by Roland Smith
“Moleskines,” Marty said. “Three hundred and fifteen of them.” Grace had kept a diary ever since she had learned how to write at the age of five.
“Yeah,” Luther said. “That suitcase weighs about a thousand pounds. The valuable gear is here in the backpack. Didn’t want to risk losing it if they lost my luggage at the airport. Phil could hardly squeeze the suitcases in with all the junk Dr. Fish Stink brought along.” He nodded at the Bullet Heads. “These guys are lucky they aren’t checking his stuff. It smelled worse than he did. Bouquet of roadkill. One whiff of that and these two security guards would be retching.”
“We are not security guards,” Bullet Head #1 muttered.
“Didn’t mean to offend you,” Luther said cheerfully.
Marty had forgotten how pleasantly annoying Luther could be when someone was annoying him. Cryptos was going to be much more fun with Luther around.
“We are Security Specialists,” Bullet Head #2 said.
“Sorry,” Luther said. “You act like security guards and I just thought …” He turned his last pocket inside out. “That does it for the pockets.” He held his arms out from his sides. “I’m ready for the pat down, but I have to warn you, I’m a little ticklish. Oh, and I have this rash that’s highly contagious. The doctors don’t know what it is or how to get rid of it.”
Bullet Head #2 snapped on a pair of disposable rubber gloves and frisked Luther more roughly than he had Marty. Luther giggled through the entire process.
“What’s on the flash drives?” Bullet Head #1 asked.
“Stuff,” Luther said.
“We’ll examine the stuff and give the drives back to you … maybe. We’ll keep the camera and the video game player, too.”
“And the cell phone,” Bullet Head #2 added.
“I need the iPhone,” Luther said. “My parents are going to be calling. I don’t think they’d be happy with you if you took it away.”
Luther’s parents were billionaires and barely knew they had a son. Marty had never even met them, and he’d known Luther since they’d attended first grade together at the Omega Opportunity Preparatory School in Switzerland. He doubted Luther’s parents would be calling.
“It’s the rules,” Bullet Head #1 said. “You got a problem with the rules, you can take it up with Mr. Ikes or Dr. Wolfe.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Marty said. “You can use my Gizmo to call your parents or to have them call you.”
“You mean I don’t get my own Gizmo?” Luther asked, disappointed.
“Afraid not,” Marty said. “Only a few people have them. Grace doesn’t have one, either. Al decided to limit the units for security reasons. To make a call out or get one in we’ll have to get his or Wolfe’s permission.”
“Why did they give you a Gizmo?” Luther asked.
Marty looked at the guards. “I’ll tell you later. You won’t believe the improvements Ted Bronson has made to them.”
Ted Bronson was Wolfe’s partner in eWolfe, a software development and technology company. Marty had never laid eyes on Ted, but not for lack of trying. It was rumored that the eccentric genius hadn’t stepped outside the Quonset hut where he invented things in more than three years.
Luther reached for his pack.
“That stays here,” Bullet Head #1 said. “We’ll give it back to you after we’ve had a chance to examine the contents.”
“When?” Luther asked.
“That’s hard to say,” Bullet Head #2 said. “We’re kind of backed up.”
Luther looked at the abandoned dock. Phil had already taken off in the seaplane to pick up more people from the mainland. “I can see that,” Luther said. “Let me just take one thing with me. It never leaves my side. If I can’t take it, then I’ll just have to wait here with you until you’re done.”
“Let’s see what it is,” Bullet Head #1 said, clearly not happy about the prospect of spending another minute with Luther Smyth.
“Close your eyes,” Luther told Marty.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a present for you and Grace, you dunce.”
Marty closed his eyes and heard pages being turned.
“This is just a bunch of —”
“Shh!” Luther said. “Do you want to wreck the surprise?”
“Just take it with you and get out of here,” Bullet Head #1 said.
Marty opened his eyes and saw that whatever Luther had taken out of his pack was now stuffed under his sweatshirt. They walked through the gate and over to a beat-up four-wheeler. Marty strapped on a helmet and swung onto the front. Luther did the same and climbed on behind him. While Marty tried to get the four-wheeler started, Luther turned around and shouted at the Bullet Heads, “I wasn’t kidding about the rash. The last doctor who looked at it was infected within an hour and he still has it. He was wearing gloves, too. I’m really sorry.”
The four-wheeler belched to life and Marty peeled out.
* * *
“Jeez!” Luther said. “It is a fort.”
They were standing outside a three-story building made of black granite blocks.
“It’s actually Wolfe’s house,” Marty said. “And it’s a little less forbidding on the inside, but not by much. Hey, you don’t really have an incurable rash, do you?”
“Duh du jour,” Luther said. “But when I took your present out of my pack, I managed to open the itching powder Brenda Scrivens invented in chemistry class. Those guys are going to think they have an incurable rash as soon as they go through my stuff.”
Marty laughed. He and Luther were going to have a blast — if the Bullet Heads didn’t shoot his friend before they even shipped out.
Wolfe’s massive stone house sat atop a high promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Luther walked over to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Marty joined him.
“How far is Cryptos from the Washington coast?” Luther asked.
