"Did the Harvard team take blood samples from the men?" Gamay asked.
"Yes. The samples were subjected to microscopic analysis. There was apparently some unusual antigen activity, but you have to understand that the optical instrumentation then was primitive by today's standards. The science of immunology is comparatively young. Jenner and Pasteur had yet to make their groundbreaking discoveries explaining why people, having survived a disease, rarely caught it again after that."
"Could the blood samples be analyzed today?" Gamay asked
"Sure, if we had them. Apparently, the samples were thrown out or just plain lost." He handed the report to Gamay. "In any event, I'm sure you will find it fascinating reading."
The Trouts were walking back to their car when Paul's cell phone trilled.
He listened for a moment, then said, "Okay." He clicked the phone shut, and said, "Guess we owe our friend Brimmer an apology."
"He's found some papers from Caleb Nye's traveling show?" Gamay asked.
"Better," Paul said. "Brimmer's got the 1848 logbook from the Princess. He'll meet us at his workshop to turn it over."
Harvey Brimmer put the phone down and eyed the four Asian men in his office. They were in their twenties, dressed identically in black leather jackets and jeans, and all wore black headbands with Chinese characters in red on them. They had arrived in New Bedford not long after Brimmer had made the call about the logbook. Their leader, a thin-faced youth with a scar running down his right cheek, was the one who had visited the bookshop looking for the book. He had told Brimmer to call the Trouts.
"They're on their way," Brimmer said. "Why do you want to see them?"
The leader pulled a gun out of his shirt. He smiled, revealing a tooth inlaid with a gold pyramid.
"We don't want to see them, old man," he said. "We want to kill them."
He ripped the phone line from the wall, then ordered Brimmer to hand over his cell phone, which he pocketed.
Brimmer's blood ran cold. He was smart enough to figure out that, as witness to a double murder, he would not be allowed to live. As he sat behind his desk, he thought about the spare cell he kept locked in one of its drawers. When he saw his chance, he would make his move.
CHAPTER 36
Like many older boats constructed before builders were sure how thick to make a hull with the then-new fiberglass, the battered twelve-foot-long skiff Austin had rented on the Kolonia waterfront was built like a battleship. The wide-beamed craft was powered by a pitted fifteen-horsepower Evinrude outboard that belonged in a museum of nautical artifacts.
Austin was glad to see that the scuba gear he'd rented was in far better shape than the boat or the motor. He inspected the regulator, hoses, and tank and found all the equipment had been well maintained. As an afterthought, he purchased a throwaway underwater camera encased in plastic. Then, after stowing the dive-gear bag, he helped Song Lee into the boat. After a couple of pulls on the starter cord, the Evinrude hiccupped and caught. Once it got going, it proved to have a stout mechanical heart as it powered the heavy boat through the water at a slow but steady pace along the coast.
Nan Madol was about forty-five minutes by boat from Kolonia. As they came up on the city on the southeast shore of Tenwen Island and caught their first glimpse of the enigmatic islets, Austin reached back into his memory trying to recall what Whittles had told him about the ruins years before. The place had been a ceremonial center going back to the second century A.D., but the megalithic architecture did not start to take shape until the twelfth century.
The city served as a residence for nobility and mortuary priests, and its population never went beyond a thousand. The mortuary spread over fifty-eight islands in the northeast part of the city, a sector called Madol Powe. Whittles had taken Austin there and shown him the islets where the priests lived and worked. Madol Pah was the administrative sector on the south-western part of Nan Madol. That was where the nobles lived and the warriors were quartered.
Nan Madol's builders had put up seawalls to protect the city from the Pacific's whims. The rectangular islets were all basically the same. Retaining walls, built by stacking heavy, prismatic basalt columns log-cabin style, surrounded cores of coral rubble. Once the walls reached several feet above sea level, platforms were built on top as foundations for living areas, or temples, or even crypts. The more elaborate of these islets, like the spectacular mortuary at Nandauwas, had two twenty-five-foot walls enclosing the royal compound.
