Night Diver: A Novel (27 page)

“Got it,” Holden said. “Universal dive signal for not good. No com required, just good visibility. Did you see the siphon stick?”

“Just feel it like a demon banging,” Raul said.

“Could it have come from Larry dropping the siphon onto something, rather than trying to suck up something too big?” Kate asked. “The suction could have made the metal mouth hit harder than you’d expect.”

Raul shrugged. “I be busy steering him to coins and such, all pretty and shiny. I don’t watch him.”

“Which grids were you working?” Holden asked. He hadn’t seen anything the least bit shiny and beckoning when he had been down.

Raul wiped moisture off his face with a neoprene-covered arm. “He just tell me follow the siphon down. I do.”

“Where’s your backup dive computer?” Kate asked.

“Volkert take, same as always.”

She headed for the dive center with Holden right behind her.

“What about me?” Raul asked.

“Stand by for orders,” she said over her shoulder.

Kate hurried down to the dive center, shut off Volkert’s cocoon, and asked, “What grids were Larry and Raul diving?”

“Larry was doing the real work. Raul isn’t much good underwater,” Volkert added, shoving a cookie into a mouth that was still half full.

“Which grids?” Kate asked again, baring her teeth.

He pointed at the screen that held all the grids. Two of them were highlighted.

“Were they bringing up gold?” she asked.

“Larry found it right on top of the ground,” Volkert said. “Then he started siphoning and Luis started whooping about coins. Then the siphon must have slipped or Larry dropped it. The old man shut it down and the divers started up. You want to see the .mpg files?”

“Copy and send to my e-mail,” Holden said. “I’ll go over it. When was your latest weather update?”

Volkert’s thick fingers moved with surprising speed over the computer keyboard. An inset appeared. “Two hours ago. Not good. Not bad. Unsettled.”

“Right,” Holden said. “The captain may want us to dive again before the storm makes it impossible.”

“Yah, okay. How many come back up this time?” Volkert asked sarcastically.

“Shut it and do your job.”

Kate saw Holden head out of the dive center and caught up. “What are you going to do?”

“Get my duffel off the workboat and dive with Raul.”

“Why bother? A handful of gold coins won’t make a difference.”

“You saw the grids where Larry was diving?” Holden asked.

“Yes.”

“When I dove with him yesterday, we were at the other end of the wreck and we didn’t see anything but junk. Today he was diving a part of the wreck that is about as far away from the old dive spots as he can get and still be on the grid. The place he chose for today looks like a pile of lava overgrown with coral, right on the edge of the drop-off, dodgy to dive. I want to know why he did it.”

Kate had noticed the same thing and hadn’t wanted to think about it. It raised questions that made her queasy and answers that made her want to throw up. Chewing on her lip, reminding herself to breathe, she watched Holden retrieve his duffel.

“Mingo has to be the thief,” she said when Holden returned to the deck.

“Circumstantial evidence tends that way, but only if there was a treasure actually found and then concealed. We have no proof of that.”
Yet,
Holden added silently.

That was what he would be looking for today, in a very rough patch of lava and coral and wreckage.

“If not Mingo, then who?” Kate asked sharply.

“Do you really need me to say it?”

“No! It can’t be Larry.”

Holden dropped his duffel and put his hands on her shoulders. “Since I arrived, I’ve watched hours of dive files featuring the divers who are still with us. Luis is an adequate diver, but doesn’t have the physical stamina or skill to work double shifts for this long and not get in trouble. Raul doesn’t have any feel for the water. He needs a keeper down there, especially since Mingo disappeared.”

The stubborn expression on Kate’s face told Holden that he wasn’t getting anywhere he wanted to be.

“Larry made all the dive assignments,” Holden said quietly. “Divers worked all over the grid
except
the place where Larry struck gold today.”

“That doesn’t prove anything except Larry was diving the safer parts of the wreck first.”

Holden wanted to gather her close and hold her against the coming storm. But he couldn’t weather it for her. Nor could he make her accept his help. It was her choice to make, her life to live.

“What if Larry was diving double shifts—one for the files in dry parts of the grid and one for himself where the valuable salvage was?” Holden asked gently. “It would explain his extreme fatigue.”

“So would drinking.” Her voice was as flat as her eyes. Her tone said that she didn’t really believe what she was saying but had to say it anyway.

“Perhaps. And perhaps oxygen toxicity took him down rather than the bends. The hospital will tell us.”

“Oxygen poisoning?” she asked, startled.

“When I was in Iraq,” Holden said, “sometimes a squad of five divers had to do the work of ten. I’ve seen men who drank too much and I’ve seen OTS. Larry didn’t stink of alcohol on his skin. He drank, but he wasn’t a drunk.”

Reluctantly she nodded.

“If Larry was ill, nobody else caught whatever bug he had during all the weeks of working in close quarters,” Holden said.

She took a deep breath and nodded again. She didn’t like where he was taking her. She liked that Larry was in the hospital even less.

“I have seen men dive until oxygen poisoning brought them down,” Holden said. “Larry looked like those men.”

“I can’t believe my brother is a thief,” she said hoarsely. “Mingo, sure.”

“Oxygen toxicity is like falling off a cliff,” Holden said, his voice level, relentless. “You can push against it and push it and still push and sometimes you don’t move the needle far enough. But one time you do, and then something bloody stupid happens down there.”

“I won’t believe it until I see some kind of evidence. And I’m not in a hurry to look for it.”

