Riptide (7 page)

The patch of fog drew closer. Hatch struggled in silence, willing himself to keep the boat pointed in the direction of the
creeping fingers of mist, so strangely alien on a horizon that had otherwise grown clear. He eased down the throttle as the
boat nosed its prow into the murk. Suddenly, clamminess surrounded them. Malin could feel droplets of condensation begin to
form on his knuckles and along the back of his neck.

He strained to see through the fog. A dark, distant outline seemed to appear, only to vanish again. He cut the throttle further.
In the relative quiet, he could now hear the sound of surf, and the ringing of the Ragged Island bell buoy, warning mariners
away from its treacherous reefs. He swung the boat in a more northerly course, to bring it around the leeward end of the island.
Suddenly, a ruined iron derrick loomed above the mists about two hundred yards off the port side, twisted by storms, streaked
with rust.

With a short intake of breath, Neidelman swiftly raised the binoculars to his eyes, but the boat had plunged into another
patch of fog and the island disappeared once again. A chill wind had picked up and a light drizzle began to fall.

“Can we get closer?” Neidelman murmured.

Hatch steered the boat toward the reefs. As they entered the lee of the island, the surf dropped along with the wind. Abruptly,
they broke through the circle of mist and the island stood revealed in its entirety.

Hatch brought the boat parallel to the reef. In the stern, Neidelman kept the binoculars glued to his face, forgotten pipe
clenched between his teeth, his shoulders darkening in the rain. Bringing the bow into the sea, Hatch threw the boat into
neutral and let it drift. Then at last he turned toward the island to face it himself.

T
he dark, terrible outline of the island, so persistent in memory and nightmare, was now once again before him in reality.
It was little more than a black silhouette etched hard against the gray of sea and sky: shaped like a peculiar, tilted table,
a gradual incline rising from the leeward to sharp bluffs on the seaward coast, punctuated by a hump of land in the center.
The surf pounded the bluffs and boiled over the sunken ledges that ringed the island, leaving a scurf of foam that trailed
like the wake of a boat. It was, if anything, even bleaker than he remembered: windswept, barren, a mile long and eight hundred
yards wide. A single deformed spruce stood above the cobbled beach at the lee end of the island, its top exploded by an old
lightning strike, its crabbed branches raised like a witch’s hand against the sky.

Everywhere, great ruined hulks of infernal machines rose from the waving sawgrass and tea roses: ancient steam-driven compressors,
winches, chains, boilers. A cluster of weather-beaten shacks sat to one side of the old spruce, listing and roofless. At the
far end of the beach, Hatch could make out the smooth rounded forms of the Whalebacks that he and Johnny had clambered over,
more than twenty-five years before. Along the nearest rocks lay the shattered carcasses of several large boats, dashed and
battered by countless storms, their decks and ribbing split and scattered among the granite boulders. Weather-beaten signs,
posted every 100 feet above the high water mark, read:

WARNING!

EXTREME DANGER

NO LANDING

For a moment Neidelman was speechless. “At last,” he breathed.

The moment stretched into minutes as the boat drifted. Neidelman lowered his binoculars and turned toward Hatch. “Doctor?”
he inquired.

Hatch was bracing himself on the wheel, riding out the memory. Horror washed over him like seasickness as the drizzle splattered
the pilothouse windows and the bell buoy tolled mournfully in the mists. But mingled with the horror was something else, something
new: the realization that there
was
a vast treasure down there—that his grandfather had not been a complete fool who destroyed three generations of his family
for nothing. In a moment, he knew what his decision had to be: the final answer that was owed to his grandfather, his father,
and his brother.

“Dr. Hatch?” Neidelman asked again, the hollows of his face glistening with the damp.

Hatch took several deep breaths and forced himself to relax his desperate grip on the wheel. “Circle the island?” he asked
managing to keep his voice even.

Neidelman stared at him another moment. Then he simply nodded and raised the binoculars again.

Easing the throttle open, Hatch swung seaward coming out of the lee and turning into the wind. He proceeded under low engine,
keeping the boat at three knots, looking away from the Whalebacks and the other, more dreadful landmarks he knew would lie
just beyond.

“It’s a hard-looking place,” Neidelman said. “Harder than I’d ever imagined.”

“There’s no natural harbor,” Hatch replied. “The place is surrounded by reefs, and there’s a wicked tiderip. The island’s
exposed to the open ocean, and it gets hammered by Nor’easters every fall. So many tunnels were dug that a good part of the
island is waterlogged and unstable. Even worse, some of the companies brought in explosives. There’s unexploded dynamite,
blasting caps, and God knows what else beneath the surface, just waiting to go off.”

“What’s that wreck?” Neidelman said, pointing at a massive, twisted metal structure rearing above the seaweed-slick rocks.

“A barge left over from my grandfather’s day. It was anchored offshore with a floating crane, got caught in a Nor’easter,
and was thrown on the rocks. After the ocean got through with it, there wasn’t anything left to salvage. That was the end
of my grandfather’s effort.”

“Did your grandfather leave any records?” Neidelman asked.

“My father destroyed them.” Hatch swallowed hard. “My grandfather bankrupted the family with this island, and my father always
hated the place and everything about it. Even before the accident.” His voice trailed off and he gripped the wheel, staring
straight ahead.

“I’m sorry,” Neidelman said, his face softening. “I’ve been so wrapped up in all this that I sometimes forget your personal
tragedy. Forgive me if I’ve asked any insensitive questions.”

Hatch continued gazing over the ship’s bow. “It’s all right.”

Neidelman fell silent, for which Hatch was grateful. Nothing was more painful than hearing the usual platitudes from well-meaning
people, especially the one that went
Don’t blame yourself, it wasn’t your fault.

