2
Yesterday’s excitement at finding and starting to exhume a four-hundred-year-old wreck quickly devolved to drudgery on day two.
Jack found the routine of sifting the newly exposed sand in the wake of Tom’s water stream deadly dull. So dull that he’d all but forgotten about the lifeless coral walls around them.
They were on their second tanks and had found nothing besides scraps of rotten wood ranging in length from a finger to an arm. The ship must have shattered when it hit the reef. Centuries in salt water had done the rest: The larger remnants crumbled under the slightest pressure.
A colossal waste of time.
But Jack held up his end, hugging the bottom, digging his gloved fingers into the sand, pulling free anything he found. He spotted the corner of another board, got a grip, and pulled. A big chunk broke off. Small fragments and dustlike particles floated away downstream.
He turned it over in his hands. Just like the rest. At first he’d wondered why no worm holes, then realized that whatever had killed the coral had probably killed the worms as well. He tossed it aside and gripped the rest of the board. As he hauled it free he caught a reflection of sunlight just below it, then sand refilled the cavity.
Metal?
He tapped Tom on the leg and pointed to the spot. Tom directed the stream into the depression. Sand billowed and sprayed while Jack worked his hands deeper. More flashes of yellow reflection. Gold?
His earlier apathy vanished. Something down there… something more than rotted wood. Despite all his misgivings about this wreck, he couldn’t deny a surge of excitement. They might be uncovering something that no human eyes had seen for centuries.
There—metal. A bright yellow band, curved across a curving surface… a surface that resembled carved wood… lacquered wood.
But how…?
Tom had seen it too and was working the hose nozzle back, forth, and around in a seeming frenzy. Didn’t take too long to realize they’d discovered a small sea chest wrapped in rusty links of heavy chain.
Tom knelt and concentrated the stream along the left end of the chest with one hand while working his free hand deeper and deeper until he found a handle. He leaned back, pulling upward while playing the hose back and forth across the surface.
As the top was revealed Jack saw that it was a camelback style chest with a convex top crossed by three brass bands. He’d seen lots of them—even owned one, though nowhere near as ornate—but had never seen one this shape: square, running maybe two feet on each side. The most startling thing about it was its cherry condition. The chain around it had wasted to a rusted skeleton of its former self. But the chest… no rot, no oxidation of the brass, no dulling of the lacquer finish.
And that was wrong. The rest of the Sombra wasn’t fit for a beach bonfire, but this thing looked as if it could have fallen off a passing boat ten minutes ago.
Despite the vague dread roiling his gut, Jack leaned in to help. He didn’t see that he had much choice.
He worked a hand down along the chest’s opposite side, found a handle that felt like leather—strong, unrotted leather—and began to pull. With the stream from the hose plus their combined efforts rocking it back and forth, they managed to work the chest free.
As they knelt in the sand, holding it between them, Jack looked at Tom’s face. He was grinning around his mouthpiece and his eyes were wide and bright behind the faceplate of his mask. He released the hose, letting it snake away behind him, and tugged on the rotted chain. The links fractured and fell away amid a cloud of rust flakes.
Jack lowered his gaze to the little square chest. Except for the domed top it was pretty near a perfect cube. And as pristine at its base as it was along its top.
This was all very wrong. Jack had no idea what it was or what it held, but he sensed that everyone would be better off if they just left this thing where it was. That look in Tom’s eyes, though, said that would never happen.
Another strange thing about the chest. Its weight… much lighter than he’d have thought. Almost weightless.
Tom motioned for them to put it down. They lowered it to the sand and released the handles. To Jack’s amazement the chest began to rise. As it picked up speed in its wobbly ascent, neither of them grabbed for it. They knelt and stared like a couple of awestruck children. Before they could react it was out of reach.
Tom pushed off the bottom and kicked after it. He caught up to it halfway to the surface and tucked it under his arm. Then he continued toward the surface.
Filled with foreboding, Jack watched him go. Everything about this was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Reluctantly he shot some air into his vest and began his own ascent.
* * *
3
“Damn thing’s locked,” Tom said. “Not that I’m surprised, but shit!”
Jack watched his brother kneel on the rocking deck in his dripping wet suit. He hadn’t bothered to remove his tank. He had the chest tilted back and was peering at the front seam of its lid.
Jack shrugged out of his BC vest and pulled off his hood. He ruffled his hair to shake out some of the water. The wind had picked up, raising some swells. Clouds were building in the west, reaching toward the sun. The weather looked ready for a change.
He didn’t see a keyhole in the front of the chest, so he leaned in for a better look. He saw a curved surface, like the edge of a cylinder, divided into seven sections. Each segment sported an embossed number.
