"But in the Water Pit you have a mystery worthy of attention."
"Yes," Neidelman replied. "Perhaps the only one left. That's why I suppose setbacks such as today's shouldn't dismay me. Great mysteries don't yield up their secrets easily."
There was a long silence as Hatch sipped his port. Most people, he knew, found silence in a conversation to be uncomfortable. But Neidelman seemed to welcome it.
"I meant to ask you," the Captain said at last. "What did you think of our reception in town yesterday?"
"By and large, everyone seems happy with our presence here. We're certainly a boon to local business."
"Yes," Neidelman replied. "But what do you mean, 'by and large'?"
"Well, not everyone's a merchant." Hatch decided there was no point in being evasive. "We seem to have aroused the moral opposition of the local minister."
Neidelman gave a wry smile. "The minister disapproves, does he? After two thousand years of murder, inquisition, and intolerance, it's a wonder any Christian minister still feels he holds the moral high ground."
Hatch shifted a little uncomfortably; this was a voluble Neidelman, quite unlike the cold figure that just a few hours before had ordered the pumps run at a critically dangerous level.
"They told Columbus his ship would fall off the earth. And they forced Galileo to publicly repudiate his greatest discovery."
Neidelman fished his pipe out of his pocket and went through the elaborate ritual of lighting it. "My father was a Lutheran minister himself," he said more quietly, shaking out the match. "I had quite enough to last me a lifetime."
"You don't believe in God?" Hatch asked.
Neidelman gazed at Hatch in silence. Then he lowered his head. "To be honest, I've often wished I did. Religion played such a large role in my childhood that being without it now myself sometimes feels like a void. But I'm the kind of person who cannot believe in the absence of proof. It isn't something I have any control over. I must have proof." He sipped his port. "Why? Do you have any religious beliefs?"
Hatch turned toward him. "Well, yes, I do."
Neidelman waited, smoking.
"But I don't care to discuss them."
A smile spread over Neidelman's face. "Excellent. Can I give you a dividend?"
Hatch handed over his glass. "That wasn't the only opposing voice I heard in town," he continued. "I have an old friend, a teacher of natural history, who thinks we're going to fail."
"And you?" Neidelman asked coolly, busy with the port, not looking at him.
"I wouldn't be in it if I thought we'd fail. But I'd be lying if I said today's setback didn't give me pause."
"Malin," Neidelman said almost gently as he returned the glass, "I can't blame you for that. I confess to feeling a moment of something like despair when the pumps failed us. But there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that we'll succeed. I see now where we've gone wrong."
"I suppose there are even more than five flood tunnels," Hatch said. "Or maybe some hydraulic trick was played on us."
"Undoubtedly. But that's not what I mean. You see, we've been focusing all our attention on the Water Pit. But I've realized the Water Pit is not our adversary."
Hatch raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and the Captain turned toward him, pipe clenched in one fist, eyes glittering brightly.
"It's not the Pit. It's the man. Macallan, the designer. He's been one step ahead of us all the way. He's anticipated our moves, and those who came before us."
Placing his glass on a felt-topped table, he walked over to the wall and swung open a wood panel, revealing a small safe. He punched several buttons on the adjoining keypad, and the safe door swung open. He reached inside, removed something, then turned and laid it on the table in front of Hatch. It was a quarto volume, bound in leather: Macallan's book, On Sacred Structures. The captain opened it with great care, caressing it with long fingers. There in the margins, next to the printed blocks of text, appeared a neat little hand in a pale brown wash that looked almost like watercolor: line after line of monotonous characters, broken only by the occasional small, deft mechanical drawing of various joints, arches, braces, and cribbing.
Neidelman tapped the page. "If the Pit is Macallan's armor, then this is the soft joint where we can slip in the knife. Very soon now, we'll have the second half of the code deciphered. And with it, the key to the treasure."
"How can you be so sure this journal contains the secret to the Pit?" Hatch asked.
