Riptide (4 page)

He lit another match, then ducked his head into the narrow tunnel. Malin could see that this passage wasn’t more than four
feet high. Cracked boulders supported the wormy timbers of the roof. The smell of mold was even stronger here, mingled with
seaweed and a hint of something worse.

“We’re gonna have to crawl,” Johnny muttered, his voice momentarily uncertain. He paused, and for a hopeful instant Malin
thought they were turning back. Then Johnny straightened one end of the paperclip and stuck it between his teeth. The wavering
shadows thrown by the match gave his face a ghoulish, hollow look.

That did it. “I’m not going any farther,” Malin announced.

“Good,” said Johnny. “You can stay here in the dark.”

“No!” Malin sobbed loudly. “Dad’s gonna kill us. Johnny,
please…
”

“When Dad finds out how rich we are, he’ll be too happy to be mad. He’ll save a whole two dollars a week on allowance.”

Malin sniffed a little and wiped his nose.

Johnny turned in the narrow space and placed a hand on Malin’s head. “Hey,” he whispered, his voice gentle. “If we chicken
out now, we may never get a second chance. So be a pal, okay, Mal?” He ruffled Malin’s hair.

“Okay.” Malin sniffed.

He got onto his hands and knees and followed Johnny down the sloping tunnel. Pebbles and grit from the tunnel floor dug into
the palms of his hands. Johnny seemed to be lighting a whole lot of matches, and Malin had almost screwed up the courage to
ask how many were left, when his older brother halted abruptly.

“There’s something up ahead,” came the whispered voice.

Malin tried to see around his brother, but the tunnel was too narrow. “What is it?”

“It’s a door!” Johnny hissed suddenly. “I swear, it’s an old door!” The ceiling angled up to form a narrow vestibule ahead
of him, and Malin craned desperately for a view. There it was: a row of thick planks, with two old metal hinges set into the
frame of the tunnel. Large slabs of dressed stone formed the walls to either side. Damp and mold lay over everything. The
edges of the door had been caulked with what looked like oakum.

“Look!” Johnny cried, pointing excitedly.

Lying across the front of the door was a fancy embossed seal made of wax and paper, stamped with a coat of arms. Even through
the dust, Johnny could see that the seal was unbroken.

“A sealed door!” Johnny whispered, awestruck. “Just like in the books!”

Malin stared as if in a dream, a dream somehow wonderful and terrifying at the same time. They really had found the treasure.
And it had been his idea.

Johnny grasped the ancient iron handle and gave an exploratory tug. There was a sharp creak of protesting hinges. “Hear that?”
he panted. “It’s not locked. All we have to do is break this seal.” He turned and handed the matchbox to Malin, his eyes wide.
“You light the matches while I pull it open. And move back a little, willya?”

Malin peered into the box. “There’s only five left!” he cried in dismay.

“Just shut up and do it. We can get out in the dark, I swear we can.”

Malin lit a match, but his hands shook and it flickered out.
Only four more,
he thought as Johnny muttered impatiently. The next match sprang to life and Johnny placed both hands on the iron handle.
“Ready?” he hissed, bracing his feet against the earthen wall.

Malin opened his mouth to protest, but Johnny was already tugging at the door. The seal parted abruptly, and the door opened
with a shriek that made Malin jump. A puff of foul air blew out the match. In the close darkness, Malin heard Johnny’s sharp
intake of breath. Then Johnny screamed
“Ouch!”,
except the voice seemed so breathless, so very high, it almost didn’t sound like Johnny. Malin heard a thump, and the floor
of the tunnel shivered violently. As dirt and sand rained down in the darkness, filling his eyes and nose, he thought he heard
another sound: a strange, strangled sound, so brief that it might almost have been a cough. Then a wheezing, dripping noise
like a wet sponge being squeezed.

