Oracle

by David Wood

  “Can’t you grease the wheels?” Jade asked, with a little more snark than she intended.

  “That works most of the time, but not always,” Nichols said. “All it takes is for one historian or government official who cares more about doing his job than earning his paycheck, and those wheels get very sticky. Our problem here is that we don’t have a good basis for a claim. No offense, Dr. Chapman, but what you’re doing is about the same as water-witching, and it doesn’t hold up in court. We’d need historical evidence supporting the idea that the Misericordia went down here—and if I’m not mistaken, Dr. Chapman told us that the evidence puts her a few thousand miles to the east. We would also need some physical evidence, including something that positively identifies the Misericordia. When I look down there, I don’t see any evidence of a shipwreck.”

  “It’s buried under the sand,” Dorion said. “Right down there.”

  “Do you know anything about marine archaeology Dr. Dorion? Do you know what happens to a ship that sinks, especially in a place like this? Salt water can do a number on a wooden ship right quick. While that’s happening, currents and storms are pounding against the wreck, ripping it apart and scattering it across the ocean floor. If any pieces big enough survive the storm season, they might become an artificial reef. Coral and other organisms start to grow on it the ribs of the ship or the cannon, and pretty soon, what’s left of the ship has become a new reef. Experts like me know how to look at a bottom profile and see the outline of an old wreck in the shape of the reef. I’m not seeing that here.”

  Dorion spread his hands helplessly. “It is there.”

  “Be that as it may, we can’t file a claim until we can prove it.”

  “And we can’t prove it until we start excavating,” Jade said. “We’re chasing our tail.”

  “I need what’s down there,” Ophelia said. Her tone was more authoritarian than desperate, and Jade was reminded that Ophelia was used to getting what she wanted. This time would be no exception.

  Nichols’ scratched his chin. “Well, I’ve got a pretty good in with the guy who makes these decisions. They would much rather deal with someone like me than with some of my competitors. I’ll make the calls, but I’m going to need a lot of latitude for these negotiations.”

  “You have carte blanche,” Ophelia assured him. “Whatever it takes.”

  Nichols seemed genuinely surprised by this. “I don’t get it, Ms. Doerner. You’ve already got more money than God, and treasure hunting, for all its romantic appeal, is a lousy investment. Why are you doing this?”

  Ophelia ignored him.

  By the time the Quest Explorer was over the coordinates Dorion had indicated, Nichols had used his blank check to secure permission to excavate an exploratory hole. Jade and the others could do little more than stand by and watch as the mailbox blowers were lowered into place over the ship’s propellers. The crew had stripped down to swim trunks. Even Nichols had traded in his designer work shirt for a pair of baggy board shorts. His deep bronze all-over tan confirmed Jade’s suspicion that he remained very involved in the day to day operations of his company. Jade hoped that the ship’s master would stay in uniform, or at the very least, stay on the bridge; even the thought of Lee half-naked was enough to make her throw up a little in her mouth.

  With the blowers locked in place, the engines revved up, and for the next fifteen minutes or so, the ship sat unmoving, held in place by anchors with all the slack hauled in, as a blizzard of sand swirled up from below and turned the blue water a milky white. While they waited for the sediment cloud to clear, Jade and Professor began getting ready for the dive.

  “I’ll stay topside,” Professor told Jade. “Just in case there’s a problem.”

  “Are you sure?” She had never known Professor or any other SEAL to pass up a chance to get wet, but he nodded.

  “Probably no reason to worry, but after what happened last night, I’m not going to take any chances.” He stared at her for a second and then said, “Where’s your watch?”

  She shrugged. “Broke.”

  He stripped off his own wrist chronograph and handed it to her. Jade felt her breath catch when she saw the watch—a stainless steel Omega Seamaster with a bright blue face—but as soon she felt it in her hand, the weird feeling passed. It looked a lot like the watch she’d been wearing in the vision the Shew Stone had showed her, but it wasn’t the same; Professor’s watch was bigger and heavier.

  “I’ll want that back. I hope you can take better care of it than you did your own.”

  “Yes, dad.” She slipped it over her wrist and closed the double-clasp. The watch was two-fingers loose.

  “Just wear it outside the sleeve of your wetsuit,” he directed. “And don’t forget to look at it once in a while.”

  “The dive isn’t going to take that long,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t.

  “Oh. Sure, I guess you would already know that.”

  She managed a wan smile. “The good news is, you probably don’t need to worry about anything going wrong. Not here at least.”

  “Maybe nothing goes wrong because I’m worried.”

  “Touché, Professor. Well played.”

  She stripped down to her bikini without the least trace of self-consciousness. Having spent more than half her life—nearly all her childhood—in a swimsuit, it was second nature now. Still, as she started to pull on a wetsuit borrowed from the Quest Explorer’s gear locker, Jade had to admit, she did look pretty good in the little red two-piece.

  As she was donning the rest of her gear, Ophelia joined them. Like everyone else, she was in a swimsuit, which in this case was a tasteful, if ridiculously expensive Missoni Mare psychedelic pattern bikini which fully accentuated her enhanced physique, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the male crewmen she walked past. Jade was a little surprised by her own reaction; she felt threatened in a way that had nothing at all to do with sexuality.

