Night Diver

by Elizabeth Lowell

  With a sigh, she put the pan away, pulled her computer from her luggage, booted up the spreadsheet she had been working on, and settled in for a few hours of sorting and entering.

  From the back room, Holden listened to the small sounds Kate made while she sorted papers, dropped something, cursed softly, and began clicking away on the computer keys.

  Probably entering receipts in columns, for all the good it will do. Whatever she digs out of that snarl of papers in the cartons won’t be enough to save the dive, so why did her family bother to fly her in?

  No answer occurred except the obvious—a bit of sexual distraction. The oldest game in the world. Because it worked.

  Holden couldn’t deny he was attracted. But distracted?

  Bloody hell. Yes, I’m distracted, sitting here mooning about her, envying every bit of food that touched her lips. Sexy lips, those. Full, made for—

  With a phrase in Pashto, he stopped his wandering thoughts, pulled out his cell phone, and hit Farnsworth’s number. While he waited for an answer, he shut the door to the tiny bedroom and booted up his own computer.

  “Malcolm here.”

  “About bloody time,” Holden said.

  “The main generator’s packed it again. We’re down to flashlights because the captain is too stingy to eat fuel running one of the main engines. Have you ever tried describing, entering, and photographing under these conditions? Took a bit to even find my phone.”

  “Try doing everything underwater,” Holden said, “and then complain to me. What’s wrong with the generator?”

  “It’s older than dirt. Old man Donnelly is down below cursing rather frightfully while he works on it. The crew took the big tender to shore for the night. Bloody hot belowdecks.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “I already had everything set up in the room,” Farnsworth said. “It’s not my first time in the tropics. Actually, I prefer the heat.”

  “Going native?”

  “Not until I’m a pensioner.”

  “Where is the gold chain the diver brought up?” Holden asked.

  “With me. I take all important finds ashore, personally. I’m the only one with the key to the warehouse where I pack important salvage for the trip home to London. Natives pack the rest.”

  “Are they honest?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Farnsworth said. “The strongbox with the valuable goods is bolted to the floor of the warehouse. Locked, of course. Again, I have the only key.”

  Are you awake every moment of every day? Holden thought, but he knew what the answer was.

  He considered telling Farnsworth how thin the security was, but didn’t. When Holden had brought the subject up in London, he had been told that security wasn’t his area of expertise, and to let the professionals do their work.

  “I’ll have a look at the warehouse, of course,” Holden said.

  “Any time, but not right away, I hope. I’m up to my arse entering bits and pieces. As the warehouse key never leaves my custody, I will be the one to show you around.”

  Holden wondered how many duplicates of the key were in circulation—a man had to sleep, after all. But all he said was “Anything valuable among the china bits found today?”

  “Trifles. A gold ring that might have held a stone. A clump of metal that might have come from a money bag or the galley. A pewter cup that had been banged about. Another bit of gold that could have been part of a brooch or earrings. A rather nice carnelian, or it might be if it survives the baths. Also what appears from above to be a cannon. I’ll send photos to AO to see if they think another cannon is worth concentrating on in what time we have before the storm comes.”

  Holden switched over to the dive software on his computer. It opened on a picture of the seabed in light blue and black. There was a suggestion of a rib cage—crescent forms laid out in a repeating pattern, though it was crumbling and uneven. He clicked a few more keys and a grid appeared over the wreck.

  “Which section had the recent find?” Holden asked.

  As the other man answered, Holden entered notes on the computer program and said, “These finds don’t seem to follow any pattern.”

  “The bottom has been stirred a time or two,” Farnsworth said dryly.

  “The ribs and keel appear in decent shape under the coral camouflage.”

  “I wouldn’t know. My work is cataloging, not diving. Is Antiquities really going to shut down this operation?”

  Holden switched over and looked at the weather program, which was always running in the background on his computer. Any significant variation in the prediction would set off an alarm.