Jack let out a barking laugh. “It’s a combination lock.”
Tom’s frown indicated he didn’t think it was funny. “Combination… but when did combination locks first appear?”
“Not sure,” Jack said, “but I know they were around before the Sombra’s time.”
Locked… not necessarily a bad thing. But as much as Jack wished this thing were still buried in the sand below, he had to admit to a curiosity about its contents—and about his brother’s intense interest.
“What’s in it, Tom?”
Tom was turning the little number wheels.
“Shit. They run zero to ten. That means…”
He paused, calculating, but Jack was ahead of him.
“Ten million possibilities. But you didn’t answer my question: What’s in there?”
“Who knows?” He sounded annoyed now. “Gold? Jewels? The Lilitongue of Gefreda?”
“Whatever that is.”
“Well, we’ll never find out if we can’t open it.”
“I think you already know.”
He looked up at Jack. “Now why would you say that?”
“Just a feeling. A very strong feeling. Time to level with me, bro. What’s going on here?”
Tom looked up at him, his face a mask of frustration. “You know anything about locks? Any idea how to bypass this?”
Yeah, Jack knew about locks, knew how to pick them, but this baby was not the pickable kind.
“Yeah. Got a pry bar?”
Tom looked shocked. “No! We might damage whatever’s inside!”
“Would that be a bad thing?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Jack pointed to the chest. “It’s been underwater more than four hundred years but it looks brand new. Now lift it, Tom. Tell me how much you think it weighs.”
Tom hefted it. “Twenty… twenty-five pounds.”
“I helped you haul it over the transom. More like forty or fifty.”
Tom grinned. “Gold is heavy.”
“Yeah, it is. But tell me: You’re the scuba diver. You’re the one who gave me lessons on the rules of buoyancy and displacement. Should something that size and that weight be able to float?”
“Well, no, but—”
“No buts about it. You saw it. This thing not only floated, it shot to the surface like a balloon. Care to explain that?”
“I wish I could. I also wish I could explain why you’re so suspicious. Why do you keep going on about me hiding something from you? Here’s what we found. It
’s sitting right here between us. I’m asking your help to open it. Where’s the subterfuge here?”
Good question. Tom was being pretty open about all this.
Jack stared at the seven wheels of the combination lock. Seven… ten million possibilities… what seven-figure number would do it? Good thing the wheels weren’t coded with letters. Twenty-six to the seventh… he couldn’t come close to calculating that.
Letters… numbers…
And then he had an idea.
“Just for the hell of it, try these. Start from the left: seven… five… six… wait.” Jack did a quick count on his fingers. “Okay, make the fourth eight, then five… four… one.”
As the last wheel turned, Jack could hear the click of the bolt from where he stood.
“Christ almighty!” Tom looked up at him with a baffled expression. “How the hell…?”
“Seven wheels, seven letters in ‘Gefreda.’ I took a stab.”
Tom grasped the lid on both sides and tilted it back. It moved easily, smoothly, without a single squeak from the rear hinges. Inside Jack saw an irregular blue dome. It took a few seconds to register that it was a piece of silk—dry silk.
Tom’s hand moved toward it but stalled halfway there. Jack noticed a fine tremor in the fingers. Then they pushed forward and hesitated another heartbeat or two before pinching a fold of the silk and lifting it.
Jack blinked when he saw what lay beneath.
No gold, no jewels—not even close. An irregular, slightly oblong sphere, somewhat larger than a basketball, sat in the box. Looked like an ugly piece of slightly rotted fruit with a leathery, olive-hued rind.
“What the hell is that?”
“I… haven’t a clue.” Tom ran skittish fingers over the surface. “Jesus, it feels like skin.”
Jack squatted next to him and gave it a feel. Cool, slightly rough to the touch. Yeah… like skin. Not necessarily human skin; some kind of hide?
“You think this is it?”
Tom glanced at him. “Is what?”
“That Lilitongue thing you talked about. Could this be it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a drawing of it.”
“Doesn’t look like any tongue I’ve ever seen. It—” Jack pulled his hand away as an unsettling thought hit him. “You don’t think its hide is made from tongues, do you?”
“No. It may not even be the Lilitongue.” He reached his hands around it. “Help me get it out.”
Jack got a grip on two sides and together they lifted the thing from the chest. At most it was only a quarter again larger than a basketball, but it was a hell of a lot heavier. As they moved it Jack squeezed it between his hands—not a hint of give.
Once it was out he could see that it had rested in a silk-lined well.
“Custom-made for it,” he said.
