Night Diver: A Novel (5 page)

Holden watched Larry do some math in his head. He had to work at it. Perhaps that was due to the bruises of fatigue under his eyes or the smell of stale beer on his breath. More likely, he simply lacked mathematical competence, unlike his very bright, much younger sister.

“The odds are—” Kate began.

“The question is to your brother,” Holden said over her.

“Less than two percent,” Larry said.

She sighed.

“Wrong,” Holden said. “The odds are fifty-fifty. Apparently you are lacking in more than the ability to read and understand simple paperwork. At this time the AO believes that wreck H-37 holds far more than we have yet seen cataloged. With the storm brewing out there, we have little time to find treasure and secure it. That, Mr. Donnelly, is a problem for both of us. Shall we get on with it?”

Kate’s clenched fingers kept Larry from speaking the first words on his tongue. The crew watched Holden now, not supporting him, but recognizing that he was ahead on points at the moment.

“There’s no guarantee of treasure,” she said distinctly. “The contract only states that the Bureau of Historic Reclamation, a branch of the Antiquities Office, gets to keep what Moon Rose Limited hauls up. Without a manifest for and a positive identification of the hulk in question, nobody knows what’s down there, thus there is no assurance of worth.”

Unlike Larry, her attitude wasn’t defensive. She had learned as a younger sister the truth about offense being the best defense.

“So the AO should be content with the cannonballs and trinkets that you’ve pulled up so far?” Holden asked. “This operation has cost—”

“Precisely what the signing and commencement fees of the contract have stipulated,” she cut in. “Which, by the way, is far less than it would have cost you to get a British naval salvage crew out here, assuming you had one to spare, and also assuming you could get in place before the doldrums ended.”

“Yeah,” Larry said, putting his arm around Kate and silently saying,
See? This is why we need you
. “It’s our necks on the line down there, not yours. So don’t walk in here and start pissing all over everything that we’ve done.”

“In any case,” Kate said, “we’ve brought up nearly a hundred silver ingots and a scattering of silver jewelry. All of which you can happily melt down and put into the Crown’s coffers. You’re hardly empty-handed at this point.”

“Even if it is determined that the silver is of no historical significance and melted down,” Holden pointed out, “at the price of silver in today’s market, my employer is uncomfortably distant from recovering its investment.”

“That’s why it’s called a treasure
hunt,
” she said. “There is no guarantee of success.”

“Point to the lovely lady,” Holden said, smiling in spite of himself. He turned and looked directly at the crew. “That should take care of the formalities. At the moment, time is of the essence. Go back to work. If need be, I’ll talk to you individually about your dive jobs.”

The crew stirred uncertainly, but turned away, accepting Holden’s authority.

Which was the entire purpose of that little farce,
he thought.
Good old Larry no longer has to figure the odds of lightning striking twice. He is still feeling the voltage.

Kate didn’t move. The smile Holden had given her had changed him from robot to something that made her pulse scramble. She suspected that his personality had more facets than the average diamond.

And when he cut, it was to the bone.

F
OLLOWING THE DIRECTION
of Holden’s glance, Kate saw that he was watching her grandfather on the upper deck, and probably had been from the beginning. Cultural glitches aside, very little escaped Holden’s striking eyes.

Something in the silent exchange between Holden and her grandfather kept Kate from running up to the wheelhouse to give his wiry body a hug. Lit by sun that was almost directly overhead, Grandpa appeared stark and dramatic. His head—bald but for a longish sliver fringe spreading from ear to ear—had been burned a dark teak from long hours in the sun, as had all of his body save the parts covered by faded shorts. His stance was casual, but somehow distant. His teeth were clamped on the stem of an unlit pipe, his elbows were resting on the rail, and his pale eyes gleamed with intelligence as he watched the newcomer.

“Patrick Donnelly, I presume,” Holden said.

“On the
Golden Bough
they call me Captain.”

Holden’s black eyebrows rose. On paper, it was grandson Larry who had that title. Reality, however, was often different from paper. It was that difference which gave Holden a job.

“I trust you will have time for a chat with me after I’ve checked out the dive center,” Holden said, again as much a command as a request.

“I’m here.”

“Yes, I rather imagine that is preferable to being in court fighting to hold on to various treasures,” Holden said blandly.

“Bloodsucking governments are worse than insurance companies. You don’t see any of them risking their pampered arses on a dive, do you? I research, I dive, I risk, and sometimes I pull up treasure. Me, not your god-rotting bureaucrats. By the law of the sea, what I find is mine.”

“At one time, yes,” Holden agreed. “Unfortunately for you, that time is past.”

“God-rotting, gut-eating vultures.”

Holden didn’t take it personally. He had read files where Patrick Donnelly had been quoted at length in court records and the less formal pages of newspapers. At one time Donnelly had been seen as a kind of folk hero for spitting in the eye of various governments and lawyers. But since the turn of the twenty-first century, that respectability had ebbed.

Not that Patrick Donnelly had changed because of it,
Holden thought
. Nothing will change that crusty old bastard except death.

Silently Kate watched as Grandpa Donnelly looked away from Holden to the eastern horizon. With a faint grimace he headed inside the wheelhouse once more.

She let out the breath she had been holding without realizing it. From where she stood, it was obvious that Larry had been relegated to bit player in the drama of the
Golden Bough
. Grandpa and Holden were shouldering each other for the lead.

Poor Larry. Grandpa’s contempt for any point of view but his own can be really hard to live with.

But somehow her brother managed. He always had.