The
Plain Jane
rounded the southern end of the island and went broadside to the swell. Hatch gave it a little more throttle and plunged
ahead.

“Amazing,” Neidelman muttered. “To think that only this small island of sand and rocks separates us from the largest fortune
ever buried.”

“Careful, Captain,” Hatch replied putting what he hoped was a playful tone on the warning. “That’s the kind of rapturous thinking
that bankrupted a dozen companies. Better to remember the old poem:

Because, though free of the outer court

I am, this Temple keeps her shrine

Sacred to Heaven; because, in short

She’s not and never can be mine.”

Neidelman turned to him. “I see you’ve had time to do a little extracurricular reading beyond
Gray’s Anatomy
and the Merck manual. Not many bonecutters can quote Coventry Patmore.”

Hatch shrugged. “I enjoy a bit of poetry, here and there. I sip it like a fine port. What’s your excuse?”

Neidelman smiled briefly. “I spent more than ten years of my life at sea. Sometimes there’s precious little else to do but
read.”

A coughing sound suddenly broke from the island. It grew louder, turning into a low rumble and finally breaking into a throaty
heaving groan, like the dying sound of some deep-sea beast. Hatch felt his skin crawl.

“What in blazes is that noise?” Neidelman asked sharply.

“Tide’s changing,” Hatch replied, shivering slightly in the raw, wet air. “The Water Pit is apparently connected to the sea
by a hidden flood tunnel. When the rip current changes and the flow in the tunnel reverses, you hear that noise. At least,
that’s one theory.”

The moan continued, slowly subsiding into a wet stutter before dying away completely.

“You’ll hear another theory from the local fishermen,” Hatch said. “Maybe you noticed that there aren’t any lobster pots around
the island. Don’t think that’s from any lack of lobsters.”

“The Ragged Island curse,” Neidelman said, nodding, a sardonic look in his eyes. “I’ve heard of it.” There was a long silence
while Neidelman looked down at the deck. Then he slowly raised his head. “I can’t bring your brother back to life,” he said.
“But I can promise you this: we will learn what happened to him.”

Hatch waved his hand, made speechless by a sudden overflow of emotion. He turned his face to the open pilothouse window, grateful
for the concealing presence of the rain. Quite suddenly, he realized he could not bear to spend any more time at the island.
He nosed the boat westward without explanation, opening the throttle as they once again entered the encircling mantle of mist.
He wanted to return to his motel room, order an early lunch, and wash it down with a pitcher of Bloody Marys.

They broke through the mist into the welcoming gleam of daylight. The wind picked up, and Hatch could feel the droplets of
moisture begin to evaporate from his face and hands. He did not look back. But the simple knowledge that the fogbound island
was quickly shrinking into the horizon eased the constricting feeling in his chest.

“You should know that we’ll be working closely with a first-rate archaeologist and a historian,” Neidelman said at his side.
“The knowledge we’ll gain about seventeenth-century engineering, high seas piracy, and naval technology—perhaps even about
Red Ned Ockham’s mysterious death—will be of incalculable value. This is as much an archaeological dig as a treasure reclamation.”

There was a brief silence. “I’d want to reserve the right to stop the whole show if I felt conditions were growing too dangerous,”
Hatch said.

“Perfectly understandable. There are eighteen clauses in our boilerplate land-lease contract. We’ll just add a nineteenth.”

“And if I become part of this,” Hatch said more slowly, “I don’t want to be a silent partner, looking over anyone’s shoulder.”

Neidelman stirred the dead ashes of his pipe. “Salvage of this sort is an extremely risky business, especially for the layman.
What role do you propose to play?”

Hatch shrugged. “You mentioned that you’d hired an expedition doctor.”

Neidelman stopped stirring his pipe long enough to look up and raise his eyebrows. “As required by Maine law. Are you suggesting
a change of personnel?”

“Yes.”

Neidelman smiled. “And you’re comfortable taking leave from Mount Auburn Hospital at such short notice?”

“My research can wait. Besides, we aren’t talking about all that long. It’s already the end of July. If you’re going to do
this, it’ll have to be over and done within four weeks—for better or worse. The dig can’t continue into storm season.”

Neidelman leaned over the side of the boat and knocked the dottle from his pipe with a single hard stroke. He straightened
up again, the long dark line of Burnt Head framing the horizon behind him.

“In four weeks, it
will
be over,” he said. “Your struggle, and mine.”

H
atch parked the car in the dirt lot next to Bud’s Superette. It was his own car this time, and it was strangely unsettling
to be viewing his past life through the windshield of a vehicle so much a part of his present. He glanced at the cracked leather
seats, at the faded coffee stains on the burled walnut of the gearbox. So familiar, and somehow so safe; it took a supreme
effort to open the door. He plucked the sunglasses from the dash, then put them back. The time for dissembling was over.

He looked around the small square. More stone cobbles were peeping up through the worn asphalt of the street. The old newsstand
at the corner, with its wobbly wire racks of comic books and magazines, had given way to an ice-cream shop. Beyond the square,
the town fell away down the hill, as impossibly picturesque as ever, the slate and cedar-shingled roofs gleaming in the sunlight.
A man walked up from the harbor in rubber boots, a slicker over his shoulder: a lobsterman coming back from work. The man
glanced at Hatch as he passed, then disappeared down a side lane. He was young, no more than twenty, and Hatch realized the
man wasn’t even born when he had left town with his mother. An entire generation had grown up in his absence. And no doubt
an entire generation had died, too. He suddenly wondered if Bud Rowell was still alive.