  “As far as I know,” he said, “the home office is in a holding pattern. The storm has stalled. Nothing predicted for a day or three, but the five-day forecast looks dodgy, to say the least. The fiddly bits you just described certainly won’t put anyone back home in a hopeful frame of mind.”

  Farnsworth sighed. “Any more news on the black market?”

  “It is doing considerably better finding treasure from Moon Rose than we are.”

  “Bollocks. They should have locked up that bastard.”

  “Which one?” Holden asked.

  “The idiot who thought he could wriggle away from the cops by giving information on antiquarian black market trinkets fenced in St. Vincent. That’s how the head of our department heard about the coins.”

  “Ah, that one.” Holden shrugged. “As thieves go, he was rather deft.”

  “Stanley Chatham—our boss—is a thief?”

  “I was referring to the weasel who decided to tell the Crown all about some shady doings that began in St. Vincent and ended with secret auctions. Because his information was good, he was allowed to slide back into the pond to continue his business, instead of being gutted and grilled as he deserved.”

  While he talked, Holden switched screens again. The image that came up was breathtaking.

  “I would very much like to talk to the weasel about the Marquez Crest,” Holden continued, looking at the screen.

  “What is that?”

  “A quite valuable ring. The gold was said to come from a melted pagan statue. Inca, I believe. The man who commissioned the ring apparently took great satisfaction in knowing he had helped subdue the heathens and become monstrously wealthy in the process.”

  “Why couldn’t I have been born into that family?” muttered Farnsworth.

  “Ugly mother?”

  “Sod off,” the other man said without heat.

  “The ring was topped with thirteen square-cut emeralds, shaped into a Templar Cross. It was a statement of rank and wealth, and a subtle twist of the nose of the Church, hinting that Captain Gabriel Mignola Brandon Marquez remembered the order that the pope himself wanted forgot.”

  “You’ve seen the ring?”

  “Two photos, one from an unnamed source and the other a closeup of an old painting of the proud captain displaying his wealth. The captain’s ship was called Cross of Madrid, last seen in company with Moon Rose, which is rather like pairing a fat tuna with a shark. In all likelihood, Bloody Green was wearing the Marquez Crest when Moon Rose met its fate.”

  Farnsworth’s breath sucked in. “Larry told me about the legend of Moon Rose. A fortune in gold and gems. No wonder Antiquities has their knickers in a twist.”

  “I received my marching orders to St. Vincent shortly after Chatham discovered that the ring had been auctioned on the black market,” Holden said.

  “So Chatham thinks the Donnellys aren’t bringing up all they find and handing it over to me for cataloging?”

  “That’s one possibility. There are others. The divers themselves are a dodgy lot. They could easily be concealing small finds such as rings or coins and selling them ashore. The dive cameras can’t be everywhere at once, and in any case they are only meant as a safety measure and historical record rather than as security.”

  “Volkert is a bit of a swine, too.”

  “I don’t know th
e man,” Holden said.

  “Has a piece ashore, if you can imagine that.”

  “I can imagine she is rather well paid by island standards, but that is neither here nor there. If having women ashore was illegal, a great many seafaring men would be locked up.”

  Farnsworth laughed.

  “Now, which grid did the pottery and jewelry come from?” Holden asked.

  While Farnsworth answered in numbers and compass settings, Holden typed. Very soon the cramped position holding the phone in place between his tilted head and shoulder became uncomfortable. And without the door open, there was precious little air movement. The room was getting hot enough to make a rock sweat.

  “Stand by,” Holden said.

  Before Farnsworth could answer, Holden was on his feet.

  CHAPTER 7

  DELIBERATELY HOLDEN MADE a lot of noise opening the bedroom door and walking down the short hall to the living area. The first thing he saw was Kate asleep over her paperwork, her computer on screen saver.

  I’d love to have the right to tuck her in bed, he thought. Next to me.

  Naked.