“About a hundred and fifty miles,” Marty answered.
“So is it part of Washington State? Is it part of the United States?”
“Of course,” Marty said, but he didn’t really know. He’d heard that the island had been a secret base during World War Two, and that Wolfe had gotten it in exchange for some work he and Ted Bronson had done for the government. Grace had tried to find the island on a nautical map, but it was as if the island didn’t exist. The name Cryptos came from the word cryptic, which meant “secret” — and there were certainly a lot of secrets on the island.
“So how’s the birthday girl?” Luther asked.
Marty thought about the question for a second, then said, “Grace is not the same Grace you knew at Omega Prep.”
“I figured that,” Luther said. “I mean, when you and she left school, she was your twin sister. Now it turns out she’s your cousin.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Marty said. “A lot more.”
* * *
Grace was in the library. She was as excited as Marty about Luther’s arrival, but for different reasons. Marty hadn’t mentioned it much, but she knew he was worried about their parents — his parents, she corrected herself mentally. Some days, she still had to remind herself that she was now Grace Wolfe, not Grace O’Hara. Luther’s presence on the island and aboard the Coelacanth would be a welcome diversion for Marty — something to keep his mind off the ongoing tragedy.
And, Grace thought selfishly, with Luther there she might be able to get something accomplished. She loved Marty, but he had a tendency to dominate every waking moment of her life. She’d barely had time to think since they had returned from the Congo. The dinosaur eggs were nothing compared to what she had discovered about herself and her past.
Just then, Marty and Luther burst into the library.
Grace watched Luther dart around the large room like a hungry mosquito, taking in everything at once with openmouthed enthusiasm. He had more energy than any other human being she had ever met. It was as if he were on fire beneath his pale, freckled skin.
Back at Omega Prep they used to make bets on how long he could remain seated in his chair. Eight minutes and thirty-six seconds was his record, and the only reason he lasted that long was because the headmaster, Dr. Bartholomew Beasel, was standing above him, ready to push him back down if he popped up. Oddly enough, Luther was just the opposite when he slept. Waking him was like trying to rouse a corpse.
Luther’s first stop was one of the two large saltwater aquariums bracketing the giant fireplace at the far end of the library.
“Coelacanths, huh?” he said, tapping the thick glass. “With those armored scales, they look medieval, like they’re ready to joust.”
“They just sit there most of the time,” Marty said. “They’re kind of boring.”
“But not these!” Luther said, rushing over to the second tank. “Squid!”
“A common variety,” Marty explained. “Wolfe caught them off the end of the dock one night. He used a flashlight to attract them, and when they rose to the surface, he just scooped them up with a net.”
“But we’re going after the giant squid in New Zealand,” Luther said. “In Nordic mythology they’re called kraken. Supposedly they lived off the coasts of Scandinavian countries and attacked ships. I’ve been doing some reading about them. Tennyson even wrote a poem about one, back in the nineteenth century. I can’t remember how it goes, but their scientific name is —”
“The kraken and the giant squid may not be the same animal,” Grace said. “The kraken might be a cryptid. The giant squid is not. We know the giant squid exists, and the scientific name is Architeuthis.”
Luther looked around in confusion. He couldn’t see her.
Marty pointed his index finger at the ceiling.
Luther looked up, and for once he was speechless.
Grace was balanced on the middle of a high wire stretched tautly between the rails surrounding the circular second-floor library, eighteen feet above their heads. From aloft, she recited the opening lines of Tennyson’s poem:
“Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth —”
“What the heck are you doing up there?” Luther asked.
“Focusing,” Grace answered.
“There’s no net. If you fall, you’ll break your neck.”
“I won’t fall,” Grace said. She spread her arms and started walking backward on the wire toward the rail. “How was your flight?”
“Uh … rough,” Luther answered. “They made me stay in my seat.”
“That must have been hard all the way from Switzerland.”
“Yeah. I brought all your diaries.”
“My Moleskines,” Grace said. “Thank you.”
“I told you she had changed,” Marty said.
“Yeah,” Luther said. “But you didn’t tell me that she had joined the circus.”
Grace reached the rail, climbed over, and made her way to the spiral staircase leading to the ground floor. She joined the boys in front of the squid tank.
“Happy birthday,” Luther said.
“Thank you.”
“How’d you learn to …” Luther pointed up at the wire. “… you know …”
“Laurel Lee taught me,” Grace said. “I started out low and worked my way up. It’s helped me learn to focus and overcome some of my fears.”
Marty’s right, Luther thought, Grace has changed. He looked at Marty. “You told me Dr. Lee was a cultural anthropologist. You didn’t mention that she was an acrobat, too.”
“I guess it slipped my mind,” Marty said.
Luther looked back at Grace. “Is Dr. Lee here?”
“I wish she were,” Grace said sadly. “She’s still in Africa.”
“So, what do you have planned for your birthday?”
“I don’t know,” Grace said. “That’s not up to me.”
Luther grinned and pulled a sketchbook out from under his sweatshirt. “I made something for you. Well, it’s actually for both you and Marty, but mostly you because it’s your birthday.” He took the pad over to a laboratory bench and cleared a space. Marty and Grace joined him.