In the drawing Whittles had sketched out for Austin, the temple of the Cult of the Healing Priests was in the mortuary sector of Nan Madol. It was a smaller version of Nandauwas, which suggested that the islet had some importance among the inhabitants. The temple was entered through a portal in the outer wall, which enclosed a courtyard, then through another portal in a second wall.
Following Whit's map, Austin steered the boat into the city, cruising past crumbling walls that seemed out of place in the remote location. They waved at the passengers in a couple of open tour boats carrying camera-toting tourists protected from the tropical sun by colorful canopies. Nan Madol had become a popular destination for day trips, and the boat went past a guide leading several kayaks like a row of ducklings.
Consulting the map, Austin left the main area of tourist activity and turned onto a quiet, dead-end canal lined on both sides by basalt walls and palm trees. In bygone days, the temple of the Healing Priests would have presided over the terminus of the canal, but the only sign it had ever existed was a jumbled pile of columns that stuck a foot or so above the surface. Austin killed the engine, let the boat drift to within yards of the debris, and dropped anchor.
Austin had purchased a Hawaiian surf-print bathing suit at the dive shop, flaming orange-red with hula dancers, the only thing that the shop had in his size. He tucked his wallet and phone in the waterproof dive-gear bag and slipped into the buoyancy compensator, weight belt, tank, and fins. He rolled over the gunwale into the tepid water, came up and gave Song Lee a quick wave, then bit down on the regulator mouthpiece and did a surface dive that took him down several feet into the slow-moving brownish green water.
He switched on a waterproof flashlight he had bought at the shop. Visibility was limited in the murky water, but the light picked out the broken basalt that had once been the islet's foundation. Austin swam around the perimeter, then came back up to the rental boat.
Whittles had suggested that the coral core supporting the temple had crumbled when the earthquake throttled the city, causing the building to sink to the bottom of the enclosure and the walls to collapse on top of it.
Austin swam around the pile again, this time at a different depth, and saw an opening where basalt slabs had fallen down at an angle. He poked his flashlight into the cavity. The light petered out, suggesting that there was open space behind. Austin twisted through the tight space, banging his air tank against the basalt.
Once he was through the passage, Austin swept the flashlight around and saw that he was in a cavelike chamber created when the inner and outer walls collapsed against one another. Even if the temple had not been destroyed, it was hidden behind the wreckage of the inner wall, which had fallen on top of and around it.
Austin thought he had reached the end of his explorations and was preparing to retrace his route when he made another sweep of the chamber with his light. This time, there was something peculiar about the way the shadows fell on the debris to his right. He swam closer, and saw that a slab had fallen and was blocking some columns, thus creating a breach.
Austin slithered through the breach, and, after swimming a few yards, came upon an almost perfectly rectangular entryway. The temple slanted down to the left, and the entry should have been plugged by debris except that its lintel had fallen in such a way that the opening was intact. He made a quick visual check to assure himself that the entryway wouldn't collapse, then swam through it and into the temple itself.
Austin's flashlight immediately fell on the pool that
Whittles had described. It was rectangular, about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. Debris had fallen in it, but Austin estimated it was around six feet deep. Playing his light against one of the walls, he saw that he was not alone.
Carved on the wall were six male figures dressed in loincloths. They were standing in profile, each holding a basin over his head. Three figures faced one another on either side of a huge bell-shaped jellyfish whose tentacles dropped down to a three-by-six-foot waist-high stone dais built against the wall. Austin flashed the light around the room and saw identical carvings and daises on each wall.
He moved in closer, tracing the contours of one of the jellyfish with his fingers, as if doing so would connect him with the ancient cult of healers. Then he backed off several feet and dug out the throwaway flash camera. He clicked off a dozen shots, then tucked it away.