  But he didn’t, so he went back to his room, left his door open for the cross-ventilation, stripped down to minimal underwear, and picked up his cell phone.

  “I’m putting you on speaker,” he said. “Bloody hard to type otherwise.”

  “Where were we?” Farnsworth asked, smothering a yawn.

  “The site map, all twenty-five sectors of it. Overview.”

  “Right.” There was a pause. “Don’t know how much AO gave you.”

  “Just tell me what you have,” Holden said. “I’ll worry about correlation with the AO information.”

  “Personally, I’ll go with Larry’s gut belief that the wreck is too small to be the Cross of Madrid. He says it’s the right size to be a two-deck sloop, stripped down for speed and boarding larger, slower boats.”

  “Merchant ships,” Holden said.

  “Right. They weren’t protected like a treasure galleon with its escort of armed vessels.”

  “That’s in line with Chatham’s theory of the wreck being the Moon Rose.”

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Farnsworth said. “AO mentioned a plump bonus if the salvage went beyond a certain amount.”

  “There was nothing about that in the dive contract I saw.”

  “Oh, the crew wouldn’t get much. I was speaking personally. Although it is about as likely as a blind man finding a needle in a haystack. Moon Rose was perhaps twenty-five meters at the waterline, according to the documentation AO gave me, and presently is spread out like an egg smashed onto concrete from a third-story window.”

  “That’s the problem with wooden ships,” Holden said. “The sea bottom constantly changes, coral grows, and things come apart in storms. Radar scans were reasonably clear, though. The wreck is indeed down there. Has anyone recently run metal detectors over the site?”

  “Volkert would know about that. Or Larry, if you can catch him awake and above water. Poor devil is doing the work of three men. The most recent detailed metal scan that I have a file of was”—papers rustled, computer keys clacked, and Farnsworth continued—“sector C2, just off center of the main hulk. That’s where the ingots and a handful of the gold coins came out. Two were unique. Lovely coins, so much history in the reversed face. AO was quite excited and told me not to say a word.”

  Holden hadn’t been told about finding more of the special coins, but it explained why some people at AO were so determined to continue with the dive. Hoping his superior was correct, Holden studied the images of the wreck that he had. “In theory, every grid square should be producing something, if only pottery.”

  “The gold chain was rather nice.”

  “My inbox is full of specific requests that one grid or another be hoovered up and spilled out onto the dredge platform,” Holden said.

  “Did they give you specific depths to search in each grid?” Farnsworth asked eagerly.

  “No. I pointed out that lack to Chatham. He said they were doing the best they could with the information at hand, and if I needed more, I should get it without interfering with the salvage process itself.”

  “I think that would be rather difficult and probably a waste of your time. On the subject of wasted time, AO hasn’t demanded a visual review of the dive records, have they?”

  Holden thought of the hours and hours and hours of dives recorded and archived as .mpg files. Going through them would be less interesting than watching grass grow.

  “Some poor drone spends her days in London doing just that,” Holden said. “If Ms. Pinkham had found anything dodgy, the local constables would already have boarded the Golden Bough and locked up everything in sight.”

  “Isn’t that your job?”

  “Not at all. I’m here to assess the efficiency of the dive itself,” Holden said. It wasn’t the whole truth, but the rest was nothing Farnsworth needed to know. “You’ve spent a lot of time on board. Have you noticed anything unusual in the crew or the salvage operations?”

  “Sorry. Usually I work on land. This is only my second time on a marine salvage site. I wouldn’t know what is common, much less out of place.”

  Holden tried another angle. “What’s your impression of the elder Donnelly?”

  “I’ve had almost nothing to do with him. His grandson seems a hard worker.”

  “What of the granddaughter?”

  “Larry mentioned once or twice that he had a sister. Sorry, mate. I’m not being much help, am I?”

  “Why don’t you ask me?” said a cold voice from the doorway.

  Kate’s voice.