“It’s a graphic novel of what happened to you in the Congo,” Luther explained. “Of course, I wasn’t there, so all I had to go on was what Marty told me. It’s a little crude and I’m not as good of an artist as Marty, but …”
“Oh, stop it, Luther,” Grace said. “Just show us.”
Luther opened the pad.
The first drawing was of a helicopter crashing in a jungle.
Marty and Grace stared at the image in silence.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Luther said. “I mean …”
“No, it’s fine,” Marty said. He pointed at the drawing. “That’s my parents crashing in South America.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what started all of this, you guys leaving school, going to live with your uncle — Marty’s uncle — so I figured …” Luther hesitated, then asked, “Has there been any news?”
Marty shook his head. “But Wolfe still has people looking. He won’t give up.”
“And I think they’re still alive,” Grace added. “If they weren’t, I’d know it.” She looked at Marty with her robin’s-egg-blue eyes. “I would feel it.”
Luther looked away. Marty’s parents had been missing for more than six months in the Brazilian rain forest, one of the most hostile areas on the planet. The chances of their still being alive were just about zero.
“If Grace says they’re alive, then I think they’re alive,” Marty said. “So don’t sweat it. Let’s see the rest of your drawings.”
Luther began flipping pages.
Marty was not impressed with Luther’s drawings, but the story they told was pretty accurate, considering that Luther had pieced it together from the few emails Marty had sent him during and after their ordeal.
The next drawing showed Marty and Grace landing on Cryptos Island to meet Travis Wolfe, the uncle they didn’t know they had, followed by the arrival of Dr. Laurel Lee from the Congo with an egg the size of a soccer ball, belonging to the legendary Mokélé-mbembé — the last living dinosaur.
As Luther continued to turn the pages, Marty looked over at Grace. The last few months had been a shock for him, but they had completely turned Grace’s life upside down. To learn that she had actually been born in the Congo; that Wolfe was in fact her father and had given her to his sister and her husband, Marty’s parents, to raise as their own child; that he had done this to protect her from her own grandfather, world-famous conservationist Noah Blackwood — the whole story was pretty incredible. Grace was handling it well, all things considered.
Marty turned back to Luther’s graphic novel.
“See, this is supposed to be Butch McCall, that guy who works for your grandfather,” Luther was telling Grace.
“The guy who kidnapped me,” Grace clarified.
Marty, Grace, and Luther spent the next half hour reading the rest of Luther’s masterpiece, which concluded with Wolfe, Laurel Lee, and Bertha Bishop commandeering Noah Blackwood’s helicopter, stranding Noah and Butch McCall in the Congo, and returning triumphantly to Cryptos Island with the Mokélé-mbembé eggs.
“It’s great,” Marty said. “Really.”
“It’s excellent,” Grace said. “You put a lot of work into this.”
“It’s just a draft,” Luther said, flushing a little. He looked at Marty. “I thought that we could spruce it up on our way to New Zealand.”
“Sure,” Marty said. “We could add a few things here and there, and I might be able to touch up some of the illustrations a little.” Meaning I’ll completely redraw them, he thought. But it is a great piece of work, considering Luther drew it from Switzerland, thousands of miles north of the Congo.
“We have something for you, too,” Marty said, opening one of the cabinets beneath the laboratory bench.
“But it’s not
my birthday,” Luther protested.
Marty ignored him. One of the problems with getting Luther anything was that Luther had everything — at least everything he wanted. His absentee parents made sure of that. Another problem was that Luther didn’t want much and was not interested in normal things.
Marty set a glass jar filled with salt on top of the bench.
“How thoughtful,” Luther said. “A saltshaker. That’s the one thing I didn’t bring with me from Omega Prep.”
“Just open it,” Marty said.
Luther carefully unscrewed the lid, then dipped his little finger into the white crystals and touched it to his tongue. “Mmm,” he said. “Sodium chloride. Delicious!”
“Right,” Marty said. “Salt. Dump it out.”
Luther dumped the contents into the lab sink. Buried in the salt was a desiccated object with fangs. He held it up and blew the salt off, tears welling in his eyes. “This is the greatest gift anyone has ever given to me,” Luther said. “It’s the head of the green mamba you killed in the Congo, right?”
Marty nodded. “We thought you’d like it,” he said, delighted at Luther’s reaction but not surprised. “It’s from both Grace and me. The venom sacs are still intact, so I would keep it in the jar if I were you.”
Luther put the snake head back in the jar and scooped most of the salt back on top of it. “I don’t know what to say.”
Marty was about to tell him that it was no big deal when the library door burst open. Travis Wolfe strode in, accompanied by Al Ikes. Wolfe was smiling. Al was frowning. They made an odd couple. Wolfe was a giant, well over six feet tall, with unruly black hair and a bushy black beard. He wore a gray sweatshirt, baggy cargo pants, and size fifteen sneakers. Al was clean-shaven and dressed in a three-piece suit and polished wing tips. The top of his carefully groomed brown hair barely reached Wolfe’s broad shoulder.
“This is my friend Luther Smyth,” Marty said to Wolfe, totally ignoring the perpetually irked Al Ikes.