"Because nothing else makes sense. Why else would he have kept a secret journal, not only in code, but written in an invisible ink? Remember, Red Ned Ockham needed Macallan to create an impregnable fortress for his treasure. A fortress that would not only resist looters, but would physically endanger them by drowning, or crushing, or whatever. But you don't create a bomb without knowing how to disarm it first. So Macallan would have had to create a secret way for Ockham himself to remove his treasure when he chose: a hidden tunnel, perhaps, or a way to defuse the traps. It stands to reason Macallan would keep a record of it." He leveled his gaze at his guest. "But this journal holds more than just the key to the Pit. It gives us a window into the man's mind. And it is the man we must defeat." He spoke in the same low, strangely forceful tone that Hatch remembered from earlier in the day.
Hatch bent over the book, inhaling the aroma of mildew, leather, dust, and dry rot. "One thing surprises me," he said. "And that's the thought of an architect, kidnapped and forced to work for pirates on some godforsaken island, having the presence of mind to keep a secret journal."
Neidelman nodded slowly. "It's not the act of a fainthearted man. Perhaps he wanted to leave a record, for posterity, of his most ingenious structure. I suppose it's hard to say what motivated him, exactly. After all, the man was a bit of a cipher himself. There's a gap of three years in the historical record, following his leaving Cambridge, during which he seems to have disappeared. And his personal life as a whole remains a mystery. Take a look at this dedication." He carefully turned to the title page of the book, then slid it toward Hatch:
With Gratefulle admiration
For shewing the Way
The Author respectfully dedicates this humble Work
To Eta Onis
"We've searched high and low, but haven't been able to determine the identity of this Eta Onis," Neidelman went on. "Was she Macallan's teacher? Confidante? Mistress?" He carefully closed the book. "It's the same with the rest of his life."
"I'm embarrassed to say that, until you came along, I'd never even heard of the man," Hatch said.
"Most people haven't. But in his day he was a brilliant visionary, a true Renaissance man. He was born in 1657, the illegitimate but favored son of an earl. Like Milton, he claimed to have read every book then published in English, Latin, and Greek. He read law at Cambridge and was being groomed for a bishopric, but then apparently had some kind of secret conversion to Catholicism. He turned his attention to the arts, natural philosophy, and mathematics. And he was an extraordinary athlete, supposedly able to fling a coin so that it rang out against the vault of his largest cathedral."
Neidelman stood up, returned to the safe, and placed the volume within it. "And an interest in hydraulics seems to extend through all his work. In this book, he describes an ingenious aqueduct and siphon system he designed to supply water to Houndsbury Cathedral. He also sketched out a hydraulic system for locks on the Severn canal. It was never built—it seemed a crazy idea at the time—but Magnusen did some modeling and believes it would have worked."
"Did Ockham seek him out deliberately?"
Neidelman smiled. "Tempting to think so, isn't it? But highly doubtful. It was probably one of those fateful coincidences of history."
Hatch nodded toward the safe. "And how did you happen to come across that volume? Was that also a coincidence?"
Neidelman's smile widened. "No, not exactly. When I first started looking into the Ragged Island treasure, I did some research into Ockham. You know that when his com
mand ship was found floating derelict, all hands dead, it was towed into Plymouth and its contents sold at public auction. We managed to dig up the auctioneer's list at the London Public Records Office, and on it were the contents of a captain's chest full of books. Ockham was an educated man, and I assumed this must be his personal library. One volume, On Sacred Structures, caught my eye; it stood out among the maps, French pornography, and naval works that made up the rest of the library. It took three years, on and off, but we finally managed to track that volume down in a heap of rotting books in the undercroft of a half-ruined kirk in Glenfarkille, Scotland."
He stood closer to the fire and spoke in a voice that was low, almost dreamlike. "I'll never forget opening that book for the first time and realizing that the ugly soiling in the margins was a 'white' ink, only then becoming perceivable through the ravages of time and rot. At that moment, I knew—I knew—that the Water Pit and its treasure were going to be mine."
He fell silent, his pipe dead, the glowing coals of the fire weaving a mazy light through the darkening room.
