The Daredevils' Club ARTIFACT

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “I’ll have all the tanks you’ll ever need waiting on the platform.”

  Frik turned off the road and stopped before a heavy wrought iron gate with “Oilstar” arching above it. The guard waved from his narrow kiosk as the gates swung open, and they were on the move again. He swerved the vehicle to a stop before a row of low, white stucco buildings, and led Simon into the first.

  After rattling off a string of orders to a male secretary—one of them arranging for tri-mix at the drill site—he motioned Simon around behind his large mahogany desk. A few taps on his keyboard popped an array of thumbnail photos onto his computer screen.

  “These are scans and three-D models of the artifacts,” Frik said, clicking on each to enlarge them.

  Four objects filled the screen in succession, each more bizarre than the last. The final scan showed all four locked together into some weird-looking shape. Frik hit a key and it began to rotate in three dimensions. Simon didn’t know much about art, but this looked like something Picasso might have pieced together. Or Dali.

  “Why scans? Where’s the real thing?”

  “The one piece I have of it is under guard.”

  “It’s that valuable?”

  Frik shrugged. “Not sure yet. I won’t know until I have all five pieces and fit them together.”

  “And the fifth is somewhere in an undersea cavern.” He shook his head. “Christ, why don’t you fly me to the Chesapeake and ask me to find one particular oyster.”

  “Oh, come now,” Frik said, grinning. “It’s not that bad. This will be a piece of cake for someone like you.”

  Simon stared at the rotating assemblage. Something about each piece had bothered him, but the aggregate was even worse. He had a feeling that finding the final piece might not be such a good thing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Simon checked his depth gauge: the arrow lay just a hair to the far side of the 130 mark. Even at this depth he was comfortable in a 1.5-mm dive skin.

  He looked around. The light level was decent, typical for this depth, the true colors of the fish and coral were washed out. Sunlight’s spectrum got pretty well bleached out after struggling through 130 feet of water.

  He’d hoped he’d be diving the cavern through the bore hole, much like descending the limestone cenotes in the waters of the Yucatán, but the hole was too small and there was no hope of widening it any further. So he went hunting for the natural entrance to the cavern. He found it, a dark, narrow, anemone-fringed opening in the wall of a rift in the continental shelf. The wall was encrusted with sponges, guzzling the fringe of the Guyana current as it swept nutrients up from Venezuela’s Orinoco River.

  Simon also found the missing diver, Abdul. A rock the size of a Porsche Boxter—loosened by the drilling, perhaps?—had slipped from the wall above the opening and crushed him. The crabs and yellowtails had been snacking on his exposed flesh, but his mask was still fastened around his head, sparing his wide-open, milky eyes. Their empty gaze brought back a few lines he’d just read in The Tempest:

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made;

  Those are pearls that were his eyes.…

  Simon shuddered and looked away. Sight like that could make you believe in the Obeahman. Empty sockets would have been better.

  The stone had also partially blocked the mouth of the entrance. The opening that remained might admit a child but never an adult, especially one of Simon’s girth.

  Which meant the stone had to be moved. And since the local labor pool consisted of himself and one curious green sea turtle, that meant it was up to him.

  After a thorough inspection, he found a spot where he could wedge himself between the rock and the rift wall. It meant disturbing some sponges and dislodging some of the smaller clinging sea life, something Simon loathed doing. The Caribbean reefs took enough abuse without his adding to it.

  But he had no choice.

  With knees bent almost to his chest, his flippers against the rock and his back against the wall, he took a deep breath and kicked out with everything he had. After half a minute of straining, he felt the rock move. Heartened, he found a little extra strength and increased his effort.

  Slowly, moving a fraction of an inch at a time, the rock began to tilt away from him. Simon squeezed shut his eyes and, shouting into his regulator’s mouthpiece, pushed even harder.