  Abruptly Holden ended the connection with Farnsworth and turned to her. When he saw her eyes widen, he remembered that all he wore was briefs.

  “If it bothers you,” he said, “I’ll dress.”

  “No,” she said, then cleared her throat, trying to remove the husky catch in her voice. “I was raised on a dive boat. I knew all about the difference between male and female before I was old enough to put it in words.”

  It was half true. The other half was that Holden Cameron had the kind of body that the ancient Greeks had immortalized in marble. Except he was much warmer than white marble. His skin was a bronze-gold over muscles shifting as fluidly as the sea, shadows curving across his body like a lover’s fingers.

  Don’t stare. Don’t stare. Don’t stare, she told herself firmly. God, would it be wrong to stroke him?

  Yes, it would be wrong.

  She dragged her attention from his body and said the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll bet that scar has a story.”

  Holden glanced at his left thigh, where a piece of an exploding mine had played merry hell with it. The scar was inches long. “Job hazard. Mines do have a tendency to blow.”

  She went still. “How far down were you?”

  “Not far enough to die.”

  “I’ll bet it was . . .” Horrible. Terrifying. “Painful,” she managed finally.

  “Most of the time it looks worse than it feels.” Automatically he kneaded the torn flesh. “It healed improperly, leaving a cyst. Pressure changes make it flare up until things equalize out, so I’m rather good at predicting weather changes.”

  Her eyes kept straying to his lap. She closed them for an instant, then focused on his face. “Flying must be hard on you.” Hard. Could I have chosen a less loaded word? And speaking of loaded . . .

  Kate prayed that her straying thoughts weren’t revealed on her face.

  “Smaller aircraft can be a problem in terms of pressure changes,” he said, wishing she was as stripped down as he was. Though her blouse was loose, it clung in intriguing places. He hoped he was doing a better job of keeping his glance from wandering than she was. “Larger planes are pressurized enough that it only hurts for half an hour or so at a time.”

  “I remember the weird feeling I got in my joints and lungs when I rushed too much coming up from a dive. Even when I did
it right, the sensation was uncomfortable for my first few times.” She hesitated. If the lower pressures aboard an airplane hurt him, then the higher pressures of diving would be a lot worse. “You don’t dive anymore, do you?”

  “The doctors tell me they can cut out the cyst any time I get tired of it. The idea of months more physio doesn’t intrigue me, however.”

  “Physio?”

  “Therapy of the physical variety.”

  “Do you miss diving?” she asked.

  “Do you?”

  Echoes of terror, denial, rage; a tidal wave of emotions from the teenager she had been. She drew a careful breath. “No. I don’t miss diving.”

  “Odd.”

  “Why?”

  “Diving for treasure with your family as a child is the stuff of dreams for land-bound children,” Holden said.

  She forced herself to look away from his tempting golden brown skin. “It was all I knew.”

  “Normal, in a word.”

  She nodded and looked into his changeable eyes, almost gold in the low light. “When I went to college, I found it exotic and strange because everyone had an address that wasn’t just a mail drop, and classrooms didn’t float around, and I could walk all day and not end up where I started.”

  “Still, getting your allowance in doubloons must have been nice,” he said.

  She accepted his teasing with an ease that should have worried her, as if she had known him for years instead of hours. “Allowance? Why would I need something like that? I was fed, had a roof over my head most of the time, and only had to do the minimum amount of schoolwork to keep the State of Florida off our backs. What ten-year-old wouldn’t love that?”

  “But not an eighteen-year-old?”

  “You grow up,” she said with a shrug. “You realize that the thing you’ve built your life on isn’t going to last. Particularly when your competition has the resources of say, the United Kingdom.”

  “We’re not competition. We’re a client.”

  “Not the way Grandpa sees it. Remember, it used to be that those wrecks down there were his. He just hadn’t gotten around to pulling up the gold yet.”

  “Or hadn’t found it,” Holden pointed out.