Chapter 21
Kerry Wopner walked jauntily up the cobbled street, whistling the theme from Star Wars. Every now and then, he would stop long enough to snort derisively at the shopfronts he passed. Useless, all of them. Like that Coast to Coast hardware store, there, sporting dusty tools and yard implements old enough to be preindustrial. He knew full well there wasn't a decent software store within three hundred miles. As for bagels, he'd have to cross at least two state lines before he found anyone who even knew what the damn word meant.
He stopped abruptly in front of a crisp white Victorian structure. This had to be it, even if it did look more like an old house than a post office. The large American flag that hung from the porch, and the STORMHAVEN, ME 04564 sign sunk into the front lawn, were dead giveaways. Opening the screen door, Wopner realized that it was a house: The post office itself took up the front parlor, while a strong smell of cooking indicated that domesticity was hidden farther within.
He looked around the small room, shaking his head at the ancient bank of PO boxes and decade-old Wanted posters, until his eyes fell on a large wooden counter marked ROSA POUNDCOOK, POSTMISTRESS. On the far side of the counter sat the woman herself, gray head bent over a cross-stitch panel of a four-masted schooner. Wopner realized with surprise that there was no line; that, in fact, he was the only patron in the place.
"'Scuse me," he said, approaching the counter. "This is the post office, right?"
"Yes, indeed," said Rosa, tightening one last stitch and carefully laying the panel on the arm of her rocker before raising her eyes. When she saw Wopner, she gave a start. "Oh, my," she said, a hand moving involuntarily to her chin as if to reassure herself that Wopner's straggly goatee wasn't catching.
"That's good, because I'm expecting an important package by courier, see?" Wopner squinted at her from across the counter. "The pony express delivers to these parts, doesn't it?"
"Oh!" Rosa Poundcook repeated, rising from her rocker and knocking the cross-stitch frame askew. "Do you have a name, I mean, may I have your name, please?"
Wopner let out a short nasal laugh. "It's Wopner. Kerry Wopner."
"Wopner?" She began searching through a small wooden cardfile filled with yellow slips. "W-h-o-p-p—"
"No, no, no. Wopner. No h. One p," came the annoyed response.
"I see," said Rosa, her composure recovering as she found the slip. "Just a moment." Taking one last, wondering look at the programmer, she disappeared through a door in the back.
Wopner lounged against the counter, whistling again, as the screen door creaked open in protest. Glancing over, he saw a tall, skinny man shut the door carefully behind him. The man turned around, and Wopner was immediately reminded of Abraham Lincoln: gaunt, hollow-eyed, loose-limbed. He wore a clerical collar under a simple black suit, and held a small sheaf of letters in one hand. Wopner looked away quickly, but it was too late; eye contact had been made, and he saw with alarm that the man was already walking over to him. Wopner had never met a priest before, let alone spoken to one, and he had no intention of starting now. He hurriedly reached for a nearby stack of postal publications and began to read intently about the new line of Amish quilt stamps.
"Hello," he heard the man say. Turning reluctantly, Wopner found the priest standing directly behind him, one hand outstretched, a narrow smile creasing his pinched face.
"Yeah, hey," he said, giving the hand a limp shake and quickly returning to his publication.
"I'm Woody Clay," the man said.
"Okay," Wopner said, not looking at him.
"And you must be one of the Thalassa crew," said Clay, stepping up to the counter beside Wopner.
"Right, sure am." Wopner flipped over the brochure as a diversionary tactic while he slid a foot farther away from the stranger.
"Mind if I ask you a question?"
"No, shoot," said Wopner as he read. He'd never known there were so many different kinds of blankets in the whole world.
"Do you really expect to recover a fortune in gold?"
Wopner looked up from the brochure. "Well, I plan to do a pretty good imitation of it." The man didn't smile. "Sure, I expect to. Why not?"
"Why not? Shouldn't the question be why?"
Something in the man's tone disconcerted Wopner. "Whaddya mean, why? It's two billion dollars."
