The Lucifer Gospel (26 page)

“Not something organic?”

“Not unless the reef is made out of cast iron instead of coral,” she answered, shaking her head.

Hilts took out the Garmin portable GPS locator Mills had lent him and took a reading that identified their exact location, then tossed out a lead line to get some idea of the depth they were looking at. The line slacked at slightly less than fifty feet.

“How can it be that shallow?” asked Finn. “We know they’ve had other divers here before—nude ones from Katy, Texas. Surely they would have spotted something this big.”

“Maybe not,” said Hilts. He pointed to the lead line, dragging away to the north, pulling out of his hands. “We’re at the tag end of the reef and there’s quite a current; we’re almost in the channel. Sport divers wouldn’t come this far unless they were looking for something in particular.”

The small waves lapping at the side of the rubber dinghy were cold. Finn looked up. The sun was dying in the west, somewhere beyond Cuba now; the further side of the afternoon. It was still light enough to dive, but not for long. It would take the better part of an hour to get suited up and prepared, and they’d already had a hectic day. She trailed her hand in the tropical water. Beneath her fingers the wreck of the giant ship waited silently, as it had for half a hundred years, secrets still locked within her wave-torn, coral-encrusted hull. She looked to the south; there was a deepening streak of silvery gray. Storm clouds were gathering over the distant horizon.

“Tomorrow?” said Finn.

“Tomorrow,” Hilts answered. “If the weather holds.”

They reached the wreck at fifty-five feet, following the anchor line from the dinghy on the surface down to where it stood hard against the current, the cast aluminum mushroom of the anchor itself tangled in the old twisted cables of a lifeboat davit amidships on the starboard side. The wreck was gigantic, a massive torpedo shape in the green-blue water, the dark hull clear against the white sand of the ocean floor. It seemed to stretch forever, the stern hard against the reef, the weed-and-shell encrusted bow jutting out slightly into the long sandy chute leading to the channel. The wreck was corkscrewed, the bow tilting downward, the amidships section and the stern still intact but rolled slightly to one side. From where the line came down from the dinghy it was easy to see why the huge hulk had remained undiscovered for so long. High above they could see the choppy surface just off the reef. The weather had turned ominous overnight, but they’d decided to chance the dive anyway.

Hilts pointed upward and his voice echoed electronically in Finn’s earpiece. “She must have been rolled against the reef wall during the hurricane when she sank,” he said. “Over the years the tidal surge and the current carved out that lip-and-groove formation.”

Finn saw what he was pointing to; it was as though the water had scooped out a bed for the sunken ship to sag into, the overhang of coral throwing a long, broad shadow that would hide her from view. She could feel the suck and pull of the surge against the rebreather unit snugged onto her back plate. With the tide ebbing it was easy enough to counter, but she knew it would get steadily stronger as the dive wore on.

“Let’s get going,” she said. They’d been up since first light, planning the dive against the deck plans. They’d assumed, correctly from the looks of it, that the upper superstructure of the deckhouse, sundeck, boat deck, and promenade decks had pancaked into each other as she sank, like a building imploding, crushed by the weight of the two large funnels as they collapsed. According to the news reports there had been an explosion in the boiler room, but by the looks of the twisted plates and the hull it was the bow section that had torn away.

“Can you tell where we are?” Finn asked. She turned slowly in the warm water, looking up and down the confusing length of the immense vessel. Her weight belt kept her poised, negatively buoyant in the blue-green ocean. She moved her arms back and forth in a slow, sweeping gesture, just enough to keep her upright. At a guess she would have said they were somewhere ahead of where the bow funnel had been, partway between it and the forward mast.

“Somewhere just behind where the bridge would have been,” Hilts answered.

“That means we have to head back toward the stern,” she said. “According to the plans the main gangway doors and the lobby were a hundred and sixty feet from the bow.”

“Fifty feet back,” Hilts said with a nod. He unclipped a Sea Marshall Diver’s Beacon from his vest, attached it to the anchor line and set the pulse light flashing. If either one of them got turned around or the weather turned bad quickly, the light and the 121.5-megahertz signal being transmitted from the device would lead them back to the anchor line.