His smile was gentle and impatient and sad. “In your place, I’d feel the same. Give me permission to go through crew quarters and don’t watch while I search Mingo’s cabin.”
To begin with. I’ll get to Larry’s, too, but I don’t have to force her to confront what is most probably true. I don’t want to be the messenger who destroys her world.

For the second time.

She’ll survive it as she survived the death of her parents, but she’ll never be comfortable with me again.

That was an outcome Holden wanted to avoid.

“Mingo’s quarters? I’ll help with that,” she said, relieved to be off the topic of her brother’s guilt or innocence.

Moving quickly, she led Holden toward the crew quarters.

“What are you going to tell your bosses?” she asked.

“For the moment, I’m stalling. The instant they know, they’ll shut down the dive.”

“You have the power to shut us down right now, don’t you?” she said, stopping in front of Mingo’s quarters. The door was painted a bright yellow.

“I choose not to.”

She blew out a breath. “Thank you.”

“No need. On a number of issues, I don’t share AO’s opinions. They take apart events, number the pieces, and file them according to tick sheets made by other bureaucrats. Life is too messy to fit onto anyone’s tick sheet.”

She opened the door to the cabin that Mingo and Luis shared.

“Whew,” she said, waving a hand at the mess. “This could use an airing.”

“Porthole is already open.”

“I was thinking more like dynamite and bleach.”

Holden’s lips quirked.

A nearby speaker crackled and produced a tinny voice: “Would the person in charge please pick up? We’re getting fresh weather reports.”

The message was relayed with a backbeat of Volkert’s electronic music, but the voice was Farnsworth’s.

Holden looked at Kate.

“Battlefield promotion,” he said. “Captain.”

K
ATE REACHED FOR
the green plastic handset on the wall near the door. The com system hadn’t been updated in her lifetime, and looked it, but it worked.

“Kate Donnelly here,” she said. “Until Larry returns, I’m the captain. What do you need? And shut down that noise.”

“Ah, right. I’m turning this over to Volkert,” Farnsworth said. “Looks like I have packing to do before we head to port.”

The music faded.

“Yah, okay,” Volkert said. “Our friends at BWS are advising us to move our wide ass. They project a seventy-five percent probability of Davida dumping crap right where we are.”

“Do they have a good track or is this a general warning?” she asked.

“Best estimates have the bitch hitting Venezuela and skimming along to us.”

“How strong?”

“That’s the good news. Only a tropical depression, but if the Brits are right, it might blow right past tropical storm and into Category One. We’ll get the wash.”

Kate closed her eyes. “Joy. When is it due?”

“Twelve to twenty-four hours before the center passes,” Volkert said crisply. “Speed has been irregular.”

“Like everything else about this damn storm,” she said.

“So are we going to port like Larry talked about before he went diving?”

“When it’s time to leave, I’ll make a general announcement.” She disconnected.

“You can take heart in the fact that the BWS is only right most of the time,” Holden said.

“Not. Helping,” she said, but almost smiled anyway.

Hands on hips, she surveyed the mess. There were two bunks along the left side. Clothes and bedcovers dangled everywhere, making the already small room look like an explosion in a closet.

“Be grateful the crew’s head is across the hall, open to everyone. No need to start there.”

“I’m just grateful I’m no longer the designated head cleaner,” she said, frowning at the mess. “Obviously Mingo missed the memo about keeping things shipshape. The first thing you learn living on a boat is that there really isn’t room to be a pig.”

“In the navy, there would have been three men bunked into a space like this. I could hardly get dressed without barking my shins on the lowest bunk. Of course, the officer who searched our quarters didn’t leave everything on the floor.”

“Searched?” she asked quickly.

“For contraband.”

“No. I meant do you think this place has been searched? That only makes sense if Mingo wasn’t working alone.”

“Exactly.” And that was all Holden said.

“You think he was stashing stolen salvage in his bunk?”

“Somebody appears to have thought so. Divers might keep their land apartments like a pigsty, but I’ve never known one to be this slovenly aboard ship. Certainly not to the point of tripping over things on a calm day.”

She put her head in her hands for a moment, then straightened. “You make looking for helium sound easy.”

He did a double take. “I beg your pardon?”

“
If
Mingo is a thief and
if
he brought the loot back to his quarters and
if
he disappeared without the loot and
if
someone knew and
if
that someone searched the place, is there anything iffy left behind for us to find?”

Holden’s eyebrows shot up. “When you put it like that, it sounds like a joke.”

“I wish it was. But Larry’s in the hospital and I’m . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“I’ll take the laundry pile,” Holden said. “You take the crew lockers.”

“Wonder what chewed on them,” she said absently.

“What?”

“The lockers.”

Holden walked over and examined the handles of the two lockers. Where a personal padlock would have been placed to secure the door, there was nothing but a few deep gouges.

“Bolt cutters can leave marks like that, especially if they slip,” he said. “Do you have any onboard?”

“Probably. Grandpa has everything else. You know how it is with men in hardware stores and chandleries.”

Holden smiled slightly and pulled something that looked like a hairpin from his pocket. He used the metal to probe around the door of the first locker.

“What are you looking for?”

“Anything with wires.”

Her eyes widened. “A bomb? That’s impossible.”

“Actually, it’s improbable but quite possible. Good job that I’ve been trained to deal with the possible. But at the moment, it looks like we only have to deal with the probable here. Good news, that.”

He gave her a quick, almost fierce hug. “No matter what happens, I have your back.”