  And then he stopped, gasping as a crushing weight slammed against his chest. He opened his eyes and wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the rock had fallen back on him, pinning him to the wall. But no, the rock was falling away, tumbling end-over-end in slow motion toward the floor of the rift. The pain was coming from his heart. He could feel that battered old pump pounding out an irregular beat, thudding in his ears as his vision wavered.

  He slowed his lungs, taking deep, measured breaths, hoping his heart would follow suit, and cursing himself for being so careless as to have left behind his back-up nitros, the fast-acting sublingual tablets for when his angina broke through the extended-release pills.

  As he prayed for the pain to ease, proving this wasn’t the Big One, motion to his left caught his eye.

  Abdul, free of the entrapping rock, was pulling away from the wall and gliding toward Simon. His face came closer, his dead wide eyes staring into Simon’s as if to say, Join me … Join me …

  With his face close enough to kiss, Abdul turned away. His bloated body began a slow ascent, belly first, arms and legs dangling behind, returning at last to the world of air and light it had departed.

  Just as slowly, the crushing weight lifted from Simon’s chest. His heart slowed. Just angina. A bad attack, but the 40 percent oxygen in his tanks had helped.

  He pushed away from the wall and stared at the now wide-open passage into the cavern. No way. Not today. He didn’t have the strength. He’d make up an excuse for Frikkie, tell him about the stone, tell him he’d used up too much daylight moving it, tell him he’d finish the job tomorrow under the high morning sun, tell him anything except the truth about his heart.

  Not that his health would prompt Frik even to consider calling off the dive. A shark bit off your left leg? So? The right one still works. Get back down there and find me that fifth piece!

  No, it was no one else’s business.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d find Frik’s damn doodad with no problems, no complications.

  Right now what he needed was a drink.

  Weak, tired, and perhaps even a little depressed, Simon shot a bolus of air into his vest and began a controlled ascent.

  Chapter Sixteen

  McKendry and Keene walked confidently along the docks in Puerto La Cruz, fostering the impression that they knew where they were going. At the terminal, the giant tanker Yucatán rested far enough off shore that the long walkway looked like a tiny bridge that extended hundreds of yards out into the muddy green water. Pipes paralleled the walkway, heading from the port and the tank farm, the fractionating towers, and the smelly refinery equipment that had turned what must have been a beautiful jungle coastline into an industrial nightmare.

  Bleed-off gas flames burned and hissed from the tops of derricks, and gasoline trucks drove around, taking a small fraction of the production to Venezuelan markets. Other tankers came into the port to fill up and redistribute the petroleum products, but the Yucatán used the facilities in reverse. It brought fresh crude from the offshore rig to the refineries, rather than hauling separated petroleum of different grades away from the port and to other customers.

  Passing a poorly guarded chain-link gate, McKendry strode behind Keene down the walkway, listening to the water lap against the pilings—a peaceful sound compared to the chaos of inland refineries.

  “Let’s get this set up as soon as we can,” Keene called out. “We’ve got better things to do.”

  McKendry marched forward with determined strides. He saw his partner look back and cover a smile, doubtless Keene’s response to the way he always took
everything so seriously.

  On the way out to the deck of the tanker, a bored-looking security guard stopped them, probably more suspicious of the two because they were white-skinned Americans than for any other reason. Keene invoked the only name that would matter to the man. “We have an appointment with Miguel Calisto. El capitán? Comprende?”

  The guard scowled, but waved them onward.

  After they had walked across a deck as big as several football fields and climbed six flights of rickety metal stairs that led up alongside the crew housing and habitation areas, McKendry and Keene stood on the bridge deck.

  Within moments, the first mate approached them. “You are not allowed up here.”

  Keene said again that they had a meeting scheduled with the captain. Eventually, the mate conceded and led them to the captain’s quarters.

  Miguel Calisto was a ruddy-skinned man whose long pointed chin was graced with a scouring-pad of a beard. A rim of dark hair surrounded the gleaming bald spot on the back of his head like a crown. He listened to what the two men had to say, but exhibited no patience with them whatsoever.