They gently laid it on the rocking deck. Jack steadied it while Tom checked the chest, poking about, lifting it and shaking it. He pulled his diving knife from the sheath strapped to his leg and began prying at the insides. He worked the blade around the edge of the well and popped it out in one piece. Then he upended the chest and tapped its sides. Nothing dropped out.
He tossed the chest aside.
“Shit! Nothing! Not even a piece of parchment to tell us what it is!”
Jack couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him as he returned to the sphere. No treasure, just this weird-looking thing.
A thing that looked more than ever like a piece of fruit. It even had a little navel, like an orange, but thirty or so degrees above the lower pole.
“What do you think?” Jack said. “Man-made or organic?”
Tom didn’t answer. He sat staring at the thing, his face a mask of disappointment. For an instant Jack thought he might cry.
“Tom? You okay?”
“Yeah.” His voice was barely audible. “I heard you. Who gives a shit?”
“Take a guess.”
Tom sighed. “Doesn’t look man-made. I mean, it’s got no seams.”
Jack agreed. That hinted that it had grown somewhere. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see the garden where it had been picked.
“Yeah… no seams.” He reached over to where Tom had left his knife. “But let’s see if we can make a few.”
As Jack raised the blade Tom wrapped his arms around the sphere and hugged it like a mother protecting a child.
“Don’t even think about it!”
“Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to ruin it. It could be some priceless relic, or it could have a stash of jewels inside.”
“Well, you’re never going to know if you don’t take a peek.”
“Right. But you can do that without cutting it open. Ever hear of X-ray?”
“You’ve got an X-ray machine?” Jack slapped the side of his face. “Wow! I knew this boat was high tech, but its own X-ray mach—”
“Put a sock in it, Jack. We’re going to gas up and head back home tonight.”
“We’ve still got some light left. Don’t you want to see if there’s anything else down here? Those doubloons you were talking about?”
Tom shook his head. “I think we’ve stayed long enough, don’t you?”
Something wrong here. Jack was about to press it until he realized he’d be arguing against heading home. Home… he didn’t want to delay his return a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
* * *
4
Tom stood watch over the afterdeck as a dockside pump filled the Sahbons tanks. He was sipping another kind of fuel: the Grey Goose he kept stashed in the pilothouse.
Instead of making the longer trip back to the sound, they’d cruised directly to St. George’s where they returned the scuba gear and the pump, paying an extra fee for the time it would take a couple of men to drive out to Somerset and retrieve the truck. Then they found a marina for refueling.
Jack was ashore, buying food and ice, and calling Gia to let her know they were on their way home.
Tom took a deep sip from the coffee cup he was using as a glass. No ice aboard, so he was drinking it warm. He preferred it freezer cold, but warm vodka was better than no vodka.
Even with half a snootful he doubted he could find a way to put a positive spin on this trip situation.
Only one way to spin being locked out of his stash and learning that the feds knew more about him than he’d dreamed.
The good news—the trip’s only good news—was that he was now the proud owner of the Lilitongue of Gefreda. At least he assumed that was what the ugly thing was.
He glanced toward the door to the pilothouse where they’d stowed it in its chest.
The bad news was that he had no idea what to do with it, or how to use it.
His initial elation had begun to die when he opened the chest and got a look at it. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he’d never dreamed it would look like that. Despair crept in when he could find no word of explanation in the chest as to what it held or what it could do or how it could be used.
He put down his vodka and stepped below into the pilothouse. There he pulled his beat-up green canvas backpack from under his bunk. He un-zipped it and searched among the banded stacks of bills. He managed a smile. Would Jack ever be pissed if he saw this pile of cash.
There. Got it.
He pulled out a Xeroxed sheet, one he hadn’t shown Jack: a copy of the inscription on the band around the Mendes map. He knew it by heart, but unfolded the sheet anyway and retranslated the ornate script.
Let this be the only record of the final resting place of the Lilitongue of Gefreda, known to the dark few as a means to elude all enemies and leave them helpless. Consigned to the depths near the Isle of Devils by order of the Holy Father. May no man exhume it from its watery grave.
He didn’t know who “the dark few” were. Maybe Jesuits—they dressed in black, didn’t they? But “a means to elude all enemies and leave them helpless” echoed through to his soul
.
Tom couldn’t think of anyone who more needed to elude his enemies. He’d wanted the map the instant he saw it. And lately, as he’d felt the noose tightening around his neck, the promise of the Lilitongue had called to him.
If he’d been able to grab his stash, he’d have had no need of the thing, wouldn’t even have looked for it. But the cash in his backpack wasn’t going to get him far. Might be enough to help him disappear for a while, but he’d need lots more to stay invisible.
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