Eager to tell Lee what he had found, Austin swam out of the temple and wriggled through the outer and inner walls. Looking up to get his bearings, he saw the boat silhouetted against the shimmering surface. As he ascended, his ears picked up the muted buzz of a boat engine. The high-revving noise grew louder. Austin wondered why anyone would be speeding through the peaceful canal. Then an alarm went off in his brain.
He followed the anchor line up. His head broke the surface a few feet from the boat. Pushing his mask up on his forehead, blinking into the bright sunlight, he saw an inflatable pontoon boat coming from the entrance of the canal and speeding his direction. It was too far away for him to see the passengers' faces clearly, but the sun glinted off the shiny bald pate of Chang, the Triad's gang leader who had attacked the Beebe. The needle on Austin's danger meter swung into the red zone.
Song Lee was sitting in the rental boat, oblivious to the looming threat. Austin yelled, pointed at the fast-moving inflatable coming in their direction. The smile Lee had greeted his reappearance with became a puzzled frown. Austin glanced back at the inflatable. He was close enough to see the grin on Chang's face as he knelt in the bow with a weapon up to his shoulder. He would have been on them in seconds, but the kayaks seen earlier entered and blocked the way. The inflatable swerved to miss the kayaks, but its wash capsized two of them.
Austin took advantage of the seconds lost in performing the tricky maneuver.
"Jump!" he yelled to Lee.
She put her hands on the boat's gunwale and leaned over the water, not comprehending the danger she was in, until she saw the muzzle flashes and heard the rattle of gunfire. A line of geysers erupted across the water that led directly to her boat as inexorably as a buzz saw. She froze with fear.
Austin pushed himself out of the water as high as he could go, reached up, and grabbed Lee by the front of her blouse and pulled her back down with him. She tumbled over the gunwale into the canal just seconds before Chang's bullets ripped into the boat, sending up a shower of fiberglass splinters.
Lee's additional weight dragged them both down several feet. Austin then expelled air from his buoyancy compensator and they sank even deeper. He put one arm around her waist, as if leading her through a waltz step, and with his free hand pointed the flashlight at his face. She had reflexively taken a gulp of air before hitting the water but now had used up her supply and was flailing in panic. Austin released her, took a deep breath, then removed the regulator from his mouth and pointed to the bubbles streaming from the mouthpiece.
Lee's eyes were wide with fright, but she understood what Austin was trying to convey. She took the mouthpiece and clamped it between her teeth. As she filled her lungs, the panic in her eyes subsided. She then passed the mouthpiece back to Austin.
Buddy-breathing would keep them alive, but there was still Chang and his men to deal with. This became abundantly clear when Austin saw a foamy splash in the water, then another. Chang's men were diving off the boat.
The men easily could have tracked Austin and Lee in the shallow waters of the canal by following their air bubbles on the surface. Eventually, Chang might get lucky, or he simply could wait until the two used up their air supply. But he was impatient.
Austin drew air into his lungs, passed the mouthpiece back to Lee, and pointed with his index finger.
This way.
Taking Lee by the hand, he swam deeper, toward the entrance of the temple enclosure. Chang's men were at a disadvantage without air and were quickly outdistanced. By the time their prey vanished through the temple wall, the men were swimming back to the surface. Chang's boat moved back and forth, searching for telltale bubbles. Not seeing any, Chang assumed that his targets had slipped past him. He ordered that the inflatable move farther out into the canal. By then, Austin and Lee were inside the temple.
Lee was buddy-breathing like a pro, but she almost gulped down a mouthful of water when Austin showed her the wall carvings. Like Austin, she too put her hand on the jellyfish. She shook her head in frustration at not being able to talk. Austin pointed to the camera clipped to his vest and signaled OK with his thumb and index finger.
They perched on the edge of the temple pool, sharing the air supply and taking in the marvelous carvings. Austin checked the supply, then tapped his wristwatch and pointed toward the temple entrance. Buddy-breathing was using up the air in the tank twice as fast. Lee nodded in understanding. They swam side by side, as if joined at the hip, until they came to the outer wall. Austin signaled Lee to wait. He slipped out of his vest and swam out into the canal. All was quiet. He looked up at the surface but saw no sign of Chang or the rental boat.