  “I’d like to dive,” she said.

  Professor met Ophelia’s gaze and his eyes did not stray. “Are you certified?”

  The slight tilt of her head was answer enough.

  “In order to SCUBA dive, even if it’s just recreationally, you need to have a certification. And to get the certification, you have to take a class and pass a test. So, if you haven’t done that, the answer is, ‘sorry, no.’”

  “I’m a fast learner. You can teach me.”

  “Yes, I can. I’m a certified instructor. Maybe later, if there’s time, I can get on the Internet and print the manual for the bookwork portion of the class. But right this minute, the answer is, ‘sorry, no.’”

  There was nothing Ophelia could say that would change Professor’s mind, but Jade had to wonder if there was anything Professor could say that would make Ophelia realize that. Evidently, ‘sorry, no’ was enough. Ophelia turned away, with almost preternatural calm, and strode back the way she’d come.

  Jade watched her leave. “She’s going to get Nichols, or someone else, to let her make the dive.”

  “Probably. And she’ll probably do just fine.”

  “Then why didn’t you just give in?”

  Professor shrugged. “Dunno. You ready?”

  Jade put on her mask and, with Professor trailing, made her way down a gangplank to the dive platform at the waterline. Dorion and several members of the crew gathered above, eager to see what treasures would be found. On the platform, another crewman, likewise suited up to dive, showed Jade the weighted line that would take them to the edge of the excavation. From there, she would be on her own, free to investigate the hole that Explorer had blasted in the reef. Without further delay, Jade held her mask in place and stepped off the platform into the lukewarm soup of the Atlantic.

  Ophelia’s expression betrayed none of the rage that was burning just beneath her smooth exterior. How dare they deny me this opportunity! They wouldn’t even be here if not for me.

  Nichols would not refuse her. She had already found the correct pr
essure point to use against him. The only question was whether he could give her what she wanted quickly enough. Perhaps she could also get him to recall the divers, bring Jade back up before she found the prize. Ophelia wanted to be the first to find it, the first to touch it and peer through the window into the infinite possibilities of the future.

  There was no sign of Nichols on deck. She found that odd, but a helpful crewman who seemed to be having difficulty raising his eyes to meet hers—a fact that she found deliciously satisfying—told her where to find Cliff Barry. Barry seemed all too eager to accommodate her, and led her to a private companionway that had not been on their tour. There was just one door at the end of the corridor, and beyond it, Barry told her, lay Nichols’ executive stateroom.

  Barry knocked and Ophelia tapped her foot, counting out the seconds. There were two things she hated: being told no and waiting. Having been subjected to the former by Chapman made this all the more unendurable. Finally, the door opened, but the face that greeted her did not belong to the owner of QMI.

  Ophelia stared at the familiar visage for a moment. “I know you.”

  Recognition quickly gave way to alarm, but before she could protest, Barry addressed the man. “We’re alone.”

  “Inside, quickly.” The man stepped back and Barry put an impertinent hand on Ophelia’s back and pushed her forward into the stateroom.

  Ophelia tried to mask her rising fear with outrage. “Don’t touch me,” she snarled, and then rounded on the unidentified man. “You were at Delphi. One of the men that tried to kill us. How dare you—”

  “Shut up.” The order was delivered in a cold, emotionless voice that was somehow more commanding than if it had been a shout. Ophelia closed her mouth and said nothing more. “Thank you,” he continued. “My name is Brian Hodges, and yes, I was there at Delphi. And before you say anything more, you should know that I’m here because your brother sent me to keep you out of trouble. You have no idea what you’re playing with here, Ms. Doerner.”

  “You’re trying to stop us. You tried to kill the others last night.”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped and now things are considerably more complicated.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Hodges’ eyes narrowed. “I’m sure your brother told you about the Norfolk Group, and what we’re trying to do. That thing you’re looking for could set the world on fire. We—the Group, men like your brother—are not going to allow that to happen. In a situation like this, our protocols call for total sanitization. But apparently, those hard and fast rules aren’t so hard and fast when family is involved.” He made no effort to hide his contempt. “Big brother doesn’t want little sister to get hurt, so that puts me in a bit of a pinch.”

  Ophelia’s heart was racing. Despite all they had been through, even the harrowing events in Greece, only now did she recognize so acutely her dangerous position. There was no one here to protect her and the only weapons she had with which to take control of the situation—her money, and her sexuality—were not going to make a bit of difference here. She drew in a shaky breath and said, “I won’t give up. If that means you have to kill me—”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Ms. Doerner. Not if I can help it. And since it’s obvious that I can’t get you to listen to reason, that leaves me just one option.”

  “What’s that?”

  His lips curled into a humorless smile. “I’m going to help you get what you want.”

  Jade followed the line down quickly, holding her mask against her face and blowing through her nose to equalize the pressure in her inner ear. She could feel the powerful tug of the Gulf Stream’s current. Five hundred years ago, European mariners had relied on this warm-water conveyor belt to speed them across the Atlantic with their cargo of wealth from the New World, but the current was capricious. The strong surface current also energized tropical cyclones; it had probably been just such a storm that had thrown the Misericordia onto the shoals near Great Isaac Cay, and then buried it under tons of sand.