  “Your request is most audacious,” the tanker captain said, choosing to speak English. He narrowed his eyes and sat down at his small desk in the cramped ready room off the bridge. “The Yucatán is not a passenger ship. We don’t give rides to curiosity seekers. My crew is not here to pamper Americans.”

  “On the contrary,” McKendry said, remembering the too-soft beds and too-garish nightclubs they had endured in Caracas. “We don’t want to be pampered.”

  “Amen,” Keene muttered.

  “In fact, we don’t even want the rest of your crew to know we’re aboard. We’d rather find a corner down in the pump room or the engine control room. Keep ourselves out of the way where no one can see us. We’re investigating a potential … threat.”

  “Top secret,” Keene added.

  “I’m afraid that is not possible,” the captain said. His lips became thin and hard, like the slash of a scowl. “Yes, indeed. Most impossible.”

  McKendry looked at the man, trying to discern whether he was opening a door to a large bribe or if he simply enjoyed playing hard to get. Calisto seemed honestly indignant, with no interest in providing passage for the two men, regardless of the circumstances.

  Keene stepped in, speaking in the man’s own language. “We understand your position, Captain. However, this is a serious political matter. I’m sure that you understand the delicacy of the arrangements between Oilstar and the Venezuelan government. If anything should happen to interfere with that … relationship, many people could be out of jobs.”

  “Show him the faxes,” McKendry said.

  Keene took out letters from Juan Ortega de la Vega Bruzual for the Security Ministry, and Fredrick Van Alman for Oilstar, both of which firmly requested cooperation “in whatever these two gentlemen desire.”

  The captain sighed. “Politics!” He practically spat out the word.

  “If you wish, we will pass on your reluctance to Minister Bruzual”—McKendry could see by his flinch that Calisto recognized the security minister’s name—“and arrange for you to discuss the matter with him. However, he’s a busy man and may not take too kindly to being disturbed.”

  “I’d prefer to know more about your … activities,” the captain said. “What are you trying to do?”

  Keene’s nostrils flared. “I will have Señor Bruzual contact you. You will be able to ask him as many questions as you like, provided you still have a job.”

  The captain gave best. “What is it you want of me?”

  McKendry saw his partner’s relief. “We need to go with you to the Valhalla platform and return here, if necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “Yours is not to reason why.”

  McKendry shot Keene a look to tell him to let up a little.

  “After we load from the Valhalla platform, I’m going up to the Caribbean next,” the captain said. “Not back to Puerto La Cruz.”

  “Wherever.” Keene shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll manage.”

  “There’s a utility closet down in the pump room. No one goes there except for maintenance, and we’re not due for any. You’re welcome to stay there. Sleep if you can.” Calisto reached up to point at a chart on the wall, a large and detailed map of the Venezuelan coast and the Caribbean.

  “We’ll head out of here in an hour and make our way around the Araya Peninsula between the coast and la Isla Margarita”—The captain’s finger traced a line along the northeastern coast of Venezuela—“around the Paria Peninsula through the Dragon’s Mouth”—his finger passed through the narrow patch of blue between the point of the Venezuelan coast and the northern edge of Trinidad—“down the Gulf of Paria and into the Serpent’s Mouth to the Valhalla platform.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Keene said.

  The captain looked at him as if he believed he was not all there. “Remember the map well, because you won’t have a view. There are no windows in the pump room.”

  “We’re not tourists,” McKendry said.

  The captain nodded. “Very well. There will be a new moon tonight. We will arrive at the pumping station at approximately ten o’clock. Most of my crew takes a boat over to Valhalla for their replacements. Until then, you are to stay in your quarters. Around midnight they should all be out of the way and you can safely come out on deck.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  After countless hours hidden in the cramped, metal-walled crawlspace down in the Yucatán’s pump room, Keene’s idea of what was and wasn’t reasonable had undergone a one hundred eighty degree change. The passage so far had been long and dreary, with nothing to see, no creature comforts, and too much time for reflection. He would have liked to play a card game or do even something as simple-minded as tic-tac-toe.