“I’ll see the dive center first,” Holden said, looking at Larry.

The other man didn’t move. If his mottled skin color was any indication, he was struggling to keep his temper leashed.

“Have you changed the location of the dive center since Dad was in charge?” Kate asked her brother.

He shook his head. “Everything is pretty much the same, but more crowded. We’ve stashed supplies and replacement parts everywhere aboard to minimize trips ashore. Fuel is expensive. Which reminds me . . .” He called out to the first crewman he saw, “Unload the tender.”

“Apparently I’m the designated tour guide,” Kate said as she turned to Holden, trying to keep her voice level.

It was bad enough being on the
Golden Bough
again. Going belowdecks was much, much worse, memories clawing at her. With a deep breath she opened the salt-rimed door and stepped into the relative darkness beyond.

She had manned the dive center often, but what raked her guts with fingernails of ice was the memory of the last time she’d stood in this doorway.

The green glow of the dive cameras recorded that the divers were coming up from the bottom far too fast, not even pausing at the decompression stations that were clearly marked on the weighted line hanging from the dive buoy.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong! Answer me, Dad!” she yelled into the mic.

At first he didn’t answer.

Then he didn’t have to.

Obviously something had gone wrong with her mother’s dive gear. Her mother’s figure was slack as her father finned his way at reckless speed to the surface.

“Oh, God. No. Dad, the bends!”

If he heard her, he ignored her, his whole being intent on getting his wife up to the air.

Holden was the only one who noticed Kate’s unnatural stillness. He eased off his sunglasses as he moved through the door and shielded her from her brother’s view. With a gentle touch to her cool cheek, Holden pulled her out of her trance.

She shivered convulsively as he touched her. His unusual, shattered-crystal eyes yanked her out of memories of terror.

“Ready to go to the dive center?” he asked in a low voice.

“Your eyes . . .” she whispered. “So beautiful. Dragon eyes.”

Then she came fully into the present with a start. A flush crawled up her pale cheeks.

“Ready,” she said, lying without a pause. She had to be ready. Everything depended on it. “You, too, Larry,” she said in a carrying voice. “I’m sure our guest will have more questions than I have answers.”

“In a minute,” Larry called from the deck. “I want to make sure the crew gets those supplies stowed properly.”

Once her eyes adjusted and she got a better grip on her nerves, she stepped farther into the belowdecks opening. Just inside and to the right, a steep stairway—more a ladder with wide rungs—led up to the main deck. The sight of it sent memories breaking over her in cold waves.

Scrambling up the pitching ladder, more desperation than judgment.

Screaming . . .

Launching the tender in an awkward rush. Sweeping the stormy sea and darkness with a heavy light.

Screaming . . .

Trying and trying and trying to haul them into the tender despite the wild ocean and lightning scoring the sky, thunder like body blows.

Screaming . . .

Her mother sliding out of sight beneath the water. Her father convulsing in the final stages of the bends as she hauled him aboard and searched the dark storm waters for her mother.

Screaming. . .

“I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry, sorry, sorrysorrysorry!”

“Kate,” Holden said softly, touching her clammy skin. “Easy, Kate. Come back. You’re safe.”

Without realizing it, she leaned closer to the comfort she had so badly needed when she was seventeen and hadn’t been able to save either of her parents. There had been too many hours alone in the storm searching for her mother’s body while her father grew cold in the bottom of the tender.

Her mother had never been found, just one more body taken by the ravening sea and the cursed wreck called
Moon Rose
.

Strong arms came around Kate, rocking gently, a deep voice murmuring reassurances into her ear. She wrapped herself even more tightly to his warmth, holding on, just holding on, until the sound of her brother shouting something at the crew cut through the moment.

Hastily she straightened and stepped back from Holden.

“Just getting my bearings,” she said without looking at him. “I haven’t been aboard this ship since I turned eighteen.”

“Of course,” he said, his voice gentle, his tone saying that he knew she was telling only a part of the truth—the most unimportant part.

And he would have all of the truth.

Holden could have told himself that it was only business that drove his curiosity, but he knew better. With a final touch on her cheek, he released her and stepped back just moments before Larry appeared at the door, still yelling orders over his shoulder.

Looking straight ahead, Kate walked toward the dive center, ignoring the brightly painted doors on either side of the narrow hall that led to crew quarters. One door was ajar, showing unmade bunks. The odor of stale alcohol competed with the usual smells of engine and sea.

Holden paused, looking into the small room. He couldn’t be certain, but what appeared to be an empty bottle of rum had been tossed into a corner with some dirty clothes. Obviously alcohol was either uncontrolled or ignored aboard the ship.

She knocked at the last door and was told to “Open the damn door yourself, I’m busy.”

The voice was flat, nasal, and impatient. The accent was more Dutch or German than English.

Kate shoved the metal door wide and gestured for Holden to follow her inside. He saw her glance lingering on his eyes and mentally sighed. It always took people time to get accustomed to his colorful eyes.

Deliberately he looked past her at the dive center.

No one made any introductions. The crew member manning the dive center didn’t even look over his shoulder to see who had come in. Holden decided not to take it personally. When a diver was working on the bottom, he deserved full attention from the liaison up top.

Because the dive center was in the bow of the ship, the space was shaped like a funnel with the wide end toward the entrance. At the narrow end, a curving bank of pale, flickering screens dominated the small room. On the screen just to the operator’s right side, the seabed was mapped out in a series of green topographical grids, waiting for a diver to appear or simply focused on a part of the dive area that wasn’t under active exploration at the moment.