They swam slowly to the edge of the collapsed deck and Finn stopped suddenly, brought up short as she found herself suddenly looking down to the ocean floor as the hull dropped away. The sense of size was almost dizzying; even under water it was almost enough to give her vertigo, regardless of the fact that she couldn’t actually fall off the edge of the ship.

“Intense,” said Hilts, treading water beside her.

She nodded and launched herself over the side, her legs and hips moving in a smooth undulating technique that was meant to reduce silt disturbance. She planed down the side of the hull, breathing evenly, enjoying the full face mask and the fact that she didn’t have to keep a mouthpiece clamped between her jaws. The oddest sensation was the ebreather’s lack of bubbles. The simple, even hissing of the unit and the boiling sensation of the bubbles’ release around her was vaguely claustrophobic; it was almost too quiet. On the other hand, the silence let her glide through the local schools of bluefish and cobia almost without notice. In the distance she could see a smaller group of silvery barracuda swimming in their distinctive, nervous zigzags, but she ignored them; she knew the needle-toothed creature’s reputation was built more on appearance than actual danger. On the rare occasions that the predatory fish attacked humans it was because they’d been attracted by some glittering piece of jewelry or a brightly reflective watch.

She planed down, aware of Hilts beside and just behind her. She kept her eyes to the left, watching the weed-and-barnacle-covered deck plates, the steadily strengthening surge moving the wrack back and forth like waving fingers. Regular lines of portholes ran off into the distance, most of them still intact, the thick glass covered in a crust of silt and growth, the cabin interiors on the other side of the barrier dark and unwelcoming. The ship was dead, not even a ghost; this was no
Titanic
with the specters of a thousand passengers still hovering nearby; this was a burnt-out hulk.

“There,” she said finally, pulling up short and pointing ahead and down. A dark hole gaped in the side of the hull. It was close to a perfect square, the edges softened by a dense mat of sea growth. “The main entry hatch. It’s wide open.”

“They would have taken off the passengers through there while they still had the time. Easier to load the lifeboats from here.”

Both Finn and Hilts were carrying high-intensity twin lights, one lamp fixed to their back plates, the other clipped to their belts. Both were powered by battery packs that had a charge life of almost two hours. They switched on and the entranceway was suddenly lit up brightly. They had agreed on position and protocols the night before, so there was no need to discuss it again now. Because Finn was smaller, Hilts would go first to assess their best route; if he could get through a space, then it stood to reason that Finn could follow. Finn on the other hand would be the one keeping track of the time, regularly checking the dive computer dangling from her vest. It would be easy to get so far into the wreck’s interior that they would run out of time; it would be up to her to call the cutoff point no matter how close they’d come to their objective.

“Top to bottom,” said Hilts. “We start with the Vatican guy.”

“Augustus Principe, the bishop. Upper Promenade Deck, Gelderland Suite. Cabin number seventy-one.” Finn reached down, pulled up the dangling computer on her vest, and set the elapsed time function. The computer would let out a loud buzz at the halfway point—their signal to turn back, no matter what. The digital display began to count down. “Go.” She dropped the computer. Hilts eased forward, keeping his swim-fin motion to a minimum to reduce disturbance of the accumulated silt that had settled on board. He kept one hand extended, sweeping his hand light back and forth. Finn came in behind him and a little above, pacing herself to him.

Ten feet inside the entrance was a pile of debris, rotted wood, metal, and a pile of something that might have been a heap of life preservers, now reduced to a layer of black muck forming an environment for half a dozen kinds of weed and deep-sea undergrowth. In the light from Hilts’s lamp Finn could see that there had once been a set of interior doors that swung on a central hinge in the middle of the entranceway.

