope was ready to leave for Columbia University, one of the best schools in the country for journalism, but still she felt she was abandoning her siblings.

As she got older, recently turned thirty-one, she discovered she was what they call a nurturer. She missed living with a family, taking care of the people she loved. She had always thought she’d have a husband and children of her own by now.

Hope felt a quick stab of pain. In the years since her disastrous engagement to Richard, Hope had decided marriage was not for her. She would make the most of her career, find fulfillment in that direction. It was certainly the safer road to the future.

She sighed as she walked out of the airport, into the hot island sun. There was activity all around her: a row of battered taxis, their black Jamaican drivers pressing for passengers to fill the empty seats; an assortment of other men promising guided tours of the island. A makeshift art fair had been set up along the road, artists displaying their paintings on a string of easels, potters selling colorful handmade jars, woodcarvers displaying their work. An open-air food booth sold hot dogs and Jamaican Red Stripe beer.

A black man neatly dressed in black pants and a white shirt held up a sign with her name on it, and Hope walked in his direction.

He smiled, his teeth neon-white in a face so black it glistened. “You be Miss Sinclair?” he said with a thick Jamaican accent.

“Yes…”

He grinned. “In Jamaica we say
yeahmon.
It mean
yes
in Patois.”

She remembered from her last trip that islanders were extremely friendly and very proud of their country.

“I be George Green. I will take you to de Pleasure Island plane.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem. Just follow me.”

It didn’t take long to reach the private airstrip, Million Air, where the expensive-looking twin-engine plane Eddie Markham, one of the partners in Treasure Limited, had sent sat waiting to pick her up. Hope waved good-bye to George, who stood on the asphalt, still grinning as she strapped herself into the deep gray leather seat.

“Welcome, everyone,” said the pilot, an American in a spotless white uniform. “We’ll be getting under way in just a few minutes. Just relax and enjoy the flight.”

Now there was an oxymoron. There was no such thing as an
enjoyable flight.

Hope glanced around the luxurious cabin. There were two other passengers aboard, a newly married couple with eyes only for each other. She didn’t think they realized that the plane had left the ground until it was flying out over the water, winging its way toward Pleasure Island.

Interesting name, Hope thought. She wondered what the place would be like and couldn’t resist an image of nude sunbathers, late-night bars, and reggae music.

As the plane flew over the coast, she saw that it was a small volcanic island, half-moon shaped with mountains sticking up in the middle. There was a long, private landing strip. The plane circled to make the approach, touched down gently, then rolled to a stop in front of a newly constructed white plaster building that appeared to be a mini-terminal of sorts.

A man in a cream-colored suit walked toward her, olive complexioned, medium height and build, slicked-back, jet-black hair. He looked a little like a Columbian drug dealer, but then, half the population of Florida looked that way.

“Ms. Sinclair?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I’m Eddie Markham. Welcome to Pleasure Island.”

She hadn’t expected to be met by the owner himself, but it was a very nice touch. “Thank you. Do you greet all your guests personally, Mr. Markham?”

“It’s Eddie, and only the more important ones. Come. I’ll help you get settled in.”

“Thank you, but I don’t expect to be here that long. I need to get out to the boat.”

“All in good time. Meanwhile, I’ve arranged for you to have the use of one of the private villas whenever you’re on the island. We can go there now. You’ll have time to shower and change out of your traveling clothes before you leave for the
Conquest.
”

A shower sounded heavenly. And God knew what sort of accommodations waited for her onboard a salvage ship.

She smiled. “Well, I can certainly make time for that.” She reached for her wheeled carry-on, but a young black man raced over from a few feet away and grabbed the handle, along with the briefcase she was carrying.

“That’s Gerald Chalko. Everyone just calls him Chalko. If there’s anything you need while you’re here, he’s the man who’ll get it for you.”

Chalko smiled and nodded, and Hope smiled back. Like a lot of the islanders, his skin was very dark, his features refined and attractive. Jamaicans of both sexes, she had discovered, were extremely handsome people.

There was a pair of green-and-white, fringe-topped Jeeps waiting on the tarmac. The newlyweds and their driver climbed into one, and Hope, Eddie, and Chalko climbed into the other. Chalko fired up the engine and they zipped across the asphalt onto a road lined with palm trees and ferns. Huge-leafed philodendrons snaked up the sides of the palms, and the ground bloomed with flowers—yellow hibiscus, wild white orchids, orange bird-of-paradise.

It wasn’t far to a gate marked by a sign overhead reading
PLEASURE ISLAND VILLAS.
The Jeep zipped through, and she saw that a dozen villas had already been constructed; it was obvious Eddie planned to build a whole lot more.

They were grouped in pairs, very attractive, with white plaster walls, red-tiled roofs, and ornately carved, heavy wooden front doors. Lush foliage surrounded each unit, and pink bougainvillea climbed up the stucco walls. They passed a sales office, and Hope began to see why Eddie was being so amenable.

A series of articles in
Adventure
magazine would bring a lot of notoriety to Pleasure Island. It was a beautiful spot with miles of white sand beaches, lush green tropical plants, and beautiful exotic flowers. Some of the visitors—the ones with a pot-load of money—would definitely be impressed, perhaps enough to purchase one of Eddie Markham’s elegant Pleasure Island villas.

And
villa
was exactly the word. At least five thousand square feet of luxury living, exquisitely furnished in the Caribbean style, with net-draped four-poster beds, cool tile floors, and glass walls that slid open to let in the sounds of the surf and the soft island breezes.

“Take your time,” Eddie said. “I’ll be back for you in an hour. We’ll have a boat ready to take you out to the
Conquest.
”

“Great.”

“You’ll find food and drinks in the refrigerator. The bar is fully stocked. If you think of anything else—”

“I know—just call Chalko.”

