Night Diver: A Novel (31 page)

Holden’s phone rang and vibrated against his leg. He ignored it. Whoever wanted him could wait. The unhappy crew could not.

“But we won’t leave until everything on the ship is stowed and secure, including the two tenders,” Kate said. “Get to it!”

As the crew dispersed, Holden’s phone rang again. He took it out of his pocket and saw that it was Antiquities.

Probably going to tell me what I already know. Davida is a right bitch.

He stepped back from Kate and the crew, turning into the bulkhead to minimize the noise.

“Cameron here.”

“Finally,” Chatham said with a grim kind of cheer. “We have a spot of trouble here. We need you to return soonest.”

“I must have heard incorrectly. Say again.”

“You are to return to London before Davida grounds all aircraft on St. Vincent. Then you will report directly to the office.”

“This is rather sudden.”

“The expedition is over,” Chatham said, his voice edged with malice. “It has been rubbish from the start. We will throw no more good money after bad.”

“There are some developments that—”

“Developments,” Chatham cut in. “Is that the new term for shagging the Donnelly bint?”

“She is not a—”

“While that peccadillo could be overlooked in a spectacularly successful operation,” Chatham said, ignoring the interruption, “the
Golden Bough
has proven to be anything but.”

“My personal life has no bearing on the work that I’m doing out here.”

“Bollocks.”

Holden was aware of Kate waiting a step away from him, but he didn’t bother to lower his voice. “We have recently discovered a thief operating from within the dive team, a thief who could very well be responsible for any perceived shortfall in small, valuable salvage.”

“Utter rot.
Moon Rose
is a historical fantasy. As the Yanks say, it is time for a reality check. After the lack of return on investment, your misjudgment is as notable as it is disappointing.”

Holden gripped his phone and wished it was Chatham’s neck.

“Our sources have also brought up certain irregularities in your recovery reports,” the man continued in his clipped voice. “At this point it is more circumstance than fact. If you would like to keep it that way, be on the next plane out of St. Vincent and we will put this unhappiness behind us. I would not want to see an honored and honorable member of our navy disgraced. Am I clear?”

“Quite, sir. Just as it is clear that you have only part of the available information, and not the important part at that.”

“Rubbish. Take your bruising like a man along with the rest of the department and I’ll see what I can do to smooth this over. There is a flight from Kingston in less than three hours. Do be on it.”

Chatham disconnected.

Bugger,
Holden thought savagely.

He turned and saw Kate watching him, worry drawing her face into tight lines.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Mist breathed over them, forerunner of the long, twisting curtains of rain that would follow.

“I have been ordered back to London,” he said. “Immediately.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As my commander used to say, the whys and wherefores are not terribly important when you have a device at hand to defuse.” Holden smiled faintly. “We didn’t call them bombs or mines; device is a less threatening term. The commander drilled into us that our job wasn’t to worry about how the device got to where it is, only to prevent it from working and to keep ourselves alive, in that order. In all, it is rather excellent advice for many things.”

She came closer, her hair and eyes radiant against the coming storm. “What do you need to keep yourself alive?”

“You,” he said, wrapping her close. “Nothing else amounts to a tinker’s damn.”

She put her hands on his face and looked into his incredible eyes. “I’m yours.”

He hoped it was true, that the fragile roots of their relationship weren’t ripped out in the storm—or its aftermath.

You can’t see the future, boyo. Take what you have and thank God for it.

“AO ordered me to shut down the dive,” he said.

“For the duration of the storm?”

“There was no mention of resumption.”

“What if the site survives the storm with only a little damage?”

“They have washed their hands of this dive. Chatham refused to hear of any thief or other new information. I rather believe that as far as AO is concerned, the sooner the storm buries everything, the better, and me along with it.”

“Bastards,” she said.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed Holden until they were warmer than the light rain slicking the deck.

“Kate, if I want to keep asking questions despite the storm, questions that include your family, will it change things with us?”

“I have some questions of my own.” She wiped damp hair back from her face. “We can compare notes once we’re ashore. I hope to see Larry, or at least Grandpa, before the storm shakes the island like a terrier with a rat. I don’t like being lied to.” The words were more forceful because of her calm.

“I would like permission to search Larry’s quarters,” Holden said.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it. I have a ship to secure.” She turned away.

“Thank you, Kate. Captain.”

“No thanks required. I’ve had a gut full of playing with shadows on a wall.”

Her words echoed in Holden’s head as he went to Larry’s quarters on the main deck. Like the crew quarters, the door only unlocked from the inside. Other than having more room and an adjoining head—and the fact that the area didn’t look like it had been searched—there was little difference between the captain’s cabin and Mingo’s.

Larry’s bed was adequately made, though hardly up to navy standards. His clothes were folded or hung, shoes stashed, nothing to trip over even if the going got rough. Nothing was taped along the back or sides of the locker drawers.

As he headed for the small, two-drawer desk in the corner between the outer wall and the head, a color photo secured to the wall caught Holden’s eye. A much younger Kate was hanging upside down on the railing of the
Golden Bough
while Larry made a great show of trying to pry her loose. Her hair hung in a wild red tangle and she was laughing with the carefree contagiousness of a child. Larry was laughing, too. In the background their grandfather was watching them with an indulgent grin.

Holden felt more like an intruder than before, losing all appetite for the process. But he kept going because it had to be done.