Hilts kept moving. Finn followed him into the interior of the midships lobby. A school of small, flashing fish turned and slid quickly away from the searching light. There was a faint haze of hanging algae in the water. On the walls, covered with silt but still clearly visible for what they were, Finn saw a series of aluminum ornaments, each one depicting a different zodiac sign. She’d seen pictures of how they’d once looked in Mills’s photo albums. Once upon a time the walls had been wood-paneled and the deck covered in some sort of nonstick tile, but all of that had long since been eaten away, leaving nothing behind but a dark, unwholesome vegetable skin. On the left the light picked out the open counters of the chief steward’s office and the purser’s office. The night before they’d discussed the possibility of checking the purser’s office, but eventually had decided against checking it out. The purser would no doubt have a safe, but it was unlikely that Devereaux or even his colleague, Bishop Principe, would have kept anything valuable there. They’d check it if they had the time, but only as a last resort.

Above their heads the false ceiling had sagged, revealing a tangle of pipes and electrical conduits. Some of the panels had collapsed and others looked half melted. The heat from the fire if not the fire itself had reached this far. They pushed a little farther, passing what appeared to be Sagittarius. A door sagged. Hilts shone his light. A row of empty dentist’s chairs looked into a row of blank, silt-covered mirrors.

“Barbershops?” Finn guessed.

“Or beauty salon,” Hilts responded, his voice crackling in Finn’s earpiece. Another few feet and they had their answer. A second room and a second row of weedy chairs. A further scattering of armchairs tangled in a heap. Mirrors cracked from side to side, silt and muck inches thick on the floor, visible here and there in patches of black and white geometric tile. A chessboard. There’d been a postcard in one of the souvenir books. This was the men’s barbershop, which meant the first had been the women’s beauty salon.

“Stairway next,” Hilts’s voice murmured in her ear. “I’m going to attach a line if I can find a tie-off.”

“Hey!” Finn yelled, pulling up, a dangerous flash of livid green appearing out of the corner of her eye.

Disturbed by the movement of the divers or perhaps the light, a huge green moray eel surged up out of the ooze and silt beneath one of the barber chairs, huge teeth bared in its beaklike head. A yard long and shaped like a thick, fleshy sword blade, the bright green horror twisted between them, snapping its powerful jaws, then whipped away into the gloom at the edge of the cone of sharp illumination thrown by Hilts’s light. The moray, had it struck, could have easily taken her hand off. Even a small laceration could have led to a vibrio bacterial infection that could cause gangrene within hours.

Finn let out an explosive breath, fogging her mask for a few seconds. Her pounding heart began to slow to something like normal again. She gritted her teeth and kept on swimming, turning toward the wide staircase that opened before her, caught in Hilts’s light. Who knew how many sharp-toothed horrors lay along the path of their explorations.

“Tuesdays with moray,” she muttered, embarrassed by her jerking reaction to the eel.“Pardon?”

“Nothing,” Finn answered. “You had to read the book.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s keep on going.”

Hilts nodded. He unclipped the Dive Rite primary reel from his vest, attached it to the end of the aluminum stairwell banister, and clipped the no-snag device back onto his vest. It held two hundred and fifty feet of braided nylon line that would guide them back to the main lobby on their return if their visibility was obscured by too much silt.

The stairway had been tilted almost to the vertical by the sinking of the ship. Debris had rained down from above, mostly ceiling panels and small pieces of furniture. The remains of a chandelier were strewn down the steps, barely recognizable in the weeds and muck. There was even more algae here, suspended in the water, caught like gently swirling dust motes in the seeking beam of their lights.

They reached the top of the stairs without incident and eased their way down the narrow corridor to the left. Over time the ceiling tiles, loosened by the collapsed decks above, had torn free, releasing the plumbing pipes and cables running through the narrow space. They swam forward, frog kicking rather than using a flutter stroke, but even so the silt thrown up by their passage soon reduced visibility to almost nothing. Hilts kept his light on the starboard line of doorways, most of which yawned open. Ten minutes brought them to suite seventy-one.

“This is it.” Hilts rubbed at the dark algae that covered the sagging door, revealing an engraved rectangular plaque screwed to the metal surface. The deeply etched lettering was still faintly visible: GELDERLAND. The photographer swung the beam of his light into the entrance. “Looks messy. Careful.” He reached down to his vest, unhooked the reel and looped the nylon line around the straight handle of the door and let the reel fall. He headed into the room with Finn behind him.