Eddie smiled. She noticed he had a few too many, very white teeth. “His cell number is next to the phone in the living room.”

Eddie didn’t miss a trick. “Thanks. I’ll see you in an hour.”

Conner Reese stood in the chart room aboard the salvage vessel
Conquest,
studying the maps spread open on the teakwood table in front of him. Pleasure Island was seven miles long and two miles wide, volcanic in nature, with lush tropical rain forests and beautiful, cascading streams. A small chunk of privately owned paradise ruled by a man who had proclaimed himself emperor of his tiny domain.

Emperor Eddie was one of Conn’s partners in Treasure Limited, along with Archie Marlin, who, for more than twenty years, had researched the Spanish galleon they were hunting. The third man on the team was the moneyman, Brad Talbot, a spoiled playboy pushing forty.

They called Talbot the Doormat King, a name he despised. Conn figured part of the man’s motivation for joining the venture was to change his image. Talbot seemed to think that by doing something dangerous and romantic—like finding sunken treasure—he would actually be thought of as dangerous and romantic.

Instead of just a guy who’d inherited his money and now had too much time on his hands.

“So what do you think?” Conn asked the silver-haired man next to him in a tee shirt that read “Salvage Guys Do It Deep” and a pair of navy blue shorts, the skipper of the
Conquest,
Bob Gibson.

“I don’t know. These reefs are damned tricky. And they’ve grown a good deal in the past four hundred years. Marlin believes the ship blew in from the west. The reef protects the north end of the island, but the beach extends around the whole southern end. Maybe we should start doing a little searching—”

He broke off as he spotted the flashy white Pleasure Island speedboat racing toward them. “Looks like we’ve got company.”

Conn followed his gaze out the window and saw the boat skimming over the waves, forty-two feet of luxury sitting on a pair of twin diesel 700-horsepower engines that could blow other boats its size out of the water. There were two people aboard. Conn recognized Chalko’s smiling dark face at the helm. He reached for the binoculars sitting on one of the built-in teakwood shelves and leveled them on the person standing beside the driver.

“He’s got a woman aboard. I wonder what they want.”

It wouldn’t take long to find out. The boat ran like lightning, and Chalko liked speed. As the vessel drew near, Conn saw that the woman was grinning. Apparently she liked a fast ride, too.

As one of the deckhands helped her aboard, he noticed she had not-quite-shoulder-length hair, the most glorious rich, deep red he’d ever seen. She was shorter than average, maybe five-foot-three, and petite, with what appeared to be a great set of legs showing below her crisp white shorts.

She wore a gauzy white shirt unbuttoned over a bright orange tank top, and when the wind whipped the tails apart, he could see she had a nice set of breasts.

His groin tightened pleasantly. He hadn’t been with a woman in months, and this one had all the right equipment in just the right places. Still, he wondered why she had come, and when he saw Chalko toss up her bag, rev up the engine, and turn the boat back toward shore, leaving his passenger behind, he silently vowed he would kill Eddie Markham if he’d sent out some rich tourist he was trying to sell one of his overpriced villas.

Conn’s jaw tightened as he fell in behind the skipper, heading for the ladder to the deck.

Hope felt the deck sway beneath her feet and shifted to maintain her balance. The
Conquest
was eighty feet long, Eddie Markham had told her on the way to the dock, and looked to be very well equipped. Of course, Brad Talbot would make sure of that. He would want to be viewed as a man capable of accomplishing the formidable task Treasure Limited was undertaking.

She glanced around and spotted a fiftyish, silver-haired man walking toward her while a taller, dark-haired man followed a few feet behind.

She smiled at the first man. “Hello, I’m Hope Sinclair. It’s very nice to meet you. You must be Conner Reese.”

He gave her a warm, inviting smile. “Actually, I’m Bob Gibson, captain of the
Conquest.
” He turned to the other man who walked up just then. “This is Conner Reese.”

She tried not to stare. If she’d had more time, she would have known everything there was to know about the partners of Treasure Limited. As it was, she knew Brad Talbot, and she had met Eddie Markham. This man, the head of the actual search operation, Conner Reese, was not at all what she had expected.

She extended a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Reese. I’m Hope Sinclair. I assume you’ve been expecting me.”

“Expecting you to what?”

She didn’t like his tone, or the unfriendly look in his eyes. But she had to admit they were gorgeous, the same incredible blue as the sea around them. And he was handsome. Remarkably so. He was wearing nothing but a pair of red swim trunks and white canvas deck shoes, leaving his chest bare and drawing her eyes to his deeply sculpted muscles and impressive biceps, a lean, flat, six-pack stomach, and a set of shoulders that would stretch the limits of an extra-large shirt. And he was tall, at least six-foot-two, with a very dark tan.

Still, it was obvious he wasn’t pleased to see her, and that jabbed her temper. She didn’t want to be there in the first place. The least he could do was be pleasant.

She pasted on a smile. “Since you weren’t informed, I suppose I had better explain. I’m a writer for
Adventure
magazine. I’m here to do an article on your search for the
Nuestra Señora de Rosa.
I assumed someone from the magazine would have called you.”

“Yeah, well, they didn’t.
Adventure
might like to do a story, but unfortunately, we’re not interested. It’s a shame you came all this way for nothing, but that’s the way it is. The last thing we need is a bunch of people finding out we’re down here looking for sunken treasure.”

She worked to keep her friendly smile in place, all the while cursing Conner Reese. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. I’ve been assigned to do this story, and that’s what I intend to do.” She glanced around at all the fancy, ultra-modern equipment on the deck, most of it new. “You probably have a satellite phone out here. Why don’t you call Brad Talbot? He can explain what’s going on.”

“Talbot? This was Talbot’s idea?”