Dark Destiny

by Edward S. Aarons

  There was still no alarm by the time he reached the beach and turned toward the mangrove swamp at the east end of the key where he had hidden the boat.

  Mona was waiting for him aboard the small boat hidden in the mangrove swamp. He had almost expected her to be gone and he was conscious of a vast relief and renewed hope at finding her there. The rain had slackened, but the boat pitched restlessly at the end of her lines and the darkness was almost absolute. Then the beam of her flashlight touched him and she came running toward him. Her arms clung to him, her body trembling, as if she never wanted to let him go. He kissed her and laughed. Her presence gave him new confidence. His arm remained around her as he took her back to the boat.

  "Sam… Sam…"

  "It's all right," he said.

  "Did you see Ashton?"

  "I'll tell you all about it." He went down into the tiny cabin and groped for the curtains over the portholes. There was a smell of freshly brewed coffee made on the little gasoline stove and when he had the place light-proof he turned on the oil lamp. Mona's face was pale but smiling.

  "I'm so glad you got back all right," she said. "I was so frightened." Her fingers touched the bruise on the side of his head. "Who did that?"

  "Ashton."

  He told her everything that had happened, keeping nothing back. He felt no reluctance about confiding in her now. It was strange, he thought, that the changes which had taken place in his attitude during the last two days seemed so normal. He saw now how wrong he had been about a great many things and how the obvious truths had escaped him. He felt deeply grateful for Mona's trust in him and then he knew it was more than gratitude. What he felt, too, was reflected in her shining eyes that never left his face. She got him a cup of coffee while he talked and he drank the hot liquid slowly, feeling its warmth and strength spread through him. When he was finished, she said: "What are you going to do now?"

  "There's only one thing to do. For the moment, we'll stay here."

  "But suppose the police-"

  "This is as safe a place to hide as any. If you want to go back to the house, however…"

  Her fingers touched his lips. "I want to stay with you, Sam. Please let me."

  "And I want you with me," he nodded.

  "Do you? Really?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened, Sam? You look different."

  "I feel different," he said.

  "Toward me?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm glad," she whispered.

  The movement of the boat and the tight security of the cabin helped clear his mind of the frustrating questions that pursued him. He knew it would be easy with Mona here with him like this to forget how precious time could be. Sensing how he felt, she moved away from him, smiling, and sat on the bench across the cabin from him. He told her what he had to do and she helped him get out the charts and tide tables he had collected from Benny Suarez two days before. His diving gear was still intact in the forward locker, but he left it there while he concentrated on the fifteen-year-old records.

  "I've only got one chance left," he told her. "If I can figure out where " that boat went down that night and if I can find it, the answers to the whole thing might be aboard. If the boat is still there and if it hasn't broken up by now, I'll find it. I've got to."

  "Do you think the money is aboard?" Mona asked.

  "It's the only place it can be."

  "What would it prove?"

  He looked at her. "It would mean that Gabrilan and Jaquin took the money my brother is supposed to have stolen."

  "Does it mean that much to you to prove that?"

  "It means everything."

  He started to work on the charts and tables a few moments later. The one attempt he had made two nights before had been a hit-or-miss proposition, the result of hasty and impatient calculations. Now he knew he could not afford to be wrong. He would never get another chance to conduct a similar search. Time had almost run out for him-for both of them, he thought, as he looked across the cabin at Mona. He had to succeed this time or give up forever. With the money, he could force the truth from Frye and Ashton. It would be enough as tangible evidence to give pause to the authorities who otherwise would scarcely listen to what he had to say when he gave himself up to them. It was his only chance.

  The hours went by swiftly. He was not worried about anyone discovering them here in the tangle of mangroves. Occasionally a car went by on the highway a hundred yards to the south, the lights a sudden flare in the rain-swept darkness, vanishing as swiftly as they came. He did not know if Ashton had summoned the police to investigate Lundy's death or not. He wondered what the man was thinking, alone and deserted at Isla Honda now. Certainly he did not underestimate Ashton's mentality. The man would think of some way out of the embarrassment of reporting the death of his boatman.

  Across the cabin from him, Mona slept. At first she had watched him, keeping silent in order to allow him to concentrate on the tide tables, storm records and coast and geodetic maps. By the time he had finished the hot coffee she had brewed for him, she was asleep. Sam paused to study her. Her face was soft, relaxed in her sleep, lacking the brittle sophistication she wore as a mask during the day. Her lips were curved in the faintest of smiles. He watched her breast rise and fall with her steady breathing. She lay curled up on the narrow bench that doubled as a bunk, a strand of dark, lustrous hair across her cheek. He felt a sense of unexpected happiness just looking at her and a strong wave of protectiveness. She had been duped and betrayed, even as he had been, trapped time and again by Ashton's machinations until she had given up, hopelessly entangled in the web of scandal he had spun around her. Perhaps for a time she had even come to believe that her nature was exactly as Ashton insisted it was. But now she looked innocent and at peace as she slept nearby. Sam returned to his work with a will.