“Johnny!” Malin cried, raising his hands to wipe the dust out of his face and dropping the matchbox in the process. It was
so very dark, and things had gone wrong so suddenly, and panic began to overwhelm him. In the close, listening darkness came
another noise, low and muffled. It took Malin a moment to realize what it was: a soft, continuous
dragging…

Then the spell was broken and he was fumbling in the dark on his hands and knees, hands outstretched, searching for the matches,
bawling his brother’s name. One hand touched something wet and he snatched it away just as the other hand closed on the matchbox.
Rising to his knees, choking back sobs, he grabbed a match and scratched it frantically until it flared.

In the sudden light he looked around wildly. Johnny was gone. The door was open, the seal broken—but beyond lay nothing except
a blank stone wall. Dust hung thickly in the air.

Then wetness touched his legs and he looked down. In the spot where Johnny had stood there was a large, black pool of water,
crawling slowly around his knees. For a crazy moment, Malin thought maybe there was a breach in the tunnel somewhere and seawater
was leaking in. Then he realized the pool was steaming slightly in the flicker of the match. Straining forward, he saw that
it was not black but red: blood, more blood than he ever imagined a body could hold. Paralyzed, he watched as the glossy pool
spread, running in tendrils across the hollows of the floor, draining into the cracks, creeping into his wet Keds, surrounding
him like a crimson octopus, until the match dropped into it with a sharp hiss and darkness descended once again.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
Present Day

T
he small laboratory looked out from the Mount Auburn Hospital annex across the leafy tops of the maple trees to the slow,
sullen waters of the Charles River. A rower in a needlelike shell was cutting through the dark water with powerful strokes,
peeling back a glittering wake. Malin Hatch watched momentarily entranced by the perfect synchronicity of body, boat, and
water.

“Dr. Hatch?” came the voice of his lab assistant. “The colonies are ready.” He pointed toward a beeping incubator.

Hatch turned from the window, reverie broken, suppressing a surge of irritation at his well-meaning assistant. “Let’s take
out the first tier and have a look at the little buggers,” he said.

In his usual nervous way, Bruce opened the incubator and removed a large tray of agar plates, bacterial colonies growing like
glossy pennies in their centers. These were relatively harmless bacteria—they didn’t need special precautions beyond the usual
sterile procedures—but Hatch watched with alarm as the assistant swung the rattling tray around, bumping it on the autoclave.

“Careful, there,” said Hatch. “Or there’ll be no joy in Whoville tonight.”

The assistant brought the tray to an uneasy rest on the glove box. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, standing back and wiping his
hands on his lab coat.

Hatch gave the tray a practiced sweep with his eyes. Rows two and three showed good growth, rows one and four were variable,
and row five was sterile. In an instant he realized the experiment would be a success. Everything was working out as hypothesized;
in a month he’d have published another impressive paper in the
New England Journal of Medicine,
and everyone would be talking yet again about what a rising star he was in the department.

The prospect filled him with a huge feeling of emptiness.

Absently, he swiveled a magnifying lens over to make a gross examination of the colonies. He’d done this so often that he
could identify the strains just by looking at them, by comparing their surface textures and growth patterns. After a few moments
he turned toward his desk, pushed aside a computer keyboard, and began jotting notes into his lab notebook.

The intercom chimed.

“Bruce?” Hatch murmured as he scribbled.

Bruce jumped up, sending his notebook clattering to the floor. A minute later he returned. “Visitor,” he said simply.

Hatch straightened up his large frame. Visitors to the lab were rare. Like most doctors, he kept his lab location and telephone
number under wraps to all but a select few.

“Would you mind seeing what he wants?” Hatch asked. “Unless it’s urgent, refer him to my office. Dr. Winslow’s on call today.”

Bruce went off again and the lab fell back into silence. Hatch’s gaze drifted once again toward the window. The afternoon
light was streaming in, sending a shower of gold through the test tubes and lab apparatus. With an effort, he forced his concentration
back to his notes.

“He’s not a patient,” Bruce said, bustling back into the lab. Says you’ll want to see him.”

Hatch looked up.
Probably a researcher from the hospital,
he thought. He took a deep breath. “Okay. Show him in.”