The first drawer of the desk held the usual mix of stuff that had been useful once or might be useful again—pens, ruler, paper clips, rubber bands, a magnifying glass, an old cell phone that had died, various pads of sticky notes. It also held a small black plastic box. Inside the box was a dive watch like Mingo’s.

Feeling like a thief, Holden pocketed the watch and replaced the box.

The second drawer held old magazine and newspaper articles about Spanish treasure finds, plus an assortment of dubious treasure maps of the sort sold by con men to gullible divers. None of the maps were for areas in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

By the time Holden headed for the wheelhouse, the workboats had been hoisted aboard into cradles and tied down, as had the siphon and its coils of hose. The decks were cleared, ready for sailing.

“What about the dive buoy?” Luis yelled to Kate as she climbed up to the wheelhouse.

“Leave it,” she called. “It should ride out this storm without a problem.”

Holden stood on the deck with Larry’s watch feeling like a lead weight belt in his pocket. As he went down to the dive center, the
Golden Bough
growled to life. Heavy metal links clanked into the chain locker as the winch worked, the sound even louder than the Techno beat. Vibration shook the deck plates and the whole ship shuddered as the anchor finally came off the bottom. Instantly the motion of the ship changed, becoming more alive, a force set free.

“Where is the plug you used to connect Mingo’s watch to the computer USB port?” Holden asked Volkert.

The Afrikaner shut a drawer, tested that it was secure, and opened a deeper drawer, where various cables and cords lay coiled. Without a word he pulled one out, handed it to Holden, and went back to checking that all the computers and screens were secured.

“Did you send the content from Mingo’s watch to my e-mail?” asked Holden.

“Yah.”

“Excellent,” Holden said, stuffing the cord into a pocket with the watch. “Need any help here?”

Volkert shook his head and said, “I’ve been preparing for the past day.”

Chain stopped rattling into the locker, and the anchor clanked into place in its holder at the bow.

Holden turned away and began climbing to the wheelhouse. With every step up from the ship’s center of gravity, the motion became stronger. By the time he reached the wheelhouse, the horizon was tilting and straightening with rhythmic regularity. When a bigger wave came along, the motion increased.

He realized he was grinning. Despite the burning ache in his leg and the damning weight of Larry’s watch, Holden felt the elation of being at sea in a good blow. And that was all the storm was now, well under thirty knots, just an exhilarating ride on nature’s own roller coaster.

When he opened the door to the wheelhouse, Kate nodded to him and returned her attention to the ship’s dials, checking that both engines were working evenly and all dials were in the green. She looked natural at the wheel, her hands steady as she brought the ship around and guided it on course for St. Vincent’s aptly named Lee Harbor. The
Golden Bough
might not be elegant in looks, but she took the waves and wind like the sturdy workhorse she had been designed to be.

Holden settled himself on the long bench seat at the back of the wheelhouse. From the looks of it, lately the bench had served as Grandpa Donnelly’s bed. Holden thought of ways to bring up Larry’s watch and decided that until he had a chance to download the information and compare it to Mingo’s, there was no point in upsetting Kate. She had enough to do handling ship and storm.

The radio crackled with one-sided conversations and warnings from the local marine stations for small craft to stay ashore.

“You do that very well,” he said after a few minutes.

“Like riding a bike,” she said, smiling faintly as she repeated her grandfather’s words. “The fear is still there, but it’s more an echo than a scream. I always loved to be at the wheel.”

“Heady stuff for the youngest by far in the family.”

“Yes. They used to tease me about it. Mom loved when the wind and waves would come up and she could take one of the workboats out and surf the breaking storm waves. I used to ride with her, then I learned how to do it myself. Incredible fun, better than any carnival ride.”

Holden watched as her smile widened, then turned upside down.

“Life aboard the
Golden Bough
was good right up until it wasn’t.” She turned on one of the windshield wipers, then turned it off. “I’d forgotten the good.”

“It is how we humans are wired,” Holden said. “Bad experiences go all the way to the bone, nature’s way of making sure that lessons stay learned.”

In his voice she heard echoes of his own nightmare, his own pain.

A captain called over the radio to another ship, planning an evening in town.

“Sometimes we learn too well,” she said, automatically adjusting the wheel to keep the ship on course as the wind and waves played their natural, heedless games. “We lose the good.”

“Like the feeling of holding a sound ship in uncertain seas?”

Her smile flashed in the dim light. “Just like that. Only Grandpa understood. Dad was like Larry. A ship was just a way to get dive gear from one place to another.”

Again, Holden felt the weight of Larry’s watch—and its implications—heavy in the pocket of his cargo pants.

There’s nothing I can do until I see what’s stored on the bloody thing. Worrying Kate about it is unnecessary and cruel.

The radio crackled but the words were indistinct, a background noise like the wind and wash of water against the hull.

“Did your mother like handling the wheel of the dive ship?”

“She preferred charts and books and dreams. I was the one who spent hours up here with Grandpa.” Kate paused. “We rarely talked. I just remembered that. We didn’t have to chatter. I learned quickly, and after I learned, we just watched the endless dance of ocean and weather and light on water. In some ways, Grandpa and I were alike.”

“You love him.”

Shadows flickered over her face as she adjusted the wheel to meet a gust of wind. “Yes, very much, and sometimes I don’t like him at all. And Larry . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think about it and can’t do anything about it anyway.”

“Blood relationships are never as simple as they look on paper,” Holden said, memories coloring his voice. “My parents have made choices I don’t like, and I’ve made plenty they don’t like. It has little to do with loving them or their loving me. Liking and loving are different emotions. One doesn’t require the other.”