"Two billion dollars," the man repeated, momentarily surprised. Then he nodded, as if in affirmation of something he'd suspected. "So it's just for the money. There's no other reason."
Wopner laughed. ''Just for the money? You need a better reason? Let's be realistic. I mean, you're not talking to Mother Teresa here, for Chrissakes." Suddenly he remembered the clerical collar. "Oh, sorry," he said, abashed, "I didn't mean, you being a priest and all, it's just—"
The man gave a clipped smile. "It's all right, I've heard it before. And I'm not a priest. I'm a Congregational minister."
"I see," said Wopner. "That's some kind of sect, right?"
"Is the money really that important to you?" Clay gazed at Wopner steadily. "Under the circumstances, I mean?"
Wopner returned the look. "What circumstances?" He glanced nervously into the bowels of the post office. What the hell was taking that fat lady, anyway? She'd have had time to walk to frigging Brooklyn by now.
The man leaned forward. "So what do you do for Thalassa?"
"I run the computers."
"Ah. That must be interesting."
Wopner shrugged. "Yeah. When they work."
As he listened, the man's face became a picture of concern. "And everything's running smoothly? No complaints?"
Wopner frowned. "No," he said guardedly.
Clay nodded. "Good."
Wopner put the brochure back on the counter. "Why are you asking, anyway?" he said with feigned nonchalance.
"No reason," the minister replied. "Nothing important, anyway. Except..." he paused.
Wopner craned his neck forward slightly.
"In the past, that island—well, it created difficulties for anyone who set foot on it. Boilers exploded. Machines failed without any reason. People got hurt. People got killed."
Wopner stepped back with a snort. "You're talking about the Ragged Island curse," he said. "The curse stone, and all that stuff? It's a load of bullpoop, if you'll excuse my French."
Clay's eyebrows shot up. "Is it, now? Well, there are people who've been here a lot longer than you who don't think so. And as for the stone, it's locked in the basement of my church right now, where it's been for the last one hundred years."
"Really?" Wopner asked, mouth open.
Clay nodded.
There was a silence.
The minister leaned closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Ever wonder why there's no lobster buoys around that island?"
"You mean those things floating on the water everywhere?"
"That's right."
"I never noticed there weren't any."
"Next time you go out there, take a look." Clay dropped his voice even further. "There's a good reason for that."
"Yeah?"
"It happened about a hundred years ago. As I heard it, there was a lobsterman, name of Hiram Colcord. He used to drop his pots around Ragged Island. Everybody warned him not to, but the lobstering was fine and he said he didn't give a fig for any curse. One summer day—not unlike this one—he disappeared into that mist to set his traps. Around sundown his boat came drifting back out on the tide. Only this time he wasn't on it. There were lobster traps piled up, and a barrel full of live lobsters. But no Colcord. They found his lunch, half-eaten on the galley board, and a half-drunk bottle of beer, left as if he'd just stood up and walked away."
"He fell overboard and got his butt drowned. So what?"
"No," Clay continued. "Because that evening his brother went out to the island to see if Hiram had been stranded somehow. He never came back, either. The next day, his boat drifted out of the mists."
Wopner swallowed. "So they both fell out and drowned."
"Two weeks later," Clay said, "their bodies washed up on Breed's Point. One of the locals who saw what had happened went mad with fright. And none of the rest would say what they had seen. Not ever."
"Come on," said Wopner, nervously.
"People said it wasn't just the Pit that guarded the treasure now. Understand? You know that terrible sound the island makes, every time the tide changes? They say—"
There was a bustling noise from the rear of the house. "Sorry I took so long," panted Rosa as she emerged, a package tucked under one plump arm. "It was under that load of bird feeders for the Coast to Coast, and with Eustace down at the pound this morning, you know, I had to shift everything myself."
"Hey, no problem, thanks." Wopner grabbed the package gratefully and headed quickly for the door.
"Excuse me, mister!" the postmistress said.
Wopner stopped short. Then, unwillingly, he looked around, the package clasped to his chest.
The woman was holding out the yellow sheet. "You have to sign for it."
Riptide Page 16