  There had been several major storms of hurricane velocity in the years since Gabrilan and Jaquin had sailed away from Isla Honda, but there had been no basic changes in the channeling among the islands and the unnamed little key where Gabrilan's bones had been recovered was a particularly sheltered area. Gradually as he worked Sam calculated the possible drift caused by wind and current. The bottom in the area he considered was mostly coral and stone fortunately. With luck, the motor yacht used by Ashton's double-crossing agents should still be intact on the bottom of the channel.

  He made another pot of coffee and his movements awakened Mona. It was well after midnight now. She awoke with a start then quickly smiled, her eyes hazy for a moment.

  "Still at it?" she asked.

  "Almost finished."

  "When will you start?"

  "At dawn," he said.

  She got up and took an extra blanket from under the bench on which she had been sleeping. "You ought to get some rest before then."

  "I will," he promised. "Go back to sleep."

  She lay down again, her eyes considering him. "Sam? Suppose you don't find anything? Will you go to the police?"

  "I suppose so."

  "But they think you are guilty. None of the real story will be considered. They'll suggest this all happened because of you and me."

  "And what do you think, Mona?"

  She said simply: "I'm here. I trust you."

  "Do you think I killed Bill?"

  She smiled. "No, Sam. Not you."

  He was surprised at the relief he felt at her expression of faith in him. He had not realized how much he had depended on her trust until this moment. His smile was suddenly boyish, light-hearted.

  "Mona, I love you."

  "Don't say that, Sam."

  "Why not? It's the truth."

  "No. Please, don't."

  "But I don't understand-"

  "I don't want to talk about it. Don't spoil things, please. Please, Sam."

  ***

  At four o'clock in the morning the rain stopped. A mist hung over the twisting, narrow channels between the keys, shrouding the low growth of mangrove and occasional clum
ps of scrubby palmettos or feathery pines. The boat's motor throbbed quietly as Sam guided her through deeper water. They passed a fishing camp and saw lights in the cabins through the mist, but no one hailed them and a moment later it was swallowed in the pearly light. The dawn was slow in coming. Mona made breakfast on the little gasoline stove, using the emergency supplies in the food locker. Sam was surprised at his appetite. He ate hungrily, but Mona scarcely touched anything except the coffee. Her thoughts were beyond his reach and he concentrated on the course he had to take, keeping the boat at half throttle. He had discovered the error in location he had made two nights ago on his first attempt to locate the sunken boat and his hopes were high. According to his calculations, the other vessel had gone down in less than twenty feet of water between two keys of about an acre in size. The area was rarely visited, since the islands were little more than salt-water bogs and there was no way of reaching the place except by boat. Twenty minutes later he let the anchor go. All through the night he had painstakingly followed the trail of the channel current, tracing the wreck from what had been its original resting place on the bottom. Gabrilan's bones had given him the necessary starting point. Tide and current had shifted the hulk, hiding its phantasmal shape from the rare fisherman who frequented this particular stretch of water. The wreck might have been covered again by the shifting bottom sands, or it might have achieved some sort of buoyancy and drifted this way. He could only hope that the latter guess was right

  A few moments after anchoring, wearing an oxygen tank, goggles and fins, he dived overboard leaving Mona at the wheel.

  The water was colder near the bottom but still relatively warm. He swam easily, the nose clamp tight over his face. He moved through the dark shadow of the boat's hull, using the rubber flippers on his feet to propel him powerfully through the current.

  He dove four times in the next hour, finding nothing and then climbed back aboard and moved the boat a hundred yards to the north and started over. He paused only for a cup of coffee with Mona. Her face was pale and although she tried to smile and buoy up his hopes, there were strain and tension in her eyes. Sam drank the coffee slowly, studying the little key nearby where Gabrilan's bones had been found. They had been discovered on a hummock built out of the sea by the mangroves, bleached white by the sun. He suddenly despaired. The body might have floated miles that night the men left Isla Honda and his search could well be hopeless. The whole effort was a wild, chancey business with only one chance in thousands that his guess was correct.

  He continued to stare at the little island. Sunlight glanced off the water in sharp, brilliant barbs. The boat swung idly in the channel current It was useless to hope that he could cover the channel bottom in one day and with the brightening day, his chances of remaining unmolested grew less with each passing hour. He studied the line of current where the water changed from deep blue to a sandy turquoise. A fish jumped and splashed under the transom of the boat Here and there he saw the dark, wavering outlines of rock that formed a ragged semi-circle halfway into the channel from the low silhouette of the key. A flight of pelicans winged swiftly over the water and Sam started the engine again, nosing the small boat carefully toward the crescent of reef that intruded into the channel. There had been no such reef on his charts, but often these were out of date and the outcroppings sometimes appeared through a number of years without being suitably mapped. The reef obviously formed the backbone on which the little key had grown. The water failed to shallow until he was almost upon it and then Mona tested the depth for him from the bow as he guided the craft in a curving course that brought him closer inshore to the island.