  The weighted line ended at a berm created by the powerful thrust from the Explorer’s engines at the edge of a much deeper crater. Most of the sediment stirred up by the operation of the mailbox blowers had settled, but Jade could see the flow of the current in the few remaining suspended motes. It wouldn’t be long before the ocean filled in this divot and erased all trace of their excavation.

  Jade stared down into the crater for a moment, marveling at what had been uncovered. She had not expected to see a Spanish galleon, sitting pretty and just waiting for her to stroll its perfectly preserved decks, yet what she now saw was almost as impressive. The ship had been mauled relentlessly by the currents and eroded by the corrosive power of salt water, but she could clearly make out the heavy wooden beams of its skeleton. Other dark shapes were starkly visible against the white sand. Metal artifacts perhaps, encrusted and oxidized, lay scattered about the bottom of the crater.

  The crew diver joined her there a moment later, and after flashing her a thumbs-up, kicked forward and dropped down into the hole. Jade went in after him. To maximize their search time, they split up and began swimming in opposite directions, scouring the bottom for treasures. Although Jade was only really interested in one item, anything that might establish the identity of the wreck would help them legally justify their initial exploration, which could prove essential if the recovery of the Moon stone turned out to be more difficult than expected. Jade’s prescient glimpse into the not-too distant future assured her it would not, but inasmuch as she hoped that vision would turn out to be wrong, it was better to do this by the numbers.

  Beneath the sand lay an encrusted mass of limestone, the ancient remains of the reef upon which the sediment had accumulated.

  The surface was crenelated with fissures and gaps—what treasure hunters called “solution holes” where coins, chains and other items could often be found. Jade painstakingly inspected several of these as she made her way around the circumference of the hole. She was careful to check her watch, just as Professor had told her, and was surprised by how little time had passed. Usually, when she was sifting through a ruin, looking for potsherds or other bits of ancient detritus, she fell into a sort of fugue state where hours could slip by without her knowledge. She was surprised to see that she had only been in the water for about twenty minutes and was nearly halfway around the edge of the circle. The other diver was just a few yards away, and Jade decided that when they met, they would head back to the surface for a break.

  She returned her attention to the task at hand, exploring another solution hole. Something glinted from the crack in the limestone and when she took hold of it, she could feel a heaviness that could only mean she had found gold. It was a chain of thick links, similar to those found at other wrecks of the period. She tugged on it gently but the underlying rock refused to yield it up. She pulled harder and suddenly a section of stone broke free, releasing a cloud of sediment.

  Jade slipped the heavy chain into her sample bag and waited for the silt to settle out. As it did, she spied something smooth and black with a gently convex surface that disappeared into the surrounding encrustation. It was too large to be a cannonball and a closer inspection showed none of the pitting and corrosion that marred metal objects.

  She stared at it for a full minute before realizing what it was.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The atmosphere aboard the Quest Explorer was electric with the news of Jade’s discovery. Ophelia seemed to have completely forgotten about Professor’s slight and now hovered anxiously at the edge of the planning session for retrieving the Moon stone.

  “It’s not dangerous,” Jade insisted, “but touching it would be a very bad idea, especially for a diver on the bottom.”

  She did not elaborate and no one asked her to explain, but she wondered if perhaps the object was more dangerous than she was willing to admit. A blackout like the one she had experienced in Teotihuacan might prove fatal in
the unforgiving underwater environment. Worse still, the Moon stone’s effect was not limited to direct contact. When Jade had come back aboard, she discovered that Professor’s watch was running a full six minutes slow.

  Dorion had been astounded. “That’s the time dilation effect,” he explained. “You were much closer to the event horizon than we were on the surface.”

  “You said the difference would be measured in nanoseconds,” Professor pointed out.

  “I thought it would. The field must be more massive than I imagined.”

  “That will make the Moon stone considerably heavier. Perez mentioned that the orb was heavier, but if it has enough gravity to cause a time differential that significant, then it may be too heavy to lift.”

  “Surely it can’t be that heavy,” Ophelia countered. “The Spaniard, Alvaro, was able to drag the thing through those tunnels under the pyramid by himself.”

  “It may have continued to accrete more dark matter,” said Dorion. “The sphere shape and the existing field would continue to draw in particles as the Earth passes through space, just like a black hole grows more massive as it pulls in material.”

  “We have to try,” Ophelia insisted. “This ship can lift cannons. Surely it can lift a big stone ball.”

  “Just how big are we talking?” asked Nichols.

  Jade recalled the small portion of it that had been exposed, a section about eight inches across. “Judging by the curvature, I’d say the size of a big beach ball. Maybe twenty-four inches max.”

  Professor did some quick math in his head. “A little over seven thousand cubic inches.”

  “A cubic inch of twenty-four karat gold weighs seven-tenths of a pound,” Nichols supplied. “If it’s as heavy as gold, then figure about two and a half tons. I seriously doubt this rock of yours is that heavy, but even if it is, our boom crane can lift twice that much.”