A minute later, footsteps sounded in the outer lab. Malin looked up to see a spare figure gazing at him from the far side
of the doorframe. The setting sun was striking the man full force, modeling the sunburnt skin drawn tight across a handsome
face, refracting light deep within a pair of gray eyes.

“Gerard Neidelman,” the stranger said in a low, gravelly voice.

Couldn’t spend much time in a lab or the OR with a tan like that,
Hatch thought to himself.
Must be a specialist, getting in a lot of golf time.
“Please come in, Dr. Neidelman,” he said.

“Captain,” the man replied. “Not Doctor.” He passed through the doorway and straightened up, and Hatch immediately knew it
wasn’t just an honorary title. Simply by the way he stepped through the door, head bent, hand on the upper frame, it was clear
the man had spent time at sea. Hatch guessed he was not old—perhaps forty-five—but he had the narrow eyes and roughened skin
of a sailor. There was something different about him—something almost otherwordly, an air of ascetic intensity—that Hatch
found intriguing.

Hatch introduced himself as his visitor stepped forward and offered his hand. The hand was dry and light, the handshake short
and to the point.

“Could we speak in private?” the man asked quietly.

Bruce spoke up again. “What should I do about these colonies, Dr. Hatch? They shouldn’t be left out too long in—”

“Why don’t you put them back in the refrigerator? They won’t be growing legs for at least a few billion more years.” Hatch
glanced at his watch, then back into the man’s steady gaze. He made a quick decision. “And then you might as well head home,
Bruce. I’ll put you down for five. Just don’t tell Professor Alvarez.”

Bruce flashed a brief smile. “Okay, Dr. Hatch. Thanks.”

In a moment Bruce and the colonies were gone, and Hatch turned back to his curious visitor, who had strolled toward the window.

“Is this where you do most of your work, Doctor?” he asked, shifting a leather portfolio from one hand to the other. He was
so thin he would have seemed spectral, were it not for the intensity of calm assurance he radiated.

“It’s where I do just about all of it.”

“Lovely view,” Neidelman murmured, gazing out the window.

Hatch looked at the man’s back, mildly surprised that he felt unoffended by the interruption. He thought of asking the man
his business but decided against it. Somehow, he knew Neidelman had not come on a trivial matter.

“The water of the Charles is so dark,” the Captain said. “‘Far off from these a slow and silent stream/Lethe the river of
oblivion rolls.’” He turned. “Rivers are a symbol of forgetfulness, are they not?”

“I can’t remember,” Hatch said lightly, but growing a little wary now, waiting.

The Captain smiled and withdrew from the window “You must be wondering why I’ve barged into your laboratory. May I ask a few
minutes of your indulgence?”

“Haven’t you already?” Hatch indicated a vacant chair. “Have a seat. I’m about finished for the day here, and this important
experiment I’ve been working on”—he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the incubator—“is, how shall I put it? Boring.”

Neidelman raised an eyebrow. “Not as exciting as fighting an eruption of breakbone fever in the swamps of Amazonia, I imagine.”

“Not quite,” Hatch said after a moment.

The man smiled. “I read the article in the
Globe.
”

“Reporters never let the facts stand in the way of a story. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as it seems.”

“Which is why you returned?”

“I got tired of watching my patients die for lack of a fifty-cent shot of amoxycillin.” Hatch spread his hands fatalistically.
“So isn’t it odd that I wish I were back there? Life on Memorial Drive seems rather tepid by comparison.” He shut up abruptly
and glanced at Neidelman, wondering what it was about the man that had gotten him talking.

“The article went on to talk about your travels in Sierra Leone, Madagascar, and the Comoros,” Neidelman continued. “But perhaps
your life could use some excitement right now?”

“Pay no attention to my grousing,” Hatch replied with what he hoped was a light tone. “A little boredom now and then can be
tonic for the soul.” He glanced at Neidelman’s portfolio. There was some kind of insignia embossed into the leather that he
couldn’t quite make out.