  They passed through a patch of iridescent oil on the quiet water and Sam frowned. The oil was astern before its meaning dawned on him. He shouted to Mona to drop anchor and hastily cut out the engine. Mona picked her way aft to join him.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Oil. Someone else has been here. Recently. I'm going to dive again."

  The water was warmer near the reef when he went down now. Once below the surface he saw how the reef formed an abrupt shelf that dropped for twenty feet to a sand and mud bottom. If the boat had gone down anywhere, this was the place for it to have been trapped. He felt the uneasy pull of restless currents that swirled deep against the dark face of the reef and he forced his way farther down, using his underwater torch this time. Fish darted toward him then flashed away. Other shapes that were dark and forbidding stirred among the narrow crannies of rock. There was a steady movement of underwater vegetation, stirred by the circling current as if by a steady wind. Sam oriented himself with the shadow of the boat above him and pulled back to the spot where he judged the oil slick had been. The edge of the reef seemed to twist itself in front of him and he circled farther out, then abruptly checked himself when he saw that the obstruction was not rock at all but the broken outline of a hull, weedy, barnacled, almost shapeless with the mass of underwater growth fastened to it through the long years.

  He forced down his quick exultation and adjusted the oxygen tank on his shoulder then swam toward the wreck again. All its edges had been blurred by the ocean vegetation attached to it, but there could be no doubt that this was the end of his search. The cabin cruiser must have struck the reef and sunk like a stone, with a huge hole torn in the bow. Underwater, it had caught between two coral outcroppings and the current had served to wedge it more firmly into its final resting place. Sam clung to the barnacled deck rail and pulled himself forward across the after deck toward the cabin door. It was swung open, one double leaf firmly cemented to the housing by barnacles, the other leaf half off its hinges.

  He hesitated, debating whether to return to the surface for a weapon before venturing into that dark hole. All manner of creatures might have made their home in there, but his boyhood on the keys had removed most of his fears for those that lived deep in the sea. He felt an impatience to explore and have done with it. Thrusting with his feet, using the flashlight to guide his way, he slipped through the narrow opening into the cabin.

  The water distorted his vision beyond the big goggles he wore. It was a scene out of some nightmare, a phantom of shapes shrouded by the growths of many years that covered bulkheads and furniture and instrument panels until only their general outline remained and even of that there was little that looked recognizable. Something brushed his leg and he jerked away, looked backward at the objects on the floor. It was a scatter of white, human bones, a grinning skull detached from the spinal column that moved slowly in the currents he had set up with his entry into the cabin.

  Jaquin, Sam thought.

  So it had been just as he had guessed, all along. Both men had died here that night of the storm, but somehow Gabrilan's body had been washed away from the wreckage. Perhaps only the slow growth of land and thrust of rocky reef had lifted Gabrilan's pitiful bones to the surface where they had been recently discovered.

  The water in the cabin felt abnormally cold and clammy against his skin as he worked his way forward, away from the grim memento of Jaquin's remains. There would have to be a locker somewhere aboard, perhaps a safe, some container in which the embezzled money had been kept. He scarcely knew where to begin the search. There were lockers built into the forward bulkhead, but they were shell-encrusted and impossible to open without adequate tools to batter away the coral crust on the doors. He searched for something he could use and then he saw the scar in the panel under what must have been a cushioned bench that ran along one side of the cabin. His flashlight played on the wavering, watery outline, and the gleam of fresh metal reflected sharply in the glow of his torch.

  Somebody had been here ahead of him. Somebody who had known exactly where to look.

  He wondered who had beaten him to it and then his bitter questions were abruptly cut off as he felt the sudden vibration of a boat's screw carried through the levels of water around him.

  It was Mona, starting the engine of the boat above.

  20

  His
strength was almost spent when he surfaced. Hope had died in him. He was conscious now only of anger, a sullen fury that smoldered like a brush fire inside him. His head came above water and he tore the goggles from his eyes. After the queer, flickering light of the channel bottom, the sun was dazzling on the surface of the sea and the white-painted boat nearby reflected the light in blinding slabs of brilliance. Behind him, the long line of the keys made a green smear on the horizon. He tore the nose clamp off and swam toward the boat and saw that Mona had hauled up the anchor and was keeping the engine at idle, waiting for him to surface. Her head appeared above the transom, then she reached down a hand for him to grasp.

  "Someone is coming," Mona told him.

  "I'm not surprised."

  He took the towel she handed him and sat down, his knees too rubbery to support him. Mona said: "Did you find anything?"

  "The boat," he nodded. "And Jaquin's bones."

  "No money?"

  "It's gone. Somebody got here first. Probably last night."

  Alarm clouded her eyes. "Look!" she said. "Over there."

  He followed the direction of her pointing finger. It was Ashton's schooner, white and graceful, moving toward them under auxiliary power through the tortuous maze of channels that threaded the tiny, low-lying keys. It was coming fast and he saw two, then three men on her deck.