He heard the sound of a engine, but to his practiced ear it sounded different from the inflatable's high-revving one. He decided to take a chance. Moving closer to the foundation of the islet, he surfaced and peered out from behind an outcropping where the basalt base had collapsed.
A tour boat was moving along the canal toward the rental boat, which was submerged except for the bow, which stuck out of the water at an angle. More important, Chang and his men had vanished.
Austin waved until someone in the tour boat saw him. When the boat turned his direction, he took a deep breath and went back for Song Lee. He gave her a thumbs-up, then pointed upward. She repeated the OK, and together they slowly rose to the surface.
CHAPTER 37
Shortly after the Sikorsky Seahawk lifted off from Pohnpei, Zavala had slipped a chart from the TOP SECRET pouch Austin had put in his safekeeping and matched the specks on it to the islands and atolls he could see from the helicopter. Ensign Daley tapped him on the shoulder and pointed directly ahead, where silhouettes of ships dotted the ocean sheen.
"Looks like we're coming up on an invasion fleet," Zavala said.
"We're entering the search area," Daley replied. "We've got six Navy ships working the waters around the lab site. A research vessel from NUMA has come in to help out. My ship is the command center. We're coming up on her at twelve o'clock."
The Seahawk quickly covered the distance to the Concord, hovered over the stern for an instant, then dropped slowly onto the large circle painted on the deck. Zavala slid the helicopter's door open and climbed out. He was greeted by a gray-haired man in a khaki uniform.
"I'm Hank Dixon, Mr. Zavala," the man said, extending his hand. "I'm commander of the guided-missile cruiser Concord. Welcome aboard."
"Thanks, Captain. You can call me Joe. My boss, Kurt Austin, is busy in Pohnpei, but he'll be coming along in a couple of hours. Ensign Daley told me that the Concord is acting as central control for the search flotilla."
"That's right. C'mon, I'll show you what we've been doing."
The captain led the way to the midship's search-and-rescue center, just off the main deck. A dozen men and women, sitting in front of computer monitors, were processing information that was streaming in from the ships and planes involved in the search.
"How close are we to the actual lab site?" Zavala asked.
Dixon pointed down to the deck at his feet.
"It's approximately three hundred feet directly under the ship's hull. We had been on standb
y patrol for the lab, acting as backup for the support ship, Proud Mary. When we heard the Mayday, we got to the site within hours."
"Where is the support ship now?" Zavala asked.
"A Navy salvage vessel is towing what's left of her to a ship-yard, where the forensics folks can take a closer look at her. We were busy taking care of the survivors, so it took some time before we got around to checking on the status of the lab. When we couldn't raise it on the radio, we erroneously assumed at first that the communications buoy got shot out. We carry an ROV for hull inspections, and we got it down." He stepped over to a computer screen. "Those circular depressions you see in the ocean bottom match the feet of the legs supporting the Locker."
"There are no drag marks," Zavala observed. "That indicates the lab was lifted off the site, which would have been possible with the Locker's neutral buoyancy. Can you show me the site on the satellite map?"
Dixon asked a technician to bring up a map-and-satellite-image hybrid of the waters being searched.
"We've been using orbiting spy satellites that can zero in on an area as small as a square yard to look for infrared emissions," Dixon said. "Davy Jones's Locker was west of Pohnpei, between Nukuoro Island on the north and Oroluk Island to the south. We've drawn lines from all three islands and dubbed our main search area the Pohnpei Triangle."
"Those red squares must be the areas that have been searched," Zavala said.
"That's right. The squares designate the territory that's been scoured with sonar. The ships transmit their sonar data to our computer network. We map out a grid of the ocean in squares, the ships move over each square parallel to one another in a line that stretches several miles across, and then they move on to the next square. We can cover a lot of ocean that way in a very short time. We've also got fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters making visual checks."
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