  Anything to keep himself from thinking about Arthur. By now, after so many years and so many adventures in the Daredevils Club, it should have been easy to accept the death of a member—par for the course. But it was never easy. Were it not for this confinement, the loss of Arthur would have come in sharp stabs of pain, engendered not so much by memories as by sights and sounds that reminded him of his friend. Out of deference to his partner, who was perfectly content to spend the time in silent contemplation, he did not suggest any trivial amusements.

  The droning engines stopped a little after eleven-thirty as the tanker pulled up to the Valhalla’s secondary pumping pier. Keene glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. “Nearly two hours late. Our Captain Calisto seems to be a true Venezuelan. Mañana, mañana … What do you say we give them half-an-hour to anchor themselves and get the crew off before we wander up and take a look around?”

  McKendry didn’t answer.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Keene said.

  This time, McKendry’s answer was a light snore.

  As Keene fidgeted impatiently, an idea began to take form. By midnight, it had become a plan. He tore a page out of the small notebook he carried in his pocket. Using a red felt pen he’d found on the floor, he wrote midnight at the top of the page. Then he wrote a brief note to McKendry, who would be awakened soon enough by the silence of the engines:

  Always wanted to piss into the wind from a great height so I’m swimming over to the rig to play King of the Hill. If you can’t see me swimming back by 2 AM, start worrying.

  He threw the pen aside, placed the note where McKendry was sure to see it upon waking, and, groping his way up the metal staircase, left their quarters. Practiced in moving stealthily without losing time, he made his way up the seven decks to the bulkhead door that opened onto the sprawling main deck of the tanker.

  Once outside, he took a welcome breath of fresh, albeit humid, air and looked around.

  The empty supertanker Yucatán was anchored under quicksilver starlight in a calm black sea, about a quarter of a mile from the monolithic offshore oil-production platform. The rig itself stood like a skyscraper on the ocean, raised up
out of the water on four enormous concrete piers like stilts. The platform’s tall derrick, numerous cranes, helipad, and flare-boom rode several hundred feet above the water. The long shaft through its center plunged down into the sea bottom like the proboscis of a voracious mosquito.

  Keene had once invested a small amount of money in off-shore drilling. The investment had led to a significant amount of reading for which, he thought, he was presently grateful. Without that, he would not have had the vaguest understanding of what was going on. Because of it, he knew that the Valhalla rig pumped crude oil from strata deep beneath the sea, but did not bring it up into the big platform itself; instead, the fresh crude was shunted to a pipeline laid across the ocean floor toward a separate derrick, a stand-alone pumping station to which the oil tanker was secured.

  On a crane high above the secondary platform, heavy nozzles dangled downward. With the cargo holds of the Yucatán open beneath them like the gaping mouths of hungry birds, the crude oil from the Valhalla rig gushed out of the nozzles, filling the numerous interconnected but compartmentalized chambers that made up the bulk of the tanker.

  The Yucatán had a double hull, an outer shell to avoid punctures of the inner compartments—extremely conservative efforts designed to prevent disastrous oil spills. The crude petroleum poured out from the pumping platform at an enormous flow rate, but even so it would take many hours to fill the supertanker. The respite gave plenty of time for most of the Yucatán’s crew members to shuttle over to the relative metropolis of the Valhalla rig.

  Keene was struck by how much the tanker’s deck looked like the Great Plains, only uglier. The expanse was dirty and stained, a long series of riveted metal plates studded with hatches and vent chimneys. Lines of different colors—red, blue, and yellow—were painted in patterns across the deck, zone demarcations of some sort. The hieroglyphics were too large for anyone to make out at this level. He figured that they were something like the lines and roads Incas had made in the South American plains, depicting giant shapes visible only from high-flying aircraft.